House of Holes

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House of Holes Page 2

by Nicholson Baker


  “What on earth?” said Woo, outraged.

  “By all means,” said Ned.

  Tendresse flicked her tongue over Ned’s crinkled scro-tatiousness, and then she drew the entire left ball into her mouth like a new potato. “Yow!” Ned said. His cock responded enthusiastically, although he had had a nice orgasm in the shower that morning. She suckled his other ball. Then she threw her head back and opened her mouth wide. “Now both together,” she said. “Fill my mouth with the manly warmth of your nutbag.”

  “Very well,” said Ned. He fed his manly nutbag into her mouth, and she made muffled gobbling and gargling noises.

  “Just plain disgusting,” said Woo, bending to get a better look.

  “Now drop the cock,” she said. “Drop it on my face, Ned. I want it.”

  Ned, canting his hips forward, let his cock fall gently against her nose.

  “Mmmmmmmm,” said Tendresse, inhaling. “You do not have magic sperm, but I know several women for you. Come, let’s meet Lila.”

  Luna Goes to a Concert

  Luna met a man named Chuck at the soup kitchen. He was manning the sink and she was unloading the dishwasher, which wasn’t an easy job because the steam was hot. They developed a nice wordless rhythm together of unloading and drying and stacking. Then, wiping the edge of the sink with a clean dish towel, Chuck directed his restless blue eyes directly at her and asked her if she would like to go with him to the Masturboats.

  Just like that, all of a sudden: “Would you like to go with me to the Masturboats?”

  “I’m not sure I’m ready for that,” Luna replied with a laugh, not knowing exactly what the Masturboats were. But inside she was saying, Why not? Because she knew that his kind of easy glancing manner was not all that common. Men turned thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and it was like someone dimmed the lights. When they’re young, they’re hilarious and bubbly and boyish. And bad. So bad. When they’re old, they’re flat and stupid and dull. She watched them in airports with their wives: brain-dead, mostly. And yet this man, Chuck, was probably forty-five at least. He still had some humor left in him. He was funny about how hot the plates were. Not funny in a poking kind of way, but in a cheerful way. He had a shock of Jimmy Stewart hair that he flung around. In some ways a beautiful man, with a rough grace to him. Why had she refused his polite offer? Of course she should have said yes to the Masturboats, whatever they were. But she just didn’t want to.

  Chuck was unfazed. “Then would you like to go with me to an intimate concert of Russian piano music and sit in the Velvet Room, and I’ll toy with your hair?”

  She took a breath, thinking. “I like Russian music,” she said finally. “That sounds nice. Sure.”

  First, though, she needed to go to Tan Wizards. She didn’t want to have white shoulders when she wore her black dress with the spaghetti straps. She didn’t want to be some blinking creature coming out of her nocturnal burrow for a grand musical adventure. She wanted to be working from a position of strength, with cinnamon-colored shoulders that shrugged and moved alluringly.

  So she went to Tan Wizards and signed up. The girl there asked her which room she wanted, Room 1, Room 2, or Room 3.

  “Which do you recommend for very fast results?” Luna asked.

  “The bulbs are best in Room 3,” the girl said, and she winked. “And I recommend this bronzer. It’s on special, only twenty-seven dollars tonight.”

  “Leo’s Tanlord Bronzer?”

  “Yes, it’s fantastic, it makes you irresistible.”

  So Luna went into Room 3 and closed the door. The upright tanning booth, with its rounded blue door, filled most of the room. There was a stool with a towel and a pair of goggles on it, and a clothes hook on the doorjamb. The walls were a deep red, and taped to one wall was a gross-out picture of an eye with a tumor in the tear duct, there to scare people into using eye protection. Next to the tumor picture was a large poster of a minister with a Bible in his hand, wearing a full robe, but exceedingly bronzed. The poster quoted him as saying that going tanning helped him be a better minister. Luna stripped down in front of the eye tumor and the tanned minister. Three eyes stared at her as she slathered on the Tanlord Bronzer. She circled her nipples with it and they began speaking to her in an odd kind of Braille.

  With her goggles on, she pressed the on button and went into the warm blue privacy of the booth. It was loud, because there was a powerful fan over her head, and it lifted her hair up. She felt like Botticelli’s Venus. She was standing nakedly there, with both her nipples on stun, and she heard a low voice behind her—almost a metallic voice, but confiding—and she felt some localized warmth on her shoulder. She said, “Who are you?”

  “I’m Leo, the Lord of Tan,” the voice said.

  She looked back, and there standing close behind her was an elongated kind of luminous being, made up of long ultraviolet lightbulbs. He resembled a balloon sculpture, except that he was almost impossible to look at because he was so blindingly bright.

  “Why are you here in the booth with me?” she asked.

  “I’m giving you an irresistible allover tan,” Leo the Tan Lord said, “and when I’ve given you an allover tan, I’m going to take you to the House of Holes, so that you can go with your new friend Chuck to an intimate concert of Russian piano music.”

  “This House of Holes,” she said. “Is it safe?”

  “They scan you seventeen ways when you’re going in. Chuck is a recruiter, and he likes you, so you’re getting a scholarship. Oop, it’s rather close quarters in here. I’m afraid you’ve given me a large fluorescence.”

  Luna, glancing, couldn’t help but admire the blinding watt-age of Leo’s long, warm blue bulbs. She felt she needed to be enveloped in his endless warmth. So she closed her eyes and let Leo do what he did so well. The fan was wonderfully loud, and Leo’s humming bulbs felt good on her skin, and then he murmured, “Open yourself for me, let me take you to the House of Holes.” She felt a long steady pressure, and then he lit her up inside. All at once she was liquefying into pure blue.

  When the light went away, she was standing in front of the House of Holes concert hall, wearing her black dress and black stockings, still out of breath from her recent exertions. She looked at her shoulders—they were perfectly tanned, not too dark, just right. Chuck came up wearing a rumpled blazer, carrying floppy tickets. His shock of hair excited her.

  “Hello, hello,” he said. “You look lovely. I got us the Velvet Room.”

  They went inside, past the bar, and up a wide red stairway to the balcony level. It was very warm, and there were gold sconces in the shape of mermaids.

  “Where’s the rest of the audience?” Luna asked.

  “It’s a special kind of concert,” said Chuck. They came to room 28L. The door said “Velvet Room.” They went inside. It was very quiet, very private, and there were two holes in the wall. A strangely shaped low chair was positioned in front of the two holes.

  “This is nice, but I can’t see the stage,” said Luna.

  “You can’t see the stage in the Velvet Room. It’s not about seeing.” Chuck smiled and moved his hand lightly over her hair. His eyes had an inner level, through the irises—it felt as if she was looking down a spiral staircase. “Now you must take off your shoes and your black stockings, although they’re very nice, and sit in the chair.”

  “Okay,” said Luna. She slipped off her stockings and handed them to him. He folded them and put them on a little side table.

  “Good,” said Chuck.

  “And now I sit?”

  Chuck nodded. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said.

  She sat and looked up at him, taking another hit of his eyes. The chair was low, and her dress rode up. “Sorry, a little indelicate here,” she said, hitching to cover the sight of her red panties.

  “Don’t worry. You’re going to put your legs through the holes.”

  “Now?”

  Chuck nodded.

  She pointed her right foot and put it
through the hole. Then her left foot.

  “Good,” said Chuck. “All the way now.”

  Luna scooted forward on the seat.

  “A little further,” said Chuck, taking a position behind her in the chair. Luna felt her legs dangling out in space, and then she felt a man’s hand touch her and cradle her right heel. “I do believe someone is holding my foot,” she said.

  “That’s Alexander,” said Chuck.

  The touch was gentle, and Luna sensed that Alexander had a little French-style goatee, perhaps. She could hear him murmuring. Her main thought was: Boy am I glad I shaved my legs this morning.

  “What’s he saying?” she asked Chuck.

  Chuck turned up a volume dial. “You can speak to him if you’d like,” he said.

  “May I ask who you are?” she asked politely.

  The hands stopped. “I am Alexander Borodin, the very famous Russian composer,” said the voice.

  Luna looked back at Chuck, who had begun playing with her hair. “But Alex,” she said, “didn’t you write the Polovetsian Dances something like a hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty years ago?”

  “Yes, but I’m here now to play your leg like the keys of a piano keyboard,” he said.

  Chuck kissed her forehead. “Just enjoy it.”

  “Okay, carry on,” Luna said.

  Alexander began to play. He was up and down her leg, her thigh, trilling away on her kneecap, glissandoing down her calf. She leaned back and sighed a soft, murfling sigh, allowing her head to fall into Chuck’s lap. “Oh, sorry,” she said, feeling a large lump there.

  “May I unpin this bauble from your hair?” Chuck asked.

  Luna’s eyes were closed. She nodded. Chuck took out the barrette and leaned and kissed her on her ear. Then, when Luna was almost swept away by the music on her right leg—she could hear it perfectly—suddenly she felt another man’s hands on her left leg.

  “Wait, who are you?” she asked.

  The hands held her leg very firmly and confidently. “I am Nikolai.”

  “Nikolai who?”

  “Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the very famous Russian com-poser,” the voice said. “I will be playing a piano transcription of my very famous Scheherazade.”

  “Where?”

  “On your nude left leg. Starting now.”

  The two composers began fingering and squeezing her legs with great intensity, and then, as if by mutual agreement, they both seized her legs and gave a strong but gentle pull, sliding her farther down in her chair. “Woopsie,” said Luna.

  “Don’t worry,” said Chuck softly. “They’re just pulling you down so that you’re fully seated in the pussy cradle.”

  “Of course, the pussy cradle,” said Luna, as her pussy made firm and not unpleasant contact with a curved item covered in black leather and shaped a little like a bicycle seat. It fit her just right, and the two composers now began pulling and stroking with a soft sort of insistent rhythm.

  Luna rocked herself into it and she heard Chuck make a slight growling sound as he traced his fingertips over her neck.

  “Chuck,” she said, “seriously, what’s going on here? This is getting down to the nitty-gritty.”

  Chuck laughed. “It’s what happens at the House of Holes.”

  Luna thought, Why not? She let her head fall back again till she could feel some of Chuck’s interesting groin bundle through his black pants. It pushed against the side of her head. Just then her attention was diverted by something stiff and warm tracing the curve of the arch of her foot.

  “Mr. Borodin, is that you?” she said.

  “Yes, that is my cock,” said Alexander Borodin. “It is very hard and very famous.”

  “I see,” she said. “It tickles a little. And you, Mr. Rimsky-Korsakov?”

  “One moment!” said Rimsky. “And now, my cock, too!”

  There was another resilient stiffness against her toes. Luna pushed back with both feet and felt both cocks standing hard against the composers’ taut bellies. They both seemed surprisingly fit for musicians.

  “How’s the music going for you?” Chuck murmured into her hair.

  “It feels good to have two stiff Russians pushing against the soles of my feet,” said Luna, smiling up at him.

  “Good,” said Chuck. Then convulsively he whispered some-thing in her hair that she didn’t catch.

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, Chuck, please tell me what you said.”

  “I said, ‘I wish I could fuck you in the mouth with my cock and come all over your pretty lips.’”

  “Woo, Chucky.” Luna got a melty feeling in her shoulders. She turned and squashed her face against his lap, inhaling his warm cocoa-bean smell through his dress pants. The smell went right to her head. “Hurry, because this pussy cradle is feeling way too good.”

  Out flopped the enormity of Chuck’s dick, poking stiffly between his white shirttails. It came to rest on her lips.

  “Jesus, that’s a nice dick, Chuck. My god. Rimsky, Alex, don’t stop!” She bucked against the pussy cup. “Nnnnnng! This is way too good!”

  She threw her head back and opened her mouth for Chuck’s cockness. “Fuck my mouth!” she said.

  Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov were squeezing her calves and doing mad cocky things at her toes. “My penis is coming right now!” moaned Borodin. “My penis is coming, too!” said Rimsky-Korsakov. “Oh god, Chuck, I can’t hold back much longer,” said Luna. “Stuff my mouth with that fucking beast!” She ground her pussytwat against the crotchy holder, lifting her hips high to hold the moment in suspense. “Nnnnng-aaaaa!” She let her orgasm wave crash down just as she felt two hot blasts of white Russian semen drizzle against her toes.

  “Phew,” she said, breathing deeply, but she wanted more. She pulled her legs from the holes. “Now really fuck me, Chuck. No pussy cradle. I want to feel you inside.”

  Chuck turned the chair around. “You ready?” She nodded, feeling the Russian sperm cooling on her feet. Chuck’s thundertube of dickmeat started sliding in. It pushed her frilly doilies of labial flesh aside, and it kept on going till it couldn’t go any farther. She grabbed his hips and pulled him in, and then he pulled out, leaving her empty and waiting, and then he slammed into her train station again. His cock train was commuting in and out of her pussyhole, filling and emptying it by turns, and she loved it.

  She heard him say, “Here it comes, oh, here it comes,” almost in a whimper, and then he made a strange guttural cry that sounded like a tree cracking before it fell, and then a sound like a monster in a Japanese monster movie, and she felt a flowering of deep warmth inside her, and the sense of hot sperm that surrounded the prow of his still thrusting peckerdickcock.

  “Thank you for the lovely concert of Russian piano music,” Luna said.

  Pendle Interviews for a Job

  Pendle read about nuclear waste in The Rooster while he was waiting for the woman at the burrito store to make his burrito and wrap it in foil and put it in a paper bag so that he could go home and eat it while listening to the rest of a Scientific American podcast on the physiology of romance. In the Rooster personals an ad caught his eye. It said, “ARE YOU able to enter an alternative universe? ARE YOU friendly? CAN YOU interview people about their sexual experiences? Good money, pleasant living quarters, must like naked people and be willing to relocate.” There was a small round black circle at the bottom of the ad—no address or phone given.

  Pendle peered closely at the ad, and suddenly he felt a powerful air current pulling his hair and the whole of his head downward. He was vacuumed down into the black circle. He lost consciousness for a moment, and when he came to he was in Lila’s office. Lila was the director of the House of Holes. She was large and pretty in bifocals, about fifty, with lots of loose light-brown hair. Pendle told her that he was there about the job in The Rooster.

  “Ah, we filled that position yesterday,” said Lila. “But just for the heck of it, why don’t you
give me a sample of your interview technique.”

  “I’d probably just say, ‘So tell me what happened.’ People seem to open up to me. It’s been true my whole life. I don’t know why, exactly.”

  “It’s your eyebrows, I think,” said Lila. “I see a forgivingness and a directness there. Now what if you were a client and I interviewed you? What if I said, ‘Be honest, why are you here?’ ”

  “I guess I’m here to see women naked.”

  “This is an unusual place, and it’ll cost you a lot of money,” said Lila. “I mean a lot, lot, lot of money.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Pendle, “because right now I don’t have a lot of money.”

  “Maybe you better come back when you do,” said Lila.

  “How much money do I need?”

  “How much nakedness do you want? Be honest. So few people are able to tell the truth.”

  “Let’s see.” Pendle took a deep breath and then poofed it all out. “I think I need twenty-four horny nude women at the same time.”

  “Twenty-four?” said Lila. “I don’t often tell people this, but you know that a man can really only handle one horny nude woman at a time. Maybe two. Even with two, it’s like that trick where you have to circle your head and pat your stomach. Do you want to reconsider? Think.”

  Pendle closed his eyes and visualized his dream of desire. He didn’t need twenty-four horny women, he realized, only eight. He wanted some of them to have merry little breasts, and some huge soft heavy sad hangers, and he wanted some of them to be fairly old and some of them to be fairly young, and some to have throaty brunette voices and some wispy chirpy blond voices. He wanted them all to be on their knees on couches and chairs with their asses up and ready and their slippy sloppy fuckfountains on display. He’d walk in front of them holding his generous kindly forgiving dick, saying, “Do you want this ham steak of a Dr. Dick that’s so stuffed with spunk that I’m ready to blow this swollen sackload all over you?” And they’d all say, “Yes, Mr. Fuckwizard, we want that fully spunkloaded meatloaf of a ham steak of a dick.”

 

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