), and everything I try to write ends up turning into a self-bash, so I just... You know what, just read it, okay?Heart's Desire
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that somewhere up there alongside the Apple of the Hesperides, the Philosopher's Stone, and the Ark of the Covenant, Emma Klingemann was every man's heart's desire.
Okay, so perhaps it would be an exaggeration. But if not every man's, than at the very least you could say that she was every boy this side of the city's heart's desire; and a few of the girls', too, depending on who you asked.
It may sound cliché, but then again, this whole story is, in a sense, so I'm just going to say it straight up: if you asked a teenaged boy to close his eyes and imagine his ideal mate, he'd either imagine Emma Klingemann or awkwardly step back into the closet.
She was to sexy what sexy was to grandma, just athletic enough to look shapely and fit without giving anyone feelings of inadequacy, she was rich and she had the million dollar smile to go with it.
Did I mention that she was sexy?
Now, you might think to yourself that, while nice, this isn't anything to gush so wildly about. Every city has its share of perfect girls, and if you ignore the fact that Anna plays the piano and Sophie's a great cook, ultimately, they all were pretty similar. And by similar, I mean annoying, and by annoying, I mean that you wanted them and couldn't help but be keenly aware of the fact that you will never, ever, ever get anywhere near them without the police becoming involved. They were a hundred kilometres out of your league in every way except body hair, and even that's making some assumptions. About you, not them: those perfect girls always have skin smoother than marble.
Emma was every boy (and a few creepy girls') heart's desire because she was perfect, yet realistically attainable. She was friendly, she was communicative. She was, well, approachable. By which I mean that yes, she was known as kind of a slut. But really, who gives a fuck, right? (Or perhaps, as the case here may be, who doesn't?)
It's not that she was famous for it or anything, but it was kind of like common knowledge, I guess, among those for whom it had any measure of relevance.
Anyway, she didn't discriminate on the basis of race, sex or religion. She didn't even discriminate on the basis of common social sense: as long as you were remotely human shaped and had the guts to ask her out, you had a fair chance of scoring with her. She went through boyfriends like normal people went through underpants (a well-fitting metaphor), but there were no hard feelings, because in the end, everybody came out satisfied.
Perhaps a few of the girls hated her, or maybe more than a few, but girls are just jealous like that. And the literature teacher sort of looked at her funny (like, actually funny. Because many teachers looked at her, and most of them not in a funny way, if you catch my drift). And there were those oddballs who claimed that having sex with her, by this point, was akin to having sex with a public toilet: just you, her, and the coagulated bodily fluids of a significant percentage of the local population.
But I'm an asshole if they didn't immediately run back to their rooms to whack off after saying it.
While I was remotely human shaped (I hope), what I didn't have, unfortunately, was the guts. I admit it, okay? I was a wuss. I was a lonely, pathetic, honest to god dork. I've had exactly one girlfriend in my entire life, and I suspect that she was only into it because she pitied me. Maybe she thought she could fix me or something- could explain why we broke up like this. Nobody likes being proven wrong.
Now, taking all of this into account, try to imagine my internal reaction to the discovery that for the last year of high-school, I was going to be sitting right next to Emma. Yes, I was that much of a dork, I already said it. Being seated next to a pretty girl was my figurative Holy Grail.
I could already see my grades plummeting, a natural consequence of me spending every available moment stealing glances at this gorgeous finished product of a couple hundred thousand years of fine human evolution.
It was the second to last period, and the blackboard was as distant as Alpha-Centaury, the teacher's dreary voice barely reaching me as an inaudible whisper from across the vast oceans of mental void. My notebook was empty, as every time I tried to bring my pen down to the paper to try and salvage at least a little from whatever it was Mrs Shultz was mumbling about, I was immediately distracted by Emma's radiant shape at the corner of my vision.
That long, wonderful hair, this face plucked right out of the front page of the world's hottest magazine, eyes half closed as if in a waking dream, those long eyelashes delicately flitting about like the wings of an invisible butterfly. Those lips, who've starred in so many shameful dreams of mine, curled ever-so-slightly in a fantastic, subtle, eternal smile. Those… oh god, those… you know. I had a bet with Christopher over them; he claimed they weren't natural. Said he was an expert on the subject (as fucking if, unless he was referring to gigabytes of reference material) and that there was no way in hell that they were natural.
But at that moment, I didn't care even if they'd been a gift from the Devil itself. Holy cow, Lucifer, you magnificent old bastard; you sure have a great taste in gifts, don't you?
Heheh. Cow. Now I can't help but feel dirty. ier.
It was the middle of the boring, faraway lesson which I couldn't care less about when something wonderful and terrible has happened: Emma looked back at me. Just a small glance, a gesture of acknowledgment of existence, a polite smile and an amused shake of the head.
Inside my brain, tiny technicians in yellow HAZMAT suits were running around screaming hysterically, because core temperature was reaching its melting point. Steam everywhere, sirens blaring, and an ecological disaster of intracranial proportions looming on the visible horizon.
I turned my head to look away, that is straight, in a futile attempt to cool-down the reactors, but this just made things worse. Who was the brilliant idiot who thought it'd be a good idea to place a hopeless geek like me half a meter away from this idol? I wasn't sure if I'd wanted to kiss him passionately or punch him in the throat at the moment.
I certainly felt as if I'd been punched in the throat. Or at least, as I'd imagined it would feel, because the last fight I'd gotten into was back in elementary school. I'd decided to change my modus operandi, so to speak: instead of long, stupid stares, I tried to go for lightning quick, stupid peeks.
And god help me, I think she's been doing the same. She had this uncertain, shy smile on her face, so sweet and so much unlike her, I couldn't take my eyes off it. Looking slightly down, as if embarrassed, looking away from me as soon as it was becoming too obvious that I was staring.
It was by pure luck that my head didn't explode in a shower of blood and gore when our eyes met. At that point, I'd felt as it could have, and I wouldn't regret a damn thing. I was a person at peace with himself.
Emma was approachable, dammit. The way she smiled like that, it was almost… almost inviting, tantalizingly close. "Tantalizing", as in "Tantalus", from the ancient Greek fairy-tale. At the moment, my sympathy for him was absolute: I could definitely feel how it must have been like to be a poor, hungry Greek tied to a tree trunk, with the glorious grapes of the gods hanging mere centimetres above you, out of reach, yet so close that if you'd closed your eyes, you could almost feel their shape inside your mouth, rolling around your tongue, their sweet taste, their juicy filling…
Personally, I had my eyes set upon the grapefruits of the gods. If you know what I mean.
And so an hour passed, or possibly a year, I was too focused on the thoughts that I just might have been passed upon by the patron saint of awkward classroom hard-ons to notice. The bell rang and the lesson was over just like that. What lesson was it? Who cares?
The class started emptying out, and I was in the middle of drowsily getting up from my chair and stumbling around my desk in order to get to my things when I was stopped by Emma's voice, clearly audible even above the cacophony of high-schoolers leaving for recess.
Emma's clear, angelic voice, directed at me. I must have been dreaming.
"Hey, are you new here?" she asked, smiling this smile of hers.
"Uhh… mmmuuh… What do you mean by 'New'?" I answered, eloquent as ever.
"You're like a transfer student, or something? When did you get here?"
I sighed in defeat. "…Actually, I've been here since the beginning of the eighth grade."
Her eyes widened in surprise, than she just laughed musically, waving her hand a little as if to physically dismiss my exclamation. "How's it then that I've never noticed you before?"
"…I could think of a couple reasons", I replied, nervously scratching my hair and trying, and failing, not to look in her direction. My dream was broken, and cruel reality has pulled me back by the balls. Of course she had no idea who I was.
"Well, that's a mistake I'll have to work on fixing, won't I?"
If I'd had a drink in my mouth, I'd have totally spilled it all over the place.
"You're a cute one; did anyone ever tell you that?"
"No."
Emma and me, in our classroom, alone. And she was flirting with me. Not very wittily, but she was. This was the start of so many dreams that ended with a wash. This was all I could think of: this isn't really happening. This is way too good to be true. Somebody's playing a cruel joke on me, maybe.
"Ouch", I squeaked quietly after giving myself a small, discrete pinch. Either I wasn't dreaming or it was one of those dreams that you… Jesus Christ, my brain was so overheated by this point, I couldn't even continue down this line of thought.
This made her laugh. Everything I did seemed to. It was beginning to get kind of disturbing.
In an awesome way.
"You look like you just saw a ghost", she said playfully as she lifted herself from her seat with remarkable grace.
I swallowed. "…err, Emma... I mean, can I call you Emma?"
"Sure, be my guest."
"What is going on?"
She looked confused as she approached me, her every step oozing sensuality and primal, feminine confidence. The smile on her face widened her voice one of pure, playful, childish innocence, like a cat might have had, if cats had human voices. "What do you mean?"
I took a step back, then another. This part was a lot easier in my dreams, somehow. My slow retreat was stopped by the edge of the desk behind me, which I've gripped absentmindedly.
"Cute as well as funny, what a lucky young man".
Oh, I was lucky. I was definitely, absolutely the luckiest man on the planet at that moment. And there I was, retreating backwards, like she was coming at me with a slasher smile all over her face.
Her face. I couldn't take my eyes of them. She was even more beautiful up close. This image alone, from back then, I was sure that it was going to be my faithful companion for a hundred lonely nights to come.
Teeheehee.
She was moving more quickly now, more passionately. There was something almost desperately animalistic about her aura, that atmosphere which she projected. Her every movement radiated a violent, all-consuming hunger.
She pushed me oh-so-gently backwards with those perfect hands of hers. I could feel her hot fingertips against my stomach even through my shirt as I fall backwards without making a sound, sitting upon the desk.
She was now standing a lot taller than me. My face was, in fact, just in level with a certain aforementioned forbidden fruit that was forcing me to begin empathizing with Adam and Eve.
She leaned slightly down, and my head turned aside so hard my neck probably almost broke. This was a very nice cleavage there.
She wrapped one long, beautiful arm around my neck and, I swear to God, she sat in on lap.
I could smell her perfume, her shampoo, her skin. I could feel that stroke coming.
I had no idea whatsoever what was going on, it was almost definitely a dream, and I didn't ever want to wake up. My heart was beating so fast then that if hooked to an EKG machine, it would probably produce a perfectly straight, still line.
"Was this lesson as boring to you as it was to me?" she whispered.
"H-how boring was it to you?" I mumbled, maybe trying to sound charming, certainly failing spectacularly.
"Unbearably so", she answered, her lips mere centimetres from my ear, her warm breath tingling my temples. I was vaguely aware of the fact that she didn't know my name. It wasn't the most concerning thing at the moment, though.
She was like a snake, coiling around me, hypnotizing me, smelling me with her forked tongue, waiting for the time to strike with venomous fangs. She was the forbidden fruit and the snake all at once. She broke my beautiful, biblical metaphor to pieces.
Her other hand was moving slowly down my back, dangerously low now. Her body getting closer and closer to my face. My fevered mind could almost imagine the feeling of her… of her…
Oh sweet merciful lord in heaven, ohfuckohfuck oh… Christopher, you poor son of a bitch, you owe me money. Those are natural, my friend. Those are completely, one hundred percent natural.
My nostrils were filled to the brim with her sweet, seductive smell.
Everything was so right and so wrong at the same time. Disturbingly, creepily wrong, like a bad trip, and I didn't care. Slowly, shaking in expectation, she raised one long, perfect leg, and with remarkable flexibility passed it over my other knee.
I was sitting beneath her spread legs. She was sitting right over my… tightly closed legs, I admit. A dork will forever be a dork.
She looked down at me, straight at my face. We were staring right into each other's eyes.
Her eyes were so very, very beautiful, and seductive, and unbelievably hot…
And completely, utterly dead. Tired, hollow, like the eyes of a woman seventy years older than Emma. There was a cold, empty, resentfulness to them, a lone mist of sorrow gently floating in the hungry void.
The dissonance was so harsh, so complete, that something inside my head must have snapped like a twig.
Was this how dreams became nightmares? Was this how nightmares killed?
Because Emma was sitting in lap, wrapping her arms around me, her legs spread, breathing into my ear, pushing her marvellous, soft breasts right into my face…
And all I could do was throw her off of me. Forcefully, fearfully, disgustedly.
This was not how this went in my dreams.
No… wait.
This was exactly how it went in my dreams, and this was exactly what was so damn wrong about it. It was not real. It was like a movie, or one of those video games. Like Emma was merely an actor, cynically acting her part in the theatre of my shameful fantasy that has just become reality. Her passion was there, but it was the completely wrong kind. It wasn't alluring. It wasn't attractive at all.
"Stop! Stop! This is wrong", I cried, my voice sounding broken and twisted as if coming out of a broken radio. I was shaking and sweating as if I'd just ran a marathon.
She looked as shocked as I must have. That smile, still on her face, twisted slightly at the corner. She raised one beautifully made eyebrow, as if in confusion, and took a step back on her own. She looked terrifying, she looked crazy. How did I not notice any of this before?
She was shaking just like I was, but in her case, I couldn't tell if it was from fear or anger, or maybe something else.
Did I offend her? I must have. Did this ever happen to her before?
"What… what's wrong?" she asked, desperately trying to maintain the former confident calm of her voice. She failed, so miserably and pathetically I almost cringed at it. Her voice was just as shaky as her body, just as charged with fear or anger or whatever.
"This. This is all wrong", I quickly muttered, looking away. I took a deep breath in an attempt to stabilize myself. "You don't even know my name. It's the middle of class, for God's sake."
She giggled again, masking her nervousness with a poor mask of her older, catlike playfulness. "Yes, isn't it exciting?" she said, putting a finger to her lips.
"Someone could come in any moment now".
She was saying it as if it was a good thing. And in my dreams, it would have been. In some… in some crappy porno, it would have been. But this was real life, and it was just stupid.
I stood silent in front of her, getting up from the desk, steadying myself. "I'm not doing this."
"What's the matter? Need some help getting into the right mood? No problem, no problem", she mumbled, still giggling madly, her hands moving up to begin unbuttoning her shirt. It was the giggle of a crackhead reaching for a package full of Good Shit, and her movements were as steady as one's would have probably been.
I took a step closer to her, and showing more confidence than I ever have in my entire life put together, reached for her wrist and grabbed it to stop her.
"Please don't do this", I said before letting go and turning around to the classroom door. "I'm not interested. Sorry."
"W-what do you mean 'You're not interested'?", her voice reached me from behind. "What… are you… I…"
"Yeah, yeah. Call me a faggot if you want, I don't care. I don't want to do this."
"Yes!" she cried, almost screaming. Maybe she had tears in her eyes, I don't know. I was looking the other way, as I said. "Yes you do! I know you do!"
I shrugged. "Not anymore I don't. Maybe you're not my type."
Her silence accompanied me as I went out of the classroom to enjoy what little was left of recess. That is, to go into the boy's bathroom, look at myself in the mirror for a couple minutes, sigh shamefully and wash my face.
I got back to class for the next period, and she was still sitting next to me.
But I just couldn't look at her the same way as before. It was as if some kind of faery glamour was suddenly dispelled, as if the magic that made her so irresistible to me before, hiding her flaws and blemishes and true features under a thin layer of illusory light was gone.
As if I had woken from a dream. It only took a single look at her to see. Her slight slouch, her dead eyes, with those dark bags under them, badly hidden by her make-up. Was she not getting enough sleep? Why?
She looked flustered, frustrated, irritated. Her blushing cheeks were anything but cute. The way she rubbed her thighs against each other, as if to calm down an itch, made her look pitiful. She bit on her lower lip, and then she bit on her pen, and her fingers were moving aimlessly and nervously around the surface of her desk. She didn't write down anything.
The bell rang once more, and over the cacophony of high-schoolers leaving their classroom, as I made my way around the desk to pick up my bag, she stood up and talked to me again. Her breath was just as rugged as it was before, as if the nearly two hours that have passed didn't calm her down at all. If anything, she looked even more worked up.
But her voice was quiet now. I think it was sincere.
"I… I'm sorry about earlier."
"It's okay", I said flatly, and started making me way out to the door.
"Maybe it would be… maybe it would be better if I sat somewhere else, right?"
I nodded without saying anything. I didn't even turn my head to look at her. I didn't want to know how she looked. She sounded like she was about to cry.
Emma Klingemann, who was every boy's heart's desire, whispered some final words to me, but I have no idea what they were.
Walking briskly, I left her standing by herself in the empty classroom behind me.
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I do, however, reserve the right to prostrate pathetically in a lamentation of dishonor in response to following posts.
As always, criticism, comments etc. would be more than welcome.
