In Which An ‘Incident’ Occurs
“It’s my… paddle,” I told Ian, in response to his question. Amaranth and Steff could talk about anything in the most casual, conversational tones. I couldn’t, and I would have sounded ridiculous if I tried, so I went for matter-of-fact.
“Your paddle?” Ian repeated.
“You know, for… for spanking,” I said. The blush was creeping in around the corners, but I felt I was doing pretty good at retaining my composure.
“You carry around a paddle for spanking people?” Ian asked. I remembered how he’d misinterpreted me ordering Two to be calm as an “S&M thing.” I hoped he didn’t imagine I would use something like the paddle on her. Actually, I hoped he wasn’t imagining that.
“No,” I said. I almost left it at that, but Steff had told me to answer if I was asked about the paddle… and besides, it would feel like a betrayal or a rejection of some kind if I tried to cover this up. “It’s for Amaranth to spank me… and Steff. That is, I mean, for Amaranth and Steff to spank me.”
“Your girlfr… owner spanks you with a spiked leather paddle?” Ian asked.
“They’re studs,” I said, simply. “Not spikes.”
“And you… you get off on that?”
“I don’t ‘get off’ on it… it isn’t sexual at all,” I said. Only my memory of my earlier lapse kept me from shouting this. “Okay? It isn’t. It’s just, sometimes I’m bad, or… really, really dirty.” The last word fell out of my mouth at about the time my brain realized that it wouldn’t do a very good job of selling the whole “not sexual” aspect of it. Embarrassment caught up to me, and I dropped my gaze to the floor… but my eye caught on something else along the way.
Apparently I wasn’t the only one of us who thought it sounded sexual.
“Ian!” I hissed sharply, jumping about a foot and a half back from him.
“Sorry!” he said, flushing. He bent over a little… if he had a loose, baggy sweater or t-shirt, I guess that might have covered the problem a bit, but since he was wearing a nice collared shirt tucked neatly into slacks, this didn’t really do anything. “Sorry! I’m not trying… I mean, I’m trying not to… sorry!”
I looked away and even shielded my eyes with my hands. Why? It wasn’t like I could see anything that you didn’t normally see if you looked at the crotch of a pair of a pants. It was just… a little bit closer.
“Will you please go to the men’s room or something until… that… goes down, or whatever?” I asked him. There were no mirrors in this corner of the basement lounge, but I imagine my face must have been a vivid purple.
“What… here?” he asked.
“Anywhere!” I said, not willing to quibble with his unwillingness to linger in Harlowe. “There’s one in the lobby!”
“Okay,” he said.
I kept my eyes on the ceiling as he left the basement of Harlowe, then waited a minute and followed him up the stairs into the lobby between the residence halls. I’d just sat down on a bench when he came out of the restroom, looking sheepish. I couldn’t help glancing and making sure that his pants were… in order.
“Uh… ready to go?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
We headed for the door… he started to walk ahead but then stopped at the last second and actually held it for me. He kind of smiled lamely at his belated gentlemanly impulse. I was suddenly struck by an equally lame idea. I almost kept it to myself, but I remembered what Amaranth had said, waaay back… uh… four days ago… about asking for what I wanted.
“Ian,” I said. “I… I would like it if you held my hand while we walk.”
“Why?” he asked, looking at me a little cagily.
I almost wanted to say, “So I can suck out your soul through it!”, but I didn’t. I was good… or at least, not that bad.
“Because… that’s what boys and girls do on dates,” I said.
Apparently, these same sounds formed a hilarious sentence in an obscure language that only Ian knew.
“What’s so funny?” I demanded.
“Have you ever even been on one before?” he asked.
“Do you ever want to be on one again?” I countered.
He took my hand, and we started off towards the student union at a fairly sedate pace. Not wanting to be stuck in awkward silence, I tried to think of a topic of conversation.
“Look, I’m sorry about… that thing, before,” Ian said.
“If you really want to talk about it, can you pick a different euphemism than ‘thing’?” I asked, serious with my discomfort but trying to turn it into a joke. “That event, that occurrence… maybe ‘The Incident‘?”
He laughed.
“Well, it won’t happen again,” he said. “I took care of the problem pretty quickly, and I can just…”
“Oh, fucking gross!” I shouted, pulling my hand out of his and staring at it wildly, resisting the urge to wipe off unseen contagion with my other hand. “Did you wash your hands?” I asked frantically. “Please tell me that you washed… oh, fucking please tell me that you washed!”
“I just meant I figured out I could think about my gross old elemental theory professor until it went away!” Ian said.
“Oh!” I yelled.
“Why are you shouting?” he asked, rather loudly.
“Why are you?” I asked.
“Because you’re freaking me out!”
“What are you freaked out about?” I asked. “I’m the one who thought… ugh! Fuck!!”
I bent down and began scraping my palm and fingers against the concrete. I knew there was nothing there… I knew it, but I could feel otherwise.
“Maybe I’m stabbing myself in the foot here,” Ian said, “but if you’re that uncomfortable with the thought of a guy’s… incident… then maybe you really are a lesbian? I mean… a total one?”
“Are you kidding?” I asked, straightening up. “There isn’t anything on your body or inside it that’s half as nasty as what we girls have got.”
He stared at me in something like amazement.
“Wow,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Have you ever considered the possibility that you might just be profoundly fucked up?” he asked.
I stared at him for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“At this point, I’m pretty sure I am,” I said. I walked around to the other side of him. “Come on… give me your left hand.”
“You know, I honestly didn’t… touch… didn’t do anything,” he said, though he took my right hand in his left, anyway.
“I believe you,” I said. “But I’m going to do what I have to, to get by.”
We started walking again.
“Would this be the wrong time for me to tell you that I usually use my left hand so I can pretend it’s somebody else?” he asked.
I let go off his hand like it’d had bit me. I took a deep breath. I’d done too much yelling already. I’d have to tell Amaranth about that… that was one of the first rules she gave me, and I thought it was probably one of the most important, as it related to our almost-break-up. I definitely wasn’t going to lose my temper again if I could help it.
“Ian, three things,” I said. I raised my arm. “One, you’re going to walk me the rest of the way to the union with our arms linked, without touching me with either hand.”
“Uh… okay,” he said, and with a little awkward experimentation he hooked his arm around mine.
“Two, when we get there, I’m going to watch you wash your hands before we dance,” I said.
“But I didn’t actually… do anything,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I didn’t see you not touching yourself so I have to see you wash. Profoundly fucked up, remember?”
“Okay,” he said. “What’s the third thing?”
“There is never going to be a right time to tell me things like that.”
“Right,” he said. “So… um…”
“Four things,” I said. “Let’s enjoy the rest of the walk in silence.”
Which we did, after a fashion… enjoy it, I mean. At least, I did a little. Ian wasn’t a huge guy… I mean, physically! As in, not that tall and broad-shouldered, but of course he was taller than me. We both kind of relaxed a bit after we quit talking.
He slipped his hand in his pocket, which I appreciated because it lessened the chance it would touch me before I saw with my own eyes that it was clean, but this also had the effect of pulling us in closer together. He was a stupid idiotic jerk who got himself hard thinking about things that weren’t any of his business and couldn’t have less to do with sex, but we were on a date and it was nice to be physically close.
And, just in case the mental image of his elderly professor failed to do the trick, I’d just keep my gaze fixed as far above his waist as I could. I needed to start paying more attention to people’s faces, anyway. It occurred to me that my mental image of Ian wasn’t really all that distinct.
I’d have to work on that.
Of course, I’d have plenty of time to look at him while we were dancing.
Oh, yeah. Dancing.
That would… be… fun.
Uhh, mack, you do realize that during the slow dancing, the uhm, girlee and boyee parts do sort of come in contact, now and again?
When my wife and I were dancing a tango or any similar outrageously sensual step-step-sliiiiide, the only way I could control my erection was to mentally recite the manual for knife-fighting techniques that the tango is based upon.
I spent the entire page laughing at her, this is great! Also, she’s taken a week to reach the kind of sexual acceptance of herself that it has taken me years to reach, after less brainwashing than she had. And if you think she’s not done yet… Well, neither am I.
They are so cute….
It appears that in any given universe freshman are still adorable