More or Less

In her dorm, Kisha undid my jeans. Her finger held the tab of my zipper. I heard the teeth release. My pants caught around my ankles as Kisha’s hand slipped under the elastic of my briefs. I snatched her wrist, holding her from going further. It was the first time we had done anything together.

“I’m not huge,” I said. Kisha’s face was at my crotch, ready.

“I don’t care about that,” she said.

I let go of Kisha’s wrist. She took me in her mouth.

It was good. Not great. Kisha said she hadn’t done this too many times before. What she lacked in talent, she made up for with enthusiasm. I thought I might get friction burns.

“Slow down,” I said. “I’m going to cum.” I reached out for her wrist again.

Kisha kept her mouth on me.

“It’s a lot,” I warned.

Kisha looked at me the same way as when I said I wasn’t huge. She continued. The space between my stomach and waist—in the core of my body—tightened, preparing to gush everything out of me.

I filled up her mouth. I felt Kisha’s face twitch, her eyebrows rising. Her lips kept sealed over my cock, her cheeks puffed out.

She swallowed.

In my sixth-grade sex ed class, Ms. Gonzalez didn’t put a condom over a banana. Instead, she lifted an unlit match to the whole class and told us that millions of sperm could fit on the red end. She lit the match. Sulfur permeated the room.

When I got home from school, I snooped around my parents’ bedroom and found a box shoved in the back of the bottom drawer of the table next to my dad’s side of their bed. I opened it. Trojan condoms. I put one in my pocket, closed the lid, and shut the drawer.

In my bathroom, I opened the wrapper. Slick goop leaked onto my fingers. A smell, like doctor’s gloves.

I couldn’t get an erection for the condom. I was thinking about my parents having sex. I had never stumbled in on them. Not that I wanted to, but I had heard stories from friends about walking in and staring at what they didn’t know.

I unrolled the condom. It was like a wet, limp balloon. I hated the flapping sound it made. I rolled it up in toilet paper and put it in my bathroom’s trash bag. But my brother Joe could find it. So, I tied the trash bag and took it to the trash bin in the kitchen. I stuffed it at the bottom. Then I thought, what if Mom or Dad saw the bag in a bag and opened it and found one of their condoms? I double-knotted the trash bag, took it to the garage, and put it all in the trashcan.

 ***

Kisha gave me a condom. I remembered the egg-fart smell of the lit match in sex ed. I figured it was either condom or no sex. I opened the condom. I didn’t wilt. I still remembered the directions from that first condom wrapper. I pinched the tip and rolled it onto myself, snug.

Kisha lowered herself onto me.

“How is it?” I asked, beneath Kisha.

“Good,” she said, with half-closed eyes. She started to rock back and forth on me.

“I don’t like it,” I said.

Kisha pushed off me as I reached out for her hips to hold on. She rolled over onto her side.

“I try to find a way for us to do it safely, and then you say that,” Kisha said. Her voice muffled into her pillow.

I looked at her ass. I wanted to take Kisha from behind. Imagine who she could be. Not have to look at her telling me no.

“Come on,” I said. “I was kidding—”

“You’re joking about something serious?” Kisha said. “I’ll have to get on the pill, and get fat.” She cried against the wall away from me.

I rolled my eyes, only because she couldn’t see me do it.

“No, no,” I said. “Look, we can try again. It’s okay, this is only the first time with a condom. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

After a few minutes of convincing, we were fucking. I didn’t think of it as sex, as love. Whatever. It was action. We were getting off.

Above her, level with my eyes, was an Obama HOPE poster. The black President was painted in red and blue. He tilted his chin off to the corner, but his eyes squinted at me fucking my black girlfriend. I thought of his campaign slogan: Yes, we can! However, with each thrust, my mantra was not-pregnant, not-pregnant, not-pregnant.

A part of me wanted to stay inside her. But I didn’t, because I knew what that could mean. I pulled out.

Kisha’s face was buried into her pillow like an ostrich. My cum hit next to her cheek. She turned around as I aimed, trying to squirt the rest onto her back. She smiled like after she had sucked me off.

“Have you ever thought of being a pornstar?” Kisha asked, trying to touch me still hard. She leaned on her side, her arms pushing her small breasts together. Kisha grated her nipples against my bicep.

“I know I could,” I said. I could still feel the gaze of the Obama HOPE poster on the back of my head.

***

I remembered, when I was single and used to watch porn alone, a clip played with this guy, who I later knew was Peter North, double-penetrating a woman I had searched for on a “vintage” site: Sarah Young—a foxy Italian with curly bangs, a polka-dotted blouse halfway ripped off, and quite a hairy snatch. Peter double-teamed Sarah with a black guy, who I didn’t know was Sean Michaels. At first, since I didn’t know Peter, I considered that Sean—because he’s a black guy—was the pornstar, while Peter was just some white boy filler. And so I watched, not knowing either guy, Sean fucking Sarah’s ass and Peter plowing Sarah’s pussy.

I was looking forward to what I knew would be the last thing in any clip: the old phrase “money shot,” which was now just called a “facial”—the withdrawal of Sean and Peter’s cocks from Sarah’s ass and pussy to cum on her face. And so, Sean pulled out and held his cock in front of Sarah’s face. I expected him to turkey-baste her. He started slow, cumming in some inch-length dribbles. At the same time, Peter continued to fuck Sarah in a wheelbarrow position, really slamming into her. Peter edged, his eyes squinted as tight as his taut triceps. Then Peter withdrew and took up more than half of my computer screen as he started to unload on Sarah’s face. He almost came on Sean, too, because it was like a shotgun spray.

Peter came nine times, and then he pumped into the double-digits. By that time, Sean was out of the frame. Sarah smiled with her face plastered. Her sopping, curly bangs began to straighten with the drying slickness. Like egg-whites, jizz dripped from Sarah’s chin.

The clip faded out. Then a pop-up appeared: a call for new recruits. I figured all I had to do was stop jerking off for a few days to “save up.” Then get out my cameraphone and record myself. I thought I probably shouldn’t take a pic, because I believed the industry folks would think I’d faked my load and enhanced it with flicks from a spoonful of yogurt, which I knew was used in some productions.

I imagined after I had finished recording myself coming, I would want to select a song. Something like “Praise You” by Fatboy Slim to play in the background. It would show I had chops besides acting. That I could edit, too, maybe even direct!

I saw on the recruitment site that I needed to include a summary of my info:

-Ounces: Well, I figured I could count tablespoons, maybe even a quarter of a cup.

-Distance: I remembered one time when I stood with my back to the wall in the shower and came horizontally, hitting the opposite wall a few feet away.

-Average ejaculations: As I jerked off watching Peter facialize Sarah, I had matched him splurt for splurt. I’d need to go back and tally how many that was.

From there, if I got accepted, North Pole Productions would fly me to California. I’d get buff, tanned up, and waxed down. My start would be a five-minute feature without my face in the frame. Just my cock and a girl and what I could deliver. I would prove myself.

I could make it a career: working out in the mornings, fucking chicks in the afternoons, blowing loads in their faces, and getting thumbs-up from businessmen in airports on evening flights from my mansion in LA to my condo in Miami.

But I didn’t apply. I didn’t want to feel empty and then wait to refill and then feel empty again and again and again. I didn’t want to be a spectacle. And I thought it would be worse than being alone.

In the afterglow, Kisha snuggled next to me. We spooned naked. She shuddered as she started to fall asleep. Then she faded into a deeper sleep. But I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to stay.

I woke up Kisha and said I was going to go back home. As I put on my clothes, I suggested she take a Plan B pill, just in case. Kisha didn’t say anything. I had my shoes tied, and I was ready to leave. I said that I didn’t want kids. I wondered if Kisha thought, Not now? or Not ever? or Not with me? I let myself out.

***
Listen to Chris read his essay.

Rumpus original art by Jason Novak.