Touching The Last Unicorn

by Aaron DiMunno

With a click of the mouse I have secured my room at the motel and drive straight from work. An hour of dark wind-blasted radio and a barely containable contentment.

Roll my car slow into the tall grass along the edge of the little road that cuts behind your mother's house. Kill the headlights and check the rear view to see if I might illuminate the light loping of your exquisite elven shape in red brake light. Let the pedal out and it all goes dark. The convertible top is down and I just stare up at all those stars.

There's a stream somewhere. I can hear the white noise of moving water. My heart is pounding like someone just put a gun to my head. The cell phone is quiet and dark in the cup holder. I called you just before I parked but you didn't answer so I hope you know I'm here.

The frogs are peeping and the crickets keep rubbing their wings together everywhere in the dark. I bet you're delivering a delicately crafted excuse to your mom. A reason to leave out the back door for the night. I'm prickly and itchy in my seat. The sky is too big and heavy over me. I want to scream out or jump from the car, abandon it and sprint down the crunchy grit of that country back road.

Until you're in the car kissing me anything could go wrong. I shouldn't be here anyway. Your brother is my best friend. We sucked each others dicks just to see what it was like when we were not much older than you are now. Seventeen.

I am ten irreconcilable years older than you. Your mother could catch a whiff of something amiss and decide to keep her beautiful daughter in from the world. Or come out and find me. Your uncle is chief of police where the motel room is reserved.

I flash the brakes again and the mirror is clear behind me. I let my foot off the pedal about to give up. Peel out on the gravel and be gone.

But just before red goes back to black your long silhouette slips into sight. A nymph emerging from the forest to be with me. A forbidden mythical creature for a mere mortal man. It's like being allowed to touch the last living unicorn.

Then you're in the car and your lips are a softness to suffocate me. I can't catch a breath. Your caress is light like a blade of grass traced up my arm. I want to cry. I want to pour everything I am into you and fall to the ground in a mush of my own shit. There is nothing else that I want. The stars are gone and the sky is blank. Crickets have no wings and frogs no peep.

I push the little sports car through its gears. Your hand is on my thigh making it tingle. The the wind is rough and hot and thick. Your long hair is a maelstrom. It whips your face and makes you squint but your smiling. I'm already frightened. How will I ever feel so alive again?

Minutes from the hotel a police car lights up behind me. It's your uncle and I'm going to jail now. You and I smile at each other anyway and you slink down in your seat.Your hair falls to shield your face.

I don't know what your uncle looks like so I'm fit to piss until the officer kindly reminds me to turn on my headlights. He tells me that those little orange ones are called parking lights for a reason. I've got to be sweating like a bank robber but he leaves it at that and returns to his cruiser.

The hotel is quiet and the man at the front desk keeps shifting his eyes from me to you. I don't know why you didn't stay in the car. I wonder what he's thinking. Either trying to guess how old you are or how your nipples might taste. But then it doesn't really matter because he hands over a white plastic card with a magnetic strip that opens a door to a room with two beds and now I will have you all to myself.

We fall into the room kissing. On the bed with your shirt off and your hair everywhere you ask me if my middle name is Gipetto even though you know it's Giuseppe. Stupid shit like that makes me love you. But you won't have sex with me.

You make hand jobs exciting again. You rub that spot under my nuts with perfection. Moan and grind on my erection. When my fingers are inside you, you wonder aloud how they can possibly be so smooth. Computer hands. Then we come. One after another. Bang. Boom. Breathe.

Two pairs of sunglasses from my bag for us and you pack your bowl. Then we stand on the slanted hotel toilet exhaling into the dusty ceiling vent. We can hear phantom toilets flushing in the darkness.

Then it's out into the hall with our hidden eyes. A weekday night in a place that's slow on the weekends. No one is anywhere. The fluorescent tube in the vending machine is blown. What scattered snacks are available look left over from the '70s.

We take my car down the strip for snacks at the Sunoco. I watch you walking the aisles in your sunglasses and school girl skirt and pretend that I'm there paying for gas. I study your shapes and try to memorize them as if you're yet another painfully beautiful girl I'll never see again.

On our way to the car a group of men in a grimy truck loaded with landscaping machines crane their necks to watch you go by. I feel sorry for them because they're just getting gas completely mortal while I'm invincible.
The room reeks of weed when we return. We smoke more and undress. Eat our cookies. Split the shitty white headphones that came with my iPod and sing along naked in bed together. I feel like I do in dreams where I can fly.

When you go down on me it is like no other. Hot melted electric butter on my dick. I remember your legs at the Sunoco, the round of your breasts against your shirt. When I go down on you you ask politely with a please for me to fuck you. I try but you keep changing your mind.

I think about the age difference. I love you like a sister and I want to fuck you like a fantasy. But we're in different places you say, too far apart. It makes me want to throw up but I have to agree.

So you left for college and found another guy my age and we don't talk much anymore.

Aaron DiMunno lives in New York City and pays too much for rent because it feels like home. He had a cat named Moochie LaRue but she died. Aaron enjoys camping every once in a while but he thinks each time that he should do it more often.
SSF: What is one thing you did this week that you are proud of?
Aaron: I finished this story.