She says, “I like it that you appreciate women. I know you might not believe me because of that letter. But honestly, I rarely get possessive,” she says.
I know you should never trust a woman who says she doesn’t get possessive, but I’m starting to think not a lot of conventions apply to Bride.
“I like a variety. I’m being healthy about it.” I’m not letting go of her wrist. And she doesn’t try too hard to pull her hand away. She sighs as I lick her there, gently. Her skin is hot; I can feel the microscopic pulse of the veins against my lips.
“Yeah, me too. I’m healthy about that too. I don’t need to prove anything,” she says, and I have to wonder: how many lovers, realistically, could she have had? But then again, if she has the same effect on the rest of the male population as she has on me, the count could be quite high. And a girl who knows her value, who understands her power, is a hundred times more powerful than I could ever be.
The sad thing is, many girls pervert this power by becoming demanding, impossible to please – or worse, they let some asshole tell them that they’re not all that. Then they spend the rest of their lives looking for validation – in diets, in more inadequate boyfriends, and later, in children, in plastic surgeries, in who-has-more competitions. If it wasn’t for men like me, many of those women would never know they’re worth more than they think they are.
“What happens when you meet someone?” I say, as lightheartedly as I can.
“Oh, they like me, I like them a little bit. They cry, I don’t. You know, same thing you do. I leave. They all turn boring eventually. Well, not even boring, not all of them, but predictable. I mean, sooner or later, something comes out, some kind of bullshit, some hang-up, and I get stuck with having to be the caring, loving girlfriend. Which I’m not. Not at all.”
I wonder about the friend she dropped out of school for. I wonder if someone took advantage of her sticking around for too long. If she got trapped with some sad-eyed loser. If she found herself betraying her free spirit. I wonder if this is just bluffing. I wonder too much.
I hope she’s not bored with me.
***
Eventually, we take a longer break to eat something substantial. I’m happy to be in the kitchen. My body is pleasantly woozy from all the fucking and lying around. I make a Moroccan-style spicy chicken sandwich with tomatoes, olives, almonds and a tomato-currant relish.
Bride eats silently, methodically, as if this were a task. In bed, she’s sensual and playful, game for anything I ask her to do. Here, she’s just masticating. I’ve seen her type of eater before, one who eats just because she needs to get it over with, not necessarily unappreciative of the food, but unable to appreciate the pleasure of eating.
“Very good,” she says when she’s done. She shakes her foot; her flip-flop, hanging off the toes, does not fall off. “Cunt,” she says quietly.
I take my time with my own meal. I chew slowly, letting every bite expand into its full flavour. I love the smooth, springy texture of the olives. I suck the juices out of the morsels of meat. The crispiness and smoothness of the almonds, the sweet, sour kick of the currants.
She continues shaking her foot. She sighs.
“You okay?” I say.
“I hate slow eaters,” she says.
“I hate children,” I say.
***
She puts on a little summer dress. We go outside. I feel myself sobering up. In my head, questions demand to be answered.
“What happened with the smoothie shack?”
“It wasn’t my thing.”
“When did you quit?”
“Maybe the night I met you? But don’t worry, it has nothing to do with you. The place sucked, that’s all. Why?”
“I asked the kid who worked there about you and he seemed surprised. He laughed when I asked for Bride.”
“How many times are we going to go over this? You wanna see my ID?”
“No, of course not. I believe you. Listen, I’m the guy with Guy for a name, so I should talk. You okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. Sure.”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t. But stop bringing it up. It’s weird. You’re being weird.”
“Sorry,” I say. I’ve never been accused of being weird. It feels gross. And the fact that I just said sorry feels small and desperate.
We walk in silence. The beach is full of Fours and Fives, but I can barely focus. Bellies and nipples and asses and knees and hair. A parade of body parts. Nothing stands out.
Bride’s bright voice snaps me out of it. “We could be like sexual Natural Born Killers. I could find girls for you,” she says. She grabs my arm. We stop, facing each other. Her face is flushed. “Instead of killing people, we’d fuck them.”
“Right.”
“I could really help you,” she says.
“Help me.”
“I’m gonna bring you the girls and you can do the rest.”
“Hilarious.”
She almost shouts, “I’m serious.”
“Okay.”
“I’d befriend girls and then bring them over so you could have fun with them, you know, fulfill your endless appetite. For variety. Virgins for the dragon.”
“You are crazy,” I say and try not to think about Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, the serial killers Dolores was fascinated with. Is that how all of that started?
I have to bend over and place my hands on my knees. While doing this, I think up a fantasy: Bride in her girly dresses, talking to other girls, holding elbows, heads touching, bald heads and hairy heads in the sun, laughing, chewing on straws in their drinks, spraying liquid out of their noses, Bride bringing them over to my lair, music pounding, everybody, all the girls, jumping on my bed.
“Guy?”
“I’m good.” I straighten up, start walking.
She trots along; tiny feet, tiny steps. “No, but seriously, eh? Don’t you think that would be cool?” she says.
“How would you know what I like?”
“Oh, I’d know. I’d figure it out eventually.”
I imagine taking Bride for one of my walks, showing her what I’m looking for, teaching her to observe and notice the specific plainness: the girls that look as if someone just slapped their features together, fat asses or asses that are flat like a pancake. She’d be hurt to learn of these girls, I’m sure. She’d wonder if she had the same appeal to me, and I’d have to explain that she hadn’t, in fact – well, maybe just barely – and that her appeal is not of the same sort. It might’ve started that way, I’ll say. But that’s all.
“What about her?” She points to a group of girls, her age or maybe younger. “The one in the green bikini.”
I isolate the one in the green bikini, and she is curvy, with hair like a sheet of burned gold, mouth full of lips and teeth, but perfectly proportionate.
I shake my head.
“Seriously, Guy. Look at her,” Bride says. I pay attention to her voice. Nothing in it suggests she’s getting upset over this. It doesn’t sound as if this was one of those girl tests, checking what or whom I’m attracted to so that she can twist it into a fight.
I say, carefully, “No. Not my type. Perhaps the other one, the one in the stripey one-piece.”
“What? Her?”
“I don’t know, there’s something about her,” I say.
“She’s a fucking fire hydrant. I’m sorry.”
“Yes. That’s why I like her. Take a closer look.”
I wait. I wait for her to observe the girl carefully, and she does. I watch her eyes zero in on the girl. I bend down to stroke Dog’s bumpy head.
Bride sighs, “She’s just so –”
“Yeah,” I say. “Plain. That’s it. Let’s go,” I say, and pull her along.
We walk all the way to the end of the beach in silence. I watch Bride looking at groups of girls and couples and individual girls around us, and I imagine my eyes seeing through hers, seeing through the awakening of her
eyes. I imagine my eyes blending with hers, teaching them to see what I see.
***
When we get back to my place, we both drink a glass of vanilla-protein smoothie.
“Tell me more.” She sets her glass down.
“Okay. It’s like a fetish. But not quite. They’re not essential to my fulfillment of sexual pleasure. It’s more cerebral. It’s all about me, but it doesn’t work if they’re not involved the way I need them to be.”
“So you want these girls to worship you?”
“Not exactly. You see, a girl like that, a plain girl, would never have a chance to be with someone like me, right? I mean, I know it’s arrogant, but I’m simply stating the facts. Beautiful women often pair up with unattractive, plain men. It’s not fair, but it happens. Why does it happen? Because of power, money, control. A beautiful woman wants control and money and power, and he wants her beauty. They work out an arrangement and everyone is happy. But what about a woman who’s not attractive? A woman who’s not only unattractive, but has no other power? A girl who is not yet formed, but who already knows enough about the world to not let herself have any hope about her ability to attract guys, interesting, smart, attractive guys? You see, if I give her the illusion that it’s possible for her to be desired by someone beautiful and successful, I may open her up to so many possibilities, may even give her enough boost to do something interesting and powerful with her life –”
“But what makes you think that she won’t anyway? This is bananas.” Bride doesn’t sound angry.
“Yes. Yes, she might. But sadly, the world values women based on their looks, and sadly, most women base their own value on looks. So I’m just responding to that, nothing else. I bring joy to girls who would otherwise have to wait for joy for a long time. Maybe forever.”
Bride’s big brown eyes scan my face cautiously. But I can’t stop now. “It gives me great joy to awaken this in them. I delight in knowing that I’m their first love – this doesn’t happen every time, of course, but still, it happens. It’s a lovely thing, Bride. I enjoy knowing that they go out into the world feeling like princesses. Feeling like they could do just about anything.”
“You think they feel this because of you? You seriously think this way?” She’s not raising her voice or making any ugly faces when she says this. She says this with the same calmness as when she asked me for a vanilla-protein smoothie.
“Why not? Why shouldn’t I believe it? Bride, look at me. It’s a dick thing to say, but I’m a catch, don’t you think?”
She gives a little smirk.
“Why do people always shit on those who admit to being awesome? I’m awesome, and I won’t let people shit on me – what’s wrong with that? And I believe that I was put on this earth to bring a few girls some great memories, some happiness even – what’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with that,” she says.
“I hope you mean that. I really do. It’s important to live honestly, don’t you think? To live in a way that’s closest to our nature.”
“Yeah, sure. I guess it’s refreshing.” Her are eyes down.
I worry that I’ve said too much.
But how could I have said too much? I just told the truth. Fine, she can hate me for it, for admitting who I am, but that’s on her and not on me, and there’s nothing I can do about it now.
“I’m going upstairs. I apologize if I’ve offended you. That was not my intention,” I say. I go up to her and give her a quick peck on the cheek. She’s stiff, but she tilts her head to receive the kiss.
I go upstairs without looking back. She’ll probably leave now. I expect her to leave. I’ve offended her. I enjoy having her around, but perhaps I’ve overestimated her level of comfort and understanding. Also, I’m hurt about her rejecting my philosophies. At the same time, this could be a good start to my detachment process.
The door clicks gently downstairs. No big deal.
I go downstairs to see what the house looks like without her in it. I take the empty smoothie glass out of the sink. I throw the empty smoothie glass against the wall. It explodes, shards and milky bits flying everywhere.
Now I finally know what it’s like to throw a glass against the wall.
29
I DREAM OF RUNNING THROUGH A DARK, MOSSY FOREST, MY paws and my face covered with grit and stickiness, my fur filled with breeze, my fur like breeze itself, nothing like what I’d expect fur to feel like. My fur filtering the nightly heat, cooling me down as I run and jump over broken branches, step on wet grass, bounce off of rocks sinking in marshes.
The moon is full. I run. I brush against the raw bark of trees. I feel my skin getting torn by something sharp that grazes my side in a narrow passage between trees, but I don’t stop.
I see in the dark; my nose can see in the dark. I see everything; I see with every sense in me. My teeth are bared and the wind smashes against them; my fangs are like antennae, feeling out the next pulsing artery somewhere in the distance, ahead of me. My mouth is wet, soaked. Blood. Most of it not mine. It mixes with my own blood, pumping into the fibres of my muscles, muscles so purposeful they’re shaped like wings, thousands of wings interlocked with one another, making me speed ahead, making me fly, till I crash mid-flight, falling …
Falling …
***
I’m awoken by a creature, a succubus, straddling me with slim, strong thighs. One narrow hand clamped over my eyes, the other hand reaching down to pull my dick from under her ass, and as she does, her hand over my eyes moves slightly and I see her, my bald-headed demon bride, my belladonna.
She inserts me inside herself. She moves steadily up and down, exceedingly fast, thighs tensing and releasing. I reach for her hips to try to slow her down, impale her further onto me, but she pushes my hands away, shakes her head no. Her face is blank, it’s a mask, and up and down like a machine she goes. The first waves of pleasure well up deep in my lower abdomen – I struggle to remember something mundane, something to distract me from too-early release. Someone. The journalist who called to get the Grey Campaign story. What was her name? I picture her how I imagined her: a big, wide body. Celia.
My mind does its own thing. Big Celia. She’s splayed out on some couch. She’s wearing beige stockings and nothing else. Her mascaraed eyes are closed and there’s a hand going in and out of her inserting bottles, vegetables – and I have to stop and quickly multiply twelve by fourteen, which is ten by ten, which is one hundred, and then two more tens and four more tens, which is sixty on top of one hundred, is that correct? And two times four, which is eight, so that’s one hundred and sixty plus eight, so that’s one hundred and sixty-eight –
“Guy, Guy.” Bride’s voice breaks through, shattering my hundred and sixty-eight into mercury pellets all over my brain.
“Guy, baby,” she pants. She has stopped moving and she’s just sitting with my dick inside her. She’s giving off a scent, hot tartness and salt and something else, something extra that’s not entirely human – residue from a muddy run through the forest.
“What you told me. It’s a great idea. The girls,” she breathes loudly.
“Oh.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s fine, so good.” She moves up and immediately bears down. Our groins are a swamp of sourness that’s pouring out of her. I won’t be able to hold for that much longer.
“But I want you to do something for me. I have a strange, ah, thing too. I want you to –” she says, and goes up again. Six times thirteen is sixty plus six times three –
“I want you to choke me,” she says. “You told me yours, so I’m telling you mine.” Now she’s not moving at all.
Choke her. I reach with my hands and pull her down, pull her closer to me. “How do you want me to do it?” I feel her pulse around my dick, just a tiny wave of muscle squeezing, like a wink.
“Just put your hand around my neck and squeeze. Keep going until I give you a sign. I’ll close my eyes. Stop when I do. I don’t actually want to die
.” She giggles a little. “Don’t give me that look. Trust me,” she says.
“I need to trust you so you won’t let me hurt you?” I say.
“Exactly.” She gets off of me and lies on her back. She moves her hand slowly above her beautiful, stretched-out, moonlit body, presenting herself to me.
What if I won’t know how to stop, won’t be able to control myself well enough? What if something springs out of me and tries to attack her, tries to kill her once I unleash it?
She moves her hips, pulling me deeper. My mind is filled with images from my dream: running through the forest, face covered in blood, speeding, feeling the wind wrap around me as I gain momentum. There’s tingling, electricity gathering deep inside me.
She stares back at me. She nods a small nod and I wrap a hand around her tiny neck. I feel the gentle swell of her throat underneath the pad of my palm.
I tighten my grip.
She gives another nod. Tighter.
I go tighter. I feel her throat contracting, a worming movement underneath my hand as she swallows.
She gives another nod.
My grip is really tight now. This might bruise her, so I loosen my grip a bit, but she shakes her head and mouths don’t, don’t.
This is a satanic challenge. But I know she wants to see if I’m capable of meeting it, if I’m at her level, if I’m not boring. I imagine dozens of little boys before me panicking, stopping, or worse, fuck-this-shit stopping, or worse still, telling her to get the hell out, calling her a freak.
I don’t want to be a disappointment. I can’t be a disappointment. I want to be her first love. I want to be the one to break the spell, make her fall for me, whatever it takes. So I tighten my hand around her neck, my fingers digging into her skin, too deeply now.
She grimaces but I keep tightening my grip. I feel my nails breaking her skin and I imagine I feel the wetness, blood, seeping from underneath my nails and I tighten –
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