Full Frontal Fiction (14 page)

Black and Blue,
or maybe
Bitches With Whips?
and he says, Yes, I saw it in B.W.W. Strike two: You've reassured me that you are not in the know, because we have no qualms saying
Bitches With Whips.
It flows. Just the same, what do you enjoy in session? What's the difference between a session and a scene? Intensity. In my case, you assume it would be a session? You want an educated guess? Never mind. You've really never done this before, have you? No. That's fine, we welcome novices, provided they're open-minded about the experience. Are you open-minded? I should think so. Naturally. Where would I have seen an advertisement, someone like me? Well, how serious are you? Very. Do you have any personal experience? None. You would have seen us on the Net. Why the Net rather than a trade publication? Partly due to changing demographics— when I started, less than three years ago, you would have used
D.D.I.,
Dominant Directory International. It's D.D.I., but not B.W.W.? Correct.
D.D.I.
costs twenty bucks, so it used to be anyone who'd shell out twenty bucks seemed far more serious than those who only coughed up a buck-fifty for a weekly sex-trade rag. Regardless, you still have to speak to them on the phone, beforehand, and feel them out. Never underestimate the power of a woman's voice. Good phone skills make all the difference between a flake who shows, and one who calls elsewhere. One last question? One. What is good phone manner, in your opinion? You involve them in the conversation, encourage them to open up and speak freely; you provide information, and pique their interest without offering too many specifics, whether that means you sound domineering, or disinterested, or naive, or confiding, or any combination, depending on personal style. Really, whatever makes the caller feel most comfortable and trusting, granted that they interest you. Manipulation, basically. You were saying? Yes, I saw your website, and I was interested. You're interested in general information, or in booking an appointment? Both. Wonderful. But before we continue, you wouldn't call on a cellular phone, would you? No, I have a cordless. You'd have to call from a hard line. Why? House policy, we only accept calls placed from hard lines; cellular calls are routinely monitored by scanners, and that's not very discreet, is it? So first, why don't you tell me what interested you about our site? Why don't you tell me what interests you? Now you sound like a genuine-article phone fuck—remember, I didn't call you and we aren't here to discuss my fantasies. I'm only interested in finding out if you actually want to understand, if you're genuinely willing, as you say you are. If you aren't up for it, that's fine, but don't tell me you want to understand, and don't think for a second that you understand anything about my line of work. Do you want to play or just talk about it, because I still think that you want something for nothing. That is certainly not my objective, and don't overestimate your powers of intuition; I already told you that I was willing. Yes, you told me you were willing, but you still haven't told me what interests you. I don't know, I've never played before. I'm not so sure of that. So let's try again. What intrigues you? B&D, D/S. So you have done some homework, after all. Nevertheless, are you asking me, or telling me? I'm telling you. You're telling me what, exactly? You're telling me that you might enjoy B&D, that sort of thing? Yes. Fine, but could you possibly be any more vague? I doubt it. If you don't want to play—No, I do. Then I need you to answer as specifically as possible. Let's just start with the first thing that comes to mind...

Fifty-five Fucks

BY SAM LIPSYTE

ONE IS HER, Heidi, maybe, or Helene, Heidi with the hair, the face, the nips that ended in little pink knots. Two is Betsy in the shrubs at pottery camp. Three is Lucretia, three is always Lucretia. Four is Kenneth by the lake. Five is Kenneth and his brother Keith by the lake, their cocks like great, quivering cocks by the lake. Six is Moira with the tragic scar from tennis. Seven is me coming in Heidi, or Helene, in the front seat of my Dodge Dart, and me, or maybe not me, thinking nips, or thinking nips, knots, nips. Seven is me or rather not me coming in Heidi, or Helene, but also me throwing my hand over the vinyl seat to clutch the hand of Donna who is topping Brian, who is maybe bodkinned there by Brian, who is coming in Donna in the backseat of my Dodge Dart. Eight is me and Donna, later, near the trestles next to Main. Nine is Ann Anteater, but only my finger, like a great, quivering finger by the lake. Ten is Heidi, or Helene, again. Eleven is very much the same. Twelve is the swineherdess, dressed as a nurse. She was the love of one of my lives. She lays down, or maybe she lies down, with men of other lives now. They suckle, I suppose, that mole on her hip, and I hope they taste me. Thirteen is there is no taste of me. Fourteen is with the girl with the poster of Fanon. Fifteen is somebody and Fanon. Sixteen is what is the strangest place you've ever had sex with? Seventeen is reamed by the Space Needle, or sticking it deep in the loop of Orion's Belt. Eighteen is buggered by chance. Nineteen is the girl who said no. Is it twenty yet? Yes, it is twenty, yet. Twenty is begging those two women leaving the party to let me in their car. Twenty-one is me on my knees, begging them to bugger me in their bed. Twenty-two is me thinking twenty-three. Twenty-three is me waking to me bathed in their blood. Head to toe. Neck to knee, really. Twenty-four is wanting them, the bleeders, to bleed on me over and over again. Twenty-five, twenty-five is to stand before God and confess my fifty-five sins. Lying, after all, is a sin, whereas laying, who knows? Did I say fifty-five? I just wanted the others to like me.

STORY OF MY COCK

Listen to this: I had a wee-wee, then I had a dick. Now I have a cock. What's so crazy about it? I thought I had small balls until she told me they were big. I thought I had a small wee-wee until she told me it was an average-sized dick. Cock, I corrected her. If you prune the pubes the way the men on the videotapes do you get more cock, or more shaft of cock. You get more of a sense of shaftness. You can kneel over someone the way they do in the videotapes, you can bend yourself over them and what you have in your hand is referred to in certain circles as a superabundance. I use my dead mother's sewing scissors.

STORY OF MY PUSSY

What was that about, the way we used to put our things away to make a pussy for ourselves? You fold it down and under, press it into disappearance. You get half of a hairy Star of David down there. It feels like God singing through you when you make a pussy for yourself down there. I don't want to hear a theory for it. The Nazis are coming. That's Dad's car in the garage. You better make a pussy for yourself quick.

PHONE SEX

You can get it all the way up in there, but I'd be careful.

PHONE SEX PART II

Here's a good way to go about having what you can never have denied you: Restrict your carnality to the fiber optic kind. What I mean is make sure you do your fucks long distance. Get a headset, do the lotion with both hands. I'm talking as a man here. I'm talking headsets and lotion and I'm talking as a man. I'm also talking as a man talking on a headset to a woman in another country, or in another kind of country than this one. What she has in lieu of lotion is something small and silver (she says), something mechanical and of a genius beyond my means. That's okay. Most things are of a genius beyond my means. Could I have invented the can opener, for example, that genius device for opening canned-meat cans, if it wasn't already invented? Not on my life. Still, I do alright. Like the Incas. Look at the Incas. A whole civilization without knowledge of the wheel. How many roads did those Incas build without figuring out the wheel? No can openers that I know of, either. No knowledge of canned meat, that I know of, in terms of knowledge imparted to me. Still, they did okay, the Incas, for a while. They did great until that prick Pizarro dragged his horses to the beach. Which is my point about phone sex, exactly. Point being, have you ever played King's Fifth? What you need is lotion, a headset, a small and silver thing, a smattering of Spanish and ancient Andean dialects, some canned chicken, and a burning desire to deny yourself what you can never have.

AUTOINFECTION

Get this: I was celibate for a few years, and after most of it I got a thing on my thing. Do you know what that means? Jesus, can you even get your head around what that might even possibly mean? I'll tell you, so you can pretend you're not one of the dumb ones who can't get his head around what it might possibly mean. It means I gave it to myself. It means I gave myself the syph, the clap, the clyd, the King's Fifth, whatever the hell you want to call that thing on my thing.

Beat that.

A SEXY NARRATIVE FOR THE EROTIC MARKET

I wanted to make her come. I wanted her to love me for trying to make her come. I wanted her to think of me as Jesus come back from my daddy's throne room just to make her come. I wanted her to come in a way that all the times she might ever come afterward with anybody else or all alone would just be some twitchy thing to do instead of reading that book again or making that call she didn't want to make. I wanted her life to be somehow ruined by the exaltation of this one moment of coming, ruined in the sense that life in its wake would be a kind of falling away.

Guess I had some problems.

Guess I still do.

So what, glass houses, pal, know what I mean?

Natoma Street

BY TERMINATOR (J. T. LEROY)

IT'S LIKE I'M PUSHED from behind, pulled down the slope of Natoma Street like it's a ramp down into another world. All the buildings are low and tight, huddled around me. Heavy-gated sweatshops, sunken-down tenements, windows filled with dusty laughing Santas and graying fake snow, ancient slaughterhouses with rusted metal beams jutting suddenly out above me. I watch my shadow slip underneath them, sharpen under the piss-colored street lamp and slide unsliced over the green and white pebbles of smashed glass almost worn smooth from streams of urine. And behind me somewhere is the rainlike sound of a car window being smashed, and in front of me the
crunch-crunch
under my boots, pulling me forward. I tilt my head to listen to the blood in my own ear and all I hear, and all I feel, is a cold ache. The sheet metal door glistens in front of me like an axe blade, and the sound of my pounding fist on the door echoes through me and down Natoma Street. Each split second of contact with the frozen metal is like a jolt trying to wake or stop me, but all that's racing in my blood is too old and too known and too mechanical to be turned back. I stand and wait and watch delicate white puffs of air float out from me. And it's amazing anything can come out of me. Soon nothing will. I bang on the door as hard as I can, bruising my knuckles, and wait a few seconds.

“C'mon.”

My teeth are clamped. I kick the door with my boot. They're gonna find me collapsed here, as drained and empty as if a vampire had fed on me. I kick the door again and again, and it shudders. I feel the panic and desperation in my stomach spread as my blood roars away, feeding on itself.

“You're supposed to...” I kick and hit the metal door. “Fuckin' be here!”

From behind me a window slams open.

“People sleeping, people sleeping!”

I turn and look up to see a bald Chinese guy, his face so chubby and squished he looks like a smiling Buddha. Christmas lights flash like a strobe around him.

“You go way, go way!”

I stare as he points the way out with a stubby thick finger. From behind me, I hear heavy latches and bolts moving. I twist in the direction the finger points, and it's like an opening in the world, with cars, lights and people passing the mouth of Natoma, and they have no idea I'm here.

“God damn, you're eager.” The door pulls open like a bank vault and blue light reflects onto the sidewalk. “It's just 11:30 now; I don't start early,” he says in a deep radio-announcer tone.

My ears pound, and I look back up to the Buddha man, but he's gone, just the empty flashing space of his gaping window.

“Let's go,” he orders, and I turn to face him, but he's gone too. I step into the door that's framed in steel, and it slams behind me. “Bolt it,” I hear from ahead of me. I stare at a puzzle of red and black painted locks and bolts. “The bottom,” he says. It's a padlock that will need a key to unlock. I feel a clink in my stomach as I watch my hand seal me in.

I walk down an unpainted narrow Sheetrock hall with bare blue bulbs poking out like lights in an arcade. The ground is concrete and cracked.

“C'mon!” he says impatiently. “Off to the right.”

The hall opens to a huge warehouse with two giant Harleys parked in the middle and a maze of other halls, lofts, ladders, and doors surrounding it. I follow the blue lights into a smaller room that smells of rubbing alcohol and something else I recognize but can't recall.

“Over here.”

He's sitting in a director's chair in the middle of the room, holding two Fosters. He holds an open one out to me. I watch my shadow like a black fog moving toward him. My shadow head hits his feet, black in engineer boots, and I trace up faded Levi's to a leather vest half revealing shining silver hoops through his nipples. His arms are like air-drawn traces of a woman's figure stretched long. I avoid his face. I reach out for the beer.

“Uh, thanks.” I stand a few feet in front of him.

“How old are you?” He crosses his legs.

“Eighteen,” I say automatically, and sip some foam. He laughs.

“Try again.” His boot wags.

“Fifteen,” I mumble.

“Fifteen?” he repeats.

I follow the floor to a brick wall to my right. There are things hanging, attached, from the wall. A warm wave rushes over me. I swallow loudly.

“Fifteen, I like that.”

I nod my head. “But I have ID in case.”

“In case of what?”

I look up at him. His cheekbones are cut too sharply, like eroded ridges pushing out. His lips are small, tight, and curled up like old newspaper. His hair is black and slicked straight back. His eyes are reddish-brown like dried blood.

“This is between you and me, got it?”

“Mmm.” I feel awkward and stupid. “I got your money!” I say too loudly, and start to reach back to my pocket with my beer hand but spill some. He laughs, shakes his head. “Sorry...shit!” It takes me a few seconds too long to figure out how to maneuver my money out with only one free hand.

“Blondes,” he sneers. “Fuckin' geniuses!” He takes a big gulp of beer. I hand him 100 dollars. “So, how's it feel being on the other side?” He smiles, crooked little teeth.

“Huh?” My throat clicks, he holds the money up and shakes it, eyebrows raised. “I had to borrow it.” I look away.

“Stop rocking.”

I didn't know I was. I feel like my eyes are telescopes I'm peering through, somewhere far away. “Uh, sorry.”

“You will be.” He smiles sarcastically.

“Huh? Oh.” I nod. “Yeah.” I feel my face getting hotter and hotter.

He nods, grins and says, as if I don't speak English, “You are paying me, how does that make you feel?” He starts fanning the money.

“I dunno.” I sigh. His foot taps. “Umm . . . weird.”

“How?” He leans in.

“Uh . . . ” I rub my face, it feels red. “Embarrassed, I guess.” I can't explain it, paying for it does humiliate me and I want that, I need that part, it calms me in some way. You can't trust people you don't pay.

“Hey, hey!!” He snaps his fingers. I look up. “Stop rocking!” He puts his arm out and waves his hand like he's trying to move something aside to see me.

He sighs loudly. “Just, just sit down.” He leans back. I look around me. “Right there.”

“Yeah...sorry.” My left eyelid starts twitching. I sit on the cold concrete, and chew on the inside of my cheek.

“I've heard about you,” he says with a little laugh, and stuffs the money away.

“Uh huh.” I nod. My blood swirls around faster and faster.

“No limits for you, right?” His beer clanks on the wooden chair arm. My eyes shift from side to side. “No safe word, right?”

“Mmm.”

“You can take it all, huh?” My head twitches in a nod. “Coz you,” he points at me and laughs, “don't give a fucking shit, right?”

“Well . . . ” My voice sounds too high. “I'd like, umm, I'd like it if, uh . . . I'd like...”

“Sssay it . . . ” he says, sing-song.

“Ummm . . . I'd like it if you would...” My head jerks.

“Would what?” He leans forward again.

“Um...give a shit, I mean, ya know...” I swallow hard. “Sorta like, um, care.” My bottom lip starts to quiver.

“Yeah.” He sighs. “You know I care. Shall we get going?” He gets up. “I don't got all night.”

I take a few huge gulps of the beer, and push up, like I'm pulling myself out of a pool, and follow him to the exposed brick wall.

“Take your clothes off. You can put 'em on that chair.”

A chill jerks my head, and I close my eyes. “Yes sir,” I whisper, and start to undress quickly.

“That's right, you call me
sir,
” he responds. I hear him moving things, setting things up. “Any other special words?”

“I dunno.” I lean down to unlace my boots. He comes over to me and I feel his hands sliding along my naked back, down my open jeans and underwear.

“You do take a lot, huh?” he says. “Dad? Stepfather, right?” He's running his hands across the little gullies and streams lining my back and ass.

“Can't get this fuckin' knot!” I yell, and punch my boot top.

“Hey!” He grabs my face between his hands and leans over me from behind. I keep punching. “Hey, hey, hey, not yet, stay calm. It's okay.” His voice is soothing. I hear a moan escape me.

“It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.” Like a lullaby.

“Please,” I half whisper, and reach one of my hands up to his hand holding on to my face.

“Tell me,” he says into my ear. His breath smells like warm beer and saliva.

I bring my other hand up around his other hand, cupping my face. I feel his hard cock leaning into me from behind, and I release into containment. “Tell me,” he whispers. We breathe together, him leaning over me, in-out, in-out.

“Fix me,” I murmur. “Fix me.”

“What's it say?” He points to the words cut on my stomach, ass, thighs.

“Bad boy.” I pant. “Evil.” I spit. “Fix me, you have to!” I feel like I've been hooked to a train that's speeding away from me.

“You are a bad boy, aren't you,” he says above me, squeezing my head like a zit. I feel it loosening. “Sinner, aren't you.” I close my eyes, and my stomach cramps, and a chill runs through me. He wraps his arms, crisscrossed, around me. I moan. “Tell me, now,” he says quietly.

“Punish me,” I pant.

“How hard?” His chin digs into my shoulder.

“Till I learn . . . please? I need you to. Please?” My body is shaking.

“Safe word?” he whispers.

“No, no, not till you're done, okay?” I pant. “Just not my face, okay?”

“It's a very pretty face.” He pats my cheek, and I try to lean my head into his touch.

“Yeah, yeah, tell me that,” I gasp, and his cock rubs into my ass through his jeans. “Tell me I'm beautiful. Please.” I can't stop.

“You are, and that's why I need to help you,” he whispers, like a kiss.

“Save me,” I groan, and he squeezes his arms tightly around me, and I hope he'll never let go.

“I will, you beautiful, conceited, bad, evil bitch.”

“Sir,” I whisper, and I feel the tears swelling in my gut. “Sir, hold me after. Please, I'll pay extra, please, after hold me.”

He says nothing.

“I'll pay extra.” I sound pathetic but I can't shut up. “Please.”

“Oh, he'll cry!” My mother squeezes and twists my wrist.

“Never done seen a thief, young or old, so bold-face remorseless,” the white-haired security guard says, wagging his finger at me. The steak and six-pack of beer from my knapsack sit on the table in front of me. “See all the trouble you put your poor mother to?!”

The young, frizzy-blond checker that busted me shakes her head at me.

“Steals it for his no-good gang friends.”

“Oh, we don't let gang members in this store, ma'am.” The manager quickly shines his shoes on the back of his pants legs.

I feel my mom smiling at him. She fans herself with her hand. “Well, that's a good thing, sir.” Crosses her legs. “We have special services for them at our church, the Virgin of Perpetual Love and Mercy, but all in vain I reckon.” She sniffles, and I can't help but laugh. Her hand reaches out fast and slaps my cheek. I keep my grin despite myself; I know I'll pay later.

“Yes ma'am, the police won't do a thing to help you, 'cause of his age. He is amazin'.” The manager leans down over my face. He smells of tuna and pickles. “Have you no shame, boy?”

My mother clears her throat. “He's been a bad boy since his father passed, few years back. Remember that big blaze? Was a firefighter, over Tallahassee.” Murmurs of sympathy. “Thank you, Lord rest his soul. Boy hasn't had the father he badly needs to give guidance and discipline.”

I spurt out a laugh at the thought of her being married to a firefighter. Her hand smashes across my face again.

The manager clears his throat. “Well, I think this is the best way to handle this, ma'am.”

“Mary.” My mother nods.

“Mary, Howard.” He reaches out, and shakes my mother's hand a little too long.

“Howard, sorry we're meeting in such a way, but I'm sure it will help save my boy more than police or I can.” I roll my eyes and groan. My mother's nails dig into my wrist. “You're an evil boy. You thank Mr. Marsh.”

“Thanks,” I say flatly, and grind my teeth.

The checker girl flashes her braces and flips her hair. “We should whoop all the shoplifters like him.”

“Way it used to be, and hardly anybody thieved,” the guard grumbles. I look up and see two bag boys, a little older than me, peering in wide-eyed through a broken, small window. “Well, no time like the present.”

My mom stands, and pulls me over to the table. My heart pounds louder. “Please,” I whisper.

“Oh, now we see the remorse,” Howard gloats. He opens his belt. “Soon you'll see the tears.”

My mother jerks me forward. “Take down your pants.” I look up at her, and her eyes flash a private message of rage. She didn't tell me to get caught.

“Excuse me,” Howard says to my mother as he pulls the belt from the loops.

I stare at the checkout girl biting her lip. “Oh, I'll leave.” She starts to get up.

“Oh no, darling!” My mother waves her back. “He stole in front of you, so he'll pay in front of you.”

I look over to the boys in the window and point. My mother shakes her head and smiles slightly at me. I feel everyone's stares, and it's like a heat and ice spasm racing through me. My body shivers, and, like Batman sliding down his tunnel, I am suddenly prepared to endure the impossible. I am suddenly able to lean over the table and pull my pants below my underwear. But I pull as much as possible of my jeans in front of me, and I pray and pray. At some point I feel Howard's belt beating me, as he will almost every other day as my new loving father till we move out of his trailer three and a half months later, stealing all his cash, his gold cuff links and his school ring.