“Uh-huh.” No more words. I went to my knees on the floor. When I reached him I cupped the shape of his knees through his pants then pushed his legs apart and rubbed him through the denim.
Asa leaned forward and pinched one of my nipples; the sensation was sharp as a gasoline smell. “Fuck,” I said.
Asa kissed me on my mouth. I kissed back. Then with my fingers fumbling, I opened his pants and got his cock out. He sat back and watched me. I fit his cock in my mouth, then let it bump the back of my throat and then fill each of my cheeks like an enormous gumball. I worked on his cock until he was about to come, which I knew by the spasm in the corner of his mouth, so I stopped.
“Damon,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”
I motioned him down. Asa lowered himself to his knees in front of me then dragged his hand through my hair to my face.
“Look at me,’ he said.
I put my hands on his hips to turn him.
“Look at me, in my eyes.”
I looked and saw a feather in Asa’s hair. I was surprised to see it and fixated on it. It was kind of funny. Asa grabbed my face. We wrestled. I got my arms loose and pinched the feather from his hair and then showed it to him. Asa sighed. I pressed the feather into a ball between my fingers. Then holding Asa by the hips I turned him. He shifted without a word then leaned forward over the chair, putting his ass in perfect position. I oiled my cock with spit then pushed the head at his asshole. He opened a little at a time for me. Soon I was all the way in and moving. I had this thought his ass was moist and sticky as fish gut. I sank further, sandwiching him between me and the chair. He moaned underneath me.
I could talk again. “Feels good doesn’t it?” I fucked him. “Yeah, it feels good.” The base of my cock felt wedged at the mouth of a channel, but beyond that, open sea. “I’m going to come up your ass, babe.” Then I did it: I dug my nails in his hips and shot off. Asa breathed heavy, and I stayed inside him and reached around and found his cock. Together we jerked him off, up and down, around to his balls, up to the head. I felt him pulling air into his lungs.
“Want me flat on my back?” I asked. “Want me to throw my legs over my head and open my asscrack up? Want to fuck me like that?”
Asa moved our hands faster. The muscles in his arm flexed, and then he gasped, and a ribbon of spunk splashed my hand. He took hold of my wrist. “What if I fall in love with you?” he said, trying to see me over his shoulder.
My cock slipped from his ass then, and I crawled backward. “Hey, it’s just the sex talking, babe, because it felt good, that’s all.”
When Asa slept he frowned, like something that didn’t bug him during the day rushed him at night, then ransacked him. He made sounds in his sleep, which woke me and then left me sitting on the bed inside a yellow stain of lamplight. I watched him sleep.
I didn’t sleep well anyway. I’d suffered years of insomnia. After a while you got used to a punch in your stomach waking you up while you slept with a pillow over your head. “Get up, join the fucking party.” Dad roughed me up as a way to entertain his friends. He’d hit me up the side of the head, give me a shove. He made me wait on his guests, clean up after them and say things like, “I’m not a pussy.” Dad liked everything rough—parties, poker, people. His girlfriends always looked like hardened plastic. One used to come to my room and suck my dick. She’d say, “Your dad shouldn’t talk to you like that; you ain’t no pussy.” I couldn’t help it: I shot off in the woman’s mouth making believe she wasn’t a woman, not a woman sneaking into my room, or a woman Dad fucked and beat up.
I wanted to know what or who ransacked Asa’s sleep and I scooted close to him on the bed at night and tried to read the lines in his forehead like a palm reader would read your hand. I couldn’t see anything, and then he’d make a sound, as if he strained against the sheets, and I got so close I nudged him.
Asa opened his eyes. I scooted away, and then he focused his gaze on me. “What is it?”
“Nothing. Sorry if I woke you. I must have, you know, jostled the bed, sorry.” I wondered if he knew I’d been staring at him while he slept.
“It’s okay.” Asa yawned. “I had a dream, I think.”
“About what?” I really wanted to know without showing I wanted to know.
“It was weird, like I was stuck and couldn’t move.”
“I’ve had dreams like that before. I want to run but can’t. Was something chasing you?”
Asa thought and then shook his head. “My mother drowned, for real I mean, not a dream.”
I nodded, trying not to blink. Short spasm under his left eye.
“I was there,” he added and then rolled over. I realized I was supposed to comfort him, that a lover would do that, but I sat on the bed instead fixing my eyes on the back of Asa’s head like a kid frozen to the side of a pool while his mother drowned in front of him.
Not long after that Asa brought up the worst idea in the world.
“I met a guy, nice guy, who’s a therapist, and I thought you could talk to him.”
“What? No. I’m not talking to a shrink.”
“But if you can’t talk to me about your dad, I thought you’d talk to him.”
“No. I mean it, just drop it.” I stood from the couch, walked across the room and then felt like the ball those guys on the beach had hit back and forth a few months ago; I paced the room.
“I thought I might talk to him too,” Asa said.
“Whatever, if that’s what you want.”
“But I think it would be good for both of us, you know, to deal with our crap.”
“You knew what I was about when you invited me here,” I retorted. I was mad and decided I had to do something. What I did was throw a beer I had in my hand, which hit the wall with a thump. Asa didn’t move. Usually if I did that, a guy hit me.
He said, “Damon, I just want to talk.”
I was out the door.
Not much later, I sat inside a bar. I wasn’t sure how many drinks I’d had, but I smoked at least twelve cigarettes, and my heart felt like it was striking the bars of my rib cage and wanted to get out. One of the jerks I used to crash with showed up and sat next to me. Cole: inky red hair and dark eyes and a weird smile that implied he knew shit about me I didn’t want him to know. He bummed a cigarette. Few minutes later he nodded at the bathroom. I followed.
Inside a stall I said, “Ask you a favor?”
“Yeah, whatever.” Cole took his dick out and began to jerk off.
“Hit me,” I said.
“What?”
“Hit me in the face.”
Cole stopped jerking off. “Can I still fuck you if I do?”
“Yeah.”
Cole balled his hand into a fist. “You ready?”
“Yeah.” I steeled myself. A second later my chin felt dislocated and throbbed like a sonofabitch. I tasted blood in my mouth. It was sort of a relief.
“All right?”
“Yeah, hit me again.”
“You serious?”
“Do it.”
This time Cole socked me below my left eye. I felt a pop and thought for a second my eye had jumped ship, and then I felt my face and my eye was there, but the area underneath had puffed up. Little more relief. “Good, I’m good,” I said.
Cole smiled. “So let’s fuck.”
I turned, then put my hands on the wall above the toilet. Blood dribbled from my mouth to the bowl. Cole jerked my pants down then stuck his finger between my asscheeks to rub my hole.
“Got a condom?” I said. “I’m kind of…in a relationship.” I squeezed my eyes shut and shook with the cold sweats.
“Red one, size magnum.” Cole chuckled. “Can you handle it?”
“Fine,” I said. “Make it hurt.”
“You’re a weird faggot.” Cole opened me up pretty good, and I pressed my nails into the wall until they felt like they’d open like lids.
Cole shoved his cock so far up my ass he pushed my face to the wall. “What a juicy hole,” he said. “Maybe you’re bleeding.” He started to pant, then got incoherent behind me. I wanted him to finish. Just finish. “I’m going to blow,” he muttered behind me.
Yeah, do it; I’m a lousy worthless stupid whore.
“Yeah,” he said, “yeah.”
When Cole finished, I yanked up my pants. He peeled the condom off his dick then flicked it into the toilet. I tried to see come mixing with blood. Cole smacked my ass, startling me.
“Where to, want to crash at the pad?”
“No thanks.” What was wrong with me? I hurt all over.
“Well, I don’t know why you’d bother going back to the boyfriend. Who’d deal with your shit?”
I grabbed Cole by the throat. “Shut up, shut the fuck up. You don’t know anything about him.”
Cole threw up his hands. “Fine, let go.”
I did.
“Weird-ass faggot,” he muttered.
Then I was alone.
I let myself into the apartment. The kitchen was dark. A second later a light came on. I held up a hand. “Damon,” he said.
“Hey.” After a minute I put my hand down.
“What happened? Did somebody jump you?”
“No, nothing like that.”
Asa came over and studied my face. Part of me was so glad to see him I couldn’t bear it. He left and came back with a wet rag; I took it. Asa left the room.
Maybe it was the next morning, although I wasn’t sure what time it was or what planet I was on initially because my head felt two sizes too big for my body, but Asa woke me. Still dark outside. I managed to say, “What?” Then sort of panicked. Asa stood next to the bed, already dressed. I expected him to hand me a bag of my stuff, as in
this is it
. I think I moaned. I think I shook my head.
“Thought we’d go for a walk,” Asa said.
“Where?” My throat hurt.
“Beach, to clear our heads.”
I tried to read his tone and couldn’t. So I stood out of bed and winced from the pain in my head before I got dressed, jeans and a sweater.
Moments later, we headed down the street. The sky was blue-black like a bruise. For a while Asa kept his hands in his pockets, then he pulled one out and pointed at the sky. “See that constellation there?”
I looked, and the stars blurred like I’d cry or something fucked up like that. I swallowed. “No.” Then I stared as hard as I could.
“Looks like a whale,” Asa said, directing me to the right.
“Oh right, that big submarine sandwich.” I tried to laugh. Asa laughed a little and then said, “C’mon, it’s a whale.”
“You’re right.” I sensed him looking at me. We didn’t say anything else. Five minutes later we scaled down a cliff to the beach and walked along the water. The sun had begun to rise. I looked at Asa then away when I saw his eyes turn to mine. Ahead about twenty feet near the water I saw something move.
“What’s that?”
Asa stopped but didn’t answer.
“Is that a seagull?” I looked, trying to see it. “Yeah, it is.” The bird hopped cockeyed along the waterline. “It’s hurt.” I looked over my shoulder at Asa. Our eyes met. A moment later I hurried up the beach toward the bird. It was caught in a net.
How the fuck had that happened?
I dropped to my knees on the sand and the bird hopped in the opposite direction, dragging a piece of net with it. I inched forward to reach for it, and the bird pecked my hand. “Fuck!” I yanked my hand back. “Goddammit!” I shoved my hand out again, and the bird narrowly missed me. “Do it!” I shouted. “Just fucking peck me full of holes!” The bird squawked and then toppled into the water. That was when I lost it: I cried, bent over and choking. Asa was behind me on the sand now. I felt him and wiped my face. The seagull had calmed down enough that Asa was able to flip the net off it. The bird was free.
SHORT SAD SORDID SEXUAL ENCOUNTERS
Sam J. Miller
By the time I finished kneading the dough I was totally exhausted. Tranced out on the push and pull of it, I went way past the ten-minute mark the cookbook mandated. My muscles were aching and I was out of breath, and I kept going. Maybe all the extra kneading would make the loaf come out better than the dense, lumpy, tasteless bread I’d baked in the past, but that wasn’t why I kept going. Kneading dough spans a whole gamut of emotions: I was massaging my lover’s back; I was punching the president in the face, I was ripping apart the whole status quo. I was a fifties housewife nourishing her nuclear family. I was a five-year-old playing with modeling clay.
After the oven heat of the kitchen, our bedroom felt frigid.
“You should try kneading the dough next time,” I said. “It’s pretty erotic.”
No response, not even a tiny fraction of a head nod. When Sprell is working he tunes the world out, which is a trick I can’t pull off. I’m very easily distracted. And then again, if Sprell called me or the phone rang while I was in there wrestling the dough, would I have noticed? My upper arms still ached, and my face was glowing.
After a long time Sprell said, “You find
everything
erotic.”
The trance was broken. “Let me see,” I said.
Our new panel showed a cute blond boy with scruffy hair and a ringer-T, looking exasperated. “But sex is
fun!
” he was saying, splaying out his palms to make the point. In the previous panel, his older, wiser roommate had said, back to the viewer, coffee cup in hand, “I’m just saying maybe you ought to cool it with the random hookups, is all.”
“It looks so good,” I said. “We have time for two more, and then dinner.”
“All right,” he said, standing, flexing, joining his hands together high above his head and then leaning back as far as he could—which is not far. Neither of us has seen the inside of a gym since high school phys ed. He sat back down and assumed the monk position, leaning over the frame, his hands moving in slow, small, expert jerks. I had already scripted out the next several panels of our comic book, so I was free to worry about other things.