The Mammoth Book of International Erotica

THE NAUGHTY YARD by Michael Hemmingson

YES, YES, OKAY now, it is time, you’ve been waiting long enough, it is indeed time, so gather around now, gather close, don’t be afraid to sit close to one another, maybe not too close, but close enough, all of us, around this fire, because it is story time now, it’s time for a story, a story set in the past, basically, you could even categorize this as an historical romance if you will, set in a time when there wasn’t so much fear about getting close, fear about sex amp;death, that horrid thing called AIDS was just around the corner like some foolish kid on his bike, going too fast and not looking where he’s destined – although right now (the time of this parable) it was rather remote and not widespread; you see, it is when this yarn begins, and people were happily careless when it came to (sex), careless because there was not that (fear of death), and you may not believe it now (but history proves this), as this tale (which is history) will prove it, and we will begin with the opening scene, as such: inside one of the bedrooms of a two bedroom apartment in Southern California, where we find a petite young lady of twenty-three, dark-haired, modestly tanned, in bed with myself, and her name happens to be, for the sake of this text, Kathy, she is in bed with me and we are making love, we are fucking, call it what you will, because this girl – Kathy – this girl and I don’t even know each other that well – I mean, we know each other, we’re friends as such, we have been friends for quite a while, were lovers for some time, until she called it off, called it off for a few months – that is, until this night in question here, where we have connected again, we are fucking again: at her proposal – you see, we were at this bar, drinking, talking, drinking amp;drinking (she loves beer) and we came back here, to her place, and we went into her bedroom and started to take off our clothes and then, well, you get the gist of the scenario; NEVERTHELESS, so here we are, so there we were, Kathy amp;myself, myself amp;Kathy, on her bed (which happens to be a noisy bed) the springs going eeeech eeeech with each thrust of myself into Kathy’s self, eeeech eeeech goes the bed, and she’s moaning. I’m moaning, we are, in fact, enjoying the moment, and – and I feel myself coming, yes yes yes, you understand this feeling (both you men and women listening to this), the intensity, you know it, the joy joy joy, this sudden moment where the world is ready to come apart like a badly stitched garment, where the Universe itself is on the verge of imminent collapse, as this bed is on the margin of destruction, and I come, I scream, I empty my balls into Kathy’s warm cunt (making it warmer), and in that brief moment I frightfully think of the moon, and Beth, my darling Beth now gone from me, but I push these baneful head things away for this is neither the time nor place, I should concentrate on Kathy, and Kathy grabs at me, legs in the air, going yes yes yes, come, and I am: and when I am done, I fall on her, she doesn’t mind, she rubs her hands up my back, into my hair, and I roll off her, light a cigarette, and she watches me as I smoke (she doesn’t smoke), my come starting to leak out of her, her pussy red and still open, and she watches me and she says I’m spent and she says (head propped up on pillow as Jackie Collins always puts it in her books) she says I feel good you know I’m glad you decided to come over.

I say that I am glad she invited me over.

She says well you know there we were, sitting in that bar again, that same bar we used to always go to, having the same drinks we always used to drink, and you know we were talking about all this amp;that, bric amp;brac, but you know I wasn’t really listening to what you were gabbing about.

I say you weren’t listening to me?

She says I wasn’t listening to us. She says I just kept saying to myself in my head I really want to fuck him tonight.

I tell her I had the same thoughts.

She says I was just thinking you know like we used to do.

I say it was nice the just-like-we-used-to-do – and then it stopped and there was no more just-like-we-used-to-do.

Kathy says maybe I was dumb to stop our just-like-we-used-to-dos.

I say yes you were yes you were.

There are two bottles of wine on the floor. One empty, one full. I pick up the full one, which isn’t all that full, and take a drink.

Kathy says well you aren’t supposed to say that, that’s not what you’re supposed to say. What you’re supposed to say is: no, Kathy my dear Kathy, you weren’t being dumb you were just confused so there’s a difference.

I say I was angry.

She says you didn’t show it.

No?

Maybe I wasn’t watching.

Watching?

She says you acted – I dunno. You didn’t seem all that angry; or hurt; I wasn’t sure if you cared or not.

I say no I guess I didn’t show it; I never do; I should have; I think I could have; if I had set my mind on it.

She says I didn’t know you were mad at me.

I say well not real mad.

Good.

I didn’t understand, that’s all.

She says there’s nothing really to understand.

I drink.

She says maybe I was afraid.

Afraid?

She says you used to make me nervous.

I say I don’t know what nervous is.

She says I think you still do.

What?

Make me nervous.

What?

She laughs and takes the wine bottle from me and says just kidding.

I hope so.

Don’t look at me like you’re hurt.

Maybe I am.

She drinks some wine and says are you?

Sure.

She says well oh well a lot of men make me nervous you know what I mean?

A lot of men?

Men in general.

General men?

She says you don’t make me nervous anymore.

No?

Nope. Awww contrary… she smiles and drinks wine and I light another cig and she looks around her room and she says to me I don’t know why I feel that way; I mean about men. Most of my friends have been men. Are men. Boys, men, guys, you know. The opposite sex and stuff. I’ve never really had any girlfriends, any close women friends. Female bonding! I don’t think I have ever been able to identify with women. Other ladies. Girls. They’re all strangers to me. Don’t have anything to do with them, except for a few obvious parts.

She adds to this by saying I’ll never make it as a feminist, Mike.

I say to her but you were telling me about your roommate.

She says Cynthia, yes, we met at work.

I say I thought you said school.

She says school, work – the job I had on campus; the campus work.

I nod.

She says we are pretty good friends. Much more than just roommates. We talk; we even talk about men.

I say well there you go: female bonding.

She says I was telling you about that bar Cynthia and I went to last week? was I saying that? was I telling you that?

I think so.

She says the same bar we went to six months ago.

I say well we’ve been to a lot of bars.

She says it was that 50s revival bar; all the guys in there looked like James Dean.

Yeah; okay.

She gives me back the bottle and says I went there last week but it has changed style, has changed clientele; it’s turned into a gay bar. Not discriminatory: men and women. We didn’t know this at first; we just went in. I wondered what happened to all the James Deans. Anyway, Cynthia and me were sitting and drinking some beers and we started to play some pool, just minding our own beeswax, when this drunk woman, in her late forties or so, comes up to us and she starts talking to us and her hair’s really dirty and she kinda stinks, she has on this funky dress and ratty old coat, and she smells like vodka or something, and she just stands there watching us and she says real loud-like I’m a dyke and I’m proud of it! I wanted her to go away. Cynthia gives me a funny look and this lady says wanna go have some reeeeealll fun, honey? So I tell her well I’m not your type and she says not my type and I go no and she goes don’t you lie to me I know a bitch dyke when I see one and I can tell that your sweet mouth has been muff-diving aplenty.

I say you’re messing with me. I say that didn’t really happen did it?

She says it did! Kathy says to me this is what she said I swear to you! I told her to please just go away please and leave us be we’re trying to play some pool here and this lesbian old drunk says to me I know what you do with your friend here; I know what you do with her in secret behind closed doors! I told her to die and go to hell and she just laughs at me and goes you think it’s all a dream but one day you’re gonna wake up, sweetie. That’s what she said, honest Injun.

I say weird.

She says I’m never going back to that bar again.

I hold out the bottle to her and ask if she wants more.

She says I think I’ve had enough to drink tonight.

I say so well that lez made a move on you – it’s just like that one time -

What time? Oh, at the club?

Yeah.

Kathy says I remember that now. We were dancing. It was late but we’d been doing coke. I was feeling very very good, this I do recall. Cocaine always makes me feel good. You went into the bathroom. This girl came up to me. She was wearing a polka-dotted dress. She comes up to me and says hi my friends and I were wondering and she points to the corner of the club where there’s these two other girls, looking over at us, and they were also wearing dresses with polka dots, and she says to me, she says we were wondering: are you gay or bi? and when I told her I was straight, quite straight, she just laughed like she didn’t believe me or something. Now that was weird too.

I say it is.

She says why do some people think I’m gay? I don’t understand this. I don’t look like a lesbian, do I?

I say I dunno.

She says I’m not.

I sit up from the bed.

She says I know I am not.

I am naked and standing up.

She says I’m not.

I say are you sure?

I should know!

I say have you ever had an experience? with another female?

She says have you ever had that kind of experience?

I walk about her room and I talk, I say to her look, here is your bedroom window; this is your window; you look out your window and you see things; you see outside; you see things outside; the things you see: you can hear them but they cannot hear you; you strain for certain thoughts; these thoughts elude you, these thoughts you thought you thought; your notions ask do you know me? And here is your desk, your small desk, the desk you have had since you were a child. A desk of memories. Who can say what used to be in these desk drawers, other than what is in them now; past things used to inhabit: objects of girlhood. And what do you have here now – old magazines, notes for college classes. Here is your word processor, an old model but still trustworthy. It gets the job done; floppy disks: slow amp;sloppy. A printer that prints dot-matrix. It prints the things you write. And what do you write, little girl, hmmmn? Poems? Stories? Belles lettres? What are you writing now, what is here on the screen, these paragraphs amp;words, these words amp;sentences, what could it be, eh? Not a poem or story, no, that is not you; that is not what you do; it’s – lemme look – it’s a research paper on marine biology. You are on page five. So here, Kathy, here we have a college term paper, one of them anyway. How long have you been working on it? [1] Is it important? [2] Is all the time and effort worth it? [3] How much actual research did you do? [4] Do you have your footnotes straight, [5] your bibliography, [6] do you have an MLA Manual of Style? [7] Look here, this is your chair. How many times have you sat in it? How many times have you plopped your bottom in this chair and thought about things, looked at the things on your desk? How many words were in your thoughts? What did you look at on your desk? Did you look at the computer, at the screen, did you look at this camera sitting on the desk? Do you have film in this camera? You do. How many pictures have you taken? Do you like to take photos? What if I took a photo of you, sitting against the bed, naked and smiling at me? What if I did? What if I put this camera up to my eye and take a photo of you? Here are your clothes, now, your dirty clothes, all piled up in a hamper as well as on the floor, shirts amp;socks amp;panties amp;bras amp;jeans amp;skirts, you need to do your laundry, girl, these clothes smell. And here, here, here is your closet; more clothes; more clothes. Clean clothes. They all look the same. Here is your carpet. A rented carpet, actually. Like this apartment, this rug does not belong to you. Here is your bottle of wine that I drink from (and I do take a drink, a pause in my monologue, and when I am done I continue, she looks at me, sitting naked on the edge of the bed, and I say:) here is your bed, the bed you have slept many nights in; the bed, in fact, that we have made love in, that we have screwed in, balled in, banged in, fucked in. I wonder how many other men you’ve had on this bed? Over the years. No, don’t answer. This is your room; your rented room; this room does not belong to you; and you have to ask yourself well what the hell does belong to me? We own very little. But your body is yours; you own your body; this here is your body; this body that I have fucked twice this evening; this body I used to make love to until you stopped wanting to see me – but now, here we are, here we are again; again, here is your body. But what is in a body, what’s in a face? Nothing at all that death won’t soon erase. For a second there, I almost believed that your body was special, and just for me. [8] But here, here, here we have two bottles, here are two bottles of wine; one empty, one still filled with the divine. We drank all of this other, this poor, sad, stupid bottle. We also drank a lot at that bar: beer beer beer. But I think we need more – we need something else. Need something to keep us going. How I ask do you feel now?

She says a little tired, and a little tense, too.

Still?

She says yes.

I tell her lie down. She does, on her stomach. I sit on her butt, gently, and start to rub her neck and back. She goes ummmn and I ask if she likes and she says she likes and please do go on and I say that we are still-lives, time and everything else has stopped here: this moment we find ourselves in. She says that she has been thinking about her family, her mom amp;dad thinking about how they are all different, yet alike, I say yeah: the ingredients of a family.

She says take my sister for example; she’s a good example; she’s a year younger than I am. We look alike; she tends to be more feminine in nature than me. This is what I think, anyway. No one has actually come out and said this but I think they think – well, maybe I’m just paranoid, maybe I have an inferiority complex or something. My sister goes to a different university, one back east. Here I am going to a university on the west and she’s back there with all those silly-ass New Englanders. Natch, she joined a sorority. She’s probably having a great time. I know she is. She has all the good-looking, shallow-brained guys she could ever want. All she cares about is buying things: clothes amp;jewellery amp;make-up. A new car. She’s always talking about how she needs cars, new cars, all cars, cars cars cars. If a guy has a nice amp;fast car, you bet she’ll go out with him, no matter what he looks like or what kind of personality he has. Is she easy? Dunno. Does she put out for these car guys? Who can say. I’ve never asked; I suspect she does; she does. And she’ll go out and spend forty bucks on a new make-up kit she doesn’t need with the money our parents give to her and all I can think of is that forty bucks could have bought groceries for the week. My sister gets this from my mom. My mom is just the same: always buying things that aren’t necessary; talking about buying things; wishing she had more money so she could buy more things. The desire for the material – but I’m sure this subject is mundane. Mmmmn, you have a good way with your hands, you know. I dunno – I guess I also like material objects, but not in the same way as my sister amp;mother. I like computers, or TVs, VCRs, anything electronic amp;exciting. I have this fascination with technology. My father is the same way. I get it from him. Dad is always taking things apart and putting them back together, just to see how they work; he likes to know how things tick; tick-tock like a clock. That’s how I am. Those are the differences and samenesses in my family. But we are very close.

I say you’re lucky; I don’t think much about mine; I don’t like to compare and analyze. I hate it; just would rather not think of it, thank you sir. One Christmas I went hungry and I was alone and I thought – well, that’s a different story for later on in this text and it is really depressing. Promise.

I keep massaging her and asking do you like this and she says you bet and I move my hands down even more, I spread the cheeks of her ass, looking at the openings of both her ass and vagina; I rub a finger over her asshole, my finger to her cunt and ask if she likes that and she says you’re a nasty boy do you know that? do you know how naughty you are? and I tell her I do, moving mouth down, licking asshole, licking cunt lips, feeling myself getting hard, stroking my cock as I lick amp;suck, moving up, entering, Kathy gasping like film noir, and when we are done, when we are done fucking for the third time tonight, I see that there is no more wine; I want more to drink; so I get up, leave the bedroom. I go into the kitchen and open the fridge where I find a six-pack of beer. I open a beer, drink, turning to see Cynthia, Kathy’s roommate, sitting on the living room couch. She’s wearing a light lavender suit with black pumps and a white blouse, gold-rimmed glasses; she’s looking at me, I’m standing naked, my cock still half-hard, cock coated with the products of fuck, and I’m drinking a beer. I smile and say hello to her and she says hello back and I return to Kathy’s room.

I tell Kathy about it.

She says shit.

She says get dressed.

I put on jeans, shirt.

She slips on a long nightshirt.

We both go into the living room.

Cynthia is still on the couch, watching TV.

Kathy amp; I sit on the opposing loveseat.

Kathy says what are you watching?

Cynthia says nothing really; the news; something about the economy; always the economy and how it sucks. It does suck.

Kathy says sorry about Mike, he didn’t know you were here.

I drink beer.

Cynthia says I’m sick of all this economy bullshit. The recession. And all that bullshit.

Kathy says I said I was sorry about Mike.

Cynthia says sorry? why? I’m happy for you. You’ve been complaining lately about not getting any. I don’t know why you dumped him in the first place. You should keep him; keep him like a pet, like a dog with a wagging moist tongue.

Kathy says I mean about him walking out like that because we didn’t know you were here. I thought you were at work, I thought you had to work until nine or ten.

Cynthia says maybe I’m too quiet when I come in; I’ll make more noise in the future.

Kathy says he was embarrassed and she says to me isn’t that right, you?

I go yes.

Cynthia goes why?

Kathy goes you know.

Cynthia says you don’t think I’ve never seen a naked guy before? I’m glad for you, Kathy. But are you? Are you glad for yourself?

Kathy says sure.

Cynthia says he’s a good lover, right?

I drink beer.

Kathy says probably the best I… and she looks at me and adds but I don’t want to inflate his ego, you know.

Cynthia says you like him a lot; you kept saying to me, these past weeks, why did I dump him? I like him a lot. Why did I treat him like dirt?

Kathy says I said that?

Cynthia says you sure did.

I probably did.

So how did he wind up back here?

I asked him.

Oh.

We went out for a few drinks.

Well that does it every time.

Kathy says so I said to him why don’t we go back to my apartment?

And what did he say?

Kathy says he said sure.

I say that’s what I said. So what’s up, Cyn?

Cynthia says you want another beer there?

Sure.

Cynthia says plenty in the fridge, go help yourself.

I get up to go to the fridge and I say to Kathy do you want one? and she says no and Cynthia says she looks like she’s had enough and I ask Cynthia if she wants one and she says sure so I get two beers, one for me, one for her, and sit back down with them.

I say I feel funny.

Do they know what I mean?

I ask what’s on TV.

They both say:

The news.

Cynthia says the goddamn economy; the fucking economy.

Kathy says I thought you had to work until nine or ten.

Cynthia says I was at work. She says I heard you; the both of you; I could hear you in your room, Kathy; you cannot mistake those sounds; I knew.

I ask did you know it was me?

Cynthia says not until you came out buck nekkid; otherwise you were just an anonymous male sound.

I say you remembered me: my name amp;face.

Of course.

Kathy says why wouldn’t she recall you? It’s not like I have ten zillion men waltzing through here; it’s not like it’s been a generation since your last visit.

Cynthia leans over to the TV to change the channel, saying there must be something else on one of these stations other than news – a sitcom, cartoons, a sad love story.

I say it’s almost like when you go back home. You have memories of a place, a home – of furniture and the way things are situated; the way things smell. An – an overall feeling and/or sensation. You walk in and you know the surroundings, perhaps intimately, and yet you still feel like a stranger; like you do not belong; like you’re just passing through; not a traveler, but reduced to common tourist; for a moment, you actually become one of the fixtures.

Cynthia says I could hear you both and you both sounded – happy.

I say I feel at peace and I don’t know why; I seldom feel at peace.

Cynthia says I tried picturing what was going on in your room. I had these images. I tried to imagine the positions you were in.

Kathy says the last time I was on my stomach. We made it three times tonight and that last time was really nasty. He was rubbing my neck amp;back and it felt really good; I was just relaxed and we were talking about things like normal people do; but I was more into his hands and the things those hands were doing. He had his hands on my ass. He reached down to put his mouth there; his tongue was there. I felt a chill. I wanted him. I let him take me. As he touched me, as he screwed me, I closed my eyes and thought of a film that’s soft around the edges.

Cynthia says I can’t stand the stress anymore; work work work; that’s all I ever seem to do. People yell at me at work – everyone yells at me. CYNTHIA!!!! The customers, too. My boss. My boss’s boss. No one is satisfied. All for the buck, the mighty green buck. The necessity of currency. Look at those people on the news! Scrambling on the trading room floor, the Dow-Jones Industrial Average. People on Wall Street we will never meet having nervous breakdowns as they mess up our lives in ways they may never know. I think I would be happier if I had more control over situations.

Kathy says you remember what I said the other night. Cyn? I said now look at us: two single girls and no dates; no one asks us out anymore.

I say but two good-looking single girls.

Cynthia says modify; I get asked out, but by creeps. Jerks. Older men, too. I should say old men. I bet my boss would like to do me; he hinted at it on occasion. It’s sexual harassment but who cares? If I slept with my boss – if I had - would things be different now?

Kathy says no one really asks me out; maybe I scare men.

I say you do – you scare the shit out of me.

You better be joking.

I’m mortally terrified of you!

Hey!

Cynthia says the world is running out of men, that’s all; suitable men, i.e.: desirable men, i.e.; there will always be creeps amp;jerks amp;dirty old coots. I got fired from my job, that’s why I’m home early.

Kathy says what?

Cynthia says they said you’re fired and I said well I quit. But I guess maybe it would’ve been better that I was fired, so I could collect unemployment.

Kathy says why, I thought -

Cynthia says crap biz; I just couldn’t take it any longer. I said screw you all and they said you’re fired, bitch.

Kathy says so you have no job?

Cynthia nods saying another thing to make me less desirable. But I do have some money in the bank, and I’ll get a severance check tomorrow. I have to go out and look for another job; that’s the part I hate. But where am I going to find a job? Maybe I should go back to school and get a degree finally.

Kathy says you should; you could get financial aid like I do.

Cynthia says I was never any good in school. Not in high school, not in my two years of college. I was born to work; I’ll work until I die.

Cynthia stands, stretches, takes her glasses off; she says I think I’m going to take a bath; a nice, long, hot bath; that’s what I’m going to do.

Cynthia goes to the bathroom, closes the door. We hear the water running.

Pause.

Pause.

Pause.

Kathy says I feel – I feel bad for her.

I say yes so do I.

She says I know what you are thinking.

What?

You – you want to go in there.

In?

There.

The bathroom?

Yes.

I say do you want me to?

She says I think I do. I want you to go in there. Will you please go in there? Make her feel better the way you have made me feel better.

I get up. I go into the bathroom.

I return to the living room an hour later. Kathy is asleep on the couch. I lift up her legs, sit, place her legs on my lap.

She wakes, sits up, yawns.

She says I fell asleep.

I say I see that.

She asks how long was I asleep?

Not long.

I was having this dream.

Umm.

I was – I dunno if I can say. I felt like a spy in this dream; felt like I was witnessing top secret images; felt like I should’ve been enjoined or disbarred from seeing what I was seeing.

I say enjoined? disbarred? where do you get these words?

I go to college.

Oh.

She says in this dream I was in Heaven; I was in the halls and chambers of Elysium. You knew – you could feel – that at one time there was peace, eternal accord, but it was not so everlasting anymore. No more. Peace was gone, it took a hike. The angels were fighting among themselves – they were… I’m, I’m not sure if I should reveal all this to you.

Why not?

I was… entrusted. If I told you… well, I don’t even remember what happened in the dream, so I guess it doesn’t matter… Tell me… tell me…

What?

What happened.

I say it was your dream; I wasn’t there.

She says in the bathroom, I mean.

I say Cynthia is in bed; she’s sleeping.

Kathy says I wanted to go in there; I wanted to go in there and be with you two. Instead… I fell asleep and went to Heaven.

I say she took a bath.

Kathy says I want all the details.

There are none.

There are always details.

I say I went in there, I went into the bathroom, and I said to her I’ve come to help you. She said you did: well thanks. And she said that she wanted to take a bath that was very warm and with plenty of tiny little bubbles. I thought that was a very good idea. Clean the skin, clean the body, clean one’s hair. She said she didn’t want the water to be too hot; just wanted it relaxing hot; very very warm.

Kathy says I know what she means.

I asked if she wanted my help; if she wanted me to assist her in bathing.

She said?

She said help should never be refused.

Yes, that sounds like something she would say; so she took a bath?

I say she ran the water; we both watched the tub fill; she put in bubbles and the bubbles formed quickly, like a protective layer, like some kind of nest, or armor to hide in.

Kathy murmurs thousands of tiny little bubbles…

I say I recall, as a child, I would take bubble baths with my toys.

Kathy says I’ve only taken showers all my life; I don’t take bubble baths; I never have; maybe I’m deprived; maybe someday I will take one.

I say she said my name; Cynthia said Mike and I asked her if she wanted me to leave and she replied that she thought I was going to help her; so I offered to undress her.

Did you?

No. She turned away from me, as if shy; she, yes – demure. She took off her top first; that blouse. I only saw her naked from back, her back, a naked back. Saw her tan line. Noticed a small mole on her back – small amp;dark. She then removed her skirt, as well as her nylons. I could see her breasts now.

Kathy says they are bigger than mine.

I say a little bigger but not that much.

What color underwear did she have on?

Pink.

She likes pink, always has. How girlish of her, hm? Me, I dig green. Army green.

I say she looked at me for a moment; there was no expression on her face; then she took the underwear off.

Kathy says she saw you naked a while ago, so now you have seen her.

I say she doesn’t have any pubic hair; she shaved it all off.

I know.

You know?

She told me.

She told you?

Kathy says she said I hate having a hairy bush.

Oh.

I guess the hairs bug her.

Yes; that’s what she told me too.

Kathy says actually I have seen her naked too.

You have?

Yes; we’re roommates; we’re both girls; at least I think we’re girls; we’re close friends, after all.

I say yes, yes you are; you are friends.

Goon.

I say naked, she stood before me naked; the bath amp;bubbles were ready. She put a foot in to test the temperature, just the sort of image you’d expect. She said it was just right and I knew she’d say that, like a perfect little postcard with dialogue balloon or something; then she got in.

Kathy says all those bubbles…

I say she rested into the bath; this is when I approached her.

She says so you went to her.

I knelt by the tub; asked how she felt; she said she felt much better.

I guess a bubble bath can do that for you.

I said to her I want to help.

Kathy says that’s what you wanted; you went in there for that; I wanted you to go in there and do that; make the connection.

I took a washcloth in my hand. First, I washed her back. Then her front. Cleansed her breasts. Her breasts were in my hands; nipples were pink took one nipple between my fingers – ever so gently – and caressed it; I wanted to make love to that single nipple.

And what did she say?

She didn’t say a word.

Sometimes she can be the quiet type.

I washed her stomach; she stood up then, turned around and I washed her ass.

Kathy says you like a nice ass.

She had a nice ass, yes; she turned again and I washed her shaved pussy; her cunny; her box. Washed her thighs amp;legs. Even washed her feet, although I was unworthy.

And her hair?

Yes; I put shampoo in her hair, my fingers did their walking on her scalp, all that blonde hair. Then she sat back in the bubbles. She said too bad I don’t have a rubber duck. We both laughed.

Kathy starts to softly sing rubber ducky, you’re the one, you… you make bathtime – la la la la lahh la lots of fun… rubber ducky la la la la…

I say I just stood there, looking at her. Then I knelt again. She stared at the wall. We did not talk.

Not at all?

But then we did talk; a little bit of talk.

What did you talk about?

I say nothing much; I don’t recall; I remember every other detail except what we talked of. I’m not sure how long this lasted. She stood up again and she had all these bubbles on her body. She stepped from the tub. I took a towel and dried her. Dried her from top to bottom, covering the same ground I did as I cleaned her. I helped her dress. First, the pink panties; it was nice to slip them on her, snug them around that ass. She had some PJs there that she was going to wear to bed. I put those on her. I took her in my arms, picked her up like a small wife or child. Like a child. Like an infant in my arms, I carried her to her room. I saw that you were asleep on this couch. I carried her to her bed. Drew the covers up to her neck. She looked like a turtle. I kissed her on the forehead. I came out here and found you still asleep. I sat down, putting your legs on my lap. You woke up and told me of a partial dream about war bound angels. Then I told you this story.

Kathy says maybe I should have gone into the bathroom with you.

Maybe.

Then I wouldn’t have slept or dreamt.

Tell me about your dream.

I forget the details; I’ve forgotten the dream.

I ask were you watching TV?

I was sleeping.

Oh. Yes… Did you dream?

I think so. I dunno.

Cynthia comes out of her room, rubbing her eyes.

She says I couldn’t sleep.

I say you seemed so peaceful in your bed.

Cynthia says I was lying there and I closed my eyes but I knew I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t want to have any dreams. I never have nice dreams so the ones I do have I’m afraid of. Why is this? I deserve something nice now amp;then.

I tell her to sit down, to sit next to Kathy.

Cynthia sits.

I say you two look right together sitting there like that.

Cynthia says we’ve been friends for a long time.

Kathy says yes, a long time.

Cynthia says to her I took a bath, Kathy.

Kathy says I know.

He helped.

He told me.

He’s helpful amp;kind.

He can be.

Cynthia asks what’s on the TV?

Kathy says I dunno; I was sleeping; I had this very strange dream.

I stand, look at them, and sit on the other couch and look more; I say she had a dream about angels.

Cynthia says really?

Kathy says I don’t recollect all the details.

Cynthia says maybe if you went back to sleep you’d dream about it again.

Kathy says maybe I could go back.

Cynthia says I hate sleeping; too easy an excuse to hide and I hate excuses.

Kathy says I guess I could return to that time, I guess I could. I dunno if I’m sleepy or not. I dunno.

Kathy yawns.

Cynthia says I was in my room, in bed, in my rented room but a bed that belongs to me; I closed my eyes; I thought I don’t really want to be here. I wanted to be somewhere else.

Kathy lies down, her legs stretched across Cynthia’s legs.

Kathy asks am I asleep yet?

I say it’s hard to say.

Cynthia caresses one of Kathy’s legs.

Kathy asks am I dreaming again? now? tell me.

Cynthia says it’s hard to put your finger on it.

Kathy goes ummmn; she says can someone tell me a story? then maybe I’ll sleep.

Cynthia says I don’t know any stories.

Kathy yawns again and says I dunno… I’m just not ready to die yet.

I have a story. I tell her, I tell both of them, this:

One Christmas, I went hungry. I lived alone, as I do now, and there was no one in my life, unlike there is now. Usually, I went home every Christmas for a family dinner. I really looked forward to those family meals because they were the rare times I ever ate well. Ever since I was on my own – since I was twenty – let’s say I left home, well not like that, I mean to say that my parents kicked me out of the house when I was twenty, they said it was time for me to grow up and go outside into the real world, and so I lived day to day when it came to food; each day I went out to get lunch I lived on pizza, taco shop specials, submarine sandwiches for a buck-fifty, that sort of thing: this was the extent of my nutrition. None of the girls I knew (I say this with a laugh, waiting to see if Kathy might contradict me) knew how to cook. (I laugh again:) I used to say I’d marry the first girl I met who could cook; who could keep me well-balanced with all the USDA approved daily requirements, the four basics and whatnot. No, I did not eat well, except when I went home – went home on Thanksgiving amp;Christmases amp;sometimes my birthdays. Turkey amp;ham amp;mashed potatoes amp;vegetables amp;candy yams amp;biscuits that were warm to touch amp;taste, melting butter on top. Just thinking about it now, thinking about it makes me want to go home amp;feast, to just go home where it’s safe. Safe, yes, and warm. Sometimes, at home, you just don’t have to think about things. Anyway, one Christmas I didn’t go home for dinner. The ritual had always been: my mother would call the day before and ask what time I’d be coming over tomorrow and I’d say well, what time do you want me over? and she’d say whatever time would be fine. Sometimes I’d go early, sometimes late, depending how I felt; but I could taste that dinner in my mouth, I could feel it in my stomach, I could perceive the wine that went along with it, and I’d know that, that night, I’d go to bed feeling okay with the night, because I’d had, yes, that rare healthy meal. But this one Christmas in question – and it wasn’t long ago – she didn’t call; my mother, I mean to say, did not call. I kept waiting amp;waiting but the phone did not ring. I had gone out to a party that Christmas Eve, and there were girls at this party, and I got drunk at this party, and I was talking to some of these girls who were also drunk, but, although I think I could have, I did not get into a situation where I may have spent the night with any of them, for at my place, my home, I was alone and always alone, it was my area of solitude, and I kept thinking that night: my God, I might be alone for the rest of my life. I guess Christmas-time can get to you like that. When I returned from the party, I expected a message on my answering machine, from my mother, but there was none. I went to bed. The room was spinning. I wondered why she had not called. I had a dream that night; yes, Kathy, I too can dream – I dreamt that my mother amp;father came to see me and they said we’re really disappointed in you, son; we know what you did and the price you had to pay and are paying even now. They said they were saddened by the horrible things I had done, the acts committed, the crimes realized. They said you should not have abandoned Beth and left her to the wolves. I protested, I defended my innocence like a man facing the guillotine. I said I hadn’t done anything, that I was merely a victim of circumstance; I was only acting on my fears amp;needs so how could I be held accountable for being human? I said I was fragile. That speeding car, her swiftness with a knife, that violent night on an alien lawn under a full moon of dismay, none of that was my goddamn fault! I woke up from this dream and for some reason I felt my parents were dead. But no no no, I told myself, it was a dream and everything was okay. I told myself that my mother would call; she’d call and I’d go over and I’d have a good dinner that Xmas. I could just smell that food. So I waited for the phone call. Maybe they did hate me for some reason, I thought; maybe there was some validity to that dream. So I phoned home; I broke down and phoned over there to find out why they had not phoned me. My mother answered; I felt relief. She was sick, she said she was sick. The flu. My father as well, she said. They were both sick, felt very bad. I asked aren’t you going to make that big Xmas dinner? because I was very hungry and she said no, she said they were both too sick to eat and they couldn’t even get out of bed. I did not confess that I was hungry. She said well, merry Christmas: it doesn’t really feel like Christmas, does it? I said no. You see, I didn’t have any money. After I got off the phone, I looked into the fridge for something to eat. I had a few hot dogs and an apple and an orange. I watched A Christmas Carol on the TV; bah humbug and all that usual stuff. I knew this food would not be enough but it was all I had. I never felt… well, I told myself that this would never happen again; I’d never allow myself to be this lonely again; to be that lonely. Then, I’d never have to be hungry. And I would never face the full moon with such antipathy.

Kathy mumbles, eyes closed, she mumbles Christmas… family… always the same… my sister… but I love her… and my father… no matter what.

Cynthia caresses both of Kathy’s legs and says you have nice limbs.

Kathy goes ummmmn, thank you.

Cynthia says they’re beautiful.

Kathy says do you like?

Cynthia says to me hey don’t you think she just has the sexiest legs?

I say huh? oh yeah: sexy.

My mind is still on the story.

I say her legs have always turned me on.

Cynthia says this is one thing that has always made an impression on me about you, Kathy: these legs. Lesjambes de vous if my French is correct. The shape; the muscles; the tan; wonderful, wonderful columns.

Kathy says that feels good, your hands there; your hands are smooth.

I say girl hands.

Cynthia says I like touching you, I like the way you feel.

Pause.

I say I see the two of you making love, it’s very clear in my mind; I see you both undressed, on a bed; maybe Kathy’s bed. You are touching her, Cynthia, as you are touching her now, only more so, and it is obvious that you care a great deal for each other; you could be deep in love. You are both kissing, passionately necking, and holding onto one another. You make love in this room, which is dark, the only light comes from the screen of the word processor, the words amp;sentences of the text flashing on you, your naked bodies. I am sitting in a corner, sitting in a chair, smoking a slow smoke, and watch; I watch your sex, lighting one cig after another. I do not join, for this is something between the two of you. In fact, I am not invited; I only watch.

Cynthia says I can see that, too; I can see it just as you describe; I can feel it; I can taste it. I want that, I want to make love… Kathy? Kathy… Kathy?

I say Kathy?

Cynthia says hey…

I ask is she asleep?

Cynthia says she’s asleep.

I say she’s dreaming now.

Cynthia says I have a story too and she looks at Kathy, still cuddling Kathy’s legs and she says well maybe she’ll hear in her sleep and have dreams about my story and she asks do you want to hear my story, Mike? I tell her that I do. Cynthia says I have been thinking of this story, this story of mine, and trying to figure out where it begins. Where it begins, I believe, is some years ago, three, no, four years ago, on my twenty-first birthday, I had just turned the big two one, the legal drinking age, the age I could get into bars. I didn’t know Kathy then, but I would soon, I would meet her at the school. I was going to college then, before I realized that I wasn’t made for academics and was doomed to the working world. But these girlfriends of mine, Nicole and n, they decided to take me out. They were already twenty-one. So they took me out to one of those places where exotic male dancers dance; you know, men with all those muscles and have all that oil on their hairless bodies and perfect tans and perfect teeth. I won’t get into the details other to say that I enjoyed myself; what woman would not? Wd been drinking, my friends amp;I, wd been drinking and smoking a few joints. I was pretty high, and when I came out of this bar where these good-looking men danced their dance, I was horny. I was really horny and mad that I didn’t have a boyfriend. I had a boyfriend not too long before that, and he was good in bed l admit, but he was a real jerk, a creep, and this is why I dumped him, I said later days to you, boy blue. Anyway, I was mad that my desire would go, on my twenty-first birthday, unquenched. Gretchen must have seen this on my face, she suggested maybe we could go to a bar I could pick up a hunk not unlike the hunks we had seen dancing and, in fact, maybe I coulve picked up one of the hunks who were hunk-dancing, and had some fun. (You see, it was announced in that club that it was my b-day and one came up and wiggled his naked ass at me and told me I could touch him, so I did, I reached into his g-string and felt his dick amp;balls but his dick, although warm, was limp because he was probably used to this all the time.) But I said no to Gretchen. I’m not, and never have been and nor will I ever be, the kind of girl who goes into a bar to pick up a dick. So – drunk, stoned, horny and alone, I went home. I was still living with my parents at the time. It was dark, everyone was asleep, and I went to bed. I got into my nightshirt, I went to bed and, well, masturbated. I had fantasies of those men. I fantasized (almost ashamed to tell you this but I will) I fantasized that they were all in my room, a dozen or so of them, and they were all naked amp;hard, standing in a line, each one taking his licentious turn, a good twenty minutes or so from each, on me, in me, just the sort of naughty birthday present that only exists in your subversive head-thoughts, and so thas how I satisfied myself, finger to clit, dreaming of being gang-banged by a bunch of muscle-bound men I did not know, unknown faces amp;cocks in the dark. I mention this episode because where it really started – you could call my night out with the girls the prologue to this tale – was the next morning, which was Sunday morning. I woke up and looked out my bedroom window and saw, in the backyard, a beautiful boy. My bedroom window looked onto the backyard and this young boy, wearing cut-off shorts only, was mowing the lawn. I know who it was: Daniel, the boy next-door. I used to baby-sit him, when he was just a kid. But looking at him, I saw that he was a kid no longer; no, this boy was no boy but on the edge of being a man. Perhaps he had been lifting weights, as boys his age start to, for he had the beginnings of a fine definition on his chest, stomach, and arms; but certainly not as much, as abundant, as those exotic dancers the night prior. He had a nice tan, too, and I remembered that Daniel made his spending money by mowing amp;tending lawns around the neighborhood. My fathes health was poor, and I don’t have brothers, so we hired Daniel to mow amp;tend the back amp;front yards each week. Paid like fifteen bucks, I think. I had seen him before, many times, but why was I now seeing him in this light? – I mean, why was I checking him out like meat? He was only thirteen. Yes, thirteen. I remembered what I was like at thirteen, the sexual feelings I had. I didt lose my virginity until I was fifteen but the first time I had given a boy head, I was twelve. He was fourteen, a freshman in high school, the brother of this girl I knew. He had long hair, listened to Led Zeppelin all the time. He introduced me to pot and oral sex. The first time scared me and I hated it when he came in my mouth. But after a while, I began to enjoy this, especially when he did it back to me and it made me shudder. Why didt we fuck if this went on for so long? I would have let him if he wanted to, but he never wanted to. All he was interested in was oral. This lasted until I was thirteen. He got into trouble and went into juvenile hall and I never heard from him. It was a while before I had another boyfriend. Anyway, I was looking at Daniel and realized, too, he was no kid anymore, not that bratty kid I used to baby-sit. I thought this absurd, me being twenty-one now and giving the eye-ball to a fricken thirteen-year-old. I knew this must have been the remains of the night, those feelings, so, lying in bed, watching Daniel mow the yard, I masturbated again, hoping to get it out of my system. I didt think about him again, not until I saw him – it was about a week and a half later, maybe two, and I was driving home from college, at the time thinking I should quit because it wasn’t for me – and I saw him walking home from school, the junior high nearby. He was with some buddies and they all had their shirts off with slight muscles and dammit if I didt think they all looked just good. I thought there was something wrong with me, I thought I was a pervert. I shocked myself even more when I stopped the car, which was my VW bug at the time, and called out to him. Daniel! I said, Daniel, you want a ride home? Is me, your neighbor, Cynthia, I used to baby-sit you, we live next-door to each other, do you want a ride home? His buddies all made sounds and punched him in the arm and I could tell they were pushing him to go, take the ride, look at that older girl! I should have driven away. I looked at myself: I was wearing a sundress with a ribbon in my hair. The dress was cut low, showed a lot of skin. Did Daniel take my offer? Yes. Slowly, embarrassed – his face was red – he came over to the car. I asked him if he wanted a ride home, or was he doing something with his friends? Daniel said well is not that long of a walk. I said it is, it’s almost a mile. Daniel looked back at his friends; they were all watching, and I knew, as he knew, that he had to, just to impress his buddies. So he got in and his buddies all said all right! Way to go Dan! and I acted like I didt hear them and so did he, and we started to go and Daniel said those guys. I told him I was sorry if I embarrassed him and he said it was nothing. He still had his shirt off, and closer now I could admire what his body was turning into; I saw a small line of hair from the bottom of his navel disappearing into his jeans. He saw me looking, blushed, and moved to put his shirt on. I told him not to, I grabbed his arm and said no. I felt a rush of heat from him. What was I doing?! This poor kid. Was I crazy? I musve been, because I was feeling turned on. Id been some months since had any sex and I was… crazy, nuts, I guess. I asked do you remember when I was your baby-sitter, Daniel? He said sure. Now that I think of it, I baby-sat him when I was with my oral sex boyfriend. This is what gave me the dirty idea. I told Daniel not to be afraid and he said I’m not. I drove to a remote area, where they were building new houses. No people around. I parked the VW. I turned to him. I was rubbing my leg like rubbing Kathy’s, and he saw my dress go up. I noticed something in his jeans: he was getting hard in there, an erection was pleading to burst. I could tell he was nervous; he was fidgety. I told him not to be. He said what are we going to do? I said what do you want to do? He didt know. I told him, my own face flushing. I didt know why I was going to do what I was about to do but for him not to get the wrong idea. I didt know what the hell I was saying but he said okay. So I got my head into his lap. He was tense to say the least. I told him to relax. He said okay but he didn’t. I unbuttoned amp;unzipped his jeans. He was wearing white underwear, the kind boys his age wear. I pulled his jeans and underwear down and his cock sprang out. Like that – boing boing, bouncy-bounce; all red with heat coming off it. Wast a big cock; thin like a thin hot dog; would probably get bigger as he got older. I took him in my mouth and not five seconds later he came! He came so much I couldt swallow it all. It spurt, like a bottle with pressure, a good five or six times. Come rolling down his dick and all over his little balls. I have to admit I was quite shocked; I mean, with that one boyfriend I had, and other boyfriends too, there was never so much; but they were all older, of course. He was only thirteen, you know, and he probably had so much building inside him. Another thing that surprised me was how sweet he tasted. Come is always a little bitter for me, always salty; but his was kinda sweet, and I wanted more. I licked it off his balls. He was still hard, so I sucked him some more. This time it took a minute or two for him to come again. I sat up, wiping semen off my lips, and looked at him. He still smiled (still embarrassed) and asked what he should do. I didn’t say anything. He reached to touch one of my breasts, but he didn’t have any idea what to do with it. I looked out the car window, wondered if I was a dirty old lady. Me, twenty-one, corrupting this kid. But when I looked at him, I thought what a fine, handsome kid he was, and I felt turned on all the more. His dick was getting hard again, can you believe it? So back down I go; his thing still wet with saliva and come. This time he ran his hands through my hair, relaxing, getting into the flow of things. The ribbon unraveled. I didn’t take him out of my mouth after his third ejaculation, kept it there, sucking my merry way to hell. His dick was limp only for a short while. I had his little thing and his balls in my mouth. I knew, since he was so excitable amp;young, that he could achieve a fourth hard-on soon. In no time, he did. Now, this time, it took him like fifteen or so minutes to come, and there was very little, but still sweet, and when he was done I told myself that’s it, I’d just blown him four times and my jaw hurt. One of my tits was sticking out of the dress; I pushed it back in, sweaty. Daniel pulled his pants up, like he knew that was that, like he knew maybe he couldn’t get it up again. I saw my reflection in the rear-view: my make-up was smeared, my hair was a mess, come on my chin. What must this boy be thinking? I drove us home. We didn’t talk. He put his shirt on. Before he got out, he tried to kiss me; I turned my head; he pecked me on the cheek. I watched him go to his house, looking at his butt and thinking he had a nice butt and wondering what… I went in, no one was home, I washed my face, brushed my teeth, then took a bath, not unlike the bubble bath I just had with your help. Thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. Who was I to do such a thing? But I thought, I gave him something he’ll never forget in his life, thinking of the first time my first boyfriend went down on me when I was twelve, making me come several times like I had done with Daniel, eating me out for an hour, and the wonderful memory, albeit decadent, I had/have of that time. Pondering on what I had given to this boy, I became excited, and in that bath I fingered myself, pleased myself, knowing it was not, and never had been, enough, knowing that I may go even further in this new chapter of events. What did I do? you ask. I did go further. But not so soon, because there were other things going on. Well, yes, I did seduce the kid again; he came over, when he knew I was alone in the house, and I did do to him what I did in the VW, splendor in the bug, and I could see it, I could see what he wanted: he really wanted to lose his virginity. That’s what he told me; he said he wanted to pop his cherry and I had to laugh, it sounded so funny coming from his mouth, that sweet mouth. So we did it. What other way is there to say it? I took him to my bed and we got undressed. He was so – eager, and didn’t know what to do; I thought this was sweet. This went on for a while. Not all the time. I had college, he had school, but the closer summer came, the more we got together. He seemed to mature, sprout, with each passing day (now doesn’t that sound like a cliche?). He had a slight mustache now. I was impressed with him and impressed with myself because by that time he’d become quite a good lover; he didn’t come so fast, and I’d taught him how to, well, uh, eat. He started sending me love letters then, in the mail or leaving them at my door. He was in love, I guess. This is when I started to get nervous. Hey, I was just doing this for fun, okay, you know, teaching a boy how to be a lover and having some fun in the process. I didn’t want this to happen but I guess I should’ve known it might. But that’s not the worst, no, the worst is the morning I was going to my car, I was on my way to a class, some dumb-ass class I didn’t want to go to but I had to, and I was a little hungover because I had been out drinking with Nicole amp;-Gretchen again, when I heard someone call my name, a woman calling my name, she says CYNTHIA I HAVE TO TALK TO YOU! It’s Daniel’s mother, a woman in her forties, she’s in a robe, hair in curlers, and she has this notebook in hand. She’s stomping my way, she looks furious, and she’s waving the notook like an evil wand and she says I WANT TO TALK TO YOU YOUNG LADY and I see the notebook has Daniel’s writing in it, and I’m thinking oh shit and she says I’VE BEEN READING SOME OF DANIEL’S WRITINGS and I’VE BEEN READING ABOUT YOU! I didn’t know what the hell to say so I say should you really be prying into your son’s private stuff? and she goes HE’S MY SON AND I CAN DO WHAT I DAMN WELL PLEASE and this is when she tells me that she knows what I have been doing, she says YOU’RE A DIRTY GIRL and that I should have shame. I’m just standing there, frozen; I don’t deny anything, but I don’t admit nothing as well. She says to me IS IT TRUE?!? She says OR IS HE JUST MAKING IT UP? I tell her it’s none of her business but I guess I could have lied, said, Oh, he just has boyhood fantasies. So she says YOU BETTER STAY AWAY FROM MY SON YOU LITTLE TRAMP AND YOU’RE LUCKY I DON’T TELL YOUR PARENTS ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN DOING I COULD EVEN HAVE YOU ARRESTED FOR MOLESTATION! I wanted to tell her he was hardly a kid anymore, but the law might say otherwise. Oh, Jesus could you see it, me arrested?!? I got into my car and left. I knew it was over and part of me felt relieved that it was. Daniel wrote me a few more letters, saying he was sorry that his mother found the notebook. I ignored him. His mother sent him away for the summer and that was probably just as well. It was. When he came back, he didn’t seem to have any interest in me. Maybe he met another girl. But that isn’t the end of this story. The real end is this: not too long after the encounter with his mother, while Daniel was away that summer, I had another going-out-to-my-car encounter. From out of the bushes this boy emerges, a boy Daniel’s age, and he just gets into my VW with me, no asking, no words, he just does it. I recognise him as one of the boys I had seen Daniel hanging around with. He smiles and says hi, says his name although I can’t remember it now. I asked him what he wanted. He says to me I know what you’ve been giving Danny and I want some of it. I act like I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about. He laughs and tells me Daniel has been telling them (his friends) all about it, about us, what I do, and I believed it, you know how boys are: they always have to brag about their conquests; I was the same, actually, and still am: always telling my sexy stories to girlfriends, when I have sexy stories to share. So this bold kid says to me I want some, I want what you give him. I tell him to get the fuck out. He reaches over, grabs my hair, he says give it to me bitch my dad always says you gotta get rough when the bitches try to nigger out on what they’re born to give and my did it hurt, the way he had my hair, so I screamed and punched him in the nose. He wasn’t expecting that, I tell you! His nose begins to bleed. He puts a hand to it, looks at all the blood. He starts to cry. I say get out or I’ll hit you again you brat! and he runs out. It was after that I changed, this is when I knew I had to change: I had to readjust to a violent world.

I tell Cynthia I have a story similar to that, that I had an experience, at twenty-two, with a thirteen-year-old girl. I ask Cynthia if she wants to hear my story and she says yes, I want to hear it. We both look at Kathy, who still sleeps, legs on Cynthia’s lap, Cynthia still rubbing them, and Cynthia says so what’s your story? I say if I were ever to write this experience down, I would title it -

THE WATCHMEN LEAVE THEIR STATIONS

– but, as I think about it, perhaps the events of this encounter are not as dramatic as my memory would like to give credence to. The girl’s name was Isabelle; a very pretty young girl, and I met her through her mother. Her mother was forty or something. When we’d met in the bar, I thought she was mid-thirties, and she looked good, but it was, you know, dark, and I was kinda drunk. What was this woman’s name, anyway? You recall the daughter, but not the mother. Oh, yes: Margo. Margo the Mother. Needless to say, Margo took me back to this trailer she lived in and there we had this drunken fuck and fell asleep. I woke up before she did, saw that she was older than I was led to believe, and without her make-up… well, she wasn’t that bad, but when it came to older women, I didn’t pick them that old. Thirty-five at most. Oh well. I looked around the trailer. It was quite messy. Saw that Margo was waking up so I pretended I was asleep. I heard her say Christ, I have to get to work and she nudged me and said hey you wake up now. I acted like I just woke up and asked what time it was. She said it was late, she said it was nine o’clock.

I said the world isn’t even alive at nine.

She said not for a vampire like y’all.

We both went oh oh oh.

She said so what do you remember of last night, sweetheart? anythin’?

I said hey sure what kind of guy do you think I am? and although I didn’t want to, I moved to kiss amp;touch her.

She said ahhhhh, now.

I told her I liked doing it in the morn.

Do you now?

Mornings are the best.

Now, lovebird, last night wasn’t so bad.

Yeah, okay.

But I ain’t no mornin’ love-girl.

I should tell you, Cynthia, that she talked with this southern accent, just like I say it.

She said I really have to get mosyin’ to work.

You work?

I don’t exist on nuthin’, sweetpants. I got me a kid to feed.

Kid?

She’s a kid: a youngun, I don’t know where she is, she’s around here somewhere. She’s a good kid. You dint see her last night? She sleeps on the sleepin’ bag on the floor there. But it was dark and you were drunk.

I said you talk funny.

She said you talk funny, dear, but at least you’re all cute.

I said don’t tell me you’re from Georgia.

She said oh Gawd no. I’m from N’Awlins. Grew up there.

I told her (for the hell of it) (and maybe I wanted to) that I felt like fucking.

She said no, not here, we don’t have time, and maybe my kid might come in.

I said then I just wanted to go back to sleep because I had this very bad hangover.

She got up, naked, and she was a little chunky I saw, and she went to take a shower.

She said as she went in you’re a bum, you know, but you probably already know this.

I said sure.

She came back out, dried off, and put on a waitress’ uniform. She said look, sorry, but I gotta rush.

I told her how awful my hangover was.

She said I do have to go but I guess you can stay and sleep awhiles, if y’all want. Kay, lover? This place is tiny, so just close the door, go when you feel better.

She left.

I lay there, then lit a cig. Wondered why I was here. Thought I should probably get up amp;go.

Don’t know when it was, ten minutes later, a young girl in a long shirt down to her ankles came in. She had straight brown hair, soft pale skin, long legs, retainers on teeth. I could see small buds of breasts.

She looked at me, didn’t seem surprised, and said (with a southern slant as well) good mornin’.

I said hey who are you? Margo’s kid?

She said her name was Isabelle and she asked, real snooty like, who the hell are you?

I said she was a snot, I said you’re a snot and my name is Mike.

She just stood there so I said you’re not the friendly type are you?

She said I’m friendly. Thing is, most of Momma’s men friends don’t stick ’round long ’nuff to be friends with.

I said well I’m not going anywhere right now.

She said you will soon.

I said are you so sure of that?

She said they all leave: they come, they go.

I asked why do you say that?

She said it’s the way it is.

Your mother have a lot of men friends?

Sure; she finds them in bars.

How old are you?

She found you in a bar, right?

Well, yeah, that’s where we met last night.

I heard you two comin’ in.

Did you?

I was on the floor here.

I didn’t see you.

I sleep on the floor, in this here bag.

Always?

Not ’nuff room on the bed there, with a man friend always with Momma.

Oh.

I’m too old to sleep with Momma anyway.

So how old are you?

When I was smaller, I used to.

What?

They would do it while I was there next to them. They thought I was asleep but I weren’t.

Oh.

Like I heard you two last night.

Oh?

She said I never knew my Daddy. You like my Momma?

I said I guessed I did.

She said do you now?

Sure.

Bet she looked diff rent in the mornin’ than she did in that bar. And you’re younger than she is.

I said old story; story of my life; older women.

Isabelle asked how old I was.

I told her.

She said oh that ain’t so old.

Maybe not.

She said Momma’s forty-eight.

I laughed.

She asked what’s so funny?

Last night she told me she was thirty-eight, she told me.

Isabella said oh, then I guess she is.

I said those women always lie.

She said whaddya mean those women?!

Oh, you know.

I dunno. But you like my Momma, right?

Sure.

I think she likes you, too. But she had to get off to work, y’know.

I know. She said I could sleep a bit. But I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

Isabelle said so instead you smoke that smelly cig’rette.

I asked does it bother you?

She said yes.

I said I’d put it out, and I did.

I asked where does your mother work?

Didn’t she tell you?

No.

She’s a waitress.

That I know. Where?

This dumb ol’ diner.

Oh.

Surprised?

No.

I didn’t think so.

I asked her, again how old she was.

She asked why do you wanna know?

I said I just do.

How old do I look?

Dunno.

Guess, you silly.

Fifteen?

She smiled and said no.

Fourteen?

No.

You can’t be thirteen?

Yes.

Thirteen?

Yes.

Thirteen.

Thirteen.

I said well.

Well what?

I said young.

She said so.

I said so.

She said I was gonna make breakfast. You want some breakfast?

I said that would be nice.

(CUT TO:)

We were sitting on the floor of the trailer, eating scrambled eggs amp;bacon.

I said this is really good.

Isabelle said oh you’re just sayin’ that.

I said I haven’t had a nice home-cooked meal since – since I dunno. This is really good.

She said Momma taught me how to cook. Said I needed to know ’cause one day I’d be on my own and all that. Ahh, one day I’ll find a man and marry him and have babies and I’ll have to cook for him and the babies. Hmmmn. I wonder what that will be like.

What?

Gettin’ hitched and all.

I said that’s a long way for you.

She said I just know I’ll be happy! I’ll only marry a man that’ll make me happy. I don’t wanna be sad. Like Momma is sometimes. She still loves Daddy whoever he is.

I went ummmn, eating eggs.

She said I never knew him.

I said that’s too bad.

She said my babies will know their daddy. We’ll all be happy together. Never have to worry about a thing in the world – food or money or rapists or killers. We’ll have a house. The house will be clean. We’ll have cars. Credit cards. VCRs. We’ll go to operas and art galleries. We’ll fly to Europe.

Um-hm.

You don’t believe me?

I do.

You ever been married?

Nah.

Why not?

I was engaged once, when I was twenty-one. Just not too long ago. But that’s a different story; in fact, it’s a different life.

What happened?

Don’t remember…

You just don’t wanna say.

I don’t… I don’t remember.

What? You senile already?

I didn’t want to talk about this. Too much pain. I told her a lot of things happened… no one specific thing. What I recall most is an image, an image of… of the moon.

The moon?

Moon.

Isabelle asked did you love her?

Well… yes.

You think about her a lot?

Sometimes.

You have dreams about her?

No, not anymore. Used to – have these strange…

Seems like it was all just yesterday? Last month or what?

You ask funny questions, you know.

She said what was her name?

Who?

The intended bride.

I said Beth.

Elizabeth?

I said you’re pretty smart for thirteen.

She said I’ve been married several times.

Yeah sure.

She pointed to her head amp;said I mean up here, this is where I have been married.

I asked what, none of them work out?

She said you always look for perfection in the wrong place and then she asked me hey don’t you ever dream?

What’s that?

Tell me about your dreams.

I said they’re mostly just nightmares. Dreams, you see, are nice. What I have are not nice. They are bad. You don’t want to hear them.

She said dreams are all that matter, Michael, it’s all we ever have.

(CUT TO:)

A few hours later we were playing the board game Monopoly, still on the messy floor. She had more hotels amp;money than I. Margo, in her waitress uniform, came in as we were playing.

Isabelle said hey, Momma.

Margo said to me you, you’re still here?

I said guess I got caught up in this game.

Isabelle said we’ve been playin’ games all day and I’ve been winnin’.

Margo said oh.

I said she beats me all the time.

Margo said to me I certainly dint expect to find y’all here, sweetbuns; I just thought you’d sleep amp;go.

Isabelle said we had breakfast.

I said I was sorry and that I’d go if she wanted me to.

Margo said no, no, that was awright. I’m glad you’re all here. I was just gonna get dressed and head back to that great li’l bar where we met, you know? But I do need an escort and well you are here.

I looked at Isabelle and Isabelle nodded.

I said sure sounds great I could use a drink or two.

Margo said or ten.

(CUT TO:)

Night.

I was really drunk.

I was pounding on the door to the trailer.

Isabelle answered, wearing shorts and a tank top.

Nipples of her tiny breasts hard.

I said where’s that Momma of yours?

Isabelle said I thought she was with you.

I thought so too.

She left with you. Did you lose her?

I said she was making quite a scene in there, at the bar, that Momma of yours. Was talking to every man there. Ignoring me. Who does she think she is anyway? I thought I saw her leaving with this man, I’m not sure. I thought she might’ve brought him back here.

Isabelle said she still might, who knows.

I said do you really think she took off with another man?

She said probably; Momma often does; that’s why the men don’t stay ’round long.

I ranted well your Momma is a whore! a slut!

Isabelle looked at me, cold.

I said I’m sorry, Isabelle. I didn’t mean to say that about your Momma.

Isabelle shrugged and said it’s okay because you’re right, she is a whore. But she’s still my Momma and I love her, whore or not.

I said maybe I shouldn’t stick around; maybe she’ll bring that man here; I don’t wanna cause a scene.

Isabelle said well it’d bring some excitement to all the boredom ’round here.

I asked do you think she might bring him back?

She said Momma doesn’t always bring them here, not if the man ain’t married and has a nice place to take her to.

I said it’s cold out; I think it’s going to rain.

She said I was thinkin’ it might.

Where should I go?

We can play another game.

(CUT TO:)

I woke up on the floor.

In my clothes.

Feeling like shit.

Isabelle was on her Momma’s bed, in the same shorts and tank top.

She was looking at me.

She said Michael.

Yeah?

Get up.

I said what the hell? and looked around.

I said I guess your Momma didn’t come back.

Isabelle said she doesn’t when she has two days off from work, like now. This is her weekend as she calls it so she doesn’t come back for two days from now.

I asked what happened?

She said you don’t recall?

I saw that there were a lot of beer cans around; I asked about them.

Isabelle said last night you walked down to the liquor store, in the rain, ’cause you wanted some beer. You even gave me one. I usually don’t like beer; I like wine.

I said I remember the rain.

Yes.

I hate the rain.

It’s almost Christmas.

I hate that too.

That’s what you was tellin’ me last night. We talked a lot.

Did we?

You – you don’t remember do you?

She seemed hurt.

I said what?

She said it don’t matter none.

(CUT TO:)

We were eating lunch.

Sitting on the floor.

I said I want to take you somewhere, Isabelle.

Out?

I said we can go and have fun, even in the rain.

She said I think it’s stopped.

I said but it’s cold out there.

She said why go out there when we can stay in here?

You like being cooped up in here?

She said we create our own world here; we don’t have to play by the rules; we can make the game up in here. Out there – out there in the cold amp;rain – it’s a different game; it’s The World. There are no dreams in the world. In here, we don’t have to listen to anyone; no one can control us and tell us what to do, what is right or wrong. We have books and a small TV. We have – each other.

I said, we do.

She said I just want to stay inside here, with you.

(CUT TO:)

She said I want you to make love to me, this is the night, this is the time, I want this and I told her no, I couldn’t do it. I looked down at her, her small face, her lean, delicate body. I was surprised that I had been doing this, on her Momma’s bed, an hour’s worth of kissing, making out as she called it. I had grabbed one of her little breasts, the taste of her retainer’s on my tongue. She had a slender leg around my waist and she said you have to make love to me, I have to know. Knowing very well the trouble this whole thing could deliver on me, I pulled off her shorts. She wore yellow panties with duck imprints. I had to laugh, just a little. When I removed her panties, I was both frightened amp;delighted by her virgin sex. Yes, she was a virgin, she had told me so. She said I’ve never made love with anyone. She had light brown pubic hair; her opening small, pink, fresh. I had never seen a vagina as so, not having had sex until I was fifteen, with girls that age, girls who had already been fucked more than once. I could not help myself: I put my mouth on her, I took her in, her smell, her taste, and with like your younger lover, Cynthia, the girl was ambrosia amp;impassioned. What am I doing? I thought. But I was down there well over an hour, enraptured with my licking amp;sucking, Isabelle buckling, quivering, crying out, sweating, coming, and coming again, juices flowing into my mouth like rivers of sugar. I wondered if she’d ever had an orgasm before. Tired, I lay my head on her stomach, listening to the rain outside. Like you, Cynthia, I felt the guilt, but I knew I had just given her something she would never forget, something that she would always recollect fondly. She whispered you must make love to me now. She took my face into her small, warm hands, staring at me and saying I have to know. She said you have to make me a woman. I knew there was no getting around it. I told her it might hurt. She said she knew. I positioned myself over her, placed my cock down there, and wondered if such a small opening could take me without agony. Just getting the head in was difficult. She was wincing, in that dark, with pain, I could tell. I told her I’d stop and she said no no she wanted this now. I entered her, pushing hard. Isabelle wailed, not unlike those cries of pleasure that had preceded when I gave her oral. I felt a warm rush down there, warm amp;wet, and knew it was blood. I almost withdrew, but she pulled me closer and told me to go all the way and she didn’t mind how it hurt. So I did, slow at first, then frantic, the smell of her sweat amp;sex in my nostrils, her hair, tangled, her kisses on my neck, her hands on my back amp;ass, her grunts, soft grunts, her small ass in my hands as I lifted her butt, lifted her so I could plunge deeper, plunge fast, hard, myself breathing into her shoulder, her hair, the bed squeaking, squishy sounds at her groin as our connection made haste, her stomach against mine breathing air in amp;out heavily, her breath against my neck warm as I fucked, and came, came inside her, just coming amp;coming like it’d never end, not once thinking of the consequences should I impregnate a thirteen-year-old girl. And when I was done, I fell on her, weeping, feeling so dirty. She ran her hands through my hair and said I love you, husband: we’ll be happy together. She said we’ll have babies and they will know you. We will go places. To art galleries. We’ll got to Europe. We’ll hold hands in the sunset and be a postcard. We’ll have a clean house.

I said Isabelle, I’m sorry…

What, dear?

Sorry, I’m…

What? making love to me?

You’re just a kid.

She said I am not.

I said no, not now.

I said oh God Isabelle…

She said don’t hurt me! You can’t hurt me!

No…

She said (her blood on us both) I don’t wanna be sad! Remember what I told you? We have to be happy at all times. What else is there?

Isabelle…

And she said make love to me again, if you want.

(CUT TO:)

She said I will crown you my prince.

I said prince?

King?

I like king.

You are King and I am Queen.

Of what country?

What country do you want?

This country.

She said you can’t be King of America; you’d have to be President, and there’s no nobility in that; it’s not a life-long occupation. And I don’t wanna be First Lady. Our country – it’ll be far away. In Europe, y’know. It can be in any time we want – now or in the past or the future. It can be a small country, but we’ll be powerful. We are powerful. We are respected.

I said you decide then. We can make up our own nation.

Okay.

She said a magical kingdom! WITH beasts amp;knights amp;elves amp;maidens.

Maidens.

I was once a maiden; a damsel in distress.

Were you now?

She said you saved me. This is when you were fightin’ for your family’s God-given right to rule this land. Our country was in turmoil: evil was all around. Bad wizards and conspiring witches with trolls amp;vampyres. I was being led in a dungeon by this wicked overlord. They beat me and did bad things to me. They were not nice at all. You loved me, you did. And you and your – your merry men – came and saved me. Then you established your rule, your right to the throne recognized. I became your wife.

I said and you became queen.

(CUT TO:)

She said who can take this from us?

Hm?

She said who can deny us?

I said no one; we’re alone.

Yes, we’re alone; no one can lay a dirty finger on us.

No.

These people on the outside – they all have unclean hands.

They’re all bastards.

They hate us.

They do – but why?

She said they don’t understand that’s why.

No, they don’t.

They don’t understand dreams.

They hate us.

They bite us.

They file complaints.

They snicker.

They pass judgments.

She said no one will ever comprehend our life.

No.

And do you love me?

God, yes.

We’ll fly away.

Away.

To a never-never…

I fell asleep with her there, Cynthia, asleep on Isabelle’s Momma’s bed and the sheets stained with her new womanhood. I had this dream, too. The dream had two parts. In the first, Margo came home with some man, and seeing us in her bed, she freaked out. The man was worse. He had plans. He had a gun and he shot all of us. We were on the floor, bleeding with bullet wounds. Margo dead, Isabelle crawling to me, crying. In the other part of the dream, Margo came home, and she was alone, and Isabelle and I had to run, run away together, with my car, the law after me, and we drove through Amerika: fugitives.

Driving in a car:

She said don’t drive so fast.

I said we have to.

It scares me.

Are you afraid of cars?

No. Yes.

I know cars. Don’t worry.

But do we need to drive so fast?

Yes.

I’m scared, honey.

Don’t be.

She said we’re out in the world.

I won’t let them take you.

What we left behind…

We’re starting over.

Will we be happy?

We will.

In a motel room:

She said this room makes me nervous.

Hush.

I just feel…

I said what?

Michael?

Come here, hug me.

She asked are you happy?

I said you’re with me; how could I not be happy?

We have this: us.

It is ours.

No one can touch it or hurt it.

We should go – go all over Amerika.

She said we need to go where dreams are made; where the sun is always out and there is no rain.

Driving in a car:

She said all this driving is gettin’ to me.

I said we’ve seen a lot of Amerika.

She said we could have driven all over Europe.

We’re almost there.

To our life?

Just like we dreamed.

In another motel room:

She said I hate all this runnin’.

I said we have to run. What do you think they’ll do if they found us?

She said I don’t want to think about that.

No.

She said how much time do we have left in this play?

Not much.

We were standing in a stagelight and she was pregnant:

She said we’re here.

I said yes.

She said this is it.

I said yes.

She said we are married.

I said yes.

She said we are safe.

I said yes.

She said we’re gonna have a baby.

I said a child; my child; I always wanted a child; your child; ours.

Feel her, here. Feel her.

Her?

Her.

How do you know it’s a girl?

She said I just know. And she’ll be happy. We’ll all be happy: together. Never have to worry about a thing in the world – food or money or rapists or killers. My baby will know her daddy. All my babies will know their daddy. We’ll have a house. The house will be clean. We’ll have cars. Credit cards. VCRs. We’ll go to operas and art galleries. We’ll fly to Europe.

– Isabelle? Isabelle, where are you? Oh Jesus… I had this dream, you see. I want to tell you about this dream. We were in this gulag – this prison – somewhere, and they were torturing us. They called us names we didn’t like. There seemed to be no way of getting out of there. One night, the watchmen left their stations. They just bailed. The path was clear. We could have left, escaped, ran away. We could have been safe. We were weak but we still could move. We didn’t. We stayed. We maintained to the familiar. We didn’t take advantage of the situation.

– and then I was on the floor of the trailer, the killer was leaving. Margo was dead, I was dying. Isabelle crawled to me, to hug me, to bleed on me, to die with me.

I said it was all a fantasy, it was all a dream.

Isabelle said it’s all we have that matters.

And she died.

I woke up then, not certain if I was awake or in the dream, or dying from gun shots, and maybe I was dying or dead, or in a motel, running with Isabelle through Amerikan landscapes of the haunted, the chimeric crux of the matrix, but I saw that I was in the trailer, in the bed, and Isabelle, peaceful, was asleep next to me. My head was clear, I saw what I had done, and knew my dreams had told me what my life may be like. I did not want any of this, I did not want this at all, this terrible mistake, this error in judgment, this second of silly lust and reverie; maybe one day I would pay for it, but I had to go! I had to run like I ran in the dreams but I had to do this one solo so I carefully, quickly, quietly got out of the bed, put on my clothes, took one last look at Isabelle and the blood that was dry, and I left, I left her, I never looked back.

We sit there, looking at one another, and Cynthia says maybe we should put her to bed. I tell her I think that’s a good idea. She says will you help me? and I say I will and we both lift Kathy – she stirs but does not wake – and take her to her room, place her in bed, the bed we had been making love in not but a few hours ago, and we cover her with a blanket, and we look at each other, Cynthia amp;I, and we look at Kathy, and we leave the room. In the hall, we stop, immediately kiss. She says we have to go to her room. She takes my hand, she leads me there, we undress and lie on the bed. She says I am not like Isabelle, I am not a young virgin. I say I’m not like Daniel, I won’t need instructions.

She says you mentioned an engagement once.

I say in the Isabelle story.

True?

What?

Were you engaged?

Yes.

Beth was her name?

I don’t look at Cynthia when I say yes, her name was Beth.

What happened?

Don’t remember.

She smiles, kisses me, reaches down and grabs my cock. I’m not quite hard yet. I lay back. Cynthia goes down and sucks and I think about the four times Daniel came in her mouth. I want to do a lot of things to Cynthia. I pull her PJ bottoms, I reach into them, running my finger along her asshole, thinking of Beth. She says she likes that. It could be Beth’s voice. She looks at me, my cock against her cheek.

She says I want you to fuck me the way you fucked Kathy.

I say do you?

She says you can do anything to me tonight, do anything to me you did to her. Do anything to me you didn’t do to her.

I tell her that I had wanted to fuck Kathy in the ass but Kathy doesn’t like that, wouldn’t let me.

She says I know.

Do you?

She says that’s why you’re playing with my asshole now.

I say you like it that way?

She says I like getting fucked any way.

She stands, opens a drawer in her dresser. First, she steps out of her PJ bottoms, leaving the top on. She takes from the drawer a small jar of Vaseline. She scoops some on her fingers, squats, applies it between her buttocks. She takes another scoop, comes to me, rubs the jelly on my cock.

I say you’re not kidding.

She says I’m burning; all this tension; all this talk; all that we have done tonight. I need to be taken in a terrible way; the worst way.

I feel deviant; I feel perverse; I feel as though I am in the celluloid of one of those triple-X movies I watch now amp;then. I have often thought that no one truly leads such nice pornographic lives, doing all those kinky things, thinking these thoughts in solitude when I have rented amp;watched pornos, but recalling that, yes, in fact, I have, now amp;then in my life – as I am in this moment of my life – acting out, in flesh, my most vile fantasies. And when I have rescinded such, as I am now, when I have thought back, looking into my head for those nasty bedroom spectacles, I conjure the image of Beth, Elizabeth, crazy sweet Beth and her vampyre-look and anal sex carnalities; that is, to say, my former fiancée, Beth, could only get off if she was getting it up the ass; there was just no other way, she had to have it in that forbidden girth, and she would rub her clit going to town! she’d say going to town! as I fucked her in the ass, and she’d come, come hard, come unlike any other woman I have ever known, and I would just look at her, in stupefaction, asking myself where did I find such an odd femme? In fact, I could ask myself the same thing, as I hover over Cynthia, Cynthia on her stomach, with her rear hoisted in the semi-light of her bedroom, Kathy dreaming her angel dreams in the other room. Cynthia whom I am about to penetrate in the same manner as I had wanted to enter Kathy, as I had entered Beth numerous times in our past life together. I could ask myself how did I get into this situation tonight and I should feel lucky, for indeed, many men would feel fortunate, many men would have envy, some would call me a sick pig, some might raise their brows and some may deem me an anti-feminist, a user of women, a taker, as it were; but all in all, here I am: in this apartment with two women and I have, in the course of the night, had them both in the most intimate way possible, as I have fucked my memories as well. Cynthia lets out a deep sigh as I enter her, but not with the same ease I used to have when going into Beth. Cynthia is tight, resists, but finally succumbs. I push Cynthia’s rear down, wanting her to be flat on the bed, and she does this, turning her head to look at me, blonde hair in eyes, asking how does it feel? I tell her it feels good and she says the same. She bunches the pillow, places her head on it like a delicate object of renown, looking to the wall, as I begin to fuck her. She emits small noises from mouth, closing eyes.

I reach under her, to find her cunt, her button, hoping, at first, she might do this herself, but knowing it is a job I will have to take on myself, for she isn’t Beth, she could never be Beth, no one could be Beth; when I used to reach for Beth’s cunt, she’d tell me she wanted to do it herself. She’d say there was a special way she did it that no one else in the world could so she’d do it and she just wanted me concentrating on fucking ass. Beth, oh, Beth, what happened? I remember the first night I met her, in that underground club, where they were playing dark gothic music from England (how I wound up in that club I don’t know, I had dropped acid that night); Beth was dressed like a ghoul: with a torn black lace dress, knee-high leather boots, very pale skin, purple-dyed hair that fell past her waist, and black lipstick. In my state of mind, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen; I had to talk to her, so I did, and we seemed to get along well. She had a soft, low, sweltering voice, almost like a child’s at times, and sometimes like a grown woman’s who has seen too much of the ugly orb. She said she wrote poetry; I asked what kind. She said the kind about the nightfall of life. I laughed. She said what’s funny? I asked her age. Twenty. I asked what do you know about life’s darkness amp;twilight? She said she did. I told her I was frying on acid. She asked if I had any more. I said I did. She held out her hand, the devil child expecting a treat. I fished from my jacket pocket a tab of LSD and she took it and said let’s go someplace. This is what I really liked: at the time I was heavily into fry and didn’t know that many girls who cared for the drug as much as I, with the pious fervor of an impassioned Baptist. Where we wound up was at her small apartment. She had a room covered in purple, draped, mantled, assuaged with that goth-favored color; on the walls were posters of The Velvet Underground, Jim Morrison, Ian Curtis, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus and The Cure. She wouldn’t stop giggling; the acid was very strong. We were drinking red wine, which she dribbled down my chest, told me was blood, the nosferatu’s nectar. She had some coke on her person. We were quite fucked-up. She looked splendid without her clothes: oh-so-very-pale skin, not ravished by the sun. She said she hated the sun. Her skin was so smooth, couldn’t fathom it was real. She had dyed her pubic hair purple as well. I went down on her; she had an odd taste I could not place – not bad, just peculiar. She said come on baby fuck me. Bauhaus was on the stereo, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” – how quaint, how perfect. She reached to take my hands in hers as we fucked, her legs spread out, breasts flat on her chest, nipples pinkish-brown. I kneeled by the side of the bed, taking her; she sat up some, nipples now erect, lips smeared in black, eyes Egyptian, purple hair tangled everywhere across her face amp;shoulders. I wanted to change positions. I turned her over. She asked if I was going to sodomize her. I said I didn’t have any plans but I would if she wanted me to. She said that’s the only way I can really get off. I spread her cheeks, looked, saw this was no virgin flower bud here, it opened so easily, the width of it, so I slipped in, using the lubricants from her cunt, and she cried OH YES and reached down to whack-off her clit, coming instantly. After fifteen minutes of this, she must have read my mind, she knew I was going to shoot soon, she said don’t come in me baby I want to suck you off. I lay on the purple bed and she took me in her mouth, cock dirty, and I thought this girl is really kinky. After I burst in her mouth, she told me she liked all the tastes mixed together: her pussy amp;ass, my sperm. She put her head on my chest, said she liked me a lot. She was stroking my dick and it got hard again. She got on top, slipping me back into her ass this way. I looked up, grabbing her tits, saw the joy on her face, sex amp;acid, finding this all so strange. I knew I’d have to keep seeing her. When I went to the bathroom to take a piss, she followed me, knelt before the toilet, looked up with her make-up-smeared eyes. She wanted me to piss in her mouth. She opened her mouth wide to prove it, tongue pink and long. She held it open as my urine splashed off that tongue, some going down her throat, some dribbling off her chin, down her chest, onto the linoleum floor. She wiped her mouth, made an ummmmn sound, smiling at me. She stood, tried to kiss me. I turned away. She smiled amp;said they were all like that – stick all sorts of shit into her mouth to eat but they didn’t want to taste it themselves. I grabbed her then, pushed her against the wall, and kissed her, tasting what she had to offer. This excited me. I threw her on the bathroom floor, hard. She told me yes, told me to be rough. I lifted her legs, found her asshole, and went in for the third time that night. I slapped her. I pulled at her hair. She scratched my body in many places. I shoved my cock, coated with her ass, down her gullet, so deep she nearly gagged and I told her to take it take it take it coming coming coming.

We went to sleep after that.

She made breakfast. She looked different, but still pretty: like a doll. Like something that could shatter with ease. We went to the park later. She wore all white: white skirt, white blouse, white sweater, white wide-brimmed hat amp;shoes. She said do I look like a sacrifice? We held hands like new lovers do, kissed a lot. She told me she didn’t want this to be a one-night stand. I didn’t either. She let me read her poetry: images of cemeteries amp;dead horses. Weeks became more weeks.

She said she loved me. She called me baby and dear a lot. She worked at a bookstore, selling volumes she said one day she might write herself. Somewhere along there, we got engaged. We were dropping plenty of acid, three times a week, and doing a copiousness of coke. She also liked to drink Southern Comfort. Our sex got more and more violent. Once I banged her head against the wall so hard, blood seeped from her nose. I licked it away. We would spend hours, in a drugged haze, connected by cock amp;ass. I would fuck her that way all night, into the morning, coming seven, eight, nine times until I had nothing left in my balls to give. But her ass wanted more. She had a thick dildo, and I’d assfuck her with that as she sat on my face, allowing that stranger, her pussy, to juice itself into my mouth. We would go for drives, we would stop at certain points because she wanted to give me head. Then she wanted my piss.

I was feeling more amp;more – filthy, a miscreant outside the halls of Eros. Once, she was writing a poem, sitting at her desk, naked, and she turned to me and said are we really as bad as we think we are? have we strayed from the Garden of Eden?

I said yes, we have taken up camp far from the garden, made our home in the naughty yard. She laughed amp;said I can’t wait until we get married.

Cynthia says fuck me harder and I think about marriage more and wonder if I ever loved Beth. I told her I did, mostly to please her. I turn Cynthia over on her back, Beth in the head, placing Cynthia’s legs on my shoulders, going back into her ass which is not unlike Beth’s ass after all, Beth the anal-fuck goddess of this vile state we call the land of coitus. I push Cynthia up, her feet near her ears; she looks at me with wide eyes as I drive like Mad Max deeper into her colon; she gasps, says it hurts a little; I ask if she wants me to stop and she says no and I go even harder, wanting to hurt her, I think, knowing I would not have stopped even if she said yes. Cynthia, Cynthia, I say her name, but I still have Beth on my brain, I can see her so clearly, alive: I can see those times when I would jack-off on her tongue; she’d lie there, mouth open to receive, the head of my cock at tongue’s tip, jism slowly seeping thickly. She would draw it in, suck on it, make some of it flow out, come-bubbles on her puckered lips like a European porno. Sometimes, giving me a blow, she’d spit my seed on her palm, rub it all over my cock, making me more sticky, and give me suck again, doing the same with the second load.

Beth, Beth, my decadent nymph, what the fuck happened to you! Where have I buried you at last? Have I forgotten already, so soon? Am I this insensitive to the intricacies of life? No no – I don’t want to think of Beth and our eight months in iniquitous bliss. I was a different human then, not the one I am now: here in the apartment with Kathy amp;Cynthia. I have to converge on Cynthia, but the more I try, the more I see Beth. I feel wanting for who I was; I feel excitement for who I was, and I know that I am with Beth now, and I come, I come into Cynthia’s intestines, and she grabs onto me, acting like maybe she’s have an orgasm too, and we lay like that for a bit, finally letting go, her legs on the bed now, I to her side, wishing for a cigarette or a drink, thinking of all the couplings I have had this night, the memories amp;history of my life with sex, in this far corner of the naughty yard.

I tell Cynthia that I can’t sleep here and she says she knows. She wants a kiss. I kiss. I gather my clothes and return to Kathy’s room, wondering if I’ll get aroused again, wake her, have her, top off this bizarre evening. She’s still quite asleep. I lay next to her. She goes mmmmmnnnnn and I wonder about her continuing dreams. I move to hold her, feeling grimy, Cynthia all over me, the haunting of Beth’s revenant all over me. I fall asleep, just a little, that strange place of half-sleep, having a half-sleep halam where in a car with Kathy amp;Cynthia, Cyn is driving, and then Kath is driving, she’s saying my new name is Forget-Me-Soon, your little Forget-me-Soon. They are dropping me off somewhere. They wave as they leave me in this somewhere; their car gets smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, smaller, and then is no more. I wake, feeling chilled, knowing it was just a half-dream and I have not been abandoned to be alone on the wrong side of the garden. Kathy has turned, her face in my chest, curled in fetal position, her breath warm, a Kathy-breath. I look at her computer, still on, the document of a marine biology paper still on the lit screen. Is daylight soon? I look out the window, see the corner of the moon, a moon that was in full view just a few hours ago. The moon. What had Isabelle asked me? About Beth? I said the moon. The moon amp;Beth. Somewhere in that relationship, the engagement was broken off, and we were enemies, the sort of thing that happens to me often, and there were those few months when we did not see or speak, until that party, that night of the party, at a house in the suburbs; how we both got there I don’t know but we were, it was a big party, and when I first looked at her I didt think this was Beth, this was just a girl who kind of looked like Beth, this Beth who was not Beth but had short hair, and it was black, real short, like a bos, and she didt have the primordial black lipstick so appurtenant to the look of Beth – red lips now; and she wore a tight tight tight dark blue dress and high heels and she moved my way, slinked my way, smiling a little, saying hello Mike in a Beth voice and I knew then it was Beth. I stared at the long gold earrings she wore, for she’d never had earrings when I knew her, when she almost became a wife. She was sex. She also smelled different, but this may have been a gap in my memory. No, no: I had not forgotten my Beth, I could see this imputation in her eyes, despite the cordial smile; I wanted to say this; I dared not. What could I tell her about these months I had spent away from her; first we had been enjoying our bodies amp;minds in ways that would have made the residents of Gomorrah blush; and now back to priesthood? Indeed, I was like a monk in a citadel, for in those months of disunion, I had not slept with anyone else, I had not gone out to find new confreres. I stayed behind doors, reading, watching TV; went to work, went home, and that was that. But I wouldt tell her this, and I wouldt ask about her activities since the adjournment of our connection, fearful that she might tell me that she was having the time of her life, true or not. Even coming to this soiree was an effort on my part, but I knew I had to return to the interaction with other human beings sooner or later; that, while it was going to take time, I would have to relearn feeling at ease with the outside world, cast off those sensations that I was being stalked by the unknown; that I was free to venture out, show my face in the yard, without dread of apprsion, without consternation of incarceration and villainy. In the light of the sun or glow of the moon, I often felt I was in the lios maw, the dragon’s asylum – I was a spy in a foreign nation and any second the secret police of this countrs sovereign hand would capture me, torture me for information and protocols. Indeed, I had gone to this party at the last moment, telling myself it was time to move on. Why did other people seem so horrible to me? What did this have to do with Beth? Was this time of solitudeI liked to call it my healing process to make me feel better – necessary? It did not matter now, for here I was, and there was she: Beth; and there was no doubt about this: Beth; just a much different-looking Beth. And I considered this night, this geether: for the moon was out amp;full, the night sky clear as refined plasma in an IV tube, a California night so close to Wintes breast. I did not run away from her, as I divined I might should this chance rendezvous ever occur. I could have, and by all means I should have; maybe I should have run, that first time, in the dark smoky club where we met. I hardly make the right moves, doing what I know I should not do, straying from the mantel of righteousness and God – like taking Beth into my arms that night at this party; it was a capricious move. She almost pushed me away. I saw she had a cigarette in hand. She should have burned me with it; scorching of the flesh is what I needed. Yes, she almost pushed me away but in that single moment where all truth resides, she embraced me as well, she took me like a perplexed foundling, she was the mother I had always hoped for, a mriarch that didt allow me to go hungry when the inimical times came; for a passing moment, I thought she was going to cry – and I was certain I would break down and reveal to her what a liar I was, a coward. I thought of the intangible likeness of ecstasy when we fucked, our groveling way of fucking, and wondered if we were meant for each other, the antithesis of the first man amp;woman. It was a Jacques Monad sort of scenario: the chance and necessity of it all. She said my name over amp;over and people around us gave us inexplicable looks. Wondered if she knew anyone here, had friends here. I didn’t really know anyone, maybe one or two people. I was an interloper, and I liked it as such: I was invisible, free to move untouched in the realm, through pedestrians, space amp;time. Beth held me, said my name over amp;over again; it was nice amp;good amp;clean. People kept glancing at us, frowns on faces, as if we were vagabonds; malefactors. Perhaps our crime was the scene of affection. I took her aside, took her to a far corner where we could be alone. We had to talk over the music and the laughs and the words of others. This party was not like the kind of parties she amp;I were used to, the bacchanalia no, this party had too much order amp;uniformity. We touched each other like the classical lovers of Greece, antiquity in our gaze, having been separated for what seemed like decades, those spaces filled with discourse amp;adventures suitable to be sung by blind men with bare amp;bleeding feet. I said Beth and she looked up at me and from behind her new look, behind the average magine-type make-up, I saw the Beth I once coveted amp;cherished. She said she had some coke but I stopped her, told her she should not. I said we had to change our lives from now on, we had to be reborn in this earth. She told me she had, citing me as a relevant cause. I told her I was not an evil person, that I had, in fact, once been angel (not unlike those Kathy is dreaming of now); she laughed and said well where are your wings, Michael? I was curious, now, about her life: wanting to know what she had been doing these past months. She told me her life was like the temple Samson had destroyed when he regained his strength. She said but instead of potency she felt as if she had grown irresolute. It was then that I acceded to the overwhelming inclination to protect her, to shield her from the imps of mortality. We decided to leave this party. She said she was renting a room in a house not too far away, which was a mile from the local university, which she said she had applied to for higher educational purposes. We started to walk there. It was one of those nights; I was ready for anything. I looked up, commented on the moon. She grabbed me, pulled me down on someons front lawn. It was quiet out; the house of the lawn had no lights. She said take me take me here amp;now and I tried to fight her away and she dug her fingeails into my face amp;neck and I felt the blood, the very warm blood, run down, run out of me. Sex amp;violence, thas all I’ve ever had in my life; this castigating I accepted fully, with all the consequences amp;corruption. One moment, Beth amp;I were locked in such a callous clasp that there were no misgivings that it would be the final grasp for both of us, that we would rise to Heaven together; that, untied, united, we would cast aside our mutual cloaks of pain and go on to some premium glory. I woke up in a bed, in a cold room, and the moon was at the window, the full moon, bright. I smiled at this moon and looked at the body next to me. Bets body. She was breathing slowly, her chest rose with each intake of life. I felt good. Here we were, in this bed, alone amp;safe. Nothing in this city or world could touch us here, nothing could extend its bitter arm and caress us with enmity. I moved against her. She was warm. I grabbed at her. She stirred. She called out to her father, in sleep. I closed my eyes and imagined myself cleansed of the dirty life we once shared. I was back on the grass, the wet grass – or was that my blood? I was caught up in a grapple for both life amp;fuck. Beth was tearing at my clothes; she squeezed my balls and I screamed. She relished this wretchedness. She kept telling me that I would never leave her again, we would be bound forever, we would marry and the only way the union could end would be murder, or worse. She hissed like some snake of old, going murder murder murder. I tore her skimpy slut’s dress down the middle, pried it off her like reptilian flesh. She was naked, pale under the moon, and I said you like this bitch, yes yes, how much you so very like it, and pushed her down, her face into the wet blood grass, mounting her rear, a coyote’s cry from her – and that wonderful full moon. I lost my edge and she bucked me off, was on top of me now, her hands around my neck. In her eyes, I could read that she apprehended we could never amount to anything, we would never have anything, and she was going to end all anguish now, terminate the memory amp;image she had of me like grease on a slate, wipe wipe wipe. I clawed at her bare breasts until they bled but this did not stop her intent. I hit her in the face; her nose broke; she fell to the ground. I kept hitting her face until her visage was raw meat, my hands bloody stumps. I prolonged this vehemence because there was no turning back now. I was driven. I was going to take this perdition to its pinnacle. I woke up on the bed and looked at my hands. My hands were all right, my body was all right. I was back in Beth’s bed. I sighed; it was a dream, that grass scene a whole dream, and there was undeniable comfort in this knowledge. But Beth was not beside me. I called her name. I could still smell her; the imprint of her body remained on the mattress. I saw that the bathroom light was on. I got up, knocked on the bathroom door. Beth, are you there? No answer. I went in. She was lying in a full tub. The water was pinkish-red. There was a sharp knife next to the tub, on the floor, blood on that tiled floor, blood smooth amp;clean, blood dripping from the arm that hung outside the water: the opened gash on small wrist. She had also, I noticed with interest, opened up her neck. The artery was languid as it pumped out the final quart of essence out of the temple of Beth. Her eyes were rolled up, toward the window and the full moon: uninhabited amp;aloof. I thought I’d never see a finale as exquisite as this. This was her swan song and no one could take it from her. She was – emancipated. I went to her, I went to her, I went to her, she stood up, she got up from the grass, her face a dominion of mess. She said so this is what you wanted all along? I charged, throwing her down again, my hands at her neck this time, using more force than she had on me. Die die die I screamed as I woke up in the bed and the moon was peeking through and Beth was not there. I could still smell her and the imprint on the mattress was evident: new, so very new, so very Beth. I had been having this dream that I was following Beth’s car in my car and it was late and we were going somewhere and as she went across an intersection a fast big car ran a red and hit hers, dragging it, smashing into the wall of a building, a loud sound, and I jumped out of my car and saw that she had been crushed in her car, almost chopped in two, her eyes popped from the sockets, blood everywhere, a baby growing in her womb, a reverie of two deaths, but I was glad now it was all just a dream, but she still wasn’t there, so I called her name, I called her name, I called her name. I saw the bathroom light was on, the door partially opened. I was not going to get out of that bed; there was no way I was going to get up and go in there. Its interior would be a mystery. I would not look upon her body again. I only wanted to sleep. A simple desire. I didn’t know what was real anymore. I grabbed Beth’s pillow and hugged it to me, cried into it, cried, thinking that this will always be my prison.

I seize Kathy, hard, waking her with strident resonance, howling into her hair like a primate in Cimmerian periodicity, thinking the moon the moon the moon.