text:
Issy?
"What."
"Suppose we switch suits?" Cleve asked.
Is what now? From where she knelt over him on their bed, Issy slid her tongue from Cleve's navel, blew on the wetness she'd made there. Cleve sucked in a breath, making the cheerful pudge of his tummy shudder. She stroked its fuzzy pelt.
"What," she said, looking up at him, "you want me wear your suit and you wear mine?" This had to be the weirdest yet.
He ran a finger over her lips, the heat of his touch making her mouth tingle. "Yeah," he replied. "Something so."
Issy got up to her knees, both her plump thighs on each side of his massive left one. She looked appraisingly at him. She was still mad from the fight they'd just had. But a good mad. She and Cleve, fighting always got them hot to make up. Had to be something good about that, didn't there? If they could keep finding their way back to each other like this? Her business if she'd wanted to make candy, even if the heat of the August night made the kitchen a hell. She wondered what the rass he was up to now.
They'd been fucking in the Senstim Co-operation's "wetsuits" for about a week. The toys had been fun for the first little while-they'd had more sex this week than in the last month- but even with the increased sensitivity, she was beginning to miss the feel of his skin directly against hers. "It not going work," Issy declared. But she was curious.
"You sure?" Cleve asked teasingly. He smiled, stroked her naked nipple softly with the ball of his thumb. She loved the contrast between his shovel-wide hands and the delicate movements he performed with them. Her nipple poked erect, sensitive as a tongue tip. She arched her back, pushed the heavy swing of her breast into fuller contact with the ringed ridges of thumb. "Mmm."
"C'mon, Issy, it could be fun, you know."
"Cleve, they just going key themselves to our bodies. The innie become an outie, the outie become an innie..."
"Yeah, but..."
"But what?"
"They take a few minutes to conform to our body shapes, right? Maybe in that few minutes..."
He'd gone silent, embarrassment shutting his open countenance closed; too shy to describe the sensation he was seeking. Issy sighed in irritation. What was the big deal? Fuck, cunt, cock, come: simple words to say. "In that few minutes, you'd find out what it feels like to have a poonani, right?"
A snatch. He looked shy and aroused at the same time. "Yeah, and you'd, well, you know."
He liked it when she talked "dirty." But just try to get him to repay the favor. Try to get him to buzzingly whisper hot-syrup words against the sensitive pinna of her ear until she shivered with the sensation of his mouth on her skin, and the things he was saying, the nerve impulses he was firing, spilled from his warm lips at her earhole and oozed down her spine, cupped the bowl of her belly, filled her crotch with heat. That only ever happened in her imagination.
Cleve ran one finger down her body, tracing the faint line of hair from navel past the smiling crease below her tummy to pussy fur. Issy spread her knees a little, willing him to explore further. His fingertip tunneled through her pubic hair, tapped at her clit, making nerves sing. Ah, ah. She rocked against his thigh. What would it be like to have the feeling of entering someone's clasping flesh? "Okay," she said. "Let's try it."
She picked up Cleve's stim. So diaphanous you could barely see it, but supple as skin and thrice as responsive. Cocked up onto one elbow, Cleve watched her with a slight smile on his face. Issy loved the chubby chocolate-brown beauty of him, his fat-cat grin.
Chortling, she wriggled into the suit, careful to ease it over the bandage on her heel. The company boasted that you couldn't tell the difference between the microthin layer of the wetsuits and bare skin. Bullshit. Like taking a shower with your clothes on. The suits made you feel more, but it was a one-way sensation. They dampened the sense of touch. It was like being trapped inside your own skin, able to sense your response to stimuli but not to feel when you had connected with the outside world.
Over the week of use, Cleve's suit had shaped itself to his body. The hips were tight on Issy, the flat chest part pressed her breasts against her rib cage. The shoulders were too broad, the middle too baggy. It sagged at knees, elbows, and toes. She giggled again.
"Never mind the peripherals," Cleve said, lumbering to his feet. "No time." He picked up her suit. "Just leave them hanging."
Just as well. Issy hated the way that the roll-on headpiece trapped her hair against her neck, covered her ears, slid sensory tendrils into her ear-holes. It amplified the sounds when her body touched Cleve's. It grossed her out. What would Cleve want to do next to jazz the skins up?
As the suit hyped the pleasure zones on her skin surface, Issy could feel herself getting wet, the mixture of arousal and vague distaste a wetsuit gave her. The marketing lie was that the suits were "consensual aids to full body aura alignment," not sex toys. Yeah, right. Psychobabble. She was being diddled by an oversized condom possessed of fuzzy logic. She pulled it up to her neck. The stim started to writhe, conforming itself to her shape. Galvanic peristalsis, they called its ability to move. Yuck.
"Quick," Cleve muttered. He was jamming his lubed cock at a tube in the suit, the innie part of it that would normally have slid itself into her vagina, the part that had been smooth the first time she'd taken it out of its case, but was now shaped the way she was shaped inside. Cleve pushed and pushed until the everted pocket slid over his cock. He lay back on the bed, his erection a jutting rudeness. "Oh. Wow. That's different. Is so it feels for you?"
Oh, sweet. Issy quickly followed Cleve's lead, spreading her knees to push the outie part of his wetsuit inside her. It was easy. She was slippery, every inch of her skin stimmed with desire. She palmed some lube from the bottle into the suit's pouched vagina. They had to hurry. She straddled him, slid onto his cock, making the tube of one wetsuit slither smoothly into the tunnel of the other. Cleve closed his eyes, blew a small breath through pursed lips.
So, so hot. "God, it's good," Issy muttered. Like being fucked, only she had an organ to push back with. Cleve just panted heavily, silently. As always. But what a rush! She swore she could feel Cleve's tight hot cunt closing around her dick. She grabbed his shoulders for traction. The massy, padded flesh of them filled her hands; steel encased in velvet.
The ganger looked down at its ghostly hands. Curled them into fists. Lightning sparged between the translucent fingers as they closed. It reached a crackling hand toward Cleve's shuddering body on the bathroom floor.
"Hey!" Issy yelled at it. She could hear the quaver in her own voice. The ganger turned its head toward the sound. The suits' sense-memory gave it some analog of hearing.
She tried to lift her head, banged it against the underside of the toilet. "Ow." The ganger's head elongated widthways, as though someone were pulling on its ears. Her muscles were too weakened from the aftershocks. Issy put her head bac\ down. Now what? Thinkjast, Iss. "Y... you like um, um... chocolate fudge?" she asked the thing. Now, why was she still going on about the fucking candy?
The ganger straightened. Took a floating step away from Cleve, closer to Issy. Cleve was safe for the moment. Colored auras crackled in the ganger with each step. Issy laid her cheek against cool porcelain; stammered, "Well, I was making some last night, some fudge, yeah, only it didn't set, sometimes that happens, y'know? Too much humidity in the air, or something." The ganger seemed to wilt a little, floppy as the unhardened fudge. Was it fading? Issy's pulse leapt in hope. But then the thing plumped up again, drew closer to where she lay helpless on the floor. Rainbow lightning did a lava-lamp dance in its incorporeal body. Issy whimpered.
Cleve writhed under her. His lips formed quiet words. His own nubbin nipples hardened. Pleasure transformed his face. Issy loved seeing him this way. She rode and rode his body, "Yes, ah, sweet, God, sweet," groaning her way to the stim-charged orgasm that would fire all her pleasure synapses, give her some sugar, make her speak in tongues.
Suddenly Cleve pushed her shoulder. "Stop! Jesus, get off! Off!"
Startled, Issy shoved herself off him. Achy suction at her crotch as they disconnected. "What's wrong?"
Cleve sat up, panting hard. He clutched at his dick. He was shaking. Shuddering, he stripped off the wetsuit, flung it to the foot of the bed. To her utter amazement, he was sobbing. She'd never seen Cleve cry.
"Jeez. Can't have been that bad. Come." She opened her thick, strong arms to him. He curled as much of his big body as he could into her embrace, hid his face from her. She rocked him, puzzled. "Cleve?"
After a while, he mumbled, "It was nice, you know, so different, then it started to feel like, I dunno, like my dick had been peeled and it was inside out, and you, Jesus, you were fucking my inside-out dick."
Issy said nothing, held him tighter. The hyped rasp of Cleve's body against her stimmed skin was as much a turn-on as a comfort. She rocked him, rocked him. She couldn't think what to say, so she just hummed a children's song: We're stirring cocoa beneath a tree / sikpla o la vani / one, two, three, vanilla / chocolate and vanilla.
Just before he fell asleep, Cleve said, "God, I don't want to ever feel anything like that again. I had breasts, Issy. They swung when I moved."
The wetsuit Issy was wearing soon molded itself into an innie, and the hermaphroditic feeling disappeared. She kind of missed it. And all the time she was swaying Cleve to sleep she couldn't help thinking: For a few seconds, she'd felt something of what he felt when they had sex. For a few seconds, she'd felt the things he'd never dared to tell her in words. Issy slid a hand between herself and Cleve, insinuating it into the warm space between her stomach and thigh till she could work her fingers between her legs. She could feel her own wetness sliding under the microthin fiber. She pressed her clit, gently, ah, gently, tilting her hips toward her hand. Cleve stirred, scratched his nose; flopped his hand to the bed, snoring.
And he'd felt what she was always trying to describe to him, the sensations that always defied speech. He'd felt what this was like. The thought made her cunt clench. She panted out, briefly, once. She was so slick. Willing her body still, she started the rubbing motion that she knew would bring her off.
Nowadays any words between her and Cleve seemed to fall into dead air between them, each not reaching the other. But this had reached him, gotten her inside him; this, this, this, and the image of fucking Cleve pushed her over the edge and the pulse-burst of her orgasm pumped again, again, again as her moans trickled through her lips, and she fought not to thrash, not to wake the slumbering mountain that was Cleve.
Oh. "Yeah, man," Issy breathed. Cleve had missed the best part. She eased him off her, got his head onto a pillow. Sated, sex-heavy, and drowsy, she peeled off the wetsuit-smiled at the pouches it had molded from her calabash breasts and behind- and kicked it onto the floor beside the bed. She lay down, rolled toward Cleve, hugged his body to her. "Mm," she murmured.
Cleve muttered sleepily and snuggled into the curves of her body. Issy wriggled to the sweet spot where the lobes of his buttocks fit against henpubes. She wrapped her arm around the bole of his chest, kissed the back of his neck where his hair curled tightest. She felt herself beginning to sink into a feather-down sleep.
"I mean the boiled sugar kind of fudge," Issy told the ganger. It hovered over her, her own personal aurora. She had to keep talking, draw out the verbiage, distract the thing. "Not that gluey shit they sell at the Ex and stuff. We were supposed to have a date, but Cleve was late com -ing home and I was pissed at him and horny and I wanted a taste of sweetness in my mouth. And hot, too, maybe. I saw a recipe once where you put a few flakes of red pepper into the syrup. Intensified the taste, they said. I wonder. Dunno what I was thinking, boiling fudge in this heat." Lightning-quick, the ganger tapped her mouth. The electric shock crashed her teeth together. She saw stars. "Huh, huh," she heard her body protesting as air puffed out of its contracting lungs.
Issy uncurled into one last, languorous stretch before sleep. Her foot connected in the dark with a warm, rubbery mass that writhed at her touch, then started to slither up her leg.
"Oh, God! Shit! Cleve!" Issy kicked convulsively at the thing clambering up her thigh. She clutched Cleve's shoulder.
He sprang awake, tapped the wall to activate the light. "What, Issy? What's wrong?"
It was the still-charged wetsuit that Cleve had thrown to the foot of the bed, now an outie. "Christ, Cleve!" Idiot.
The suit had only been reacting to the electricity generated by Issy's body. It was just trying to do its job. "S'all right," Cleve comforted her. "It can't hurt you."
Shuddering, Issy peeled the wetsuit from her leg and dropped it to the ground. Deprived of her warmth, it squirmed its way over to her suit. Innie and outie writhed rudely around each other; empty sacks of skin. Jesus, with the peripherals still attached, the damned things looked like they had floppy heads.
Cleve smiled sleepily. "I's like lizard tails, y'know, when they drop off and wiggle?"
Issy thought she'd gag. "Get them out of my sight, Cleve. Discharge them and put them away."
"Tomorrow," he murmured.
They were supposed to be stored in separate cases, but Cleve just scooped them up and tossed them together, wriggling, into the closet.
"Gah," Issy choked.
Cleve looked at her face and said, "Come on, Iss; have a heart; think of them lying side by side in their little boxes, separated from each other." He was trying to joke about it.
"No," Issy said. "We get to do that instead. Wrap ourselves in fake flesh that's supposed to make us feel more. Ninety-six degrees in the shade, and we're wearing rubber body bags."
His face lost its teasing smile. Just the effect she'd wanted, but it didn't feel so good now. And it wasn't true, really. The wetsuit material did some weird shit so that it didn't trap heat in. And they were sexy, once you got used to them. No sillier than strap-ons or cuffs padded with fake fur. Issy grimaced an apology at Cleve. He screwed up his face and looked away. God, if he would only speak up for himself sometimes! Issy turned her back to him and found her wadded-up panties in the bedclothes. She wrestled them on and lay back down, facing the wall. The light went off. Cleve climbed back into bed. Their bodies didn't touch.
The sun cranked Issy's eyes open. Its August heat washed over her like slops from a bucket. Her sheet was twisted around her, warm, damp, and funky. Her mouth was sour and she could smell her own stink. "Oh, God, I want it to be winter," she groaned.
She fought her way out of the clinging cloth to sit up in bed. The effort made her pant. She twisted the heavy mass of her braids up off the nape of her neck and sat for a while, feeling the sweat trickle down her scalp. She grimaced at the memory of last night.
Cleve wasn't there. Out for a jog, likely. "Yeah, that's how you sulk," she muttered. "In silence." Issy longed to know that he cared strongly about something, to hear him speak with any kind of force, the passion of his anger, the passion of his love. But Cleve kept it all so cool, so mild. Wrap it all in fake skin, hide it inside.
The morning sun had thrown a violent, hot bar of light across her bed. Heat. Tangible, almost. Crushed against every surface of her skin, like drowning in feathers. Issy shifted into a patch of shade. It made no difference. Fuck. A drop of sweat trickled down her neck, beaded a track down her left breast to drip off her nipple and splat onto her thigh. The trail of moisture it had left behind felt cool on her skin. Issy watched her areola crinkle and the nipple stiffen in response. She shivered.
A twinkle of light caught her eye. The closet sliding door was open. The wetsuits, thin as shed snakeskin, were still humping each other beside their storage boxes. "Nasty!" Issy exclaimed. She jumped up from the bed, pushed the closet door shut with a bang. She left the room, ignoring the rhythmic thumping noise from inside the closet. Cleve was supposed to have discharged them; it could just wait until he deigned to come home again.
Overloading, cractying violently, the ganger stepped back- Issy nearly wept with release from its jolt. Her knees felt watery. Was Cleve still breathing? She thought she could see his chest moving in little gasps. She hoped. She had to keep the ganger distracted from him, he might not survive another shock- Teeth chattering, she said to the ganger, "You melt the sugar and butter-the salty butter's the best-in mil\, then you add cocoa powder and boil it all to hard crack stage. ..." Issy wet her lips with her tongue. The day's heat was enveloping her again. "Whip in some more butter," she continued. "You always get it on your fingers, that melted, salty butter. It will slide down the side of your hand, and you lic\ it off--so you whip in some more butter, and real vanilla, the kind that smells like mother's breath and cookies, not the artificial shit, and you dump it onto a plate, and it sets, and you have it sweet like that: chocolate fudge."
The sensuality in her voice seemed to mesmerize the ganger. It held still, rapt. Its inner lightnings cooled to electric blue. Its mouth hole yawned, wide as two of her fists.
As she headed to the kitchen, Issy made a face at the salty dampness beneath her swaying breasts and the curve of her belly. Her thighs were sticky where they moved against each other. She stopped in the living room and stood, feet slightly apart, arms away from her sides, so no surface of her body would touch any other. No relief. The heat still clung. She shoved her panties down around her ankles. The movement briefly brought her nose to her crotch, a whiff of sweaty muskiness. She straightened up, stepped out of the sodden pretzel of cloth, kicked it away. The quick movement had made her dizzy. She swayed slightly, staggered into the kitchen.
Cleve had mopped up the broken glass and gluey candy from yesterday evening, left the pot to soak. The kitchen still smelled of chocolate. The rich scent tingled along the roof of Issy's mouth.
The fridge hummed in its own aura, heat outside making cold inside. She needed water. Cold, cold. She yanked the fridge door open, reached for the water jug, and drank straight from it. The shock of chilly liquid made her teeth ache. She sucked water in, tilting the jug high so that more spilled past her gulping mouth, ran down her jaw, her breasts, her belly. With her free hand, she spread the coolness over the pillow of her stomach, dipping down into the crinkly pubic hair, then up to heft each breast one at a time, sliding cool fingers underneath, thumb almost automatically grazing each nipple to feel them harden slightly at her touch. Better. Issy put the jug back, half full now.
At her back, hot air was a wall. Seconds after she closed the fridge door, she'd be overheated and miserable again. She stood balanced between ice and heat, considering.
She pulled open the door to the icebox. It creaked and protested, jammed with frost congealed on its hinges. The fridge was ancient. Cleve had joked with the landlady that he might sell it to a museum and use the money to pay the rent on the apartment for a year. He'd only gotten a scowl in return.
The fridge had needed defrosting for weeks now. Her job. Cleve did the laundry and bathroom and kept them spotlessly clean. The kitchen and the bedroom were hers. Last time she'd changed the sheets was about the last time she'd done the fridge. Cleve hadn't complained. She was waiting him out.
Issy peered into the freezer. Buried in the canned hoarfrost were three ice-cube trays. She had to pull at them to work them free of hard-packed freezer snow. One was empty. The other two contained a few ice cubes between them.
The ganger too\ a step toward her. It paddled its hand in the black hole of its mouth. Issy shuddered, kept talking: "Breaks off chunks of fudge, and is sweet and dark and crunchy; a little bit hot if you put the pepper flakes in, I never tried that kind, and is softer in the middle, and the butter taste rise to the roof of your mouth, and the chocolate melt all over your tongue; man, you could almost come, just from a bite."
Issy flung the empty tray into the sink at the other end of the kitchen. Jangle-crash, displacing a fork that leapt from the sink, clattered onto the floor. The thumping from inside the bedroom closet became more frenetic. "Stop that," Issy yelled in the direction of the bedroom. The sound became a rapid drubbing. Then silence.
Issy kicked the fridge door closed, took the two ice-cube trays into the bathroom. Even with that short walk, the heat was pressing in on her again. The bathroom was usually cool, but today the tiles were warm against her bare feet. The humidity of the room felt like wading through spit.
Issy plugged the bathtub drain, dumped the sorry handful of ice in. Not enough. She grabbed up the mop bucket, went back to the kitchen, fished a spatula out of the sink, rinsed it. She used the spatula to dig out the treasures buried in the freezer. Frozen cassava, some unidentifiable meat, a cardboard cylinder of grape punch. She put them on a shelf in the fridge. Those excavated, she set about shoveling the snow out of the freezer, dumping it into her bucket. In no time she had a bucketful, and she'd found another ice-cube tray, this one full of fat, rounded lumps of ice. She was a little cooler now.
Back in the bathroom, she dumped the bucket of freezer snow on top of the puddle that had been the ice cubes. Then she ran cold water, filled the bathtub calf-deep, and stepped into it.
"Sssss..." The shock of cold feet zapped straight through Issy's body to her brain. She bent-smell of musk again-picked up a handful of the melting snow and packed it into her hair. Blessed, blessed cold. The snow became water almost instantly and dribbled down her face. Issy licked at a trickle of it. She picked up another handful of snow, stuffed it into her mouth. Crunchy-cold freon ice, melting on her tongue. She remembered the canned taste from childhood, how her dad would scold her for eating freezer snow. Her mother would say nothing, just wipe Issy's mouth dry with a silent, long-suffering smile.
Issy squatted in the bathtub. The cold water lapped against her butt. Goose bumps pimpled the skin of her thighs. She sat down, hips pressing against either side of the tub. An ice cube lapped against the small of her back, making her first arch to escape the cold, then lean back against the tub with a happy shudder. Snow crunched between her back and the ceramic surface. Issy spread her knees. There was more snow floating in the diamond her legs made. In both hands, she picked up another handful, mashed it into the V of her crotch. She shivered at the sensation and relaxed into the cool water.
The fridge made a zapping, farting noise, then resumed its juddering hum. Damned bucket of bolts. Issy concentrated on the deliciously shivery feel of the ice melting in her pubic hair.
"Only this time," Issy murmured, "the fudge ain't set. Just sat there on the cookie tin, gluey and brown. Not hard, not quite liquid, you get me? Glossy-shiny dark brown where it pooled, and rising from it, that chocolate-butter-vanilla smell. But wasted, 'cause it wasn't going to set."
The television clicked on loudly with an inane laugh track. Issy sat up. "Cleve?" She hadn't heard him come in. With a popping noise, the TV snapped off again. "Cleve, is you?"
Issy listened. Nope, nothing but the humming of the fridge. She was alone. These humid August days made all their appliances schizo with static. She relaxed back against the tub.
"I got mad," Issy told the ganger. "It was hot in the kitchen and there was cocoa powder everywhere and lumps of melting better, and I do all that work 'cause I just wanted the taste of something sweet in my mouth and the fucker wouldn't set! I backhanded the cookie tin. Fuck, it hurt like I crack a finger bone. The tin skidded across the kitchen counter, splanged off the side of the stove, and went flying."
Issy's skin bristled with goose bumps at the sight of the thing that walked in through the open bathroom door and stood, arms hanging. It was a human-shaped glow, translucent. Its edges were fuzzy. She could see the hallway closet through it. Eyes, nose, mouth were empty circles. A low crackling noise came from it, like a crushed Cheezies bag. Issy could feel her breath coming in short, terrified pants. She made to stand up, and the apparition moved closer to her. She whimpered and sat back down in the chilly water.
The ghost-thing stood still. A pattern of colored lights flickered in it, limning where spine, heart, and brain would have been, if it had had those. It did have breasts, she saw now, and a dick.
She moved her hand. Water dripped from her fingertips into the tub. The thing turned its head toward the sound. It took a step. She froze. The apparition stopped moving, too, just stood there, humming like the fridge. It plucked at its own nipples, pulled its breasts into cones of ectoplasm. It ran hands over its body, then over the sink; bent down to thrust its arms right through the closed cupboard doors. It dipped a hand into the toilet bowl. Sparks flew, and it jumped back. Issy's scalp prickled. Damn, the thing was electrical, and she was sitting in water! She tried to reach the plug with her toes to let the water out. Swallowing whimpers, she stretched a leg out: Slow, God, go slow, Issy. The movement sent a chunk of melting ice sliding along her thigh. She shivered. She couldn't quite reach the plug and if she moved closer to it, the movement would draw the apparition's attention. Issy breathed in short, shallow bursts. She could feel her eyes beginning to brim. Terror and the chilly water were sending tremors in waves through her.
What the fuck was it? The thing turned toward her. In its quest for sensation, it hefted its cock in its hand. Inserted a finger into what seemed to be a vagina underneath. Let its hands drop again. Faintly, Issy could make out a mark on its hip, a circular shape. It reminded her of something...
Logo, it was the logo of the Senstim people who'd invented the wetsuits!
But this wasn't a wetsuit, it was like some kind of, fuck, ball lightning. She and Cleve hadn't discharged their wetsuits. She remembered some of the nonsense words that were in the warning on the wetsuit storage boxes: "Energizing electrostatic charge," and "Kirlian phenomenon." Well, they hadn't paid attention, and now some kind of weird gel of both suits was rubbing itself off in their bathroom. Damn, damn, damn Cleve and his toys. Sobbing, shivering, Issy tried to toe at the plug again. Her knee banged against the tub. The suit-ghost twitched toward the noise. It leaned over the water and dabbed at her clutching toes. Pop-crackle sound. The jolt sent her leg flailing like a dying fish. Pleasure crackled along her leg, painfully intense. Her knee throbbed and tingled, ached sweetly. Her thigh muscles shuddered as though they would tear free. The jolt slammed into her crotch and Issy's body bucked. She could hear her own grunts. She was straddling a live wire. She was coming to death. Her nipples jutted long as thumbs, stung like they'd been dipped in ice. Her head was banging against the wall with each deadly set of contractions. Issy shouted in pain, in glory, in fear. The suit-ghost leapt back. Issy's butt hit the floor of the tub, hard. Her muscles were twitching spasmodically. She'd bitten the inside of her mouth. She sucked in air like sobs; swallowed tinny blood.
The suit-ghost was swollen, bloated, jittering. Its inner lightning bolts were going mad. If it touched her again, it might overload completely. If it touched her again, her heart might stop.
Issy heard the sound of the key turning in the front door.
"Iss? You home?"
"No. Cleve." Issy hissed under her breath. He mustn't come in. But if she shouted to warn him, the suit-ghost would touch her again.
Cleve's footsteps approached the bathroom. "Iss? Listen, did you drain the wet..."
Like filings to a magnet, the suit-ghost inclined toward the sound of his voice.
"Don't come in, Cleve; go get help!"
Too late. He'd stuck his head in, grinning his open, friendly grin. The suit-ghost rushed him, plastered itself along his body. It got paler, its aura-lightnings mere flickers. Cleve made a choking noise and crashed to the floor, jerking. Issy levered herself out of the bath, but her jelly muscles wouldn't let her stand. She flopped to the tiles. Cleve's body was convulsing, horrible noises coming from his mouth. Riding him like a duppy, a malevolent spirit, the stim-ghost grew paler with each thrash of his flailing body. Its color patterns started to run into each other, to bleach themselves pale. Cleve's energy was draining it, but it was killing him. Sucking on her whimpers, Issy reached a hand into the stim-ghost's field. Her heart went off like a Gatling gun. Her breathing wouldn't work. The orgasm was unspeakable. Wailing, Issy rolled away from Cleve, taking the ghost-thing with her. It swelled at her touch, its colors flaring neon-bright, out of control. It flailed off her, floated back toward Cleve's more cooling energy. Heart pounding, too weak to move, Issy muttered desperately to distract it the first thing that came to her mind: "Y... you like, um, chocolate fudge?"
The ghost turned toward her. Issy cried and kept talking, kept talking. The ghost wavered between Issy's hot description of bubbling chocolate and Cleve's cool silence, caught in the middle. Could it even understand words? Wetsuits located pleasurable sensation to augment it. Maybe it was just drawn to the sensuousness of her tone. Issy talked, urgently, carefully releasing the words from her mouth like caresses:
"So," she said to the suit-duppy, "I watching this cookie tin twist through the air like a Frisbee, and is like slow motion, 'cause I seeing gobs of chocolate goo spiraling from it as it flies, and they spreading out wider and wider. I swear I hear separate splats as chocolate hits the walls like slung shit and one line of it strafes the fridge door, and a gob somehow slimes the naked bulb hanging low from the kitchen ceiling. I hear it sizzle. The cookie tin lands on the floor, fudge side down, of course. I haven't cleaned the fucking floor in ages. There're spots everywhere on that floor that used to be gummy, but now they're layered in dust and maybe flour and desiccated bodies of cockroaches that got trapped, reaching for sweetness. I know how they feel. I take a step toward the cookie tin, then I start to smell burning chocolate. I look up. I see a curl of black smoke rising from the glob of chocolate on the light bulb."
Cleve raised his head. There were tears in his eyes and the front of his jogging pants was damp and milky. "Issy," he interrupted in a whisper.
"Shut up, Cleve!"
"That thing," he said in a low, urgent voice. "People call it a ganger; doppel..."
The ganger was suddenly at his side. It leaned a loving head on his chest, like Issy would do. "No!" she yelled. Cleve's body shook. The ganger frayed and tossed like a sheet in the wind. Cleve shrieked. He groaned like he was coming, but with an edge of terror and pain that Issy couldn't bear to hear. Pissed, terrified, Issy swiped an arm through its field, then rolled her bucking body on the bathroom tiles, praying that she could absorb the ganger's energy without it frying her synapses with sweet sensation.
Through spasms, she barely heard Cleve say to it, "Come to me, not her. Come. Listen, you know that song? 'I got a weakness for sweetness....' That's my Issy."
The ganger dragged itself away from Issy. Released, her muscles melted. She was a gooey, warm puddle spreading on the floor. The ganger reached an ectoplasmic hand toward Cleve, fingers stretching long as arms. Cleve gasped and froze.
Issy croaked, "Is that you think it is, Cleve? Weakness?"
The ganger turned its head her way, ran a long, slow arm down its body to the floor, back up to its crotch. It stroked itself.
Cleve spoke to it in a voice that cracked whispery on the notes: "Yeah, sweetness. That's what my Issy wants most of all." The ganger moved toward him, rubbing its crotch. He continued, "If I'm not there, there's always sugar, or food, or booze. I'm just one of her chosen stimulants."
Outraged tears filled Issy's mouth, salty as butter, as flesh. She'd show him, she'd rescue him. She countered:
"The glob of burned sugar on the light? From the ruined fudge? Well, it goes black and starts to bubble."
The ganger extruded a tongue the length of an arm from its mouth. The tongue wriggled toward Issy. She rolled back, saying, "The light bulb explodes. I feel some shards land in my hair. I don't try to brush them away. Is completely dark now; I only had the kitchen light on. I take another step to where I know the cookie tin is on the floor. A third step, and pain crazes my heel. Must have stepped on a piece of light bulb glass. Can't do nothing about it now. I rise onto the toes of the hurting foot. I think I feel blood running down from heel to instep."
The ganger jittered toward her.
"You were always better than me at drama, Iss," Cleve said.
The sadness in his voice tore at her heart. But she said, "What that thing is?"
Cleve replied softly, "Is kinda beautiful, ain't?"
"It going to kill us."
"Beautiful. Just a lump of static charge, coated in the Kirlian energy thrown off from the suits."
"Why it show up now?"
"Is what happens when you leave the suits together too long."
The ganger drifted back and forth, pulled by one voice, then the other. A longish silence between them freed it to move. It floated closer to Cleve. Issy wouldn't let it, she wouldn't. She quavered:
"I take another step on the good foot, carefully. I bend down, sweep my hands around."
The ganger dropped to the floor, ran its long tongue over the tiles. A drop of water made it crackle and shrink in slightly on
itself.
"There," Issy continued. "The cookie tin. I brush around me, getting a few more splinters in my hands. I get down to my knees, curl down as low to the ground as I can. I pry up the cookie tin, won't have any glass splinters underneath it. A dark sweet wet chocolate smell rising from under there."
"Issy, Jesus," Cleve whispered. He started to bellow the words of the song he'd taunted her with. The ganger touched him with a fingertip. A crackling noise. He gasped, jumped, kept singing. Issy ignored him. Hissing under his booming voice, she snarled at the ganger, "I run a finger through the fudge. I lick it off. Most of it on the ground, not on the tin. I bend over and run my tongue through it, reaching for sweetness. Butter and vanilla and oh, oh, the chocolate. And crunchy, gritty things I don't think about. Cockroach parts, maybe. I swallow."
Cleve interrupted his song to wail, "That's gross, Iss. Why you had to go and do that?"
"So Cleve come in, he see me there sitting on the floor surrounded by broken glass and limp chocolate, and you know what he say?" The ganger was reaching for her.
"Issy, stop talking, you only drawing it to you." "Nothing." The ganger jerked. "Zip." The ganger twitched. "Dick." The ganger spasmed, once. It touched her hair. Issy breathed. That was safe. "The bastard just started cleaning up; not a word for me." The ganger hugged her. Issy felt her eyes roll back in her head. She thrashed in the energy of its embrace until Cleve yelled:
"And what you said! Ee? Tell me!"
The ganger pulled away. Issy lay still, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. Cleve said, "Started carrying on with some shit about how light bulbs are such poor quality nowadays. Sat in the filth and broken glass, pouting and watching me clean up your mess. Talking about anything but what really on your mind. I barely get all the glass out of your heel before you start pulling my pants down."
Issy ignored him. She kept talking to the ganger. "Cool, cool Cleve. No 'What's up?'; no 'What the fuck is this crap on the floor?'; no heat, no passion."
"What was the point? I did the only thing that will sweet you every time."
"Encased us both in fake skin and let it do the fucking for us."
The ganger jittered in uncertain circles between the two of them.
"Issy, what you want from me?"
The ganger's head swelled obscenely toward Cleve.
"Some heat. Some feeling. Like I show you. Like I feel. Like I feel for you." The ganger's lower lip stretched, stretched, a filament of it reaching for Issy's own mouth. The black cavity of its maw was a tunnel, longing to swallow her up. She shuddered and rolled back farther. Her back came up against the bathtub.
Softly: "What do you feel for me, Issy?"
"Fuck you."
"I do. We do. It's good. But what do you feel for me, Issy?"
"Don't ridicule me. You know."
"I don't know shit, Issy! You talk, talk, talk! And it's all about what racist slur you heard yesterday, and who tried to cheat you at the store, and how high the phone bill is. You talk around stuff, not about it!"
"Shut up!"
The ganger flailed like a hook-caught fish between them.
Quietly, Cleve said, "The only time we seem to reach each other now is through our skins. So I bought something to make our skins feel more, and it's still not enough."
An involuntary sound came from Issy's mouth, a hooked, wordless query.
"Cleve, is that why..." She looked at him, at the intense brown eyes in the expressive brown face. When had he started to look so sad all the time? She reached a hand out to him. The ganger grabbed it. Issy saw fireworks behind her eyes. She screamed. She felt Cleve's hand on her waist, felt the hand clutch painfully as he tried to shove her away to safety with his other hand. Blindly she reached out, tried to bat the ganger away. Her hand met Cleve's in the middle of the fog that was the ganger. All the pleasure centers in her body exploded.
A popping sound. A strong, seminal smell of bleach. The ganger was gone. Issy and Cleve sagged to the floor.
"Rass," she sighed. Her calves were knots the size of potatoes. And she'd be sitting tenderly for a while.
"I feel like I've been dragged five miles behind a runaway horse," Cleve told her. "You all right?"
"Yeah, where'd that thing go, the ganger?"
"Shit, Issy, I'm so sorry. Should have drained the suits like you said."
"Chuh.
Don't dig nothing. I could have done it, too."
"I think we neutralized it. Touched each other, touched it: we canceled it out. I think."
"Touched each other. That simple." Issy gave a little rueful laugh. "Cleve, I... you're my honey, you know? You sweet me for days. I won't forget any more to tell you," she said, "and keep telling you."
His smile brimmed over with joy. He replied, "You, you're my live wire. You keep us both juiced up, make my heart sing in my chest." He hesitated, spoke bashfully, "And my dick leap in my pants when I see you."
A warmth flooded Issy at his sweet, hot talk. She felt her eyelashes dampen. She smiled. "See, the dirty words not so hard to say. And the anger not so hard to show."
Tailor-sat on the floor, beautiful Buddha-body, he frowned at her. "I 'fraid to use harsh words, Issy, you know that. Look at the size of me, the blackness of me. You know what it is to see people cringe for fear when you shout?"
She was dropping down with fatigue. She leaned and softly touched his face. "I don't know what that is like. But I know you. I know you would never hurt me. You must say what on your mind, Cleve. To me, at least." She closed her eyes, dragged herself exhaustedly into his embrace.
He said, "You know, I dream of the way you full up my arms."
"You're sticky," she murmured. "Like candy." And fell asleep, touching him.
Nalo Hopkinson is a science fiction writer from Canada by way of Jamaica, Trinidad, and Guyana. She's published the novels Brown Girl in the Ring and Midnight Robber as well as a collection of short stories, Shin Folk. She's currently working on Griffonne, her third novel.
"Ganger (Ball Lightning)," by Nalo Hopkinson, © 2000 by Nalo Hopkin-son, first appeared in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, edited by Sheree R. Thomas (Warner Books, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.


text:
Well, I would like very much to have my own skirt of leather and my own makeup bag that closes with Velcro," I say to Glad.
"I can get you a big sight more than that," he says and thumps the table.
We start my training right away in the caravans back behind The Doves. I try to tell Glad I know what to do, that I've been with enough of Sarah's boyfriends and husbands that if they had paid me I could buy a gator farm. Glad tells me I have to unlearn bad habits learned by watching drunken whores, no disrespect intended.
"You have to learn to read a man and know when he's just lookin' for fun and when what he really needs is for you to hold him so he can cry his eyes out like a babe," he told me as we drank strawberry Yoo-Hoos and sat on custom satin-covered beanbag chairs. "You have to learn how to listen. There is medicine in that penis bone to help you learn how to love like a real professional."
I take daily lessons from various boys of Glad's, that affectionately refer to each other as baculum, which Glad tells me means "little rod" in Latin.
I practice rolling a condom on a man with my teeth without him knowing. I practice how to take every bit and grain of a man in my mouth. I already knew that one. I'd have contests with Sarah. We'd lay on our backs, side by side on some motel bed, with our heads hanging, tilted back over the side of the bed, till our mouths, esophagus and throat would all line up. Then we'd put in a carrot as deep as we could without gagging. We'd mark the carrot with our top teeth and after we'd see who is the better head giver. Sarah always won.
"You win cause you're older and bigger," I told her once and she slapped my face so hard I saw stars.
"Don't you ever call me old and big," she said and ran out crying.
I acquire tricks, like spraying Binaca on your right hand, so if a date is not on top of his hygiene, you can breathe in the scent of fresh mint from your hand and think of the snowy Alps instead of inhaling his ammonia scent and being reminded of a dirty Porta Potti.
I learn how to trick with men who want to dress in lacy frilly things.
"That's the most difficult one," Pie tells me. Pie was born a woodscolt-a bastard, and half-white on top of that. To his Chinese mother from a traditional Chinese family that ran the only traditional Chinese restaurant in the upper reaches of the Appalachian Mountains, it was a disaster. They tried to keep him hidden by making him tip long beans and slice bitter melon all day and night. All Pie wanted to do was be a Japanese geisha, and as soon as he was old enough he hitchhiked all over ending up in San Francisco. He came back home when his Great Aunt Wet Yah was dying. His Great Aunt Wet Yah was the only one who let him wear her silky undergarments and read to him from a forbidden book on the great geishas she had happened to possess. Wet Yah died and now Pie was working for Glad, saving up to move back to San Francisco and open his own geisha training school for men.
"You have to listen very carefully when you are with a man that wants to dress." Pie uses his hands while he talks, gracefully waving them back and forth as if he were icing a cake in the air. "He might only want to show you how nice he looks in his pink panties and discuss how much he enjoys the feel of the smooth material against his privates. Or he might want to be a lesbian and make love to you as a woman making love to another woman." Pie moves his body in a flowing S, making the silk of his kimono ripple so sinuously as to suggest two women making love. "Or the gentleman might wish to be called a sissy little pantywaist, teased, and otherwise humiliated." Pie shakes his hips and mimics a femmie boy. "You can often make extra by making the gentleman pay to bring in other bacula to laugh at him." I nod and scribble notes in a notebook Glad has given me.
"The gentlemen often do not tell you what kind of cross-dressers they are. You have to listen and take their clues." Pie sits down on a beanbag and looks at me studiously, the slight slant of his eyes accentuated by broad strokes of black liquid liner. "It is your job to figure out, do they want to pretend you are a woman completely, do they want you to be sweet and gentle, do they want you to be forceful and fill their hungry mouth, do they want abuse or gentle guidance? The faster you can figure this out, the more famous you will become."
And Pie is famous. Cross-dressers come from as far away as Antigua to see him. But I don't need to be told which boys are the best. All I have to do is look at the raccoon bone around their neck. The better the whore, the bigger their bone. I heard it said that the bigger bones aren't real, that Glad just melts waxed dental tape onto a small bone until it is bigger. I look at Pie's and it looks authentic. Big and genuine.
"You're ready for your first date," Glad says to me two months after I've started my training. I haven't lived at the motel room in a month. I stay at the caravans. Sarah took off with a rich crooked cargo inspector, and I check the room every day to see if she is back. The plastic attache case is still gone, but her bubbles are still there in the bathroom so I know she'll come back eventually. I plan to have my own bubbles on the shelf next to hers by the time she gets back. "You think you're ready? You feel okay?" Glad asks as he helps me get dressed in a muted pink leather miniskirt I couldn't wait to show Sarah when she came home. "Ready as snipers at bull ball-cuttin' time," I say, borrowing Sarah's line. I put finishing touches on my makeup the way Sarah taught me. Glad makes me go light on the makeup though. I want to take an iron and straighten out my hair so it flows like floss, but Glad won't hear of it. "You should really oughten not to be wearing any. The natural look will make ya more lettuce then a face palette. Men pay for freckles and curls," Glad says and wipes up my face with his hankie. "Glad, you are a sight worse than a mother dressing her daughter for prom night," Sundae laughs. Sundae is a Texas honey-blonde with a bone bigger than Pie's. Sundae's specialty is cheerleaders. "You'd be surprised by how many football players want a cheerleader with cock," she says adjusting the miniature pom-poms in her hair.
Glad picked out a truck driver everyone knew. "He's a nice man that only wants to diddle you," Sundae says. "Remember to watch the clock on the dash," Pie says and gracefully kisses the air next to either side of my cheeks. "Good luck." Glad just wrings his hands and makes me feel nervous.
I walk, in the flat white Mary Janes Glad made me wear instead of the spike heels I wanted, out of the caravans with everyone seeing me off, past The Doves, and into the lower lit fluorescent nighttime of the overnight truck lot. The Nice Man's truck is right where Glad said it would be, five rows in and seven across. It is a plain truck, nothing special. No custom anything. The door is a dark blue and I can see my face mirrored on it. I squint my eyes so I can pretend I am seeing Sarah's reflection. I was supposed to tell the Nice Man my name is Cherry Vanilla, but after I knock and he says, "Who is there?" "Sarah" just comes out of my mouth.
At first I'm scared of the Nice Man. He reminds me of a New Orleans voodoo priest, his eyes rimmed with a thick black tattoo. Then I realize after I sit on his lap a little and he talks to me in his near undecipherable Appalachian twang that he is just a laid-off coal miner. And it's true what they say, the dust settles in every crease of skin like a new layer of pigment.
"Started in the mines when I was ten," he says and places his charcoal-lined hands gently on my waist.
He is from Mingo County, West Virginia. Everyone in West Virginia, no matter how bad off they are, gives thanks that at least they don't live in Mingo County.
"I used to lie in the bed with my brother at night, while my Mama listened to The Christ Cure radio show and my Daddy sucked on a piece of coal to help his graveyard cough," he tells me while bouncing me tenderly on his knee. I thought about asking him if he heard my grandfather's sermons too, as his show came on not too long after "The Christ Cure" show and was very popular in Mingo County, but I remember what Glad told me about not getting personal about my life.
"It ruins the fantasy of who they want you to be," Glad had said.
"I do love Jesus," the Nice Man says and begins to run his hands up under my pink skirt and to my peach panties. "And you are such a sweet thing." I hope he will say the name I told him. I want to hear her name while his hands begin to diddle me. I close my eyes and let him rock me and caress me.
"Sarah," he finally whispers into my ear.
"I'm here," I whisper back, "not going nowhere." I let my eyes roll back into my head in pleasure.
J. T. LeRoy is the author of Sarah, a novel currently being made into a film by director Gus Van Sant. LeRoy's new book, The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things, is his second novel. LeRoy is in collaboration with Todd Kessler and Rebecca Goldstein at No Hands Productions on an independent television series called House Arrest, as well as a children's feature film. He contributes a monthly column to Shout magazine and continues to do interviews for New Yorl{Press and The Face. His website is www.jtleroy.com.
"Driving Lesson," an excerpt from Sarah, by J. T. LeRoy, © 2000 by J. T. LeRoy, first appeared in Sarah, by J. T. LeRoy (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2000), and was reprinted in Nerve (Nerve Publishing LLC, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury Publishing.

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text:
Just listen to this. You're not going to believe it. I was on the tube, right, coming home from the studio, right, and there was this guy on the train. We were eyeing each other like fucking animals. And I just knew something was going to happen. I could tell he was really into me. I could tell he really wanted me. I knew exactly what I was wearing, and I could tell it was making him hot. He was so fucking gorgeous, and he just couldn't keep his eyes off me. And I let him, fuck, I let him stare as much as he wanted to, right. And then he got up, and it was like he had some fucking dog collar around my neck. He yanked me out of my seat, and I was off. After him. We were way past King's Cross, past the Angel. But I wasn't going to let this one get away. He was fucking gorgeous, and I was shaking, I was, I was so fucking nervous I thought I'd shit in my pants. In these new fucking cords. I thought I was going to die.
Anyway.
His place wasn't far from the station, but I could tell I'd never be able to trace my Way back later. I could tell there was no way I'd find my way back to the station. It's not like I know my way around London after all these years. Take me to a part I've never been before, and every house and street looks the fucking same to me. Identical. But I was being led by him, right, fucking dragged along like a dog. His boots were thudding on the pavement as if they were saying: fuck you all out there. I don't give a fuck what you all think. I live here. This is my fucking street. I've never had that, you see. I've never had that feeling in any place. So it was like I could feel it through him. Fuck, I could have carried on walking behind him forever.
But then we got to his house. Just this regular fucking house. He opened the front gate as if he didn't give a fuck whether I was behind him or not. He unlocked the front door, and we walked up to his flat on the first floor. One of those converted houses with about six fucking flats in one house. He said his brother owned the whole place. He said his brother felt sorry for him. He said he felt sorry for him and let him stay in one of the flats. And then inside. Inside there was no light. The blinds were down, and he kicked the door shut behind him, and there was this dead fucking silence. Like: Shut the fuck up, nobody talks from this point on.
I knew he was going to turn round and lash at my face with a fucking knife. I knew it. I thought, This guy's going to whip out a fucking chain from his back pocket and fuck my head in. And I thought, What the fuck. There's no way I'm going to get out of here so just fucking enjoy yourself. And did his place stink. Fuck, that place smelt foul. Cigarettes and dirt and smelly clothes, and I just thought, You English are so fucking grimy. You're all fucking slobs. And that was when I knew this guy would never hurt me.
He came at me, grinning, grinning like some fucking evil fuck, but I just kept my eyes on his. I let him play his game. His face was this close to me, this close, and he put his mouth on mine. He held the back of my neck and pushed my mouth open with his tongue as if he wanted to dig through me. He was quiet, not a word, and I wasn't going to risk saying anything. I wasn't going to make a fool of myself by saying something really stupid. Then he bit my bottom lip, here, look, look what he did, left his mark on me, and then he stepped back. He stepped back to look at me and started to undress right there in the fucking living room. In that fucking pitch-dark living room that stunk of wet ashes, armpits, and shit-stained underwear. He knew I was watching him. He took his time taking off his jacket, unbuttoning his white cotton shirt, massaging the hair on his chest, pinching his nipples. He stood there in his boots and jeans, and I knew with every pore in my fucking body that this guy was going to fuck me and it was going to be so fucking good.
He was like a fucking animal, I'm telling you, thick and hard and covered in dark red hair. He left his clothes on the floor and walked into his bedroom, sweat glistening on him like fucking dew in a spider's web. You can't imagine what it was like. I just wanted to go down on my knees and lick his whole fucking body. I did. I was ready to lick the fucking floorboards his shoes had stood on. I imagined looking up at the fur on his shoulders and his chest and stomach and him pulling me to my feet and saying: Boy, I'm going to fuck your pussy.
Fuck it, you know how smooth I am. You know how sometimes my body feels as soft as a cunt and I'll do anything to get a man to fuck me. I'll follow him into his bedroom and beg him to stick his cock inside me. I'll call fucking strangers on the phone and leave the door open for them to come in. That's what was going to happen here. But no begging this time, right. He was fucking hot for me. He was going to fuck me like a fucking wolf, and there was nothing I could do about it. I took off my All-Stars and my cords, then my T-shirt. I left them lying there in the hallway and went into his bedroom and lay back on the bed, just watching him take off the rest of his clothes. He stared at me while he undid his trousers and scooped out his cock. He looked at me as if he could kill me and he said, "I want your arse so fucking badly. Show it to me. Lie back like that and let me see. Let me see where I'm going to stick my fucking cock."
And I did just what he said. Fuck. He was so fucking hot for me.
"I'm going to fuck your arse," he said. "I'm going to fuck it so good. I'm going to fuck your arse like it's the only thing in this fucking world."
This guy couldn't get enough. Can you picture it. Can you picture him there talking to me, saying, "I want to be inside you, man. I want to fuck you so hard and long and sore. I want to fuck that soft smooth cunt of yours. Come on, show me. Spread your arse like that. Yeah. Let's see."
By then I'd propped myself up on his pillows, holding my arse open and watching him pull off his boots, then his trousers and socks. He wasn't wearing any underpants, and his cock stood out like a fucking flagpole, jerking up and down every time he said "fuck" as if his prick was some fucking worm-monster waiting to get stuck into my fucking arsehole.
He came at me with a vengeance. He did. He pushed those cushions off the bed and jerked my legs over my head and buried his tongue up my arse like there was no fucking tomorrow. I wanted his whole fucking face in there. I wanted him slobbering all over me, making noises with his mouth so it'd feel like the sounds were coming from inside me. His tongue pressed against the lips of my arsehole, and I lifted myself up and held on to the back of his shoulders and pulled him into me deeper. And he made those noises, those fucking animal noises, as if he couldn't get enough. Like a mangy fucking mutt caged and starved for days. He whimpered and growled and chewed into my arse as if he didn't care what was going to happen.
And his bed was like ice. Believe me. I'll never forget that. Like ice. Sheets like a fucking ice rink. But smelly. Fuck, did they stink. Damp and creased and smelly. I could feel the fucking cum stains melting under my back. And his hot tongue between my legs.
"Open up," he said. "Open." And I swear I could have screamed or fallen in love between each syllable. "Come on, baby," he said. "Come on. Open up for me."
I could have ripped myself in two for him to be inside me. I pulled my arse cheeks apart and felt his face push further into me. I don't know if you've ever felt this way. I don't know if you've ever trusted someone like that. Have you? Have you ever trusted someone to do to you whatever they wanted, and you knew they'd never hurt you?
And when his tongue wasn't enough, he tucked his shoulders under my knees and brought his cock to my arsehole. He stared at me without blinking and slowly made his way into me, chiseling his cock inside, jerking it back and forth. He was in. He stopped. He closed his eyes and let out this gush of air that was a scream and a sigh. Then he drew his cock out to the tip and slid it back in and kept whispering, "Open up, open up, open up." And I watched him moving in and out of me, and he looked so fucking tormented. Fucking deranged, believe me.
He was sweating like a pig, right. And grunting. Every time he stuck his cock into me he'd snort like a pig, like a desperate fucking animal that had lost all control. His body became darker as the sweat made his hair a damp mat on his skin. My legs were aching as if I'd been holding them up in the air for fucking ages. I needed to lower them, so I slid them off his shoulders and made them a ring around his back. I put one arm around his neck and clung to him like a baby. I pulled myself up and filled my mouth with his hairy nipple. I sucked on it and drank sweat out of his fur and told him to fuck me.
"Oh, God," he said. That's what he said. He said, "Oh, God, I'll fuck you. I'll fuck you. I'll fuck you so hard. I promise."
With my other hand I wiped the sweat off his back and rubbed it into my chest. My skin was already slippery from the sweat dripping off him. He pushed me onto the bed and stared at me. His face was beautiful. I touched his cheek and stroked his forehead and ran my fingers through his hair and traced them down his spine. His body tensed as if he was about to pounce. I clung to his arse cheeks and drew his cock deeper into me, slowly, reassuring myself. I wanted to say: Look. See? I've got all of you inside me.
Are you listening? Are you listening? Can you imagine this? Can you imagine what this was fucking like? In the middle of fucking nowhere with this stranger inside me, and I knew it was going to be fine. I knew that all he wanted was to fuck me. That he wanted me to lie there and take his big fat red-haired cock up my arse.
Then he said. He said, "You like it, don't you?" He said, "You love me fucking you."
"I do," I said.
"You do what?"
"Love it." I said. "I love it."
"What do you love?" he said.
I said, "I love you fucking me."
And then, just like that, he lifted his hand and slapped me across the fucking face. Hard. The pain shot from my cheek to my arsehole like a dart ripping through me. Then he just grabbed my legs and yanked my body down onto his cock and hugged his arms around my knees and shoved his cock into me and used my body to pound into as if I wasn't there and he pulled my arse toward him over and over. And I just let go. I just closed my eyes and let go as if I was doing some fucking yoga exercise, some kind of meditation, right. Fuck, I don't know, some mind and body split. I was looking down at myself and thinking: Fuck, this is amazing. I'm nothing. I feel nothing, and I'm fucking loving it. And then he fucking snorted up this big wad of gob from the back of his throat and spat into my face.
And I could feel again. I could feel how soft my arse was around his cock. I could feel how tight his arms were around my knees. I could feel the fur on his chest rubbing against my legs. And I wished he'd slap my face again. God, I fucking prayed he'd hit me before he came. Because I knew he was close. I knew by the way he was grunting and roaring and then his cum shot into me and dripped from my arse down to my back and he just dropped my legs and fell on top of me.
My face was under his armpit, drenched with sweat, and fuck knows how long since he last washed. He was gasping like he'd just run some fucking marathon. I put my arms around his back and stroked him. His skin was coarse and slippery. I ran my fingers up and down his back, combing his hair, until he rolled off me, slowed down his breathing, and just stared at the ceiling.
"Okay," he said. He said, "Okay. Okay." He said, "You can fuck off now."
I was lying there and there was nothing inside me and I thought, How the fuck am I going to get out of here. I wanted to ask him if I could stay. I wanted to say to him: Let me be here with you. Let me stay here at least until it gets dark outside. Then I can go. I don't want to be out there where everyone can see me. Please, I'll lie here and be still. And when it's dark, I'll go. I should have said that to him. I should have. All I wanted was to be near him. But I kept quiet, I kept hoping he hadn't meant what he said, or that he'd fall asleep and forget. I should have said to him: You don't have to be afraid. You know that. I don't expect anything from you.
But he got off his bed and moved into the living room. He gathered up my clothes and walked with the bundle to the door. He opened the door and chucked everything onto the landing. I walked past him and was going to ask if he really wanted me to go but he stared at me with such disgust I couldn't bear saying anything to him. I couldn't but I still wanted to and I felt my cock go hard and I just said, "Let me stay with you. Please. Let me stay."
His face wrinkled up as if I was the juice at the bottom of the rubbish bin. I should have said: I can love you more than anyone in this world. I can love you like nobody can. But I didn't. He held the door open with his foot and stood with his arms folded across his chest. I looked up at him, at that red fur covering his chest, at his massive nipples above his hands. Then he grabbed his cock and wiped my arse juices from it and onto the wall outside his place. He stepped back inside and slammed the door. And that was it.
I put on my top, hoping someone would come up and see me naked. Fuck, maybe he was even watching me. I tied my laces, my trousers still round my ankles, my arsehole facing his door. I walked back the way we came, looking straight ahead, making sure I didn't see the street name on the corner wall. I know what happens when you come back for more from these guys. I took a left, I think, I think it was a left, and I kept walking. The sun was still out but the air had turned cooler. I love this kind of weather, the kind of weather we've been having lately, that crisp brisk-walk kind of weather. It reminds me of when I was a kid. Going fishing with my grampa. Sitting in his boat at the mouth of the river before the sun came up.
I wandered around for ten minutes before I saw the cafe. I was sure I'd been there before. The name looked familiar. Maybe they'd done the place up since I was there last. It was bright. Yellow and orange walls and this bright blue furniture. The guy behind the counter stared at me. He just stared at me, and I thought, Aren't you open yet? Was there a sign on the door I didn't see?
"You alright, mate?" he said.
"Could I just have a coffee," I said.
"Anything else?" he said.
Because I remember him asking that. I remember him asking if I wanted anything else. And I remember him calling me "mate." I think he did. I think he said, Anything else, mate? Because when he said that, I knew I had to get out of there. I knew that if he asked me one more question I'd answer him the way mad people do when they latch on to you at a bus stop. I'd end up telling him the whole bloody story of my life from beginning to end.
I said just tell me the way to the tube, and he frowned and said, "Coffee's on the house, mate." He said, "Stay. Drink it before you run off." I said I had to be somewhere. I said I'd forgotten that I had to be somewhere. And I did. I did have to be somewhere. I had to be here with you, didn't I? The ride home's a blur now. Maybe because I kept my eyes shut on the train. Maybe because no one ever looks at you in this city.
I had a quick shower at home and changed into some clean clothes. When I looked at myself, in the mirror everything seemed fine. I looked fine. I hadn't eaten all day, and my face always looks better when I'm hungry. More defined and chiseled, right. I like the way I look sometimes. Jesus. Thank God for that. I never have to worry too much about going out and looking a mess. And then I came here. And here we are. And I'm fucking starving. So let's order some food.
Shaun Levin lives in London. He has stories in The Gay Times Boo\ of Short Stories, Quickies 2, Best Gay Erotica 2000, and Slow Grind, as well as in Much, Indulge, and Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly. He runs Gay Men Writing, a creative writing workshop for gay men. His e-mail address is
shaunlevin@yahoo.com.
"The Whole Bloody Story of My Life from Beginning to End," by Shaun Levin, © 2000 by Shaun Levin, first appeared in Best Gay Erotica 2000, edited by Richard Labonte and selected by D. Travers Scott (Cleis Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.


text:
I elbow a fat old lady with white hair out of the way in order to get a window seat on the Amtrak 9:25 Silver Eagle, non-reserved, to Washington, D.C. As I push past her, my shoulder bag rams into her side. Her mouth opens wide in a surprised "O" but she says nothing, probably pegging me as violent, confrontational and deranged. She shakes her head, closes her mouth and moves down the aisle.
A long scream is rising inside my throat but I force myself to push it back down into my belly as I put my bag under the seat and get out my book. I am traveling down to Maryland to spend Thanksgiving with my family but am not feeling at all thankful; I am reading Lolita as I have to lecture on it for my erotic lit class next week. I find this to be an excellent manifestation of the Jun-gian law of synchronicity, for certainly I am as obsessed, as craven, as whacked out by love as Humbert Humbert. My lover is no longer in love with me. He is planning to move to Alaska, near the Arctic Circle, to study Eskimo creation myths. Perhaps he was never more than a myth of my own creation, because when I phone him he says, who are you, why are you calling me, I don't know you, and slams the receiver down.
I open Lolita and begin to read. I am at the place where Humbert has spent his first night of bliss at the Enchanted Hunters Hotel with his Lolita. He does not share the mechanics of this coupling, instead he waxes romantic. He says the vision he saw when he orgasmed within her was of a fire opal dissolving within a ripple-ringed pool.
A woman with her bleach blond hair in two girlish pigtails, which would be far more suitable on Lolita, pauses in the aisle and asks, "Hi, anyone sitting here?" "Yes," I grunt, but she does not hear or pretends not to hear me. "Goody-goody," she says, "I have to take a load off my feet." She parks her substantial bottom in the seat next to mine. I wonder how much of my anger and rage toward other people has to do with my failures in love? Is it sexual frustration that makes me want to push this woman out of the seat, grind her under my shoe? I think there is no help for me and I immerse myself in Lolita again, though I fear I will find scant comfort there.
When the conductor comes to punch our tickets he tells us that a magician will be coming through the train to do tricks as part of a promotion for the new Amtrak advertising campaign: Amtrak-the magic railroad of your life.
My seatmate bats her overly mascaraed eyelashes at the conductor. She is wearing a big, cheese-colored diamond engagement ring and matching diamond wedding band. She giggles, "Tee-hee, tee-hee, maybe he will pull a rabbit out of his hat and I can bring it home for the kids, but my husband would just kill me, tee-hee, tee-hee." I try to imagine the husband; is he a good old boy or a would-be serial killer who wears black nylon panties under his golf suit? The conductor smiles blandly at the silly woman and moves on down the car.
I return to my book. Lolita reclines on the bed next to Humbert Humbert. Her soft lips part, she whispers in his ear. I wish for an exotic new obsession to replace the would-be Arctic anthropologist; maybe a twelve-year-old boy a la Mary Kaye Le Tourneau or a sweet ten-year-old lass with the tiniest swell of budding breast, her pink nipples the size of a dime. I have a modest reputation as an erotic writer but for the past few years my love life has been so meager, puerile, and psychotic, I have to do all my research in my head, the pages of the tabloids, or the amorous confidences of my friends. I am beginning to feel like a fraud and am desperate for real flesh and blood inspiration, but right now all I have is Lolita.
My neighbor pulls a book from her shopping bag, Five Days in Paris by Danielle Steel. We read as the train stops at Newark, at Metro Park, at Princeton Junction. Then my neighbor gets restless; she squirms in her seat like she has a diaper full of ants. She pushes her elbow into me, breathes her tuna fish breath into my face, "What are you reading?" she trills in her squeaky voice, and leans over even further, almost poking her nose into my chest. When she sees Lolita printed on top of the page, she starts to squawk, "Why, why,... that's a dirty book!" I want to do violence to her again, grab her by her twin pig tails, twist her head off her neck, but I control myself and pull back. I force myself to look hard into her small, glassy eyes. "You better believe it," I say, grinning ferociously and I have scared her now. She cranes her head out, looks up and down the aisle. All the seats are taken. She picks up her book, opens it in front of her face, stares at the pages. We move down through the morning past Trenton. At the Philadelphia stop, she gathers up her bag, trying not to look at me, and moves to a just vacated seat down the aisle.
A new set of travelers, bustling with suitcases, shopping bags, back packs, enters the car. A shadow falls over me and a low-pitched male voice says, "Excuse me, Miss, anyone sitting here?" I look up to see a huge, black man. His hands visible at the level at the top of the seat are the size of baseball gloves. Because he is so tall and his head is above the luggage rack, I can see his stout neck, but not his face. The russet corduroy fabric of his trousers is exceeding fine. "No, sir," I say, "this seat is not taken." He shoves his satchel and what looks like a tripod onto the luggage rack.
"Thank you, Miss," he says and he sinks down into the seat next to me. I really want to look at him, to see if the face matches the elegant voice, but I am too shy. I start to read again. In an effort to amuse and perhaps excite her, Humbert takes Lolita to see the world's largest stalagmite. I am thrilled the dark stranger called me "Miss" instead of the dreaded "Ma'am," which makes me feel old and spinsterish. Despite my romantic disappointments, I am as eager and curious for the world as I was when I was the same age as Lolita. The stranger did call me Miss; perhaps he finds me blithe, artful, a nymphet. I read on: Humbert and Lo quarrel because she asks him how long they are going to live in stuffy cabins, doing filthy things together and never behaving like ordinary people!
I allow myself to look at my neighbor. His heavy-lidded eyes are half shut as if in meditation, his small, slightly beaked nose is a bit too delicate for his broad face. His large, full lips seem puckered for a kiss and there is something about the strong, forward thrust of his jaw that excites me. His skin is a creamy light caramel color, his mouth darker, almost chocolate. I wonder if this is the color of his cock. Perhaps he likes to be pursued, perhaps he would like to be seduced. I wonder what he would say if I leaned over and, making my voice sweet and girlish, softly whispered in his ear, Please may I rest my head between your manly legs? Would he let out a slow, surprised sigh, then nod? Would he lift the corner of his long suit jacket up so my head could burrow inside? Would he jump up and yell This woman is a sex fiend! and then rush away down the aisle? I am not bold enough to try, so I return to Lolita.
It is a bright, fall day and the leaves on the trees outside the train window are turning red, gold, colors of passion and heat. We cross the Delaware River. The sight of water, the slow, undulating waves make me think of the ebb and flow of sex, and I can not help but steal another glance at my fantasy lover. His head is leaning forward, his chin resting on his chest. He is asleep.
His skin is oily and his face shines like new copper. I want to place my cheek against his and let his oils moisten my dry face. His arm, under his brown suede blazer, is as wide as my thigh. In repose, with his massive frame, he has the dignity of an ancient monolith. I close my eyes and on the screen inside my head I see him turning toward me, his arms open. Suddenly I am naked with him on a bed in a dark room lit by a single candle. His vast self is glistening, shining in a corona of light. I am on my back and his huge body covers mine totally, maybe in the way Humbert covered little Lolita. My imaginary lover knows just how to support himself on his elbows and knees so that his weight is off me. The top of his big, meaty sex taps against my pubes, teasing me. We are kissing in a tender, lingering way, his big mouth envelops mine, holds it open. His tongue moves inside, dances a slow and languid rhythm, a samba. He has one giant hand cupped beneath my ass. The middle finger, high inside the deep fissure, is moving to that samba beat. He puts a second finger inside and then a third and I want more. I wonder if I could expand to contain his fist, his arm, his whole being?
Such thoughts are driven from my mind as he swallows my entire mouth in a juicy kiss. Then he moves his great head down; first he kisses my inner lips, then he sucks them; he kisses, he sucks. He moves his tongue high inside my vulva and finds the tiny button there. He tongues it a bit roughly, matching the increased rhythm of his fingers moving in and out of my butt-hole. I am going to die with pleasure but then, he spares me. Keeping his fingers solidly in place, he raises his head, his whole body over mine. He kisses my eyes, my neck, then very slowly, he pushes his giant flute inside me so I am filled by him both front and back. I have never been so full. His fingers and his sex stitch to and fro as he strings me up on a thread of fire, but I feel no pain. My arms cling to him, my flailing legs fan our heat. We come together, melt, as he explodes into me. Beneath our magic room the earth spins to a stop. He holds me, enfolds me. We sleep.
" Wilmington, Delaware, Wilmington, Delaware," the conductor calls out, "Passengers departing the train at Wilmington, please make sure you take all your personal belongings."
I return to the conscious world, damp, sweating, my legs spread wide so my knee is touching his. He is still sleeping, does not seem to notice. I can smell myself, even through my tights and heavy, velvet leggings. The smell seems so strong it could wake him, wake a pack of wild dogs, wake the world. I clap my knees together trying to contain it. The train pulls out of the station, leaving the city spires, the smokestacks of Wilmington behind.
I look around for my book; it has slipped to the floor between his feet. Do I dare reach between his legs to retrieve it? What if I wake him? I observe his breathing is deep and regular, he seems totally zonked. I decide to go for it. As I bend down, my arm knocks against his calf muscle, which is hard as a boulder. Slowly, I reach out for Lolita. My fingers are just closing around the spine of the book, when suddenly he sighs, shifts in his seat, clamps his legs shut. He's got my arm and head in a scissors lock! Directly in front of my eyes, on the grimy, gray carpet beneath the seat, is a white business card with a picture of the top half of a smiling woman whose naked breasts are the size of basketballs. Right beneath the woman's humongous breasts in bright red letters it says Dial 1-800-Big-Bust. What I really want to do is dial up a genie to get me out of this mess. I squirm my ass back on my seat and gingerly pull my head out from between his legs. I think that this has got to wake him and it does.
He opens his eyes, which are a surprising blue. "Who are you?" he says, "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I manage to straighten myself up into some semblance of a sitting position. I scramble around in my head for the right words, knowing full well there are none. "I-I-I dropped my book," I stutter, "I didn't mean to wake you." "Nah," he says, "You just like to dive between strange men's legs." He's not annoyed, he's amused, he's even smiling at me. His teeth are big and white as sugar cubes. I like this, I haven't met a man with a sense of humor since 1992.
"That was a lot better then a "Do you come here often?" he says. He's still smiling and I realize he's giving me the old once-over. His eyes rest on my small breasts, made more prominent by my padded bra, then he eyes my crotch. His nostrils swell and he, very faintly, sniffs. I close my legs tight, try to squeeze my sex up high inside me so he won't smell me but it must be already too late because he sniffs again. I introduce myself, tell him I'm a writer. I start to chatter nervously about Lolita. I am still clutching the retrieved book in my hand. I wave it about as I talk at him, but what I'm really saying is; please don't find me ridiculous, please don't take my pathetic chatter for desperation, even though it is. "I know Lolita is about an old guy and a young girl," he says, "but I never got around to reading it, there's got to be more to it then that; what's is it really about?"
"It's a one-sided love story," I tell him.
"I know how easy that can happen," he says. "When I meet someone I like I want it to work out so much, I try to ignore it if we're not compatible." He adds, "I've been in too many of those one-sided things." "So have I," I respond, thinking of the would-be Eskimo anthropologist and the one before him, the one who would only do me doggy style.
My seatmate looks at me very seriously, "So, you've been around the block too," he says, "It's hard to find someone who sees you how you are and is not trying to make you into their private fantasy." "I'll say," I answer, surprised and delighted at the turn the conversation has taken, "That's part of what Lolita is about, that and not knowing that real love is about give and take."
"My last girlfriend was a looker," he says, "she was forty with the body of a twenty-five-year-old, but her eyes, her eyes were old and tired; they said, she'd been everywhere, done everything, there was nothing I could give her." He sighs, "But you," he continues, "You have young eyes, like a girl, you're open to life. That really attracts me."
I know this is a miracle. I put my hand out and tell him my name. He immediately grasps it in his. His palm is sweating, maybe he is as nervous and thrilled as I am. When I ask him his name, he tells me that it is Jimmy Horn and he is a jazz flautist.
He is returning from a concert in Philadelphia to his home in D.C. He collects flutes, and he says, has over eighty of them. "I'd like to see your flutes," I say, smiling up at him, widening my eyes, flirting. He smiles back. "That could be arranged," he says. He pulls a card from his inside jacket pocket and hands it to me. The card has a picture of a long, silver flute and his name and phone number. I slip it inside the waistband of my tights so I won't loose it and Jimmy leans over, leering, trying to peek inside. He is so cute and sweet I want to kiss him. Before I can, an unhappy-looking man in tails and a top hat comes down the aisle of the train toward us. It is the magician promised by the conductor. When he stops by our seat, he pulls a bunch of red paper roses out of his sleeve. "For you, madam," he says, bowing from the waist, "thanks for traveling Amtrak."
I take the roses from him and then he makes his way down the car. "Can I have those roses," Jimmy says, his face opening into a big grin. "Sure, but why?" I ask. "I'll stick them in my flute to remind me of you." He rolls his eyes at me. I want to tell him that I want to stick him in my flute, but instead I place the bunch of paper roses across his knee. I put the copy ofLolita, which has been resting in my lap, away in the pack by my feet. Then I move closer to Jimmy, put my hand lightly on top of the nice, big bulge between his legs and, gently as a nymphet, I squeeze.
Tsaurah Litzky lives in a Brooklyn waterfront apartment with a view of the Statue of Liberty. This is her fifth appearance in The Best American Erotica. Her work has appeared in Penthouse, Paramour, Pin\ Pages, Longshot, and many other publications. She teaches erotic writing and erotic literature at the New School.
" Reading Lolita on the 9:25," by Tsaurah Litzky, © 2000 by Tsaurah Litzky, first appeared in The Blacklisted Journalist (The Blacklisted Journalist, 2000); www.bigmagic.com/pages/blackj. Reprinted by permission of the author.


text:
The most obvious time is after menstruation. But you'll want to use it other times as well-after nervous tension has left you not-so-fresh, to wash away contraceptive jellies or creams (check your contraceptive instructions first), after intercourse (of course, this product is only a cleanser, not a means of birth control), to flush away built-up secretions that cause odor, or any time you want to feel clean and refreshed. Remember, this product is to be used for hygiene; it is not recommended as a method of expressing regret for joyless or ill-advised sexual encounters. It is possible, even with repeated use, that some women may not feel clean and fresh. Certain somebodies may look at themselves in the mirror after proper use and notice a halo of taint, an aura of having been "ridden hard and put up wet." If, for example, you've been doing it with a drifter in a parked car behind a bar, with your shoes up against the window, your pantyhose shackling your ankles and your bra pushed up into your armpits (and, furthermore, if you suspect there are a couple of guys standing in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer and watching- and in your drunken state you like this), then this product may be ineffective, despite the light raspberry scent. We recommend you discontinue use entirely if overwhelming sensations of guilt and humiliation ensue when your regular boyfriend finds out. And why would he find out? Because everybody saw you either leaving, sucking face or actually doing it with the weird, over-tan guy with the tattooed forehead, and of course all the products in the world will not restore you to "clean" or "fresh." A word about relief: This product does not support the idea of "do-overs," as when playing pool and missing the ball entirely, in which case certain women feel the right to call out "do-over" and shoot again without penalty of any sort. We consider this cheating. Therefore, it doesn't make it better if, on the night in question, your regular boyfriend was off "taking some time to think about things," which means, as we've learned in earlier sets of instruction, that he's off thinking about how badly he wants to dump you and start "seeing" one of your very stacked friends. Who knows? Maybe he would have stayed if you hadn't drunkenly turned yourself over to the first unwashed mouth-breather who made suggestive comments about the shape of your ass. But it's too late, there shall be no do-overs, and you're destined to remain pathetic, manless and a known slut. You will be largely ignored by your social circle, with the exception of certain guys in shiny shirts who've begun to stare openly at your inadequate breasts. You may start to fantasize while walking or driving around, grief-struck and miserable, about a fresh, clean start where everything is suddenly crisp and blank, like bleached bed sheets, newly washed chalkboards, refinished floors-the ultimate do-over. These instructions have this to say about that wish: ha! You should be so lucky. Let's face facts, little lady. It's girls like you who force us to include warnings like Do Not Administer Orally. We're not going to let you out of this one that easy.
The most obvious time is after menstruation. But you'll want to use it other times as well-after nervous tension has left you not-so-fresh, to wash away contraceptive jellies or creams (check your contraceptive instructions first), after intercourse (of course, this product is only a cleanser, not a means of birth control), to flush away built-up secretions that cause odor, or any time you want to feel clean and refreshed. Remember, this product is to be used for hygiene; it is not recommended as a method of expressing regret for joyless or ill-advised sexual encounters. It is possible, even with repeated use, that some women may not feel clean and fresh. Certain somebodies may look at themselves in the mirror after proper use and notice a halo of taint, an aura of having been "ridden hard and put up wet." If, for example, you've been doing it with a drifter in a parked car behind a bar, with your shoes up against the window, your pantyhose shackling your ankles and your bra pushed up into your armpits (and, furthermore, if you suspect there are a couple of guys standing in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer and watching- and in your drunken state you like this), then this product may be ineffective, despite the light raspberry scent. We recommend you discontinue use entirely if overwhelming sensations of guilt and humiliation ensue when your regular boyfriend finds out. And why would he find out? Because everybody saw you either leaving, sucking face or actually doing it with the weird, over-tan guy with the tattooed forehead, and of course all the products in the world will not restore you to "clean" or "fresh." A word about relief: This product does not support the idea of "do-overs," as when playing pool and missing the ball entirely, in which case certain women feel the right to call out "do-over" and shoot again without penalty of any sort. We consider this cheating. Therefore, it doesn't make it better if, on the night in question, your regular boyfriend was off "taking some time to think about things," which means, as we've learned in earlier sets of instruction, that he's off thinking about how badly he wants to dump you and start "seeing" one of your very stacked friends. Who knows? Maybe he would have stayed if you hadn't drunkenly turned yourself over to the first unwashed mouth-breather who made suggestive comments about the shape of your ass. But it's too late, there shall be no do-overs, and you're destined to remain pathetic, manless and a known slut. You will be largely ignored by your social circle, with the exception of certain guys in shiny shirts who've begun to stare openly at your inadequate breasts. You may start to fantasize while walking or driving around, grief-struck and miserable, about a fresh, clean start where everything is suddenly crisp and blank, like bleached bed sheets, newly washed chalkboards, refinished floors-the ultimate do-over. These instructions have this to say about that wish: ha! You should be so lucky. Let's face facts, little lady. It's girls like you who force us to include warnings like Do Not Administer Orally. We're not going to let you out of this one that easy.
The most obvious time is after menstruation. But you'll want to use it other times as well-after nervous tension has left you not-so-fresh, to wash away contraceptive jellies or creams (check your contraceptive instructions first), after intercourse (of course, this product is only a cleanser, not a means of birth control), to flush away built-up secretions that cause odor, or any time you want to feel clean and refreshed. Remember, this product is to be used for hygiene; it is not recommended as a method of expressing regret for joyless or ill-advised sexual encounters. It is possible, even with repeated use, that some women may not feel clean and fresh. Certain somebodies may look at themselves in the mirror after proper use and notice a halo of taint, an aura of having been "ridden hard and put up wet." If, for example, you've been doing it with a drifter in a parked car behind a bar, with your shoes up against the window, your pantyhose shackling your ankles and your bra pushed up into your armpits (and, furthermore, if you suspect there are a couple of guys standing in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes, drinking beer and watching- and in your drunken state you like this), then this product may be ineffective, despite the light raspberry scent. We recommend you discontinue use entirely if overwhelming sensations of guilt and humiliation ensue when your regular boyfriend finds out. And why would he find out? Because everybody saw you either leaving, sucking face or actually doing it with the weird, over-tan guy with the tattooed forehead, and of course all the products in the world will not restore you to "clean" or "fresh." A word about relief: This product does not support the idea of "do-overs," as when playing pool and missing the ball entirely, in which case certain women feel the right to call out "do-over" and shoot again without penalty of any sort. We consider this cheating. Therefore, it doesn't make it better if, on the night in question, your regular boyfriend was off "taking some time to think about things," which means, as we've learned in earlier sets of instruction, that he's off thinking about how badly he wants to dump you and start "seeing" one of your very stacked friends. Who knows? Maybe he would have stayed if you hadn't drunkenly turned yourself over to the first unwashed mouth-breather who made suggestive comments about the shape of your ass. But it's too late, there shall be no do-overs, and you're destined to remain pathetic, manless and a known slut. You will be largely ignored by your social circle, with the exception of certain guys in shiny shirts who've begun to stare openly at your inadequate breasts. You may start to fantasize while walking or driving around, grief-struck and miserable, about a fresh, clean start where everything is suddenly crisp and blank, like bleached bed sheets, newly washed chalkboards, refinished floors-the ultimate do-over. These instructions have this to say about that wish: ha! You should be so lucky. Let's face facts, little lady. It's girls like you who force us to include warnings like Do Not Administer Orally. We're not going to let you out of this one that easy.
Stacey Richter is the author of the collection My Date with Satan. Her stories have been published in GQ, Zoetrope, Granta, The Pushcart Prize Anthology XXII and XXIV, and elsewhere. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and is a licensed cosmetologist.
"When to Use," by Stacey Richter, © 2000 by Stacey Richter, first appeared in Nerve (Nerve Publishing LLC, 2000); www.nerve.com. Reprinted by permission of International Creative Management, Inc.