mannikin

No. 5

she took his hand and led him down the steep hill and to the open bank.
i like you, fonzie, she said. i like you, you understand?
sure, he said.
let's play a game, she said.
ok.
she started removing her dress, the one garment he promised himself to remember her by.
well, take off your clothes, fonzie. we're going to go swimming.
swimming? but it's night and i don't have my swimming trunks.
this is a different kind of swimming, she said. this is called skinny-dipping. ain't you never heard of skinny-dipping before?
is it like lover's leap? he said.
sure, she said, not quite understanding.
you mean you want to play lover's leap with me? in the name of fonzie and everything.
i guess so, she said.
fonzie felt that he understood now. the excitement was unprecedented.
take your clothes off, fonzie. that's all part of the game. we have to be naked. that's what makes it fun. it's not a game if there's no fun in it, right?
fonzie started at his shirt, removed each button slowly. he wanted this to happen. he liked the idea of sharing his nakedness with another human being. but he was also very protective of his body.
well, hurry up now, fonz. you can't delay the inevitable.
without thinking, or allowing himself to entertain his reservation, fonzie quickly undid each button. he started at his belt when he caught a glimpse of miss traum's glimmering flesh. he liked that her body was so structurally different from his own and that there was so much yet to see. it would take days to fully comprehend the sight in front of him and the absence of light, the flattering moonlight only made it that much more exciting because it deprived him of the opportunity to look and really see everything. he thought back to the story of adam and eve--how it had affected him as a child and how it had informed his conception of sexuality in the present. he had a fundamental knowledge of the female form, but until now, no real-life experience.
there it was, in front of him. he tried to take it all in, contrasting in his mind the disparities between the crude and speculative sketch he'd always envisioned and the image now standing before him, a transient model for study. it was cruel, he thought, that she could provoke these feelings within him, simply by being naked, a different kind of naked, not the kind that stared back at him in the mirror when he showered or changed clothes, but a new kind, and not feel them herself. there were one or two glaring differences in their physiological make-up, though it was essentially the same, but it was the one or two differences that sent fonzie's head swirling. she was furry in places he thought unusual for women to be furry. she had breasts and jutting hips. and none of this seemed to faze her. this is what set fonzie off more than anything: that she had grown accustomed to this image and that it was so intrinsically a part of who she was and that, try as he might, he could never truly know what that was like. she would be a mystery forever.
come on in, she said.
fonzie discarded his pants into the collection of clothes sparsely scattered around the bank.
he jumped in.