Choke

by Chuck Palahniuk

  Denny tips the boulder out of the stroller, and it lands in the tall grass beside the sidewalk. He shakes out the pink blanket and hands me two corners. Between us, we fold it, and Denny says, “If you can have the opposite of a role model, he’d be my Uncle Don.”

  Then Denny flops the folded blanket into the stroller and starts to push the stroller toward home.

  And I call after him, “Dude. You don’t want this rock?”

  And Denny says, “Those mothers against drunk driving, for sure, they threw a party when they found out old Don Menning was dead.”

  Wind lifts and crushes the tall grass. Nobody but plants lives here now, and across the dark center of the block you can see the porch lights of houses on the other side. The black zigzags of old apple trees are outlines in between.

  “So,” I go, “is this a park?”

  And Denny says, “Not really.” Still walking away, he says, “It’s mine.”

  I pitch the doll head at him and say, “For real?”

  “Since my folks called a couple days ago,” he says, and he catches the head and drops it into the stroller. Under the streetlights, past everybody’s dark house, we walk.

  My buckle shoes flashing, my hands stuffed in my pockets, I say, “Dude?” I say, “You don’t really think I’m anything like Jesus Christ, do you?”

  I say, “Please say no.”

  We walk.

  And pushing his empty stroller, Denny says, “Face it, dude. You nearly did sex on God’s table. You’re already shame spiraling big-time.”

  We walk, and the beer’s wearing off, and it’s a surprise how the night air’s so cold.

  And I say, “Please, dude. Tell me the truth.”

  I’m not good and kind and caring or any of that happy horse-shit.

  I’m nothing but a thoughtless, brain-dead, loser dude. That I can live with. This is who I am. Just a puss-pounding, seam-reaming, dog-driving, fucking helpless sex addict asshole, and I can’t ever, ever let myself forget that.

  I say, “Tell me again I’m an insensitive asshole.”

  Chapter 27

  How tonight’s supposed to work is I hide in the bedroom closet while the girl’s taking a shower. Then when she comes out all shiny with sweat, the air steamy and fogged with hair spray and perfume, she comes out naked except for a lacy bathrobe. Then I jump out with some pantyhose stretched over my face and wearing sunglasses. I throw her on the bed. I put a knife to her throat. Then I rape her.

  Simple as that. The shame spiral continues.

  Just keep asking yourself: “What would Jesus NOT do?”

  Only I can’t rape her on the bed, she says, the spread is pale pink silk and will spot. And not on the floor because the carpet hurts her skin. We agreed on the floor, but on a towel. Not a good guest towel, she said. She told me she’d leave a ratty towel on the dresser, and I’d need to spread it on the floor ahead of time so as not to break the mood.

  She’d leave the bedroom window unlocked before she got in the shower.

  So I’m hiding in the closet, naked with all her dry cleaning sticking to me, the pantyhose over my head, wearing sunglasses and holding the dullest knife I could find, waiting. The towel’s spread on the floor. The pantyhose are so hot my face is running with sweat. The hair plastered to my head starts to itch.

  Not by the window, she’d told me. And not by the fireplace. She said to rape her near the armoire, but not too near. She said to try and spread the towel in a high-traffic area where the carpet wouldn’t show as much wear.

  This is a girl named Gwen I met in the Recovery section of a bookstore. It’s hard to say who picked up whom, but she was pretending to read a twelve-step book about sexual addiction, and I was wearing my lucky camo pants and cruising her over a copy of the same book, and I figured what’s one more dangerous liaison.

  Birds do it. Bees do it.

  I need that rush of endorphins. To tranquilize me. I crave the peptide phenylethylamine. This is who I am. An addict. I mean, who’s counting?

  In the bookstore coffee shop, Gwen said to get some rope, but not nylon rope because it hurt too much. Hemp gives her an inflamed rash. Black electrical tape would work, too, but not over her mouth, and not duct tape.

  “Pulling off duct tape,” she said, “is about as erotic as getting my legs waxed.”

  We compared our schedules, and Thursday was out. Friday I had my regular sexaholics meeting. No chits for me this week. Saturday I spent at St. Anthony’s. Most Sunday nights she helped run a bingo event at her church, so we settled on Monday. Monday at nine, not eight, because she worked until late in the evening, and not ten because I had to be at work early the next morning.

  So Monday comes. The electrical tape is ready. The towel’s spread, and when I leap at her with the knife she says, “Are those my pantyhose you’re wearing?”

  I twist one of her arms behind her back and put the chilled blade to her throat.

  “For crying out loud,” she says. “This is way out of bounds. I said you could rape me. I did not say you could ruin my pantyhose.”

  With my knife hand, I grab the front edge of her lacy bathrobe and try to tug it off her shoulder.

  “Stop, stop, stop,” she says and slaps my hand away, “Here, let me do it. You’re just going to ruin it.” She twists away from me.

  I ask if I can take off my sunglasses.

  “No,” she says and slips out of her robe. Then she goes to the open closet and hangs the robe on a padded hanger.

  But I can’t hardly see.

  “Don’t be so selfish,” she says. Naked now, she takes my hand and presses it around one of her wrists. Then she slips her arm behind her back, turning to press her bare back to me. My dog’s nosing higher and higher, and her warm slick butt crack’s gumming me, and she says, “I need you to be a faceless attacker.”

  I tell her it’s too embarrassing to buy a pair of pantyhose. A guy buying pantyhose is either a criminal or a pervert; either way the cashier will hardly take your money.

  “Jeez, quit whining,” she says. “Every rapist I’ve ever been with has brought his own pantyhose.”

  Plus I tell her, when you’re looking at the pantyhose rack, they have all those colors and sizes. Nude, charcoal, beige, tan, black, cobalt, and none of them come in just “head-sized.”

  She twists her face away and groans. “Can I tell you something? Can I tell you just one thing?”

  I say, what?

  And she says, “Your breath is really bad.”

  Back in the bookstore coffee shop, while we were still scripting, she said, “Make sure and put the knife in a freezer beforehand. I need it to be really really cold.”

  I asked if maybe we could just use a rubber knife.

  And she said, “The knife is very important to my total experience.”

  She said, “It’s best if you put the edge of the knife to my throat before it gets to room temperature.”

  She said, “But be careful, because if you cut me by accident”—she leaned toward me over the table, jabbing her chin at me—“if you even scratch me, I swear I’ll have you in jail before you can get your pants back on.”

  She sipped her herbal chai and set the cup back in its saucer and said, “My sinuses would appreciate it if you didn’t wear any kind of cologne or aftershave or deodorant with a strong scent, because I’m very sensitive.”

  These horny sexaholic chicks, they have such a high tolerance. They just can’t not get banged. They just can’t stop, no matter how degrading things get.

  God, how I love being codependent.

  In the coffee shop, Gwen lifts her purse into her lap and digs around inside it. “Here,” she says and unfolds a photocopied list of the details she wants to include. At the top of the list it says: Rape is about power. It is not romantic. Do not fall in love with me. Do not kiss me on the mouth. Do not expect to linger after the act. Do not ask to use my bathroom.

  That Monday night in her bedroom, pressed into me naked, she says, �
�I want you to hit me.” She says, “But not too hard and not too soft. Just hit me hard enough so I come.”

  One of my hands is holding her arm behind her back. She’s grinding her butt against me, and she’s got a kick-ass tanned little bod except her face is pale and waxy with too much moisturizer. In the mirrored closet door, I can see her front with my face peeking over her shoulder. Her hair and sweat pools in the crack where my chest and her back press together. Her skin has that hot-plastic tanning-bed smell. My other hand is holding the knife, so I ask, does she want me to hit her with the knife?

  “No,” she says. “That would be stabbing. Hitting someone with a knife is stabbing.” She says, “Put the knife down and use your open hand.”

  So I go to toss the knife.

  And Gwen says, “Not on the bed.”

  So I toss the knife on the dresser, and I raise my hand to slap. From behind her, this is really awkward.

  And she says, “But not in the face.”

  So I move my hand a little lower.

  And she says, “And do not hit my breasts unless you want to give me lumps.”

  See also: Cystic mastitis.

  She says, “How about if you just slap my ass.”

  And I say, how about if she just shuts up and lets me rape her my way.

  And Gwen says, “If that’s how you feel, you can just take your little penis and run along home now.”

  Since she’s just out of the shower, her bush is soft and full, not matted down the way it is when you first take off a woman’s underwear. My free hand creeps around to between her legs, and she feels fake, rubbery and plastic. Too smooth. A little greasy.

  I say, “What’s with your vagina?”

  Gwen looks down at herself and says, “What?” She says, “Oh, that. It’s a Femidom, a female condom. The edges stick out like that. I don’t want you giving me any diseases.”

  Is it just me, I say, but I thought rape was supposed to be more spontaneous, you know, a crime of passion.

  “That shows you don’t know shit about how to rape anybody,” she says. “A good rapist will plan his crime meticulously. He ritualizes every little detail. This should be almost like a religious ceremony.”

  What happens here, Gwen says, is sacred.

  In the bookstore coffee shop, she’d passed me the photocopied sheet and said, “Can you agree to all these terms?”

  The sheet said, Do not ask where I work.

  Do not ask if you’re hurting me.

  Do not smoke in my house.

  Do not expect to stay the night.

  The sheet says, The safe word is POODLE.

  I ask what she means by a safe word.

  “If the scene gets too heavy or if it isn’t working for one of us,” she says, “you just say ‘poodle’ and the action stops.”

  I ask if I get to shoot my wad.

  “If it’s all that important to you,” she says.

  Then I say, okay, where do I sign?

  These pathetic sexaholic chicks. They’re so damn dick-hungry.

  Without her clothes, she looks a little bony. Her skin feels hot and damp as if you could squeeze out warm soapy water. Her legs are so thin they don’t touch until her ass. Her little flat breasts seem to cling to her rib cage. Still holding her arm behind her back, watching ourselves in the mirrored closet door, she has the long neck and sloped shoulders of a wine bottle.

  “Stop, please,” she says. “You’re hurting me. Please, I’ll give you money.”

  I ask, how much?

  “Stop, please,” she says. “Or I’ll scream.”

  So I drop her arm and step away. “Don’t scream,” I say. “Just do not scream.”

  Gwen sighs and then hauls off and punches me in the chest. “You moron!” she says. “I didn’t say ‘poodle.’ ”

  It’s the sexual equivalent of Simon Sez.

  She twists back into my grip. Then she walks us over to the towel and says, “Wait.” She goes to the dresser and comes back with a pink plastic vibrator.

  “Hey,” I say, “you’re not using that on me.”

  Gwen shudders and says, “Of course not. This is mine.”

  And I say, “So what about me?”

  And she says, “Sorry, next time bring your own vibrator.”

  “No,” I say, “what about my penis?”

  And she says, “What about your penis?”

  And I ask, “How does it fit into all this?”

  Settling herself on the towel, Gwen shakes her head and says, “Why do I do this? Why do I always pick the guy who just wants to be nice and conventional? The next thing you’ll want to do is marry me.” She says, “Just one time, I’d like to have an abusive relationship. Just once!”

  She says, “You can masturbate while you rape me. But only on the towel and only if you don’t slop any on me.”

  She spreads the towel out around her ass and pats a little area of terry cloth next to her. “When it’s time,” she says, “you can put your orgasm right here.”

  Her hand goes pat, pat, pat.

  Uh, okay, I say, now what?

  Gwen sighs and sticks the vibrator in my face. “Use me!” she says. “Degrade me, you stupid idiot! Demean me, you jerk-off! Debase me!”

  It’s not really clear where the switch is, so she has to show me how to turn it on. Then it’s buzzing so hard I drop it. Then it’s jumping around on the floor, and I have to catch the damn thing.

  Gwen brings her knees up and they drop off to each side the way a book drops open, and I kneel on the edge of the towel and work the buzzing tip just inside the soft plastic edges of her. I work my dog with my other hand. Her calves are shaved and taper to curved feet with blue polish on the nails. She’s laid back with her eyes closed and her legs spread. Holding her hands together and stretched above her head so her breasts pull up into perfect little handfuls, she says, “No, Dennis, no. I don’t want this, Dennis. Don’t. No. You can’t have me.”

  And I say, “My name is Victor.”

  And she says to shut up and let her concentrate.

  And I try to give us both a good time, but this is the sex equivalent of rubbing your stomach and patting your head. Either I’m focused on her or I’m focusing on myself. Either way, it’s the same as a bad three-way. One of us is always getting left out. Plus the vibrator is slippery and hard to hang on to. It’s heating up and smells acrid and smoky as if something’s burning inside.

  Gwen opens one eye just a sliver, squinting down at my flogging the dog, and says, “Me first!”

  I’m wrestling my dog. I’m snaking Gwen. I’m snaking Gwen. This feels less like I’m a rapist than I’m a plumber. The edges of the Femidom keep slipping inside, and I have to stop and pick them out with two fingers.

  Gwen says, “Dennis, no, Dennis, stop, Dennis,” her voice coming up from deep in her throat. She pulls her own hair and gasps. The Femidom slips inside again, and I just let it go. The vibrator tamps it deeper and deeper. She says to play with her nipples with my other hand.

  I say, I need my other hand. My dice draw up tight and ready to trigger, and I say, “Oh yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah.”

  And Gwen says, “Don’t you dare,” and she licks two fingers. She pins her eyes on mine and works her wet fingers between her legs, racing me.

  And all I have to do is picture Paige Marshall, my secret weapon, and the race is over.

  The second before you trigger, that feeling when your asshole starts to clench, that’s when I turn toward the little spot on the towel Gwen said. Feeling stupid and paper-trained, my white soldiers start to toss, and maybe by accident they misjudge the trajectory and toss across her pink bedspread. Her whole big soft puffy pink landscape. Arc after arc sprays out, in hot cramping gobs of all sizes, all over the spread and the pillow shams, and the pink silk bed skirt.

  What would Jesus NOT do?

  Spunk graffiti.

  “Vandalism” isn’t the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind.

  Gwen’s
collapsed on the towel panting with her eyes closed, the vibrator humming inside her. Her eyes rolled back in her head, she’s gushing between her fingers and whispering, “I beat you …”

  She whispers, “You son of a bitch, I beat you … ”

  I’m tucking myself back in my pants and grabbing my coat. White soldier gobs are hanging all over the bed, the drapes, the wallpaper, and Gwen’s still lying there, breathing hard, the vibrator angled halfway out of her. A second later, it slips free and flops around on the floor like a fleshy wet fish. It’s then Gwen opens her eyes. She starts to push herself up on her elbows before she sees the damage.

  I’m halfway out the window when I say, “Oh, by the way … ”

  I say, “Poodle,” and behind me I hear her first scream for real.

  Chapter 28

  In the summer of 1642 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a teenage boy was accused of buggering a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves, and a turkey. This is real history on the books. In accordance with the Biblical laws of Leviticus, after the boy confessed he was forced to watch each animal being slaughtered. Then he was killed and his body heaped with the dead animals and buried in an unmarked pit.

  This was before there were sexaholic talk therapy meetings.

  This teenager, writing his fourth step must’ve been a whole barnyard tell-all.

  I ask, “Any questions?”

  The fourth-graders just look at me. A girl in the second row says, “What’s buggering?”

  I say, ask your teacher.

  Every half hour, I’m supposed to teach another herd of fourth-graders some shit nobody wants to learn, like how to start a fire. How to carve an apple-head doll. How to make ink out of black walnuts. As if this is going to get any of them into a good college.

  Besides deforming the poor chickens, these fourth-graders, they all walk in here carrying some germ. It’s no mystery why Denny’s always wiping his nose and coughing. Head lice, pin-worms, chlamydia, ringworm—for serious, these field trip kids are the pint-sized horsemen of the apocalypse.

  Instead of useful Pilgrim crap, I tell them how their playground game ring-around-a-rosy is based on the bubonic plague of 1665. The Black Death gave people hard, swollen, black spots they called “plague roses,” or buboes, surrounded by a pale ring. Hence “bubonic.” Infected people were locked inside their houses to die. In six months, a hundred thousand people were buried in the huge mass graves.