And Tell Me That You Love Me

—Why don’t women want to sit on guys’ faces?

—I don’t know, Jimmy,—I said, smiling and shaking my head. —I never really thought about it.

We were sitting at the bar, in the Nine Ball, a place a couple blocks down from the factory where I work. I’d just gotten off shift. Twelve hours again. They laid a bunch of people off, then started working the rest of us longer. Saves money that way.

Jimmy works at a tool-and-die place nearby. He’s a regular. Skinny, a little bit up grey starting to show in his hair. Always wears black Carhartt t-shirts. We’ve talked before, shot some pool, watched some games. He tends to attach to whoever is around and available, so sometimes we don’t talk for days. Which is fine. I just get tired, my feet aching from walking around on the cement floor all day. I don’t even know how he got on the subject. Something on his phone, I guess.

But he continued, —I mean, they like getting their pussies licked.

I nodded. —Yes. That’s true.

—So you’d think they’d want to be in the position, literally the position, to really be able to control that.

I thought about that, then added, —Sure.

—I mean, I think the idea of a woman wanting to sit on my face is hot, don’t you? he asked.

I said, —Yes. That is, on my face, not yours.

He nodded. —Right, that’s what I meant. A woman on each of our faces.

There was a pause. The bartender, Tammy, a gorgeous young woman, or younger than either of us anyway, with tattoos up each arm, who I think both of us were infatuated with, came by and refilled our beers. As she walked away we both stared at her ass. I said, —Maybe it’s that women don’t want to be in control during sex?

He nodded, musing. —Could be. I never thought of that. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like being in control during sex, as much as the next guy.

I nodded quickly. —Me too.

—I mean, I like throwing a woman down on the bed and having my way with her as much as the next guy.

—Yes. Of course. Who doesn’t?

He leaned over to me, lowering his voice. —Have you ever had a woman sit on your face?

—Oh, once or twice.

—Did they enjoy it?

—I think so, yes. The second really did. I mean, she came.

—Are you sure?

—Well, pretty sure.

—Because sometimes they fake it.

—Yeah, I guess.

He kept his face close to mine. —So did they initiate it?

—Sitting on my face?

He kept staring, and nodded. —Yeah.

—Well, no. I asked them.

He leaned back, raising his voice. —You asked them? You gave them an option?!

Tammy looked over briefly.

—Well, no. I guess I told them, and they kind of agreed. I guess just to please me.

—More than once with each woman?

—No.

—You’d think since they liked it they would’ve wanted to do it again.

—Well, they weren’t girlfriends.

—Why didn’t you ever ask a girlfriend?

I shrugged. —I don’t know.

He sipped his beer. —Oh, I see.

—You do?

He nodded. —Yeah.

—Have you?

—Have I what?

—Had a woman do that?

He shook his head. —No. It’s one of my greatest regrets.

I hesitated. —Well, from my experience, I wasn’t exactly ready to go afterwards.

—You mean fucking?

—Yeah. I mean, it kind of takes up all your attention, so you can’t really stay, you know—

—Hard?

—Yeah.

—Oh.

He thought about that for a second. —Maybe that’s why women don’t like it.

—Why?

—Because they know. They know if they indulge in the lesser pleasure of pussylicking, that they may not be able to get the greater pleasure of a cock inside their pussy.

I shrugged. —Could be. I guess. I mean, that’s me. Maybe some other guy could stay hard.

He shook his head. —No, I think you’re pretty normal.

—Thank you.

He stared at the bar mirror, eyes becoming unfocused. —It’s just, you know, the sensation.

—The sensation?

—Of being surrounded.

—Oh.

—And her in control. Like you’re trapped and you have to do a good job or else.

I finished off my beer, got out my wallet and put some money down. —I gotta go Jimmy.

He nodded. —Yeah. Sorry. Got carried away there.

—It’s ok Jimmy, I understand.

I stood up, putting my wallet away. Tammy walked by, grabbing the money, and I waved for her to keep the change. She smiled.

Jimmy turned in his stool. —Do you have a girlfriend right now?

—No. Do you?

—No. Is there something wrong with us?

—No. Of course not.

—Oh. Ok.

He turned back to staring in the mirror, sipping his beer. I said goodbye and left. Outside, the sky was dark and the air cool and I almost forgot where my car was.

The Eye of Fortune

He introduced himself on September 11th.

“Hi, Elias. I’m Prince September.”

“cool, cool, cool.”

He’d burst through the doorway of my apartment, a complete stranger, but I was used to crazy shit.

“I’ve come to bring you a gift, Elias.”

Removing his Fedora, he pulled a ball of underwear from the hats head hole, then unwrapped it to display his treasure, still
in the underwear.

“Here. Its your father’s eye.”

I scratched.
father?

“Go ahead. Try it out”.

fuck it, I thought, free eye

I lifted the patch that shields the innocent from the watery hole where my left eye used to be, and popped it in.

He replaced the Fedora.

“so how’s the view?”

“the cartoon vision is fucking amazing.”

and it was.

no bullshit.

just like the old Disney films.

and he smiled, as if to say,
a lot of people are gonna shoot heroin,
and suck dick for heroin,
and some are going to jump from tall buildings,
and say Aaaaaaaaaaaah!
as they fly down and Splat! on the sidewalk,
but not you Elias,
you’re the man,
wink wink…

he threw his head back and
laughed at the ceiling.

“AAAHHHH.
huh.
huh.
huh.
huh.”

“AAAHHHH.
huh.
huh.
huh.
huh.”

I was fairly certain he was trying to fuck me out of something, but his hilarity was so infectious that I came down with the awfullest case of the Pillsbury Doughboys.

“huh-hoo  huh-hoo”

“huh-hoo  huh-hoo”

and we remained that way for days it seemed,
laughing our asses off, talking, and toking.

and he told me that he’d written some of the Beatles songs,
and practically every song ever,
“at least the good ones anyway.”

“cool, cool, cool”.

He’d handed me his business card:

Jack of Clubs.

Jack of Clubs? What the…?

and as I’d slowly turned it over, he placed his hand on my shoulder,

“Congrats, Elias…

 “yes, yes, yes”

“from this day forward,
your pussy’s gonna burn like a motherfucker.”

We shook.

He left.

Lights In the Sky

Its night, and I see the flashing of drones up high, beaming their cancer messages for everyone, and some stranger inside flips his wig, and urges me to run under the trailer, to curl-up in a dog burrow and sleep, and I sigh with age, fumbling my keys, and plastic grocery bags, and I comfort him with the knowledge that from now on, we’ll carry aluminum foil at all times, the good shit, not the dull store brand stuff, whenever it’s on sale of course, and he lets me know that he’s got my back, when I show him an image of me standing before God, like a child in line to see Santa Claus, pointing at my upraised finger, to debate the finer points of giving man one long enough to reach the stars, and the stranger subsides, and when I’m certain the coast is clear, I press play, to continue watching the movie, and Santa laughs, and pats his knee, and I crawl up, trying not to stare at the bulge in his pants, and he smiles with those whiskey eyes, as he proceeds to whisper something so profound, that explains everything so well, and I’m so amazed, that I walk off as if in a dream, grinning from ear-to-ear, like I just had my ass pounded.

Owning Emily

I arrived at around 3am. I wanted to be first in the queue but had been beaten to it. Occupying the prime position was a tatty old sleeping bag, topped with a woollen bobble hat bearing multiple primary-coloured stripes. Somewhere inside was a man; a man with foresight, as he was slumped in a fold-up picnic chair. A chair; I hadn’t thought about bringing one with me. That meant I would be standing for six hours, if not more.

I said hello to Man Number 1 as I took my place behind him, but he didn’t reply. I wasn’t sure if he nodded an acknowledgement or twitched due to the shock of being addressed. Either way, it was clear he wouldn’t be good company for the long wait that lay ahead.

As the sun sneaked above the rooftops, more people arrived: all men and all alone. The shipment would be limited to 25 models, according to the rumours, but there were already over a hundred people in the queue. The numbers swelled as the store’s opening time approached. Maybe they were just hoping to get lucky.

Activity inside the shop caused Man Number 1 to shed his hat, climb from the sleeping bag and fold his chair. It would soon be the start of the business day.

‘Which model are you after?’ I asked Man Number 1. He didn’t reply, turning away as if I had somehow broken a code of silence. I didn’t know about the etiquette of such transactions; it was my first time.

‘Which model are you after?’ I asked Man Number 3. ‘Any take your fancy?’

‘I don’t want one for myself,’ he replied, almost too eager to disassociate himself from the impending transaction. ‘Hell; I don’t need a sex robot. Why would I? I’m a real man, I’m all man and the women love me for it. I’m only buying one to sell it on. I hear the ethnic models attract high prices in the Middle East, so that’s where I’ll be flogging it.’

Man Number 3 said nothing else. He wasn’t interested in which model I was after. Had he asked, my answer would have been an anti-climax. I didn’t care which model I ended up with; any of them would do. I wasn’t looking to fulfil a specific fantasy.

The staff brought us into the shop ten at a time. As we entered they gave us a number. We sat on a collection of unmatched chairs, filling in the various questionnaires that the programmers would need to ensure compatibility.

They called Man Number 1 in. My consultation wouldn’t start until he had selected his sex robot, and Man Number 3 would wait until I had made my choice. All the robots were unique; well, that’s what the adverts claimed.

The consultations could be quite a lengthy process. After assessing the purchaser’s personality, the next step was to filter the choices of sex robot by looks. They considered weight, height, ethnicity, age, hair colour, eye colour and a host of other physical attributes. Then there were optional extras: piercings, tattoos, scars, birthmarks and the like. With only 25 models in stock, not every taste could be catered for. It explained why some of the late-comers still queued. The last few purchasers would have little choice and might pass up the opportunity to wait for the next delivery.

Once the purchaser assessment was completed, the next stage was to define the robot’s personality. This part of the consultation considered culture, beliefs, hobbies and a wide range of socio-political data. The manufacturer insisted that every purchaser went through the process. Following widespread criticism in the media, they were trying hard to reduce the sleaze-factor of what was – in truth – a machine men could have sex with.

Once the consultation was complete, the purchaser went into another waiting room. The engineers added any optional extras to the robot and used the information from the consultation to create a personality profile. All the robots had artificial intelligence and deep learning was implemented, so they adapted to the owners’ routines, their likes and dislikes, and any special needs they might have.

After an hour, the representative called me in to the consultation room. On the table was a multi-page questionnaire. Its cover proclaimed it to be the Owner Requirements and Expectations Survey. I told him we wouldn’t need it.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to know which model they want, not without going through the consultation process. Then there’s her personality; we need to get that right for your relationship to be realistic.’ He made his comment sound like a warning against my haste. Representatives were paid commission on upgrades, so it was in their interests to push the customisation options.

I decided to seize the initiative and keep the transaction as straightforward as possible.

‘I’ve done some research and as I understand it the robots, when new, all fit into general classes regarding looks and personality, and within those classes there is a degree of individuality which can be adapted.’

‘Yes, you’re right; that’s stated in the brochure.’ He seemed put out I wasn’t letting him do the hard-sell on me.

‘Do you know which the most popular classes are – in terms of sales – for looks and personality?’

‘Of course I do,’ he replied, not liking my approach.

‘Okay; do you have a model in stock with looks and personality that fall within the most popular classes?’

He checked the stock sheet and nodded. ‘We have three. If we complete a few sections of the survey I can determine which is best suited to your needs.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ I said, adding a smile to appear friendly. ‘Just get whichever of the three is nearest the door in the warehouse.’

The representative wasn’t happy that I hadn’t let him indulge in his sales patter. He stressed the need for compatibility, for optimal adjustments to the programming, for tweaks to physical traits to suit my every need. By ‘my every need’, he meant tweaks that would make my sexual experience with the robot dirtier. I let him finish his argument and then repeated he should just get the one closest to the door.

The sex robot I purchased was called Emily. She came in six parts: two legs, two arms, one head and one torso. The package included the tools required to build her. At first, I put her head on backwards for fun, but she wouldn’t power up until I put it back the right way. They were happy for you to screw the robots, but not to screw with them.

She had three operational modes: Girl Friend, Mistress and Filthy. I selected Filthy and dressed her in a leather basque and thigh-length latex boots.

Emily asked if I wanted to fuck her. I said I might, in a while, but before we did the dirty deed would she mind sweeping the leaves off the driveway? She took the broom with a smile and went outside. After some time, I went out and watched her working. In fairness, she made sweeping the driveway look sexy. She spotted me watching, and as she swept she told me how much she wanted to feel my cock inside her. After an hour of sweeping and a long verbal description of what she wanted me to do to her, the driveway looked great.

She asked again if I wanted to fuck. I told her to wait and suggested she pass the time cutting the grass. I watched as she mowed accurate lines into the lawn. Each time she reached the end of a line, close to where I was sitting, she’d say how much she wanted me to ejaculate on her breasts. She said it in coarser language; I had set her to Filthy mode after all.

That night I was in bed, reading, when Emily appeared at the window. The rain bounced off her face, her hair wet, bedraggled and plastered to her head. She balanced on the ladder, her skimpy negligee flapping in the wind. As she cleaned the glass with a squeegee, her lips mouthed a message. The only words I could make out were ‘finger’ and ‘anus’.

After a few days the deep learning had built a database of the clothes I dressed her in and the tasks I asked her to complete. She dressed herself, learned where I kept the tools and understood the jobs that needed doing. She also propositioned me for sex and described her fantasies in the filthiest of terms while she was doing her chores.

In the following days she built me a shed, cut the hedges, painted the living room and even carried out an oil change on my car. Despite her usefulness, Emily was beginning to bore me. A sex robot carrying out everyday tasks in a slutty way had seemed amusing and, to be fair, the first few days were fun. However, her sunshine attitude and legs-akimbo spirit started to grind me down.

One night, after a few drinks, I contemplated having sex with her. Despite her attractiveness, that was something I had no intention of doing. With the amusement factor on the wane, Emily represented a pointless investment.

Man Number 3’s plan of selling on his sex robot came back to me. Emily was, to all intents and purposes, a virgin. She had also amassed several housekeeping and maintenance skills, and while it might take time for her to unlearn those, she had kept her filthy attitude. Emily would be a catch for anyone seeking a nearly new sex robot. In fact, I was proud of her and all her achievements.

Searching the internet revealed a rich vein of potential sex robot purchasers. The unique personalities and low supply volumes of the automatons had kept resale values high. Demand changed according to locations. In the Middle East there was little call for anything but ethnic models, and North American purchasers seemed to prefer sex robots of greater heights. Emily was short, slim and blonde. The demand for such characteristics came from Japan.

Finding a buyer was easy, but as we discussed the transaction via a series of emails, he asked questions that made me feel uneasy. How tight was she? I said I didn’t know; I hadn’t had sex with her. He then asked me to gauge her tightness with my fingers. How big would a penis need to be, in terms of girth, to enjoy a tight fuck? He wanted information about her vagina and anus.

I was appalled. This was Emily. She had her own ways: fixing things and cleaning up and doing so with a slutty indifference that made her charming. The thought of a stranger using her as a sperm receptacle was unacceptable. The transaction was akin to handing over a loved one to sex traffickers. I couldn’t sell her.

I bought Emily a dog costume. It was hairy with floppy ears and a long tail. I taught her to chase cats, fetch sticks, bury bones in the garden and sleep in a basket in the kitchen. I took her out for walks, let her curl up in front of the fire when I was watching TV, and trained her to heel and stay.

She still asks me to fuck her every day, but I guess some characteristics are buried too deep.

Paul O’Pandy Fights Everyone On The Train

Paul’s wife Linda tells him over breakfast that despite all his awkward, shame-driven puritan bullshit, she still has fantasies and that the biggest one is she wants to do a threesome with two guys while he watches. Paul doesn’t have the emotional capacity to process this, so he throws his eggs against the wall and storms out of the house to go to work. Beyond the front door, the day is humid and hot enough to flop his hair down with sweat and glue his balls to one thigh. He hate-walks the whole mile and a half to the subway station and when he gets there he hops the turnstile and gives the station agent the middle finger before getting on the first train that comes by. Number, letter, line, fuck it, doesn’t matter, get me out of here already.

It takes him all of thirty seconds to make it worse.

He picks the guy at random, muttering at him out of breath.

“Heyyew. Heyyew. I said, heyyew. Heyyew gotta problem me?”

The little guy on the bench behind the book looks up into Paul’s wet, bloodshot eyes and says

“No.”

“Yes yewdew! I sawyew looking! I saw! Yew gotta problem me, yewdew! Well howbout yew dewsunthin bout? Huh?”

The little guy goes back to his book, or at least tries, but Paul slaps it out of his hand and gets taken totally off guard when the guy immediately socks him in his sweaty, melty testicles. He crumples to the ground and starts kicking back at the guy, but that only inspires him to get to his feet and start beating on Paul worse. The blows crunch against his bones and soft parts like a hammer. Half his teeth go loose and he tastes blood and one eye goes blank and he starts crying like a child, which only makes the guy hit him harder. In his idiot riot and rage, Paul screams that the guy is a tiny little pussy and that makes everybody else stand up and join in on the beating.

They stomp him flat, dancing around him as they screech and preen and kick him through until he doesn’t look like a person anymore. They joyously smash his pretty hands to leather bags of blood and bone chips, powder one of his ankles, kick him in the penis until it looks like a bicycle that was in a car crash. Some of the men pee on him when they’re done and then everybody takes pictures on their phones.

When the train rolls into his station, they all pick him up and throw him out together so he can crawl to wherever he’s going like the vicious little shit he so obviously is. At the office, everybody stares while Paul drags himself to his desk, tracking a thin snail trail of blood behind him. More pictures. Nobody says anything until the boss comes over and sits down across from him and asks if everything’s okay.

“Fllurmrr, mn clurnm, lekkf frummrnp.” Paul’s tongue is swollen and split from the beating and half his teeth are broken, threadlets of nerves hanging loose from the jagged stumps. Words are hard.

“Do you need to go home? Your wife called a little while ago…”

At the mention of Linda, Paul makes a rattling sound in his throat and headbutts the boss in his teeth. The boss recoils, his perfect smile stained red, then he belts Paul in the side of the head with his heavy black Swingline stapler. A blue explosion goes off in Paul’s brain and then he passes out.

It’s dark in the office when Paul opens his eyes again and everybody’s already gone home. He manages to call a cab dialing using his nose and ripped-up tongue and when they pull onto his street he whines and he pushes and noisily fills his pants with shit so the cheery fellow behind the wheel just kicks him out and doesn’t ask to be paid. Paul crawls the rest of the way home and doesn’t even really notice that Linda left the front door open, but he knows something’s wrong when he gets inside because the whole house smells damp with sex fumes.

He finds them in the kitchen.

His boss and the teenager from across the street with the toned arms piston in and out of her like industrial machinery while she hits them and makes them both call her Paul. They all look up in chorus and keep going while he leers weeping at them from the floor. Linda smiles and spits at him and he sees that the eggs are still on the tile from this morning, scattered amongst shards of his plate and dignity.

From between her two lovers, Linda calls his name and when he looks at her she locks his gaze and starts to come so loud the neighbors all turn up their TVs so they don’t have to hear. Except they kind of want to hear.

Paul hates how much he likes seeing her like this, and it’s hard to jerk himself off to it because his hands are smashed-up garbage now, but somehow he manages it.

After the men are gone and they’re alone again, Linda tells Paul that she wants a divorce and inside his heart he knows he’s too old and broken to ever find anyone else. She goes upstairs to sleep and when Paul doesn’t hear her turn on the shower to rinse off all the stinking fuck first, he cries harder and turns the oven on to five hundred degrees and he climbs inside. It’s easy to do because he’s so little.

In the morning, when the boss and the neighbor kid come over again, the kitchen’s blackened with smoke and shame so Linda takes them in the back yard and the neighbors video record her over the fences with their cell phones and touch themselves and invite her over for dinners and Monopoly nights and barbecues and no one ever asks about Paul ever again.