Abandon

It was a typical Thursday night that found Ed and Dorothy hanging in his room. They had taken to calling it, “The Sanctuary of Surrealism,” after the many stoned and trippy evenings that had transpired there. They were drinking beers and smoking ciggies, listening to Pink Floyd and Jane’s Addiction and some Stones.

“Ed,” Dorothy said, sitting on his fold out chair, “Can you please tell me why my professors are so fucking stupid.”

“Yes,” Ed said, standing near the half-opened window, “I’m quite sure I can, if you’ll tell me what the fuck you are talking about.”

“Well check this out, today in my English class, Mr. Harper wants us to do a ‘peer review’ of our classmates papers. What the hell is that shit? Is he just lazy? He just doesn’t want to have to grade all those papers. He is the professor, right?”

“I agree. I can’t see how on earth your opinion would help anybody.”

“Shut up,” Dorothy said, “I’m serious. Is there any real benefit for having students embarrassing themselves by reading their papers aloud, and then getting slammed by inferior minds who are just out to impress big bad Mr. Harper?”

“I don’t know, sometimes it is good to get other people’s thoughts about it…”

“No way, Ed, I think this guy is plain lazy.”

“I’m not saying he’s not. You know what my math teacher told a kid today?”

“What?”

“The kid asked a serious question about a hard formula, and the guy said, get this, “Use your brain, to think!” This is what we get for 3 Grand a course.”

“College is a racket, man. You want another beer?”

“Does the Pope bugger little boys?”

Dorothy got up from the floor and went down the hall to the kitchen.

She came back with two cans of PBR. They were getting nice and pissed. A light snow had started to fall and Ed looked out the window that opened up onto a Boston Brick Building Back Alley. The snow was collecting on the railing of the fire escape.

They kept drinking, and kept smoking. Dorothy produced a roach from somewhere and they hit it until it burned their finger tips. The night wore on. They were having fun, as they usually did. They started goofing off, play acting. First, they pretended they were a teacher and a student. Then they pretended they were kids on a playground. Then they were a cop and a drunk driver. Then they were a priest and a nun who had a thing for each other. Then they arrived at being two strangers at a party.

“So, where you from, baby?” Ed said, in an overly leering and seductive way.

“I’m from Malaysia.”

“What are you studying?”

“The botany of deciduous trees of North America.”

“That sounds kind of sexy, I must say.”

“Well, deciduous is a very sensual word.”

“I wonder if you might define it for me.”

“Well, yes, I think I can. Certain trees that shed their leaves at the end of the season are called deciduous.“

“Oh, I see, so you mean that they sort of take off their clothes for the winter.”

“You might say that,” she said.

They stared at each other. They were standing in the middle of the room. Those invisible and sometimes unknown barriers that exist between people had been thinning all evening, for months actually, stretching, and very soon to be blown away like gossamer. Something happened. Dorothy smiled in a way Ed had never seen, and they both felt something new and foreign, yet strangely familiar. There are so many levels of attraction between people, friends, men and women; so much undefined spiritual or kinetic energy that can rage like a stormy sea but is most often kept at bay by reason and so-called logic. Ed and Dorothy stood inches from each other.

They came together like two magnets and kissed, rough and long and full of tongue. Their hands rubbing up and down each other’s bodies in that pure unconscious exhilarating way, like branches writhing in a fierce wind. Unthinking, savage and pent up emotions and desires overflowed. Ed grabbed her, picked her up and threw her on the mattress. He got on top of her and started rubbing into her, spreading her legs, pressing his hips hard into her as he lifted up her shirt and kissed her belly, licked her breasts, sucked on her neck. Dorothy put her hands down his pants and grabbed him, hard and hot and pulsing. She was moaning and they both were breathing heavy. There were no words, just the overflow. They stripped down, ripping their clothes off. Ed looked at her face, her fine and pronounced features, so new yet so familiar, so fucking hot and satisfying to experience this release. Dorothy moaned again with her eyes closed as Ed went down on her. The sweet exhilaration, the rapturous spontaneity. She grabbed his hair with both hands and pressed him into her, writhing and groaning. She got on top of him and when she put him inside of her Ed suddenly let out a scream of pain and rolled over. They had rubbed so hard and raw with their jeans on that he had lacerated his member.

“Fuck, goddamn it, that hurts,” he said. Dorothy grabbed him and stroked him.

“It’s OK, It’s OK…” she said, softly. Ed lay back and relaxed. She stroked him gently and he came and she pulled the blanket over the two of them. They lay there in silence, exhausted, bewildered and fantastically free. A few hours later Ed woke up and it took him a minute to realize what had happened. Dorothy’s scent filled the room. He watched her, sleeping on her side. She was snoring softly with the slightest smile on her beautiful, Greta Garbo face.