Hit Me
(from 2010)

The party was unremarkable. Martini drinking academics in turtleneck sweaters chatted with women in short skirts. Old money seduced new money. NYU coeds who had rejected their peers in favor of older, richer prospects fawned and flirted. Obscure indie rock music (much of which was older than said coeds) blared. 

Her eyes were closed, and her head nodded to the music. Her lips were full and covered in a glossy sheen. She wore a blue dress, short, no stockings, and heeled knee-high boots. Her light brown hair hung over the rise of her breasts and half way down her belly. She looked as if she might have been very, very drunk.

She was beautiful, though. James had given Trevor a wink as he gestured to the empty space next to her on the sofa. Trevor sat, looking at her mouth and thinking of what it could do. 

He waited for the perfect moment in which to initiate an introduction – she was so sexy, after all – but she seemed so painfully out of it that he had resorted to sitting there, staring at her through the lens of his peripheral vision, waiting for the moment that reality might force her awake.

That moment never came. He took it upon himself to force the moment to its crisis and laid his right hand gingerly on her knee. Her eyes opened, but they didn’t look nearly as inebriated as he had expected. In fact, she looked a bit like a frightened deer, threatened with the grill of a Buick. But this revealed, through the widening of her eyes, that one was sharp blue, and the other pale green. How exotic. Maybe by the end of the night I’ll be able to say that I fucked a woman with two different color eyes.

“Do you like this?” he asked.

“I don’t usually go to parties.”

“No, no, the music. You seem to be enjoying it.”

“Oh, yes.” She paused, looking downward at her bare knees. “I’ve always loved My Bloody Valentine. Do you like them?”

“Yes, I think they’re spectacular.” He hated Shoegaze music in general, and he loathed My Bloody Valentine in particular. All that noise, the scratching and grinding of distortion and echo, but nothing other than a weak and mild pop tune to score it. Her demeanor had been so hazy because she actually enjoyed this noisy, nineties filth. She liked it so much that she had lost herself in it.

“You’re a little young to like this stuff,” he said

“So are you.” She giggled.

“How do you know James?” he asked.

“He was my professor for The Age of Donne last year.”
“What a coincidence. I had him for the same class about six years ago.”

“What do you do now?” she asked with ravenous eyes.

“I work on Wall Street,” he said.

“Oh, after studying English?” she asked. She seemed genuinely enthralled with this notion.
“My father owns the firm Hunter & Keith.”
“How wonderful for you.”

He thought about what her ass looked like on all fours.

He wondered if she would ask
him to stop.

“Hey,” he said, in his mildest voice. “Would you like to get out of here? I’m feeling sort of flushed. and I could use a cigarette, too. I don’t want to infect James’s apartment with the smell of smoke.” She looked at him with those eyes, those raw, youthful eyes, and he wanted to bite her cheek.

“I guess so,” she said, finally. He got up and chivalrously offered his hand to help her. He nearly gagged. These games, silly games that women require you to play in order to get them to a private location. They not only expect, but they demand you to misrepresent yourself.

Once they reach that location, however, they had better know how to run if they want to escape you.

They went outside onto the stoop of the brownstone. He offered her a cigarette, and she accepted. They smoked in silence, although he was trying to give her interested if slightly predatory looks as a sort of signal. She continued to look wide-eyed, like a rabbit frozen in a pair of headlights, and she giggled each time he neared her.

They talked a little, primarily about that simplistic racket that typified the music she liked. His disgust for her, his contempt for her flighty artistic sensibilities and her seeming lack of intellectual facility made him want her all the more. She was a nervous little mouse, yes, but she would be easy to convince – or, if need be, to overtake. It was nearly definite that he’d get his dick wet one way or another. Maybe he’d find some moody, guitar-laden nineties pop music to play while it happened. Maybe then she would learn, like Pavlov’s dog, to hate it like she should. This might hurt.

He asked if she’d accompany him back to his place. She agreed reluctantly, coyly,
and her smile made him want to force himself inside her. 

She was not fazed by his ’81 924 Turbo Porsche, the car he had paid a great deal of money to have restored, though he only drove it to parties and the like to impress women. She maintained a look, one that was something akin to nervous, for the entirety of the ten-minute ride. When he put his hand on her knee in the hopes of warming her to him, she did not move.

When they arrived, he opened the car door for her, and they took the elevator to his fifteenth floor apartment. With hardwood floors, a view of the park, and furnished in black leather, his place was respectably elegant. 

Trevor had friends with nicer, more expensive places, but this one had never failed to arouse a woman to her full erotic potential. This woman, though, showed no signs of any thought or feeling on the matter at all. She sat on his leather sofa, and he brought her a gin and tonic at her request.

Then, she did something that shocked the hell out of him. She ran her tongue along the rim of the glass, at once voracious and tentative, licking at the condensation. He knew that his apartment would find her agreeable. It’s much more convenient when they
cooperate. He unhooked her fingers from her drink and poured a little onto her breasts.  

She looked startled and enlivened as she pressed her mouth hard onto his. She tasted like fruit, bread and cigarettes, and her tongue probed his mouth hungrily. 

Then they were a mess of limbs, frantically pulling at clothes, licking and nibbling and grabbing. Her body was firm and long, and her breasts were pliant and round. Then she said it.

“Hit me,” she breathed. “I want you to hurt me.”

He sat up and glared. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked, now filled to capacity with an irritable dread.

“I thought – I mean, you seemed so intent on having me either way, so persistent, sort of predatory – I thought you’d give me what I want. Her eyes had gone from naive, desirous bulges to narrow slits of contempt.

“I want you, yes, but damn it, why the fuck would you want a thing like that?” He wanted to cry. His heart thumped erratically and seemed to steal all the blood that had only a moment ago resided safely elsewhere.

“What the hell is your problem?” She began to gather her clothes and put them on haphazardly, and he had to hold back tears of aggravation, as if something that was his had been stolen.

“You’re a sick woman, you know, liking things like that.”

“You’re a sick man. You don’t even know what you like.”

When she was gone, he collected his clothing from the living room, tossed it in the wash, and climbed into the shower. He could not feel the heat of his tears there.