Study Stress

When we started coming down from our dance, the clock had advanced past midnight. We were covered in sweat from running in the summer heat. I started feeling really tired. Rose said that she had to get home. Her organic chemistry class was waiting for her the next morning at Brooklyn College. I had my mown class to think about. We connected on Instagram. I walked home through the pretty empty streets for New York, reveling in the memories with Rose and the feel of her touch.

Oddly, I wasn't wet at all. I didn't even feel the need to masturbate anymore. I guess with the anxiety gone, also the erotic arousal had stopped. I simply felt fulfilled, happy, and relaxed. I snuck into my room quietly and lay down on my camp mat, falling asleep instantly.

You know when you wake up happy, you should pull your guard up? I woke up happy and relaxed. When the sunrise tickled my face, I sang 'Three Little Birds' from Bob Marley in my head. An hour later, Ms. Anderson was handing out the first test sheet. I did well on the chapters that I read. However, I was two chapters short of doing the homework assignment. After the downfall of messing up the test, my body felt like I had been ground between two millstones. Everything felt yucky. I couldn't get much joy out of sniffing the flowers Ms. Anderson was passing out. Everyone was so busy writing notes. None of my classmates had said hi to me or even smiled. I don't think anybody had smiled at all. Everyone seemed like a strung out machine of ambition. There were a lot of yawns, probably from studying late. To my complete surprise, Ms. Anderson allowed, actually encouraged, students to bring coffee to class. That would have never happened at Central School.

A few hours later, I was back in my room with the bare walls. I sat Indian style with my back against the wall and the textbook on my knees. I should decorate the room. It feels so barren and loveless to come back to a room with only a sleeping pad, mac laptop, and textbooks. I read through the pages. Each time, I flipped a page, I marked a scratch mark on my thigh. It's a little habit that I started as a kid. Each scratch mark feels like a little success. And seeing the number count go up made me feel accomplished. I made them high up enough on my thigh so that a skirt would cover it.

A message on IG distracted me: "Yo Jen! I'm in your hood to pick something up on St. Marks Place. I want to see you! Can you come out and play?"

I was so happy. My friend Rose wanted to see me. She had such a softness about her, the way how she held my hands... and boobs! I didn't even check my study schedule. I went straight to my clothes selection on the floor. I wanted to look cute. I picked a baby blue tennis skirt and a soft pink crop top. The white sneakers finished the girly look. I threw my curled up thong and bra on the floor. I knew what she wanted to see in me. She liked me being that wild thing that she had met yesterday.

I looked in the mirror. My nipples were showing a lot through the sheer fabric. I could even tell the color of my nipples. I knew what to do. I slipped out of my room. My hippie roommate was in the shower. He'd often be there for half hour singing Beatles songs -- Yellow submarine. Under the kitchen sink, he had a toolbox. I quietly opened that big clunky thing. I carefully rummaged through the partially rusted pliers and broken up nail boxes. The black electric tape was a little scummy. After another check to make sure that he was still singing in the shower, I pulled up my crop top and applied a cross with electric tape to my nipples. I put the crop top back down. Yep, the cross was nicely visible.

With a light skip in my steps and a giddy smile on my face, I made my way out of the rough streets of Alphabet City to the rebellious punk East Village until I landed at St. Mark's place. On one side of the street are drug dealers sitting on stoops. The other side has Asians busily slurping Japanese ramen soup and spicy Szechuan rice dishes. All the while office workers streamed out of the Astor Place subway stops onto their way home. I looked out for Rose and found her talking to a shady black dude with bare chest and his jeans below his butt. His hair was all dirty. His eyes looked a bit crooked like the crazy homeless eyes do. He quickly slunk away when I showed up.

"Don't worry about, Jesus," said Rose, seeing the worry on my face. She grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the seedy St Mark's place to the wide open Astor Place where women and men in business attire ate salad boxes from nearby takeout places. The crisp gray formal dress was reassuring. The high heels and ties had a cleanliness about them that washed away my concerns of the dirt and grime that I had seen on Jesus' character.

"Listen," Rose said, "I got an hour. Then I have to head back to Brooklyn for class. Do you want to make the most of the time and do a hit? You seemed to like it last time."

I could feel her slipping away. Last night, it felt like she had all the time in the world for me. I felt like I was the center of her world. That felt so good. A New York attitude had fallen over her. She was rushed like everyone else. I did not want to lose her. She was the only joy and warmth that I felt alone in the city. "Sure," I told her no matter how big my reservations about drugs were. I had doubt about last night. The intensity of everything and how I ran around half naked. A sense of losing my life to drugs had lingered like a doom over me.

She carefully poured a cone of white powder in the same spot of her hand again. I felt nervous. I didn't really want to do it. I really wanted her to be my friend. I really wanted her to cuddle me, hold me, and her soft, warm body pressing against me. I didn't want to go back to that place of overwhelming adrenaline. Such ambivalence welled up in me, but most of all, I wanted to keep her. I wanted to light up her brown face and make those cheeks twinkle with happiness.

I steeled myself against chickening out. I bowed forward. I smelled her hand. There was a musk smell to it, something dull and deep like aged incense. I really simply wanted to lay in her arms and smell her -- to be enveloped by her smell and being. I knew she wanted to do that white powder. I sniffed. It hit me harder than before. All my muscles tensed up. I felt like at the end of a sprint that had gone on twice too long. I snapped for oxygen. "Breathe!" I told myself.

Then a furtive search in my mind for a thrill set in. "Find a thrill! It's the only way to flip the sensation!" I saw a traffic light post. I pictured showing all those people underneath my bare pussy under my skirt. The moment that thought entered my mind. I had already reached under Rose's dress to pull her panties down. No sane person would have done such a thing. Rose was still holding her head back to sniff the powder deeper. A madly satisfied smile spread over her big mouth when she felt my fingers rummaging for her panties and pulling them down. For extra kick, I stuffed the navy blue cottons into her mouth. She joyfully showed me the gleam of her white teeth with some of the panty fabric in between her teeth.

I grabbed her hand and ran toward the yellow of the light pole. I climbed on top of the trash can next to it. There was a bracket on the light pole that I could get my white sneaker on to step up higher. My hands reached high to feel the cross beam. The cross beam was angled upwards. The rough metal hurt the skin on my fingers. I kept moving one hand in front of the next, my body dangling beneath. Rose was right behind me, when hand over hand I swung myself towards the end of the cross beam. We were over the pedestrian side, not the car side. Rose was strong. She climbed after me effortlessly.

The adrenaline intensity had gotten a little better from the physical action, but the rainbows didn't kick in. Then I realized that nobody was really going to be seeing much of my coochie because my thighs were together. So I told Rose to kick and swing. I'd kick with one leg sideways to let my body turn that way. And then let the momentum spiral me back again. And the motion swirled up my skirt and her dress to provide a fanned out view for below. The passersby could see our bare legs stretched straight out. Rose did a full split to give people a really good look at her pussy. But it didn't work.

People were kind of looking up at us for a moment like we were circus performers and moved on. I didn't get that voyeur sensation that turned me on. I needed more of a kick. I couldn't shake that unpleasant adrenaline behavior and turn it into rainbows. I felt frustrated. My brain tried its best to up the thrill. When the light turned to "Don't walk", I yelled "pee!"

I let go of my bladder. It felt freeing to let the current run. The warmth felt comforting. I held my legs wide to not pee on myself. Rose followed me. The shrieks down below felt wonderful in my ears. Then the "fuck you!" cursing started. It oddly didn't affect me at all to have people be raging mad at us. People moved away and left two empty circles beneath us where our pee splattered down. A stray thought entered my head that this might be the lowest part of my life -- lost to drugs and an embarrassment (not a fun one but bad one).

When I climbed down, I was somewhere still feeling the rush but that rush was also somewhat dampened by the exciting activity of climbing a traffic pole, showing off my pussy, and peeing on people. "Why doesn't it work?" I asked Rose.

"Well, it's not personal enough. You are too removed from feeling the response of people. You went too extreme. You didn't let the emotion built. I'll show you what I like to do. I got to playgrounds and turn the dad's on." She took my hand. We ran down the street towards Greenwich Village, a fancy part of town where people really cherish their gourmet coffee and wine. We ran because walking was very hard with the rush.

The gate clicked behind us as we entered Bleeker playground. There were swings, rope castles to climb, and even some water fountains to run through. Rose had her focus right away set on a middle aged man with a jacket and vest. He looked like a school principle from a movie. His jacket had brown elbow leather patches. His glasses were round. The expression on his cheeks was long. He had a newspaper folded out in front of him over which he occasionally peered at his offspring. A leather bag was next to him. It had all the adorations of a golden buckle, an extra strap to signify fortification, and stencil patterns punched into the leather surface.

Rose picked a bench that was only a couple feet from him so that he could see us on the side of his paper. She reclined back on the bench to curve her back and push her gorgeous breasts out. They were so ample that they always changed their shape with her movement. When she reclined back, they pancaked a little bit.

"Do you think the breast surgery worked out," she asked me.

Those were natural! I looked at her confused. She gave me that look that said: just play long.

"Wow! They are amazing! I can't believe you went three sizes up! Can I feel?" I played along with a face that said: What are we doing?

But I liked the chance to get my hands on Rose's breasts. I had never felt them. They felt soft and firm at the same time. It was like you could really think your fingers into them, but they also languidly changed shape to fit in between whatever spaces you created. I guess I wasn't simply checking her boobs, but I was playing with them. I kind of wished that I had such feminine body parts. Mine were small and perky. I kind of got lost in feeling how they looked when I pushed them all the way up to create a revealing cleavage and giggled at the sight of it.

Then it dawned on me. There was a feeling that had been there for a while, but that I hadn't paid attention to. It was the feeling of being watched. The father had raised the newspaper a little more to shield his face. And his eyes were all the way in the corner, staring at us. There was such an unabashed feeling about the way how he did it. It felt like he had learned in life to cover his steps, yet ruthlessly go after what he wanted behind a pretense façade. There was a sense of sly danger about him. That sense of that he would do anything he wanted and find some way to make himself beyond reproach. It scared me a little bit. And that little fear set off a little baby rainbow right in the center of my sternum. That moment, I knew what Rose had meant with the thrill needs to be personal and felt.

Now, I know what to do. I swung my leg around so that was straddling Rose's lap. She looked straight at my face. Her big brown eyes looked like that of a doe -- peaceful and relaxed. It was like she knew what was coming next, and she cherished the feeling of letting it come to her. While she was relaxed, slouched down, and reclined over the backrest, I was the one making moves on her. I was the one gazing over her body and face to plan the way I was going to ravish her. And then I gently got closer to her. I knew that this was the time that I would be able to bathe in her energy and personality.

My face got slowly closer to her face. She displayed enormous restrained not to lurch forward at me, but hold still to wait for me to come closer. Her pupils hungrily moved down to look at my lips. Her lower lips was big and standing away a bit. I grabbed her lower lip in between my lips to give it a little squeeze and tuck. I was going to let the satisfaction of a full on mouth kiss linger there. I closed my eyes. I inhaled, pulling all the air away from her to savior that musk scent of her that's smelled like old incense -- a dark and cavernous gothic church where the smell of old rock, flowery incense, and aging wood blend. I felt secure here. I'd want to stay here for a long time. It felt like home, but I knew that she wanted me to arouse that man on the bench near us. I just wanted her to hold me, but I had to pay to keep her interest.

I let my hand glide through her kinky hair to feel all the webs that my fingers got stuck in. When I reached the back of her head, I pulled her head forward to latch my lips onto hers. I knew that she wanted me to put on a show. So, while I was full on mouthing her, I moved my hand up her side over her ebony skin to reach under her top and caress the bare skin of her breasts. I made sure to pull her top up in such a way that the men could see her bare side boob while my body covered her front. Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw the playground father with a red face, slowly tilting his hips back and forth. He couldn't let go of the newspaper that shielded his face. So he tried to rub his erection in the pants but only got a soft simulation.

Girls have never been my thing. There was a different attraction with Rose. It was the warmth and the joy that radiated out from her and attracted me. Her warm facial expression and playful kinky hair gave of that energy, but it was only a façade, a very compelling one. She was trouble underneath. She was a dangerous influence. But nothing stopped me from being drawn in and wanting to be closer to her. She touched feelings in me that felt so closed up in this city. I felt so damn good around her that I couldn't get enough of her. And to get more of that good feeling, I couldn't help but kiss and fondle her. It wasn't like guys who can get me all horny and wet. It was more like a delicious chocolate treat that melts in your mouth and you can't get enough of.

Rose stirred from her passive indulging repose. She held me across the back and swung us sideways on the bench so that my back was facing the father. I felt her lift up the back of my skirt to expose my butt cheeks. She had carefully let the side of the skirt cover me from everyone but the men. She seemed to point at my butt. I could feel his piercing eyes burning on my butt. She seemed to point at me and pimp me out. I didn't know how I felt about that. I held still as in panic. I held tighter to her to comfort myself. She seemed to communicate with the men through facial expressions. I could tell her focus was all on that and not on me.

"Honey, I'll be right back." She told me while she slipped me off of her. I felt a bit used like a prop that was no longer needed. She got up and walked over to the men. When she passed him. She let her hand run over his shoulder. Then she pulled the back of his jacket up to gesture to him to follow her. The man folded up his newspaper and followed Rose behind the public restroom building. They were gone.

That powder makes everything be so instant. It doesn't feel like time is passing because every moment is so intense. Being alone, time and space suddenly came back to me. I was sitting alone on a bench in the afternoon. I had a lot of school reading to do. The drug still gave me shivers. But I could choose to either ignore them or did something exciting to trigger a little rainbow spark. It dawned on me that as intense and intimate the time with Rose had been, we were still strangers. As easily as she had entered my life, she could be gone from it. This city left a strange sense of impermanence. I had had dreams where I dreamt about buildings growing under my eyes. Everything seems to always be shifting here.

Five minutes later, Rose and the men came back from behind the restroom. He had a looseness to his gait like he was walking on a cloud. He walked back to his bench but only stood there looking over at us. Rose was a little bit rushing towards me. She lead with her lips as if she was asking me to kiss her. As soon as our lips touched, her tongue rushed into my mouth. I felt her pushing saliva into my mouth like she was feeding me like a baby bird. Acrid! Her saliva was very acrid. There was a bitterness to it. It was definitely sour. And there was a bit something rotten like three days old sweaty gym clothes. It was cum!

"Swallow" she breathed into my mouth when her wet content had fully unloaded into mine.

It dawned on me. She had given him a blowjob behind the restroom. His cock had been all over the insides of her mouth. I had his semen mixed with her saliva in my mouth. Well, I swallowed because that's what I was told. I felt a bit disgusted. I felt tricked. I felt dirty.

The father was so quickly next to me. He handed me a clean fifty dollar bill. His face was in the forties. There were so many furrows and character lines on his face that seemed to say so much about him and how much he had experienced. "Thank you! You are real cute!" he said and left. I looked at his butt as he walked away. It was so strange to have his most intimate juices inside of me even though we were strangers. It was such a conflicting sensation.

"He offered fifty bucks if we exchanged his cum. Look! He got me three hundred dollars for five minutes of fun!" Rose said.

I had never seen prostitution. It seemed like a foreign concept on TV or the newspapers for sad and abused women. There was Rose. She was smiling. It seemed so natural. It seemed like a fun thing and a nice reward. I felt dirty about a man that old. There were so many ambivalent emotions swirling at me. And Rose left me to jump the F train to rush to her class.

I walked home. The constant noise of people and buzz of traffic around me dropped into the background. I had adopted to be deep in my head while walking through the craziness, ignoring it all. When I got home, I got my textbook on my knees and started studying. I had two chapters to catch up on in addition to the newly assigned chapters. I learned about leaf shapes and the classifications of plants.

All the while, I kept thinking about the man. In the safety of my home, I could examine what I had seen and felt from a secure distance. I was a little curious on what his dick looked like. I was a little curious what would such an experienced man be like. Would he be coy? Would he be rough? I thought about his wife. She was probably a blond pretty lady with a hard body from working out and a fancy degree from a top university. I felt a bit jealous. I felt angry that I would never have those things. I had been proud about getting my public education, but coming face to face with how fancy and successful some people are, I got angry. I pictured the perfect make up on her face. And then I pictured holding his dick in my hands. And he'd become all doe like to me. He'd lose her interest in her. That moment that I stole him from her, I felt like I was better. I was the prize! I had never had such fantasies before.