Eunuchs and Nymphomaniacs Read online

  Something broke open inside me.

  My latest fear had been that she’d turn out to be a lesbian (that unruly bush had rocked me to the core) or that maybe we would get back together but I’d have to take all the blame for everything, everywhere, throughout history and she would just be encouraged to be the same miserable cunt she’d always been. But I was beginning to see that when I was nice to her she became the most beautiful girl in the world and when I wasn’t she was intolerable.

  Men in the street sometimes asked her to smile and she hated it. To her it was as boorish as asking to see her tits. But she really was such a beautiful girl when she smiled.

  I made no further reference to The Kiss and I was careful not to behave in a way that might confirm or deny that we were seemingly, in appearance at least, back together. I was too busy doing somersaults and backflips inside myself. I somehow managed to walk her back to the car.

  I couldn’t bear the probability of a good-bye kiss being demoted to a peck on the cheek so rather than try for it I nodded at her comically and jumped on my bike. She looked sufficiently regretful to see me go and I trembled with delight that she might just miss me if I removed myself fast enough.

  But my triumphant ride home was followed by a deep, dark, echoing chasm of nothingness. For what would prove to be the eternity of the rest of that evening and the yawning void represented by the following day there would be no text, no email, no word.

  Was she that cruel or was I just overly sensitive?

  It felt like we were breaking up all over again. Wounds only half-healed opened anew. This couldn’t go on. She had mentioned the possibility of inviting me over to watch the DVDs and I was very keen to see what would happen since the unsolicited kiss/smile combo had to be indicative of sexual imminence. And I was aware that the following week, she would be mixing with all manner of potential suitors so this was not the time to reject an invitation to her apartment. She would be less susceptible to new advances if I could reestablish myself as a romantic possibility.

  I heard nothing until 9:50 PM.

  I was hoping to be already ensconced in her place by then since her roommate had left two hours earlier for the weekend. But no. When she finally did call she said she’d been looking for her phone for two hours and that when it eventually turned up there was a message on it from someone I hadn’t heard of before, accusing her of not being a good friend, so she felt she had to call her back and having done that she now felt terrible. I was hearing all this on my way to a ten o’clock AA meeting, the beginning of which I would now have to miss because it was already 9:55 PM.

  She was accusing her friend of being self-centered. This was rich coming from her. I wanted to hang up and go to my meeting. I could say my phone died. But this was Marian, I couldn’t do that. But then because I had answered in the street I had to ask her to repeat what she’d said and this was dangerous because I knew she moved the receiver away from her mouth and this had always infuriated me. But it couldn’t be mentioned. It was mind-boggling that I now yearned to hang up on the very person I’d spent the entire day hoping to hear from because she was keeping me from the meeting I needed to console me for the fact that she hadn’t called.

  If she didn’t let me fuck her soon I’d walk away.

  She had studiously omitted any reference to my coming there until the end of the call.

  “Okay see you around eight PM … and if you have any laundry, bring it with you. I can do it for you.”

  It was a strange afterthought but endearing.

  Like she was being maternal.

  Was this a cultural thing? Maybe there was an American tradition, like studying together, where a mention of laundry was shorthand for platonic? Or maybe it was a precursor to cohabitation. I looked around for some token items to fill a bag. I intentionally didn’t shave or shower in case she’d think I was expecting to get laid.

  Which of course I was.

  The moment I entered her apartment she asked for the laundry, the reasoning being it would take at least an hour to wash and dry while we ate and watched a movie. It also set a convenient time limit on my visit. At the door to the basement where the washer-dryer was located she paused.

  “Hmmm, I don’t recognize this one.”

  She was holding up a black-patterned knee sock like a dead snake. I had no idea how it had gotten in with my socks and jeans but I immediately felt robbed. I had never seen it before. And why was there only one?

  “I’ve never seen that before,” I said, sick with myself for being trapped in such a cliché.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  I might have been her little brother whom she’d caught having a wank. It was obviously a deeply embarrassing moment for me but she’d be gracious about it. It was none of her business. But I wanted it to be her business. It would have been the perfect opportunity to clear the air if I hadn’t been forced to be so defensive. Where the fuck had it come from? I had honestly never seen it before. I would have loved to see it on her but I couldn’t even allow that thought in.

  After we ate, she stretched theatrically, yawned, and removed her shoes and socks before settling onto the couch beside me. The opening credits were already rolling on the DVD but my attention was required elsewhere as I felt her bare heel in my lap. It was so pleasurable and unexpected I almost cried. It seemed unfair to be subjected to these extremes.

  Deep-fried to deep-freeze and back again.

  A knee sock inferred I was sexually active, which should have meant I didn’t have a hope with her but now my poor confused cock was starting to get hard in response to the outwardly innocent movements of her naked heel in my crotch.

  She pretended not to notice and so did I.

  Instead, pronouncing the film not very good, she offered to walk on my back. This was something she knew I loved not just because it was highly therapeutic for the tensed up muscles in my back but because it had often been a prelude to sex. I was almost in tears as I lay facedown on the carpet and she stepped onto my lower and middle back and shuffled around up there, occasionally shifting her weight onto a buttock, effectively crushing my hard-on into the carpet. This was disconcerting enough but then she jumped off and invited me to stand. Surely this was it.

  She waited until I was fully upright so I could register her nod at the door.

  “I need to get up super early tomorrow but it was lovely of you to come out and see me.”

  Had I blown it because I smelled bad? I knew I should have showered. Outside on her stoop, just before I got on my bike, she leaned forward and brushed the front of her hand against the subsiding cock in my jeans. This was an unprecedented gesture from someone who had until then made a point of avoiding even the abstract suggestion of such a thing. It was as if she needed to confirm that it was in fact still vaguely hard. The fact that she used the outside of her hand was significant in that it demonstrated her interest was purely analytical.

  I must have looked anguished.

  “I know, I know …” she said, nodding sympathetically.

  “You know? What do you know?” I said, almost sobbing with lust. The enigmatic smile again as she handed me my laundry.

  “Have a safe ride home,” she said.

  And yes, the knee sock was included.

  * * *

  Was it her?

  The girl approaching my table looked like Marian when we first met—before I happened to her.

  She was about to sidestep a man taking a photo of the Tou-rette’s sign when she stopped, and after reading it broke into an easy smile. The same bangs, same height; the body wasn’t as lithe but from a distance it could have been her. I tried in vain not to stare as she touched my books on the table.

  Her voice was calm, soothing even.

  “So what’s all this?”

  My throat tightened. There was a possibility I might start to sob. I was capable of it. This seemed unnecessarily cruel. I was being shown how fresh-faced and unaffected Marian was when we first met. S
he looked at me, looking at her, intrigued if not a little unnerved. I pointed at the blurbs on the back of the books. I didn’t dare speak.

  It was obvious she felt my eyes on her as she read because she nodded slowly, telegraphing that she understood. Our eyes met again as she handed me a crisp $20 bill and I signed her book The Oxygen Thief. In an unexpected lapse of inhibition I wrote my number on the inside flap.

  I gawked unashamedly now because I was sure I’d never see her again. Her large ass, as she walked away, should have been disappointing but for some reason it didn’t seem to matter.

  The following week she texted.

  It’s Audrey. I met you on Prince Street and bought your book. I read it in one sitting. I have so many questions—

  And then in a separate text, Did Aisling ever bring out her book?

  I called her.

  Toward the end of our relationship, Marian’s phone manner grated on me so much I avoided answering when she called. So there was something healing about the idea of talking so easily on the phone to a girl who looked so much like her.

  Audrey’s voice was definitely silky, but even more alluring were the silences she allowed when she sensed I was about to speak. So wholehearted was her faith in my acuity she closed down her own. This was new to me. And deeply flattering. It was seduction on a spiritual plane.

  But it was becoming obvious that anyone who liked my book was far from normal. Or maybe there was no such thing as normal. She’d had a crazy upbringing where her parents were almost always drunk or high and frequently arrested. She took the brunt of her father’s beatings even when her more feminine sister had been the cause.

  “Well, someone was going to get it and I thought it might as well be me.”

  She learned to “poke the beast” so as to control the timing of the outbursts if not their savagery. It was important to her to be the normal one in a fucked-up family but her sister, whom she described as needy, might have been the smarter one since she managed to avoid being beaten altogether.

  She felt her recent election to the zoning board of her local district of Westchester was completely undeserved since the full extent of her preparation for politics consisted of watching one episode of House of Cards. As a child she hid behind books. Shields against the madness. In one of them she came across a new word and after looking it up she realized it was what was missing from her parents’ life. The word was divorce. Amazingly they agreed.

  She was nine years old.

  By the time they actually separated she was eleven and at that age, children of divorced parents were required by law to see a counselor. These sessions were quite cheery since she was delighted her parents had taken her advice. She was proud of them. She saw herself as their parent and now that they had grown up she could concentrate on her own life goals. No surprise then that she became a divorce lawyer.

  She also felt that she’d been born with the powers of a matchmaker. On three separate occasions she had dreams that friends of hers, still unintroduced at the time, would later marry. They scoffed when she mentioned it but in time they ended up together.

  I was delighted to hear her say that at conferences men often walked right up to her and asked for sex. It meant she was physically attractive not just to me but to complete strangers. She said she enjoyed playing with these guys’ expectations, letting them think she was going to have sex with them but saying good night at the last moment.

  She said she had a married friend who was worried because her husband liked to fuck her from behind and she thought it might mean he wasn’t attracted to her or that he had something to hide. This might well have been the case for all I knew but I didn’t want her to think that if/when I fucked her similarly it meant I didn’t like looking at her so I lied.

  “Maybe sometimes it’s just nice to change things up a little.”

  This was rewarded with a little giggle and I suddenly realized I was being interviewed for sex. She didn’t drink or take drugs.

  “I don’t like to have any distractions when I have sex. I like to be present and aware of the other person.”

  “This makes me think of a theory I have but I think it’s best saved for our second conversation.”

  “But we’ve already talked for what could be considered the duration of two phone calls.”

  She wanted to hear it but I didn’t want her seeing me like that just yet. (My theory involved a dildo being inserted in my butthole.) But I was happy she wanted to know.

  I ended the call against her protestations.

  Satisfactory of course since it left her wanting more.

  A quick google of “Audrey—Zoning—Westchester” revealed that she had been married to a guy from Belfast with a shaved head who if you blurred your eyes could have been me. Not that I was Northern Irish but my continued use of Britishisms must have evoked memories in her. And according to an obituary, she’d given birth to a stillborn child. Born sleeping was the term used. I imagined a grave where her vagina should be.

  There was no mention of any of this in our three hours of conversation. Somehow it meant I was exonerated from behaving like a gentleman. Also the word tragedy was used in connection with her husband. If she didn’t want to talk about any of it then neither would I. I had decided I would come loudly at the end of our second call and then disappear. It would be my unannounced revenge for her unspoken insult.

  I would come at her.

  Prnnnnng

  “This is Audrey.”

  I could clearly detect an excited tremble in her voice. It was obvious from the moment she answered she’d been waiting for the call all day. Her wifely silence insisted on nothing less than monologue. I began.

  “Because a woman is actually penetrated during sex, she needs more information about the perpetrator. A man remains outside and therefore relatively aloof during the act but a woman is actually intruded upon. I realized this first when I slipped a dildo into my ass for the first time and felt an emptiness filled that I hadn’t until then realized was there. A cavity, not just physical in nature but emotional too. I felt completed. Like a missing piece from a puzzle had finally been slotted into place. If this was even vaguely what it was like when a cock entered a woman, well, then I understood why they, meaning you, always want to know as much as possible about the person attached to it.”

  She waited. After all, I might not be finished. This marvelous man might have more to say.

  “That’s very astute,” she said after a respectful pause and then perhaps feeling the need to offer something similar in tone she continued shyly.

  “And there’s that lamentable need for the man to get an erection while for the woman there are so many other levels of pleasure.”

  “I’m sporting a rather lamentable erection as we speak.”

  “It would be even more lamentable if you weren’t.”

  I hadn’t actually been hard at all but now, suddenly green-lit, my cock surged into being. I imagined aloud that my hands were her hands and from there on it was plain sailing.

  She didn’t say as much as I would have liked (her smooth voice was so fucking sexy) but her breathing had an enormous effect on me. She began to exhale quite heavily but somehow it was still ladylike. She remained civilized even in her primal state. Unlike me. I started to pump my poor enraged cock holding the phone up to it so she could listen to the obscene squelching as I fucked my own spit-filled fist. This had a tremendous effect on her and she began moaning and sighing prettily, which only fed my lust more and my confidence further and I began to tell her not just that she should imagine I was fucking her at that moment but that I was going to actually fuck her when we met. She might have wanted to stop and deal with this prediction in case it sounded too much like an expectation on my part so I decided to up the ante by telling her she should lick her fingers to taste the juices from her already sopping wet cunt and then slip them back in there and hold the phone to it so I could hear it as it happened. It didn’t seem like she was going to com
e in any climactic sense so I thought it might be time to take matters into my own hands.

  Show her how it was done.

  I started moaning and groaning and pumping on my cock and letting her hear what that sounded like and demanded she say I want your cock and fuck me and at one point she ad-libbed and said split me in two. This was unusual. It almost gave me pause. It inferred that I might need a bigger cock than the one that was at hand. Split me in two? Was this what it felt like to have a cock thrust into your pussy? Like it was the thin edge of a much larger wedge? That opening her legs ever so wider would in fact have the effect of splitting her from cunt to throat? I decided to change the subject.

  “Get down on the floor and lie on your belly.”

  Whether she did it or not was not important. It allowed me to think of her with her ass raised in the air. I told her I was now licking her out from behind as she fingered herself. This received load moans of approval. I said I was now spreading her ass cheeks and tongue-fucking her gaping butthole. The idea was to introduce all manner of taboo before we even met. The lack of resistance to these imagined sex acts gave unspoken permission to their three-dimensional counterparts.

  * * *

  I thought he was another one of Françoise’s jilted suitors coming to fuck with me. To avenge himself on the smartass who duped him into buying his shitty book. The guy with him looked familiar. I knew his face from somewhere. Was he in AA?

  “Wait, why does it say ‘I don’t have fucking Tourniquettes’?”

  He was obviously pretending to misunderstand. First he’d mock me, then he and his friend were going to stab me right there in the street. He looked into my frightened eyes. He seemed upset with me. Oh fuck, he was Alpha. Undercover cops. I suddenly remembered I’d seen the other guy helping a handcuffed vendor into the white van.

  They were partners doing their rounds.

  Should I correct him and risk embarrassing a police officer and perhaps awaken a need in him to avenge himself? Stone Cold Joe dipped in and out of my peripheral vision trying to warn me with his face. Difficult, since I had only ever recognized one expression there and that was of patient endurance. The Alpha cop was now actively frowning at my sign. Was I about to be arrested for use of profanity in a public space? The frown deepened when he looked back at me. Had he just realized the sign was attached to the lamp pole? An offense that carried a $1,000 fine. I’d seen the white van summoned for less. The fact that they put the handcuffs on so carefully was in itself scary. It showed the professionalism involved. How streamlined the whole procedure was for them. It wasn’t personal. There was no passion.