IM

To: moodyjudythefoodie@yahoo.com

From: youareell@bendertheisp.com

Hi. This is a little weird. I knew a girl with your name at Atlantic University from 1996 to 1998. I moved to Portland in July of that year and we talked maybe once or twice since, but I’m curious and I’m trying to find her. I ran across your site and saw your name and thought maybe. If you remember me, please reply to this email.

Thanks for your time,

Paul Cecchini

To: youareell@bendertheisp.com

From: moodyjudythefoodie@yahoo.com

Paul!

Paul?

Paul!

aol chat:

moodyjudythefoodie

Judy


For two days, I waited to hear from Paul, nervously activating my iChat, a little red bubble in the upper right hand corner of my screen, waiting to drag its tail into all kinds of trouble. And there he was on Wednesday night, while I was answering emails. He popped up, well, yeah, he popped up right there with a little bwooop sound.

P-Judy!

I smiled and blushed, my fingers shaking over the keyboard.

J-Paul!

P-Judy!

J-Paul!

P-What the fuck is going on with you?

I was unsure of how to take this one, then remembered that Paul’s mouth contained a billowing blue cloud of smoking profanity. This was him just talking. I thought about being vague about my life, letting him wrench details from me question after question, but I realized I was impatient, wanted to skip to the good stuff right away. I’d wanted to talk to him for years.

J-Occupation: Administrator at graphic arts house.
Marriage status: Married. His name is Frank.
Kids? No.
Want them? Not really.
Living where? Newburgh, NY
Why? Husband got a job there.

You?

P-Occupation: Arranging religious pamphlets alphabetically, throwing them out, gathering more pamphlets. To make money, I work as an architect. But you know that, silly.
People in the home whose various moods I must administer: One fully grown adult named Bea. Tad, five years old. Gordon, three.
Living in Portland (Oregon, you remember) in a house of my competitor’s design.
Why? I wanted to stop well short of the ocean. Fucking hate fish.

The night I met Paul, he was in a crisis at a bar. He’d just found out that his girlfriend was cheating on him. He confessed this to me in the line for the men’s room, across from the line for the women’s.

“Would you do something for me when you’re done in there?” he asked, nodding at the women’s room door.

“What?”

“I fucking need a hickey. A big fucking hickey like Jennifer Lopez thought I was a straw or something.”

“What, like on your neck, right?”

He sighed and grinned. “Yeah, on my neck.”

Under a fluorescent lamp buzzing over a pay phone at the back of the bar, I sucked on Paul’s neck for all it was worth, rubbing the bend of skin with my tongue. It took a few minutes, this being the first task set by a new friend, I wanted it to be perfect. We were silent, still, listening to Lovefool by The Cardigans play on the jukebox. My lips tingled when I was done.

J-Did you miss me?

P-Of course. Did you miss me?

J-Aw. Totally. I like your avatar thingy.

P-I like yours. It looks just like my computer.

J-You’ve got a MacBook?

P-Just got it last week.

P-Uh oh.

P-I’m about to press that camera button.

P-I’m going to press it.

J-Oh shit. Alright. I’ll press mine too.

P-Ready? Go.

I pressed the camera button and Paul appeared before me.

“Can you see me?” he asked.

“Oh my God.”

“I guess so. I can see you. You look great! You look better than you did in school!”

“You look exactly the same,” I said.

And he did. He picked up his computer and did a kind of head-to-toe of himself. I did the same when he was done.

The last time I saw Paul, he was in my dorm room. He was about to move to Portland and asked me if he should bring his girlfriend. I told him he should. Then he complained about not getting laid enough.

“There’s always some reason that she won’t. And then I’m stuck there with this girl that I can’t touch and I can’t touch another girl because I’ve got her. And I can’t touch myself ‘cause she’s there. And then, you know what I’m thinking about? I’m thinking about calling you.”

I blushed, sitting cross-legged on my bed. We never talked about it. He would ask for it, I’d do it, and we just went on like it never happened. He sat down on the opposite side of the bed, his back against the wall.

“Would you do one more? I don’t think I can afford to call you all the time. Just one last one for the road?”

“Just call me when you get back.”

“Why not do it now?”

“Like right here? Isn’t that going to be kind of boring for you?”

“I was thinking I would… right here. You could finally see it.”

He didn’t look at me. My heart beat like a box full of bricks dropping on the floor. Whump. Whump. Whump.

“Okay,” I said. “Um, girl?”

“Gillian Anderson.”

“Place?”

“Haven’t done a restaurant in a while.”

“Okay,” I start. “You’re at an expensive restaurant and you’re eating a New York strip with garlic mashed potatoes. You’re sitting next to Gillian Anderson. She puts her knife and fork down and takes a pat of butter in her hands. She warms it up between her palms and you know what to do. You unzip your pants and pull it out.”

I watched Paul unzip his pants and pull it out. He looked around the dorm room and took a bottle of lotion from my desk. He dropped his pants completely and sat back down on the bed. He pulled his shirt up to his armpits so I could see and squirted some of the lotion into his right hand.

“She reaches under the tablecloth and wraps her hand around it. Some of the butter hasn’t melted yet and it feels cold. You stare at your fork and concentrate.”

Paul looked good these days. He seemed fit, a little paunch, but not too much. He moved with more confidence, taking the computer around his house to give me a tour. He put it down and I watched him pour himself a Coke in his kitchen. He didn’t have the lope in his walk like he used to.

“Where’s Bea?” I asked him. “I haven’t seen her since like your first date.”

“She and the kids are visiting her mom. Her mom spoils the absolute shit out of them and we’ve gotta break them in again whenever they come back. “

“I guess that’s what grandmothers are for, right?”

There was a long pause and he picked up the computer again, his face, and then a turn and a walk until we were back in his office. He set it down, sat and stared at me for a while.

“Where’s your guy? Frank, right?”

“He works nights.”

“Factory?”

“Sommelier.”

“Oh. That’s gotta be hard.”

“Not really. We’re very different people and it’s better that we don’t see too much of each other.”

“Now I’m jealous.”

“Don’t be.”

“Things not so good?” he asked.

“Not really. You?”

“Same as they were at Atlantic.”

“Sorry.”

“Ah. You get what you marry, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “You getting laid any more than you were?”

“Nope.”

“Cheating?”

“Nope.”

“Good for you.”

“I guess. I missed you.”

“I missed you too,” I said, and this time he could see me smile. He smiled back.

“You had your teeth capped, huh?”

“Had to,” he said. “Dentist’s orders.”

He mussed his hair and sat back, regarding my face.

“Tell me a story,” he said, and I waited for him to say he was kidding.

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Bea. Frank.”

“It’s not cheating. No one’s touching anyone.”

“No!”

“How ‘bout I tell one?”

“Paul….”

“Judy….”

“Place?” I said nothing and frowned at him. “Pl-aaace.” His hands patted his desk. “Judy, when I would call you in college, would you say that we were having sex?”

“No.”

“So it’s not cheating.”

“Frank hasn’t had sex with me in five months.”

“Give me a place.”

“Bedroom.”

“Did you say dining room table? Okay. He’s kissing you hard in your dining room and he’s got his hand in your pants. He unzips them and pulls them down. Judy, pull your pants down.”

“What? No!”

“I’m telling the story. Pull your pants down. It’s only fair.”

I slid the laptop forward on my bed, got up, my heart pounding like it was in the dorm room. Whump. Whump. Whump. My pants and underwear, as though my hands were not under my control, were dropped to the floor. I angled the laptop screen so he could see. His face went a little slack. I saw his arm go down to a drawer in his desk. He got a bottle of lube and set it out.

He continued. “He starts to fuck you with his fingers. It feels good. It feels really good to you. You want the real thing and you start to beg for it.” He took his shirt off, then stood and took his jeans off, still talking. “You say ‘Fuck me. Fuck me with that big cock.’” He stood in his underwear for a moment, an undeniable bulge in there, then pulled those too off. His cock was hard, straight, bouncing out of the underwear.

“I forgot how hairy you are,” I said.

“Shh. He asks you to say it again. You do. ‘Fuck me. Please.’”

His voice was a little comical, trying to imitate me. I couldn’t laugh because he’d see me. I covered my mouth instead. He backed his chair far enough from the desk so I could see all of him. “Your pussy is wet.” He snapped open the bottle of lube and poured some down over it. He rubbed it in with a twist and began to work it. My smile turned to hot shock under my palm. I seemed to stop breathing. “Is your pussy wet, Judy?”

“Probably.”

“Check.”

My fingers slipped between my pussy lips, his face changing, a smirk and a gasp.

“I’m wet. This is wrong.” But my finger took some of the wet and moved up.

“There you go,” he said. “I’m not very good at this. Why don’t you take over?”

“You press her face down on the dining room table and smack her ass a few times. The pink drives up on both cheeks. She tries to hide the pain in her face, but she can’t. ‘Please, Paul,’ she says. ‘That hurts.’” My fingers started to rub furiously, as if doing this fast would make it less wrong. I found a spot that made my thighs tremble. He noticed. “You finally give in, press your cock down and slide in. Her pussy grabs you tight and you’re not sure how you’re going to hold out. You start to fuck her, slow so you can feel it all, but she begs you to go harder now.”

He stopped for a moment and held his cock out for me to see. It was long and thick, just as I remembered it. I remembered it all the time, had memorized that night in my dorm room like I filmed it.

He brought it back into his fist and started to beat it hard, the sound of flapping skin making it to the tiny microphone in his computer. “You’re fucking her madly now, and she calls out to you. She says ‘Paul! Paul, that’s so good! Fuck me harder, Paul! Fuck harder!’ And you look down at her face and see it all scrunched up and red and you do. You go harder.” It was getting harder to talk now. To concentrate on the words. I never did this when he’d call me before. I waited until we hung up.

“Mmm. And your… your body just fills… up with… sex. And you slap her ass one more time for it. One more time… and she… cringes. You can feel her tighter on your cock. Her teeth are gritting. “And you slow down and grind into me. You… grind me and I can feel you so deep.”

I’d done it. We both noticed the switch to first person. We both gasped. I was about to come, but he got there first.

“Judy, fuck, fuck, Judy.” He stood up and came, shooting out onto the camera. “Fuck!”

“Paul! Jesus Christ, Paul!” His thumb wiped the come off as I came in wave after wave, thrown all over the bed and shaking the computer. I lay silently for a few moments before I had the strength to sit up. I knew I was blushing. I knew he wouldn’t be.

“I miss you,” he said again.

“When does she get back?”

“Next week.”

“Good. Tomorrow night, then?”

“Yeah.”

And I closed iChat.