Hard Evidence- The Collected Bawdy Writings

by Kevin Keck

  When I came around from the vampyress' sweet embrace I woke to sunlight. I was sitting on the couch, fully clothed. No one seemed to be in the apartment but me. Had I fallen asleep and only dreamed a wild meeting with a vampire? Be it so, if you will; I didn't stick around to find out, but instead made a hasty exit and found my car. When I looked in the rear-view mirror I saw the cuts on my lower lip.

  It occurred to me that Lorraine would have driven by my apartment last night; she would have noticed my absent car, perhaps even waited for me. I could not begin to guess what loss I was about to return to, but I felt it prudent to stop on the way home and purchase a new toothbrush.

  Swing Town

  A few months after I’d broken up with Lorraine, she sent this text message to my cell phone: I just want u 2 know I slept w/ Brian while u &I were still dating. That’s right, we had sex. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

  She actually said that thing about revenge-- I wish that were some terrible cliché that bubbled up from my poor imagination, but instead it’s a terrible cliché from a woman with whom I had sex for three years. For quite a while I was unsure whether it was the content of her message or the phrasing which upset me most. She had a real chance to say something that would have tipped the spear of her confession with a more potent poison, something like, His cock was the solution to the riddle of our relationship. Certainly it’s not Shakespeare, but it would have confused me for months.

  Brian was a friend who lived across the street, a trusted companion, and a devout Christian. That last item should have raised a red flag immediately that he was going to cause trouble. I should know: I was raised in the church in the South, and since you’re taught that humans are eternally flawed and Jesus forgives no matter what, those that buy into the programming are more or less free to screw up as much as they like and never serve any real time in eternal damnation. All that limits you is your ability to negotiate the gauntlet of consequences in this world-- a skill at which most folks are rather adept.

  But because Brian kept a supply of premium hash in his apartment it was for this reason that I was willing to let my instincts take a backseat along with my consciousness. (I have my beliefs, too, and getting really high whenever possible is at the top of my commandments.)

  Truthfully, though, I couldn’t have cared any less that Brian had nailed Lorraine, despite the fact that he never told me about it and that I was sleeping a mere 10 feet away when it happened. Lorraine was in the past, and so any vengeance or betrayal that involved her was a moot point. Besides, she and Brian and I had spent the night drinking and joking around about the possibility of a three-way, but because of all the hash I became narcoleptic rather early; Lorraine was a horny beast when she drank and I knew that. What ultimately pissed me off was the realization that, once again, my dream of group sex had come so very close to fulfillment, but instead of orgiastic ecstasy I am left only with the memory of a sweet, solitary slumber. Story of my life.

  Actually, my dream would have only been grazed rather than satiated had I been a participant in Lorraine and Brian’s copulation. My ideal situation would have involved me and two women. At one time this seemed like an achievable objective, and I approached it with cold, military calculation. It was a two-pronged attack which involved the initial recruitment of an ally (my friends who had fallen upon the good fortune to engage in a threesome always implied that bringing in that key third element was easier if you already had one woman with you), followed by a joint campaign of invading a willing lass of our choosing. My mistake was always trying to form a pact with my current girlfriend, and few questions shake the foundation of a woman’s self esteem like, “Hey, honey, how about we bring another woman into bed with us? You know, just for kicks…”

  It was also my misfortune to constantly date women who had already been through this experience. Whenever I began a new relationship and the inevitable cataloging of each other’s romantic résumé commenced (an activity that is most often accompanied by a late hour and many drinks), it was the ménage à trois category that gave me the most heartache. If my girlfriend had participated in group sex before, it was usually framed in this manner, “Me and [insert female name here] and our friend [insert male name here] were really fucked up one night, and it just happened… It’s not something I’d do with someone I was actually dating. That just wouldn’t work, you know?” I always asserted that I, as a point of fact, didn’t know, but that I was willing to test those waters because that’s how one gains knowledge. How could anyone really and truly know how they felt about watching their partner have sex with someone else unless they had tried it? Besides, translated literally from the French, ménage à trois means “household for three.” Granted, it means “three people fucking” in English, but isn’t there some wisdom in the literal French, some nuanced notion that invokes the trinity and implies that we are all God’s creatures , that we should live (and fuck) together in perfect harmony, that we are all one in this house of a world?

  Had I been dating Aristotle I’ve no doubt my argument would have been viewed as the epitome of rational thinking and certainly been put to the test. (Then again, a Greek guy will go along with just about anything to get laid.) But regardless of whether or not my girlfriends had previously dipped their toes in the orgy-pool, my attempts at getting them to sign on to such a tempting treaty were always met with the same dismissive laugh and look which said, Hey pal, you’re lucky to be getting what you’re getting-- don’t push it.

  It occurred to me that I could take things on alone and attempt to be one of those lucky lads who happens to fall into bed one drunken/stoned night with two of his female friends, but there was an immediate obstacle that made the task more Herculean than it might normally be: I have few female friends, particularly those that are available for group sex. I tend to have more emotionally satisfying and comfortable relationships with men, and if I have a friendship with a woman it’s usually because she has some quality that I find attractive, and when a woman possesses such a quality, I want to have sex with her. Thus, I have more ex-girlfriends than genuine female companions, and I would endeavor to put my time towards dismantling Mount Rushmore with 19th century dental tools rather than endure the agony of trying to coax one or two of them back into bed with me. As to the matter of approaching two women previously unknown to me about the prospect of a three-way: rejection from one woman was dreadful enough; why double-down on humiliation?

  However, at the beginning of my relationship with Lorraine when we reached that point where it was necessary to tally the failures of our past loves and detail those desires which delighted us, her stance on the three-way was not the traditional response I’d grown accustomed to. While she admitted to a single incident of the sort in her own past (an unpleasant event, as she described it, involving a great deal of cocaine, her sister’s ex-boyfriend and a cherubic stripper named Poppy), she didn’t rule out any future experiences. Her exact phrasing was, “Put a ring on my finger and I’ll do whatever you want.”

  This was the beginning of a series of statements that should have activated the air-raid sirens in my brain, but the blitz was already underway: Lorraine was just stunningly beautiful and fucked like a cat with its tail stuck in an electrical socket. Although she would eventually get around to throwing a blistering hot espresso on me, smashing my television, and chasing me around my apartment with a loaded Red Ryder BB gun (I abandoned all pretense of masculinity that night-- I wasn’t about to lose an eye to demonstrate I was as cool under fire as Bugs Bunny), I dismissed these events simply as proof that her love for me was deeply passionate, however oddly she might choose to express it. I am a shallow man; I liked having a beautiful girlfriend, and the television needed replacing anyway.

  Over the ensuing months I would broach the subject of group activities, and Lorraine’s answer was always the same: buy her a ring and she’d be my willing slave. The dilemma would have been easily resolved, I think, for most men, but I didn’t want a willing sl
ave; I wanted a willing partner. On the flip side, I had no desire for a wife. A hot girlfriend was one thing, but a wife-- a wife involved legally binding contractual arrangements, and I have an intense aversion to any situation which does not afford me the comfort of a quick and hassle-free exit.

  Other than her occasional psychotic outbursts and statements (“If you ever try to leave me I will call all your friends and tell them how much you hate them and that you used to beat me” which she actually did, but not because I tried to leave her; she did it because I wouldn’t buy her a hairless cat-- I have eight cats, and I was more than willing to shave one), my only other grievance with Lorraine was that she loved holidays. I love holidays, too, but I also like being in bed at a reasonable hour. This is mainly due to the fact that I like smoking pot, and the side-effect is that after giggling at everything for a while, I become hungry, then extremely sleepy. Lorraine was a serious weekend and holiday drinker, and if you’ve been around such folks you know quite well their capacity for stretching their decadence into the early hours of the next morning. I have little tolerance for such behavior, perhaps because I do not understand the binge mentality: why cram everything into one night and feel like shit for the next day or two, when you can stretch that pleasure moderately across the whole week?

  Thus, when it came to parties and other late night social activities, I was quite content to let Lorraine go with her friends while I sat at home and listened to my old Michael Jackson records, occasionally calling up my friend Chad to say, Listen to the funk in “Rock with You” as I turned the volume up on the stereo so that it might be audible over the telephone.

  After one of these parties in early December 2003, at which I was not present, Lorraine returned with an invitation to yet another soirée on New Year’s Eve. This party was right around the corner from my apartment, and it took place at the home of a former Maybelline model turned dental hygienist and her boyfriend.

  “How do you know these people?” I asked.

  “She’s my dental hygienist.”

  Being around people in the dental trade makes me uncomfortable as it is; I have an incisor that was chipped by an errant Frisbee during a game of disc golf, and I always feel like they’re looking at my teeth. Also, I don’t have a good relationship with New Year’s Eve-- it’s been a let down my whole life, and I find a good night’s rest for myself far more pleasing than putting another year of the same old shit to bed. I told Lorraine I’d probably just sit at home and try to decide on the ultimate rock vocalist: it was down to Roger Daltry or David Lee Roth, but I didn’t know how much credit to give Elvis for being the first.

  Lorraine frowned and walked out of the room. I was prepared for the sound of one of my more valuable possessions hitting the ground, but instead Lorraine re-emerged from the bedroom, nude, and said, “They’re swingers.” Then she proceeded to remove my cock from my pants, suck it a little, spit on it, and place it between her scrumptious breasts which she pumped up and down on my shaft until I heard the assailing, triumphant yell of Roger Daltry from “Won’t Get Fooled Again” reverberate through my head.

  Prior to the invitation to the New Year’s swingers’ party, the closest I’d come to a group encounter happened via the phone. I do not refer to the party phonesex lines which I called with impunity in my youth and beyond, but to a curious period in my relationship with Bridget, back when I was still in graduate school.

  Bridget was bisexual, but fiercely monogamous, and so her desire to involve anyone else in our lovemaking was as nonexistent as that desire had been with previous girlfriends. However, Bridget had experienced the pleasure of another woman, and it is simply a fact of the universe that one female can provide for another what a man never can. What it is that’s provided I’ve no clue; as I lack a vagina I hesitate to speak for those who possess one. But having a cock, I can say something about the psychology of that thing: it is just that-- a thing. It dangles from one’s body like a gregarious dog on a minuscule leash, constantly nosing ahead of its owner, always wanting to be petted or scratched, getting into things it shouldn’t get into, making a mess. Or it is a mildly useful tool, often a good gauge on just how cold it is wherever you’re standing at the moment, or it functions nicely as a novelty towel rack for moderate amounts of time. (I’ve heard that some men can open a beer bottle with their penis, but I can neither imagine the mechanics of such a feat nor the desire to attempt it.) It is an entity at once attached and yet separate from you. As far as I know, every implement of war bears some resemblance to a testicle or a penis, and that should tell you something right there: the masculine aspect lacks a tenderness, a capacity for acceptance.

  My personal encounter with Bridget’s strap-on dildo had taught me my own limits of acceptance, and while I knew that she would not stomach the idea of me having sex with her and a strange girl, I suspected she might miss the sound of a woman coming, and so I proposed the idea of she and I having sex while we talked with a girl on the phone.

  There was little, if any, hesitation to her answer:

  “Well, where do we find this girl?”

  “Online.”

  Bridget began to peel off her clothes. “Get to it.”

  I discovered that finding a woman to have phonesex with me and my girlfriend was much easier than finding a woman to have phonesex with just me. I conjecture this is due to the high volume of single men who congregate on the internet in search of phonesex with a woman who is into the act altruistically; a man who already has a woman with him is less likely to be a loser or a stalker (in most cases), and besides it’s often more entertaining to listen to a couple have sex than a man masturbate.

  Our first few encounters with various women presented certain obstacles, the biggest one being the most efficient way to fuck while holding the phone. Alas, as college students we could neither afford a headset nor a speakerphone, and had to make do with a bulky cordless unit I’d inherited from my grandparents. The best position depended on who was doing the talking: if I was on the phone, then it was doggy-style (a descriptive term I have loathed since I was a teenager, as so many more interesting animals have sex in this position, though “goat-style” implies a satanic filthiness about the act), and if it was Bridget then it was missionary on her riding me.

  While it wasn’t a part of our regular sexual routine, when the occasion presented itself (usually when my roommate Steve was absent, which was not often) the added thrill of some anonymous woman masturbating to the sounds and descriptions of our love making (Bridget and I, as baseball fans, were pretty good at giving a detailed play-by-play of what was happening) heightened the intensity of our orgasms. I often had to restrain myself from a quick release, and I couldn’t imagine the even greater pleasure that must certainly be a part of genuine, physical group sex. I was fairly sure at that time in my life that should an opportunity arise it wouldn’t be worth it: my anticipation would be so excessive that I’d go off like a geyser just prior to earth-shattering seismic activity.

  As all earthly delights, the phone three-ways did not have an infinite shelf life. The end came during a session with a girl Bridget and I had spoken to several times. We had paused to switch positions, and when Bridget handed the phone to me the girl on the other end said, “Is that Phish playing the background?” Indeed, it was Phish, and as Phish is one of those breeds of bands that inspire a tedious fanaticism in their listeners, the girl and I launched into a painfully intricate discussion of the various shows we had been to, what we thought of the new songs they were playing, and the peak performances of the last ten years. While this conversation actually made my cock even more hard than it already was, Bridget was not amused in the least. She finally snatched the receiver from my hands, hung up on our phonesex partner, dressed silently and walked back to her apartment. I didn’t bring the subject up again.

  In the weeks before New Year’s Eve, I pestered Lorraine with questions about our hosts. Mainly these questions related to the hotness factor of Lorraine’s hygie
nist, and then minor queries such as, “What does one wear to a swingers’ house?” My wardrobe is limited-- mainly a menagerie of clothes that ex-girlfriends have bought me because I apparently lack the ability to attire myself in an acceptable manner-- and there was the potential to have sex with a former Maybelline model. Or any other number of women, for all that I knew. I wanted to be dressed as appropriately and desirably as possible. Lorraine was vague on the particulars of my own clothing choices, but certain that the party would be large, intense, and fantastic, and attended by folks in casual evening wear. That made the decision easy for me: khaki pants, white shirt-- my standard dress for events that fall between the casualness of playing horseshoes and the formality of funerals.

  Any other questions regarding the party I tended to ask in the bedroom while Lorraine and I were fucking, and these were repetitive questions along the lines of, “You like this dick don’t you? But it’s not enough is it? You want more than one cock, don’t you?” Often Lorraine shouted her answers, most usually, “Give me two dicks! I want another fucking cock in my mouth!”

  As I live in a building that was built in 1949, the insulation between apartments doesn’t absorb sounds as it might in a more modern dwelling, and after these late night Q&A fucking sessions, my downstairs neighbor, Jennifer, would level a curious gaze at me when we inevitably ran into each other the following day. She never said anything about it at the time, but at a cookout at our apartment some months later when Lorraine stated that she only wanted one hotdog, Jennifer tilted her head and said, “Are you sure you don’t want two? I thought you might prefer two.” I moved my bed to the opposite end of the apartment that night.