by Cara Bruce
“You’re reaching the end of your first set,” I continue. “You close your eyes with the effort, breath coming harder as your muscles push, forcing away the weights. You open your eyes and catch one of the guys watching you in the mirror, staring at the muscles that flex in your legs with each extension.”
And what ensued after this quick hug with Mike was Casey telling me fantasies she had, first about hugging him, feeling him hard against her or feeling his cock against her back as he passed her in the kitchen. The fantasies progressed to her sucking his cock. I was sure that the “him fucking her” fantasy was just around the corner.
“It’s funny, the guy watching your legs,” I tell her, “because you don’t shave and each of your muscles is well-defined, but the lines are smoother than a man’s; longer, more sustained. And you know that some people notice this and some people don’t, depending on what they want to see. You wonder what he thinks you are. You feel him watching you. And the quick jolt of adrenaline tells you it’s sexual, the heat and wet of working out.”
Although I knew that Mike and Casey were probably never going to even kiss each other, I also knew that something was opening in Casey, something hot and deep, a desire free of fear. I knew that she was curious enough and brave enough that someday she might play with this desire, maybe even satisfy it.
“The heat and wet combine with the liquids of arousal. Your breasts and palms are sweaty, the crevice between your pussy and thigh soaked.” At this point, I’m getting that the words wet and sweat are working for Casey, so I sprinkle them liberally through my narrative. “The high from pumping your muscles and feeling the strength of your body, the cool wetness of your shirt sticking to you, the sheen of sweat on your legs, along with these guys noticing you, mixes until you’re not sure which is which and it doesn’t matter because all the energy helps you finish your second set. You’ve got one more, and you try to slow your breathing down, gather yourself, and then begin again. You narrow your focus, watching your own body now, marveling at the sweat that highlights your thighs and calves. You unclench your hands from the bench and slide your hands down your legs as they work, feeling yourself as your muscles contract and expand, and you grunt softly with each exertion.”
Casey’s breath comes faster now, her arm tightening with the effort of rubbing her clit in fast, wet circles.
“Without even looking up, you notice that a few more guys have stopped what they’re doing, standing at a machine or with free weights in their hands, just watching you. Your muscles are burning now, hurting, and you focus even more, matching your breath with the rhythm of the reps, barely noticing the other machines, the men close by, the swirling of other bodies, quadriceps, triceps, at this point only muscles, bulges, moving, thrusting, pushing, and then releasing. Sweat is dripping off your face, down your chest, and you’re not sure if you can do the last five, but the guys are checking you out, and you can’t stop now. Then something grabs your attention. It’s a smell, and at first you think maybe you smell yourself, but then you realize it’s coming from somewhere close by. It’s the smell of guy sweat, and not just sweat, but it smells like Mike, after a fire, when all of you are exhausted and exhilarated, coming down from the high of fighting fire, and glad to be alive, strip off the layers of protective gear, get down to the wet and sweat-drenched clothes, sweat that wreaks of fear and hard work and adrenaline, pure and animal-like. And not until this minute did you realize how much the smell is part of why you love fire fighting and that the smell turns you on just as much as touching someone’s cunt or the sound of a woman coming from the way you’re touching her. That smell of men, and a picture of Mike stripping down the layers of his clothing, and the motion of nearby muscles is exactly what you need to get through your last set. You control your breath now, measured. You’re wet and hot.”
At this point, Casey moans and begins to clench next to me. “They’re watching you. The sweat and heat of your effort is burning the muscles in your legs and the muscles between them. When you don’t think you can push any harder, you breathe in, tasting the thick air around you,” I say, and she moans again. This is the part I love—she finally stops controlling her breath, and it comes out faster now, throaty, and she’s quietly but surely shuddering next to me. “You finish your last five reps with a groan. Wasted, you fall back, limp against the seatback of the bench, catching your breath, almost lightheaded. Your shirt is drenched with sweat, and after a minute, you gather enough strength and stumble into the showers.”
Scenes from Thailand
Rachel Resnick
Bangkok
Here we are, in another girly bar. Same, same, every night. On our way in, the katoey are merciless. Three of them, lounging up against the wall outside the bar.
“Ooooh,” and “big boy,” they say, grabbing at Gary’s arms and crotch. “Show us, hunh?” One points at my tits. “Real?” Then to Gary, “Squeeze ’em. Look,” and she pulls one fake tit out of her chintzy leopard print halter, grabs his arm roughly, and makes to press it there.
Gary withdraws his arm, slows, smiles, exchanges a few whispered words. The katoey giggle and slap Gary’s butt as he walks by.
“Bye-bye,” they sing, waving to me mockingly. I didn’t even want to come tonight. But Gary won 2,500 baht playing horses and insisted. There’s always a reason, and his eyes light up so when I say OK. How can I be jealous of katoey?
Singha beers. Itchy strobes. House music. A horseshoe-shaped stage. More slender girl-women, this time in cowgirl outfits. Sequined silver vests and cowboy hats, tooled boots, and white leather G-strings. Walker is transfixed, doesn’t notice me fidgeting. I told Walker I didn’t feel like coming tonight—how many girly bars do we have to go to?
In the corner is a wide-screen TV showing one scene continuously. At first I don’t know what it is, think it’s some psychedelic lava lamp effect, a throbbing pulse of pinks and blacks, sea anemones locked in mortal combat, an animated Rauschenberg, a mouth undergoing invasive surgery—but then I see it is an extreme close-up of a four-foot-high black cock sluicing in and out of a five-foot-high pink pussy.
I look around, embarrassed, but no one is paying any attention to me, and I realize I have never really watched porn, let alone hung out in girly bars night after night. The movement is mesmeric, and I have to steady myself from swaying with my hand on the back bar. Again I look at Walker, to anchor my vision, but he too has not moved—it is as if everything is moving repetitively or else has stopped moving altogether. The bar is undulous and wavery, with frozen parts. I realize I am soaking and it reminds me of the sensation I sometimes have when I am bleeding, that all my innards are slip-sliding down and will flush out along with the blood, leaving me gutless.
It is only with great concentration that I can tear my gaze away from the screen and join Walker in viewing the stage. We are now one gaze, Walker and I, swallowing up each and every girl—and I, for the first time, am his partner. Look, touch, take. There is always more and there is never enough and all is molten. Oceanic. I think I’m getting it.
With one look now I can pierce through the veil of manner, see desire. Everyone is want. What did the Buddhist tract say? “One must look correctly to be able to penetrate, otherwise one will see nothing.” But was it meaning this? I can’t remember.
A particular girl captures my attention. Instead of cowboy boots, she’s wearing Doc Martens, and looks more Samoan than Thai. She is built, and attacks the pole with muscularity, climbing to the top then slowly twirling back down head first, her legs snaked around the gleaming pole, then pow, into a split, wham, into a back handspring, all meaty shimmer and steel-toed boots.
Now the girls openly eye me while the men hunched around the stage shoot me homicidal looks. It is the first time I’ve noticed the men hating me. Walker nudges my side.
“The girls don’t like men—all those ugly drunken tourists, hitters, losers. They’re into women.”
He is so enjoying this. A nothing guy with red cre
w cut and close-set eyes actually spits in my direction.
“These men want to kill me,” I say.
It’s not only a revelation; it’s a turn-on. I am powerful. Electric rays snake out from my fingertips and into the watery reality strobing around me.
Four Singha bottles later, not the Samoan but another girl, Suki, is grinding her soft ass up against my groin. I find myself placing my hands on her bare hips, guiding her, the fringe of her vest swaying at my fingers, the dimple of those hips softly indented and cool to the touch. She is the only girl wearing high heels—scuffed white numbers like you’d wear to a wedding and toss afterward. I want to hold Suki, keep the gnarly men away, give her a sack of American silver dollars to match her outfit.
Buzzing and ultrasensitive, I feel something shift in the air. Walker, on my left, also leaning against the back bar, has placed his hand on Suki’s hip and she freezes. He slips his hand up onto her arm and I can feel the hairs rise there. She’s mine, I want to tell him. Don’t touch. But instead, I gently push her toward the bar so he can’t see. She turns toward me, her black bangs swinging.
“Buy me a drink,” she says shyly, pointedly ignoring Walker.
But it is Walker who goes to the bar, gets her a drink, some blue-colored confection.
While he is gone, I reach up and lightly brush my fingers against her tit. She’s so flat. How the fuck old is she? I can’t tell anyone’s age at all in Thailand. She could be thirty; she could be thirteen.
They turn on the lights and the house shifts to slow-dance goodnight get-out sap.
“Let’s go,” I say to Walker.
I want to escape from the harshly unpleasant glare. I’ve had enough. But he hangs back. Suki has moved away, stands in a cluster with some of the other girls who now, in the blinding light, look incredibly young, all carrying school satchels with bionic bright flower stickers on the flaps.
“Walker,” I say.
What is he waiting for? He is a different man at night, in these bars, more wired and distant. It makes me panicky, afraid I’ll lose him. We move slowly toward the door, but Walker stops at the cluster, says something to Suki, who looks away. The other girls giggle. Walker rejoins me.
“I asked her to maybe come out and have a bite to eat with us or something.”
“Walker, it’s three A.M. I’m tired.”
Suki looks uncertain, catches my eye. When she does, her eyes turn dead. In their reflection, I see a hoary-scaled reptile shedding his pink-fleshed humanoid daywear. The blush suffuses my face, but she has already turned her back to me and together with the other young girls, en masse, the many-legged, many-armed, flower-satcheled young cowgirls melt away.
Phuket
The whore’s name is Bang and she has a crush on me. She is on break. Most of the girls in Delight Ship Bar are dressed in school uniforms, white ankle socks, heels. A few wear cheap synthetic dresses. Bang wears a minijumper and scuffed white pumps that are two sizes too big. Before she went on break I watched her dance. I stared at her narrow heels sliding around in the pumps that belonged to someone else, then at the sweet V of her shaved crotch, which kept appearing and disappearing as she wriggled against a pole in front of her. I could have stuck two fingers in that gap behind her heel. Two thick American fingers.
Bang barely reaches to my chest, and I can circle her wrists with my index finger and thumb. Bang has a friend named Bong. I prefer Bong. She is taller, curvier, more sultry, with long eyelashes and a constellation of freckles that looks like dirt over her left clavicle. Bong leans over, whispers in my ear.
“You are better looking than him,” she hisses. “You should not be with him.”
I like her warm breath in my ear. She squeezes my waist, then goes back on stage. Bang presses her slender hip against mine.
“Take me home,” she says.
She ignores Walker. Walker who’s leering, who’s eyes are moist with anticipation.
Bang holds my hand as we walk through the crowded street, past carbuncled men with perfect Thai girls at their sides, girls who are bought and yet the men are proud, they walk by as if they are hot shit, this is their pretty young girlfriend and it’s all real, when the truth is they hemorrhage money to pay for a whole night with these girls. What is real is the stink of Third World sewage and rot, the fry smell of cooking dough, simmering chilies, twinkly lights strung haphazardly everywhere, and everyone leering, me too, my face is figured by kink, and Bang’s small hand is in mine.
People are watching, staring. This threesome is something a bit out of the ordinary even for the beach town of Phuket, not much, but a little, happening only every half hour instead of steadily on the second, every second. She talks to me, Bang does, about her family. She has three children. She is from Laos. In Laos they have a very primitive counting system: one, two, three, many…. Bang wears a gold necklace and bracelet and anklet. In the shadow-pocked night they glitter against her dusky skin. Her hand is humid, meltable, but then so is everything. The world is covered in a sheen of sweat. I am in Phuket, walking hand in hand with a whore down a street back to the hotel room I share with Walker.
We sit on the bed, awkwardly. The TV is on. Time is a slinky. Time is tight coils of seconds stretching U-shaped over our heads, between our bodies, then collapsing with a slap. The thin bedspread is decorated with cross-country skiers. It is 90 degrees even now.
“Something to drink?” Walker says. “Orange soda?”
“Please, yes.”
“Me too,” I say, and Bang and I sip from the same orange soda can.
After some long minutes pass, us staring listlessly at the TV screen, Walker says to me, “Kiss her.” I kiss her.
She tastes like Laos. Pungent, earthy, fetid, powerful, rank, completely foreign. I recoil. To compensate, I kiss her with more passion, brush back her silken black hair and cradle her head as if I am the man. Bang is so tiny. I want to make her come. I know whores rarely come, if ever, even though I’ve never been with one. I want to make her happy, and I want to turn Walker on, show him what I can do.
With her delicate frame, she’s almost weightless above me, like she’s floating. I remember playing airplane with my father, how his fat feet lofted me high into the air. I lift Bang, softly place her shellfish cunt against my thigh, and make her ride, deep-kissing her into an altered state. My thigh is a stallion, and her cunt is riding barebacked, shaved clean. I feel the pulsing there, a naked mouth with pursed lips, trying to speak.
As she writhes on my body, I see again an image from this afternoon: the ex-votos, those parti-colored frangipani fabrics they tie around sacred trees for blessings, undulating in the sea breeze. This is her body. Slender. Furling and unfurling. Silk-spun. I hold Bang close. She grabs a handful of my fat American tit in her tapered fingers, sucks on the nipple furiously. Maybe I am a fantasy for her, vaguely suggesting one of those fleshy babes who charges up and down the TV beach in her wet red clingsuit; perhaps it’s simply my otherness that makes her wet; maybe, like she to me, I stink of the foreign, too. Maybe all those soaps and lotions, perfumes and sprays seem a kind of formaldehyde to her, and she is wondering as she searches my body, What are Americans trying to hide?
Now Bang is making little gasps. Encouraged, I become merciless; for minutes, hours, my thigh gallops against her pretty little cunt. I dare not touch that cunt, although I think about touching her the way I touch myself. But that is my private prayer, the secret communion of my own flesh and fingers. Like a bat, I blindly radar in on Bang’s steady, small gasps, search for clues to take her home. Then we are grooving together on a shared plateau where foreign tongues blend, and two bodies are reborn as Siamese twins, joined at the hip of Walker’s greedy gaze.
This is taking forever. Before we finish, the whole world will have rubbed its genitals into oblivion.
Pressing harshly against her cunt, I make more violent, urgent moves, wanting this to be over, wanting Bang to love me for just this moment. I crush the smooth, almost rubbery nether
lips, mash them so her pubic bone clicks back and forth, and it is like I’m kneeing her in the cunt. It would take so little to damage her, and I am tempted. I hold Bang even more tenderly, shamed by my impulse, unable to imagine three children emerging from between her fragile legs. Finally Bang exhales a sharp, bestial yelp.
I am exhausted. Disgusted. Triumphant. Disoriented. It is as if I have woken from a strange claustrophobic dream and here it is, that dream. Inescapable. Her juice trembles down my thigh, her bony chest shudders against my pillowy breasts as if she were my baby. If I dared, I would pick her up and hurl her from the door of The Seagull Cottages, #7. She is old enough to fly. Bang wants to keep kissing me. Finally she asks Walker if he wants to fuck her.
“No,” he says. “Nah.”
He pays her at the door. Bang wants to come back tomorrow, to visit me. She wants to bring her three children to play at the beach. I say I’d love to. Bang gives me her number, kisses me shyly on the lips. When tomorrow comes, we take the train back to Bangkok.
On the train, Walker does not mention the whore, but I cannot stop thinking about the smallness of her hands, her assaultive smell, how much I loathed and cared for her at the same time—a woman I know not at all. Some other kind of currency was exchanged during that transaction. Something more valuable than baht was traded.
Happy Loving Couple Makes It Look So Easy
Susan Coss
“Oh…sweet…fucking…Jesus,” I gasp.
“Hey-zeus, se pronuncia hey-zeus,” he says as he makes those final thrusts before collapsing on top of me.
