Mirrorworld Girls

Joy stops moving on me, stares past us, over the couches' arm and at the door. I can feel her heartbeat inside her, feeling mine as well, her walls contracting around me, Joy punctuating every flex – "Shit. Shit shit shit." Some panic in her eyes. That car horn. She's looking wild at me, and it takes me a minute to realise, our timelines converging, that same danger. And then I'm there, in the same place.

"Shit," – me this time.

Joy's mum. Her car outside.

Joy, wild-eyed, whispering, "Get rid of her." Blush and heat spilling all down her neck and chest. Beads between her breasts, nipples still hard. Arousal not forgotten in panic.

"Get rid of her? How?"

"Fuck."

We can see the car through the stained glass, arrogant thing, warped and refracted. A blob gets out of the blob car, checks for other blobs before it starts walking across the blob. All sort of hard to see.

Joy hasn't moved, weight of her still bearing down on me, puss still gripping me.

"Inside me. Hurry" Rasping.

"You're kidding."

"Cum inside me."

"She is right outside." Whispering this. Stupid.

"You don't want to?" Joy not messing around. "I need it. Yours. Take you home with me." Panic still in her eyes, vague and wicked smile. That same duality. "Please."

"You have to get changed. Off, quick."

"I can make you come."

Some fuzzy shape at the door rings my bell.

"Shit. Don't answer."

"Duh."

She lies down on top of me, breasts flattened between us, her hips bearing fiercely down. So warm, her insides. Unbearable to leave. And she's rasping in my ear now, that kid lilt.

"Please."

The bell again.

Rasping, "I can make you."

She doesn't move, looking straight at me. Spider webs and dimples. Hands on my chest, she makes just the slightest shift, her hips tipping imperceptibly and me feeling every iota, every single flex of muscle. Lifts up slowly, taking such time for a girl caught in such strange headlights, and with the same patience lowers herself, her walls gripping, tugging at me, rolling my foreskin back inside her and sliding monk-like down my length. Vice-tight grip of her. Patience, patience. I've never felt anything so exquisite.

Nobody here before?

And then that bell again. Knocking, now, some terrible impatience. And her daughter is everything but! Sitting completely still on me. Waiting for me, sweating.

But I'm losing it, feel myself slipping away; everybody waiting for something from me, all of them things I'm having trouble giving. I've lost it. Some curse upon me, my own mantra working against me. Don't blow it. Air of Eros lifted, the convergence of timelines. I'm already soft inside her, impotent to affect the surfaces of the world. Too late for us.

"Joy I can't. I'm too far away."

Blown it. A simple task.

My softness inside her is exquisite, cock tender and hyper-sensitive, but the disappointment is far too acute. Etched on her face, not anger but some cute smile, some tender resignation. Tenderly resigned, Joy takes a moment before pulling away, and I'm falling out of her as she's sighing. Says –

"You're such a disappointment."

No hurt in it, no cruelty, but the words are shattering. Difficult sometimes, divorcing the symbol from the sign. She scooches up onto me, ostensibly in no hurry but I can see the wasted time in her furrow. I've wasted just plain so much time. Sitting her sex onto my chest as she's reaching for her clothes, trailing her wetness up my midriff. Her puss plants a wet kiss on my chest, open mouthed and unsatisfied, breasts teardropping in front of my face as she slips her arms into her sleeves and climbs off me. Some swagger, stumble, still half-drunk on standing. Slipping her panties on, safety pin and skirt, buttoning, closing herself to me, she's staring at me the whole time, some reassurance in her eyes. Her dark hair tsunami blown, rumbled clothes reeking of beer and sex, who knows what sort of trouble I'm in.

She's very beautiful, this Joy thing. Pistachio girl. I can't take my eyes off her. She sighs over and over.

Joy grabs her bag and kneels at my face. Her Mum is calling her mobile now, but we're back in our own time. Too late, too late. She kneels and brushes her lips over my face, kissing me over and over. Reassurance, healing power of plumbago as her lips find mine, kiss me a tender goodbye, dark eyes looking straight into mine. I must look pretty wrecked.

"Don't feel bad."

Me saying, "I'm crazy about you."

"My first time. You were very nice." Cooing, comforting. Who's the adult?

"I love you." It's certainly not me.

"Just don't feel bad."

"I adore you."

"Just, the timing is bad, is all."

"Sorry."

I'm just this naked loser on a couch right now.

Lips parting, moist pressing into my stupid fuzz.

Whispering into my mouth;

"This is crazy."

And then she's gone. I roll naked off the couch and crawl into the kitchen, weary of her mum who hates me. I stare and stare out the window, watching the warped blobs get into the car and disappear. No salt pillars, no Orpheus deal. I'm slumping back against the fridge, hearing coronas clinking on the inside, my butt sweaty and cold against the tile.

In the quiet of the empty house, my fingers fiddle absently with my wilt, my wearied champion, the skin of it still shiny from Joy's wetness. Feel her fluid, some wonderful Joy levy trapped under my foreskin. Run my fingers through the wet kiss she left on my chest. I can still smell her.

And I do need to finish, something fierce, the urgency of it welling up inside me someplace. But the will is gone, the mechanism broke. The ragged and ecstatic joy all gone from me. A question of timing.

I light a cigarette, look around at my living room all torn apart. Signs of what just happened, all of them big smoky question marks.

***

Later that night, and there's a red blip laser-sighting the dark of the apartment. My new and entirely relative loneliness taking form, night-snipers peering out at me from the shadows, red dot training on me. I'm drunk and staring at the answering machine, and the red blip is the deficit of phone calls. No new messages.

The next day I leave the apartment. Milk, cigarettes, newspaper. The blip is still there when I get back. I was thinking, maybe if I turn my back, something nice will happen to me. Orpheus again. I will miss it, but at least it will have happened.

She still hasn't called.

All my dumb kids, they're all of them sitting their end of year thing, and they're all of them more or less doomed. I haven't taught anybody anything this year; it's entirely possible I've made some of them stupider. All that exposure to my singularly evil smelling apartment, to my own unlucky pheromones – my doom is quite likely contagious. Invisible odourless failure. So I have no sessions, the work all dried up – just me and my red dot.

It's a buddy movie.

Why I don't call?

Because I'm an infant.

And I'm afraid of her mother.

This girl, man, she's probably busy anyway. And mad at me.

I wonder what she's up to.

The Joy smell hasn't left the apartment. I am preserving it, some precious and pungent relic, the peak in my romantic life's oscillations. It's all of it down hill from here. Nobody but me allowed in or out of the apartment – my crime scene is sealed off, a veritable museum of DNA evidence. I only smoke on the balcony. And that old fart smell that used to plume around the couch when I collapse into it, there's a sweetness to it now, some hint of girlfume, so heavy a thing for so slight a nymphette.

There's a stray pubic hair wedged in the butt cheeks of the couch and I know it's owner immediately. Long thing, dark looking but belied under the sunlight, pale brown sliver curling around my finger. Not mine, certainly, nothing missing from my brillo pad. I paste it above my bedhead with spit. Stray butterfly wing. Make a wish.

On the fourth day I've got sort of a mean drunk on, and I find myself hanging around outside her school. Not kidding, about the old internal oscillator. It's been a bad week. Outside the classrooms and demountables, the street's a pile-up of four wheel drives, rich looking mums picking up their rich looking girls. There's a traffic conductor conducting some strange private-school semaphore. I hate this place; she doesn't belong here, my Joy. The girls here are all surface culture, mirror-world girls and mirror-world parents, shiny like the RAV4s humping it in a circle around the block. But Joy is something else. All internal life, leonine, catlike and complex. Secrets in that dark spider-web tangle. What is she doing here?

She's invincible here.

I guess she's stopped coming to school by now.

The mirror-world parents are looking at me kind of funny.

I should have worn shoes; I think somebody's calling security.

I pad home, sad and shambolic.

***

The stray pubic hair looms over my bed like some religious icon in miniature, a secret in its curl, accusing and all seeing. Pubic hair idolatry. I'm rolling over and over, sleepless and rumpled with wine in the brain, planting myself against the wall and letting the mattress gap digest me. My cock rubs angry at the plaster. I never did finish, not all week. Too much guilt, the strand on my wall watching me.

The sniper in my apartment is becoming downright sinister.

Can't sleep.

I roll ragdoll out of bed, 1am says my little redlight buddy, and before I can ruin the gesture with thought I'm pulling on a jumper and heading out into the night, my brain fog venting in the Eskimo night air. I need to know the secret of that curl – no blind faith in my idolatry. Religious love. Stuff of Chaucer, if you ask Joy.

At 2am I'm standing outside Joy's place, hoping this is her window. The bad news is I'm wearing a beanie.

I have to see her, need to. Matter of life and near-death.

Skulking through the hedge boxes and peering up over the window ledge, my dark turtleneck scritching at my jawline, how I look is like some strange knitwear ninja. There are of course methods of pursuing romance with far younger girls without seeming creepy; my night prowling is probably not one of them. But the room is hers. An art student's room, ink drawings blue-tacced to every surface, books and records stacked waist-high on the floor. Underwear everywhere, really just everywhere, her school uniform tracked from the door to her bed, discarded, girl-school snake-skin. An ashtray slowly smoking itself on her desk.

I tap my lighter on her window until she stirs, rolling over in hangover slow motion, her eyes splitting open and squinting into the dark. Tapping again, breaking the still of her room, frightening her – she sees me, instantly awake, a gasp-yell thing escaping her at the sight of me, silhouette pervert standing at her window. Recognising me then, the fear leaving her. Squinting, squinting.

"Hi," I'm waving. Hello.

"Phil?"

"Sorry. To scare you." Whispering.

Her eyes adjusting, waking more fully, she raises an eyebrow at me. She holds her bedsheet up over her breasts, runs a hand through her spiderwebs. Ruffled, sleep mussed. Her cocked eyebrow gives me a powerful embarrassment.

"What are you doing?" she yawns. "You are so weird."

"In the neighbourhood."

"Get in here." She stands, sheet wrapped precariously around her as she stumbles to the window and lets me in, rubbing her eyes. She turns and pads back to bed, not helping me climb as I scramble into her room. The sheet hangs low around her, and I'm staring and staring at the smooth canvas of her back, the moonlight turning her to porcelain, sheet-creases and goose-brail, watching the shifting of her butt parentheses as she turns and plonks onto her mattress. Moonlight the only light, and I'm catching my breath. She relights a cigarette from her ashtray, offers me one, still giving me that single eyebrow. Cute smirk on her, patronising. I feel silly, but at least she's not mad.

"Dude. I thought you were a burglar. I was going for my hockey stick."

She's lying down, pulling the sheets around her. She curls her feet up under her, facing me, dark hair falling all around her face. Breasts brought up into a little hug as she holds herself in the cold. I'm pulling my beanie off. Stupid. I have no idea what to say. Standing, rubbing my hair. I sneeze.

Joy starts laughing a little. Breasts shaking under the sheets. "You are such a creep! Outside my window." She's still groggy. Her voice sounds amazing half awake, this husky laughing fit. Sounding older. "Where did you go this week? No phone from you, nothing."

"I thought – maybe, you would phone. If you wanted."

"Jeez. I can't make every move. Here, get in." She lifts the sheet corner up, and I stoop awkwardly, climb into bed with her. Making every move. Flash of blue skin, blue nipple as the sheet balloons around us, her smell and her smoke expelled from the polyester cocoon. My clothes feel rough, hazardous against her naked skin. It's real warm beside her. She's shifting away from me, making room that isn't there, and the tiny bed is more or less pushing us face to face, my nose brushing against hers. Same deal, that instant intimacy. Her breath smells of sleep, tickling my lip. Nice. Faces me, holding the sheet up under her neck and staring at me. Little girl eyes.

"I missed you. Thought maybe you forgot me. Or I talked you into something."

"Sorry. Sorry"

"Or too young for you."

"I'm stupid. Probably is, I'm too young for you."

"Take this off." She's tugging at the bottom of my jumper, pouting. I lift up, helping her. "Arms up."

We slide my shirt off and I settle back into her, her breasts and tum pressing warm into mine as we wrap arms, tangle of sheets and skin. Nothing awkward in it. Smell of her windtunneling up between us. I kick my socks, my trousers off, my hardness brushing her naked thigh as she sighs into my neck. Melt into each other, my hands cupping her ass, holding her hips to mine. Naked reprieve.

What drives me crazy is that she never assumed. That silent assumption – my own silent assumption: I'm a loser, and anybody can have me. I won't fight. I need this. Joy never joined those dots, never fully knew how easily she could have me. Our internal lives hidden. I adore her; I can't believe she didn't know.

I'm reaching between us, slide my palm over her breast, nipple hard and dragging along my palm, tracing my prosperity line, life line, love line. Wristwatch. Her fingers seeking, nails tenderly finding the underside of my cock, scratching lightly up and down. Plays me to full length, my crown pressing against her hairs.

She kisses my neck, love bites. Whispering into my pulse. "Asshole. I'm angry at you. I'm not this easy."

"Kiss me."

She kisses me. Lips finding mine, tender thing, mouths parting. Letting me in.

I roll us over, nothing mean in the feat of it upon her little cot number, the two of us a tangle of fabric and muscle and skin as I roll her onto her back, lying on top of her. Her legs wrap around me, my cock dipping against the wet of her entrance. And here we are. I kiss her again and again, our hesitant tongues becoming bold as blushes spread, stifled growls from Joy and a stifled joy growling in the pit of me. Release, days of it. Need. I'm taking her hands in mine, fingers interlocking as I pull her hands up above her head, pinning them by the wrists and putting my weight onto her, head of my cock dipping in and out of her folds. Teasing. She's looking up at me, big eyes peering out from under her brow. Submission. Her breasts are pulled taught against me by her lifted arms, every muscle in her attached, every movement she makes a chain reaction of tightening skin. Kiss her again, speaking into her mouth.

"How were your exams?"

Her bottom lip between mine, she laughs. Ug.

"You're very good at this. Saying the wrong thing."

I'm kissing her neck, sucking, biting, moving down her chest. My tongue darts over her nipples, flicking them. Drawing wet little circles as they harden.

"Maybe you should – oh – maybe you just shouldn't say anything."

Lips tracing down her tattoo, the skin of it shiny in the moonlight. A lunar descent down her belly, muscles beneath quivering on my chin. Tongue lifting under her bellybutton ring, tasting her cold sweat there. Spearing. She giggles. My chin and her bush are a sandpaper tangle, her soft down brushing my steel wool. They've met, finally, our hair, where before they met only in my mirror, in my drunk and self-defeating imagination.

"I can't believe you waited so long. Finding me. Time waster."

"Too long. I'm stupid." Speaking into her pink.

I lap over her bush, wetting her, flicking at the soft edges until I find her lips, her legs going over my shoulder and arching against me as I press the flat of my tongue against her sex, her folds splitting apart. She reaches for me, looking down at me, holding me to her with her hands. Deep breaths, hands guiding me. Her heavy smell all around me as I slowly kiss into her, delicately take her lips into my mouth, sucking lightly, hitting everything but her button. Teasing. Taste of her making me crazy, her thighs flexing wildly, pressing hard against my ears. I spear my tongue into her, darting, alternating, playing only upon her entrance and then pushing into her as far as I can go, licking at the rough of her walls. My nose brushing at her nub, feeling it under pliant skin, rubbing wet into her. Hard to breath.

My pace is constant, unchanging, no speed gained or lost. Her hands encourage me, pushing me into her, begging me to quicken, to increase something. I love how crazy she gets.

"More."

"Uh-uh."

"Asshole." Pushing her hips up to meet my tongue, lifting right off the bed. Close, close, but I'm holding back, keeping her on some terrible edge. Same urgent place I've been living this week. "You've no idea."

My hands hook under her legs and I'm pushing her legs up, her knees touching her breasts. Exposing her tiny asshole to me, tongue finding it and licking the lightest circle around its tiny pout, drawing a wet line between her two entrances. Tickling her. My pointed tongue spearing into her rose, and feel her tightening, clenching against my intrusion, unable to relax as my palm cups her sex above me, fingers finding her opening and pressing deeply, playing at her walls. My thumb circling her clit. Never a change of pace. Everything I've got busily working her, pulling her strings, my cock grinding angry and blind at her bed. I've never been so hard. Joy is electricity underneath me, humping fiercely at my hands, face, her head thrown back, hands leaving me and gripping at the bedhead behind her as she tenses, biting at her shoulder and stifling some apocalyptic yell as she comes, no warning in it, sudden and fitful, her ass lifting right off the bed, her inside grasping tightly at my fingers as I spear my tongue into her, me holding her down like I would a seizure, a fever. She comes in waves, in that same silent bawl, breath held and held as everything tenses and then it's all out, collapsing to the bed. Sighing. Blush painting her neck and breasts as she catches her breath. I keep licking her, slow, gentle until it's all too much, too sensitive and she's pulling away from me, scootching further up the bed. Giggling.

"Too much too much."

Bouncing away from me. I'm looking up at her from between her legs, she running hands lazily through me hair. My fingers still inside her, feeling her clasping at me as her waves subside. My glazed donut smile, I'm feeling like an infant. Looking up at her for praise, approval. How does she do that? Shrink me. I adore it.

"Good?"

"Mmm. Duh."

I crawl up her, laying between her legs as she breathes heavy under me, eyes following mine. Elbows at either side of her head, I brush her tangle out of her eyes and she smiles, loving my touch. Brushes my cheek, pouting.