House of Holes

by Nicholson Baker

  “You think?” said Jessica. “In my case I did the one on my back, and then I liked it, and it was like building a collection of something.”

  “Yes. But it is collecting something that hides you. It is a way of not being naked while being naked. My job is to return you to your nakedness. Turn over and let me please see your pussy for a moment, if I may?”

  She turned.

  “Why do you have no hair on your pussy?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t. It’s the fashion.”

  “That, too, is a way of hiding. No hair means you are dressed in hairlessness. You are finding a way to be clothed when you aren’t clothed. Hair is your true nakedness. Do you want your true nakedness back?”

  Jessica nodded. “Can you do that?”

  He held out his hands. “These hands can do it. If we are lucky. You must make me feel your nakedness. If I feel it then your hair will grow and your tattoos will lift and come onto me. Try.”

  He put his hands gently on her hips and looked at her face. “Feel naked now.” He circled his hands over her hipbones and then pressed his thumbs gently into her stomach. “Breath in and feel naked,” he said. As he pressed she saw his chest muscles jump. “I will do this one first,” he said.

  He put both his hands over the flower on her breast. His touch was very light at first. “Feel,” he said. She began to feel an urgency coming from his hands. Her breast was glued to them. “You see how we are bonding.” Suddenly he flinched. “Oh,” he said, “here comes the pain of it.”

  “The pain of the tattoo?”

  “Yes, all of it is going in my arm at once.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, it’s what happens. It’s lifting now. Wait, watch. Look in the air above your booby.”

  He removed his hands and lifted them. Following his fingers was a faint flower shape in blue and green ink, with a red blossom. He scooped it out of the air carefully. “Where shall I wear this flower?” he said.

  She found a place on him that was still mostly free of other tattoos. It was on his rib cage just under his left pectoral.

  “Touch it,” he said.

  She touched it. His skin was hot and very dry.

  “Kiss it,” he said.

  She kissed the skin. He smelled smoky. He closed his eyes then and held the captured tattoo to his skin. “Ouch,” he said. He drew his hand away. “Now it is on me, and your breast is naked. Look.”

  She looked, and her breast was entirely free. There was no ghost of the tattoo, no hint except the faintest tiny outline of what had been there. She sighed and laughed a laugh of relief. “I feel free,” she said.

  “Good,” he said.

  “Now my back? My back is the one I really don’t want anymore. I hate it. Everybody has a butterfly.”

  “Stand and turn and I will see,” he said.

  She turned and he sighed with pleasure, lightly touching the base of her spine. His fingertips had a strange focused intensity. “Ah, no. This is not merely a tramp stamp. This one was done by a hostile tattooer of great skill. He put a potent fingerblock on it. This will be most difficult. I think we must help you grow back your pussy hair first. You can’t release such a tattoo with a bald cameltoe, it won’t work.”

  “But that will take a week at least.”

  “No, I can help. It will mean my kissing your pussybone and then cupping my hands over it and blowing softly on it.”

  “Okay.”

  “You must close your eyes and ask to be naked and hairy again.”

  “Help me be naked and hairy, Hax.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Help me be naked and hairy, Hax!”

  Gently he directed her to sit on the edge of the table. He knelt between her legs and brushed his fingers in peacock-feather motions over her stomach. He looked up at her. “I will kiss your pussybone now, very lightly.”

  “Okay.”

  She felt the kiss as a burning ring that made all of her discouraged and thwarted hair follicles scream and come alive. And then quickly he stood and cupped his large hands over her entire sex place, one hand over the other. He pushed hard against her several times. “Open your legs a bit more,” he said. “Good. Now we wait. It will be very warm, almost hot.”

  All around her pussy the follicles were quivering and trembling and sending up shoots of hair. She looked down and watched her brown bush fill his hand. He pressed her and shook his hand, saying, “That’s it. There it goes. Do you feel the tingling?”

  “Sorry, I’m getting a little drippy,” she said.

  “Good, you’re feeling naked again.” He began swaying and moving his hands over her bush. “Now hold your arms up, and I will give you lots and lots of luscious hair under your arms, too.”

  “God, no!”

  “Are you quite sure?”

  “Very sure. No, thank you.”

  “Okay. But let’s see.” He removed his hands. “Spread your pussy for me?”

  She reached down and felt the thicket of her hair, the feeling that she remembered from when she first became a sexual person. She spread her lips and then scissored her fingers closed around her clit. “Ooooh,” she said.

  “Better now?”

  “Much, yes.”

  “Now maybe perhaps I will have success with your tattoo.”

  In one quick motion he turned her so that she was lying facedown. “I will lay my hands directly on your butterfly.” She felt his warm dry long hands pressing at the base of her spine. “And now I lift,” he said. “Rrrrrrr!” She was conscious of a force lifting her lower back up. “Come on, come on now,” he said. He lifted her trembling until she all but hung from his hands. “Your skin is not releasing the ink,” he said. “You must relax. I will put you on your knees. We are joined now, and we won’t be able to unjoin unless you give up on the release of the tattoo, or the tattoo gives up. It is a battle now. You must choose nakedness. To do that you must play with your clitoris. I may perhaps be able to draw the tattoo out with my penis. Do what your clitoris craves that you do, and show me how open you are.”

  She slid her knees apart until she felt the tendons tighten in her thighs. “There,” she said. “You can look at my cunt if you want.”

  “It’s beautiful. The hair is slick—it looks newborn.”

  “It’s naked, and it’s open, and—Hax?”

  “Yes?”

  “I need you to please fuck me. I want your cock in me.”

  “Then you will have to pull it out of my shorts,” he said. “I’m afraid I can’t move my hands from your back.”

  He moved awkwardly around the table so that she could reach him, and with some struggle she pulled off his white shorts. His dick was shockingly enormous and covered with murky tattoos except for the head, which was bright pink. She gasped at the sight of it, and her shoulders involuntarily arched back to pop her boobs. “You need a home for that thing,” she said in a sudden low fuck-ready voice. “Get back behind me.”

  She rose a little higher, centering his bow-curved dick just where it needed to be, and then she circled on it for a moment so that it was wet all the way around. Then she drove slowly back on it. A long low guttural cry was hauled out of her. “Fuck me, oh, my god, it’s been too long. Oh, yes.” She bit her lips and felt his hands burning on her back, and then she began to feel a lifting that began at her asshole and swirled and whorled up through her skin and into his hands.

  “I must use my penis to pry the ink away under my hands,” he said. He drew himself slowly out of her pussy, and then she felt his slickened seedstick slide up over the cleavage of her ass and, directed by her slippery crack, begin bumping against his hands. “I have an opening,” he said. “I’m going to fuck your tattoo free now. Uh. Uh. Fuck it away, uh.” He slid in and out from under his hands. At first she felt nothing, and then suddenly she could detect all the tiny microampules of ink withdrawing themselves from thousands of tiny holes in her skin. “Ahhhhh!” he said,
“it stings, it hurts, it’s okay, ouch.”

  And then he lifted his hands. “Your back is finally nude now.” He held a mirror and she saw.

  “Oh, baby,” she said and she turned. The butterfly was gone. “I’m so free. I’m so clean.” She held his dick in both her hands and spoke things to it. “You’ve made me new, you lovely dick. I’m going to suck you off, and I’m going to feel you come.” And so she did. She opened her mouth and let all of his big tattooed dick inside, teasing the hole, and then she pulled back and pumped him several times and felt the come splash over her, and then she collapsed in a happy heap of complete artless pubic-hairy bliss. “My tattoo-removing wizard, how can I thank you?”

  “Just tell people: Stop hiding, stop disguising, be naked for once. Be hairy down in the punany.” He took her to Lila’s office.

  “All gone?” asked Lila.

  “Gone,” said Jessica. “But so are my feelings for the artist, I’m afraid. He didn’t want to paint me the way I really looked, and that bothers me. I really want to see more of Hax.”

  “Well, that’s unfortunate, because Bosco paid for your tattoo removal by having a voluntary head detachment.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “He reveres you, but his head is, for the moment, physically separated from his body.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Jessica. “How awful for him.”

  Wade Presses the Sex Now Button and Koizumi Visits

  Wade woke up in his hotel room and pressed W, for woman, on the Sex Now button of his remote control. Then he dozed off. About ten minutes later, he heard the door open—the woman had a keycard, he supposed. He heard her slip off her slippers and her bathrobe in the dark and get into bed next to him. He could tell from the way she moved in the bed that she was naked.

  “Hi. Wow, that was fast,” he said.

  “Hello, my name is Koizumi. I’m a sculptor. I am also a collector of wet-dream memories. Do you have a wet-dream memory for me to collect?”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t remember. I had only a few, and it was a long time ago.”

  “Try to remember,” said Koizumi. “You will remember if you try.”

  Wade shifted so that he was lying on his back, his arms on the blanket. He breathed, thinking. “Okay, I remember one. A woman looked at me. I didn’t know her. She was sitting under a red beach umbrella and wearing a black bathing suit. Nobody else was around. She held out her arms and I asked, ‘Me?’ She nodded. She liked me. She understood me. She wanted me. I walked toward her and knelt in the warm sand, and I put my arms around her, and then I felt this gulping overflowing fizzing of sexual goodness, and I woke up, and I discovered that I had a dab of something in my underpants. I went around for a week thinking, Wow, I’ve had a wet dream. It was great because it was a dream in which something real really happens. I didn’t tell anyone. That’s it. Not very detailed, I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” said Koizumi. “I will let you feel my breasts now.”

  “Okay, great. Thanks.”

  Wade felt her breasts.

  “I’m sorry they are quite small,” Koizumi said.

  “Nonsense, they’re exquisite, and you know what the Be Good Tanyas say. The littlest birds sing the prettiest songs.’ You know the Be Good Tanyas, right?”

  “Yes, they’re Canadian. I’m Canadian Japanese. I believe in supporting Canadian singers.”

  “Makes sense,” said Wade.

  “I believe in Canadian art. Also I believe in men who have quite big penises.”

  “Do they have to be Canadian men?”

  “No, they can be non-Canadian. They can be from any country. When I said to the computer that I was ready for sex now I specified only men with quite large penises. So I hope you have one.”

  “Well, you’ll have to see, won’t you? Your nipples are hard, like dried peas.”

  “My husband was not honest with me,” said Koizumi. “He had a large penis, and he was very nice, but he was a gay man and he pretended to love me but he couldn’t. He wanted me to have my hair cut very short like a boy. He liked to do me in the anus.”

  “Did you enjoy that?” asked Wade.

  “Yes, because of a time I ate a pinecone seed.”

  “Really? It was eating a pinecone seed that made you like anal sex?”

  “Yes, it was,” said Koizumi. “When I was thirteen, I wanted a boyfriend. We lived in a small town in northern Saskatchewan. The only friends I had were two sisters, Natasha and Brigid. I told Natasha that I wanted to see a boy without any clothes on, and she said she did, too. So we went to her sister, Brigid, who was older, and we said, ‘Brigid, we would like to see a boy without any clothes on.’ She said, ‘You mean a picture of a boy?’ And we said, ‘No, not a picture, a real boy.’ And she said, ‘Then follow me.’ So we followed her out to the hill behind their house, where there was a tree that had lots of large pinecones on it. Brigid said, ‘Choose a nice pinecone and pull a seed off it and put it in your mouth and chew on it a little and swallow it.’ We asked her what would happen and she said, ‘A special pinecone will grow inside of you. You’ll feel like you’re constipated. In a few hours, you will need to take the biggest poop of your life, and it will hurt a lot when it comes out, but not unbearably.’ And we said, ‘Okay, but how will this help us see a boy naked?’ ”

  “That would have been my question, too,” said Wade.

  “Brigid said, ‘The pinecone is called a boycone, and the best place to allow it out is in the creek.’ She said, ‘When it comes out, wash the cone in the creek and it’ll crack open and a miniature boy will hop out, and if you rub him he will grow rapidly until he is a full-sized boy, and you can talk to him and look at him naked.’ We said, ‘Can we eat the pinecone seed right now to get started?’ And Brigid said, ‘Go ahead.’ And then she went inside to bake a pie. My friend Natasha got scared and said she didn’t want to do it. But I said I would. I chose a nice big pinecone from the tree, and I pulled a seed from it and chewed it up, and nothing happened. We sat on the hill and looked at the telephone pole against the sky and talked about how much we liked boys.”

  “Nothing happened?” said Wade.

  “Natasha kept asking me if I felt anything, and I said no. Finally she went back to the tree and got the biggest pinecone she could find, and she put a seed from it in her mouth, and she swallowed it. Meanwhile, I could definitely feel something going on inside my body. I felt this tremendous pressure in my bottom, against my anus.”

  “Did it hurt?” asked Wade, full of sympathy.

  “No, not then. I pulled down my pants and lay facedown in the grass, and Natasha opened my bottom cheeks and looked. She said she couldn’t see anything except that my pussy seemed to be very purple. I said, ‘I need to go down to the creek.’ So we went down to the creek, and I took off my shoes and my pants and held on to a branch and dipped my bottom in the creek, and I screamed because the water was so cold. Then Natasha whimpered a little and said her boycone was really hurting and needing to come out. I said, ‘Mine’s hurting, too.’ But it wasn’t hurting as much, because I hadn’t chosen quite so big a pinecone. Then we both squatted in the creek for a while, and we pushed and pushed, and we could feel the boycones wanting to come out but not being able to. Finally we took a breath together and looked into each other’s eyes and gave a huge push as hard as we could. She got very red, and then at last the boycones splashed into the creek. We were relieved, and we laughed and washed them off and laid the pinecones in the sun to dry, and we lay next to them. We were quite exhausted.”

  “I can imagine,” said Wade.

  “And a few minutes after that, we heard the two pinecones go pop, pop, and crack open. Just as Brigid said, there was a miniature boy in each one, wrapped in green plant folds.”

  “How old?” said Wade.

  “They were about seventeen, but very tiny. We rubbed them and massaged them, and after half an hour they grew to one quarter size, then half size, and then they were full-size long-legged boy
s, but their eyes were still closed. They were sleeping. So we looked them all over while they gathered strength, and they had the most beautiful penises and thatchy patches. Then their eyes opened, and mine said, ‘It’s a beautiful day,’ and he stretched. I stroked his chest, and I knelt over him and held the sides of his face and looked at his eyes. He was in the tent of my hair, and I could feel his hips trying to find a way in. He was very ready, so I let him in. He became my boyfriend that summer, and then unfortunately he went away. Now I make sculptures of women. I use very smooth hardwood. The women I carve have wide faces, and I always drill deep into their asses. I think the reason why it is so important to drill deep into their asses in my sculpture is because I pooped out the boycone when I was young.”

  “Maybe, maybe,” said Wade.

  “I would like to touch you.”

  “Okay.”

  Wade felt her fingers move lightly over his arms and chest. They converged and found his cock. Koizumi made a little startled happy sound.

  “Oh, that is lusty,” she said. “I feel like a lusty lady when I hold your cock. I get a very special feeling in my anus.”

  “I’m glad you like it,” said Wade.

  “Would you like to know what my wooden women look like when I carve them?”

  Wade said he would.

  “They are posed in the kundalini pose, like this.” Koizumi threw off the covers and put her round bottom high, with her knees together and her wrists crossed at her ankles. A wisp of black hair fell across her face and stuck to her lips. “I believe that the anus is the center of life energy and of consciousness,” she said. “I need to be drilled by a cock now. I hope your cock can be hard enough to fill my ass and anus.”

  “I hope so, too, for both our sakes,” Wade said.

  She had something in her hand. “I brought you a pinecone,” she said. “Pull off a seed and chew it. It will make your penis very stiff, and then if you come inside my bowel I will make you a special souvenir.”