My Understanding of Sex

My Understanding of Sex

Nathan Tyree

 

One

Deke asked me why a girl would want to sit on a guy's cock. We must have been ten or so at the time. It was august and we had been trying to suck the last bit of freedom out of summer before we had to go back to school. Our bikes were tossed over and almost forgotten. We were lying on our backs in the grass when he asked the question. The image I got was of a man standing next to a chair with his wang stretched out on the seat and some girl plopping down on it. It sounded painful to me and not at all in line with my current understanding of sex. The way I had heard it the girl had to lie on her back and the man had to get on top of her.

“What the hell you talkin’ about?” I asked leaning up on one elbow.

“You know my mom’s new boyfriend”

“Yeah.” I had met him a couple of times when I stopped by to see if Deke wanted to hang out. He was a tubby guy with a shiny brow that extended too far back. I didn’t like the way his eyes darted around when I entered the trailer.

“Last night I walked into mom’s room and saw her on the bed with him. It looked like she was sitting on his cock.” Deke didn’t look at me. I got the feeling that maybe he was embarrassed.

“I don’t know, man.” I got up and walked to my bike. I righted it and climbed on. “Come on, let’s go watch the girls at the pool.”

“’Kay,” he said and we rode off. We spent the afternoon looking through the fence at girls a few years older than us swimming and jumping and bouncing in their bikinis.

Two

When I was seven I found my Uncle's collection of dirty magazines. I was in his garage arranging a couple of old pieces of tin stove pipe and wondering if I could build a rocket with them. My parents were inside having coffee or something and talking about things that bored me silly. I spied a jar filled with bolts and screws on a shelf and decided to see if any of the contents could be put to use in rocketry. When I pulled the jar down I noticed something behind it. It was a stack of old magazines. I pulled the top one from the stack and looked at it. On the cover was a girl with her back to the camera. She was bending forward at the waist and her skirt had pulled up so far that I could see part of her butt.

I sat on the floor and began thumbing through the pages. Inside there were cartoons that I guessed were funny although I didn't understand the jokes. There were long articles I couldn't really read. And there were pictures of girls without any clothes. They were contorted into uncomfortable positions and showing parts of their bodies that I hadn't even known existed. Some of the pictures made me feel weird.

Three

"I'll show you mine but you go first." She was my neighbor and a year older than me which made her nine. We were behind the garden shed hidden in the shadow from the wooden fence. When she led me there by the hand she had given no hint at what she had in mind.

"Okay" I said in a squeaky sort of way.

I just stood there making no movement to comply with the contract we had just made. She was pretty and I really wanted to see hers. I was terrified of showing her mine.

"Go ahead," she said.

I unbuttoned my pants and lowered them. Her eyes dropped to look at what I had just revealed and I could feel my cheeks warming up. I must have been glowing red. We stood there for a minute, her looking at my most secret self. Then I said "Okay, now show me."

"No," she said.

Four

My car was no beauty. It was a beat to hell hatchback than coughed and spit every time I pressed the accelerator. We had pulled off the road and into the edge of a cornfield. It was after one in the morning and no one was likely to drive by out there, so we had moved to the back seat where there was more room to stretch out.

Cindy said that she loved me. I figured that that was my cue to try something. Not that I hadn't been trying already. I had my hand under her shirt, but above her bra. This was a point of order with Cindy. I could squeeze her breast, but only through her bra. 

I slid my hand out of her shirt and tried to put it between her legs. She was quick. Her hand shot down, grabbed my wrist and moved my hand back to her breast where it belonged.

"But, I love you Cindy," I said.

"You don't love me that much," She said.

Five

"You get any?" Me and Ted were dressing out for gym class. He had been telling me that he had taken Sue Scibor to the movies the night before. Everybody knew that Sue was a slut. James Thomlinson had screwed her behind the bowling alley the summer before and if she'd do a toad like him she'd do anybody.

"Fuck yeah," Ted said. "Didn't even have to try real hard."

The thing I couldn't understand was that I had taken Sue out a few weeks earlier. I had bought her Chinese food and even sprung for a movie (which I let her pick) and she hadn't even let me tongue kiss her. I was starting to think that there was something wrong with me.

Six

“I’m leaving.” She stood in the doorway ringed by light from the hall. Her eyes were set, lapidary. Her mouth betrayed the ghost of a smile. 

“What’s his name?”

“Who?”

“The guy you’re leaving me for. What’s his name?” I felt like throwing something.

“There’s nobody else. “

“Then why leave?”

“You know why. I just need to. It’s not you. It’s me.” I think she may have actually meant it.

“Ya know, I’ve been dumped more times than I can count, and it’s never been me.”

She almost laughed at that. Or maybe she almost cried at it. I can’t be sure.

“Don’t make this hard. Please.”

At the time I thought that it was an unfair demand. “Don’t make it hard? Fuck. It should be hard. You’re killing me and you want me to make it easy for you. What kind of bitch are you?”

“Fuck you, Bill. Fuck you.” There was no inflection at all in her voice. She turned and walked out the door without even bothering to slam it behind her.