C is for Carpe Nocturne
Introduction to “C is for Carpe Nocturne”
This story is for Jim Steinman, who is best known as the songwriter behind Meatloaf, but also the writer of hits like Air Supply’s “Making Love Out of Nothing at All” and Celene Dion’s “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and Streisand’s “Left in the Dark Again.”
Steinman, like no one else I’ve known, tells the stories of high school Friday nights and the all-or-nothing angst of teenage love and passion and lust. My first line is lifted directly from his “Lost Boys and Golden Girls.” There’s one Steinman song titled “Everything Louder Than Everything Else,” and I guess that says it all. That feeling, that hormone-fueled rush that everything is possible and tomorrow is forever colors a lot of my work, both basking in it and reflecting cynically on it. Those rare teenage years, where our potential knows no limits and hasn’t yet been bashed down by the necessary choices and hard realities, is something I come back to again and again. There’s a romance there that is irrational and unrealistic and totally wonderful and dangerously reckless.
Then again, it’s just a story about what happens when you go out at night, and what else is out there...
* Reader’s note: Contains strong language and/or adult situations.
There were lost boys and golden girls streaming up and down the boulevard; parading for each other and also for the lines of platinum cruisers going back and forth on the street, turning around at 73rd and coming back for more...just in case there was one they missed, one that needed to be seen to be believed, one that would make worthwhile all the fuel credits they were spending.
She got picked up by some boys in a newer-model Gartussian coupe, the one with the methane A/C option that made it so popular for out-worlders. These were Earth boys, though, all blonde and fair skinned and only one head and two arms each. They didn’t even seem drunk, so she got in, squeezing between the two of them in the back seat, pretending to ignore all the hands that needlessly helped her in and buckled her down.
The music was loud, old Earth music, lots of guitars and drums, and that was fine, too. There was a certain recklessness to it, an earnestness and a passion, telling in a thousand different ways the story that the greatest mysteries in the universe were to be found in the distance between a boy’s fingers and a girl’s zipper.
Silly boys. So silly.
She had learned long ago how to nod and smile and giggle when they talked, without even having to listen. She wasn’t here for them, although they’d do; she was here for the night, for the frantic energy of unmet longing, for the promise of forgotten taboos, for the deliciously selfish taste of vows carelessly made and carelessly broken. The night was alive with life being given away in the hopeless hope of something better, something awful, something delightful, something unforgettable. The banality of daytime, of routine and regimen and wheel and spoke was banished here; here it was all about impossibility...impossible expectations, impossible desire, impossible needs.
She felt their hands on her body; one, maybe two. She was secure; she was in no danger. She could end it when and as she wished. But she felt their loneliness, their hunger; she could sense their senses, all jangly and electric at the thought of her skin. She could feel how they wanted her, how they were willing to give...what, all?...for a moment’s touch, a smile, just a hint that maybe she wanted them, too.
She didn’t want them, of course. But she wanted their wantings.
The kryptogen streetlights gave everything a flickering, unreal sheen, like they were all actors in a cheap off-world movie. Her friends on the street, her sisters and brothers and sons and daughters, were all beautiful and vulgar and desirable. Everything was loud and bright and manic and desperate. She thought it was wonderful. It was a wonderful night. Four Earth boys would be enough.
She had the driver, probably the youngest of the four, turn off onto a side street just beyond the Stryssian import shop. They found an empty parking lot; she told him to turn off the humdrive but leave the music on. She liked that Earth music; it felt right with these four boys.
She was undressed in a moment; it didn’t take much, with what she was wearing. The boys in the front spun their seats around, and she willingly opened herself to their hunger. She was not a tease. That was important, she would tell the younger girls: There was no sense in teasing. Why not make it satisfying for everyone?
One boy, the driver, found her breast with his lips; she gasped. The sensuality of it had never worn off; she hoped it never would. She would tell the younger girls that, too: Why should feeding not be enjoyable?
She put her hand on his head, the driver boy, and felt the intoxicating flood of his passion run from her fingers to her heart; she moaned as he fell limp on her chest. The boy from the other front seat was fondling two of her other breasts; when she touched his head, she felt a kaleidoscope of faces pumping into her brain...a cheerleader, a sister, a teacher’s face, before he slumped back in his seat.
The two back-seat boys had their hands below her waist, exploring wonders that Earth girls could never have given. She took a deep breath and touched them both at once. The one fed her something almost sweet; it was all nerves and uncertainty and innocence, and it was like sugar on her lips. But the other...the other had a longing that throbbed with anger, with violence, with a want to possess and conquer and destroy her; from him, she began to gasp in orgasm.
It was over in maybe five minutes, but it had been good; the rush would carry her for hours. Those Earth boys, they still believed, they still felt and wished and wanted deeply; they still had that primeval push that had thrust them all the way out here, to her planet.
She loved Earth boys.
She leaned forward and turned off the music. She put her clothes back on, then pushed her hand upward, effortlessly tearing the whole metal top off the cruiser. She climbed out, being careful not to step on the limp dead boys.
She headed back toward the boulevard, and looked up at the giant orange skyclock. It was only 38 cycles; there would probably still be kids at the diner. She wasn’t exactly hungry, but a chocolate shake would taste good right now.
