Love in Mid Air Read Online Free PDF Page B

whom Kelly insisted on calling
     the Brothers Pressley. Frank and I were always in the back, Kevin and Kelly in the front, and we knew each other so well that
     there was no pretense about watching the movie. Even as the previews were rolling, we were shifting into position, and almost
     the minute Kelly would lie down, with Kevin poised above her, her foot would begin to tap out a nervous rhythm against the
     seat.
    Now I hear that it’s all about blow job parties, that it’s all about what the girl can do for the boy, but I grew up in a
     time when girls weren’t expected to do anything, when you could render a boy speechless with rapture just by leaning back
     and letting your legs fall apart. Every Saturday night for most of our junior year and into the summer that followed I would
     lie there passively while Frank bent over me, his face gone sweet and serious with concentration. He studied me as if I were
     a lock.
    I was as mysterious to myself as I was to him. Frank would unzip my jeans and turn his hand… I can still feel it. The hand
     slowly sliding, the middle finger grazing the full length of my opening, the palm cupped around the mound, the grip, the slight
     shake. Once I finally got him going on the right spot, once I finally managed to persuade him that—despite what logic dictated—it
     wasn’t down there but actually up somewhere higher, once I finally got him to stop rubbing me in that hard, systematic way
     that he undoubtedly used on himself and got him instead to do this small delicate flutter… then something would begin to build
     and my foot would shake too, answering Kelly’s taps in the same nervous rhythmic pattern. Such bad girls we were, so bad,
     so conspiratorial, and it was always worse when we were together. She tapped. I tapped back. We may as well have been convicts
     passing news of a jailbreak.
    Frank was intent on his mission, but somewhat confused by my constant navigational redirection. Once he whispered to me, “Are
     you sure this is right?” I was sure, suddenly so sure that I put both of my hands on Frank’s wrist. “Yes,” I said, and I think
     I said it out loud. I gripped his wrist with both of my hands and guided him up and down and in small circles, just there,
     holding him back to where he had no choice but to touch me lightly. Over and over again we traced a pattern of curves and
     circles, my hands clamped around his, almost as if I were teaching him to write. “Are you sure?” he said again, and now I
     realize that he probably could hear me just fine, but that my muttered “Yes, yes, yes…” must have excited him, that it must
     have pleased him to think he’d made me so lost in the moment that I didn’t even care if Kelly and Kevin heard me cry out.
    Years later Kelly and I were drinking wine and the conversation fell to the twins. Older and kinkier then and slightly drunk,
     I said, “You know, at some point or another, we should have swapped them.”
    And Kelly said, “What makes you think we didn’t? They were totally into the twin thing, remember? Always switching off to
     fool teachers, so why wouldn’t they have tried it with us?”
    I was shocked even at the suggestion, but she’s right, it isn’t hard to picture. The two of them plotting at the snack bar,
     walking back and simply sliding into different seats. It isn’t hard to imagine them sharing notes later in their bedroom about
     the ways she and I were different, or alike. I imagined them smelling their hands, as boys do, as men do, and breathing in
     the combined scent of her and me. But I hid my unease and said, “Well, that would explain why I had to keep teaching him the
     same things over and over,” and Kelly laughed, still willing to accept, as she has always been willing to accept, the myth
     that I am the more sexual of the two of us, that I am the risk-taker and trailblazer, although her tapping from the front
     seat all those years ago should have told us that this