Juliette and Her Lover

Typically, I do not offer “trigger” warnings for my stories, gritty though they sometimes are. This one tells of a pornographic video and an obsessed teen boy.

When I told Juliette what I had seen, she put her head on my naked shoulder and wept. Her tears pooled in the hollow of my neck and breastbone and trailed down my chest. Her warm breath exploded in irregular sobs. Her damp hair clung to my cheeks and to the nape of my neck.

We were in her kitchen where she had been dicing zucchinis and onions for their supper. She stopped the knife halfway through the belly of a large squash and looked up at me, her brown eyes widening, the pupils seeming to dilate, as if to take me in whole to observe every detail about me as I said what I knew of her past. Then her lips quivered, and her mouth fell slack. She seemed to try for words, for an explanation, but I said none was necessary. Then there was a look of surprise, her eyes widening again. Then a look of relief. "At long last...." She gasped and dropped the knife, still stuck in the vegetable, and reached out for me.

I put my arm around her waist and held her upright, though she collapsed against me like a fainting woman and with each sob she seemed to have gotten heavier.

"Juliette, oh, Juliette," I said, "It really is all right." But I wasn't sure, I wasn't sure at all.

2.

It should come as no surprise that events which happened long before your birth have tremendous consequences for your life. The very accident of your parents meeting for instance is such an event. If I were to be simple, I would say that these events are of two types, benevolent and malignant. Such would be convenient to believe, then I would know how I felt about Juliette, but I know something else, she had her reasons; she knew what she was doing, and yet she knew nothing.

This is how I'll tell you about it: I have a friend. Call him Peter, though you may have already guessed that Peter is not his name. About four years ago, when Peter was seventeen, he was invited by his friend Wesley to come next door and look at pornographic tapes which Wesley's father had received from a specialty shop in Los Angles, two thousand miles away. They were in the basement den of Wesley's house. Wesley closed and locked the door so his sister couldn't barge in on them. He felt in his pocket for the key he had taken from his father’s jewelry box. It opened the cabinet where Wesley's father locked away his most licentious tapes, those involving bestiality or excretory sex. It was the key to the exotic erotic Wesley said as he dangled the key in front of Peter.

"The key to making you horny and miserable," Peter said and slid onto the black leather sofa which sat in front of the giant television screen, the kind you see in a sports bar; it was turned on to an adult channel. The flickering light of the tv reflected off of the cheesecake posters Wesley's father decorated the den with. These were a part of Mr. Sharpe's poster and calendar collection, one of the most complete in the country, he touted. Mr. Sharpe's collection had been featured in a national men's magazine. Beneath the posters were shelves and cabinets which contained other parts of the collection and collections of various adult magazines, video tapes and sex paraphernalia. To the squeamish, this room, bathed in blue light on black enameled furnishings may have seemed a den of iniquity, but to the curious it was a wonder world.

"What's wrong buddy," Wesley chided, "you still a virgin or something? You don't get any puss-puss off any of those Kappa Club bitches. That's what you get for being such a smartie ass."

"I can't help it if I'm smart, and you're not."

"Look, shit head, " Wesley said opening the cabinet and taking out the tape box, "there's two kinds of smarts." He rubbed the box across his groin and made a face which suggested sexual ecstasy.

"Just shut up and show the tape."

"I don't need to see it on video," Wesley passed the tape box in front of Peter's nose. "I can see live pussy anytime I want to."

"I can see it, too." Peter pushed Wesley playfully on the shoulder, and then scooted across the back of the sofa to look in the wet bar refrigerator for a beer. "Doesn't your old man drink anything besides Coors? I thought he was supposed to have good taste."

"He does, idiot. Coors is the best—they don't call him ‘Mr. Sharpe’ for nothing."

"Couldn't he at least stock in some Heineken or St. Pauli's for his guests with discriminating taste?"

Wesley pushed the tape into the VCR, the television screen went fuzzy and color bars came up. "Dad doesn't know any babes with discriminating taste. Besides, since when did a shitter like you start drinking imported beers?"

Peter opened the Coors and brought one for Wesley. "Juliette turned me on to them. They're good, kind of creamy."

"Creamy—shit. There's only one kind of cream Juliette knows about."

"Shut up," Peter said. He threw Wesley's beer as if to hit him. It landed six inches from Wesley's calve as he knelt in front of the monstrous screen, and rolled up against the base of the screen.

"Careful, asshole. " Wesley turned toward him, his eyes wide and glowering in the steady light of the color bars. "Ricky Sharpe will kill you if you break his baby."

"I don't give a shit and half about Ricky Sharpe."

"You'd better, or I won't let you watch videos down here anymore. You know this is like a sanctuary for him." Wesley picked up the beer and the remote control and sat on the sofa beside Peter. "You know it's very important to respect other people's property. Sometimes that's all they have."

Peter took a sip of his beer. "I thought we came here to look at videos."

"I'm just trying to tell you, " Wesley said." That this means a lot to my dad with Mom gone off to Juneau and all—"

"Yeah, I know all about that," Peter said and slipped down to the floor in front of the sofa resting his elbow on the sofa seat. "I didn't come here to hear the sob story of your life. I came to see some action."

The color bars held stationary on the screen, wavering a little. "I guess that's all I can expect from a shithead like you,” Wesley's said. "You are just as cold blooded as that lesbian you got for a mother."

Peter had heard it before. "Don't start with that."

"Dad said she was."

"Just because she won't go out with him."

"Why won't she go out with him?"

"I don't know. I'm not her social secretary."

"You could ask her."

"Let's just watch the video."

"No." Wesley's slowly opened his can letting the agitated foam release. "I think it's important."

"Believe me, it's not important, Wes, it's nothing. She just doesn't want to deal with him.”

"What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing."

"Then why won't she just go on a simple little date with him. He'll take her someplace nice and all."

"She doesn't date next door neighbors. It's one of her rules."

"She could break it for Ricky Sharpe. Women always break the rules for Ricky Sharpe.”

"Then he doesn't need to date Juliette, right? If he's got so many damn women?"

There was a pause. Peter took the remote control from Wesley and fast forwarded past the color bars. The movie started without title or credits. It showed a field with snowcapped mountains in the background, the kind you might expect from out West. Then, roughly, the camera panned and focused on a couple strolling across the field. The man was lean, high cheeked with oily black hair skirting his shoulders. "Let’s rest here a minute,” he said, wiping with a bandanna under the butterfly collar of his shirt.

"This is an old one," said Wesley, "Probably from the seventies. No telling what they might do."

The camera did not show the woman’s face. They could see the back of her head, very short hair, a bob cut. She leaned into the man, her fingers combing through his hair, pulling it back out of his eyes. "You want it?” The man asked. "Do you want it right here in the midst of mother nature, baby?"

"Yes, yes." The woman sounded flat, insincere. "Give me what you got. Every inch of it." She woman lifted her thigh against the man’s thigh. She turned around, her back to the man, her chest pushed out so that her breasts budged against her halter. The man's large lean hands caressed her breasts through the halter and the camera focused in on the impressions of her erect nipples.

"Please take off your top," the man said, "so I can see your tits."

"Listen to this guy," Wesley said, incredulity and amusement in his voice. He said 'please.’ Did you hear that?"

"So," said Peter, "Can't he be polite?"

"Hell no. These are just fuck films, dude. People aren't supposed to be polite."

"Well, maybe he likes her."

"Yeah. I bet he really does."

The halter fell away exposing the woman's large breasts and black nipples. The breasts seemed too large for her thin shoulders and slim waist. The man used both hands to massage more than rub the breasts. His hands moved down to her skirt and caressed over the front of her thighs. She turned into him and he caressed her buttocks, pulling the skirt up to expose her naked bottom. He kneaded her buttocks between his thumb and fingers.

"You have such a tight ass," the man said. He fiddled with the hook in the back of the skirt, and not being able to release it, gripped the waist band of the skirt with his sinewy hands and pulled until the hook popped off. He continued pulling until the zipper popped and the fabric of the skirt ripped and tore apart.

"Now,” he said, “I can feel your beautiful body."

"Shit! This dude is horny,” Wesley said.

Next the camera showed the man pulling open his shirt, the buttons popping one by one to expose his lean torso. He started to undo his belt, but the woman stopped him.

"Oh, let me," she said, her voice, soft and breathy. Involuntarily Peter closed his eyes. There was something soothing about the woman's voice, soothing even in its flatness. Something that made him tingle and feel secure. When he opened his eyes again, the woman was unzipping the man's pants.

"Be careful,” the man said, as his semi-erect penis sprang out of his clothing.

"Oh,” said the woman, "You are so large."

"Thank you,” the man said.

The camera focused on his groin, the wiry pubic, the hairy sack of his scrotum, the patches of fine hairs on the inside of his thigh. The shiny head of his swelling penis twitched as the woman took the shaft between her thumb and index, making an "o" and stroking it from the root to the neck. The man breathed hard. His penis, fully erect and vascular, shook back and forth as the woman stroked. "That's so good," he said. "Please, won't you blow me?"

Without comment, the woman took his penis into her mouth and begin to move up and down on it. Wesley laughed. "Damn, she's going to choke herself. Have you ever had a blow job like that?"

Peter said nothing. He listened to the woman's hard breathing as she intermittently sucked around the head of the penis, licked its belly and took it all the way into her mouth. The man's hand clasped the back of the woman's head. He weaved his fingers into her hair clutching it with greater and greater intensity, then through clenched teeth he said, “Stop!” and pulled the woman’s head away from his penis.

For the first time, as her wet face came away from the man's penis, Peter saw the woman clearly. She was Juliette.

It was clearly Juliette, though he dismissed the discovery, convincing himself for the moment that it was only someone who looked like Juliette. Someone with Juliette's hair, cut short; Someone with Juliette's face, only younger. But things began to come into focus again as the man on the big screen politely asked the woman to turn around and to bend down on all fours. The large breasts which hung between her thin arms were Juliette's; The arch in her back as the man's penis penetrated her was Juliette's; The moan she released as the man thrust was Juliette.

“You are very big,” Juliette said.

“Thank you,” the man said and expelled a breath. “Is it hurting you?”

“No,” Juliette said. “Oh, God, no.”

Peter sat on the edge of the sofa. He looked at Wesley, whose beer can seemed stuck to his lips, his eyes gleaming in the light of the TV. Wesley didn't recognize her, Peter thought. Peter shifted reached for the remote and then the camera panned away so that the faces of the actors were no longer in view, only their genitals as the slippery penis slid in and out of the Juliette's vagina.

Peter closed his eyes. He heard the squishing of the penis in Juliette's vagina; He heard the man's thighs slap against Juliette's rump; He heard the man's hard athletic breathing and Juliette's gentle come calls at each thrust. His skin burned. He was perspiring. Stop it, he said. Stop it, he said. Stop it, he said. Stop it.

"I'm getting hot," he heard the man say, “oh baby, so hot."

Feebly, Peter reached for the remote control, patting around on the sofa cushion for it. He felt he must stop it, must stop it, but at the same time, he tingled. He sweated. Waves of heat rushed over him, generating from his groin like tiny sonic booms, debilitating him.

"I'm coming, my god, I'm coming,” he heard the man say. Juliette released a sustained melodious sigh.

Peter felt as if he had fainted. His shirt was soaked through; His legs tingled as if they had fallen asleep; He was slumped against the back of the sofa. Wesley was kneeling beside the video, cussing.

"Damnit, that's all! What was so special about that? He has a whole lot of them worse than that, he doesn't even lock up.”

Peter sat up and leaned his head over his knees to catch his breath.

Wesley started to rewind the tape. "You want to see it again?"

"No!" Peter blurted. "No."

"Jesus," said Wesley, "are you all right?" He laughed. "Damn it must have been good to you."

Peter lay his head against his knees. No. No. No, he said. Oh my god, no.

3.

That afternoon, I dreamed I was Juliette in the movie. I was on all fours in a field. In the distance I saw just the peaks of the snowcapped mountains, slightly blue rather than white. Around me I saw tan and black dying grasses. The scent of straw and damp earth was profuse. The ground pressed against my palms and my knees. Then I felt the heat of the man behind me: heard his heavy breathing, rhythmic and grunting. I could feel the head of his penis bump against my thigh, find my vagina, and push into it. The lips of my vagina parted and the long firm shaft of flesh passed between them. It was warm and slippery and sent waves of pleasure through my thighs into my stomach. My nipples itched pleasurably. His thighs slapped against my rump, smooth and stinging. He and I rocked back and forth, he slapping against me, and each time pushing me forward a inch. My arms wobbled. His sweat dripped on my back. I felt him growing tense behind me. He spoke something and then a wave of pleasure rolled over me. My stomach tightened. My elbows buckled and I fell onto my face in the weeds. My cheek lay in a clump, the smell of the earth in my nostrils. He tensed and suddenly retracted, and I felt his cum spew into the hollow of my back. "Thank you,” the man said.

When I looked up, I saw myself wearing a beret, carrying a megaphone. "Cut," I said into the megaphone, looking at the sweating Juliette. "Once again, but this time with more passion."

In the next dream, I was the man pushing my penis under Juliette's soft round rump. And in the third dream, I was myself. I was myself with Juliette. At the end of each dream, I was the director too, with the megaphone at my lips, saying, "Once, again, only this time with feeling. This time with more feeling."

4.

Juliette's hand was on my chest, shaking me to full wakefulness. "Jesus, you're warm,” she said, “your shirt is soaked through." She put her hand to my forehead. "Are you running a fever?"

"I think I'm all right. I'm just hot is all."

"But you've been napping for a couple hours, and talking in your sleep." She sat on the side of the bed, her long hair pulled back in a ponytail, dark with silvery strands. Her hand came back to my chest, to the hollow of my solar plexus where she patted. "Why don't you take a cold shower, and I'll turn on the air conditioner. That'll cool you off. Then come on down and get some supper. I fixed a good one tonight."

"With meat?" I teased.

She leaned over, the ponytail falling beside my cheek, scented with herbs, and gave me a kiss on the forehead. I felt at once suffocating and tingling. Oh, my god, Juliette, I thought, and shivered suddenly when I realized her breasts pushed against my ribs.

"What's wrong?" she said, again feeling my forehead, pushing my hair back. "Maybe we ought to go see a doctor. You've probably got a bug."

I tried to smile. "I haven't been eating properly."

"No," she said then pressed her lips together firmly, batted her eyes, thinking. "It could be a summer flu; they're not that uncommon." She smiled, her lips parted, the edges of her strong teeth were bright in the late afternoon light. "We'll have you fixed up in no time." She stood to leave, and I felt her absence, a void suddenly next to me. "Juliette," I called, an unintended urgency in my tone.

"What?" She returned to the room, her eyes, widened, expectant.

"I...." I sighed. "Well, have you ever been out west. I mean, to Colorado or someplace where there are tall mountains?”

She cocked her head, smiled again. "Why, yes. Several times. Especially when I lived in Los Angeles. But that was many years ago. Before you were born." Her head remained cocked for a moment, then straightened. "Why do you ask?"

Slowly I answered, my stomach tightening, my skin prickling. "No reason."

She came to the bed, sat again. "I can tell when something is wrong with you. We've always been too close to keep secrets." The irony made me bite down on my tongue. "What is this all about?"

"I...I was wondering who my father was, that's all."

She took my hand in hers like a handshake, and with her other hand, stroked the back of my hand and rubbed my forearm. The pleasure made my stomach quiver. "Listen, I told you all about that. It was a mistake. We all make them. Last I heard he was killed in Vietnam, but even that doesn't make a difference. The times were different. We did things then that...that seem silly now. We were freer then." She put my hand to her mouth and kissed my fingers. "Your father and I were strangers. We were young and foolish, but we were strangers. But that doesn't mean I don't love you. Capeesh?"

I sighed. "I love you too."

She smiled and patted my cheek. "Yes, I know."

5.

"You are a mousey son of a bitch," Wesley said and leaned across the wire fence which separated his backyard from mine. "Why don't you just ask her to come over and have supper with us. There is nothing romantic about that. It's just a family thing. You, me, Miss Piggy and the parents. Just a little family dinner that's all."

"We already ate. I told you." Images of the afternoon video show coming back.

"I'm not talking about tonight you total queer. I'm talking about tomorrow night. A nice Sunday night dinner. Just Juliette and Ricky and the kids."

"Who'll do the cooking? It's not any fun for Juliette if she has to do the cooking." I clasped my fingers inside the wire diamonds of the fence and leaned back. If I asked him enough questions, I was thinking he would let it go. He had to. I wasn't going to let Ricky Sharpe near Juliette as long as he had that video. It wasn't by coincidence that he had that video, all the way for Los Angeles and locked in his special cabinet.

"Miss Piggy will cook."

"What can she cook?"

"I don't know. Mom taught her something before she left for Juneau. She can make some kind of hamburger helper.

"Juliette doesn't eat meat."

"That's not what I hear."

"Shut up." I pulled myself upright, a little knot in my stomach. "Why do you always have to say something like that? First you want Juliette to come over and date your sleazy dad and then—"

"He's not sleazy—"

"He's a wad of snot, and you know it. What other dad has a closet full of sex videos and nudie magazines? Huh? Can you name one?"

Wesley put his back against the fence, turned away from me, facing his own house, the shadows of the hedges cast against its brick side. "He just likes to have his fun, that's all. He likes a little fun which is more than you can say for most dads."

"I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. But you ought not talk about Juliette; she's my—"

"You didn't hurt my feelings." He turned back around, a big grin on his face. "You think you could hurt my feelings? Well, you can't. Especially since you don't even have a dad."

"Shut up idiot."

"Well, you don't. You can talk about Ricky Sharpe all you want, but it don't mean a thing if you haven't even got a dad."

"I said to shut up, you're making me sick."

"I'll shut up when I want to." He was quiet for a moment and leaned into the fence. "But I don't see how come you just couldn't ask her over. I'll cook. I'll order some pizza, a vegetarian. And some beer. I'll ask Dad to get some of that St. Pauli shit that Juliette likes. Come on, why don't you just ask her."

I walked a ways along the fence pulling at it as I went. "I could ask her, but she wouldn't do it. She wouldn't do it because she doesn't date neighbors."

Wesley came down the fence after me. "It's not like it’s a date. How could it be a date with you and me there."

"What would it be then?"

He smiled. His eyes looked bright. "Like a family thing. You know?"

"Me and you in the same family? Forget it."

"Awh, come on. Why not? We're like family already—I mean we hang out all the time, go to the movies together, hang out after school and stuff. Why is that such a bad idea?"

I was ready to end the conversation. "Because you already have your own mother, that's why."

"But she's in Juneau."

“And Ricky Sharpe put you up to this? Didn't he? Didn't he? He's not man enough to come out and ask for his own date."

"No, he didn't. I thought of it all by myself."

"Why?"

"Because I like Juliette."

"What?" Before he could answer I reached across the fence, caught the collar of his t-shirt and pulled him against the wire. My strength surprised me and it felt good to see him pressed up against the fence. "What did you say?"

"Let me go."

"Not until you take it back."

"Take what back?"

"What you said about Juliette?"

"What did I say? What did I say? I just said I liked her, that's all."

I bounced him against the fence and let him fall back, stumbling. His rump hit the ground. "I don't ever want to hear those words coming from your sleazy mouth again."

6.

About a month later, I stood by my bedroom window and watched Ricky Sharpe flipping burgers on the gas grill on his patio. He was wearing an apron with a picture of a sprawling cheesecake girl on it. Where her one breast was, was the apron pocket into which Ricky Sharpe slipped the greasy spatula. Ricky Sharpe was short, a little pudgy, and had silvery hair like a doctor, though he sold cars for a living. I knew his wife a little just after we moved from downtown to the suburbs, and next door to the Sharpes. She seemed nice enough, but always looked tired and sick. She would never let Wesley and me into the den. We had to sneak in when she wasn't home, and bribe Miss Piggy not to tell. Juliette came out of our house with her herb scissors and a basket. She bent along the fence clipping basil and oregano and putting it into her basket. For a moment I watched her, the wonderful curve of her hips as she bent. The firmness of the backs of her legs. She moved with grace and robust from plant to plant, stroking the plants, parting their branches as she clipped.

For a moment my attention wandered, I was looking into the treetops which line the back of the yard, looking at them sway in the gentle evening breeze. Really I was dreaming, rushes and tingling in my limbs. I heard Juliette's clear laughter, reverberating through the daydream and slowly my eyes came back to her, standing, arms wide, holding her basket and scissors in either hand, her hair falling about her shoulders and the middle of her back. Ricky Sharpe was on the other side of the fence, arms folded across his cheesecake apron, leaning against the fence post.

They held their positions for a moment, the only movement in the frame of the window was the smoke curling up from the grill. Then, Juliette put her hand with the scissors across her waist, leaned back and laughed. The melodious laughter both caressed and gnawed at me. I loved to hear it, but I couldn't stand that she was laughing with Ricky Sharpe.

I met her at the back door as she came in smelling of basil. She was still smiling.

"Hi sugar," she said, as she walked past to the sink. Through the window, I saw Ricky Sharpe flipping burgers.

"What were you talking to Mr. Sharpe about?" I leaned against the counter as Juliette cleaned the herbs.

"Nothing. Just a chat."

I scoffed. "What has that nit-brain got to talk about?"

"Nit-brain? Don't be so hard on him. He’s really a nice man."

"You're got to be kidding.” My stomach knotted, though it still hadn't occurred to me that she might actually like him. "Have you seen his basement?"

"Once. When Karen was still with him." She looked up and smiled. "I admit, it's a little extravagant, but it's harmless."

"Mom," I said, demanding her full attention, "Ricky Sharpe is a sleaze ball."

"Don't say that."

"He is mom, I swear, You don't know. He's the lowest."

"No, " Juliette said. "He's just a lonely guy." She laid the herbs between the folds of a towel and patted them dry. "He's kinda like one of those poodles, kind of hyper and silly looking, but kind of cute too."

"Mom, I serious."

He's has his faults, I'm sure." She looked up, a twinkle in her eye. "All men do."

"Even me?"

She patted my cheeks, her hands damp and rich with the smell of herbs. "Even you, you lug-head.” She started out of the kitchen toward the living room.

"But Mom," I called, realizing I was beginning to sound like a whiny kid. "You don't know him."

"I kind of like him,” she called back.

"What!" I screamed it.

She looked back, her head cocked. "What's wrong? Can't I like somebody?"

"Not Ricky Sharpe."

"Why not Ricky Sharpe. He's as good as anybody."

"Not Ricky Sharpe." I tried to take a step from the kitchen, from the linoleum onto the carpet of the family room, a step toward Juliette, looking back at me from the other end of the room, but my feet wouldn't move. My stomach wouldn't let them. "But..." I tried, “but you don't date neighbors?"

"Who says?" A look of amusement came on her face. "I believe you're jealous."

"I'm not!"

"It's all right to be jealous. It's kind of cute."

"It's not." I took a deep breath, "He's a...a...pornographer."

Her head cocked again. She smiled. "Where did you learn that word?"

"From Ricky Sharpe, who else?"

"Really?" She pressed her lips together. "You don't know what a pornographer is." She came toward me. I was trying to say what Ricky Sharpe had locked in his cabinet, but the words wouldn't come. I couldn’t think of what to call him. I wanted to say rapist. Rapist. He was a rapist. But all I could think of was pornographer, and then Juliette, her hips swaying, her arms swinging by her side as she came toward me.

"Look,” she said, "I've got a life, you know. I'm not just your mother. I'm a woman, too."

7.

I was dreaming I was Juliette dreaming. Peter came into my room and sat on the side of my bed. We talked for a moment about how I was feeling and he put his broad hand on my forehead. The very presence of the hand made my temperature rise. My breath shortened. His hand rested between my breasts. He patted me. Fatherly. My nipples burned for a touch, but he took the hand away. I watched his lanky body rise, tower above me, the lean face come down next to me, his lips on my forehead, the smell of his body, slightly sweaty, swept over me. Passion. There is so much passion; and yet the surface is cool, must remain cool. "Peter," I said, "I'm only human."

"Yes, I know," he said.

I placed my hand on his flat hard chest and worked with my fingers across to his shoulders. Slowly he leaned toward me, his breath in sweet waves, washing over my face.

"What does this all mean?" he said.

"What else could it mean? I love you."

"But?"

I held the back of his neck and pulled his face nearer, the breath enveloping me like a cloud, my eyes closed, my lips quivering, my tongue on the back of my teeth, tingling.

Through the half dream, like the haunted echoes of an empty house, I heard doors slamming, footsteps, Juliette and someone else. There was Juliette's clear laughter and the low mumbling of a man. Ricky Sharpe. The refrigerator door shut, glasses clanked, and the laughter came again. Ricky Sharpe. My eyes opened staring into the blankness of the ceiling, slated with streetlight. Ricky Sharpe. I sat on the side of my bed, listening for his mumbling to articulate into words. Nothing. But I knew, in my bones, at the stiffening roots of my hair that Ricky Sharpe had snaked into our house.

That wasn't enough for him. I heard their footsteps on the stairs, rising toward me. Juliette shushing him as they came up towards my bedroom made the turn around the landing and went into hers. The door shut and all was still. All was still in my heart. I didn't breath; heard each slowed tick of the clock; stared into the half-light which seemed to atomized in front of me.

8.

What would you have done? That is how I'll put it to you? What would you have done? You would have risen, unaware of your bare feet on the carpet, unaware that you only wore briefs, unaware of touching the door handle and floating down the hall and stopping just outside of her door. You would have heard his puerile giggling, the insolent joy of his conquest, and Juliette's own breathy response, genuine and innocent, and ripe. You would have felt something then, when you heard the squeak of the bedsprings, a twinge, a blade of heat moving up your chest to your throat and suddenly, a flash before your eyes, blindingly white. Your brain would have felt cooked for a moment and then, cold, a chill settling over your body, like the miraculously sudden deep freezing of a glass of water. You would have moved away from the door, glided down the stairs, so quietly, so smoothly, neither rushed nor slow, and you would have found a knife. Not a gun—Juliette wouldn't allow so crass a weapon in the house. Not a butcher’s knife, but a chef's knife, the broad flat blade tapering to a point. You would feel its weight, you would feel it's solidity and it would feel good. You wouldn't think about what you would do with it. You would only know that you had to have a hold on it, that it gave a purpose to the moment. Then you would rise up the stairs, maybe you would have risen right through the ceiling, coming up through the floor into the bedroom, your hand on the door handle, pushing the door shut behind you.

Ricky Sharpe would have turned toward you pushing himself away from your mother, saying, "What's the matter, son? Can I help you?"

You would have moved toward them. You would have heard your mother say your name, the same breathy way, only now a question. Ricky Sharpe's feet would have thudded against the floor as he shot out of the bed, his penis, a stub, in front of him. "What's the matter, son?"

And the knife would have been there, a dull shimmer in the half-light, an arms-length away from you, floating between you and Ricky Sharpe. "Now take it easy son," pleading sneaking in behind the forced authority of his tone. His hands would come up in front of him, to shun the knife from his throat and chest, but the knife would out smart him, and at the last second dive toward his belly. There would be a slight resistance as it broke through the skin and fat and rammed up against the muscle. Now you would feel your power, your manhood. Now your senses would come back to you, as red as any blood. It would be conscious, so very deliberate; you would push the blade, feeling the muscle resist it, push the blade, feel the muscle tear and then pop and feel the blade slip into his softness.

He would bend over your hand, gagging words you wouldn't hear. You would consider pulling the blade out, when your mother, your beautiful Juliette would take hold of your wrist, "You little motherfucker!" she would scream.

9.

I'll tell you now that I'm not insane, no more so than any common person—though, insanity was suggested as a defense. I talked to a psychoanalyst who said I was all normal, but this was done only to satisfy the judge and long after we had already settled on another defense strategy, a defense which culminated in the final unravelling of illusion and the onset of the realization that certain mysteries and melancholies will follow me until the final miracle of my life. I love Juliette; this much you know, and you think you know exactly how. You think, but I have it on the authority of a doctor, that these Freudian urges—I did not tell him about the tape—are completely normal, even in males my age. I am reckoning with that trauma. The sad trauma of the love I have for Juliette, a love that twists into every fiber of her being, twists every way, in every color. She is the woman who gave me birth, my mother, my guide, my only true friend upon this earth—and she is a woman apart from all these. Where the one love stops and the other begins is the mystery, that we make them distinct is the melancholy. To love a person is to love the whole person with all that you have to love.

Juliette hired a clever attorney, a vegetarian, with the very solid name of Robert Weston. He was tall with a kind playful face. Full lips that twinkled smiles at you even during the most serious talks. He wore his greying hair long, pulled into a ponytail, and occasionally wore sneakers, the high-top kind people wore before everybody took athletics so seriously.

He got bail for me, even before we talked, and when we met, alone in his office downtown, he won my confidence completely. I told him about the tape. I made him promise he wouldn't tell Juliette. I'd rather go to jail for a million years than have him tell Juliette.

He smiled, his lips seeming to quiver, as if they needed to start up before he could smile. "Not to worry, lad," he said. "The word's mum—only one person will have to know about it—Ricky Sharpe; only two if he won't cooperate—Ricky Sharpe and the DA. In two days, Ricky Sharpe dropped the case. He told the DA that he only pressed charges it in a moment of anger, that I was really a good kid, and was only trying to protect my mother. Besides, except for a couple of feet of intestine, he was all whole and well again.

Robert told me the real score. They had had a quiet lunch meeting at the Vegetarian Epicure, though all that Ricky Sharpe could manage was a glass of carob soy milk. Robert had mentioned the tape to him, rather gently, diplomatically, I imagined. Waiting until Ricky Sharpe had the glass up to his mouth, his head tilted back to gingerly take in his first sip the slightly oily beverage, Robert would have said, "So you collect pornography."

Ricky would have snorted, the milk would have gone down the wrong way, making him cough, spastically tensing his sore belly. "Who told you that?"

"You have a house full or it."

"It's a collection, perfectly above board."

"That's what I hear... except for the cabinet."

"What do you mean? What cabinet."

Robert would have twinkled at him, taken in a mouthful of sauteed pea pods and tofu. "The cabinet with the woman fucking the donkey... or was it a dog?"

"How did you know?—That slimly kid—I'll kill him."

"Oh, I don't care about the dog, or the snake, or—" Robert Weston would have shaken his head, looking down at his plate, a soft musical chuckle escaping him, "or the defecation. Ricky? Defecation?"

"It's legal."

"In some states, maybe. Maybe even downtown, but in the county, Ricky. I think the DA would be interested to know about that."

"It's legal. I may tell him myself." Ricky would have lost all interest in his soy milk.

Now Robert would have put down his fork, squarely beside the plate, pointing it directly across at Ricky Sharpe. His voice wouldn't raise an iota. As soft as a humid night. "Will you tell him about the one with Juliette. That may be legal, too, in some places, but it wouldn't look good for you, sending off to California to dig up porno pictures of your next-door neighbor, and then having your son harasses her son until you got a date with her. That wouldn't look good at all in a court of law around here. I'm sure the papers would like to know about that collection too—but they probably wouldn't treat it the way Playboy did? Now, would they? What would your boss think? He likes a lot of publicity, likes to kick a lot of tires and bang on the hoods, but would the good Christian suburbanites buy cars from him if he employed a sexual pervert?" Robert would have picked up his fork, "Gives you something to think about, eh?"

10.

Wesley stood on the other side of the fence and faced me. Occasionally he moved his hand to his forehead and wiped his dark hair out of his eyes. He seemed even smaller than usual, like a grade school kid with a little whim of a mustache and beard. Neither of us said much. I kicked mulch around Juliette's basil, beginning to burn from the heat.

"I hear there are lots of mosquitoes in Alaska," I said. "You wouldn't think about mosquitoes being up there."

"You wouldn't think it," Wesley said.

"No, you wouldn't," I said. "At least I didn't."

Wesley shifted his weight from foot to foot, wiped the hair out of his face. "Well, I just came to tell you."

"Thanks."

"I mean to say goodbye."

"I know."

"Well, goodbye."

"Goodbye," I said, and moved down the fence a little, kicking at the mulch.

He paced me on the other side. "We've been friends a long time, and...ahh... I just wanted to let you know where I was going."

"I know."

"You could...well, maybe you could come up sometime."

"To Juneau, Alaska? You're kidding."

"Why not?"

"You know. After what I did to your Dad and all. Not that he didn't deserve it."

Wesley bit at his nail. "I'll have a new dad in Juneau."

"Well, good. That's what you wanted, right?"

"I don't know. I don't know if I wanted a new dad...I mean. Well, I don't know what he'll be like."

"He can't be any worse than Ricky Sharpe."

Wesley came up to the fence, tentatively reached for it, then took his hand back. "I...I don't know what Juneau will be like. I mean. I won't know anybody."

"You know Missy and your mom."

"But I...never mind." His hands clutched the wire in the fence, his hair fell down into his eyes and he leaned into the fence and looked up at me. "Do you think you could ever come? I mean I know what you did to Dad and all and that he never wants to see your face again, but Dad is never going to come to Juneau. I mean it would be like starting all over again, but different. We—"

I stepped up to the fence and he stepped back, still clutching. "Don't be a shitter, I'm not going to hurt you."

"I know that."

"Then why are you acting like a pussy?"

"I'm not. It's just that, shit." His face balled up, but the tears didn't come. "I'm going to miss you."

I was quiet for a moment. I felt something too. What it was I couldn't say, then. It was akin to the feeling I had when I missed Juliette, but it was nothing as intense—and what I felt for Juliette, I knew was love. "Wesley," I said firming up my voice. "Don't be such a kid. It's a fact, so face up. It's over. We'll probably never see each other again. And besides, I don't think we were that good of friends anyway."

His face twisted. "We are too that good of friends. We're like two brothers."

I kicked, missed the mulch and took a wedge out of Juliette's basil. Sweet green aroma rose up. "Jesus,” I said. “Jesus, don't fucking cry like a snot. What's with you anyway? Christ, will you just—just go away!"

"No,” he said. "No. I'll never go away. Never. Wherever you go I'll be there—even if I'm in Juneau or the North Pole or dead, I'll be wherever you are until you want a friend and that's when...that's when I'll tell you to go to hell."

"Jesus," I said and kicked at the fence. He stood back. “Jesus Christ, what do you want from me? What do you want me to say?"

"Nothing." He stepped back again, his face twisted, snot running down his chin.

"What? I'll miss you. How about that? Ok? I'll miss you. I'll miss you lots. Ok? What about that? I'll miss you loads. Great loads. How about that? Ok?"

“Nothing.” He stepped back, turned and ran into his house.

11.

On the evening Wesley and Miss Piggy left, I stood by window in my bedroom which looked out at the street, and watched Ricky Sharpe and Missy put suitcases into the car. Ricky Sharpe, still walking stiffly from the cut, went back to the door and called for Wesley. After a minute and no answer, he went back to the car, where Missy was already waiting, and crawled in behind the steering wheel. I waited, my stomach churning to see Wesley come out. Maybe I should go down I thought, go down and tell him I was sorry, sorry for everything, sorry for what I had said, sorry he was going, sorry for sticking his dad in the gut. I went to the window that looked out at the side and into their backyard. There was Wesley, staring up at my window, his hands clutching the diamonds of the fence. Our eyes met, held each other like small figurines, or like boys looking at heroes on baseball cards—but it was something more mysterious than that. My insides seemed suddenly to swell and I wanted to shout to him, I wanted to smash through the window and shout to him. I didn't know what, just say something, say something loud. Then his hand went up, a tentative wave. I responded, just the same way, the palm not quite open. He backed away from the fence, dropped his hand and went inside. I stood a moment longer, and then, as if air slowly released from a balloon, I felt him leaving me. I felt my body sagging, deflating without the substance of him. It seemed an hour, but I finally pushed myself into motion, and ran downstairs out to the front only to see their car accelerating down the street. I shouted. I don't know what I shouted. It was just noise.

Later that evening, I found out that Juliette had a date with Robert Weston.

"I can go out with whomever, I please." Juliette said, her lips firming at the end of the sentence. "You, just listen young man—you don't own me. You never did." She underscored her statement with a glaring stare, which before she broke it turned into a question. I didn't try to argue. She was set and the date would happen. I considered that it could be worse, after all, Robert Weston had saved me from Ricky Sharpe, and I liked him, but the idea that he knew about Ricky Sharpe’s tape gnawed at me. I wondered if he had seen it. After a while it seemed only logical, that in order to make his case he had to have seen it. So, then he had to have felt about it the same way Ricky Sharpe felt when he looked at it. He must have felt the overwhelming heat, the debilitating rushes, he—he—like Ricky Sharpe, then pursued the Juliette, like a great white hunter stalking the lioness. He wanted her in the open, with the mountains in the background, crouched in the sunburnt grasses.

Juliette came out of her bedroom, freshly perfumed, wearing dangling silver earrings that looked like something from India.

"Where did you get those earrings?"

"Do you like them?" She turned her head and held her hair out of the way.

I hesitated, a sneaking suspicion welling in me. "Where?"

She sighed, "Robert gave them to me and so what?"

"So nothing." I spat back at her and went up to my room.

Later I dreamed of the hunt. Kilimanjaro, its cloudy peaks on the horizon and the great African savannah lay out before us. The jeep bounced across ruts and with each bounce a vibration went up through my groin, tingled in my chest. My companions and I gripped our well-oiled rifles, ready at any moment to spring from the jeep and crawl through the swaying grasses for Juliette, the lioness. The dream went along quite pleasantly until I realized who my companions were, on one hand Robert Weston and the other, offering me a swig from his canteen, the awful grinning Ricky Sharpe.

I awoke with a start, thinking I heard someone coming into the yard. It was Ricky Sharpe, in his own yard. I watched from my window as he locked his car and went into his house. The lights came on in room after room, moving toward the back of the house. How his house must echo now, his children of sixteen years gone. How it must ache. Eventually, the lights went out one by one, until the house was dark again, all dark until from the basement I saw the soft blue light and the flickering.

I went down, stood by the fence, and stared at the small ring of blue around the window blind to the basement. I put my face against the fence and pressed the wire diamonds into my cheek. I didn't hate Ricky Sharpe as much as I wanted to. I knew that at that moment we shared the same terrible common weight—not your love for Juliette, for I doubted he loved her—but our knowledge of never being able to have her.

12.

How terrible it must seem to think this way about a mother, but it is part of the rightful passage away from childish things, part of the slow ripening toward whatever end or purpose destiny has planted for us. I fell asleep by the fence dreamt of the rich green odor of the basil, the slow spicy sweetness invading every pore, greening my blood, and every drop of my blood roiled with a vision, the scent of Juliette. When I awoke a ringed moon rode above the clouds and the light washed sky. Robert Weston's convertible was parked on the street in front of the house, and inside, inside both houses, was dark and quiet.

I lay against the fence, aware of the clamminess, the dancing light of moon and clouds, of the singing crickets, the fluttering of moths and the distant groan of the interstate. In a few hours, a light came on in the house and slowly, I realized that Robert Weston was leaving. Juliette walked him to the door, her nightgown pulled around her. They spoke in hushed voices, and he kissed her, and she shut the door. He did not hear me stand and walk after him to the car. He was softly whistling as he searched his key ring for the right key. I came up behind him, not so much as a somnambulant, as one dispossessed. It was not so much that I tackled him, as it was that crawled up on to him, weighted him down, tried to smother him as if my body were a wet quilt. He fell to his knees on the pavement and tried to roll me off with a shoulder. But I manipulated my weight, just the right way, forcing his face into the street, winding his ponytail into my fist, and with a thrust of my buttocks, forcing his hips flat against the ground. At first, he thought he was being mugged, "Just take my wallet,” he said. Then he realized it was I, and his terror took on a different quality. He shouted my name, and I put one hand against the back of his skull, and pushed his head into the asphalt, with the other I pulled his ponytail, until he was silent. He gasped, “What do you want? Please, what do you want?" I released the pressure and told him the truth.

"I don't know. I only know what I don't want. I don't want you to see Juliette."

"Why? Why? She's a grown woman. she can—"

"She's my—"

"She's your mother, damnit. Please."

"Yes. She's my mother, you bastard. You son of a bitching bastard and you—you knew about her. You saw the tape."

"No. I didn't."

"You saw the tape and you went after her."

"I didn't. I didn't, but she knew."

"What?" I slackened the pressure enough so that he could turn to one cheek.

"She knew about the tape all along. She gave it to Ricky Sharpe."

"You liar," I jerked on his hair, put my knee against his spine. "He ordered it from LA. That's what Wesley said.”

"She ordered it for him. He dropped the case to protect his collection, not himself."

"You're lying," I said. I wanted to rip the ponytail off, to pull off the back of his head and hold up a bloody tuft, skin and all.

"Listen, to me, son. Juliette has a life of her own. She had one before you were born; she has one now. Grow up. Face the fact."

My grip loosened by degrees. It was a fact that had been slowly growing on me. Not only did Juliette have a life. She had a terrible and potent life as a woman, and one into which I had no invitation. One which may tantalize me, one which I may get both aslant or clear visions of, but one from which, not only the world, but she herself forbade me to enter.

I let him go, stood away from him. It was as if the clouds had moved away, revealed a clear blue sky. But what was blue sky? Only a film of ethereal gases enveloping the globe. The more I delved into the blue, the more I realized the cold, unfathomable depths of black space which lay behind it. I was alien to Juliette. An alien, and yet I had my place.

13.

Wesley and I talked on the telephone occasionally. He liked his new father, but he missed Ricky Sharpe. Infrequently, he visited Ricky, but Ricky had moved to Pittsburgh, and in four years, I had not seen Wesley. Juliette and Robert still see each other. There is talk that now that I'm in college that she may move in with him, into his downtown condo with the terrace that overlooks the park. I have accepted this, though I am still uneasy about it. But I know that I operate at a distance from them. I know on which doors I must knock. I know on which side of the fence I must stand, how much I can peek in on, how much I can say. Still, it is with discomfort that I take her into my arms, knowing that the passions I feel, like water and oil, must remain separate, must be reserved for my own true lover, when in the days to come, I will realize that final ripening miracle of my life.

The End

NOTE: This is the first publication of “Juliette and Her Lover,” which I wrote about 1991. I got an encouraging rejection from Playboy magazine, which among other comments, corrected my spelling of “come.” Ninety-one was the year I won a scholarship to Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and when invited to do a brief reading, I shortened “Juliette” to a short-short version which I call “Lioness.” It follows on this website.