The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels

ONE

I’d been celibate for five years. I didn’t think I was a bad-looking man – women had found me appealing in the past – but between the ages of twenty-two and twenty-seven, I hadn’t touched a woman and a woman hadn’t touched me. I’d created my own isolation, going from one dumb job to another, spending my time alone in a studio apartment, writing. My first novel was published in an irregular paperback format by a small press operated by an enthusiastic fellow, reminiscent of those old City Lights Pocketbooks. It fitted easily in my back pocket and not too many people read it, despite all the good reviews. The whole matter was a solitary experience with no one to share it with.

One day, I received a letter from an English professor at the local university, Barry McGinnis. He wrote that he’d gotten my address from the publisher of my book, and how the book was an unknown work of genius, and that he’d like to meet me.

I put the letter aside.

A month later, the professor called on the phone.

“Your publisher is an old buddy of mine, a former student, in fact,” McGinnis said. “Hope you don’t mind. I got your number from him.”

“No,” I said. “I meant to call you. I did get your letter.”

“Listen, why don’t we meet for a beer?”

I met the professor at a pub near the campus, and listened to him talk about how great he thought my work was. He’d not only read my novel – and assigned it to one of his classes – but had seen my work in various and (quite) obscure literary journals and underground publications.

“You go by Nicholas?” McGinnis said. “Or -”

“Nicky.”

“Nicky, Nicky Bayless – where’d you go to school?”

“College?”

“Yes.”

“Never went.”

“No degree? No creative writing program?”

“No.”

“Probably a good thing,” McGinnis said, nodding his head, his long grayish-black bushy hair bouncing. “But you know, I bet I could get you into the MFA program here.”

“With no BA?”

“Hell, your published work will vouch your worthiness,” the professor said. “I bet I could get you a nice fellowship, too.”

And that’s just what Barry McGinnis did.

TWO

I met Alexia in one of the graduate courses Barry McGinnis taught. She had a quirky look to her I found appealing – thick, dark-rimmed glasses; a white streak in her otherwise jet black hair; an odd-assortment of attire, cool in this age of awkwardness; when geekiness, coupled with intelligence, was sexy. She was one of the regulars who hung out at the pub where I first encountered McGinnis – often this crowd was orbiting around him, a charismatic man in his own right. He was at the pub three nights a week, and I soon found myself there as well. Alexia was there. I was sort of the oddball, I felt, brought into this circle by McGinnis because of my book and not my academic struggle (and I had a new book, a collection of stories, coming out from another small, obscure publisher).

One night, at the pub, McGinnis wasn’t there, and many people departed. I sat drinking beer with Alexia and Bart (a blond surfer poet) and his bombshell blonde girlfriend, Randi. We all decided to go to a different bar and play pool – Alexia was insistent on this particular bar, telling us all we’d like it very much.

It was an OK bar. Bart and Randi wanted to play pool, which wasn’t my thing. Alexia bought a pitcher of beer and we sat together.

Bart was bending, ready to take a shot at the table, his rear end very close to us. “Get your butt somewhere else,” Alexia said, “or I’ll take a pool stick and shove it up -”

“Oh, yeah,” said Randi.

“That’s not very nice,” I said. “How’d you like it if someone stuck a pool stick in your ass?”

Alexia raised her brows. “I just might like it.”

That was the first clue I didn’t get – I wasn’t paying attention. I’d recall in hindsight, yes, as well as overhearing her talk about how her favorite scene in Last Tango in Paris was when Marlon Brando put butter up his young lover’s backdoor before sodomizing her.

Bart and Randi left (we’ll get back to them in another chapter), and Alexia and myself finished the pitcher of beer.

“What will you do now?” Alexia said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Drink more?”

“I don’t know.”

She took her glasses off and looked at them. “I live a block away, you know.”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t know.”

This was the second clue – and I wasn’t paying attention.

“Well,” she said.

“Maybe we can go there,” I said.

She put her glasses back on. “OK.”

We walked up the block to her place, which was a small cottage. It was nice, a little messy. I asked how much she paid for it.

“Nothing,” she said. “My parents own the property.”

“Nice.”

“I don’t work,” she said. “I go to school. Like you.”

“I used to work. I worked too much. Dumb jobs, blah blah blah. Now I have a fellowship.”

“What about your book?”

“I don’t make any money from that.”

“Oh. I have it, your book.”

“Really?”

“I didn’t read it.”

“That’s OK.”

“Dr McGinnis said I should.”

“Listen to him.”

“I have beer, I think,” she said, going to the kitchen.

I sat on the couch in the small living room.

Alexia returned with two Budweisers. “Yes, I have beer.”

She sat next to me.

I don’t remember what we talked about. On the floor, I noticed an action figure of the Warner Brothers Martian from the Bugs Bunny cartoon. “I always loved that Martian,” I said.

“Me, too,” she said, going to the floor and picking it up. “Marvin the Martian. ‘I’m going to destroy planet Earth!’ ” I touched her hair. She put her head in my lap. It was nice to touch somebody.

“I, um, I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“What?”

“I haven’t been with anyone in a while.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s a line,” she said. “Do you like me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I like you.” She got on the couch with me and we began to kiss. She had to take her glasses off: they were getting in the way. We kissed for a long time. She pushed me back on the couch, and lay on top of me. I grabbed her ass, put my hands down her skirt.

She pulled her mouth from mine. “Bad boy,” she said.

I grabbed her head, and we kissed more.

When I tried to touch her cunt, she stopped me.

“No,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, and we kissed.

When I touched her breasts over the fabric of her blouse, she pushed them away. “Now, now,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said.

She took one of my hands and put it back on her ass. “Play with that.”

I did, and we kissed. My hand, and my second hand, were all over her butt.

“Hey,” Alexia said, “rub my asshole.”

“What?”

“With your finger,” she said, and I found her asshole with my finger. “In small circles,” she said, “yeah, like that -”

She pulled away from me, and sat. She took the finger I’d been rubbing her with, put it in her mouth, sucked on it. She smiled, and gave my finger back. She put her glasses on.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, moving to her, wanting to kiss her more.

“Nothing,” she said. “I have to pee.”

“Hey.” I grabbed her hand as she stood up. “Can I watch?”

“You want to watch me pee?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I need a commitment before I go that far,” she said.

“We hardly know each other.”

“Exactly,” she said, and went to the bathroom.

I sat there. I got up, and followed. The door was unlocked, and I went in. Alexia was sitting on the toilet; she glanced up at me. She smiled and said, “You.” I could hear the stream of her urine. I sat on the floor, cross-legged.

“You’re bold,” she said.

“The door was unlocked.”

“There is no lock.”

“I couldn’t resist.”

She stood up. “OK, Mr Bold. Clean me.”

“With my mouth?”

“Absolutely not.”

I would’ve done it with my mouth, if she’d asked. I took a wad of toilet paper, and wiped her cunt. She pulled her panties up.

“I have to go, too,” I said.

“Then I get to watch,” she said. “Quid pro quo.”

She took my place on the floor; I stood in front of the toilet, took my cock out, and started to go.

Alexia made a weird sound. She moved, snagged my cock, and put her mouth before it, drinking my urine; what she didn’t get flowed out of her mouth, down her chin, and into the bowl. I liked the sound this made. I breathed hard; it was an experience in itself watching her drink from me.

She pressed her face to my leg. “Nicky, I’m sorry. I couldn’t help myself,” she said, softly. “Now you know my fetish. OK, I’m weird. You’ll never love me.”

“I could love you,” I said.

“Do you mean that?”

“Yes.”

“Will you kiss me, to prove it?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

She stood, and we kissed, and I tasted her – and me.

“I want to make love to you,” I said.

“No, I can’t,” she said.

Alexia left the bathroom and sat on the edge of her bed. I sat next to her; we both fell back. It was a nice, big, comfortable bed, the kind of bed I liked; the kind of bed I didn’t have.

“It’s late,” she said, moving away from me. “I’m a little drunk.”

“Me, too,” I said.

“You can stay here,” she said, “if you want.”

“I’d like that.”

“I’d like it, too,” she said, standing. “I’m going to turn the light off.”

“OK.”

In the dark, I saw her silhouette; she was removing her clothes. I also took my clothes off, and got under the covers. She joined me; we didn’t touch. My hand went to her body. She was still wearing her bra and panties. I moved closer to her, kissed her.

“I don’t think I want to screw,” she said.

“OK,” I said.

“I mean, I’m not sure if I can.”

“OK.”

“I’m not sure if I’m in the right frame of mind.”

“OK.”

“It’s not OK,” she said. “You don’t understand, you don’t know.”

“I want to,” I said.

“I know you do.”

“Alexia,” I said.

“It’s nice having you in my bed,” she said.

“It’s nice to be in a bed with someone.” She placed her head on my chest, and then a hand, playing with the hair. We were quiet, touching each other. Her hand moved down, and grasped my cock.

“This is nice,” she said.

“Yes,” I said, “it is.”

“Nice…”

I kissed her on the head.

“I know,” she said, and, “I’m twenty-eight years old.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m still a virgin.”

I laughed, after a moment.

“This is true,” she said.

“Now who is giving who a line?”

She let go of my cock. “Nicky, listen. I’m Jewish. I’m not a nice Jewish girl, but I’m Jewish and a virgin. I come from a really hard-ass strict Jewish family, even though, like I said, well, I made up my mind years ago that I would save myself for my husband, because some day I plan to marry a nice Jewish man, I mean my family won’t have it any other way. And this man will expect me to be a virgin.”

“I see.”

“No you don’t see,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand. Other men haven’t. Like I said, I’m twenty-eight. This doesn’t mean I’m sexual. Obviously I’m sexual, and I have fetishes. I’m really pretty basic in that matter – I have a pee fetish, and a butt fetish. I mean, I’m a virgin, vaginally, but I like having sex in my butt.”

Things started to come together for me – the pool stick remark, her living close to the bar she wanted to go to. “You lured me here,” I said, “from the bar.”

“Of course. I’m terribly attracted to you. I want you. I want you inside me. But I want more than a fuck-buddy. I had a fuck-buddy for a while, for a few months: it was just sex, nothing more. I didn’t like it. I mean, it was OK, but it wasn’t me. It was a different me.”

“He fucked you in the ass?”

“Yes. I don’t know if he liked it that much. Some men do, some don’t.” I’d only had anal sex with a woman once, and I think I was nineteen or twenty.

“I want you to fuck me,” Alexia said, “but I’m looking for more than just fucking.”

“I’m not a nice Jewish boy.”

“I’m not looking for a husband. I’ll do that in my thirties, maybe my forties. I’m looking for companionship, closeness, a little love. Devotion, all that.”

“Sounds nice,” I said.

“Yes. It sounds – it sounds nice.” She took her panties off. “I’d like you to fuck me,” she said. “I want you to.”

“I don’t have a condom.” I felt stupid.

“I’m not going to get pregnant this way,” she said.

Lubricant?” I asked, thinking the last time I’d done this, I had to use a lot of petroleum jelly.

“Spit is fine,” Alexia said. She spit into her hand, put her hand between her ass-cheeks. She spit into her hand again, and rubbed the saliva over my cock. “I’m getting impatient,” she said.

I moved on top of her, feeling inexpert. Alexia reached back, took my cock, and guided me into her ass – where it slid in just fine, without hesitation or resistance. The warmth of her interior sent a tingle up my body and soul. Alexia whispered, “Oh boy,” and pushed her rear up, hard, slamming into my pelvis. I looked down at the streak in her hair, which was scattered about the back of her neck and on the bed with the rest of her hair. I swear she had an orgasm, I wasn’t sure, but mine came quickly, and it was a lot; I emptied myself inside her.

We lay next to each other, and Alexia commented on the amount of semen I’d gushed out, that she liked how it felt up her ass, and coming out her ass.

She touched and played with my cock and balls, and soon I was hard again. She got on top of me. “This position is always tricky,” she said, sitting down on my cock and sliding it in. She leaned forward to kiss me, and it popped out, covered in semen from that first ejaculation. Alexia giggled, and put my cock back in her. I reached for the light. “What are you doing?” she said.

“I want to see you.”

“I like the light off.”

“OK.”

“Oh, turn it on if you want.”

I did. She still wore her bra; her hair was a mess. I reached to unclasp her bra and she pushed my hand away; my cock slipped out of her.

“Let’s try it like this,” I said, gently pushing her off me and onto her back. I put her legs on my shoulders; I didn’t need her help to find my way in. I was deep in her now.

“I like this,” she said.

“I can kiss you,” I said, and did.

“Kiss me more.”

I did.

“Fuck me harder.”

I did, and I came inside her again.

“I have to piss,” I said to her. “Do you want it?”

She made a noise, reached up and bit my right nipple, hard.

“Ouch,” I said.

I took her hand, pulling her from the bed, and took her to the bathroom, where she sat before the toilet as I urinated. She drank just about all of it. Then she sucked and licked at my cock for a while, eyes closed.

We went back to bed, in each other’s arms, and fell asleep.

I woke up, the next morning, with Alexia messing around with my ass. She had her face down there – I was lying sideways – licking from my balls to my crack. I’m not sure how long she’d been doing this, but it was a nice thing to wake up to. She pushed me onto to my stomach, spreading my buttocks, a light finger on my sphincter, then a tongue. She licked it a bit, asked me if I liked that. I did, of course – “Yes,” I said.

She said, “I like it too,” and licked more, harder this time, pushing the tip of her tongue into me like a thirsty animal at a waterhole. I felt saliva roll down onto my balls – a funny, ticklish feeling. She started to suck, making sounds that I can only describe as pleasantly perverse. She did this for the good part of an hour, as I lay there in ecstasy, having discovered a new world. She was still making wicked sucking sounds, and there was a soft hum from the back of her throat.

She turned me over, and sucked on my cock for a bit. “My mouth is getting tired,” she said. “Can you fuck me?”

She was on her hands and knees, and I took her from behind. I grabbed her hips, and slammed myself inside and out of her. I wanted to come in her mouth: this image was in my head. I told her this. She turned around and took me in her mouth, and I came.

And that’s how I ended my period of celibacy.

I didn’t see Alexia again for over a week. We played phone tag, then she stopped calling, and she didn’t come to class (it was a once-a-week thing). I drove to her place; her car was there, but no one answered the door.

The next morning, she answered her phone.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

“Where you been?”

“Nowhere,” she said.

“I was worried.”

“Were you?”

“Yes.”

“You really were?”

“Yes.”

“That’s sweet,” she said.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing really,” she said. “I’ve been depressed.”

“Depressed?”

“I get that way sometimes.”

“About what?”

“This and that.”

“I see.”

“Don’t you ever get depressed?” she asked.

“Well, yes,” I said.

“When I get depressed, I get depressed big,” she said.

“But you’re OK?”

“Yeah,” she said, “I’m OK.”

She didn’t sound OK.

“I’ve been thinking about you,” I said.

“You have? I’ve been thinking a lot about you. What’ve you been thinking about?”

“You,” I said, “and your ass; how I’d like to be fucking you, how I’d like to lick your ass like you did mine. I’ve never done that to anyone before.”

“I wonder about this,” she said.

“What?”

“You could come over,” she said.

“When?”

“Now.”

I rushed over.

Alexia was wearing a thick, terry-cloth robe, no glasses. We immediately embraced. Her body felt warm and nice.

“Do you want something to eat?” she asked. “I was going to make grilled cheese sandwiches.”

“I love grilled cheese sandwiches.”

I sat in her small kitchen and watched her cook. We ate the sandwiches in the living room.

“We should’ve gotten together again sooner,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“What’ve you been doing?”

“Writing.”

“Anything good?”

“I don’t know. Another novel.”

“About?”

I smiled. “This and that.”

“So be it.”

“Essays,” I said. “I’ve been writing essays lately for The USA Viewpoint.”

“Really. That’s a big magazine, isn’t it?”

“I think so. They pay well.”

“What do you write?”

“Opinions, views – viewpoints!”

“Your look at the nation.”

“And the world.”

“I should be impressed,” she said.

“You’re not impressed?”

“I’m impressed,” she said. “But I’m more impressed with what you want to do with that mouth and tongue. Did you mean what you said? You want to get nasty with my butt?”

“Very,” I said.

She took my hand, led me to the bedroom. She removed her robe, was naked underneath. I looked at the dark, thick bush of pubic hair between her legs, something I hadn’t noticed the last time. Alexia was on her stomach, spread-eagled. I didn’t waste time getting to work on her, finding her puckered asshole and going to work at it with my tongue. Alexia seemed to enjoy my effort, wiggling her hips back and forth. I reached to touch her cunt, thinking she’d like this, but she told me not to touch it, was very adamant about that. I continued to lick and suck, and then she touched herself, and she came. I moved up, my cock out now, my pants down to my ankles, and entered her.

We fucked for the rest of the night, and I stayed there. I stayed there for several days, engulfed in nothing but nasty sex, fucking her in the ass, pissing in her mouth, her face buried in my crotch and rear.

It was fun.

In between, we slept, ate, drank, and talked. It was the usual talk – the past, our lives, our families. She was very close to her family (as I’d already gathered) and wanted me to meet her mother and father and two brothers, and some aunts and cousins tossed in. I nodded my head, but I was never comfortable meeting my lovers’ families, both in the act and the thought. We parted, as people must part – I went back to my life, she did what she did.

She called two days later, a Sunday. I was working on the novel.

“My family is having a big dinner tonight,” she said. “Do you want to come over and meet them?”

“Well,” I said. “Not tonight, I can’t.”

“You can’t?”

“I’m on a roll.”

“You just don’t want to meet them,” Alexia said, an accusation. I guess she could hear it in my voice.

“I’d feel weird.”

“Why?”

“I just would.”

“It’d mean a lot to me,” she said. “I told my mother about you.”

“You did? What’d you tell her?”

“Not that,” she said. “Just that – I’d met this guy. I told her: ‘I met this great guy.’ ”

“Oh.” I felt like shit.

“You are my boyfriend,” she said, “right?”

“Yes,” I said. I liked the way it sounded.

“I’d like you to come.”

“How about next time?”

“Oh, fuck it,” she said, and hung up.

I tried calling her back. She didn’t answer.

She didn’t come to class the next time, either.

Over beers at the pub, I asked Barry McGinnis about her.

“She’s a strange one,” Barry said.

“Well,” I said.

“Fucking her?”

“You could say that.”

“I had a feeling,” Barry said. “Well, fucking is a good thing. There are plenty of fuck opportunities around here.”

“She’s kinky,” I said.

Barry had this look on his face. “Really?”

I knew that look. “You didn’t fuck her, did you?” I asked.

“Well,” Barry said, drinking his beer. “Not exactly. Look. OK. This was last year. It was two a.m., the bar had closed, she was sitting in my car with me. We made out, she was reaching down my pants. Then she stops and says, ‘I can’t.’ ‘You can’t?’ She said, ‘I can’t.’ And that was that. There’s always been this strange tension between us since. So,” he asked, “how kinky is she?”

I told him.

“Wow,” Barry said. “Hey, it’s my birthday next week. Big party at my place. Do bring Alexia.”

“Don’t get any ideas.”

“I never have ideas.”

Alexia called the next day. “I guess you should know something about me.”

“You’re an alien?”

“Sometimes I think so,” she laughed. “No. I mean. I’m manic depressive, I mean.”

“Who isn’t?”

“I’m serious. I get into these bad funks sometimes. That’s why I haven’t gone to class.”

“It’s not me?” I asked.

“A little bit, I suppose,” she replied. “It’s mostly me. My screwed-up head. Do you want to come over?”

“Of course I do.”

“In maybe an hour? I need to straighten up a bit.”

“An hour,” I said.

An hour later, I was there.

I kissed her; it wasn’t a long one – she pulled back.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” I said.

She had the fridge stocked with beer, and we sat on the couch and had a few. The TV was on, no sound. It was an awkward moment again.

“I need someone,” she said. “I’m not sure if now is the right time.”

“I’m never sure,” I said. “I need someone, too. We all do, right? That’s what I’m told.”

“I’m twenty-eight and I feel like I haven’t done shit with my life. OK, OK, so I’m getting my Master’s, but so what? Me and a million people. I have all these things in my head that I want to do. I want to write novels like you. I have novels in my head. I just don’t know how to write them. And movies. I have screenplays in my head, whole movies.”

“Just sit down at your computer and write them,” I said.

“Easy for you to say. Maybe you can do that. I can’t. I tried, I mean I really tried. I can’t. And that’s what drives me crazy. That and a zillion other things. I really do want to make movies. I have a camera. It’s hidden away: you haven’t seen it. I have a camera, I have ideas, I want to make movies. Write books. Compose songs. Maybe even act, you know? So many things. But I’ll never do these things.”

“You don’t know that.”

“That’s what the little voice in my head says. The Devil on my shoulder. ‘Alexia, stop fooling yourself, you could never do those things.’ And my parents, they don’t care – they think it’s all silly. ‘Alexia, an artist? How sweet.’ They don’t even think much about my getting an MA. ‘You already have a Bachelor’s, Alexia, why waste your time further?’ They just want me to get married. Before I’m thirty. ‘You need to get married soon, you know,’ my mother says. You know, you know – when I told my mother about you, when I said, ‘I met this great guy,’ she said, ‘Is he husband material?’ You know what I said?”

“He’s a pervert, Mom!”

“I’m the pervert. ‘No,’ I said, ‘he may be for someone else, Mother, but he’s not Jewish.’ ‘Not Jewish,’ my Mother said, ‘why are you wasting your time. Alexia?’ And that’s just it, Nicky – wasting time. I’m always wasting time. I don’t mean you. I mean in general, my life in general – I always feel like I’m wasting my time! I should be – doing something else, I think. I envy you, in your way, how you’re always spending your time writing this and that. This is what makes me so depressed – I feel like I’m getting old and I’ve done nothing.”

“You’re not old.”

“I feel like it,” she said. “And yes, I need to get married, right? Find a nice Jewish man who’ll take care of me, and bear his fucking children for him. Lose my virginity, keep my secret desires hidden, for surely he’ll be offended. And I won’t have to work. He’ll take care of me; I’ll stay home and raise the kids. OH FUCK, NICKY, I DON’T WANT THAT KIND OF FUCKING LIFE! THAT’S NOT ME!! BUT WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?!? MY PARENTS EXPECT THIS OF ME! MY WHOLE FAMILY DOES!! ‘WHEN IS ALEXIA GOING TO GET HER HEAD STRAIGHT AND MARRY AND START A FAMILY LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE DO???’ ”

I held her. She hit my chest with her fists… not hard.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said, wiping tears.

“It’s all right,” I said.

“It’s not all right. You didn’t come over for this.”

“No, no, it’s all right.”

“You came here to fuck. So let’s fuck.”

“You don’t seem in the right -”

“No,” she said, “I want to fuck.”

We went to the bed, took some of our clothes off, kissed a little. She wasn’t into it, I wasn’t into it.

We lay there.

“Barry McGinnis is having a birthday party next week,” I said.

“How old’s he going to be?”

“Forty-eight, I think,” I said.

“I thought he was fifty.”

“I’m not sure.”

“You know what,” she said.

“What?”

“I’m so pissed off at my whole family, everything, all of it,” she said. “Fuck my heritage, fuck tradition. I feel like losing my virginity. Do you want to do that? Fuck my pussy? You can if you want.”

“I’d like that,” I said. “I never deflowered a virgin.”

She laughed. “That sounded so silly, ‘I never deflowered a virgin.’ ”

“It’s true.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re melodramatic, sometimes?”

“No.”

“You are,” she said. “Deflower on.”

I got on top of her.

“Wait,” Alexia said.

“What is it?”

“I can’t.”

“I have condoms in my car,” I said.

“It’s not that,” she said. “I’m scared all of a sudden,” she said. “I can’t.”

“Well,” I said, “OK.”

I rolled off her.

“Nicky, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“It was a wild moment in my head.”

“I know.”

“I’ll suck you off,” she said.

I woke up to the sound of shattering – something. Breaking. And cries. Alexia. She was cursing, and sobbing. In the kitchen. I went to her. There were broken plates and glasses all over the floor; Alexia was naked, standing there, her feet bleeding. Her face streaked with tears. She just looked at me. She cried out, and broke the rest of the plates.

I went to her, cautious. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I need help,” she whispered.

I held onto her, and took her to the living room. She was trailing blood on the floor. I went to the bedroom, found her robe, brought it to her.

“My medicine,” she said.

“What medicine?”

“You need to call my brother,” she said. “It’s bad.”

“What? What?”

“Just call my brother, he’ll know what to do.”

She gave me a number, and I called. An office. I told the man on the other line I was a friend of Alexia’s – “She told me to call -”

“She’s at home?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I’ll be there.”

Half an hour later, a man in his early thirties showed up, in a suit. He looked a little like Alexia. Alexia was curled up on the couch. He went to her, and helped her up.

“Come, now,” he said. “Everything’s OK.”

I felt stupid standing there.

“It’s OK,” her brother told me. “It happens. I can handle it from here.”

And they left me there. Alexia and her brother departed in his car, and I was alone in her place, with broken plates and glasses and a bad energy lingering.

I tiptoed through the kitchen, like a mine field, and got myself a beer. I needed a beer. And another. She had vodka, and I had some of that. I waited. Weren’t they coming back? It was night. I finished the vodka and beer and I was drunk and went to sleep. I dreamed Alexia’s ghost came to visit me. “Hello, Nicky, I’m dead.” I woke, sweating. I went back to sleep. I kept thinking she’d come in any minute, and join me, and we could make love. In the morning, I was still alone. I took a shower, washed up. In the bathroom cabinet, I found a large assortment of pills. I didn’t know what they were all for. I knew what Prozac was for.

I remembered her brother’s number and called it, told him who I was. “I was just wondering if she’s OK,” I said. “I’m worried.”

“Oh, she’s just fine,” her brother said. “I took her to the hospital.”

“The hospital?”

“Yes. It happens sometimes. They bandaged her feet. She’ll be okay. She’ll be out in a few days. She has her medication. You’re a friend of hers?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a nice friend.”

I locked her place up, and went home.

THREE

I went to Barry’s birthday party alone.

Barry’s party was well-attended – faculty from the school, students, writers, odd friends here and there. I drank, and I intended to get quite drunk. There were plenty of drugs going around, mostly pot and speed and I heard somewhere that someone had acid, but I couldn’t find the acid. I think Barry was on acid – he was acting like it – and he’d done a lot of speed as well.

This is where I connected with Hanna.

Hanna was in the same class with me as Alexia, plus another class, and I’d never really taken note of her. She had tattoos, punk-style short hair dyed red, green, and blue, and wore baggy nondescript clothes. At the party, however, she wore a low-cut, short dress, showing a good portion of her milky white skin and assorted tats. Some time during the party, a good four hours into it, we started talking, and when we weren’t talking, she was staring at me from across the party. She was pretty drunk (and on acid, I found out later) and I wondered what the sudden interest was. Well, I didn’t care. I found myself sitting on the outside stairs and talking with her, and we got closer, mentioning how we liked each other, and then we were kissing.

“Oh,” she said, looking down. “Oh, I’m drunk.”

“Me, too.”

“Kiss me again, man.”

I did.

“This is funny,” I said. “I had no idea you liked me.”

“Neither did I. I just found out tonight. Maybe it’s the acid.”

“You have acid?”

“I took acid. You want to fuck me?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to find a place to fuck.”

We searched out and discovered Barry, who was swaying about, a beer in both hands.

“Barry,” I said, “we need a place to fuck.”

“Well,” Barry said, “you should use the guest room.”

We were all hanging onto each other, so we wouldn’t fall.

“Thanks,” Hanna said, and kissed Barry. He kissed her back. Then they were kissing quite passionately.

I smiled. “Maybe we should have a threesome.”

“Hey,” Barry said, “I’m there.”

“Really?” Hanna said. “God, Dr McGinnis, I’ve been wanting to fuck you for a long time.”

The three of us went to the guest room. It was dark, and we fell to the bed. Barry and I were all over Hanna, undressing her, kissing her, touching her. Hanna kept saying how much she wanted us both. Barry sat up and said, “I can’t do this. What am I doing?”

“What?” Hanna said.

“If my wife walked in, she’d kill me,” he said. “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

The last I saw his wife, she was lying in the grass, on acid, staring at the stars.

“Damn,” Hanna said.

“Some other time,” Barry said, and kissed her. He left.

“Come here and fuck me,” Hanna said, and I got on top of her. After a minute, she said, “Wait!”

“What is it?”

She got up and ran to the bathroom, closing the door. I listened, heard her throwing up. I left the bedroom and rejoined the party, which was starting to scatter at this point. Barry’s wife was still on the grass and Barry was snorting a line of speed in the living room.

“Back so soon?” Barry asked.

“Hanna’s sick,” I said.

“Ah, ah,” he sniffed. “Well, really, look, Nicky, this threesome sounds like fun: we have to do it a different time.”

I suddenly realized I didn’t think sharing a woman with Barry, as much as I liked him, would be my thing.

I made myself a tequila tonic, and went outside. I sat on the stairs.

Hanna joined me. Her dress was back on. “Sorry ’bout that.”

“You OK?”

“I’m OK.”

“Sure?”

“It happens. I’ve puked before.”

“Can I have a kiss?”

“I puked.”

“That’s OK.”

We kissed. She didn’t taste like anything bad.

“The party seems to be ending,” I said.

“Parties end, you go home.”

“I’m too drunk to drive.”

“I can drive.”

“You’re on acid.”

“I’m coming down,” she said. “That puke sobered me up. I can drive, believe me. You want me to drive you home?”

“That’d be nice.”

We said our goodbyes, and got into her car, a small two-seater.

“You want to come home with me?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said.

She lived in the graduate housing section on campus, a studio apartment, really, which was packed with books, CDs, clothes, a water bed, and a Fender electric guitar – not to mention a single goldfish in a bowl that, Hanna told me, had no name. It was around three in the morning when we got there.

“I feel so weird,” Hanna said, “and I feel so good.”

We lay on the waterbed, kissed and touched.

“Does my goldfish look weird to you?” she asked.

“Looks like a goldfish.”

“I think he may be getting sick,” she said. “I’ve had him all year.”

I remembered that it was almost the end of the school year – I’d entered the program in the spring semester. Summer was close. I hadn’t felt this since high school – summer, no school, what to do? I wanted Hanna.

“I know this is gonna sound bad, man,” she told me, “but I’m not sure if we should fuck.”

“Oh, boy,” I said.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I mean I wanna fuck, of course I wanna fuck, but I’m always fucking. I mean, fucking guys I just meet. I have to stop this. I started this two years ago. I was raped. After I was raped, I just fucked any guy who walked by. It messes with my head. I’m sorry.”

I was actually tired, and suggested we sleep. Hanna couldn’t sleep – the acid was still in her, and she’d done some speed.

We undressed. I liked looking at her tattoos – a dragon on her back, a snake on her left arm, a spider above her right tit, assorted butterflies and black roses on her hip, near her cunt, and on her legs. It was four-thirty in the morning.

I got on top of her.

We woke up early that afternoon, fucked again, dressed, and went onto campus to get something to eat. Slices of thick pizza, ice cold soda. I needed a beer.

“Damn, you know,” Hanna said, “I have this paper to write.”

“On?”

“Comparison of the poetry of Sharon Olds and Carolyn Forsche.”

“I love both their work.”

“You know their work?”

“Of course I know their work,” I said.

“Not too many guys…” She shrugged.

“When’s the paper due?”

“Two days.”

“Two days?”

“Twelve pages.”

“Two days,” I said.

“I always wait until the last minute,” she said. “And I always get As. I’m an A student: ask Dr McGinnis.”

“A as in ass?”

“What?”

“Guess you need to work on that paper today,” I said.

“Tomorrow.” She finished the last bite of her pizza. “I want to fuck you some more today.”

FOUR

Hanna was twenty-two, used to play in a rock band, was now an MA candidate in comparative lit (obviously). She was worried about her goldfish, but the goldfish seemed fine to me, as far as goldfish go. Our sex that day was fun and normal – we kept to several positions, we didn’t do anything kinky. I liked being with her, enclosed in her room, the world just the two of us. The world was fucked, and Hanna knew this as well as me. She’d had some bad experiences – the rape, yes, and a short stint as a heroin addict when she was a teenager, and the death of a brother by a drive-by shooting.

“I’ve seen your novel at the bookstore,” she told me, “but I haven’t read it. I’d like to.”

I gave her a copy.

That evening, I decided I should leave. I needed a change of clothes, a shower; I needed to go home and be alone for a little while, maybe write. Hanna needed to work on her paper.

“Don’t worry,” she said, hugging me, “I’ll get it done on time. I always do.”

“Good, good.”

“Well.”

“Well.”

“I always hate this part,” she said. “You want to see me again?”

“Yes,” I said. “When?”

She shrugged. “Let’s just flow.”

I went by Barry’s office. He was going through his mail.

“Nicky,” he said, “this was left on my door.”

It was a small envelope, to me from Hanna.

“Look,” he said, “I’m not your mail service.”

Dear Nicky,

I’m leaving this letter on Dr McGinnis’ door because I don’t have your number and I don’t know how to reach you. We should’ve exchanged phone numbers! What was I thinking? I need you! God, I can’t believe what’s going on. All I can think about is you being here, holding me in your arms and making me feel safe. I read your novel and it made me cry. The ending was so sad. I haven’t felt so sad in a long time. It is a good kind of sad, the kind of sad that makes you think about love and the world. I wrote my paper and now I just want you here inside me. PLEASE CALL IMMEDIATELY!

Love,

Hanna

She left her number, and I called.

“I knew it’d be you,” she said.

“Psychic?”

“Just hope.”

“The letter was nice,” I said.

“Just get over here,” she said.

“I don’t know why I didn’t notice you before,” Hanna said, after sex. “I can’t get your face out of my mind now. Even looking at your face, I also see it in my mind.”

“So you see two faces.”

“Someone else noticed you, I could tell. Alexia.”

“I know.”

“You slept with her?”

“A few times, yes.”

“Are you still?”

“Well, no,” I said.

“She’s pretty.”

“Yes.”

“I’d fuck her.”

“You’re bi?”

“When the time is right,” she said. “I was gay, for a year. Before I was raped. I had a girlfriend. We lived together. We were in a band together.”

“You loved her?”

“I loved her very much,” she squeezed me. “Right now, I’m straight as an arrow, with Nicky Bayless. Tell me what she was like.”

“Alexia?”

“Yeah. What happened to her anyway?”

“She’s – sorting out her life.”

“Aren’t we all? What was she like?”

“She’s a nice person.”

“I mean in bed, man.”

I laughed. “You won’t believe it.”

“I won’t?”

I told her everything about Alexia – except the broken plates and glasses.

“I believe that,” Hanna said. “I hear women from the Mediterranean are like that, too. Not the golden shower stuff, just – you know. You know what? I’ve never done anal sex.”

“No?”

“Nope. For no reason, really. It just never came up. Huh – it’s weird, I guess.”

“Well,” I said.

She smiled. “You wanna say, ‘Can I deflower you?’ ”

Too much of Alexia was inside my head, and I tried to push her out. But she was there. “Yeah,” I said.

“I don’t know,” Hanna said.

I pulled her close to me.

She said, “You, you.”

I grabbed her short hair and kissed her.

“Tell me,” Hanna said, “what you wanna do to me.”

“Your ass,” I said, like I was delirious. “I want your ass.”

“Like Alexia?”

“Like you.”

“There’s a first time for everything,” she said.

I played with her butt, fingers exploring. Hanna’s ass was meatier than Alexia’s, an alabaster white. I went down on her ass, my tongue pressing against her virgin pucker. I asked if she liked this and she said it felt nice. Next, I slid a finger into her. She liked this very much. I finger-fucked her for a good half hour, my other hand at her cunt, and I made her come.

“This is so good,” she said.

“Do you feel ready to be fucked in the ass?”

“The finger is nice,” she said, “but a whole cock?”

I took my finger out of her, and put it in my mouth. “You’re yummy.”

“Let’s do it.”

“You have Vaseline?”

“Cabinet, bathroom.”

I went to the bathroom, got the Vaseline, applied some to my cock, to her ass, and tried to get in her. Hanna was on her stomach, butt up. I got the head of my cock in her when she cried out, “Oh, shit, oh, crap, no! OWW! FUCK! TAKE IT OUT!”

I removed myself.

She turned around. “It’s not me, it’s just not me. A tongue, a finger, sure, but not a fucking dick, man.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You really wanted me that way.”

“I’ll live.”

“I want to please you.”

“You do.”

“Lie back.” A hand pushed my chest.

Hanna took me in her mouth. She deep-throated me, her nose pressed into my pubic hair. I immediately shot into her mouth.

“I usually don’t like the taste of come,” she told me. “Yours is OK.”

“Just OK?”

“Wanna taste?” She moved to kiss me.

“Hey, it is OK.”

“I really did cry at the end of your book,” she said later.

“So did I,” I said. “When I was writing it.”

“You’ve felt pain.”

“Sure.”

“Pain is sexy.”

“Never thought about it like that.”

“I don’t mean physical pain. I mean here,” she touched her head, “and here,” touching her chest, “the pain inside. Maybe I mean sadness. Maybe I’m a cerebral masochist.”

“I like that: ‘cerebral masochist’.”

“I love you,” she said.

“You do?”

“Is it OK to say that?”

“We hardly know each other.”

“I fall in love pretty fast. Don’t say ‘I love you’ back. Because you don’t.”

I didn’t.

FIVE

“Fuck her,” Bart said, “I want to watch you fuck the shit out of her.”

Lying naked on the bed, Randi smiled. She was on acid and pot and vodka and coke and I don’t know what else. I was with them, the both of them, in Bart’s apartment, and I wasn’t quite sure how I got there. We were at the pub, but it was summer, and there wasn’t the usual crowd – there wasn’t any Barry McGinnis or Hanna or even Alexia.

Bart found it funny that I was sleeping with Hanna.

“Funny? Why is that so funny?” I asked.

“She doesn’t seem your type,” he said.

“My type?”

“Or Alexia,” he said.

“What’s my type?” I asked.

“You tell me. Take Randi, for example.”

She was a few feet away, talking to someone, and she couldn’t hear us.

“OK,” I said.

“She looks good.”

“Yes.”

“Nice ass.”

“Yes.”

“Nice tits.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s fuckable,” Bart said.

“I imagine so.”

“Sucks cock GOOD,” Bart said.

“I imagine so.”

“Is she your type?”

“She could be my type,” I said.

“You want to fuck her?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“Nick,” he said, “I like watching guys fuck her. It really turns me on.”

Then we were at his place, and Randi got undressed and sat on the bed. We’d dropped acid before leaving the bar, and Randi was doing coke on the way.

“Who would’ve thought,” Bart said, and laughed, and slapped me on the back.

I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

“C’mon, fuck her.” Bart pulled up a chair.

Randi looked good. They were both beautiful and blonde and tan. While Bart was an MFA poet, Randi worked as a hostess of some upscale club downtown, and I knew she made good money at it. I could not help but feel aroused, especially looking at the blonde pubes between her legs. Randi saw what I was looking at and opened her legs. Her finger touched her clit, and made a circular motion. “You like what you see, Nicky?” she said. I did. I went down on her, engulfed her, got a mouthful, got a taste, ate her. The acid was hitting me pretty hard at this point. I put my tongue in her as far as I could get it. I was about to turn her over when Randi started pulling at my pants, saying she wanted my cock. Bart was getting a real kick out of this, sitting in the chair, drinking a Heineken. I was on my knees on the bed, and Randi was reaching around, cupping my balls with one hand, squeezing my ass with the other, and sucking me off. Then I had a condom on my cock, and I was fucking her. I fucked her several ways, and came. She peeled the condom off, and emptied my come into her mouth. Some of the semen spilled out the side of her lips, going down her neck and shoulder.

“Right on,” Bart said.

Bart got on the bed, and I sat in the chair. I needed a beer. I watched Bart kiss her, my come still on her lips, in her mouth. Bart started fucking her, his ass going up and down. He had a perfect, round, tanned ass. Randi spread his ass with her hands, and said, “Hey, Nicky, would you like some of this?”

“Crazy woman,” Bart laughed.

“I like watching men fuck him,” she said, “as much as he likes watching men fuck me.”

“I don’t think Nick swings that way,” Bart said.

“Do you or don’t you?” she asked me.

I got up, and went to get a beer. Bart continued to fuck her.

Later, I wondered if I shouldn’t have fucked Bart after all. I was in the mood for anything.

SIX

I had lunch with Alexia.

“You just vanished,” I said.

“I had to,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I want to understand,” I said.

She wouldn’t explain. Lunch was awkward, but it was good to see her. We went to a bar nearby to have a few drinks.

“Come home with me,” I said.

“I can’t,” she said.

“We can go to your place,” I suggested.

“You don’t want me,” she said. “You just want to fuck me.”

“I want you,” I told her, “I need you.”

“You just want to fuck me,” she said. “Fuck my ass, piss on me. You want the dirty world.”

“The world is dirty,” I said.

“I want the nice world,” she said, and added, “I’m moving, Nicky.”

“Moving?”

“To San Francisco,” she said. “Next week.”

“That’s rather sudden.”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a while.”

“What about your Master’s?”

“I can transfer to SFSU.”

“What’s in San Francisco?”

She said, “My family is not there.”

I’d been playing around on the Internet more and more, and had discovered on-line chat and all the various channels and rooms. There were some local channels, where a lot of people from the University hung out; women, in particular. Or so they claimed. This is where I met Mo. Mo was her on-line name, and evidently what people called her in real life (short for Maureen, her real name).

My on-line play with Mo was consistent with that of many others: vampirism, sexual descriptions, strange adventures and scatology. It was fun, but for the most part, silly. I soon started to grow tired of it; it was all right when you were bored, but the novelty could only last for so long.

What are you doing right now? Mo typed.

Nothing, I wrote back. Just sitting here.

Why don’t you come over?

Where do you live?

On campus, she replied, at the student apartments.

She gave me her address. I was leery at first, wondering if I was being set up. For all I knew, Mo could be a guy. She did tell me she was Asian, nineteen, and that people said she was pretty. What the hell, I believed her, and went to her place.

She was fortunate to be in the apartments and not the dorms, for an undergraduate, but still shared the apartment with three other young women (whom I had not met yet). Mo greeted me in a long white terry-cloth robe (like most kids at the University, she didn’t get out of bed until afternoon). She was an exquisite young woman, and part of my delight was that she was, indeed, a young woman, and real at that. She was Asian, as she said, with dark slanted eyes, brown skin, and long black hair. She was tall and slender and she smiled and said, “Hello,” and let me in. “So,” she said, “you’re WmGibson.”

“WmGibson” was the screen name I used on line, a bad one at that, all the cyberpunk connotations laid right out.

“Actually,” I said, “my name is Nick.”

“You said.”

“I did?”

“Yeah.”

“Nicky,” I said.

“I like ‘WmGibson’,” Mo said.

The apartment smelled of and looked of young women. I felt awkward, being older than Mo. I knew that many of the graduate students who were TAs slept with their freshmen students – it was all par for the course. But I wasn’t a TA, and Mo wasn’t one of my students. I was getting ahead of myself anyway – how did I know something of a sexual nature was going to occur between Mo and myself? Maybe she just invited me over to be friendly?

Mo offered me something to drink, and I said milk would be nice. She laughed at that, and said, “Don’t you want a beer?”

“Not now,” I said.

“I have milk,” she said.

She got me a glass of milk and she had a soda. We talked some; it was small talk. Her robe kept opening, giving me a glance of cleavage, but she’d quickly close it. I was falling in lust. Mo never wiped away the sultry grin she maintained, and I couldn’t read what was in her small dark eyes, often covered by strands of black hair. I detected something insidious. I didn’t know if I should make a move or not.

“Let’s get on-line,” she suggested, “and tell everyone you’re here. That should stir up some gossip.”

It didn’t sound exciting to me but I said why not. Mo lived to be on-line; she was a true William Gibson character in the flesh – bright, Asian, and Net-savvy. I asked about her heritage, and she said her family had come from Korea.

She took me to her bedroom, one of three in the unit. It was small and cluttered, with a single bed, a desk, and a Macintosh computer. It smelled feminine. There were clothes all over the floor – skirts, jeans, blouses, bras and panties.

She logged into one of the chatrooms we both frequented; sure enough, there were people we knew there, both on-campus and all over the globe.

Guess who is here in my room? Mo typed. WmGibson!:^)

Some people said hello to me, some said they didn’t believe it.

“Say hello,” Mo said to me, getting up from her desk.

I sat at the desk. Mo sat on the edge of her bed, which was very close to the desk.

Hey everyone, I typed. It is me, WmGibson, aka Nicky Bayless, and I am here with Mo.

Answers were like so:

No way!

Kiss Mo!

Jerk!

It’s Mo fooling again.

I felt silly typing, No it’s really me.

This is when Mo slipped her foot between my legs. First she guided her naked foot, with clean, well-clipped nails, up my leg, leaned back on the bed, and got her foot into my crotch. This wasn’t an easy thing to do, but I had my torso half-turned in the chair. I turned some more.

She sprung up, and came to me. She sat in my lap. She reached for the keyboard and typed: Guess what I’m doing? Rubbing WmGibson’s cock and balls with my left foot!

She added: I’m now trying to stick my big toe up his asshole. His asshole is resistant, but my toe is getting in there.

I laughed, and she laughed.

As the chatroom clamor went on, I touched Mo – her back, her neck, her breasts. She stood, and we embraced. She ran her fingers through my hair and it felt very nice. I kissed her chest where the robe opened.

“I haven’t showered in three days,” she told me. “I must be gross.”

“No,” I said, although I could smell and taste her sweat.

I started to stand, to kiss her. She pushed me back in the chair.

“I don’t kiss,” she said.

“What?”

“Anyone.”

“Why?”

“I hate saliva,” she said. “Mouths, tongues: yuck.”

We continued to embrace and touch. I pulled at the sash of her robe.

She said, “What do you think you’re doing, little boy?”

“I want to see your body,” I said. “You won’t let me kiss you; let me see your body.”

“Only for a second,” she said.

She opened her robe, still in my arms, and revealed her young, beautiful frame. Medium-sized breasts with dark nipples, an outie-bellybutton, a very thick patch of black pubic hair. She then closed her robe and smiled and said, “There, you’ve seen it.”

“Kiss me.”

“No way.”

I pulled her to me, my face pressed between her covered breasts. She continued to run her fingers through my hair.

“Play on the Net,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Now?”

“I need a shower.”

She left me there, at her desk, and went into the shower. I heard the water run. I logged her account off, and logged into mine, getting back on the same chatroom channel.

Hey, someone named Nexus said, are you really at Mo’s place?

Yes, I replied.

Cool, Nexus said.

I was getting all the signals wrong. Mo was naked in the shower; I could see the hot water hitting her brown body, the water rolling down it. I logged off, got up, and tried the bathroom door. It was unlocked. I went in.

“Is that you?” Mo said from the shower.

There was a lot of steam. I said, “Yes.”

“It’s about time,” she said. “Get naked and join me.”

I got naked and joined her.

We spent a good twenty minutes cleaning one another with a bar of soap, putting shampoo in each other’s hair, and touching each other’s sex. I took every opportunity I could get to feel her body – her neck, her chest, her breasts, her stomach, her ass, her cunt. She let me finger her clit, but wouldn’t let me slide my finger in; each time I tried, she said, “No, not yet.” Not yet? And she still would not kiss me on the lips; she allowed me to kiss other parts of her body, but not the lips. She took my very hard cock in her hand, stroked it, and took it in both hands. I made myself not come. We got out of the shower, and dried each other off. Naked, we went back to her bedroom. I pushed her toward the bed.

“I said I will not kiss you,” she said.

“I know,” I said, and put my mouth on her tits.

I reached for her cunt. She sat up. I laid on the bed, rubbed her back.

“You should know something,” she said. “I’m a virgin.”

“I’ve heard that before,” I said, and stifled a sad – a very sad – laugh.

“What?” she said, and just when I thought she would tell me I could fuck her in the ass, Mo said, “I swallow.”

“What’s that?”

“I can suck like a crazy machine,” she said.

“Show me,” I said.

“I want to show you,” she said, and did. She went down on my cock. She wasted no time, and had the whole thing in her mouth. She cupped my balls in her hand, squeezing just a little too hard. After the whole shower bit, I was ready to explode, and explode I did, several huge spurts of semen, which she swallowed completely.

“Yum,” she said. “Reminds me, I’m hungry. You want to go get something to eat?”

“I want to eat you,” I said.

“Not now, later,” she said. She stood, and went to her closet. “I need food. I don’t want to eat on campus.”

“There’s plenty of places to go,” I said.

“OK,” she said. “Don’t watch me dress.”

“I just like looking at you.”

“I don’t like people watching me dress. Go get your clothes on.”

I went to the bathroom and retrieved my clothes, like a good boy.

We went to get pizza a few miles off campus. She ordered a beer and wasn’t carded.

“So,” said Mo, leaning back. “Tell me about Nicky Bayless, aka WmGibson.”

“What’s to tell?”

She leaned forward, voice low. “I can still taste your come in my mouth. The back of my mouth, really. You just pumped your come in my mouth and I don’t know anything about you. Don’t you think that’s kinda weird, on my part?”

“I’m getting hard again.”

“Good. I like guys who’re always hard.”

“Tell me about you,” I said.

“I like sucking dick,” she said. “I like to swallow. I could swallow all day.”

“I’m twenty-eight,” I said.

“Nice.”

“Graduate student.”

“Nice.”

“I write things.”

“Nice.”

“But you know all this.”

“Yes.”

“So what do you want to know?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“No.”

“Do you want me to be your girlfriend?”

“Yes.”

“Will you marry me?”

“I don’t know you.”

“Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” I said. ”

“Tonight?”

“We could drive to Vegas.”

“Mo Bayless. Sounds funny.”

“Let’s do it,” I said.

“I’d give up my virginity for the man who’d marry me.”

“We can be in Vegas before midnight,” I said.

She said, “Many guys wanna marry me.”

“I bet.”

“I have a lot of boyfriends.”

“I bet,” I said, and asked, “Do you swallow them all?”

She said, “Yes.”

“Oh.”

“I bet you have girlfriends.”

“Women come and go in my life,” I said. “Dark entries.”

“And I’m just another,” she said.

“Tell me about Maureen.”

“Mo.”

“Oh?”

“I hate ‘Maureen’.”

“Mo.”

“Mo has nowhere to go,” she said, softly.

“What?”

She eyed me. “My parents would never approve of you.”

“I’m too old.”

“Too white.”

“I see.”

“I have to marry a nice Korean man -”

“I could fake it,” I said.

“- some day.”

“But not today?”

“Today,” she said, “I’d marry you.”

“Let’s do it.”

“You just want my pussy.”

“I want you.”

“Are you still hard?”

“Very.”

“I want to swallow you again,” she said. “Maybe for dessert?”

“Let’s eat fast.”

“Behavioral science,” Mo said.

“What?”

“My major. For now.”

“How am I behaving?”

“Too nice,” she said.

“What should I do, to not be so nice?”

“Grab me by the hair. Force me to suck your dick.”

“Here?”

“Sure.”

When we were done, and in my car, I grabbed her hair, hard. I tried to kiss her.

“Don’t kiss me,” she said, a hand on my chest.

“Dammit,” I said.

“Make me suck your dick. I have these elaborate rape fantasies that I’ll tell you about someday.”

I took my cock out, grabbed her head, and pushed her down. I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation of her blowjob. I came in her mouth the second time that night.

I took Mo home, and there I met her two roommates, both of whom had short hair and were nineteen or twenty, young.

“Just another guy,” I said to Mo, referring to her roommates’ looks.

“Do you care?”

“No,” I said.

“Do you want your dick sucked more?”

“Yes,” I said.

We undressed, in the dark, and lay on the bed, where she took my cock back in her mouth. I wanted her, too; I told her this.

Mo said, “I’d like your face in my pussy.”

I was quick to get between her legs. Now I had her cunt before me, the fresh smell of it, and I licked it. I spread it open. I couldn’t admire, in the dark, what I knew must have been the beauty of a virgin twat (perhaps quite unlike Alexia’s), but I could taste it, and it was the sweetest cunt I’ve ever had on my tongue, my lips, my mouth. Mo squirmed with delight, and made enough loud sounds that I knew her roommates were getting an earful. I moved a finger to her opening, and was surprised she let me do this. I slid the finger in. Mo’s body tensed all over, and began to shake. “That’s it, Nicky,” she said, “finger-fuck that kitty,” and I did, sliding it in and out, my tongue pressed and lapping against her clit the whole time. Mo’s shaking became almost frightening, but intriguing and fun at the same time; and she came with such a shrilling cry I’m sure it echoed all across the campus.

I kissed her belly-button, my lips wet with her sex. I moved up to kiss her, but she looked away. I moved up more, so that my cock was at her mouth. She took it. My hands were against the wall by the bed, balancing my body, so that I was able to move my cock in and out of her mouth with the motion of my hips, fucking her pretty Asian face. Looking down, all I could see was the silhouette of her hair, and a slight whiteness of her eyes, as she was looking up at me. Mo’s hands grabbed my ass, pulling me, making me fuck her mouth deeper. She squeezed and rubbed my ass, and one finger moved to touch my asshole. I was a piston, going in and out of her mouth, and I too let out a loud groan (maybe too loud, wanting her roommates to hear) and came in Mo’s mouth a third time that night.

I came in her mouth a fourth time a few hours later, waking up to her sucking me off. It took me a good while to get there this fourth time, but she didn’t seem to mind, and I enjoyed every minute, every second.

It was awkward sleeping in that single bed with her; we were close and entwined. Sleeping with someone else, I usually like room. It was also very nice. Her smell, her body, her hair, her flesh was always on me. I felt her pubes against my leg. She slept well, but I didn’t. I never sleep well in a new environment. I looked at her in the night, and pondered on her beauty, and basked in the comfort of being so near her.

In the morning, we sixty-nined, she on top of me; I licked her from cunt to asshole as she kept my cock deep into her mouth. She didn’t come, but I did.

She had to get ready to go to class, and I had to go home. I had nothing to do at home. I tried talking her into skipping class.

“Kiss me goodbye,” she said.

I kissed her, gently, on the lips.

“That’s no kiss,” Mo said.

“You said you hated kissing.”

“I say that to all strangers.”

“I’m not a stranger?” I asked.

“After last night?” she said.

We kissed for a good five minutes; then I left.

I was soon to learn I was in a long line of lovers Mo had, mostly younger men. A few days later, I went to her place, and she took me inside, wearing shorts and a halter. There was a guy sitting on her floor. He wore glasses, baggy jeans, was perhaps twenty. He stared at me.

“Steve,” she said, “time to go.”

Still looking at me, he got up, and left.

“Someone?” I asked.

“I was blowing him most of the afternoon,” Mo said.

“How many times did he come?”

“Twice.”

“Your mouth must be tired,” I said.

“No.” She smiled. “I can suck you for a few hours.”

And she did, and I came in her mouth twice.

“Just how many cocks do you suck?” I asked her.

“A lot,” Mo said. “I’m a suck-machine, you know.”

She wasn’t kidding. But I was going to Bosnia in a few days, and I really didn’t care.

Still, the idea of her sucking cock non-stop rows of dick was a delightful image.

SEVEN

Randi’s ass was high in the air, moving back and forth. “Yeah,” Bart said. The three of us were royally fucked-up.

“Spread your ass,” I said to her.

She reached back and spread her cheeks.

“I want to see that asshole,” I said.

“She has a nice little bud,” Bart said.

“Spread that asshole,” I said.

“You wanna fuck her in the ass?” Bart asked me.

“Deeply.”

“I like watching her taking it in the ass,” Bart said, “horny little bitch.”

“That’s hot little bitch,” Randi said.

Bart went to the store to get more alcohol. Randi and I were kissing on the bed, still naked.

She stopped me.

“I don’t like all this as much as you think,” she said.

“This?”

“It’s Bart’s thing,” she said. “It’s what turns him on.”

“Maybe I should go.”

“No.”

“Now I feel weird.”

“Don’t. This is fine,” she said.

I didn’t feel like kissing.

“I shouldn’t talk,” she said.

“It’s all right,” I said.

When Bart came back, Randi started sucking on my flaccid cock.

I got hard.

EIGHT

I went to San Francisco to do a reading.

I called Alexia. She lived in this city now, and I had her number.

“Alexia,” I said, “it’s me.”

“Where are you?” she said.

“The City.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Really, I am. I’m doing a reading.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“How weird,” she said. “I didn’t hear about any reading. How weird.”

“Why weird?”

“I can’t say.”

“Why?”

“It’s a secret,” she said.

“I like secrets,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “Then you write about other people’s secrets. You make the lives around you into stories.”

“Well, I’m here and I’d like to see you,” I said. “Would you like to see me?”

“Of course,” she said, “but I’m sick. Don’t I sound sick to you? I must sound sick.”

“How sick?” I asked.

“Sick in bed,” she said.

I thought she said sick in the head.

She said: “I haven’t gotten out of bed all day. That’s why I’m not at work. You know I got a job – finally. And not in the film biz. I’ve been sick for a few days but I’m getting over it – the flu, I had the flu, I still have the flu. A little bit.”

“Oh, I see,” I said. “Well, the reading’s tonight,” I said.

“Where?”

“This bookstore on Valencia, I don’t know where: it’s called Sucking the Zeitgeist Books.”

“If I feel better later on,” Alexia said, “I’ll go.”

“Please go,” I said, “I’ll feel so rejected and sad if you don’t.”

“Oh, you’re good, Nicky! You know what a guilt sponge I am! You’re manipulating me!” She was laughing.

“I work at it,” I said.

“OK,” she said, “I’ll be there.”

It was good to see her. She did look a little sick and she kept wiping her nose with a tissue. She wore her dark-rimmed glasses and a short black dress; her long black hair was in a ponytail. I ran my fingers through her hair like I used to when we were together, those brief moments, and she smiled and made a sexy sound and said, “I like you touching my hair.” It all seemed so strange. We were sitting in Sucking the Zeitgeist Bookstore, which was also a coffee shop, with my publisher and another writer whose novel was out from this same publisher – his name was Luke and he was a professor from Utah and he also knew Barry McGinnis, they were colleagues of some sort, had edited a few special issues of journals together. Also with us was Karl, one of those – what I say – wannabe hangers-on; he published a magazine with a small circulation (had even published me) and all he liked to talk about were other writers, which was usually something bad; he also liked to talk about the novel he was writing, the novel that one day would blow all our minds. I’d met a lot of Karls since I’d been publishing my work. I was more drawn to his girlfriend, Lori, a tall thin woman who was quite pierced.

Alexia leaned over and told me she had to pee and did I know where the bathroom was? I didn’t. I grabbed a glass from a table and put it by her knees and said, “Pee in here.”

“I don’t know if my aim is that good,” she said. She got up and searched for the bathroom.

I looked at the glass.

“So where do you know her from?” Karl asked me.

“Back home,” I said. “She was a McGinnis student.”

“She’s cute,” Lori said.

“Yeah,” my publisher said, smoking a cigarette, “she’s cute.”

The reading was somewhat well attended, fifty or so people. They didn’t know who I was – no one knew who I was. I was obscure as any writer. I read, signed a few books. Luke read from his novel, Karl read some of his poetry.

I hate readings. But my publisher had talked me into this.

There was an open reading after. I figured that’s why most of these people were here: they wanted to read their own stuff, that constant search for an audience. I didn’t listen.

We all went outside and talked about where we’d go. My publisher suggested this bar down the street. I wanted Alexia to go; she didn’t seem to be into it. She was huddling with Lori; the two girls were talking. Lori oozed sex, in her tight jeans, her cut-off top, exposing her pierced belly-button. Her nose and lips and eyebrows were also pierced.

“Come along,” I said to Alexia.

“She’s sick,” Lori said. “She has to go home.”

“Lori is my doctor,” Alexia said; she smiled at Lori like they were old friends.

“How far away do you live?” Lori asked her.

“I’ll take the Muni,” Alexia said.

“I’ll walk you,” I said.

“You don’t have to walk me,” she said.

“It’s dark,” I said.

“It was dark when I came here.”

“But if something happened to you, I’d feel guilty for the rest of my life.”

She took my hand and said, “How sweet.”

It was weird walking hand-in-hand with her.

“This is weird,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

“I feel weird,” she said.

“I don’t,” I lied.

“I haven’t seen you in months.”

“Months, weeks, years: it’s all the same to me.”

“What have you been doing with yourself? Other than going off to bad places? You know, I had a dream you were going to come here soon, a dream during my fever. That’s what’s so weird.”

“Oh.”

We were standing at the Muni tracks. “What train are you getting?”

“The N Judah,” she said.

I didn’t know what that was. She took her hand from mine. A train was coming and I was disappointed. “Is that yours?” I asked.

“That’s the J Church,” Alexia said. “I want the N Judah.”

I felt better and said, “I like San Francisco – I need to come here more often.”

“Be sure to always call me when you do.”

I pulled her close to me.

“Oh, now,” she said.

“The last time we were together,” I said, “before you moved here, remember what you told me -”

“Yes.”

“- that when I came up here, your bed was open to me, that you wanted me to stay with you…”

“I had a feeling you’d remember that,” she said.

“I don’t want to go to that bar.”

“They’ll wonder what happened to you. They’ll get worried.”

“I’ll call,” I said. “I’d rather go home with you.”

She put her face into my chest.

“Alexia,” I said, touching her.

“It’s not that I don’t want you to,” she said, “but I’m sick and you’ll get sick, too. I’d love to take you home and fuck you all night and deep down I really want to do that, I want to fuck you: but you’ll just get sick.”

“So I’ll get sick.”

“I don’t feel very sexual, right now,” she said. “I’m too sick to have you in my bed. I wouldn’t mind having you there but I’m really very tired and it wouldn’t be good for both of us. My ass doesn’t feel like fucking. I just, I just…”

Another train started to come our way.

“N Judah?” I said.

“Yes.”

I wanted a kiss but she turned. She said, “You’ll get my flu and you don’t want that.”

I kissed her cheek.

“You’re here for a few days?” she said.

I nodded.

“If I feel better tomorrow night, I want you to come stay with me.”

I stood there and watched N Judah go away and then headed back to the location of the bar my colleagues had gone to. I hoped I’d gotten the directions right. This wasn’t a good neighborhood, but I’d been in worse. There were a lot of dealers and whores mixed with club-goers – and some pretty tough-looking bars that appeared interesting. A woman was screaming from the third floor of a hotel; she threw a bottle down which shattered not too far from me. She kept screaming. I could’ve took a cab, but I liked what I was seeing. I felt in the zero and I wanted to be with the zero. I was a rising young writer, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I supposed to be above all this? I didn’t feel like it. Someone tried to sell me crack and it was tempting. There were bodies sleeping in all the alleys.

I found the bar. I didn’t like it – too many successful-looking thirtysomethings in suits and evening gowns, with a jazz band playing in the corner. I had a beer. It was too comfortable here.

We were joined by a young lady who was doing publicity for my publisher. Her name was Kate.

Outside the bar, we debated whether we should walk or take a cab. We were going back to my publisher’s house. My feet already hurt from all the San Francisco trekking.

“We could all fit into two cabs,” my publisher said. She stood on the street corner and said, “It’s so cheap to get there and so far to go.”

“That’d be a great title for a book,” I said.

“Write it,” she said.

I was sharing a cab with Karl and Lori. My publisher, Luke, and Kate were in the other cab.

“What’s to do at her house?” Karl was saying. “I don’t feel like going there. Do you?”

“I’m staying there,” I said.

“Why don’t you stay with us?” Lori said.

I guess I knew, deep down, that I would get the opportunity to fuck Lori. I didn’t think that Karl would have to be around.

I plain just did not like Karl, no matter how much he tried to get buddy-buddy with me. He was a fake, he had that air about him. I’d read his fiction and poetry and it was pure crap. The guy didn’t know how to write. He had a beer gut and a dull look to his eyes and I had to wonder what Lori saw in him. They’d been together for three years, I was told. She was a delectable person, and I couldn’t wait to have her. They had a spacious and dark apartment with a coffin in the living room, which I was told was a guest bed. I had no intention of sleeping in that. We drank some beer, they smoked pot (I didn’t care much for pot); then Karl said, “Hey, I have some XTC.”

“Let’s do some X,” Lori said.

“OK,” I said.

Karl went to get the drug. Lori licked her lips. I tried projecting to her that I wanted her – could she read my mind? She had the thickest lips. I wondered how painful it was to pierce them. Karl returned with three capsules of the drug in question.

It was the perfect drug to get into the right mood.

Karl put on some music: gothic, electronic, and eerie. Lori began to dance around the room, her body slinky, slithery. She took her top off; small, pointed breasts. She pulled her jeans down, and danced in black thong underwear. There was a tattoo of a naked woman on her ass, a Celtic band around her ankle. She danced and she danced and the drug started to get to us all; my mind was intent on fucking this dancing body. My cock was hard and it hurt.

Lori peeled her panties off. Her cunt was shaved naked, her clit and her labia both pierced. She touched herself.

“I’m so fucking wet,” she said. “Won’t you two just fuck me?”

We went to the bedroom. There was a futon on the floor, clothes scattered all over. Karl lit a candle. I was sucking on Lori’s tits, falling to the futon, undressing myself. Karl loomed over us and watched. He began to undress. I didn’t care to watch him.

I put my cock in Lori’s mouth. Her tongue was pierced, and the metal ball against my cock’s flesh was a nice sensation, especially on the drug.

Karl was naked, and moved to join us. I saw his dick and was amazed. He had the biggest one I’d ever seen up close. I’d say eleven inches, and very thick and veiny, with a large head. Maybe this is why she liked him, lived with him. Was it really just the cock? I’m an average-sized guy; I didn’t feel threatened by Karl’s dick, I was just flabbergasted.

Lori positioned herself so that she could suck me, and Karl could fuck her from behind. She took in a deep breath and her body stiffened when he entered her. We did this for a while, then Lori turned around so that she could suck Karl, and I slid myself into her cunt. We switched back again. Then Lori got on top of me, riding me. Karl moved behind her. He spat in his palm, rubbed his saliva on her asshole, his hand grazing my cock as he did so. I couldn’t imagine him getting that monster flesh into her butt, but he did, and it wasn’t easy for her. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she cried, digging her nails into my chest. I could feel Karl’s member through her septum, and realized I’d never done this before, not even with Bart and Randi. Our bodies were hot with the drug and the physical motion, slicked wet with sweat. Each thrust into her anus, Lori grunted, eyes shut. Karl was enjoying himself. Tears formed at Lori’s eyes.

“Let’s switch positions,” Karl suggested.

He laid down on the bed, and Lori got on top of him. I got behind her. Her asshole was a gaping hole; it was like someone had bored a cavern into her ass, it was so wide. Obviously, I didn’t have any trouble putting it in her, and I felt nothing. It took a minute for her sphincter to undilate, and snug around my cock. When it did, it was nice, but now her cunt was being drilled by Karl’s monster. I closed my eyes and came into her bowels. Lori reached back for me as I pulled out, took my cock in her mouth, and cleaned it. Karl got up, gently pushing her onto her stomach, so he could get on top of her, and go back into her ass. I stood there and watched his prick violate her ass in a glorious way – he was fucking her hard, she was crying into the sheets, he started laughing, and came himself. He got up, his body covered in sweat, and said, “Look at that.”

Lori lay there shaking, her ass once again blown open.

“I love wrecking her rectum,” he said.

The woman who’d published my collection of stories, her name was Brianna. She had spiked, dyed blonde hair and a number of piercings and tattoos herself, and was two years younger than me. I didn’t have any ideas about her because she was a lesbian, and lived with her lover, Raven. Raven didn’t like me, I could tell; Raven had dyed black hair and was goth and had a whole lot of tattoos.

Brianna’s publishing my book was a fluke. She had a small company that released industrial bands (mostly San Francisco home grown) on CD, and she published a quarterly magazine with a focus on alternative music and literature. She’d published several of my stories, and soon began accepting so many that one day she sent me an email suggesting she publish all the stories as a book, because she also had a novel by this professor in Utah that she wanted to publish. So now she was a book publisher, her press was unknown – another small press in a sea of many. My books were warehoused in her basement. Like the publisher of my first novel, she was a one-person operation, for the most part, and she was probably going to lose a lot of money putting my words into the world.

“So you went to Karl and Lori’s,” she said.

Her lover, Raven, wrinkled her nose.

“Yeah,” I said.

Brianna grinned, and shook her head.

That evening, Luke and I did another reading, at Small Press Traffik. The attendance was small, but the people were very interested in the work. I signed a few books.

Brianna wasn’t completely alone in her venture as a publisher; she had her friend Kate helping her with publicity. Kate was at this reading, and she came back to Brianna’s apartment, where we drank tequila and vodka, and Brianna and Raven smoked pot. Kate started smoking, and so did Luke. Then Luke wanted to order pizza, so we ordered pizza.

Luke retired early to the guest room; he had to go back to Utah in the morning. Raven also went to bed. I was going to sleep on the fold-out couch in the living room.

It was me, Brianna, and Kate.

The three of us got drunk. Brianna started dancing around the room, saying, “Why am I so crazy? Why am I so crazy?”

She bumped into a bookcase, a tall bookcase, that almost came crashing down on her.

“Bri!” Kate said, laughing.

“Oooohhh,” Brianna went. “I’m fucked up. Maybe I should go to bed.”

“I’m too drunk to go home,” Kate said, “but here’s a pillow!” and she laid her head in my lap. I was sitting on the couch.

I looked down at her.

“Hi,” she said.

I touched her round face, and caressed it. I ran my fingers through her thick, dirty blonde hair.

“What a cute sight,” my publisher said.

I tried to reach down and kiss Kate. It was hard. She sat up, and we kissed. Brianna watched us, weaving.

“I had a feeling you two would hit it off,” Brianna said.

“Go to bed,” Kate said.

Brianna stumbled into her bedroom.

“Turn off the lights,” Kate said.

I got up, switched the lights off, as Kate folded the couch out into a bed. As she adjusted the sheets, I got undressed. I got on the bed. She also took her clothes off, leaving her bra and panties on. I held out my arms; she came to me, and we held each other and kissed.

Her body was small and plump and warm.

“When I saw your author photo, three months ago,” she said, “you know, for the book?”

“Yeah.”

“I knew I wanted you. I knew I’d have you.”

“Wow,” I said.

“What?

“Nothing.”

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You’re sexy,” she said.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said.

“You don’t know anything about me. Do you know my last name?”

“No.”

“See.”

“You know mine,” I said.

“Yeah. I know a lot of things about you.”

“Like what?”

“Your stories are very painful,” she said.

“To you?”

“To me, to you, to anyone. You’re a sad soul.”

“Sometimes I’m sad,” I said. “Right now, I’m happy.”

“I’m happy, too.”

We kissed more. I unclasped her bra, touched her round, large breasts. I reached between her legs.

“I haven’t had sex in a year,” she told me.

“Oh.”

“Since my divorce.”

“OK.”

“But I’m ready to have sex.”

Sex with Kate wasn’t wild, bizarre, or kinky. I got on top of her; she wrapped her legs around me. We fucked slowly, and it was very nice. It was very warm. It was like we’d known each other for many years.

We slept in each other’s arms.

In the morning, she was gone. I looked at the ceiling. Luke was gone, too. I had a flight back home late in the afternoon.

NINE

I was sitting in the patio of the campus bar, drinking a pitcher of dark beer with Bart. Bart had been drinking since noon; he was pretty gone.

“One of these days,” Bart was saying, “you have to share one of your women with me!”

“I don’t have any women,” I said.

“Yeah, right.”

“Nothing real, like a girlfriend,” I said.

“But you get some now and then.”

“Now and then,” I said.

“Did you really used to fuck Alexia? Before she vanished?”

“Yeah. She’s in San Francisco.”

“You liked her?”

“And Hanna.”

“Hanna?”

“You know Hanna.”

“Of course I know Hanna,” Bart said. “I fucked her once. Maybe twice.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Hanna fucks,” Bart said.

I nodded.

“OK, I didn’t fuck her: I was lying,” he said. “But I know some people who have.”

“OK.”

“Hey, there’s Zina,” he said.

He started waving.

Zina was a poet in the MFA program, whom I’d met several times in passing. She had light brown skin and dark hair, wide brown eyes and a chiseled, distinct face. I knew she was half-Spanish, half-German, something like that, she’d told me once, at a party, I think. She joined Bart and myself.

“Have a beer, Zina,” Bart said.

“I was just on my way home,” she said.

“You can have a beer,” I said.

“I usually don’t like beer,” she said. “Maybe I’ll have some wine.” She got up and went to the bar, returned with a glass of white wine. She was wearing tight, dark slacks and a blue blouse.

The three of us didn’t talk about much – some gossip, some b.s. on the nature of poetry. It was starting to get dark out. “I wanted to get home before it got dark,” Zina said.

“Where do you live?”

“Two blocks away. I don’t like walking in the dark. You think you could walk me home?”

“I could,” I said.

“See ya,” Bart said.

So I walked with Zina.

“You’re a strange character,” she told me.

“Why do you say that?”

“No one can figure you out.”

“Do people try and figure me out?”

“Some people do.”

“Like who?”

“People.”

“Maybe you’re the strange one.”

“I know I’m the strange one,” she said. “My rabbit is going to be mad at me. I’m late; he’s hungry I bet.”

“Your what?”

“My rabbit,” Zina said. “I have a pet rabbit. He’s an albino rabbit.”

“You keep him in a cage?”

“Not at all. He roams free. I mean, he does have a cage. He doesn’t stay in it much.”

“Doesn’t he shit all over the place?” I said. “Dingle-berries, or whatever they’re called.”

“No. He’s trained to poop in his cage,” Zina said.

“No, he’s not. You can’t train rabbits to do that.”

“I did.”

“I thought they weren’t in control of where they crapped,” I said.

“My rabbit has control.”

“Your albino rabbit,” I said. “I don’t believe you,” I said.

“Think I’m making this up?”

“You’re pulling my leg.”

“Do you want to see my albino rabbit who’s trained to shit in his cage or what?” Zina asked.

She lived on the second floor of the apartment complex. I went inside with her. Her place was sparse of furniture, heavy on books. A small, albino rabbit (white fur, red eyes) was waiting at the door.

“Moby Dick!” She picked up the rabbit and hugged it. “This is Nick; Nick, this is Moby Dick.”

I nodded to the rabbit.

“He looks hungry, doesn’t he?” she said.

I nodded.

“He’s very hungry,” she said. I went with her into the kitchen, where she put the rabbit down, and put some rabbit feed and a carrot stick in the rabbit’s wire-mesh cage. “You want something real to drink?” she said. “Besides that god-awful beer.”

“What’s wrong with beer?”

“There’s something basically barbaric about beer,” she said.

“What do you have?”

“Let’s take a look.” She opened a cabinet above the stove. I think, for the first time, I took a good look at her body (and her ass) and admired what I saw. “Rum and vanilla sherry,” she said, “it’s all I have.”

“Coke?”

“Pepsi.”

“A rum and Pepsi sounds good.”

“Your wish is my command.”

We both had rum and Pepsi, sitting at the small table near the kitchen. The kitchen was littered with toys – dolls, army men, action figures, dinosaurs.

“Toys for your rabbit?” I said.

“Toys for me,” she said, “I like toys.”

She was twenty-nine, had majored in religious studies as an undergrad, at this same university. She’d had an affair with one of her professors. We began to drink sherry.

I’ll skip right to the sex. We were both pretty drunk. I’m not sure where it began; yes, I was very drunk and we were talking and getting closer and the next thing I knew we were frantically, almost violently kissing. She was sitting in my lap, the way she would sit many times later, and she opened my shirt up and said she liked my chest, said, “It looks delicious,” and she bit into it, bit into my skin, but I didn’t care, the pain was OK, like the pain when she bit my lips as we kissed, and how she grabbed my throat and started to choke me, the air leaving me, letting go just at the right time. I opened her blouse, unclasped her bra, her nipples at my fingers, her dark eyes glaring at me, and the circles under those eyes. The circles under her eyes would come to haunt me some day, and I only wish I knew then what I was about to get into.

She had a double bed in her bedroom, and a computer on a metal desk. There was an opened document, what looked like a poem.

I was too drunk to fuck; she said it was OK. We were partly undressed. I took her sex to my mouth – she tried to stop me, once, but didn’t the second time – her sex small and salty like the sex of any woman, and then she tried to do the same for me but I stopped her because she was hurting me with her teeth and she said she was very drunk, she never got this drunk, and we lay there holding each other. I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted her; I thought she was asleep but she wasn’t and we were kissing again and I started to put myself in her, whispering, “It’s OK, now,” and in the dark I saw her eyes roll up in her head and she grabbed the metal rail of her bed and we finally fucked. An hour later, still drunk but awake, we tried again, she told me she liked men coming in from behind, but we were still too drunk to be very amorous and she began to masturbate. She masturbated with a frenzy, lying on her stomach, her hand going at it on her cunt like that hand was possessed. I watched and she said, “I’m sorry, I like doing that. I like getting myself off.”

She seemed to sleep well. I couldn’t sleep. I kept hugging her warm body next to me. I liked it here with her. I liked her bed, her company, more than any of the others, these past few months – my divorce from celibacy, my entrance back into the world of sex and women.

In the morning we looked at each other, feeling awkward, and when I asked if this would happen again, she said, “That’s up to you. You can come over any time.”

The next night, we made love and we weren’t drunk and we were like two regular people connecting and everything seemed to be just right.

TEN

Zina’s alarm went off, and we both jumped. Zina grabbed her alarm clock and threw it against the wall. It stopped. Naked, we looked at each other, and again there was that awkward feeling. This was my third stay at her place.

“Oh,” we both said.

“God,” she said. “I hate alarm clocks.”

“What time is it?”

“Must be eight.”

“I, um, Zina,” I said.

She touched my lips with her hand. “Don’t say anything. You don’t need to say anything. Do you need to go anywhere? I have an early class. Do you actually attend classes? It’s not like I’m prying. I just want to start some kind of conversation in an obviously maladroit situation. Listen to the words I use. So I’m a poet and, uh, you already know it. Huh. Like we look at each other and say: ‘What should I say?’ Is anything really on both our minds? There must be a lot. I’m really not sure what’s on my mind. I have this very small mind, you see. Not that I’m small-minded, just that my brain is small like my body is small because I’m small person. I always wanted to be a tall person: so my mind’d be tall with tall thoughts all the time. Are you married and don’t want to tell me and: am I assisting in adultery? You’re not married, no, I can tell. Maybe you were once married: don’t know. Not that I wouldn’t have slept with you if you – were married; but I really don’t like to sleep with married men any more. Oh, hell, I don’t care. I could just pretend I’m sick; we can stay naked and stay in bed and sleep or make love or watch TV -”

“You don’t have a TV.”

“Stay in bed, fuck.”

“My feelings exactly,” I said.

“Could just lie here in bed till noon, afternoon. I used to do that a lot. Worked nights. Maybe I should get another night job. I’m really a night owl – used to come home late and stay up late working on my poems and then sleep till past noon and get up for work and – go to work.”

“What’d you do?”

“Delivered pizzas.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“No. Thirty minutes or less! I did this for, what? I did this for two years. Undergrad.”

“I can’t see you doing that,” I said.

“Why not? I wore a uniform and everything. I even made good tips.”

“Did any men ever come on to you? Drunk men who ordered pizzas?”

“Not really. Sometimes they’d give me wine coolers as part of my tip. That was always fun.”

“I bet.”

“I want to close my eyes and go back to sleep.”

“Do it.”

“No.”

“Close your eyes.”

“OK.”

“They’re closed?”

“You can see that.”

“How is -?”

“Much better.”

My body was next to hers. “Just go back to sleep.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Nicky,” she said, “hold me.”

“I am.”

“Hold me tighter.”

I did.

“You’re being a bad influence on -”

“Me?”

“Me,” she said.

“I know,” I said.

ELEVEN

I went to Zina’s apartment late in the day, after one of McGinnis’ classes. Her front door was unlocked, like she told me it would be, like she said she often left it unlocked. I could hear her in her bedroom, typing away at her computer. I crept in. Moby Dick was at the doorway, and looked at me. I thought better of scaring her. She was sitting at her computer in shorts and a halter, hair pulled up in a messy tail.

“Zina,” I said.

She spun around in her chair. “You!”

“Expecting someone else?” I sat on the bed.

“Only you. Only you would be here.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t leave your door -”

“I was expecting you,” she said. “I told you on the phone. I said let yourself -”

“I scared you.”

She sat next to me. “A little.”

“What are you writing?”

“What does it look like?”

“What’s the subject?”

“Flying.”

“Oh,” I said.

“If I had wings,” she said, “I could fly. I could fly here, I could fly there. I’d be rich! Marveling everyone in the world how I can fly.”

“I can fly.” I laid back on the bed.

Zina got on top of me. “Can you now?”

“I’m a superhero, you see. But this is a secret. Well, now you know the secret. When I’m a superhero, I can fly. I’m a superhero – with no name.”

“Show me,” she said. She kissed my nose. “I want to see you fly.”

“Can’t,” I said. “Not in costume. Right now, I’m a regular person.”

“But when you’re a superhero -?”

“I can fly.”

“Well,” Zina said, “not all of them fly.”

“Superman does.”

“Batman doesn’t.”

“He doesn’t have super powers. He’s a vigilante.”

“Batman is sexy,” and she rolled off me, looking at the ceiling. “I’ve seen those movies. I’m not talking about the goofy Batman on TV. I mean the movies, armor-plated nipples and everything!”

“All superheroes are sexy.”

“Does Spiderman fly?”

“No. He swings around the city with his fake webs.”

“Who’s that guy who runs really fast?”

“Runs?”

“Like lightning.”

“The Flash.”

“Yeah,” she said, “he wears all red.”

“The Flash.”

She said, “I’d like to be like that, run around all in red, running faster than – faster than I don’t know what.”

I moved to kiss her, to say, “You’re Wonder Woman.”

She got up. “No. I’m too short, if you have not noticed. So,” she bent down, and grabbed my legs, “when you’re a superhero, do you wear one of those tight, sexy spandex outfits?”

“You bet.”

“And battle evil foes.” Her hands were running up my leg.

“I keep the world safe and clean,” I told her.

“Sexy hero,” she said, unzipping my pants. She took my cock out, and started sucking on it. She sucked long and slow; I relaxed and allowed myself to enjoy this. I came, but she didn’t swallow. She let it go out of her mouth and down my cock. She looked at it. She moved up onto the bed and put her head on my chest. “So where are we going with all this?”

“This?”

“This,” she touched my stomach, “and this,” touching my wet cock, covered in saliva and semen.

“This.” I touched her back, her ass.

“Sing to me,” she said.

“What song?”

“Sing to me all night,” she said.

“I’ll sing to you all week,” I said, “all year.”

She kissed my neck, nuzzled her face into my neck. “You smell good.”

“You smell pretty good yourself.”

“You always smell like sex,” Zina said. “Is this a good or bad thing?”

“Everything between us is a good thing,” I said.

“Will it always be?”

“Don’t be a pessimist.”

“Everything just seems to be too good.”

“Zina,” I said.

“We’ll end in tragedy,” she said.

“Tears?”

“Violence?”

“Pain?”

“Maybe blood,” she said.

“You have these thoughts?”

She sat up. “Put your hands here,” indicating her neck. She took my hands, and put them there. “There, there. Now choke me.”

“Why?”

“I want you to.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Keep your hands there and squeeze.”

“Like this?”

“Harder.”

“I’ll hurt you.”

“You won’t.”

“Well.”

“Just do it, you bastard.”

I squeezed her neck hard. “You like this?”

“You know what I like?” She broke free from me. She plopped down on her hands and knees, body on top of me; she said, “What I really like is men to fuck me from behind, my ass high in the air, and reach over, here, here,” taking my hand, “reach over like so and choke me, like so, as they fuck me from behind, like so.”

“Is this romantic talk?” I had to laugh.

“Depends on your upbringing,” Zina said.

I laid next to her. “Let’s not talk.”

“Who said we have to talk?”

“Sometimes,” I said, “I like the silence.”

She kissed me, and put her head on my chest. “Is this getting serious?”

“I don’t know what serious is,” I said. “I’m just an idiot.”

We stopped talking, and started kissing, which led to fucking. I fucked her the way she wanted, my cock in her pussy from behind, and I reached over and choked her. It wasn’t an easy thing to do; I thought it’d be easier if she were on her back, so I’d have better access to her neck. “Choke me harder,” she pleaded, and I did, and her body spasmed as she came, my hand still at her neck. “Oh boy,” she said.

I woke up with a short scream. I stopped myself. I was sweating. It was dark in the room. I was naked.

“What is it?” Zina said. “Superhero, what is it?” She pulled me to her breast.

“Dreaming,” I said.

“Hush.”

“I was having a bad dream.”

“Hush.”

“I was dreaming of an angel.”

“Angel?”

“A dead angel.”

“Angels don’t die,” she said.

“I thought I saw a dead angel, not too long ago.”

“Go back to sleep, Nicky.”

We lay there for a while.

“Are you asleep?” she asked.

“No.”

“You were dreaming again.”

“With eyes open,” I said.

“Now I have angels on my mind,” she said. “Could I be an angel? I could really fly then. With wings. Do you know what the beauty of angels is?”

“No.”

“They have no self-pity.”

Zina and I started to make love, in her bed, and she stopped me, a hand on my chest – “Wait.”

“What?”

“Why are you here?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Maybe,” she said, “I like to ask questions.”

“I’m here,” I said, “because I want to be here.”

“I was hoping for a different answer,” she said.

“Like what?”

“Kiss me.”

I did.

“That was a peck,” she said.

I kissed her again.

“Why are you here?” I said.

“Because this is my apartment and I live here,” she said.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” I said. “Something is wrong.”

Zina looked away from me. “Things are getting different. We’re seeing more of each other. I’m sorry. I think I forgot all the moves somewhere: how to budge, how to speak, how to make eye contact. Been a while since I’ve been in a relationship. Maybe I’m afraid of doing the wrong thing. Maybe I don’t want to do anything at all. Maybe I don’t know what to do.”

“Don’t do this,” I said.

“What?”

She was looking at her lava lamp, next to her computer. “Come here and look at this.” She went to the lamp.

“What is it?”

“Come and look.”

I joined her.

“That glob in there,” she said, pointing to the lamp, “it almost looks like a person. Like a person looking at me.”

“Seems just like a glob of lava lamp lava to me,” I said.

“I see a person.”

“What person?”

“You.”

“Me?”

“Don’t you see yourself?”

“Well,” I said, “no.”

“What are you doing in my lava lamp?”

I reached for her – “Trying to get out so I can fuck you.”

She pushed me away, hard. I fell on the floor.

“Get out of my lava lamp,” Zina said.

“Hey,” I said.

She sat on the floor with me. She looked at me. She said, “Can I tell you something, Nicky?”

“Now?”

“Something I want to tell you,” she said.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“I went crazy, once,” she said.

“Crazy?”

“I mean -”

“It happens to us all.”

“Nicky -”

“It’s a crazy world,” I said, “and a dirty one.”

“Listen to me, I’m serious.”

“OK.”

“I wasn’t right in the head. This head: you see my head? I don’t know what went wrong. Something went wrong with this head. I was really paranoid, like all those conspiracy people who think the United Nations are going to invade America. Well that’s an arcane reference. I should shut up. No, I won’t. I was convinced everyone was talking about me behind my back – my co-workers, my friends. I had just gotten out of this relationship with an older man -”

“How much older?”

“Older. He was – I told you about him. A professor here. He was divorced.”

“OK.”

“That’s really a different story for a different time. What was I saying?”

“People were talking about you.”

“Oh.”

“Were they?”

“Thought so. I mean, people do talk about you when you’re not around, and I was obsessed. It was driving me crazy. Crazy. I – couldn’t sleep.”

“What were they saying?”

“The usual shit.”

“Back-stabbing? The kind of people who smile in your face and stick a huge knife between your shoulder blades every chance they can get? Know the type,” I said.

“No. Well, yes, I don’t know,” she said. “Stop interrupting me,” she said. “It was a major problem, especially when the billboard ads starting talking to me.”

“Billboard ads?”

“Everywhere I went,” Zina told me, “I was convinced billboard ads were delivering subliminal messages just to me. Specifically to me, you see. They were telling me things, like what these people were doing, how I was displaced in the universe.”

I asked, “Who were sending you these messages?”

She replied, “Spiritual beings, aliens in UFOs, some kind of strange creatures – and then they started to invade my lava lamp and talk to me from there.”

“Sounds like a problem.”

“Somewhere deep down I kept telling myself this wasn’t real. I knew it wasn’t real. Finally, I went to get help. I went and saw a hypnotherapist.”

“You were hypnotized?” I said.

“Oh, yes. It did me a world of good.”

“You were cured?” I said.

“Yeah. I’m not crazy now, am I?”

“No.”

“I used to be.”

“How long were you…?”

“A few months.”

“But you’re OK now?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

“So,” she said.

“So,” I said.

“Now that you know I used to be crazy,” she said, “do you still want to sleep with me?”

“I’d be crazy not to.”

TWELVE

I began to enter Zina’s world of pain: her delight.

I was touching, caressing her breasts. I pinched her nipples, which were hard; I pinched lightly.

“Pinch them harder,” she said.

I did.

“Harder,” she said.

I was afraid I’d hurt her.

“I want the pain,” she said, “it makes me horny.”

She gave an example. She got up, found a pair of clothespins in a cabinet in the kitchen, and placed a clothespin on each nipple. With the clamping down on each nipple, she took in a deep breath, almost like a hiss.

“Fuck,” she said.

“You like that,” I said.

“Yes, yes,” she said. “Take them off.”

I did, quickly.

“Put them back on.”

I did, and this time I took delight, watching the pins squeeze into her flesh.

“Ahh, fuck,” she said.

I took one off.

“Now use your fingers.”

I took the nipple in question between two fingers.

“Squeeze,” she said.

I squeezed.

I started to become quite good at choking her while we fucked, whether she was on her belly or on her knees or stomach. Repetition makes you better. I also started to enjoy this activity. I was never quite sure if it was mental or physical for Zina, but as long as it got her off and made her happy, it made me happy.

We started biting one another, soft at first, then harder, sometimes until we drew blood from each other’s punctured flesh, fragile as anything in the universe. The biting was not just into the body, but into the soul.

We were in bed, holding each other.

“Are we getting very serious?” Zina said.

“It feels like it,” I said.

“Is this OK with you?” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “You?”

“Yes,” she said. “Very,” she said.

“I have something,” Zina said, standing naked before me.

“Yeah?”

“Something I want you to use on me,” she said.

She went to her closet, and produced a cat o’nine tails. I’d seen such a flogging device in magazines, in movies.

“Where’d you get that?” I asked.

“I’ve had it a while,” Zina said. “I want you to use it on me,” she said.

It was black and ominous. She handed it to me. She lay on her stomach, on the bed. “Use it on my back,” she told me, “use it on my ass, my legs.”

I did so, lightly, uncertain.

“It’s OK to start off soft,” she said, “but increase your strength. Gradually. I want you to get to a point where you could almost make me bleed.”

I did this. I hit her with the cat o’nine tails, just as she said: her back, her ass, her legs. She seemed to like it best on her ass. I started to get into it. I started hitting her harder, the smack of leather against flesh. Harder. She began to cry out with each blow. Tears in her eyes. She wanted more. Welts were beginning to form on her ass, the back of her legs. I concentrated on her back, till welts formed there.

“OK,” she said. “Stop.”

I stopped. I, too, was almost out of breath.

“Now get on me,” she said, “fuck me: I can’t stand it, fuck me!”

I entered her from behind, I reached over to choke her. We fucked for a bit, then she turned around. She put her legs on my shoulders.

“Slap me,” she said.

I raised a hand.

“Slap me.”

Fucking her, I slapped her, hard, across the face.

She just looked at me, some blood on her lip. “Not that hard,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching down and licking the blood away.

“Slap me again,” she said.

I did, but not as hard.

Zina bought toys several days a week, usually at thrift stores, sometimes at the toy store. She loved her children’s toys, and so did Moby Dick.

She had adult toys hidden under her bed, and it wasn’t until a month after we’d been seeing each other that she brought them all out, and wanted to share them with me.

Anal beads, large double-sided black dildos, a dog collar, other assorted rubber penetrating devices. While Zina liked the beads or my fingers in her ass, she didn’t care for anal sex all that much. She wasn’t into ass-licking, pissing, or even swallowing my come. She liked pain, she liked to whack her clit off, she liked me to choke her. It was easy to get into what she enjoyed, as I got into any woman’s pleasure, however alien it was to me. I adapted well.

“Once,” Zina told me, in the dark, in bed, “I was so full of myself, I wanted to colonize my own psyche; I wanted to chase the message owl across fields unfamiliar. I wanted to fly because I was born with wings and I was angry at God for not allowing me to fly.”

Being with a poet can sometimes shed new light on pretension.

Zina didn’t like to hang out at the bar with McGinnis and his crowd. She didn’t think McGinnis cared for her, and she didn’t care all that much for him, either. “All those people are from fiction,” she said. “I’m from poetry.” Only now did I start recognizing the split in the English Department within genres, especially those in comparative literature, rhetoric and writing. All the time I’d been attending this school and only now was I noticing the petty in-fights, jealousies, the mini soap operas. “Do you know what kind of reputation McGinnis has?” Zina said.

“He’s well known,” I said.

“As a womanizer, as an iconoclast. He’s not classical in his approach.”

“But his books!”

“They don’t make sense.”

“He’s helped me,” I said.

“I know he has,” Zina said, taking my face in her hands. “He’s your friend.”

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you,” she said.

I’m not sure how it started; it wasn’t even talked about. Zina said something like, “It’s silly for you to be paying rent on your place when you’re always over here.” Gradually, my possessions began making their way to her apartment. I gave her money for rent. We bought groceries together. We went to bed at the same time, and got up together. She cooked breakfast and we had breakfast together.

I knew it was over, the night I got really drunk: we had this fight. I don’t know what the fight was about. We were fighting more and more, and I was drinking more.

My car was in the downstairs garage. I went into the garage door, got into my car, and floored it, going in reverse. I forgot the main door was down. I smashed right into it. I sat there in the car, in the alley, and thought: shit, I just ruined the garage door.

I laughed. It was like something out of a Raymond Carver story, something Bukowski would’ve done in a drunken stupor.

“OK,” I said, “I gotta write a story about this.”

Zina came down, wearing a robe. “What have you done?” she said.

“Oops,” I said.

“You better pay for this,” she said.

Oh, I would.

After she calmed down about the door, I went to her for comfort. I was shaking. I tried to hug her. She was cold. We went to bed. “Tie me up,” she said. I tied her wrists to the metal railing of the bed, and then her ankles to the other railing. I got out the small black whip (a new toy) and went to work on her flesh. I made her bleed. I fucked her from behind. I put it in her ass, much to her seeming protest. I choked her, harder than I’ve ever choked her. She was coughing at the end, her face red, her body shaking.

“Why haven’t you ever fucked me like that before?” she wanted to know.

THIRTEEN

The image I have of her (this image will always stay with me) – and I wanted to tell her this as she sat behind the wheel of her car, driving (I was in her car and she was driving) – was an image of Zina surrounded by her toys, a milieu of toys, the toys she liked to buy and play with: filling the empty spaces of our apartment with.

Zina was driving and we were going to Los Angeles. I was surprised how little traffic there was on Interstate 5; usually there were many cars clogging, the slow march of machines, especially on a summer night, so many people coming or going. We were going, Zina and I, but we were not going to the same place. Places have divisions, spaces that are hard to fill, no matter how many toys you buy from the toy store to make up for some memory or lack thereof.

This is what I knew about her, or this could’ve been mere assumption – and the image of her that sticks like hot glue to the fingertips of my reverie is Zina as I saw her one night, the night I went to our apartment (when we were going to the same place together and everything was OK and we both seemed happy) and she had bought a bag full of the alphabet ($1 at the thrift store) with magnets on each letter, the colored letters I seem to recall having played with when I was a very small person. “Look! look!” she said: with glee and like a small person, and she said, “Help me with them,” an invitation to play. She tore open the plastic bag the colored letters were contained in; they scattered across the floor of her kitchen like stupid human dreams forever lost in a car crash. She went to her knees, told me to come to her: play, help, fight. She started putting the letters on the white refrigerator, where she had a color print of a happy smiley face woman with large eyes and the caption HOME HONEY, I’M HIGH and two postcards, one of a brunette holding a gun and shooting, another of a man with a gun, an image from the movie Reservoir Dogs. There was a mixture of delight and anxiety on her face; she looked at me and said, “Won’t you help me?”

I got to my knees, picked up several letters, started putting them on the fridge with her. The kitchen was hot (like the rest of the apartment) and I felt very sad. She must’ve seen something on my face because she said, “You think this is silly. You don’t like doing this.”

“No,” I said, “there’s nothing silly about this,” and so we were like two children frantically picking up the alphabet from her floor – letters that I thought would any moment now get up and dance – oh, God, a memory – sticking them to the door of the fridge. Merriment, yes, a small one’s joy on her small triangular face and when I looked at the kitchen table which had a lot of other toys, used and new, I felt sad again; I knew there was something missing. Something was missing from her past (something was missing from mine) and something was missing between us, yet another space to be filled, a vacuous interior needing intestines.

“You buy so many toys,” I said. I sat down at the table and played with a dinosaur.

Zina looked at her letters, arranged them in a way she liked better. “Yes, I do,” she said.

She sat in my lap, like she always did, arms around my neck and looking down at me with her dark eyes, dark circles under her eyes – my face pressed against her breasts, the smell of her now on me, that smell which was not perfume but some men’s cologne I never heard of that mixed well with her skin and gave her the smell I knew I’d forever associate her with, an invasion of my psyche: my memory of Zina.

She kissed me on the lips, she kissed me on the forehead. “Just think,” she said, “I keep collecting more and more toys; we’ll never have to buy toys for our children.”

What the hell was she talking about?

I looked at Zina next to me, Zina’s hands on the wheel tonight, going north, going to LA – she to her brother’s, me to a reading I didn’t really want to do. She wasn’t going to come to the reading with me.

I wanted to tell her that I’d hoped this time it would be different, she wouldn’t just be another woman to jump into my pool and splash and leave and never come back. I wanted to tell her what was on my mind, what was in my heart. But, in my heart, I knew it was over between us.

My staring at her was making her feel uncomfortable; she looked at me and said, “What?” then looked back at the freeway.

She put her hand to my face. “My hands are cold, do you feel?”

I grabbed her hand at my face, pressed it to my face hard, then pulled it away and kissed it, holding it. “I don’t want to fight any more,” I said.

She put her hand on my leg and didn’t say anything. She continued to drive. We were on the freeway and there was no stopping now -

Now I didn’t want to go to LA. I wanted to go south, back south, I wanted to go home, I wanted to hide, I wanted to remember when things were nice and soft and good between us.

“Do you know what I feel like?” Zina said.

“What?”

“French fries! Yummy!”

I was hungry, too. “We have to look for a sign post of some fast food place. Why is it you see them all the time except when you really want to get to one?”

She didn’t reply.

“I want that fast food sign,” I said, “high on a post for all to see, in neon glow, advertising food, beseeching me to consume, saying -”

“Eat me!”

“I was going to say that.”

“I know. You’re becoming -”

“Predictable?”

“He thinks!” she said. “You got it.”

Her hands were tight on the wheel.

There was something rueful inside me; this didn’t feel right; we shouldn’t be this way; there shouldn’t be this distance like aliens coming to earth. (“Right now I need my space,” she’d told me, “so this doesn’t mean we won’t get back together. Just, right now, I have to focus. I can’t be in a relationship like this; I have to be like a monk – monastic living, you know what I mean?” Also: “After a while, you get used to being alone, and you even start to like it.” I think she said something like: “I’ve never felt I needed someone else to complete me; I’m complete in myself.” I’m a fragment, this I’ve always known, but knew all the more as we drove, as she drove.)

I looked at her, still feeling the dejection, and she gazed into the rearview, her eyes looking at her own eyes – her reflection – the mirror – playing again “The Whore for Borges” -

– like when she said she was the votive of Borges, the simulacra that never was. “I’m beginning to appear in people’s dreams,” she told me and, looking at the mirror on the wall of her bedroom, she said, “I am the mirror, but you can never be.”

This happens to poets who take courses on critical theory. Perhaps this is where things went wrong, when I did want to be her reflection: I wanted to be inside her, know everything; she started to feel violated, intruded upon.

I went home one evening, the other evening, really, and realized, for the first time, that I did not belong there. I was feeling weak. All day I had this sensation of horror, but all I wanted was to be with her, to hold her, to have her hold me, to play with her toys, to talk, to have her warm body against mine, to make love, to do anything, anything but be away from her, whip her, slap her, beat her, choke her. Our apartment was dark, candles were lit all around, flamenco guitar music playing on the CD. She was in the bathroom, hair pinned up, applying make-up in a way she never did before, looking at herself in the mirror; and when I went into the bathroom, her eyes on me, from the reflection, were eyes of rancor. She seemed angry, like she didn’t want me there; she seemed evil in the candlelight. I tried to kiss her and she pushed me away. Once, she told me she did a lot of symbolic things, some abstruse and some subtle, and I would have to get used to it. “Like this band on my wedding finger,” she said, “is to remind me who and what I’m really married to: myself,I’m married to myself; and this necklace, these earrings in the shape of hearts, to remind me to always follow my heart.”

“Why are you here with me?” she asked after we made love the night before. “I don’t understand,” she said.

I grabbed her necklace and said, “I’m just following my heart.”

In the candle-lit apartment, she told me she was having second thoughts, she wasn’t sure if she wanted a partner, someone to tell her to come to bed at four a.m. while she was working on a poem; someone to tell her to eat; someone to even talk to, to be present, to remind herself of herself. “I’m used to being a hermit,” she said, “I like being a hermit.” I told her I would go but she grabbed me and said no and we held each other and I smelled her and I was all the more confused. Many times I said I would go, I would just leave, and be a hermit myself, like I was for five years; but she would say no, stay here with me, and now she was saying she didn’t like having me around…

“I don’t see any French fry places,” she said, driving.

“Well, it doesn’t matter.”

“You’re hungry.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m hungry,” she said, “but I guess it doesn’t matter.”

I don’t want French fries, I don’t want to be here; I wish we were home.

FOURTEEN

Alexia met me at a coffeeshop in San Francisco – it was easy to get there from the airport. I’d made an impromptu flight from LA to The City, calling Alexia on the phone just before I got on the plane. “I’ll be there in less than two hours,” I said.

She was wearing a black bodysuit and a little hat, and her glasses. She already had a chai tea. The coffeehouse served beer, and I had a beer.

We kissed, lightly. A peck, really, between old friends.

“So where are you reading, this time?” she asked.

“Nowhere.”

“You’re not here for a reading?”

“No.”

“You’re just here?”

“I don’t know why I’m here,” I said. “Maybe I’m here for you,” I said.

“I don’t believe that,” she said.

“Well,” I said, “I’m here.”

“I’m glad you’re here.” She reached over for a quick kiss. “I’ve been wondering about you,” she said. “It’s been a while. I even missed you. Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you want to go back to my place?”

“Yes,” I said.

I couldn’t do it.

We were in bed, we were naked, we were touching, kissing, tasting, all that – a finger in her ass, her hands cupping my balls.

I moved away from her.

“Nicky?”

“I feel like I’m using you,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “There’s something very wrong. But it’s OK.”

“I think I was in love,” I said.

“Love is nice.”

“The past five months, I was living with someone. I was actually sharing my life with someone.”

“I see.”

“We went to LA. In LA, she told me she was staying at her brother’s for a week. She said when she got back, she wanted me and my stuff out of her place. She said a week was enough time. Is a week enough time,” I said, “to alter one’s life?”

“So you came to San Francisco?”

“It was an impulse.”

“A good impulse.” She put her head against my back, her arm around my waist.

“I called you,” I said.

“I was here,” she said.

“I feel like a shit,” I said.

“Do you love her?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What the hell do I know?” I said.

“I thought I loved you, once,” Alexia said. “But I was using you.”

“How?”

“People always use each other,” she said, “for one reason or another. It’s a selfish world. You know this. You just have to accept it,” she said, “and embrace it.”

“You loved me?”

“What’s love?”

“This is OK?” I said.

“It’s very OK,” she said.

Alexia told me I could fuck her pussy, if I wanted; she was no longer a virgin.

“What happened?” I asked.

She said, “The whole wait-till-I-get-married thing was bullshit. I was away from my family, and I started to think about it. I said the hell with it.”

“Who had the honor?” I couldn’t help but think of Mo.

“It was with some guy,” Alexia said. “Just this guy. He’s living in some stupid place like Arkansas now. I didn’t even care for him. A fuck-buddy. I didn’t even tell him I was a virgin. I was all prepared for – I don’t know what. Pain. Blood. Ecstasy. Angels singing. Bands marching. Motions of love and truth and the face of God. It was no big deal. It was nothing. He put it in and that was that. I was no longer a vagina virgin. And my life was just the same.”

I didn’t want her cunt. I wanted her like we used to be, a grasp of my past. I fucked her in the ass, very deeply in her ass, and it was good, her ass all over my cock, her ass clamping down on my cock. We went into the bathroom, she opened her mouth, and I peed in her mouth, I peed deeply into her mouth, down her throat, on her tongue and teeth, on her lips and chin. It was good, my urine in her mouth, its taste filling her, warming her. I lay on the bed, she spread my cheeks, and she reamed my anus, deeply tongued my asshole, licking and sucking. It was good, her tongue up my ass.

As I knew it would be good.

It was getting dark, and I held her in my arms. In the bed. In her room. In her home.

I touched her hair.

She touched my hair.

I kissed her.

She kissed me.

Our smell…

“This is very nice,” Alexia said.

“Yes it is,” I said.