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High Fives and Pitchfork The
day Pekka gave up his parents’ religion, a dust storm swept up from the
south,
blanketing the sky in a dizzying mash of spinning brown. That night he dreamt of
his dead grandmother
on her ascent to heaven. She
kicked him
in the face. “Have
sex like Jesus is watching,” Pekka’s father said years ago. Pekka was twelve and
didn’t yet fully
understand the mechanics of love-making, but now, twenty years old and
unbuttoning his pants, he recalls the comment and imagines what that
might look
like: Jesus at the foot of the bed in a folding chair whispering
directions.
Should they be praying? Does He stroke his chin when things go right? Is He congratulatory—a
high five maybe? Pekka
slides off his pants under the ceiling fan, on high, as the cut
moonlight
filters in between the twisted blinds, imprinting a faint mosaic of
light on
Suri, naked on his comforter save the slim panties that hug her hips. Pekka, a master of
abstinence, discovered the
best way not to have sex is for Suri to keep her panties on. They’d started, months
ago, with all of their
clothes in place, but they grew tired of the redundancy and slowly
began to
peel. They were at
their last line of
defense, which had been the only barrier for the past two weeks. But tonight, just as Pekka
strides toward the
bed, Suri hooks her index finger into her pink underwear and teasingly
tugs. He looks at
her as he imagines
Adam might have looked at Eve after she took the first bite: that is to
say,
“Baby, this could get good.” Suri
has a glass eye and a lifted Copyright
© 2010 Jesse
Goolsby |