Barely Older

I was barely older than them. In my early twenties. They were teenagers as I had never been a teenager, all giggly and blonde and fine tanned skin from a bottle, their uniforms too short at the waist and the little indentations of their belly buttons marring the perfectly flat surface of their stomachs.

You could smell them. They were all cheap perfume and sweat and heat. The heat was something else, I could feel it through my knees which were closer to them. When the bus lurched and one of them fell towards my lap there was heat in there too. I wanted them to be naked. I wanted this more than anything in that moment. I was appalled at myself, but I wanted it. They were ripe. They were peach fuzz and perfect sweet flesh. I wanted to bite down into them before the flesh was spoiled by their slow trudge towards death.

This makes me a monster, this moment of longing. They would look at me and curl their lips back in disgust if they knew about my sudden flush of lust. They would look at my flesh, which was never beautiful and smell my damp earth muskiness and make hideous squealing noises in their disgust.

I settled back into my seat on the bus. I pulled my knees in and away. I looked out of the bus window. I wondered if I had some kind of problem, to be lusting after girls who were barely grown. Would I still lust when I was thirty? Forty? Seventy? Would I be more and more perverse the older I became? Could I still blame the glossy magazine and TV advertising for my desire for something young and beautiful?