Her hair stood on end and crackled and everything smelled like a thunderstorm had just rolled through, fresh and clean and sharp. She quickly stuffed the remote control in the pocket of her battered dungarees. There were two of him on the bed, just like she’d thought there’d be.
Two of them, naked, entangled. Two sets of eyes blinking sleepily up at her. Two hands entwined as two hands push against the floor boards. Two groans. A belly against the bare white cushions and a belly rolling over in the air as two knees hit the floor by two knees bending and pushing up. Two of those cocks flopping not quite loosely as his mouth and his mouth both quirked up in that reckless little smile that sent her heart looping.
“Christ,” he said, and “Fuck,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have pressed the wrong button or something. During the gating. I mean, I didn’t mean to.”
“Uh huh,” he said, and “An accident,” he said. “Uh huh.”
“Honest,” she said.
He was sitting there on the cushions, beside himself. One of him put his hand on the other’s knee. They were both looking at her. Neither smile had quite gone away, so she stepped closer to them, and couldn’t not smile herself.
“What am I going to do with myself?” he said at the same time, and she laughed as he grabbed her by the pants, as he grabbed her T-shirt, she laughed as he kissed her throat and he kissed her belly, she laughed as he lifted the shirt free and unbuttoned her pants, yanking them rudely down her legs.
—which I could feel rolling beneath me a pulse like a heartbeat the earthsblood warm and sluggish rich just beneath the skin of the earth the rock a skin a skim under my feet flexing welcoming my weight the water sluicing away around me sizzling almost I hear it where it brushes the rock hot not from the sun but itself smiling I can hear it to see me as I sit and gasp feeling already dizzy with anticipation the first time I did this the shock and surprise but now oh now I just want I want the weight of it under me gravity suspended clinging my thighs and my cunt as the rock and the rock against me within me the slick of it clayey like wet skin the pebbles smooth in my fingers as I try to give back with my fingers what little I can until trembling I’m coming so huge and vast and I close my eyes and groan and it’s shaking beneath me the river is roiling the rapids crash and fall about me the land itself changing around me as I dig my hand into the bloodied rock knuckles stinging my calf cramping tears running down my face and I’m screaming and screaming as the wind cracks and the rock shakes and I’m coming it’s coming I’m done and I’m done oh my God I’m done
He wore a long grey robe, and though the hood of it was down about his shoulders it was hard to make out his face in the dark room. When he spoke, though his did not raise his voice, his words echoed eerily; some sort of tube on the plinth before him caught them and threw them about the space: “Please disrobe,” he said.
“What, just like that?” she said.
“Please,” he said. “Remove your clothing.”
She was already unknotting her corset stays. “Usually,” she said, tugging her chemise free of her underskirt, “they buys me a drink, first. Not that I’m complaining, the cash you’ve given me.”
He said nothing. There were colored lights set in the top of the plinth, and they lit up and died down in rhythmic patterns, chasing his face with greens and blues and ugly reds. He had a beard of uncertain color, and a nose as long and sharply edged as his cheeks. He pressed a level, and suddenly she was lit up in harsh white light. She stood there a moment, blinking.
“Stockings, too,” he said. “And underthings.”
“It’s chilly,” she said. “I said, it’s chilly!”
“It would be best,” he said.
When she’d laid the filmy stuff on the heap of her discarded outfit and stood there, arms about herself, shivering under that light, he stepped out from behind the plinth. He limped as he walked, and something under his robes thumped dully with every step of his right foot. “Lie down,” he said.
“On my back?” she said.
“As you like,” he said. “Stimulate yourself.”
“Stimulate?” she said.
“Manipulate your orifice to generate the lubricative juices. However you might prepare yourself for a customer.”
“A customer?” She sat up, resting back on her elbows, blinking against the light. “Look, sir, I don’t know what you think I am, but—”
“A doxy,” he said. He turned and limped back to his plinth. “Are you ready, then?” He did not wait for an answer, but raised one hand as all the lights on his plinth flashed, bathing him in a lurid stew of color.
The wave that washed over her was at once cold and hot, and started somewhere down near her toes and hiked her knees up, toes stiff, thighs shivering with an uncertain effort. She cried out as it slapped her chest and throat and face, and her hair was suddenly soaked—with water? Sweat? Come? She cried out, and she moaned, jerking, and fell back, raising one leg up into the light, her back arched, as a second wave washed over her from nowhere at all.
When she opened her eyes, she lay in a sticky puddle on the stone floor. He stood at the edge of the bright white light, making notes with a stylus on a wood-framed tablet. “Thank you,” he said, or she thought he said, over the ringing that still sounded in her ears. “It helps, to make the metaphor concrete.”
The door was open when I got there. The guy on the bed was moaning something fierce and it didn’t matter what language it was he was speaking. What he was saying was pretty clearly no, no, get off. I had no idea what the girl was saying, or what language she was saying it in. Her hands were on his shoulders and she was leaning over him, her stringy dark hair curtaining his face, her voice a low guttural mutter.
“Hey,” I said. “Hey!” She looked up, sat up. Her bare tits bounced a little, and she looked drained of color under the harsh fluorescent light, except for this savage-looking hickey all liver-brown and blue bitten just over her right nipple. Must have been one bruiser of a kiss. “You gotta keep it down,” I said. “We’re getting complaints.” The guy on the bed I could see was naked, and I didn’t want to figure out what was in the look he was trying to give me.
“Is okay,” said the guy behind the door, and if I hadn’t had that second beer I might have been quick enough to clock him before I figured out he wasn’t trying to clock me. He didn’t flinch at the jerk of my arm, though. “Is my brother,” he said, hands up, smiling.
“Go on,” says Rachel. “Holler.” Her hand on Ashely’s neck, pressing Ashley’s face into the counter. “They say you’re loud.” Her other hand between Ashley’s thighs fingers crooked the edge of it sawing at Ashey’s underwear. “Nobody out here to hear you scream. Go on. Let loose.”
“Fuck you,” says Ashley.
“No, fuck you,” says Rachel. Swinging her hips around to slap her groin against Ashley’s ass. Thrusting her hand jabbing against Ashley’s cunt. “You’re getting wet,” says Rachel. “You’re shaking. You’re loving this. You’re gonna fucking come all over my hand.” She leans over Ashley small breasts flattening against Ashley’s back to whisper in her ear, “And then I’ll give you to Jimmy.”
Ashley bucks then, tries to push away from the counter, but Rachel holds her down, grinning. “God damn,” she says. “Fuck, girl.” She slaps the back of Ashley’s head. Ashley roars. Rachel jams her against the counter with her hips, and again, tattooed arm quivering. “Do that again and I’ll give him the rest of them, too. Where are they? Upstairs?”
Ashley wails.
“Go on, girl,” says Rachel. “Let it all out. Then settle down and give me that come. I want to watch what it does to your face.” She’s settled back into a smooth rocking motion. Ashley groans. “Face it, fucker. Nobody’s coming for you. Nobody’s coming for any of you. You ever notice how bad the cell phone reception is out here?” Rachel laughs. “Guess they never got around to building that tower.”
I saw the pop star downtown again today. I was going to pick up dry cleaning when I looked out and saw her climbing the big stone steps up to the railroad trestle by the Old Spaghetti Factory. It looked like she was unbuttoning her blouse.
By the time I’d found a parking space and run back to the trestle she was up on the railroad tracks. Her blouse was discarded at the top of the steps, a slash of white against the dark, mossy stone. I scooped it up. She was a little ways down the tracks, sitting on one rail, unlacing one of her knee-high soft leather boots. You dropped this, I said.
I know, she said, and she kicked off the boot and left it drooping on the tracks. She stood up barefoot wearing only a tiny pair of carefully cut-off jeans, legs gone right up to the crotch, waistband gone with the beltloops riding low on her swelling hips, back pockets ripped away, all the edges soft and feathery white threads leaking from pale distressed denim. She was looking down and down the long curl of her belly, blond hair tangled in the breeze, her hands busy with the fly of her shorts. Took me a moment to figure out what she was trying to do.
Need some help? I asked, and she looked up with that dazzling smile. I left the blouse with her boots.
The shorts were held shut with a big gold safety pin and her fingers were slipping as she tried to squeeze it enough to open it. I took hold of the pin which was warm and tried to squeeze it open myself but had to grab her shorts for purchase. My fingers clutched between the feathery white remains of the waistband and the brown bare skin of her belly. The backs of my fingers scratched by rough gold curls.
I thought you shaved, I said. It was in that magazine. The pin popped loose and pricked my thumb. She grabbed my hand in hers which are surprisingly small and sucked the blood from my thumb, her blue eyes impishly mischievous, and somewhere far away I heard a train whistle blow. That was then, she said, and let go of my hand. She danced away down the tracks, tugging the shorts over her hips and letting them fall down her long, long legs. I’m shooting a video! she cried.
Human passions, however, grow more active as the territories in which they operate approach the equator, whether from north or south, with correspondingly rising climatic temperatures. Accordingly, about the 45th parallel, approximately dividing Japan from Siberia, Istanbul from Odessa, Barcelona from Marseilles and the United States from Canada, sexual concupiscence, like other dictatorial sentiments, retreats more and more from the front lines of a social group. It tends to concentrate, if at all, on artifice in the communications zones rather than on the frank and simple conjunctions ordained by nature in the raw. This is especially the case in the lands north of the 45th parallel which have enjoyed several centuries, though fewer than most of Asia and North Africa, of sophisticated civilization. It is no accident that German, British and Scandinavian sexologists have found their subject far more complex than did the solemn sixteenth century Arab Sheikh Nefzaoul of Tunis, author of the celebrated Perfumed Garden, a prose manual interspersed with a few scraps of verse, for the use of lovers. He dealt only, though at somewhat inordinate length, with the possible if often difficult varieties of the conjunction of phallus and vagina and matters appertaining thereto. He ignored altogether, except for two brief and contemptuous references to lesbianism and bestiality, the numerous divergences from normal coition and the strange practices for its stimulation which have been widely cultivated in Europe and other non-Islamic territories, for the sake of novel sensation, from a relatively early period.
Back in the days of knights in armor
There once lived a lovely charmer
Swimming in the Rhine—
Her figure was divine.
She had a most immoral eye.
They called her Lorelai.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.
Four grey walls, and four grey towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shalott.
She wants to be like that gal on the river,
Who sang her songs to the knights passing by.
She had the goods, and how she could deliver—
The Lorelai.
She used to love in a strange kind of fashion
With lots of Hi, ho-de-ho, hey-de-hey.
And the Lady of Shalott weaves night and day
A magic web with colours gay—
The pop star was on my couch again when I get back from the vet. She was wearing a pair of knee-high rainbow socks. She said hello to Oscar and diddled her fingers on the rug when I let him out of the cat carrier. He sniffed them suspiciously. I asked her if she’d like maybe some coffee or tea. No, she said, your reception’s better up here. But the television was off.
She yawned and stretched on the couch, kicking her rainbow socks. Sunlight gleamed from her naked back. She smiled that megawatt smile. It’s okay, she said. Everybody does it.
They do? I said.
Sure, she said. Go ahead.
So I went to sit on the floor by the couch but she said what about your pants? and we both laughed and I took them off. I sat down and she rested her chin on my shoulder and watched. She murmured something I couldn’t catch. All I could think about was the smell of her hair warmed by the sun. Now that I think about it, she might have been playing with herself, maybe. It’s hard to tell because she was lying on her stomach. Oscar sat in the doorway to the kitchen and watched me the whole time. He’s always liked moving hands.
He scampered out of the way when I stood up and went to get some paper towels. She ran her fingers along the rug again where I’d been sitting. I’ve always liked leopard-print, she said.
