AUTOEROTIC Cameron Heisey

Cameron Heisey

Barren, leafless branches pried at the low winter sky.

The Young Woman stood by her tree, watching. The thin blue plastic bag rustled in her hand. A sharp crackle of leaves brought her attention outward—she saw The Young Man approaching anonymously. Hat drawn low about his face, he posted up beside a distant tree of his own.

She leaned back and slid down the scratchy, rigid trunk to sit at its base. A desolate breeze chilled her skin as she brought her pants to her ankles, flesh rising, cold undulating across bare skin. The Young Man unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his shirt as she slid the thin plastic over her head, tucking the edges into her shirt collar for a flimsy seal.

The warm moisture of her breath clung to the inside of the bag, weakly expanding and contracting tighter with every inhalation. Through the cloudy aqua filter, she saw The Young Man drop his pants and wrap his leather belt about his neck, pulling both ends tight behind.

He began to masturbate, and she followed suit.

Her oxygen dwindled as her effort increased, barely making out The Young Man tightening his grip on his belt, posture craning backward, fighting his own resistance. She could only just discern the quiet effort of his strained breath before he faded from all awareness and all she heard was her own, desperately smothered by the crinkly, waxy tastelessness of the bag.

Wispy plastic constricting tight around her face, utterly drained of oxygen, The Young Woman felt the daze seeping into her head, wrist working violently against the brink of consciousness. She could feel her veins surging in her temples and neck, eyes lolling up into her head as the faint visage of The Young Man spasmed once, twice, three times into shrouded refraction and out of her consciousness completely before falling against his tree for support.

The ecstatic warmth of her climax roused a blissful last surge of willpower—nerves in her

legs throbbing with heat, the electric high of endorphin rush teasing her up against the barrier of the unconscious—at last tearing the bag across her face to breathe again.

Rushing arctic air frosted her lungs and dizzied her head more wickedly than before as she lapped it up, drunk on lurid pleasure.

By the time her body came down from the exuberance of her orgasm, reality resurfaced and The Young Man had pulled his pants back on, already buckling his belt as he walked off the way he came.

They stood awkwardly, hand in hand before the front door. She saw her warped reflection in the door’s decorated glasswork.

Her Boyfriend reached out to ring the doorbell, noticed her stiffness.

“Anxious?” He knew the answer.

“A little.”

He squeezed The Young Woman’s hand. “They’ll love you.”

Flamboyant figures gestured obscurely beyond the glass. Her Boyfriend’s parents answered the door in an assault of enthusiasm.

Her Boyfriend’s Mother, a tiny, fiery charge of joy, enveloped The Young Woman in a sweeping hug while His Father, tall in a lovingly washed sweater vest, threw a playful punch to his son’s shoulder.

Oh my word, look at you, sweetie! You are gorgeous! I’m so happy to meet you finally!

His Father beamed. I’m proud of you, kiddo. I can already tell she’s too good for you.

They had sex on Her Boyfriend’s bed after his parents had decided to step out to give them

Don’t do anything an ordained minister wouldn’t do while we’re gone, kids! His Father threw back on his way out the door.

His Mother responded in kind: Oh my god, you— and the front door closed.

Her Boyfriend was on top, taking care to be gentle and receptive. His breath a steady ebb, his thrusts methodical, commentary hushed and sparse. Is this good? Like that? You’re beautiful.

The Young Woman affirmed him, watching the black shadows of leaves outside fragment through venetian blinds. Slashed and split apart, those shadows looked mysterious and ineffable, formless motion without destination, particular energies in cycle with the inertias of themselves.

Self-consciously selfless lovemaking.

She felt his breath on her neck, in her ear, a kiss on her cheek.

Those shadows felt remote. Like out in the woods.

She dreamed she felt cold wind, that steady firmness at her back, sliding her body down its length, roughness tearing at her shirt—

She moaned through the bag.

Head thrown back, dead trees shot up around her in silent vigil. She tore a hole in the bag, chilled blood rushing to her head in a cold flood, gauzy daze drowning out the wind.

The Young Man had already turned away. He sauntered off the way he had come, automatically sliding his belt back through the loops of his pants when she felt a vibration at her ankle, disturbing her solipsistic quiet. Huffing, she leaned forward to wrestle her phone from her pocket, watching his back as he walked away, seeing nothing but trees.

Breathless: “Hello?”

Why call now? “Yeah, yeah. Finishing up a workout.”

“Okay. Well, I get off early in about an hour. Wanna hang out?”

The Young Man was farther away. Fully clothed again, adjusting the hat on his head. Disappearing into the trees, blurring into the cloudy gray of the woods—as if he had never been there at all.

She felt something rumble in her at his question. “Sure, yeah.”

He sounded clueless, so happy. “Okay cool. I’ll just head over to yours and we can figure things out?”

No movement around her, only the chilly desolation of an overcast winter dream. “Sure…”

They drove at sunset. Dim heat and light smeared through cloud cover, and the window glass was ice on her skin. She leaned her forehead against it, felt her brain vibrating in her skull, the pulses of friction thrusting into her arms and hands and fingers. Strange, tingling flashes—severed circuits finding connection.

Her Boyfriend smiled at her and his grip on the steering wheel tightened, thick veins bulging from the pressure. He felt the firing force of the axle spin in his palms, the smooth rubber curves of the wheel under his hands, the clammy sweat slick left from his heat. He adjusted himself.

Later, when he made The Young Woman jump and laugh by opening her window on the frigid sweep of highway air, her hair blowing in a somehow graceful suspense beneath the edges of her fluffy knit hat, smile like moonlight eclipsing the gray-orange spears of the sun, she looked at the curvature of his face. The tight, rough bend of his jaw. The fluid musculature of his neck and bowing sweep of his lips. She followed the arch of his eyebrow and saw a small, faint vein pulsing at his temple.

She remembered his call, and their car pulled off the highway into the oncoming night.

In a blank, empty church parking lot, The Young Woman straddled Her Boyfriend in the backseat. Her hips worked against the blast of the car heater, sex stopping and starting to readjust in the small hatchback. He craned his head and neck up against the door to see her, and she placed a hand against the icy window. From the outside, it almost looked as if gentle steam rose from her palm up the glass, snaking between her fingers.

He watched her face against the orange glare of the overhead light in the backseat. He could see where her hat, long since removed, had matted her hair with slick warmth. A small sweat shine like highlighter graced the angular thrust of her cheekbone in the light and she stopped moving on top of him. He found her face in half-silhouette: one sparkling eye visible in the glow, the other lost in darkness. Behind her, the parking lot streetlight cast a cool electric radiance on the car windows. She looked like a backlit secret.

“Are you okay? Something wrong?”

She pushed loose strands of hair out of her eyes. “No, it’s—” She looked down at him for a long second, wondering. Would you? “Would you choke me?”

Confusion ruffled across Her Boyfriend’s forehead. “What?”

“Could you just, like, lightly choke me? Would you be into that?”

He sat up slightly, holding onto her, keeping her steady. He still felt warm inside her. “I, yeah, okay. I just don’t want to hurt you.”

She smiled and put a hand on his face, gingerly patting in reassurance. “You won’t, don’t worry. I’ll tell you.” The Young Woman lifted his right hand slowly to her throat and started to ride him again. She let out a soft moan under the tightness of his grip, watching out the window at the white light glare. “Harder.”

Her Boyfriend nodded. “Okay.” He squeezed a bit harder.

No. “Here, harder.” One hand against the window, with the other she grabbed his right hand

and squeezed for him, forcing the tightness up against the ridge of her neck, pushing against the vein clusters and tendons to each side. She felt his palm against her windpipe.

He was holding back. “Are you sure?”

Bucking fluidly on top of him, she imagined out the window a familiar, obscure shape. As though from the fog of the dark, The Young Man stood in lamplight, hat low about his face. He was watching them through the car window, with long, slender fingers unclasping the buttons of his shirt, his isolation blowing ghost wind across her bare legs.

“Yes, harder.”

Her Boyfriend heard her moaning, felt the current of her motion strengthen. He squeezed her neck harder, the furious rush of blood flushing her face. She gasped, his strong hand closed vicelike around her throat, smooth palm snuffing, comforting, commanding, encouraging the flow of her small sputtering, bursting breaths.

Her thoughts felt lighter and she looked away from the window, down to Her Boyfriend’s face for the first time. There was something soft in it, strange confusion glowing in that warm orange streak of light. She moved her hand to his forearm, feeling the stiff cords of muscle and effort, and for one fragment of a moment the movement of her hips and his found the nervous, nascent awakenings of a perfect harmony.

She broke from his matching stare and out the window saw The Young Man’s belt falling to his feet and—

No. No. No… Fuck.

She felt her orgasm slipping away, like dream memory. Chasing, chasing, chasing, gone.

Frustrated and wrist afire, she threw her head back against the tree trunk, ignoring the pain. Eyes up, she looked along its length, the most subtle of curves casting its shape on a microbend on its rise into the gray slate sky. Am I ever really here?

Her bag was tight around her face, plastic vacuuming into her mouth with each angry breath. She tore the bag off her head and out of her sweater collar, fist falling heavy to the ground. Breathing was cold and hard, like the ground beneath her bare bottom. She shuddered at the chill.

She heard fainter breath. Her eyes dropped back down—it was The Young Man’s. His head was tilted back, staring up like she had been. He steadied himself against the tree with one arm while the other worked furiously below his waist. His belt hung limp around his neck. A fashionable, form-fitting flannel shirt had draped off his square shoulders and clung to his wrists, bouncing with his frantic rhythm.

She looked at him like a mirage and his head dropped down to look at her.

The Young Woman saw it clearly: the flashing strain of green eyes beneath the brim of the hat, the jaw and sharp nose and cropped blonde beard and strong cheekbones. The Young Man was attractive and petrified, absently real for the first time. After that millisecond linkage of eye contact, his face contorted in abject fear and he threw himself behind his tree. A moment later he darted off into the woods in a furious, almost comical sprint, holding up his waistband while shirt and belt flapped from his shoulders.

She watched him run and felt sick. More lonely than before. The Young Woman slipped her pants back up her legs and listened to the quiet footsteps pounding off into nothing.

Leaving the woods, The Young Woman heard movement far off and looked for him. Instead, she saw two teenagers, probably mid-to-late high school: a boy and a girl, his hand in hers, following her lead. She turned to him in a playful spin and leapt into his arms. They kissed and he fell back against a tree from the force of her. They laughed, and went on their way deeper in.

The Young Woman watched them go, and left.

They were walking together along the streets of her comfortable, boring neighborhood.

They talked about anything, nothing—mainly just so each could hear the voice of the other. It had rained earlier and the street was alive with a lovely fog, yellow lamps aglow overhead in blooming clouds of diffuse. The fog wisped and twirled in on itself with their walking, a flat cloudfront drifting patiently across the sky.

It was cold and damp, but The Young Woman seemed not to notice or care. Neither did Her Boyfriend. He was talking about secrets when her focus settled on his grip. She squeezed his hand to feel him squeeze back, and he did so without a thought. That slightest force, perfectly calibrated and applied; that force she knew could choke and cascade her along the cradle of lucidity, vision fading and throat tightening as she passionately rocks her hips against the dying light and feels the strength of him in their connection, most clearly when they release and his hand falls from her throat in seething pleasure and the entire world blossoms more vividly than ever before, as though the veil of sentience had been lifted and re-gifted in the same instant.

And then she looked to his face, saw the glimmer of his every syllable breathed out into open air, and wrapped her arm in his.

She could imagine herself by the tree when they burst into Her Boyfriend’s bedroom. He clumsily threw the door closed behind them and lifted her in a spin as they kissed, running a hand beneath her shirt to feel the sensual gliding arch of her lower back.

The Young Woman’s feet hit the floor and she shoved Her Boyfriend back to sit on the edge of his bed. She grabbed his neck tentatively. When she squeezed, bringing her hand up right beneath his chin and lifting his face to look at her, he grabbed her almost viciously and brought her closer to him, hands wandering.

The chill of the breeze through the cold wood waved through her ears as she pushed him to his back, hand still firmly squeezing his throat. She fell on top of him and, holding a long violent kiss, felt Her Boyfriend’s hand slide over her throat in kind. Every muscle in his arm tensed with force and her sight went black for the slightest instant before he was there under her again, feeling

Her Boyfriend’s other hand was taking off his belt and she felt that waxy plastic vacuum on her tongue. In a concentrated instant of molecular intuition, Her Boyfriend wrapped his belt around his throat as she ripped at her own and did the same. She straddled his lap as he sat up to stare into her. She stared back, and together they pulled their belts taut behind their necks, thrusting and bucking against their own force.

The Young Woman imagined herself sliding down that thick tree, unable to breathe as they each choked themselves; saw that field of dead trees and watched the shape of Her Boyfriend approach from beyond the pale of physical space. She could see herself sitting there as he crouched down in front of her, both naked and alone, together in the cavernous wild. The plastic bag would be gone and Her Boyfriend would seize her neck, throttling her against the tree trunk. And she would reach out with both hands and hold closed his mouth and nose and there they would sit, in the primal, ecstatic departure of individual experience.

Sat on Her Boyfriend’s lap, his free hand guiding the movement of her lower back against his own tide, insatiably grasping at her soft sparkling flesh, The Young Woman had stopped thinking almost entirely. Trees and lone winds dissolved to flurrying bokeh and Her Boyfriend saw the most attendant vacancy in her eyes, locked onto his as though motion-tracked. Again, their rhythms aligned to prolonged perfection, and they moved in tandem as one.

No selfless or selfish or self-consciousness. No effort or strain or individuality. Her Boyfriend saw her face patterned by slats of moonlight through the blinds and, without thinking, reached around and grabbed hold of The Young Woman’s belt around her neck, pulling fiercely for her. And in flowing simultaneous motion, she grabbed hold of Her Boyfriend’s and did the same.

Starlight seemed to drift down the walls, the floor and ceiling fell away and together they had apocalyptic sex in the deep night of fading consciousness, eye to eye, breath to breath, pulling closer against each other’s pressure as they fucked, each holding the other’s life in their hands.