When my sorority planned a ski trip I had no idea I was in for such a rowdy carnal encounter. I told my girlfriends, I don’t swallow sperm. They looked at me like I was insane. There’s pressure from every side. The world insists that I rejoice in it, that I swallow the gross glop, smack my lips, and ask for another helping. But anyway, what’s a Gondola? The Puffs, that’s the name of our group, they said. You’re lucky we’re letting you come along, stupid prude. I swear … I like guys, I just don’t think it’s cool if they cum in your mouth. Why should I have to swallow something that isn’t really nutritious? My objection is I don’t like squishy foods, old bananas, custards, or any type of thick, room temp beverages. But I hear sperm is good for your complexion, so that’s what I’ll do. I’ll massage it into my skin if I have to. I hate this entire flow of words but I might as well continue. What happened to me is … I was riding up the Gondola (is that Italian for something?) with five big men. Out of the blue, no provocation from me, they all pull their cocks out and start masturbating. I was just looking out the window, minding my own business, but then I got this sudden curiosity, maybe I won’t hate it. Maybe spode tastes good. I eat a lot of fast foods. I like lots of salt on my popcorn, maybe boy jizz is really salty like that, and since five guys are masturbating in this Gondola contraption, I might as well have a European adventure at this Mammoth Resort, and sample; plus I’m on vacation and a wild experience is something I promised myself this weekend. I just kind of kneeled in the center and let it all happen. One guy named Bob said he was ready to shoot. I said, Don’t use that terminology, please, violent guys are a turnoff. He apologized and said, Quick cash. That’s better, I said. Then another guy who introduced himself as Robert stood up and said, Fry that thing. Bob came on my shoulder and Robert in my hair. Fabulous. Then the other Bob, who had the queerest method of doing himself, like he was trying to jimmy open a broken door, dripped out a morsel and said, Crawl home. I just looked at him like, What is your problem? Two more remained. Rick screamed, Oh my shit hell, and came on one of the Bobs who started unpleasantly cussing, and someone named Bill tapped his massive tool on my brow. He had a twisty vein that looked like an access road on a wrinkled map—I jerked him out the window. He shouted, Nobody knows me. Translucent sperm-ropes swirled down to earth. Boy, did he seem sad. Our ride was over; the lovely sky boat docked at the top of the mountain. All that sperm and not one droplet crossed my lips. We got out of the Gondola a little dazed, but psyched and ready to rock, or at least they were. I was frightened. The young Gondolier handed me my skis with the little roosters on the tips. What do I do now? Everything appeared so treacherous. How am I going to get down the mountain? Where are my girlfriends? Maybe one of those ski patrolmen will help me. I snowplowed toward something called Climax.
4.
I am one horny fucking ski patrolman without a squeeze to call my own. Me and the boys work hard like pack mules and then we sit around all day and do nothing. It’s like the Marines but without the war. We fight snow. The morning after a storm we load up the cannon and fire away. Avalanche safety. Snow’s not our enemy. We love it. We’re on the same side, the side of weather, chaos, and the radical snowpack. Anyway, one day the summit shack was crammed with 10 of us and the subject of orgies came up. I stepped outside to get some air. I’ve participated in a few orgies in college and I didn’t like them. What people don’t realize is the person you most want in your mouth is always taken. Secondly, some pants shitter you’d never want within a mile of you is creeping up from behind, wanting a piece of you, and thirdly, it can get a little gamey when Joe Yuck sticks his gnarly arm pit or reeking foot in your face. Okay, so maybe I’m a little prissy, but I know what I want and I know who I am (I wear these 5 lb. lead hoop earrings that can take your eye out if we’re dancing too rough). One day I was doodling away on my Patrolzine—a kind of private newsletter called Sierra Serenade, it has quite a following—and up walked Lars Stubenklonk. I go, Hey, are you circumcised? And he goes, Hell no, are you? I say, That’s a big negative, Foreskin Brother, Christ prefers his flock uncut. We chortle together, and then I say, You want to pose for me tonight? Ten-four, Oil Can, see you … when? I say, Midnight, and you better be in leather. Fast forward to 11:45 P.M. I stuff my backpack with art supplies and a small bottle of sherry. We’re climbing Huevos Grande, a bigass full moon lighting the way. When we reach the saddle I drop my pack and say, Hey Lars, pull out your cock, that’s an order. He unzips and releases a killer slab. I bend him over a snowy boulder, plow his cinderblocks, and then the pig farmer returns the favor. Damn. Then we pack up our gear and continue our steep stroll. With Lars two steps ahead of me, I say, Fart in my face, you dumb ox. After a brief pause he releases the most profound intestinal horn recital my mind has ever translated into English. A fine aromatic concoction of meat, gasoline, and old socks. In a word, Yum. When we summit our favorite chute, I say, Bend over and show me your smelly crevasse, which he does, and I pound the cheese out of him, then I pull out my sumie brush and watercolors and paint for a while. I do a very loose rendering of my fist in his ice cave and then a sentimental sketch from memory of my old lace-up boots from childhood with the man in the moon in the background and then a snowman with a cock so big that it goes up to his nose. Then Lars and I click into our skis, do figure-8s down Huevos. He and I are going to Valdez for the championships. We’re going to bring home that trophy and make America proud.
TECHNICALLY DADLESS
DEATH BY TOILET
A mother tells her son that murderers take great pleasure in hiding out near public restrooms, especially late at night, and that if he, her precious son, isn’t careful he could end up six feet under, or worse. What’s worse, Mom? Worse is when your body isn’t recovered. You’re in limbo. You’re dead in theory, but technically you’re still alive. Or maybe it’s the other way around. I’m not sure, but you never get a funeral. And that’s a shame. When a child disappears it is most troubling for the surviving family, the loved ones—in your case, your father and myself, and if you had a sister or a brother (thank God you don’t), they would also experience undue emotional pain. The parents would be placed in a situation of not knowing. There’s a technical term for that. I think it’s called hell in a crock pot or no closure for the little witch or grief dangles from faulty cables. Needless to say, both your father and I would then be treated like suspects, and for good reason. No motive for killing is stronger than parent to child, with the exception of child to parent. It’s often a contest. Who will strike first? Who will bury whom? People, which is another way of saying strangers (the blur of slime you see everywhere you go), and police (because it’s their job), and friends (pseudo intimates; we all know how stretched and inaccurate that term is) with a sick sense of humor (because they like to torture those closest to them) will call us night and day, under the pretense of caring, just checking in to make sure everyone is okay, they will say, but in fact it’s all a very sophisticated method of psychological torture. Mother, the boy asks, and, Shut up, let me finish, the mother continues, These people bring cold cuts and cakes to your house. They think you’ll be hungry. But you’re sick to your stomach with sorrow. Two seconds later these friends are ripping into the ham and roast beef. They’re spreading mayonnaise on their earlobes. They’ll say they’re famished as fragments of meat shoot out of their mouth and whistle past your ears. Occasionally a chunk of ivory gristle lands on you. They apologize and then fire another piece of brown matter in your direction, secretly hating you for all the attention you’re getting. They think you’re milking the situation. The boy yawns. Cover your mouth when you do that, the mother says, and, don’t use a public bathroom unless you go in with five or six friends—two should be on guard and vigilant, eyes constantly moving, on the lookout for suspicious men—or if there’s an armed guard in front of the boys room, that’s fine, but make sure he’s authentic, check his badge, act like you come from an important family; there’s a lot of fake law-enforcement types floating around who prey on children such
as yourself. If my name comes up, refer to me as Mother, say it with a slight British accent if you can. Remember that game we used to play? I am a limey prig. Do that. Most sex offenders are intimidated by these sorts of things. You’re our only son. We mustn’t lose you. Not after all the money we’ve invested in you and all the love we’ve ladled out on your precious head. Other parents have two or three kids. Losing one isn’t nearly as bad. They get over it. They dote on the others. The siblings carry the bulk of the guilt like soldiers who witness the death of a close buddy—why them not me, a simple thought carried and turned over every day for their entire existence. If we lose you we’ll go mad. I shouldn’t speak for your father. I know I will. Now go to school.
In art class the boy puts the finishing touches on an animated movie he’s shooting with a super-8 camera. He pulls white yarn through the stem of a pickle. Then he stands the pickle up and attaches the stem to the lower third of the pickle’s body. Frame by frame the boy shoots the white yarn slowly creeping out of the stem. The teacher is pleased with the boy’s innovation. Oh, that’s semen, she says. A male pickle ejaculating onto a female pickle—that’s not the safest or most reliable form of birth control. I had two abortions when I was in high school because I never used contraception. My boyfriends and I would use the pull-out method—which is no method at all, really, it’s plain stupidity—but when I’m all hot down there sometimes I don’t think and I’m just screaming for more. The guy would pull out at the last mega-second and cum on my belly, but inevitably a drop or two would make its way inside me, and since I’m the most fertile woman on the planet, it would always be straight to the pregnancy-termination center. The teacher says, I know the school bus passes that orgy house where all the Reef Girl models sunbathe naked. What a treat that must be. I hear all the boys jump out of their seats to get a better look. Makes going to school kind of a necessity. I know you’re probably a little young for this, but next semester I’ll bring in a book called the Kama Sutra which describes hundreds of positions a man and woman can be in when they have sex, each with a wonderful name like the Butterfly Plow and Circle K, all of which I have tried. The thing I learned was that different positions work for different body types. It’s funny, when all is said and done, I’m really just an old-fashioned girl that likes the missionary position. I like being on the bottom. I like to look up and feel the weight of the guy. Also, I can really thrust back when I’m down there; it’s like the crushed-petunia pose in yoga. If I’m on my side or on my hands and knees, it’s sexy and everything, especially if we’re in a motel and there are mirrors everywhere, but I’m not as agile as I’d like to be. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you get a little older. And if you’re gay and prefer being a bottom, well then, girlfriend, we’re going to have plenty to talk about. The teacher gives a limp-wristed slap in the air. The boy writes restroom assassin in his notebook. Then he writes don’t flush. Then he writes wipe front to back, not back to front. The teacher says, You can’t have a movie without a movie poster. She hands out huge sheets of paper and charcoal. The boy draws pictures of knives, rows and rows of them, stacked up, single file, knives falling from the sky like snow. I love your knives, the teacher says. My first husband used to love to have sex with various accoutrements, including knives. He never cut me, thank heaven; I was just excited by the whole danger thing. These were in our cocaine and vodka gimlet days, before we got married. Once we exchanged rings and vows it was all downhill. Sad story. We both went into AA and straightened out our lives. Your knives are quite lyrical, the teacher says, focusing on the boy’s drawing, but where are your two pickles? Your poster might mislead viewers, but only you have a clear vision of the final product. Why don’t you draw hands? Hands and knives together. After the boy draws a picture of a hand stabbing another hand, the teacher leans over his desk and says, Now you’re talking, try a face, to hell with the pickles. Soon the boy is drawing big heads with knives stuck into eye sockets and ears. The teacher sees a big curved line and suspects the beginnings of an ass. Ah, the butt crack, she says, we’re not doing nudes until next week, but I’m not going to hold you back. The teacher drops the pencil she’s holding and gazes at the ceiling, lost in thought. She smiles and says, The ass is a sacred area. It’s the only place on the human body where tragedy and comedy reside together in conflicting harmony. Young man, you are a skilled draughtsman. The teacher walks to her desk and pulls out a tape recorder. She places it on the boy’s desk. Then the school bell rings. Day over. Time to go home. I think you’re ready to make sound art, she says. I want you to take advantage of all the interesting sounds on the way home. Don’t take the bus. Walk. Put this microphone in unusual places.
On his way home, the boy walked through the park. He had to make a Number Two. The sun was going down. He saw a scruffy man in a bathrobe standing by the restrooms, holding a wire coat hanger. The boy pulled the tape recorder out of his backpack and pressed record. Hey mister, the boy said, are you going to strangle someone with that wire hanger? My mom warned me against people like you. He said, Let’s go inside where no one will see us. He held open the door. After you, he said politely. I’m recording this for class, the boy said, do you mind if I ask you a few questions? That’s cool, the man said, fire away. What’s your favorite method of murder? He held up the coat hanger. Then he said, Actually, I prefer my bare hands. Why do you do it? Well, my father sort of did stuff like this and I’m just following in his footsteps. You got to follow your father. Strike that from the record; one can’t help following one’s father. You do everything you can to resist but there’s something in the genes or the psyche that clings to the lineage no matter how destructive. But, aside from natural forces driving me to kill, it’s just a great feeling, like riding a giant wave and surviving. It’s a total rush. That sounds awesome, the boy said. Yeah, but it depends on who you kill; some people are not as enlightening as others are. For instance, I can’t understand the appeal of killing the elderly. They’re almost dead to begin with. There’s no challenge there, plus they confuse you with their children. They think you’re part of the family, one of their grandkids or nephews. You find yourself explaining who you’re not right before they die, which is disconcerting. Plus, they’re not challenging. They’re physically so weak. They die at the drop of a hat. I tried to strangle one gentleman who offed himself with a heart attack the second I touched him. I like a little struggle. Also, old people tend to be religious, at least that’s my experience. They babble. They’ll say anything to survive. Why do you wear a bathrobe? Aren’t you cold? No, I’m actually perspiring. I’m hot. I’m kind of nervous. This is my good luck bathrobe. It’s never been washed. It makes me feel like I’m home in front of the TV no matter where I am. The boy said, That’s enough questions for now. I have to go to the bathroom. The man said, Are you going to record it? You should. The whole kerplunk thing will sound great if you get your microphone close enough and then the big flushing sound. The toilet is the classic metaphor for a ruined life. The boy went into a stall. Leave the door open in case you need any help, the man said. I’ll be fine, thanks, the boy said, and locked the door behind him, pulled down his pants, and sat on the toilet. The man in the bathrobe put the coat hanger down for a second and splashed cold water on his face. In the stall the boy spoke to the tape recorder. Here we are, ladies and gentlemen; I’m about to let loose a big nasty poop. We’re hoping for a figure-8, but any configuration or letter of the alphabet will be considered kickass. It’s only a matter of time. Wait, I feel something poking through; could it be, yes it is, the blind snake is venturing out of his hole. He’s making an appearance. There he is. He’s stretching farther and farther down. He’s about to cut his losses and fall into the round sea. He’s dangling quite nicely. Oh yes, he dropped right in. What a quiet little plop. Let’s spin around and have a look-see. Ah, the letter U. Is the black butt-snake trying to tell me something? Should I leave the creature in the water for the next kid? So many questions. One thing is for sure,
I must wipe, front to back, not back to front, like my mother taught me. The boy turned off the tape recorder and said, I didn’t flush. The man with the coat hanger said, I know. I could hear every word. Maybe I’ll tell the next kid that walks in here all about the kid who laid down the U-shaped turd. The boy said, Make him eat it.
When the boy returned home his mother was in the kitchen cooking. The boy said, Mom, I hate liver and onions more than anything in the world. The mother said, Wash your hands and set the table, your father should be home any second. The boy said, I’m doing so well in school that my teacher let me borrow a tape recorder. She told me to make sound art so I went to the park and met this really cool guy in a bathrobe that said he strangled little kids but he wasn’t going to kill me for some reason. The mother said, You don’t listen, do you? No matter what I say, it’s in one ear and out the other. Before I had you I was an actress. I had a promising career in the theatre. I was in Auntie Mame, Off-Broadway. I wasn’t much of a dancer, but I could sing. We were trained in those days. Not like now where the first thing the anorexia actress does is stuff her chest with silicon and pose naked. Now they’re all prostitutes posing as thespians. I gave it all up to have you. I said goodbye to all that and I became one of the great mothers in the history of childbirth. I fed you with my own bosom. Now you tell me that whore teacher of yours gave you a tape recorder and told you to make sound art? The mother put down her wooden spoon and turned off the gas flame. The sizzling onions, which were once so loud, quit wiggling and grew quiet. The mother picked up a butcher knife and approached her son. No, Mom, the boy screamed. Yes, the mother said calmly. It is time. You’ve read the Bible. This happens now and again. It’s the natural order of things. Plus, no son of mine is going to fornicate with his eighth grade teacher. I am not going to stand around and cheer while she licks and sucks on my baby. I will not light her marijuana cigarettes, nor will I provide her with a clean ashtray, nor will I change your disgusting sheets. I will not be ridiculed in my own house. You are a little bastard. Since when do you think it’s okay to break every natural law known to man? The boy hit record and said, Mother attempting to kill her son, into the tape recorder. She took a swing at him with the giant blade, and the boy said, Tape recorder doubling as shield, son blocks deadly weapon, stabbing action continues. The boy dropped the machine. Batteries skidded across the linoleum. Liver and onions are my favorite, he said. I changed my mind. I love liver and onions. The mother lunged at him, knocking the phone off its cradle. The mother plunged the knife wildly, and repeatedly missed the flesh of her son. The boy picked up the phone and struck his mother on the head. She dropped the knife. She fell to the ground dazed. The boy wrapped the phone cord around his mother’s throat in the same manner that a cowboy ties up the feet of a young calf. She struggled to breathe. The mother said, I have to set boundaries, a mother can’t say yes to everything. At that precise moment, the father came home from work. He put his briefcase down and watched his son strangling his wife. That’s interesting, he thought, before realizing the severity of the situation. He ran across the kitchen and jumped on the boy and slapped him across the face. Then he hugged and kissed him and started to cry. The boy cried. The father unwound the phone cord from around his wife’s neck. Are you all right, he asked? I’m fine honey, she said. Mom tried to stab me, the boy said. The father said, Everyone wants to stab everyone, son. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t love in the air, flowers in our hands, and benevolence in our hearts.
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