Andorra stood outside, Coochie on a leash.
The blood froze in my veins. Here was the moment I had been fearing.
“May we come in?” Andorra asked with a big, insincere smile. The dog wagged his tail, excited, probably foreseeing who knows which kind of filthy development.
No, no, no! I thought with all the power of my mind. However, I heard my voice answer politely: “Yes, of course, feel at home.” Oh, the hypocrisy of etiquette. I could have bitten off my tongue. But there was no escaping from destiny.
Oliver remained expressionless as he met the gaze of Andorra, then of the dog. Andorra was observing Oliver inquisitively, as if to perceive a penis improbably hidden between his eyes. The gay dog was salivating, detecting the smell of a friendly penis that it knew . . . in the biblical sense. Coochie pushed close to Oliver and insolently sniffed his genitals through the trousers. Was the trace of an erection swelling in there? Oliver’s forehead was knit. Did Coochie awake in him those dreams that I feared? Under no circumstances should I leave Oliver, and above all my penis, alone together with these two sexual jackals. As yet we were only in my hallway, which was quite large.
The doorbell rang again, and I turned to open the door once more. Etiquette!
Outside stood two mature women.
“We’re from the Church for the Protection of Genital Organs,” announced one of the ladies. “We’d like to interview you for our religious magazine.”
This church had sprung up recently. Advances in plastic surgery were making it possible to have one’s genitals exotically customized. Surely this insulted the sexual organs God designed for Adam and Eve and for all of us! Biblical believers had long since abandoned defending the sanctity of marriage as a lost cause; consequently they poured their piety into defending the sanctity of copulation as God intended, using the exact organs He provided, not pudenda reshaped into orchids or trumpets, or giant clitorises or bifurcated dicks.
As I later discovered, Bodies’r’Us – who approved of exact copies, not baroque variations – had given some money to the Church of PGO and encouraged them to interview me to make an interesting scene in the movie. Drawing the attention of the Church of PGO was a big mistake, as subsequent events proved. But meanwhile I got rid of the two women as quickly as possible, although not fast enough. When I turned back to my guests, they were not there anymore. Andorra and Coochie had vanished along with my Beloved and his/my penis!
Obviously they had gone into the lounge, but why then had they closed the door? Worry clutched at me. I gripped the door handle to follow them only to discover that the door was locked! With a shiver I imagined the spectators of the movie seeing my face turn pale at this point as the most horrible of scenes formed in my mind, of my beloved Oliver buggering the Labrador, who in turn was buggering Andorra, who, between moans, was sipping champagne from one of the crystal glasses my grandmother had left me in her will.
Was the artistic, romantic movie of reunion with the Oliver of my penis destined to turn into the usual bestiality porn reality show, the commonplace of television? I banged loudly on the door, but the only response was what sounded like a suffocated whine. Nobody came to let me in to my own lounge.
“Oliver!” I shouted. “Andorra!” For answer, just another whine.
This was too much. I fainted.
When I recovered, I was lying on the couch in the lounge. Andorra and Oliver were watching me with worried expressions. Coochie was sitting, looking sleepy.
“How long have I been unconscious?”
“A few minutes,” replied Andorra, whether this was true or not.
“We heard a thump and found you behind the door. You ought to have the handle seen to. I don’t think it works properly.”
Was she sincere?
“Why did you close the door at all?”
“To be discreet. You had visitors.” Oh, etiquette again. If I believed her.
I turned to Oliver. “What happened in here before you found me passed out?”
“What is passed or past is the turd of the Fall, come Springtime.”
In other words, No use crying over spilt milk? By which he might mean spilled semen. Did turd allude to a dog’s anus? To my mind those two items are always closely linked. Oliver was no help at all. I’d been getting along better with his, or rather my penis.
Ignoring the gaze of my Beloved, I looked lower, so as to distinguish within his pants my more beloved penis, probably the only part of Oliver which ever really loved me. That wasn’t difficult – an evident protuberance seemed likely to perforate his pants at any moment. Obviously Oliver’s penis was completely erect, the way I remembered it, the way I had long loved it. Hidden as it was by trousers, I couldn’t actually see it, and this seemed unjust. Forgetting about the presence of Andorra and the hidden cameras, instinctively I reached out a hand sweetly to caress my beloved penis, which I hadn’t seen – nor felt – in its full, majestic, generous erection for far too long. In the very moment when my hand grazed it, the penis imploded like a Hindenburg airship, deflating at once and evading my contact. Suddenly everything became atrociously clear beyond any doubt!
The penis itself could not know so quickly that it was me who touched it, because the trousers were a barrier to its sensitive nerve endings. Therefore the order to deflate must have come directly from the brain of Oliver. I became furious and shouted: “You treacherous fuckface prickhead, get out of my home! Get out, but leave my penis here!”
Seizing Oliver, I propelled him with all my strength out of the lounge, through the hall, to the front door. He didn’t resist but let himself be thrown out, although of course he took my/his penis with him. Those two damn churchwomen were still loitering outside, index fingers scribbling on smartscreens nestling in their palms. Were they inventing a nonexistent interview? Aurora and Coochie hurried past me without a word or a woof, and I slammed the door behind them. Then I allowed myself the wisest feminine recourse in emergency circumstances: I began to cry.
Oliver took up residence in Andorra’s flat. Some days later a man with the face of a mummified pig presented himself at my door.
“I’m the lawyer of the penis,” he introduced himself.
I discovered that the Church for the Protection of Genital Organs had arrogated to itself the right to represent the interests of Oliver’s penis. From Pigface I heard talk about the rights of genital organs to self-determination and about some Treaty of Independence from the Bearer of the Organ. Oh the mysteries of jurisprudence! The ways that lawyers get rich!
Pigface explained to me that Oliver’s penis had gained the status of an individual by virtue of having lived independently for a sufficient time before finding itself again attached to a human bearer. The Church for the Protection of Genital Organs was entitled to represent the penis because it was the first to claim that right, without the penis raising any objection.
“But the penis wouldn’t be able to understand any of this!”
“Exactly. So it needed legal representation.”
Later I learned how the judge at the court in question had become obsessed with making controversial landmark judgements in the hope of being retired soon with a knighthood or some other honour. The Church of PGO had been well aware of this.
In Andorra’s flat there were no hidden cameras. Andorra had refused the TV company permission to install any cameras in her home – probably so as not to expose to the world her affair with the dog. For the TV company and for Bodies’r’Us this was unacceptable. On the other hand, the impotence Oliver’s penis displayed toward me when it was attached to Oliver hardly made his return to my own home a very exciting prospect for Natalie and the other people involved in the production of the movie. The public doesn’t much care for erotic dramas with impotent characters. Therefore the lawyers for Natalie and Bodies’r’Us were petitioning to have Oliver and his penis separated again, so that the penis could go back to performing in the role that had made it so famous: the penis without a man.
/> The penis without its Oliver had already become a star. A poll revealed that as an anonymous part of a normal person it wouldn’t be so interesting to people.
The Church for the Protection of Genital Organs likewise wanted the penis to be separated from Oliver, yet not so that it could perform in porn movies or couple with me again, which they viewed as unnatural. Instead, they wanted it to retire to a Zen monastery. Oh, the moral obsessions of churches!
Thus there was conflict between the movie producers, with whom I had signed an agreement on behalf of the cloned Oliver, and the lawyers for the penis and the Church of PGO.
“We won’t allow you to go on sexually exploiting that poor penis,” Pigface told me at a deposition hearing.
“It’s a sexual organ. It was born to be sexually exploited,” I retorted.
“He’s an individual with full rights, included the right of freely choosing the modality of his sexuality.”
“It’s a penis. If it becomes hard, that means it wants to fuck.”
“Not at all! Diseases exist, such as priapism. Erection can be the symptom of a pathology.”
I decided to change my strategy.
“It’s a piece of meat without a brain. It’s not compos mentis.”
“Another reason to protect his dignity. We will never allow that poor penis to be forced into any more intercourses for which he didn’t give written consent.”
“How can a penis write anything?”
“If held properly, it can produce a DNA signature.”
“Without a prostate it can’t ejaculate, so where’s the ink?”
“We can prepare all necessary documents before the separation.”
Suits and countersuits were heard, and the lawyers were all very happy until at last no legal problems prohibited the penis being separated from Oliver. Final judgement was that since the penis was cloned before the body, it was the one who owned the other, and not the contrary. The penis owned the man, namely the cloned Oliver; Oliver did not own the penis. If it’s legitimate for a man to cut off his own penis, provided that he isn’t attempting suicide, logically the penis could decide to cut off its own man. The lawyer for the penis, as his legal representative, had full power to act in this regard – and to steal the penis of my Beloved, I was thinking in anger and frustration.
The judge duly retired and became a Lord.
* * *
However, we live in a strange and unpredictable world.
Under its various Patriot Acts, the USA had permitted itself to intervene in any part of the world in defense of its homeland security and its supplies of oil and cheap obesity fast food full of oil and sugar and additives. To signal to the world its rise as a rival superpower, China enacted the Salvation of Culture Law, by which the Chinese gave themselves the right to intervene anywhere to protect the interests of art. This was something that the American government found hard to understand, so they did not threaten the Chinese with thermonuclear war.
If the USA was the Global Cop, China would be the Global Curator. A popular US slogan was Kick Ass America! So Beijing declared Save Art China! – and why not, China being the oldest civilization on Earth? When Venice began to sink rapidly, swift intervention by Chinese technology had rescued the Italian city, preserving it in a dome to the applause of most nations. From then on, China could take great liberties in the defense of art.
Art included performance art, and one of the many ways of preserving art was Gor-Gon, a polymerizing nanotechnology inspired by Gunther Von Hagen’s corpse plastination factory in the northeastern Chinese port city of Dalian. In just a few seconds, a jab of Gor-Gon administered by injection or by a dart fired from a gun could transform any living being into plastinated artwork, petrifying forever (though by no means as stiffly as stone) the target animal or person at that moment.
The penis had been quite a performer; and the legal case was by now notorious worldwide, as was the prospect of cloned penis and cloned person parting company. So Chinese art agents targeted Oliver. Already Chinese art agents had over-enthusiastically targeted several famous opera singers and actors for a Hall of Fame. Since the salvation of Venice the Chinese could do pretty much as they pleased, but plastinating artists suddenly while they were on stage caused demands for ticket refunds, arguments about civil rights, and also poorer performances by many divas and stars who didn’t wish to be plastinated; which was all very regrettable and counterproductive. So this was made illegal. But according to Chinese law plastinating a clone was just as acceptable as plastinating a criminal for export to medical schools . . .
I’m so lucky. At the moment of petrification, the penis of my former Beloved was fully erect – he had to be slid out of Andorra by the Chinese agents who invaded her flat. So now I live in China, inside a big transparent cube. I couple with the penis attached to Oliver whenever I want. Plastination keeps the penis stiff, yet soft and comfortable to use. Of course plastinated Oliver never says a thing, nor moves, although I arrange him artistically just as I please.
Outside the cube every day crowds of visiting art lovers and connoisseurs admire us and shoot holographic movies, so that we never feel alone. Inside the cube, the air is always fresh and rich in happy-making hormones. The Chinese takeaway meals supplied to me free are so varied and delicious. Life is beautiful! Or maybe life is simply too complex to understand.
Cherry Bottom
Shanna Germain
“You okay, babe?” Andrew’s voice above me was half sexual rasp, half concerned. His warm, oiled hands had moved from the outside curves of my ass to the inside of my thighs, and they were resting there, not pulling or teasing, just resting against my skin. I kept my eyes and mouth closed like I was supposed to and tried not to think about my naked ass in the air. I nodded against the pillow.
“She’ll tell you if she’s not,” Miss Suzanne voice came from the other side of me. “Won’t you, Cate?” I nodded again, the rasp of the pillow filling my ear. Miss Suzanne pressed her cool, slim fingers next to Andrew’s, higher up on the inside of my thigh. The hot and cold of their hands made my ass break out in goose bumps. “See, Andrew? She’ll tell you. So stop stalling.”
Miss Suzanne’s fingers left my skin. Her heels click-clicked away, presumably to another one of the six couples whose husband was also stalling.
Andrew’s hands didn’t move. I waited, head on my hands, belly and thighs resting on the prop-up pillow, ass in the air. My bare body was still in goose bumps, although the room was warm enough. Some of it was anticipation. But most of it was fear – Miss Suzanne’s anal sex class was our last resort. If we couldn’t get Andrew over his fear of anal sex here, I was afraid it was never going to happen.
It had been difficult enough to ask for it – the way I was brought up, girls aren’t supposed to like any sex. And they definitely aren’t supposed to like it the way I liked it. And poor Andrew – he wanted so badly to please me, but couldn’t get over his fear of hurting me. No matter how many times I told him, no matter how much I begged for it. We’d tried videos and books. I’d even bought the smallest butt-plug at the store. Straw-sized, really, but still, he couldn’t bring himself to put anything inside me. Not even just a little bit. Bad experience, was all he’d say. But this class had been his gift to me, and I knew he wanted to please me that way, even if he was too afraid. So, now, here we were, being taught anal sex by Miss Suzanne Saunders, southern belle turned sex therapist. Our first two classes had been lecture and book-learning. Today was hands-on. Today was our last chance.
I concentrated on letting my muscles go loose, on breathing in through my nose. We’d just spent ten minutes playing, getting warmed up. A little strange, to share foreplay with a dozen other people in the room, but every time I looked up, they were all concentrating on their own space, their own bodies. It was like a yoga class in the nude. And despite his fears about anal, Andrew didn’t seem to have any fears about public sex. He just ran his tongue up and down between my thighs, reached up and ran his we
t thumb over and over my nipple until I could only lean back and try to keep my moans quiet.
I wanted this so badly, I could already feel him inside me, the fullness of him, the weight. The way his balls would slap against me. Jesus, it had been so long, I could barely remember how it felt. I took a deep breath, tried to think of something else for a minute, to be calm so that Andrew would be calm.
Andrew’s fingers held steady at the inside of my thigh, one second, two. Then he ran them up through the crack between my cheeks. With one hand, he spread my ass cheeks open. With the other, he circled the skin around my asshole. Part of our class had been learning the anatomy of the asshole, getting used to its pink pucker, its hairless expanse of skin. Knowing that Andrew was looking at me like that, that he was studying me, made my pussy ache for his fingers. My asshole too. I wanted to reach my fingers underneath me, to ease the ache in my clit, but we weren’t supposed to move, so I squeezed my eyes tighter and tried to enjoy the ache. Maybe I could learn something too.
Andrew’s finger went around and around, tighter and tighter circles toward my asshole. The tip of his finger against it and I could barely breath. I wanted him, any part of him inside me so bad. He held his finger there, not moving it in or out . . . just resting his finger against it like it was a button he was deciding whether or not to press.
Miss Suzanne’s heels click-clicked toward the front of the room. “Okay, boys, I want you to get your fingers really well lubed, the way we talked about earlier. We’re going in.”
The class broke into nervous giggles. I was glad to hear Andrew’s snort, the same one he gave at the comic strips at home. But his finger at my ass didn’t move. Against my legs, his thigh muscles tightened.
C’mon, baby. C’mon . . . mental telepathy, the only encouragement I could offer him. I hoped he could hear. That he could hear me begging, could hear how much I wanted him like this.
Miss Suzanne and her heels again, right at our table. “Can I help, Andrew?” she asked. He must have said yes, because then her cool fingers were at my ass cheeks again, spreading them for him. My asshole puckered up against the cold. My tightening nipples crinkled the paper sheet beneath me.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 7 Page 17