Over one of our sushi dinners, I mentioned mating to Andie, about how marine creatures did not go through the awkwardness of sex on dry land. When she had cleared her plate, she went to the bathroom. Andie called for me after ten minutes. I heard the taps running from outside and knocked on the bathroom door.
She poured in the bath salts and the foam and issued me instructions: “Don’t turn around until I say so.”
I heard the taps running, water gushing out. Inspired, I invented a name for a new cocktail: “Sex in the Bath”. Foam spilled over the rim of the bathtub and drifted over to my bare feet. “You can look now.”
Andie had skimmed off a layer of thick foam and fashioned a bikini out of it: bubbles shining on her wet skin like sequins sewn onto a body stocking.
The water sloshed around as I climbed inside the tub. I lifted aside a handful of wet hair pressed against her shoulder blades, strands of kelp left on white sand at high tide. The strap of lather on one shoulder had split. I nipped and rasped my teeth along the ridge of a collarbone until I reached the notch at the base of her neck. I dipped my tongue in, the skin tasting salty, the same as the mussels at dinner. The rest of the makeshift bra had dissolved, exposing her tiny rosewood nipples. My hand reached between her thighs and sought out her niche, fingers discovering that her hole was as shallow as a navel. Andie gasped and shoved me back with the contained violence of a self-defence class. We slid in rhythm against the wall of the tub. Male sea snakes cannot disengage from females until mating is complete.
My living room had a built-in marine aquarium equipped with backlit glass, harsh and vivid like a screensaver. The cleaner shrimp from my shop were servicing a blue-striped angelfish.
“Humans think they can study animals in tanks and cages, and put them into categories.”
Dressed in a terry-wrap robe, Andie walked over to the window, her profile slashed into shadows by the Venetian blinds. Her rants began like our lovemaking, a sharp tangential stab in a random location, growing in intensity as she located an available target. I tried to distract her. I pointed to the aquarium, “Are you talking about my fish?”
“You make them sound like they’re your property.”
I went over and put my arms around her to soothe her displeasure.
“You don’t own me – I’m not one of your fish in your shop.”
“I have a duty to my shop.”
“Your shop is your property, which has its own set of conditions.” She loosed the belt on the robe and opened it before taking my hand and pressing it on her soft breast, “Duty is unconditional. When you’re with me, you are beyond all that.”
“No.” I struggled to deny my body’s responses. “Can we talk about you? Or us?”
Andie rolled her eyes at me and pushed me back towards the sofa. “Remember the deal, Jack? You don’t ask dumb questions about me or anything. We enjoy what we can when we can.”
On the sofa, the bathrobe fell down around Andie as she climbed above me, a goddess holding up the canopy of the night sky with her body. It was dim under her robe as the moist velvets of our mouths mingled. When she placed her mouth around what she humorously called my “seahorse”, I forgot about duty or business.
Andie was right; my shop was my property and my duty although I had been neglecting it. Live food drifted in plastic basins, air pumps broke down and filters clogged up with algae and gave off the metallic tang of nitrates. My courtesy transformed into curtness with customers. As families waited for a table outside the dim sum restaurant, they allowed their children to wander into my shop. I shooed them away with a broomstick, annoyed that these conventional lives and their offspring had intruded into my floating world.
A man entered the shop, tall and white-haired, his skin so tanned that it gave off a violet lustre in the striplights of the fish tanks. His appearance attested to a life spent under the sun. The juxtaposition was odd; what was his interest in an indoor hobby like aquarium fish-keeping? I realized the connection when he put a plastic bag on the counter; the cleaner wrasse was swimming inside.
“I’m returning the wrasse. My wife told me she bought it from here,” he said with a faint European accent.
I did not answer and tightened my grip on the broom handle. Andie had lied to me about her marital status. Deceived as I was, I had no desire to be murdered by a jealous husband.
“OK, relax.” He held up a gnarled hand to assuage me. “My ex-wife. Well, not until she signs the papers. If she signs them.”
I waited for him to get interrogative. Would he ask me to step outside for a fistfight in front of the dim sum restaurant? When I still did not speak, he said “Thank you.”
“What for?”
“Andie has no real friends in KL. I suggested a change of scene to her. We even bought a studio apartment in Mont Kiara last year.” He pushed the wrasse towards me. “Since no one’s going to live there now, there’s no need to decorate it.”
I opened the till to give him a refund for the fish.
“No, please. I insist.” He refused the money. I asked him what was his job.
“I own a scuba-diving school in Thailand. Hey, maybe you should try it one day?”
I ignored his offer and blurted, “Do you still have feelings for Andie?”
He smiled as if I had articulated something he could not admit to himself. “We live apart, but we are not separated. She goes and returns. Nothing’s definite with her and that’s the deal.”
“I know.” I agreed and thought of the male and female shrimp inside the Venus’ Flower Basket, an arrangement of complete security but defined by soft translucent bars.
Andie sent a blank email with a photo attachment to my business mail address: a fuzzy snapshot of sea snakes mating taken with an underwater camera. I replied with a brief thank-you and never heard from her again.
My customers thought I had closed my shop for a month. Instead, I renovated it and got rid of the marine fish and invertebrate tanks. I applied for a licence to sell dogs and cats. The shop was noisier with barks and meows, but at least it distracted me from thinking about Andie. My new employees did not understand why I was obsessed with checking the sex of new puppies and kittens. I was looking for recurrences of Andie’s condition in nature.
Of course, I never found any, but conventional family life found me when a petite woman walked into my shop one evening, tearful that her boyfriend had stood her up outside the dim sum restaurant.
However, my fiancée baulked at making love in the bathtub. She told me I could get hurt. She did not understand when I replied that I had already been hurt that way.
Get Up! Stand Up!
Madeline Moore
It should be the happiest night of my life, and it would be, if it weren’t for the boy on my fire escape, crouched like a gargoyle, with as miserable a countenance as any stone beast I’ve ever seen.
It’s the night before my wedding and even though it’s not my first time down the aisle it’ll be the first time I remember. Plus, this time I’m marrying a handsome, intelligent, wealthy man and my dress is amazing. It’s awesome, in the vernacular of the young.
I’m not young, but he is – the boy, not the fiancé. The boy’s cock is as magnificent in its solidity and endurance as a rock. The thought of it makes my cunt ache. I’ve been spoiled over the last six weeks; I’ve indulged myself and now I must suffer.
If I wanted to I could claim perimenopause has played a part in my behaviour of late. My girlfriends point to my sixty-year-old boyfriend and his freakin’ commitment issues. They didn’t even have to see Guy to declare him good for me. Of course, they’ve been cruising in a pack, feeding on the young, for a while now.
I refused to join the cougar brigade. When they tried to make me go a-prowlin’ I said no, no, no. I had a much bigger fish to fry. Now look. An engagement ring on my finger, the pre-nup signed and sealed, and a boy on the balcony. My bad. I’m pushing frickin’ fifty and I feel ridiculous.
Tea’s on! I tap at the
glass doors, smile and hold up a tea cup.
“Come in.” I mouth the words. “Talk to me.” Tilt my head. But I know he won’t respond. This is a silent, passive protest. All the talking is done, he said, and he was right. Try as I might I’ll never convince him that our time is up.
His blue eyes stare, two sapphires set in stone. They stream rain and, probably, tears. His black hair is matted to his head. His face is flushed. He’s likely sick by now. I have to do something, but what? They’re so stupid, the young. When I told him that he’d said, “I’d rather be stupid than cruel.”
The first thing I said to him was, “You come down out of that tree!”
The first thing he said to me was, “You’re not the boss of me!”
In retrospect everything was mapped out in those two sentences. That I would play at taking care of him (while fucking him senseless) and he wouldn’t do what he was told (while fucking me senseless).
I sit down at the table, pour a lone cup of tea and contemplate the list of phone numbers I’ve been staring at for the past few days, ever since he moved from my bed to the balcony. There’s the police, known in these parts as La Sûreté du Québec, and a mental health crisis line. My girlfriends. Plus Ash, Mr Potato Head, Willow, Big Balls – these are names and numbers I nicked from Guy’s cell phone the night I brought him home.
All my fiancé’s phone numbers are on speed dial, of course, though there’s no need to drag him into it at this late date, now is there? Brian is a developer. He owns undeveloped land all over Canada, and properties all over the world. I’m a physiotherapist. I own my condo.
We met when I treated his bad back at the swish physio centre where I work. We’re both bilingual Anglo-Quebeckers so right there we had plenty to talk about. The relationship took off beautifully, then stalled after about six months, then continued crawling forward.
Thus was the state of affairs one fine summer evening six short weeks ago. I had the sunroof open on my Beetle, enjoying the breeze and basking in the last of a summer sunset. Brian and I were meeting at a posh restaurant for a night of fine dining followed by sex, which I was very much looking forward to. My cell phone rang. When I picked up Brian said he had to stay late to meet with the Châteauguay contractors about “the kid up the tree”.
I’d heard about the protest of course but hadn’t paid it much mind. There are plenty of acres of protected forest in Quebec; indeed we have the Châteauguay Conservation Area. It hadn’t seemed too terrible to mow down a few adjoining trees to put in a soccer stadium and Brian stood to make a healthy profit, which of course I was all for. But I hadn’t heard about this boy until now.
“How long has he been up there?” My voice was modulated. When dealing with Brian my default state is “patient”, which is not always an easy one for me to maintain. But it’s essential.
“I don’t know, months,” said Brian.
“That’s crazy! What about his legs?”
Brian laughed his evil developer “nyah ah ah” laugh. “We start clearing tomorrow, kid or no kid.”
“But he could be hurt.” Tears actually sprang to my eyes. Partly because I was pissed at Brian and not giving him even a hint of it was making my blood boil, but also because here’s a young, idealistic man with no one to stand up for him, or to him, and make him stop. When I was young I did my time in the marches, but I never risked my life and if I had, someone would’ve stopped me.
“So dinner’s out but if you want to come by around eleven I’d love to see you. Annie, I miss your lovely mouth.” Sounds nice, but what he really meant was, “I’ll be too tired to make love but you can always suck me off.”
“We’ll see,” I purred. “I miss your . . . mouth . . . too.” I rang off before steam could start whistling out my ears. “Fuck you, pal,” I hissed.
I drove to Châteauguay.
The protest was a fair distance from the parking lot, which was hell in my heels, which I wouldn’t even have been wearing if I hadn’t been en route to a date. Pissed. I wasn’t talking out loud but inside I was spouting the worst string of expletives I knew. “Motherfucking cocksucking prick shit dick-for-brains,” and such. Words I stopped saying out loud long ago but that lurk in my brain, ready to leap to my lips at the first sign of frustration. Fuck.
Sunset’s gorgeous in Châteauguay and I knew the area well. Back in the day we used to build illegal campfires and sit around singing and swilling home-made wine and smoking dope. I was a “back to the lander”.
It turned out just as well that I was dressed like a lovely lady. When I reached the stand of trees where the protest was taking place the police were herding Mr Potato Head and Fern Gully and the rest of that motley crew off the premises for the night and would’ve made me leave, too, but I said I was the kid’s mom and had come to take him home. They left me alone, under the butternut tree.
I yelled, “Tu parles anglais?”
He yelled back, “Oui,” which in Québécois sounds like, “Wah.”
Then we had our first exchange, after which he gently pushed a leafy branch aside and stared down at me. Long dark hair, lanky body all scrunched up. A wistful face, as the young so often have; pale, unlined, sharp cheekbones and a soft, sensuous mouth. Big baby blues, baby.
I swear, I hadn’t been planning anything beyond the rescue, maybe a little physio and a hamburger platter and a bus ticket or something, until our eyes met. But as we stared at each other in the twilight, something stirred in the pit of my stomach.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,’ he said.
“You can come home with me,” I replied.
He shimmied down the trunk of the butternut to plop in a bony heap at my feet.
“You stink,” I said. I leaned low to get his arm around my shoulders and hauled him up. “Pee-yew.”
He teetered, almost falling. I clutched him tight. “Yeah but you smell great,” he said, as if one cancelled out the other. He patted the smooth bark of the tree. “She’s old and disease-free. A real beauty,” he whispered. His voice trembled.
I resisted the urge to say, “Just like me.” Instead I whispered back, “I know, baby. It’s going to be OK.”
He really did have trouble walking, which I thought was horrible but he found “trippy”. When we got to my place I helped him into and out of the elevator, then into my condo and straight to the main bathroom. I stripped him like a professional, giving no outward sign that the sight of his tight young flesh made my blood hum and my clit stand at attention. He was too dirty for a bath and too unsteady for a shower so I left him sitting in the tub with the shower pounding down on his head.
I contemplated throwing his clothes into the washer but in the end I bundled them up and dumped them down the trash chute. I searched his pockets first. They were empty. All his worldly belongings, it seemed, were contained in a filthy jute shoulder bag. I made a quick survey of its contents, copping those phone numbers from the cell, happily taking note of his habit of regularly giving blood (clean!), checking his ID for his age (legal!) and tsking over a couple of chubby reefers (as if there weren’t a few skinny joints of hydroponic tucked away in my lingerie drawer).
The story is that when Cher laid eyes on Rob the bagel boy she said, “Have him washed and brought to my tent.” I knew that was what I was doing but I was still pretending my motives were pure.
“Straighten your legs,” I ordered when I was back in the bathroom. “Yum Yum,” sang my body in response to the sight of him stretched out in my tub. “Young, young, yum, yum.” I averted my eyes.
“Can’t. It hurts.”
“Do your best. Now flex your toes. Can you feel it in your calves?”
“Sorta.”
“Do five flex and relax reps. Ready? One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Relax.”
“You have a beautiful voice.”
“Merci. Again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. And relax.”
“Will I walk again?”
“Yes.”
“Will I play the piano?�
��
I laughed. “No.”
“I’m clean now,” he said. “Get in.”
“You think?” I looked at him. His cock waved a solid, friendly hello. The sight of that majestic hard-on struck me dumb.
We exchanged a long look. Mine said, “I’m almost fifty, chéri,” and his said, “De rien.”
So I dropped my button-through dress. I was wearing a black satin push-up bra and thong (sixty-year-old men love a thong on any woman’s body, even a perimenopausal one) and lacy stay-ups that were riddled with runs from my trip into the forest.
“Oo la la,” said Guy. His cock got bigger; the head got thicker and started turning purple.
Desire hit my crotch so hard it hurt, like a cramp in my clit.
“I haven’t even touched you,” I whispered. I was awestruck. Honestly, I hadn’t seen a cock that big and hard and blatantly horny since I quit trolling the gay porn sites. As for the real thing?
Years, baby.
“You have a beautiful voice,” he said. “And a bootylicious body.” He licked his lips.
I stripped off my bra and panties and stepped into the tub, positioning one foot on each side of his slender boy hips. Then I simply lowered myself onto that magnificent member. I didn’t even spread my labia with my fingers, instead letting the heat-seeking head of his dick shove them aside to find my seriously aching hole.
“Christ,” I muttered as it stretched happily to accommodate him.
Water hit the back of my head and poured over us both.
“Oui,” (Wah) he said. He sighed like an old man, long and slow, and closed his eyes.
I kept mine open, watching the guileless grin that spread across his face as I slipped down another inch onto him, and another, until he was fully inside of me, encased by the hot satin walls of my cunt. My lips and clit nestled in his straight black pubic hair.
He humped up.
I gasped like a girl.
He did it again. Again. Again.
I started trembling all over. Usually I need a little help to make it all the way to euphoria, by which I mean wine as well as foreplay, but not this time. I was about to start howling and even the sight of my belly wrinkling between my navel and my pubic hair didn’t faze me.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 11 Page 56