Going to New York

by Oliver Markus Malloy

  Somehow she seemed to take that as a challenge. Every time after that, she always tried to include the wild slobbering, twisting and biting in her blowjobs, instead of doing what she knew I enjoyed, a slow, tender blowjob with feeling. She seemed determined to make me like getting fast and wild blowjobs, with lots of slobbering, instead of slow and sensual ones. But that wasn't gonna work for me, and from that point on I really didn't like her blowjobs anymore. Or maybe I was just getting sick of way too much sex.

  One day she asked me if I would like to see her squirt when she has an orgasm. I told her no, not really. Especially not with her deep manly voice. She asked me to go down on her a lot. She really liked it. But she always asked me if she tasted good. It turned her on when I said yes. But it turned me off when she asked me that, because I always expected her to squirt in my mouth any second now. Yuck!

  Then she asked me if I'd like to fuck her in the ass. I said: "No, not really. I mean, I have nothing against anal. I tried it once or twice. But it doesn't really do much for me. I'm perfectly happy with a pussy."

  She seemed disappointed: "Aww, really? You don't wanna try anal with me? How about if I put my little lipstick dildo in my ass while you fuck me?"

  She kept going on and on about anal. I was getting kinda impatient: "No, I'm really not all that interested in that. Can we talk about something else now?"

  Maybe if it had been any other girl, I would have been more interested in trying anal. Maybe if Alice or Jennifer had asked me. But I was just getting sick and tired of the way Patty was totally preoccupied with sex.

  I hadn't heard from Alice, ever since I kicked her and Papi out of my apartment. But now Alice suddenly texted me, and told me she wanted to come over. I told her that it was too late, that I had gotten rid of that apartment in Middletown, and I was living in Florida now. She was really upset. She acted like I had abandoned her.

  "What are you talking about?" I asked her. "You're fucking around with Papi and all these other people, so why the hell would I stick around for that? I went to Florida with Patty. At least she wants to be with me."

  Alice was upset, but she admitted it was her own fault. She asked me to come back. I told her Patty was going to be there for a few more days, until after her birthday. Maybe afterwards I would go get Alice, and we could spend some time in Florida together for the first time.

  Alice asked me how things were going with Patty. I told her that I wasn't really all that happy having her at my house, and I would much rather have Alice with me right now.

  Later that day I texted Alice: "She's a squirter, a scratcher and a screamer. Kill me!"

  I looked at my phone, and suddenly I realized that I had not sent that text to Alice. I had accidentally sent it to Patty!

  Holy. Fucking. SHIT!

  I was sitting in the bedroom while texting. Patty was in the living room. I didn't even want to go out there and face her after sending her that text message. My heart was pounding! But I figured I was gonna have to face that situation sooner or later, so I went in the living room and decided to play it off as a joke, and to pretend that I had sent that text to Patty on purpose.

  Patty was on the computer, chatting with people on Facebook. They were fans of the rock band Blood, and they accused Patty of having killed Rocky on purpose. She was totally absorbed in that online argument.

  I nervously giggled: "Uh, haha, uhhh, did you get my text?"

  She absentmindedly took her eyes off the computer screen for a second, looked at me and said: "Yeah, I got it."

  "Uh, haha, uh, did you think it was funny?"

  "Uhmm, I guess," she said, and continued to furiously type rebuttals on Facebook.

  Wheeeww! That went a lot better than I feared. I really dodged a bullet there, I thought.

  Later that night we were in bed. The lights were off. I thought she was sleeping. Suddenly I saw her cell phone screen go on in the dark. She was re-reading my text message about her being a squirter, a scratcher, and a screamer.

  She put the phone down and the screen went off.

  Then the screen went on again, because she picked the phone back up and re-read the text again.

  The screen went off. She put the phone down again.

  Then the screen went on again. She re-read the text again.

  Her cell phone screen went on and off about ten times. She kept putting the phone down and picking it back up and re-reading my text over and over again, like a psycho. Then she got up, locked herself in the bathroom and started crying hysterically.

  I felt like such a major ASSHOLE! Yeah, she was way over the top with all that sex, but I really didn't want to hurt her feelings about it. And now she was sobbing in the bathroom, because I had been such a total jerk, when I wrote that text about her.

  I didn't even want to face her anymore. I'm not a praying man, but now I prayed: "Dear God, please let her not even be here tomorrow! Please make her leave before I wake up!"

  God didn't answer my prayer. Go figure. Did he not want to interfere with her free will? Or was the confrontation I was about to have with Patty the next morning a predetermined part of God's great plan for me? Or is there really no God who answers prayers? Discuss! (Just kidding. Just checking if you've been paying attention to my book so far.)

  The next morning, I found her sleeping on the couch in the living room. After she woke up, we both avoided the topic and acted like nothing had happened. Later in the afternoon, we finally talked about it. I told her that I was really sorry I hurt her feelings with my stupid text, and that she was just a bit too aggressive sexually. She teared up, and said: "I know. You're not the first guy to tell me that."

  Wow. All I could think was, damn, woman, take a hint! If more than one guy has told you that you're too over the top when it comes to sex, then maybe you need to dial it down a little. But I didn't say that. I didn't want to hurt her feelings again.

  During our sex talk, she started to open up more about her relationship with Rocky. She said that he had been an addict for a long time, and that he didn't have any money left when she met him. She said she definitely was not a gold digger who tried to kill him for his money. And even if that had been her plan, wouldn't she have waited until after they were married?

  Then she told me about their sex life. She said since he had been an addict for so long, he had erectile dysfunction, and couldn't get hard. She said they expressed their love for each other in other ways. Not sexually. And she said she was probably so over the top right now, because she didn't have sex in a long time and wanted to make up for it, and because while she was having sex, for a few minutes she wasn't thinking about how unhappy she was.

  So, sucking my dick was part of her grieving process. Ok. To each his own. But then the things she told me next took a bizarre turn into the Twilight Zone:

  She had told me a few days earlier that Rocky had a few strange fetishes. She said he liked to play with fire and burn things. "Significant things," she said. Whatever that meant. She didn't elaborate any further on it at first.

  But now, during our sex talk, she told me what she had meant by that. She said Rocky liked to go to the pet store and buy little hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, mice or gerbils, and light them on fire. And while those poor critters died an agonizing death, he'd get off.

  "What?!?" My disgust was written all over my face. "Did you ever do that with him?"

  "Uhhh, no," she said. But she paused just a little too long. My instincts told me that she was lying and that she did do that stuff with him.

  Patty told me that Rocky kept asking her to burn animals with him: "Hey, you hate snakes. So how about we get a snake, I scare you with it, and then we light it on fire?"

  She said she never agreed to do anything like that with him, and that she had asked him: "How about we get one of those rubber Halloween rats and light that on fire?"

  He said that wouldn't get him off: "It's not the same, unless it's an actual live animal and it's squirming in pain."

  Then
she told me at one point he said: "I don't know if you've noticed, but I have all the symptoms of a serial killer."

  And then she told me that he said: "My ultimate sexual fantasy is to kidnap a homeless girl, light her on fire, and rape her while she's screaming and burning."

  While she was in Florida with me, every day Patty had been weeping about how she had lost the love of her life when Rocky died, and every day she kept gushing about what a beautiful mind he was. And now she was telling me that he wanted to light homeless girls on fire and rape them. What. The. Fuck?!?

  How sick in the head did she have to be to think that sick fuck was a beautiful mind? Up until this point, I thought that she was just weird. But now I was starting to think she was really not all there in the head, or at least mentally or emotionally disturbed.

  She told me that she had bought a wedding dress a few years ago, even though she had no wedding plans, and she didn't have anyone to get married to. She just liked the way she looked in a wedding dress, and walked around the house at home, imagining what it would be like to get married.

  To me, that sounded like something out of one of those horror movies, where some crazy girl in a dusty old wedding dress never got over the fact that her high school sweetheart stood her up at the altar. And now, thirty years later, she kidnapped the balding, aging ex-jock and re-created her dream wedding in her basement, with dressed-up corpses she dug up at the cemetery. (Come to think of it, I've never really seen a movie exactly like that. Someone needs to get on that.)

  Oh, and did I mention she talked in her sleep? One night, she said, loud and clear as day, as if she was wide awake: "You're going to hell! You know that, right?"

  Another night, she said: "This isn't over yet!"

  When I asked her about it the next morning, she said the anti-depressants she was on had to be giving her vivid nightmares.

  I was really starting to get very uncomfortable around her. I felt like I needed to sleep with one eye open while she was lying next to me, because it seemed more and more plausible that she really did kill Rocky.

  Before Patty came to Florida to spend her birthday with me, one of her co-workers, Susan, had gone on a road trip to Florida. Then her mother got sick all of a sudden and had to go to the hospital. Susan decided to fly back to Scranton to be by her mother's side. She left her car behind in Florida.

  When Susan heard that Patty was about to go to Florida to visit me, she asked Patty if she could drive Susan's car back to Scranton. Patty had planned on flying back the day after her birthday. But if she had to drive back in Susan's car instead, it was going to take her a lot longer to get back home, which meant she would have to leave two days earlier.

  Patty asked me if I would take a road trip with her back up north, so that she wouldn't have to spend her birthday alone in Susan's car on the I-95. She said once we get up there I could stay with her in Scranton for as long as I want.

  I really rrreally didn't want to. I just wanted her to leave, because even after our sex talk, she really didn't tone down at all. She still wanted to have sex all the time, and she still tried to convince me that I liked her sloppy zombie blowjobs.

  But I felt bad for her. She was obviously a train wreck right now. And spending her birthday alone, while she's in this vulnerable mental state, certainly wasn't gonna be good for her. So I told her I would join her on her road trip and spend her birthday in the car with her, but that I probably wouldn't stay in Scranton for more than a day or two.

  This whole road trip thing actually worked out pretty well, because while Patty was in Florida with me, I had bought a condo in Liberty, NY, at an online real estate auction. Liberty was not far from the famous Woodstock concert site, and just a few minutes north of Middletown.

  I figured once I'm up there, I could check out my new condo. And since Alice and I had been texting every day again, and she asked me to come save her from Papi, this all worked out perfectly. And as long as we were driving in the car, Patty wouldn't be able to rape me. As long as I wasn't alone in a room with her, I'd be good.

  Only three or four days after Patty had arrived in Florida, I overheard her talking on the phone to her friends, co-workers, and her family. We hadn't seen each other in over a year, and now we had not even spent a week together yet, but here she was, on the phone in my bathroom, telling everyone she knew that I was The One: "Oh my God, he is sooo nice! He is one in a million! I love him! I'm gonna marry him!"

  I think that was really just her biological clock talking. I think she was so desperate to get married before she ended up old and alone, she was even willing to marry a guy who liked to burn little animals. And compared to that psycho, I looked pretty damn good.

  And I don't mean to sound like I'm making fun of her for liking me or having a crush on me. I think that's sweet and I was flattered. But I think she should have talked to me about it first, before telling her family, friends and co-workers that she was going to marry me, four days after meeting me.

  When the time for our road trip came, Patty told me she wanted to stop in Tampa along the way, and introduce me to her sister, Rita. She told me that Rita was a total bitch. Oh, great! I can't wait to meet her!

  I really rrreally didn't want to meet Rita. I just wanted to get this whole thing over with and go rescue Alice. But of course we stopped by Rita's house anyway.

  As teenagers, Rita had always made Patty feel like she was an ugly heffer. Rita was prettier and skinnier, and all the boys wanted her. Patty was an overweight ogre with a hormonal issue. Too much testosterone. I guess that's why she had such a manly voice now. She told me for most of her life, she never got her period, and couldn't have a baby.

  She obviously had a lot of issues growing up. She told me she had been in therapy for it.

  So there was this rivalry between Patty and Rita, and I guess now Patty wanted to show me off in front of her sister. When we arrived, Rita was arguing with her ex-husband, who was dropping off their kid at Rita's house. I instantly disliked her. She really was a total bitch.

  After she had scared off her ex-husband, her current boyfriend, Jake, arrived. He was a handsome, friendly guy. I got along well with him. I asked him what he did for a living. "Construction," he said. Rita seemed embarrassed by his answer and tried to make his job sound much fancier than it is. I guess Patty had told her that I had made a lot of money with cartoons online, so Rita felt her boyfriend wasn't measuring up.

  Patty and Rita had planned for all four of us to go on a double date at the International Plaza mall in Tampa. Patty and Rita loved the hand-made soaps at the Lush store. As we strolled through the mall, Rita and Jake were kissing and necking, while holding hands.

  At Lush, I bought Patty three or four bars of fancy soap. Jake bought Rita one bar. Big mistake. He failed to measure up again. Suddenly Jake was dead to Rita. She wouldn't look at him, wouldn't talk to him, and walked with her arms crossed in front of her chest. All that because of some stupid bars of soap. What a petty bitch!

  Patty and Rita had planned to end the double date with a dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. Rita and Jake were sitting across the table from us. Rita wouldn't even acknowledge that Jake existed. Patty and I didn't know whether to pretend we didn't notice, or try to help mend things between them. It was so awkward and uncomfortable. You could cut the tension with a knife.

  Suddenly Patty put her hand between my legs, opened my zipper, and started to play with my dick. Un-fucking-believable! There's a time and place for everything. But the double date from hell is neither the time nor the place to play with my little buddy.

  After the dinner, Rita gave me a long hug in the parking lot. Way too long. Then she whispered in my ear: "Thank you. Thank you so much for what you did for my sister. She has really come out of her shell since she's been hanging out with you. She was a wreck after Rocky died."

  She was basically welcoming me into the family.

  I didn't say anything. I just smiled politely. But I was thinking: "If you only knew."r />
  Afterwards Patty said she was tired and wanted to get a hotel room. But I told her I wanted to keep on driving north. I drove until about midnight. Then we got a room. I hopped in the shower and went to bed. Then Patty went in the shower. When she got out, I pretended to be sleeping, so she wouldn't try to have sex again.

  She went back in the bathroom and started sobbing hysterically. I don't know if it was because I had pushed her hand away at the Cheesake Factory, or because she knew I was only pretending to be sleeping. She cried in the bathroom from 12:30 am until 6 am.

  I couldn't get any sleep at all. My heart was pounding. This reminded me of those nights when Donna would wait for me to fall asleep, and then slam the bedroom door wide open, turn the lights on and scream at me so that I would wake up with a near heart attack. I expected Patty to storm out of the bathroom any second now and scream at me. But she didn't.