Tell

There's a fat spider in the corner of the ceiling, a highway robber between the vent and the yellow light. I'm afraid of spiders, terrified of watching them move, the way they seem to glide without legs, zooming then creeping. Between dicks I've watched this thing, at least two inches long, and begged it to keep still. I can't climb up on the toilet seat to kill it, even if I could pull together those kind of guts. I can't put my face over the stalls. I'd get the crap beaten out of me, if I wasn't arrested. I hold this guy, a shorter one, but veiny, trimmed, the young ones are, in my thick glove, hand hidden inside, and hold him steady in my mouth, forever bargaining with the spider. I'm so distracted that I don't notice him coming, miss the sounds and the trembling ankles. I'm ready to ask for one more from the spider, but it could be hours. My fingers stroke, but the spider has made me go dry. I wait for the man to leave, then total silence, then head for my car in the lot.

"I just can't watch that stuff," Debra said. "It's just... blech." She chased two shaved pieces of red cabbage in her salad to a different part of the plastic bowl. All over the room, women in sensible sweaters and huge hair pointed at each other with their forks or finger foods, movement on top of the cropped beige carpet and the beige wallpaper, flat in the fluorescent. Men sat back in their chairs, knees apart, like fathers at PTA meetings.

Casey blinked at me, then turned to Debra. "What, two men kissing? Big deal," she said. "I'm a fag hag," she said proudly, but blushed, and rearranged herself in the chair.

"I read somewhere that fag hags are all lesbians," Debra said. Casey didn't look at her, but put her sandwich down and left her mouth open in case she came up with the gumption to respond. They were waiting for me to say something. I peeled my orange and stacked the strips on top of each other, even little triangles rocking back and forth.

My eyes close and I'm back on my knees in the men's bathroom, one cock or the other slipping through my lips. The man comes again and again, losing everything to his dream. My legs are bent against the floor on the futon couch, the shades closed, the pads of my fingers kneading me.

"What's your name?" the guy asks. I can see his hands buttoning his jeans. I dodge in case he looks. "Dude, what's your name?"

My back arches on the futon and my eyes go crossed and blank. Waaa uh. Uh. UH.

George grips my hand and takes a deep sip of his bottled water. It's a hazy night, people's sweat seeming to cause the halos on the streetlights. Sticky men pass us and size George up. He ignores them. I wonder if I've ever sucked any of these guys off or if George is right, I've only sucked straight men with a fantasy. "Hhhhuuuuhhh!" George says, as if he's just noticed the First Lady making out with a girl. "We've gotta go to Deliveries in Rear tonight!"

"No!" I say, and I mean it.

"Yes! Come on." He takes me tightly by the hand and pulls me up the sidewalk. His hands are smallish, not painfully large to hold like my other ex-boyfriends' or thin and poky like my older sister's. They fit.

The bouncer exhales pointedly when I hand him my ID, shakes the flashlight over it and hands it back to me quickly. He looks deep into the club as if he has a secret tell for the entire staff, like a baseball coach, a noserub and neck twitch indicating "fucking girl in here."

I was sick of swimming and decided to jump from one end of the pool to the other just to keep moving. My toes touched the bottom on the deep end, my face well under and I leapt up and forward, emerging into the cold air, and crunched down again. A boy wouldn't get out of my way and I was forced to tread for awhile. I didn't know him, and the way he smiled at me made me nervous.

"What?" I said.

"You're a boy," he said.

"I'm not! I'm a girl!" I said and swum around him.

I jumped again a few more times, splashing gloriously from the water with each one. The boy was there again. I looked for friends, neighbors, but remembered I'd come alone.

"Don't lie. You're a boy."

"I'm a girl!"

I dove and jumped a few more times, a little too fast. Water bubbled in my loose terrycloth suit and pulled it down too much. He ruined my thing, this boy. He was there again. I tried to swim around him, but he blocked me.

"You're a boy!" he said.

George takes me straight to the back of the club, his one eye lazy from drinking. "You order," he says, and socks a twenty in my hand.

I can't look around. The bar is dark but for sharp beams of light that you only see if you're looking straight at them. I see blurs of men in small groups, the special shine of skin. Others cruise, watching the groups with their backs against load-bearing poles. I want to be a spider, to watch them as anything but a woman, but I'm conspicuous here as Queen Victoria. I decide that going to the bar will keep my eyes busy.

"I'm a girl! God!" I said to the boy. He smiled at me as if I were falling for some sort of bait. "What do you want?" I asked.

The bartender is slim and short with a faux-hawk. He clashes with the leather-men.

"What will this lesbian be ordering this evening?" he asks, repulsed.

"This girl wants two Ketel and cranberries."

"Does the lesbian want a twist?"

The boy almost lost himself in victory. "Prove to me you're a girl," he said.

"No! Go away!" I looked at the lifeguard, but he was busy watching older girls directly under him. They were talking to him and he smiled, holding the whistle in his mouth absentmindedly.

"The girl doesn't, no."

"Good!" the bartender says, and slaps the drinks down on the service mat so that much of the liquid splashes out. He looks at me up and down and rolls his eyes. "That'll be sixteen-fifty for the lesbian."

I would have waved my arms for the lifeguard, but I didn't want to raise them. This boy was waiting to touch me. "Hey!" I yelled instead. "Heeeeey!" He blew his whistle, amazingly. The voiceover came on the loudspeaker.

"Adult swim," it said. "Ten minute rest period."

"Here's twenty dollars for the asshole."

"Thanks, lesbian."

"Anytime, asshole."

I swam as fast as I could to the edge of the pool, pulled myself out, and ran for the girls' locker room.

George had been sitting beside me, but saw none of this. I examine the glasses for cloudy floaties, but find none. I give one to him.

George and I went to separate colleges after graduation and didn't see each other until Thanksgiving. He picked me up in his car but didn't kiss me.

"I've held out for you," I said.

"I know," he said.

"So you're gay?" I said.

"Yeah," he said.

"And I'm an idiot," I said.

"If there were a girl...," he said.

"That you would have sex with it would be me, right?" I said.

"But you're a girl," he said.

"Do you love me?" I said.

"Of course," he said.

"Screw me anyway," I said.

"No," he said.

"Then you can go," I said.

The music, if the rumpy-bumpy beat could be called that, goes loud and then off. George hands me his empty and I put it behind me on the bar.

"It's time," says a voiceover, "for adult swim. You've got ten minutes."

The bare lightbulbs go out and George shoves me forward into what must be the crowd. I try to turn around but find the bare chests of men, their fingers in my hair, a dick in jeans at my ass. Before the one can reach around, I drop too hard to my knees and bury my head in his bulge. He pulls locks of my hair between his fingers and unzips. The music grows louder.

George let me kiss him in the car. The two of our faces were wet with tears. I slid my hand up his thighs and found his cock. It was limp, but I'd gotten it going before. Keep your eyes closed, I whispered. I'm a boy. This is my first time with another boy. He lifted his hips so I could lower his jeans. I'm careful to keep my voicebox out of my speech. I'm scared, but I want to touch you.

The man's cock is thin and long. It goes hard right away and I suck to the music. I can feel him trembling and go faster. His fingers pull through my hair tighter and tighter. My pussy swells, needs this. Three minutes pass, four, five. "Yes," he says, "that's a good boy."

I'd been ready for almost a year, ready to lose my virginity to George, would close my eyes in movies and will him to fuck me later. I'd imagined him staring me in the eyes, blinking slowly as he pumped, declaring his love before he came. He lay inert in the car seat as I straddled him, one of my legs forward into the backseat the other twisted and shaking in the well. I'll let you fuck me, I whisper. I'm so scared, but I'll let you do it. I held his cock between my fingers, found the wet spot that I'd tested with hot dogs and Barbie dolls, and put him inside me. It didn't hurt. I thought it would hurt.

Another set of hands moves up and down my shoulders. The man in my mouth's knees shiver. The hands dip down and pull at my ass in my jeans. I want them to slide under me. I want them to press into me. A little bit of friction is all I need. They roll up my hips for a moment, then cross to the front.

It wasn't what I thought it would be, but I grasped the back of George's seat and concentrated. I've got a huge erection, but I don't want you to touch it. I just want to give you this. He was sweating, his shoulders tense and his stomach cranking with his breaths. You feel so good inside me.

The man in my mouth is coming. He holds my head in place and dives into my throat. The taste is there, the swim of salt and lemon and savory. I forget about the arms around me until I notice that one is at my breast and the other is feeling the front of my neck.

George's mouth opened and he grunted just a little, an mmmm-guh, then quickly got a pained look on his face.

"Am I done?" I said.

"Yes," he said.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you too," he said.

"You don't have to speak to me again," I said.

His eyes opened and he looked at me, considering it.

He's checking for an Adam's apple. The hands are thin and the arms are too. I stand up quickly, but he's got me in a hold.

"It's little bitch cunts like you that fuck us all up," he says in my ear.

"Get the fuck away from me!"

The voice of a girl on the floor gets the lights turned on. A bouncer heads toward us from the back. The man lets me go and heads for the exit. I push him. He turns around and grabs my face, runs me back to the bar. I punch him. I've never thrown a punch before and don't even know if I've made contact. I punch again and keep on punching. His face. His chest. He looks furious with me and dodges some of them, trying to catch my arms. My knuckles are bloody and sore. My cheeks sting. He pushes his fingertips into them. The bouncer is a few feet away. I twist my face out of the guy's hands and head for the exit. My cel phone begins to ring. People look at me and someone behind me. Must be the bouncer.

The air is fresh now and I climb into a cab. The phone call was George. The stings were tears in wounds.

The cab takes me to my car and I drive for two hours to the edge of the suburbs. A different forest preserve. Another hour passes before I have my first visitor. He approaches slowly. I watch and close my eyes. His hand touches my cheek through the hole instead. I stare at the hair on his knuckles.

"You got a little beat up there," he says. "What's your name?"