Anita & Me: A Story

The pleasant smile didn't leave her lips, it just grew a little bigger. She was getting into her car, "You're students. Would I put you in a place you couldn't afford?" Then she rolled down the window. "You can move in anytime after the 18th. That will give them lots of time to get the furniture in." Then she waved and drove away.

That little klatch of women that was managing my life? It just grew by one and the founding member was squeezing me from behind and squealing, "Can you believe it?" I couldn't. Things like this didn't happen to people like me.

With my bike poking out of the trunk, Anita drove us back to our slum. We were both giddy with excitement. And why not? Our new life was shaping up rather nicely. As she prattled on, I was imagining myself walking my bike across the busy boulevard then jumping onto it to sachet through the unending trails when Anita pulled into an empty parking lot, turned off the engine, pulled me to her and kissed me with a ferocious passion of noise, tongue and laughter. I tried to push her away, but she wouldn't let me. She clamped onto me and beat up on my lips while all the time saying, "fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." God I loved this girl.

The windows were steamy when she let me go but instead of turning the key and getting us back on the road, she sat back, holding my hand to her lips. She was kissing it when she said, "I just can't believe what you've done for me."

I didn't laugh out loud at this. I don't know why, maybe because it shocked me so much. What I'd done for her? All I had done for her was enter her life. The rewards were clearly mine, any fool could see that and I was about to state the obvious when I thought, why? What's wrong with a little harmless delusion? So I used the moment to ask the question that had been on my mind for almost exactly 48 hours. "What about your fantasy?"

She began to suck and lick the back of my hand. I guessed she was doing that absently, she was thinking, she was sucking and licking like you chew a pencil when you're lost in thought. "You know I never had a date all the way through school," then she laughed, "well, not after, either. A couple of times someone asked me out but I always thought it was through pity so I always said no. But I thought about it a lot," she snickered again, good naturedly, "Well, I thought about it all the time. What would it be like to go out on a date? That was my fantasy. That's what I thought we'd do last night. I'd be 18 again and you'd ask me out and I would go and I would finally find out. That was my plan." She absently kissed my wet hand a few times. "But it didn't work out that way. I couldn't say ‘yes' to you. Even within a fantasy I couldn't become someone I wasn't. Asking you to come back to my place was a real shock to me. I have no idea where that came from, and as for the rest?" She was shaking her head and laughing a little, not a joyous laugh but not nervous, either. "All that just kind of just happened and I let it. When you asked me later what it meant, I can honestly say I didn't know. But I think I do now." Then she stated what was to me almost obvious at the time. She wanted to let people know that the acne had only attacked her face. That she had a normal body and she had normal desires. "That's why I masturbated. I just wanted to proved that even an ugly duckling has feelings, sexual feelings." Then she laughed with a little joy, "and I wanted the word to get out that the pimples stopped at my chin and that I have a good body, a good body loaded with sexual tension, just like everybody else." Then she pulled me to her again, "Like it is now."

But I was sort of ready for her and I fended her off. "And?"

She looked at me quizzically, "And?"

"And how do you feel?" Even in the grey light I could see she didn't understand me, "From the fantasy? What did you learn?"

She sat back in the seat and thought about it, sucking on the back of the hand she had never let go. "I honestly don't think it much matters any more. I think I was a little lonely, but I had five brothers for God's sake, how lonely could I have been? And I thought, maybe, I was sexually a little, ah," she smiled, and when she said, "untapped," I laughed with her. "But I think the fantasy kind of told me that I wasn't the type to fuck my way to popularity anyway. You know, in the fantasy I could have screwed you, I could have let you screw me, but I didn't want that to happen. I didn't. That really told me something." She pressed my hand into her crotch and shivered. Then she started the engine. "And it's telling me something now."

We didn't talk for the rest of the way home, nor for a long time after we got there. We just quietly walked up the stair, unlocked the door and walked directly to the bedroom.

She opened her top drawer and motioned me to it as she took off her clothes. At first I didn't get it but deductive reasoning made it clear enough: she wanted me to feed my fetish, so I fished out the orange bra and panties, mainly because they were the easiest to find and when I handed them to her she smiled and, not knowing what to do, I watched her put them on, always a treat.

She sat me on the side of the bed and held my head against her and calmly stroked my hair as I hugged her around the waist. She was thinking, I could feel her concentration, but I don't know what she was thinking about. It could have been anything, I was beginning to learn that. I started to stroke her pantied ass and while I found it really sexy and I could feel my hard-on uncomfortably pushing against my underwear, I was surprised that I wasn't turned-on. What I was feeling was the closeness and I was really enjoying it. And I think she was too because she backed away, helped me take off my clothes, stripped off her underwear and we lay down beside each other and just held on.

The phone rang about an hour later. Anita made to get up to answer it, but I held her back, I didn't want her to leave me for a lousy phone call. The voice was loud and a bit belligerent, ‘JIM, IT'S JOHN FRANK. MEET ME AT 1267 UNION AT 10:30 TOMORROW.' I knew the address. With a little dread, I was getting some sense of the assignment he would have for me. About a minute later the phone rang again. ‘AND FOR FUCK'S SAKE WEAR A SUIT.'

I was sitting at the kitchen table having a coffee when the dream I'd woken up to came back to me. Anita was getting organized for work when I told her about it.

Like always, I was sitting in the front row, furthest seat to the left. I think it was physics class. I couldn't see her. Anita was behind me, near the center of the room but I knew she would be ducking down in her book, almost lost in it, that's the way she always sat in class. I was having difficulty writing precisely what I wanted to say. I was struggling and it came out awkwardly, but the note I gave her as I passed her desk after class said something like this:

‘I want to ask you to the prom. But I can't. I haven't got a suit or the money to rent one. And, anyway, I probably have to baby sit, I think that's why my foster parents got me. But I'm sure I can get away. If you would like to go for a walk, go for a bicycle ride or just sit and talk, that's what I would like. Can I come and see you or can we arrange to meet somewhere?'

She didn't react. She just gave me a peck on the cheek and left and I got up and got ready to meet Big John.

I was home, staring at the pile of papers I had to study, when Anita burst through the door. She stopped in the middle of the room with a great grin on her face. "You know What? I would have said yes. I'm positive, I would have said ‘yes.'" She spun around in a circle like Mary Tyler Moore did at the end of her show, but Anita had more joy on her face.

I laughed at her and said to her when she came to a stop. "And you know what?" I had put a lot of thought into this today, once while Big John was talking to me, "If I had been in your class I would have given you that note."

She dove at he. "I know."