"I break your laws. Note that: your laws, not mine. But if I am bound by laws, they are of my own making, and I believe that is my right - to choose which authority to submit to and in what way."

...

The Commandments

...

"I'm gonna' break every one of them," you whispered in my ear in a gust of strawberry gum. You smelled like sin already then, a scent so strong I was sure Sister Clarisse would call it a fail-safe way to a roasting spit in hell.

"What?"

"The commandments," you mumbled behind Sister Clarisse's bulky black habit, your breath tickling my cheek. "Gonna' break every single one."

I wanted to inhale the air of rebellion oozing from that red dress you wore. You, sitting next to me, legs moving constantly, swinging, shoes scuffing the floor while Sister Clarisse chafed our ears raw with her talk of morality. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Never have words been more wasted than on this boy, because I saw only you. That puffy dress in the color of deer blood, like Bambi's mama had bled all over you.

"Red is not appropriate for Sunday school." Sister Clarisse's mouth was drawn righteously tight, her chin bulging over her collar as she burrowed her Jesus eyes into you.

Carroty pigtails, scabs on your knees and no front teeth. Ugly, I thought until you threw that little stubborn head of yours back and brayed like a mule. Sister Clarisse sent you home with a note for your mama and my dumb little heart swelled up big enough to fill my entire Transformers t-shirt.

"Incorrigible." That's what she called you when she caught you stealing a biscuit from the bible study class next door. Thou shalt not steal.She took you into the Deacon's office. You came out dry-eyed with welts on your hands.

And I was in love.

...

I lost my virginity to you on a jittery August afternoon behind your daddy's shed. You were never a virgin, even when you were one. I followed you around like a puppy-dog, watching you, heart in throat as you painstakingly did everything Sister Clarisse told you not to, and then some.

It's been a while since I worried about your soul's salvation when I bump into you down at Morvant's. You're wearing a red dress. Red, as if you've slaughtered Bambi yourself.

"Reminds me of Sunday school." I touch the silky material and want to sniff it to check if you still smell like sin.

"Fat good it did me," you say.

"So did you manage to break them all yet? The commandments?"

You've got freckles on your shoulders, a ruthless sway to your hips and a big-ass gap between your teeth. Ugly, I think until you knock that notion on its rear with that horsy laughter of yours, head thrown back.

"Still have a few you can help me with."

I squint to blur the jarring sight of the gold band. Just metal, metal in a circle. It don't mean nothing, I tell myself. Nothing. Need pulsating under my skin at the sight of you with your hair in a hot mess, your dress askew and riding up your thighs. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. Sister Clarisse's words painstakingly scratched into my shallow moral fiber.

You erase them with a brazen kiss.

...

For claiming not to believe in God, you sure spend a whole lot of time trying to piss him off. And every now and then you get the kind of itch only I can scratch. You tell your husband some cock and bull and drop your kid at your mama's. Then you come running.

You and me. The air is swelteringly humid like that sweet spot between your legs and the music, a primal heartbeat whooshing through my head as we dance our way to eternal damnation. Cheek to cheek, bumping and grinding, whispering dirty things in velvety rabbit ears. Commands are just words, that ring, a piece of round metal and none of it matters when you twine the short hairs at the nape of my neck into tiny mice-tails and move your hips against me. Those hips, sweetly rounded, but too narrow to birth a kid. They had to cut him out of you.

That kid of yours, who looks an awful lot like me.

A mistake, you say but you smile because it's the kind of mistake we repeat, over and over again. A dance, a few drinks becomes you and me, skin slippery and eager. Cover me. Covet me. A steamed up pick-up truck, the frostbitten parking lot beyond it, as if sprinkled with caster sugar. I keep my sight glued on the streetlight as I move inside of you. It just seems less wrong. In and out, the griping of sweaty skin against faux leather seats, the vulgar soundtrack of you and me.

You grind your apricot cheeks against my stubble until you look like Colonel Sanders with a red beard. But you never look guilty. Never.

I watched something about Ted Bundy on television once. He was handsome and smiled charmingly into the camera. A peaceful certainty that I recognize in you. No scruples, no lying awake sleepless at night remorseful about the things you've done. You fuck without frills and bows, take what you want. You scare me sometimes.

"We can't keep doing this," you say because you know that's how the script goes. Remorseful married woman - check. Your rear pressed against the steering wheel, your hand braced on the side window to steady yourself and legs open wide for me. I cringe at the crudeness of us, but when you plant a clumsy kiss at the corner of my mouth and laugh your raspy laughter, guilt is very far away.

"We sure spend a lot of time breaking this one," I say, because frankly, it's eating at me, the thought of him waiting at home for you. But who the fuck gets married at seventeen anyways? I reckon you just did it to piss God off. Or me.

Your handprint left on the condensation of the window somehow seems more sordid than my seed spilled on the seat beneath us. You barely bother cleaning yourself up, red dress yanked over your hips before you jump out. I watch your easy gait as you tuck your panties into your coat pocket, skipping down the curb towards your house. To the bed you share with him. You'll have no problem making up a lie and he'll believe you too.

And I know this won't be the last night you come home with my truck's steering wheel pattern emblazoned across your ass.

You call me and ask me to meet you at your house, that house that he built, and it seems like some kind of trick. Or maybe I just don't want to see the part of you that doesn't belong to me, the world behind that little gold band.

It's been months since we last met. I string this girl along, just to prove that I'm not waiting around for you to summon me and I'm not proud of it. She's got razor sharp hipbones and a shrill voice. I can't lie - I miss your throaty laughter and the saltiness of your skin. She wears a scratchy perfume that clashes with the menthol cigarettes she favors. I turn my face away and breathe through my mouth when we fuck.

You open the door and I falter, my foot jerking back instead of forward. Your head is a bald, bold moon and your clothes hang like slack sails on a mast. You shoot your chin out, daring me to say something. Who stole your hair, carrot top?

You take me by the hand and lead me upstairs. Your slim hips swing back and forth with each step, no meat, no flesh on those bone pipes and I'm queasy. If you're hoping to make love, I'm not sure I can get it up.

"Where's the kid?" I ask because God, it's quiet here. You're waiting for death and I don't want to be around. I know what folks around here must be saying. A girl like that, she had it coming. Divine retribution.

"With my mother."

And he, where the hell is he? I was supposed to get the fun part, the dancing, the drinking, the sneaking around. Not this. We reach the master bedroom but when I start unbuttoning my shirt you shake your head. "No. Not for that."

"What the hell am I doing here then?" I pretend to be miffed because I know my relief would hurt you.

"You're gonna' help me get ready."

You move on rickety stick legs, making me follow you into the bathroom. Your red dress on the floor, spread out like a sacrifice. The bathtub filling up water so hot the mirrors are clouded in milky fog.

You stop in front of me, holding your arms up like a child. And I get it, I do, but I don't want to, don't want to, Goddammit. But you called me here, knowing damn well I'll do anything for you, anything you ask. There is no hair to get tangled in buttons when I pull your blouse over your head. Just that smooth bald skull and the skin stretched taut over your cheekbones.

"How long?"

My hands skim down your arms, bringing the bra straps with them. As if someone has draped a stick chair in rabbit hide, that's how it feels to touch you. I don't dare to look at you properly. I can't.

"Long," you say and you actually laugh when a sock rolls out of one of the bra cups and lands by my foot.

You place my palm where your breast used to be. I don't want to, don't want to. But I don't want to be rude. There is nothing there but a knotted, angry ridge sitting directly on top of the chest bone, skin as fragile as gauze. I make the mistake of looking down and I don't know why I search for that orange triangle between your legs. The onslaught of white hairless skin makes me snow-blind. You're monochrome in the unforgiving fluorescent bathroom light and I hurry to cover you up in that red dress, zipping you up with a hard tug.

"I can't... I won't," I whisper into the hard, angular dip by your neck as I help you inside the tub. Your shoulder blades are sharp enough to cut through the red silk.

I watch you lie down in that tub and I feel nothing. Nothing. Your red dress flaring around you like a swarm of sea nettles. You, ugly with your cranium on display, until you grin, showing off that gap between your front teeth, so wide you could fit a pea there without even squashing it.

"Come on, imagine getting all ten in. It'll make for a perfect record."

I want to protest that it won't technically be a perfect record if I do it, but I won't rob you of the satisfaction. You melt into the water and I dip my entire face under the surface to get that last kiss in. Your scalp is silky smooth under my palm. Your instincts take over, you claw at my hands, but I don't let go. You wouldn't want me to. I hold you under until you grow limp and there are no more bubbles. Thou shalt not kill.

Your dress is sucker punch red against the stark white of the porcelain. Your bony kneecaps poke up above the rim of the water and I draw the hem down for decency's sake. Mine not yours. You look oddly smug where you lounge like a bald mermaid, as if you're real pleased with yourself - getting the last word against God.