Full Frontal Fiction (26 page)

This dream was so terrible that the girl forgot it before she woke. It is still inside the woman. He is part of her, the male who would kill. The female he wants to kill is part of her too. Deep inside, she is still trying to bring them together. And for one moment, down a special trapdoor, she has found a way. If the murderer who guested on the talk show had been fucking the marathon woman at this moment, he might've had a feeling of subconscious unease: for she has entered the deep place of sex and it is not a place the killer wants to be. This is a place without form or time. There can be no grid here. Even the shape of his heart will no longer hold; it will be forced to open. Sorrow, terror, hate, love, pity, joy: all human feeling will come in and he will be unable to bear it. He will dissolve. His killing nature will be stripped to abstract movement, a bursting surge overtaking the weaker prey, the principle of pouncing and eating. In this place, all pouncing and eating is contained, because this place contains everything. This place is her ovaries and her eggs, bejeweled with moisture, the coarse, tough flowers sprouting in her abdomen, the royal, fleshy padding of her cunt. Some people say that nature is like a machine. But this is not a machine. This is something else: a million dark wombs giving birth to millions of creatures, wet and rank, eyes sealed blind with darkness, humans and animals, all forms derived from every formless entity swarming in boundless black nothingness.

When male turtles fuck, they thrust deep inside their mates, they stretch out their necks, they throw back their heads and they scream. They don't have to drop through trapdoors or travel down layers. They are already there. Animals want to live because they are supposed to. But they know death better than a human killer. Life and death are in them all the time.

The marathon woman is more than halfway through, and she is tired. You are tired too, just from thinking about it. The theme from
Chariots of Fire
is on the sound system, but you are hearing a very old song from the Industrial Age called “John Henry.” It is about a steel driver of great strength who outperformed the machine invented to replace him. He won, but in doing so, he died. The song ends, “He lay down his hammer and he died.” This song is not about sex or about women. The marathon woman is not going to die, nor is she going to win. She has no hammer to lay down. But she is like John Henry anyway because she is making herself into a machine. But she is not a machine. She is something else.

Over Chinese

BY RACHEL SHERMAN

MY FATHER SAYS that, after twenty years, maybe it's enough. Maybe it is his own fault, those few nights at home, in front of the TV, charging away the hours. And then those other nights, the nights away, when indiscreet smells from his starched shirts would reek from the hamper...

Suddenly, everything felt so raw, as if it had happened yesterday, but twice as bad just to spite me. My father's mistakes flashed from the tube onto his glasses, from the glass table to the infinite snow of our prized and perfect snow globe that was too crazy when shaken and too much of a mess to break.

He takes me out for Chinese.

“Enough is enough,” he says, and eats hot and sour soup. He licks his big fish lips. If he were a girl, the boys would tease and call him D.S.L. Dick Sucking Lips. I am a girl and I own his lips. The boys tease less than they used to.

My father kissed me once and it was not a nice kiss. It was on the lips and too wet. It was for my mother.

“Tell me,” my father says, over our fourth Bloody Mary, “tell me.”

Sometimes I forget who my father is. He wasn't around as much when I was younger and now that I've begun to notice him, his slicked gray hair, his sweet, back-deep eyes, I look for things familiar, for things licked up and pasted in the center of me, connected by more than white saliva, but dreamy as a kiss.

I tell my father about the boy who lives next door, who is so close through my walls I can hardly sleep. This boy, he likes me for the things I can't control: the way my hips jut out like my mother's from the side, my thick and sad pillowed lips.

I tell my father how the boy said we could dress up. I could pretend to be Jackie O and he could be John. I tell my father how I told the boy that he too may die a tragic death—too tragic for me to watch— but that I was good at pretending.

“Stay faithful,” my father says, having just ruined his marriage.

Meanwhile, I order egg rolls, feel my father's leg beneath the table and die. I worry that things are off-center, that my watch is minutes fast. I watch the light from the window, the glare from his glasses, his fingers, my hands.

Perv

BY JERRY STAHL

I DIDN'T OFFICIALLY see her go. I made myself look away, pretending to watch for pedestrians. But I heard her, the first quick
wisssh,
then the sputtering gush. I saw the pee run and puddle the damp cement. A frothy stream ran under my work boots but I didn't move. It wasn't piss. It was her piss.

I couldn't believe it. After my whole life, Michele's pussy was right there...and I stared somewhere else. When the puddling stopped, she tugged my pant leg. She raised her face and gave me a funny smile. “You want to?” Her voice was sweet and girlish again.

“Want to what?”

“You know...” Shy and defiant at the same time. “Wipe me. Girls have to wipe when they pee, you know. My daddy always wiped me.”

“Your daddy?”

Maybe I could tell her about Mom's cuddle-fish.

My mouth went so dry I could have spit wood chips. The sun peeped out of the clouds and everything looked super clear. More real than real. The wet crease between her legs was the color of champagne. My parents served it every New Year. I never liked the taste, but now sneaking a peek—because it was too much, because I would die or go blind—now I guessed I'd love it.

“I don't have any tissue,” I sputtered, but Michele only shrugged.

“So?”

That's how it happened: in the middle of the Miracle Mile parking lot, I not only got to feel like I loved a girl, I got to feel when you touch one—down there—and love her at the same time. I trailed my finger so lightly on her slit, I hardly touched her at all. I'd have strangled puppies to do more, but there were all those people, those cars. All that light and traffic. The air felt like cold tinfoil.

I thought, idiotically, What would Bob Dylan do? Then I freaked. I imagined a station wagon owner footsteps away, ready to catch me. But catch me what? All I was doing—and I couldn't believe I was doing it—was brushing my hand along Michele's cleft, feeling the hot wet of her. The warm droplets in her champagne slit mingled with the chilly rain still on my fingers.

“Lick it,” she said. Just like that. Matter of fact. “Lick it.”

And, still standing over her, sort of leaning in, I slowly brought my hand up to my mouth. Yes! All the traffic noise seemed to fade away. The volume of the world had been turned down, leaving nothing but the roar of blood rushing from my balls to my ears. I let her see what I was doing. My tongue sponged along my knuckles, over the backs of my hands. I tasted the briny flavor of what I guessed was pee. I made a show of it, darting my tongue between my fingers, wiggling it, like a goldfish plucked out of its bowl. Then she spoke up again.

“I didn't mean that, Bobby. I meant this.”

I stopped my knuckle lapping, looked down again, to where her finger was describing little circles. Her wrist blocked all but the purple-pink clit. “You know,” she said huskily, “the little man in the boat.”

“You mean...right here?”

My face got hot. I imagined police. Choppers swooping out of the sky, fixing us in a telephoto lens, filming everything and presenting the evidence to a horrified jury. I could see the witnesses: Dolores Fish and Dr. Mushnik, Ned Friendly, Weiner, Tennie Toad and Far-well and Headmaster Bunton. All of them dying to testify, itching to send me to Perv Jail.

My head wouldn't stop. I saw my mother, pill-drunk and burbling baby country-and-western, hiking up her salmon nighty and tell the judge, “He wuvs to cuddle...” They'd drag her from the courtroom facedown in a box of turtles, yelping for electroshock. Somewhere in sweaty heaven, watching all of it, Mr. Schmidlap would crack a Rheingold with his flipper while Dad banged his head off the nearest wall.

“BOBBY!” Michele's harsh whisper brought me blinking back. “Bobby, GO AHEAD. Bobby, I WANT you to...”

She touched herself and I shivered.

“But there's...I mean...There's all these people.”

“I know,” she said, but huskily, edging her back against the tire well of the VW bus. She parted her naked thighs slightly further. “I know.”

The way she studied me, it's like she was measuring something, seeing how far I'd go. Or else—and this really made my stomach sink—how much I loved her. I was so hard I thought my dick would crack off. But all those people! Those cars! The weather...

You didn't think of sex and weather in the same breath. You didn't have to. Not normally. Not ever. Except for here, in the Miracle Mile parking lot, where Lela the Hare Krishna, who used to be Michele Burnelka, was on the run from Shiva—whoever Shiva was—and on her haunches for me. Whoever I was. That's what I wrestled with. Not, Can I do this? But, What the fuck was it I thought I was doing? And who the fuck was doing it?

Even the raindrops seemed to mock me.

“Michele,” I stammered. I was ready, but then...A Negro lady gawked at me from a Dodge Dart and it seized me up. I had to pull the words like olives from out of my throat. “Michele, I can't...I can't do it.”

I heard myself and I died. It killed me to find out this was me. I had everything I ever wanted. AND LOOK WHAT CAME OUT OF MY MOUTH!

It wasn't like I was being a “good boy.” It was like, I don't know, like I was scared. Or not even scared, just...guilty. That was it. My psyche sputtered like defective neon. One thought wrenched my brain: Mom's seen a husband stroll under a streetcar. She's seen a daughter disappear to Canada, her son fucked-up and flown home, kicked out of a pricey prep school. If that weren't enough, picture her expression when I was arrested for public pee tasting, or whatever the legal term happened to be. How could I face her if I got popped for a sex crime? For the ten zillionth time, I wished I was an orphan, like my long-gone father, just so I could relax.

Just to make things perfect, my voice squeeched into Jiminy Cricket. “Michele, I really like you...I mean, I've always, like, loved you, it's just that...“

“Forget it,” she said, her face hardening. She pulled up her pants and launched herself off the station wagon in a single movement, as though she'd been bouncing off cars and asphalt her entire life. “Forget it, Bobby. It's nothing.”

“Really?”

This was so hugely untrue, so clearly not nothing, I hated myself for needing to hear it.

I held my hand out to help, but Michele ignored it and dusted herself off.

“You don't,” she said with a brittle laugh, “you don't think I was serious, do you? You don't think I'm some kind of exhibitionist.”

“Gee, I don't know,” I said. I just knew I wanted to rip my tongue out at the sound of “gee.” This was worse than Jiminy Cricket. My voice box had been hijacked by Wally Cleaver. Because I never said “gee.” Never before and never since. I was not a “gee” type person. But I couldn't tell Michele that. What was the point?

To Michele, from here on in, I'd be the geek who said “gee” and didn't have the balls to lick her pussy in broad daylight. With one move—or lack of one—I'd killed something horribly important. Whatever else happened, I knew I'd spend the rest of whatever time I had left walking upright trying to redeem myself.

When Michele slouched off toward the highway, I resolved to be a badass. A rebel. A daredevil. Keith Richards with Jew-hair. Whatever it took to de-lame myself, that's what I'd do.

With no plan to speak of, I announced, “We need sleeping bags.” To which Michele replied, “Sleeping bags cost money.”

Remembering that she had all the money, and knowing I'd look like an even bigger lightweight if I asked for it back—suppose she said, “No!” Suppose she said, “Fuck you!” Then what?—I heard myself mumbling, Marlon Brando–style, “Don't worry about it. One thing I know how to do is steal.”

And without another word, I headed back to the mall. Before I left, I thought I caught a flicker of respect in her eyes. It gave me hope. (And a partial erection.)

I was back in ten minutes with a pair of lightweight goose-downs, army green and waterproof.

When I handed hers over, I could tell she was impressed. With any luck, I wouldn't have to knock off a gas station to make her forget my cowardice. I could probably kill a man with my bare hands and it wouldn't matter now.
Too-chicken-to-lick.
It might as well have been tattooed on my forehead. What do you do when you're branded and you know you're a man?

Michele's eyes grew huge under her Beatles cap. At some point, she'd dumped the rose-petal grannies, and I didn't miss them. She squeezed the sleeping bag, then smiled. “You...you stole these?”

“No big thing.” I shrugged, and pretty much stood still while she hugged me. I didn't want to look too eager. Didn't want her to know what I felt. Most of all, I didn't want her to accidentally touch my ass. The credit card was in my back pocket. The last thing I needed was her finding out I charged the bags to my mother.

Intimacy

BY HENRY WREN

IF I SENSE that they're going to fuck back there (after twenty-six years in the business I can usually tell at the beginning of the evening, sometimes long before either of them have any intuitions of intimacy) I'll drive them to Iwo Jima out in Virginia. Not only is Iwo Jima beautiful at night, all lit up, but it's a good long drive away, it allows ample time for him to move to her side of the seat, to kiss her on the cheek, for her to kiss him back, for him to kiss her neck, for her to crane it, to intimate a moan, for him to touch her breasts, to mess her hours of hair, to begin to undo the preparation like winding a clock hand backward, for her to fumble with his cummerbund, for him to begin work at what is always an inconvenient dress, to look for quick ways in, of which there are never any, for her to help him help her out of the dress—the dark window between the driver and passenger compartments of the car is usually raised for all of this, but not always—for her to lick her palm before taking his cock, for him to move his hand down from her breasts, down to her belly, down to her pussy, which is usually wet, and sometimes leaves a water-soluble mark I have to take care of in the morning, for him to insert a finger or two in her pussy, two or three knuckles deep, for her to moan, for him to think about baseball, or his mother, or anything to distract the seven seconds of come knocking on the door of his existence, for her to lean over and wrap her lips around him, to take off her class ring and use her hand under her mouth, like she was trying to swallow a microphone, for him to pull back her hair to watch her suck him off, for her to sit up, to remove her panties from over her high heels, which she usually won't take off, I don't know why, for her either to spread her legs, bend her knees and pull him unto and into her, which is the most common way of accommodating to the backseat, or mount him, to use her hand to insert his cock into her from behind, to balance and torque herself with her hands against the defrost parallels of the back window, to push her chest into his face, for him to say, sometimes with a whisper into her ear, sometimes with a holler, “I'm fucking you, I'm fucking you, I'm fucking you, I'm fucking you,” because he's still in high school, still more aroused by the fact of his having sex than by the sex itself, for him to fuck her, to fuck her all the way to Iwo Jima, to roll down the window, which he thinks is something like a joke, and watch the city pass as they fuck, the city that I choose to give to them: the gay bars and rusting neon of Dupont Circle, the losing lottery tickets of Mount Pleasant, the fluted columns of the Tidal Basin, the baguettes and bag ladies of Georgetown, the numb yellow street lights of the Whitehurst Freeway, the scenery that I choose for them as they fuck in my backseat.

This has been my job for twenty-six years. I drive a limousine. During most of the week I drive rich people who are used to limousines. I drive them from here to there, am never late and never talk unless I'm spoken to. Just before the summer, in mid and late May, early June, I drive high school kids to proms. These kids have never been in a limo before, and have saved up for months to pay for this one magical night. Some will actually call it that: the one magical night. Because of this, they very often have sex in my backseat.

I may have to drive around Iwo Jima several times, waiting to be sure they're completely done, and more than done, that they're at peace, rested, happy. That's my job, if I had to state it in such a way: to make people happy. I'll circle around while they finish up. I'll see our boys' faces, their right sides, from the back. I'll watch the names at the base circle by and blur. I'll try to count the soldiers in the statue, but it's almost impossible because of the way they're climbing all over each other. Every time you look at it you think you see another arm, or another boot. All of these must connect to another soldier, you think. (There are seven of them.) It doesn't bother me to drive as long as they need back there. I've driven around the memorial for hours waiting. Sometimes they'll finish only to start again. How do I know? After twenty-six years, you learn to know. I've memorized every fold in every shirt on the boys in the memorial. I know how the helmets fit on the heads. I know how the backpacks rest, and whose hand is where on the flag that they're so eager to stab into the island. Whose hand is on top.

When they're done in the back, I always get them out of the car to see the memorial. They like it when I do this. It makes the night feel more magical, more unique, like everyone else is in a limo but only they get a tour from their driver. Usually she'll be wearing his jacket, smoking a cigarette, a complete mess as compared to how she looked at the beginning of the evening. He'll look better than he did when we picked her up, more relaxed, I guess, and will sometimes hand me a couple of bucks, although I don't know why. “This is my job,” I tell him. Which is not to say that I give it back. “Iwo Jima,” I say, pointing to the memorial in front of us. “One of the Volcanic Islands in the North Pacific, south of Japan. Site of the greatest battle in Marine history.” They're holding hands, always, this is how it always is, they're holding hands, and his attention is elsewhere, maybe at other girls walking around, maybe off in space, maybe replaying the events of a few moments ago, but she's listening, so I talk to her.

“I've never been to Japan,” she says, “but I'd like to go.”

“Well, it's amazing. It's an amazing place. My brother wrote me letters from there, every day.”

“Every day!”

“Every day,” I'll say, and sometimes I'll feel proud of that. “We returned the island to the Japs in '68, so I don't know about since, but it used to be just beautiful. That's what he told me.”

He'll kiss her. He'll put his hand on her butt, and she'll smile, as if for me. Am I happy for them? Of course I am. Who do I hate?

“It's a really pretty monument,” she'll say.

And then we'll get to talking more. He isn't paying attention. He doesn't care. The further away his mind goes—and he may even go for a walk on his own at this point—the closer we get. I've said everything I have to say for the evening, I don't want to say any more than I already have, so I let her talk. I let her tell me about how she's never been to Japan, but has been to Portugal, which is really pretty. She was there for a semester, because school was becoming too much. Home was. I let her tell me about how she doesn't usually smoke, she hardly ever smokes, she doesn't even know why she's smoking now. I let her tell me how she has a little brother with Down's syndrome, and he can really be embarrassing sometimes, I've never said this to anyone, I'm ashamed to say it out loud, but I've been drinking, you know, God, I hope it's okay that we had a couple of drinks in your car, but, well, it's just that I love him, but. You know. But. And then I let her tell me about her first boyfriend's car, and how the alignment was so bad, you're not going to believe this, but he actually had to hold the wheel upside down to go straight. I let her tell me about where she lost her virginity, it was so long ago, I can't believe how young I once was, I don't know why I'm telling you this, you probably think I'm some kind of weirdo. She flicks the ash, and I let her tell me about her father's girlfriend, and a food called
panini,
they're just little sandwiches, and how given the choice she'll always use a pencil. I let her tell me about her brother's school, which is a special school in Virginia, and the music she likes to listen to, and how her room is decorated, and her friend Tracy's night in Atlantic City when she won four hundred dollars but had to give it back when they asked for some ID. I let her tell me about what college she wants to go to, and her mom's sleeping pills. And after everything she tells me is my implicit response. “It's okay.” I don't say it, I don't say anything, but it's there, hovering like the dust between the spotlights and the statue. I let her tell me again that she doesn't usually smoke. “It's okay.” I really want to learn to drive a motorcycle. Do you know how to drive a motorcycle? “It's okay.” All the while, she doesn't even realize that we've been walking, that I've been leading her around the memorial, around our young boys blown up huge like heroes against the night. The breeze makes her shiver, and I let her tell me about how she's allergic to peanuts, how if one touches her lips, even touches them, she could die, and I lead her to my older brother's name. HENRY J. TILLMAN, JR.

“This is my brother.”

“Oh.”

“Right there.”

“He's—”

“My brother.”

“I'm so—”

I interrupt her with my nod. I don't ask her to touch the name. Wouldn't do that. I don't tell her about how he died, or what he was like, or any of that. Not even if she asks, which she almost never does.

“That's him, anyway,” I say.

By now he's usually come back from wherever he went. Sometimes he's been with us all along, and only mentally absent. Sometimes he won't let go of her hand. I've seen guys go off and take a piss in the bushes. I know that sometimes you have to take a piss after fucking, but still. “We should get going,” he'll say, and I'll lead them back to the car. I won't look at her in the mirror, even if the glass is down. When I drop them off, he usually gives me another tip, this time a bit bigger, maybe a twenty. “It's my job,” I tell him.

Then I drive home. The car stays with me. It's a leasing arrangement. I park it in a garage I rent from my neighbor two doors down. So no one will mess with it. I open my door, which involves four keys, and take off my jacket and pants. My apartment isn't fit for a king, but I'm not a king, so it works out fine. Two rooms. Kitchen. Bedroom. I make a good living. Since the car is with me, I can pretty much choose my own hours, which is good. I want to get up at noon. I get up at noon. I need some extra cash. Not even need. Want. I get up at the crack of dawn, or before. I'll use the car like a cab. I've got a sign I put on top. The neighbors upstairs are usually fighting, even though it's already the morning of the next day. Why do they fight so much? I wish they wouldn't fight so much. Not for me. I can take it. But. I pour myself something strong and carry it with me to my bedroom. I go to the TV, pull the video from my bag, and put it in. I sit there on my bed, in the half darkness of the approaching morning, and I watch it all again on the screen. I watch him kiss her. I watch her kiss him back. There's a little static, but it's all pretty clear. I can see almost everything. I watch him kiss her neck, watch her crane it and intimate a moan. I'm in the television's glow. I watch him touch her breasts, her fumble with his cummerbund, him begin work at what is always an inconvenient dress. I can see out of the rear window the receding rotunda of the Capitol, and the blurred image of someone crossing the street behind us. The person is looking at the car, which means maybe he can see. Who is that? What can he see? I watch her lick her palm, and I don't know why, but that part always makes me so sad. I rewind and watch it again. I watch it again. I watch it dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. She licks her palm before taking his cock. Stop. Rewind. She licks her palm. Stop. Rewind. She licks her palm. Stop. Rewind. She licks her palm. Stop. Usually that's as far as I'll watch. Sometimes I'll make it to the end. Then I take out the video, label it with date and names, and put it on the shelf with the others, none of which I ever watch after the night itself. Jenny Barnes and Mark Fisher—Friday, May 14, 1999. Beth Baxter and David Jordan—Saturday, May 15, 1999. Mary Robinson and Casey Proctor—Tuesday, May 18, 1999. Gloria Sanders and Patrick Williamson—Thursday, May 20, 1999. Leslie Modell and Ronald Brack—Friday, May 21, 1999. Chase Merrick and Glenn Cross—Saturday, May 22, 1999. I don't watch the videos to get off. I never touch myself, if that's what you're thinking. If that's what you're thinking then you haven't understood a thing.

Iwo Jima isn't real. The island is real. The battle is real. The monument is real, too. But it's based on a staged photograph. Joe Rosenthal, the Associated Press photographer who shot it, was there when our boys captured the island. There really were those seven marines. They really did grab at the flagpole. But he couldn't snap the picture in time. So he restaged it. While the smoke still hung behind the soldiers, while their foreheads were still pelleted with sweat, he arranged them for the picture. And who knows how similar it was to what actually happened. He swore it was the same. Exactly as it was, he said, right down to whose hands were where on the flagpole. The picture won Rosenthal the Pulitzer in 1945, and was the model for the memorial, as is how we have come to remember Iwo Jima. Our memories are bound to that image, which isn't even real.

If I can go to bed at this point, I go to bed. Usually I can't. They're still fighting upstairs, I wish they would stop fighting already, and I'm just not feeling good enough to go to sleep. I'll make a bowl of tomato soup from the can. Maybe a grilled cheese. I'll drink another. Morning is coming. Should I start early? I'll start early. I've got a prom at night. Bethesda. Lynn Mitchell and Ross White. Everyone, except for my neighbors upstairs, is asleep, and I can imagine the first rays pushing over the seven marines at the memorial. I can see it. I know how the sun will reveal them, how it will make them silhouettes before illuminating them. It's cold there and it's cold here. I'll go back out to the car with a rag from the cupboard and clean the backseat.