Yellow Truck

We lie for hours on the front lawn of the rented house, my sister and I, side by side in our swimming costumes, trying for a tan. My sister pinks up quickly, but I have inherited my grandfather’s swarthy skin and my plump limbs turn to charcoal in the sunlight. A yellow truck rattles by and the back of it is filled with young men in singlets and khaki work pants. My sister raises her roasting body up on her elbows and stares combatively straight at them The truckload of workers break out into spontaneous cheering. Under the darkness of my tan I can feel a blush sweeping across my skin. They are cheering for her, for us. I have never been looked at or whistled at by boys before. I am the fat weird girl who reads too much. I am the one they laugh at, never to be cheered for. We wait for another truck to pass and when it does we both rise up to challenge it. Another cheer, and whistling this time as if the speed and the distance has disguised the hideous puffiness of my flesh. My sister holds up her middle finger and this defiant gesture earns her an excited round of applause.

“I’m gong to take my top off," I tell her. I know she doesn’t believe me, but when the next truckload of workers passes I lower the top of my one piece swimsuit and the cheers are explosive.

We lie back, giggling and breathless.

“If you could see ten years into the future, who do you think you would be with. Would you have a boyfriend? A husband?”

She snorts, turns over onto her front to scald her back in the sun. “No. I think we’ll both be sad and alone.”

She’s probably right. My mother found and lost a husband, my aunt never even looked for one, the husband that my grandfather has is barely sighted by the rest of the family unless he emerges briefly from his room to visit the bathroom. But still I am longing for sexual contact. If not a boyfriend, then at least a series of encounters with anonymous men. I will never fall in love with a man. I know that all my love is saved and given to my best friend Gillian. My heart swells to bursting when I think of her, and unless we finally admit it I am destined to a life of loneliness, but still I want to experience sex for myself.

A dream. The yellow truck stops. The nameless men vault over it’s railings, run towards our garden. They are all tight arms and shining sinew. They are ripe with heat and strength and sweat and when they are close enough to cast a shadow over me I feel afraid. My legs are shaking. I wanted this. I pulled down my swimming costume and exposed my breasts to them and I wanted them to stop for me. Now that they have I feel afraid, but the fear is a shiver that vibrates the muscles under my skin. I cross my legs coyly and the pressure of this movement creates a wet warmth in my crotch.

There are two endings to this dream and I’m not sure which of them I like the best. In the first I am passive. They circle me and I feel their shadows dark and cold like the bodies of sharks brushing against my lets. My fear silences me. The first man to break this circling stand off is slick with sweat. He kneels, straddling my crossed legs and it is at the encouragement of the others that he slips his hand between them and his finger, rough from work and smelling like loamy soil, drags the crotch of my swim suit aside and I feel the scratch of it entering me. I am trembling by now and my fear is like excitement. Hands on both my legs, hands around my wrists. Four men stretching me taught as a skinned roo and the fabric of my swimmers stretch so easily when he wrenches them to one side. The heavy chest pushing the air from my lungs. The scent of sweat and hay and diesel, the tugging of the hands around my limbs. I am acutely aware of each of these sensations and if I wake before the first man has finished with me and zips up, stepping aside for another man to take his place, then I am disappointed. I crush my fist between my legs and roll over hoping to regain the rising tide of excitement before the last fragments of sleep drift away.

In the second version of the dream the men flirt. This is a slower beginning, but I enjoy their banter. At some point one of them admits that he has seen my tits. I feign surprise. They all agree. They did see me lower my top. They saw the large brown nipples standing tight and erect. My nipples respond to the thought of their attention, pulling the thin white lycra away from my body. It is impossible to hide them from their gaze and they are gazing. I might as well show them what they have already seen. I take my swimming costume off, stripping it down and away from my breasts which bounce back into full view. They watch, enthralled and I enjoy them too, Seeing my breasts as they must see them, full and round and pulling into buds of dark skin at their crests. One of them asks if they can touch me and I consider this. Only the man I choose can touch me. I am free to choose. They are all different. Some of them are large shouldered with tight brown muscles, some of them are smaller, with a wiry athleticism, some of them are very tall, dwarfing me. Amongst them there is one who is shy and small and pale. This man is hovering near the edges of the crowd. I point to him and he when he drops to his knees in front of me I notice that he is shaking. I know then that I will make the others watch while he sucks on each of my breasts. I will peel the rest of my swimming costume down and make him spread my labia so that they will see how pink and soft it is inside. I will make him lie on top of me while they watch, tortured by desire. I will make him take his penis from his overalls and, fully clothed, and with his blundstone boots scratching for purchase in the dusty ground, I will make him enter me. Sometimes in this dream I let some of the others touch my breasts, touch the place where his penis has become slick with my juices. Sometimes I make them touch him too, with their hands, and their mouths. Through all of this I am the one they listen too. They do not challenge me or complain. They never judge me. They desire me. If I wake during this dream I lie in my bed and touch the place between my legs that has become warm and damp from dreaming, and I keep my men from the yellow truck where I can see them, behind my closed eyes in the bright focus of my imagination and I make them work until, pressing my lips together I fall into the silent pulsing dark of climax and then beyond that, into sleep.