Missionary's Position

Meredith had almost gotten used to being stared at. After being ignored and invisible all through grade-school and her two years at college, she finally found herself the center of attention, and all it took was moving to a different continent, a different hemisphere. Of course, it had nothing to do with any sort of beauty on her part--though she was beautiful, at least in her own mind. No, she was the center of attention because she was probably the only white woman these people had seen in their lives.

She hadn't intended to come to Uganda. She had signed up for missionary work in Haiti, but spent only a few weeks there before political riots forced the humanitarian aid organization to pull out their people. And so they sent her here instead.

It was a non-Christian mission--educating people about AIDS. And it was difficult work; local folklore contradicted their teachings, and few people believed that AIDS could be contracted as a result of sex. Many associated it as a result of bad hygiene. Some educated people felt that it was a government conspiracy.

She sat at a table with a couple other missionaries, local officials, and several educators, who were discussing ways of breaking through those barriers of understanding.

"When my students look at western culture, they see a society that is much more promiscuous than our own," it's a school-teacher from one of the larger urban centers speaking. His eyes flash with concern as he speaks. "And they see nothing of AIDS in America. Or in your Canada," he said, looking at Meredith now. "How can we convince them that promiscuity is a problem? They see it as being part of a modern life.

They associate promiscuity with things like Coca-Cola."

"It's not a new problem," Paul said. Paul was a social-anthropologist from Egypt. "AIDS may be new, but it's not an isolated event. Evidence shows that viruses like this have sprung up throughout history. The problem is more with a mobile society that spreads the disease, rather than isolating it."

Meredith looked out the window. They were talking in circles now. A storm was moving in, another storm: it seemed like there was one every evening. It was the rainy season, though. She missed her hometown, the grain elevators and wheat fields, and the prairie churches. It was so different here. Such a hard life, even in her relatively up-scale position. Maybe she'd write a letter home tonight. Or maybe just reread the last one her family sent.

One of the men was staring at her, not in the normal, curious way. She knew that look. He would probably approach her later. Meredith gave the man a bitter stare, and he smiled back at her, a flash of white teeth on his dark face.

When at last the session ended with no real headway, she took Paul aside. "I need some time to myself tonight. Can you cover for me? Tell people I'm not feeling well and went to bed early."

"Is that true? You aren't well? I used to be a doctor, you know."

Meredith nodded. "No, it's nothing. Just exhaustion."

"Okay, get some sleep."

Ilapu brought Meredith some food after dark. She had been sleeping, and was awoken by his footsteps outside. Ilapu was a young Ugandan man who helped out around the school, and he was tall, and as lean as a rail.

When she first met him, Meredith was convinced that he was starving.

She'd constantly try to get him to eat more, even though he seemed to eat as much as anyone.

"I know what you must think, Miss Birsch," he said to her one day at lunch. "That I am hungry, that I am undernourished. But this is the way I'm built. We're different people than you. We're different..." he paused for the right word "...genetically."

That much was true, was obviously true. But she still hated herself any time she observed the lanky form of Ilapu or one of the other locals, and saw in them something different, somehow like an animal, somehow like a God.

He pushed open her door now, bringing her food. "We have goat stew,

Miss Birsch. It's very good."

She turned up her lantern, and took the bowl of stew from him, sitting up on her mattress as she did so. The roof above crackled with rain; the forest beyond the window roared with a billion raindrops landing on leaves.

"How many more months?" she asked Ilapu.

"The rain? Not much more. One month, maybe. You don't like the rain."

"I like the rain fine, I just miss the sun."

"You'll get sun soon enough. Soon, you'll come to love the rain,"

Ilapu looked out the window, as though listening, and Meredith listened, too. She also watched. His skin looked so coppery here in the lantern-light, and it looked so thin, thinner than skin, like kitchen-wrap stretched across the muscles and bones.

"Where is everyone tonight?"

"Poker," Ilapu replied.

"Ah."

"Were you playing?"

"Yes, Miss Birsch."

Well, I should let you get back then."

Ilapu nodded. His spoken-english was good enough to understand those subtleties of the language, such as this dismissal. He closed the door behind him.

It was still raining hours later when Paul awoke her. He was standing in the doorway.

"Feeling better?"

Meredith nodded. "Yeah, I needed a long sleep. How'd the poker game go?"

Paul shrugged. He sat down on the edge of Meredith's mattress, forcing her to move. "Our friend Ilapu did well. He was the big winner.

Something like fifty bucks."

"Wow," Meredith said, only slightly interested. "Any gossip?"

Paul gave a big sigh that caused his entire considerable mass to raise and then sink back down. "I shouldn't tell you."

"No, tell me."

"You won't like it," Paul said.

Meredith wrinkled her brow. There was no gossip that she didn't like.

She loved hearing the stories about the lives of all the villagers she barely knew.

"Why did you come to this mission?" Paul asked.

"Well, because the mission to Haiti was cancelled."

Paul nodded. "But what did you think when they told you it was an AIDS mission? Did it... resonate with you?"

Meredith nodded. "It seemed like an important cause. And now that I'm here, I'm very glad I came. I feel like we're doing a lot of good... Aren't we?"

"You must understand," Paul began, before pausing. He scratched his beard and then gave her a deep, sympathetic gaze. "It's difficult for people to take advice about their sex lives from someone who has never had sex."

Meredith's heart raced. This was the last thing she expected to come up. "Wait, who says..." she didn't finish the sentence.

"It's fairly obvious. You are, aren't you? A virgin. I knew you for a week and I could tell. There's a woman in the village, Unara, who met you once, and then immediately asked me why an inexperienced girl was telling them how they should and shouldn't have sex."

"Oh, I had no idea." Meredith raised a hand to her mouth. Was this why people were staring at her? Not because she was white and different, but because she was so obviously a virgin? She felt the sudden, crushing awkwardness of high-school, when girls in her class were discussing blow-job techniques before she had even seen a penis.

"What should I do?"

Paul shrugged. "There are things," he said. He moved his hand across the sheets, and found, cupped her knee. He didn't look at her as he did so, and Meredith rolled over, pulling away.

"You've got to learn sometime," Paul said. "I will go slow."

She looked back toward him. He sat on the edge of the bed, his back to

her, but she could see from his arms that he was unbuttoning his shirt.

She watched him bend his arms back, his collar falling open and away and his broad back suddenly revealed. It was more muscled than she would have guessed, a yellowy bronze, such a different colour from Ilapu's skin, and from her own ivory flesh.

She wanted to stop him, but this might be the right time for her. It would be a relief to get it out of the way. She felt no desire, no fascination, only a mild curiousity. He stood to remove his pants.

"I'm not sure I'm ready for this," Meredith said softly.

Paul gave a deep sigh, and continued undressing. "Have you even seen a man naked before?"

"Yes." Meredith responded quickly. It was true, she had, from art-class. Young men would model for them, with the dormant little creatures dangling between their legs. There had been no excitement there, either. She had treated her illustration assignments with clinical precision.

Paul's jeans fell to the ground, stepping out of them. He turned toward her, letting her look upon him, upon his shaft which was far from dormant.

"Have you ever touched one?"

Meredith shook her head.

"I will show you how it works," Paul said. "There are nerves all over.

It responds to touch," he said, wrapping his hand around it. "It responds to other senses, such as looking at a beautiful woman." He knelt down in the bed, close to her. She curled up a bit. He was close now, the size of him and the smell of him a little scary. She was also leary of her cock--suprised how easily this dirty word sprung to mind--and the way it swung to-and-fro in her direction.

"Do you want to touch it?"

She shook her head. It seemed right to observe it though. She should understand it, be able to converse about it in a knowledgeable fashion.

"You can watch then." Paul began stroking it faster now. "It's the friction that really works for it." He began stroking himself faster now. "The ejaculate starts way down here," he said, indicating his balls. "And when I reach an orgasm, it shoots all the way up here and out."

This was all stuff that Meredith had known before from sex-education classes and from hearing others talk, but it was a different thing entirely to see it in practice. More fascinating than the cock itself was the way Paul's body tensed, the tight muscles of his arm pulling his cock against his body for stroke after stroke, the way his eyes

were closed now--scrunched up as though pained--and his teeth barred.

Suddenly his mouth burst open in a gasp, a huge intake in air, and his hand stopped moving, but was still tense and tight around his shaft. She watched, fascinated, as suddenly huge spurts of ejaculate--cum, she had heard it called so often--sprung forth, landing in an arc on the bedsheets. And then another. She had not expected so much of it.

It actually landed across her body, she could feel it soaking through the sheet onto her thigh.

Paul opened his eyes again, suddenly looking tired. "I will teach you more tomorrow." He gathered up his clothes, and left the room.

It was so clinical, observing like that. She had observed Paul, and now she observed herself to see if there was an real reaction. There wasn't--he might just as well have read to her. And yet--she looked at the white ejaculate slowly disappearing as it sunk into the grey sheets--this was the root of her work here--this gooey fluid that was

so problematic and so essential. She tore the sheet off her bed and threw it into the corner. It wasn't at all the way she had wanted her first experience to be. She got up and went to the window, staring out into the rain. She could see the lights in the village in the distance, and closer.

She felt dirty, dirty in her methodical, clinical nature. She kicked on her sandals, and climbed over the edge. It would be scandalous for her to be seen, wearing just her underwear and a tank-top. But nobody would see. She would just go for a quick walk.

She stepped from beneath the eaves, into the rain. It soaked her almost immediately, cool, but not cold. Refreshing. She turned her face upward to the sky, opening her lips wide so that the clean rain filled up her mouth and ran down over her neck.

It was all wrong, with Paul. Yes she wanted it, she wanted sex, she wanted to be fucked. But not like that: slow, scientific. There had to be passion, desire, it couldn't be so cautious.

She walked along the row of brick buildings, and then stopped at an open dark window.

"Ilapu!" she whispered, hoping she got the right window.

"One minute," came the response from within, and then a moment later he was at the window, his skin dark as the night, his eyes bright and alert.

"Is everything alright, Miss Birsch? You are in the rain."

"Yes, everything is alright. I was just going for a walk."

"Maybe you like the rain more now?"

"I like the rain fine."

Meredith felt something within, something she had always tried to stop from feeling. Ilapu, with his long, lean body, his respect and devotion to her... She wanted to say something, but she couldn't. So she reached out and pulled his head forward, kissing him on the lips.

For a moment she was kissing a closed mouth, but then he opened up, and began kissing her back. Did they have french-kissing here in Uganda? She wasn't sure, but she slipped her tongue into his mouth, past his teeth, and he responded in kind immediately. Meredith used her own tongue to explore his, first the rough topside, then the slick and tender underside.

"Do you want to come in out of the rain?" Ilapu asked her gently. "Or I could come out there."

"Come stand in the rain with me."

He climbed out the window, and put his still-dry about against her. And already he was soaked in water. His long arms enveloped her completely, rubbing the small of her back, just above the panties, then working the wet cotton of her tank-top away from her body, and rubbing his hands up her back.

He had to bend down to kiss her now, and she had to turn her head skyward, as she had when she let the rain flow into her mouth. But now it was his breath that was flowing down into her mouth. She ran her hands down his back, found his ass naked, unclothed. She sunk her fingers, her nails into him, pulling him against her, feeling his strength against her belly. Then she broke the kiss to look down, trying to make out the shape of his cock in the darkness. She reached down, and took it in one of her hands. It was so hard, bone-like, harder than she would have believed flesh and blood could ever be.

"You've wanted this for a long time, haven't you," Meredith whispered, running her hand along his rain-soaked shaft.

"Ever since you've came here, I've wanted to kiss you, to have sex with you, Miss Birsch."

Meredith felt right. This was what she needed; this desire. She moaned, and the sound of that, the air in her throat, excited her more.

Ilapu pushed her up against the stone wall, his hands just a little rough with her, wrapping around her arms, then down over her breasts, finding the bottom rim of her tank-top and sliding back up inside, cupping her breasts. He squeezed the nipples tenderly, then pressed the breasts together against each other.

And then his hands were on her hips, pulling at the wet panties, rolling them down her legs. He pulled at her knees in a way that told her that she was to stand with her legs a little further apart. She did so, stepping out of her sandals and into the mud, even as Ilapu knelt before her.

Meredith looked out into the darkness of the rain and the hungle beyond. She couldn't see the lights of the village from here.

Then something happened down below. It was so sudden and powerful that Meredith didn't realize at first what had happened, it was just a sudden rush of nerves and tension.

She pressed her hands back, flat against the wall to steady herself, and looked down at where Ilapu had pressed his mouth between her legs. So this was oral sex. She had never understood how it would work, how it would feel good, and yet it did. She reached down to carress his head, shaved clean, so smooth in the rain. Meredith closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on her nerves, tried to understand exactly what he was doing. Definitely he was working over her clit a lot with his tongue, and sometimes longer strokes with his tongue, going all the way back to her quim. And something else; he was working her opening with a finger, not sliding it in, just pressing it around the edges.

It must be a strange thing to do, to go down on a woman. Meredith wondered what she tasted like, what it felt like.

"Do you like doing that?"

"Yes, very much. I love the taste of your... what's the word for this?"

"Cunt. You love the taste of my cunt." Another first for Meredith; the first time she used that word. It felt good to use it.

"Yes, I love the taste of your cunt, Miss Birsch."

And that was another thing: she loved the way he called her 'Miss Birsch.' She figured that she probably should tell him to call her 'Meredith', but no, she liked him calling her by that formal title. Meredith wondered if this meant she had a dominatrix streak in her. And then suddenly Ilapu was sliding up her body, his long, slick wet torso against her breasts, and then he was kissing her again. And his cock was between her legs. He rubbed it against her, pulled her hips back and forth slowly, and she could feel every inch of it against her.

Meredith reached down, took it in her hand, and pushed her quim onto it, pushed against it... and Ilapu pulled back, pulled out of her and stepped away.

What had she done wrong? Meredith's stomach lurched. Did he not want this? She had been so certain that he did.

"We should..." Ilapu started slowly. "We should use a condom."

Meredith laughed. She had forgotten. And to her, it was hilarious that she had almost had unprotected sex with a guy who, despite being very nice, was fairly unknown to her. So this was how it happened. This was how you got so caught up in the moment that you forget something like contraception.

She could see Ilapu looking at her in the darkness, could see the confusion in his eyes.

"Sorry, it's nothing. Just funny that I would forget. You're right, we should use one."

He took her by the hand, and Meredith reached down to take off her panties. It seemed silly to pull them back on now, especially with Ilapu being naked.

They walked through the mud to a stone building on the edge of the settlement. Ilapu waited outside while Meredith went in, lit a lantern, and opened a supply chest. There were boxes upon boxes of condoms. She found an open box and pulled out one of the little packets. As she closed the cabinet, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror--naked from the waist-down, her nipples hard and visible through her soaked tank-top, her hair a tangled, soaked mess, mud on her feet and a condom in her hand. Nothing like she had ever seen herself before. And she looked good. Like something out of a magazine. Maybe not. Was there a magazine that specialized in wet, muddy missionaries?

She turned off the lantern and went back outside.

The rain was letting up, and the moon was up on the east now. She could see Ilapu, lit with a silver edge and stroking his cock the way Paul had, earlier.

Meredith handed him the condom, and he deftly opened the packet, and slipped the condom over the head of his cock, rolling it back along the length.

"What should I do now?" Meredith asked. "Should I lie down?" She imagined lying on her back in the mud, her legs spread open for Ilapu.

"Turn around," Ilapu instructed. Meredith did so, not sure what to expect. She felt Ilapu's hands on her hips. "Now bend over."

Meredith put her hands on her knees. This was good. It was primal; it was like something off of the discovery channel, made all the more primal by the fact that it was out here, in the rain, in the mud.

And suddenly Ilapu was pressing against her, pulling her back against him. It hurt quite a lot; it stung, like being ripped open. And then something else shouted out from deep within her body, something joyous. The pain was still there, but the pleasure was almost overwhelming. Ilapu was pulling out now, slowly, now pushing back in. She tightened her hip muscles, exploring different feelings. Down inside her cunt, Ilapu's cock brushed something else that felt really good, and she moaned out, "Oh, Ilapu."