Date: Tue, 25 Sep 2001 18:51:22 -0400 From: C. E. Jordan Subject: MY DENNIS 11: THE RUMPLED BED My Dennis Copyright c.e. jordan MY DENNIS 11: THE RUMPLED BED Museums are quiet like churches. I usually feel soothed there. But this day my walk through the Metropolitan Museum of Art didn't help. The movie I couldn't stop from running through my mind overwhelmed and obscured the masterful Rubens and the bright impressionist landscapes hanging right before my eyes. I left and took a long walk looking in the windows of the ritzy stores along Madison Avenue. I walked from 96th Street uptown all the way to 8th Street in lower Manhattan near SoHo. I checked my watch, it was four p.m. I wondered what was happening at that very moment in my apartment. My anxiety increased and I surpressed an urge to phone home. So I stopped in a small Pizza place on Broadway where I knew they wouldn't throw me out if I lingered too long. While I picked at my pizza, I tried to focus on a novel I had with me. I even remember the name of the book...it was `DHALGREN', a complex literary Science Fiction masterpiece by Samuel R. Delany. It's set in some indeterminate future. But any kind of future for me, at that moment at least, was unimaginable--just too difficult for my uncomprehending brain to grasp. So I just sat and idly stared out at the people passing by. I must have dozed off, because when I jerked awake and glanced at my watch, it was near six pm. I looked around embarassed, but the friendly pizza guy just smiled and asked, "You had a nice rest? Looked like you needed it." "I guess I did, thanks for not throwing me out." And I left for home. **** I dropped the keys twice as I fumbled to unlock my door. I entered and looked around. Everything seemed in place but the quality of the air was subtly different. Perhaps it was my overactive imagination again. The kitchen was fine except there were two empty soda cans on the counter. I entered the bedroom with some apprehension. And, yes, the bed was rumpled. I suppose Dennis deliberately left it that way for me to see--and experience. His normal neatnik impulse would be to, at least, pull it smooth. I got out of there and entered the bathroom to throw some water on my face. As I toweled my face dry, I happened to glance into the toilet bowl and my stupid heart nearly stopped. There on the surface of the water was a sheet of baby-wipes or paper towel, blushing reddish pink at the center. D had left me vivid proof of his brand new manhood, the virgin blood of his young love floating in my toilet. I threw myself upon the mussed up bed that used to be ours, on which we once rolled around together wet in a crazy rain of Coca Cola, and a squalid mess of crunched potato chips. And I wept. Not very manly, I know, but I couldn't help it. I wept for the end of all the things we had shared....and the impossibility of love that would last forever....I was disconsolate that the central fact of life is that, eventually, things change ....... I waited wondering if he'd call as usual. And as usual he did. He was hesitant at first, but soon D was enclosing me in his web, pulling me in close, trying to get me to feel exactly what he'd experienced. The bloody evidence, I knew, was meant to involve me in some way with his first hetrosexual act that established his identity as a functioning male. I could tell as he spoke, that doing it in my bed was like I, his loving partner, had been right there for him. It's hard to explain...I wondered for a second if he was thinking of me even as he made love to the unsuspecting girl. I shook my head. Probably not. He was telling me: "She was so soft inside, and she was begging me to do it. But when I pressed in harder she yelled `no, no' get off, get off, it hurts..." I did nothing but breathe, and Dennis continued to speak, "But when I tried to get off of her, she wouldn't let me go....then it was `get off', `get off' all over again....but I couldn't stop myself this time and she went `oooof' and Charles, I sunk deep, all the way in...inside she felt so soft and so damned tight at the same time..." He continued on like this for awhile and I listened to him in a daze. "Charles, she kept cumming over and over and over again. I only came twice. But she didn't want to stop at all." He sounded astonished that girls were like that. "Then...after my third time, I was really tired and it was getting late. It was after four. We were going to be in big trouble. I had to beg her to get dressed." Well, all I can say, is that Maria got an introduction to sex from a boy with stamina, one who was thoughtful, inventive, and unselfish in bed. No wonder she didn't want to let him go. And he got a girl who was responsive and who truly wanted him. I suppose it was a good experience all around. Except, of course, for me. "We got dressed, an' as we were about to go out the door, Maria started kissing on me and pulling me back, saying we didn't have to go and saying stuff like, she didn't care if she was late, and she didn't care what her parents did to her....she wanted to stay and do it again! But it was late and my `little D' was just about dead...I told her I didn't have any more condoms....but she said she didn't care.....hey, I remembered what you said about babies....so I grabbed that girl and told her we had to leave NOW!" I was glad my advice sank in, but I was about to throw up. I had to make him shut up. "D, I'm sorry....we can't do this anymore." "Huh? What you mean." "Talk...like this...and.........the other thing." Silence. "It's too painful for me to keep on doing this D..." "I....I know...." "You know what?" "That.....that ......we got to stop......" Was I imagining it? I thought I heard a snuffling. D never displays much emotion. "I love you D, I always will." I don't think I had told him that so directly before...I guess, because it was too easy a thing to say. I was astonished to hear him reply, "I love you too Charles............look, you're makin' me cry." There. I said it, and he'd said it. Somehow, I began to feel better even with all the tears. If we had to part, at least we could go our own way knowing that whatever happens, dispite Maria, wife, kids, whomever and whatever, there'd be a special kind of love, a bond between us which would survive forever. That was my hope, at least. "So, what's gonna happen now?" D asked. "I don't know kiddo...I guess were gonna find out as we go along..." ****