And you saw her again, you spent the night in her clean girl house rolling around watching movies and having filthy unprotected sex. Talking in between. You liked her. Lingered in the morning; it was a hot day, she lives on a hill, you cracked the front of her neighbor’s new Audi backing up with the Benz’s creaky brakes… you were horrified, but it was OK. She didn’t care. Still gave you a long kiss goodbye. You knew you had something. You went home feeling possibility. You could see yourself with her. Dear Lord, thank you for letting me feel this thing even one more time.
You got home. Let out the cat. Headed to the toilet to take your shit of triumph. Ass burbling fire after the 16 oz sustainably harvested coffee with notes of raspberry you drank with her at the yuppie cafe, while the other dorks looked on jealous. Flip the lid, sit, drop your purple American Apparel briefs.
There is a beef gravy shart in them.
You sharted. You fucking sharted. And you didn’t know. Which means you don’t know when. Which means:
You might have also sharted in her bed.
You slept naked.
You might have sharted in her bed.
The worst is the not knowing. If I’d sharted for sure I could recover. But if I didn’t… I mean… you can’t text somebody:
Hey, did I shart in your bed? If so, I’m really sorry!
She has a dog. It sleeps under the covers. When you fuck and she’s on top the dog grinds its twat on your shinbone. Maybe she’ll think it was the dog. Except if the dog ever sharted you better god damn believe she wouldn’t let it snuggle up in her howeverthefuckmany thread count real job girl sheets. Fuck. You did. You must have. You shat in her bed. With the world the way it is, how else could it be.
You know that feeling when you’re a pig but you find God and open your heart and meet a nice girl and you get one more chance and when you do, when you do… you literally shit the bed.
Eloi… Eloi…
Ass
She’ll break my heart but I don’t care because my asshole hurts. She’s going on a date with another dude. I don’t want her to. There’s other complicated shit. Who cares. My ass.
I’m afraid it’s cancer. A polyp. Started hurting after four days of diarrhea from bad spinach. Figured it was the acid. My asshole was just overworked and surly. But it got worse. It hurts a little when I sit and a lot when I cough. When I adjust. Until your asshole hurts you don’t know how much you pucker it in life. Suck it in. It’s like a second mouth and all day you’re nibbling your lower lip. When I do that it’s like a rat’s chewing through it. Abrasive pain. You understand why Richard Gere pulled the gerbil’s teeth. It hurts when I shit, obviously. But also when I jerk off. Your asshole pulsates when you nut. Who knew.
I assumed it was a cyst. Whatever it is, it weeps. You feel just a hint of slippery blister fluid trickling in your underwear. The reflex that kicks in when you feel a wet ass: did I shit? All day it’s like this. I had to look. Assumed it was a cyst right over the hole and I could lance it. Got out of the shower, bent over in the mirror. Spread my shitpipe. You never look at your own asshole. But with porn we’re all connoisseurs now. It did not look half bad. If it were on a chick I’d fuck it.
The outside is fine, so whatever hurts is in my ass. Cancer. I spat on a finger, stuck it in. Started to feel something. Slimy cherry size lump covered in smooth wet skin like a salamander’s back. When touched it recoiled, like an animal. The finger made it angry. The burn spread from my ass to my guts to my navel.
I’m gonna ride it out. The doctor would be a hassle. But what if it’s infected. What if it’s a pus bulb from a wound from some shard of chicken bone I swallowed. What if the sharp end of a shattered party wing scratched a 300 yard track through my bowels… organs and blood stewing in half-formed septic shit… We can’t choose the form our death takes. But that would fit.
**********
If you don’t want her to go out with this dude, just tell her, my sponsor says. If you want to be monogamous, say so. If not, fine. But stop with this OKCupid pussy. Those girls are damaged. Go talk to girls in real life. You’re at the grocery store for instance. A woman contemplates celery. You go up to her, you say: I see you’re buying celery. I also like celery. Etc. Meet a nice girl this way.
And now an Isabella Rossellini looking chick with a band aid on her face asks to sit with me. She needs to charge her phone, she says. Right as I’m typing about talking to girls.
Message from God. So what the fuck do I say. I see you have books about art. I also like art. Here are some things I know about art. Anyway, you want to get a drink some night. Here, put your number in my phone. I want to hold a fistful of your hair down, look in your eyes when I’m about to cum. Make you think I might blast in you when you said don’t. A fan of medieval Japanese woodcuts I see. You have tiny arms like a child. I want you to put on Hello Kitty pajama bottoms and stumble squinty eyed from the bedroom and tell me daddy I can’t sleep. Too bad about your fuckin’ muppet eyebrows but I can look past that. You didn’t choose to be Armenian. I want to rut with you like a mandrill and I want it so god damn bad I can’t form a sentence, is what I’m saying. Anyway do you come here often.
Impossible. Impossible. I’m gonna clench my asshole so I don’t have to think about it anymore.
It Will Be Very Unpleasant
At the Mexican Doctor to get my surgeon referral. For the ass surgery I will need. Telemundo is on and the Copa Mundial is playing. Nigeria versus somebody. There’s a pressboard portrait of Christ on the wall, mounted on an oval piece of burlap, with the Oracion por la Paz. It feels like there’s a swiss army knife in my shitcave and all the blades keep flying open. The corkscrew.
Will he too have to finger my asshole. What will this accomplish. Someone needs to look. Feel is not enough. Especially with those gloves– maybe he could tell what it is if he went in raw. Yesterday the ER told me it’s a hemorrhoid, which it isn’t. It’s an anorectal abscess. I know from the internet. Sudden onset anal pain that escalates quickly. Coupled with fever and chills. Lethal if left untreated, but lancing provides instant relief.
**********
I had finally called the insurance helpline. Wanted the nurse to tell me it was not an anorectal abscess. Sir, please stop looking at WebMD and getting paranoid. I know it blows when your ass hurts, but suck it up for a day or two. It’ll just go away. Eat fiber, etc.
Nope. With the symptoms you’ve described, sir, you will need to get this treated within 1 hour. If you begin to feel feverish or dizzy, call 911 immediately. What? I asked, as the room began to spin. Sir, please hold the line; I’m pulling up emergency medical facilities in your area. Well fuck. My asshole is gonna kill me. Let it be fast.
The girl drove me to the ER. She wanted to watch them lance my ass. A keeper. At night I think about the smell of her neck. It’ll be over soon.
Two doctors. The “big” doctor sees you first. Asian guy who’s graying perfectly and has a tan like he paraglides. You tell him your symptoms. He types into a laptop. Severe sudden onset anal pain. Chills. Fever. A lump just inside my rectum. Ah, yes, he says. Sounds like an anorectal abscess. Lethal if left untreated, but lancing provides instant relief. We’ll just take you back and handle it. He adds one sentence that isn’t copy-pasted from WebMD. Maybe he scrolled down to the comments. “It will be… very, uh, unpleasant.”
Yeah, I figured, I tell him. But, you got a choice between puncturing your lethal ass cyst or dying from it, you know… you gotta play the hand you’re dealt. He laughs and the cute nurses do too. I want to seem cool to him. I can tell he gets laid.
The second doctor stuck her hand in my ass and her finger got right on top of it and I screamed and screamed. You could hear the whole floor go quiet. Even the cholicky babies, the death moans of the elderly. Well I don’t see any signs of infection, she said. You’re doing a great job keeping it clean.
Thanks.
It feels like an internal hemorrhoid. Are you sure? Well no, she says. Someone needs to loo
k at it. I can’t really get in there. Go to your primary care, get a referral to a surgeon. They’ll tell you if you need to get it cut out.
Lancing provides instant relief. What a fucking tease. I should have known, I should have known– a doctor tells you to go to a different doctor who can refer you to a real doctor. I went to my new Primary Care. Named Cesar just like the last one. Ten nurses there but only the hot one gets to follow him around. Yeah, they should have just done a colonoscopy at the ER, he said. But now you gotta see a specialist. I’ll put in the paperwork.
Meanwhile I looked at my ass again. The cyst is unmistakable now. Small grape erupting through the hot flesh of my ass ring. The whole pulpy pulsating organ is turning itself inside out. Pain like flames. There are also hemorrhoids. She was not wrong. Hideously coiled blue worms just on the verge of prolapsing. You induce a narrative. Spinach diarrhea caused a tear which caused a fistula which caused a cyst which blocked my anus which caused the hemorrhoids. If I had known this one day ago I could have told them. Instant relief.
Understanding only comes when it’s useless. Now I wait for the insurance letter. Dear sir: we regret to inform you that your request is not authorized. Get a lighter and a needle.
But Enough about My Ass
No! Never enough about my ass. Typing this standing up. The pain spread to my balls. They’re a pair of brass doorknobs clattering on each other. I can stand so my balls don’t touch my thighs. I can avoid sitting. But I cannot prevent my balls from having contact with each other. Pissing is OK, until I get to the last “drain it all the way” squirt. You want to flex your taint, muscle out the last few drops. This requires your asshole. Everything requires your asshole. And now every nerve command stops on its way there. A bite of pain flares up. My body says are you sure. I learned how to cough without clenching my ass. How to clear my throat. Do you know if your toothbrush hits your gums too far back, you clench your ass? No? Shatter a beer bottle and stick in in your ass and then brush your teeth if you don’t believe me.
A fart is like a knife. A shit is not so bad, interestingly. Except my ass– it’s like an old movie where a cop is trying to talk to a hysterical woman and has to smack her. It’s so traumatized it just shuts down. And I can’t push. That will make the hemorrhoid pop out. You have to be patient. Just let it drop. The prescription strength stool softener does nothing. My stools were already pillow soft.
I can either sit in the bath or lay face first on the couch. Fine. What would I have done anyway. I have no job. But it hurts, it hurts. I should have taken the Vicodin script. Trying to be Dudley fucking Do-right over here with my sobriety. Nobody’s giving me a prize for this shit. I have a couple jobs lined up. I’m not following up on them, because of my ass. I will lose this woman over my ass. My life maybe.
Oh well. They made more.
Ass Part 4
I called 911 because I was in the bath and my legs started spasming. You could see muscle pulsing like a snake moving under the skin. First calves. Then thighs. Then my legs locked up and my belly started to go. My foot stuck twisted like the end of a chicken wing. It hurt. What if it went all the way up. Would my face just go in the water. Would I die naked with my hot bath ball sac spread over my thighs like a steamed tortilla.
While my arms still worked I hoisted myself up by the soap holder. My fucking thumb was twitching and the phone was wet. Many tries to get the passcode. When there’s an emergency, you forget you can just hit “emergency.” Then– no, you dumb fucker, I am not calling 921. Jesus Christ. That voice never goes away. The one that tells you of course it would be like this. Your ass goes out and it spreads and you die naked because your retarded thumb can’t work the phone. You went to the doctor and everything. They told you it was hemorrhoids. You knew it was an anorectal abscess. Septic cyst that infects and kills you. That other voice doesn’t go away either: ha! I was right!
The girl left work to take me back to the ER. Of course it would be like this. You meet a nice girl and then die from your asshole.
Then a lot of pain and screaming broken up by long waits. I needed an operation, I was told. The staff were all funny. The guy who checked my heart said they had me figured for anal trauma. The nurse used to be an EMT, talked about dead bodies on the toilet. I told the anesthesiologist I was nervous and he said haha, me too. Then he told me he was giving me Michael Jackson medicine. So it’ll make me rape little boys to forget the savage beatings my dad gave me, I should have said. L’esprit d’escalier.
The only stick in the mud was the surgeon. We drain it and then we wait, he said. See if a fistula develops. 30-50% chance. The cyst cavity forms a tunnel connecting your rectum to the outside. So like a second butthole? No, no, it’s a tiny… it’s a pinprick. It just causes leakage. That sounds like a second butthole to me, I said. A third nipple is still a nipple even if it looks like a mole. Look, I have other patients, he said.
I had to stay overnight. They had TV. Discovery Channel was running a show called Naked and Afraid. Two nude people are dropped into a jungle. It’s a stupid show but there’s a woman’s ass. Meanwhile people come change your IV bag and make you sign papers and pray over you. A man in a hair net brings fajitas.
The procedure was a success. I feel better already. Now we wait. Stay vigilant about changing the ass maxi pad as it soaks up blood and weeping pus. Color of the juice on the cutting board when you carve a rare London Broil. The incision in its raised red crater like the second asshole I’ll soon grow. Twin suns of Tatooine. They blasted me with antibiotics and now my eyes are blurry and the light hurts. They gave me an estimated bill. Twenty eight thousand and twelve dollars. I do have insurance. This is just the opening highball in a long haggle between bloodthirsty corporations. There will be a bill for my first visit too. When they misdiagnosed my agonizing lethal condition as a minor nuisance. Insurance will say no and the hospital will stick me with it. I’ll get robocalls from whoever they sell the debt to deep into middle age. What are you gonna do.
Look at it this way: a hundred years ago this shit would have killed me. Now it’s just a bad week. That and a 50/50 shot at a permanent second shitpipe. Maybe I can fit a cigarette in it.
The Wolf Witch
They were laying in bed. He had her ipad on his lap to watch Conan the Barbarian. Golden Age Schwarzenegger had fled across frozen wastes. He came upon a hut. A woman with 1982 plastic surgery stood in the door. Do you not wish to warm yourself by my fire?
I’ve been unfair to you, she said. He paused the movie.
What?
I shouldn’t even tell you this but I forgot my texts come to that fucking thing.
Well I didn’t look. But now you better tell me.
It might hurt you.
It’ll hurt me a lot more if I don’t know what it is.
I’m seeing other people.
Who, Judah?
Judah made Youtube videos. He ate unusual flavors of Japanese potato chips and commented on them. They had over 300,000 views. His parents had money.
No. I mean… maybe. I might see Judah again. But different guys.
Where are they from, he asked. Thinking: OKCupid. That shit is a gun in your house. You think it’ll save you but it gets used against you.
Friends of friends.
He’d met her friends. They owned homes and bought new custom sofas. The women looked good for their age and talked about men like dialogue from romantic comedies. The word “dealbreaker” was used. The men were Vice Presidents of Licensing Sufjan Stevens Music for Volkswagen. When he was with them he felt like he was in an ad in a design magazine.
Why do you have to see other men.
Do you want me not to?
Yes. Don’t go.
I can’t. I have to.
Why?
Because I like you, but I can’t date you.
He would have asked why, but he knew. She’d been his first date since he stopped drinking. His first normal person. She was Senior Vice President of Sufjan Stevens. She w
as 32. She needed to get married. The more time passed the more her children might be retarded. Her job was her life and her friends were job friends and she couldn’t bring him around. They had houses and were half famous. He had nothing and he was nothing.
If you’re gonna go, you’re gonna go. To be honest, I’m not threatened by these guys. We both know they’ll be dorks.
Probably.
And what if they’re not, he thought. What if they’re tall, what if they’re funny, what if they’re Disney Channel handsome. What if they take you skydiving. I could never take you skydiving. Why do you have to take this thing we have and kill it. Just let it have its time. Yes, you need to marry some dork. But why now, why now, when I have dreams about the smell of your fucking hair. I don’t want to lose you, he thought. I don’t want to lose you. He didn’t say it.
**********
In the morning he edited his OKCupid profile. Changed from “seeing someone” to “single.” His face would appear in a column of updates for age-appropriate women when they signed in. So and so answered a match question. He said yes, consent is sexy. So and so added a photo. Lit from the side this time like the internet told him. And him. “I’m single now!”
I’m single now.
He looked for women aged 18-22 and scrolled down to their “looking for” age range. If they weren’t ugly and they weren’t stupid and they said they’d date over 30 he hit Control-V and sent a message.
I want to go out with you.
How about it.
No question mark. A question mark makes the reader hear an upturn in pitch. This connotes weakness.
There were 5 of them out of 20 he looked at. It was enough. Like the world, OKCupid was 90 per cent men. But most of them were stupid and boring and not over six feet tall. And they smelled like need. He thought the idea of God was ridiculous but he believed that women could smell pheromones through phones and computers. That if he sent the exact same words but didn’t get laid the night before they could tell. Therefore it was important that he message girls today. The shot clock had been reset.
The Pussy Page 10