eggs, glowing light-up dildos, blown glass dildos, dildos shaped like various animal penises, a scary dildo shaped like a fist and forearm, and a futuristic model called The Thumper which had three sections divided by clear joints filled with little multi-colored balls and a small appendage near the base that was meant to provide clitoral stimulation. There were a few different kinds of strap-ons, including one called The Accommodator that was designed to strap to your chin for obvious reasons. They had whips, riding crops, paddles, nipple clamps, leashes, ball gags, pig noses, queening chairs, sybians, and black leather face masks. There were extra large diapers, rattles, bonnets and pacifiers for adult babies, they carried a line of furry underwear, crotchless underwear, edible underwear, assless chaps, regular cock-rings and cock-rings with vibrating clitoral stimulators, they had cock-socks, ball-cozies, free-standing rubber vaginas, Magic Fingers electric panties, edible body paint, glow in the dark body paint, paint on latex, Ben-Wa balls, French ticklers, dental dams, nipple tassels, sex swings, lubes and oils including some that came in fruit flavors and a brand that warmed on contact. There were butt plugs of various shapes and sizes, anal beads, amyl nitrate poppers, numbing creams and lotions, clit pumps, dick pumps, pussy pumps, male and female blow-up dolls, an anal douche kit, Kama Sutra Position of the Day calendars, little wind-up dicks, and a five foot inflatable penis punching bag that was weighted at the bottom so it would always bounce back. There were novelty boxes of pasta shaped like tits and penises, bottles of fake pills labeled Horny Pills and Boner Pills, a coffee mug shaped like a women’s naked torso and one with a dick for a handle, cake pans and ice trays shaped like dicks, pornographic playing cards, pornographic stanhopes, maid outfits, cowgirl outfits, Naughty Nazi outfits, and elaborate cow, dog and pig costumes. They had an item called the full body condom, and lollypops shaped like dicks, pussies and tits. There were t-shirts that had pro-sex slogans and shocking statements like No one knows I’m gay, No one knows I’m a lesbian, and one that simply read Pervert with an arrow pointing up. They had t-shirts that made the wearer look like they had large, porn star breasts. I think they even had some regular old condoms.
I surveyed the people milling around, looking at magazines and videos. There was a punk in a leather jacket, an old guy with bad posture, a young giggling couple, and a black guy looking at a lesbian magazine. The guy working the counter was extremely skinny and had dyed brown hair that was moussed up into a ridiculous pompadour.
The place felt safe, I couldn’t imagine Rob looking for me there. I walked over to the ‘shaved’ section and picked up a video at random. It was called Shaved New World. I flipped it over and looked at the pictures on the back, which were your usual triple x stuff. Big cocks stuffed in mouths and asses. Maybe it was the lingering effects of the joint I’d smoked, but it seemed more funny than sexy.
I looked at a few more videos before I noticed a rack of books. It seemed odd that anyone would want to read pornography in the age of the VCR but there they were. They all had the same style artwork on the cover, like the illustrations in a Hardy Boys novel, but with big tits and asses. I picked up one called Filly Ranch that had a woman tied up with a bit in her mouth on the jacket. I read the first couple pages and then flipped to the middle. From what I could gather it was about a guy who ran a ranch and had three daughters who were super horny. He wound up treating them like horses, keeping them tied up in the stable, putting bits in their mouths with reins and everything, and of course fucking them. He had to ‘break’ each one successively, and the main point seemed to be that the girls really liked being treated this way and getting beat up and fucked by their father. The author made a point of mentioning that all the girls were over eighteen, which struck me as funny. As if raping your daughters was fine, but you’d have to be sick to do it before they turned eighteen. The book was decidedly creepy and wrong, which was probably it’s appeal.
After I thought an hour had passed I left and walked back to Sammie’s Spacecraft. There was no sign of Steve so I sat on a bus-stop bench nearby and lit my last cigarette. I was almost finished with it when I noticed a black Mustang creeping up the street. I could see two people in it, and they seemed to be looking for someone on the sidewalk. As they got closer I thought about running. A black mustang was exactly the kind of car that Fly Rob would have. When it was a block away my heart began to race. I threw the cigarette in the gutter. I was about to dash across the street and look for a place to hide when the Mustang suddenly sped up and drove past me. It was a girl driving the car.
I exhaled.
I recognized that I was in a ridiculous situation, sitting at that bus stop, waiting to get shot. And all because I wanted to go to a party. Mr. Bennett’s theory was that you could send information back to yourself through time. If it was possible to do it, I could warn myself not to go to that party, and maybe save my own life. I’d have to find a heavy point in time, a moment when time slowed down and there had been the possibility of many different outcomes. Somehow I could project the image of what had happened at the party to that moment. I had the discouraging thought that if I was successful I would already remember it, but I decided to try anyway.
I was searching my recent past for the right moment when I saw Steve’s Jeep pull around a corner and stop in front of the diner. He was leaning over the passenger seat, trying to see if I was in the restaurant. I startled him when I opened the door. “Hey man, thanks for coming.”
“Yeah, what else am I going to be doing at three in the morning? Sleeping? So what the hell happened, why’s a frat-boy want to kill you?” He asked as he turned off Melrose.
“I killed his dog.” I said.
“Are you serious?” I nodded. “What the fuck is it with you? Do you hate dogs or something? That’s the second dog you’ve killed.”
“No I don’t hate dogs, I fuckin’ like dogs. It’s not like I’ve ever gone out of my way to hurt a dog. It just happened.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m a lot older than you, and I’ve never killed a dog. Not even once.”
“Come one, you know the first one was an accident. This one was kind of an accident too. It was attacking this guy… I thought it was going to rip his throat out, I swear to god, so I stomped it… I had to do it. I mean, I might’ve saved the guy’s life.” I said.
“You know how rare it is for a dog to actually kill someone? People get bit by dogs all the time, but for a dog to actually kill someone is rare.” He lit a cigarette and thought for a second before he continued “It probably would’ve bit the guy a few times and he would’ve had to get some stitches. It’s fucked up, but that kind of thing happens all the time. If someone gets bit by a dog you don’t go stomp it to death. What’s wrong with you?”
“You weren’t there Steve. The dog would’ve killed him, I know it.” I said, trying to keep my voice from going up to a whine. We got on the freeway and Steve immediately slammed down the gas pedal and we were screaming along the 110.
“So where have you been Nick? I haven’t seen you all week.” He asked.
“My Gram kicked me out, so I’m back at my mom’s in Altadena.” I said.
Steve smiled. “What happened? Did she find some more interracial porn in your room?”
“No, it’s ‘cause I stopped going to school and I lied to her about it.” I said.
“You dropped out? Why the hell would you do that?” He shook his head disapprovingly. “Don’t you know you’ll never have it that easy again? As long as you’re in school you don’t have to get a job and support yourself. I was never a good student, but I stayed in school as long as I could… I wish I was still in school, it was a great time for me. When I was going to SMCC I actually started to enjoy learning. If my grades had been a little better I would’ve transferred to a university. Then I could’ve stayed in school even longer. You fucked up Nick. As long as you’re a student, you can put life on hold. Now you have to earn your keep like the rest of us.”
“Yeah, well, fuck it… I don’t know why
I stopped going. I guess I didn’t like how I was being treated by the teachers. Not that they were mean or anything, it’s just -I couldn’t give a shit if I got an A or an F, and they didn’t really give a shit either, but they had to act like they did. So I went through all this play-acting with them, which got old after awhile. Like this one teacher, Mrs. Prough, she would always hold me after class and tell me I was failing, and she would tell me all the old homework assignments I needed to do to get my grade up. She knew I’d never do them. She just had to tell me so she wouldn’t feel bad about failing me, you know? I think giving me an F made a lot of my teachers feel bad. Not because they cared about me or anything, but because flunking me made them feel like bad teachers. I was fucking up how they saw themselves. Then there was this one big English assignment, it was supposed to count for half our grade that semester. We had to compare and contrast these two boring books in like eight pages or something. I never even read ‘em. So the due date comes around and everyone hands in their paper except me, you know, big deal, I always got incompletes. But for some reason this time the teacher got it in her head that she was going to motivate
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