House of Holes

by Nicholson Baker

  He looked over at her. “This is a big store,” he said.

  “It’s got everything,” she agreed.

  They kept walking. Finally they reached the men’s bathing suits.

  They turned the corner. “Do you like the display?” she asked. “I designed it.”

  Pendle made enthusiastic noises. “I like the way you offset one bathing suit over the other—that’s fresh. That’s fresh new work.”

  She thanked him and touched him lightly on the arm. “The Heftyshots are around this side,” she said.

  “I believe you just touched me,” he said.

  “Just a twitch of the hand.” She beckoned him on. “These blue ones with the yellow flowers are nice, I think. What size are you?”

  “Large,” he said. Then he said: “Do you ever have crazy nights?”

  “Sweetie pie, don’t we all?”

  Pendle thought, I love talking to this graceful eyelash girl at Big Top Sports on O Street.

  Then there was a bling and a woman’s voice came on the PA system. “Trix to the front for a price check.”

  “Oh, that’s me, I better go,” she said.

  “Wait,” Pendle said, “I want to try these on.”

  “With Heftyshots you have to buy what you try,” said Trix. “Do you know how to put it on?”

  “It looks complicated,” said Pendle.

  Trix held the suit open. “It isn’t. You put your jacksons in the pouch, and then just hang pete out front, like that.” She indicated how with curled fingers and index extended.

  “Got it,” Pendle said. “Can I wear them out of the store?”

  “Come to my register, I’ll scan you.”

  He could hear her shoes going tap tap tap tap, until he couldn’t hear them anymore. He thought about how amazingly petite she was and how amazingly attractive, and he thought, I wonder what would happen if I gave her a drop of Bohu’s beardwater?

  He went to the changing room and stuffed his ballsack into the pouch and tied the waistband of the suit. It looked pretty good, but it felt strange—as if his testicles were trying to sing the song about a horse with no name. He pulled his pants on over the suit, leaving the tag flapping visibly.

  At the register, Trix pointed her scanning gun at his pants, and it made the bleep.

  “Two hundred and four dollars,” she said.

  Pendle pulled out his wallet, and he gave Trix some bills. She handed him back his change. He hesitated. He’d come to the test. Here was the moment. There were so many things that he could do wrong. For instance, if he leaned toward her and said, “Trix, I’d so like to munch on that apple ass of yours”—that would not be good. Even at the House of Holes, especially at the House of Holes, crassness didn’t pay. If he said, “I have half a pound of prime Angus cockbrisket ready for you”—that would not be good, either.

  And then he thought, You know, so what? He said, “There’s something I want to say, but I don’t think I should say it. I mean, it’s not that outrageous, it’s just that it’s not something that you normally say at the checkout counter.”

  “You’d be surprised at what people say here.”

  Pendle said, “I was going to say that I wish I was a man who had a store where he made custom sequin pasties for exotic dancers and you were an exotic dancer and came into the store and ordered a set of spiral pasties and so I had to measure your aureoles for fit.”

  “How would you measure them, with a ruler?”

  “Probably with my mouth,” said Pendle, “and then I’d measure my mouth with the ruler.”

  “I see. How does the bathing suit feel?”

  “Intense. Things are definitely hopping down there. But here’s the thing. When I look at you my fingertips actually go cold on me. Your face is that powerful. Do you want to have a bowl of soup and half a sandwich?”

  “Sure, I’d like that.”

  So at nine o’clock, when Trix got off work, she and Pendle went to a restaurant and had smooth soup and talked about working at the House of Holes. Pendle showed her the little purple vial of Bohu’s beardwater.

  Trix said, “What does it do, make you horny? I don’t need much help with that.”

  “Me neither, frankly,” said Pendle. “But I think it also makes the sexual experience more intense.”

  “Well then, I’ll try a drop in my spritzer.”

  “I’ll put a drop in my spritzer, too, so we’re even,” said Pendle. Then they went for a walk down Quim Street and turned right on Loulou Avenue. They talked about shipping lanes, the European Union, Trix’s French grandmother, and what Trix did after she got home from work when she wasn’t at the House of Holes. Bohu’s beardwater was beginning to kick in by then.

  “I walk around in my bare feet listening to NPR and eating soy crisps and cherry tomatoes,” Trix said. “Gradually I take off my clothes. I open the fridge and look in the celery drawer, and I sometimes flash the fridge my pussyhair, and the fridge seems to like it. At least, its motor comes on and it gives me a breath of cold air. I like to have my breasts out when I eat soy crisps.”

  “And then a little later you . . .”

  “Mhm. Close the curtains. Now here, it’s different. Here I go to a groanroom with a friend. Sometimes I don’t have sex, I just listen. I love sex sounds.”

  “I’ve never been to a groanroom.”

  “Oh, you should go. The groanrooms are like the darkrooms except bigger. There are four couples in each one, and you can’t talk at all, not one word, and everyone wears a glowing wristband and a glowing ankleband. That’s all you can see. Mostly it’s just juicy sex sounds. I love when people make a surprised sound, ‘ooh!’ Basically I love to listen to people making out. That’s why I don’t understand about cumshots, frankly. Not that it’s bad for you to wear a Heftyshot. But seeing a man squirt out into the air is much less exciting to me than the idea of a man shooting inside me and filling me up with wonderful hot streams of doodle-goo.”

  Pendle gave her an eager smile. “Just the sounds of people just—just doing the happy humperdinkle, eh? Just doing it and loving it. Hooooooo.”

  “Exactly.” Trix sat forward politely. “So what about you, have you been having any fun here?”

  “No fun at all,” said Pendle. He plucked an aspen leaf. “Well, a little. I haven’t been here that long. Lila asked me to be a nipplerider, and I shrank down and rode her nipple for a bit, but I wasn’t good at it. The best time I had was when I went out with this woman for lunch on the terrace, overlooking the Garden of the Wholesome Delightful Fuckers. We were eating melon and blueberries and looking down, and there were all these wholesome fuckers having sex in among the palm trees and the bushes. It was exciting. They really take extra care with the grounds here—the grass is so green and the paths are so carefully tended. I like the landscaping.”

  “How many couples could you see?”

  “Oh, gosh, eight, nine couples. I think our final count was eleven. I said to her, ‘I have never seen this many couples doing it before.’ She said, ‘Me neither, I kind of like it.’ I said, ‘Do you want to go down and be a part of the action?’ And she said, ‘Well—let’s just sit in the glorious sunshine and watch them being wholesome.’ I said, ‘Okay,’ and we watched for about half an hour. We both got very turned on. I was saying things like, ‘Woo, look at them go, look at them just boinking away like the crazy wholesome fuckers they are!’ And eventually we went up to her hotel room and messed around, and it was okay.”

  “No anal?”

  “No, should there have been?”

  “There’s just so much talk about it. Everybody’s supposed to love assfucking, and live for assfucking, and frankly I just don’t.”

  “No, no anal,” said Pendle. “It was good but I don’t think we’re really soul mates.”

  “And what after all is a soul mate?”

  “A soul mate is when you really think someone is great. You really like her a lot. You like when she explains things to you. You love her. That’s a
soul mate.”

  “Oh,” said Trix.

  “Will you take me to the groanrooms?”

  They went to a groanroom, and in the darkness of the entry foyer they put on the glowing wrist and ankle bracelets, which were in plastic packets in baskets just outside the door.

  “Just remember, we can’t talk in here at all, only groan,” said Trix, her hand on the door. “It’s like meditation except it’s more fun.”

  They went in together and closed the door very quietly.

  Henriette Chooses the Cheekpump

  Since she’d surfed the lake, Henriette had received two invitations to the Masturboats and visited the Hall of the Penises, but she still hadn’t met a man who really attracted her. Lila suggested that she take a walk down the Man Line. Henriette thought that was a good idea.

  The Man Line was a line of about a hundred single men who stood fully clothed in wedding suits, with numbers pinned to their lapels. She walked down the line, nodding at the men. Then she saw the one. He was smiling, trying to stare straight ahead. He was tall, with wide, even teeth and an easy, careless way of standing. His bow tie dangled. His number was 53.

  She didn’t say anything to him, but back at the office she told Lila that Number 53 was the one.

  Lila promptly called up a video of Number 53’s entrance interview. “Do you want to see it?”

  “Of course,” said Henriette.

  On the screen, Number 53, slouching in a chair, was asked what type of woman he was interested in. “Honestly?” he said.

  “Honestly,” said the entrance interviewer, Mischa.

  “Well, right now,” Number 53 said, “I’m wanting a woman with a humongous oversized ass—not a fat ass but a big round wobbly huge ass that’s busting out of her pants.”

  Lila turned off the video and Henriette sighed. “That’s just not me,” she said. “My ass is not humongous and oversized.”

  “It could be you if you wanted it to be,” said Lila.

  “How so?”

  Lila called Mischa in. “The cheekpump,” she said. She held Henriette for a moment. “If you let Mischa work on you with the cheekpump, you’ll get a day with the biggest ass you could possibly want.”

  “Just one day, and then it goes back to normal?”

  “Sometimes the ass lasts two days, if the fixative is properly applied. Here is a pair of jeans that will fit you after the procedure.” She handed Henriette a pair of strangely roomy pants.

  Mischa took her to a small, dimly lit round chamber with a low couch against one wall. He pulled down from the ceiling two enormous clear-plastic suction cups that looked rather like cymbals or dinner plates.

  “You have to strip down so I can put these on,” he said.

  She shucked off her pants and scants and knelt on the couch. “Like this?” she said.

  Mischa was frozen, staring. “My dear, dear friend,” he said. “I don’t know why you want to do anything to that rear end of yours. That is a lovely piece of craftsmanship.”

  “Thank you,” said Henriette. “But I want it bigger.”

  “I’m going to have to ask Krock to come in to help position the suction pads. This is too much ass experience for one man. Krock!”

  There was a slight pause, and then a man emerged, chewing a hastily finished sandwich. He washed his hands at a little sink, winking at Henriette.

  “What do we got?” Krock said.

  “One day cheekpump,” said Mischa.

  “For her?” Krock said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Eh, she has a thing for a guy who likes a superbig ass.”

  “In that case,” said Krock sadly, “let’s do it. But first, a moment to look—okay, baby?”

  Henriette nodded. She sensed them both looking at her exposed wonderloaves and felt a softening and an unfurling in her innernesses.

  Meanwhile Mischa reached up and pulled down a black hose with a squirt attachment at the end. “This is the flesh-bulging oil,” he said. He misted it lightly over her ass, and she felt strange things begin to happen.

  “You hold the left and I’ll hold the right,” said Krock. Henriette felt the two suction cups embrace and conform themselves to her cheeks, and then there was a sound of a vacuum motor starting and jiggly vibrating sensations, and she felt pressure as both men leaned against the suction cups, holding the seal in place. “Oooooooffff,” she said. It felt strange but strange in a delectable way and then, when Mischa and Krock together started rotating their suction cups—“to distribute the energy uniformly,” Krock explained—she put her head down and gave herself up to their ministrations, feeling her privacies stretched and held open and then squeezed shut. “God dang!” she said. “Holy effing shitter wiggle.”

  And then she started to feel the growing—she felt a heaviness to her ass as it grew and grew and grew and grew and grew. “Don’t let the cups slip off as she gets bigger,” Mischa warned, “keep pressing.”

  Finally they were finished. The groan of the vacuum pump stopped. The vibrating suction pads released themselves with a juicy kissing sound.

  “Okay, baby,” said Krock. “You have now got some seriously heavy assjunk. Mmm, mmm, mmm!” He rolled a full-length mirror over. Henriette stood.

  “Holy cow!” she said. She reached back and squeezed it—it was like squeezing two soft smooshy pillows. She tightened one crumpet muscle and then the other and felt how that felt. “I hope Number 53 likes this,” she said, “because this is one major derriere.”

  She turned toward the two of them, wearing only her bra. “What’s your verdict?”

  They were both open-mouthed. Her eyes flitted to Krock’s nethers, and she saw what looked like a stack of Duplo blocks. “The verdict is yes.”

  Mischa said, “And now, the fixative.”

  “What’s that?” asked Henriette.

  “I will excuse myself and Krock here will come on your new humongous ass.”

  “What? I didn’t know about that. What happens if he doesn’t come on my ass?”

  “It shrinks back to normal size in ten minutes.”

  “No!”

  “Yes. You have to have the fixative. For each man who comes on your ass, it’ll remain humongous for a full hour, up to a total of twenty-four hours. How much fixative do you want?”

  “The full twenty-four.”

  “Then you’ll need us to summon the beginning of the Man Line. Kneel on the couch and Krock will come on your ass, and when he’s done I’ll wipe you down and send in the next man. Okay?”

  Henriette knelt on the couch and waited, jiggling her amazingly huge ass a few times to get used to how it moved. “Okay,” she said. “Bring on the Man Line.”

  Dave Trespasses

  Dave was out for a walk in the middle of a quiet road near the House of Holes. He’d set out at about three o’clock in the afternoon, needing a little break after spending eight hours in the Porndecahedron watching amateur movies of women making themselves come. It was a lovely budding afternoon, and the sky was a perfect Pantone 2925 blue. Dave had a big plaid blanket in his canvas bag and a thermos of barley soup, and he unfurled the blanket over some matted grass and lay down and looked up at the clouds till he found one with soft breasts and a leg held alluringly half open, and he stuffed his hand down his pants and started working himself to the bone.

  A young woman walked up and said, “Excuse me, what are you doing?” She had a large blunt-faced dog on a leash. The dog barked once politely and then sat down.

  Dave whipped his hand out of his pants. “Just having my way with the clouds,” he said. “My apologies.”

  “You shouldn’t be doing that here in this field. This is a working farm. It doesn’t belong to the House of Holes. Beyond that road over there is the property line. This is the real world.”

  Dave was horrified. “Very sorry, I had no idea I’d wandered off the range,” he said. “You’d think they’d have a little border-crossing caution sign.” He looked at the woman. She had generously messy ha
ir and rough lips with no lipstick and a tiny scar on the bridge of her nose. “I’ll tell you, it’s one heck of a nice field you’ve got here. And you have some nice clouds, too. Nice soft luscious clouds just hanging in the sky.”

  “Thanks,” she said, with some friendliness, looking at his missing arm. “It was the clouds coming over this hill that convinced my parents to buy this place. It has different weather on this side. And the oats grow well down on this slope.”

  “Do you drive the tractor?” Dave asked. “I’m Dave, by the way. I’d offer to shake your hand, but I’ve been, ah, having a meeting with the fondling fathers.” He folded up his plaid blanket and stuffed it into his canvas bag.

  “I’m Chilli,” she said. “Yes, sometimes I drive the tractor.”

  “Good skill to have,” he said. “Portable.” He stood and brushed off his pants, holding the canvas bag over his lap. “Well, I’m off. I’m practicing for a festival.”

  “Was that what you were doing when I walked up, ‘practicing’?”

  “I like to stay in shape.” They walked together down the rutted path toward the road. “Do you think there are certain fields on this planet that are sex fields? I feel that this is a sex field. It’s not just the clouds. It’s the shape of the land. You can’t tell if it’s a rectangle or a triangle or an oval. It undulates.”

  “It does,” said Chilli.

  “Can I ask you something impertinent? Do you ever come out here and just want to take your pants off? With the sky so huge and those clouds just hanging there?”

  “Do I come out here sometimes and play with myself?”

  Dave nodded. “Yeah. Do you do rude things to your little pulsing happy bloated clit, who’s sitting there in the prow of the boat, looking backward at the rowers with her horn saying, ‘Row, team, row, row the boat faster, and when you reach the shore, slide way up on the warm sand’? Do you do that?”

  The woman looked down at her dog for a moment, and then she said, “Once I did sort of take my pants off.”

  “What made you do it?”