Divine: A Novel (15 page)

They whisper and look at his bulging trousers. The buttons
are coming undone from his Rocky Mountain size erection.

“Oh, sweet sugarcane, Petey. You trying to get these fine
ladies out of their knickers without inviting the entire camp to join in?”

It’s Ned Williams - wagon train leader, Indian interpreter,
rattlesnake catcher, and the man with the longest beard in the camp. And as the
rules of the west have been written, longest beard reigns, always.

“Howdy, Ned,” Petey says. “Thought you’d be sleeping by
now.”

“No. My woman’s bathing down by the creek and I’m not
getting any shut-eye ‘til she returns. Matter o’ fact, I don’t think I’ll get
in my wagon bed for some time now, not knowing your little pecker knocker’s
gonna get some.”

“Ned!” Al calls out. “Leave my nephew alone and let him get
some pork and bean practice before he finds himself a wife.”

“Ewweee, Al. I got a good old cow named Betsy with me who
could use a fine lad like your nephew to show her a good time,” he jokes. “What
do ya say? Betsy’s in need of some lovin’ too. She’s good practice for
beginners; bigger hole, no complaining.”

“Ha, ha, ha, good one old friend. Petey, go ‘head and show
Ned what you got. He might change his mind about you poking his cow once he
sees your...”

I nearly spit out my wine at how
ridiculously awful and yet classically funny this twisted pulp erotic fiction
is. You need a sense of humor and an open mind to enjoy this stuff. I have a
feeling my father would have gotten a kick out of these books, and maybe that’s
why I’m drawn to them.

Petey’s snake falls to his knees as he lowers his trousers
to the dry earth. He kicks them away and the brown cloth lands on top a sage
bush. He stands with both hands on his hips in a proud stance.

“My nephew has a pecker bigger than your beard, Ned.”

The women gasp and point at Petey’s pecker. He rocks his
hips and it swings like a rope over a swimming hole and their giggles echo into
the starlit sky.

“Well now, I think we need to turn our circle of covered
wagons into a circle of uncovered fanny’s. Hey, Dewey,” Ned calls out to
another man. “Get that violin of yours to sprout out some of that parlor music
you like so much. And Mary, give each man a drink from my barrel of whiskey.
The coyotes are coming out tonight!”

Ned drops his drawers and exposes his short, but fat,
pecker. Its width is greater than it’s length and that makes for some fine
lovin’.

As Ned always says, it’s the width that counts.

The bubbles are gone and the water’s
cold, which means my after-work, much deserved, fiction party’s over. Today was
long. Too long. And I still have dinner to eat and a shitload of work to do for
the university.

By the way, Violet, if you’re listening,
I did go to the police station on my way home today, but I ended up sitting in
my truck for a good hour. It was an hour of people watching - a guessing game
of who was there to report a crime, who might be turning themselves in,
visiting someone in the holding center, or perhaps, there to pick up a loved
one. That’s what made me drive away instead of talking to someone about the
weekend break-in. It was a mother who walked in alone, but came out with her
arm wrapped around her daughter. A young teenager who was maybe picked up for
shoplifting or leaving graffiti on the back wall of the local Walmart, it was
that teen who made the decision for me. I pictured her having a record, unable
to get a decent job or accepted into college after one arrest, and her life
never the same. Okay, I admit my daydream was extreme, the kid probably got off
with a slap on the wrist and community service, but that wouldn’t happen to an
adult charged with breaking and entering, and I won’t destroy Bridgette’s
future based on one mistake. Hannah’s a different story. I could easily take
pride in knowing I took her down, but Dan’s right, I can’t bust one and not the
other; it would have to be both.

And all of that made me think of Dan
entering my home. He did it out of spite because he thought I had a guy in my
shower, and he wanted his books back.

Which made me think of myself. I
trespassed on his property and looked in his windows.

Fuck. We should all go to jail. Every
single fucking one of us. I bet most of the population could be arrested for
doing something wrong at some point in their life. This entire world is full of
criminals.

So I drove away without filing a report, knowing
Hannah’s a bitch and wondering if she believes in karma.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

I
t’s strange living so close to the person
I’m dating. I wake up each morning and realize a few walls away is his bedroom.
It’s like being in the dorms. If Dan and I both stood on our back decks with
our morning coffee we’d be able to see one another and wave. I wonder if he
even drinks coffee?

I want to see him, damn it! He’s all I
can think about as I wait patiently for my office hours to end. Time drags, and
since I can no longer watch porn, I need something else to do. On days like
these I could kick myself for not bringing a book along, but when lost in a
boredom funk, there’s always Facebook.

I can’t believe no one’s liked my
I wanna get drunk
post from yesterday.
My friends suck.

But on a happier note, Dan’s sent three
cheesy e-cards. Literally, all of the messages are referring to cheese, with a
man dressed in ‘50s era clothing off to the side and a solid color background
behind the greeting.

I
know it’s cheesy, but I feel grate!

Good
sex sounds like you’re stirring Mac-N-Cheese.

I’m
not afraid to eat melted cheese that dripped on my dick. That’s the five-second
rule of awesome.

I post a message on his wall to please
stop being so cheesy and he replies with a smiley face. When did Facebook
change from being clean and sophisticated to full of preschool stickers you get
for using the potty? Good girl! You get a sticker of an animal with a giant
smile and hearts over its eyes... just because. Because it’s fun. Because the social
media king wants its members, the majority of whom are over thirty, to feel the
joys of wearing footed pajamas once again.

Since Dan’s online, I take the
opportunity to send him a few quizzes so I can
really
get to know him, because, after all, Facebook quizzes are
the best determining factor of whether or not a relationship’s going to
flourish.

First,
Which Biblical Figure Are You?

I’m Mary, he got Peter. That’s pretty
good. They could’ve made it work with one another. Hard to believe that eight
short questions would determine that I would be Mary, but I’m not complaining.

Second,
Which Internal Organ Are You?

Heart for me, but he got spleen. Why
spleen? How did he answer the questions to come up with a spleen? That’s awful;
a person can live without one of those. That’s one for two.

Third,
Which ‘90s Romantic Comedy Leading Man Is Your Soulmate?

Oh, this blows. I got Joe from
You’ve Got Mail
. I want a do-over.
Do-over! No, wait. He got Joe too. Awesome. It’s a match made in heaven. Two
for three.

He asks if that means we’re getting
married and I respond that we should have dinner first then maybe elope
afterward.

Why
don’t you come over tonight at six? We’ll have a bar-b-que before the justice
of the peace arrives.

Lol!
Should I wear white?

Only
if you don’t mind red stains on it. Bar-b-que’s messy.

Everything’s
messy with you!

He sends another smiley face with a
second request to join him for a casual dinner tonight. It’s an amazing feeling
knowing he misses me as much as I miss him. I reply with a pair of sticker lips
and a thumbs up. Facebook’s so surreal.

Speaking of which, I haven’t checked in
with the Dick Sluts this morning. I wonder what they’ve been up to and if I’ve
missed any posts about my books.

I sign in as Violet and search the site,
but come up empty-handed. If I’m not promoting it, no one’s reading it. Ahh,
but Kimmy Firestorm’s been posting all morning about a bad review. It must be a
troll. I feel that there are more troll reviewers now then ever and I’ve
noticed a pattern with them. They give all Indie authors a one star, and all
well-known authors who are with a publishing company five stars. Why read Indie
authors if you never like any of their books? Or worse, I’m not a Kimmy
Firestorm fan, but why do shit like this to her?

Kimmy
Firestorm

Sluts! Please Help! Your reviews are
needed to move a one star I received on Amazon further down the list so readers
don’t see it first. It was posted two days ago and now my sales have dropped
eighty percent. I have a little boy to take care of! This reviewer said not to
buy my books and to stay away from them and that they were the worst books
ever! This isn’t helpful at all! I don’t want my baby boy to starve! Please
write some reviews so her bad review gets mixed in with the rest. I don’t want
it to be the first one seen by readers! Love you guys! XOXO! Please save my
baby boy!

489 people like this.

I sign into Amazon to look at the review,
which has already been pushed to the third page with the help of the Sluts. I
click on the reviewer’s fake name, and then on her public wish list, which many
people don’t realize displays the real name, and see... it’s... what the fuck?
She really goes by that name? It’s fucking Kimmy Firestorm! It’s a marketing
ploy! That bitch! She wrote this review herself! She’ll get a shitload of five
star reviews from that post and then delete her one star. What a scam.

I’ll have to try that. What a smartass
Slut. Damn she’s brilliant. I’ll never trust another one star review again.

I check my own reviews, which I’ve been
avoiding for a couple of days. The books are doing fairly well with twenty new
reviews, and nothing too horrendous from reviewers. But there is one guy named
John Lambert, whose screen name is Voracious Deep Throat Reader, who left me
something special, keeping his review short and sweet.

Way
too much sex, borderline porn, no one over twenty-one would ever enjoy this.

Porn. Hmm, that coming from a reader who
goes by Deep Throat?
I might take
that as a complement, plus, whenever a reviewer mentions there’s too much sex,
my sales double. Thank you. That’s why most women read these books, because of
all the nooky; otherwise they’d search for something in another genre. I guess
he didn’t read the warning.

The fucking parts of my books focus
mainly on the couple’s teenage daughter. She uses sex to take away the pain of
the loss of her mother. I made her eighteen in the book so I wouldn’t be called
out for writing child porn, but hated doing it because that’s not reality.
Like, teenagers don’t fuck? Was the Titanic not a boat? Do bears not shit in
the woods? Whatever. In real life I turned nasty after my mother passed, but it
was a lot of third base action, without any home runs.

At any rate, the thing people criticize
the most in my story is how the parents die and how immature the daughter is
(me). One reviewer said she was so appalled at how unrealistic it was that she
wanted to toss her Kindle out the window, even though it’s all true. I
was
immature and my parents actually
died that way. If everyone in this world was perfect and we all had
cookie-cutter personalities, life would be boring, and that goes for books too.
It’s dark, I know, especially my father’s death, but it’s factual. That’s what
hurts the most. The unbelievable doesn’t necessarily mean the impossible.

My life today’s the same. I’m a
disgruntled professor who writes erotic novels, who lets a voice in her head
take control of her life at times, and who recently picked up a man with a foot
fetish. It’s all true, but unbelievable to those sheltered women who live in
the middle of the Nebraska cornfields.

“Div?”

Richard pokes his head into my office and
I close the window on my desktop, replacing it with a PowerPoint lecture. Yes,
I’m busy with university work. I promise I’m not pussyfooting around. No pun
intended.

“Come in, Richard. Did you get the
document I sent last night of the new brochure for the department my students
designed?”

“Yes, it was wonderful.” he says, wearing
his usual pleated khaki pants and argyle sweater vest. “Thanks for all your
hard work.”

He walks over to my window and looks out.
From the third floor I have a clear view of every building on campus, every
event that takes place in the quad, and every bake sale, protest, sidewalk
chalk message, and make-out session on university grounds.

“I have a meeting with the Board of
Trustees tomorrow. They want to discuss you and Margaret.”

“They want to discuss
us
, or our program?” I ask.

“Both,” he sighs. “I came to ask if there
was anything you’d like me to say on your behalf?”

“Oh,” I whisper. “So, it’s
that
kind of meeting.”

He nods. “I want to be completely honest
with you, Div. There’s a good chance your department will be deleted at the end
of this semester. With the lack of majors and the continued hostility among the
faculty,” he turns and looks at me, “I believe this will be the meeting that
ends it all.”

Fuck. I’m not ready to be unemployed. I
was hoping to have one more semester to save a little more money before I
resigned.

“Tell the Trustees to look long and hard
at the track record in this department, the faculty who have come and gone, and
then steer them to the root of the problem. Then suggest they institute a
mandatory retirement age to rid themselves of her.”

He laughs, which I wasn’t expecting.

“I can’t say that, how about coming up
with something your program has to offer the university and the community, and
where you’ll be taking it in the next five years so they see an opportunity for
growth.”

“Yeah, okay,” I mumble. “I’ll email you
something.”

“By the way, have you seen Margaret
today? She didn’t open her building this morning, which is unusual. She’s here
from seven to seven each day, even when she doesn’t have class.”

“Yeah, even when she doesn’t have class.”
I shake my head. “No, haven’t seen her.”

“Uh-huh, well, I had to open the building
for her students this morning, which is a first.”

“You could call her.” I suggest. Why are
people so dumb? Why ask me?

“Alright then,” he starts to leave. “Make
sure you send some information you’d like passed along to the Trustees.”

“Will do.”

Richard plays both sides. He’s equally
friendly to Margaret and me, as Chairs often try to please both parties, never
saying one person’s right over the other. Which is exactly why these things
linger on. If he would just point a finger at Margaret, or at me for that
matter, and say ‘cut the shit,’ I think it just might be over, but he doesn’t
have the balls under those khaki’s to do it. I’m convinced that men who wear
pleated khaki have lost their nuts within the folds of the pants.

I bring the Amazon window back up on my
desktop and search for Hayden’s trilogy. I’m feeling gracious enough today to
post a good review for her first book. Why not? I thought it was interesting
enough that I continued on to the second.

Holy fuckin’ hell, the woman’s got over
three thousand reviews. I only have three hundred. She’s been selling a
shitload of books.

She already has many long-winded reviewers
who have written essays, recapping the entire story so I decide to keep mine
short.

Good
start to this trilogy. Spoiler Alert - Be warned, it’s dark, with kidnappings,
people killed and their body parts used for pleasure. The guy’s a psychopath,
but I think he just met the one woman who will be able to change him. Excited
to find out!

I’ve decided to forgive Hayden for
writing that nasty post about my book on the Dick Sluts site. Just like Kimmy
and myself, and all the other erotic writers in this world, we all want the
same thing, sales. Hayden’s no different.

I sign back into Facebook and send her a
private message, author to author, looking for some feedback.

Hayden,
Violet Cuddlecock here. Just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your first
book. Reading the second one now. As a fellow Indie author, how do you get so
many sales? I saw all of your reviews. You must have a shitload of readers! Can
you help a fellow author out by giving me a few helpful pointers? Thanx.

She responds instantly, and totally
pisses me off.

I
have a lot of sales because my books are better than yours. Duh.

Fucking bitch. I take my review of her
book off Amazon and walk away from my computer. Maybe it’s time to reconsider
my job here at the university and quit writing. It might be easier to deal with
Margaret than the world of erotic princesses. It seems like everyone’s a writer
nowadays anyway, just like everyone’s an artist. Fuck, I’m so confused! I’m
having a midlife crisis at the ripe old age of twenty-six. I’m too sensitive to
be in either career. I’d be happier serving popcorn at a movie theater.

Div,
you got PMS or something? You’re good at everything you do, but unfortunately
you don’t have anyone telling you how amazing you are. Without the support of
your parents, you’ve grown into an adult with little confidence. Can’t you see
that? You need to find someone who’s gonna back you up, tell you when you do a
good job, and support you in everything that you do. And it’s not me, because I
think you’re a whiney ass bitch most of the time.