Bridge Work

"Her name is Aphrodite And she rides a crimson shell And you know you cannot leave her For you touched the distant sands With tales of brave Ulysses How his naked ears were tortured By the sirens sweetly singing And you want to take her with you To the hard land of the winter"

As he bobs up and down to the beat, his side rubbing Steve's, a guy he knows by sight, who hangs out with Steve, comes up. Steve laughs at him.

"Asshole," the guy shouts.

"I'm sorry about it man," shouts Steve. Steve leans down to him and shouts in his ear. "This is really funny, Trudy. Me and some guys were driving home last night. We'd been drinking some beers over in Flint Hollow State Park. Tim, who's in the back seat, he says he needs to take a leak so I pull over. Tim gets out, is gone a minute and comes back and off we go."

"Leaving me, asshole!" shouts Roger.

"Hey man, I didn't know you'd gotten out too! You guys should learn to hold it!"

He listens to the conversation swirl about him, it's volume turned way up to be heard over the drums and guitars. It feels great to be among these guys. He feels the envious eyes of girls looking over. A month ago his would've been one of their number. He leans against Steve and puts an arm around his back, then with a flush, slips his hand into Steve's back pocket.

Another guy chips in, "We didn't know you weren't there until we got to your place to drop you off. I said, 'Shit where's Roger?' We hadn't a clue."

Steve shouted, "I said, 'The fucker started out back there didn't he?' It was like you'd just vanished, man. We forgot all about the pit stop."

"Then we saw a prowl car coming up the street and we split."

"I come out of the woods and there's no fucking car," Roger shouted with a laugh, "I stick out my thumb and who should stop but the fuzz! He thought it was pretty funny. Not my Dad, he had a cow. You guys may be seniors, I'm a junior. I'm grounded for life."

Steve laughed, "This explains you're being here, how?"

"I jumped out my window. See these scratches? And I got poison ivy when I was taking that leak!" He made a show of scratching his crotch.

Steve laughs again and puts an owning hand on his bottom and shouts, "I'm getting a beer, you want anything Trudy?"

"A coke," he shouts in reply.

This gets a laugh from the guys who've clustered around.

"Shit," shouts Steve, "I'm not getting you a coke. You can get that for yourself," and he is off into the crush.

A girl, Dana, who's never noticed him before comes up and shouts. "Hey Trudy! Come down in the basement. Let's shoot some pool."

The one time he'd been here before, at a party at which, though barricaded upstairs, the parents were safely present, he'd made his way down into the basement. There'd been a crowd of girls around the pool table. He'd watched for a moment then gone disconsolately back upstairs to stand by a friend along the wall.

This time the crush parts miraculously before him and he finds himself playing pool with Sandra, cheerleader, yearbook editor and homecoming runner up, the girl's whose house, well whose parents' house, this is.

Some time later a hand touches his shoulder and a girl shouts in his ear, "Steve's look'n for you, he's upstairs."

He hands the cue off and makes his way back up. In the living room someone else points up the stairs to the second floor. He feels the weight of eyes as he climbs to the second floor, he tries to move like a boy, with no motion in his rear.

The words surrounding him now are:

"If you want to get to heaven, over on the other shore, stay out of the way of the long-tongue liar. Oh good shepherd feed my sheep."

He makes his way to what must be the parents' bedroom. Steve is waiting for him, a Bud on the bedtable.

He feels a wave of desire and gratitude.

Steve shuts the door. "It was a lot of work clearing out the rabble," he says as he bends and kisses him.

He presses himself against Steve, swaying to the sound of the guitars and drums that echo through the room.

They fall together onto the bed. For the moment all they do is neck and clutch through their clothes. He feels hot and breathless.

He closes his eyes as Steve pushes at his blouse and fumbles with his bra. He feels suddenly sophisticated and superior. He twists and undoes it. Steve is on to other things. He feels the tug at his jeans and underwear. He lifts his bottom off the bed. He feels Steve's hands on his skin as the stiff material slides down his legs. He's exposed from shoulders to knees. Steve is undoing his own belt.

The bedroom door bursts open and the music redoubles in volume and there's the sound of surprised excited laughter. He flushes red and frantically pulls at his jeans, his panties bunch and bind uncomfortably, he tugs his blouse back down and rushes from the room and down the stairs, his breasts bouncing, he's left his bra behind. He finds the phone in the kitchen and calls home. In the hall he hears someone shouting gleefully, "He had Trudy's pants down to her ankles!".

"Mom," he shouts, "Can you come get me?"

Steve is beside him. "You're not going! You came with me and you're going with me!"

He slaps Steve as hard as he can to the sound of more laughter and rushes out the hall and front door. He hears Steve shout, "Hey Trude! You're forgetting something!" He hears the laughter and doesn't look back. His Mom picks him up on the street as the red lights of the police bear down on the party.

On the ride home, through his tears, what he thinks about is the way the girls'd looked at him when he was with Steve, about what Monday will be like with the humiliation, about how hard the humiliation would be to bear in the darkness away from Steve.

The dream changes again.

He stands on a patch of grass and dirt. Spreading to his right is a marsh thick with cattails. The low cloud cover forms a kind of reddish suspended ceiling which, by reflecting the city and highway lights, provides a glowering indirect illumination. Everything looks heavy, sodden, and colorless. Just to his left is a highway overpass. There's a steady hiss of cars and an occasional rumble of trucks. Each throws brief light on the trees up on the high ground beyond the swamp, giving the trees sudden brief colorless life.

A cold drizzle fills the air. A mist wisps above the creek.

He recognizes the place. He and his kids and sometimes his wife used to canoe here, paddling up the lazy stream. The bridge always proved a high point of the outing, the kids glorying in fear and excitement as the structure echoed and groaned and stank and the cars and trucks raced unseen overhead. Often too, the canoe would shake and tip and swing into rocks no matter what he did. He'd have to get out and pull. Even then the canoe would fight him, his two boys laughing, his wife, if she were along, going, "Stop it! Tom. Stop fooling around! It's not funny at all!"

The girl stands in the water before him, its black surface cutting her off at the knees. If it weren't a dream, he'd've looked embarrassedly away, instead her naked form fills his eyes. The drizzle coats her skin with pale gold. Her breasts are firm and high, her nipples twin unblinking eyes, her pubic hair an open dark chasm of a mouth.

She holds out a hand to him and he steps into the water. He knows it's cold but somehow also feels it's like the summer water he and his kids'd swum in. His wife always tried to stop them and wouldn't go in herself from a probably sensible fear of pollution.

The girl turns and leads him, the water splashing about their knees. His eyes are on her bottom, her shoulders, the awkward way her arms swing. In the dark water behind her he sees her reflection, swaying and bobbing on the disturbed surface.

An unseen drowned branch hits his shins and tangles between his legs and he spills into the water with flailing splashes and a shout. He stumbles to his feet. She is twenty yards up the stream, mist floating about her thighs and waist.

He catches up to her where the creek opens into a small pond. Lily pads brush her waist and bob and part as she passes. Frogs leap as the water grows shallow, providing brief glimpses of desperate life.

She stretches on the bank, rushes and cattails all about her. A crushed stalk rebounds between her legs, brushing against her sex. She chuckles lightly, lifts her leg up and forces the stalk down beneath her thighs. She reaches a hand up and pulls him down beside her.

The weeds snap under him and feel slimy and coarse.

He puts his hand on her slick waist, so warm and elastic. Her belly is springy and soft, gently rising and falling. He is consumed with desire. Years of dutiful lovemaking help him suppress it. He shifts, the grasses whisper under him. He spreads her legs and kneels between them, his feet in the stream, his knees in soft muck. He bends and touches her sex with his tongue. He hears her gasp with surprise.

He caresses her with fingers naturally moist from the mist. He spreads her sex. He pushes his tongue in as far as it will go, then licks up. He feels his way to her nub. His eyes are closed and he tries to forget the smell and taste, to ignore the coarseness of her thatch. He slips a hand up along her flank, up to a breast and cups it. It feels so nice. He concentrates on that, letting his tongue run the course he'd used on his wife for years: lick her clitoris, tongue down pressing to the left, push into her entrance, tongue up pressing to the right, attend to her clitoris, around and around. In his mind he counts the circuits, 50 always seemed a good round number.

She begins to push up with her thighs so his nose is sometimes unpleasantly against her. He pushes his tongue up her as far as he can, his wife always said that his best trick was how he could roll his tongue. He feels her buck in earnest. He hears her gasp, "Oh! Oh shit!"

Her hands grip his hair and push his face hard against her, her thighs tighten and loosen against his cheeks. Her skin feels silky and elastic and so nice. Her smell is overpowering, her dark wiry hair gets in his nose and eyes, she bounces against him, the reeds beneath her rustle and crunch, she gasps and cries loudly. The sound echos, lost and empty and wild.

When she is still, he kisses his way up her belly arriving at her breasts. He fondles them with pleasure, kissing down one and up the other. They are firm, their nipples eager small pyramids. As it's a dream he says what comes to him without filter, "I wonder what sort of Pharaoh lies buried within and what his afterlife is like."

"I hope the grave robbers've cleaned him out," she says, looking down, "I hate clutter in a graveyard. No never-ending kisses or wind chimes or battery lights for him."

Then her hands grip his head and pull him higher, her hips press up against him, her sex slides against his stomach.

He looks into her eyes. They are wild and young and eager. Her warm cold rain slick fingers grip his cock. He feels sad. This being a dream he will wake shortly, if he were young, he'd wake to a mess, as he's old, there'll just be a sense of loss and emptiness.

"That was great," she whispers. "I never felt anything like it."

She shifts under him to get properly positioned and he feels himself enter her. Now, he thinks, I will wake. Then I can masturbate and get some sleep.

She feels wonderful, tight and slick and warm. So tight he finds he cannot get more than an inch in and must work his thighs up and down. She lifts her legs and locks her feet above him, he feels her heels on his bottom. He slides all the way in. He rests hot upon her, hot within her, hair tangled, feeling her pelvis hard against his.

He kisses her for the first time and her mouth is wide and seems to engulf him. He feels her teeth with his tongue and the roof of her mouth. He feels her tongue under his. He wishes he could push it in further and match his efforts below.

He whispers, "With a little genetic engineering, people could be given the tongues of frogs."

She bounces her hips against him and says, "Get to work."

He does, sliding slowly in and out, the flesh of her tunnel seems to cling to him, letting him slide out only reluctantly. He rocks his hips to make sure his angle varies, his wife would be sure to complain if he didn't.

His hands slip along her back, feeling the slick bed of rushes and reeds on which she lies.

She grips his rain slick shoulders, then slips one hand between their bellies, he feels her fingers press against him as he slips in and out, her knuckles press against his stomach as she fondles herself. Her other hand slips behind his thighs and he feels her fingers on his balls.

He feels her hips press up against him, her legs shifting along his side, splashing in the water. Inside he feels her muscles tighten about him, clutching him, like the squeeze of a lover's hand. He remembers his wife, lying still under him, passively letting him take his due.

He gasps and begins working harder. He sees her gleaming pale breasts rocking beneath him. He closes his eyes and is lost in her panting, his shortness of breath, his rising pleasure.

He knows he must wake. Surely before his climax.

His calves and thighs cramp almost painfully. He clutches her to him and holds his hips hard against hers as his excited pleasure engulfs him and he spasms within her. Her fingernails cut his back and her choked cry seems distant and fierce.

Still he does not wake.

The dream shifts slightly. They sit side by side, backs to the bank, hips and legs in the dark water. One of her legs is hooked over his, her knee a dim white island where it breaks the surface. The surface tension causes the water to dip just before it touches her flesh, it's like she's untouchable.

Through the water, he sees a long red scratch on his calf where the underwater snag scraped him earlier. She runs a toe along it. He feels its faint sting.

He feels her side against his. His back is on the bank. He can feel the stalks of grass and rushes and a rock or two. Her head rests on his shoulder, her breath hot on his nipples. Her hair, wet and aromatic, is draped over his shoulders and about his lips.

He thinks he is only partially asleep, some corner of his mind is aware of his dog. She's burrowed under the covers now, her bony spine pressed against his side.

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Steve looked down at where she lay half conscious, still impaled on his cock. "Hey honey, I think you're getting to like it at long last!"

Without opening her eyes, she said "Asshole", then "Shutup and fuck".

"Honey your wish is my command," and he began to slide in and out once more.

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"That was amazing," she says, "I never knew it could be so good."

He thinks of all the dreary times he's made love to his wife, running through that script from duty, a final unwanted spasm of pleasure for reward. It'd never felt so good for him either, and of course, he thinks, it's just a dream. His best sex is in a dream. To say something, he says, "Well, you're young. You can't've" then he flushes and stops.

She chuckles, "Can't've been screwed that many times?" She bites his nipple lightly, "If only you knew."

A car roars on the highway. Its lights hit the trees on the hill behind the far bank. Individual trees flash into focus, then the headlights move on and the woods return to a dark blur.

"You know," she says, her toe still idly slipping along his scrape, "This is the same stream that flows through town and along the edge of the cemetery. This water," she gave it a kick, "Might've been there this morning. You could like get up and splash home."

He has a vision of himself climbing up the slope into the cemetery, walking naked past the sleeping graves, past the sleeping residential houses with their waking decorations, into his house and up the stairs and then standing silent, looking down at his sleeping self and dog.

Her hand touches his cock where it floats in the dark creek water. "That last time was almost good enough," she says as he stiffens, "Let's try again."

She swings herself over him, water splashes and drips. She bends and kisses him. His hands grip her firm narrow waist. Her fingers position him and she slips herself down as his erection rises up within her. This time he lets her do everything, looking up, admiring her soft beautiful face, it still possesses the smooth gleaming bloom of youth.

He admires the straining muscles of her thighs, the lines of tendons that tighten and stretch as she slides up and down him, he admires the ripples that spread in the water, the slight splashes. He admires the sway of her breasts, he lifts a hand and feels them bob against it. He watches her collarbone how it stands out against her elastic flesh, how her throat moves as she gasps for breath. He feels her hands grip his shoulders, watches the muscles move in her arms as she pulls against him. He watches her face flashing into view as her hair swings back and forth. Her eyes are clinched tight.

He feels the excitement in his cock, in his balls. It's a pleasant and undemanding sensation. There is no sign of a climax, nor does he want one, this dream could go on forever.

She pauses, the tip of his cock all that's within her. Her fingers dip into the water and then slide along him, from his balls to where he vanishes within her. The sensation is intense and he pushes his hips up. He slides his hands along her waist and back over her belling bottom, feeling how tense and smooth and slick her skin is. He slides his hands up her sides to her face and pulls her down and kisses her. She bites his lips hungrily then begins working herself up and down his length again.

After a delicious time she pauses, chuckles ruefully at some thought that is opaque to him, sighs, bends and kisses him and he woke, alone in the dark, filled with need. This time he did get heavily out of bed and stumbled down the dark empty hall to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and masturbated. It wasn't long before his whole body seemed to clinch tight and his cock experienced a brief painful pinch of pleasure as it spat into the toilet paper. Spent, he noticed the thin scrape along his calf where in the dream the submerged branch had snagged him.

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She opened her eyes, looking up at the bridge. "It's not going to work out," she sighed.

"Nonsense, honey," Steve murmured, sated and half asleep. "We're our class's most successful couple. We've been together 35 years. All the other guy's've split up and remarried dozens of times."

"Asshole," she said.

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He woke feeling tired and heavy. He stared at the ceiling trying to remember the dreams. He thought if he could, he'd be energized and happy. All he could call up was drums and music and the substanceless memory of the sensation of sex and the dark weed choked stream and a painfully sharp image of the girl, standing naked in the water.

Dart wriggled under the covers and pushed her nose into his side and scratched him with an eager forepaw. Once he was awake, she wanted action.

Their morning walk was drizzly and thankfully uneventful. He took her along deserted residential streets. The only sign of life was a dog in one of the houses they passed, standing at a window and barking out at them, scrabbling at the glass.

After breakfast he stared without enthusiasm out the window at his car in the driveway. He started up his laptop and sent email to his group, the subject line a single word, "WAH", the body empty.

Shortly he got email back, "Hey man," it read, "Get your ass in here and make the coffee! I'm thirsty."

He smiled slightly and sent in reply, "Funny, I was just gonna ask you to get off your own rear and drive over with a cup for me. That office coffee is soo good."