The Random Short-Story Exercise
Apr. 14th, 2004 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dotintheskyLast week, I asked you to pick a magazine or a book and find me a sentence, randomly. I promised to take all the sentences and write a short-story.
It's done and ready for inspection. I suggest you read the story first before going back to see what everyone selected. Some of the sentences will be too obvious in the story - it was hard to get around them. Others blended more nicely. You can judge.
Most of all, I really enjoyed doing this. You inspired me. Don't be disturbed though with the result. That was entirely my fault. I hope you enjoy the story.
Fate made me sit at home today and wait for Pink Lady to leave the apartment. When the front door slammed shut, my parent’s portrait over the fireplace rattled. I went to it and fixed its position on the wall. The Pink Lady, my lover for the last two years, has the habit of banging doors, leaving her thongs on the living room’s floor, and keeping our bathroom in a perennial mess. She has a name, but I prefer to call her Pink Lady. It keeps things informal between us. When I first moved in with her, the apartment was a disaster zone: sofa cushions marked by cigarette burns, chipped plates, indescribable stains all over the walls, limescale overrunning the taps, cobwebs and broken furniture. In her bedroom, a worse picture. Phone number and graffiti were scrawled on the walls, and on a wardrobe, a slogan was found: drink, drink, wherever we may be. I could only agree with the statement. We finished off two bottles of wine that night.
Pink Lady called me later from her mobile phone. I could hear a sports’ channel in the background. She was over at Barry’s, her usual “arrangement” on Saturdays.
“I’ll probably stay overnight here,” she said. “Barry hasn’t been doing too well at work. You know how it is… stress.”
“Sex solves everything,” I said. My evening’s horizon suddenly expanded beyond the apartment.
“I know this is everybody’s answer to everything and I’m sorry, but if ever a chap needed to get laid, it’s Barry.”
“Have fun. And don’t apologize.” I hung up and stretched out. I got an immediate erection thinking of the apartment all to myself. Another night of revenge beckoned – I was free to entertain and be entertained.
Five months ago I’d discovered Pink Lady was cheating on me. Barry was one of those stocky rugby player mates that I used to see when England played against Australia. We’d bet a few quids on our respective teams and drink the afternoon away. Like all my guy friends, I was curious about the size of his prick. When Pink Lady confessed she was getting it slipped in by him, my curiosity became an obsession. I understood why she could be attracted to Barry; he was the dangerous kind. He had nearly been convicted for an unspoken crime in Australia, and his immigration status in England was still under scrutiny by the authorities. When we drank in pubs, I’d excuse myself to follow him into the gents. Still, it struck me as odd that he could steal gasoline and threaten the lives of countless strangers, yet feel the need to hide so completely while peeing. I had to, in the end, beg Pink Lady to give me the measurements.
“Seven inches, medium thick” she declared, a smirk on her face.
Like all the other days when she’s away, I have to clean the apartment before putting any thought into my revenge. No stranger would enjoy my rooms if they found her used cotton buds lying on the pillows, hair clogging the bathtub, slivers of clipped toenails lining the floors. I hoped to take only an hour fixing the place up but, instead, I’m peeling Trojans off the floor and earning valuable practice at fighting off the vomit reflex. I’m amazed at my forgetfulness: when did we fuck so wildly? How did the bed sheets end up with those huge stains? Pink Lady must be running a brothel while I’m at the office.
My parents met the “lady in pink” a few times, when they managed to leave their comfy retirement in Florida for visits. Even in their old age, they’ve retained a golden glow which charms my friends and lovers. They have always been the kind of couple envied by other adults. My father, Tom Shepard, is a tall man, with jet black hair and round blue eyes who seems to know everything of the world. My mother, Helen, had been a beauty in her youth, compared many times to a young Rita Hayworth. She wore her dark red hair then as long as it was fashionably allowed, like a velvet mantle cascading around her face. Her black eyes glittered underneath it. As a child, wherever they took me, people would look at us and say: “what a beautiful family.” Or, “there goes the Shepards, the luckiest family in town.”
It’s easy for me to look back and glamorise my parents like that. I can forget the times I hated them, the times they punished me and treated me like a child, even though I was a young man and knew better. A lot of parents are like mine: they like to bring you little icy lollies even though you are fifteen and sometimes they give you a pound, and act as if they’ve done something to change your life. They don’t realize that the only power over their children’s lives is fate. Luck, chance, the mistress of the roulette – she has brought me from there – the soft protection of my family’s home – to here, the vast wilds of a life under Pink Lady’s thumb.
I planned a dinner for the four of us in one of London’s best Thai restaurants. When my lover, beautifully dressed in a pink dress that night, excused herself for a minute, my mother leaned towards me across the table and whispered:
“There are very few times in life when we do something crazy. I don’t think you can outdo yourself after this one.” She gestured at Pink Lady’s retreating form.
I nodded in agreement, sipping my white wine.
Tom (as I still called my dad), jet black hair intact in his late sixties, added: “your mother and I were wild for each other when we first met.”
“It’s true” my mom continued, a twinkle in her faded Rita Hayworth eyes. “The culmination was our wedding night. The only crazy I was when I married him.”
We were silent for a few seconds, just in time for my lady in pink to return, all smiles and powdered nose.
“Are you sure you don’t want to eat?” my mother insisted, all naiveté.
Nothing could go down Pink Lady’s throat. The night had sparked for her and we quickly descended into an argument about modern politics.
“It’s partly the cogency of the argument, but also the vitality of the language,” she sneered, hitting her palms against the table. “The reason why the Republicans deserve the White House is exactly because their language is the most aggressive. The winner takes it all.”
“Nobody who quotes ABBA in a political discussion wins anything,” I retorted, looking at my parents. They looked like little children ready for bed.
When the bill came, my father insisted on paying. A few minutes later the waiter returned with his credit card.
“Mr. Tom Shepard, I’m afraid we have a problem. Your credit card has been cancelled.”
We quickly called the VISA hotline and were informed that somebody had duplicated the credit card and gone on a shopping spree. We congratulated ourselves on finding this out soon enough. I handed my credit card to the waiter. Bewildered by what had happened, Tom nodded, smiled uncertainly. My mom gently patted him on the shoulder.
Days later, during an intense fuck session, Pink Lady confessed she had cloned my father’s credit card during their first meeting and bought our digital flat screen tv with it. That night, I uttered for the first time the words which would kill our relationship: “I love you.”
Later, still in bed, she claimed that her breasts were suddenly milking, and this may mean she was pregnant. I stroked her breasts and tried to squeeze the milk out, but she wouldn’t let me. Her patties were harder than usual. She wondered what she could do with so much milk: people were starving in the world and there she was, her milk going to waste.
“According to Barry,” she explained, “if breasts become too full or the mother has to be away for a feeding or two, the breast milk may be easily expressed by hand or with the aid of a device called a breast pump.”
The thought of Barry gaining access to her milk before I knew of her pregnancy drove my fist through the wall. Afterwards, in the hospital, she confessed it was all a joke. She never wanted to be pregnant, and she never wanted to feed the world.
*******
I met the lady in pink through work. At the time, she was only the “woman in pink”, the young and austere academic who did the conference circuits like a professional hustler. New York, London, Paris, Tokyo: she would go wherever there was an audience for her polemics on pilgrimages into the Holy Land.
I sat at the back of the conference room in a London hotel, observing the audience react and then retract from her words. The women wanted to be her, the men wanted her (excluding the gay ones, of course – those only wanted some time alone with her to accertain whether she was a real Diva.)
Her voice came to us like rhythmic poetry, in great waves of softness, then aridity.
“…The complaints of the returning pilgrims (particularly those of Peter the Hermit) about their treatment by the Muslims in Palestine had no foundation: Christian and Muslim pilgrims visited their holy places in jerusalem, and were the main support of the local economy.”
I introduced myself to her afterwards, during the costumary wine and cheese. My position as representative of her publisher in London did not impress her. All she cared about was a fast cab to the nearest bar, whiskey on the rocks, and a pack of Camels.
“Do you think Camels sell more than Marlboros in the Holy Land?” I asked, trying to refill her wine glass.
She could have decimated entire armies with the look she gave me. “Is that the sort of humour that gets you laid in this town?”
“As a visible Republican, I thought you might enjoy it. Holy Land mixed with Tobacco goes well for your political party, doesn’t it?”
“I’m only a Republican because of my father. In truth, I only care about the facts. If they aren’t coming from the liberals, then I must look for it somewhere else.”
“You’ve published some interesting views on what the media would consider hot topics for liberals: the justified oppression of homosexuals in the Holy Land, for example.”
“You are nowhere near getting me into bed with this talk.”
I ignored her.
“Unlike people with physical disabilities, who are protected from discrimination by federal laws, no such protection exists (yet, at least) for another group whose members are frequently victims of prejudice – gay men and lesbian women.”
The academic in pink stared at me in amazement. She had slowly fallen into my trap: I would antagonize her mind with sensitive issues, ply her with drinks, then get her naked in the nearest hotel room. Though she was much younger than me, she was just as experienced in the sexual hunts provided by academic conferences. Finding fresh meat in these conferences was what confered any interest in my job. I had been given the job as a gift – the publishing company belonged to my uncle Jeremy Shepard. For twenty years I’d worked under his tutelage, learning everything there needed to be learnt about the publishing of academic books. It was my old uncle who had insisted I discover the beauty of the pink lady in person. He even hinted of knowing her beauty personally, though I suspected he was just a big fat liar.
At the time, my parents hoped I would settle down with my long-lasting girlfriend Abbie. She was a favourite of my parents, the chosen bride to bear my children. One look at the Pink Lady and I knew I couldn’t be with anybody else. I stopped returning Abbie’s calls and sent my best suit to be dry-cleaned. I had to look my best for our first meeting.
My uncle Jeremy told me Pink Lady was coming to London on one of her book tours, and that he wanted me to wine and dine her, “in the name of our company”. Crazed with love for the lady in pink, I covered my old uncle’s tobacco-filled cheeks with mad kisses, and, while with some embarrassment he let me know without venturing to tell me openly that he would just as soon I not talk about this visit to my parents, I said to him, tear in my eyes, that the memory of his goodness was so powerful within me that one day I would certainly find the means to show him my gratitude.
Needless to say, my parents were heartbroken when they found out about the end of my long-term relationship with goody-goody Abbie. I was determined to keep my diary free for Pink Lady’s visit to London. I was approaching my late 30s, impotent, and tired of dreading marriage. I needed a kick in the balls. And that was exactly what Pink Lady gave me when I tried to grope her on our way to her hotel room.
*******
I leave our apartment and head for the Thames. London is submerged under winter’s darkness and few people are outdoors. My chances are low in finding someone to bring home, but my hopes are unending. Ever since I found out about Pink Lady’s betrayal, I only wish to fuck men. Strangers they must be, and willing to wear her clothes. Willing to make a mess of her clothes, of her bedsheets, before she comes home. Men who leave me alone when we are done. Men who will stretch and destroy her clothes.
A Latino approaches me. His name is Pablo and he reminds me of Coronas and lazy people. I see the glint of a gold tooth when he smiles. As I walk beside the rushing river, watching its black waters lap against the concrete borders, Pablo says “Pues ahi estaba el mar, y del otro lado del mar estaba el mundo.” He thinks I don’t understand him, but I do. I say, more to myself, “the Thames was never a sea – it’s always been a river.” I distrust wannabe poets, and the way they make me feel. All of a sudden, I’m not so horny anymore. Maybe I’ll just go home alone and watch sitcoms. Pablo grins. He thinks he’s going to fuck me with his fat burrito dick. I try to remember how to say “fuck off” in spanish but my memory fails.
Just from being with Pablo for ten minutes I already know what kind of a person he is: if anyone offended him or made him angry, he thought about it for a long time, and wouldn’t forgive them. I insist that I’m the one doing the fucking. He plays that he doesn’t understand and puts his hand on my ass. I slap it away.
I grab him by around the neck and pull his face into a kiss. My hands slide down and my fingers find his asshole. I stick them in there, first one, then three. He squirms and groans, like a pig whose just found a fresh cob in the sty. The first time I did this to a man, I made the mistake of sniffing my fingers afterwards. I finger-fuck him for a while until I feel his hardon glitching agaist me. I ask Pablo if he wants to come home with me and he promptly shoves his tongue down my throat.
On the way home, Pablo tries to tell me about his life. He works for the National Orchestra as their repertoir coordinator. The cab driver eyes us suspiciously, possibly wondering where two men could be heading at 3 in the morning.
“Beams are the thick lines used to join eighth notes (quavers) and shorter notes into groups” Pablo explains. “It’s hard sometimes for the orchestra to agree with my ideas.”
I want him to shut up, or speak to me in spanish. I don’t want to be reminded that he is more than an asshole to be fucked, more than a heavy-set body to be cajouled into wearing Pink Lady’s nightdresses. Some men are very protective about their sexual fantasies.
My parents always taught me to be showered and dressed an hour before your guests arrive. Even with strangers, like Pablo, I’m no different. I took a long shower before I went hunting, brushed my teeth, even clipped my toe nails. I’m a perfectionist. And I suffer because I no longer have the perfect woman all to myself.
*******
I saw Pink Lady for the second time in Paris. I knew she had branched from her area of expertise on the Holy Land and was now talking about maps and human geography. It fit nicely with her previous studies on migrating Arabs.
She was already lecturing when I entered the conference room: “The term as employed in these maps [she pressed a tiny box in her hand, showing a slide of Europe’s map on the white wall] does not refer to the total population of a country, i.e. not to Belgians or Moroccans, but to the ethnic groups living there, namely Flemings and Walloon or Arabs and Berbers.”
I wanted to scream at her, at the sedated audience: how dare you come here, you fucking Republican, and preach about our history?” And yet, there lay her allure. She always battled to control other people’s backyards; she had no interest in the weeds growing in her own plot of land.
When I tried to approach her in the hallways, I saw three iminent french critics encircling her like a pack of hungry hyenas. They had blood lust, desire for her body, her work, for some metaphysical sacrifice. I pushed one of them from behind and was surprised to see him fall on the floor. His glasses broke. It was the first time, and perhaps the last, I surprised Pink Lady. We took each other’s hands and slipped away. We spent the rest of the day in bed. She was suddenly curious about me. I had become the personification of the ideal male – an old masculine type that was close to extinction.
She told me her life story. She’d been brought up in the mean streets of Philadelphia, by zealous parents who ran a boarding-house. Her mother had painted all the rooms pink and insisted on her only daughter wearing pink clothes (or red for special occasions). As hard as Pink lady tried, she couldn’t break away from that childhood habit. Her life was seen through pink lenses and was resigned to being the personification of a colour despised by the majority of the population.
Her family’s boarding-house came from a long tradition of European inns and travel lodges. As a child, she’d been told of her grandparent’s boarding-house in Lithuania, the struggles they’d faced in America, surviving the Depression years by renting rooms to prostitutes, factory workers and artists. She remembered going for days with hardly anything to eat. By then, she’d learned to depend on the kindness of the guests. In some boarding-houses, leadership was provided by a dominant male, usually an older, more experienced sojourner or a man of good standing in the village who presided over the house with seigniorial authority, who had to be consulted about everything.
She lost her virginity to one of the workers who boarded with them for many years, a man twenty years older than herself. She was only 15. He was the man who stood out in the boarding-house as a clear leader, who protected her when nobody else could.
The fatal flaw in my relationship with Pink Lady was her initial belief that I could be that man. She wanted to revive her romantic past, and she had chosen me as an actor. She mistook my obsessive nature with determination, my stupidity with courage.
*******
I’m stradling Pablo on the bed. His legs are hooked to my arms, his wheat-brown ass is spread open to me. The pink dress is too tight and bulges around his body. I’ve lubed my dick as best as possible, as well as his asshole. Preliminaries are over and it’s time for action.
I begin to push in. He looks upset and vulnerable, a teasing fringe concealing a slight glassiness to his right eye. He isn’t crying. He isn’t in pain. The bastard has done this before.
My body’s weight is on him. I slide all the way in until my shaved balls rest against his ass. He smiles, his eyes closed. The winners take it all.
When I’m finally getting into it, I hear a door open behind me. Pablo freaks out. He had no idea I lived with a woman. He thought the clothes, the shoes, the make-up, everything was mine. Pink Lady stares at me while Pablo scrambles for his clothes and runs away.
“You’re not 29 years old. This isn’t 1965.”
“Welcome to my revolution,” I moan, pulling the condom off my dick. She doesn’t say a word. She closes the door and leaves me with an unfinished erection.
It's done and ready for inspection. I suggest you read the story first before going back to see what everyone selected. Some of the sentences will be too obvious in the story - it was hard to get around them. Others blended more nicely. You can judge.
Most of all, I really enjoyed doing this. You inspired me. Don't be disturbed though with the result. That was entirely my fault. I hope you enjoy the story.
The Winner Takes It All
Fate made me sit at home today and wait for Pink Lady to leave the apartment. When the front door slammed shut, my parent’s portrait over the fireplace rattled. I went to it and fixed its position on the wall. The Pink Lady, my lover for the last two years, has the habit of banging doors, leaving her thongs on the living room’s floor, and keeping our bathroom in a perennial mess. She has a name, but I prefer to call her Pink Lady. It keeps things informal between us. When I first moved in with her, the apartment was a disaster zone: sofa cushions marked by cigarette burns, chipped plates, indescribable stains all over the walls, limescale overrunning the taps, cobwebs and broken furniture. In her bedroom, a worse picture. Phone number and graffiti were scrawled on the walls, and on a wardrobe, a slogan was found: drink, drink, wherever we may be. I could only agree with the statement. We finished off two bottles of wine that night.
Pink Lady called me later from her mobile phone. I could hear a sports’ channel in the background. She was over at Barry’s, her usual “arrangement” on Saturdays.
“I’ll probably stay overnight here,” she said. “Barry hasn’t been doing too well at work. You know how it is… stress.”
“Sex solves everything,” I said. My evening’s horizon suddenly expanded beyond the apartment.
“I know this is everybody’s answer to everything and I’m sorry, but if ever a chap needed to get laid, it’s Barry.”
“Have fun. And don’t apologize.” I hung up and stretched out. I got an immediate erection thinking of the apartment all to myself. Another night of revenge beckoned – I was free to entertain and be entertained.
Five months ago I’d discovered Pink Lady was cheating on me. Barry was one of those stocky rugby player mates that I used to see when England played against Australia. We’d bet a few quids on our respective teams and drink the afternoon away. Like all my guy friends, I was curious about the size of his prick. When Pink Lady confessed she was getting it slipped in by him, my curiosity became an obsession. I understood why she could be attracted to Barry; he was the dangerous kind. He had nearly been convicted for an unspoken crime in Australia, and his immigration status in England was still under scrutiny by the authorities. When we drank in pubs, I’d excuse myself to follow him into the gents. Still, it struck me as odd that he could steal gasoline and threaten the lives of countless strangers, yet feel the need to hide so completely while peeing. I had to, in the end, beg Pink Lady to give me the measurements.
“Seven inches, medium thick” she declared, a smirk on her face.
Like all the other days when she’s away, I have to clean the apartment before putting any thought into my revenge. No stranger would enjoy my rooms if they found her used cotton buds lying on the pillows, hair clogging the bathtub, slivers of clipped toenails lining the floors. I hoped to take only an hour fixing the place up but, instead, I’m peeling Trojans off the floor and earning valuable practice at fighting off the vomit reflex. I’m amazed at my forgetfulness: when did we fuck so wildly? How did the bed sheets end up with those huge stains? Pink Lady must be running a brothel while I’m at the office.
My parents met the “lady in pink” a few times, when they managed to leave their comfy retirement in Florida for visits. Even in their old age, they’ve retained a golden glow which charms my friends and lovers. They have always been the kind of couple envied by other adults. My father, Tom Shepard, is a tall man, with jet black hair and round blue eyes who seems to know everything of the world. My mother, Helen, had been a beauty in her youth, compared many times to a young Rita Hayworth. She wore her dark red hair then as long as it was fashionably allowed, like a velvet mantle cascading around her face. Her black eyes glittered underneath it. As a child, wherever they took me, people would look at us and say: “what a beautiful family.” Or, “there goes the Shepards, the luckiest family in town.”
It’s easy for me to look back and glamorise my parents like that. I can forget the times I hated them, the times they punished me and treated me like a child, even though I was a young man and knew better. A lot of parents are like mine: they like to bring you little icy lollies even though you are fifteen and sometimes they give you a pound, and act as if they’ve done something to change your life. They don’t realize that the only power over their children’s lives is fate. Luck, chance, the mistress of the roulette – she has brought me from there – the soft protection of my family’s home – to here, the vast wilds of a life under Pink Lady’s thumb.
I planned a dinner for the four of us in one of London’s best Thai restaurants. When my lover, beautifully dressed in a pink dress that night, excused herself for a minute, my mother leaned towards me across the table and whispered:
“There are very few times in life when we do something crazy. I don’t think you can outdo yourself after this one.” She gestured at Pink Lady’s retreating form.
I nodded in agreement, sipping my white wine.
Tom (as I still called my dad), jet black hair intact in his late sixties, added: “your mother and I were wild for each other when we first met.”
“It’s true” my mom continued, a twinkle in her faded Rita Hayworth eyes. “The culmination was our wedding night. The only crazy I was when I married him.”
We were silent for a few seconds, just in time for my lady in pink to return, all smiles and powdered nose.
“Are you sure you don’t want to eat?” my mother insisted, all naiveté.
Nothing could go down Pink Lady’s throat. The night had sparked for her and we quickly descended into an argument about modern politics.
“It’s partly the cogency of the argument, but also the vitality of the language,” she sneered, hitting her palms against the table. “The reason why the Republicans deserve the White House is exactly because their language is the most aggressive. The winner takes it all.”
“Nobody who quotes ABBA in a political discussion wins anything,” I retorted, looking at my parents. They looked like little children ready for bed.
When the bill came, my father insisted on paying. A few minutes later the waiter returned with his credit card.
“Mr. Tom Shepard, I’m afraid we have a problem. Your credit card has been cancelled.”
We quickly called the VISA hotline and were informed that somebody had duplicated the credit card and gone on a shopping spree. We congratulated ourselves on finding this out soon enough. I handed my credit card to the waiter. Bewildered by what had happened, Tom nodded, smiled uncertainly. My mom gently patted him on the shoulder.
Days later, during an intense fuck session, Pink Lady confessed she had cloned my father’s credit card during their first meeting and bought our digital flat screen tv with it. That night, I uttered for the first time the words which would kill our relationship: “I love you.”
Later, still in bed, she claimed that her breasts were suddenly milking, and this may mean she was pregnant. I stroked her breasts and tried to squeeze the milk out, but she wouldn’t let me. Her patties were harder than usual. She wondered what she could do with so much milk: people were starving in the world and there she was, her milk going to waste.
“According to Barry,” she explained, “if breasts become too full or the mother has to be away for a feeding or two, the breast milk may be easily expressed by hand or with the aid of a device called a breast pump.”
The thought of Barry gaining access to her milk before I knew of her pregnancy drove my fist through the wall. Afterwards, in the hospital, she confessed it was all a joke. She never wanted to be pregnant, and she never wanted to feed the world.
*******
I met the lady in pink through work. At the time, she was only the “woman in pink”, the young and austere academic who did the conference circuits like a professional hustler. New York, London, Paris, Tokyo: she would go wherever there was an audience for her polemics on pilgrimages into the Holy Land.
I sat at the back of the conference room in a London hotel, observing the audience react and then retract from her words. The women wanted to be her, the men wanted her (excluding the gay ones, of course – those only wanted some time alone with her to accertain whether she was a real Diva.)
Her voice came to us like rhythmic poetry, in great waves of softness, then aridity.
“…The complaints of the returning pilgrims (particularly those of Peter the Hermit) about their treatment by the Muslims in Palestine had no foundation: Christian and Muslim pilgrims visited their holy places in jerusalem, and were the main support of the local economy.”
I introduced myself to her afterwards, during the costumary wine and cheese. My position as representative of her publisher in London did not impress her. All she cared about was a fast cab to the nearest bar, whiskey on the rocks, and a pack of Camels.
“Do you think Camels sell more than Marlboros in the Holy Land?” I asked, trying to refill her wine glass.
She could have decimated entire armies with the look she gave me. “Is that the sort of humour that gets you laid in this town?”
“As a visible Republican, I thought you might enjoy it. Holy Land mixed with Tobacco goes well for your political party, doesn’t it?”
“I’m only a Republican because of my father. In truth, I only care about the facts. If they aren’t coming from the liberals, then I must look for it somewhere else.”
“You’ve published some interesting views on what the media would consider hot topics for liberals: the justified oppression of homosexuals in the Holy Land, for example.”
“You are nowhere near getting me into bed with this talk.”
I ignored her.
“Unlike people with physical disabilities, who are protected from discrimination by federal laws, no such protection exists (yet, at least) for another group whose members are frequently victims of prejudice – gay men and lesbian women.”
The academic in pink stared at me in amazement. She had slowly fallen into my trap: I would antagonize her mind with sensitive issues, ply her with drinks, then get her naked in the nearest hotel room. Though she was much younger than me, she was just as experienced in the sexual hunts provided by academic conferences. Finding fresh meat in these conferences was what confered any interest in my job. I had been given the job as a gift – the publishing company belonged to my uncle Jeremy Shepard. For twenty years I’d worked under his tutelage, learning everything there needed to be learnt about the publishing of academic books. It was my old uncle who had insisted I discover the beauty of the pink lady in person. He even hinted of knowing her beauty personally, though I suspected he was just a big fat liar.
At the time, my parents hoped I would settle down with my long-lasting girlfriend Abbie. She was a favourite of my parents, the chosen bride to bear my children. One look at the Pink Lady and I knew I couldn’t be with anybody else. I stopped returning Abbie’s calls and sent my best suit to be dry-cleaned. I had to look my best for our first meeting.
My uncle Jeremy told me Pink Lady was coming to London on one of her book tours, and that he wanted me to wine and dine her, “in the name of our company”. Crazed with love for the lady in pink, I covered my old uncle’s tobacco-filled cheeks with mad kisses, and, while with some embarrassment he let me know without venturing to tell me openly that he would just as soon I not talk about this visit to my parents, I said to him, tear in my eyes, that the memory of his goodness was so powerful within me that one day I would certainly find the means to show him my gratitude.
Needless to say, my parents were heartbroken when they found out about the end of my long-term relationship with goody-goody Abbie. I was determined to keep my diary free for Pink Lady’s visit to London. I was approaching my late 30s, impotent, and tired of dreading marriage. I needed a kick in the balls. And that was exactly what Pink Lady gave me when I tried to grope her on our way to her hotel room.
*******
I leave our apartment and head for the Thames. London is submerged under winter’s darkness and few people are outdoors. My chances are low in finding someone to bring home, but my hopes are unending. Ever since I found out about Pink Lady’s betrayal, I only wish to fuck men. Strangers they must be, and willing to wear her clothes. Willing to make a mess of her clothes, of her bedsheets, before she comes home. Men who leave me alone when we are done. Men who will stretch and destroy her clothes.
A Latino approaches me. His name is Pablo and he reminds me of Coronas and lazy people. I see the glint of a gold tooth when he smiles. As I walk beside the rushing river, watching its black waters lap against the concrete borders, Pablo says “Pues ahi estaba el mar, y del otro lado del mar estaba el mundo.” He thinks I don’t understand him, but I do. I say, more to myself, “the Thames was never a sea – it’s always been a river.” I distrust wannabe poets, and the way they make me feel. All of a sudden, I’m not so horny anymore. Maybe I’ll just go home alone and watch sitcoms. Pablo grins. He thinks he’s going to fuck me with his fat burrito dick. I try to remember how to say “fuck off” in spanish but my memory fails.
Just from being with Pablo for ten minutes I already know what kind of a person he is: if anyone offended him or made him angry, he thought about it for a long time, and wouldn’t forgive them. I insist that I’m the one doing the fucking. He plays that he doesn’t understand and puts his hand on my ass. I slap it away.
I grab him by around the neck and pull his face into a kiss. My hands slide down and my fingers find his asshole. I stick them in there, first one, then three. He squirms and groans, like a pig whose just found a fresh cob in the sty. The first time I did this to a man, I made the mistake of sniffing my fingers afterwards. I finger-fuck him for a while until I feel his hardon glitching agaist me. I ask Pablo if he wants to come home with me and he promptly shoves his tongue down my throat.
On the way home, Pablo tries to tell me about his life. He works for the National Orchestra as their repertoir coordinator. The cab driver eyes us suspiciously, possibly wondering where two men could be heading at 3 in the morning.
“Beams are the thick lines used to join eighth notes (quavers) and shorter notes into groups” Pablo explains. “It’s hard sometimes for the orchestra to agree with my ideas.”
I want him to shut up, or speak to me in spanish. I don’t want to be reminded that he is more than an asshole to be fucked, more than a heavy-set body to be cajouled into wearing Pink Lady’s nightdresses. Some men are very protective about their sexual fantasies.
My parents always taught me to be showered and dressed an hour before your guests arrive. Even with strangers, like Pablo, I’m no different. I took a long shower before I went hunting, brushed my teeth, even clipped my toe nails. I’m a perfectionist. And I suffer because I no longer have the perfect woman all to myself.
*******
I saw Pink Lady for the second time in Paris. I knew she had branched from her area of expertise on the Holy Land and was now talking about maps and human geography. It fit nicely with her previous studies on migrating Arabs.
She was already lecturing when I entered the conference room: “The term as employed in these maps [she pressed a tiny box in her hand, showing a slide of Europe’s map on the white wall] does not refer to the total population of a country, i.e. not to Belgians or Moroccans, but to the ethnic groups living there, namely Flemings and Walloon or Arabs and Berbers.”
I wanted to scream at her, at the sedated audience: how dare you come here, you fucking Republican, and preach about our history?” And yet, there lay her allure. She always battled to control other people’s backyards; she had no interest in the weeds growing in her own plot of land.
When I tried to approach her in the hallways, I saw three iminent french critics encircling her like a pack of hungry hyenas. They had blood lust, desire for her body, her work, for some metaphysical sacrifice. I pushed one of them from behind and was surprised to see him fall on the floor. His glasses broke. It was the first time, and perhaps the last, I surprised Pink Lady. We took each other’s hands and slipped away. We spent the rest of the day in bed. She was suddenly curious about me. I had become the personification of the ideal male – an old masculine type that was close to extinction.
She told me her life story. She’d been brought up in the mean streets of Philadelphia, by zealous parents who ran a boarding-house. Her mother had painted all the rooms pink and insisted on her only daughter wearing pink clothes (or red for special occasions). As hard as Pink lady tried, she couldn’t break away from that childhood habit. Her life was seen through pink lenses and was resigned to being the personification of a colour despised by the majority of the population.
Her family’s boarding-house came from a long tradition of European inns and travel lodges. As a child, she’d been told of her grandparent’s boarding-house in Lithuania, the struggles they’d faced in America, surviving the Depression years by renting rooms to prostitutes, factory workers and artists. She remembered going for days with hardly anything to eat. By then, she’d learned to depend on the kindness of the guests. In some boarding-houses, leadership was provided by a dominant male, usually an older, more experienced sojourner or a man of good standing in the village who presided over the house with seigniorial authority, who had to be consulted about everything.
She lost her virginity to one of the workers who boarded with them for many years, a man twenty years older than herself. She was only 15. He was the man who stood out in the boarding-house as a clear leader, who protected her when nobody else could.
The fatal flaw in my relationship with Pink Lady was her initial belief that I could be that man. She wanted to revive her romantic past, and she had chosen me as an actor. She mistook my obsessive nature with determination, my stupidity with courage.
*******
I’m stradling Pablo on the bed. His legs are hooked to my arms, his wheat-brown ass is spread open to me. The pink dress is too tight and bulges around his body. I’ve lubed my dick as best as possible, as well as his asshole. Preliminaries are over and it’s time for action.
I begin to push in. He looks upset and vulnerable, a teasing fringe concealing a slight glassiness to his right eye. He isn’t crying. He isn’t in pain. The bastard has done this before.
My body’s weight is on him. I slide all the way in until my shaved balls rest against his ass. He smiles, his eyes closed. The winners take it all.
When I’m finally getting into it, I hear a door open behind me. Pablo freaks out. He had no idea I lived with a woman. He thought the clothes, the shoes, the make-up, everything was mine. Pink Lady stares at me while Pablo scrambles for his clothes and runs away.
“You’re not 29 years old. This isn’t 1965.”
“Welcome to my revolution,” I moan, pulling the condom off my dick. She doesn’t say a word. She closes the door and leaves me with an unfinished erection.
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no subject
on 2004-04-15 10:28 am (UTC):)
no subject
on 2004-04-15 10:31 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-16 08:55 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-16 12:32 pm (UTC)I just don't write as much as I used to. I don't really feel compelled, you know? hey, I'd like you to read a short story I wrote in college. I'll have to remember to send it now cos I'm going on vacances for a week.
no subject
on 2004-04-17 02:24 am (UTC)Will you be away from LJ for a week?
no subject
on 2004-04-17 08:54 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-18 09:17 am (UTC):)
no subject
on 2004-04-18 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-19 12:39 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-20 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
on 2004-04-21 02:05 pm (UTC)