/yesod

Tag: sex

  • the short

    We’re in the back bedroom, my wife and I. Fucking.

    It’s hard sometimes to find the time, the moment. Children, work, day-to-day life — these things conspire and distract and exhaust.

    But we find the time, when we can. We find the moments, synchronized, together. And it is good. Perhaps it is too brief, too short. But we know each other so well now.

    Like tonight. Together in the bed in the back bedroom — my absent son’s bedroom converted to a guest room for the time being.

    The room sits in the relationship corner of our home, according to my understanding of feng shui. So, I suppose, it’s good that we don’t leave it empty. It’s good we fill it, from time to time, with each other.

    As we fuck, the window rattles — the expected ice storm has arrived.

    Reaching the end, of our short time — doing my best to hold out as long as I can, to stretch the moment and the movement as long as possible — I look up at my wife’s beautiful face shrouded in shadow. A moment later there is a flash of light and she laughs, suddenly visible.

    The bedside lamp has turned on by itself.

    It flickers, then goes dark.

    This happens, more or less, five or six times before we’re finished.

    It almost seems to be an accompaniment to my wife’s final burst of lovemaking, a response to her rising and falling.

    After she heads to the shower, I inspect the lamp. I try to find a reason for the erratic interruption. Nothing I do will replicate the odd flashing.

    I unplug it, just in case there is a short.

    For the rest of the evening, even now, I’m fighting the feeling that someone is just behind me — quiet, waiting.

    Outside, the ice storm seems to have passed. It is cold. My hair is on end. I do not know if I will sleep tonight.

  • a tornado, two corpses, and a leather sofa

    Inside the house, people are starting to panic. The sky outside is dark and green, the wind bending the trees to almost impossible angles. We can hear the sirens and, in a house this old, there is no safe place . . . every room has windows, the elderly frame flexes and creaks in the wind just like the trees outside.

    Women huddle with their children, people cover in corners and try to stay out of the way as pictures fall from walls, little knickknacks shatter to the floor.

    I can feel a pressure in the house, a suction that ebbs and flows as the storm overhead rages on. I move from room to room, peeking out of windows as I pass, making sure they stay open so that the suction won’t blow them out completely.

    Through one window, I watch as a massive trees outside comes down. The entire house shudders under the weight of it. People are screaming now.

    I look up to the mass of gray swirling in the sky, like ink in milk . . . funnel clouds dance around each other, like strands of barbed wire twisted together. I count five of them, shouting out to the people to take cover. The funnels move in.

    I head into another room and suddenly the house is vibrating, a low hum that slowly builds to unbelievable intensity. I can feel it in my eardrums, in my molars, in my gut.

    People are praying, people are crying.

    Looking back on it now, I am surprised I did not think of the gods.

    The ceiling of the room I am in begins to peel away, I move quickly to the other side of the house . . . Just in time to see something so odd, my eyes have trouble making sense of it at first.

    It is a rubble in the suddenly still air of the room, a wavering column of distortion that runs from floor to ceiling, as wide as a refrigerator and spinning. It moves across and through the opposite wall without leaving a trace of its passing.

    Then all is quiet once more — save for the sobs and cries from the other rooms.

    Later…

    The specific circumstances of it escape me now, but at some point I am helping out with a local theatre company in town. One of the actors has an old van that we need to pick up to haul props. I volunteer to go over to their house and collect it.

    They live in a seedy part of town, their house is a hoarder’s nightmare. Out back in the tall weed a is a rusty van, engine idling.

    I go to see if they’re inside, ready to go . . . only to find that while they are inside, they’ve already gone.

    Her face is bloated, her lank gray hair matted to her skull with sweat and vomit. There’s no way of telling how long she’s been this way.

    Repulsed, I back away.

    And later still…

    “I need to talk to you,” my son tells me. I nod and suggest we go out back where it is quieter and the people at the party won’t bother us.

    Why we are having the cast party in the dead woman’s house, I don’t know. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but I have a vague recollection of being worried that she might be discovered back there and somehow spoil things for everyone.

    On the rickety back porch, I see the van in the weeds — the engine has long since run out of gas — and I suddenly remember that I never called the police.

    My son is already down the steps, trying the side door of the van. I call to him to leave it be but he is curious. Something dark and vile has pooled at one corner in the grass below, running from the door frame like a faucet accidentally left on.

    He opens the door and I hear his disgust. He starts to move the body, to try and get her out but she’s become a liquid, gelatinous mess. I tell him to leave things as they are, otherwise the police might suspect him of trying to cover something up.

    He runs inside to call 911.

    Standing there in the dead grass, I turn my head to look down the broad alley at the back of the house. A few yards down there is a splintered wooden fence, leaning to one side. A large dead tree bends low over it, the skeletal boughs hanging over the alley.

    Caught in the boughs is the body of a small child.

    And just before I wake…

    My wife and I are walking through the house, we cannot believe that we are so lucky to have a place of our own at last. In the attic room we find an old leather sofa that the previous owners have left behind. I flop down on it in exhaustion. Under my hand, the dull surface gleams as I wipe the dust away.

    My wife stands at the gable window and looks out onto the street below. She turns and raises her blouse over her head, tosses it aside. Her jeans and panties follow. By the time she gets to me, I am ready for her.

    She straddles me and we begin to move, the old sofa creaking under us.

    Somewhere down below in the house, we hear a door slam. A woman calls out, we hear the voices of children, little feet running up the stairs…

  • dark ride

    I am surprised to see a Ferris wheel looming over the downtown district, pale against the darkening sky. As evening descends, we make our way towards the carnival.

    It is dark everywhere. There are no flickering lights, no music — just the mechanical clack and clank of the rides, the muted murmur of the crowds.

    (This seems ominous now, awake. But at the time, dreaming, it did not seem so.)

    Bright rings of neon dart overhead, flying saucers, small and almost toy-like. I remark to my companions that the adult rides are further down.

    We find ourselves in a queue, jostled by children at every side. At the front of the line I watch a kid climb into a small bucket-like car and rattle away on a track into the darkness.

    “It’s a ghost train!” I exclaim. “I love a good ghost train.”

    I realize I’m speaking in a British accent and make a conscious effort to drop the Doctor Who act.

    At the front of the line, two queues feed into the start of the ride. Everyone fumbles in the darkness, taking turns to climb into the little carts. I let one of my friends go ahead of me and then wait for a small child to take their turn.

    As I’m getting ready to take my turn, a fat middle aged couple shove ahead of me dragging their little pig-faces son with them.

    I step back and watch in amazement as they try to squeeze their combined bulk into the one-person cart. An impossibility, so the husband lays down over the cart and his impossibly bloated wife lays on top of him, her doughy face turned up to the sky. Their son scrambles on top of this quivering bulk and the cart spins off as they lie there like starfish with their limbs out for balance.

    My turn. I do my best to fit my lengthy legs into the next cart. It’s a bit cramped and I consider making a joke about having to fold myself in half but I realize that everyone is waiting for me. So I do my best and soon enough I’m off in my little cart.

    It’s a bit of a disappointment, too dark to see anythIng. I rattle along, vague shadows passing by.

    There is a little pause at a station, where a worker waits before sending me on through the last bit of the ride.

    This point in the ride is staffed by a young woman with long dark hair, her pale skin glows in the semi-dark and her soft voice has a light English accent.

    She flirts with me for a moment while we wait. I feel awkward and self-conscious all folded up in my little cart. And she’s too lovely, I can barely look her in the eye.

    It’s a relief when the ride moves on — the final sequence is a rolling section of track, a child-sized roller coaster. The ride opens up and the sky is lighter now. I coast through a landscape of unkempt hedges and stunted topiary animals as the ride comes to a stop…

    . . .

    The morning after the fair, I wake in a hotel suite overlooking downtown. The sky outside is pale and the light is cold, even harsh.

    The woman from the ride is there, wrapped in a thick white robe. As she passes by the bed on her way to the bathroom, I pull her down to me.

    She protests as my hands slide over her hips, exploring. “I have to take a shower,” she gasps as I slide my thumb into her. I feel her constrict around the base and she closes her eyes for a long moment.

    But then she pushes off of me and heads to the shower, leaving me there to throb with frustration.

  • just another white trash weekend

    …for some unknown reason, our family has been relocated to what can only be charitably described as “the bad part of of town.”

    The neighborhood is a congregation of cheap, prefab homes and trailers jumbled together with only the thinnest of spaces between them. The houses stand (barely) on two hillsides with the street running between them. Each house is a hodgepodge of aluminum siding, cardboard boxes, plywood scavenged from packing crates — all tacked on to supplement the cheap, original structures. If houses were hobos — with layers and layers of clothes scavenged from thrift stores covering unwashed, diseased frames — they’d look like this neighborhood.

    The only comfort I have is the knowledge that we can sink no lower.

    A married couple we’re friendly with has come for an afternoon visit. It’s not really very pleasant, having someone stop by unannounced at your hovel. We do our best not to let them see the stress and shame they’ve imposed on us. But it isn’t easy.

    Our friends take it upon themselves to do us the favor of building a rabbit hutch in the small side yard of our house. My wife goes out to supervise, to make sure they don’t take away too much space from our meager garden. The stunted corn stalks and tomato plants are all we have, some days. Rabbits will add meat to our table, if we can find the will to follow through. At the very least, our daughter will have a few fuzzy little friends to brighten her days.

    While they’re working, I hear noises from the street out front — men’s voices raised above the groan and clank of heavy machinery. I realize that a work crew from the city has begun tearing up the street out front.

    I head out to the sidewalk to find that most of the street is already a jigzaw puzzle of broken asphalt and concrete. A wide trench twenty feet deep already runs down the center, swallowing steet and sidewalk whole. It stops just before our driveway. I manage to flag down one of the workers and beg him not to continue until our friends can back their car out of our driveway. I have no desire to spend the next two weeks stuck with them as houseguests.

    The man, heavyset with a dark bushy set of eyebrows and matching mustache, rolls his eyes and shrugs massive denim shoulders. He heads off and I rush back to let our friends know they need to go. I’m relieved to see them back their car up the street, barely ahead of the steam shovel.

    It is only after they’re gone that I realize that we’re now trapped, unable to back our own cars out. I grind my teeth, already rehearsing the phone call to my boss in the morning. I don’t even know how to figure out the bus route in this part of town.

    As evening falls, it’s clear that the street construction is the big show for the evening. Up and down the street, everyone in the neighborhood comes out to sit on their steps and drink beer. Women socialize and men laugh and tell dirty jokes while their ragged children scramble among the dusty machines.

    I shake my head, amazed at the white trash spectacle of it all. I head back up my steps to go inside and help my wife get the baby ready for bed. I see a small red and white coffee cup that she left out on the stoop. I make a mental note to come back out for it once bedtime preparations are underway.

    The time inside with my wife and daughter is an oasis from the squalor and chaos outside. I feel a rush of gratitude and know that, no matter what, we will always have this. It is all we need.

    Outside, I find that the cup is gone. Puzzling.

    A few feet away, our next-door neighbors sit on their steps doing their damnedest not to make eye contact with me.

    The patriarch of the clan, a borderline obese old bastard in work pants and a white dress shirt with coffee colored accents under the armpits, sucks sucking his false teeth and taps his cane on the steps, knocking out loose stones and gravel with the tip.

    “Excuse me,” I say to him.

    He looks at me through the thick lenses of his glasses, his eyes lie raw eggs floating in their yolks.

    I don’t even bother pretending to give him the benefit of the doubt. “There was a cup out here a few minutes ago. What did you do with it?” It’s obvious to me, and obvious to him — we both know what happened to it.

    The man waves his cane in the air, dismissing me without bothering to look my direction. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, son.”

    This is intensely annoying to me. The cup is nothing, a cheap thing that has no nostalgic or sentimental value. But it’s the principle of the thing. I pass across to their steps, standing just below him. “What’s your name?”

    “Walter.” I am gratified to see he looks a little bit wary.

    “No kidding? My grandfather was named Walter.” I looked him directly in the eye, as much as his distorted lenses will allow. “But he wasn’t a thief — not like you, you lying son of a bitch.”

    Everyone freezes. One of the young guys in his family stands up, fists balled. He’s half my age, sporting the lazy muscles of a kid with too much time to find a job but not too much to work on his tan. “What’d you say?”

    “I said, this old bastard stole my coffee cup.” I keep my eyes on the old man. “Right, Walter?”

    The old man considers this, his jaw moving thoughtfully. After a moment he flaps a hand at his grandson, waving him down. Walter rises like a antique doll, unfolding his limbs carefully. He motions for me to follow him back up the steps into their house.

    I tip my chin at the young punk as I pass. He face is red to the roots of his bleached hair. He looks like an Oompa Loompa.

    Inside, Walter leads me through a dim maze of little rooms and hallways cluttered with junk and more members of his family. Every sound within and without rattles along the cheap fiberboard walls. Surprisingly, I am not worried. Just curious about where this will go.

    Finally he steps into a large area at the back, a garage with high ceilings that dwarfs the rest of their dwelling. Inside are vintage automobiles from the 30s and even earlier, all perfectly restores. Along one wall are antique signs from the turn-of-the-century. A mint condition jukebox sits in one corner, bubbling quietly to itself. Little shelves line the walls with knickknacks and memorabilia from decades past.

    I realize that everything here, even in the automobile, is branded by the Coca-Cola Company. All in red in white. Like my cup.

    He turns, giving me a minute to take it all in. “Why would I take your shitty little cup, when I have all of this?”

    He’s making my argument for me. We both know we took it for his collection. And I say so.

    He looks me over for a long moment, clears his throat and spits on the floor at my feet.

    Without a word, he turns and leaves me there alone. I consider hunting through his collection to find my cup, or a least one to replace it. but I realize that I’ll be thief if I do.

    I head back out through their white trash warren. He is waiting on the steps, as before. As I pass he says, again, “Why would I take your shitty little cup?”

    I don’t answer. Back on my steps I stop and turn to look at him.

    It takes maybe ninety seconds for him to deign to turn his head in my direction.

    “Go fuck yourself, old man.” Before he can respond, I head inside.

    My wife and I decide that we’ll sit on the back porch tonight. Better than putting up with the human carnival of misery out front.

    The “back porch” is really nothing more than a set of corrugated iron steps leading down to a patch of dirt where our daughter plays. A few of her toys and action figures are scattered here and there among the scrubby grass and mud puddles. But she is too tired to play tonight, so we just sit together. My wife and I talk in low voices while we wait for our daughter to doze off.

    My wife holds the baby — not so much a baby anymore, really — leaning back against my chest. A few stars are visible in a little scrap of sky overhead. Quiet. Peaceful. All we need is this, being together.

    After a while, I feel my wife’s hand at the fly of my jeans.

    “Not in front of the baby…” I say, mildly shocked and mildly thrilled.

    She chuckles and leans back, her mouth against my neck. “She’s out like a light…”

    …aaaaaand, regrettably, that’s when I wake up.

    After a little tossing and turning, I manage to fall back asleep once more, hoping I don’t miss out on the good parts…

    …as we’re getting ready to head back in for the night, our neighbors on the other side spill out into their little patch of backyard. Fifteen people stand around, drinking beer and talking over the techno music blaring from the open doorway.

    I can feel the thump of the bass in my lungs. The baby stirs and my wife sits up, gives me a look — one that we have long shared about our neighbors. She sighs and heads inside with the baby, leaving me to deal with the guys next door.

    They’re not bad guys, really. They just forget that other people sometimes need to sleep. They’re always very nice when I remind them.

    And they’re big nerds, which I appreciate. Everyone at their party has a t-shirt referencing Doctor Who or comics or Star Wars.

    I get up and go over to one of them and he gives me a friendly nod. “Dude, check it out…” He proudly displays his shirt, stretching it over his dumpy frame. Every single one of these guys is built like the comic book store owner from The Simpsons. His shirt features a black and white picture of Bart Simpson captioned with a clever gay double entendre.

    (For what it’s worth, I could not remember the double entendre once I woke up. But it was funny, I promise.)

    I smile, in spite of myself. There are worse things than living next door to a trailer full of pleasantly homosexual nerds. I just wish they would stop inviting me to go clubbing with them.

    I decline tonight’s invitation, yet again. I’ve got work in the morning, I tell them. “And I’m not really on your team, you know.”

    One of the other guests chimes in. “There’s no teams, man. Don’t you know being gay is just a percentage?”

    I shrug, pretending to consider my options for the very first time. “Maybe that’s true . . . but none of you faggots are George Clooney,” I say good naturedly. It’s a running joke between us.

    They explode with laughter.

    Another one makes hip thrusts in my direction. “Hey man, I’ll be your Clooney. You won’t know the difference.”

    I give him a scornful look. “Who says I’m a bottom?”

    This cracks them up even more. One of them offers me a beer.

    I decline. “Seriously… I gotta work in the morning.” I make one last attempt to plead my case. “And we’re trying to get the baby to sleep, so can you maybe turn the music down?”

    One of them heads in and, a few seconds later, there is an imperceptible reduction in the volume. He comes back out. “How’s that?”

    I’d give him a resigned nod. “Perfect, thanks…”

    I head back over to climb the steps of our little house, hoping my wife’s still awake…

    …and then I’m back in bed, cold afternoon winterlight slanting in through the window. Across the hall, I hear my wife talking to our daughter while she changes her diaper.

    Feeling very lucky to have them, to have this life, I get up from my nap.

  • the girl in the warehouse

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 4th, 2000]

    …and because I have been thrown out of my house, lost any connection to my wife and children, I am living in an old building adjacent to where I work — downtown, in the old industrial district, where an empty warehouse is easy to find.

    I barely have any clothes and none of my belongings, but I make due — hiding my shame by getting to work extra early each day and staying late.

    Shortly I come to realize that the place where I am staying is haunted — a small girl with dark hair and pale clothes flits about shyly in the evenings. She is sad and somewhat horrible as well. The is a demoniac sense to her, the way she pops up without warning.

    Late in the evening, on my way back to my new “home”, I pass by a bar and some women out front shout at me. One of the comes over and after a brief conversation she suggests I bring her home with me. I do.

    We get back to my small room. She is already all over me.and before I can lock the door she is kneeling on the bed, unclothed, pulling her dress up over her head.

    I turn to see her there, and I stop for a moment.

    She smiled wide and warm, and then I see her eyes dart to a place beside me and her smile falters.

    There dark girl is there, hideous and livid.

    And I suddenly realize that she is not a ghost, never was a ghost — this thing was never alive, never drew breath or felt joy. What has come is older than anything in creation, masquerading,

    She looks at my companion, frozen in a parody of her formerly seductive pose, and she speaks.

    I don’t remember what was said, but the truth of it strikes home with such force that my “date” is driven from the room, sobbing and weeping.

    And, alone with that terrible pale girl, I wait. She looks at me for a moment.

    And then she is gone.

    The next day, in my dream, my secret is found out by the people I work for. I can’t recall how, but it is discovered.

    The big surprises: First, they aren’t angry with me for being there, they’re sympathetic in fact. I find out that one of them also did a similar thing with his ex-wife — he stayed where I am staying.

    Face with this information, I don’t say anything but I know my face tells it all.

    “Yeah, I was there for a few weeks,” he says, watching me.

    “Is the ghost still there?” He asks, offhand.

    “Yes.” I am dumbfounded.

    “Man, she used to scare the shit out of me.” He laughs.

    One of the others says “What’s this ghost?”

    We tell him and, goaded by his fascination, I offer to bring him down.

    “I gotta see this,” he says.

    As we walk down the hallway, it begins.

    Far up the hall, we can see her standing there watching us.

    As we approach, I recognize a familiar feeling of cold dread.

    Brackets and boxes fly off shelves, thrown at us by unseen forces.

    Prepared for this, nerves ringing like an alarm, I knock them away from us — grabbing a broom and brandishing it like a sword.

    My friend marvels at my skill.

    “Yeah, I’ve got a high midichlorian count.”

    We continue on towards the girl. She is hideous and pale, and the lines other face are very dark, her eyes like pits.

    I know what she is, and it is no ghost — she is something far older, engaged in a grotesque masquerade, playacting the child in a diabolically ironic manner.

    We sit and speak of childish things. I am hoping to draw her away from my real thoughts but I can feel the rage boiling within her and I cannot stop it when it finally surfaces.

    Nearby an old man sleeps on the sidewalk, drunk beyond all waking.

    She finally reveals what I already know.

    I am talking with her, realizing that my phony jocular child voice is not only annoying to her, but entirely unnecessary… I know she knows that I know what she truly is, and I know that she knows that I know that she knows that I know.

    But I keep up the pretense; I can see her fighting it at every step.

    Finally, we discuss the colder weather and Halloween is coming soon, I remark.

    And with that, she goes ballistic — force and rage radiating off of her, she’s halfway levitating, screaming with rage.

    And then I wake up, frightened by one of my own dreams for the first time in a very long time.

    [2013 Addendum: Although this dream raised a number of disturbing feelings, I remember being very proud of the Star Wars joke. In fact, I still am.]

  • the recursive old woman

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated December 6th, 1996]

    …I’m standing in front of a shelf full of journals and books in the dead man’s rooms. I take one down, finding [ILLEGIBLE] and poetry, handwritten recollections between the pages — it dawns on me that these are the rooms of my great uncle, the missionary to Burma, and that only I know he is dead.

    The guard eyes me through the front windows and I move on to the inner rooms, marveling at the collection of antiques, souvenirs, and artifacts [ILLEGIBLE] the grimy gray walls, the peeling paint, and the dusty windowpanes.

    Within the inner rooms, I come upon a woman — elderly and wholly lovely. She embraces me and slowly we back to an old bare mattress with a brass frame and headboard tarnished and lovely.

    …and then the guard is knocking at the window and shouting and I am still standing at the bookshelf, a book open before me with a picture of an alluring elderly woman open on the page.

    And I know I am dreaming, but still I set the book back upon the shelf and move once again into the inner rooms, coming to the place of the woman yet again, embracing and being embraced yet again, awakening once more at the shelf of books with the guard behind me, knocking on the window of the dead man’s rooms.

    And again, I turn to pass back into the inner chamber again,

    And again.

    Again.

    Until I wake in the dark morning.

  • the three old men

    Three old men. Drunken and cheaply dressed sit in a library and make vulgar innuendos to every girl who walks by. In the background a brass ensemble plays Cab Calloway tunes.