“Wow,” I said.
“What?
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You’re sexy,” she said.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I said.
“You don’t know anything about me. Do you know my last name?”
“No.”
“See.”
“You know mine,” I said.
“Yeah. I know a lot of things about you.”
“Like what?”
“Your stories are very painful,” she said.
“To you?”
“To me, to you, to anyone. You’re a sad soul.”
“Sometimes I’m sad,” I said. “Right now, I’m happy.”
“I’m happy, too.”
We kissed more. I unclasped her bra, touched her round, large breasts. I reached between her legs.
“I haven’t had sex in a year,” she told me.
“Oh.”
“Since my divorce.”
“OK.”
“But I’m ready to have sex.”
Sex with Kate wasn’t wild, bizarre, or kinky. I got on top of her; she wrapped her legs around me. We fucked slowly, and it was very nice. It was very warm. It was like we’d known each other for many years.
We slept in each other’s arms.
In the morning, she was gone. I looked at the ceiling. Luke was gone, too. I had a flight back home late in the afternoon.
NINE
I was sitting in the patio of the campus bar, drinking a pitcher of dark beer with Bart. Bart had been drinking since noon; he was pretty gone.
“One of these days,” Bart was saying, “you have to share one of your women with me!”
“I don’t have any women,” I said.
“Yeah, right.”
“Nothing real, like a girlfriend,” I said.
“But you get some now and then.”
“Now and then,” I said.
“Did you really used to fuck Alexia? Before she vanished?”
“Yeah. She’s in San Francisco.”
“You liked her?”
“And Hanna.”
“Hanna?”
“You know Hanna.”
“Of course I know Hanna,” Bart said. “I fucked her once. Maybe twice.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Hanna fucks,” Bart said.
I nodded.
“OK, I didn’t fuck her: I was lying,” he said. “But I know some people who have.”
“OK.”
“Hey, there’s Zina,” he said.
He started waving.
Zina was a poet in the MFA program, whom I’d met several times in passing. She had light brown skin and dark hair, wide brown eyes and a chiseled, distinct face. I knew she was half-Spanish, half-German, something like that, she’d told me once, at a party, I think. She joined Bart and myself.
“Have a beer, Zina,” Bart said.
“I was just on my way home,” she said.
“You can have a beer,” I said.
“I usually don’t like beer,” she said. “Maybe I’ll have some wine.” She got up and went to the bar, returned with a glass of white wine. She was wearing tight, dark slacks and a blue blouse.
The three of us didn’t talk about much – some gossip, some b.s. on the nature of poetry. It was starting to get dark out. “I wanted to get home before it got dark,” Zina said.
“Where do you live?”
“Two blocks away. I don’t like walking in the dark. You think you could walk me home?”
“I could,” I said.
“See ya,” Bart said.
So I walked with Zina.
“You’re a strange character,” she told me.
“Why do you say that?”
“No one can figure you out.”
“Do people try and figure me out?”
“Some people do.”
“Like who?”
“People.”
“Maybe you’re the strange one.”
“I know I’m the strange one,” she said. “My rabbit is going to be mad at me. I’m late; he’s hungry I bet.”
“Your what?”
“My rabbit,” Zina said. “I have a pet rabbit. He’s an albino rabbit.”
“You keep him in a cage?”
“Not at all. He roams free. I mean, he does have a cage. He doesn’t stay in it much.”
“Doesn’t he shit all over the place?” I said. “Dingle-berries, or whatever they’re called.”
“No. He’s trained to poop in his cage,” Zina said.
“No, he’s not. You can’t train rabbits to do that.”
“I did.”
“I thought they weren’t in control of where they crapped,” I said.
“My rabbit has control.”
“Your albino rabbit,” I said. “I don’t believe you,” I said.
“Think I’m making this up?”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“Do you want to see my albino rabbit who’s trained to shit in his cage or what?” Zina asked.
She lived on the second floor of the apartment complex. I went inside with her. Her place was sparse of furniture, heavy on books. A small, albino rabbit (white fur, red eyes) was waiting at the door.
“Moby Dick!” She picked up the rabbit and hugged it. “This is Nick; Nick, this is Moby Dick.”
I nodded to the rabbit.
“He looks hungry, doesn’t he?” she said.
I nodded.
“He’s very hungry,” she said. I went with her into the kitchen, where she put the rabbit down, and put some rabbit feed and a carrot stick in the rabbit’s wire-mesh cage. “You want something real to drink?” she said. “Besides that god-awful beer.”
“What’s wrong with beer?”
“There’s something basically barbaric about beer,” she said.
“What do you have?”
“Let’s take a look.” She opened a cabinet above the stove. I think, for the first time, I took a good look at her body (and her ass) and admired what I saw. “Rum and vanilla sherry,” she said, “it’s all I have.”
“Coke?”
“Pepsi.”
“A rum and Pepsi sounds good.”
“Your wish is my command.”
We both had rum and Pepsi, sitting at the small table near the kitchen. The kitchen was littered with toys – dolls, army men, action figures, dinosaurs.
“Toys for your rabbit?” I said.
“Toys for me,” she said, “I like toys.”
She was twenty-nine, had majored in religious studies as an undergrad, at this same university. She’d had an affair with one of her professors. We began to drink sherry.
I’ll skip right to the sex. We were both pretty drunk. I’m not sure where it began; yes, I was very drunk and we were talking and getting closer and the next thing I knew we were frantically, almost violently kissing. She was sitting in my lap, the way she would sit many times later, and she opened my shirt up and said she liked my chest, said, “It looks delicious,” and she bit into it, bit into my skin, but I didn’t care, the pain was OK, like the pain when she bit my lips as we kissed, and how she grabbed my throat and started to choke me, the air leaving me, letting go just at the right time. I opened her blouse, unclasped her bra, her nipples at my fingers, her dark eyes glaring at me, and the circles under those eyes. The circles under her eyes would come to haunt me some day, and I only wish I knew then what I was about to get into.
She had a double bed in her bedroom, and a computer on a metal desk. There was an opened document, what looked like a poem.
I was too drunk to fuck; she said it was OK. We were partly undressed. I took her sex to my mouth – she tried to stop me, once, but didn’t the second time – her sex small and salty like the sex of any woman, and then she tried to do the same for me but I stopped her because she was hurting me with her teeth and she said she was very drunk, she never got
this drunk, and we lay there holding each other. I couldn’t sleep, and I wanted her; I thought she was asleep but she wasn’t and we were kissing again and I started to put myself in her, whispering, “It’s OK, now,” and in the dark I saw her eyes roll up in her head and she grabbed the metal rail of her bed and we finally fucked. An hour later, still drunk but awake, we tried again, she told me she liked men coming in from behind, but we were still too drunk to be very amorous and she began to masturbate. She masturbated with a frenzy, lying on her stomach, her hand going at it on her cunt like that hand was possessed. I watched and she said, “I’m sorry, I like doing that. I like getting myself off.”
She seemed to sleep well. I couldn’t sleep. I kept hugging her warm body next to me. I liked it here with her. I liked her bed, her company, more than any of the others, these past few months – my divorce from celibacy, my entrance back into the world of sex and women.
In the morning we looked at each other, feeling awkward, and when I asked if this would happen again, she said, “That’s up to you. You can come over any time.”
The next night, we made love and we weren’t drunk and we were like two regular people connecting and everything seemed to be just right.
TEN
Zina’s alarm went off, and we both jumped. Zina grabbed her alarm clock and threw it against the wall. It stopped. Naked, we looked at each other, and again there was that awkward feeling. This was my third stay at her place.
“Oh,” we both said.
“God,” she said. “I hate alarm clocks.”
“What time is it?”
“Must be eight.”
“I, um, Zina,” I said.
She touched my lips with her hand. “Don’t say anything. You don’t need to say anything. Do you need to go anywhere? I have an early class. Do you actually attend classes? It’s not like I’m prying. I just want to start some kind of conversation in an obviously maladroit situation. Listen to the words I use. So I’m a poet and, uh, you already know it. Huh. Like we look at each other and say: ‘What should I say?’ Is anything really on both our minds? There must be a lot. I’m really not sure what’s on my mind. I have this very small mind, you see. Not that I’m small-minded, just that my brain is small like my body is small because I’m small person. I always wanted to be a tall person: so my mind’d be tall with tall thoughts all the time. Are you married and don’t want to tell me and: am I assisting in adultery? You’re not married, no, I can tell. Maybe you were once married: don’t know. Not that I wouldn’t have slept with you if you – were married; but I really don’t like to sleep with married men any more. Oh, hell, I don’t care. I could just pretend I’m sick; we can stay naked and stay in bed and sleep or make love or watch TV –”
“You don’t have a TV.”
“Stay in bed, fuck.”
“My feelings exactly,” I said.
“Could just lie here in bed till noon, afternoon. I used to do that a lot. Worked nights. Maybe I should get another night job. I’m really a night owl – used to come home late and stay up late working on my poems and then sleep till past noon and get up for work and – go to work.”
“What’d you do?”
“Delivered pizzas.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“No. Thirty minutes or less! I did this for, what? I did this for two years. Undergrad.”
“I can’t see you doing that,” I said.
“Why not? I wore a uniform and everything. I even made good tips.”
“Did any men ever come on to you? Drunk men who ordered pizzas?”
“Not really. Sometimes they’d give me wine coolers as part of my tip. That was always fun.”
“I bet.”
“I want to close my eyes and go back to sleep.”
“Do it.”
“No.”
“Close your eyes.”
“OK.”
“They’re closed?”
“You can see that.”
“How is –?”
“Much better.”
My body was next to hers. “Just go back to sleep.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Nicky,” she said, “hold me.”
“I am.”
“Hold me tighter.”
I did.
“You’re being a bad influence on –”
“Me?”
“Me,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
ELEVEN
I went to Zina’s apartment late in the day, after one of McGinnis’ classes. Her front door was unlocked, like she told me it would be, like she said she often left it unlocked. I could hear her in her bedroom, typing away at her computer. I crept in. Moby Dick was at the doorway, and looked at me. I thought better of scaring her. She was sitting at her computer in shorts and a halter, hair pulled up in a messy tail.
“Zina,” I said.
She spun around in her chair. “You!”
“Expecting someone else?” I sat on the bed.
“Only you. Only you would be here.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t leave your door –”
“I was expecting you,” she said. “I told you on the phone. I said let yourself –”
“I scared you.”
She sat next to me. “A little.”
“What are you writing?”
“What does it look like?”
“What’s the subject?”
“Flying.”
“Oh,” I said.
“If I had wings,” she said, “I could fly. I could fly here, I could fly there. I’d be rich! Marveling everyone in the world how I can fly.”
“I can fly.” I laid back on the bed.
Zina got on top of me. “Can you now?”
“I’m a superhero, you see. But this is a secret. Well, now you know the secret. When I’m a superhero, I can fly. I’m a superhero – with no name.”
“Show me,” she said. She kissed my nose. “I want to see you fly.”
“Can’t,” I said. “Not in costume. Right now, I’m a regular person.”
“But when you’re a superhero –?”
“I can fly.”
“Well,” Zina said, “not all of them fly.”
“Superman does.”
“Batman doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t have super powers. He’s a vigilante.”
“Batman is sexy,” and she rolled off me, looking at the ceiling. “I’ve seen those movies. I’m not talking about the goofy Batman on TV. I mean the movies, armor-plated nipples and everything!”
“All superheroes are sexy.”
“Does Spiderman fly?”
“No. He swings around the city with his fake webs.”
“Who’s that guy who runs really fast?”
“Runs?”
“Like lightning.”
“The Flash.”
“Yeah,” she said, “he wears all red.”
“The Flash.”
She said, “I’d like to be like that, run around all in red, running faster than – faster than I don’t know what.”
I moved to kiss her, to say, “You’re Wonder Woman.”
She got up. “No. I’m too short, if you have not noticed. So,” she bent down, and grabbed my legs, “when you’re a superhero, do you wear one of those tight, sexy spandex outfits?”
“You bet.”
“And battle evil foes.” Her hands were running up my leg.
“I keep the world safe and clean,” I told her.
“Sexy hero,” she said, unzipping my pants. She took my cock out, and started sucking on it. She sucked long and slow; I relaxed and allowed myself to enjoy this. I came, but she didn’t swallow. She let it go out of her mouth and down my cock. She looked at it. She moved up onto the bed and put her head on my chest. “So where are we going with all this?”
“This?”
“This,” she touched my stomach, “and this,” touching my wet cock, covered in saliva and
semen.
“This.” I touched her back, her ass.
“Sing to me,” she said.
“What song?”
“Sing to me all night,” she said.
“I’ll sing to you all week,” I said, “all year.”
She kissed my neck, nuzzled her face into my neck. “You smell good.”
“You smell pretty good yourself.”
“You always smell like sex,” Zina said. “Is this a good or bad thing?”
“Everything between us is a good thing,” I said.
“Will it always be?”
“Don’t be a pessimist.”
“Everything just seems to be too good.”
“Zina,” I said.
“We’ll end in tragedy,” she said.
“Tears?”
“Violence?”
“Pain?”
“Maybe blood,” she said.
“You have these thoughts?”
She sat up. “Put your hands here,” indicating her neck. She took my hands, and put them there. “There, there. Now choke me.”
“Why?”
“I want you to.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Keep your hands there and squeeze.”
“Like this?”
“Harder.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
“You won’t.”
“Well.”
“Just do it, you bastard.”
I squeezed her neck hard. “You like this?”
“You know what I like?” She broke free from me. She plopped down on her hands and knees, body on top of me; she said, “What I really like is men to fuck me from behind, my ass high in the air, and reach over, here, here,” taking my hand, “reach over like so and choke me, like so, as they fuck me from behind, like so.”
“Is this romantic talk?” I had to laugh.
“Depends on your upbringing,” Zina said.
I laid next to her. “Let’s not talk.”
“Who said we have to talk?”
“Sometimes,” I said, “I like the silence.”
She kissed me, and put her head on my chest. “Is this getting serious?”
“I don’t know what serious is,” I said. “I’m just an idiot.”
We stopped talking, and started kissing, which led to fucking. I fucked her the way she wanted, my cock in her pussy from behind, and I reached over and choked her. It wasn’t an easy thing to do; I thought it’d be easier if she were on her back, so I’d have better access to her neck. “Choke me harder,” she pleaded, and I did, and her body spasmed as she came, my hand still at her neck. “Oh boy,” she said.
The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Michael Hemmingson Page 18