Page 26 of Taipei Story

“Oh! Well, thanks.”

He lowered his chin. His gaze had become very intense. The intensity came from his eyebrows, the arch of them. I wondered if this was something he had control over—whether he practiced it in the mirror before he tried it out in public.

I ran through a mental catalog of JC’s features, trying to decide how I felt about this situation. Yes, JC was very beautiful, but when I looked at him, I could not feel any stir of desire in my loins. In fact, I had never felt the stir of desire in my loins for any flesh-and-blood boy. I understood lust as an abstract concept, something I felt toward fictional characters, and though I wanted desperately to feel it around a real person in the moment, this had never happened. At this point, I was starting to wonder if there was something wrong with me, and I was truly disappointed that JC was not the one.

But there was no good way out of the situation, and it seemed that the old mantra applied. The only way out was through.

JC pushed his fingers through his hair. “Look how hard I am.”

I suppressed a snort.

I had learned over the past year that boys were not subtle about getting me to handle their penises. Sometimes they grabbed my hand and placed it down there. Sometimes they just rolled over onto my thigh and started rubbing themselves until I took over. Sometimes they said things like look how hard I am, touch it, feel it. The general strategy seemed to be shoving the penis at other people and hoping for the best, and this did not reflect well on me or my fellow women, but most of the time it worked.

“So hard,” I said.

“I bet you can make it even harder.”

I splashed some water across my arms, which felt like the equivalent of rolling up my sleeves. My freshman year had been very instructive. I knew how to handle a penis.

Thoughts of milking a cow rose unbidden to my mind, but once the image was there I couldn’t get rid of it. Yes, this was what I would have to do—milk him dry, and then I could go to sleep. I didn’t want to be in the hot water anymore. It was making me dizzy. He didn’t try to kiss me, which was a relief. I didn’t like kissing people if they hadn’t brushed their teeth after a meal, and I knew JC had not. I was not ready to taste pork ramen on his tongue—that would have been the final straw.

“Ow,” said JC.

“Sorry.”

“I think it’s the water. The friction—I mean, you have to lubricate it.”

“Oh, okay. Did you bring lube?”

“No, I meant with your spit. Like with your mouth.”

Water gurgled around us. The water level had reached the jets along the wall, and the way they sputtered sounded so much like wet farts that I couldn’t help but giggle.

“What was that?” JC asked.

“魚水之樂,” I said. We had learned this phrase in Thought and Society last week. “The joy of fish in the water.” I splashed with my elbows, pretending my arms were fins, but JC didn’t look amused. “It means sex, isn’t that funny?”

“Okay, so.” JC settled back against the wall. “Do you want to try lubricating it?”

He clearly wanted me to put his penis in my mouth, but I didn’t want to do that, so I licked my hand and went at his shaft again. JC’s eyelids fluttered closed. I could see the whites of his eyes. It seemed like we were getting some good traction here. Every time I moved my wrist, he gave a little twitch, which I assumed was from mounting pleasure. I asked him to warn me before he came. I didn’t want to pollute the water.

“Not quite there yet.” His eyes remained closed. His brows furrowed, and his lips twitched down in a frown of concentration.

I redoubled my efforts. It seemed to be taking much longer than it should. My understanding of the penis was that you did not have to contribute much to get it excited. But something was wrong. The penis was getting softer rather than harder, and this meant there was no end in sight.

“Maybe if you put it in your mouth,” said JC.

“But we just had ramen.”

He blinked at me. “Huh?”

“I’m really full,” I explained. “So I think that would make me nauseous. I don’t like, um, giving blow jobs this soon after eating.”

“How much longer would you need?”

“Maybe like a few hours. Until I’ve digested everything.”

“I see.”