Last time with Colleen m/f

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calebtras
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Last time with Colleen m/f

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Last time with Colleen

I was lying in bed late at night reading an Aquaman comic, a towel under the bottom of my door so my mother couldn't see my light was on, when I heard a tapping on my window. At first I wondered if it was some crazy stray cat, because burglars don't tap. I pulled aside the shade and saw Colleen on the fire-escape. She'd come over the roofs from her end of the block. I opened the window and she slipped in. I put my arms out to hug her, but she put her hand on my chest and shook her head no.

She whispered, “Your ma awake?”

“Maybe, I don't know.” I could hear the TV, but she left it on to fall asleep.

“I had to get out of my place.” When she took off her jacket, she winced.

“What's the matter?” I asked.

“I had a tiff with my old man.”

Even in the dim light of my lamp I could see dark bruises on her left arm. “Asshole,” I said. Her father started drinking the minute he got home, was stumble-down drunk by night, but the couple hours in-between he was dangerous.

“You got a mirror?” she asked.

“I can get one.”

“Nah, that's all right.” She bent stiffly at the waist and held her arms up. “Can you pull off my t-shirt?”

I peeled it off. When she stood straight, I could see she had dark blue-purple splotches on her front and left side.

She turned around. “Undo me.”

I unhooked her bra. There were more bruises on her back. When she turned to face me, I saw a fist shape mark on her left breast.

“Fucking bastard!” I felt so helpless. “I'll get some ice, and mirrors.”

I cracked open my door. My mom was slumped down, her mouth open. We had a railroad apartment, and my mother slept in the living room. I sneaked past her to the kitchen, and got an ice-tray, towel, and glass of water, then two mirrors and aspirin from my mother's dresser, and brought them back. Colleen took two aspirin and drank the water, while I wrapped the ice in the towel and held it to the worst bruise on her back.

“How'd it happen?” I asked

“Same shit, my dad gets mad, slaps me around.”

Not slaps—punches. “'Bout what?”

“He found out about us. Accused me of fuckin' you. Called me a whore.”

“You told him we weren't havin' sex?”

“Yeah, and it made him madder, said I was callin' him a liar.”

I was near tears with frustration. When you're 15 in my Irish working class neighborhood, you got used to being pushed around by your parents, teachers, priests, gangs, bigger kids. But there were rules, limits, and her father had broken them.

“I gotta tell ya somethin', Terry.”

She avoided my eyes. What could be make this worse?

“He's sendin' me to my grandparents in Charlestown. That's in Boston, six hours away. Tomorrow morning.”

I was stunned. That happened to boys who got in trouble with the cops or the mob, but not girls. I desperately searched for some way to stop this. “You know what they do in Flatbush when they hear a father's beatin' on his kid? The Irish, Jews, and Italians all snitch each other out, call the cops, sic the social workers on 'em. I can pretend I'm your upstairs neighbor and call in the cavalry. They'll either set him straight or rescue you.”

“I can't do that to my mom.”

Her mother let it happen. I was frustrated and angry. “But, you can't leave!”

“I gotta, Terry.” She was serious, her voice cracking. I'd never seen her like this. Almost like she was broken. “It's Mom's idea. She convinced Dad. I stay here, somethin' bad's gonna happen between me and my Dad. Real bad.”

She meant one day he could kill her. I knew it was true.

“Well, when can you come back?”

“When I'm old enough to get a job and my own place.”

We were kids. Even guys in our neighborhood lived at home until they got married. We didn't think about the future, because it was all laid out. This wasn't fair. I was sad, confused, and upset. “Can I hug you?”

“You can do this,” She put my hands around her waist, “And this.” She put my hands behind her neck.

We sat cross-legged on my bed in our underwear. She sat with her back straight, like a doll. We both wanted to talk. Not about what happened to her. About us. The whole time we were going out we hadn't talked all that much. We played handball, stickball, invented our own games, or just sat on the rocks by Hudson Bay, watching the seagulls.

It was as if we were cramming everything we'd meant to say over the whole year we were together into one night. We talked about all the things we'd done, how we felt doing them, and about being together. She was everything that made me happ, why I woke up in the morning. I couldn't imagine walking down the halls in school, down our street without knowing I'd see her. Whenever bad stuff happened to me, I told myself, at least I have Colleen.

But she was telling our stories as if leafing through a scrapbook of the good old days, and at the end, she would close it, The End, and move on. I was listening to her leave me behind. I felt hurt and abandoned. And she was making me angry. I couldn't handle all these feelings, and shut down.
She thought I was just sad, saying, “You can kiss me, you know.” Wincing with each movement, she leaned toward me. Halfway, she grit her teeth and stopped. “It's just this one twist movement that stabs me like a knife. Help me lie down.”

I held her by her shoulders and helped her settle on her right side. “Now I'm good. Just don't make me laugh,” she said grinning.

I stroked and kissed her body. Over the year, we'd reached the point we were comfortable in our underwear touching each other everywhere. But this time, seeing and touching her beautiful body, even marred by bruises, just made me ache with loss.

She sensed I was bothered. She said, “You can tie me up. Tie me like you want to keep me here with you forever.”

She was half joking, but that's exactly how I felt, and that's what I'd do. The first time I'd ever tied her up was in a game of ringolevio, just for fun, but even then it was as if I wanted to capture her wild spirit. As she lay on her side, I tied her hands behind her with my church necktie, tighter than usual. She tried to move her arms but winced and lay still. For the first time, I tied her ankles together with a soft woven belt. I wrapped my bathrobe sash above her knees and tied it.

“You really don't want me to leave,” she said. She wriggled to get more comfortable, but she couldn't. Colleen liked being in control, even when she was tied up, but this time, between her bruises and my ties, she was helpless. She closed her eyes and lay still.

I had a lot of hurt and anger, and it all focused on her. I'd gift wrapped her, a present to myself. She was leaving me, this was my last shot, and I was going to make her remember it. For the first time I thought about having sex with her. In her condition, it would hurt, but she had hurt me, and everyone knew there's no pain worse than a broken heart.

I tested her—I tickled her. She laughed and immediately winced. “I told ya not to do that, Terry, it hurts.”

She should hurt. I put my mouth on her neck below her ear and sucked hard. She tried to shrug me off, like always, because she couldn't show up with a hickey at home. Tied up, she couldn't push me away. I sucked harder and she gave up. “Okay, fuck it. I won't say goodbye to Dad. Can I stay here 'til morning?”

“Yeah, good.”

“All right, go ahead.”

When I finished the hickey, I checked to make sure it was darker than the bruise her father gave her. She now wore my brand, I owned her. Her mother would see it. She would have to explain it in Boston.

I rubbed her thigh, sliding my hand inside, expecting to be ready for sex, to be the most excited I'd ever been—but I wasn't. The opposite—I was turned off and deflated. All my anger drained away. All I had left was deep shame. Not because I wasn't able to have sex with her; how could I have even thought of hurting her?

Colleen had always been good to me. She was beautiful, charismatic, and rebellious, a magnet for attention from boys in the neighborhood and at school, while I was the nerd nobody remembered. She wore a hard, tough shell to others, but she had let me in. I saw her inner strength, her never-give-up determination, the care and gentleness she kept hidden. To the outside world we were opposites, but to each other, we were the same. That's why we chose each other, why we were most at ease by ourselves, why we'd go outside the neighborhood together and hang out with strangers.

The adults in our neighborhood believed sex was sinful, girls were virgins or whores. It was a time when TV married couples slept in separate beds, and porn was only in dirty book stores in Times Square. The older boys talked about girls like they just got down to business and screwed. So Colleen and I distrusted everything we'd heard about sex. We only trusted each other.

Her father had beat her up, cracked her rib. I didn't got to church anymore—I understood it was just bad shit we had no control over, raining down from the world of adults, forcing us apart. Colleen was traveling to a scary unknown. She had to focus on that. I shouldn't be betraying her to steal last-chance sex. I had felt protected by her; now it was my turn to give her the only thing I had to offer to help her move on.

As I was straightening out my own head, I was stroking her hair, and a lock fell over her face. As I brushed it back, she opened her eyes, looked up, and said, “I'm gonna be on the bus somewhere in Upstate Vermont by the time you make your move.”

I laughed. I untied her legs and loosened the belt around her wrists. “You okay?” I asked.

She snorted. “Are you?”

I leaned over and kissed the the crown of her head, and worked my way stroking and kissing down her neck, side, leg, to her toes, which she wiggled happily. I ran my fingers lightly over her hips, which were a little wider than when we started going out a year ago, her breast, still small, her abdomen and butt, still muscular and firm. I squeezed and massaged every place that wasn't purple, and kissed the bruises. I could feel her relaxing, like she always did when she came to see me after something bad happened. I stroked and held her, sensing when she relaxed, when she tensed up, listening to her gasps, her breathing, so quick and shallow. I sucked on her buttocks, nibbled on her bound hands, and squeezed her calves. I gently kissed her bruised back, side, and chest.

I lay down facing her. When I kissed her right breast, the one without a bruise, she giggled.

“Does that tickle?”

She pressed her chest, now pink and warm, against my face, so I sucked. She couldn't lie on top of me and press down the way we liked, couldn't comfortably move more than her legs and head. It forced us to listen to each other's bodies and speak with my hands, her lips and leg. She kissed me harder, nudged me with her knee, letting me know when she liked what I was doing. She pressed her thigh against me, my hand stroking her, finding a rhythm together. We'd never done that before, and were both really surprised and thrilled at the new sensations. We came; first me, then her. Our first and last time.

I untied her and was drifting off when she shook me lightly. She wanted to stay awake all night to be sure she wouldn't miss her bus. We kissed and talked some more, and I let her fall asleep, staying awake myself.

I woke her at dawn and helped her stand up and dress. She was stiff and achy, and I gave her extra aspirins for the long bus ride. When I opened the window for her, I gripped her hand. “Joe Brophy will be on the roof doing his pigeon coop. He'll see you.”

“He's construction, union—not a snitch.”

I kept talking about stuff, anything, clinging to her hand.

“I gotta be on our roof, watch my father leave, 'cause then I got a half hour to when my mom takes me to Port Authority for the bus.” She kissed me to shut me up, and it turned into a long, last kiss. She pulled her hand loose, turned away without saying goodbye or a last look. She gasped in pain as she scrambled out the window. The last I ever saw of Colleen, were her feet disappearing up the fire escape.
AlexUSA3
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Post by AlexUSA3 »

That's a sucky way for such a meaningful friendship -- for both of you -- to end. Did you ever find out what came of Colleen after this?
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calebtras
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Post by calebtras »

As I recall, Colleen would come home holidays, but I'm sure I didn't try to contact her, as it would have meant trouble for her, and everything would have been different anyway. Bad stuff happened, we rolled with it--we had to. But my memories of Colleen are good, highpoints of my childhood, as I hope my stories convey.
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cellofello
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Post by cellofello »

That's a sad yet beautiful story.
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Canuck100
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Post by Canuck100 »

It’s sad that it had to end. But it made for wonderful memories and a beautiful story
calebtras
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Post by calebtras »

Thanks.
While what happened to Colleen was sad, we both ended our last night feeling more happy than upset, which was a kind of closure. The first time she let me tie her up in a game of capture the flag, I think she was giving up control to see what would happen; I didn't take advantage and made her feel good. Over the year our tie-ups while swimming at Coney Island, fishing at Marine Park, playing handball, described in my Colleen stories, she became more trusting—what she wanted, and we became more intimate—what I wanted. When as a kid you have mean people with power over you, giving and receiving trust and intimacy is like grabbing a moment of freedom.
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