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He was the one to give her head when she was on the rag. He liked it, the saltiness, the nastiness of it. He grabbed her legs so hard it left bruises, because she claimed she didn't want him to go down on her when she was bleeding. Yeah, right. Her pussy was so clean anyway, even when she bled. The shock of it. He tongued her asshole, too. Fresh as a daisy, this girl. Broad daylight, on the lumpy futon on the floor of his room in an apartment in Allston, Massachusetts. Totally naked, their skin pale and visibly human-veins, pimples-lit by the sun streaming in, the bright, midday sunlight. Some torn sheets hanging in the windows, not providing much protection from the fierce light. As they move, dust rises in the streams of light, surrounding their glowing bodies. It was noon, maybe 2 P.M. They'd been having sex all morning. Hungover sex, "hangover helper" he called it. She propped her head up on a pillow so she could watch his face in her cunt, the top of his forehead, his receding hairline, the dark, almost black strands of hair, his long, long hair, falling past his shoulders. Rock drummer hair. He'd look up at her. Pull his mouth away from her and she could see it, his mouth, dark where her blood streaked him. I fucking love your pussy, he says quietly, a finger inside of her.
They didn't have much in common. He didn't read, and she wasn't from the Boston area, but he changed her life the day he ate her out for an hour straight, moving the vibrator around inside of her, outside of her and finally sticking a finger up her ass and-she came. For the first time. A huge, huge blood-curdling, screaming, flying-across-the-room orgasm, that ended with her smacking her head against the wall. Did he levitate her? How'd she get so far off the ground, so high in the air? After that, he owned her. Not that he necessarily wanted to, but he did, and so that was that. And then she was terminally in his bedroom, naked, begging for it. Please, Curt, please. Don't leave me. Don't, don't. Taking her clothes off, wanting him so badly, falling to her knees. Her hands gently petting his head, God, Curt, oh, oh, moving his head ever so slightly, as he eats her out for the ten-millionth time.
Actually, it wasn't always that way. At first he had to coax her. Come on, let me kiss you down there. She was barely nineteen and she'd blush. Oh don't do that. That's gross. Oh no it's not. And she'd let him do it and she'd get so excited and yell stop, stop and pull him up and into her. Which was fine. He'd fuck her and he liked doing that. She was ten years younger than him and skinny and-ten years younger than him. Pale nipples on her pointy little tits and a long perfect stomach with the tiniest little bulge resting in her narrow hips. Her pink, little girl cunt, with youth fluffing it up and dripping out of it. You're made for sex. You're built for this. Your pussy should be in magazines. And he'd roll onto his back and sit her on top of him and lean her back, with her knees stretched as far apart as they could go, and instinctively (or maybe someone had told her, but he doubted it, because every other guy she'd fucked before him was some young, dumb college jock who'd fuck her cloggy style with the lights off), gently, saying, yeah, yeah, with her left forefinger and middle finger, she'd pull herself wide open for him. Wide open in the middle of the day. He liked it. Liked seeing all that.
Later, they'd go shoot pool down the street. Or he'd be playing and the bass player would pick them up and drive them to the club. She'd watch him play drums. Standing directly in front of the stage with her friend Katie. The two in nearly matching Betsey Johnson skintight minidresses. Her mouth slightly open, shiny pale lip gloss, moving awkwardly to the music. She was a horrible dancer. And afterward, she would come right up to him. Stand next to him, step on his foot. Sorry, she says sheepishly, her brow anxiously furrowed. He just wanted to talk to his friends. And sometimes he had schmoozing to do-label people, a guitar player who may want to use him. His mother might be there. No matter, there'd Sonia be, right next to him. Her breath stinking of beer and cigarettes. She'd drink four beers during his set and smoke half a pack. Her arms folded nervously over her tiny chest. Her hair limp against her moonish face. Her mascara smeared. Okay, okay, sometimes he'd be talking to a cute girl. He played in a band for God's sake! Most of the time, the girl would be a friend's girlfriend. No matter, Sonia would freak out. Her face stuck in this weird nervous position. He noticed then her double chin, from the way she held her head smooshed back into her neck. She wasn't fat, she was skinny, but she'd tense up and her chin would fold into itself. It was ugly. Her insecurity made her ugly. He hated her then. Wanted her far away from him.
But then he'd drink four beers, and eventually Katie would drag Sonia away somehow, so Katie could talk to some guy, and he'd have fun talking to his friends. Smoke some weed. And then the bar would be closing-this was Boston, the bars closing at 2 a.m.-and he actually would want to bring her to Nat's house, some of the times. Sometimes, he didn't want to bring her. Sometimes, he just didn't want to deal with her, her being nervous and jealous. Other times, he wanted her warm body around, her cute, young, young body, her skinny legs sticking out of her tight minidress, wanted all that nervousness even, that he would pound out of her later. Pound pound pound her late at night, early in the morning, in the dark of his room, on the futon, sometimes as the sun came up. She was loud when he did it. And so it would start all over again. And as the sun trickled through the sheets in the windows, then he could see her. Another day wasted in the lemon freshness of her youthful pussy, another day of playing with her young body and she bent over and under him with such desperation and abandon. Later, at four or so in the afternoon, he'd get her to buy him breakfast at the diner down the street. Then she'd go home to shower and change into another one of her slutty outfits-he didn't let her keep clothes at his house anymore. That he put an end to. He'd be listening to Neil Pert drum solos, playing air drums, and he'd hear the answering machine pick up, "Curt, Curt, are you there?"
Sonia, Sonia, go away! Why was it so hard to make her leave him? He treated her like shit-well, except for the fucking. He fucked her right. He couldn't help himself. A woman's body in his face and he had to do his job. It was enough for her, or so she claimed, but she was miserable. She'd given up all her self-respect, and for what? For his face between her legs. She was crazy. Sometimes, he blamed it all on her ass, but you can't base a relationship on an ass. Her flat, white, smooth as silk ass. Skin like a baby's. It killed him. A shapeless ass, small as a boy's. He loved her ass and loved opening her legs up underneath her ass. He didn't love her anymore-maybe he never did-but when she showed up at three in the morning, letting herself in with the keys he needed to take away from her, not turning on the lights, saying, I need you, I need you, slithering in bed with him, crying, breathing unevenly, uninvited, what could he do? Her mouth on his cock and he'd be hard in seconds and then it was too late. He had to get those keys from her. And tell her it was over.
He asked for the keys outside of the diner on Harvard Avenue one warm spring afternoon. She'd just bought him French toast with bacon, orange juice, and a cup of coffee. He asked her for the keys, saying, this is not working, I need my space right now, it's not you it's me, like that, on the street, so that she couldn't start taking her clothes off. Or throw too much of a hysterical fit, although she wasn't much into self-control. During that last breakfast in the diner, she'd been weepy and whiny, we only see each other twice a week, I mean, I guess it's okay, but why don't you want to see me more? What's wrong with me? What don't you like about me, sniffle, sniffle? I can change, I can, I really can.
No you can't. No one can. I can't either. He tries to tell her that that is what he doesn't like about her, the what don't you like about me, I can change. The sheer lack of pride. He can barely look at her when she starts in with that pathetic shit. How could he have let it go on for two years? Two years...
So what happens next? He already started fucking that girl in Portland, the one with the nice Volvo. She stunk of money. And she lived far away. Although he could see a future with her, her money, her scowl, her no-bullshit attitude. The opposite of Sonia's wimpiness. He needs a hard-headed woman, just like Cat Stevens says. Meanwhile, lots of hang-ups on the machine. Then a message from her. I need to talk to you. He doesn't call back. More hang-ups. Then a week later, another message. And then, a week after that, he picks up for some reason and it's her. Just let me see you one more time. I need to talk to you. OK, he says, I'll drive over in the cab, I'm driving tonight.
He drives over. It's dark, around 9 P.M. He honks. He's not parking. He's not going in there. The cab idles in front of the yellow house where she lives. He sees her come out the door and he steps out of his cab, leans against it. It makes him feel secure. She's lost weight, she's even skinnier than before. Her hair seems longer, stringier. She's wearing a tight miniskirt, like always. Those skinny legs look like he could break them with two fingers. She walks down the steps and onto the sidewalk. He folds his arms. He's not gonna let her make him feel guilty. He doesn't owe her anything, except seven hundred bucks. He doesn't owe her himself though, he doesn't owe her. He's afraid she's gonna fall down, she seems so weak, so pale, so helpless. Did he do this? It's her life, it's not his responsibility. Give me one more chance she whispers, and he can barely hear her, the motor of the cab hums loudly. Did he read her lips? Please, give me one more chance, I can change, she croaks. One more, one more. But his arms remain folded, and he shakes his head, no. He gets in the cab and he sees out of the corner of his eye that she's walking back to the yellow house, and he's so relieved, he was afraid that she'd do something crazy, jump on the cab, throw herself at him, and he drives away, wishing he could go all the way to Portland tonight.
Ah, Sarah in Portland. Lays there like a board, but her pussy's as slick as a seal. When she comes, she makes the tiniest of noises, moves her hips one centimeter. Blip. And it's over. It's as if all that money keeps her mind off of her body. It's a relief. It's... low pressure. It feels like fucking a wife would. No more screaming and thrashing about. No more hysteria. No more Sonia! No more.
Curt drives, his breath a little uneven, to a parking lot behind a convenience store. There, he rolls down his window and smokes half of a joint. It costs fifty bucks to lease a cab for the night. He needs to make at least fifty bucks. Christ, he wants to do more than break even. The pot starts numbing his mind. He feels better. He feels relieved. A tiny bit of sadness creeps into him, but he shrugs it off.
He pulls over to the cab stand on Harvard Avenue. A gaggle of BU girls walks down the street, swinging their glistening hair around in the clear New England night. They get in the cab in front of him and he pulls up to take its place, then turns on the radio and a Rush song is playing and he thinks, this is good, this is a good sign, and he takes his hands off the wheel, and with the utmost precision, air drums all of the fills. Tonight he'll try his luck with the rest of the college students in Boston, those girls out on the town who, drunk and terrifyingly young, hopefully will need a ride somewhere, and pay him to give it to them.
Paula Bomer has an M.A. in creative writing from the City College of New York. Her work has appeared in Global City Review, Open City, Feed, Ms., and other publications.
"Two Years," © 2000 by Paula Bomer, first appeared in Nerve (Nerve Publishing LLC, 2000); www.nerve.com. Reprinted by permission of the author.


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My Uncle Edna killed hogs. He came home from the slaughterhouse every day smelling of shit and pig blood, and if I didn't have his bath drawn with plenty of perfume and bubble stuff, he'd whup my ass until I felt his hard-on poking me in the leg.
Like I said, he killed hogs. At night, though, you'd never have known it to see him in his satin gown. He swished around the old farmhouse like some kind of fairy godmother, swigging from a bottle of J.D. and cussing the bitch who stole his man.
"Homewrecker!" he'd shriek, pounding his fist on the table and rattling the stack of rhinestone bracelets he wore on his skinny arm. "How could he want her when he had me? How could he do it, boy?"
And you had to wonder, because even with his lipstick smeared and his chest hair poking out of his gown, there was a certain tired glamour to Uncle Edna. Thing was, the bitch hadn't even wanted his man. Uncle Jude, who'd been with Uncle Edna since he was just plain old Ed Slopes, had all of a sudden turned het and gone slobbering off after a henna-headed barfly who called herself Tina. What Tina considered a night's amusement, Uncle Jude decided was the grand passion of his life. And that was the last we saw of him. We never could understand it.
Uncle Edna was thirty-six when Uncle Jude left. The years and the whiskey rode him hard after that, but the man knew how to do his makeup, and I thought Uncle Jude would fall back in love with him if they could just see each other again.
I couldn't do anything about it, though, and back then I was more interested in catching frogs and snakes than in the affairs of grown-ups' hearts. But a few years later, I heard Tina was back in town.
I knew I couldn't let Uncle Edna find out. He'd want to get out his shotgun and go after her, and then he'd get cornholed to death in jail and who'd take care of me? So I talked to a certain kid at school. He made me suck his dick out behind the cafeteria, but I came home with four Xanax. I ground them up and put them in Uncle Edna's bottle of J.D. that same night. Pretty soon he was snoring like a chainsaw and drooling on his party dress. I went out to look for Tina. I didn't especially want to see her, but I thought maybe I could find out where she'd last seen Uncle Jude.
I parked my bike across the street from the only bar in town, the Silky Q. Inside, the men stood or danced in pairs. A few wore drag, but most were in jeans and flannels; this was a working man's town.
Then I saw her. She'd slid her meaty ass into a booth and was cuddled up to one of the men in it. The other man sat glaring at her, nearly in tears. I recognized them as Bob and Jim Frenchette, a couple who'd been married as long as I could remember. Tina's red-nailed hand was on Bob's thigh, stroking the worn denim.
I walked up to the table.
Jim and Bob were too far gone to pay me any mind. Tina didn't seem to recognize me. I'd been a little kid when she saw me last, and she'd hardly noticed me then, bent as she was on sucking Uncle Jude's neck. I stared into her light blue eyes. Her lashes were clumped with black mascara, her lids frosted with turquoise shadow. Her mouth was a lipstick wound. Her lips twitched in a scornful smile, then parted.
"What you want, boy?"
I couldn't think of anything to say. I didn't know what I had meant to do. I stumbled away from the table. My hands were trembling and my cheeks flaming. I was outside, unchaining my bike from the lamppost, when Tina came out of the bar.
She crossed the deserted street, pinning me where I stood with those wolf-pale eyes. I wanted to jump on my bike and speed away, or just run, but I couldn't. I wanted to look away from those slippery red lips that glistened like hog grease. But I couldn't.
"Your uncle.,.'," she whispered. "Jules, wasn't it?"
I shook my head, but Tina kept smiling and bending closer until her lips were right against my ear.
"He was a lousy fuck," she said.
Her sharp red nails bit into my shoulder. She pushed me back against the lamppost and sank to her knees in front of me. I felt hot bile rising in my throat, but I couldn't move, even when her other hand undid my pants.
I tried to keep my dick from getting hard, I truly did. But it was like her mouth sucked the blood into it, right to the surface of the skin. I thought she might tear it out by the roots. Her tongue slithered over my balls, into my peehole. There came a sharp stinging at the base of my dick, unlike anything I'd felt when other boys sucked it. Then I was shooting my jizz into her mouth, much as I didn't want to, and she was swallowing it like she'd been starved.
Tina wiped her mouth and laughed. Then she stood, turned, and walked back to the bar like I wasn't even there. The door closed behind her, and I fell to my knees and puked until my throat was raw. But even as the rancid taste of half-digested food filled my mouth and nose, I could feel my dick getting hard again.
I had to whack off before I could get on my bike. As I came on the sidewalk, I imagined those fat shiny lips closing around me again, and I started to cry. I couldn't get the nasty thoughts out of my head, things I'd never thought about before: the smell of dank sea coves and fish markets, the soft squish of a body encased in a layer of fat, with big floppy globes of it stuck on the chest and rear like cancers. And the thoughts were like a cancer in me.
As fast as my feet could pedal, I rode home to Uncle Edna. But I had a feeling I could never really go home again.
Poppy Z. Brite is the author of five novels-Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, Exquisite Corpse, The Crow: The Lazarus Heart, and Plastic Jesus-as well as two short story collections, Wormwood and Are You Loathsome Tonight?, and a collection of nonfiction, Guilty but Insane.
She lives in New Orleans with her husband, Christopher. Find out more about her at www.poppyzbrite.com.
"Homewrecker," by Poppy Z. Brite, © 2000 by Poppy Z. Brite, first appeared in Embraces: Dar\ Erotica, edited by Paula Guran (Venus or Vixen Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.

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Weill d say we were drunk except that neither of us drinks, but we'd drunk enough lattes to send us into the next galaxy. My skin was tingling, and Joe kept picking up my hand and dropping it, each time dragging a finger across my palm.
He was young and tattooed and shaved and pierced, and I was about ten years older. "Vanilla skin," he called me. But he wouldn't tell me his last name, or what he did, so I told him, no way would I take him home with me. I was that kind of girl, but I wasn't that kind of girl.
"So let me ride the train home with you, at least," he said. "Let me make you feel safe."
I didn't feel safe around him. He had pale skin and deep blue eyes, and the slightest hint of a brogue. The tattoos were mostly Celtic designs, and his pale scalp stubble hinted that when it grew, he had dark hair. Blac\ Irish, I thought.
It was 2 A.M. on a Sunday night, and we boarded the train at Broadway-Lafayette. Both dressed for city combat: white T-shirts, black jeans, heavy boots.
And we entered an empty car, empty but for the trash blowing around.
And as we approached a seat, he said, "So you won't fuck me
at your place, Nell?"
"Not without further particulars," I replied.
At this point we were kissing and sucking each other's fingers, sticky with the coffee we'd downed. We'd both been bad drinkers once, but now coffee and sex were the drugs of choice.
"Not in your house," he said again, and grabbed my shoulders from behind, licked my neck. I would have told him anything right then, but then he quickly slid his hands down my arms and grabbed my wrists. He pulled my arms overhead, and kept both wrists trapped in one meaty hand.
With the other, he pulled out a set of handcuffs. They jangled so loud. Just at that point, the doors flew open. Last stop in Manhattan.
"You can get off now, if you'd like," Joe said, and loosened the pressure on my hands just a bit.
But I shook my head. Let's see where this goes, I thought.
"You could take me home to your bed," he hissed, and shook the handcuffs.
"No," I said, and Joe flipped open the cuffs and slammed them on my wrists, carefully suspending me from the overhead pole. I was still facing away from him, but I could see everything he was doing in the smudged subway window. My feet barely touched the floor.
We were underground, in a tunnel beneath the East River.
"I'm not a bad man," Joe explained. "I just don't like to be denied."
Then he yanked my shirt up and exposed my bra, shoving a hand into the soft, sweaty cotton. He came around so he was facing me and pulled my breast to his mouth. The cuffs hurt my wrists, but they seemed to build the sensation in my nipple. I was moaning. Joe was silent. His tongue was long and pink, and I could smell smoke on his skin. He lapped at my breast like a baby. His jeans bulged. I tried to move closer, get more of his mouth on my tit, but he backed away. And again, he moved behind me.
First stop in Brooklyn, York Street, the ghost town stop. Still, I looked over my shoulder to see if anyone was entering. For a moment, I had a flash that Joe would make whoever entered the car join our handcuff party. I felt ashamed. And very hot.
"I get off in six stops," I said, suddenly angry.
"Oh, you do, do you," Joe said, impishly. "Then we'll have to hurry this along."
Joe unbuttoned my jeans and yanked them to the floor, where they lay in a heap around my feet. I felt doubly trapped, a cloth bond around my legs, a metal one around my wrists. I was still wearing underwear, stupid white cotton briefs, because while I always wanted sex, I never believed I'd get it on the first date.
"Practical panties," Joe said, and ground himself into my back. I could feel his erection looking for a place to rest, and as he slid around my ass, it fit perfectly in my ass crack. I could hear Joe unzip and in the window I saw his cock rise in the air, bobbing. Sweat dripped off his face and onto my back. I heard him reach in a back pocket, and that familiar metallic sound, ripping, stretching.
"Next time," he growled, as he rolled it over his cock, "you'll put it on with your mouth."
"What makes you think there'll be a next time?" I snapped. Then he spanked me once, and I moaned.
"Don't pretend with me, Nell."
And then he stuck his hand in my panties and ripped them off. They fell in a heap, too. And before I could object, he had one hand dithering my clit, the other stroking my ass crack.
"You really have to get home?" he murmured into my hair.
"No!" I moaned. "I mean, yes."
"All right," he sighed. Then he grabbed my breasts and plunged his cock deep into me.
Suddenly we were one with the train's rhythm, just as it rose above the ground, into the sparkling Brooklyn sky. His cock was the right size for me, and he kept hitting my G spot like he had a map. When I tried to back into him, he would hold me still.
"You are my little fuckdoll tonight, Nell," he said, and then two stops from my destination, he pounded at me in earnest, fingering my clit all the way. The only sounds: the train, moans, the unmistakable sound of precome mixing with latex. And because of the way we were positioned, we could see ourselves fucking in the window.
As could anyone who was in the station. A few sleepy partiers gaped at the next stop, but they didn't get in. One man actually did a double take: a rarity in New York.
And all the while, the heat was rising in me, and Joe's cock was pulsing. His hands pinched my nipples, as if trying to pull the orgasm out of me.
"I feel so embarrassed," I said.
"No... you... don't," said Joe, pumping with each word for emphasis. "No. You. Don't."
Now Joe was groaning, and he was very close. His hand drifted to my face, and I nipped his fingers with my mouth, drawing them in, sucking them, and he came closer. One and a half stops to my destination.
"You're my fuckdoll, and you'll do anything I tell you," said Joe. "Tell me what you are."
"I'm your fuckdoll and I'll do anything you say."
"No, I said, 'anything I tell you.'"
I was quiet.
"Say the words right, or I'll pull out and leave you in the train."
Words were just words, I thought. And I needed that orgasm. Still...
Then he said it.
"Nell, please."
So he needed it, too.
"I'm your fuckdoll," I said slowly, and Joe pumped me with every word, and I was seconds from going over the edge.
"... and I'll do anything you tell me."
And then we came together, bent, standing, convulsing, seeing ourselves in the glass, panting, coming some more. As soon as we stopped quivering, Joe moved quickly to unchain me and zip himself up. My arms ached, my mouth was dry, and I could have done it the rest of the night.
Joe yanked my pants up and picked up my ripped panties
from the floor.
"Joe needs Fuckdoll's number," he said in a sweet pleading voice, and so I wrote it, quickly, on the soiled and sweaty cotton. It didn't occur to me to do otherwise.
The doors of the subway train parted, and we kissed, Joe nipping my mouth, just a little.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and propelled me out of the
train.
"You gave me what I wanted, now I'll give you what you
really want," Joe said. I turned to face him.
"My last name's O'Riley," he smirked. Then the doors closed again. And he was gone.
Nell Carberry is a screenwriter and teacher living in Hoboken, New Jersey, birthplace of the zipper. Her past work has appeared in Salon, Libido, Bust, Paramour, and in the anthologies The Best American Erotica 2000 and Exhibitions. She is a passionate advocate of public transportation and can be reached by e-mail at nellcar-
berry@yahoo.com.
"Night Train," by Nell Carberry, © 2000 by Nell Carberry, first appeared in Exhibitions: Tales of Sex in the City, edited by Michele Davidson (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.


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Losing in the quarterfinals was the worst part of the U.S. Open. The next worst thing was that it all took place in Flushing Meadows, Queens -no comment necessary there. The next worst thing was that it was painfully hot. The next worst thing was that Oleg, my hockey player boyfriend, ignored me because his babushka was in town and he was ashamed to be seen with his seventeen-year-old blond devochka. I think that in English you would say that he has no balls.
But Mariana made up for all of it. I don't need to say a thing about her really, she was a legend in women's tennis before I even picked up a racket. I'm still not sure I like her, even after what happened, but I am sure that I do respect her for not giving a shit about being a six-foot-two-inch Slavic dyke when it was still hard to be anything but a proper lady. And I respect her for what she did for me-although that's fucked up in its own way, as you'll see.
Mariana is an intimidating presence, tall, tow headed, piercing blue eyes that look out from a severe brow and pointed eyebrows. Even at forty-four, her body is rock hard, or at least the muscles are. As for her skin, it's simply spent too much time unprotected under the sun, like all tennis players, and is leathery and tough like a hide, as if it had been skinned from her body, treated by a tanner, and then reattached. Nevertheless, a defiant sensuality shines through those forty-four-year-old wrinkles so that, even as I made a concerted effort to ignore her, I, on occasion, could not help but glance quickly at her from the sidelines and admire the knots of muscles on her calves, or the severe shadow of her jaw.
Of course, she hated me immediately. Rather I should say that she hated me in a very particular way that is unique to women, and possibly unique to Mariana herself. Whenever her eyes would fall on me either during a warm-up or in the locker rooms, I would feel a cold disdain, cold and hard like I imagined her heart to be. She got to where she was by a Nietzschean effort of will, and she could see quite clearly that I was where I was (financially at least) with the generous help of my figure, my long blond hair, my party-girl image, and the pictures of me on the covers of fashion and sports magazines looking kittenish, coquettish, and just plain slutty.
From my own point of view, the only people who complain about it are people who can't do it themselves, but I will admit that I've had more press coverage than the top ten women in the world, and I've never been ranked higher than twelfth. I don't blame her.
She first spoke to me as I walked off the court about two days before the Open. I was having a great day on the court, which bothered me, because I thought I would curse my game if I was too good during the warm-up. I feel better when I am less than my best until the day of the matches. Somewhere in my mind, I believe that you only get so many good games and you need to save them up for the right time.
"Your name is Anna?" she asked as I walked off the court.
I nodded but stayed silent.
"Anna Gramovitch?"
We both smiled weakly at each other. I rubbed a towel up my arm, across the upper half of my chest.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked, gaze following the rag as I slid it across the back of my neck.
"A variant rival to a man," I answered.
There was a pause as she drove her hard blue eyes into mine.
"Let me tell you something..." she leaned close. "Think more about your game, less about hockey players."
I rolled my eyes and headed for the locker room, but Mariana fastened an iron grip around my triceps and held me in place. "Gravenfort will eat you alive if your return is not better." She looked me dead center.
"Spasibo," I said. She was old and ugly and retired and irrelevant. I ripped my elbow from her and walked away.
When the Open started I was a victorious tornado. I removed the much-acclaimed but slow and lumpy Gravenfort 6-2, 6-3. Next, I eked out a win over the younger Neptune sister, Valariana, with a perfect shot down the baseline, followed by a perfect backhand and a series of equally perfect serves (even though the press keeps claiming that I cannot serve). She pouted and looked at me like an enraged lemur, but I met her most irate behavior with professional sportswomanship.
The crowd naturally championed their faltering poster girl, but nevertheless, a vocal minority could not resist my golden charm and made their support known.
After my win (4-6, 6-4, 6-4) Valariana's father told reporters I was the product of a Nazi eugenics experiment. Despite these remarks, I noticed he never took his eyes off of the Nike swish on the front of my tennis dress. I suggested that perhaps she would do better next time if she would rid herself of those swinging braids, which surely affect her peripheral vision and make her look ridiculous. I even offered to braid her hair like my stylish coiffure, but this placated neither Valariana nor her rabid sire.
I was looking for Mariana after my victories to remind her that her prediction about Gravenfort had gone horribly wrong, but I did not see her either during or after the matches. I did see her once briefly in the company of Terri Fierce, that amazon with the prominent beak. I wondered what was going on there, but decided that I didn't want to know anyway.
My performance was faultless up to this point. I was in the quarterfinals and faced Christina Hinges, who was, in my opinion, a bit rusty, having been sidelined for six weeks with an ankle injury. Prior to this I had defeated her twice in a row. I fully expected to make cheese out of this little Swiss girl with my obnoxious forearm.
And so, the night before my quarterfinal match, when I should have been at the hotel resting, I was confident enough to accept Oleg's apologetic invitation to dinner. He was very gentlemanly, and obviously wanted to make up to me. Apparently his babushka did not like Ukrainians or some such nonsense. I really didn't give a damn what this old woman thought, but was irritated that he would hide me like that from his family. I was, after all, an international tennis superstar and sex symbol with millions of dollars in paid advertising endorsements. You'd think that the boy would be able to get around some fossilized prejudice in the old bag's head.
Despite his best efforts, our date was a disaster. If he wasn't talking about his mother or his grandmother, he was going on and on about his team's owner, some brain-damaged millionaire named Henry Quillgreen. According to Oleg he had taken most of the money meant for the hockey team and given it to a man who promised to develop barrel rides for tourists over Niagara Falls.
The long and the short of it was that Oleg might be traded to Calgary. When he said this I just looked at him. He must realize that if he moves to Alberta the most he will see of me is the pictures on the Gatorade bottle. I told him he could either make his peace with the Jew or forget about me.
"Ach, listen my little fish..." he said, leaning in close, "... I was just mentioning it to let you know what is going on in my life, that is all."
"Well, now I know."
"Don't be angry, Anna."
"How can I not be? You are such a disappointment."
There was silence for a long time. I drank a Vodka tonic, then two.
"Anna Petrovna," he sighed after a thoughtful puff on his cigar, "You cannot be unhappy with me for long. I have quite a gift for you back at my place, you will-"
"Then I must remain unhappy with you for a while longer, because I am not going to your place tonight," I answered firmly.
"Anna..."
While this depressing scene was going on I tried to forget about Oleg by sucking on my drink. I sucked too much and presently felt dizzy. The candles and the glasses and the Caspian beluga swam before my eyes. It was at that moment that I felt a pair of icy blue eyes on me from across the restaurant. It was Mariana.
I almost didn't recognize her at first; she was sitting with two other women at a table across from us wearing a long, sleeveless black dress, flat shoes, and a string of pearls. I chuckled to myself, thinking, "Who has ever seen this woman dressed like this?" At the same time, I must admit that, far from seeming out of place in her clothes, she had a gawky, long-legged elegance to her. The dress made her look even longer than she was, so that she seemed to grow out of the ground like a vine.
Catching her eye, I smiled at her and raised my glass. Her lips tightened around her teeth and her body seemed suddenly rigid, as if she were getting ready to leap right at my throat. I saw her mouth move as she said something to her companions, who looked over their shoulders at me and giggled simultaneously. Then she smiled widely and winked at me.
I took another draught of my Stoli. It all seemed amusing at the moment, to have two famous athletes both flirting with me at the same time; one male, one female. I smiled back at her.
As the evening wore on, Oleg became more unbearable. He wanted to know why I wasn't coming back with him to his apartment. The fact that I was in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open was apparently not a good enough reason. It occurred to me that he didn't even take my career seriously. Unable to endure him for much longer, and far more buzzed than I should have been the night before a match, I excused myself while he asked the waiter for the humidor.
In the marble ladies' room I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked somewhat tired and sad. Most people do not know that one of my eyes is not straight, it looks off to the side a bit. Maybe this allows me to see the ball coming better, I don't know. But in the mirror it almost seemed as if each eye was connected to a different brain, a different personality, a different person.
I can only look at myself at one eye at a time, strange to say. It is always my straight left eye. This is my strong eye and it seems like the me with which I am familiar. My right eye wanders a bit away from my nose. I have to tip my head to look in this eye and when I do, I am not sure who I see.
My head throbbed. I loosened my braid and combed my locks with my fingers. I flicked some of my hair in front of my right eye so that it no longer looked back at me. That made me feel prettier. Then I played with the straps of my gown and the pendant that hung around my neck. Looking down I could see my cleavage and the slit in my skirt that ran up my thigh.
I once told an interviewer that my skirts were not shorter than the other players, it was just that my legs were longer. Looking at myself in the mirror again, I ran my hands from this slit, up over my pelvis and my tummy, to the spot right below my breasts. The papers were right: I was a gorgeous blond goddess.
I ran some water on my hands, then wet my cheeks and brow. I leaned over the marble sink into the mirror until I was inches from my own face. My thong nipped my pink anus as my haunches extended. "So this is what it looks like to kiss me," I thought. No wonder the boys pay so much attention. My single eye was captivating, luxurious, and intoxicating. My hair was coiled a bit and fell like flames over my chest, while my arms were supple and long, tan from the sun with tiny white hairs standing erect. I pouted my scarlet lips, then licked them with my shy tongue. Without even knowing what I was doing, I closed my eye and kissed myself.
The tip of my nose turned up, as my lips pressed against the cold glass.
"Mmmmmm," I said.
I stayed that way for a moment, my hips swaying back and forth against the marble sink top. Then my eye, my wandering right eye, saw through the falling strands of my hair, into the mirror, and around my shoulder.
Mariana was staring back from the mirror like a wraith in the shadows. She did not move.
I smiled shyly.
"Such a pretty girl," she said in her Czech accent.
"Thank you," I laughed, still leaning over the marble sink.
She slid up behind me, "If only you were not such a brat." And she slapped my ass; she slapped it a shade too hard for it to be a joke, and her hand lingered there without moving.
I straightened up and felt my buttocks tighten and sting against her wide, strong hand. Looking at us in the mirror I said, "I get paid to be a brat," and lowered my eyes.
"Not to me," she said in a low monotone, sliding her hand up to my lower back.
She pulled me toward her-or maybe I lost my balance on my heels-or maybe I just voluntarily settled back into her encircling arms. I really cannot be sure. Her arms were around me and all over me; she was all hands, like some Buddhist bodhi-sattva clawing at the Shakti on his lap. One hand was on my thigh, playing with the slit, another on my waist. A third hand slid up my side to my neck, a fourth cupped my breast, a fifth ran lightly across my nipple, and a sixth pulled at my dress. A seventh hand lifted my hemline several inches; an eighth pulled my hair with a tug so that my chin was forced up to a 45-degree angle. Her lips were rough and cold on my neck, like a hairy bug crawling leg by leg toward my ear.
I heard the door open from the dining room. Startled, I stared open-mouthed into her eyes.
"Please," I whispered.
She wouldn't have stopped unless I'd said something, I am sure of it. And the irony of it was that here I was, the bad girl of tennis, pleading with Mariana to not start a scandal. She had no reason to stop-what did she care, she never hid a thing from anyone. But she did stop for me and smiled almost awkwardly. When the door opened and two Japanese women walked in, she played like she was my older aunt helping me to braid my hair. Wisdom is where confidence meets reality.
The two girls came to the mirror beside and chatted in rapid-fire Japanese. Mariana winked at me in the mirror and squeezed my shoulders with her rough hands.
"Good luck," she said, and turning as if she were leaving a military review, she walked out the door.
When she had gone I looked in the mirror at myself again, this time into both eyes at the same time. I looked different.
Contrary to my expectations, it was a well-oiled Christina Hinges that showed up to the quarterfinals. To make matters worse, I had a hangover. It was the worst of all possible combinations. I felt as if I was playing in some sort of vacuum without air or noise. It was like an ocean of pain, where the crowd would roar, then hush like waves; and in the interim there would be a hard silence punctuated with my groans and Christina's girlish grunts. My returns were clunky, my backhand weak, and my serves inevitably missed the mark. I tried to salvage my game in the second set, but I could only concentrate for short moments at a time.
It seemed to me that the spectators rose on top of each other like layers of an inverted ziggurat. On top of the highest layer there seemed to be another layer, but this time of opaque entities of oppressive humidity called clouds. They piled on top of each other, up into the air, hanging over the rim of the stadium, looking down on us, pressing in on us like school boys trying to see a schoolyard fight. Lecherous little boys, looking and pointing and whistling and finally spitting-first one drop, then two, then a barrage of thousands, all spitting on me from above. They called a rain delay.
I sat on the bench during the interim, looking at the small squares of space between the strings of my racket. Olga, my coach, asked me repeatedly what was wrong. She told me to wake up and to stop dreaming.
"Are you in love, Anna Petrovna?" she asked.
I shook my head.
Somebody whistled in the crowd. "Come on, Anna!" yelled a deep voice. I turned my face and saw that it was Mariana. She was sitting about three rows behind, between her two companions from the previous night, and wearing the exact same dress. She clapped her hands twice and an almost involuntary smile tugged at the wrinkled corners of her mouth. It seemed to me that she was making fun of me, trying to sabotage whatever concentration I could manage.
In the next set I was so angry that I consistently over-hit the ball and faulted on the serve. Hinges was swinging like the doors of a whorehouse on payday. The coup de grace was delivered by the line judge who obviously hated me and called every shot for my opponent. When I protested, she ignored me, and the crowd cheered, as if it was just more entertainment for them.
They said in the paper that I refused to shake hands with Christina after the match. I don't really remember, but I think that perhaps it was Christina's dirty hands, more than my anger that made me pass her by. She should wash them more often. I have nothing against sportswomanship, but I am not going to get a disease just to be nice, the press be damned.
People would not leave me alone on my way to the locker room. They shoved microphones in my face and leaned in front of me, and Olga would not shut up. I just wanted to be left alone. In my dressing room, I asked Olga to please leave me alone, but she kept talking about my backhand as if I gave a shit. Finally I yelled and threw my racket at the wall. She may claim all she wants that I threw it at her, but she just wants to get on TV. Finally she let me be, and I cried on the carpet between the locker and the massage bench.
I didn't hear Mariana come in. I just heard her voice between sobs and heaves of my chest.
"You were not even trying, Anna Petrovich," she said, "you were thinking of something else... or perhaps you have been having too much fun."
I sat up. I hated her.
"You must really decide what you want to be," she said, "A champion or a party girl."
"You were there last night, too."
"Yes, but I am not playing today." She sat down on the bench in front of me, sitting on her hands.
"Is that what this is all about?" I asked. "You want to shame me? Does that make you happy, Mariana?"
"Yes, of course," she answered, with again the hint of smile that came from that borderland between altruism and cruelty.
I cried and lifted my hands to my face. She tried to pull me toward her, to press my head against her lap, but I shoved her away. She tried again.
"Go away," I said in a high and quavering voice, "what do you want?"
"For you to be a good girl," she answered, and crossed her arms in front of her chest.
"And how do I do that?" I cried more, to the point where I could not breathe. I wanted her to pull me to her, but she kept her arms crossed. I reached for her and my slender hands grasped her dress at the knee, then knelt forward onto her lap, between her iron thighs. I wanted her to touch me, "I want to be, Mariana, I want to be." And, sobbing, I wet the cloth between her legs.
I pressed my face to her lap, and she pressed her lap to my face. My tears soaked her dress through, and then the cloth changed and it wasn't her dress anymore-and it was wet but not with tears.
I looked up at Mariana's face. Her eyes were fierce, severe, and wary. I lowered my eyes to her wet cunt. Her callused hand slapped her thigh sharply, like a ringmaster ordering his bear to dance. Looking up to her to make sure I understood, I pushed aside her underpants and felt her soft brown hair on my lips and nose. I inhaled deeply and took her scent deep inside me. For the moment, I forgot about tennis. To forget about tennis even for one moment feels like those first minutes after my braces were removed, so long ago. It feels strange and easy and finally natural.
As a thirsty pet rodent taking a drink from a water bottle moves the metal ball with its tongue to release the moisture behind it, so I lapped at Mariana's wet cunt. She stood, and lifting her dress with one hand, ground her softness into me from above. I inserted my tongue and, curling it upward, probed her moist, pelvic void. I imagined that every time I licked her, my tongue caught drops of her greatness.
My lips found her hooded clit and I placed it between my teeth like a champagne grape. I sucked her clit, gently flicking my pink tongue in a horseshoe-shaped swish around the hood, then back again; wax on, wax off.
She enveloped my face with her iron thighs so that my next breath must have come from deep inside her. I licked and licked and licked her wet cunt. I closed my eyes and tongue-fucked her with lightning quickness over and over again until my face was awash in her juices. Mariana's hips bucked against my tongue, trying to escape, but I pushed forward and pressed my lips desperately against her swollen labia.
She shoved me from her half-gently. I looked into her eyes and she still had the same fierce expression.
"Lift your arms, Anna," she commanded. When I complied, she removed my tennis dress with a single motion so that I was naked on the floor before her, nipples hard, my pale white haunches that turned to brown thighs, and my downy blond hair between my legs, wet and heavy. While her cold blue eyes appraised me, I unbraided my hair and shook my head so that it fell on my spine and tickled me.
She knelt in front of me so that our knees touched. Her rough hands traveled up my legs to my waist. She kissed me once, lightly on the lips and then... crack!
She slapped me, not playfully, hard with the back of her hand. I was not expecting this and was stunned for a moment. Angry, my brows knit and I tried to rise. She pushed me down again.
"Stop it!" I squealed like a kitten, trying to rise again. Her thick arm caught me and I spun around as I was pushed toward the locker. Behind me now, she curled one arm around my waist and hooked my ankle with hers in a grapevine such that I could not rise.
"Stop it!" I repeated, "get off of me!"
"Shhhhhhh," Mariana whispered, "shhhhhhh."
I tried to rise but could not. When I felt her fingers work into my pussy and wiggle inside me I was furious.
I screamed like a girl.
"Shhhhhhh." She added another finger.
I yelled again and tried to rise, my hips inadvertently pushing against her. I bucked.
"Shhhhhhhh, be good," Mariana purred, as she finger-fucked me.
I screamed again, but softer and lower.
"Shhhhhhh." She slapped my ass hard with her free hand.
My screams were no longer really screams.
The door rattled and I could hear Olga's voice on the other side.
"Anna, are you okay?" she asked.
I meant to say, "Help me, I am being attacked!" but all I could manage was, "Olga!"
"Anna, open the door," Olga yelled.
I meant to say, "Help! She is crazy!" But Mariana's hand kept moving in and out of me and she kept whispering, "Shhhhhhhh" into my ear, and I didn't say anything.
"Anna, do you need help?" Olga yelled. Mariana yanked my hair so that my head jerked back. She finger-fucked me hard and fast.
"Anna! I am going to break down the door!"
Her fist entered my hot insides.
"Go away, Olga!" I yelled.
"Anna!"
"Shhhhhhhhhhh."
"I am okay, just go away, Olga, go away!"
Olga went away.
"Shhhhhhhhh, good girl," whispered Mariana, fisting me.
I shuddered and cried; hips and hair flailing. Mariana's fist slammed into me over and over again until I didn't know what was happening. I came so hard that I was almost unconscious. I didn't hear Mariana leave and she didn't say good-bye.
After this experience I decided that it was, perhaps, time to end my affair with Oleg. He was heading to his babushka's place near Brighton Beach, so I invited myself along, telling him that I had to talk to him seriously. I could have ended it all over the phone, but I didn't. It was more authentic to speak to him face to face.
When I arrived, his grandmother's apartment was in turmoil. His grandmother, hearing that I was arriving for dinner, decided to display her mastery of American cooking by making us a lobster dinner. After locating a seafood store, she was surprised to find that the creatures were sold while still alive. She bought the poor fellow nevertheless. The old lady had it in her head that all fish, live or not, should be prepared in the same way: covered in bread crumbs and butter, and baked in the oven on a cookie sheet at 350 degrees. And so the creature's eight kicking limbs were doused in melted butter and covered in crushed Ritz crackers after which he was placed, much against his will, on the middle rack of a very hot convection oven.
Shortly before I walked through the door the lobster, subjected to such conditions, began to scream. It is true, they can scream. Not only do they scream, they make the most pitiful, plaintive moaning noises that you have ever heard as the exoskeleton is heated.
The old lady had run out of the kitchen and was pacing up and down in the dining room.
"Shut up! Shut up, you little shit!" she said over and over again.
Oleg was in a state of indecision before the oven, holding a skewer in one hand and a potholder in the other.
"Anna, the thing keeps yelling at us... this is not supposed to happen." He had a look on his face that I have never seen before, like a little boy afraid to jump in the swimming pool.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooo!" screamed the lobster.
I opened the oven. A smell came out like burning pitch. The poor little crustacean had crawled off the pan, dragging its charred body into a corner in the back. Its antennae had fallen off and the stubs waved frenetically in the smoky air. Its eyes had burst, leaving him blind, and a whitish blue foam came from its mouth. Inside the thick rubber bands, the creature's claws clicked together, straining to free themselves.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooo!" it cried.
Babushka looked over our shoulder, "Still it is not dead!" she exclaimed.
Now Oleg crouched next to me. "I will kill it," he claimed, and took several tentative stabs at the bug with his skewer. The lobster pulled back instinctively. Oleg tried again, but the angle was impossible.
In the end, it proved very resilient. Oleg finally removed it with tongs and brought it out to the driveway where I smashed it with a shovel repeatedly until it lay still, heaving a final, tiny groan.
"I do not think it would be good to eat now," his grandmother remarked with a grimace, and disappeared inside.
Oleg and I sat on the steps and stared at the smooshed body of the lobster, still smoking in front of us. There was a long pause.
"I'm sorry," said Oleg at last, "Dinner has not gone as planned..." I nodded.
"Anna... did you have something to tell me?" he asked.
I shook my head. "No," I answered. I rested on his shoulder and sighed. I felt so heavy and tired.
"No," I said again, "but Oleg dear."
He raised a questioning eyebrow.
"Next time I will cook."
Ernie Conrick is a freelance writer and the former senior editor of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. He lives in Brooklyn where he spends his time raising South American rodents and ingesting CalmPlex, a soothing herbal dietary supplement. His novel, Safe in Heaven Dead, written under the name of Richard D. Connerney, is available on Amazon.
"Backhand," by Ernie Conrick, © 2000 by Ernie Conrick, first appeared in Susie's Stories (Susie's Stories, 2000), www.susiebright.com/stories. Reprinted by permission of the author.


text:
Or, Ungh, Mmmm, Oh-Baby-Yeah, Aaah, Oooh... UH-OH!
I 've related elsewhere the catastrophe that befell when, one Christmas Eve in the late sixties, the archangel Michael, entrusted with the whole ball o' wax while God was vacationing, inadvertently allowed Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy to cross paths.
By no means was that the archangel's only screw-up. Michael was renowned for screw-ups. But his other major gaffe, which the heavenly host oohed and aahed and tut-tutted over for eternities afterward (though God proved kinder), came when he unleashed, by mischance, the Orgasm Fairy upon the world.
Before the ninth of February 1964, no lovers had ever truly had a simultaneous orgasm, which is to say, one in which amorous jet-fuel propels them at precisely the same moment along precisely the same giddy arc of glee. Michael, you see, had been given the crucial task of assuring unaligned orgasms, since God knew what would happen if two human beings ever experienced such a conjunction. So, around the clock, God's spy into the world's bedrooms tracked copulators (and those who, either through cross-genital stroking, or through mutual masturbation and the visual stimulation it brings, likewise approached synchronous derailments) to ensure that, if only by a hair's breadth, the sexual surge came upon them asynchronously.
For centuries, Michael's sneeze built.
His nostrils tingled as he knocked out of phase the oral bespurtments of Burr and Hamilton weeks before the lovers' quarrel which history-swallowing Hamilton 's spin with as much zeal as Burr his sperm-ever after passed off as political in nature.
Michael's right index finger hitched to his upper lip even as its tip flicked toward Toklas and Stein, putting a hair fracture in what would otherwise have been a perfect union. No matter. The pink roses of their twinned mouths and vulvas bloomed with sufficient ooze and pucker that, by any measure, there was plenty of there there.
But the archangel's sneeze peaked just as the Beatles laid their first chord atop the screams of young girls on The Ed Sullivan Show and, far more germane to this tale, at the exact moment that Hap and Meg Osborne, de-pajama'd in bed-Hap's pud cuntily beslubbered as it jaunted in and out of his wife-went ballistic. Michael blinked into the sneeze, losing his grip on the groaning pair. In that instant, there came a-borning between them the Orgasm Fairy.
Meg had known her impending climax would be grand. It skittered upward like a megalopolis of skyscrapers rising in time-lapse photography. And when those upswept edifices began jutting and thrusting into the heavens, her detonations pounded out with increasing force. Ka-booml Ka-booml! Oh-my-god-ka-boom!!!
No perverts they, Hap did his sexual pushups as Meg lay quiescent beneath him, and the bedroom lights they kept of course discreetly off. But an eel-like phosphorescence now coated the air between them. It writhed and wriggled to the bestial gruntings in their throats, to the slippery lock of their loins. The form it took was female. Suddenly Meg and her husband were making love to it as much as to one another.
Worse, Meg found it absolutely delightful! "Honey," she gasped, "what's-?"
"I don't (umpfh!) know." His words strained up an octave, no longer his deep baritone nor the above-glasses quip-voice of his Sunday-morning funnypapers snap, but rather the scranneled woe-ache that piped from Hap's lips whenever his man-gloop blurted out inside her. "Jeepers, I can't stop myself from... you know!"
Nor could she.
The ghostly creature between them grew a new face and soul-kissed both of them, her moon-slick tongue setting Meg's mouth afire with steam and sizzle. Her wanton touch thrilled their bodies in every secret place. Then she vanished, slipping away like sun-glints passing across the hood of a Chevy. But unending orgasm billowed anew even as she vanished, threatening swift terminal overload.
But lo, effulgence unexpected flooded their bedroom with spun gold.
"Be not dismayed," said a distraught angel, for angel he surely had to be. His eyes flitted from Meg to Hap to the wall their ethereal lover had hurtled through. "Pray excuse the intrusion, pardon the liberties, no time, we'll talk on the way."
It was as if the angel embraced them, still coming, and zinged them smack into the bedroom wall. They broke no bones nor did they splat, but arrowed straight through, cradled in the arms of their protector, sweeping past neighborhood homes and out into the night.
Their thighs rocked deliciously. The agony of sensory overload had vanished when the angel enfolded them. In its place, pure pleasure sprang up. "I'm Michael," he said. "We've got to... ah, but there she... damn!"
Moaning with love for Hap, Meg saw atrocity flash by: another bedroom, bright and tacky. Upon the wall, a sequined matador on midnight velvet thrust an estoque into an enraged bull's back. But what hurt Meg's eyes was the pair of lovers that reached out of a muddle of melted flesh on the bed. The woman was bone-thin, olive-haired, saucer-eyed, her head atwitch on a stretched stalk. Her lover's mouth gaped, his shouts dopplering by as he struggled to free himself of their mingled putrescence.
"They're toast, alas. That's how you'd have been," Michael said, blithering on as they brushed treetops and sped through the night. "We've got to stop her before she mucks up the entire world." But what conceivable role, Meg wondered in among a continuing concatenation of body-explosions, could she and Hap play in stopping the Orgasm Fairy? For such was implied in the archangel's statement. He wasn't merely keeping them from turning into orgasmic pudding. She sensed, too, even as they hurtled over forests and graveyards and light-scoured highways, that Michael maintained his task of unsynching lovers all over the globe. Though his face was as calm as wisdom itself, his mind appeared to boast more facets than the eyes of a swarm of fruit flies.
Said Hap in mid-hump, "Isn't that-?"
"It is." They swooped down into an extremely well-known theme park, eerily quiescent by night. Outlines of idled rides evoked TV memories as they slammed down into a brick walkway and passed along a brightly lit tunnel below.
Meg wasn't sure if her loss of breath came as part of her unending climax or because of what she saw next. Three huge-headed creatures, cartoonish above the waist, humanly naked below, were engaged in white-gloved prick-and-pussy stroking. At the tunnel's far end, an insane phosphorescence corkscrewed up into nothingness. Despite her orgasm, Meg giggled. Then she covered her mouth, at once aghast and aroused. Smoke rose from cotton fingers that caressed squirming thighs. Gloves caught fire. Yet Meg's childhood fantasy friends moaned with pleasure through neck-gauze beneath beak and snout, as below the belt they sizzled and flared.
Again the archangel swept Meg and Hap away, a swift smack upward past hums of fluorescent light, then a zoom into darkness. "We're gaining on her," insisted Michael as Hap gasped, "I love you." It was unclear whether he was addressing Meg, or the archangel, or both. Not that it mattered. It was all love. Every shred of life was love. Such was the message of this unending, unifying, edifying climax.
"We'll outfox her," declared Michael as they changed course, trebling their breakneck pace. Meg was blessed with a glimpse inside the archangel's mind. Like skate-scorings on ice, swift tangents etched along the hunted fairy's erratic track, sweeping beyond its obscure end into God-granted certainty.
The Pacific coast, California perhaps. A full somber moon silvered upon a sea of crushed grape. Upon a crag, there loomed a mansion. They burst through it into an opulent bedroom even as the creature they pursued did the same from the opposite wall.
On the bed, a zesty platinum blonde, nipples stopper-hard, rode the stickshift of a grimacing young stud, his hair as tossed and golden on the pillow as waves of wheat in sunlight. "Hang on," said Michael, sweeping her and Hap onto the mattress. Like streamwater sculpting boulders, they slid over the climaxing pair, melding with them, embracing them. The Orgasm Fairy, not yet halted in her mad career, slipped in among them. Meg and Hap kept coming, joining their gasps and groans with the couple on the bed. By God, the warmth and fragrance that rose from them! Meg's mouth tasted the ramping woman's left nipple as the man on whom she performed the buck-and-weave caressed Hap's unstoppable cock where it slipped in and out of Meg.
The archangel issued new directives to the Orgasm Fairy, which she at once obeyed. Meg didn't understand what he said, but the gist-an order to convert mayhem into benevolence- became one with the love the foursome shared.
It was absurd.
All Meg had learned about love in her thirty-three years told her that one needed time to know someone before sex meant anything at all. Not so now. Orgasm, precisely synched and blessed by an angelic presence, opened them up, brought out the best in them, made plain the divinity they shared, the unequivocal love that spilled out of them and into them. At last, their orgasm peaked for real this time, a tower of Everests high. They started an extremely long slow descent, wheeing and wowing like a quartet that Verdi had never quite managed to compose.
Michael gestured at the Orgasm Fairy, who at once vanished in a flurry of sparkles. Her loss devastated them all. "I'm sorry." The archangel was touched by their bereavement. "Sorry as well about-" but he didn't have to conclude the thought, for he had swept her and Hap up in his arms and was already on the move. The young man's pussy-prod slipped out of Meg's fist as her mate's own quim-pleaser de-vulva'd with a pop from the blonde's mouth, like an all-day sucker eased out to renew the joy of its insertion. Anguish warped the young couple's faces, an anguish mirrored, Meg knew, by hers and Hap's.
The archangel sped them backward along their route, soothing, cuddling, assuring them that all would be okay. And Meg felt the sorrow of parting from perfection, even as Hap and Michael embraced and consoled her. Their bedroom bloomed up about them. Aromas of arousal floated in the air, a delight and a torment: her arousal, and Hap's, and that of the unknown pair.
"Happy trails," said Michael.
"But how will we find them again?" Even as the words formed on her lips, he gestured above her nightstand where a paper wafted down like a feather, falling between her clock radio and her crook-necked lamp. Names in gold script, a phone number writ large.
"Wait!" cried Meg.
The angel halted in his swirl.
"Please," she said. "What's heaven like?"
Michael smiled. Just before he vanished, he uttered a soft single word. Meg couldn't parse it but it went straight to her heart. "Oh, Hap," she sighed. "We are blessed indeed."
"Yes, Meg," agreed Hap. "We are."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" In her eye, deviltry glowed.
"Youbetcha!"
Together they leaped for the phone, laughing as they fumble-punched its buttons. The phone at the other end, in a California mansion by the sea, rang once before it was picked up.
As for Michael, he was ready to fall abject at the feet of The Lord, particularly since even God's toejam gives off an irresistible ambrosial scent akin to that of aroused organs. But there was no need to grovel.
The Head Cheese beamed. The Orgasm Fairy's hands were busy beneath His robes.
God nodded. "Good work, boy. You wasted no time correcting your mistake. Five deaths is too damn bad, I'll grant you. But hey, it's a small price to pay for the emergence of this delightful creature. That's very nice, little one. Your mouth, please." She complied.
"Besides, Michael, look over yonder."
Upon a nearby cloud sat the puddled couple, still puddled but blissed out. They were making goo-goo eyes at one another and squirming in the most heavenly of ways. One flesh they had become, united as blissfully as the androgynous creatures Plato had painted in The Symposium,
Next cloud over, the trio of lovers from that extremely well-known theme park were whole again, flames undone, their huge cartoon heads alive and integral to them. The sight pleased him. I wish I could describe them for you. But the aforesaid theme park and the exceedingly famous characters these three had once depicted-which now, in some peculiar way, they had become- are the intellectual (yeah, right, make me laugh!) property of a highly litigious and soulless corporation. Still, I think you can guess who they are by the shapes of their ears, the fuzzy grays, the bright yellows, the telltale hat with its telltale hue and ribbon, the eyelashed eyes. I have unshakable faith in the imaginations of my readers.
"Henceforth," said God, "I entrust the Orgasm Fairy with the task of ensuring that simultaneous orgasms don't happen. As she is so very talented, however, she shall be allowed to bring lovers of her choosing extremely close to simultaneity, to join in if she likes, and to give them unforgettable joy. Only the good ones, of course. The nasty, naughty, Godforsaken baddies-by which I mean the bluenoses; the intolerant blithering screwballs on the extremes of an issue; busybody anti-choicers; the so-called Christian right who are misguided miscreants all; soldiers everywhere who allow themselves to be duped by the murderers who appear to be in charge of their lives, but really aren't; dolts, bullies, short-sheeters, tireslashers, blasted numbnuts tailgaters, and others of that nasty little ilk-shall go straight to hell. Ain't no way I'll give those little bastards and bitches any pleasures worth the having.
Michael tried to hide his concern.
"Hey, pardner," said God, chucking him under the chin without moving from His throne, indeed without so much as uncup-ping His hands from the Orgasm Fairy's sweet pair of luscious, prick-sproinging boobies. "Cheer up. You done good. But I have other plans for you. I'm considering, maybe in five years' time, a sort of vacation..."
And as God filled Michael in on what the archangel's duties would be in his absence and the Orgasm Fairy's head dipped like a feathered cuckoo-bird craning for water, a quartet of TV'd moptops, 'midst twists and shouts as hearty as sex itself, sounded their second chord.
Robert Devereaux is the author of Deadweight, Walking Wounded, and Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-ups. The last of these, banned in Cincinnati, relates the erotic mishaps of Saint Nicholas, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. Out soon is Caliban and Other Stories. Robert's future novels will silence forever our yammering foes in the culture wars.
"On the Dangers of Simultaneity, Or, Ungh, Mmmm, Oh-Baby-Yeah, Aaah, Oooh... UH-OH!" by Robert Devereaux, © 2000 by Robert Dev-ereaux, first appeared in Embraces: Dark Erotica, edited by Paula Guran (Venus or Vixen Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.