Free Breakable You by Brian Morton Page B

problematic, an engenderer of mixed feelings. On the one hand there was something disgusting about it: the ignorant penis, always weird-looking when observed from up close, sporting too many pimplelike things and inexplicable purple patches, smelling pungent and unwashed—a blow job is a man's idea of heaven, but it rarely occurs to a man that a woman might have more interest in putting his penis in her mouth if it was
clean
—and then of course if he comes in your mouth, although it doesn't always taste awful, it never exactly tastes good. It's never as nice as a milk shake.
I could give you that blow job you asked for, but I'd much rather have a milk shake
. But on the other hand there was something she loved about having a man in her mouth like this: his helplessness, the way he falls into a kind of trance when you go down on him. And she also loved the complexity of it. Giving a blow job always made her feel like a supplicant, as if she were unworthy of meeting the man face-to-face, but it also made her feel powerful, because of the hint of primal danger, the fact that you could bite the damned thing off if you felt like it, ridding the world of a penis. Maybe the thing she liked about blow jobs, after all, the reason she continued to give them, was that both participants, the woman and the man, were at each other's mercy.
    She had him in her mouth, and he was leaning against the tree, and he was shuddering, he was working his fingers through her hair with a gentleness that surprised her, and she still didn't even know if she even
liked
him, but here she was, taking him in a shady part of Central Park. It was as if the two of them had connected, from the first, on a pre-rational plane; it had been obvious from the first that something in each of them craved something in the other. She had a feeling of mystical tightness—she remembered Plato's notion that each of us has an other half, whom we search for during all our earthly days—and she knew that she was giving him as much pleasure as he could stand.
    Maud Weller, pleasure artist.
    But when she looked up at his face, she saw that she'd perhaps misperceived the situation, because even though his cock was hard in her mouth and he seemed, down here, to be feeling as good as a man could feel, his eyes were wide open, and he was crying.

----
Twelve
    She took her mouth away, which was what he wanted her to do, which was what he didn't want her to do. One or the other, but he wasn't sure which.
    She brushed her hair away from her eyes and sat back against a tree. She was smiling at him: kindly, puzzled, sympathetic.
    "Are you okay?" she said.
    He zipped and buttoned and sat down next to her and took her hand.
    "I guess I should tell you a couple of things," he said.
    "I'd like it if you would."
    "I told you I used to be married."
    She nodded.
    "We had a daughter. She was born with a blood disease. She died when she was three years old."
    "I'm so sorry," Maud said.
    She looked sincere. Samir could always tell whether expressions of sympathy were genuine or not. Experience had turned him into a lie detector of condolences.
    "Let's walk," he said. He gave her his hand and they started back out of the tangled shelter of trees.
    Back in the brightness of the park, life was continuing. Families, runners, bicycle riders, friends out for a walk. The beauty of the human body. He felt very tired.
    "Do you want to tell me more about it? I want to know, if it's okay for you to talk." She said this in a small voice that he didn't like. Hushed and trembling with concern. A social worker's voice, he thought.
    He was aware that he was being ungenerous to her. Even if her voice was a little phony, she was being phony in a good cause. She was trying to show him that she was interested.
    He wasn't sure what else he should tell her. The problem was that if he started to talk about it, he might never stop.
    He had met Leila just after college, and they were married in their mid-twenties.