Full Frontal Fiction (11 page)

Chickenfingers: “Bring back Goldie. Let her beat the crap outta Alex, that pussy.”

As if prompted, Peg's next installment began:

Hey, Maniacs,

I haven't seen Goldie in I don't know when, like maybe two weeks. I
told Alex I had a story in
Bristle,
and he went to the website to read it.
Like Goldie'd ever do that. Like she can read! My story is about having
sex in Central Park with an alien who looks like one of the chicks on
Baywatch,
with tawny skin and green eyes, and she has two little velvet-covered horns on her head. Alex touched the back of my neck, ru fling
my hair, saying the story made him laugh and that my writing was
musical. I felt good, and it scared me.

We go out to the deli. Alex is at the counter, ordering bagels, and I'm
at the front, getting apples and chips, when Goldie comes in. She's
wearing tight jeans, worn out at the butt, and I feel that jolt go through
me. She comes up and stands close enough for me to smell Marlboros
on her breath, and I say she looks good, because I'm one of those dolls
where you pull its string and out comes a recorded message. But all of
a sudden, I don't want anything. It's because Alex is there, though I
don't know exactly what this means. I'm not trading one mean fucker
for another, because Alex isn't mean. Yet. He sees me talking and he
doesn't come over, and I think that's cool.

Goldie is used to seeing me whipped, so she doesn't know what to do
with the new information. She catches me glancing at Alex. “You with
that guy?” I tell her we're friends, and she laughs so hard she looks
pretty. She takes a step back, and then she squeezes my left tit like she
needs it to develop the muscles in her hand. I let out a little gasp, but I
don't want to give her too much. She says she'll come by the bar tonight,
and I shrug. She buys a pack of cigs and a cup of co fee and leaves. I
don't say anything to Alex, and he doesn't ask me anything. I say I
have to split, and he says okay, but he looks sad.

Later,

Peg

The next letter was from Alex.

Hello from downtown. I'm writing a new piece of music, and I'm forgetting the other parts of my life, except wanting to get o f, and I don't
know whether it's from the excitement of composing or the anxiety of
maybe failing. Before, I'd shoot skag, but now it's only sex. I feel like
one of those chimps that got launched in early space shots. He must
have known he was in the hands of people who did not, shall we say,
have his best interests at heart. He's catapulted up in a rocket and his
brain fills with fear, and what can he do but jam his paw into his space
pants and hang on to his pud for dear life, fiddling away and doing a
little dance.

I'm cheerful today, and I attribute this to Peg. Fellow drooling idiots,
don't worry, I have designs on her silky, unblemished flesh. I contrive
scenes in which I take her in every imaginable way, scenes of delight for
me. I like that she is a child. It's possible she only likes girls. It's possible she doesn't like sex. But she comes to me every night. I gave her a
key. Maybe what I like is that she asks for nothing. I don't see need in
her eyes, the thing that usually makes me want to smash someone.
Maybe we are easy, because I don't like women and she doesn't like men.

Gotta work,

Alex

Then suddenly the letters stopped. Neither scratchandsniff nor everydayfiend posted messages of any sort. Some members of the chat room complained. They wanted a conclusion to the story. Others said good riddance. Each morning after making my coffee and feeding my cat, I would turn on my computer, but now, instead of a quickening pulse, I felt deflated, and I either opened my email with a sense of duty or just deleted it.

I am masked by temperament, not as a strategy, but after a while, to others, it amounts to the same thing. I might be straining your patience now, relating my experiences, yet offering no clues about my life. But what I tell you is the most salient thing I have to share— my responsiveness—which can be conveyed independent of my sex, or what I like to do in bed, or how I make my living, or whom I spend time with. None of these things weighs in, especially with my reactions to Alex and Peg.

I wished for their return, not to see a resolution to their tale but just the opposite. I wanted them never to conclude it. They made me feel a little less numb, a little more alert. They were my companions, even though I only eavesdropped on their lives. Unlike the characters in a book to whom one might become attached but whose fates were typeset by the time you read the first page, Peg and Alex were in a constant state of becoming. Or so it seemed to me.

I had never written to either scratchandsniff or everydayfiend, but now seemed the time. “Dear scratchandsniff and everydayfiend,” I wrote,

I am saddened by your absence and wish you would return, for I have
greatly enjoyed your revelations. You give flesh and personality to horniness. How many times have I masturbated in the arms of a blank? No
name. No face, sometimes. Often, no words. The script is engraved on
the brain, the code scribbled on the laughing part of the double helix. I
am a droid. (Not really.) Have you grown tired of displaying yourselves? I see Peg at the bar, with her miniskirt and fishnet hose, leaning over to get a glass and flashing her rear, as if it were in a spotlight.
The mini's made of leather, and I smell it. Ah! Peg wears red lipstick,
though she chews it off and has to reapply it often, in a little round mirror—a gift from Goldie. I see Alex in his loft. He's sitting at his keyboard, when his gaze drifts to the leather-covered bench across the room
and beside it the set of barbells. He feels less like a ghoul when his body
looks fit. He's been lifting lately and sometimes walks around barechested in front of Peg. She asks him to show her his scars, and she runs
her fingers over the insides of his arms. The first time she touches him.

I could go on, but you know them better than I could ever hope to!
Please return.

Faithfully yours,

privateparts

When there was no immediate response, I became melancholy, as I do at the exit of a beloved person. I sought consolation in the flesh. The need would sneak up or would dog me all day, until I could find a few minutes to be alone. What is it about the thoughts that are summoned, the pulsing of the body, the going out for those moments of bliss until the shudders subside and you return to the place you left, no better no worse, though feeling peculiarly detached from the desire that only minutes before seemed so urgent, and you wonder when the desire will return?

About a month after the letters stopped and just as my hope was nailed in its coffin, everydayfiend returned. There was no explanation for the break, and I took it for a game of suspense. “Readers, I took her. Peg, that is. Took her in every part,” the note began.

Last night around three, I hear the key in the door. I'm not asleep. I
know when the traps are being loaded and how to nab the cheese without getting my snout snapped o f. It's gotten so all I think about is the
soft skin of her inner thighs and the tiny hairs that glisten there. I can
taste her pussy, though I have never so much as sni fed it. Her youth,
coupled with her brash attitude, make her seem innocent. She trusts
me. I want her to split herself open for me. The tape just loops in my
brain. I'll risk anything to make the pictures there dance in real life.
She's trying to be quiet. She stifles a yawn, and the sight of her in silhouette, with her little shoulders slightly bent from fatigue, fills me with
tenderness, and it's confusing, because a part of me wants to fold her in
my arms and protect her from harm, and another part wants to consume her, until there's nothing left but her miniskirt and the stockings
that make her look like a downtown cliché. She places her backpack and
jacket on my workout bench and tiptoes to the bathroom, where I hear
her run water into the tub. I'm on the bed. I ask myself why I can't continue as her friend. Why I can't allow her to come to me, if that is ever
her choice.

I swing my body off the bed and knock lightly on the bathroom door,
as I push it open. She's in the tub, her knees drawn to her chest, with
bubbles floating around. I smell gardenias. I'm wearing a shirt and
boxer shorts. Ones she bought me, with little red hearts pierced by an
arrow. Fresh towels hang on the hooks. She's draped a large purple one
over the edge of the tub. I see a dab of toothpaste in the sink and the wet
bristles of her brush sticking out of its cup. There is a brick of glycerin
soap in the dish beside it and another by the tub. We were walking past
a shop with expensive stu f like this, and she looked at it longingly. She
doesn't turn around, just waves over her shoulder. I want to hold on to
things before they change. I feel like wax.

I have not thought what I would do if she wanted to be with me,
wanted me there for her, and I push down the idea, because the possibility that she will refuse me drains my cock. On the other hand, my
cock will say anything to get what it wants. I think of Peg when she is
away, as I write the score for the play, see her plump lower lip when
composing themes. What is sex without an open question?

“Were you awake?” she asks, languidly. She trusts me. To do what?
Not to do what?

I kneel on the mat beside the tub, feeling shy, as if she is the one with
designs and I'm not sure how to respond. “You look sad,” she says,
pulling damp fingers through my hair. She runs an index finger along the
lines in my forehead, as if to erase them. I take her hand and kiss it. I
think my chest will explode when she lifts her chin and laughs, and I see
her nipples peek out from the bubbles. The feeling surprises me. It's fear.

“You want me,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“I do.”

“I don't like men,” she says, but not with distaste, rather to remind
herself.

“You don't have to think of me as a man.”

She laughs again. “What do you want to do?” she asks, as if willing
to eat some ice cream, though not every flavor.

“I want to wash you everywhere, dry you, and carry you to the bed. I
want to explore every inch of your skin, and hurt you a little if you like.
You have to tell me what you want. I want you to feel the same way
about my body. I will not do anything unless you ask for it.”

“I like the way you smell,” she says, enjoying the power of not wanting. I feel she has the upper hand, my little top, and to test her, I pick
up a washcloth and soap it for a long time. I make her wait, so her
mind can catch up with her breathing. I begin washing her slowly, and
she says nothing as I work my way down her back and part her legs and
slip my fingers into her slick parts. She says nothing, but she meets my
eyes and says, “Take off your clothes.” I do, easing myself beside her,
and when we kiss I plunge my tongue deeply into her mouth, though I
can't tell whether she wants me to or has no choice.

Later,

Alex

I did not believe a word of this and therefore wasn't surprised when, the next day, Alex admitted he'd imagined the seduction and that Peg actually “got out of the tub and went to sleep.”

The next letter was from Peg.

Dear Freaks,

I don't see Goldie for weeks, and I think, good, she's gone. My life
feels regular, which is weird. I write, go to my job, sleep at Alex's. I'm
not having bad dreams. Alex is working on a new score. He's eating
and working out. We're good for each other, I guess. How much longer?
No guy has ever left me alone. They want something they think is there.
I'm like a magic trick they are sure they can figure out, and when they
can't they feel cheated.

Maybe that's how I see Alex, like a promise I'm afraid is a lie. Or
maybe that's how everyone sees everyone else, until they understand
that the promise is what they want and the lie is what has been there
all along. I'm in this space, after shit happens and before more shit happens, and I'm trying to remember it for the time when I don't have it
anymore.

Then boom, Goldie's back. She walks into the club like she was there
the day before. In one minute, I bite. She is the promise and lie
wrapped in one. She looks me up and down, taking her time. Other
people know how many plants grow in Brooklyn, or what the population of China will be in 2005, or how much money it would take to cure
AIDS. Me, I know how to feel all the parts of a second.

“So is that guy fucking you?” Goldie says, leaning toward me, as if
she doesn't want people to hear, although she is speaking loud enough
for everyone in the bar to be clued in.