Little Cat

  Coach House Books, Toronto

  copyright © Tamara Faith Berger, 2013

  Lie With Me was originally published in 2001 by Gutter Press

  The Way of the Whore was originally published in Canada in 2004 by Gutter Press and in the U.S. as A Woman Alone at Night in 2007 by Soft Skull Press

  Published with the generous assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Coach House Books also acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Berger, Tamara Faith

  Little Cat [electronic resource] / Tamara Faith Berger. -- Rev. 2nd ed.

  Reissue of revised novels, Lie with me and The way of the whore, in one book.

  Electronic monograph in EPUB format.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-77056-339-1

  I. Berger, Tamara Faith Lie with me. II. Berger, Tamara Faith The way of the whore. III. Title.

  PS8553.E6743L58 2013——C813’6——C2013-900221-9

  Little Cat is available as an print book: ISBN 978-1-55245-271-4.

  LIE WITH ME

  ONE

  One time, Jupiter, happy to be idle,

  Swept the cosmic mystery aside

  And draining another goblet of ambrosia

  Teased Juno, who drowsed in bliss beside him:

  ‘This love of male and female’s a strange business.

  Fifty-fifty investment in the madness,

  Yet she ends up with nine-tenths of the pleasure.’

  Juno’s answer was: ‘A man might think so.

  It needs more than a mushroom in your cup

  To wake a wisdom that can fathom which

  Enjoys the deeper pleasure, man or woman.

  It needs the solid knowledge of a soul

  Who having lived and loved in woman’s body

  Has also lived and loved in the body of man.’

  – Ovid, The Metamorphoses

  But if I told you everything you’d probably think I was a slut and I can’t deal with that so I’m not going to tell you absolutely everything. I mean, I can’t fully deal with myself if I call myself a slut. It’s just that I know there’s all these problems with a girl like me having sex so much. I think if a guy loves sex it comes from the pleasure he feels in his cock – which is why he’s never called a slut. But because it’s easier for a girl to get disconnected from all the feelings she has down there, she can get lost trying to know herself. Do you see what I’m saying? Being a slut kind of implies getting lost, going astray.

  I think the trouble, too, is that a slut understands that there is not as much pleasure having sex as she wants there to be. Pleasure roams around her body like a runaway. I am speaking from experience on this. I used to hop from guy to guy, always looking to feel more down there, and I got so disappointed. I felt like I was missing something, as if my body were lacking the basest enjoyment that was supposed to be there. I’d seen how pleasure touched a cock and made a guy look like he was never coming back. Pleasure hurled right through him! But my pleasure never felt done – even when I came, there were parts stuck inside. Pleasure clung to my stomach, it swelled up my throat.

  See, I used to be the kind of girl who’d walk down the street and practically call out fuck me fuck me fuck me to strangers. I’d get dressed really sexy and go out to clubs to pick up. In the secret pit of myself, I felt like a lunatic loose on the street, legs in the air, eyes popping wide. I wanted men to grab me and fuck me right there.

  There was this time when I went out by myself and I wasn’t wearing any underwear. I straddled the bar stool, toes swinging over the ground. My pussy lips were pressing on the leather. My whole body was balanced like this, legs wide, back arched, clit stampeding like a bull. Then this man got near to me and started checking me out sideways. I saw his hands grip the bar. I knew right away that this was the person who was going to fuck me.

  ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ the guy asked.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Anything.’

  A grin started widening all over my face. It was like it was mocking my part down below. I thought I was going to start laughing out loud. I couldn’t put words to what was going on, but my stomach felt like it was going to erupt under my skirt, my body kept getting these warm continuous blows. I thought every person in that bar could see that coming off me. I mean, how much I wanted. How I could’ve fucked all of them from the way I felt. It’s always the same, I thought, getting sex like this is always the same. It starts from this feeling of flagrancy, which expands until it flattens, until I forget where I live and I forget what I like, until I don’t even recognize my face in the morning.

  The man at the bar started laughing with me, as if he knew that I was holding myself back. Then he stole my hand and pressed it on his dick. We both straightened our backs, like we were bracing ourselves. All my flesh pulled toward his flesh. I gulped my drink and banged for more.

  ‘More!’ I shouted. More! More! More!

  I started rubbing that guy with my fist up and down under the bar. His cock was a hose, all coiled up and bulging. I wanted to hold it forever. But my cunt was breathing like a small animal, begging me to do something.

  ‘Let’s go!’ I pleaded.

  The man looked at my eyes, as if he were confused by my need, then he opened his mouth to say something. I looked above his head. I didn’t want to see how he was going to say yes. I didn’t want to see if his mouth was trembling. The guy took my hand from his dick and held it tight. I slid off the bar stool. My cunt was so wet. Both my shoes hit the ground.

  I followed him out the back door of the club to the parking lot. I felt air rising under my skirt. The darkness was drying all the stuff on my thighs. The man led me to the end of the lot by a fence. He leaned up against it and pulled down his zipper. I wanted to cling to his body like wind. But when I saw the glare of his long hanging thing I went down on my knees. His cock started swelling in front of my face. I opened my mouth. I took the head of his dick between my lips. My whole neck arched up and circled round. I was sucking and sucking and I heard a car starting behind me. I couldn’t stop, my heart was speeding. The car was coming closer behind my back. I couldn’t stop. I felt the lights burning onto my ass, pumping as I sucked. I closed my eyes, I jacked my jaw. I kept sucking in a pulse going on and going off. I thought I heard two men laughing behind me. Then it got dark around us and I couldn’t breathe right.

  ‘Hey,’ the guy moaned, lifting my head by the hair. ‘Hey, come up now – easy, baby.’

  My breathing got rapid, ragged, the second the head of him popped from my lips. I’d wanted it faster and harder. I didn’t care who was watching.

  ‘Don’t. I want more!’

  My tongue was hanging out, my palms were on his legs, I was breathing so fast.

  ‘I wanna fuck you,’ the guy said. ‘Come back up.’

  I saw the guy’s stretched-out neck. I wanted him to fuck me too. I pressed my breasts into his legs. The sky looked so large and so black that I felt like I could fly underneath it.

  The man raised my dress as I climbed him. My naked ass was exposed and I felt it clench in his hands. Then
he slipped his palm through my thighs and put two of his fingers inside me. I was so wet down there, dripping. I tried to squeeze his fingers up me but I didn’t have time. He was poking my cunt like a madman.

  ‘Let me do it, just like this, let me feel you, lemme fuck you, just for a second, just for a second.’

  My thighs were splitting and I started to shiver. I was rocking back and forth, my whole pelvis in his hand. My pussy was sticking to his fingers like a leech. I wanted to fuck, to feel his cock just like this, his skin on my skin. I wanted to plug up my hole, feel his whole naked part up my whole naked centre. I wanted to jolt myself, fuck myself, make myself cum. My hands went to the guy’s chest. I wanted my fists to pound until I hurt him.

  It was like I was stuck. I knew where I was and I knew what I was going to do.

  ‘Get a condom. Come on!’

  The man reached down. I couldn’t look at what he was doing. My face was turned up toward the sky. We were pressing back into the fence. I was swallowing hard. I couldn’t stop now. I felt the man’s bone pressing up in my thighs, he was bending his knees. I was trying to stop myself from moaning too loud. My lower body felt like it was going to flare open. Then he pushed up so hard that it shocked me. My legs went all locked. My mouth filled up with air. He was lifting me up, right from the ground. It was like my cunt lips were sliding out of my body, growing, and I thought I heard men laughing again. I squeezed my legs, clipped so tight, we were fucking and rocking back into the fence. I tried to shift myself more and more in his hands, move with his thrusting – god, he was in me …

  It was all going too fast, I couldn’t keep up. The man was gripping my hips, his head to the sky. Still stabbing, he opened, lips unfurled, eyes jacked wide, his temples were beating all over his face. I held his shoulders, our lips almost came together, and I clamped my hands on his head: you’re beautiful you’re beautiful you’re beautiful. Then he made this noise like a tied-up dog. Still pounding and thumping, his knuckles dug into the sides of my ass. I knew it was over. My breathing sounded almost like crying.

  I started to stretch my legs toward the ground and his cock slipped out of me. His shoulders came down. The guy was prying me off his body too fast and I fell in front of the fence. I wasn’t steady. My arms reached back to find something to hold on to. I just wanted to lie down – it was over, all over, I wanted to go home.

  I saw the condom crumpled up on the gravel beside me, there was cream shimmering on the top. My skirt was still hitched at my hips. I was just sitting there, panting. I wanted to go home. I heard the man zipping up his pants. People were coming out of the bar and starting their cars. I straightened my skirt and got up. The man looked around. I knew that he was ready to go. I could barely move my legs to walk. All I could think was over and over: Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe?

  I bet you think I’d have deserved it if I got a disease that night. You’d say I was just being a dumb slut walking around all tarted up and having sex with a stranger in a parking lot. You’d say that, or you’d think it at least. But you don’t really know why I do it. I’m not hooked on danger or anything like that. And of course I don’t want to get a disease. It’s just that there are times where I don’t see what’s safe before losing my footing. It’s that feeling of falling, I mean, falling into someone’s strangeness – there is no way around it for me. It’s like I walk into someone in sex and I know: I am losing parts of my body in this, my body dissolving, my body for his … Following, falling, fucking like that, until every split second of being open wraps around me. My flesh looms so close and so large in this light. When I can have sex with a stranger my body is filled to its ends with these kinds of murmurs:

  I need your cock to touch my cunt.

  I need us naked for only one second.

  I need us forever to be here forever.

  I have always had to feel myself like I’ve never felt myself before. The very first time it ever happened, I was young, maybe seven years old. It was late at night when I was put into bed with a boy. It was just the two of us, under the covers, completely awake. We stared for so long at each other, until his eyes felt like my eyes in buzzing grey light, until our breathing turned fast. The places between our legs became opening and shining.

  I remember how we went toward each other, really slow, like we were moving through water. We got so close to each other’s faces. Then we moved at the same time down each other, until his face was at my thighs and my face was at his. He lifted my nightgown, I pulled down his underwear. We stared at each other down there. His mouth pressed the line that was beating between my legs. My lips touched so light on his animal skin. His penis looked like a bloom I’d never seen open. I thought I was staring at the softest, warmest thing in the world. He was putting his lips on my vagina. We stayed together like that all night.

  When I remembered much later what I’d done with that boy, it felt like the worst kind of secret. I had this cold wind racing from my head to my stomach every time I saw in my head how I’d touched and kissed him, over and over, and how I’d been touched and kissed down there over and over … I didn’t want that boy to remember what we’d done. I wanted to think that it never even happened. See, I didn’t understand how I could’ve already been touched down there. I had never even touched myself down there. I couldn’t stop feeling my face stuck in that black and warm place between his thighs. The whole thing between us kept playing in my head in slow motion. I couldn’t get it out. What happened between me and the boy was tying me up so tightly that I couldn’t fall asleep without thinking about it.

  When I was around twelve, there was a guy who started liking me. He was a few years older than me and he invited me over to his house. He took me down to his basement. We sat on the couch and we were just watching a movie when he started touching my breasts. He turned my whole body away from the TV. I didn’t know why he was doing that. It felt like his hands were pawing these lumps that were attached to my front. Then the guy moved his hands up to my face and cupped my cheeks. It made my lips part open the way he pulled a little. I watched his face coming in toward mine. His eyes were closed and he pressed his lips down onto mine and all of a sudden from that cupping on my cheeks, he opened my mouth and his tongue pushed inside. He started licking around. It felt like his tongue was made of something plastic. I watched him like that, inside my face, and I knew that my tongue was licking his too. The guy’s face was swelling, his eyes were flat shut. It looked like he was having a really good dream. I slit my eyes and shifted them away. I didn’t want to see how he was liking this and I was not.

  When I was finally alone back in my own bed that night, I kept thinking about the way that his face looked so close to mine, his hands on my tits, his tongue moving inside me. I knew that I never wanted that to happen again! I felt like a monster. I never wanted something like that to happen again. Because I thought: There is nothing on my body to touch.

  I mean, who was I to let that guy touch me? I never said a thing when his hands squeezed my breasts. I didn’t say a word when his tongue left my throat. It felt like words gurgled up to my lips but those words disappeared when I swallowed. What would I have said? Would I have said please? Would I have said stop? Would I have said lick, suck, cat, dog or dream?

  I remember how, afterward, I couldn’t even tell my friends that I’d kissed or made out, that a guy had touched my breasts. It was just me with myself, every night in my bed, saying you will never let that happen again. After a while, I guess, I felt fine keeping it inside me. But maybe when you never say a thing, your thoughts spread like mould.

  See, I kept feeling ugly. And I let it happen again even though I said it never would.

  I heard someone say that once a girl opens her legs she can never close them again. In my case that’s true.

  I was dancing at a party in someone’s basement when I was in high school. We were all drinking whe
n it happened. I remember how my body felt thickened with juice. Only my breasts felt alive then, thrust out from my chest. They felt so good that I was jumping! I was gulping drink after drink, and all I wanted to do was move like that, feel my flesh shaking loose on my bones, my arms in the air. I started to push my tits into all those dancing people. I laugh at myself when I think of that night. See, I ended up going to the bathroom with this guy. I don’t exactly remember how we got there but I think he pulled me out of the crowd. I remember he said: I was watching you dance.

  It was dark in the bathroom and it smelled like a wet plant. The door was locked. I really had to go pee but this guy was pressing me down by the shoulders until I was on my knees. The bones in my back pressed against the slick side of the toilet. That guy was pulling down his pants and he was holding my head with one hand so I wouldn’t move. He was calling my name but he was so far above me. I felt all this hair at my mouth. I didn’t think that was what it would feel like. He held himself and his body got bigger in my face. His hips started rocking. His thing that had no hair pushed into my lips. It was there on my tongue like a water balloon. My mouth had to really open. I wanted him to stop moving, just let me feel it for a second, just let me feel what it was like. But he slid it in my mouth until it felt too deep. I had to open my jaw and it hurt. I was ready for it to stop. But he was too tight with his hand on the back of my head. He kept horsing the thing and his hips in my face.

  ‘Please, please, please,’ he moaned. He sounded like a girl.

  I started moaning too. I heard myself gag.

  Then this strange sour cream flew into my throat, the guy’s grip went slack on the back of my head. I quickly yanked away and looked up. There was this flash where I saw his head reeling. But I knew he was happy, he kept saying my name, saying yes saying yes …