House of Holes

by Nicholson Baker

  “That’s fine.” So Lanasha held Marcela’s knees together and pushed her legs back over her stomach. Then Marcela could feel the cut edges of the Kentucky Lime on the tender skin around her bottom hole. “I’m going to squeeze the fruit now, don’t freak,” said Lanasha.

  She frowned and Marcela felt her bottom flooded with juice. Her asshole opened blindly for a moment and gulped some of it. She could feel the burning warmth going far inside her.

  “How do you feel now?” asked Lanasha.

  Marcela didn’t speak for a moment. She cleared her throat. Then she said, “How do I feel? Lanasha, frankly I need two yellow school buses of dick to drive right through me. Each filled with a whole soccer team.”

  Lanasha made a satisfied chuckle. “I thought you said foot-ball,” she said.

  “Okay, one football team, one soccer team.”

  Lanasha rang a bell. “I think she’s ready for you, Ross,” she called.

  Ross and Bono walked in. “Hot show,” said Ross. “I loved when your titties were hanging.”

  Marcela began to turn slowly, smiling, and put her ass up. “You liked it when I was like this?”

  “Yeah, just like that!”

  Bono was standing to the side, staring at Marcela while Lanasha gently stroked his pecker. “Ross, sweetheart,” said Marcela, “where’s that nice young peeny wanger of yours? Is it still full of gobs of nice hot come?”

  Ross said nothing, but Marcela watched Bono’s eyes follow something happening around back of her. Then Marcela felt two hands on her hips and a heavy, knobby pressure moving around the folds of her pussy, seeking a way in. She arched her back and suddenly, because she was so wet, a stiff immensity went deep and filled her up. She made a surprised groan and answered instinctively by slapping her ass back hard against Ross’s hips, then she pulled partway off his cock and let him slam into her again—once, twice, thrice, four times, and then she heard Ross say, in a fierce whisper, “Shit, baby, I’m coming!” She felt the thickness twitch hard inside her. “I’m sorry! Your pussy was just too hot for me.”

  “That’s okay, honey, I like that you had to come right away—that’s supersexy.” Marcela turned and smiled at him reassuringly. He gave her an embarrassed shrug and grinned.

  Lanasha spoke. “I think Bono’s got something all ready for you,” she said.

  “Bono? You got something for me? My ass is still up. La-nasha, can you help this nice boy find his way? I’m still open for business.”

  Ross slapped hands with Bono. Marcela felt Lanasha’s strong practiced hands pulling her asscheeks open, and then she felt a middle finger twiddle purposefully in her ass. And then, finally, Bono’s length of badness stuffed her gasping twat full of warm, brown dick muscle. Bono had more control. He said little, but he developed an oval rhythm, angling and slamming his smooth musclemeat in and out. He slammed fourteen strokes, and then he said, “It’s gonna pop soon!”

  “Wait, stop, not quite yet,” she said, freezing. “I want to frig myself off while you’re still hard in me.”

  “Okay, but if you move the tiniest bit I’ll come for sure.”

  Marcela held three fingers together and circled and swizzled over her clit hood, while Lanasha’s finger darted and dithered in her ass. As she began to come, her cunt muscles tried to close around Bono’s motionless blood-pulsing truncheon. “Now!” she said. Bono pulled out almost to the helmet and slide-slammed back into her slippery salope, then out, then back in, and once more, and then five hard short strokes. “UHLLLLLLLL!” he said, followed by lots of snuffling. She felt a cold spray of sweat droplets on her back, and, inside, she again felt the long warm twitch of liberated jizm. “Oh, that’s it, fill me up with all that goodness.”

  She lay panting on the massage table. Lanasha rubbed the backs of her legs with a cool washcloth.

  Shandee Wears the Sponge Gloves

  Shandee left Dave’s arm to sleep late in the hotel room. She met Zilka for melon and a croissant at the terrace restaurant overlooking the Garden of the Wholesome Delightful Fuckers. Zilka was wearing a striped shirt with the collar up. Her hair was amazing. Shandee wanted to know more about how she had lost her clit, but she didn’t want to ask her about it right away, so instead she asked how Zilka spent her days. Zilka said she helped Lila, and after work she went out to the Trou or hung out at the Darkrooms. “The Darkrooms are good because you can just talk to a guy,” Zilka said. “Before I lost my clit I would have been dancing or sleeping with somebody—not now.”

  “So—how did it happen?” Shandee asked.

  “When I was a stripper, I headlined at the Wiggle Room in San Antonio for almost a year, and I flew all over the Midwest. I was going through security, and this awful woman with bad hair stole my clit from me.”

  “That’s terrible,” said Shandee.

  “Yeah, it kind of is.” Zilka was sad and silent for a moment, and then she pointed. “You see that cable over there? That’s a ride called Fuck the Lake. Over there’s the midway, where you can do Spank the Pretty Ass, or Hold the Young Hung Hard-on. The Masturboats are over on the river. They’re moored right now.”

  “Zilka, can you tell me how it happened?” said Shandee.

  “Oh, I was at the airport in St. Louis, and they told me my flight was out of a certain gate in Terminal O. I thought, Hm, I don’t think I’ve been to Terminal O before, even though I’d flown through St. Louis a lot. But there was a security line, and the guy checked my ID, wearing the pale blue glove, and I got in line and took my shoes off, took my belt and my necklace off, and my bracelet off, and I put them all in the tray, and I walked to the metal detector, which was like a doorway, and I saw the man on the other side. He had a classy smile and short hair, and he lifted his hand and said, ‘Come on through.’ So I walked through in my stocking feet, and when I did I was fwooshed into a different mind zone, and all the men around me were the same but they were naked from the waist down.”

  “That’s strange,” said Shandee.

  “Yeah, isn’t it? They didn’t seem to care that they were naked below, but they definitely were. They looked up and nodded at me, because I like to dress kind of sexy, and I was amazed because I’d never seen so many penises on public display. Cocks were swinging everywhere, every size and shape. Even though I’d been a stripper for a few years, I really hadn’t seen all that much in the way of cock. Then I heard ‘Bag check on three,’ and the nice guy who’d gestured me through started going through my carry-on in extreme detail, and every move he made made his thingy bobble around a little.

  “He said, ‘We’re professionals. I know it may seem a little strange to you that we don’t have pants on.”

  “I said, ‘Well, it’s not a bad thing, really.’ Then he said, ‘Uh, we’re going to have to perform a secondary. Would you like it in private or in public?’

  “I said, ‘Well, what are you going to do?”

  “He said, ‘Well, we have to check your tits and your nipples, make sure you’re not concealing anything in your undertit area, and we’re going to have to inspect your mouth with our dicks to be sure you’re not concealing anything in your mouth area.’ ”

  “Jeez!” said Shandee.

  “I know, and I said, ‘What the hell?’ And he said, ‘Of course we’ll perform the search very politely, with full consideration of your privacy, blah blah. But we’ll probably have to ask you to ease open your tight crotch hole so we can check what you’ve got down there, too.’ ”

  “Oh, please,” said Shandee.

  “And as he said this I looked down, and his cock, which had been uninterested up till then, seemed to be doing a strange loop-the-loopy thing. It had come alive. I said, ‘Give me a break, Mr. Airport Bag Check Man.’

  “And he said, ‘You know how important national security is.’ And then he called out to one of the other security guys, and the two of them took hold of my elbows and steered me into a room that said ‘Official Business Only.’ I knew I was in trouble then.”

&nb
sp; “Did they search you all over?”

  “Let me tell you, ‘gangbang’ would be another word for it. I thought it was over, and then one guard, the less nice one, said to the other, ‘We’re going to have to call in the Pearloiner.’ And the nice one said, ‘No, let’s not.’ But then the Pearloiner came in. She was about forty-five, superpatriotic, big hair, big high heels, big patriotic tits, fake. And she goes, ‘I’m sorry, but we’ve determined that your clitoris is not a carry-on item.’ She’s like, ‘It’s swollen and oversized, and it’s over the weight limit, and it’s a security threat, and I’m going to have to remove it now.’ Then she clapped her hand to my crotch, and I felt this sharp painful tugging, and I saw my clit go into a tiny clear baggie, with a numbered label on it, and then a gloved man took the top off of a large jar.”

  “That’s just so sad and so wrong,” said Shandee.

  “Yeah, and since then I’ve only had three good comes,” said Zilka, “and they were all in my sleep. I used to come so big. I used to shout and kick, sometimes even fart if I was by myself and really bearing down. Now I can’t come at all. Nothing to rub against. I still think about sex a lot, though, and I still get incredibly turned on. It’s about as frustrating a situation as you can get.”

  “So what are you going to do?” said Shandee.

  “Well, a few months ago I was dancing at Carbon Fiber in Chicago, and this girl Cheyenne who’d also had her clit stolen at the same airport said she’d heard the Pearloiner had gotten in big trouble with the FBI, finally, for abuses of her authority, and that she’d gone AWOL and somehow managed to sneak over into the House of Holes, where she’d been making a nuisance of herself—stealing more clits, of course. So Cheyenne and I decided to track her, and that’s when I came here and met Lila, who said she’d help if she could. I worked the Penis Wash for a month—that was a kick. Now I’m a greeter.”

  Shandee was moved. “We must help you get your clit back,” she said, socking her fist. “You can’t just have that pleasure stolen from you. You have rights!”

  “Thanks,” said Zilka. “If you spot a woman with big hair and spike heels and a jar full of stolen clits, let me know. Precious baggage.”

  They were still for a moment, listening to the clink of plates from other tables. The warm wind sang in the gorse.

  “Thanks for telling me,” said Shandee.

  “I guess it’s time for me to take you to the Penis Wash, eh?”

  The Penis Wash happened in a concrete-floored room. Five recessed floor tracks emerged from five openings in one wall, their low archways covered by flaps of cloudy plastic. Men lay face up on massage tables that rolled slowly forward on the tracks. Drifts of foam moved on the shiny wet floor. A sound of clinking filled the air; the massage tables were being drawn forward by loops of chain under the floor. The soap smelled wonderful.

  Each woman had a washing station, with several pedals to control the spray of water.

  “The right pedal is soapy water, the left pedal is rinse water,” said Zilka. “Enjoy.” She left.

  Shandee tested the sprayers and the pedals. The water was warm. A man emerged through the dangling plastic flaps and was slowly pulled toward where she stood. A preliminary curtainlike blast of warm prewash water drenched him, and as he reached Shandee’s station and came to a stop, he lay dripping, strapped to the table, his eyes closed. Shandee looked at the other women, who were all busily spraying their men. The speakers were playing something without words and with lots of twelve-string guitar. She cleared her throat.

  The man opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Hi,” he said.

  “Hello,” said Shandee. “Welcome to the House of Holes. I guess I’m supposed to spray you. Are you okay with that?”

  “Yes,” he said. He closed his eyes again, and she sprayed him all over with soapy water and then began scrubbing down his chest with her orange sponge mittens. She reached his genitals and scrubbed his short, thick penis, which lay against his stomach, lengthening, and his balls, which were warm and heavy and loose. Then she scrubbed down his legs and back up to his balls again, trying to maintain a professional frown. She noticed as she straightened that his penis was no longer lying back, but was now pointing diagonally at a corner of the room.

  She sprayed, rinsing it. And then, with a clink of dragger chains, the massage tables lurched into motion.

  “Bye,” she said.

  “Bye, thanks,” he said.

  Another man emerged through the flaps. She washed his penis. Then another. Most of the men lay quite still. One tried to grope her, and she said, “Oh, stop it,” and sprayed water in his face.

  More men to be washed. She was really starting to get into the rhythm of it. Just when she felt relaxed, Ruzty appeared. He was propped up on an elbow, looking around for her. When he came through the flaps he broke into a relieved beaming smile. He wasn’t quite so muscly as some—built more like a snowboarder than a bodybuilder—and he lay with one knee up. “I’m so lucky to see you,” he said.

  “I’m lucky to see you. I thought about you yesterday. I did rude things to an orange.”

  She gently put his knee down and washed his stomach. She washed his legs. She didn’t touch his cock, although it was the most beautiful cock she’d ever seen. It lay there.

  “This is pleasant,” he said. “I’m lying here while a woman scrubs me.”

  She scrubbed his calves and thighs.

  “Uh, would you mind also washing my private places?” he said.

  “Oh, I’d like to, but I’m afraid I can’t,” said Shandee.

  He looked at her with eyebrows raised.

  “If I start washing your private places,” Shandee explained, “I’ll get carried away and want to jerk you and watch you come, and you heard what Lila said—we’re not allowed to.”

  He made a whimpering sound. “Just look at my cock. Look at how bad it needs you. Is it really true that you don’t mind that it curves?”

  “Believe me, I don’t mind,” Shandee said. “Your cock is a revelation. Some have a hammer, and some have a sickle.” With this she pressed the spray pedal and drenched Ruzty’s body with warm soapy water. The cock still stood, hunched over, proud and pale and purple tipped. She sponged his forehead gently. “You poor thing,” she said. She hit the spray pedal again and drenched his balls with warm unsoapy water, watching them metamorphose. His mouth was open so she kissed it, and then she looked down at his cock again. She simply couldn’t stop staring at it.

  “Just hold it for one second, will you, please?” he said. “I’m quite desperate.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said. She held his cock in her orange sponge mittens. In a flash he grabbed a sprayer and sprayed her shirt.

  “You!” she said. She looked down. The dark buttons of her nipples were visible through the white fabric.

  “Watch what your nipples do to me,” he said, and he tightened his cock muscles so that his scythe squirmed and nodded like some strange plant.

  “Whooo!” said Shandee.

  “Take off the mittens and hold it, please, please!”

  “I’m going to get in trouble, but okay.” She pulled off her sponge mittens and held her hands under the soapy water till they were slippery. Then she took hold of Ruzty’s cock, which was as hard as a summer squash. She splayed her fingers and moved them over his balls and then over his stomach. She could see his thigh muscles tighten. His cock was straining, and she had to stroke it. She took it in her hand and felt its thickness and its sense of certainty. It was like the Arch of St. Louis. It had one thing to say to the world: “I am a stiff swervie.” She slid her hand up to the tip—it was like sliding over a steering wheel—and slid it down again, enjoying the sheen of the soapy water on his cockknob.

  “This is a big, beautiful dick you’ve got, Ruzty,” she whispered.

  “Thank you,” he said. “You’re nice to say it.”

  She began moving her hand slowly, then faster. “Ooh boy, I want this dick inside me,” she said, “I
want to be fucked by this dick, I can’t help it, it’s so perfect. It’s literally THE perfect dick for me.”

  She gave it a number of good quick pulls and then she noticed that Ruzty was quivering and trembling. Suddenly he said “Ohhhhhhrrrrr” in his beautiful accent, and several white glops spouted from the end.

  Immediately there was a buzzer and a ringing. “Uh-oh,” said Shandee. She blew Ruzty a kiss.

  “Bye-bye,” said Ruzty.

  An assistant named Krock appeared and led Shandee away.

  “Why in heaven’s name did you wank him off?” Krock asked.

  “I didn’t mean to. He begged me, and I obliged him.”

  “Did you take off your sponge gloves?”

  Shandee nodded. “We had a rapport. I’m sorry.”

  Krock reassured her. “I think it’ll be okay. Lila will give you your reassignment tomorrow.”

  “Is there any chance that I’ll be able to see him again?”

  “You never know,” said Krock. He gave her a sly look. “I’ll put in a good word for you.”

  “Thanks.” Shandee shook her head wistfully. “I really wanted that cock of his so bad. God, I still do. I can’t stop thinking about it. I had to hold it. I’d give that cock everything.”

  “I wish people said that about my cock,” said Krock, as they reached the lobby of Shandee’s hotel.

  “I’m sure it’s nice,” said Shandee.

  “Do you want to see it?”

  “Um—” Shandee checked the wall clock. “No, thanks. Dave’s arm is going to be needing his meal.”

  Rhumpa Unbuttons Her Shirt

  Rhumpa was her name, and, yes, she paid a visit to the House of Holes. The people she was staying with in New Haven were wealthy and under-read. Although they were middle-aged, their minds were very young and she couldn’t take them seriously. She saw a pepper grinder in the middle of the table, and while they talked about the price of tires she unscrewed the little knob on the top, and when it came off she lifted the wooden part off the central spindly thing and looked inside, where she could see in the shadows of peppercorns. She thought, The peppercorns are waiting to be ground up. They’re still round, like little dry planets, but not for long.