One night, she and Kurt were eating a huge oyster dinner that Marnie had picked up from the seafood diner next to the flower shop. She hadn’t thought about aphrodisiacs when she’d ordered the oysters, but as she pierced the first gleaming brownish-purple glob from its shell and slid the meat onto her tongue, she noticed that its texture was like a little pussy, wet and soft and aroused. Kurt’s senses also seemed to be titillated, teeth scraping into an oyster, droplets of juice running over his lower lip. He licked his lips and stared at Marnie, brown eyes smoky with desire.
Back in her bedroom, headboard banging against the wall, his cock sawing back and forth in her tight pussy, Marnie gazed up through her lashes at that almost-pained expression on his face and felt the warmth rising from her genitals to her heart.
Then she started squeezing. It wasn’t entirely voluntary; she spasmed frequently when she was very aroused, and it was just a small step from a spasm to a nice, extended squeeze. Their metronomic fuck became a waltz in ¾ time, her squeezing a long note while he pumped three short, a pump pump squeeeeeeeeze pump pump squeeeeeeeeze on the Blue Danube of their Sealy Posturpedic. As Kurt neared climax they changed to a pump pump pump squeeze and then broke into some crazy improv rhythm, with assonance to spare.
Kurt came in an explosion, with a loud groan. His penis slid out of Mamie’s vagina, spent, and he dragged himself out from between her legs to grab a Kleenex for a quick cleanup job. Mamie reached across Kurt on the bed and snapped on the light, and she blinked as she saw Kurt holding his penis, starting down at it as if it were a dead bird.
“My dick! What’s going on with my dick?” he moaned.
“What’s wrong with it?” she asked, her voice husky, still honeyed with sex.
He didn’t answer at first, just sat cross-legged and hunched over, fiddling with his foreskin. His penis looked fine to Mamie, its usual limp post-sex self. “See this constricted ring?” Mamie sat up on an elbow. Sure enough, there was a part underneath the penis head that seemed a little narrower than it should be. It was somewhat hourglass-shaped. It looked funny, this bulbous, rubbery head hanging from a little stalk, and she burst out laughing.
That set off a new round of moans. His face was scrunched up with worry, prunelike. “Oh, God, what’s happening to my dick? It’s your pussy. It’s too tight. Don’t squeeze it anymore, okay?”
Almost as a reflex, Mamie did a Kegel, clenching the muscle as if to protect her precious new pussy-strength. “What do you mean, it’s too tight?” Her voice sounded unnaturally high to her as she fought to keep her composure. Her mind felt frozen, uncomprehending.
“Come on, Marn! Just what I said. You’re so fucking tight and hard when you squeeze, it’s like fucking an asshole. ’Cept the ass is made out of brick or something. There’s only so much I can take of that shit. So fucking cut it out.”
Mamie felt cold. She lay awake for hours after that, her mind circling in angst. After all her efforts! All her Kegels! A lone tear trickled down one cheek. She didn’t even notice that her muscles were still locked in a Kegel, and they remained so even as she finally slipped off into dreamless sleep.
After that, things went downhill. Marnie suspected, dreaded that that shellfish dinner had been the beginning of the end. At first she tried to laugh it off. But then Kurt started not wanting to have sex again. The few times he did, he’d run afterwards to the bathroom moaning, “What’s happening to my dick?” afterwards would kill the post-sex afterglow. She started feeling rejected and as desperate for change as before she’d started the Kegels.
She started feeling depressed. She went to her naturopathic doctor (she was suspicious of regular doctors), and she was informed that her pubic floor muscles were hypertoned, and how on earth had she gotten them that way? But on the naturopath’s suggestion, she started taking St John’s Wort, as well as flower essences intended to balance out her upper and lower chakras. She wondered once if perhaps the Tarot reader had been wrong and Kurt wasn’t The One. But she wanted him.
She asked Tina about the strange dynamics of her sex life, wondering whether what was happening with Kurt’s penis had anything to do with her daily Kegels.
“Certainly not,” Tina said as she pulled herself erect in the café chair, full lips pursing in affront. She folded long arms and lifted a pointed chin, as if speaking as the representative for the expertise of all sex workers. “Kegels just give you more muscle control. They don’t make your vagina any tighter – you can just have it be tighter, at will. And don’t forget about how they help prevent incontinence.”
“What do you think is giving him that constricted ring around his dick, then?”
Tina lifted her shoulders once, releasing them in an elegant shrug. “Is he a briefs or boxers kind of guy?”
“Both,” Marnie moaned, feeling no closer to an answer at all.
“Maybe tell him to freeball it for a week or so, to give it some fresh air or something. But keep doing your Kegels – I’m telling you, they’re the key to better communication with your own body. And – you might start incorporating your breath with your Kegels – pull the energy up from your sacrum to your cranium, and you’ll really start being connected to your core.”
Marnie did continue with her Kegels, more now because they alleviated her sexual frustration, which skyrocketed as Kurt’s libido plummeted. She started fucking herself with the skinny end of the hairbrush, the carrot, the highlighter etc. And incorporating the breath too. This creative activity was enough to deal, short-term, with her raving horniness.
When they’d gone without having sex for three weeks straight, Marnie had just about had it. She’d done everything she could to tempt Kurt. She’d started working out daily, no small feat for Marnie, whose relatively healthy diet and small-boned frame had been enough to offset a tendency toward laziness. She’d started dressing sexier, tossing her Thai wrap pants and peasant blouses, her flare-leg yoga pants and fleece pullovers, deep into the closet; she instead hauled out her tight jeans and miniskirts, her tit-tops, and her silk lingerie for the bedroom. She’d gotten shellfish take-out for dinner for them whenever she could. She’d shyly suggested to Kurt that maybe he could skip wearing his underwear for a while. He’d just curled his lip into a disdainful sneer and told her she was blocking the TV screen.
At night, Kurt continued to repulse Mamie’s timid attempts to caress him. He’d shove her hand away and snap, “I can’t fall asleep when you’re groping my balls!” Finally she decided to bring in the heavy artillery. She went to the nearest natural foods store, a small, family-owned place with green and white decor and a bell that jangled to the tune of “Home on the Range” whenever a customer entered or exited. Weaving through long, neat rows of products packed onto pale wooden shelves, she found the section with the herbal sexual stimulants, the all-natural lubricants, and the pagan aphrodisiacs. She had always scoffed at these products, but now she perused them with a deeper, more sympathetic understanding.
She couldn’t decide on any particular product, and she really didn’t feel like asking the prowling shop assistant, whose eyes looked even beadier than usual when he noticed what product area she was soliciting. So Marnie decided just to buy them all. She grabbed a couple bottles of pills, some herbal extracts, two homeopathic remedies, and some weird Chinese cream to rub on her nipples and genitals that was guaranteed to drive him wild. She also went for the pink aromatherapy candles, the romance incense, and the “romance pouch” – a collection of rocks and herbs that was supposed to draw love to her. Out of all this stuff, something was bound to work!
She piled all the things from her basket onto the counter in front of the shop assistant, who had stopped prowling but whose eyes were still beady and staring.
“Problems in the bedroom?” he asked, his voice hushed and a little nasal. His eyes darted from side to side underneath a low, bushy monobrow, never quite meeting Mamie’s gaze.
Marnie looked around, wondering why the shop assistant was being so secretive. �
��Oh, you know. It’s probably nothing. I’m just making sure.”
“I’ve got something extra special for that,” the man said, again in that hushed voice. He reached under the counter and pulled out a small, unmarked blue bottle. “It’s made out of special mushrooms gathered in the rainforests of South America, and it’s been blessed by shamans.”
Marnie looked at the bottle. Obviously, judging from the clerk’s attitude and the way the bottle looked, it wasn’t legal. “It’s all natural, isn’t it?”
“Of course. 100 percent organic.”
Hmm, Marnie thought. She was a sucker for organic. Why not try it, then? It couldn’t hurt. “I’ll take it,” Marnie said in a voice as hushed and secretive as the clerk’s.
She set her plan into action the following night. She went all out in her preparations: rose and patchouli-scented incense wafted into the air, pink candles sent a romantic glow across the bedroom, the silk aphrodisiac pouch lay tucked securely inside her pillow. She ordered in shellfish again. Then she liberally laced the red wine with all the pills and powders and elixirs purchased yesterday. The mushrooms she boiled, pouring the cooled tea from them into the wine, and mixing the solid bits into the shellfish. She’d decided to partake liberally of everything herself, thinking it was only fair that both of them be caught up in the wave of lust that was sure to transpire. If her hands hadn’t been so occupied mixing and pouring, arranging and rearranging, she’d have been rubbing them together with anticipation.
When Kurt came home, Marnie was ready. She was lounging on the couch in a sleeveless polyester dress that was very uncomfortable, but very short, and it clung like a second skin. She’d tamed her chicken-fluff hair into a silky gold halo about her face.
Kurt’s eyes widened, then narrowed, taking in the lighting, the smells of food and incense, Mamie’s appearance.
“Did you have a nice day?” Marnie asked, making her voice slightly husky, seductive.
He scratched his head, confusion furrowing his brow. “What’s going on?”
Marnie slid off the couch, gliding towards him and taking his hand. “Come to the kitchen with me.” She was a little afraid he’d push her away, but he seemed almost like he was under a spell, and he followed her, unresisting, as she led him to the kitchen.
The kitchen table had been transformed, its small square surface sporting a red charmeuse tablecloth with gleaming china plates and perfect settings atop. Long pink taper candles sandwiched a single red rose.
“I still don’t get it,” Kurt said foggily. “What’s the occasion?”
“I’ll tell you after dinner,” Marnie said, looking up at him through her lashes. They sat down to eat.
“Whoa, this wine is kinda strong,” Kurt said at one point, which made Marnie tense up for an instant. “I don’t remember drinking anything like this before – it’s almost . . . howdoyacallit . . . bittersweet.” He sipped again, as Marnie held her breath. “I like it.”
Marnie smiled in relief, lifting her glass in a silent toast.
After dinner, the strangeness began. They were sitting at the table, sipping vanilla-flavored detox tea and having a lazy discussion about reincarnation, when Marnie noticed Kurt’s pupils were dilated and focused on her. The expression on his face combined with his stare was making her nervous. Her voice trailed off as she gazed back at him. What was that strange, unfamiliar expression on his face? Could it be . . . lust? It was somehow different, though, and more intense – those flared nostrils, the way his lips were drawn back the slightest bit from his teeth – he looked almost . . . animal, like a panther who’d spotted his prey after a long, dry hunt. Mamie’s heart leaped wildly in her chest. She blinked a few times; her mouth watered. She felt the same animal expression settling onto her own features.
What was going on? she thought. Her pelvis felt like it was opening, contracting, expanding. A tingling warmth began at her tailbone and shot up through her pussy, mounting swiftly up her spine and then spreading all over her back and front, encompassing her entire body in heated, sweaty, horny fever. Her fever could be slaked by only one thing . . . Kurt.
She tried to focus on Kurt’s face then, but she was starting to see colors. Purple . . . red . . . green . . . His face expanded and contracted as she blinked, and she couldn’t make his face appear normal. No matter, though. Who needed to see properly to have a good fuck? If anything, sight just got in the way.
Apparently, he had the same idea. They lunged towards each other at the same moment, hampered only by the chairs they both knocked over. Mamie kicked hers aside just in time to avoid it being tangled into the leglock they now held each other in. Clothes started flying every which way, and they looked to Mamie like pieces of rainbow confetti. Her bra was a snowflake; it landed in the sink and didn’t melt. She felt like she was going in slow motion, then fast motion, slow, fast, slow, she could no longer feel normal time. Time was like tangy taffy. Space was suspended.
She didn’t care that nothing was comprehensible. All she wanted was something to satiate the craving, pulsing maw her whole pubic region had become – and that something had to be a cock in her steamy, wet, tight pussy. And just when she was about to scream with frustration at the clothes still between their skin and all the limbs that were getting in the way, she felt it poking, then burrowing in like a gopher on speed.
Yeah, that was more like it! she thought. She began to twist and heave her body enthusiastically. She was that feeling, that blessed, divine feeling between her legs, and that was her entire existence and being in that moment. God she was happy. She was so happy she just wanted to . . .
Squeeze!
Squeeze!
“Ungh!” Mamie grunted, squeezing as hard as she could.
Kurt shrieked. But, Mamie noticed through her haze of pleasure, that shriek seemed to express something other than lust. Something like . . . pain, could it be?
She tried to focus on his face. It faded in and out of her vision – somehow it was being superimposed every other second by a large panther-face, black and velvety, panting, squealing now. The panther was trying to speak between squeals now.
“Let go! let go! You’re killing me!”
Huh?
She noticed then that he was no longer moving inside her. She had him in a pussy-lock, clenched so tightly that he couldn’t even pull out, despite her wetness.
She relaxed her muscles the slightest bit, and he began to pull out. Then she tightened them again even more, grabbing him so he couldn’t move yet again.
“What are you doing, you bitch? Let me go!”
Marnie blinked her eyes and tried to focus again on her beloved, her soulmate, who was trying to communicate with her. His chiseled features, his Greek-god face was crumpled now into a strange tragic mask. He was holding himself poised over Mamie’s body, arms straight yet trembling, torso shining with sweat.
Kurt was saying something else now, but his voice seemed to be coming from very far away. She closed her eyes and squeezed even harder. She would keep him safe. Incorporate the breath, Tina had said. Pull the energy up the spine. She squeezed and sucked in her breath, a mighty, mighty breath. She felt an enormous force gathering up in her vaginal muscles. All those Kegels. All that energy she’d harnessed was now running deliriously through her tingling genitals. She felt like they were so strong, they were like a second mouth, sucking, sucking at her lover.
Marnie screamed as she came, the earthquake roiling up from her epicenter and exploding through every nerve ending of her body. She felt her physical boundaries dissolving, a truly divine bliss permeating her being.
“Old MacDonald had a farm,” she sang in a dreamy voice. She floated, enjoying the fog that drifted in and out of her brain. After a few timeless moments, she opened her eyes. She was alone. Kurt was nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t care. She wanted only to hold on to the waves of euphoria that still coursed through her in weakening pulses.
Her last conscious thought before she slept was that maybe she shoul
d have tried the aphrodisiacs one at a time.
She woke up with a splitting headache. She was on the kitchen floor, naked and very cold. And bloated; her stomach hurt like the dickens. All that shellfish, she guessed, and God knew whatever was in that wine. She felt as if a fist were squeezing her insides in a slow, nauseous pulse.
She was alone. Where was Kurt? Her memories of the night before were foggy, but she did know he’d been with her, here on the floor, having intense sex.
She didn’t feel like moving, but she hauled herself up. She dragged herself into the shower and got herself feeling halfway human again. Shuffling naked to the kitchen, she spotted the crumpled polyester dress on the floor and pulled it on, wincing a little at how tight it felt.
Marnie surveyed the kitchen, evaluating the collateral damage: tablecloth and the remains of shellfish dinner, as well as utensils and a few plates, lay strewn across the floor. She plucked her bra out of the sink and then dropped it back in – it was soaking wet. She got the broom and halfheartedly began to sweep.
As she cleaned, she searched for a note from Kurt. She could find no clue of his whereabouts anywhere. His keys and coat were still lying by the door where he’d tossed them, and she could not imagine where he could have gone. Was he angry with her, did he think she was trying to manipulate him, had he stormed out of the house and gone to be with another woman? All sorts of horrible possibilities flooded her brain.
After waiting the entire afternoon for him to come home, she began to call around – she tried his workplace, his parents, then she began to go through his cellphone, first calling all his closest friends and then, driven by panic and worry, everyone else in his address book. No results.
Finally she called the police. “I want to report my boyfriend as missing,” she told the operator, her voice trembling.
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