“Is that ‘Andrew’ in Spanish?” I lick my lips and wish I hadn’t. I blush.

His head jerks back as though he is cocking a trigger. He laughs. “Español,” he drawls. He speaks a southern city dialect. I don’t know enough to recognize it.

“No, my dear,” he almost trills the “r”, “Shenar.”

I raise myself from sitting tailor style on the floor as he enters. He faces me as I pause a moment on my knees.

“Hello, Shenar.” He remembers my name. Is interested in saying it.

I am level with his dick. I study the vector, then look up. He is watching me looking.

“It may be Greek.”

What I am learning may not translate into anything else.

I am wondering something. I don’t ask, but he answers, anyway.

“We knew each other in a past life.”

The point isn’t reincarnation.

I don’t need an explanation, but an explanation would harden it for both of us. He is too young to be doing this. I am old enough to know better. But I don’t know better. Not anymore. He was the one with the knowing smile. He is no virgin. I am no teacher. All he will admit to is that he fucked me, lavishly, once, before.

“What language did we speak?” I quiz.

He understands what I mean.

“Sanskrit.”

I am the one who is being enticed.

He is eighteen. He stays behind, though, when his friends go to look for Friday night. It doesn’t seem presumptuous. Before, he only leaned toward me, surprised by the pull. I remained steady. He went with his friends, looking over his shoulder. I have not thought of him again until we met, tonight.

Tonight, I think, he intends to stay. Come forward. Tell me what he means. I can tell.

He drinks a little, slowly, chasing it with carbonated water. My carbonated water. Lights a cigarette, then puts it out. “I don’t know why I do that,” he says, glancing at me. “I know better.” He swishes a mouthful of Gentleman Jack and swallows it.

A joint is passed. He offers it to me before he takes it.

Someone is asking him if his mother can write a letter to a relative. He is asking in heavily accented English. Andrade answers in soft Spanish. I watch him speak.

When he finishes, he looks at me. “Do you know what I said?”

“Yes,” I say. “Not word for word,” I add.

He looks as though he would like to reach across the room and touch me. He rubs his breast with his hand.

“I could teach you.”

On my periphery, our audience looks startled.

“I hadn’t thought about it. Is there anything you need to know, we could trade,” I suggest, a smooth elide, I think.

“Yes,” he says. Nothing else.

I reverberate from the floor up.

He is slow. I am almost too aroused to be friendly. He knows it. When he looks at me, there is darkness around the edges.

My impatience brings me to my feet, to the feet of the old man. Am I flirting? No. But I touch him more than usual. We exchange a glance. He touches me back, cradling the side of my hip. He says nothing different, but his voice is lower. I am aware of avoiding his crotch. I want to touch him. Now. Bare him to the air and touch him. I look at him.

He knows it. He smiles. Rocks back with a public-private laugh. Acknowledges the mixed company with a glance between my legs.

The old man tires and rises to leave. I always follow him to his room. I always tell him, “Goodnight,” in the darkness, close to his ear. Tonight, I sit by his bed. “Just for a moment,” I say.

“You can touch it now.” His voice is strong, as though we have already agreed on this.

He is still clothed. I touch him through the cloth of his jeans. Search both sides, through taut denim. He feels thick. He moans, then coughs.

“When you get finished with that young ’un,” he says, clasping my hand to his dick, squeezing himself with my fingers, moaning again, “mebbe I can show you somethin‘.”

Although he can’t see me, I smile. “Maybe so,” I say, and cough. He has passed his congestion on to me. His old, determined congestion.

“I know you want it now,” he whispers. “Relax. There is something I need to know.”

He spreads my legs wide, stations my knees in the air, ties my ankles to the bedpost. My hands remain free. I cover my exposure and whimper.

“How did you touch yourself when you were a child?” His lips are against my vulva. He anchors my hands to my thighs with his.

“I don’t remember.” I try to stifle a sob. I was thinking something else, something else...

He picks up my right hand, licks it, nuzzles it, then strokes the side of my clitoris with my index finger. I can’t see him. “I’ll help you to remember.”

Text & Graphics © 1999 by Gail Rae Hudson

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