AJ Greene’s The Foursome

The Foursome – Chapter 1 excerpt                                                   

Steve’s mother was a pain, always telling him what to do. “At twenty-two years old,” she said, “I really think you should have some idea what you want to do with your life. I’ve told you about Sheila, the teacher in my aura reading class. Sometimes she sees things in people’s auras that reveal helpful things about them and she’s agreed to meet you. Please come with me. I think you’ll like her.”

“Mom, I’ll be fine,” Steve grumbled. But, as usual, he did what she wanted and went with her. 

They arrived early at the run-down office building where the classes were held. The hallway needed a paint job and the dust in the corners showed where the lackluster efforts of the janitor hadn’t reached.

Steve’s mother greeted the teacher, who was arranging chairs for the class, and introduced her son. “Sheila, this is my son, Steve, who I spoke about. Do you think you could spend a few minutes with him?” 

Sheila, casually dressed in a red blouse and blue slacks, might have been around forty-five years old but Steve wasn’t good at telling old people’s ages. She walked over to Steve, casually looked him up and down and observed, “Hm-m-m, I see you’re masochistic.” 

Steve’s face flushed and his knees buckled, as though she had punched him in his gut. His voice trembled as he denied it. “No, no, I’m not.” For god’s sake, his mother was standing right there! 

He wanted to scream. How did that woman know? Was it that obvious? Who else knew about his masochism? Steve stumbled out of the building, into the bright sunshine, afraid of the answers to his questions.

                                                              ***

Fourteen years earlier, eight year-old Stevie was playing jump rope with his friend Anne but he wanted to play another game.

“Anne, let’s play cowboys and Indians.”

“What do you want to do, if we play?”

“Let’s play that you’re an Indian princess. You capture me and you tie me up and …”

“We did that last time we played, Stevie. It’s boring.”

“Okay, Anne. We can play cops and robbers. You can be the cop and I’m a robber and you catch me and tie me up. Want to play that?”

“No. That’s boring, too. I’m going to go home and watch Nickelodeon. It’s on now.”

                                                              ***

Stevie was in the Cub Scouts and learning how to tie knots. His friend Judy was a year older than him and already knew how to tie a square knot and a double half hitch. 

“Judy, I’m trying to learn these knots. Could you help me?”

“Sure, Stevie. Show me how you make a square knot.”

“Let me see, left over right, tuck. Right over left, tuck. There! How’s that, Judy?”

“That’s good.”

“Judy, would you wrap your rope around me and tie it tight? With a square knot?”

“Uh, I guess I could. Like this?”

Judy tied her rope around his chest.

“That’s good but could you tie it tighter please?”

Judy re-tied the rope and Stevie strained against it.

“Yeah, that’s good. I like that. Now, could you use my rope to tie my legs together?”

“No, Stevie, I don’t want to do this anymore.  Why do you always want me to tie you up, anyway?”

“I don’t know. I like how it feels. Don’t you like to be tied?”

“No and I don’t know why you do.”

                                                         ***

 At age fifteen his hormones were surging. The Phys Ed teacher had droned on about how their bodies would change, blah, blah, blah, but now it was his body that was changing and Steve wanted no part of it. Coarse, ugly pubic hairs were sprouting down there.  He gasped, horrified at his discovery.  Yuck! In a panic he grabbed a tweezer and yanked out the first five dark hairs that had dared to intrude. 

The next day there were seven; he pulled them out too but more kept on popping up. He gave up the battle; they were coming and he was resigned that he couldn’t stop them. Big boys had hair like that. Grown men had hair like that. “I’m not ready!” he wanted to scream. But he didn’t scream; he kept quiet and suffered silently, alone.

His parents were going out for the afternoon and he would be home alone. He trembled with anticipation. The food he tried to eat for lunch was dry in his mouth. He spit it out, unable to swallow. Would they ever leave? Finally, their car disappeared around the corner. With sweaty palms, Steve bolted to the family computer. He feverishly typed in the letters S, E, X and was rewarded by a treasure trove of magnificent pictures. Steve spent all afternoon pleasuring himself to images of naked, alluring young women. Exhausted but unwilling to stop, he kept at it until he heard their car crunch the gravel on the driveway.

The next time he had solitary access to the computer he scrolled eagerly through the same kind of sexy pictures that so excited him the first time. He chanced upon the image of a very pretty woman with a confident half-smile holding a coil of rope in one hand and a three foot long, braided leather whip in the other. Her shoulder length blond hair, streaked with blue highlights, was brushed all to her right side. A long, glittering gold earring dangled from her left ear. She had beautifully arched eyebrows above large black eyes that looked piercingly at him. Her image captivated him in a way that the other pictures, of more scantily clad women, had not.

The whip had one strand of red leather woven in with the black strands, from the base to the end.