The Pussy

by Delicious Tacos

  He got his black pleather attache and his tupperware of leftover pot roast. Locked up and headed down the hill to the bus. When he got home the gap in the blinds was closed.

  **********

  It was a month before he saw inside the place again. This time at night. He was out calling the cat. Normally Fluffykins came in as soon as he got home from work. But once in a while he’d get in a fight with another cat. Spend hours squaring off with it under some car. Fluffykins won mostly, which made him proud. But out back was a big steep hill covered in tall grass; coyotes lived there. If the cat was out after dark he’d sit and think about the coyotes ripping him apart until he came in. The cat hadn’t come on the street out front. So he walked up the driveway toward the back lot, making a ch-ch-ch- sound.

  He saw a patch of light from the old man’s window. Heard the groaning. There was the triangle of open glass. In it, a gnarled yellow dick in a gnarled yellow hand, the latter pumping furiously. The man’s pubic hair was a tangle of white like a wizard’s beard and he jerked and jerked and groaned and groaned. One of the monitors was visible. On it a Latina woman presented her ass to the camera and looked back, concentrating as she tried to stuff a half hard arm-thick horse’s penis into it.

  The horse cock was white with brown spots. The woman mouthed something in Spanish or Portuguese and the man groaned again. Accelerated. His face was hidden, but there was the cat picture. And now next to it, a picture of a girl.

  Well I’ll be damned, he thought. Heather.

  Heather lived there before the old man moved in. Even though she was his neighbor he met her on Tinder. They’d walked out of their buildings to head to their date at the same time. She had blue eyes and looked like a painting on a 1930’s fruit crate. They got drunk and talked shit at the Short Stop. Her choice of venue. He invited her home for Scrabble.

  She wouldn’t fuck him. He learned later she was fucking the Short Stop barback. He looked one of like Ed Norton’s rapists in American History X. He was married. His wife was cheating on him but he wouldn’t leave her. The Tinder date was meant to change his mind. Instead, he’d come up the hill the next night looking for the apartment with the cat, to kick that guy’s ass. No one was home. He left a note.

  Later she came to apologize. He was alone, drunk. The best way to make amends, he said, would be some pussy.

  No such luck.

  They talked. Her dad was in prison for life, she said. He’d stabbed her stepmother to death. He was some kind of preacher and she’d followed him to Idaho; she was Heather’s age. Well I’ll never measure up to that, he thought.

  Still, she kept coming over. They’d sing Grateful Dead songs then she’d get naked and he’d rub her back, her ass, her belly. She never did fuck him but one night she came over drunk and asked: why don’t you love me. After that he knew he’d won. He moved on.

  In the old man’s picture she wore a white dress with the tops of her tits hanging out. Smiling next to her potted rosemary plant. It was extraordinarily healthy. She was a skilled gardener.

  Well shit, he thought. I guess she left some stuff behind. Wonder if the old man has her dirty panties. I could stand a whiff. He fell asleep trying to remember the smell of her neck.

  **********

  The last time he looked in the old man’s window he saw a picture of himself.

  It was sunset. He’d been with his upstairs neighbor by the trash cans, smoking. You know about the old guy next door, he asked.

  You hear him too?

  Yeah.

  He lives alone. I think he’s on disability or something. He never leaves. We thought he was sick, like he had cancer. But I think he’s just crazy and sits at the computer jackin off all day. We call him Jack.

  That’s funny.

  How’s shit with you, the neighbor asked.

  Good. Working. You know how it is. Beats the shit out of me. But I got bills.

  Ayuh. How’s things on the lady front.

  You know. Fuckin Tinder. Even that’s drying up.

  Your girls used to make me jealous.

  Well shit man, I wouldn’t mind what you have. I’m almost forty for Christ’s sake.

  Yep. Hard to find in this town though.

  They parted ways. He walked out front to look for the cat. There was the light and the window and the hand; no dick in it this time. The picture. It was framed, next to Heather. She had taken it one drunk night. He was naked on his couch playing guitar. His face looked fucked up but his shoulders rippled.

  He looked at Heather, then at himself, then back at her. Her tits in her white dress with her rosemary plant. Her warm belly in his lap, her naked back damp in the summer heat.

  Well I have to say something, he thought. I can’t have a portrait of my god damn ball sac in the neighbor’s window. Go tell him to take it down. Maybe I’ll get that rosemary shot too. She knew me at least. Whatever else he has of hers. I have a right to it, he thought. More than him.

  He walked down the driveway and up to the black metal gate of Jack’s building. The buzzers weren’t marked but he tried the handle; unlocked. The old man’s door was first on the left. The rosemary plant was there in its pot, dead. He knocked.

  Coming, said the groaning voice.

  The peephole darkened. The door creaked open a crack.

  I’m glad you’re here, said Jack. I’ve been waiting.

  He recognized the sinewy yellow hand that crept out. Reached out to shake it out of reflex. When he woke up there were colors and lights in his eyes. Bright but blurry. He was sitting down. His hands felt wrong, like they were all tendons and bones; there was an ergonomic mouse in one and a warm wet weight in the other. He forced his eyes to focus. Screens. On the left was Heather with her rosemary. On the right, the woman with the horse, furrowing her brow as she struggled to penetrate herself.

  This is Why I Can’t Have Kids

  Meanwhile I have an infection that will eat my face. Rough spreading redness between the eyes. Lotion every day. By night it recedes. Then when I wake it’s worse. It will spread to my eyeballs and blind me. Die horrible from eye AIDS but first I’ll never get laid again and every woman will laugh at my small penis. And the cat will die.

  This is why I can’t have kids. Every minute imagining a rapist vivisecting them. You make a kid, you make a target for acid throwers. Limb severers. As it is I spend at least ten minutes per day picturing a van fragging the cat with its back tires. That’s enough. I don’t need more things to love and be afraid of losing.

  All your fears are true. You will die. You will die painfully. The least painful death conceivable is the guillotine. I bet that hurts like a bitch. The blade slicing through your neck nerves, fast as it is– time telescopes out and out and you’re in that moment for a thousand years. Like the stairmaster. Working off one Mrs. Fields Fucking cookie you follow a long train of thought about kneebones grinding. Run lost down long cornering corridors of hate, fear. pain, knowledge of future pain. Look up. The seconds digit hasn’t turned. Watch it laying still for a very long time. Only after does it seem like nothing. In the car with the NPR over the windshield wipers groaning in the cold rain. Cavernously hungry for a Mrs. Field’s cookie. You’re fat. You’ll always be fat. Your soul is fat. No matter how skinny you get people look in your eyes and see fat. Fat ugly stupid small penis long nostril hairs. You trim but you always miss one.

  One More for the Road

  She was a thick black chick and her cunt smelled like celery. Thicker than her pictures but I’m so thirsty I’d fuck a possum carcass. We met by the duck pond. She was leaving town that night. Whatever showed up, I was fucking it.

  Now my bed smells like celery. There are pustules on my crotch. Not near my dick. Way off to the left by my inguinal crease. If I get some infection, fine. As long as it’s something condoms wouldn’t have prevented. Because then it’s like: what are you gonna do. I promised myself I’d never wear a condom again. After the Philippines. I put my bare dick in whores, in a country where t
he average net worth is a chicken. Came back, paid extra for the full bore VD panel. Nothing.

  STDs don’t exist. Not for people like me. Every guy I know with herpes has five to eight lifetime partners. Got it from his Brown University econ major fiancee. Guys like me who creampie Throw Momma from the Train against a bar urinal with half a piss soaked pizza slice in it: nothing. Sewer rat immunity. These whiteheads are just a rash from her filthy summer cunt sweat.

  She studied zoology. Knew a little about ducks. We saw mallards. They mate for life, she said. It’s romantic. Well yeah, but they also gang rape corpses. Look it up; it’s true.

  We walked around the pond holding hands. There are no girls there anymore. It’s all families. 17 year old Mexicans and 45 year old whites walking with their 3 year old kids. Wheezing French bulldogs. Is there more than one kind of egret at this pond, she said. I perked up for a minute. A great egret stalked fish in the reeds, but I couldn’t see whatever else she was talking about. There’s a blue crowned night heron somewhere, I said. But she was looking at double crested cormorant. I pointed out the one pair of American coots left after the migration. They’re an interesting duck, she said. Well no. They’re part of the rail family. Jesus Christ, there’s no hope for anyone.

  We got back where we started, by the lily pads. Two male mallards were trying to rip another one’s neck open with their rough snail crushing beaks. They got on top of him and held his neck underwater, screaming. Drive me home, I said.

  I’d jerked off five times that morning and couldn’t cum. Had to say I needed a break. Pull out, go limp, rub her ass a little and look at her fat purple pussy so I could picture it. After that I put it in half soft and pumped for fifteen seconds until I shot hot ropes in her navel like a machine gun. She must have been ovulating. Ten awkward minutes and she left.

  Sunday I went to a barbecue at a porno shoot. The best looking girl was half black. That’s why Monday I needed to fuck a black stranger from the internet. Director was an old guy; he was in Vietnam in the navy. He saw body parts float past his boat in the Gulf of Tonkin and it meant nothing. You could get a meal and a beer and fuck for five dollars, he said. If one guy caught the clap his buddies would all fuck the same girl out of solidarity. We were nineteen, he said. What are you gonna do.

  I shouldn’t have done it. I’m meant to be past this. But if you don’t fuck for too long your spine starts to hunch. Your eyes get nervous and you smell like a leper. Your face looks stupid and your job starts to matter. What if I met my future wife but I was like that. She’d look at me like an insect. I can’t take that chance.

  Shit Piss Cunt Fuck

  We both know I won’t make 30, I told her. What will you put on my grave. “Kiss Joy as it Flies,” she said.

  She died at 4AM Wednesday morning. 36. Heart attack. Drug related. Funeral is tomorrow. I think about putting a snow pea flower in her coffin. I think about her in the coffin and I have to cry.

  She’s the other voice in my internal dialogue now. I have to write about you, I tell her. I don’t know what to call it. Maybe “Goodbye Baby” but I never called you baby. Yes, that’s stupid, she says. Obviously shit like “RIP” is out; “She’s Gone,” “She Died,” what the fuck. I can’t use your name. I’m afraid your mom will read it. She’ll think I’m spreading shit that you did drugs. Well you did– you did a ton of fucking drugs. Order an eight ball at 10PM and cook it all up and then another eight ball at 3 in the morning. I had work the next day. Woken up by your douchey fucking dealer from San Diego with the spiky hair. He wanted to fuck you but who didn’t. At least he was respectful about it. Just get a quarter ounce at the start of the night, I’d say. Trying to sound cool. Like I was top secret drugs guy too. Really I was scared.

  Well what about “Kiss Joy as it Flies.” It’s too corny, I tell her. But it’s true, she says. Yeah but I can’t be titling shit after William Blake on my blog about fucking whores and taking shits. Stop being afraid to be corny, she says. Just share how you feel. Well then how about “Shit Piss Cunt Fuck,” I say, and she says perfect.

  Why did you have to die, you bonehead. How did you go. Were you on pills like they said or did you slip on a banana peel. How will your mom react if she sees me at the funeral. What is this flower on this tree. Why are you not here to tell me. You always knew. Why did you have to die and now I can’t see you anymore. You’re in a fridge at the morgue. I don’t want you to be cold. I want to give you a warm blanket. There has to be a way to make it not true. Wake up. Reset everything. I want to just hear your voice one more time. Your laugh.

  I was gonna do a ninth step with you but my sponsor told me not to. Stay away from the girls, he said. But you weren’t a girl that way. What if I’d done a good job. What if you came to AA and lived. What if a unicorn came out of my ass, we could hitch a ride on it, it would suck me off after.

  I’ll see you in your coffin clothes and think what you might say about the outfit. I can’t let you go into the ground. Darkness and silence. I don’t want you to be scared.

  There was a loose pit bull on the street this morning. Looked like yours. What if it was, I thought. You lived 15 miles from me but I chased him anyway. Because what if you warged into him like Jon Snow. Came and found me. The neighbor’s pit chased him away. What if you got hit by a car. I’m a sane adult and I’m scared your spirit is inhabiting a dog. It knows enough to get to my apartment but not enough to stay off Sunset Boulevard. Year of Magical Thinking shit. I wanted to reread that book before making this post, but I lent it to you I think. Little awkward getting it back.

  When my cat is out at night I go call him. Coyotes coming; he’ll get shaken to death by his neck. Too long and every shadow starts to look like him running toward me. Same with you now. Every breeze is your spirit. Every animal possessed by you to look me in the eye, and tell me: what? What is the message from the dead? Would you really inhabit a squirrel in my trash can. Look up from worrying a Jack in the Box bag with one french fry in it. Wordlessly tell me the meaning of life. Knowing you: maybe. I saw a green finch and I stared and stared until I heard your voice. You said: retard, you’ve seen this same finch fifteen thousand fucking times. It lives here.

  What can I say about her. She was smart. She was funny. She was pretty. I loved her as much as I’ve loved anybody. She loved me like that too. I’m glad I got to feel that. Now I’m glad I remember.

  She took care of me. I took care of her. When she took too many pills I’d turn her over. One day I couldn’t. It hurts. I wish I’d said something. Told her life gets better when you stop this shit. The world goes deeper than what you know. What you’re running from isn’t so bad. But I can’t tell her now, so I’m gonna tell you:

  Stay here.

  Stay with me.

  William Randolph Thirst

  No matter how much pussy I get I’m Elliott Rodger. Couples on the street make me sick. Tepid Tinder response means I’m a chromosome damaged power line baby. My mom should sue a drug company. No response means I don’t exist.

  Had a date yesterday. I liked her. She’s pretty. Likes the same books as me. She too is a writer toiling in obscurity. Worried about losing her voice in work, worried about time. We lock in on the same sentences in stories. I want a relationship. So I did what my sponsor told me: don’t make a move. Instead I said: I’d like to see you again. Peter Brady voice crack. She said yes but I think she was lying. At the end I gave her a peck on the bottom lip. We agreed to go to dinner this week. I felt like I had no dick.

  Fuck right away or nothing. Fuck right away or they hate you. Fuck right away or you’re a worm, and the horror of seeing it proved over and over.

  Went inside and tried to jerk it to her but I couldn’t make it stick. Had to switch over to the fat Chinese girl stuffing her grapefruit tits into a black bikini top in the Target dressing room. I masturbate to women I don’t like. That’s who I can build a story around where they’d fuck me. Hideous in itself, but also: she’s a human being. An artist. Worried ab
out losing her voice in work. We share things but she looks a certain way so she’s a hole. She wouldn’t fuck me so I went into my “good” date with no swagger. I resent her for that.

  In my heart I’m thirteen. The first age where you get girls or not. Whatever happens after, you’re stuck that way. You either get on the bus or the fucker pulls off and you’re chasing it forever. Making up for thirteen when you’re fifty.

  Meanwhile girls fly to fuck me because of this web site. Mail me their panties. I’m fucking a Pasadena City College freshman with CUNT cut into her arm. She stops by, eats chicken, sticks her sweaty summer twat in my face, its fill-me-with-babies-teenage perfume. Sits on my cock until I cum like a machine gun. Leaves with a kind word. I like her spirit. Her perfect teenage skin next to my grisly middle aged sac with its snowy hairs like Kenny Rogers’ beard. She talks about her homework and it makes me hard.

  If I text her and she’s doing laundry I think: she’s leaving me. Sometimes when she’s with me I think she’s leaving. I can literally feel thirst while my dick is inside a hot young teen.

  This is why I hate women. They’ll leave me because I don’t like myself. Then I don’t like myself because they leave me. When does it stop. Maybe if I joined a band.

  God

  God will not get you any pussy. He cannot cure cancer. Or at least, He won’t. He won’t get your kids home safe; He won’t save your job; He will not affect your AIDS test. What He will do if you can get through to Him is remind you that it doesn’t matter. God is your insignificance. God is the knowledge that you’re already dead. The world moves on as if you were never there. One day it’ll be as though the world itself was never there. Your mistakes, less meaningful than the death of a liver fluke. Like your happiness.

  You were never born. You never lived. When you’re dead things are just the way they’ve always been. Somehow by some accident you exist for half a second. Hear a woodpecker in the park. Take a couple good shits, beat off and die. Even if you’re Hitler– you were never there. Do what you want, or don’t. Fail. Never leave the house– or do, go nurse orphans in Somalia. Who gives a fuck; it’s all nothing. Your pitiful instant divided by infinity is so much of nothing that zero is too big a number to express it.