April Showers

or

"If You Have Any Additional Comments About Your Treatment Please Write Them Here"

I’ve been told I should know myself better. I’ve been told to write about myself. To be creative. They said it would help, but it’s not so easy. That’s to be expected. The easiest things usually help the least. If you’re lucky. Most of the time they make it worse.

In a way, I’ve been trying to know myself better for the last 22 years. I’m going to write about recent things, though. I don’t like going back too far yet. I’ve been told it’s okay. The term they probably used was “normal”. That’s why I’m here. Controlled, payed attention to, studied, asked to do things like this. So I can slowly take a hold of my life again. So I can eventually deal with the stuff I just want to forget.

I came back home two months ago, in March. I won’t talk about anything before that. It was a gorgeous day, it felt like summer. My parents came to get me with big smiles on their faces. I’d never seen them smile like that before, I was immediately suspicious. It was warm and the sun was shining, so after my parents came into my room to hug me and ask me if I was okay we went outside for a walk with my doctor. My mother held my left arm and my father held her arm, and the doctor walked on my right, not holding on to anyone. Sometimes he slapped my shoulder roughly, like we were buddies. We talked. About me, which was weird. Mostly the doctor talked, though, and he used really evasive terms so I wouldn’t feel uncomfortable. Then we walked back the way we came, resolutely, as if something had been tacitly decided. My dad and I went back to my room to pack my things, and then I got in the car with my parents and I returned home with them.

The weather was okay for a couple of days. Then April kicked in and it started raining a lot. The fat, muddy earth farted the gases of spring. The humid air hung heavy with the smell of melting dog shit. Everything was soggy, dirty, brown. My mood dropped with the air pressure and I sulked around the house in the vestiges of my old life. I drank herbal tea and tried to read some of my books but I couldn’t concentrate. Mostly I just watched Oprah and Dr. Phil reruns, and after dinner those crazy reality shows about families with 10 kids. I could see my mother was worried for me. She wanted to offer some activities, probably, but she didn’t dare say anything. What could she do? Every time she looked out the window all she saw was sheets of murky rain. She was as depressed as I was.

For Easter we were invited to my aunt’s house. I talked about it with my parents and we agreed it would be a good thing for me to go. So I went. My aunt’s house, like our own, is a suburban, square, clean place where you are meant to feel secure and as far as possible from the confusion of urban life. There were perhaps a dozen people at the brunch. Cousins, aunts, and uncles I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. They all seemed genuinely happy to see me. Maybe they were just relieved that I didn’t look took different from the last time they saw me. They were evasive in their questions, generally acknowledging me with graceful tact. Uncle George automatically asked me what I studying now when we shook hands. His wife shot him a stern, meaningful glance. “Literature,” I answered meekly. “That’s what I was studying before, anyway. I’m planning on going back to school in September.” He didn’t care. He was already moving on to greeting my dad, mentioning his new car. At least he hadn’t asked what I was going to do with a degree in English, which is what I usually get at these kind of family gatherings.

So basically the brunch was quite boring, except there was a cousin there whom I vaguely remembered as a braced, pimply, angular tween and who had turned into a stunningly hot young woman. She wore this nice, flowery dress that showed off her lithe body. High breasts, tight ass. I hadn’t looked at a girl like that in a long time. It made me feel good, and made the tedious conversations about kids and cars and spaghetti sauce recipes more bearable. I tried to talk to my hot cousin, who is called Pauline, over our mimosas — although I suspected mine to have very little, if any, champagne — but she was kind of evasive.

While we were eating I excused myself to go to the bathroom. When I finished I pulled the door to get out but it gave too easily and I stumbled right into Pauline, who was trying to get in at the same time. I stammered some embarrassed as I tried to get out of her way, but she pushed me into the bathroom with her and locked the door behind us. She kissed me with force, pressing her thin, supple body against me.

We made out against the door for a short time. Her mouth tasted like sweet summer. I longed to do much more than just kiss her. As if responding to my desire she slid her dress off. I lifted her onto the bathroom counter while she half tore the shirt off my back and ran her fingers on my chest, against my back, down my pants... I kissed and licked her everywhere — she had a soft, narcotic smell, like mellow flowers, vanilla — her shoulders, neck, the depression between her breasts, delicately enclosed in flower lace. I let her scent guide down my kisses, slid her panties down her thighs and kissed her cunt in long, shuddering strokes. She was so fresh, so delicious. I hadn’t felt so alive in months.

Pauline forced me back up by the nape of the neck. My pants and underwear went down and I slipped into her. She rocked her hips on the counter ever so gently. Then faster. Faster. Arrows of sensation shot up from my penis, deep into her soft inside, from my neck where she landed soft kisses, from my palm resting flatly against the cold mirror. I was in a spinning kaleidoscope of sensation. We climaxed quickly, together, in long, tender shivers — I, panting into her neck, fogging up the mirror behind her; she, moaning deeply, teeth clenched on my forearm.

Perhaps I should stop, now. This is pointless.

I never had sex with Pauline in the bathroom at my aunt’s house, though I wish I had, of course. I came out of the bathroom and Pauline was there and I muttered an embarrassed excuse. She smiled shily — I wonder what her parents told her about me — and I moved aside and she entered the bathroom alone and locked the door behind her. I went back to the people-filled dining room and sat silently between my parents, waiting to go home.

April was foul, cold, and wet. But now it’s May, and I suppose if I looked outside the window I would find the showers have been replaced with the proverbial flowers. I don’t like to look outside. The tentative spring sun glares and hurts the soft tissue behind my eyes, burns my hopes. I close the blinds and curtains on my father mowing the lawn for the first time and sulk back to the sofa, the bed. My mother watches me. She says nothing, but I see her eyes are too shiny, as if tears were pooling there, not quite sure if they're going to stream down or not.