I went into the living room and put a DVD into the player. I sat on the sofa. Energetic acoustic guitar began the film soundtrack.
“Garbage!” began the dialogue.
The beautiful young Southern woman discussed imagery with her therapist. Garbage. What if garbage cans were actually producing more garbage? she wondered. The doctor smiled. They’d soon be discussing masturbation, the woman blushing and stammering, denying her need. Fast-forward. The woman sat on a plaid sofa in a hot, sparsely furnished room. She wore a gold blazer, black T-shirt, black miniskirt and black leather cowboy boots. A man in T-shirt and jeans sat on the hardwood floor in front of her, looking up at her. His camera rolled. “Do you remember the first time that you saw a penis?” he began. She narrowed her eyes, parted her lips, cocked her head to the side and began to talk. As she shed her blazer and rearranged herself on the sofa, her leather boots rubbed together, making soft squeaking sounds. Fast-forward. In a bedroom, a man and woman shouted at one another. “Did you have to masturbate in front of him?” he demanded of her. “No. I wanted to. So there!”
Sex, Lies, and a Video Cam was another favourite film of mine, transporting me to yet another humid Southern clime. I’d felt voyeuristic viewing its seeming raw intimacy and dialogue; I’d thought its editing amazing; it had inspired my purchase of black leather cowboy boots. I soon slept on the sofa, in blue screen light.
I opened my eyes to filtered sun. I got up, made coffee and went to my desk. I checked my schedule: no appointments for the day. I sipped my coffee and tiredly made notes on my writing projects. A drive to the coast might be inspirational, I thought. I took a shower, dressed in a pullover scoop-neck sweater, skirt and leather sandals.
Highway 120 wound through velvet hills and grassy flats on its way to the sea. The two-lane road could be lonely, with little traffic. The dark-skinned hitchhiker stood on the north side of the road. He wore a Henley shirt and jeans. His dark hair was tied into a ponytail. I passed him, checked the rear-view, braked and pulled onto the shoulder. He smiled as he loped towards the Jeep. I unlocked the passenger door. He hoisted himself into the leather bucket seat, threw his bag to the floorboard, closed the door, and fastened his seat belt.
“Hello. Thank you very much for stopping. Gracias.” He warmly smiled, his dark-brown eyes making direct contact with mine.
“Hi. Call me Anna.”
“I’m Manuel. Manny.”
“Where are you headed?”
“Caida Del Cielo. Heaven’s Fall. The beach.”
“Where’s that?”
“Near Fuego Que Sopla. Blowing Fire.”
“It’s on my way.”
Darkness was beautiful; I thought of the deep reds of roses and blood and wine; the tan brown of bread and chocolate and exotic skins; the dark liquid of brown, drowning-pool eyes pulling one in. Contrast could be interesting. I thought of sophistication and innocence; vanilla cream swirling with caramel tan.
“Where are you coming from, Manny?”
“Palmville.”
“Do you hitch much?”
“Do you pick up much?”
We smiled.
“Would you like a beer? There’s a cooler in the back seat.”
“Thank you.”
Over a hill, the road turned and opened to the Pacific Coast. Heaven’s Fall seemed deserted. I saw no parking area. I wondered where to park.
“Don’t park too close to water. The sand is wet and deep,” Manny cautioned.
“Thanks. Do you have time for another beer? Or do you need to meet someone?” I glanced at the pier and the vast, empty shoreline.
“I’m meeting no one.”
I parked a distance from the shore, near a small dune. I scavenged a blanket from the back and spread it on the sand.
We wordlessly sat on the blanket next to the Jeep, drinking amber lager, getting stoned on nature and negative ionization and brew. I wasn’t sure whether minutes or hours had passed.
“Let me touch you . . . ?” he asked.
“Where?” I smiled.
“Here . . . here . . .” His hands brushed my cheeks; he lightly ran his hands down my neck to my breasts. “Soft pechos . . . sweet pechos . . .” He gently pulled a bare breast from my sweater. His thickly sensual lips took my nipple; his mouth pulled. He stood and pulled me up and kissed me. “Wait,” he said, opening the rear passenger-side Jeep door. He lifted me onto the edge of the high bucket seat. He pulled down my scoop-neck sweater; my breasts lightly hung over the purple velvety material. He pushed my stretch skirt up around my waist. I sat, legs askew on the leather seat, grains of sand sticking to my skin, the sea wind blowing against me. He kneeled and placed his hands on my lower inner thighs, slowly moving up. I leaned back and more widely spread my legs. His head moved towards my centre; I held it and felt the texture of his hair, removing the tie that held it. It softly fell and draped my thighs. His finger centered the outer lips of my cunt, moving into the inner.
“Ahhh . . . ostra rosada . . . pink oyster,” he murmured.
Licking and entering me with his tongue then fingers, he moaned and intermittently gave soft voice. “Mar salado . . . salty sea.” The Spanish language would never be the same, I thought. It now seemed even more beautiful, if that was possible. I clenched and came around his fingers.
“Wait.” He pulled away, his erection straining against his jeans. He unzipped his fly and lowered his jeans, releasing his prick. He fumbled in his small travel sack, pulling a small square brightly coloured packet from it. Gallo read the lettering; the art was of a red rooster. He removed the white condom, held the tip, and rolled it onto his brown erection, vanilla white engulfing caramel tan. The wind grabbed and whipped the empty condom wrapper down the beach. I dripped onto the leather seat. He held my hips and slowly slid his cock into me. He moved deeply into and out of me, gliding clitoris and G-spot, clitoris and G-spot. Orgasm rolled from my wet centre, sensation becoming sound, escaping through my O-shaped mouth. I envisioned my orgasm having come from the sea and returning to it; my cries metamorphosing into ocean roar.
“Caliente caliente . . . hot . . . mojado! Anna!”
In front of my television, I drank Shiraz and ate take-out crab and shrimp enchiladas and squash with red peppers. I clicked my DVD play button. Sexo En El Camino was subtitled. Miquel entered his girlfriend’s bedroom, and her, in rapid succession, with no foreplay. The girl had long dark hair, perky breasts, a thin build. In a fascinating, non-American quality she had lots of thick, dark pubic hair. The film’s logic seemed to imply that women were in a perpetually pre-moistened state. It worked. The sex was quick and intense and hot, with penises and vaginas artistically filmed in shadow. Fast-forward. In a dilapidated motel room in Oaxaco, the young naked Sergio stood with an erection. “Drop the towel,” commanded Gabriella, from the edge of the bed. He stood in front of her and kneeled. “I’m wet for you. Eat me . . .” she said. He lowered his mouth to her and began to lick. “Wait! Let me take off my panties!” She laughed. He very soon fucked her, in another quick, intense scene. Miquel watched his friend from a doorway, a hurt look in his eyes. Fast-forward. The two young male friends and the older woman drove through mountainous jungles and small villages towards an allegedly mythical beach, laughing and telling stories, stopping in run-down cantinas for beer and food. At the beach the three fucked. The men fought and drove away together. She stayed at Heaven’s Mouth for the rest of her short life. Fade to black. I sighed and thought of a spontaneous, passionate man who made love in soft whispers, intense cries and beautiful words; who could have been manifesting Tourette’s or channeling spirits as he thrust and came.
I drove 120, and I-5 to the Citrus exit. The generica of strip malls seemed somehow obscene. I pulled into the medical plaza and parked. I walked the maze between offices and entered the lobby at 3.50 p.m.
I took a seat on the sofa in Dr Wellman’s lobby.
“Hi, Anna! He’ll be right with you.”
Secretly Wishing for Rain
Claude Lalumière
My palm pressed between Tamara’s small breasts, I feel her heartbeat. The raindrops pounding on the skylight reflect the city lights, provide our only illumination. Tamara’s fingers are entwined in my chest hair; my perception of the rhythm of my heart is intensified by the warm, steady pressure of her hand.
This mutual pressing of hands against chests is our nightly ritual. Our faces almost touching, we silently stare at each other in the gloom. This is how it is for me (and how I believe it must also be for her): I abandon myself to the dim reflection of light in her eyes, the rhythms of our hearts, the softness of her skin, the pressure of her hand; I let go of all conscious thought or intent. We whisper meaningless absurdities to each other. One of us says: “There are fishes so beautiful that cinnamon nectar spouts from their eyeballs”; the other replies: “Your mouth is infinite space and contains all the marvels of gravity.” Most nights we explore each other’s flesh, revelling in each other’s smells and touches. Deliriously abandoned in each other’s embrace, we reach orgasm, remembering the loss that binds us. Some nights, as tonight, we simply fall asleep, snugly intertwined.
The cliché would be that I was jealous of Andrei’s mischievous charm, his tall-dark-and-handsome good looks, his quick wit, his svelte elegance, his easy way with women . . . but no. His omnipotent charm defused the pissing-contest resentment that heterosexual pretty boys usually provoke in the rest of the straight male population. Everyone – men, women, straights, gays – was helpless before his androgynous beauty, his complicit grin and his playful brashness. Perhaps I was even more helpless than most.
Andrei avoided being in the company of more than one person at a time. Whoever he was with enjoyed the full intensity of his meticulous attention. I never felt so alive as when I basked in his gaze.
Andrei may have been desired by many, but few had their lust satisfied. Men weren’t even a blip on his sexual radar. Most women also fell short of his unvoiced standards – the existence of which he would always deny. The women who could boast of the privilege of walking down the street arm in arm with Andrei were tall and slim with graceful long legs, hair down to at least their shoulder blades, subtle make-up and cover-girl faces. And, most importantly, they had to be sharp dressers. Age was not an issue. I’d first met him when we were both nineteen, and during the seven years of our friendship, I’d seen him hook up with girls as young as thirteen and women as old as fifty-five. All that mattered was that they have the look. Actually, that wasn’t all. Andrei possessed a probing intelligence. He read voraciously, and he expected his assembly-line lovers to be able to discuss at length the minutiae of his favourite books. Invariably, he grew bored with his women, or contemptuous if they read one of the books in his pantheon and proceeded to display the depth of their incomprehension. Rarely would he declare to the injured party that their short-lived romance was over. Instead, at the end of an affair, he’d simply vanish for several weeks without a word. Even I – his closest friend – never found out where he vanished to.
Ten years ago, Tamara had been one of those women. The last of those women.
At nineteen, I moved to Montreal from Deep River, Ontario. I wanted to learn French, to live in a cosmopolitan environment. See foreign films on the big screen. Go to operas. Museums. Concerts. Art galleries. Listen to street musicians. Hear people converse in languages I couldn’t understand.
I never did learn French. I’m often embarrassed about that. Montreal isn’t nearly as French as most outsiders think, and it’s all too easy to live exclusively in its English-language demi-monde.
I’d taken a year off after high school, intending to travel, but I never did. I never had enough money, and I languished resentfully in Deep River. I applied to McGill University for the following year, was accepted, chose philosophy as my major.
In early September, less than a week after classes started, I attended a midnight screening of Haynes’s Bestial Acts at the Rialto. I’d heard so much about that film, but, of course, it had never come to Deep River, even on video. There were only two of us in the theatre. The other cinephile was a stunningly handsome guy I guessed was about my age. He was already there when I walked in, his face buried in a book, despite the dim lighting. I sat two rows ahead of him.
After the credits stopped rolling, the lights went on, and I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned, the handsome guy – Andrei, I would soon learn – said, “I feel like walking. Let’s go.” I had no choice but to obey; I didn’t want to have a choice. So I followed him, already ensorcelled.
We walked all over the city, and he brought me to secret places where its night-time beauty was startlingly delicate. The water fountain in the concrete park next to the Ville-Marie Expressway. The roof of a Plateau apartment building – its access always left unlocked in violation of safety regulations. We snuck into a lush private courtyard covered in ancient-looking leafy vines; the windows reflected and re-reflected the moonlight to create a subtly complex tapestry of light. All the while, we talked about Bestial Acts, trying to understand it all, to pierce the veil of its mysteries.
As dawn neared, he said, “You’ve never read the book it’s based on, have you?” There was disappointment in his voice.
I felt like this was a test. I looked him straight in the eye. “No. Before seeing the ‘adapted from’ credit on the screen tonight, I didn’t even know about it.”
His face changed, and he laughed. He’d decided to forgive my ignorance. He dug out a paperback from the inside of his jacket. “Here. Read this. Let’s have lunch on Sunday, and we can talk some more.”
The book’s spine was creased from countless rereadings, the corners furled and frayed. It was a small book called The Door to Lost Pages, and the film was named after the title of the first chapter. The back-cover blurb said that the author lived here in Montreal. Andrei saw my eyes grow wide; he told me, “No. I didn’t write that book. That’s not a pseudonym. I don’t even know the guy.”
So we had lunch that Sunday, and then became nearly inseparable. As for all those women of his – well, yes, I admired their beauty, but they were unattainable, too glamourous and self-confident for me to even fantasize about. Was I jealous of them? Of the love he spent on them? No; it was abundantly clear that I was permanent, that spending time with me took precedence over his dalliances. And they were only ephemeral mirrors into which he’d gaze to see his own beauty reflected.
As I do every morning, I wake up at six. The rain is still splattering on the skylight window. Although it’s summer and sunlight should be flooding the bedroom by now, under this thick blanket of dark clouds it’s still as dark as midnight.
I turn around and spoon Tamara. My nose rests lightly on her shoulder; I breathe in her unwashed aromas. She is intoxicating. Her soft back is luxuriant against my chest. My semi-erect cock jerks lightly, probing the smoothness of her buttocks.
She moans, but she’s still hours from waking up. She rarely wakes before noon. Then, eventually, she heads out; without a word, without a goodbye kiss. Brunch with friends? Museums? The gym? Does she even have friends? I can only speculate. She always returns past eleven in the evening, and we go to bed together around midnight.
I get up. Normally, I would go jogging, but I’m too fed up with the rain.
Andrei never worked. But money never seemed to be a problem. I was curious, but I knew better than to enquire. Whatever he wanted to share, he would tell me.
Actually, it’s not fair to say that he never worked.
He wrote. He wrote for hours every day, the words pouring out of him with the relentless flow of a waterfall. He never tried to publish. He disdained the very idea of publication; nevertheless, he was supportive of my futile efforts at getting my own work into print.
He wrote poetry, fiction, philosophical ramblings and other prose that segued from genre to genre. All of it was brilliant. Yes, I envied his way with women, but what inspired my jealousy was his prodigious literary talent. I
t often took me months to finish a short story, while he would write several of them a week, in addition to countless other pieces. And he worked on a number of long Proustian novels simultaneously, each of them accumulating wordage but never seeming to reach any kind of conclusion.
We’d spend sleepless nights poring over each other’s work with a harsh and unforgiving love. We questioned every word, every comma, every idea. We revised and reread and rearranged. He was unfailingly generous with his talent and editorial acumen. His input imbued my feeble scribblings with a depth of allusion and empathy I could never have achieved on my own.
If he was aware of my jealousy, he never showed any sign of it. He considered me his only friend and let no one but me read his work. And so my jealousy was tempered by exclusivity. Although I urged him time and again to seek publication, I secretly thrilled like a teenage girl who, magically, knew that she – and no one else – had the privilege of sucking the cock of her favourite rock star.
Tamara and I rarely talk, rarely spend any time together, save for the night-time in bed. Our lives are separate, save for that nightly communion. We are strangers.
Occasionally, she walks in on me, whether I’m in my study or in the living room or taking a nap, and asks, “Read to me.”
What she means is, “Read me something of Andrei’s.” And I always do. Sometimes I grab a book, sometimes an unpublished manuscript. Andrei left so much behind. She nestles into my lap and chest, and I enfold her as best I can, breathing in the heady blend of sweat, perfume, shampoo and lotions, wishing for the weight of her body to leave permanent impressions in my flesh.
When I stop reading, we neck like teenagers, fondle each other tenderly, hungrily, with unfeigned clumsiness.
Before, she used to read voraciously. Now, all she desires of the world of literature is to hear me read Andrei’s words.
During most of my years-long friendship with Andrei, I never had a lover, never seriously pursued anyone. Andrei had awakened the writer in me, and that was all that mattered. I’d quit school. I supported myself with a string of meaningless jobs, and devoted all my spare energies to, inseparably, my writing and my friendship with Andrei.
The Mammoth Book of the Best New Erotica Page 49