House of Holes

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House of Holes Page 8

by Nicholson Baker


  Meanwhile the prince had sent guardsmen and black dogs out in search of his braided beard. “How can we hide it?” asked the girl of her friend. The friend knew the arts of pharmacy, and the two young women boiled the beard until it dissolved. Then they skimmed off the purple scum and buried it, and they purified and distilled the barbaric essence, mixing it with the liqueurs of fennel and saps of wild spinach, making of this mixture an uncommonly powerful aphrodisiac. The two women fled to Paris and grew wealthy selling Prince Bohu’s beardwater, under the name Gouttelettes de Bonheur, or Droplets of Happiness. Even much diluted, the liquid had a startling effect on anyone, male or female, who tasted it.

  The prince, meanwhile, took the loss of his beard as a warning. He ended his dalliance with Uniques and built a large hospital so that his wife wouldn’t go away on Thursdays. Seventeen of his penis sandals are on view in the museum of the House of Holes.

  Rhumpa Makes Her Come Video

  Rhumpa emerged from her shower in a hotel bathrobe, with her hair in a towel turban. Daggett had arranged fourteen bras on the bed, sorted neatly by color. “These are all roughly your size, I believe,” he said primly.

  She looked at them with a secret smile. “They’re all very nice,” she said.

  “Does one in particular call out?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Well then,” he said, “there’s only one way to make the right selection.” Daggett drew from the bag a large piece of patterned silk. “This is the Silken Flesh Communicator,” he said. “If you allow me to place this over your naked breasts, it will help me determine which of these bras is ideal for you.” Gently holding Rhumpa’s shoulders, he had her stand facing away from him. “Open your robe,” he said. “Wait! Good. I just had to check that I couldn’t see you in any mirror. Now open your robe. Let it fall open.”

  Rhumpa did as he asked.

  “Thank you. Now I am going to gently unfurl the Silken Flesh Communicator and draw it back against your breasts so that it surrounds them and cools them and makes them feel exactly the way your breasts most want to feel. Are your breasts ready for the silken touch of the communicator?”

  Rhumpa looked down at them. She smoothed her hand over them and jostled them a few times. The nipples had tightened and were pointing off, as they did. “Yes, they seem to be quite ready,” she said. “Unusually jiggly today, in fact.”

  Daggett made a small whimper and gently flung the piece of transparent silk over her head so that it fell in a U in front of her. Very slowly he pulled it back, so that the folds opened. She watched her breasts fill them. He held the ends of the fabric with a light touch, not drawing it too tight. He paused. “There,” he said. “I can feel them resisting my pull.”

  “Mm,” she said. The pattern on the silk was of peonies and birds of paradise. As he pulled, she felt the silk coming alive against her skin. It was clearly not just an ordinary fabric; it had an intelligence.

  “I can sense the nervous vibration in your hands,” she said.

  “Yes, sorry,” Daggett said. “Now we wait just a bit, and the silk will conform itself exactly to your shape, and it will understand your weight. But you must walk with me for a moment for it to work.”

  Rhumpa walked slowly around the room, and Daggett followed behind her. She could feel her breasts bouncing a little in their sheer halter, and she knew that the fabric was recording how they moved. Suddenly she felt a surge of warmth that began deep in her breasts and burned upward till it reached the tips of her nipples and was gone.

  “That’s it!” said Daggett. “Your breasts have communicated.” He withdrew the silk and Rhumpa hiked her robe back on and tied the sash.

  Daggett dangled the fabric over the bras that he’d arranged on the bed and waited. Nothing happened. Then all at once there was a twitching, a tugging, a movement similar to that of a dowsing rod. “It’s working,” he said. “Watch.”

  The very end of the fabric quivered and reached in the direction of a pale-yellow-and-white plaid bra with a white band of lace over its top. “This yellow one?” Rhumpa said. “I wouldn’t have chosen it.”

  “It will fit you well and make you feel so beautiful and so new to yourself that you will make a movie that will cause many men watching it to bring out their cocks and yank on them till the jizz flies everywhere.”

  “Okay,” Rhumpa said. “And, uhm, Daggett? I don’t know quite how to put this. You can have my old bra if you want.”

  Daggett, reddening, reached under the pillow for it. “I just put it away for safekeeping.”

  “I saw you manhandling yourself with it.”

  Daggett moaned and dove facedown on the other bed. “I’m so sorry,” Rhumpa heard him say, muffled in the pillow. “I’m so utterly mortified.”

  She put her hand on his shoulder. “That’s okay. You wanted to see my breasts and you weren’t allowed to. You were a big bundle of pent-up desire.”

  Daggett peeked at her. “Thank you for understanding,” he said, visibly relieved.

  Rhumpa took the yellow plaid bra to the bathroom with her and put it on. And it was true, this bra fit her perfectly, and her breasts looked full and luscious and slightly squeezed together, and she had a feeling it would drive a man crazy to look at what she was carrying in that bra.

  “What should I wear below?” she asked.

  He handed her the Silken Flesh Communicator. “Tie this around your waist, it can be your skirt. Leave your panties on.”

  Daggett helped her set up the tripod, aiming the camera so that she could dance next to the bed or on the bed. And he showed her how to turn on the music. Then he left.

  Rhumpa danced at first on the balcony. Because it was so bright outside she was in a silhouette. Then she paused the camera and came inside and closed the dark-green drapes. “I’m going to do a pussy dance for you guys,” she said. She slowly took off her robe and shook her jerries in the bra for the camera. She danced with one finger up her stash, danced while circling her clit, danced with one foot up on the edge of a chair seat.

  She knew it was good. She phoned down. “Daggett? I’m done pussy dancing.”

  He came back to her room and retrieved the camera. “Have some dinner,” he said. “I’ll edit the tape and load it on channel six.”

  Rhumpa had an eggplant panini down at the café, and then Daggett led her down a hall inset with sixteen square, mirrored windows. There were green and red lights above each window. “In each of these little rooms is a man,” said Daggett. “He has control of a video screen that has sixteen possible tracks. By clicking a button he can switch from one track to the next. You can look in any of the windows, but only when the light is green is someone looking at the movie of you dancing.”

  She nodded. She stood for a moment. All the lights were red, and then one was momentarily green, and then it went red again. Another light changed from red to green and stayed at green. Rhumpa walked to the window and peered in through the one-way mirror. In it was a man she hadn’t seen before. Rhumpa was watching him from the side so that she could see a little bit of her own dancing performance. Mainly she saw him, sitting in a chair, squeezing his united parcel through his pants.

  She looked at his face and saw how intently he was looking at her dance, and she saw that when she turned around and lifted the scarf he undid his belt. He stood and pushed his pants down and out flopped a heavy, ugly dick in the shadows of the little room. He stroked on himself several times and then he clicked the channel-selection button with the back of his hand. He began watching someone else strip. That was a rude shock.

  Rhumpa stood back and looked at all of the doors: Three lights were on the green. She hurried to each window. In one room, a man had entirely removed his pants and underpants. He stood in his dress shoes, naked from the waist down, his feet tightly together, his fist shuttling over his small tuber. In the next one, a guy in jeans was leaning way back, his jeans unzipped and open, his dick-ball ensemble flaccidly out and about. In the third was Dune.
He hadn’t yet taken his pants down.

  Breathing softly so as not to fog the glass, Rhumpa watched Dune remove his suede jacket and hang it on a hook on the back of the door. She watched him study the video of her dancing with her finger in her snatch patch. For a while he didn’t move, and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking; then all of a sudden he wrenched open his belt, unbuttoned his pants, and slid his boxers down. His dick bobbled once and stood still, its tip angling up slightly. He enclosed it with two hands and looked back at Rhumpa’s movie.

  “He’s gorgeous—what a penis!” said Rhumpa to herself, enraptured. She was desperate to nibble on his pectoral manslabs; desperate to knead his suede-soft balls. She wanted him every-where, in all holes at once—she wanted to show him the real her and not a movie of her.

  Dune now leaned with his left hand splayed flat against the wall, holding the other hand fisted and motionless in the air about a foot in front of his crotch. He nosed his free-hanging cock into the tightness of his fist and began pumping his hips, driving the unyielding dicklength deep into his hand tunnel. His long hair hung in his face. When, in her video, Rhumpa put one foot on the chair and held her pussylips open, Dune started thrusting hard. Again and again the head of his cock poked out, dark and bull-necked, from his immobile fist, until finally, at the end of one long plunge, he held still for an instant and sent a hot and heavy lasso of manstarch slapping against the video screen. Even through the soundproofing, Rhumpa thought she could hear his primeval cry. He squeezed his Pollock one last time, shaking the orgasmal dregs onto the floor.

  Breathless, elated at what she’d seen, Rhumpa wandered in a daze of dicklust back to her hotel room. She put on a dress, one dangly earring, sunglasses, and a soft sweater with big buttons, and then slowly she took everything off except the sunglasses. She lay on the bed and stuck two fingers up her simmering chickenshack and shook them. She found a can of Red Bull in the mini-fridge and humped its coldness. She thought about plaid patterns and polka dots. She could feel her ovaries and her hipbones dying for dick.

  She called the front desk. “I don’t want to come alone,” she said. “I want a forest of cocks around me. I want to see them up close—I want to wear my sunglasses and have dick juice splurt all over them. I want ball loads of hot cockslurp landing on all my soft parts. This is an emergency top-level request for dick.”

  “You got it, ma’am,” said the man at the front desk. She heard him make an announcement. “H.O.H. H.O.H. Emergency H.O.H. Hotel room 313. Eighteen stiff dicks needed.”

  Rhumpa heard the thumping of many feet, and then a crowd of dudes of all ages in green T-shirts arrived and began hopping out of their cargo pants. They formed an oval around the bed, where Rhumpa lay teasing herself, wearing red finger-less gloves.

  “Now start ragging,” she said. “Rag on yourself as fast as you can. Faster! Faster!” The men were puffing and blowing, their cheeks pink, a fine sheen of strain on their foreheads. “Who’s first?” Rhumpa said. A little man of about forty-five wearing a baseball cap said, “I’m gonna juice big-time!” Rhumpa grabbed the back of his leg and pulled him close. “Come all over these britneys,” she said. “They need it, shoot right here.” She pinched her nipples and pointed them around the crowd. “Here it comes!” the man croaked, and a long whipflick of silly string curved through the sparkling air.

  Then one very hairy man pulled off Rhumpa’s panties and clapped them to his nose and went, “Aaaah!” He jerked out his putz and splashed on her pussyfloss.

  “Next! I need more come—more come!” Rhumpa said.

  Just then Daggett burst in, naked, wild-eyed, with Rhumpa’s former bra twisted around his huge purple erection.

  “Daggett!” she said. She clapped her hand over her breasts.

  “I don’t care, I need to see them, I don’t care.”

  She let her hands fall, and he stared feastingly at her breasts while he slowly unwrapped the straps of her bra from his pulsing hellhound. He waved the other men back. “Take me and fuck me good!” Rhumpa said. She threw her legs open and he slowly socketed himself deep in her famished slutslot. Somewhere alarm bells and buzzers rang, but the lovers fucked for a moment with joyous sweaty abandon, laughing. Then two headless men appeared and pulled Daggett away.

  “Is this it for your balls, then?” Rhumpa asked.

  “They’re going back in the tank,” he said, “but it was worth it. It’s only two weeks.”

  “I’ll go to the opera with you,” Rhumpa called as they dragged Daggett away.

  When he was gone, she gestured the other men back. “More come, more come!” she said. “Jerk it out! Ice my cake, dickboys! I want to feel like a breakfast pastry!”

  Wade Learns about the Cloth of Ka-Chiang

  Wade’s vesicles were jumping, and he felt sunny inside. He wanted to be near a woman he didn’t know, but he felt a little shy, so he called up the House of Holes and said, “Hi, this is Wade, and I’d like to be able to be friendly with a woman.”

  Wade was transferred to Lila, who said, “Honey, why don’t you come on by?”

  Wade said, “Because I don’t know how.”

  “Do you have a penis, Wade?”

  Wade said he did.

  “Then grab hold of it.”

  Wade grabbed hold of it.

  Lila said, “Now make it hard and stare it down. Is it hard yet?”

  Wade said, “No, it shrank way down while I was making this call.”

  Lila said, “Well, you’re not going to get anywhere without a dependable boner.”

  Wade said, “I realize that. Okay, here it goes. It’s hard now.”

  “Good, now stare right down at the hole in it. That’ll open up time and spice for you. We’re out here in spicetime.”

  Wade stared at his cockhole and zoomed down into it. It was kind of an odd, juicy, self-referential experience, but at the end he emerged as himself in the waiting room outside Lila’s office. Lila’s assistant for the day, an intern named Crackers, opened the door and asked him in. Wade said hi to her. Crackers, dressed in black pipe-stem jeans, was not bad at all—in fact, she was perfect—and he wanted to fondle her or touch her shoulder but it didn’t seem the right moment. He sat down in the office chair. There at her desk was the famous Lila, a large and lovely gal of a certain age.

  “I’d like to be able to help you, Wade,” said Lila. “How long are you going to want to be busy here at the House of Holes?”

  “I’d say three, four days,” said Wade. He was tightening and loosening his thighs while Kegeling his love muscle, making his balls rearrange themselves. It all felt good in a crowded sort of way. “I figure maybe a girl will take a liking to me, and then I’ll get over my shyness and go home with her and then I’ll have a girlfriend.”

  “Now there’s a plan, Wade. Four days, nine thousand dollars a day,” said Lila, calculating. “That’ll be thirty-six thousand dollars for room and board.”

  “That’s too much. I can’t pay it.”

  Lila said, “Can you drive a truck? Because if you look good enough naked I can offer you a half-time paid gig here in which you drive the sludge truck. That’s the truck that drops off the pornsludge after we’ve let it settle in the settling tanks.”

  “Where do I drive it to?”

  “We spread it over fields at the Triple O Raunch, and we grow all kinds of yellow and red and blue cornflowers there. Women walk through the fields after the flowers have bloomed and they get all hot and bothered, and they don’t know that there’s a layer of sanitary pornsludge underneath their feet. It’s a pretty good system. But it depends on how you look naked.”

  “I see. Well, let me take my clothes off.” Wade handed Crackers his Hawaiian boxers, and she tied his penis back with a rough strip of burlap.

  “Good, now I’ll weigh your testicles, if you don’t mind,” said Lila.

  Just then Hax walked in and slapped his head. “Here she goes again, feeling the balls,” he said.

  “Hax, please
be quiet and let me do my job.” Lila cradled Wade’s balls. “Hmm, good temperature,” she said, frowning slightly. “You seem strong and resourceful.” She lifted one ball, let it fall, then lifted the other and let it fall. “They’re heavy, and they’re independent. I believe you’ve got naturopathic potential. Your balls are holistic. You pass the testes.”

  Wade asked what that meant.

  “Some men’s come—young men’s come—can develop special healing powers,” Lila answered. “Did you masturbate yet today?”

  “I haven’t,” said Wade. “I was too busy thinking about calling you up.”

  “Good,” said Lila. She opened a wooden box on her desk and lifted out the top part, which held old coins and stamps. Underneath was a folded green cloth with ancient symbols on it. “This is the sacred healing cloth of Ka-Chiang,” Lila said. “I’m going to tie it loosely around your balls. If you wear it for twenty-four hours you’ll develop a crop of new sperm—very, very special sperm.”

  “Special how?” asked Wade.

  “If the cloth works as it should,” said Lila, “your new sperm will have the power to reattach human limbs or heads.”

  “That’s interesting,” said Wade.

  Gently, with her head held slightly to the side, Lila tied the green cloth around Wade’s balls. As she worked its corners into a small knot, the tugging made him smile slightly. His penis grew under the roughness of the burlap and pointed off to the side. “How does the Ka-Chiang cloth feel to you?” Lila asked.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  “Not too tight?” she said.

  He said no, just right. “Burlap tickles, though.”

  “Now,” she said, “you’re almost ready to go, but first you must, absolutely must, empty out the crop of mature sperm in your system, so that you will have a fresh, new generation formed under the powerful influence of Ka-Chiang. Crackers, could you please do a sexy lap dance to help Wade while he gives himself pleasure?”

  Wade made a noise. “You mean I’m supposed to wank while Crackers does a lap dance?”

 

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