The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Michael Hemmingson

by Michael Hemmingson

  “Oh,” she said, looking down. “Oh, I’m drunk.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Kiss me again, man.”

  I did.

  “This is funny,” I said. “I had no idea you liked me.”

  “Neither did I. I just found out tonight. Maybe it’s the acid.”

  “You have acid?”

  “I took acid. You want to fuck me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We need to find a place to fuck.”

  We searched out and discovered Barry, who was swaying about, a beer in both hands.

  “Barry,” I said, “we need a place to fuck.”

  “Well,” Barry said, “you should use the guest room.”

  We were all hanging onto each other, so we wouldn’t fall.

  “Thanks,” Hanna said, and kissed Barry. He kissed her back. Then they were kissing quite passionately.

  I smiled. “Maybe we should have a threesome.”

  “Hey,” Barry said, “I’m there.”

  “Really?” Hanna said. “God, Dr McGinnis, I’ve been wanting to fuck you for a long time.”

  The three of us went to the guest room. It was dark, and we fell to the bed. Barry and I were all over Hanna, undressing her, kissing her, touching her. Hanna kept saying how much she wanted us both. Barry sat up and said, “I can’t do this. What am I doing?”

  “What?” Hanna said.

  “If my wife walked in, she’d kill me,” he said. “I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

  The last I saw his wife, she was lying in the grass, on acid, staring at the stars.

  “Damn,” Hanna said.

  “Some other time,” Barry said, and kissed her. He left.

  “Come here and fuck me,” Hanna said, and I got on top of her. After a minute, she said, “Wait!”

  “What is it?”

  She got up and ran to the bathroom, closing the door. I listened, heard her throwing up. I left the bedroom and rejoined the party, which was starting to scatter at this point. Barry’s wife was still on the grass and Barry was snorting a line of speed in the living room.

  “Back so soon?” Barry asked.

  “Hanna’s sick,” I said.

  “Ah, ah,” he sniffed. “Well, really, look, Nicky, this threesome sounds like fun: we have to do it a different time.”

  I suddenly realized I didn’t think sharing a woman with Barry, as much as I liked him, would be my thing.

  I made myself a tequila tonic, and went outside. I sat on the stairs.

  Hanna joined me. Her dress was back on. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

  “You OK?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “Sure?”

  “It happens. I’ve puked before.”

  “Can I have a kiss?”

  “I puked.”

  “That’s OK.”

  We kissed. She didn’t taste like anything bad.

  “The party seems to be ending,” I said.

  “Parties end, you go home.”

  “I’m too drunk to drive.”

  “I can drive.”

  “You’re on acid.”

  “I’m coming down,” she said. “That puke sobered me up. I can drive, believe me. You want me to drive you home?”

  “That’d be nice.”

  We said our goodbyes, and got into her car, a small two-seater.

  “You want to come home with me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  She lived in the graduate housing section on campus, a studio apartment, really, which was packed with books, CDs, clothes, a water bed, and a Fender electric guitar – not to mention a single goldfish in a bowl that, Hanna told me, had no name. It was around three in the morning when we got there.

  “I feel so weird,” Hanna said, “and I feel so good.”

  We lay on the waterbed, kissed and touched.

  “Does my goldfish look weird to you?” she asked.

  “Looks like a goldfish.”

  “I think he may be getting sick,” she said. “I’ve had him all year.”

  I remembered that it was almost the end of the school year – I’d entered the program in the spring semester. Summer was close. I hadn’t felt this since high school – summer, no school, what to do? I wanted Hanna.

  “I know this is gonna sound bad, man,” she told me, “but I’m not sure if we should fuck.”

  “Oh, boy,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I mean I wanna fuck, of course I wanna fuck, but I’m always fucking. I mean, fucking guys I just meet. I have to stop this. I started this two years ago. I was raped. After I was raped, I just fucked any guy who walked by. It messes with my head. I’m sorry.”

  I was actually tired, and suggested we sleep. Hanna couldn’t sleep – the acid was still in her, and she’d done some speed.

  We undressed. I liked looking at her tattoos – a dragon on her back, a snake on her left arm, a spider above her right tit, assorted butterflies and black roses on her hip, near her cunt, and on her legs. It was four-thirty in the morning.

  I got on top of her.

  We woke up early that afternoon, fucked again, dressed, and went onto campus to get something to eat. Slices of thick pizza, ice cold soda. I needed a beer.

  “Damn, you know,” Hanna said, “I have this paper to write.”

  “On?”

  “Comparison of the poetry of Sharon Olds and Carolyn Forsche.”

  “I love both their work.”

  “You know their work?”

  “Of course I know their work,” I said.

  “Not too many guys . . .” She shrugged.

  “When’s the paper due?”

  “Two days.”

  “Two days?”

  “Twelve pages.”

  “Two days,” I said.

  “I always wait until the last minute,” she said. “And I always get As. I’m an A student: ask Dr McGinnis.”

  “A as in ass?”

  “What?”

  “Guess you need to work on that paper today,” I said.

  “Tomorrow.” She finished the last bite of her pizza. “I want to fuck you some more today.”

  FOUR

  Hanna was twenty-two, used to play in a rock band, was now an MA candidate in comparative lit (obviously). She was worried about her goldfish, but the goldfish seemed fine to me, as far as goldfish go. Our sex that day was fun and normal – we kept to several positions, we didn’t do anything kinky. I liked being with her, enclosed in her room, the world just the two of us. The world was fucked, and Hanna knew this as well as me. She’d had some bad experiences – the rape, yes, and a short stint as a heroin addict when she was a teenager, and the death of a brother by a drive-by shooting.

  “I’ve seen your novel at the bookstore,” she told me, “but I haven’t read it. I’d like to.”

  I gave her a copy.

  That evening, I decided I should leave. I needed a change of clothes, a shower; I needed to go home and be alone for a little while, maybe write. Hanna needed to work on her paper.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, hugging me, “I’ll get it done on time. I always do.”

  “Good, good.”

  “Well.”

  “Well.”

  “I always hate this part,” she said. “You want to see me again?”

  “Yes,” I said. “When?”

  She shrugged. “Let’s just flow.”

  I went by Barry’s office. He was going through his mail.

  “Nicky,” he said, “this was left on my door.”

  It was a small envelope, to me from Hanna.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not your mail service.”

  Dear Nicky,

  I’m leaving this letter on Dr McGinnis’ door because I don’t have your number and I don’t know how to reach you. We should’ve exchanged phone numbers! What was I thinking? I need you! God, I can’t believe what’s going on. All I can think about is you being here, holding me in you
r arms and making me feel safe. I read your novel and it made me cry. The ending was so sad. I haven’t felt so sad in a long time. It is a good kind of sad, the kind of sad that makes you think about love and the world. I wrote my paper and now I just want you here inside me. PLEASE CALL IMMEDIATELY!

  Love,

  Hanna

  She left her number, and I called.

  “I knew it’d be you,” she said.

  “Psychic?”

  “Just hope.”

  “The letter was nice,” I said.

  “Just get over here,” she said.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t notice you before,” Hanna said, after sex. “I can’t get your face out of my mind now. Even looking at your face, I also see it in my mind.”

  “So you see two faces.”

  “Someone else noticed you, I could tell. Alexia.”

  “I know.”

  “You slept with her?”

  “A few times, yes.”

  “Are you still?”

  “Well, no,” I said.

  “She’s pretty.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d fuck her.”

  “You’re bi?”

  “When the time is right,” she said. “I was gay, for a year. Before I was raped. I had a girlfriend. We lived together. We were in a band together.”

  “You loved her?”

  “I loved her very much,” she squeezed me. “Right now, I’m straight as an arrow, with Nicky Bayless. Tell me what she was like.”

  “Alexia?”

  “Yeah. What happened to her anyway?”

  “She’s – sorting out her life.”

  “Aren’t we all? What was she like?”

  “She’s a nice person.”

  “I mean in bed, man.”

  I laughed. “You won’t believe it.”

  “I won’t?”

  I told her everything about Alexia – except the broken plates and glasses.

  “I believe that,” Hanna said. “I hear women from the Mediterranean are like that, too. Not the golden shower stuff, just – you know. You know what? I’ve never done anal sex.”

  “No?”

  “Nope. For no reason, really. It just never came up. Huh – it’s weird, I guess.”

  “Well,” I said.

  She smiled. “You wanna say, ‘Can I deflower you?’ ”

  Too much of Alexia was inside my head, and I tried to push her out. But she was there. “Yeah,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Hanna said.

  I pulled her close to me.

  She said, “You, you.”

  I grabbed her short hair and kissed her.

  “Tell me,” Hanna said, “what you wanna do to me.”

  “Your ass,” I said, like I was delirious. “I want your ass.”

  “Like Alexia?”

  “Like you.”

  “There’s a first time for everything,” she said.

  I played with her butt, fingers exploring. Hanna’s ass was meatier than Alexia’s, an alabaster white. I went down on her ass, my tongue pressing against her virgin pucker. I asked if she liked this and she said it felt nice. Next, I slid a finger into her. She liked this very much. I finger-fucked her for a good half hour, my other hand at her cunt, and I made her come.

  “This is so good,” she said.

  “Do you feel ready to be fucked in the ass?”

  “The finger is nice,” she said, “but a whole cock?”

  I took my finger out of her, and put it in my mouth. “You’re yummy.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “You have Vaseline?”

  “Cabinet, bathroom.”

  I went to the bathroom, got the Vaseline, applied some to my cock, to her ass, and tried to get in her. Hanna was on her stomach, butt up. I got the head of my cock in her when she cried out, “Oh, shit, oh, crap, no! OWW! FUCK! TAKE IT OUT!”

  I removed myself.

  She turned around. “It’s not me, it’s just not me. A tongue, a finger, sure, but not a fucking dick, man.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “You really wanted me that way.”

  “I’ll live.”

  “I want to please you.”

  “You do.”

  “Lie back.” A hand pushed my chest.

  Hanna took me in her mouth. She deep-throated me, her nose pressed into my pubic hair. I immediately shot into her mouth.

  “I usually don’t like the taste of come,” she told me. “Yours is OK.”

  “Just OK?”

  “Wanna taste?” She moved to kiss me.

  “Hey, it is OK.”

  “I really did cry at the end of your book,” she said later.

  “So did I,” I said. “When I was writing it.”

  “You’ve felt pain.”

  “Sure.”

  “Pain is sexy.”

  “Never thought about it like that.”

  “I don’t mean physical pain. I mean here,” she touched her head, “and here,” touching her chest, “the pain inside. Maybe I mean sadness. Maybe I’m a cerebral masochist.”

  “I like that: ‘cerebral masochist’.”

  “I love you,” she said.

  “You do?”

  “Is it OK to say that?”

  “We hardly know each other.”

  “I fall in love pretty fast. Don’t say ‘I love you’ back. Because you don’t.”

  I didn’t.

  FIVE

  “Fuck her,” Bart said, “I want to watch you fuck the shit out of her.”

  Lying naked on the bed, Randi smiled. She was on acid and pot and vodka and coke and I don’t know what else. I was with them, the both of them, in Bart’s apartment, and I wasn’t quite sure how I got there. We were at the pub, but it was summer, and there wasn’t the usual crowd – there wasn’t any Barry McGinnis or Hanna or even Alexia.

  Bart found it funny that I was sleeping with Hanna.

  “Funny? Why is that so funny?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t seem your type,” he said.

  “My type?”

  “Or Alexia,” he said.

  “What’s my type?” I asked.

  “You tell me. Take Randi, for example.”

  She was a few feet away, talking to someone, and she couldn’t hear us.

  “OK,” I said.

  “She looks good.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice ass.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice tits.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s fuckable,” Bart said.

  “I imagine so.”

  “Sucks cock GOOD,” Bart said.

  “I imagine so.”

  “Is she your type?”

  “She could be my type,” I said.

  “You want to fuck her?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Nick,” he said, “I like watching guys fuck her. It really turns me on.”

  Then we were at his place, and Randi got undressed and sat on the bed. We’d dropped acid before leaving the bar, and Randi was doing coke on the way.

  “Who would’ve thought,” Bart said, and laughed, and slapped me on the back.

  I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

  “C’mon, fuck her.” Bart pulled up a chair.

  Randi looked good. They were both beautiful and blonde and tan. While Bart was an MFA poet, Randi worked as a hostess of some upscale club downtown, and I knew she made good money at it. I could not help but feel aroused, especially looking at the blonde pubes between her legs. Randi saw what I was looking at and opened her legs. Her finger touched her clit, and made a circular motion. “You like what you see, Nicky?” she said. I did. I went down on her, engulfed her, got a mouthful, got a taste, ate her. The acid was hitting me pretty hard at this point. I put my tongue in her as far as I could get it. I was about to turn her over when Randi started pulling at my pants, saying she wanted my cock. Bart was getting a real kick o
ut of this, sitting in the chair, drinking a Heineken. I was on my knees on the bed, and Randi was reaching around, cupping my balls with one hand, squeezing my ass with the other, and sucking me off. Then I had a condom on my cock, and I was fucking her. I fucked her several ways, and came. She peeled the condom off, and emptied my come into her mouth. Some of the semen spilled out the side of her lips, going down her neck and shoulder.

  “Right on,” Bart said.

  Bart got on the bed, and I sat in the chair. I needed a beer. I watched Bart kiss her, my come still on her lips, in her mouth. Bart started fucking her, his ass going up and down. He had a perfect, round, tanned ass. Randi spread his ass with her hands, and said, “Hey, Nicky, would you like some of this?”

  “Crazy woman,” Bart laughed.

  “I like watching men fuck him,” she said, “as much as he likes watching men fuck me.”

  “I don’t think Nick swings that way,” Bart said.

  “Do you or don’t you?” she asked me.

  I got up, and went to get a beer. Bart continued to fuck her.

  Later, I wondered if I shouldn’t have fucked Bart after all. I was in the mood for anything.

  SIX

  I had lunch with Alexia.

  “You just vanished,” I said.

  “I had to,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “I want to understand,” I said.

  She wouldn’t explain. Lunch was awkward, but it was good to see her. We went to a bar nearby to have a few drinks.

  “Come home with me,” I said.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “We can go to your place,” I suggested.

  “You don’t want me,” she said. “You just want to fuck me.

  “I want you,” I told her, “I need you.”

  “You just want to fuck me,” she said. “Fuck my ass, piss on me. You want the dirty world.”

  “The world is dirty,” I said.

  “I want the nice world,” she said, and added, “I’m moving, Nicky.”