Sunday, April 29, 2007

Beloved

“She could never remember that I don’t like onions,” Glen said, brandishing his beer at Chloe. She smiled, all teeth that never quite cancelled out her pout, and pretended to dodge Glen’s attack. He smiled back, waved the beer two more sweeps at her for good measure, drew it back and pulled a half-forced and shy kiss from her before looking at me again. He smiled, almost as sweetly, at me. “But she was so beautiful that I didn’t mind coming back every time to ask for a new sandwich, or to risk another mess-up.” Chloe pursed her lips, which created a dent and brought the top of her bottom lip down into a further pout.

“You asked for onions every time,” she said, and Glen and I felt that she was genuinely hurt for a moment and exchanged glances (it’s your fault; no it’s yours), before she blushed and looked at Glen as if she’d just noticed that she was in love with him, her eyes open below the irises, and the smile of someone who’d just received a large bouquet of flowers.

“It’s a good thing you’re beautiful,” Glen said, and kissed her again, deeply, with his hand cupped over her cheek, stroking the jaw. It was like watching children play red-light green-light, something you must watch, and you must watch with a hapless grin. They were, in short, adorable. “Or you would have been fired a hundred times over.”

“Yours was the only sandwich I ever messed up,” she said. “I couldn’t think when you came in.”

“I still don’t like onions,” Glen said, with an exhale, turning to me.

I sat up straight, having forgotten that I was there, that it was my question that they were answering, and that it might be my turn to ask another. Luckily, Chloe pushed in.

“You’re an attractive man. Are you gay?”

“What?” I said, in a guffaw as if people didn’t always assume this of me. “No.”

“We don’t care,” Glen said.

“I’ve just broken up with a girl actually.”

“Uh-huh,” Chloe said, waiting for the because-I’m-gay portion of that statement to arise.

“No, look, everyone thinks I am when they meet me and I’m not. There’s nothing wrong with it, but I’m not.”

“But you’ve gone there, surely,” Glen said, cupping his girlfriend’s hand.

I looked back and forth between them and took another sip of my drink. It wasn’t any of their business, but somehow I felt like telling the truth, politely.

“Well, most people have.”

“And…,” Chloe said.

“It wasn’t bad, but I prefer women.” I was a little upset, suddenly, about this line of questioning, the perfect straight couple addressing the imperfect, broken-up-with, slightly bisexual stranger, attractive though he may be. “And you, Glen?” I asked, finally finding my revenge. “Have you ‘gone there’?”

“Yes,” he said. Chloe nodded as if she was agreeing that he had a degree from university. I took another wide dip into my drink, the coolness of it slapping my uvula like a punching bag. They stared at each other meaningfully, little naughty glances between them. I got the attention of the barman and ordered another scotch and soda.

“On us,” Glen said to the barman, waving at an imaginary bill in front of him. I tested him with a look. He returned it, a stare with slow blinks. I bit my lip. I pulled at the inside seam on my trousers, an erection, an uncalled-for one, in there. Chloe stood up, said something in Glen’s ear that made his bottom lip slide out, and made for the ladies’.

“Do you like Chloe?” Glen asked.

“Sorry, mate, I know she’s your girlfriend, but, let’s just say you’re the luckiest guy in this town, possibly the world.” I turned away from him and held my drink to my mouth, biting the glass idly after a sip, and taking another. He noticed me doing it and grinned. I was no longer Alex White, former mail room employee and current middle manager in a software company, owner of two Weimaraners and a goldfish named Tom, officially in mourning of the wasted three year and seven month relationship with a woman from Ealing who had beautiful eyes and a shoddy waistline, but the toy of a man named Glen and a woman named Chloe, and there was very little to be done about it. And all I’d wanted was a large scotch and soda with a packet of crisps.

Glen’s gaze sloshed away from me and his eyes went as bright as they could be. I followed them to Chloe, returned from the toilet, though such a word could never be associated with her. She must have just gone in to do some charity work and give the other girls makeup tips by osmosis. She glided to us, a pink streak, though she wore blue, and lit to my left. I was now between the two radiant, otherworldly angels, my back curving me into the bar and my right arm across my lap.

“Alex,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Turn your head for me, alright?”

“Yeah.”

I turned and was swallowed whole by a new religion, one of peace and sex and shameless beauty in the face of all obstacles. She kissed me like a shot of sweet morphine and I swam in it, pressed my fingertips to the bottom of the pool and kicked my feet in the air. Her breath was ambrosia, her lips, candied and strong, were at once on all parts of my body, transcending my mouth. My cock went from maybe to its surest moment and pressed into my forearm like an angry mob.

She stopped and winked at me, looked around me to Glen and gave the slightest nod. A hand went around my glass and put it on the inside of the bar. I hastily untucked my shirt and put my jacket on. “Come on then, Alex.” A male voice to my right said. It was someone I knew. Glen. I stood up slowly, grasping the back of the chair and exited the pub with my eyes down, following the floor as well as I could, as I could only see, could only concentrate on three feet of information at a time.

Glen hailed a taxi and I was put in between them as if I was being kidnapped. Glen could manage an address for the driver and I was astounded at his dexterity and facility of language, humbled by it, for I couldn’t evoke my own name anymore. A hand came around my neck and turned my head to the right. It was Glen, a blur of masculine perfection, his kiss a sock across the jaw, a red melee of domination and spirit. He quickly unlashed his belt in his trousers, and fumbling, took my hand to his cock through the top of them. His kiss halted and he timed a move against the driver’s glances, waited, then pushed me down to his cock by the back of the neck. He straightened himself out, pushed his trousers down below his hips and held it out for me. I dove on it gratefully, because my purpose was clear, to serve the beautiful, and I rearranged myself on the seat so I could put more effort into it, one knee on the cushion, one foot on the floor, pushing with all its might by the toe.

Glen organised my rhythm, pushing me down and suggesting me up, finally just fucking my mouth, though I fought to enhance it with my tongue, struggling to impress him. A hand washed up the back of my thigh, made a turn and came down the other, and again, and again, each time making me quiver as it, for the briefest moment, made contact with the area behind my balls. My cock pushed at my trousers, cried sad holy murder to the zip, and fought again. Glen’s cock, as perfect as the rest of him, thickish and thunderously hard, battled my tonsils for space, my jaw aching in self-righteous martyrdom. When he came, a tensed and battering-ram final set of thrusts into my throat, he yanked my head to his face, invaded my mouth and spelunked his funk into his own. Pure gold to him, as it was, deferentially, to myself.

He looked again at the driver and then, sweating and succulently, at his girlfriend, and placed me back in hostage-position, leaning forward again, my erection nagging me like a loose tooth, begging to be nudged. “Here, please,” he said. And for a moment I had no idea what he was talking about.

We piled out of the taxi. Glen stood outside of it and paid the driver with a twenty pound note, his legs apart on the pavement. Chloe took my hand with camaraderie, sympathy and affection. I couldn’t look at her. If I looked, I’d come. She lead me to her door, my knees awobble, my brain fog and dust. She squeezed the hand, produced a key and used it.

It wasn’t a flat. They owned the entire fucking thing. To my left was a salon, straight ahead an enormous kitchen and pantry, upstairs, heavenly opulence in an opal sheen, only imaginable in film and fantasy. They looked around nervously, Jesus fucking Christ, there’s help, and lead me upwards, to the palace that no doubt lay above. Chloe’s arse strode and arched the steps like a temple itself, Glen and I below to worship it. The idea of me getting a leg over this girl seemed like blasphemy, but I would only do as she asked, could not deny an angel her desire and whim. Glen followed me closely, his hands checking the merchandise occasionally, a rub of my arse, a dive between the thighs. Chloe strode the hallway with confident ownership, the rugs certainly chosen by her, the colour of the paint itself her decision. Opulence that only shows true in the cultured. I was now dazzled by the environment and almost slapped away a hand on my cock through my trousers, wanting to say that it was for Chloe. It was Chloe, of course, and looking at her briefly, the idea of her under me, filled by me, made me stop in the hallway to get my bearings. She knew, of course and kissed me briefly, saying “Come on and fuck me, Alex.” I looked shocked at her and she glowed a bit, all fluorescent in pink to contrast the yellow light.

She drifted to the floor right there in the hallway, the back of her fingers coasting my stomach and hooking into my trousers. She took me down with her and twisted, arch-backed on the floor, her thighs spread. I sat on my knees for a while and stared down at her, examining her, toes to the top of her head. Glen knelt next to me and leaned forward, lifted her dress and hooked his fingers in her underpants. They slid over her hips, revealing a trimmed, diminutive triangle of hair, above swollen pussy lips, her clit a crimson tongue between them, peeking out. Glen left her underpants on one foot’s toes and bent to smell them. He buried his face in the crotch and visibly sucked her scent inside. She had my trousers open, pulled them forcibly over my arse and my cock flipped up like a bicycle kickstand. She pushed her index finger into the precome and slid it around the tip like it was medication, a soothing to my aggravated cock. Of course, it was only the opposite, what was dry, now suggestively wet and ready.

I spread her thighs more, twisted my hand around her pussy and entered her with reverence and modesty, prodded by Glen’s fingers toying with my ass. My hand curved her neck and went into her hair, pulled her mouth to mine again, and we did not so much kiss as share the space, the intimate blood-breath of a couple in fuck. I ground into her, my entire body waving into her, my knees apart and bitten into the floor. Glen watched beside us, his pants down below his waist, his cock, a flag of perfection, halfway to hard again, his lips on his girlfriend’s forehead before sitting back to watch the show.

I began to shiver above her, my arse clenched and tingling from effort. Glen jumped up and walked down the hallway, stepping over us as if we were a curled rug. “Are you having fun?” Chloe asked when Glen was out of earshot. I answered with a deep, sucking kiss with a bit of a moan, some stirring, deadly affection for her. Glen returned, naked and muscular, a chest of soft hair descending to a treasure trail that would save any lost woodsman, and leaned against the wall for a bit, watching us. I looked at him, Chloe’s mouth at my ear, her breaths ragged. Glen wiped the side of his face. I waited until his eyes were in mine again and descended his body with them, landing on his cock, curved in the air like an enchanted cobra. He smiled once more, turning his face as though I’d just said something wonderful and surprising. He exchanged a look with Chloe and she stopped my hips with her hands.

She kissed me and rolled over under me before sliding out. I was heartbroken, my hips still bent as if she were there. I turned, finally, to a seated position, posing as best I could for the both of them and watched Chloe turn and lean over the railing, her legs spread, arse in the air and tiptoed. I know I grimaced with pleasure, but waited for Glen to take his position. I waited and waited. “Alex?” Chloe said. I jumped up, held her hip, pushed my cock down and entered again. Glen gasped. He was stroking himself. He approached me and with my head turned, I felt him come around my back. He’d gotten a bottle of lube. He squeezed some out and I was helpless and shocked. He held my arse in place, pressed against me and entered me without ceremony or comment. I wailed, pain and unbelievable pleasure, and smoothed my thrusts.

I seesawed against them, pain, pleasure, pain, pleasure, a slap and then a reward and then a slap. My senses drifted away. My eyes could only see Chloe’s skin. My mouth could only taste Glen’s come. My ears heard naught but desperate panting. I could smell only pussy juice and sweat. And I felt the rush of cyanotic pleasure, some dredge of it never seen before, concentrated and crystallised. “Fuck, that’s fucking… wonderful… that’s… FUCK! God God God God GOD!” I yelped and trembled between them, my feet jumping on the floor. I held fast and waited for the world to right itself, ready to plunge over the railing, for it would never happen like that again, until Chloe twisted around me. Glen pushed me to the floor, reentered and fucked hard, my knees sore and shifting my eyes on Chloe’s fingers, dragging across her clit. I grimaced for her, spread my knees wide and lay down on my chest. She shift to our sides and continued to toy her clit, slow and thorough.

“Let me know, sweetheart,” Glen said, his heart in it. She nodded.

“Now,” she said. Glen slipped out of me, rushed to her and lay his mouth on hers. Her neck arched and so did his, two elegant curves in a complement, and their bodies rattled. She squealed and he caught it, comforted it, even as his body locked against hers. They came beautifully, her fingers drawing art out of her pussy, his cock shooting wide splats into her stomach. They fell down and spooned on the floor. I found my clothes, kissed both their cheeks and left them, envious and in love with them both.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Sic Semper Tyrannis

The play is boring. Sebastian and I wait outside the box, yet another night of endless staring at each other, his hands toying at his sideburns, running down his chest when he’s sure no one’s looking to play at his breeches. I’ve been trying to forget those nights, after endless drilling and marching and drilling, the sounds of the men in tents gasping, some with the etiquette to escape to the woods, most just unbuttoning their Union suits, grabbing some bacon grease and quickly abusing themselves. It was the only thing to do. The smell of the men would loom in my nostrils, the heavy salt and sour of their sweat, the curdled food too, and the dizzy boring panic. Nauseating fear and lurid scraps of the living. All of us piled too close together in one clearing or another, mosquitoes, hard tack and buggery.

“Do you remember how easy it was for me?” Sebastian asks.

I can’t think of what night he’s referring to. It could be one of several. He could be talking about me or Hubert or Adam or Ogden. A couple walks by, some soldier and his young, pregnant wife, all of us trying to repopulate The Union as quickly as possible. She sees Sebastian and I and seems to test us, to mark if we’re serious enough for our posts. Her husband grasps the back of her elbow and clears her of the alcove.

“I’m going in,” Sebastian says. “Can’t do a damn thing out here anyway.”

I follow. I don’t know how I ever came to outrank him. That I am his thrall is obvious. He stands behind The President for a while, as a formality, then slips behind a curtain. Again, I follow. There are a few moments of listening to each other’s breathing, the smell of Sebastian, distinct enough to render me instantly tumescent, trapped in the folds of the velvet and silk.

“We were marching to Vicksburg,” he whispers, “and our legs were so tired that we made do in the mud. You were down in my breeches, and you remarked upon the beauty of my cock.”

I take his hand and slip it in. I am in an instant returned to the side of that dirt track, the taste of him between my lips.

“We were so tired every part of me felt like a cannonball,” I whisper into his ear.

“And every bit as hard,” he whispers back, before pulling at my mustache and sipping my breath. He grasps my cock too hard and I blurt a nasal moan. He takes it as a sign of weak obedience. It is. His hand withdraws from my breeches and he grasps instead either end of my mustache. He pulls me down. I go to my knees. He rends braces from trousers, dropping them with alacrity, and I pull his drawers down to his boots. “There you are sir. Attend to your man.”

I take him in hand and tease the tip of him with a few licks. His back falls to the wall. A roar waves across the audience behind me. I start at the noise, my hand searching for a weapon, and remember that it is only laughter. That it is a comedy. He knocks my cap off and forces me upon him. “Sergeant, teach your man how to do it. I’m just a bumpkin. I’ve never been under the hand of a superior before.” I take his full length into my throat, such that his short hairs tickle at my nose. He bends his knees into my armpits. My tongue twists along the underside of his cock as my mouth makes its sweet ascent and descent.

“Mmm. That foul evening in the muck and you were down my front, much as you are right now. I glowered at the blood-red clouds at sunset, you taking the last of me. I felt that if I should die the next day, this is what I would want for my last night on this earth, in the earth, really, as we were half sunk in the mud.”

He leans forward a bit, losing balance, and I raise my arm to shove him back against the wall, lest he fall upon me. I redouble my efforts, the laughter of the audience becoming more sincere behind me, the end of the play will be coming soon. He tastes of soap and savory, my tastebuds rubbing at his skin.

“I couldn’t move even if that should have been what I wanted,” he continued. “Your body and mine so lean from the drilling and the starvation, and pounding at each other each night.”

He’s trembling. It’s true that we do have a bit more on our squalid bones now. He has a pouch that my forehead slams into. It makes him more attractive, if anything. More like a real man than the walking specters that we were not so long ago. There is a howl of laughter from The President. It shocks me into a pause.

“No, sir, you must continue,” Sebastian says. “I’m quite beyond the threshold.”

I wasn’t planning on stopping. Sebastian’s cock, harder still than the bodies we had on the battlefield, sure that death was all that was ahead of us, not planning on anything more, is alight and pulsing. He seems to vibrate in my mouth, but it is easily explained by the numb friction in my lips. Pins and needles.

“And when I came, my soul rising from the… squalor… and the… mmm… insects and… it seemed that my balls were… gunpowder… and you… you were the fucking match. Mmmph!”

He’s almost there, epiphany and ecstasy now. I’m going to finish him in time. I hold at the tip of him and work simply with lips and tongue. He squirms like a dying squirrel, trying to force me into thrusts.

"Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal—you sockdologizing old man-trap..." I don’t know what the line means, but it makes everyone laugh, including Sebastian. I am wrong, though. He is coming, the sweet and bitter sludge on my tongue and between gum and lip.

“Sic semper tyrannis!” I hear, and then a gunshot. Sebastian and I are recovering, panting, but we must hurry, as those laughs have quickly become screams.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Lunch Break

I’m on all fours, or, more accurately, on all twenties, forced to hold myself up by my fingertips and my toes. I see only her boots. I picked red this time. Her heels are spiky, but not in the normal way. There are nails instead of heels, long, deadly ones, sixteen for each shoe, and short, sharp cleats in the front. They scratch the floor as she walks around me, leaving little wood shaving curlicues.

His eyes are closed, his legs apart on the toilet lid. He thinks he hears something and stops, then decides it was nothing and continues. He picks up a bottle of hand lotion that he keeps at his desk, the scentless kind in the manliest packaging possible. He really does use it on his hands most of the time. Today is an anomaly, but he saw her the night before, her hand on the back of her new husband, and he can’t concentrate on work until he get this out of his head. He squirts some into his palm and pulls his shirt up over his nipples. He takes his cock in his left hand, already half-erect, and grasps the handrail with his right. It’s the handicapped stall, the last one anyone goes to. He bites his lip and inhales.

She spanks me. One sharp, hard spank, enough to make me lurch forward and bite into the heavy candlestick she put in my teeth. It has a horrible metallic taste. “Ohhh, sorrrry,” she says mockingly, then spanks me again. The candlestick, it turns out, is very cheap, and accepts a bite mark. She comes around to my front again and holds my head up by the hair to look at her face. Her hair is wild, twisted and teased like she’d been fucking other men all afternoon. I suspect this is the case. She pulls harder and my mouth opens from the pull of my neck. It drops the candlestick. She watches it drop and lets go of my hair. I’m in trouble. The candlestick rolls back to my fingertips. She clamps it in the arch of her shoe. The cleats gouge my hand. She twists them, then rolls the candlestick back toward her, stands it up with her toe and bends down to get it, her legs spread, the very edge of her slit appearing under her skirt.

She does not stand up. She slides the candlestick inside of her pussy, thrusts it a few times and pulls it out. She shows it to me. It’s glistening. She opens my mouth by the chin and forces it back in, slapping my mouth shut by the jaw.


His body tenses and releases, tenses and releases. His fingers slide into the hair on his chest, his pinky teasing a nipple. His left hand strokes slowly. He needs a good, long one. A special effort is put into it. It’s needed. She was wearing heels last night. His mouth opens, droops. His fingers echo the curves of his cock as they move across it, like an arm slipping into a tight sleeve. Each stroke begs for another. Each is a lick from his ex.

”Don’t worry, boy,” she says to me, stroking my earlobe between her forefinger and thumb. She pinches it. “That wasn’t going into your asshole. This is.” She produces a ten-inch buttplug from her purse. I stifle a laugh. She catches it, smiles knowingly, shakes her head slowly, then gets a wide roll of cloth tape and says, “And it ain’t goin’ anywhere either.” Her hand drops into her bag again and brings out a bottle of lube. She stands the buttplug on the floor and bends over again. She snaps the lube open and lets it drip down. It slowly coats the buttplug. She slides the skirt over her hips and holds her asscheeks open with one hand. She slowly sweeps the buttplug up to her asshole, twists it there a few times at the opening and then swings the tip in the open air a few times, saying “Nuh. Uh. Uh.”

She quickly stands up straight and scoots behind me, her shoes denting the floor. My ass is held tight open with one hand and then there is a tickling shock on my asshole. I barely have time to breathe before she plunges it inside of me. The candlestick receives new bitemarks. A yelp comes up behind it. She spanks me. Then I hear the sound of tape ripping from a roll.


His body is rolling a little. Some waves caused by the muscles in his chest and stomach in a war with the ones in his back. A moan escapes him. He pauses for a moment and then continues. He’s unable to pace himself anymore. His balls lift between his legs, the skin wrinkling. His hand twists at the rim of the tip of his cock with every stroke. It feels like her lips. It feels like her lips used to feel. He gasps and grabs at his thigh. He tickles the inside of it with his fingernails.

She wraps it around me, my cock in it too as if it meant nothing to her. After three passes of the wide tape, I’m bound up tight. She spanks me all around it to make sure anyway, then straddles me backwards. I’m still on the tips of my fingers and toes and the extra weight is excruciating. She laughs. “You can go down on palms and knees now, boy,” she says. I do, quickly, watching her shoes touch the floor. It’s much better, but the buttplug still burns. She rubs her pussy around my back a few times and I can feel the wet.

He is quivering now, his legs kicking at his pants at his ankles, his mouth wide open, his tongue pushing at the back of his bottom teeth. His head fills with smoke, all of his bodily functions set only for his hand, cock and the strong smell of his ex-wife’s pussy. His strokes concentrate on the tip now, and each one brings him more blurred ecstasy. Something in him is thrown into the air and flies, waiting for the inevitable stall mid-parabola and descent. He flies higher, higher.

She lifts from me and turns me on my back. She ignores my cock again and arranges my arms instead, each at forty-five degrees from my chest. She straddles me again, facing my head, and drags herself, hand over hand until her knees hit my arms. She climbs them, hooking them in the arch before her ankles and pushes forward until her knees are on either side of my head. She removes the candlestick from my mouth and rolls it away. Above my eyes lie her pussy lips. She puts one finger on the outside of each of them and presses in. She descends. “Go on boy, and take your time.” My tongue twists out for a taste.

He reaches a high point in the atmosphere, things here orange and fuzzy, and begins to come down, his body shuddering, his legs kicking back into the toilet. The door to the bathroom opens. He bites his lip. Another stall door is open and shut. Come shoots out of him, swift and ambitious. The first oversteps his nipples and lands on his shirt. The second, third and forth in descending rippling blots down his front. He mouths fuck, fuck, fuck.

He cleans up, pulls his pants up, lowers his shirt, silently lifts the toilet seat, flushes the tissue away, opens the stall door, looks at himself in the mirror and wipes the last bit of a spot he missed off of his collar.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Empathy Part Two

There is a couch on the porch. College towns seem to inherit everyone’s old couches, like they just land there, sometimes on the football field or precariously on a roof or in the parking lot of a convenience store, but most of them end up on porches. They are by no means waterproof, but they never smell bad or seem to have a lingering wet. They are inevitably of eighties-design, strange arches and triangles all over, like Nagel paintings. Many were at one time red. Max’s feral porchcouch has a dramatically high back and laughably low armrests. I sit in the center, examining the flight of suicidal moths on the bare lightbulb above me.

Max, in lieu of a gentle touch on my shoulder, waves to me, bending in front of me. “Did you go in at all?” He asks me. I smile at him.

When I entered Max’s house twenty minutes earlier, praying that he had very few friends, all I saw was the back of people’s necks at the door. They were immobile too, wouldn’t listen to “excuse me” or “pardon.” I inhaled and tapped the shoulder of the one who was talking at the door. I felt anxiousness, joy, confusion, all of it slow with the guy’s alcohol, and dropped my hand right away. I touched it again, at least knowing what I was getting into. Slow confusion and disappointment gave way to a slight resentment in the guy’s head. He turned around.

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying not to shake out my hand, “but I need to get through the door. He turned to his side and his friends pushed in closer to each other. I would have to touch him to get through. There was no time to dread it. I plowed in, got past the first group of people, self-righteousness, insecurity, fear, confidence, and plow into the next group. They were dancing, three people rhythmically dry humping in the middle of the living room. The man, mocha-skinned and sweaty, was feeling hope, sadness at something lost, concern for someone, but most of all desire. I got a charge, and felt a swelling in my underpants. I made it past him and simply got more of the same, insecurity, sadness, fear, confidence and desire, desire, desire, none of it my own. There was no path, no simple way to avoid the touch of others. I wanted to scream, searching desperately for Max but drowning in other people. I had to get out and yelled out as loud as I could, “Let me out! Let me out! I’m sorry, but get me the fuck out of here!”

That cleared a path. I ran through it, fighting tears, my own tears, embarrassment in a wash over me like a syrup, and the sex part, now real in my body, though it started with someone else, leading to self-loathing, like I’d been raped.

But now there is the couch and the moths. “I went in a little, yeah,” I say to Max, smiling in case he’d already heard it. He smiles back, friendly, his lips parting for a second as if to blow me a kiss. If he heard about some madwoman screaming to be let out of his living room, he’s being polite about it.

“Let’s take a walk,” he says, and holds his hand out for me. I reach for it, then we both remember at once and let them drop.

Max and walk slowly, closer than we did on campus. I ask him about the house (his older brother got their fraternity disbanded and sold it to his friends at a discount, only to coincidentally need a roommate at the same time Max needed a place to live), the graffiti site (he plans to expand on it, into handwriting analysis of the vice-presidents, but is taking a break for school), where he’s from (city kid, went to Catholic school even though his parents are Baptist), and what all he wants to do with his life (he just got finished reading Kerouac and was enthralled with it for a while, thought about working as a line cook across the country, he read Kerouac’s biography and decided he was a free-loading asshole, he’s not sure what he’s going to do now). I don’t tell him much about me and he doesn’t ask much. That’s fine. I don’t want to get into the seven stages of accepting Sarah’s uniqueness yet. He seems to take it at face value.

“Max?” I ask him, though I’m so scared my stomach is turning. “I want you to do something for me, okay?”

He stops and looks at me. While we walked I could feel him get closer to me. Right now, he’s right in front of me. Now or never.

“What?”

“Could you try to kiss me?”

Try to kiss you?”

“I’ve never let anyone do it.”

“I’m either going to kiss you or I’m not.” He looks at my lips. He got all shy on the word “kiss.”

I bite my top lip and inhale. “Kiss me,” I say, absolutely shaking. “Please.”

He blinks a couple of times and leans in. I close my eyes. His lips touch mine and it’s all there, all of it, synched, mine and his. Sex, affection, fear, sedition. It’s the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me. He lets up and goes back to his heels.

“How was that?” he asks, genuinely worried.

“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.”

He turns his head suspiciously. He doesn’t believe me. And I haven’t even told him yet.

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

The Prognosis

The patient walks into the examining room with a look of hope on his face. He is a man in his mid-thirties, though he could pass for late twenties. People guess that he is twenty-eight. He has young skin, a full head of dark hair and a quick step. The only real wrinkles he possesses show in times of emotion, small waves at the outsides of his eyes when he laughs and ribs on his forehead when he is concerned. He is concerned at the moment, though not dejected. The wrinkles in his forehead pull his eyes open wide, expecting an answer, because when this patient has expected things in the past, he has often received them.

The doctor walks in the examining room a few minutes later to find the patient bouncing on the examining table. The doctor’s eyes drop just before they would make contact with those of the patient and he takes his stool, running it under his ass and sitting down. The stool is broken in for the doctor, bent to the correct curves of the doctor’s ass when he sits on it, but it still pushes air out as the doctor’s weight settles, a sound that both doctor and patient wait to end before they begin to talk.

The doctor is also a man in his mid-thirties and unmistakably so. He has grown a beard and cut his hair very close to the scalp to mitigate the receding hairline that has formed at the bends of his skull, as if rubbed away by a stubborn hat. The beard shows grey in stripes just below the end points of his lips. The patient finds the stripes distinguished. They give him fantasies of old Englishmen, of sucking off Sherlock Holmes. The doctor thinks of the stripes as dribbled milk, thinks, sometimes, in a bleary shower in the morning that he’ll be able to wash them away, only to find them in his mirror again.

The patient spends his time trying to make eye contact with the doctor, but the doctor does not concede. This makes the patient smile, imagining the doctor childish, that this is all a game between two fully grown twelve-year-olds on the playground. The doctor sees that he is being childish and, with a sigh, looks at the patient.

“Whaddaya want, Jeff?” the doctor asks, tapping his wedding band on the back of his metal clipboard. It’s a sound that grates both doctor and patient, but the doctor pretends not to care.

Jeff, the patient, looks shocked, almost pulling it off. He flicks the suggestion away with his hand and a smile. “Just my yearly checkup.”

“Alright.” The doctor opens a drawer and pulls out a paper gown. The patient begins to unbutton his shirt slowly. The doctor nods at the gown and shuts the door just at the sound of a zipper. He attends to other patients with a red face and an eye above their shoulders. He makes Jeff wait.

When there are no more scrips to fill out, no more swollen tonsils to gawk at and the nurses stare with concern at the remaining shut room, the doctor puts his hand on the door handle and twists it with authority. Jeff smiles at him as he enters, prostrate on the table, his legs crossed with patience.

“Sit up,” the doctor says. Jeff sits up and turns, letting his legs dangle over the side of the table. He leans toward the doctor, expecting. The doctor goes to his side and puts an otoscope in his ear. Jeff looks at the doctor’s shoulders, muscle draped with white like an Italian statue. The doctor, satisfied with the contents of Jeff’s left ear, backs off and dives awkwardly on his right.

“Doctor,” Jeff begins.

“Hang on,” the doctor says, and rubs the glands under Jeff’s chin, comparing them. He frowns and lets go.

“Oscar,” Jeff starts again, but the doctor has a thermometer now, and slides it under Jeff’s tongue, slapping his mouth shut by the chin. The doctor lifts his stethoscope to his ears and slips its dangling appendage into Jeff’s sleeve and around to his front.

“Inhale and hold, please,” he says. Jeff does. The doctor makes him hold it longer than he should and Jeff finally exhales out of necessity. The doctor backs the diaphragm out of Jeff’s sleeve and reenters the gown between the ties at the back. “Inhale and hold, please,” he says again. Jeff inhales and holds. The thermometer in his mouth beeps. It sounds like Jeff’s alarm. The doctor leaves it. Jeff exhales, again out of necessity and waits, the beeping continuing. The doctor moves the stethoscope down Jeff’s back and to the right and says, “Again, please.” Jeff inhales and holds, feeling Oscar’s breath on his neck. He holds to the count of five and exhales.

The doctor pulls the thermometer out, briefly looks at it, stashes it aside and takes an ophthalmoscope and puts his fingers under and over Jeff’s left eye. Jeff reaches for the doctor’s cheek. The doctor takes it before it makes it and holds it. When he is done examining both eyes, he turns Jeff’s wrist and presses to the area below the thumb. He looks at his watch and counts.

“Your pulse is very high.”

“I had a Coke before I got here,” Jeff says sarcastically.

Jeff takes the doctor’s other hand and puts it on his thigh inside his gown. The doctor flinches, but doesn’t pull back.

“Oscar,” Jeff says. “Come on, Oscar.” The doctor drops Jeff’s wrist and opens Jeff’s legs. He stands between them and examines Jeff’s eyes again, this time without an ophthalmoscope, admiring their beauty instead of looking for cataracts. The truth is, they’re perfect. Oscar stands for a moment, watching Jeff blink, until Jeff takes his chin and puts their lips together. He pulls Oscar’s hand up his thighs by the index finger, opening his mouth gradually and twiddling Oscar’s upper lip with his tongue. The beard, dishwater blond but thick, brushes at Jeff’s face. This is what Jeff loves the most, the feel of Oscar whiskers in his lips.

“You said last time would be the last time,” Oscar says.

“I said that, yes.”

Oscar presses his forehead to Jeff’s and rolls them against each other for a few beats. Then he takes the paper robe between the thumb and forefinger of each hand and tears it open, thigh to neck. Jeff’s body is revealed inside the paper tube. It’s bare and youthful, pink nipples and very little hair, cut like an Olympic diver but for a few stray, nearly imperceptible rolls, one at the stomach, two at the edges of the armpits. Oscar bends into Jeff’s chest and buries his face in it. It had been too long, but not long enough to forget. Jeff kisses the top of Oscar’s head, smelling the shampoo that Oscar still uses, though there’s barely a need, and slides off of the table. He holds Oscar to him tightly and kisses him some more, slowly, affectionately, letting the heat build steadily and true. He feels Oscar’s clothes against his naked skin, a poke in the chest at the pens, a poke at the stomach at his belt buckle, the rivets on Oscar’s jeans at his hips.

Oscar’s pulse is also fast. He feels it throb at the top of his sternum. He can see that Jeff wants to stretch this out, but there is a time limit, an adrenaline fear that gets bigger as the time passes, that any minute a nurse can enter the room with a single knock. There are no locks on the doors by design. With the smallest heart-chip, Oscar breaks from Jeff and asks him to sit on the end of the table. He takes a tube of KY from a tray and puts some on the tip of his finger. He walks to Jeff. Jeff bends like a contortionist, ass out over the edge of the table, lips bending into Oscar. They kiss deep and fast now, and Oscar slips his fingers inside Jeff. He locates Jeff’s prostate and begins to stroke. Jeff stops kissing Oscar and bends back a little over the paper on the table, the crunching noise of jarring pulses, his elbows tearing it up.

Jeff’s head falls back and Oscar admires his neck, the high arête at his laryngeal prominence, his Adam’s apple, the sternocleidomastoid curving down his neck to connect with the clavicle. If he concentrates, he can see the blood bounce in his carotid, faster now, sweat forming all over. Jeff’s mouth is clamped shut, but his head crackles against the paper, betraying his pleasure. Oscar slips more fingers inside and massages with weight, with power and skill. Jeff’s cock stands wickedly straight, hovering just above his stomach almost to his navel. Fuck me, he whispers, Fuck me, Oscar.

Oscar is dizzy, but slides gingerly out of Jeff’s asshole and stumbles to the drawer with the condoms. He wipes his brow on the sleeve of his coat and opens it. He gets one, takes the tube of KY and rears back to Jeff. He pulls the stirrups out of the table, sets them high and puts Jeff’s ankles in them. He unzips his pants, suits up, pulls out the step, mounts it and angles himself above Jeff. Jeff is smiling, naughty and exposed. Fuck me, doctor.

Oscar plunges inside of Jeff, abandoning himself to fate and nature, his eyes screwed shut, his body on fire. He pumps. He takes the KY and squeezes some onto Jeff’s cock. He pumps. He rubs it in. He pumps. He jerks Jeff off in his hand, already fully tumescent and throbbing. He pumps, a cool static forming in his ears, his body taking over his mind. He pumps. Jeff’s sweat has melted the paper and it has ripped, tiny rolls forming at the edges of his skin. He pumps. Jeff jolts and his ankles, trapped in the stirrups, lift his ass from the table. He pumps. Jeff’s ass contracts around him like a tight fist and his come sprinkles and sprays and splats on his stomach and chest. He pumps, his brain feather-light. Fuck me, doctor, FUCK ME.

The doctor’s office disappears. His lab coat disappears. His wife disappears. There is only Jeff and narcotic, shivering his body. He comes like a paintball gun and stays, quivering, for a while inside of Jeff.

In ten seconds, the office is back, his wife is back, the dread of the single knock is back, and his cursing of nature returns too. He takes his condom off, throws it in the biohazard bin and lingers for a moment, watching the prostrate man on his table. He zips his pants and hovers over Jeff. He bends down to kiss him.

The doctor hands the patient back his clothes, has him sign a few things while the patient gets dressed and leaves the examining room, his face back to normal.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

More Than Five and Less Than Ten

The door opens without a squeak. You can only tell that it’s the door because the air sweeps your face like a door. It’s not a clean sweep, but a warm one, full of humidity, in this, the room they do this in. The only room without air conditioning. I wonder if I’ll feel the door swing shut again, another cloud of black, soft air, but there isn’t. The door remains open, so that they can come and go as they choose. They know the room much better than I do, will have no trouble finding the door. I wonder what the first touch will feel like, whether it will be strong or light, how forceful, really, this whole experience will be. I wonder if they’ve got some ritual, some secret handshake in the dark, if they discussed what they would do before they got in here, all of them in a lit room, hunched over as if preparing the plays in the second half.

Of course, I’m shaking. Of course I am. I tried not to think about it too much, told myself I was going to a party with friends, that I would tell all my good stories and they would laugh and shake their shoulders, but they left me here in the dark for a long time, long enough for me not to know how long, and I’ve worked myself up, in the fifteen to sixty minutes that I’ve been in here, to a frothing nervousness, the kind that you get at a podium, the vicious tomfoolery of your opposing muscles, unable to decide what to do, uncontrollable wave cancellations in your electricity.

You only have to do what we ask you to do, Nick said. We may ask you to turn around, or open your mouth, or stand up. We’re polite, but you better take it as an order, or you’ll never get this opportunity again.

The first touch is not gentle, but it is a kiss. He palms the crown of my head and shoves me to his mouth. I’m shocked at first, but I get it, try to do my best and find it easy. The time in the room alone was also filled with blurred beats of what might happen any minute and I’m ready. I’m more than ready.

You can’t lift your arms unless we lift them for you.

My arms dangle at my sides, still hopelessly twitchy, with real messages to fight now, ones that want me to paw the air, count the visitors, feel their bodies, but I manage to dangle them. A hand comes around my front from behind, slips under my shirt, nail-skates my skin and lands on my nipple. I buckle and feel him pinch. This buckling thing isn’t allowed. I whimper a little because the pinch is hard and unexpected. The pinch is emphasized with a twist to see if I’ll call uncle. I don’t. The man behind me gives a satisfied “humph,” and kisses the back of my neck just below the hairline. He drags his tongue, circling what he has to know is my tattoo, stops and blows on it. I arch my neck. I can’t help that.

My keys swung in the ignition and I regarded them for as long as it was safe to do so, wondering that the wind didn’t flutter them around like the chaos of current above the steering wheel. Nick said he hadn’t been in a convertible in years and would stop mid-sentence to lean out to the side or straighten above the windshield, the hot day completely negated in the wind. “Do you really have the authority for this?” I asked him, watching the bend of his jeans at his hip as he sat down, his arms relaxing at the bicep. He simply looked at me as if he was about to end the deal if I said one more stupid fucking thing like that. I turned forward again and bent my neck back, squinting at the glare of the car in front of us.

I can feel the hard-on of the guy behind me, half between my ass-cheeks and half above, as if he’d put a flashlight in his pants. He bends his knees until the hard-on is below my asscheeks and lets it catch on the way up, pushing me into the man who’s kissing me. The man at my lips takes this as an affront, twists my face and bites the side of my upper lip. It stings awful and I suck air in around it, mostly his exhales, I gather. The air tastes like him. Why? I want to ask, but he relents with a lick on the inside of the lip, looking for blood, no doubt. The man behind, as if sensing the mercy up front, pulls my pants down over my ass and slaps it hard, rubs the sting away, then slaps it again. A whine escapes, though I’m clamping my mouth shut to stop it. The man behind takes this as a challenge and spanks harder, four, five, six! He rubs the sting away, but bends over to rip at it with his stubble.

”Is there a safe word?” I asked.

“Is there a safe word?” Nick repeated incredulously. “You need a safe word?”


There are two more hands now, each descending the sides of my pants, pulling them down my thighs. My shoes are removed without much thought for my balance and the pants are removed to parts unknown. A hand enters my underwear through the right leg, weighs my balls gently and taps behind them. “Give me your hand,” says a voice to my right. I lift it toward the voice and it is taken, puddled with lube and wrapped around someone’s cock. “Twist it slowly,” he says. Then all I hear from him is moaning. As I turn him in my fist, he fucks it. I consider dropping, taking the tip in my lips, though the one is still sore, but remember that I must wait for orders.

My knees are kicked bent behind me. I take it and straighten again. “No, on the floor,” says a man behind me. My knees fall to the rubber floor, the one I’d bounced my heels on as I waited. A chop of the forearm arches my back concave. There is a squirting noise, a slap of latex, one thumb in my asshole pulling one direction, another pulling opposite. Then a cock and nails into my skin. Exquisite pain, a 911 call within me in a gasp. I’ve lost pace on the man in my fist and he flicks at my fingers and wraps them tighter. “You’re multitasking today, boy,” he reminds me. I’m very sorry and match the twists to the fucking behind me. There are fingers in my hair and my head is lifted painfully. I’d been hearing squishing smack noises in front of me somewhere and they approach quickly. The smell of cock is here, salty and sour, and my lips are split by the tip of one. I taste the candy bubbles of the lube and open my mouth wide for it, my lips wrapped around my teeth. “Good,” I hear. The cock is rubbed sincerely on its way in, a welcome for the swollen traveler.

Lube has begun to pool on the rubber and my right knee has found a daub. It keeps slipping, parting my legs and pulling me down. The man who’s fucking me gets impatient having to pull me up and spanks me hard and red. A new sharp twinge stampedes up my back. The knees are withdrawn from between my legs and my knees are nudged shut. A hand comes up to my shoulder and wrenches me back. The cock is returned full force with hardly a consideration, a warning, a bow to etiquette. I almost lose the cock in my mouth in the tussle and my head is wrenched forward again by the scalp. After a few pushes and pulls, the two men figure out their tug-of-war, and instead of relenting, pull harder. I’ve got hands hooked around my hips, controlling their every move and another twisting my head by the hair, taking the neck in yanks when this isn’t enough.

The man fucking my hand begins to slow and stops my wrist from twisting. He lifts my thumb to the tip of his cock and circles it slowly. He’s groaning, shaking, calling for God. Then there is warmth and pressure, three gooey gushes under the pad of my thumb. “Umph,” he finishes with. I’m too tired to think about it. The hand in my scalp changes direction, however, and shoves my face down and to the side. I see it glow blue. There must be a blacklight. “Lick it up,” he says. I descend, my tongue leaving wider and fainter bastes of pale blue on the rubber with each pass, the salty bitter swept into my mouth and swallowed.

The room is Machiavellian hot. Sweat pours off me in rivers. I can taste it, feel the others’ sweat hit me in little rainstorms. With a jerking plunge, the man fucking me comes, bounces in grunts. He waits, pulls out and smacks my ass one more time for good measure.

”How many are you?” I asked Nick.

“More than five, less than ten.” He saw me squint with doubt. “Don’t worry, though. Some are just watchers, or listeners mostly. You won’t have to take care of all of them yourself.”


It occurs to me that I hear squishing smacks all around, that not all of them are coming from the men who are touching me. The one who finished behind me is replaced, this one in a hurry without grind or romance, simply pumping into me quickly, as if there were a time limit. I hear a groundswell moan to my left and teeth chatter. A Fuck!

“Talk to me,” says a voice to my right, very close. “Tell us what you want us to do.”

“I want to make you come. I want to make you all come. I’ll lick it up. I’ll fuck you dry. I’ll suck you crosseyed. Whatever you want is what I want you to do.”

Another cock is brought to me and my face is lifted by the chin. I feel warm shocks to my upper lip and nose, open my lips and suck it in between my teeth. “Aw, God!” I hear from just above. His thumb sweeps my lips and pushes the remainder inside. The man behind me stops abruptly with a yelp and pulls out. Nothing happens for a while, but the exhales of men, my own probably the loudest.

A ghostly apparition of bluish white brush strokes gets closer and farther away. My mouth twitches and so does it. It’s a mirror. Light comes up, just enough to see myself. The men come into the picture and lift me to my feet. Two hold my arms back, two bend at my feet to hold them in place. One stands behind me and waves at me in the mirror. He nibbles the back of my neck. A finger is plunged into my ass, then another and another. I’m hanging from them, exhausted and drained. The fingers begin to rub and a harsh blushing tingle rushes my body. The man under my right arm licks the sweat off of my cheeks, reaches to my front and grasps my cock. The one on the left gently pulls at my balls, biting into my shoulder. I can barely lift my head to watch. Another man drops to his knees and licks the tip, rubbing his tastebuds across it.

A steamroller hurricane passes through me and I come with the very last of my energy, almost a death-throe, a cracked jolt and I’m swimming in a dream. Then there is black again. I wake in a comfortable bed hours later, sore but comfortable. Nick, the man who made the lick that almost did me in, hands me an aspirin and some Gatorade.

“You did good, buddy,” he says and gives me a sweet kiss on the mouth. There will be a new one next week. I’m in.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Two Phones and the Internet

“I never do,” I said, covering my face, though she couldn’t see it. I really hoped she’d never ask.

“You don’t masturbate?”

“No. I mean I tried a couple of times and just, I dunno, nothing happened. I felt numb and dry.”

“Get some lube.”

“What?”

“Get some lube. Go to the Walgreens or whatever and buy some freaking lube.”

“I don’t know if I want to talk about this.”

There was a long pause and the sound of her having a sip of something over the phone.

“Well, I do,” she said, having made up her mind. The only way to get out of this conversation now would have been to get off the phone.

“I just don’t get into it that much,” I said, desperately searching my mind for something else to talk about.

“I’m emailing you a porn site.”

“No! Come on.”

“There, click on it. I’ll watch with you.”

I clicked and the window popped up.

“I’ll give you my password. It’s J. S. Y. R. 1. 3. O. R.”

I hadn’t even found the field for it yet and had to ask her to repeat it. I was shaking, but told myself I was being silly. People do this all the time, right?

“Okay, I’m in. What do I do?”

“It’s a website, Megan, do what you would normally do. Find something you’re interested in and click on it.”

“This one looks pretty normal, I guess. Um, try the….” I couldn’t decide what kind of words to use.

“The one with the guy fucking the girl scissors style?”

“Um. Sure?”

“Okay, we’ll click at the same time. Let me know when you’re ready.”

“I’m ready.”

We watched on the count of three. It started with a guy in a ridiculous haircut taking a girl by the sides and pulling her face to him on a couch. Her hair was curly and enormous.

“Her hair is huge,” I said.

“Shh.”

He kissed her hard and then tried to gag her with his tongue.

“Are they always this bad?” I asked.

“Usually, but most people fast forward through this part. Don’t say anything, okay? Just watch.”

He grabbed her breast like it was about to run away and she moaned like it was the most amazing thing ever. I took the phone away from my ear so Nina couldn’t hear me laugh. The man in the video took the woman’s hand and put it on his dick. She squealed a little and squirmed down to it. She unzipped his pants and pulled his dick out. Things became very silent between me and Nina. The woman in the video slid off the couch and looked up at the man from her knees. He held his dick over her as if to bless her with it. She took it and played with it, her tongue, unnaturally long, slapping it and rubbing it. Then she put it in her fist and sucked it in. I watched her as she went down on him, sometimes in slow motion, sometimes the same shots repeated, her face elongated and slack in the cheek, her eyes watery staring up at him. They would focus in on his face occasionally, bored, really, staring down at her.

Two minutes passed and the only sound was Nina’s breath.

“Are you feeling anything yet?” she asked.

I decided not to lie. I didn’t want to get out of this as much anymore. “A little warm, tingly, kinda. I feel like I’m slowing down.”

“Are you wet?”

“What?”

“Are you wet?”

“Nina!”

“Check.”

I slid the seat of my panties to find out and find myself very wet, to my surprise, swollen too.

“Yeah! Wow!”

“Good, keep watching and then decide what to do.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

“Megan, come on. You hang up and you’ll shut it off. I know you will. So stay on the phone.”

“All. Right.”

The man was standing then, his arms akimbo, unclothed, the girl in stockings and high heels sucking him off vigorously. The camera shifted and showed her enormous fingernails on her clit, digging in.

“Are you doing that?” I asked.

“Aren’t you?”

Nina was so fearless, so scary sometimes. I worried about myself around her. Whether I was afraid that I was nothing like her or that I was going to become her, I can’t say for sure. I pushed my panties to the side anyway, though it was hopeless, of course.

“You need to get some of that wet on your fingers,” Nina said. I was blushing, like an awkward boy being forced to dance. I went to the hole and coated my hand.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Rub.”

“Where?”

“You don’t know?”

She was not making this easy for me. “I… I don’t know where it is.”

She sighed for me and said, “Okay, here’s what you do. Put your index finger in the entrance to your naughty hole.”

“My ‘naughty hole’?”

“I’m trying not to make you uncomfortable.”

I did. She continued. “Now, there’s something like a ski slope between two folds just above it. Can you find it?”

My fingers stabbed around a bit until the inner lips separated and I saw what she meant, a little ramp.

“I think I’ve got it.”

“Follow it.”

My finger slid up and ran to the top. I pressed in. “There’s a piece of cartilage or something in there.”

“Don’t press that hard. Think of it like trying to clean the keys on your computer without pressing them down.”

I flinched and had to find it again. “Okay.”

“Now, just little flicks…. Cleaning the keyboard…. And keep your nails… away.”

The man had the woman on her back, one heel over his left shoulder, the other on the floor. His face was tense and he was panting. I began to flick.

“Oh God,” I said. It was like being tickled but you didn’t want it to stop.

“There you go,” Nina said. She was gasping, her breaths like wool across the phone.

“Oh God, Nina, holy shit!” There was a zip and a vibration up my spine. My feet were sweating and my knees were shaking.

“Slow down…. You’re gonna come too… too fast.”

The man in the video twisted the girl onto her stomach with her knees on the floor behind her. I tried to keep watching, but my neck was taking my head in all kinds of directions. My eyes were blurring.

Nina began to whine and yelled out, “Fuck!” I heard her lose control over the phone and finally heard it slap to the floor. I let mine go and it rested on my breast. Jolts started where the shaking began in my knees and something terrible, something unbearable, something beautiful tore like a penis shaped arrow through my body. I screamed through my nose, biting my lip, and rode the orgasm, because that’s what it had to be, through to its end. I shivered for a while and felt a new elation change my body for the good, the electric warmth gradually subsiding enough for me to pick up the phone again.

“Megan?”

“Yeah?”

“You came, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, good. Now, clear the history on your browser and go to bed.”

“Nina?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, friend.”

Sunday, April 1, 2007

The Mole

Don’t do that, Caroline. Don’t let your eyelashes flutter like that. Don’t bite your bottom lip.

Alan watches her face, he too biting his bottom lip, his fingers busy under the table. Caroline wears a dark green satin dress, from this view at the table, nothing more than a bra and the ever changing shine waves of material at her midsection. Her lips pull at the sides. A strap falls from her shoulder and she leaves it there, see-sawing on her perfect skin on her perfect arm.

Please don’t. Can’t you see that I’m here, across from you? Do you know what this is doing to me?

Alan dips his fingers in the ginger mayonnaise sauce and goes below again. I could see that his fingers are wrinkled from the wet. Caroline could breathe while I was watching this, but now she is tensed again, her body is quivering steel, like a cadaver in the back of a truck, rigid but vibrating. Then convulsions, and Alan, his mouth agape and his eyes dark, takes a stalk of asparagus from the cold, long-forgotten meal and puts it too between her legs. And it’s over for now. Alan takes a sip of the Côtes du Rhône, slightly chilled for the occasion, though certainly warmed now in his grip, rearranges himself on his seat and turns to me for conversation. I’m meant to ignore what just happened, meant to make light talk of heavy things with an air of casual omnipotence while Alan and I wait for our erections to subside. Before they work out a way to destroy me again.

“Lawrence,” Alan says, leaning forward, the Côtes du Rhône flopping in his glass, “I’ve been meaning to ask your opinion of the financial crash in Argentina.”

I interrupt him before he can talk down to me with a piddling question about whether it will effect us. He’ll give a little head waver at the end that means “I’ve just made your wife come and later, well, we’ll see, won’t we?”

“They never should have tied their currency to the dollar. Lazy economics. I told them that. Stability cannot exist when it’s based on the someone else’s variables, just as you cannot have a truly stable family based on imitating a better one. Order must come from within in its own pattern and crystallization.”

“You don’t feel bad for them?”

“No. If anything, this was the stroke of reality they needed. And it’s better for us.”

“I think it barely affects us at all.”

“Perhaps, but a mole, as inconsequential as it seems, can still become cancerous if it is not removed.”

“I find that quite cold coming from someone who used to live there.”

“I worked for the American people, not the Argentineans.”

Caroline’s arm moves to Alan’s lap and straightens. His face eases, a superior slack, and the mole itches again.

“I agree with Alan,” Caroline says, and turns her face to kiss him. His mouth opens for it, his eyelids half closed, but she only teases him, only breathes his exhales and returns them, her pouting lips wet with gloss and sex. He leans back in his chair, stretching his abdomen. The dinner, gelling gravies and melting sorbets, is trapped in her fingers and pushed away like it had been forced on her in the first place. Alan puts his hand around the back of her neck and she arches it. His lips hover, deciding where to land. When they descend, his top lip dragging over her carotid, she gasps, and Alan looks at me before his lashes enmesh with each other.

My meal is carried away by the tablecloth, our Côtes du Rhône with it, and an area of lacquered dining room table is cleared before me. Caroline sits on the other side, the lobes of the heart-shape bulging above. Her dress is bunched up in Alan’s fingers and her thighs are exposed, olive-skinned and long, like a grasshopper preparing to leap. Her arms shimmy in front of her and Alan’s pants are dropped. She pulls at his shirt, but he leaves it on, but open, one shoulder exposed.

“Fuck me, Alan,” she whispers in his ear, though I can hear it quite well. My erection stretches against my pants, altogether less roomy in there, though I do not allow it to be free. I cannot let Caroline have that part, that final humiliation. Alan’s arms fall to her hips, gripping the satin in strong fingers, he pumps. His fists tear at her dress, breaking the left strap. He seems angry with this and shoots me a look as if I’ve kept her from buying good clothes. He impatiently unravels her from the dress and I see the side of her breasts bounce as her arms come down. They are blocked finally as her hands grasp the table and she leans back for a better angle. Alan’s face is then exposed, superior slack in handsome matting, the better to fuck her with. A bead of sweat drops from his temples to his perfect cheekbone.

He pauses and hooks her inner thighs between thumb and forefinger. He lifts her and she helps him along, letting her legs drop behind her, settling into a crawl on the table. He steps onto it, the grease of their skin scuffing the shine, and kneels behind her. The asparagus spear, fallen out of her asshole, is twisted in the ginger mayonnaise and then returned. He balances it straight above his cock, organic blood flesh pulsing, and enters her, pushing the asparagus in as he goes. She falls to her elbows and splays her hands. A drip of mayonnaise hits the table and beads up. This, too, is part of it. They want me to clean it, put a napkin under them, but I don’t move because I can’t. My thighs can’t make that kind of coordination at this time, my knees aren’t interested in manifesting their purpose.

Alan’s cock and the spear of asparagus expose themselves, shiny and bubbling with agitation moment after moment, only to push inside again. Caroline’s hair waves and shakes, her breasts pendulum sweeping, over there. The dome of Alan’s ass, dimples appearing and disappearing, his brow furrowed and bottom lip drooping, over here.

“Do you want me?” Alan asks.

“Yes,” Caroline whimpers in the distance. “Yes, I want you. Yes.”

My body shivers and I grimace. I’ve just come in my pants, like I always do.

Alan’s back arches and he makes two final trembling thrusts above her, watching me.

“Do you want me,” he asks, in breathy breaks, “Lawrence?”

“Yes,” I answer, because I, after all, am the mole.