She put her hand to my face. “My hands are cold, do you feel?”
I grabbed her hand at my face, pressed it to my face hard, then pulled it away and kissed it, holding it. “I don’t want to fight any more,” I said.
She put her hand on my leg and didn’t say anything. She continued to drive. We were on the freeway and there was no stopping now –
Now I didn’t want to go to LA. I wanted to go south, back south, I wanted to go home, I wanted to hide, I wanted to remember when things were nice and soft and good between us.
“Do you know what I feel like?” Zina said.
“What?”
“French fries! Yummy!”
I was hungry, too. “We have to look for a sign post of some fast food place. Why is it you see them all the time except when you really want to get to one?”
She didn’t reply.
“I want that fast food sign,” I said, “high on a post for all to see, in neon glow, advertising food, beseeching me to consume, saying –”
“Eat me!”
“I was going to say that.”
“I know. You’re becoming –”
“Predictable?”
“He thinks!” she said. “You got it.”
Her hands were tight on the wheel.
There was something rueful inside me; this didn’t feel right; we shouldn’t be this way; there shouldn’t be this distance like aliens coming to earth. (“Right now I need my space,” she’d told me, “so this doesn’t mean we won’t get back together. Just, right now, I have to focus. I can’t be in a relationship like this; I have to be like a monk – monastic living, you know what I mean?” Also: “After a while, you get used to being alone, and you even start to like it.” I think she said something like: “I’ve never felt I needed someone else to complete me; I’m complete in myself.” I’m a fragment, this I’ve always known, but knew all the more as we drove, as she drove.)
I looked at her, still feeling the dejection, and she gazed into the rearview, her eyes looking at her own eyes – her reflection – the mirror – playing again “The Whore for Borges” –
– like when she said she was the votive of Borges, the simulacra that never was. “I’m beginning to appear in people’s dreams,” she told me and, looking at the mirror on the wall of her bedroom, she said, “I am the mirror, but you can never be.”
This happens to poets who take courses on critical theory. Perhaps this is where things went wrong, when I did want to be her reflection: I wanted to be inside her, know everything; she started to feel violated, intruded upon.
I went home one evening, the other evening, really, and realized, for the first time, that I did not belong there. I was feeling weak. All day I had this sensation of horror, but all I wanted was to be with her, to hold her, to have her hold me, to play with her toys, to talk, to have her warm body against mine, to make love, to do anything, anything but be away from her, whip her, slap her, beat her, choke her. Our apartment was dark, candles were lit all around, flamenco guitar music playing on the CD. She was in the bathroom, hair pinned up, applying make-up in a way she never did before, looking at herself in the mirror; and when I went into the bathroom, her eyes on me, from the reflection, were eyes of rancor. She seemed angry, like she didn’t want me there; she seemed evil in the candlelight. I tried to kiss her and she pushed me away. Once, she told me she did a lot of symbolic things, some abstruse and some subtle, and I would have to get used to it. “Like this band on my wedding finger,” she said, “is to remind me who and what I’m really married to: myself, I’m married to myself; and this necklace, these earrings in the shape of hearts, to remind me to always follow my heart.”
“Why are you here with me?” she asked after we made love the night before. “I don’t understand,” she said.
I grabbed her necklace and said, “I’m just following my heart.”
In the candle-lit apartment, she told me she was having second thoughts, she wasn’t sure if she wanted a partner, someone to tell her to come to bed at four a.m. while she was working on a poem; someone to tell her to eat; someone to even talk to, to be present, to remind herself of herself. “I’m used to being a hermit,” she said, “I like being a hermit.” I told her I would go but she grabbed me and said no and we held each other and I smelled her and I was all the more confused. Many times I said I would go, I would just leave, and be a hermit myself, like I was for five years; but she would say no, stay here with me, and now she was saying she didn’t like having me around . . .
“I don’t see any French fry places,” she said, driving.
“Well, it doesn’t matter.”
“You’re hungry.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m hungry,” she said, “but I guess it doesn’t matter.”
I don’t want French fries, I don’t want to be here; I wish we were home.
FOURTEEN
Alexia met me at a coffeeshop in San Francisco – it was easy to get there from the airport. I’d made an impromptu flight from LA to The City, calling Alexia on the phone just before I got on the plane. “I’ll be there in less than two hours,” I said.
She was wearing a black bodysuit and a little hat, and her glasses. She already had a chai tea. The coffeehouse served beer, and I had a beer.
We kissed, lightly. A peck, really, between old friends.
“So where are you reading, this time?” she asked.
“Nowhere.”
“You’re not here for a reading?”
“No.”
“You’re just here?”
“I don’t know why I’m here,” I said. “Maybe I’m here for you,” I said.
“I don’t believe that,” she said.
“Well,” I said, “I’m here.”
“I’m glad you’re here.” She reached over for a quick kiss. “I’ve been wondering about you,” she said. “It’s been a while. I even missed you. Do you believe me?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you want to go back to my place?”
“Yes,” I said.
I couldn’t do it.
We were in bed, we were naked, we were touching, kissing, tasting, all that – a finger in her ass, her hands cupping my balls.
I moved away from her.
“Nicky?”
“I feel like I’m using you,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “There’s something very wrong. But it’s OK.”
“I think I was in love,” I said.
“Love is nice.”
“The past five months, I was living with someone. I was actually sharing my life with someone.”
“I see.”
“We went to LA. In LA, she told me she was staying at her brother’s for a week. She said when she got back, she wanted me and my stuff out of her place. She said a week was enough time. Is a week enough time,” I said, “to alter one’s life?”
“So you came to San Francisco?”
“It was an impulse.”
“A good impulse.” She put her head against my back, her arm around my waist.
“I called you,” I said.
“I was here,” she said.
“I feel like a shit,” I said.
“Do you love her?” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What the hell do I know?” I said.
“I thought I loved you, once,” Alexia said. “But I was using you.”
“How?”
“People always use each other,” she said, “for one reason or another. It’s a selfish world. You know this. You just have to accept it,” she said, “and embrace it.”
“You loved me?”
“What’s love?”
“This is OK?” I said.
“It’s very OK,” she said.
Alexia told me I could fuck her pussy, if I wanted; she was no longer a virgin.
“What happened?” I asked.
She said, “The whole wait-till-I-get-married thing was bullshit. I was away
from my family, and I started to think about it. I said the hell with it.”
“Who had the honor?” I couldn’t help but think of Mo.
“It was with some guy,” Alexia said. “Just this guy. He’s living in some stupid place like Arkansas now. I didn’t even care for him. A fuck-buddy. I didn’t even tell him I was a virgin. I was all prepared for – I don’t know what. Pain. Blood. Ecstasy. Angels singing. Bands marching. Motions of love and truth and the face of God. It was no big deal. It was nothing. He put it in and that was that. I was no longer a vagina virgin. And my life was just the same.”
I didn’t want her cunt. I wanted her like we used to be, a grasp of my past. I fucked her in the ass, very deeply in her ass, and it was good, her ass all over my cock, her ass clamping down on my cock. We went into the bathroom, she opened her mouth, and I peed in her mouth, I peed deeply into her mouth, down her throat, on her tongue and teeth, on her lips and chin. It was good, my urine in her mouth, its taste filling her, warming her. I lay on the bed, she spread my cheeks, and she reamed my anus, deeply tongued my asshole, licking and sucking. It was good, her tongue up my ass.
As I knew it would be good.
It was getting dark, and I held her in my arms. In the bed. In her room. In her home.
I touched her hair.
She touched my hair.
I kissed her.
She kissed me.
Our smell . . .
“This is very nice,” Alexia said.
“Yes it is,” I said.
THE BRILLIANCE AND
MISERY OF BODIES;
OF WAR, OF DREAMS
Michael Hemmingson
LIKE MANY IDEALISTIC young Ivy League men in 1917, he signed up as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross. His name was Roland. He was going to Europe, and Elizabeth didn’t want him to go. She was also a student of the Ivy League crust, and she was in love with Roland; they’d already made plans to get married. Roland was set on this decision to go – this was to be a great adventure, after all, and many young men of his acquaintance were also doing the same.
“I can finish school when I return,” he told Elizabeth, “and I’ll come back much more prepared for life – our life.”
And he kissed her.
Elizabeth decided she would give herself to him before he left, and in the back of Roland’s Ford, he made her a woman. It was painful and uncomfortable, and Elizabeth didn’t like it at all. She held onto Roland after, and cried.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked.
“I’m afraid I’ll never see you again,” she said.
“Of course you’ll see me again,” he said.
He didn’t come back from Europe. He was unaccounted for; he was presumed dead. Elizabeth knew he was dead – she’d known this would happen the night in his car. She kept dreaming of all sorts of horrid scenarios, until the real news arrived.
That was when she began drinking.
She made a point to attend as many parties she could, where she could drink, laugh, dance, forget; and find men to have, sex with.
Sex was no longer uncomfortable, but an evasion. She could close her eyes, her body tumult, with alcohol and cocaine; it was nice to get lost in the sensation of a man’s cock moving in and out of her. She never imagined these men to be Roland (she couldn’t do that to herself). They were just men, and she knew it was her lot – maybe mission – to have sex with any man who wanted her; in the name of Roland, and all he’d missed in this life. She didn’t care. She was taking something from them, little pieces that were slowly filling her. She was taking, and they didn’t know – they thought they were the ones taking, and this perverse knowledge of her secret mission gave her great pleasure.
She soon gained a reputation for a sexual appetite, which was not a positive reputation, so she made it a point to go from city to city, from party to party, club to club; from Maine to South Carolina; from New York to Chicago. Of course, she quit school, and didn’t talk to her parents. She’d acquired her trust fund, left by her grandmother, not long after Roland had gone to Europe. It was a sizable amount. It was easy for a young woman with a great deal of money to move comfortably as a nomad. It was the Jazz Age, after all, and she became good at playing the role of a flapper.
When she slept, she did not dream.
It was 1922 and she was twenty-three years old when she found herself at a party at a large mansion near the University of Virginia, at the home of – so she was told – a great writer and historian, Jonathan Blacksmith Caine. She’d gone to the gala with a young man who was studying at the university; she’d met him somewhere – she forgot where or how – and slept with him, and was now here with him. The young man – whose name she forgot – was an aspiring writer, and was attending this school because Edgar Allan Poe had been educated here. The only written work by Poe she knew was the poem, The Raven.
Never more, never more, she said to herself.
She found the party – populated by some one hundred or so well-dressed, well-speaking individuals of all ages – extremely boring. The best thing, she decided, was to intake a little cocaine, drink like a fish, and find some fun. She got too drunk, and the young man she’d come here with took her aside and told her she was embarrassing him.
“Fuck you,” she laughed: “fuck you!”
She danced, she laughed, she drank, she propositioned a few men – some who were old and married, but she didn’t care.
Everything was spinning. She was taken upstairs by a tall, silver-haired man in a tuxedo. She tried to kiss him.
“You’ve had too much to drink, my dear,” he said. “I am taking you to bed.”
“To screw me?” she asked.
“So you can sleep,” he said.
“I don’t need sleep,” she said.
“I’m a wise man of many years, so take my advice. Yes, you do need to sleep. Rest the demons inside you, because they need to rest.”
“You talk funny,” she said.
“So I’ve been told,” he said.
The man guided her to what she assumed was a guest room – guest rooms always having that certain feel and look about them. He laid her down on the bed.
She pushed her dress up and spread her legs.
“I want you,” she said.
He looked at her sex and said, “That’s a very kind offer, and you’re a beautiful young woman, but sleep now.”
“I don’t want to sleep,” she said.
He closed her eyelids with warm fingers, and kissed her on the forehead.
“Sleep,” he said.
It wasn’t an easy sleep, and sometime later – a minute, an hour; she didn’t know – a man came to her in the darkness. He smelled of booze. He got on top of her and fucked her. She wasn’t ready and he shoved himself into her and it hurt. It was rough and quick. When he was done, he left, and she went back to sleep.
In the late morning, a maid opened the drapes and let the sun in.
“Goddamn,” Elizabeth said.
“Breakfast is downstairs,” the maid said. “You can join Mr Caine if you wish.”
She went to the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. There was nothing she could do about herself. She washed up a little, and went downstairs. The tall, thin man with silver hair was eating poached eggs and bacon at a long table in the dining room, and reading the paper. He smiled when he saw her, placing the paper down.
“Please sit, and eat,” he said.
Elizabeth sat across from him. Another female servant poured orange juice and coffee, and asked what she’d like to have for breakfast.
“Just some bacon,” Elizabeth said.
“Bacon?”
“Yes, perhaps ten strips.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“An unusual meal,” the man said.
“I like to eat meat,” she said.
The man picked up a piece of bacon and took a bite into it. He said, “It is quite good.”
“I’m sorry,” Elizabeth said, “but w
ho are you and where am I?”
The man laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“You drank a lot,” he said.
“I always drink a lot,” she said. “I went to a party with some fellow. I guess the party was here. I guess I stayed here. The house belonged to some sort of professor, a man of letters, I was told. Are you that man?”
“My name is Jonathan Blacksmith Caine,” he said.
“It’s a fine American name,” Elizabeth said. “I hope you won’t be offended if I say I don’t know who you are, or what work you are famed for.”
“That’s quite all right, my dear. It’s refreshing to be unknown.”
“I see. Well, I hope you are not as equally offended at what is probably my ghastly sight.”
“I’ve had similar mornings,” he said. He added, “In my youth.”
The servant brought a plate of bacon out. Elizabeth was ravenous, and ate quickly.
“I remember you taking me to the room, telling me to sleep,” she said.
“You were causing a scene.”
“It’s what I live for.”
“You needed to go to bed.”
“Like a good little girl?”
“Perhaps.”
“I’m not good.”
“There’s good in everyone.”
“I remember asking you to make love to me,” she said. “You declined, but later you came in and did me.”
“I assure you,” Jonathan Blacksmith Caine said, “I did not.”
“Somebody did. It wasn’t a dream. I’m still sore.”
“Hmm. It could be that someone snuck up to your room during the remains of the party.”
“Most likely,” she said, looking down.
“You were making many men – how should I say it –?”
“Just say it,” she said.
“Aware of your presence,” he said.
“I apologize if I embarrassed you,” she said.
“Not at all,” he said. “I was quite amused, and glad. My parties tend to be somewhat stuffy at times.”
“I’ll say,” she said with a mouthful of bacon.
“You added a bit of spice,” he said.
“I’ve been called spicy.”
“You haven’t told me your name.”
The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Michael Hemmingson Page 20
