SEX
a short story

ritten in no particular genre that I can identify. 

Mes petits choux se sont �chapp�s avec les chaises comfy.
French

My little cabbages escaped with the comfy chairs.
N-Glitch

Babelfish poetry by Mr. Williams

Notes: This doesn't fall into any recognizable genre that I can recognize, but it deals with the subject, nonetheless. The great con (make that "Great Con") of the American sex industry (over $4-billion a year in explicit sales as of '84) has always been that ANY sex is better than none at all. Moreover, that ALL sex is always great and fabulous. And groovy and magical and guilt and karma-free.

"Dear _______ Letters, I am a forty-year old housewife in Cleveland, Ohio, and recently I had an experience I'd like to share with your readers. Our muscular pool boy, Mark, was just finishing up when ...."

 � 1985 Hart Williams

Sex
a short story
by Hart Williams

Sex. Got your attention didn't it? "Got your attention" got your attention, didn't it? I know. You're thinking this is going to be one of those things where I try to sell you something different than I promised. No. Sex is like that, though. And that's what this is about.

Her name was Stephanie, and I never slept with her. By that, I mean I never fucked her. Nothing you use to talk about sex means what it really means. We talk around sex. Stephanie always did. She'd sit there, her perfect legs crossed, and her blouse just right around her perfect frame, and talk about everything and anything, but what she was really saying was: "I want to fuck you."

Well, that wasn't what she was really saying. She was saying: "I want you to want to fuck me." It took me a long time to figure that last piece out.

I was at the dog-end of a bone-wearying love affair when I ran into Stephanie. Literally. I was sitting in Duke's Tropicana, scarfing down the last of my mexican omelette, and listening to the pseudo-rockers while they laid down their dreams in 70mm Dolby. I don't know why I do it. Some perverse sprite in me takes delight in laughing at all that Hollywood star crap. Hell, I starved for ten years, and looking at the carefully groomed poodles of rock and roll always cheers me up. Nothing comes from nothing.

Stephanie? She was heading out of the ladies' room while I was heading in. I was in the middle of an internal debate as to whether to throw the bitch out of my apartment with a big scene, or just bag her stuff by the front door, and lock her out. I'd met Tanya at Duke's, and I figured Duke's owed me a solution.

Blam. Right into the most ravishing blonde I'd ever seen. Leather, and lace gloves, and a Van der Graaf hairdo.

"Excuse me," I said. I meant it.

She shrugged, zapped me with 25,000 watts of sea green, and said. "You can buy me breakfast."

I pointed out my table, took care of my business, and ended up watching as she daintily wolfed down her body weight in eggs and salsa. Duke's giveth and Duke's taketh away.

We ended up back at my place, packing up Tanya's clothes and records. Stephanie wasn't going to leave that easy, I realized. I started to hedge about her staying, and she just zapped me again: slid down the breakfast bar, unzipped my pants and blew me.

She knew how to get what she wanted.

It's ancient with some of them. They know precisely the moment. Feel the tightening of the balls, the throbbing. And have no compunctions whatsoever about asking. "Mind if I stay the night?" she whispered.

I couldn't even talk. I nodded. She smiled and let me off the hook. The only thing I could think of was thanks to the Goddess, and I wondered how I went with eggs and salsa.

Hollyweird is just that. And the magic. You find yourself in the middle of things that make their movies look tame. Pure fantasy. I remember one night I was driving Mulholland, looking for a house I was supposed to meet a man at. I kept driving the winding mountain road, looking for the turnoff. And then he was there: ten points and a couple hundred pounds of Supernatural grace. Looked at me like "Who are you?" and jumped clean over the car into the woods. A stag right in the middle of Hollywood.

Stephanie was that way. A blowjob for a place to spend the night. Trade without any hooks. She spent the night on the couch. Tanya dragged in about 3 am, and I never even saw her. Heard the door open, Tanya's "Who the fuck are you, cunt!?!?" and then nothing. I pulled on a robe, and padded into the living room. Nothing. Just Stephanie.

As silent and swift as that stag, Tanya was gone. Stephanie took it as part of the order of things, and asked me if there was any beer in the fridge.

"Poor baby," she said. "Tied up to that."

She had a beer, and unzipped me again.

I'm bragging, right? Telling you shit. Doesn't happen and all of that, right? Uh-uh. Stephanie was pure fantasy, when she felt like it. She tended to feel like it just about the time I'd get ready to give her the heave-ho. Other than that, it was just her talking, wrapping those perfect legs, and making sure she was working her effect. She knew if she didn't talk sex, I couldn't bring it up. And if not, I wouldn't get any.

So I did, one night.

"Fine," she said. "Unzip your pants."

I did. I was rock hard.

She pulled down her top, and spread her legs. "Jack off," she said.

I did, and she enjoyed it. Now I realize what she enjoyed. She got off on the fact that she could get me off without doing anything. I don't think Stephanie was sexual at all. Sounds strange, but it was true. A thousand generations of breeding told her on some strange, instinctive level, that her puss was her fortune.

Once she told me: "Every time you come, you die a little death."

Afterwards, she grabbed a paper towel, and gently wiped me off.

I don't know why we never question the implicit assumption that Man has to have it, and Woman can decide to give it if the price is right. Don't kid yourself. There's always a price. I used to think Stephanie was the coldest, meanest creature God ever designed. I used to think that her power games, and her Prick Teasing were the most casually malicious act I'd ever seen, outside of tearing the wings off flies.

But I was wrong. Stephanie was just like everybody else. She was certain (on a deep subconscious level) that she was the only thing that existed or mattered. The rest of the World was just props and bit actors in the Drama of her Life. There was a real sensitivity, and a caring. I remember the way she would carefully wipe the semen from my belly, blown away that she had provoked such a reaction. So careful and maternal. As though my sexuality were the most precious jewel in the world. As if she genuinely cared about each and every dying tadpole.

But I wasn't real to her.

She moved out, finally. It was the single most thoughtless, uncaring act I'd ever seen. I felt used -- I had been. I felt like one of her paper towels. Carefully and delicately wrapped around her perfect fingers while she needed it, and then unceremoniously flushed down the toilet.

One day -- gone. No note. She called later, and explained it to me. She had to rationalize it to herself so she wouldn't be a bad person in her own eyes. I was torn apart, so I let her rationalize. Usually when they leave, they're looking for you to lose your temper, or let them off the hook by being a bastard. "How could I live with such a brute?" they ask their girlfriends.

I don't really remember what she said. I just remember that shock that you feel when somebody walks up to you and very seriously tells you the World is really flat, and all this `round' stuff is a Satanic plot.

I wasn't real to her. She called to finish up her own little drama. When she came by to pick up her things, she tossed me a bone. She told me sweet lies, got me to carry her stuff out to a strange car. She pushed me onto the back seat and blew me.

Fade forward. Let's skip my drinking, and the year I spent hating every woman I saw. Let's avoid the times I couldn't even bring myself to speak to a woman, and the constant wrenching pain I felt.

We'll skip through all the hateful trips I laid on people to try and even up the Cosmic Scoreboard. Let's just say I'm no better than Stephanie. I'm sure at a deep level that I'm the only person who exists, and the rest of you are just window dressing in my life. I'm the only person who has a penis, who pisses, shits, or eats. I can't understand why it is that none of you think the Right way -- My way. If I don't like it, it should be illegal or dead, and if I do like it, it's the most important thing in the World.

We're all that way. Little bubbles that want with a capital `W'. Stephanie never really realized what she was doing.

I used to pray that God would even up the score, even while he looked the other way on some of my less savory trips.

And then I heard.

I was all better. That was the lie I was running past myself. I had a nice steady Yuppie Lady. Slept together on a semi-regular basis. My Quixote days were gone. Stephanie was further away than Dulcinea, and just about as real. She was Aldonza. There were no more Dulcineas, and that made me all better. But cynicism is just a mask for bitterness. And bitterness is the fruit of heartbreak.

I learned what happened to Stephanie from a friend. She had left me for a lead guitarist. They put together a band, and were climbing. Stephanie fell in love. And he dumped her.

My friend saw her that night. They were radiant. A great couple, he said. No hint that he was preparing to shuffle her off in favor of his own little social climb.

She drove her beat up '72 Mazda around and around, and cried. My friend said it was the tears that blinded her to the semi. And when it was all over, her beautiful face was ruined, and her hands didn't work anymore, and they had to teach her how to eat again, and walk again, and write again. It took six months for her eyes to focus in unison. Her singing voice was gone the second her larynx was crushed. For the rest of her life, she'd talk in that horrible belch that permanent tracheotomy victims talk in. Her face was restored, but not the same.

At first, I thought I was vindicated. Thought that the Gods had heard my strangled prayers and paid her back. But such a terrible vengeance! I cried, and realized that I loved her.

But that's not really the end of it.

I broke up with my Yuppie Princess, and was sitting at Duke's Tropicana scarfing down a Mexican omelet when I saw her again.

"Hello," she rumbled.

It took me a minute. My guts knew, because they twisted up even before she said a word. My brain took a little longer.

I looked up at her. "Please," I said, motioning to the chair.

She sat down.

And we talked around it, like always. Talked around sex, around love, around all of it. She was doing all right. Had a little booking agency. She was a Music Businesswoman. I was doing fine. Business was growing. Life was all right. I was between women. She was between men.

A perfect opportunity of sorts. I still really loved her, wanted her, felt an electric thrill just to be in her presence. But I had trusted her, and she had trashed my soul. The courage wasn't there, and no matter how much I wanted her, I wouldn't, couldn't have her.

She all but offered. "The traech's all right," she rumbled. "Makes giving head a breeze."

I knew what she meant.

I never saw her again. She gave me her number, and I left it sitting in my salsa. This time, I deserted her. I'm not proud of myself for it.

That's the way it is, I guess, with love and sex. Doesn't matter how much you want and need to say: "I love you." It's too close, too personal. It always ends up called "making love," when it's really just another "fuck you."