The Fermata

by Nicholson Baker

  Over time, though, she noticed that there was a powerful distraction from the mere feeling of twelve-point-five-horsepower empowerment, which was that the constant vibration of the machine had gradually won over her clit-shaft—in fact it had enlisted her entire perineum. She began to think of two long, lithe men lying back with hiked-up T-shirts in Dying Slave poses over the tractor tire, looking up at the sky and slowly pulling on their Michelangelesque penises. She imagined herself lying naked on the fresh cool grass with a huge slow wooden wheel suspended above her, and twelve nude men tied securely to the spokes of the wheel, their heads pointing toward the center, all of their testicle-sacks hanging halfway down their unsnipped cocks, all of them masturbating languorously with their one free hand. As the Catherine wheel turned above her, she felt the gaze of all twelve pairs of eyes admiring her hips and pubic hair, seeing her pressing her thighs together, which were right in the center, and as each man’s cock ticked into position over her face, she opened her mouth and held her tongue out and closed her eyes and felt warm semenous splashes fall on her lips and neck.

  By this time she was in reality driving around and around the white tractor tire, mowing grass that had already been mowed, near coming but not quite able to. She was glad young Kev wasn’t in sight right now, or she might not be able to contain herself. She went inside, had a shower, and finally came harder than she had in quite a while, lying on her bedroom floor with her legs up on her bed, one finger polishing her nug, the other hand reaching around her leg and rudely giving herself the finger. She prolonged the aftergasms by squeezing her clit gently as if it were her nipple.

  But when she thought it over an hour later, she was not perfectly satisfied. The orgasm itself, though it had unquestionably had a beginning, a middle, and an end, had lacked, despite its intensity, the lush greenery and winding roads and hot, fruit-filled bazaars that her hour of ridem mowing had led her to expect almost as her right. Perhaps she needed to do something to pep up her masturbational technique; perhaps her clitoris was simply tired of her own fingers after all these years. The vibration of the mower had felt so unexpectedly good. A year earlier, David’s car had developed a problem with wheel alignment, so that the steering wheel started wobbling dramatically at about sixty-three miles an hour, and she now remembered that before he had gotten it fixed she had been obliged once or twice to pull over to the shoulder and get her orgasm out of the way so that she wouldn’t be a hazard to others on the road. She simply needed more vibration, faster vibration, in her life—it was that simple. The idea of sexual devices had seemed faintly ludicrous in previous years, and when it stopped seeming ludicrous it began seeming too trendy—she couldn’t escape the suspicion that the majority of vibrators were still given as joke gifts at office good-bye parties. But why shouldn’t she at least try a toy of some kind? She had gotten rid of David, she was beginning her life afresh. She went back to her Cosmo, avoiding Patrick Swayze (who looked a little the worse for wear anyway), and found in the back pages an ad for a company in San Francisco, “women owned and operated.” They rushed her a catalog, sensing her breathlessness, and a week and a half later the good old UPS man was asking her to sign on line 34 for a large white box that Marian expected to contain four hand-held devices and a container of Astroglide. The UPS man, she noticed with relief, was, though handsome, not perfect—with a slight double chin and a pleasant asymmetrical smile and a hint of David’s incipiently stocky shape.

  When she opened the box, however, she discovered that she had gotten only three toys, not the full four she had ordered. There was the startlingly realistic hand-painted slightly curving Arno Van Dilden Heavydick, with movable balls and suction-cup base; there was the Swiss-made TorqueMaja Desnuda, with its twelve special “power-frig” torque settings; there was the mixeresque Oster plug-in coil model with its little cabinet of attachments; but she was missing the forty-dollar, four-foot-long, double-headed Royal Welsh Fusilier with dual slidable foreskins—it was on back order, to be shipped in several days. At first Marian was irritated, wanting to have all four artifacts to try one after another, but then she found that the ones she had at hand were more than enough to get her through the next forty-eight hours. She became especially fond of the fast-humming and refreshingly un-penile Oster. She pirated the surge protector from her neglected PC and plugged it in below the plug from her washing machine (safety first), and plugged the clit-knobbed Oster into it, and, using it, came with mystical intensity sitting naked on the cold lid of the washing machine with the door to the nearby garage wide open, looking down at her trembling titfat, as all her bras and underpants spun around in damp darkness underneath her. And when the clock radio woke her at six-thirty on weekdays, she unplugged it from its extension cord and plugged in the Oster in its place, relishing the illusion that time could be stopped while she started the day right with a brisk coil-driven clasm.

  She took a vacation day on the day the back-ordered vibrator was due to arrive. When the UPS truck hadn’t shown by almost one o’clock and when Marian, already on her third pair of underpants, found herself holding a mother-of-pearl hand mirror up to one of her nipples and watching the aureole get wrinkly backward and then trying to push her nipple through a buttonhole of her linen shirt, she decided it was time to do something—to mow the lawn, which did need mowing. She changed to a full loose gypsy skirt with nothing underneath and a ribbed black camisole with no bra and drove the mower out of the garage into the yard with her freshly batteried Van Dilden resting in her lap. She hopped off in the middle of the front yard, and in full view of the world (though too fast for anyone to see really what she was up to), with her back to the road, she licked the vibe’s inch-and-a-half suction-cup base and stuck it firmly on the seat of the idling green machine and turned its little switch on. She regarded it trembling there on the seat, this enchantingly obscene blurred tube of realism shaken simultaneously by its internal mini-motor and the macro-motor of the ridem, and her slype ached to feel it push her open. She slapped it once; it flinched a little to the side but didn’t unsuction itself. She wanted to mow now; she wanted to mow that fucking lawn like she had never mowed it before.

  Planting her feet on the floorboard of the ridem, holding on to the steering wheel, she demurely flounced her skirt over the seat, and then, arching the small of her back and closing her eyes, she slowly lowered herself until she felt the buzzed brainless head of the Van Dilden nudge into her underthigh. She only had to readjust herself slightly, ticklish trickles moistening open her self-aware slypelips, and she was ready to be upfucked: she looked out smiling at the cars driving by and stamped on the throttle, and with a long groan that was masked by the sudden rev of the engine, her slopping cunt-ness was forced back and down on the full hand-poured width of the Van Dilden. She sat heavily down on it and mowed and mowed, and as she mowed it was as if the whole lawn was concertedly fucking her: every little hummock, every undulation of turf, every tough clump of thistle stalk was telegraphed directly via her autodick-fitted ridem directly into her boggled cervix, while all twelve pistoning horsepowers added their internal combustions to the party as well. She worked the lawn for ten minutes or more, risking a numb-out but successfully avoiding it, smiling again at the traffic because they couldn’t know the supreme full-pelvic cuntfucking she was giving herself as she mowed. She was lowering her head forward toward the steering wheel, just on the point of allowing herself to crooningly come, when she noticed the UPS truck pull over to the side of the road. The driver waved his clipboard at her and walked up with a long oblong box, stowing his sunglasses in his shirt pocket. Marian straightened and tried to collect herself. There was no way to turn the Van Dilden off without pulling up her skirt. She was covered with sweat. Above human hearing, her nipples were screaming for any knowledgeable mouth. She signed where the UPS man pointed, line 27, hoping the idling motor would hurry him off, and he almost handed her the box, and then said something she couldn’t hear.

  He gestured to the front porch
questioningly with the box; Marian nodded. She watched him jog to the porch. He ran like a coach. She hadn’t noticed before that his eyes were attractive; his helpful hesitation was quite sexy when she was able to contrast it with the idea of the molded thing that was fucking her right at that moment. Nonetheless, she wanted him to drive off so that she could finish mowing.

  He was halfway down the slope to his truck when he stopped and came back with a “May I trouble you for something?” expression.

  “Yes?” she shouted.

  He said something she couldn’t catch. Reluctantly she cut the mower engine. “Sorry—what?”

  “Oh, you didn’t have to turn that off,” he said. “I was just wondering if I could hose off my head. I’m burning up. It must be over a hundred in the back of the truck.” Suddenly he frowned. “You hear that?”

  It was the vibrator. It felt so good. She smiled and closed her eyes. “What exactly do you hear?”

  “Is your engine still on?” he said.

  “It’s nothing,” said Marian. “Go hose your head, by all means. The hose is right up on the side of the house. Oh,damn—I had to turn off the water in the basement because it leaks.”

  “Never mind then, that’s okay.” He was backing away. He did look uncomfortably hot. She liked the idea of his hosing off his head.

  “It won’t take a second to turn the water on, just let me get off this thing.” Marian held out her hand and he steadyingly took it. “Oof,” she said. She lifted herself carefully off the Van Dilden and dismounted from the mower. The gleaming cockshape continued to buzz away trustily on the slick, and in places even frothy, seat. “Pardon me,” she said, waving dismissively at the sight. “I was just experimenting.”

  “Is that …?” he said, slack-jawed, pointing. “Did I deliver that the other day?”

  “You did. Come on and I’ll get the hose going.”

  “Wait.” He took off his shirt and draped it over the dildo.

  “Thanks,” said Marian.

  While the UPS man bent at the waist and spluttered and snorted in the cold hose-flow, Marian opened the new box. The lean double-headed length of the Royal Welsh Fusilier lay bent in half within.

  “Is it what you wanted?” the UPS man inquired, wiping the water from his eyes. “If not, I can tape it up for vou and send it right back now.”

  Marian held it up and experimentally slid its two foreskins back. “No, it’s more or less what I expected.”

  “What do you plan to do with that? My name’s John Westman, by the way.”

  Marian introduced herself and they shook hands. She felt his eyes flicking over her nipples. “I know what I’d like to do,” she said, “but unfortunately I can’t do it on my new ridem lawn-mower because what I have in mind needs a little more privacy.”

  “Well, what about the back of my truck?”

  “I was just thinking that. You have to drive, though. I’m not going to have sex with you—is that okay?”

  “Sure, I guess. I’m just intrigued. You’ve gotten me all intrigued.”

  Together they retrieved his shirt and her Van Dilden.

  “Lick this, will you?” she said. He licked the suction cup and she affixed the dick to the metal floor of his truck. Boxes were piled high on wire shelves on either side of her. There was a narrow opening to the front seat. The UPS man got in the front and sat watching her. He was squeezing his crotch through his pants.

  “No, just drive,” she ordered, lifting her skirt and kneeling over the Van Dilden. “Find a dirt road and drive on it. I want this truck to bounce.”

  “My pleasure,” he said. She turned the vibrator on to full and slid halfway down on it. While she squeezed Astroglide on the two ends of the Fusilier, he turned onto a dirt road in low gear. The truck rocked and lurched. “Oh, that’s it,” she said, feeling herself filled with unexpected lateral UPS-truck fuck-motions. Already aching from her earlier mowing, she was impatient. “Now stop for a second. I want you to stick one end of this in my ass.”

  She pulled her skirt up over her ass with one hand and leaned forward and passed him the double-headed vibrator. The head of the Van Dilden was still inside her.

  “Should I turn it on?” he asked, examining the little remote controller.

  “Yeah, I guess, but, mmm, the main thing is to stuff it in my ass right now.” He turned it on, using the little control box. The two buzzings were at slightly different pitches, wowing in and out of phase. Marian felt something hard push against the muscle of her ass. “That’s it,” she said. She relaxed against it and let its head go in. “Push it a little further. Wow. Now drive—oh fuck, just drive this fucking truck.”

  The UPS guy hopped back in his seat and put the truck in gear. Marian unbent her knees and sat flatly down on the Van Dilden with her legs extended in front of her. This had the effect of pushing the Royal Welsh Fusilier deeper into her ass. It was like a fleshy tail. “I’ve got toys up my cunt and up my ass,” she moaned. The truck started bumping and jostling. She pulled the length of the Fusilier up against her tailbone and bent it around her hip and found that, as she had hoped, the other end easily reached her clit. She pulled back its “foreskin” and held the slick second head against herself. “Oh, fuck” she said, feeling all of her circuits starting to get busy.

  “Is that about right?” called the UPS man. He was driving manfully from one gulley to the next, steering with one hand. His other, Marian saw, was in a fist, pounding up and down on his surprisingly meaty coral-gabled cock. His brown UPS pants were around his knees, the zipper splayed open and ready to rip. The dirt road sloped down.

  “Starting to feel nice,” called Marian politely. Then her voice changed to a command. “Now pump the brake. “She held the hem of her skirt with her chin so that she could look down at her spread vadge. The road was pounding the Van Dilden’s cockshape into her stinging cuntskin. She reached back and twisted the Fusilier in her ass. Her clit looked as if it were ready to jump up and propose a toast to old friends; the other end of the double-header was sitting solidly to one side of it, talking in the fast, even, confident nasty-rumor language that vibrators use with their clit-clients. She felt a gorgeous huge thick-muscled orgasm moving slowly up her legs and fanning out toward all orifices. She spat her skirt out. “Pump the brake harder!” she commanded again. “Oh shit! Oh God! That’s it. Pump it. Brake, brake, brake. That’s it, like that. FUCK ME WITH YOUR TRUCK! JACK THAT BIG UGLY DICK AND FUCK MY ASS WITH YOUR TRUCK!”

  The UPS man, his leg pushing the brake-pedal in rapid rhythm to the long white-knuckled strokes of his fist, looked as if he couldn’t hold back another second. The truck lurched and rocked. A box from Harry and David’s tumbled over beside Marian. She grunted down against her toys, feeling them stretch her sex-holes to the point of pain. “Now watch me come!” she called to the front seat. “Keep pumping the brake and watch this hot little cunt come! I’M COMING! AAAAAAAAH, fuck fuck fuck, coming, I’M COMING!” She pressed the silicone snake-head harder against her clit and let the truck-chassied orgasm bump and grind through her.

  The UPS man had his head cranked around and was watching her crammed crotch, pop-eyed. He made a vowelly groan and lifted his butt clear off the seat. “Oh, here it comes!” he said. With a final upward fist-stroke, his squat thick dick blew a united parcel of peckerpaste all over the sleeve of his uniform. “Ooh, yeah babe. Ooh yeah.”

  He put the truck in neutral and the two of them caught their breath. Marian stood unsteadily, smoothing her skirt. The Royal Welsh Fusilier fell out of her ass to the floor with a snakey thump. The UPS man sighed happily. “The tightest ship in the shipping business,” he said, shaking his head.

  “That’s me,” said Marian.

  When the brakes had cooled, he drove her home. And for several months afterward, whenever John the UPS man delivered a white box and Marian the librarian was at home, he helped her test out the sex toy that it was certain to contain. Without him, too, Marian had large numbers of outdoor-gasms on her
ridem mower, helped by several dilda, and when she was done mowing and coming for the afternoon, she often arranged a towel in the sun in the back yard and lay there for an hour or two with her glasses folded near her hand, smelling the smell of cut grass and gasoline and sex juice on her fingers.

  10

  AS A PIECE OF ROT THIS WAS, I KNOW, A SMIDGE KEYED-UP in places, but for a first attempt I felt it would do. It was fun to write. But much, much more fun was watching my sunbathing companion read it. I had spent so much time alongside her that I felt she was an old friend, and yet I had no idea how she would react. I stared at her mouth through the binoculars. (She had put on sunglasses.) Every line that she read was a personal triumph for me; every time she moved to the next page I was in absolute heaven. This was a pleasure the likes of which I had not known. Even before she started reading, the sight of her pulling the bag from the sand and undoing the silver twist-tie made my heart swat in all directions,like the Cocoa Puffs rabbit. I wanted her to be holding and reading my home-grown smut so, so much! I so much wanted to have inspired a feeling of quickened curiosity in her. To have done just that—to have created an expression of puzzled curiosity in the universe, where before there had been only a woman lying in a green bathing suit in the sun on the beach, digging in the sand.

  And—I wish I could whisper this for dramatic effect—she did get a little turned on—she did, she did. The first sign of it was when she glanced around to verify her dune-grassed isolation and then subtly lifted her upper body a little higher on her elbows so that her titshape elongated, and then when they, her two laggard cherubim, were hovering almost free of the earth, she moved her shoulders so that her nipple-tips grazed lightly over the open mesh-lined cups of her undone bikini top. I debated stopping time to hold them for a moment, but I decided that I wanted to see her reaction continuously, without interruption. A little later, on about the fourth page of my typescript, she scratched her leg for a long time, apparently forgetting that she was scratching. I took this as a good sign, a sign of absorption. Then she pulled her chin in suddenly, surprised by something, and shook her head. She looked around. She resumed reading. Then it began: the rhythmic antiphonal tightening of her butt-muscles began: first the left, then the right, left right, left right, so that her heart-shaped ass-curve systoled and diastoled before my eyes. I knew that these marching contractions were pushing her bush-bone hard into the towel and into the accommodating sand underneath, and the sight of this secret self-assertion got me so hot and frantic that to work off the energy I had to drop the binoculars and push up my glasses and sprint down the length of the beach, slaloming barefoot around the halted family groups and single shell-musers and grizzled voyeurs. On the way back, running more slowly, I hesitated before a tall girl of sixteen or seventeen in a blue maillot standing in an inch of water, recoiling from the cold, and I stopped for a second, panting, so that I could slide her tight shoulder straps off and regard her white, hippy, sexily imperfect body with her suit turned inside out on her legs. “You’ll do just great,” I said to her as I suited her back up. Then I resumed my binocular station near my assive-aggressive reader and let myself calm down. Strangely, I felt a little guilt that I had been unfaithful to her with the seventeen-year-old.