The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 2

by Maxim Jakubowski

  Actually, I shtupped the hell outta him.

  All right already. Stop with the eye-rollin’. Hear me out an’ then close yer mind. Just listen, will ya?

  In the beginnin’, there was this fuckin’ schlimazel an’ his saint of a wife. That’s me. My name’s Ruth. Ruth Faust.

  Again with the eye-rollin’. Wait an’ hear my whole name an’ then roll away. Ruth Faust, née – that means “born” if yer a girl – Ruth Marie Vitale. What gives? yer askin’ yerselves. Whoeva heard of a Italian girl named Ruth?

  My mutha, née – don’t ya just love that word. It sounds like somethin’ outta Shakespeare. What? Ya don’t think I ever read the bastard. Hey, don’t let the plain speakin’ ways of my people fool ya. What people? New Yorkers, ya schmo. Greenlawn, Long Island, t’be exact.

  Anyways, I’ve read the complete works of Mr William Shakespeare three times in the last year. That’s right. I said “year”. OK, OK. Hold the phone. I’ll get to that if you stop rushin’ me.

  My mutha’s name when she was born, in case yer still interested, was Estha Rosenbaum. Guess what? She’s a Jew. An’ ’cause of that, I’m a Jew in the eyes of good ol’ Eretz Yisrael. I could make aliah – that’s Hebrew for returnin’ to the muthaship – in a second an’ be putzin’ aroun’ Tel Aviv’s equivalent of the Walt Whitman Mall t’day.

  My tata, Sal – that’s Sal, not Saul – his family came over on the boat about a hundred years ago from Palermo. That’s in Sicily, by the way. That’s right. I’m a Sicilian Jew. Don’t fuck w’me. Unless ya want yer bed, yer house, an’ yer world t’be seriously rocked. Even the Devil’ll vouch for that.

  I wasn’t always so in ya face, though. Actually, I’d never talked back to anyone till two years ago. Honest to Gawd.

  Hey! I said enough already with the eyes.

  Na, since I was a kid, I’ve always been the good little girl. The problem was that, on the inside, I wasn’t really good. It’s just that I was afraid of gettin’ caught doin’ all the dirty stuff I was thinkin’ about doin’ – all the time. An’, on the outside, I wasn’t ever little. That’s right. I was fat. I still am fat. The only difference is that now I’m fat with a fuckin’ vengeance. But I’m gettin’ ahead of myself here.

  Back then, I was just fat. An’ shy. An’ a girl. It couldn’ta been worse. Except at home. I mean, me an’ my parents didn’t hold hands all day an’ skip aroun’ the house. But they loved me. I think they worried about me bein’ so quiet ’cause they weren’t. No way, no how. But that didn’t matter. In their eyes, I was their beautiful daughter, Ruth Marie. An’ as for the fat, they were unusual for the time. They never said a word. I mean, how could they. The food don’t fall far from the table, if y’know what I’m sayin’.

  So, home was allright. Hell was anywheres other kids where. Gawd, kids can be such fuckin’ shits. Like at school, durin’ recess, in the third grade, I’m finishin’ up my lunch, bitin’ into my Charleston Chew an’ dreamin’ of what it’d be like to touch Bobby Randall down there, an’ Joey Fusaro comes over an’ starts in on me. Don’t ask me what he said. Either yer fat an’ y’know or yer not an’ y’ve said it. Or whaddabout every afternoon in tenth grade, after gym an’ after fingerin’ myself to the point of no return – twice – in the showers while thinkin’ about Scott Jacobs bonin’ me, an’ I have to walk back to my locker past Mary Kilpatrick an’ hear her wonderin’ aloud to her girls, Brigit O’Shaughnessy an’ Shannon McQuaid, about why it takes so long for me to shower. Y’know. All that blubber needs time to hose off or some freakin’ shit like that.

  You’d think things woulda gotten better in my junior year when I gave up on food an’ just swallowed pills an’ washed ’em down with Diet Cokes. I lost 70 pounds by senior year.

  T’be honest, I lost many things by senior year. That’s when I met my future husband Kurt. Kurt Faust. A little too Aryan Nation, I know. But I fell in love with him, not his name. Trust me, the last name coulda been worse. Thank Gawd, it wasn’t Waldheim.

  Actually, he’s Dr Kurt Faust. He’d want ya to know that. What my schmuck of an ex-husband – I’m gettin’ to that – wouldn’t want ya to know is that, after ten years of tryin’ an’ failin’, he had to make a deal with the Devil t’ get his tenure at S.U.N.Y. The one in Stony Brook.

  I’m not shittin’ ya. I swear. The original Slick Willie. Lucifuh.

  So where was I? Oh, yeah. Senior Year.

  Kurt’d just transfered in. Instant misfit. We met for the first time when we sat next to each other in band practice. What instruments? Trumpet. Don’t laugh. I had amazin’ly strong lips. Still do, just a lot lower.

  An’ did I mention he was cute? Little did I know he was a putz in mensch’s clothin’.

  Lookin’ back, it’s so obvious I was naive. Not in the stupid way where ya get what ya deserve. But in the sad way where ya settle for somethin’ that’s so-so ’cause ya can’t believe you’ll ever get anythin’ better. If y’ve been there, y’know what I’m talkin’ about. If ya haven’t, forget about it.

  When I saw Kurt all I saw was the mensch. This really kind, gentle man. He wasn’t the first guy to kiss me. C’mon, my life was never that pathetic. But Gawd, could he put his embouchure to good use! An’ no, he wasn’t the first guy to fuck me. But he was the first to really look at me while he was poundin’ away. Askin’ me is this good for me? Do I like this? How about that? An’ he was definitely the first to go down on me. I bet he’s still got little dents in his head where I dug my nails in.

  Maybe that was all show. He gave me head so I’d give him one of my “famous” blowjobs. Yeah, I had a reputation, at least among the football team, for doin’ things their girlfriends wouldn’t. That’s right. No gag-reflex. No shit. I musta practised my way through a field of cucumbers the summuh before my senior year. An’ I swallowed.

  Or maybe the reason he was so sweet was ’cause he still believed he had everythin’ ahead of him. Hell, he was 17. He hadn’t failed yet. He’d never even fucked up. Never lost anythin’ really special.

  Not till April 3, 1977. That was the day the doctuh told my mutha, who told my fathuh, what I’d already learned two weeks before, pissin’ on a pink plastic stick in the bathroom. I was pregnant. Go ahead. Say it. Y’ve been dyin’ to.

  Oy!

  Feel better?

  Yeah, there was lots of tears. An’ shoutin’. An’ more tears when I finally told Kurt. But he did the menschly thing an’ asked me to marry him. An’ I was 17 too an’ wait-listed at Hofstra – can ya believe it? Hofstra!

  An’ I was scared. I was in love. I said yes.

  In May, we graduated. In June, we got married. In July, we got our own apartment. Both our parents helped with the rent. In August, I miscarried an’ I lost my baby.

  OK, I don’t mean t’be flip or nothin’, but let’s just say I knew about Hell long before I met the Devil. An’ that’s all I plan to say ahout the “Summer of 77”.

  Kurt got his first degree. I got a job as an office manager for this lame-wad office supply company. I also got back the 70 pounds I’d lost an’ then some. Next Kurt goes an’ gets his master’s. An’ then, in the four years it took him t’get his doctorate, my mutha – Gawd rest her soul – died of cancer an’ my fathuh – Gawd rest his soul – lasted about a year longer before he died of grief. That left just me an’ Kurt. In other words, I was alone.

  I missed ’em somethin’ fuckin’ awful. Still do.

  So, yeah, right. Where was I? Right. Kurt gets his doctorate. In what? History. With a special emphasis on that magical moment when the gawd-awful Middle Ages turned into the ain’t-it-friggin’-swell-t’be-alive Renaissance. What was the word he used all the time? Oh, yeah. “Liminal”. It was a liminal moment. I think it means “doorway” in Latin. You know, “threshold”. Like what you carry a bride over. Or that invisible boundary you have to cross t’get from bad to worse.

  Which Kurt an’ I did some time in 1997. Our 20th anniversary – can you fuckin’ believe it? Twenty fuckin’
years.

  Now’d be a good time for ya to roll yer eyes.

  Thanks.

  I don’t know why we stayed t’gether that long. I mean, I guess in the beginnin’, even after the baby died, it was ’cause I was in love with him. But from August 17, 1977, Kurt Faust hated me. I mean, in his cockamamy mind, I was the fuckin’ cunt – his words, not mine – who trapped him in marriage an’ then killed his child. But he needed a maid so he kept me on. I see it now. I didn’t wanna see it so much then. I told ya I used t’be very different.

  Take sex for example. Not like I wanted to have sex for a long time after the baby, but at some point the jones comes back. I mean, it’s part of bein’ human. I used to try all the time t’get him as hot-an’-bothered as I was. But he’d push me away, An’ then, for some gawddamned freakin’ mysterious reason known only to him, he wouldn’t. An’ when he was done, I wished he hadn’t bothered, the schlub. You know. Like I’d be goin’ down on him an’ right when he’s about to burst, he goes an’ pulls it out an’ shoots all over himself or the bed. The same with fuckin’. It’s like he never wanted his precious gawddamned fuckin’ seed anywheres near me again. An’ goin’ down on me? Gettin’ me off? You can so forget about that.

  Right, 1997. By then, we’d been livin’ in Smithtown for almost ten years an’ Kurt’d been teachin’ in the Department of European Languages, Literature an’ Culchah at Stony Brook where he spends alla his time runnin’ the tenure track like a rat in a wheel at the pet store. We’d stopped havin’ sex altogether an’ didn’t even talk. Wheneva he was home, he lived in the downstairs den: his office, his study, his space. Occasionally, he opens his door an’ shouts out some command, which I ignore, or some complaint, which I also ignore. Why bother? I’m mean, it may take milk a few days to go sour. But, with Kurt, it took 20 long years. An’, Gawd, by 1997, he was the foulest farbissener there ever was.

  What? Farbissener? You know. A bitter ol’ fuck.

  Oh. What’s with all the Yiddish? ya ask.

  Now ya ask.

  Yeah, yeah. I’ve heard it all before: if I’m a Sicilian Jew, how come I never go an’ blurt out a really killuh insult about my ex in Italian. I mean, it’s obvious I’m not too fond of him nowadays. For good reason too. An’ the language has got some fuckin’ perfect words for a man like Kurt Faust.

  The answer’s simple.

  Pretty much everythin’ was verboten – you know, forbidden – in Grandma Renata’s house, ’specially swearin’. An’ my dad’s dad, Grandpa Giancarlo, died when he was just a kid, leavin’ him alone with his five olduh sisters, each one a nun from birth, an’ his holy terror of a Mutha Superior. An’ the rest of dad’s family lives in Jersey an’ he only saw ’em wheneva there was a funeral or weddin’. Sure, he learned a few dirty words from his cousins. What teenage boy can’t say “whore” in at least two languages? Gabiche?

  Gawd, I can hear him doin’ it now in my head. He’s yellin’ from the reclina in front of the TV to my mutha in the kitchen about his cousin Vito’s third wife, Concetta. “You like her? I hate her. What? Huh?! ’Cause the butanna’s a freakin’ hoo-uh, Esta, that’s why!”

  Yeah, my tata Sal could curse with the best of ’em. But he never learned how to swear the way yer supposed to in Italian. Rapidfire. Arms an’ fingers shootin’ off in the air. Which means I never learned how to swear like an Italian, like a Sicilian. Which is too bad, cuz Italians can curse as good as they cook. An’ fuck.

  But, boy, whadda mouth Bubbe Rachel had on her. That’s my mutha’s mutha. An’ if ya wanted to talk to her ya had to learn to give as good as y’got. By the time I was six, she had me swearin’ up such a blue streak, I could make even her blush every now an’ then. I wish she were still alive to see just how much chutzpah her little bubeleh’s got now. She’d totally kvell.

  That’s Yiddish for “cream in yer jeans”. An’ ya will too if ya let me finish my story. OK?! So, one night in 1997, Kurt comes all the way outta his office an’ speaks to me. OK. Speaks at me. He tells me he knows that I think I’m some hot-shit witch. Which I never said or thought, yet. But it was no secret either what I was doin’ in my freetime. An’ there were all those trips an’ cheques to the Magickal Childe in New York. Who knew the schmendrick still paid attention to the outside world? An’ then he goes an’ says the most fuckin’ outrageous thing eva. He says he needs my help with a research project of his.

  Yeah, I looked just like ya. My mouth all open wide. Oh, did I forget to tell ya I’m a witch?

  Well, bubeleh, I am. I’m a fuckin’ amazin’ witch. An’, maybe, if ya keep bein’ a good listener, I’ll give ya a ride on my broom when I’m done tellin’ ya my story.

  What? When did I turn into a witch? Listen, ya don’t just turn into one. What are ya? From California or somethin’? This ain’t Bewitched we’re talkin’ about. Ya can twitch ya nose all ya want, but you’ll look like a friggin’ rabbit with a coke habit an’ that’s about it. Na, it’s just like everythin’ else. Y’gotta start out knowin’ nothin’ an’ then work yer ass off.

  For me, that was when I joined this monthly women’s encounta group. The year’s 1981 an’ I’m 22 an’, as ya can imagine from what I’ve told ya so far, very lonely. Yeah, we did that rite of passage for the repressed housewife. Y’know the one: ya squat over a hand mirror an’ read between ya lips. Gawd, I can see the rest of their faces now. Some of ’em look so shocked, like they’d just been asked to go down on the woman next to ’em (a request that, at the time, I’m sorry to say, would have had me runnin’ for the car). Actually, Mrs Scaduto does. Run for the car, that is. I’m already hikin’ up my dress an’ pullin’ down my panties before I hear her car door slam. By the time she’s floorin’ the car into reverse an’ then grindin’ the gears over to first, I’m done wedgin’ the slightly steamy mirror between my thighs.

  You’d think I’d be all hesitant to do this shit in front of strangers. Wrong again. First, the mirror was nothin’ new. The summuh I was 13 I wanked off in front of the mirror every day. An’ takin’ a peek at my twat. No problem. What? Yeah, I know it took me a long time t’get over how others saw my body. I was there, Einstein. But I never was ashamed of my twat. Don’t ask me how or why the Angel of Penis Envy passed me over. All I know is that me an’ my twat have been best friends since I was four.

  What’s with the face? Oh, don’t even try. A lot of well-meanin’ women over the years have “counselled” me – that’s Joyce’s word – Joyce Krieger, she’s the one that started the group. Anyways, they’ve counselled me to call it by any other name. Sorry, “ladies”. Sorry, Joyce. But I’m gonna call my “female mystique” a “twat” till the day I die.

  Why? That’s easy. I hate all the other words. “Vagina.” It’s too clinical. It makes me dry up every time I hear it. All I see are stirrups an’ cold, shiny speculums. An’ “vulva”. It’s a great name for a drag queen an’ that’s about it. An’ “pussy”. Puhleez. If I was a size two, maybe. But t’me, it sounds so high-school, y’know. An’ “cunt”, y’gotta scrunch up yer mouth just to say it. It’s too tight an’ angry. An’ that ain’t my twat. No ways, no how. “Twat.” Y’gotta really stretch yer mouth to say that. Wide. An’ it is. An’ deep too. Especially mine.

  So, after a year, the group kinda turns into this witches’ coven. Or, as Joyce, who’s known to witches far an’ wide t’day as High Priestess Morganna Moonblood, calls it, “a circle of goddesses”. The first meetin’, I feel kinda stupid. Joyce keeps wanderin’ aroun’ the room with that same damn mirror an’ makes us tell our reflections, “Thou art Goddess.” But it’s still better than waitin’ aroun’ for Kurt to come home from classes an’ pick an’ complain his way through whatevuh I’d cooked. Which, at that point, he’s done every night since our weddin’, unless it’s somethin’ über-german like bratwurst. Then he fresses his way through it like a pig at a trough.

  Finally, after months of kibbitzin’, we go an’ “celebrate” our first ritual. The minute we get sky-clad, y’kn
ow, naked, my twat’s hooked. But it ain’t till we’re spinnin’ aroun’ the room chantin’ to the witches’ gawddess Hecate an’ I can feel the encouragin’ laughter of Bubbe Rachel that the rest of me lets loose. It was the closest I’d come – in 23 fuckin’ years – ta the Big O without havin’ to use my killuh hands.

  An’, even if I don’t believe much in the high ritual mumbo-jumbo (O sea-swept watchtower of the watery West . . .), I really took to the idea of spells. It’s just like cookin’. I started borrowin’ all of Joyce’s Llewellyn books. Ya probably have no idea what those are. They’re like those ol’ time school books for “Today’s Wiccan”. Y’know, see Jane cast a spell on Dick.

  Wiccans? Jeez, I need a freakin’ vocabulary list here. More Yiddish yer thinkin’. Wrong. Y’know, Wiccans. They’re like the Unitarians of pagans. A pinch of this an’ a dash of that with lots of so-so songs an’ endless conversations filled with bad, really bad, puns, thrown in for good measure. I’m sure you’d know who I’m talkin’ about if ya saw a big gatherin’ of ’em. There’s always some ol’ hippies who like to do arts an’ crafts when they’re stoned an’ lots of middle-aged formuh Dungeons & Dragons warriors who wander aroun’ in homemade armour convinced they’re extras on the set of Excalibur an’ tons – literally – of some of the ballsiest fat women, like yours truly t’day, in search of finally gettin’ the respect an’ righteous bonin’ we so deserve.

  Sorry. I’m gettin’ way off track here. Where was I? Oh, right. Spells.

  I kept it kinda simple in the beginnin’. Y’know, a little prosperity spell – a few green candles slicked up with some fast money oil – ta have enough cash t’get the shoppin’ cart through Waldbaum’s without havin’ to schlep the Tupperware bin with all the coupons in from the car. Or my favourite – one I made up myself – the be-there-now spell. I’d use a little incense, the cigarette lightuh an’ ashtray, an’ start chantin’ as I’d head the car toward Burguh Haven. An’, nine times outta ten, by the time I drove up to the winduh, that gawd Rick – Jesus, I can see his face an’ his plastic name badge even now an’ I get wet – Rick would be waitin’ to hand me my double cheeseburguh an’ fries.