* * *
She had discovered the gallery by accident. Of course she knew it was there but she never ventured into it, scurrying past its flat, striated lines, blocks of buildings, stairs, all of this just a hurdle to the rhythm of her rushing. It was her sister who had lured her here last week with the promise of great pizza in the library café. The pizza was fine, not great, but she saw the cupcakes in the cabinet, a bouquet of gorgeous soft colours, almost as pretty as the cupcakes she had made five days ago. The cupcakes that had sustained her all week. She had saved the last of them and licked the icing off it as she sat curled on the lounge. The lounge would always be a sacred site now, the place where she took his penis into her mouth, the place where she felt him begin to respond to her gentle sucking. She had revisited her orgasm on her own, repeating it till all the sharp edges of it had worn away. As soon as it was achieved, she began again, rubbing herself, her fingers buried in her up to the knuckles for so many hours at a time that her skin pruned as if she had been luxuriating in a bath. She wanted to tell her sister this. She ordered them cupcakes for dessert even though her sister insisted she was on a diet.
She waited for a break in conversation. She would admit it. Her sister was always so much more worldly than she was. Her sister knew about sex when Jill, herself, was still a baby.
‘So Jilly, how’s Kev?’
This was her moment, she knew it. She looked towards Lisa and opened her mouth and found that all her words had turned to stale air. She smelled her own breath, tainted as it was from the coffee. She was rotting from within. There was evil in her gut. She had a perfectly good husband who provided for them both, working hard, buying her nice dresses, giving her money to spend on frivolous lunches and nice shoes. She shut her mouth again and reached in her bag for a stick of gum.
‘He’s fine,’ she said whilst chewing.
‘Just fine?’
‘Yeah. Same old.’
‘Hey, Jill.’ Her sister leaned forward, whispered through a cheeky grin, ‘Have you seen the erotic art?’
‘What?’
She tipped her head towards the flat blocky facing of the buildings. ‘I don’t know how I missed it but there’s this bit in there with sketches.’ Lisa winked on the last word and sketches might as well have been etchings, code for pornography. Jill felt herself begin to blush.
‘Come on. Let’s go look. There’s the biggest prick I’ve ever seen and some girl with enormous boobs about to fellate it.’
Fellate. Her sister was worldly enough to use the word fellate. Jill licked the last of the icing off the edge of her lip. Perhaps her blush was not entirely because of the idea of pricks and boobs, but the word fellating gave her reason to pause.
* * *
The room was small and tucked away and looking at the sketches she wondered what made this into art when the drawings her brother used to do in the borders of his maths text book were merely smut. The penises were truly swelled to the size of cocks and there was, indeed, no other word for the giant balloons on the girls’ chests than boobs, a word that wears its double o’s with pride.
‘Is Kevin’s cock that size?’ Lisa laughed and pointed to a particularly disproportionate member.
‘Not quite.’
‘It’s weird how men think we might want something that huge inside us.’
‘Kevin’s too big.’ Jill said and instantly regretted it.
‘Too big?’
‘Well, for comfort. I would… I suppose if he were a little smaller it would be a bit easier.’
‘Oh man, now you’re boasting.’
‘No. I mean it. I wouldn’t mind something a little more discreet.’
‘Take it from me, there are some tiddlers out there, Jilly. Some of them so small you feel like you are a giantess.’ She stepped closer to Jill and whispered. ‘You can fix that, you know, you just have to take it in the arse. I suppose you don’t do that with your hubby who’s hung like a horse.’
Jill looked at her watch. ‘Speaking of husbands.’
‘Oh, come on princess, you are just embarrassed at the thought of getting fucked in the arse.’
She felt the heat spreading from her cheeks to her neck and down onto her chest. She pulled her jumper more firmly around her shoulders.
‘I’ve got to get the dinner on.’
‘Sure. Once a prude, always a prude, huh sis?’
‘We’ve had a nice day, Lisa. Do we have to fight now?’
‘I’m not fighting you.’
But Jill had already turned and was retreating past the spreading thighs, the sketchy spill of vaginas, the penises in the process of spluttering their charcoal delight.
* * *
Now Jill took another step and watched the odd blue sculpture change from convex to concave. She leaned closer and looked at the plaque identifying the artist, Anish Kapoor, Void. Perhaps it was supposed to say something about the universe but Jill thought it had something to do with sex. Strangely she found this sculpture more erotic than the sketches. The way the thing could transform from a protrusion reaching out of its surface to something curving inward. Male and female genitals, but not the obvious pornography of the little hidden gallery. This was something more subtle. This was the eroticism of her boy next door, hidden and yet obvious, full of desire and yet still flaccid and coy. She recommitted to the seduction between one side of the sculpture and the other. She would seek him out. She would kiss him so deeply and with such passion that his very body would transform under the probing of her tongue. Her life was one thing but it could also be another and barely one sideward step between the two states of being.
* * *
Blue stopped howling when she caught scent of him. She had been howling all night, again, and now, when he was close enough to touch the fence, she calmed. This filled him with a sudden surge of pride. He could settle her just with his presence, but of course she knew him. He passed by her gate every afternoon. He was familiar, and perhaps her pining was not for him after all. He wished there was a language between them, not English necessarily, or dog, but a carefully constructed set of signs. He would be prepared to devote all of his time to studying them if only he could understand her. He could hear her moving from one side of her yard to the other, an awkward trot, so free of natural rhythm that it made him smile. If she were human then she would be that gorgeous librarian with the lopsided glasses and her skirt caught up in the elastic of her knickers, revealing mismatched socks beneath. This beautiful clumsy beast. She began to run and he heard her stumble and he smiled. Romantic, of course, but this was not a romance. He let the smile fade from his lips. This was about sex. He felt the potential of this rising in his groin. The air was electric with it. It would be an easy thing to leap the fence and perform the act. If he were any other man, then sex with Blue would be within reach, as long as the dog allowed it without barking or biting him or waking her owners with her cries.
The thought of this stopped him. He reached out to touch the fence. Dew beneath his fingers. The fence loomed up to shoulder height. He could scale it. Jesse was light and lithe and had a restless energy urging him forward. He glanced up at the house, all dark windows and shadowy deck. The neighbouring houses were just as dark. 3am. That midmorning pause where insomniacs close their eyes for the briefest of moments, and joggers are still lost to dream.
His cock swelled at her approach, her big paws in the damp grass, her slick, neat flank bumping against the fence posts. She reared up and there was her muzzle. That open smile, enthusiastic tongue curling around his fingers. He resisted the groan that bubbled into his chest, taking a deep breath. If he were to be caught here, now, he would never be able to make a second attempt at it. He forced himself to breathe. Let his fingers curl around her chin. Perhaps there was no need to take this all the way. Her tongue on his flesh, just this, naked and her tongue. Surely this would be a consummation of sorts.
The neighbour’s garden had a low fence, brick, unfinished. There was lavender, struggl
ing in the damp aftermath of an unseasonably wet Brisbane summer. The smell of it clung to his sleeves as he brushed over and past it. Purple flowers, but in the dark the scent was more yellow, acrid, sharp. He hoped she wouldn’t turn her nose up at it. She would be sensitive to scent as all dogs are, her big nose snuffling at the fence even now. A lower fence here at the side of the garden. Her whole head leaning over it, straining. Jesse glanced behind him to where the house slept. Children’s toys spilled on the lawn. Oh the things he would do here so close to the sleeping innocents. Unspeakable things, unthinkable. His cock twitched. It was time.
He leaped over the fence in an easy arc. He was graceful in ways that Blue was not. He was balletic. She whined as she leapt, her claws suddenly pressed into the flesh of his chest. She was gearing up to bark in excitement and he wrapped his arms around the muscular neck and held her head close to his and he shushed her, trying to calm her, when he himself was almost annihilated with his own excitement. She was all muscle just as he expected she would be. Her neck powerful, the pelt gleaming in the vague moonlight. Her flank trembled and he realised, suddenly, that his own trembling matched hers. Of course she would be excited. One lone playmate in a long dark night.
He thought of his Real Doll, his Frankenstein’s Blue, and suddenly he was attributing human qualities to it, lying, alone, forgotten, cuckolded on his unclean sheets. A strange kind of guilt settled onto him. It was crazy, of course, but perhaps he was a little insane.
Blue jumped up again and he winced under the sharp pressure of her toenails. The house was too close. There were no shrubs, no trees inside the yard. If it came to that, his transgression would need to be conducted in full view of the house. He would need to be brave with it, quick. Of course it would be quick. He was almost at that point now, his cock straining, his arms shaking. But first he would need her to agree to it. Here, now, was the problem. He wouldn’t continue without consent.
* * *
In his dreams she pressed her head into his crotch, sniffing, suddenly excited by that earthy smell of flesh and sweat and shame. The animal place inside him showing its stiff wicked face in that barely contained thickness of flesh. In his dreams he showed himself to her and she began to lick him there. A clear sign of her desire. In the continuation of the dream she presented her rump and it was done just as it is done with his Real Doll version of Blue. A quick mounting, a shudder, a little death. This was the order of things in Jesse’s fantasy. Now in reality he found himself shivering so hard, he was unable to unzip his fly. She licked him. But her kisses were randomly placed, a lick to his arm, his hand, his cheek, her nose bumped into his crotch and he groaned softly, a random bumping because the next contact was to his knee, a scratch on his hip, a little whine.
He petted her but his fingers were slicked with sweat. This wasn’t going as planned. He glanced up towards the dark eyes of the house. This was probably the lounge room. Most of the houses hid their bedrooms in the back, the place of sleep and sex coyly tucked away. If this connection was to take place it would have to be here, up front but protected from the sleeping street by the high fence and the dark.
Jesse knelt. The grass was dew-damp. He felt the moisture seeping up onto his knee. He shivered. Her muzzle was warm against his neck. Her tongue in his ear set the hairs on the back of his head to rise. Dog breath, the scent of turned earth, he angled his head a little and her tongue was on his mouth. His lips parted. She lapped excitedly at his teeth, a whine of pleasure and as he shushed her, Blue’s tongue slipped behind the teeth and he closed his eyes with the melting pleasure of the sensation. He stiffened, frozen, with his lips parted. Blue lapped at his tongue as if she knew that this was what he wanted from her. Maybe she did. Maybe she could sense his desire, the scent of it infusing the air, exciting her sensitive olfactory awareness. He raised a trembling hand and cupped her jaw. He extended his tongue and traced the gorgeous sharp pointed teeth, teeth that could rip out his throat if she chose, teeth that could feast on flesh.
When she pulled away from his kiss she jumped up onto his shoulders. Jesse was unbalanced, he swayed and fell back, sitting in dampness with the full weight of her chest in his face. She skipped over him, clumsy and gorgeous at the same time. Her thick whip of a tail smacked against his cheek, he glimpsed that place, that little overhang of flesh, the pink of her orifice. What words? He had none, he had only the fullness of his desire and the torture of knowing he could not act without her provocation.
She hunkered down in the dew, crouching, grinning, on the verge of a bark. She wanted to play, she wanted him to give chase. Again he settled her with his shushing and she stood, a little disappointed, or that is how it seemed. He knew he should not gift her with human responses. A grin was not a grin. Her tail was more a symbol of her mood than her mouth would be, her kiss was not a kiss in human terms, but another way of seeing, tasting the measure of him. Would sex be sex? If she licked his genitals as he had planned would this be seen as something sexual? He had seen male dogs lick themselves, their own red penises slipping out with the excitement of the touch. Surely if she licked him there would be a natural correlation. Jesse eased his zipper down, glancing up at the darkened windows. His cock was straining against the tent of his underwear. He should never have worn underwear. Some seasoned pervert would have planned ahead. He was new at this and shamed by his own behaviour. He reached into his fly and tugged aside the cotton and there it was, the ridiculous protrusion forcing its way out of his pants. He sat on the damp grass and offered his crotch to her, waiting. He could not make the first move. This was his rule and he would stick by it. If she licked him it would be of her own volition.
His thighs were trembling, his chest was tight. He watched as she crouched down again, keen for the game of chase. She glanced at the thick pink worm in his lap, cocked her head to one side, a cute gesture that a young girl might make, curious and playful. Again he was making her human and this was the last thing he wanted. He looked to her tail, a little tentative wag, then a pause. She wanted him to play, she saw his cock and noted it but she wanted him to run with her or throw a stick or roll in the grass as puppies do. He waited till she stood and looked behind her as if there may be a more forthcoming playmate hidden across the fence in the neighbouring yard.
He was thinking it, a mantra, human words and he didn’t realise what he was doing till some of the words spilled out of his mouth and he heard them, a soft shaping of his breath with no force behind them, ‘please lick it, please lick it’. Human words. She would never understand them. He could pat his lap and shake his cock and make her notice his excitement but this would break his first and only rule. She had to make the gesture. He could not coerce her in any way. And so, after a time she trotted off. He watched her rump swaying as she wandered away and around to the back garden. Jesse slipped his penis awkwardly back into his jeans. He stood, damp and dejected, and climbed the fence for home.
* * *
Jill was surprised to see him. It was late, past midnight, perhaps closer to morning. There was still no light in the world and she was grateful for it. Just enough moonlight for him to see her. Jesse stopped, his eyes wide with his surprise as if she were a ghost sent to frighten him.
She supposed it looked pretty bad. She held her hand to her cheek as if the glare of the waning moon was too bright for her. She wondered if the shadow of her fingers would hide the worst of it. She had been crying and her face would be puffy, her nose bright red. She rubbed mucus away with the back of her hand. She was disgusting, nothing sexual about her at all and yet she wondered if he would remember the last time they met, if that little stiffening would be beginning inside his jeans. Such a tender little movement towards his shy desire. She glanced there. It was awful to think of sex at this time. Her vagina throbbed and there was a stinging sensation. There was blood. Her eye had already begun to swell. She had become a cliché, something you might film for an ad for the Smith Family. Still, if he were to have an erection now it would thrill he
r. She looked away from him. She was disgusted by herself.
She felt him sit beside her and her nipples darted to attention, an involuntary stirring. The warmth of his leg leached over to her. He didn’t reach for her, but it was as if his body heat was there to reassure her. She held her hand under her eye and caught the single tear on her finger tip, peering at it in the dark, surprised. She did not feel sad. She felt numb and broken but not sad. Still, if he were to touch her knee now she would probably cry. That’s how it worked. Any small sign of tenderness would be her undoing.
He cleared his throat and she chanced a glance at him. His sweet downcast eyes, his slim shoulders. His hands nervously picking at his own fingernails. If there were an anti-Kevin then this was it embodied. He had small thin fingers like a girl. She wished she could lean over and kiss them gently. It was wrong, of course, it was perverse, but if she could put his tiny flaccid penis in her mouth now she knew it would make her come again and the release might shift something in her. She might reactivate her feelings like a leg beset by pins and needles finally filling with blood.
‘I’ll call the police.’
She shook her head so violently that she winced, touched her fingers to her eye and realised that her lids had almost swelled shut. She would have to stay indoors for a week at least and even then she would have to wear heavy makeup. She took a shuddering breath and let it out in a sigh.
‘I don’t have to tell them who I am if you like. I’ll say I was passing and heard screaming coming from your flat. He’ll never know it was me.’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s my husband, Jesse.’
‘And so what? He can do whatever he likes to you because he married you?’
‘Love, honour, and obey.’
Review of Australian Fiction, Volume 3, Issue 2 Page 5