Tandi, Sweeter Than Candy

The car pulled over on the side of the road was of no interest to Drew until he drove closer. Next to it stood a dark-skinned, slender woman, wearing a sundress. He watched her kick the rear tire. Then she put one hand on her hip, made a fist with the other, and shook it at the sky. A young child stood next to her. 

Drew pulled up behind them. The trunk of the woman’s car was popped open. A cooler, with NY Yankees emblazoned on its side, a beach umbrella, and a guitar case was spread across the side of the road. A car jack lay on the ground.

He got out of his car, and the boy took his mother’s hand and hid his face in her dress. She took a step back. Drew hesitated. In the brief moment before he spoke, he admired her high cheekbones and long slender legs. Her bosom looked like it would burst out of her dress. The dreadlocks she wore were not the thick, traditional type you sometimes see. These were thin strands of hair, tightly wound. Her features were just as delicate as her hair.  

“Need some help?” he asked, approaching her.

She started to cry and took another step back. 

“I’ll be okay. It’s just a flat.” 

“Then why you crying?” he asked.

A truck speeding down the road drove past them. The rush of air it created caused her dress to fly up, covering her face and she pushed it down, but not before Drew caught a glimpse of her panties. Pink they were, and she may have realized what he saw because she turned her back to him, and covered her face with both hands.  

The boy stepped forward and said, “Momma don’t know how to change a flat.”

“You be quiet Trevor,” she said. “Go sit in the car.”

“My name’s Drew. Let me help.” 

Reluctant, but desperate for help, she nodded her approval.

Andrew reached into the trunk and pulled the spare out. 

“Damn. Your spare’s flat.” He stopped himself from using a few choice words he had known since boyhood.  

“Now what do we do?” The woman asked.

“There’s a gas station down the road. “I’ll get your spare fixed and bring it back. You can come with me, or wait here.” 

“If you don’t mind, I’ll wait here.”

“What’s your name?” he asked her.

“Tandi.”

***

Fixing the spare took longer than Drew would have liked. He was anxious to get back. It wasn’t leaving her alone on the side of the road that concerned him. No, he wanted to spend more time with her. 

He returned to find the woman sitting in the car with the boy. She looked in the rearview mirror and fixed her hair before climbing out. 

Tandi watched him change the tire. Drew wore a tee shirt, and she admired the muscles in his arms, his broad shoulders straining to loosen the tire lugs. Occasionally he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand to get the sweat and blond hair out of his eyes. His face was rugged and manly.  

Once finished he said to her, “You need to keep a good spare with you.” 

She thanked him and then noticed his hands.   

“Oh, look at how dirty you are,” she said.  

Tandi took some wet wipes from her car and smiled as she took his hand. First, she wrapped the pinky with a wet wipe, then moved on to the ring finger. Tandi pulled a bit on his gold wedding band and stared into his eyes. She moved to the middle finger and lingered on it before proceeding to the others. He turned his hand over and let her clean his palm. Tandi then did the same with his other hand.  

“How can I ever thank you,” she asked.  

“You could meet me for a drink.” Drew reached into his wallet and offered his business card.  

Tandi read the info on the card. Andrew Previn Esq. He had an office on Madison Ave.  

***

Tandi expected Drew to arrive in about an hour. She bustled about straightening her apartment. It needed to look better than the last time he visited. 

That last visit was his first, and although she couldn’t prevent Drew from seeing the hopelessness of her neighborhood, and the squalor of her building, she could have done something about the mess her apartment was in.  

This time would be different. She picked up Trevor’s toys that littered the living room and put them in his room. After cleaning up the kitchen, she straightened out her bedroom. The laundry basket, full of dirty clothes, the pile of magazines she wanted to read, it all went into Trevor’s room. She put clean sheets on her bed and lit a scented candle. Last, Tandi took a shower and put on a skirt and a tight top, but not before she slipped on a new bra and a pair of thong underwear.   

The doorbell rang, right on time, and she buzzed him in.  

Drew wasted no time with idle chit-chat. He took her hand and led her to the couch. Sitting down, with Tandi standing in front of him, he put his hands on her hips, then slid them under her skirt and slowly pulled her underwear down. 

“A thong,” he said sounding surprised. He held them up. “Maybe I should have left those on for a bit,” he laughed.

“Your loss,” she replied. She tugged at his shirt. 

He picked her up and carried her into the bedroom. Drew lay on top of her and said, “I want to eat you like candy.” 

***

They tried hard to satisfy their carnal lust for each other. After about an hour, their cravings not satisfied, but too exhausted to continue any longer, they stopped. 

Tandi slipped on a robe and went to take a shower.

Drew sat at her kitchen table in his shorts and lit a cigarette. He reached for an ashtray that sat on top of a stack of mail. When he pulled the ashtray closer, the envelopes shifted, and one stuck out from the pile, exposing a message in bold type. The words “FINAL NOTICE” were visible to him. 

“You call me about next week, ok handsome,” Tandi shouted from her bedroom. She came into the kitchen wearing a robe. He pulled her close to him. Tandi ended up sitting on his lap, with her back to him.

He reached around her and cupped her breasts with both hands, his head resting against her back. “Maybe next time we can meet at that hotel again,” he said. “It is our anniversary.”

“That’s convenient for you but a hassle for me. Takes me ‘bout an hour to get there. No. Let’s meet here.”

“Okay, you’re the boss.”

Tandi felt something pushing against her butt.  “Is that you knocking on my back door?” 

“Little Drew wants some more.” He kissed the back of her neck. 

She stood and gave him a playful slap. “Little Drew ain’t got time for anymore. And Daddy Drew needs to get back to where he’s supposed to be.”  

Drew dressed and hugged her goodbye. Then he took his wallet out and offered her some money. 

Tandi squinted her eyes at him. “Why you doing that?”

Using one finger, Drew pushed the envelope with the bold message on it out from under the pile. He tapped it a few times. “I thought you could use a bit of help.”

“I ain’t doing this for money.”

“I know. Don’t be offended okay?”

Drew put the money on the table and left.

***

A few weeks later, they celebrated their anniversary, as planned but at her apartment. Drew stayed a bit too long, and when Tandi realized the time, she said, “Better get your ass outa here. I gotta pick up Trevor.” 

She took a quick shower after he left, and ran down the steps from her apartment in a hurry. With her hair still wet, no makeup, and wearing an old sweatsuit, she walked as quickly as possible. Despite her lack of preparation to go outside, a man in a passing car whistled at her. Tandi turned a corner and saw Trevor. Her friend Jervaise held him with one hand, and with the other, her little girl Juanita. Jervaise frowned and shook her head from left to right as Tandi came up to her.  

Tandi ignored her. “You all right Trevor? Mommy’s sorry she’s late.” She kneeled and hugged her son. 

“You’re lucky I was on time. What if I wasn’t?” Jervaise said in a stern voice. She stood with her hands on her hips, chin thrust out and her brow riddled with lines.  

Tandi stood up. “I swear that school bus is early.”

Jervaise gave her a ‘humph,’ as she turned and walked away. Tandi followed her, making excuses as to why she was late.

“You mean you were spending time with that sugar daddy of yours.”

Tandi shushed her. “Trevor don’t need to hear none of that.”

“Well? Admit it. You ashamed or something?”

Tandi didn’t respond.  She looked at the donut shop across the street and had an idea.  

“Let me treat you to something for helping me with Trevor.” Tandi grabbed her friend’s sleeve and tugged at it. “Come on. We’ve got time.” 

“Maybe you got time but I got me a husband I got to cook for.”

Tandi laughed. “You probably got dinner just about ready. You kids want a donut before we go home?” Tandi said as they crossed over. “C’mon.” 

She didn’t wait for an answer and walked to the shop, opened the door and waited. Jervaise gave her a half smile and led the kids in. The air in the store smelled of coffee, vanilla, and cinnamon. Most of the tables were occupied. 

“You all grab a seat,” Tandi told them.  

She bought hot chocolate and a variety of donuts and then joined them at the table. The kids were excited and fought over the donuts as soon as she put the tray down. 

“Mind your manners,” Jervaise scolded them. 

Without touching the money that was on the tray, Jervaise counted a twenty, a ten-dollar bill, and some singles. 

“Sugar bring you some Christmas cheer?” Jervaise asked.

“You could say Santa paid a visit.” 

Jervaise gave her a smug smile and shook her head from left to right.  

“You kids eat up now,” Tandi said. 

The kids finished their donuts and Tandi gave Trevor a few singles and sent him and Juanita to play the arcade games in the back.  

Jervaise’s eyes went back and forth between the kids and Tandi. When they were out of earshot, she grilled her.

“Okay, so how long you gonna let this go on?”

“Girl, I ain’t hurting nobody.”

“You’re a married woman, and he’s a married man. Never mind a white man. You taking care not to get pregnant?”

Tandi nodded her head yes.  

“You’re just setting yourself up to get hurt.” 

“I know he ain’t gonna leave his wife and kid for me.”

“He say that to you?”

“No, but he say he loves me.”

“How ‘bout you? You in love too?”

“No. I just see him ‘cause the sex is good, and he helps with the bills.”

“So now you’re a whore. What does Trevor’s father say?”

“Oscar? He don’t know nothing. He’s playing with that band in Paris. Says they appreciate a black man, not like here. He sends what he can, but a musician don’t make much.”

Trevor came to the table and asked for more money. Tandi gave him two more singles and told him that was all he would get. The boy went back to the arcade game. 

“Remind me, how did you meet this fella? Drew, right? What kinda name is that?” 

“That’s short for Andrew. Says no one calls him that. He fixed my flat. Remember? I told you. I know I told you.”  

“Well, good luck is all I can say.” Jervaise stood. “Time for me to head back to the kitchen. C’mon there Juanita, say goodbye. Say thanks for the donuts.”

Tandi headed home with Travis. They walked past a group of young men who were shooting dice against the side of a building. One of them, an older fella winked at her but she paid him no mind. Tandi stopped at a street light. Close by, two men were leaning on a car. One of them discreetly showed her a small clear plastic bag with a white powdery substance in it. She turned away. 

Tandi hurried across the street to her building, The lobby smelled of cleaners and marijuana. There were flyers for a Chinese restaurant littering the vestibule. She stopped at her mailbox and retrieved her mail. There was a letter from Oscar. Tandi’s emotions went from joy at receiving his letter to consternation as to what it might say. She waited until she was in the elevator to read it.

Oscar said his gig in Paris would soon be over, and he’d be home in a few days. Tandi felt no excitement at the thought of him coming back.

Later that evening, back in her apartment, she spoke with Drew and told him how much she loved him. It weren’t no lie. 

Coconut Grove 

Midnight: crickets. moon, stars; palm and palmetto trees. When I stepped into the bubbling waters of the hotel whirlpool, the temperature was the way I liked it—extra-hot bathwater. 

I was naked with Gabe, a former grad school acquaintance whom I’d run into earlier that day at a conference in Miami Beach. Chatting with him at an after-party, I’d been charmed by his dark hair, athletic build—and dimples—and invited him to go swimming with me at the hotel in Coconut Grove where I was staying. Actually, I’d used the words skinny dipping, since the pools were closed at night and there’d be just the two of us.

I was more like a trespasser than a paying guest. The father of my ex-boyfriend owned the hotel, and I still had a key to the iron gate of the pool area as well as to the father’s tenth-floor office, where I’d planned to spend the night, leaving the key inside with a thank you note. After all, my ex had told me several years ago when he gave me the key that I could use it whenever I wanted to….

God, I love hot tubs, I thought as Gabe and I eased into the hot water and sat down facing each other. Only our heads and necks showed above the bubbles. Hmmm. He’s got strong shoulders. He reminded me of a relaxed tiger. 

I couldn’t see his cock—but I did picture it in my head. My nipples perked up—

I am evil.

I can live with that.

I scooted along the underwater ledge to sit beside him, listening to him talk over the whoosh of the jets. It must have been 1 a.m. I was starting to wonder if he was even interested in me, when he let his feet and legs float, touching mine. What’s next? I asked myself.

What’s next was my every orifice. He had expert, expert fingers. Keep it up, man. Feels great—I’m close—andmy whole body spasmed, washed with waves of lava.

When my breathing calmed down, Gabe’s expression was the small smile of a cat presenting its human with a mouse it has lovingly killed. I felt fond of Gabe; he was turning out to be a dynamite lover. Too bad we lived on opposite coasts of Florida and both had long-time partners. I’d better take advantage, I thought.

We fucked for hours in the hot pool. We also tried doing it on poolside lounge chairs, the diving board, the steps of the regular swimming pool, and the concrete pool deck. 

At dawn, Gabe showered in the office suite and left. I was wiping down the shower walls with paper towels when I heard a key turn. It was the owner of the office and entire hotel, my previous boyfriend’s father. Today of all days, he’d arrived much earlier than his normal time.

I’d always found my ex’s father attractive—he was tall and powerfully built, like my ex. I actually would’ve preferred the father over the son, but had always squashed those thoughts. Screwing around with son and father at the same time had smelled faintly incestuous to me, though I knew it technically wasn’t.

The man’s eyes went wide with surprise when he saw me. He said he’d forgotten that I still had the key—but didn’t seem pissed off. He asked me out to breakfast.

After that, he invited me back to his office. I knew right away that he was going to hit on me and thought once again, I’d better take advantage, but then began to worry: What if his son finds out?

I felt so guilty, I practically couldn’t enjoy it.

Ashley

Situated on the leather bucket seats in the back of Tom Rong’s black ’70 Camaro which he’d bought from some shady customer who’d long since fled the scene. Short-to-midlife-crisis car. The vehicle was basically a teenage boy’s high school wet dream. Truth is Tom Rong never developed past his 17-year-old self he was stuck there in perpetuity unless by the grace of the almighty or perhaps a natural disaster he could transcend his manic state of material attachment. Yeah right. So we’d been drinking. Ashley was crammed in there with me and several other liquored-up bodies, mostly young vixens handpicked by Tom Rong to represent the baby-brothel coke-addled entertainment troupe for our nightly sojourns into depravity and debauch. Ashley was the head cheerleader type grown up into an office girl who still had a figure and wasn’t yet too sloppy but was fairly verging on it. Like I said we were crammed in together thigh to thigh passing around a pipe smoking laughing poking around in the shadowy dark with only the single light pole in the parking lot which was on a sloping hill down to the alley where a rotting fence just managed to support scores of blooming passion flowers. I’d never felt much for Ashley or her bumptious posse the more snide and sneering of us offhandedly referred to as the Spice Girls, a popular girl band from the UK at the time who had a hit single that was played relentlessly for about a month or so before settling forever into obscurity except for the random b-movie soundtrack appearance resurrecting that particular month or so of that particular year ad infinitum concerning one-hit wonders of that stripe. Ashley had big tits that’s how Tom Rong liked ’em. I was more a leg and ass man, to me legs and ass represented motivation, tits were fun to fondle and suck on but they had little purpose for the career bachelor, fertility not being a required option. Ashley’s face musta been quite pudgy as a child but she banked on it. Just another secretary whose office romance appeal was waning before us like the onset of a particularly dull apparition. I’m pretty sure Ashley hated me as well since I generally thumbed my nose at her amateur seductions, yet strangely that night we were getting along fine, wedged in there, juiced and lubricated and hot and electric like it gets in close proximity, but like animals in a cage of different species at a certain point one’s bound to prey on the other. There she was, stinking like a chunk of sexual meat. Her eyes widened as I suddenly kissed her. Ashley didn’t resist and I felt her hands sort of fluttering, but she was basically a cold fish with little to zero lip response, submissive to the point of I’d just as soon osculate with a rubberized mannequin. I didn’t feel even the slightest twinge in my nether regions, so there was that and that wasn’t much. It ended nearly as soon as it started but not before all the other little tramps in the vehicle noticed what had transpired short-lived as it’d been and uneventful in the grand scope of things. I thought nothing of it until the following day arriving at work to prepare pizza for the clamoring tide of a fool’s paradise. Tom Rong glowered at me and wouldn’t speak and from the peripherals of my vision I’d catch him whispering to bar clientele cronies I had no clue as to what and could care less but Tom Rong was not just the bartender but the boss. The night wore on and my usual coveted shift shots of Jägermeister were alarmingly lacking. Tom Rong was looking meaner stony-faced resolute drinking no doubt my shots as well as his own. WTF? We’d always been chummy in a men’s locker-room sort of way. Fuck this noise I said to myself and took a break to hustle across the street to the Greek’s for a couple quick shots. After shift I perched at the bar but Tom Rong’s ignorance of my presence was so obvious it verged on comical. Staring at NBA highlights oblivious to the empty space on the bar before me. Well shit. Amy the waitress another objectified princess of Tom Rong’s priapic selection nudged me. Tom told me not to serve you. Fuck sakes, I said, need I ask why? Did his dog die? Amy slitted her slant cat-eyes and strutted away. You’d need a trowel to remove the make-up she’d caked on her face. Just how Tom Rong liked ’em. Busty strippers-in-training. Get ’em coked up and drunk and stick a wet finger in their ears. Tom Rong white male wiry and tall with a goofy kid’s face and big nose smiling like a silly idiot with his hand caught in the cookie jar. But I underestimated his dormant fury and though he was married with two kids his envy had reached nuclear accident levels and suddenly I was on the floor of the bar being dragged by the coat collar. Unprecedented behavior from the boss, but I was not compliant, in fact I didn’t give a fucking shit, and even outweighed by a good fifty pounds I had Tom Rong down on the floor beside me in seconds, applying the ol’ pressure-point disarmament technique I picked up from a Shiatsu monk several lives previous. Tom Rong, incapacitated. I took the opportunity to slam his head against the floor once, twice, and was holding it up by the hair to slam it again, since three’s a charm, when Tom Rong tapped out. Sweet surrender, is what it was. That Ashley, I hissed, can’t even kiss properly, motherfucker. The next day Tom Rong had a shiner for each eye like some kinda mutant raccoon. Get out! he yelled and pointed to the front door but was forced to relent knowing there was nobody else to throw dough that night or for that matter the entire weekend to come. But Tom Rong never really recovered from this phantom betrayal and the animosity grew to a rather persistently uncomfortable nadir until one sunless day I simply didn’t show up for work and thus never returned. Luckily right around that time my mother died leaving me to inherit tens of thousands of dollars which I managed to pay rent, buy food and get drunk on for nearly a decade. That tart Ashley. She didn’t even offer me her tongue. Maybe she had herpes.

In the Dying Embers

Then she asked the inevitable question, “Do I know any of your books?”

“No,” I said.

She twirled a finger on the rim of her wine glass. “Well, what do you write about?”

I picked up my half-empty shot glass and downed the contents. It was filled again as soon as it hit the well-worn mahogany. I nodded at her glass. It was still full.

“Want another?”

“Well, I don’t know yet, do I?” she said coyly in a schoolgirl voice.

“How old are you?” I blurted out.

She stopped the rim-twirling and stared at me.

“What a rude question! A gentleman wouldn’t ask a lady that.”

I focused on my shot glass. It was filled to the brim. He’s my kind of bartender, Doug is.

I picked it up and rested it on my lower lip for a second. “I’m no gentleman,” I said, and threw my head back, feeling that old familiar burn traveling down my esophagus. “Are you a lady?”

She dropped her jaw with poorly feigned indignation. “You’re an asshole!”

“Hey!” Doug barked, strolling towards us from the opposite end of the bar where he’d been attending to a couple of the other regulars. He picked up my bottle and poured it. “There are no assholes in here, miss.”

Doug was right – at least for another half hour – then the assholes would begin streaming in from the surrounding office buildings. For now, it was just the regulars, five or six of us, and these three girls who had wandered in from out of nowhere – two of them sipping spritzers by the jukebox – and this one, who had seen fit to plunk herself down next to me trying to start up a conversation. I’d bought her a white wine spritzer – like a gentleman – which she was nursing with remarkable patience.

“Women,” I said, as she took a sip.

“I’m sorry, what?” she said, looking at me, holding her glass in midair.

“I write about women.”

She took another quick sip. “Why? Do you like women?”

“I hate them,” I said.

She put the drink down. Too gently. “You really are an asshole!” she said in a loud whisper, first making sure Doug wasn’t within earshot – then shifted her weight around the barstool for several seconds. We both knew she wasn’t going anywhere. She grabbed her glass and, for the first time, took a proper gulp. Good girl! When she’d apparently found a comfortable sitting position, she looked into my eyes, “Has anyone ever told you, you look like Kelsey Grammer?”

I’m usually pretty quick, but had no immediate reply to that one.

She turned to her girlfriends by the jukebox. “Mona! Molly! Look over here!” she yelled, pointing at me. “Doesn’t he look like Kelsey Grammer?”

The two girls looked over briefly, gave their friend a thumbs-up, and returned to whatever they were doing.

“You see! They agree, you do look like Kelsey Grammer!”

“Is that a good thing?” I asked.

“He’s handsome,” she said – adding, “in a sorta, kinda way.”

“Then sorta, kinda thank you.” I raised my glass and she extended hers.

“Cheers!” she laughed. “Cheers,” I said – struggling to muzzle a smile which made her laugh even more.

“See!” she said, “that wasn’t so hard, was it? My name is Jenny.”

I told her mine.

She wasn’t a bad looking woman – one of those bleached blondes you can’t avoid bumping into all over New Jersey and Southern California – the kind you’d have a hard time telling apart if you lined them up. They’re probably everywhere by now, and for good reason. Men love them. I’m no exception. Those blonde locks and curls make ordinary girls look slutty, and slutty girls, sluttier. This one – Jenny – did have some distinguishing features, most notably, no tits. Not a disqualifier in my book – on the contrary. Her upper arms were, however, problematic. They had the circumference of a dwarf’s thighs, and looked like them, too – meaty, but not muscular – the kind of upper arms you’d expect on a baker’s daughter who’s been kneading and stuffing down dough her entire life. She was wearing a white sleeveless cotton shirt which only added to their humongous-ness. But her face was both cute and sexy, although not at the same time. When she opened her mouth to drink, she’d twitch her nose like an adorable bunny rabbit. When she sat just observing, or in quiet contemplation, she looked eminently beddable. A cute and sexy face covers up a lot of flaws. Except for the arms, I didn’t detect any. I wondered what her legs were like under the loose flannel pants she was wearing.

I’m not much of a talker and we soon ran out of conversation. She’d gotten more and more jittery and distracted as the bar had begun to fill up with assholes. It would soon reach maximum capacity and stay that way for a couple of hours. Doug was earning a living.

Jenny thanked me for the drink – like a lady – and left to join her girlfriends. A little while later, the three of them were next to me. The room had gotten loud and overcrowded. A desperate horde, vying for Doug’s attention, was pressing up against those of us lucky enough to have a seat at the bar.

“Nice not meeting you!” one of Jenny’s girlfriends yelled, and squeezed past me.

Ah, a joker! I wish you’d been the one who’d come and sat next to me, I thought. Female jokers are so rare. “Likewise!” I yelled.

“Thanks again for the drink!” Jenny smiled and extended a hand. I gave her a wink and a thumbs up, and wondered if I might have misjudged her.

Then the second girlfriend was up against me and yelled straight into my ear, “JENNY LIKES ASSHOLES! OLD ASSHOLES, PREFERABLY!”

Perplexed, I watched the three of them shove their way through the thirsting herd. Someone opened and closed the front door, and I regretted my passivity. Not for the first time in my life. I looked at the bottle – my bottle – sitting on the shelf directly in front of me. I still had almost two-thirds to go and there was always a backup in case of an emergency. Soon the assholes would leave, except a few who were training to become like me and, in a few years, were likely to succeed. It was them and me, and the other regulars, for the rest of the night. Groups continued to drop in – ordered cocktails and wine, huddled somewhere in the barroom, made a lot of noise – then left. The hours got short and no one came in, save for a few lost souls in search of a watering hole to call home.

At some point Doug told me, my bottle had run dry. I paid, shook his hand, and said tomorrow. He nodded, and I walked out into an oppressively hot and eerily quiet Midtown Manhattan. I made my way down the block on the water sprinklered sidewalk, to my apartment, where I kicked off my shoes and opened a bottle.

Maybe I shouldn’t have lied about being a writer. Ah, so what, I’d never see her again anyway. I closed my eyes and downed another, simultaneously kindling and quenching the dying embers.

Instant Connection

THEIR love is a different kind. 

She eases him onto the edge of the bed and takes two steps back. She bites down playfully on her left thumb, greets him with a sensual expression and slides her hands down her left thigh. The front of her strapless red dress accentuates her breasts and displays the network of bright blue veins streaking across the tops. 

He shrugs out of his camel-colored work shirt and tosses it onto the back of a nearby chair. He grins as the bedside lamp traces the contours of his white pear-shaped body with soft brass fingers. Sweat breaks out across his forehead in a sheen of bright lucid acne and glistens off of his big hairy chest. 

From the second they saw each other from across the bar, they know it was meant to be. The magnetism, heat and attraction that’d pulled them together had been too strong for them to resist. They’d left the bar together, oblivious to the mystified expressions on the faces of the other customers they’d passed on their way out. 

She slides her dress down her slender frame, exposing milky white skin stretching taut over her ribs. She grins at the silky smooth fabric of her dress sliding down her hips and caressing her ankles on its way toward the floor. He fumbles with his belt and jeans, drops them into a heap around his ankles and kick them across the room. 

“Oh, babe.” She says. “You’re so fucking hot.” 

He draws his tongue across his upper lip and sighs. Her chest rises and falls. Her skin bristles as the wave of widespread passion washes over her. 

“I want you.” He says. 

Without hesitating, she leaps off of her feet and clamps onto him like a koala. Their lips pressing together in a passionate kiss, their tongues writhe inside the caverns of their mouths. She pushes him onto the bed, slides down the length of his naked plump body and glides her tongue across his huge sack. 

He sighs, his body writhing under the aura of the euphoric pleasure wafting off of her skin. He raises his head from the mattress and peers down to watch her work his stiff pale cock in her left hand. Her saliva glistens off of the hairless patch of skin above his cock as she runs the light pink nails on her right hand across his stomach. 

He grasps her arms, lifts her up and over him and onto the bed. She bounces face first onto the mattress, chuckles from behind a wide pleasing grin and rolls onto her back. She slides the fingers of her right hand across his cock, winds a strand of long black hair around her left forefinger and spreads her legs. 

He crawls across the bed, slithers his corpulent body between her legs and guides his cock inside of her soft wet pussy. She draws a quick breath, peers down at the narrow gap between their stomachs, arches her back and groans with pleasure. 

“Oh yeah.” She sighs. “Right there babe oh yeah right there don’t lose it.” 

Her legs quivering, she sighs and stares up at him with wide starstruck eyes. 

Gripping her hips in both hands, he leans back on his feet and slides his cock in and out. A small sensation rises from somewhere deep inside of her, sending seismic vibrations throughout her body. The cheap metal bedsprings squeal under their combined weight; the even cheaper wooden headboard thuds against the motel room’s sick green walls and sends the three second-hand landscape portraits into a swaying and scraping frenzy. 

She grasps the bedspreads until her knuckles turn pale as their orgasms collide against one another in a supernova of sexual ecstasy. His body shudders with carnality. They sigh, their bodies heaving from exhaustion, and grin at each other. 

He plops down beside of her and plants his right hand on his chest. She grins at him and hikes her right leg over his left. 

“Oh God, babe.” She says. “You were great.” 

“You were wonderful.” 

She leans toward him, her mouth curling into a satisfied smile. He winces, his face creasing with pain and raises his left hand in a protesting manner. She leans back and greets him with an apologetic expression. 

“I’m sorry, honey.” She says. “I didn’t mean to do that.” 

“It’s okay, baby.” He says. 

They look down the length of their bodies toward their genitals and smile. The bright pink tube growing from the tip of his shaft connects to the small soft pink pocket growing from the center of her vagina. It pulsates and pumps a continuous amount of sperm inside of her. 

He brushes a strand of hair away from her face and grins. He stares into her vivid deep-set blue eyes and feels his heart twitch with joy. 

“How many do you think we’ll have?” 

“Two,” He says. “Maybe three.” 

“Are you sure?” 

He nods. 

They rests their heads together. Their eyes flickering with affection, they hold hands and listen to the sounds of raucous night traffic blare outside of the motel. 

No matter what, whether human or inhuman, love is what it is. 

Stroke

The man’s face was frozen in a permanent sun squint. With his lower lip just a fat pocket of chewing tobacco, he was just another backwoods hick. Except for his police uniform. Standing all hunched over and with one thumb tucked into his belt, his other hand was holding Dad’s backpack. He said there was a crash. Dad’s car got totaled. Crushed up like an empty beer can. The cop spat out a brown glob of chew and said the words “drunk driving.” He called it a damn shame.

The girl who smashed full-speed, head-on into him was drunk off her tits and high as a rocket. She swerved through the double yellows, reeking just like a skunk with rabies. With my dad dead, she didn’t even break a nail.

That afternoon on the front porch the grownups talked. Little-kid me was digging through the backpack. Whatever things Dad needed with him were inside. Spare socks. A flashlight. There was a pack of translucent plastic lighters and a pair of mirrored red sunglasses with circle lenses. Emergency screwdriver case. A half-empty bottle of coke. These were the last things Dad ever touched. The things he loved, I figured.

Then that old magazine flopped out onto the floor, pop, right on the spine of it. It flipped open by itself, almost like it had its own memory. Crinkled and worn and bent, it knew exactly which page to turn to. Must’ve been Dad’s favorite page. The picture in the middle of the magazine takes up two pages. It’s called a centerfold.

I didn’t know why yet, but I knew it then. I was going to hell. Blueberry eyes with those fat pink lips, she shimmered wet like a jolly rancher. That babe was a smoke-show. With her perfect skin lit up between my sketchers; I knew I wasn’t a little kid anymore. Seeing all that naked skin for the first time, I threw the rest of Dad’s stuff to the side.

One minute, Dad was gripping the steering wheel, cruising the back roads. It was on one of those winding-curvy mountain roads where you can’t see past the bend, and all you need to watch for is deer crossing and the odd pick-up truck. A Sunday driving kind of road, all week long.

Then, at full speed, he shot through the windshield like a jack in the box full of meat and hair. His legs got snagged under the steering column and the shattered glass cinched around his waist like jaws of a bloodthirsty shark chewing him in half. His organs pan-seared on the hood of his car. All that pain triggered the adrenaline to flood his brain. He spent his last moments alive not knowing he was dying.

According to the cop, Dad went full spaz. He was wiggling to get free, pulling and squirming as his lungs strained, tighter by the breath. His diaphragm, Google says that’s the muscle that pumps up from under your lungs, was torn apart in the crash. To make up for it, his shoulder muscles worked overtime to pull in more air. The veins in his neck popped out, fat and purple. 

His fingertips painted desperate hand prints all over the hood of his car. Lubricated in his own sludge, he couldn’t get past slipping. The thing you need in a situation like that is friction. Too much lube will get you nowhere, trust me. Dad couldn’t have known it, but grinding side to side to get free, that broken windshield became a hacksaw through his waistline. It shredded his intestines and tore holes through his bowels. He was leaking half-formed shit and blood all over everything.

The stupid bimbo who smashed into him was a gazillion-out-of-ten. Her mug shot is in my search history and she’s just my type. Ticks every box. If you sent that picture to a modeling agency, they’d post her bail. She’s staring intense, like the porn star from the centerfold. From where the photo cuts off near her bikini lines, you can tell she’s got huge knockers. Those great big tits must’ve been smooshed into her windshield, car-wash style. The last thing Dad ever saw was probably those heaving honkers. Crawling toward them.

If your dad gets killed in a head-on collision with a sorority slut, you cold-sweat every time you sit in the driver’s seat. You never get anything passed down, father to son. That porno from his backpack is all you have. Whenever pretty girls wink at you, your dry mouth can’t even say “nice ass.”

Then, you’re twice that age and all your friends are learning to drive. All their dads have been teaching them how. Their dads have been stashing money to cash-flow used station wagons. Birthday presents. Your dad in an ashcan, your family, with no income, you ride the bus. Behind the steering wheel, you’re sitting where your dad was when he got rammed. You suffocate with the seatbelt tight against your neck. Don’t google auto-erotic asphyxiation. It sounds like this, but it means something totally different. If you read my search history, you’d see:

BLONDE BIMBO WITH DOUBLE “E”S

BLONDE SLUT NAKED CAR WASH

HOW TO GET OVER YOUR FEAR OF DRIVING

PARTY GIRLS, BIG TITS

When you don’t get your license in high school, your friends leave you behind. When they ask you to sneak out and party, you freeze up. You say you can’t. You tell them you’re grounded. While they were out getting laid and growing up, you just stayed home and jerked off.

The most disgusting and disturbing things never seem that bad until later. That’s called post nut clarity. I was just a dumb kid and I stuttered and shook every time some spit-roaster talked to me plus my friends stopped calling and I couldn’t drive, all my teenage cum got pumped out between my knuckles, splat. White raindrops hardened all over my computer desk like the bird shit on the hood of Dad’s car. 

It’s like breathing while bleeding to death. Each breath out is one breath closer to dying. But then you strain to pull more air. To make it one more breath. Then another. One more pump. By the time you’re done, you’re alone and panting and ashamed. Post nut clarity.

What my mom kept from me as a kid was that while he sliced his guts open on the shattered windshield, Dad also cut clean through his boner. Sandwiched between his beer gut and the jagged razor blade of broken glass, it was his first line of defense. Defeated, it rolled off the hood of his car like a runaway hot dog, grilling on the blazing hot hood. 

By the end of high school, if you looked at my dick, all red and covered in blisters, you’d think it had some horrible std. Only I hadn’t even lost my V-card yet. If you looked at my search history, you’d see that I was searching up:

AUTO-EROTIC ASPHYXIATION

CAN A PERSON DIE OF LONELINESS

FUCKING COLLEGE GIRL IN PASSENGER SEAT

SLUT FUCKED ON HOOD OF CAR VIDS

In college, the professor’s rant sounded like TV static fading in the background. I knew I was going to hell when I missed out on an education staring at some blonde skankinator in the third row. Just my type. Ticked every box. The professor was talking about Keynesian economics, but the only inflation on my mind was those giant milk mounds. My hands rolled back to flex the tendons in my wrists. Imagine those things smooshed into the windshield like deployed airbags. While the guy up front talked about the push and pull of the market, my boner slowly woodpeckered the bottom of my desk.

When you pop a stiffy in public, there aren’t a lot of options. Pretty much, just wait for it to go away or hide it. You can’t really wait though because a watched pot never boils. A watched boner never flops. So, when class ends, if you want to stand up and leave with everyone else, you’d better have a plan.

I always wear a belt for this exact reason. You wear it loose, so it leaves a gap. With your hands in your pockets, you contort the unwanted wood up behind your belt, and voila. Totally flat. 

Class was over and I was tying it back when that hose-me-down-hottie I’ve been ogling stood and turned my way. She must have spotted me drooling at her. Speeding toward me in her pink sweater, she swerved into my lane. I braced for impact. Then… nothing. No crash. No guts. No hot dog on the road. Just a pretty pink smile.

Parked right in front of me, she said how she needed a study buddy. Looking just like all those other girls I beat off to, she giggles. Just like the chick who killed my dad. Biting the bottom corner of her lip and glancing down past her headlights, she twirled from side to side, waiting. I froze, sweaty and red, just like my dick behind my belt. I gulped down a mouthful of spit as she slipped a scrap of paper into my chest pocket. Her dorm room number in green gel ink. She made a U-turn, shimmying her ass with each step. Looking back at me over her shoulder, locking eyes with me, her pink lip gloss mouthed “ay-toe-clok”.

My heart pounding in my fist, wrapped around my crank, I’m searching:

COLLEGE GIRL FUCKS NERD FOR HOMEWORK HELP

CHEERLEADER SLUT NEEDS GOOD GRADES

WHAT IS AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS

SHOULD YOU MASTURBATE BEFORE YOUR FIRST TIME WITH A GIRL

In her dorm, on her bed, I was out of time. Trust me, she was hot, even when she yawned and checked her watch. My sweaty hands rubbed and pulled and jerked. No luck. I went fast and light. I squeezed hard and pulled slow. Nothing worked. Where was the stiffy from class when I needed it? Her, glazed over. Inspecting her manicured fingernails, she was fleshy heaven. But in that moment, all I could picture was my dad’s severed cock, steaming like a BBQ sausage in between the double yellow lines. Flaccid from blood loss and stinky.

“It’s fine,” she said, pulling me by the wrist and forcing me out the door.

My spongy wiener still clenched in my hand, I told her this literally never happens, I promise.

“Yeah, suuuurrreee,” she rolled her giant Bambi eyes and slammed the door.

Alone in the hall. I was still too horny to stop rubbing. I squished my ear against her door and heard a click. Then, the beehive buzzing of a vibrator. Then soft, airy moaning. Drunk-driver-waiting-to-happen moaning.

I could have battered that door down, full force. Reaching out for those big tits, just like Dad. Gasping for air and full of adrenaline. I could have rammed my stick shift, smashing like a head-on collision, slam, right up her guts at 90 miles an hour. With her big fat airbags cushioning my face, her hands would clutch my shoulders at 10 and 2. Her preppy pink nails would curl into me like a leopard plush steering wheel cover. With this iron solid piston thrusting at a million horsepower, it would be impossible for her to walk a straight line, even sober. With all the Listerine she would need to rinse my taste out of her mouth, she’d never pass a breathalyzer. 

By then I was hard, but I just stood there pumping. Stroking in secret to her porn star moans, I pumped and pumped until I blew my angry wad all over her door. Powerful ropes of pent-up virginity erupted into the air. The first squirt, with all that rage and disappointment behind it, got eye level and landed splat, bullseye, right on the lens of her peephole. I didn’t even wipe it clear. My cum would dry up on that lens. Looking through it, everything would seem fuzzy and haloed. The way it looked in heaven. Everyone would look like angels. 

They say if you do anything for 10,000 hours, you master it. In empty aisles at Walmart, it didn’t even make me smile anymore. In public library bathrooms, I got off to people being shushed. I jerked it in the elevator on the way up and pounded it again on the way down. My cock sputtered little white globs on every surface I had a moment alone with. Like bird shit on my dad’s rusted-out car frame, a lifetime later in some junkyard somewhere.

Even now, I’m king of virginity with the most used penis in the animal kingdom. It’s deformed and all chewed up and striped like a tiger with stretch marks from when I’d torn the skin. Don’t look at my search history unless you want to see:

ERECTILE DYSFUNCTION

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY

SILDENAFIL FOR SALE ONLINE

DEATH GRIP SYNDROME

When I finally get my driver’s license, I remember about my inheritance: Dad’s porno magazine, the one from his backpack. Brittle and stuck together and smelling like mildew from all the years crammed under my mattress. Trapped with all the moisture and dead sperm. Hidden like the decomposing family prostitute. Used up and rotting. 

I figure, what’s the harm? In high school, all my friends had dads who bought them rusty old used cars. Secondhand vehicles with crinkled-up doors, the interiors full of stains. Covered in dried white globs. Coming of age gifts from father to son. I think let’s dig out that old beater and take her for a spin.

While I drive, she’s spread eagle in the passenger seat. I keep glancing over, taking her in. The slut on the centerfold is just my type. Ticks every box. I’m tasting her shiny candy skin with my eyes. In my mind, thousands of copies of this same girl are getting slammed wide open on repeat.

At the drive-thru, a breathy voice asks me what I want. I almost let “blow job” slip out. Our hands brush past one another when I grab my soda and she smirks. Pulling out onto the road, I’m already stiff and throbbing up from behind my belt. On this quiet road, the only signs I pass are speed limits and deer crossings. No traffic in any direction. Just me and my boner for miles.

I’m one-handing the wheel while my other hand goes back and forth between feeding me handfuls of fries and rubbing the tip of my dick, strangled purple. The grease from the fries is perfect lube. I’m barely paying attention while the empty road zooms past me. The “no seatbelt” alarm blares while I think of that disappointing night after class. I’m staring down the barrel of my pee hole when pop. Bullseye. The opposite of post nut clarity.

One stroke, you are on a relaxing drive. The next, you’re flopped on the hood of your car, sticky. Warm from the sunlight. The heat mirage of the engine. The iron taste of blood. The craft glue smell of cum. Shards of broken glass are crusted into your face and up the length of both forearms. The dull pressure on your guts of something stabbing up is a million miles away. Everything is a white, soft version of itself.

With all the adrenaline frying my brain, I am completely numb. But I know I’m going to hell, even before I see him. The red fur and spiky horns. His black eyes stare into mine without blinking. I hear the sideways clopping of his cloven hoofs against my fender. That’s when I know for sure. I’m going to hell. The palm of my jerking hand is covered in blood and for once in my life, I can’t feel my dick.

I remember how Dad died—the sausage on the road, cooking in the sun. Suddenly, I don’t care about being in hell anymore. I try to rip and pull myself out, just like he did. I finally get it. He wasn’t trying to squeeze the girl’s tits, he was reaching for his dick. He saw this same demon and didn’t want to be caught dead in hell without his penis. Think of all the loose gash burning in Hell! 

Jerking and yanking, hard as I try, I’m getting nowhere. I always figured it would hurt more all those years ago, when my dad ripped a hole in his stomach and his stinking bowels fell out of him. Just like me, he couldn’t get free. Being in his place, it feels like nothing. No pain at all. The demon keeps screaming and bucking its horns. I’m about out of strength when, through my snowy white vision, I see people haloed in white. Wearing red crosses, they must be angels. 

“I’m here to help,” a voice tells me. The breath of god warms my skin, saying everything is going to be okay. If I still had my cock I’d be pumping out some knuckle babies to it.

“God,” I whimper, “please…save…my…dick.”

When I wake up, I’m not in heaven, but at least I’m not in hell. Machines that keep people alive beep all around me. Everything is white and soft blue under fluorescent light. A blue nitrile hand prods at me, playing with a tiny plastic tube in my arm. Then I see two airbags. For one breath, I’m back in the car, dying. Practically grazing my face, this is way closer than my old man ever got.

It was the belt trick that saved me. When I plowed into that ten point buck, my dick was the only thing buckled in. The windshield glass got caught up in the leather of it, so I got away with some tearing and bruising. Other than the broken bones, it’s nothing new.

“Oh,” the tits exclaim from inside their blue scrubs, “you’re awake!”.

Looking up to see the rest of her, she’s just my type. Ticks every box. Her pink lip gloss tells me I’ve been sleeping for a week. It could be my imagination, but I swear she was shimmying her ass on the way out the door. In that hospital room, I don’t know how long I got alone.

A whole week without a Google search bar. Not one tug or jerk or pump that whole time. The nurse’s eyelashes fluttered when she looked at me. I swear she wanted it. Thinking that, I can feel my dick again. My bruised and beaten willy, it almost killed me. Probably in self-defense. Now in this bed, alive, I’m giving it a rest.

I’m broken and half-dead and full of glass. Hooked up to tubes and fed air by oxygen machines, everything hurts. But for the first time since the day my dad died, I’m not picturing jugs or asses or blond hair or big eyelashes.

I promise, I’m not thinking about rock-hard nips or fake sex moans or fat pink lips or blow jobs. And I’m definitely not wondering about that nurse and her knockers in my face or how her cunt smells. I swear, I can hardly even think of her grinding that ass up my IV pole, practically begging for it.

Looking toward my feet, that little tent pitches up under the hospital blanket. Like a finger pointing right at me. Blaming me. Fully erect, with the rounded lump of a catheter tube bent out of the top, I just close my eyes and grit my teeth and try not to touch it. 

That nurse though. She was just my type. Ticked every box. Please don’t look up:

POSTERIOR URETHRAL STRICTURE

SUPERFICIAL THROMBOPHLEBITIS OF THE DORSAL VEIN OF THE PENIS

MAN HAS FATAL STROKE WHILE MASTURBATING

Wizard of Oz

The house burns. 

I almost trip over her corpse as one hand stuffs a deflated blow-up doll into my shirt, and the other wipes blood off my chest with a brochure for St. Albany’s School of Excellence. Seven in nine of their graduates end up in ivy league schools. Impressive.

The campus is state of the art. First rate, grade A heroin for helicopter moms. The gym features a full size weight room, two olympic swimming pools, and suspension ropes for aspiring gymnasts. 

“I want Jonny to have the best education,” I tell her, between not staring at her breasts and looking at the pools. “If only Veronica could see this…”

“We can schedule a second tour if you like—” the guide leans in and raises an eyebrow, “for your wife?”

It’s generally not considered polite to talk about car accidents, cancer, or dead spouses with strangers. I drop them all into her DD cups in a single line.

Then her blue plaid blouse is on the floor of janitor closet #4, the math wing. Superior to #7, the science wing. No one left an open container of Clorox bleach on the shelf.

Next is St. Mary the Immaculate’s School for Girls. Cushioned indoor track. Virtual reality computer lab. Red headed tour guide. Tears. Dead wife. Supply closet.

Wilconsin’s School for Excellent Children. Equestrian program. Dead wife. Tack room.

Academy of Arts. Dark Room.

School of Science and Space.

You get the idea.

“Tell me about your son,” she glares through thick glasses. Forehead stretched as taught as her bun. Thirty couples walk the halls waiting their turn. Her day hasn’t even started.

Tears are good, with manly control. Shudders and shoulder trembles draw them closer. A solid, “I promised I wasn’t going to do this today,” is gold. Avoid snot bubbles. Passion turns to disgust with the first pop.

I get through my dead wife routine, composure mostly maintained. A good show.

Her pencil stops tapping.

“That’s very touching,” she says.

Her name is Margret. 

She strives for her students to finish first. I love her for it. It saves my life.

“But, it doesn’t answer my question.” Margret looks at the stack of student files left to interview, “What makes Jimmy special?”

If a dead mom doesn’t make a kid special, what does?

Margret sets her pencil down.

“Look. There are countless couples who want their kid short listed. So, I’m going be blunt. Is that OK?” She waits for me to nod. “Good. Tell me what you or Jimmie can offer to get him on the list?”

***

Sexual anhedonia is caused by medications, physical conditions, and psychosis. It’s the joke without a punchline of a sexual disorder. Unlike erectile disfunction, everything works. The zucchini gets hard. You can mash that potato whenever you want. 

Sex therapy is supposed to help. So is exercise. I spend thirty minutes a day doing Kegel’s to strengthen my pelvic floor. It doesn’t.

Imagine cooking pulled pork. Eight hours of slow cooking bliss. The kitchen fills with the succulent smell of rendered fat and BBQ sauce. The warm tug as you pulled the loin apart with your hands. Five minutes under the broiler crisps the edges to perfection. You plate the meal. Set the table. Sit down. But don’t eat. 

Yes, you’ve satisfied your senses on the process. You’ve gained fulfillment by making perfection. But no matter what you do. No matter how many meals you prepare. You can never take a bite. You live in constant hunger.

That is sexual anhedonia. You get all the sweat and cum, but none of the fun.

Can you imagine the lengths a person would go to achieve an orgasm?

***

I pick up Thai and a tail on my way home. Two lights and three turns after Thai Nana Plaza, I see the blue Malibu. Four cars back and keeping pace.

After a closet rendezvous some people feel guilt. They tell their therapists. They tell their spouses. They tell their friends. Who do you think needs to watch their back? When I was younger, before I knew better, I found myself with slashed tires and broken bones. I’ve learned. Now I watch the rearview. 

It doesn’t take much to loose an amateur. Pros are harder. A few quick turns, run a red light, and the Malibu’s gone. Coincidence, maybe. Stranger on a night drive, probably. Better safe than broken.

***

I get home to Veronica waiting, hair done up, make up on, and mad as hell. Like always, she sits at the dinner table. The thai is as cold as she is, so we eat in silence. It fits us like a glove.

When it’s time for bed, she shows me her back. This is the signal. Three days ago I told her I was horny as all hell, so she’s right on time. Three days, every time, like resurrection clockwork.

Twenty minutes of back rubbing. Fifteen minutes of manual stimulation. Five minutes of cunilingus. She manages to touch me right before penetration. Its clinical. Just enough to make sure I’m hard. After that, she doesn’t touch me again. Doesn’t kiss me. Can’t even look at me. This ends the same for me every time. Nothing.

Alden’s Organic Vanilla Bean Ice Cream is considered the best in the world. An investment banker told me during a school tour. How they process the beans draws out a depth in the flavor that causes people to go mad. They’ll stand in line for hours just for a taste. For vanilla. Vanilla fucking ice cream. Sure as a pallet cleanser. A free cone at someone else’s birthday party. Maybe throw in a sprinkle of road head, a squeeze of bondage, with some butt play on top. I’m mixing metaphors. 

The point is, no one can survive on a diet of vanilla alone.

My first therapist said anhedonia can be cured. It was just a matter of finding the right stimulus. It was possible to walk the yellow brick road of sexual experimentation to the Orgasm of Oz. You just need the willpower to keep trying.

***

The call comes at 4:30 am. Blocked number. I answer anyway.

“You still want Jimmie on the short list?” asks Margret.

I get to her place as the blue of the sky starts taking over from the night. Big house. Stone. Fruit trees on the lawn. And Margret hitting my thighs with a whip, clad in skin tight leather, screaming, “When you finish the dishes you’re going to wash the floor. I want to see my reflection in it!”

***

Working on the belt isn’t as bad as people think. It’s about seeing what’s different. Like that Sesame Street Song, “One of these things is not like the other.” Except instead of fruit it’s prophylactics. 

As each foil wrapped string slides by they are visually inspected for punctures and tears. Any damage to the container and they’re pulled. Marked for destruction. One in every four-hundred receives manual inspection. One condom randomly chosen from the strip is rolled on and off a baseball bat. If the condom fails before the seventh application the whole batch is pulled. Marked for destruction. It’s an insurance thing. Failure testing is not my department. I just inspect and remove.

The belt vibrates as the condoms go by. If you lean into it just right it provides constant stimulation. I’ve been employee of the month for over a year now. I’m dedicated to this job.

One guy in the New York Plant was employee of the month, too. He came at work early every morning. Better than reading the newspaper with his Mrs. He told me about the vibrations. Two years ago he went bare nut to wheel and they found him dead two hours later as clean cut as a bloody Ken doll. Supposedly, a couple in Illinois won the prophylactic lottery, they found a nut and half his shaft.

Insurance says there’s supposed to be a plexiglass barrier on all observation posts. No one listens.

At the end of the day I load all the marked for destruction rejects into my trunk. The foreman helps. He saves overhead not running an incinerator 24/7, and I’m the largest blackmarket distributor of wholesale condoms in 200 miles. Most of the rejects are actual rejects. Some are perfectly fine and pulled to fill customer orders.

My biggest clients are clubs, travel agents, and college vending machines. The vending machines are the real money makers. I sell 1,000 count a week to the resupply technician at 3/4 standard wholesale rates. We both make a bundle.

If you’ve bought a condom from a club for a private dance or “drinks” in the champaign room, you’ve bought from a guy like me. Was it a reject or taken from the line to fulfill an order? Toss a coin. If you get anything but heads there’s a good chance you just won child support.

***

After I finish weeding Margret’s garden and deepening the edging, she pushes me onto her couch. Like her students, she wants her lovers to finish first. She says it’s to deplete sperm count, reducing the chance of pregnancy. I think it’s about the control of keeping me hard after ejaculation.

She disappears under a weighted blanket before taking me into her mouth. It’s four or five inches thick. The blanket. If anyone walked in, they wouldn’t even know she was there.

I enjoy eye contact and the curves of a woman’s back, but the blanket makes it easier. Faking an orgasm while staring into someone’s eyes as they drool smile like they’re doing you a favor is tedious. Facial contortions. Eye rolls. The whole kabob – waisted effort. I finish, but there are no fireworks or tingling limbs. No elation, euphoria, come to Jesus moment of release. Just me. Empty. 

There are times when it is right there. When the building pressure leads to a momentary spasm of promise. Like the sun coming over the horizon, about to warm your face with early morning rays — only to plunge back into darkness again. Unfulfilled.

***

The travel agents don’t like me bringing my wares through the front door. They worry people will ask why they buy hundreds of single serve condoms at a time. They couldn’t just be honest. Lay it all out. How do people think they stay in business with GroupOns, Trip Advisors, and other large tech taking over the travel game? What kinds of “trips” do people think they arrange these days?

I unload the boxes onto stacks of dusty timeshare brochures, and go up front to collect payment. 

Syed has been a customer from the beginning. He arranged my first dungeon experience. I give him a discount.

He gives me a check and tells me to go to Malibu — hot girls, great party scene, real crazy stuff — when the door bell jingles. 

“Hey there, stranger,” a voice says. “Planing a trip for you and little Jonny?”

St Albany’s School of Excellence. Blue plaid blazer. Janitor closet #4, math wing. 

“Bora Bora,” I tell her, not staring at her tits. “I was thinking sunny beaches for Christmas.”

She squeezes my arm to her chest.

“You are such a good dad,” her lips quiver enticingly. “I don’t know if I could be so strong if—”

And she bursts. Pulls me into her cushy embrace. Warm tears running down my neck from her cheeks. I feel it. Actual passion. Desire. Today is the day. I am going to finally reach Oz. Pressure builds. She pulls me tight. I’m about to pull her into the back room. Throw her down on the dusty time share brochures… and her snot bubble pops in my ear.

***

The drive home is tedious. One more day. Two minutes from home and I’m so distracted by failure I almost miss it. A hint of blue five cars back. The tail. 

I drive straight on Sinclair instead of right on Jackson. An immediate left to Kimble, left again to Johnson. Another hint of blue. I speed through a red light at Four Corners Intersection and slam into a driveway between two pickup trucks. Thirty seconds later the blue Malibu slowly prowls by. And there’s DD cups, Mrs. Snot Bubble herself, scanning the road. 

Our meeting at Syed’s wasn’t a coincidence. She got on my trail. But for how long, what has she seen, and why?

A neckless bruiser in a wife beater that matches his truck pounds on my window. “What the hell do you want?” he asks.

I smile. “Do you have time to talk about our Lord and savior?”

***

Veronica is silhouetted in the dinning room window when I get home long after dark. She doesn’t speak when I get in. No dinner on the table. She didn’t touch the breakfast I left her, and there’s no chance she’s going to touch me. Just stares. Cold.

I shower and make us sandwiches for dinner. Peanut butter and jelly. Barely a meal. We eat in silence.

***

The phone call comes at 1:30 pm. Blocked number. Margret.

“Get here now,” she demands through the phone. “And if you want the short list, bring your wife.”

I try to convince her otherwise. I don’t have a wife, or girlfriend, dead or otherwise. Try to tell her the truth when the lies don’t work. She doesn’t listen.

“I followed you home tonight, asshole,” Margret says. “I saw her silhouette in the window. You have an hour.”

She hangs up.

Fucking silhouettes.

I get Veronica in the car and talk the whole way. I explain everything. Every sordid detail. Every casual liaison. I try to explain what makes one closet better than another. Snot bubbles. Sexual anhedonia. I did it all for little Johnny. She doesn’t say a word.

When we arrive she won’t get out of the car, so I carry her up the steps. The light of the opening door falls across our struggle, Margret is all laughs and memories of leather.

“Oh! This will be fun,” Margret giggles, and leads the way inside.

***

The living room is entombed with candles. Soft music plays. An open bottle. Glasses.

“Tonight will be different,” Margret says, sipping her wine. I pour a glass for Veronica, anything to make this easier. 

“No chores. No work. Just sex,” Margret smiles.

“Let her leave,” I plead. “She has nothing to do with this.”

“No,” says Margret, and pushes me onto the couch. “She watches.”

And she disappears under the weighted blanket.

If it weren’t for the sounds of suction and casual gags, it would be easy to pretend we were alone, Veronica and I. Music and candle light. A romantic evening. The things normal couples do. Normal couples who are not us.

As my tension builds, I can’t look at her. I can’t meet her eyes. She won’t look away. This is what she’s always wanted. This is her ticket out. After tonight, she can wait as many days as she wants before showing her back. She can not touch, not kiss, not look at me as much or little as she pleases. She sits triumphant, and I stare out the window just waiting for it to be over.

And the window stares back.

In the darkness of the night, the candle light reflects off the contours of a face. Blue eyes. Angry scowl.

“Ohh. Fuck!” I scream.

“Let me have it,” Margret moans. “Don’t hold any back.”

“Don’t move,” I tell her. Stiffening, holding her head in place. The window breaks.

“This is what you want!” a voice yells, as I don’t stare at her tits. “This is what you chose over me?”

Margret bites down in shock.

“No!” I cry, picturing bloody Ken dolls.

“This could have been me. I loved you.” DD says, wiping tears with her right hand, showing me the gun. “I loved you, and you treat me like this?”

Fuck. This is my moment.

“I’m sorry,” I say, trying to keep Margret still under the blanket. “I don’t even know your name.”

“You,” DD’s head shakes uncontrollably. Tears. Snot bubbles. “How can you say that? We love each other.”

I look at Veronica, “I don’t know her. She was a closet fling. I don’t know why she’s doing this.”

DD barely looks at Veronica. The gun comes up. BANG. Right in the head. The bullet passes cleanly through shattering a bottle of wine and launching candle-wax and flame across the floor. Margret jumps at the sound, I can barely keep her head still.

The motion combined with the smell of burning plastic as Veronica slowly deflates onto a bed of candles pushes me into high gear.

“Welcome to Munchkin Land” blasts through my head.

DD sees the blanket move at my lap.

“That’s what gets you going?” she screams. “A fucking doll? Well it’s too fucking late. There’s only one way to deal with trash like you.”

She points the gun at my head.

A tornado. Falling houses. Fields of poppies. Lions. Scarecrows.

“I’m going to take the only thing you care about,” tears stream down her face as she lowers the gun towards my crotch.

“NO!” I yell. 

She fires.

I explode.

All hail the Wizard of Fucking Oz.

By Royal Decree

I hesitated at the doorway, looked left and right down the corridor, then knocked. Knock-knock, pause, knock-knock-knock, pause, knock. The code I’d paid for.  God, I hated these places. Couldn’t believe I’d sunk this low. 

I turned the knob, sticky from god-knew-what—I didn’t want to know. 

“Welcome.” 

A youthful voice. My lips pulled back into my cheek. The right side only. I felt it. The pull. Felt it because I tried not to show my delight.

I stepped from dark corridor into darker room, let the heel of my snakeskin boot tap the door closed.

“Make yourself at home.” The youth’s words, syruped with drink, stumbled from across the room. 

A light flashed. Moved through the air. Landed on a stubble of candle wax. Phosphor smell burst through the air, then poof, disappeared, replaced by the scent of vanilla, and something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. A rotten lemon? A decaying tuna sandwich? Vomit? My stomach tightened. Why couldn’t I turn around? Leave?

“Don’t be shy. The bed’s right there.” 

Now I could see who owned the voice. Nice looking. Had me by an inch or two. The hair reminded me of Black Minx, the horse I’d lost a bundle on at Doomben. On a photo finish no less. Should’ve listened to Charlie Hersch. He warned me that filly would stay undefeated. The Minx’s mane was longer than the kid’s, which fell just past the collar of his shirt. Looked like a silk shirt. Black silk. Or maybe midnight blue. Or deep plum. 

I slid my fingertips across my bottom lips, thinking—color, not a difference to make a difference. I rubbed my bottom lip against my teeth, an old habit I had no intention on breaking, except in front of news cameras. Now skin color? That would make a difference. A big difference. 

But Billy Ray knew where I stood on that matter. Christ, every voter in Dawson County knew where I stood on that matter. 

Candle light flicked shadows across the kid’s pale face. 

I loosened the tie around my neck. “Where’s the goddamn air in this place?”

“A.C.’s down. Billy Ray says heat’ll add to the atmosphere.” 

“If I wanted to screw in a sauna, I’d go to my club.” No. Not my club. Somebody else’s club. “Shit.” No A.C.? In fucking west Texas? “I paid Billy Ray good money. I should have comfort.” 

“Billy Ray isn’t into comfort.” 

“Flexing his sadistic muscle, is he?” 

“Paying me to provide the comfort.” 

I unbuttoned the top button on my shirt, forced my breathing to slow, forced my blood pressure down. No sense getting worked up over something you couldn’t change. Wasn’t that what I told city counsel just this morning? 

“I’ve had my fill of arguing,” I told the kid. “Got enough of that with people at work. Every fucking day. Makes the goddamn office a pressure cooker.” 

I removed the linen handkerchief from my pocket and wiped my forehead. “From one pressure cooker into another, huh?” A chuckle strangled my windpipe. 

“You’re smiling.”

“Pretty funny.” Wasn’t funny at all. I ought to get a medal for how well I hold it together. “I’ve got a right to let off steam. Any way I see fit.” I removed my jacket and tossed it on the bed.  

A sandstone-colored sheet I assumed was once white covered the mattress. Spotted, dark stains reminded me of Old Joe, the mongrel who shared my home for fourteen years. 

Where the hell did that thought come from? Old Joe was dead. Dead for three fucking years. What’s that mutt doing raising his ugly head now? 

Maybe that’s what I need, a new mongrel. One who runs to me when I come home at night, wagging his tail, lapping my hand, slobbering his delight.

“Sheet’s clean.”

I jumped when the kid whispered, close, sudden, into my right ear. Nearly peed my pants. God I hated being startled. 

The kid placed a gentle hand on my forearm. “Sorry.” The word almost dripped, like thick, raw molasses. “I didn’t mean to scare you. . . . unless you want to be scared.”

“I . . . ah—” 

“All you need to do is describe your wishes.” 

Wishes? My wishes? I’d made a living out of bartering other people’s dreams. My own had died long ago.

“Your first time?” he asked.

What a laugh. “Yours?” 

The kid glanced away, hesitated. “I’ve got experience.” 

Hmm. A dodge. I’d obviously struck a nerve. I tried to keep my eyebrows level, my lips from smiling. I’d heard first timers worked harder to please. I waited for the squirm. 

“Why don’t you give me a name I can call you?” he said. “Bob, Leonardo, Mr. Smith . . .?”

“It’s . . . King.” A slight rise in my voice tipped off my deceit.

The kid hesitated again, either spotting the lie or about to make one up. “Then King it will be.” 

Now I did smile. Wise kid. Knew a big tip depended on making nice.  

“And you can call me . . . Prince.” He took my arm and guided me to the bed. “Come over here.” 

He had a knack, this kid. He almost made his voice sweet as a woman’s. A new admiration spread inside me. So did Hope. The hope that I’d find what I was searching for, what I’d had to deny needing. Deny needing for way too long. I could help the kid get somewhere in this business. 

I sat on a mattress that must’ve been stuffed with the county’s best caliche soil. Hard, lumpy, and moist.  “Christ, it’s hot in here.” 

Prince stood before me and unbuttoned my shirt. 

My shoulders dropped and I rolled my head from side to side, heard the crackling as I stretched out the kinks. Prince must’ve heard it too. He slipped warm hands under the opening of my shirt, kneading the tension from my neck. 

A burst of needles radiated from my elbows, ran cold prickles through my arms and chest as my torso shivered. A sound I didn’t even recognize as my own moaned from deep inside me. 

“How about a drink, King? Be right back.” 

A drink? Now? Did the kid think I wasn’t ready? He trying to enhance my pleasure or get me loaded, make his work easier? Or maybe it was the kid who wasn’t ready. Maybe Prince was as confused as I. 

I used the time while Prince was out of the room to scan the nightstand, not really a piece of furniture, rather a pile of cinderblocks with a wood slab on top. A candy dish with a half dozen assorted condoms and finger rubbers sat in the center. An opened package of Juicy-fruit gum, a matchbook with “The Hot Spot” embossed on the cover, and a ballpoint pen lay to one side.  A Gideon Bible sat toward the back, looking as crisp and untouched as the day it was printed. 

Was the Bible a reminder? A portent to go home? Prince returned with a glass of pale amber liquid. I held it for a long while before drinking it. What if it was spiked? Or poisoned straight out? I twirled it under my nose. It smelled like weak beer. It tasted flat, stale. 

“It’s my own concoction,” Prince said. “How do you like it?”

“Different. It’s different.” 

“That’s me. Nothing common about me.” Prince pulled his tee shirt over his head and tossed it onto a chair. Cream-colored skin flickered in the candlelight. Obvious the kid didn’t work outside, but he did do some sort of physical work. Tight abs. Defined muscles. He nodded to my glass. “Feel better?”

“Sure, thanks.” Actually, I did feel better. Relaxed. I reached out and touched the kid’s hard chest. The softness of his black hair reminded me of the negligee my wife wore on our honeymoon. “Shit.”

“What?”

“Damn thoughts keep popping into my head.” What the hell was happening to me? I gulped down the rest of the unnamed elixir. “How about we talk first. Okay?” My words surprised me as much as the thoughts about Old Joe and my wife. 

“Sure.” The muscles in Prince’s face softened, his eyes relaxed, his shoulders lowered.

Or perhaps it was a reflection of my own relief. 

“‘Your nickel’ as my grandfather used to say. As long as you realize the meter’s still ticking, talk away, King.” Prince lay on the bed, his arms bent, hands under his head. 

The pose oozed an invitation I fought against receiving. 

I paced the short length of floor by the side of the bed. “How much is Billy Ray paying you, Prince?”

“Why?” More curiosity than distrust. Good. Definitely an amateur.

“Maybe I can pay you more. If you can be discreet.”

He got up on his elbows. “I’m listening.” 

Ah ha. He needs money.

“You clean?”

“I don’t have any drugs, if that’s what you’re looking for. But if you’re worried about sex, I’m cleaner than a bar of soap.”

“Why you doing this?”

He sat up. “None of your damn business.”

I sat next to him, laid a palm against his cheek. Clean shaven. Smooth. “I want to make it mine. Bet your family doesn’t know you’re queer. Bet that’s why you sell it—to get it.”

His jaw muscle pulsed. He pulled my hand from his face. “Sorry, King, I’m not paid to give you my family history. You want to talk, tell me about yourself.”

“I can’t do that.” I stood and took a fifty out of my wallet. Placed it on the nightstand. 

He looked from the money to me to the money again. Then crossed his arms over his chest and gazed straight ahead. I took another fifty from my wallet and waved it in front of him. He followed my movements. I laid the bill atop the other. 

Prince stared at the money and exhaled between pursed lips. “It’s complicated.”

“Always is. Do they love you?” 

He looked off to his left, ran his gaze along the side wall, up and down, sucked in the corner of his lip. He shook his head, just tiny back-and-forth movements, while staring at the wall. His gaze lower to his hands and they closed into fists. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and released his clenched hands. He took another deep breath, then sprung to his feet. “So how do you like it, King?”  

I yanked off my boots, dropped my pants. “I’ll show you. Get undressed.” 

Prince stripped and I regretted the command. Without saying a word, his body, lean and full of youth, shamed my soft chest, my flabby gut, my marshmallow derrière. Christ, I’d become my old man. “No!”  

“No what, King?” 

Sweat hid under my hairline, ran like sideburns past my ears, dribbled down my forehead. I glanced at the door. He’d be coming home from work soon. Don’t you love me, Daddy? My hands flew to my head. “No!” My son’s voice? My own?

I recoiled from the bed. Two steps and my back was to the wall. 

“Hey, man. It’s all right.” He took a small step forward, tested the ground for explosives. “It’s all right, King. No one’s going to hurt you.”

My vision blurred. My son came toward me, whispering, Don’t you love me, Daddy? My son morphed into me, I was approaching my father, whispering, begging, Don’t you love me, Daddy?

Love you? How could I love a queer like you? Was it Daddy talking or was it me? “You disgust me.”

“Okay,” Prince said. “If this is how you like it.” 

“Like it?” How could a man like having a homo for a son? 

“I can get you to like it.” 

In one step Prince was in front of me, pressing his bare chest against mine. Pressing an erection next to mine, crushing me against the wall, whispering in my ear. “You’ll like this.” His fingers grabbed my hard, oozing cock. Christ, I couldn’t help myself. I moaned and threw my head against the wall, arching my chin to the ceiling. Prince tightened his grasp and my knees went weak. I pressed against the wall to stay on my feet. 

“Yeeeeessssss,” I called to the ceiling. 

Prince licked my chest, sucked on a nipple, dragged his tongue down the center of my body. He took me into his mouth, working his tongue and suction in harmony, his hands crawling around my ass, kneading and pressing and probing. I spread my knees like a cowboy posting a horse. Oh, god. Why’d I stay away for so long? The kid was so fucking good. I grabbed Prince’s head and thrust it harder against me, pushing myself deeper into the kid’s throat. I came quickly, shuddered and shrunk in the kid’s mouth. My back traced the wall to the floor. 

Prince lowered himself with me until we were both lying on the small floor, not even caring about the last time it was vacuumed. Prince propped himself on an elbow, pulled a hair off his tongue, wiped the sweat off my temple with his fingertips. “That wasn’t so hard to like, now, was it?” 

I closed my eyes and pulled in a big draft of air. I could have said no, but the word caught in my throat. 

“Good,” Prince said. “You want to give it in the ass now? Or you want me to give it to you?” 

I jerked myself to a sit. “You think I can’t come more than once, kid? You think I’m not the man you are?” 

Prince rolled to his feet. “I didn’t say that.” 

“Hand me your belt.” 

Prince cocked his head, arched an eyebrow.

I stood and pulled on my pants, zipped and buttoned them. I stuck out my hand. “Now.”

Prince pulled the belt from the loops of his pants. “This’ll cost extra.”

“I know what it’ll cost. Now hand it to me. Bend over that dresser. I’ll show you what I want to do with your ass.” I folded the belt in half. With the double ends in both hands, I snapped the leather twice. 

I could tell Prince tried not to jump, but he couldn’t help himself. I tucked the belt under my armpit and freed my hands. With both palms I rubbed Prince’s bare ass, separating his crack, pushing it together, feeling the softness, losing myself in the kneading, my eyes closing, my head tilting up, extending my neck, feeling the heat of his skin, hearing Daddy ask, So is this what you do with those boys?

“You want sounds?” Prince asked.

I bent and kissed the center of each ass cheek, a hard, deep kiss. When I stood, I told him, “Not a sound. Not a whimper. Be a big boy and I’ll go easier on you. Show Daddy you’re not really a faggot.” 

Zzzwhack. I slapped the belt across the kid’s butt. The soft skin vibrated with the assault.

The kid grabbed the handle of a drawer. Said nothing. 

Zzzwhack. 

A welt erupted along the trail of the first strike. The mark of the second strap was instantaneous. 

“Turn over.” 

“This’ll cost you an extra three bills. You got it with you, man?”

“Man. Strange word coming from you, queer.” 

The kid stood, his eyes moist with unspoken pain. “I think you should go.”

“I’m going nowhere.” I snapped the belt. “I need you to show Daddy you’re a man. A goddamn fucking man. My genes didn’t create any fucking fags.” I pointed to the bed. “Screw her!”

The kid shot a look at the bed. “Scenes’ll cost you another two. And I don’t run a tab.”

I raised the belt and he flinched. I slapped the leather on the bed. “I told you to shut up, girl.” I stepped to the bed, made sure her hands and feet were still tied. “You ought to be proud of yourself, girl, proving your brother’s no sissy.” I pointed to the bed again. “If you want to belong to this family, prove you’re really a man. Fuck her.”

The kid’s eyes roamed over his sister’s naked body. His beautiful twin’s body. He stood there staring at her. Just staring at her. I lifted the belt and he inched his way onto the bed. 

“I’m watching you, boy. You fuck her good, then spread her legs and pleasure her till she cries out for more. You hear that girl? If he pleasures you, you better cry out for more. And if you beg for more, by God, he’d better deliver. You don’t cry out for more, I’ll know him for the fag he is. He’ll no longer be your brother. He’ll no longer be my son.” 

I glared at the kid’s crotch. “Get it up, boy, and show your sister what a man can do.”

I instructed the kid how to fuck the girl, at times demanding he pull his torso back so I could see his penis enter her. At times, I’d stick my finger inside her to demonstrate where the kid’s tongue should go. 

The girl cried out and I shouted, “Again.” She cried out for more and I ordered, “Again.” She cried out and—it wasn’t a cry of delight. Her face glistened with tears. Blood colored the sheets, from her wrists, from her ankles, from her—

The kid lay limp and exhausted beside her. 

“What have you done?” I grabbed the kid’s shoulder and pushed him off the bed. “What the hell have you done to your sister? You think fucking a virgin will make you a man? You’re sick, boy. I can’t bear to look at you.” I rushed to my jacket and hauled out my .38. 

The kid backed behind a chair and glanced at the door. “Easy, man. I didn’t do anything to anybody’s sister. I fucked the damn mattress is all, doing what you told me. Now put that thing down.”

Look what you made me do. Why’d you do that, Daddy? I was floating. I couldn’t let Daddy get away with—Daddy says God’s got to punish queers. I was Daddy. I pulled the trigger. The kid, me, Daddy slumped to the floor. Red or crimson or scarlet spouted from his pale chest. Color, not a difference to make a difference. 

The gun burned with fever, its sweat made it slide in my hand. Had it made a sound? I hadn’t heard anything. I listened now. No footsteps running in the corridor. No siren. 

Holy shit.

What had I done? 

I shoved the gun into my jacket pocket, poked my arms into my shirt sleeves. 

God’s gonna punish you. I smacked my temple with an open palm. “Shut up, old man. You crazy, fucking old man.” Christ. I needed to get out of here. 

I pressed my heels down hard inside my boots. Pocketed the money on the nightstand. My money.

Blood spun in my ears like in a centrifuge. My mind whirled, my thoughts gyrated. But I had to think straight. Ha. Daddy’d have a laugh at that one: me, thinking straight. 

Billy Ray would know what to do, how to clean up the mess. He wouldn’t want a spotlight on his business. Besides, helping me would be like earning a get-out-of-jail-free pass. 

I made a quick sweep of the mess. Prince’s crumpled, nude body had stopped gushing blood. I took his shirt and covered his privates. My hands were vibrating like a goddam dildo, but I gently closed his eyes. “Cradle this young prince in loving arms, Lord. It’s about fucking time he had a good father.”

Art

“The problem with art is that not everyone seems capable of appreciating it.”

Vogel listened to what the curator said. He nodded in agreement.

“It can’t all be pretty pictures,” he said.

“Or mere representations. A camera will always do better at that game,” said the curator.

“Or a 3D printer,” Vogel added.

“Yes, of course, for statuary,” said the curator. “And yet we still yearn for the simple, the organic. That is one of the reasons I appreciate what Udermeyer does. He and his imitators combine the natural, the simple, the organic and the theoretical. Their work can be both representational and complex and elusive.”

“I have seen many of Udermeyer’s pieces. He has done realistic portraits and busts, but also works that are more of a study of geometry.”

“He teaches us about life,” the curator said. “Both its beginning and end. He does it with shapes, smells and textures. We learn to overcome any initial feelings of disgust, any urge to regurgitate, and become aware of the intrinsic beauty to be found in the worst possible materials.”

“He certainly is remarkable,” Vogel said. “How many years did he spend training his bowels?”

“I read an interview in which Udermeyer stated it took him fifteen years to develop his technique.”

“Really? I heard it took him much longer.”

“Well, who is to really know?” the curator said. “He worked on his art for years without notice. He was nearly sixty before he had his first showing at a major gallery. “

Vogel thought about this before replying.

“There can be benefits to obscurity. It provides an artist with an opportunity to explore, develop and blossom without being poisoned by outside forces. They can stay on their own course, become something truly unique and new. Too many artists find the spotlight too soon. It happens much too early. I blame social media in part, and the curiosity people tend to have for anything new.”

“They do seem to have a brief moment before getting crushed by the critics or getting corrupted and turning into a machine that stamps out more or less the same thing over and over again.”

“Money and fame, ” Vogel said. “These are the gifts of the marketplace.”

“The marketplace giveth and the marketplace taketh away,” said the curator.

“Do they even get fifteen minutes anymore?”

“Come on. You know they all get more than fifteen minutes. It is after they have worn out their welcome that we wish they had wasted much less of our time.”

The two walked in silence viewing more of the exhibit. Vogel felt fortunate to have been allowed an early glimpse before the formal opening of the museum’s retrospective on Udermeyer’s work. It was on of the benefits of being a major benefactor of the museum and a well known collector of Udermeyer’s art. At the curator’s request, Vogel had loaned several statuettes and a few small canvases to the museum for the special exhibit. Vogel smiled whenever he came upon one of his loaned pieces during his private tour. He liked how the placards displayed his name prominently along with the name of the artist. Vogel had always loved art, but had never had much talent for it. This was his way to be part of the art world.

“I heard he experimented a lot with diet over the years,” Vogel said.

“From what I understand that is true. What he consumed depended on the piece he envisioned. For some he needed the color and texture supplied by carrots and corn. For others he needed to eat something else such as oatmeal or sardines.”

“It still amazes me what he was able to do with his ass. It had to have been very difficult. I tried to imitate him without success. All my attempts ended in a mess.”

“I must confess I was once tempted to try Udermeyer’s methods myself. It  did not end well. Udermeyer is several levels beyond the artists in the sixties who used to squirt paint into their anuses then squat over a canvas. I doubt anyone will ever be able match his success, let alone surpass him, using similar methods.”

“Udermeyer is one of a kind,” Vogel agreed. “A true master.”

“I am sure his version of the Mona Lisa would have impressed Da Vinci,” said the curator.

“Michelangelo would have appreciated his take on David,” said Vogel.

“Udermeyer proved in his middle period that he could compete with the old masters with canvas, murals, and large statues.”

“Yes,” said Vogel. “I still enjoy viewing Udermeyer’s works from that period. Still, I have always been more impressed by his more impressionistic, almost surrealistic work from his most recent period.”

“If we are talking about personal preferences,” the curator said. “I have always had a soft spot for some of his early works. Many are small, often no larger than the size of a palm, but what he does is revolutionary.”

“How could I disagree,” said Vogel. “Some of Udermeyer’s early works are rather spectacular when you think about it. I used to wonder how could he possibly form a perfect sphere like that, or a cylinder, or a cube? I know I could never contort my sphincter like he could.”

The curator nodded.

“Back then he was developing the building blocks that would help him later create much larger works.”

“You can see the future in his Statue of Liberty that is on loan from my collection,” said Vogel. “It is no more than seven inches tall, yet has so much detail.”

The curator smiled and shook his head. 

The curator said, “It is so hard to believe. Udermeyer insists it came out that way all in one shot.”

“It is remarkable what he was able to do.”

“It is unbelievable what he is still able to do now. Age ninety, a colon cancer survivor. He had a colostomy but somehow still manages to produce art from his stoma.”

Vogel laughed, “Yet some people still refer to his art as nothing but shit. I have heard people say that this entire Udermeyer exhibit is just a  pile of shit.” 

“What fools.”

“Philistines.”

“Yet they are right in a way,” said the curator. “It is all shit, at least in base substance.”

“Yes it is,” Vogel said. “But it is so much more than that. You could call it ethereal.”

“I could not agree with you more.”

Crazy Fucking Rats and Ass-Ended Cadillacs 

I’d been in seclusion for a few months or more in my haphazardly constructed shack in the dump; the stench and vermin were unbearable, keeping most ass-fucks from ever coming around, save for a few asshole scavengers who visited when the time came to cannibalize the dump for anything that would fetch a few dimes. I didn’t feel comfortable with those creepy fucks roaming around at night; so I started shooting off my gun and hanging gruesome voodoo dolls covered in butchered rats; there’d be no quarter in my land of the wretched. The corpses that caught some of my bullets were easy to dispose of, being at the dump already they just sank beneath the bird shit and the top layer of garbage like quicksand.   

I often wondered what was more fucked; a recluse lowered to the status of having to live in a dump, or a recluse choosing to live in a dump and committing homicide to defend it, anyway most people steered clear of my shit kingdom and that was really the point. I needed to write, to bring words together in any discernable context; but I had writers block, or as I referred to it; an ass backwards divine intervention with extreme malice delivered by sodomy, I was convinced that some god or demon had sucked out my creative machinery, most likely through my ass, but I never discounted the possibilities of extraction through other orifices.

Everything I wrote read like it had been shit out of somethings ass or on all accounts an indecipherable abomination to the entire history of writing; I drank the local moonshine which probably wasn’t helping.

The locals called the dump the “Ivory Mountain” and told stories to their children about elephants going there to die. “Jesus Fuck” it was completely white from the years of seagull shit fossilized and covering it like a blanket, and no self-respecting elephant I’ve ever met would come within a mile of this shithole.

The dump was old and never used due to the troublesome fossilized bird shit that had through some process become explosive and in the wretched heat little bursts of fire blew up skyward without warning, which made navigating the terrain close to impossible. This and the fact that the dump was covering an antiquated mine field, left me preferably quite alone and undisturbed. The shack itself was constructed of many strange things but the main super-structure keeping the whole thing standing were four Cadillac’s standing on end; asses dug in the ground, they were like skyscrapers, solid and triumphant like those sculptures on Easter Island, evoking a guardian like nuance. The roof was a big square piece of corrugated green plastic and roared like fuck through the rainy season which lasted eleven months out of the year; my chair and desk were gracefully cannibalized from another abandoned “caddy” using chainsaws and pickaxes, I had the typewriter bolted on the dashboard with a pea green long front seat behind it. The shack was lit with dollar store flamingo lights powered by a haphazardly ill-advised dangerous connection to a few car batteries; the rest of the interior design was made up of coolers I found around the dump stacked up against my Cadillac walls, everything I had was stored inside them, down here monsoon season shared the same seasons as the rainy seasons so the coolers had to be completely fucking water-proof and they had to fucking float in any flood, demonic insurrection of water monsters, or large tectonic movements.   

I smoked the local cheap brand of cigarettes that I believe actually contained some species of animal shit, which gave them a pungent but bold and pleasant aromatic flavor and smell; the local “shine” cost pennies and really fuck-assed your mind due to its hallucinatory effects and one of its more gruesome ingredients being gasoline. The smack habit started not long after I arrived when I realized that I was a recluse living in a dump and the fact that I had orchestrated every bad decision that put me there; there really was no “down” from that point and certainly nothing to propel me upwards, onwards, or out of that fucking dump.

My prescription meds were long gone and the only pharmaceuticals available were the recreational kind; needless to say I was on a hayride to hell with my mental illnesses creeping back in and completely laying rot to any good decision making skills I may have had, I was desperate and my brain was literally eating itself.

The voices in my head had started to wake; luckily, they mostly argued with each other, leaving me out of their existential bullshit, but they were pissing me off all the same, and the smack was doing shit fuck all in that regard. What I needed was P.C.P.; now that would fix me up all right ways. There was a mini little shanty town about a mile from the dump; which I was previously trying avoid, but when that monkey on your back throws you into a choke hold, well, you’ve got to feed the fucker.

I put on my most dapper attire; shit stained Bermuda shorts, my FUCK THE WORLD t-shirt, and my camouflage bucket hat, I had no shoes as they floated away during the last storm, however I didn’t discount the possibility that they were taken by the rats, they’d been gathering in organized groups since I arrived and I suspected that they were conspiring against me, now that would be an earth moving clusterfucking massacre that nobody would walk away from. As it goes for now, I’d added shoes to my shopping list, some bullets would be useful as well, and a few sticks of dynamite, the sensible thing would be to hoard munitions, as I had little experience in vermin warfare. I made out for my grocery run and the voices in my head were beginning to address me; even though I explained that any dialogue would not be advantageous for them or me at this particular time, they never fucking listened, they were self-involved fuck-asses, and it was my goddamn brain that they were ass-fucking, they were squatters at best. Man; did we get into it, by the time I reached the town I was screaming bloody murder and they weren’t making any fucking sense, they were all talking at once, one was suicidal and wept through the whole ordeal, one was screaming at that one, calling him wimp little pussy, and it went on and on and on. 

If I couldn’t get my hands on some P.C.P.; I was going back for a do-it-yourself lobotomy in the dump. I crept up to the main strip that had only one bar and that was it; I noticed that it was also a grocery store, hardware store, lots of fishing and tackle shit, and a whole lot of bad ass, noticeably armed motherfuckers, just hanging around drunk, or on some fucking crazy shit, with their eyes just bugged the fuck out of their sockets; obviously I’d come to the right place.

I found flip flops; cheap rusty bullets and sat down for a beer. I was casing the joint for any salesmen baring the fruits I was in desperate need of; if they were anywhere, they were here, but I wasn’t attracting any business at all, until a waitress took my ear and said, “If you’re lookin, see what’s cookin, dump man”. Jesus fuck man! Was I the talk of the fucking town now? I’ve never seen any of these creeps before, but I guess they’ve been watching me, I wondered what they knew, none of them looked like they could string two words together, fuck, they’d have trouble with one from what I was seeing.

Let’s go check out what’s “cookin”. I discerned from the cryptic words I’d received, that the kitchen was where I could find some bumpable product. Aside from being the most wretched, disease infested, blood-soaked demonic cookery I’ve ever set eyes on; their chef was a giant bunny rabbit, not some guy in a fucking bunny outfit, a goddamn human sized bunny/rabbit/hare thing. In all living fuck; what in goddamn hell was going on? I thought I’d seen some really fucked up shit man, but this was the motherfucking topper on the proverbial cake of shit sideways clusterfucking madness. 

I decided to be really casual about the whole thing; the truth was that if I didn’t get some P.C.P. soon those motherfuckers in my head were going to take over and I’d be completely ass-fucked. I addressed him as “chef”, and he came back with “Hey! Aren’t you the dump guy”, was I wearing a fucking sign on me or something? I came here to be anonymous, not the best fucking show in town, “yeah; I’m the dump guy” I confessed with obvious frustration, “what can I do you for?”, fuck! He was a pretty fucking chipper bunny guy, “I’m in desperate need of some fucking angel dust, and for the love of god, please tell me you’ve got some”.

He motioned for me to follow him out back; and I enthusiastically skipped along after him, stepping through a door marked no exit into a back yard of sorts. It was jam packed fucking full of what some may call a “how to begin a guerrilla war starters kit”; there were two tanks, an Apache helicopter, crates on top of crates of guns, bazookas, ammunition, grenades and land mines. “Jesus fuck dude! You planning for a rainy day?” apparently he was known infamously for being the guy who could get anything for anybody, fucking fast and fucking cheap. “So, what about that P.C.P.?”, “you’ll have to give me a minute” the bunny man strolled over to a hole, dug in the yard behind some crates and dove in, about three minutes later he crawled out with a bag the size of a potato sack and asked how much I wanted. “I’ll take the lot, and by the way, you wouldn’t happen to have any dynamite, would you?”Hee motioned to a crate the size of a couch and said I could take the whole thing as it was apparently hard to unload because of all the new advancements in the mass destruction industries.

He went inside and grabbed a couple beers for us and sparked up a zeppelin sized dube; the shit was some super high grade weed, and after the first haul I was spinning all Disneyland style. He enquired about my curious arrival a few months ago and choice of living arrangements; I explained that I was a writer of sorts and required privacy; not only for creative exploration but also because I was bat-shit fucking crazy and a danger to all those around me, passing over the joint he gave an me a subtle understanding glance.

I asked him about my surprising infamy; as I thought I’d been very careful in my attempts to be generally unnoticed, having no contact with anyone, save for those douche-bag scavengers I’d murdered in the dump a few weeks ago. He explained that this was a very small place; and most of the people here were hiding from the authorities, disgruntled countries, mobsters, aliens, their wives, or husbands or both, most had prices on their heads from ripping off ass-fucks they shouldn’t have. So, everybody knows immediately about any newcomers; in fact, you’d have been fucking butchered within days of your arrival if it wasn’t for your constant screaming and choice of habitat, everyone knew you must be crazy as fuck, and therefor presented no danger. 

We sat and got abominably stoned off the bunny man’s grass; sucking down a few more beers, and bumping P.C.P. It was a good old time; and I really appreciated the pleasure of his conversation, but there was still that proverbial elephant strolling around the yard amongst the tanks and assorted munitions. I was fucking dying to ask him what in all living fuck he was, I had a lot of extremely surreal ideas rolling around my head, but I’d learned not to trust my presumptions because I was cosmically fucking deranged, and most of my ideas led directly into cryptic misadventures that couldn’t be undone.  

Finally, at last the elephant was poked, or acknowledged, or evidenced, or tipped over, however the fucking phrase goes it went. The bunny man brought it out in thanking me for treating him like any other douchebag should be treated; he started out saying I guess you’ve been wondering, and fuck yes, I’d been wondering.

As the story goes; before the munitions business he’d been a scientist of sorts working in the field of dimensional shifting, which was a debunked science at the time and only a few wacko fucks were actually involved in those type of studies. He’d become ostracized from the scientific community; he was defunded and became the punchline of many unoriginal jokes. Faced with bankruptcy and having to move his lab into his basement; depression set in, as well as a very expensive cocaine habit which followed in divorce and the loss of his kids, he continued his work with what little he had, haphazardly defying all health bylaws in storing radioactive materials that were integral to his work. In acquiring some of the more dangerous materials; he was forced to go through some back channels, which forced him to associate with some very shadowy people, and it was one of those shadowy people that offered to help him in his endeavors, but it came with a very concerning ethical dilemma. This guy offered up tons of fucking cash; and a shitload of land to build up a new state of the art laboratory, all he had to do was come up with a genocidal size explosive device that could be detonated with absolutely no sound and no residual evidence. Apparently, he jumped all over it; the funding came in, the lab was built on a giant piece of farmland, far away from any peering eyes, they even brought in some farm animals to complete the disguise.

By this point in the conversation I was pretty ass-fucked on the P.C.P. so the science behind building this device was fucking lost on me; but basically the bunny man found a way to separate the physics of this explosion, in that he could someway move the sound into another dimension when the fucker went off, as far as the evidence goes, he said that the aftermath would be so goddamn radioactive that it would take about a hundred years for anyone to get close enough to take any readings without melting into toxic fucking goo.

He knew he’d hit the nail on the head; but there’d have to be a test, admittedly at this point he’d been doing so much cocaine that his nose cavities were in fast decay, so he did overlook a few details in his calculations, and being the first person to ever open a dimensional rift, details were sort of important. During his research he was being visited by a curious wild rabbit that he’d feed from time to time and eventually adopted as a pet, he said it was good company as cocaine makes one talk a lot of shit a lot of the time, and the rabbit seemed to listen, and from his perspective completely understand everything he was saying.

Finally, the day came for the test and a few of his benefactors rolled on up with gleeful anticipation; the bunny man had cordoned off a circle of about a half mile radius and placed a small container of this gruesome cocktail of inter-dimensional whatever the fuck in the center. They all got behind a makeshift shelter with a big plastic 5inch thick window; the bunny man was holding his little friend at the time so he handed off the detonator to one of the others. 

Apparently, this was the time that the small details manifested into not so small details, the little bit of what the fuck blasted a hole in the ground about five miles deep and incinerated everything within ten miles of the explosion. However; the test was actually successful, given that there was absolutely no sound at all, the shelter was completely gone and so were his benefactors, as well as all life, structures and every fucking thing around him, it seemed to have just vanished, except for him, he spent about an hour looking for his rabbit without success before retreating into a bunker he’d dug out in case of emergencies, this is where he finally realized after looking into a mirror about forty or fifty times, that his not so little cocktail of catastrophes had somehow fused him and his little rabbit together, creating what was sitting beside me: the bunny man. He never figured out what actually happened; like why he and the rabbit fused and survived, “survived” however, in this particular case was a somewhat abstract usage of the word, he’d really fucking shit the bed on the dose of the experimental explosive and now with some of his benefactors “disappeared” he’d have to get the fuck out of dodge before the rest of his benefactors got wind of the clusterfuck that had just occurred, he was unable to collect anything formally on the surface as there really was no surface to speak of, so he grabbed whatever he could from the bunker, which included an ass-fucking amount of uncut cocaine, a few notes and a small amount of the cocktail he’d created. He hitched a ride to the nearest circus; and eventually ended up here. 

I had to compliment the fellow on his reintegration into society; if you could call this fucking snake pit a society, I never asked his name, mostly because I didn’t give a fuck and really wanted to get back to the dump before the rats gained too much ground. I asked what I owed him for the drugs and dynamite; he said I could just take it, probably because I sat there for a fucking hour listening to his bullshit, which he could have summarized down to about a few minutes, in fact I believe I may have slept through some of the more crucial details. Fuck him anyways; I’ve got enough douche- bags inside my head squawking shit about shit-fuck all, and I’ve had enough of bizarre bunny man origin stories for one day. I paid the fucker a decent sum despite his gracious offer; I didn’t want any fuck-asses coming down to the dump asking for favors, so I smiled and went on my merry fucking way.

By the time I got back to the dump I was right fuck assed on P.C.P. The dump was downhill from the town/store thing; and because of the rain I was actually able to ride my supplies all the way, unfortunately, I couldn’t steer or stop, so the crash following the ride turned out to be rather gruesome and painful, and would probably have lasting medical effects. After unloading my booty; I had a good look around at the dump, it looked different in some way, it was hard to see as it was raining shit buckets and blowing like some furious titan fart, but if my eyes weren’t deceiving me, as they usually did, I could make out a fuck-load of very small tower looking things that had sprung up in my absence. Those fucking rats: they’d built watch towers all around my fucking shack, this was obviously a prelude to a full on insurrection, they had eyes on me now and I didn’t fucking like it. As the rain began to calm I could see the motherfuckers on top of these goddamn things, looking at me through tiny little binoculars, where they got hold of the miniature technology I’ve no clue and didn’t give one fuck, all I knew was that my previous paranoia was in fact a realistic first strike troop movement, these seemingly small brained nonconsequential little fuck heads had developed into a comprehensive fully sentient war mongering culture. Even the voices in my head were silenced in a full on conscientious grouped focus on what lay before us; any further movement of those little fucks would put me into an irrevocable situation with no way out.

It was going to be bloody; and massive destruction would ensue, but now was the time, I knew full well that I could do very little to save my life, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to be taken down by a full on rat attack, I was on enough P.C.P. to hospitalize about five elephants, and had enough dynamite to level the whole dump, with that, the fire bursts, and whatever mines were still active under this shit heap, we were all going down in frightful bloody fucking carnage, and no one, rat or human, was going to escape the wrath of the guy living in the dump.