Graciela
"Good morning, sleepyhead," she says.
"Mmphth," I reply. It's five to seven. The shift doesn't start till seven, and by the time a nursing assistant gets to my room it's usually about eight. "You're here bright and early," I say to the stranger in my room, coherent at last.
"This is my first day on this floor," she says. "I wanted to get an early start. My name's Graciela."
Graciela brings me breakfast and my toothbrush. She seems bright and efficient, which is a welcome change. She's also better looking than most of them. Not that she's beautiful -- just better than ugly. She's heavy; her breasts seem to ripple as she moves, and her eyes, very close together, are tiny in her big round face. Her dark hair is tied back, with stray strands escaping at odd angles. When she turns away, I see her hips, large and round, the white slacks stretched tight over them. I see the outline of her enormous panties. Still, she's young -- in her twenties, I'd guess -- and her smile is warm and pleasant, even with the yellow crooked teeth. After breakfast she does my bed bath. She washes first my face, them my arms and chest. Then she takes the sheet and pulls it away from my lower body with a flourish. "Ta-da," she says with a smile, and looks at my private parts, which I know without looking down are small and withered, atrophied by twenty years of disuse.
"Don't you get embarrassed with strange women handling your penis every day?" she says.
"You get used to it," I say.
"I don't," she says matter-of-factly, as she washes my genitals. "I've been doing this for three years and I still feel funny every time I do it." I have no sensation below my chest and can't feel what she's doing, but somehow I know she's got the tip of my penis between her fingers, and is caressing it gently.
She finishes the bath, gets me dressed, and rolls my wheelchair beside the bed. Then she swings my legs out and puits them on the footrests, and pulls me to a sitting position on the side of the bed. "Don't be nervous," she says. "I'm strong."
I'm not nervous. She looks strong. She puts her arms around me and holds me tight. My face is pressed against her breast, which is soft and warm. She sets me easily in the chair, and I'm up for the day. "That wasn't bad, was it?"
"You're all right," I say.
"Do you really think so?" she breathes, her face close to mine. The soft tang of garlic on her breath is not unpleasant.
The next day, again, Graciela is there when I wake up. She's got my breakfast tray all set up, and she sits on the side of my bed to feed me. When she fills up the basin for my bath, she pushes the door closed with her elbow, and then she pauses a few seconds, breathing deeply, before she removes the sheet. I can see her breasts rising and falling as she looks down at me. "Madre de Dios," she mutters in a barely audible whisper. I'm puzzled at her reaction to my shrunken parts, but I'm too self- conscious to mention it. There is a sheen of sweat on her forehead as she washes between my legs. It takes her a long time, and when she gets me into the chair she holds me against her breast a bit longer than is necessary to get me out of the bed.
On the third day, I open my eyes to look into hers, a few inches from mine, and breathe deeply of the garlic that reminds me of the life I had before the bland food of hospitals and nursing homes. Graciela is kneeling on the floor and leaning on the bed, her head bend down. "Hi, handsome," she says and smiles. "You'll never know how bad I want to kiss you good- morning."
"You can if you want to," I say, a little aroused by the prospect.
"I wish I could," she says, standing up and getting my tray ready in a businesslike way. "But you'd complain to the charge nurse and get me fired."
"No I wouldn't," I say, suddenly wanting very much to kiss her.
"Yes you would," she says, and smiles. Somehow she looks a lot prettier than she did at first. Her smile is nice to look at, despite her bad teeth.
Every day, Graciela embarrasses me by making a big production of washing my private parts, breathing deeply and all but having an orgasm. When she gets me out of bed she holds me against her a little longer each day. Now she's bold enough to press my head against her breast and she massages herself with my face. She doesn't wear a bra, and I can feel her nipple through the fabric, erect under my lips. After about a week, I'm kissing the nipple through the cloth. "That's nice," she whispers, and I can feel her warm seasoned breath on my ear.
A few days after that, when she pulls back the sheet and looks at my pathetic little cock, she suddenly bends impulsively and gives it a quick kiss. I can see the blush spread over her cheeks, and she glances nervously over her shoulder at the door to the corridor. It's still safely closed. "I'm sorry," she says. "I couldn't help myself."
"That's all right," I say.
"It's so little. . . ," she says, moving her hands helplessly.
"It hasn't been big in twenty years."
"Pobrecito," she says, and adds, "I think I like them little." Graciela reaches out to touch me with a hesitant finger. "You really don't mind?"
"No. Of course not. I only wish I could have felt it."
"You can't feel this at all?" She's stroking the tip of the penis.
"No," I say. "I can't feel anything below about here." I make a line across my chest with my finger, at the level of the nipples.
"Then you can feel this?" She caresses my right nipple. "Yeah," I say. "Feels good."
"Do you still have. . . you know. . . urges?"
"Sure," I say, and laugh. "Do I ever. I can't feel my balls, but they still dump as much testosterone into my system as Mike Tyson's. It's harder for me, though, because I can't do anything about it."
"Well, he couldn't do anything when he was in jail," she says.
"He could still masturbate."
"And you can't even do that," she says, as though she were realizing it for the first time. "Poor baby," she says.
A few days after that, Graciela looks at me thoughtfully. "If you still have urges," she says, "is there anything. . . I mean. . . can you still. . . you know. . . do anything?"
"Sure," I say. "I should be able to do oral sex pretty well."
"Really?"
"Sure. I guess. I haven't ever gotten a chance to try, but I think about it all the time."
"Do you?"
I laugh shortly. "You know, I've never had the nerve to say this to anyone, but for twenty years that's practically all I ever think about. Every time I see a woman, all I can think of is what it would be like to go down on her. But I'm in a wheelchair. Women just look at me like a piece of furniture."
"I don't think you're any piece of furniture." Her hand has strayed between my legs and she's playing with my little penis again. "Do you ever think about going down on me?"
"You most of all." I say. And it's true. Ever since that first day, I've lain awake nights imagining what it would me like to have my head between her soft heavy thighs.
"I love getting eaten," she says. "I like it better than anything else."
When she gets me up, she presses me to her breast as usual, then releases me, bending her face low. "I think I wish I could kiss you."
"Please do," I say.
"Somebody might see us."
"The door's closed."
"Someone might walk in."
"Nobody'll walk in."
"Yes, somebody will," she says. "But I really want to." She takes my hand and holds it between both of hers. They are very warm.
"Me too," I say.
"You want to know how much I want to?" Without waiting for an answer, she pulls my hand between her legs, and holds it tightly in her crotch. Her pants are very wet. She rubs my hand against herself. It's been so long since I've touched a woman. I'm dizzy and short of breath for most of that day.
The next day Graciela is very businesslike. "I apologize for what I did yesterday," she says. "It was imperdonable." "That's all right," I say. "I enjoyed it."
"It was not professional," she says. Now she briskly washes my cock without playing with it -- though she gazes wistfully at my body before putting my clothes on -- and doesn't hold me as tight when she gets me out of bed. Graciela is the model of professionalism for several days, and I begin to wonder if everything else had been a figment of my sex-starved hormone- driven imagination.
But grdually, she begins to play absently with my cock when she washes me, and sometimes reaches under the sheet during breakfast. I hardly notice any more, though, since I can't feel anything. One day a week later, when she puts me in my chair, she kneads her breast thoroughly with my face on the way and I nibble her nipple through the cloth with my lips. She pauses and looks at me speculatively, the way you'd look at an automobile engine that's stopped running for no apparent reason.
"I been thinking," she says.
"About?"
"About kissing you."
"I think about that too."
"You really want to kiss me?"
"Of course. I think about it all the time."
"Okay," she says, and goes over to the door. "Now," she says, suddenly brisk and businesslike once more, "I figured this out last night. The door doesn't have a lock, so we can't keep anybody out that wants in. But if we put this in front of it. . . , " she rolls the little table with my breakfast tray on it over and pushes it next to the door, ". . . it'll make enough noise we can stop what we're doing by the time they get past the curtain," and she pulls the curtain that hangs from a track in the ceiling closed like a tent around us. She smiles at me triumphantly. "Now -- about that kiss." She puts her arms around me and sits half on my armrest and half on my lap and we kiss.
I might have had a kiss that good sometime before I got paralyzed, but I don't remember it. She kisses with her whole body, pressing against me and squirming, touching my ears, my neck, and all the parts on my body I can feel, and she guides my hands to all the best parts of her. When we finally release each other a long time later, I feel faint and out of breath and better than I've felt in twenty years.
"This works good," she says, pushing the curtain back and opening the door. "We can do it again."
That whole day I am in a goofier daze than the Alzheimer patients and I don't sleep much that night thinking about Graciela. I am in love.
When morning comes at last, she comes in with my tray and watches me eat like a cat at the dinner table. I gobble my breakfast and swill my coffee through a straw. Then she pushes the table against the door and draws the curtain. She pulls off the sheet and lies down to kiss me, pressing her whole body against the length of me. "Good morning, darling," she says at last, and gets up to start my bath. "How come you like to kiss me?" she asks while she fills my basin at the sink.
"You're beautiful."
"I'm fat. I'm not even pretty."
Actually, she's right, there. I must find a way to disagree without actually lying. "You look just the way I like a woman to look," I say. And that's the truth.
She sits on the edge of the bed with her hand on my knee. I can't feel her hand, but I can she she's softly caressing it.
"Just my face?"
"All of you."
"You haven't seen all of me." She smiles.
"No, but I'd like to."
"Tell me," she says. "If you could see any part of me at all, which part would you choose?"
It feels as though someone just set the thermostat to a hundred. "Your pussy," I say at last, starting to sweat, surprised by my own boldness.
"Why?"
"Because. . . because I want to eat it," I blurt out.
"Really?"
"Yes really, Graciela. I've lived like a monk for twenty years. I feel like I'm gonna explode I want you so much." I'm sweating freely now as she thinks that over. I really do feel ready to explode. Or burn up.
She turns and walks across the room to look out the window. Her buttocks are round and ripe in the white pants. "I've figured out how to do it," she says. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Okay." She comes back to the bed and leans over me, speaking in a rapid whisper. "Tomorrow I'll wear this big full skirt I've got. It's not really a medical uniform, but it's white and looks okay. So, I'll close the door and set the table for a booby trap, like I always do, and I'll slip off my panties, and I'll do this." She stands with one foot on the floor, straddles my head and lowers herself onto my face. She presses the crotch of her slacks against my face and I can smell her musk through the cloth. She rests her weight on me, her thick soft thighs pressed against my cheek. Her pants are soaking wet. "Now imagine me with my skirt held up and no underwear. . . "
"Oh yes," I moan, squirming, tasting her. She gets off me and grins. "Tomorrow, then, my darling."
She finishes getting me in my chair and gives me a quick kiss before opening the door. That day I'm even goofier than the day before. I'm lucky none of the doctors come that day; they'd think my mind is messed up for sure.
I feel like a kid on Christmas eve, a teenager before his first date, a bride on the night before the wedding. After twenty years as a thing, a piece of furniture, I'm going to be human again. I'm wide awake at the first gray glow of dawn. She usually shows up a little before seven, and I barely breathe, listening for her footstep in the hall. Seven o'clock comes, then five past, then a quarter past. Where is she? I'm in an agony of anticipation. When I hear steps approaching it is a quarter to eight, and a nursing assistant named Maxine comes in with my tray.
Maxine is about seventy, and has worked here since the late Triassic. Her skin is like the skin of an apple that's fallen on the ground and been dried, wrinkled, and cooked brown by the sun, and her hair is dyed an unnatural jet black. "Mornin'," she says. "Looks like I got you today."
I stare at her in disbelief. "It's not Graciela's day off, is it?"
"Graciela gone, honey."
"What do you mean, gone?"
"She fired."
"Fired?" The room seems to rock and my eyes go out of focus; my world is coming apart. "Fired? Why?"
"Well, I ain't supposed to tell none of the residents, but I pissed off about it."
"What happened?"
"That stupid charge nurse believe every stupid thing she hear."
"What happened?"
"You know old Mr. Wllis, how crazy he be?"
"Yeah?"
"Shoot, he don't even know what planet he on, let alone what goin' on on this one."
"So what happened?"
"Well he told Miz Frankel that poor Graciela done talk dirty to him. And the fool bitch believed him."
"What do you mean?" I say.
"He say she talked sexy to him. You ever hear of anything so stupid? Why'd a young gal talk sexy to an old man like that? Shoot, that be about as stupid as talking sexy to a cripple like you. I 'spect old Mr. Willis been thinking about some gal he knowed eighty years ago and think it just happen. But that fool Miz Frankel believed him, and that poor young gal got fired. Oh, well. . ." She took the cover off the tray. "You got somethin' in your eye, honey?"