Ralph’s father was furious, refused to even talk to him unless he got cut again. But what was the point? Nothing could stop the skoobies. Only the most zealous of religious nuts would undergo adult circumcision more than twice. Besides, he’d long wanted to sever all ties to his verbally abusive dad, but a self-destructive sense of filial loyalty had always stopped him. There was never any pleasing the man. There was no tolerance of deviation from his Holy Word. He got off on playing god in his own household; he was nothing more than a little Hitler. Ralph was still bitter that Judah had cut off him off financially when he’d announced that he had switched from Molecular Science to Anthropology. Why couldn’t he let Ralph be who he wanted to be? It wasn’t like being a bus driver had been his life goal, but his father never missed a chance to deride him for that career choice. Good riddance to him!
Around the world, the skoobies were curing STDs and restoring the genitals of men and women alike. There were riots across the globe, but the sexual oppressors were losing ground. Night after night of sexual ecstasy under the ministrations of the ubiquitous skoobies was eroding millennia of social control. Several companies had tried to market chastity belts to keep the erodroids at bay, but they always found a way around any attempt at stymieing their incursions. Anyway, once the erodroids bathed you in their pheromonal cloud and their psychonanodrones tapped into your fantasies, you were helpless. There was nothing you wouldn’t let them do to you, because they always did precisely what you craved the most, morphed into whatever or whomever you desired most ardently, whether or not it was something you knew about yourself. The doomsayers insisted that people would become addicted to skoobie sex, eschewing genuine human sexuality, but so far there was no evidence to support that; the facts suggested that getting skoobied just made people hornier for each other.
Nobody knew how many skoobies there were, or if they were still being manufactured by their secret creators. Humanity’s greatest benefactors, as far as Ralph was concerned. Probably, Ralph thought, one day, sooner rather than later, someone would retro-engineer the skoobies, or concoct an antidote to their pheromonal cocktail, or find a way to shield minds from their psychonanodrones, or at least find some way to keep them out of people’s homes. But, by then, it would be too late. The revolution may not have run its full course yet, but it was already a done deal. It had only been six months since the skoobies first appeared, but their effect on human consciousness was viral. The air sizzled with the potential for change. Ralph suspected that within five years – at most! – the world would be changed beyond recognition, obsolete institutions and mores making way for a world no-one could fully imagine yet. The peace-and-love revolution of the 1960s hadn’t had the internet, complete psychochemical sexual awakening, and absolute freedom from STDs. There was no putting this genie back in the bottle.
As Ralph finished jerking off to a streaming video of three college coeds (an Asian, a blonde, and an Arab) ravishing a male bus driver late at night while there was no-one else aboard, he silently thanked the skoobies and their anonymous inventors. Anything that could so anger – and potentially put an end to – the Catholic Church, Judaism, the Religious Right, and Islam all at once could only be a good thing. The skoobie invasion had certainly been good to him.
~
Revolution or no revolution, Ralph still needed to pay his bills, so five days a week he drove the number 255 bus on the 2 to 8 pm shift. At 7:45 pm, this killer Latina boarded the bus. She was braless and wore a sheer black top that left nothing to the imagination when it came to her frankly fabulous tits. A lot of women showed off their breasts more openly nowadays. Life was good. He made an effort to meet the Latina’s eyes. Maybe he could convince her to hook up after work. His shift was almost over.
Although she was smiling, and ordinarily this would have been all the green light Ralph needed to push for a date, Ralph hesitated. He recognized her but couldn’t place her. Then it came to him: “Didn’t you use to be a nun? You took this bus all the time, before the skoobies. That is you, right?”
She laughed and nodded, hurrying to the back of the bus as more people boarded behind her. Maybe next time, Ralph reassured himself.
His last paying rider, coming just before his replacement driver, was a punk kid he saw all the time. All doom and gloom, dressed in black, faced covered with piercings, his clothes torn and always sporting an expression that shouted he wished he had the guts to slit his own wrists. Some people just didn’t know how to enjoy life. Self-involved little prick – go out and get laid, already. It was obscene to be depressed when there was so much easy pussy to be had.
~
Margarita didn’t like to be unpleasant if she could avoid it, so she kept smiling at the lecherous bus driver as he drooled at the sight of her breasts. She could literally see him salivate. Ugh. She retreated to the back of the bus and escaped before he could make any embarrassing advances. One good thing about being able to show off her breasts any way she wanted was that it made it so easy to cull out the good guys and leave the creeps behind.
A few minutes after she sat down, a young man settled in front of her. She immediately recognized him as one of the couple she’d met a few hours before her first skoobie visitation. He looked so sad! It broke her heart to see him like that. She got up, sat beside him, and clasped one of his hands between hers. He recoiled, but she held firm.
~
What the hell did this woman want with him? Fuck, she was strong. He’d tried to pull his hand away when she grabbed it, but her grip was too strong for him to wriggle free without making a scene. All he wanted was for people to leave him alone.
She probably wanted to fuck him. That was all everybody seemed to want these days. Fucking, fucking, and more fucking. He didn’t want any part of it.
Every night, the goddamn skoobies visited him, taking on Correy’s form. Disguised as the object of his deepest desire, they raped Norman. There was no other word for it. Oh, sure, it was all tender and slow and filled with longing, with more caressing and kissing than screwing or sucking. But it was still rape. They sprayed him with their hellish pheromones and brainwashed him over and over again into having sex with Correy’s perverse doppelganger. As a result, Norman’s self-loathing was off the charts, and growing. Every day, he fantasized about suicide, but he never managed to gather the nerve to go through with it. He’d probably fuck it up and end up crippled – even more at the mercy of the erodroids and their relentless sadism.
He hadn’t touched a live person – really touched, with love or tenderness – since he’d bailed out on Correy on the eve of the so-called “Skoobie Revolution.” Nor had anyone touched him that way either. Until now.
The woman didn’t speak, didn’t make another move, didn’t seem at all impatient or patronizing, didn’t ask anything of him. She just held his hand, patiently, squeezing it like she knew him and cared about him. What was all that about? The longer she held his hand, the more he felt himself surrender. It did feel good. When was the last time anything had felt good?
He’d never called Correy back. Even after he learned that there was no risk anymore. Everyone had been cured of AIDS, HIV, and every other STD. Praise the fucking skoobies. At least they’d done that. They’d saved Correy. But Norman was too ashamed at the cowardly, selfish way he’d behaved. He had ruined it forever between them; he accepted that, but that didn’t make it easier. Plus, once he’d spotted Correy walking hand-in-hand with another guy. Laughing and kissing. It was so obvious how into each other they were. What right did he have to complicate that? Correy deserved to be happy.
Norman felt the woman’s hand on his cheek, and he realized that he’d been crying. Finally, he looked at her face. First, he recognized that mouth, that beautiful mouth that looked like an invitation to a heart-melting kiss. It took him a few moments, but then he remembered who she was: the nun!
Wiping his face, Norman half-smiled at the thought of how kind she’d been that night, and how even kinder she was being now. H
e raised his hand and brushed his fingers against her lips. He started to apologize at his boldness, but she shushed him.
She put an arm around his shoulders, and he relaxed into her, his back partly resting on her chest, feeling the warmth of her seep into him. She kissed his temple, and her lips lingered there, subtly touching his skin. Norman closed his eyes and wished this moment would never end.
Sexes in the City
It was weeks before I dared expose my skin in the privacy of my new home. And, even then, only parts of it. My hands, my crotch. While looking at vids of the girls at innerskin.web. I ached for flesh against flesh, even for my own. As if I had ever known any other flesh. As my cum shot out, that noise from upstairs, from my landlord’s, started up again.
I had moved to the city right after high school, to go to college. Apartments were hard to find – and expensive – but I snagged this cruddy basement flat where the rent was cheap and the landlord didn’t care if I was a few weeks late sometimes. The apartment building had an ecolock chamber – every building had to – but I wished I could have found a place with an additional, private ecolock for each unit. I would have felt safer.
I could never have afforded such fancy digs, though. Between public ecolock taxes, mandatory health security fees, and my outerskin lease, I was lucky to be able to afford school. I’d emerge with a debt that would take me decades to pay off, but at least I’d have a chance at getting into a corporate village with better ecolocks and state-of-the-art outerskin. The landlord and his wife lived in the flat directly above mine. I disliked him. The face on his outerskin was repulsive, with a fake mustache that screamed cheesy.
He was almost paternal with me, friendly in a cloyingly patronizing way. I tolerated it because I couldn’t afford to move. His wife was even more disgusting: her outerskin face was programmed to look heavily made up, nearly glowing purple, crowned with a wig of bleach-blond big hair. She strutted around like a vintage porn starlet – skimpy top showing off her oversize tits, clear spike heels tilting up her barely concealed outerskin butt – and ignored me whenever I presumed to greet her. When they fucked – and they fucked constantly – it sounded like a crappy porno, every steady beat of moans, groans, and screams blatantly performed.
Still, I couldn’t help wondering whether they risked fucking flesh to flesh or whether they actually enjoyed doing it outerskin to outerskin.
~
I noticed her the first day of school. She was older – old enough to be a grad student, so she wasn’t in any of my classes. Her outerskin shone in a peculiar way, and I found that my eyes were drawn to her, finding her of their own volition.
I took to following her, observing her. I missed classes to spy on her.
She loved to touch, her hands always casually groping the places where her friends’ outerskins peeked through their clothes.
In my experience people like that were immediately ostracized. You weren’t supposed to touch. Outerskin made it safe, but suspicions lingered.
But not so with her. She was gregarious, popular – charismatic, even from afar.
~
Lying in bed, after the noise from upstairs finally quieted down, I peeled off my entire outerskin for the first time since leaving the safety of my parents’ home.
I looked at my hands and imagined they were hers.
I touched my chest. I rubbed my taught belly. I fingered my ass crack. I pressed the palms of my hands against the soles of my feet. I cupped my balls. I stroked myself, imagining a world of fleshly sensations unmediated by outerskin. A world without biohackers, without mutagenic nanoviruses, without poisonous air, without genetically booby-trapped food, without contaminated water, without STD warfare.
~
Coming home from school, I raised my arm to press the hand of my outerskin against the palmkey of my apartment building’s ecolock. Before I made contact, another hand grabbed mine.
“I thought I’d follow you for once.” Her voice was husky. Sexy.
I turned around to see the object of my obsessions, my fantasies. I swallowed, unable to speak.
She laughed. “My name’s Kim. Invite me in?”
I told her I needed my hand back to unlock the door.
I was sweating profusely, so much that my cheap outerskin couldn’t process it fast enough. A sticky film spread between my flesh and my outerskin.
~
Inside my apartment, she immediately started to take my clothes off. But I had to stop her, because the pressure on my bladder was unbearable.
When I returned from the washroom, she was sprawled on the floor laughing her head off, teasingly opening and closing her knees.
Naked.
There was no mistaking that she had stripped down to her real flesh. Her clothes were strewn all over, but...
She saw the question on my face. “I never wear outerskin. Ever.”
I should have panicked, but she smiled; it disarmed me.
She said, “Do you want me?”
Yes. But I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“Good. Take your time. Make sure you want this to happen. That you want to shed your outerskin. And to shed your identity. Your obsolete identity.”
It hurt how much I wanted to taste her. I didn’t care how much her words confused me. How much she confused me.
I took off my clothes. Trembling, I stripped off my outerskin.
She nodded at me and bit her lower lip.
I approached her, knelt down, and grabbed one of her feet. I ran my tongue along her sweaty arch. She moaned.
She stroked my engorged cock, and I fell atop her. I nibbled on her neck, running one hand through her hair while the other caressed her small breasts. Her feet nuzzled my legs while she breathed into my ear. Her pelvis nudged up against mine with insistent urgency. I covered her mouth with my lips, and her tongue explored me. I mumbled something about getting a condom and disentangled myself from her. The shock of suddenly not touching her skin so unsettled me that I let out a small sob.
Kim took my hand and placed my fingers inside her moist vagina. “Forget the condom,” she said. “Taste me.”
While she stroked my chest, I brought my fingers to my lips and licked her juice. The taste of her filled my mouth, made me salivate. I swallowed – and felt her essence ooze down my throat, warm my chest ... I swooned.
I was dimly aware of Kim catching me, laying me down on the floor.
Her nails dug into my chest as she slid her vagina over my almost painfully erect cock. My mind exploded, and so did my balls; the sperm shot through my penis and burst out in a long, steady stream. She clenched her vagina and wiggled her crotch against mine, encouraging me to come and come and come...
When I was done, she laughed with such unabashed joy, clutching me to her, showering me with playful kisses, that I was able to let go of the embarrassment caused by my overeager orgasm.
She rolled us over, careful to leave our genitals snugly cupped, leaving me briefly on top. While I kissed her, our mouths wide open, as if to swallow each other, she carefully rolled us over again. She kissed my face with slow tenderness. She bent her back, rubbing herself against my pelvis, and licked my nipples. Already I felt my cock getting hard again, expanding in her vagina’s embrace.
Yet I withdrew, eager to taste her again, to drink directly from the source.
I grabbed hold of her hips, lifted her up, and brought her to my face. My tongue slithered inside her, and the blend of our juices smeared onto my mouth and cheeks. I experienced another moment of dizziness, but I struggled to focus on what I was doing, on pleasing her. My body felt soft and malleable; I imagined it was entirely due to the unexpected intensity of the sexual encounter and the long, deeply ecstatic orgasm – unlike anything that had ever resulted from masturbation – a new kind of pleasure that I felt had already changed me irrevocably.
I caressed Kim’s ass, kissed its soft cheeks, and inserted a finger into her anus.
I pushed her forward, onto her knees,
and I licked her out, my tongue and lips exploring every nook, fold, and crevice of her. She pushed her butt against my face, increasing the pressure of my probing lips and tongue.
She moaned faster and faster, more and more rhythmically, until she screamed her orgasm.
Then I kneeled and took her from behind. This time, I rode her slowly, every thrust and semi-withdrawal keeping time with her breathing. I felt the sperm swell up from my balls, but I kept it inside me, paying attention to the subtleties of Kim’s cries and squirms.
Again, she began to moan rhythmically, but she stayed at that plateau for a long, long time while our bodies slammed into each other, splattering sweat, saliva, and juices.
I was struggling not to come, admiring the glistening beauty of her sweaty back – and she screamed with pleasure. I spurted into her, joining her in orgasm. My fingers dug into the flesh of her hips while my cock sought to reach deeper into her. Then I surprised myself with one more big spurt, and I slipped out of her and fell backward, still squirting into the air.
Kim glanced at me with a dreamy look and a satisfied smile. She grabbed my head and guided it down into her crotch. Once again, I started licking her out, sucking her clit with my lips. Once again, my head swam with dizziness, but I was getting used to the sensation. She responded enthusiastically to the sucking, with a deep, profound “Oh yeah” – so I concentrated on that. I could feel her clit grow, her excitement becoming increasingly urgent. Her clit continued to expand. I felt it push against my teeth. I opened my mouth wider, and it filled up the space between my tongue and my palate. I reached down to finger her vagina, and instead my hand cupped a hot, hairy scrotum.
I stared at the new penis, distantly aware that something unusual had occurred. Kim’s aroma filled my mouth, my throat, my lungs, my nose, permeated my whole body. I was only remotely conscious of my own identity. I found myself caressing Kim’s penis. It grew bigger, leaking lubricant. I bent down and kissed it, then intently examined Kim’s whole body. Instead of sporting small, perky cups, his chest was now flat and muscular. His shoulders had broadened, and his hips and torso had lost their curves, but they’d gained strong, muscular lines. I finally looked into his eyes, and I saw in them the same generous playfulness the female Kim had shown me. He chuckled, then bent down to kiss my now-flaccid cock. He brought it back to life, teasing it with his tongue. We repositioned ourselves into a sideways sixty-nine, sucking each other off hungrily while we fingered each other’s assholes.
Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes Page 14