No puns. Just an exercise about SEX. By Jess.

By the time she got back to her mother’s apartment, Eliza couldn’t bend her fingers. She stayed outside, leaning against the cold brick building to catch her breath. It was only then that she realized how fast she had been walking. Holding her right hand out in front of her, comparing it with the left, she watched as blood seeped into every crease, every wrinkle. Every time she tried to wipe it away, she only rubbed it in more, dying her skin the color of rust. The air had cooled a bit, the sky clear. They had been talking for hours, sitting outside their old middle school, trying to remember the names of teachers there who they imagined as being exactly the way they were ten years before. They guessed at which ones had left and which were still teaching the same classes, assigning the same books, planning the same recreational activities. They did this to pass the time, making no acknowledgment of the hours that they knew would be passing. She was trying to think of anything but home, her mother, the news she had just received. “If you need to go, it’s okay,” she said to him. He was sitting back against the building, his knees bent. His fingers made small circular designs in the gravel. “I can be here as long as I want. I don’t have anywhere else to be.” “You’re lying,” she said. “You always have to get your dad’s car back by now.” “Yeah. But this is a different occasion.” Not a great one, she thought, picking up a pebble and lobbing it straight ahead of her. It landed in a pool of other stones. She heard the tiny clicking of it meeting the others. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned. She nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just don’t feel like going home, that’s all. But I’ll be fine by myself if you’re going to get in trouble.” “I don’t care,” he said, leaning over and kissing her neck. She moved away at first, remembering the promise she had made to herself. She made it often. Every time she was with him she made it again, once she got home. But if the time was different, the circumstances were always the same, and she always felt the same way when he began kissing her neck. Next, she thought, he’ll tell me I look like I need a hug. “Don’t think about it,” he said, putting his finger inside her collar at the back of her neck and pulled it down, leaning over to kiss her again, this time closer to her shoulder. Eliza closed her eyes. “Fuck it,” she said. “What?” “Nothing.” She turned her head down and began kissing him on the mouth. He was slouched down, his neck awkwardly bent, and he pushed himself up with both hands and then pulled her over onto his lap. Already he was hard beneath her. “Do you want to move?” he asked. “Move where?” “I don’t know. Over there.” He tilted his head to look behind her and pointed over her shoulder. “What, the slide?” “Yeah.” “Fine.” He stood up and walked over to it, sitting on the edge, waiting as Eliza sat for a moment, picking gravel from her knees. Standing over her, he lifted her shirt over her head and pushed her down onto the slide. She tensed when her skin met the cold metal. Unbuttoning her pants, he pulled them down to her knees. His hands worked on his own belt and zipper, and he let his pant fall down to the ground around his ankles. Bending over his hand seemed to rest between her legs, and then he let himself, his whole body, descend and sink into her. Everything in the schoolyard seemed to be looming and watching, and she tried to focus on him, on his body as he pushed himself into her, on his hands holding her wrists above her head. But she couldn’t stop looking at the trees, the buildings, the swings. It all began moving with them. Pushing his hands underneath her hips he lifted her higher, pressing her harder and faster against the slide. She tried to look at the sky, to think about him, and to tell herself it was okay. She would keep her promise next time. This time it was just to forget. This is me using him for once, she thought, realizing just as it came into her head that she was lying. He squeezed her wrists and his body fell heavily on top of hers. He breathed hard into her ear and she jerked her head away. For a few minutes he stayed there, pinning her against the slide. When it became hard to breathe, she pushed him off and felt the air come into her lungs. “Was that okay?” he asked. “Yeah,” she said, sitting up and searching the ground for her shirt. “Are you sure? Did you?” Standing up, she pulled the t-shirt back over her head and adjusted her belt. Everything was still. The trees moved only with the wind. Her hair was tangled, and she tugged on the elastic band that held it up. When it was free she retied it, but her scalp hurt. “Did you?” he repeated. “Did I what?” she said. “Finish.” “Christ. No. But I didn’t want to so don’t worry about it.” “What do you mean, you didn’t want to?” Eliza turned to face the woods, the small opening, the beginning of the path that would lead her out. Back to the city, the world. “Fuck off,” she said, taking her jacket and walking into the woods. She left quickly, not entirely sure why, but knowing she wouldn’t know how to talk to him after like they had been before. And she knew he would want to. Or try to. On her way home, it felt unnecessary to make another promise to herself. Either she would or she wouldn’t do it again, but she didn’t see the point in disappointing herself every time she couldn’t keep a promise. It also seemed silly to give herself a kind of personal penance, but she did. As she walked the streets of the city to her mother’s apartment, passing the closed shops and alleys she felt like hiding in, she counted the bricks. Every time she got to the number ten, she punched the wall as hard as she could. By the time she reached the apartment she couldn’t feel her hand anymore, but she smiled, turning it under the streetlight, watching the blood stain her skin.