I got the hots for Tracy: sixteen, bleached-blonde hair and skin-tight Wranglers, all Norse godlike, with kind of hawkish features. Beautiful and hard and nasty to those she didn't know, offhand with the rest of us, and most of the time just not giving a fuck.
Courting was slow. Over God knows how many months, I worked my way up to the back seat of the school bus and finally got the bottle up to ask her: What would you do if I felt your tits? She scowled at me, making the most of the year-and-a-half age gap, and said: I'd grope your cock.
promotion
Everything else just happened. I say fate now. Back then, I'd no idea. There was a dance in the Hope at the Cromarty Hall. I walked out of the South Parish in something like a suit. Shouldn't have bothered.
Tracy was with her mates. They were all in pink or white shorts and tight white jeans, half-pissed, some of them with boys in tow, the rest, including Tracy, laughing and snarling at anyone and everyone, and her eyes opened wide when she saw me, almost maternal, kind of, Oh it's you! And then her body language went — pout and girlishness right after how loud and hard she'd been — and I was smitten again, not knowing what to say or do except buy her drinks and nod along to the band and chain-smoke and at the end hold the hair out of her mouth as she puked on the dance floor, and then the mix of pure lust and roughness when she snogged me. Right after the puking, a snog. But so what? All that softness. Oh God. That and how she held on to me, the arms going round my neck, and the closeness of it, all the inbred and two-faced jaws dropping just watching.
Tracy was kneeling over me, big and bold and glorious and gasping for it.
She dragged me to the bowling green next to the tennis court, knocked me over, got the trousers off me and then stopped, all wide-eyed wonder and maybe even a little bit of love when she saw I was wearing a pair of Finola's knickers. I was lucky. Or maybe not. Like I said before: fate. I hadn't come out expecting to be ravished. No one knew I wore girls' underwear. That was part of the thrill of it: going out and no one knowing, and me knowing what they'd do to me if they knew. There was the feeling closer to Finola too. That and the total tightness of it, cos even though I was hell of a skinny and I'd got the knickers to stretch a good bit, I was older and bigger than when I hung out with Finola — nearly fifteen when I finally got out with Tracy — and, if they caught me in these skin-tight knickers, all the boys down at the dancing, all the men down there, and the women, they'd lynch me. The only person who knew now was Tracy, and she was kneeling over me, big and bold and glorious and gasping for it.
Boy, I knew it, she said. You're a poof. But I'm going to cure you. She stripped off, made me wear her knickers over Finola's and then blew me through them right there on the bowling green.
But the real revelation came when I had a go at her. First off we kissed. She shuddered, stopped and pushed me off. I'm sitting there, not quite knowing what, and she's on her back, rubbing her belly, smiling.
How did you do that?
Do what? I said.
Here again, she says, and held out a hand. Gently, though.
So I kissed her again, one hand on her breast, and she groaned, trembling all the way down to her toes, then suddenly this wild kicking and punching as she struggled to get away from me. I fell back with a foot in the face. She got up and ran to the other end of the bowling green nearly screaming, she was so spooked. This is freaky, she said. This is so freaky.
I went after her, confused and in pain from the kicking, but still, horsing, playing the bogeyman, me in two pairs of knickers and her less than half-dressed. She started laughing, trying to keep out of reach.
Have you been reading that Joy of Sex book?
What are you talking about? I said. And she screamed for real when I put on a bit of speed and cornered her by the hedge and bowls shed. Christsake, Tracy, what is it?
And she goes: I came.
You what?
She nodded and said: First time ever. I just got two off you and we hardly did anything. She tried a smile, out of breath, still a wee bit wary. I think it might be a gift, she said.
And I was like: What?
A gift. Like psychic, or being able to see the future. Healing hands.
"I came," she said. "First time ever. I just got two off you and we hardly did anything."
I don't know which one of us was more amazed. There was nothing for me in the books at home. No mention. I made up mad theories about Finola's spirit flowing through me, with the knickers and everything, and thought maybe I knew what Tracy liked because Finola was a girl and she was possessing me. But I was too old to conjure her image in the mirror by then, and even after the elastic snapped in the last pair of her knickers, I was still able to bring Tracy to tears.
At first it was kind of annoying how she'd go into orbit just cos I put my hand on her neck or nibbled her nipple. But after a while we learned to draw it out for ages. Got it down to a T, so we'd both come together. The first few times that happened I got more visions: tunnels of light, orchards, and angels, always angels. But then it would keep on after we'd finished, and I'd walk home, the whole sky sparkling with stars and wings.
It wasn't all sex, but it was mostly, cos that was the only thing I was good at. Some people are good at football, or chess, or singing, but my thing's being able to make folk melt. Guys and girls spilling between my fingers like ice cream.
And that's how they taste. I could never quite understand Dove, or others since, saying they'd never go down on their girlfriends, or moaning about how they'd never swallow, when I get kind of drunk on spunk and cunt juice. All these bodily fluids are like delicious liqueurs to me — apple sap or honeysuckle. Skin's like meat or sweeties. Some nights I finish, I feel like I've been to a feast. n°
Excerpted from the book Venus as a Boy (Bloomsbury).
To buy this book, click here.
Luke Sutherland grew up in the Orkney Islands. He is most recently the author of Sweetmeat, and his first novel, Jelly Roll, was shortlisted for the 1999 Whitbread First Novel Award. He has never before been published in the U.S. He is also known for his musical collaborations with bands such as Mogwai and Long Fin Killie, and for his personal music project, Bows.
