Eleven Secrets in No Particular Order

by Timothy Boudreau

1

When you were thirteen your mom caught you masturbating on the sofa, penis pumping into a white sock. “Jesus Christ, use a tissue, Pea. I’m sick of these dirty socks.”

            “Mom!”

            “Why don’t you do it on the toilet?” She picked your jeans off the floor. “And put that afghan in the laundry, my GOD.”

            She caught you again when you were twenty-four when she came into your bedroom to wake you for work. You were facing the wall, humping the extra pillow.

(1994, 2005)

 2 

Your dad called you Pea Pod because you had tiny hands and feet, perfect kissable ears, and you loved peas. 

He was a small man, but his hugs were enormous; he scooped you, engulfed you in warmth. “My little Pea Pod.” 

He died when you were nine.  

“You can stop calling me that, Dad,” you told him when you were eight, but secretly hoped he wouldn’t. 

(1989)

 3

At recess, Joselyn Craigie kissed your cheek; her mouth tasted like peanut butter, her palms grape Smuckers sticky.

            Narrow eyes, cough drop blue, stubby pale eyelashes; blotchy cheeks redder with each boy (you counted four) she kissed.

(1991)

4

The guys called it “Eating someone out.”

You were eavesdropping; they weren’t your friends. “She’s so hot,” Darren Jennings said. “I heard Jamey ate her out.”    

Cute Karin Glass sat on the bleachers in her gym shorts, leaned back, and laughed.

“Ate her all the way out,” Bobby Tailor added. “She was soaking wet.” You envisioned chewing, something you’d need to get out, crimson jelly, grainy custard, Karin’s curly-haired privates wet with—what? You were filled with a sense of girls as throbbing, desiring things; beings so horny that their insides were beading, dripping with moisture.

(1996)

5

“Didn’t we already have that talk?” Your mom, drunk on Gallo zinf; dried spaghetti sauce in the corner of her mouth, stray bangs, half-buttoned blouse, gray eyes clouded glass. “Your dad would’ve if he was still around.” She was across the kitchen table, rummaging in a bag of Fritos. “But you must know about it all already.”

            “Sure.” All what, you wanted to ask.

            “Like protection,” she slid you the chips, “and how not to get pregnant?”

            “Mom.”

            “Just wrap it, Pea.”

(1998)

6

Aunt Peggy visited Saturday night to play cards. You were in the next room, listening to Counting Crows, sorting job applications.

When you switched CDs, you overheard.

Peggy: “He likes girls, right?”

Your mom: “I’m not concerned with who he likes. I’m more concerned with who in God's green goodness will ever like him.”

(2001)

7

The bedroom window of your first apartment looked over a frozen street the orgasm-free February you spent masturbating nearly to climax, tip of your dick wet again and again, an agony of leaked pre-cum, until your balls were sore. You waddled out, tiny thing in a giant parka, to start your beater Escort in god-forsaken twenty-below mornings, your aching testicles swollen and cracked like over-struck golf balls.

(2007)

8

When the store was slow, you went to the paint section to see her.

Stefanie Dreyer: “Damn, Petey, your eyes are the most amazing silver-gray.”

            You slipped behind a display in your Aubuchon vests. “They’re just like my mom’s.”

            “You’re tiny,” she looked at you, “but everything is just so.” She was taller, lean and sinewy, freckled forehead, amber eyes. “I just want to cuddle you like a stuffed bunny.”

            You touched a can of deck stain, and looked over your shoulder. “Guys used to beat the shit out of me.”

            “That’s not your life anymore.”

            Hands in your pockets. “I’ll always see myself as that.”
           She brushed past, after straightening your bangs, and a kiss, scarcely a breath, on your forehead. “Listen to me.”

(2009)

9

Mattress on the backroom floor of her uncle’s camp, row of snowshoes hanging on the wall. Before you tried it, Stefanie showed a diagram: labia, clitoris, g-spot. “Concentrate here and especially here.” Pointing with her slim freckled thumb. “Not too much pressure to start,” demonstrating with her mouth on your palm, “but then—sometimes—more.” Pressing your fingers. “You’ll feel it, you’ll follow my lead.”

Creeping down for the first time, you were swept up, focused, tender, as ecstatic as she was while you tasted, sucked, tongued, until her crotch was pummeling your face and she cried, “Oh, oh, oh—okay Petey, stop, holy fuck please stop.”

(2012)

10

            “Who was that I saw you with behind the store?” your mom asked, after sloppy joes in her living room, spaghetti sauce over toasted hamburger buns. “Come on, Pea. Should we be celebrating your first girlfriend by now?” Her eyes flickered, a special mixture of teasing sadness.

“No that’s not what I’d call it.”

            “You mean not what she’d call it?”
            “Just not what it is.”

When you stood, she tried to hug you, but you were already putting on your coat.

 (2011)

11

Mattress on the camp floor the morning after your first time. Soap-scented sheets, pleasant mild hangover, sun falling through the white curtain across the room; outside the snowy yard, rusted birdfeeder, soggy clothesline. Stefanie was asleep, hand on your chest. Her breathing punctuated your foggy memory of the night before: she’d unzipped you, you’d sloppily kissed her neck; she’d said, “I want you inside me.”

            You stroked her hair. Before you got up to make coffee and eggs, you longed to throw open the front door, to stand naked and bold, twenty-nine years old, stretch your tiny arms to the snowy world outside as you call out, Does this count? Does this count?

(2010)

BIO: Timothy Boudreau lives and works in northern New Hampshire. His collection Saturday Night and other Short Stories is available through Hobblebush Books. His recent work has been nominated for Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and a Pushcart Prize. Find him on Twitter at @tcboudreau or at timothyboudreau.com.