The Last Laugh

"Oh man, oh man," he said, furiously stroking himself harder and harder.
"This gets better every time I do it," he moaned, his eyes rolling upward in ecstasy.
Sitting cross-legged on the beach, watching the soft flickery glow of the campfire illuminate his smooth, recently shaved body, made him feel like he was garbage for wasting his life, and that only added to the pleasure.
"Fuck, I'm beautiful, but in a trashy way," he laughed, finishing his sixth or seventh session of the night. He lost count, that's how often he did it. No, actually, he never kept count. Kody didn't have a mind for math, or thinking about anything else for that matter. He was interested in sex, his screamo band, and probably a little beer, meth and pot on the side, nothing more.
Wiping the sticky goo into his hairless legs like lotion, he giggled out to the nearby woods, "Wanna join me? I'm already up for seconds!"
There was no answer, and he knew there wouldn't be.
For three nights, she walked into the jungle to avoid his sick, perverse stare. Kody had a way with sluts, druggies, and other hedonistic, emo wrist-slashers such as himself. But he had no clue how to connect with the clergy, or decent people of any strip, for that matter.
Kody stood up, rising with the animalistic vigor that others admired in him so much. He was bored having no one to talk to, or to fuck, and wondered when help would arrive.
"Stranded for three days with this! Out in the middle of the ocean, we're lost and going to die out here and I got no minutes left on my phone. Tyler and Tanner are still texting. What the fuck's their problem? I got no minutes, you motherfuckers, I can't even read them," he laughed. Everything made him laugh.
"What the fuck kind of name is Diana Morning Starr, anyway?," he shouted angrily that first night. He was always angry and always laughing about it, so he shouted it toward the jungle again like he did every so often when she wondered off.
To his surprise, she finally answered.
"A chosen name, you little prick!"
She leapt onto the beach with such force as he didn't imagine she was capable of in her emaciated, half-drowned like-a-cat goofiness.
"I am sick of your judgmental arrogance! You get so serious about every meaningless snicker, every slight draft across your testicles. No wonder you can't read anything except pointless anime. There are bigger things in this world than enjoying carnal pleasures, you know," screamed a high New England accent.
"Uh, no. I don't think so," he sniggered, gazing downward at his statuesque nudity.
Brushing red hair out of her eyes, Diana wasn't impressed. She considered telling him about her church, a Wiccan Coven she presided over as High Priestess. When they were on the yacht before it sunk, she talked reverently about her Celtic fertility goddess, Brigid, and all he did was giggle with remarks about a transgender man named Brigid who liked group sex.
Diana knew he was making it up, but the disrespect angered her more than she could handle. As reasoning with him would never work, Diana decided to at least shame him out of his wantonness until they were rescued. She felt like strangling him in his sleep with her bright purple priestly robe, he was that frustrating.
"You creep me out. You really are as strange as they get. Who in his right mind brags about being a hooker?," she asked calmly. She wanted him to give a genuine response, and wouldn't let his mockery get to her this time.
After his smartass comments, a feeling of being centered and calm came over her. Diana sat down carefully, no longer caring what he said about her body.
"I got something you can sit on over here if you think you can handle me," he laughed. Kody was as wild as Hell and couldn't help himself. It was that laugh, more than anything, that bothered Diana. He was real. She finally figured it out. That had been the problem all along. He really was just a simple-minded, nymphomaniac pretty boy, and that's all he would ever amount to.
"Remember what I said on the yacht? I toasted the happy couple on their one-year anniversary, telling them the Universe conspired to bring them together, the gods wanted a happy union blessed with child. They are meant for magic, which is why Joanna needs a fertility priestess like myself," Diana explained.
"I think what they need is Viagra. That bitch married that old impotent fucker for the money, you ain't fooling me none. And you're just out for his money like I am," Kody spat with a deep, booming manly laugh that didn't match his soft, efiminate frame.
"You self-righteous asshole!" A violence rose in her voice that made Kody laugh even harder.
Diana calmed down when he started masturbating again. They were on opposite sides of the fire, which she made as big as possible so any passing planes or ships might come to their rescue. She made the bonfire without any help from Kody. Now she was glad should could only see his head and upper body, but that rhythmic churning of his right shoulder gave away what he was doing over there.
As far as Diana Morning Starr was concerned, he was her enemy. Although she was uncomfortable with Christian iconography (for obvious reasons), she rationalized his desires away as if he were Satan, a temptor who came as a destroyer of mankind.
"What kind of name is Kody Jarama? It sounds fake to me," Diana asked, hoping to get under his skin.
"It's the name my bitch of a mom came up with. My real dad's name is Kody, but she was married to some fatass loser named Jarama who raised me. I could care less," Kody shrugged, getting distracted by his body like a cat with a laser pointer.
It wasn't just his indifference that bothered her. She knew he wasn't her enemy for anything he had done. He was brought aboard the yacht to seduce the groom, whose family trust would cut him and his young wife off if he didn't produce a biological heir by his fastly approaching sixtieth birthday. All the money would go to his dishonest nephew, Aiden Sodowsky, who wanted Kody to drive an erotic, hateful wedge between the May-December couple.
"You may not believe this, but there really is a higher power watching over us, always present even if we don't feel it, always gazing at us as if fixated on our every movement," Diana solemnly explained.
"Ah, so you mean the gods are into porn?," Kody laughed. "I bet I'm getting ten billion views on Pay-Per-View in Heaven."
He fell back, arching his abdomen upward in the whorish fashion that made closeted, middle-aged married men go wild. Young women were not immune to his sensual, writhing frame either, as Diana discovered when she strained to avoid his eyes the moment she seen him walk onto the yacht in a svelte tuxedo showing his eager, pulsating manliness.
"Is everything a joke to you? STOP! Don't answer that. Your lame comebacks are almost too boring to take after three days. Um, you clearly have a gift at enticing people. Your mannerisms alone draw attention to you, if only disgust among straight men, but still," she droaned on for several minutes in what seemed like an eternity to Kody.
His naive thoughts included the assanine: "Comebacks? Comebacks? Is she coming on to me?"; the serious: "I need to make sure the right side of my face is better illuminated. It's my better side and I think that pupil dilates bigger than the other, giving me a more divine catlike presence"; and the rare task-oriented: "How many times must I remind you to switch hands? Now I'm cramping up!"
Diana sighed heavily, realizing he wasn't listening.
Wind rippled through Kody's long blond hair as he laid down next to the fire. He was still completely nude and admiring his tan, which he had been working on since being shipwrecked.
Feeling tired, physically sore from sodomizing himself in various ways, he looked around the fire to see if Diana was asleep. Thrusting upward with his lean arms, he still couldn't see her. Kody walked around the raging fire and followed her sandy footsteps around the beach.
He had never ventured further than the immediate spot they were washed up on, leaving Diana to explore the tropical island alone. She brought back coconuts, a moth-eaten cot, and bottles of vodka she discovered in a crate somewhere.
Walking barefoot in the cool white sand made him realize he hadn't contributed a thing to their survival. Three days of being stranded here, and he treated it like a vacation. He didn't even help with the fire, despite having set so many as a teenager back in his hometown.
It suddently dawned on him that they may never get off this island alive.
"That motormouth bitch may be the last human being I lay eyes on. And she's not even my type. I'd do her as an escort, but I doubt I'd really be into it," Kody stammered quietly.
All she cared about was "fertility this, fertility that," and using odd phrases like "family values" that meant nothing to him. As if sex can't also be enjoyable for it's own sake. Walking for more than an hour made his legs tired. Kody didn't realize how stiff and lazy he had been lately.
When he finally came upon Diana, she was kneeling down on an overturned Army crate gazing at the North Star with her hands pressed together as if in prayer.
While this too aroused him, Kody had to admit there was something else about her that made sense at that moment. He wasn't sure what it was, and there was no way he would ever admit it to Diana. At that moment she seemed to have that "oneness" she preached about on the yacht.
Kody wasn't sure if he was a spiritual person. All he understood was his rent was late again, and the old groom's nephew offered him five-hundred dollars to spend a weekend on a yacht having sex with as many guests (including the old man) as he could wrap his lips around.
For a brief second, he felt unsure if he should make a move on her. That seldom happened. He didn't like the feeling of not jumping effortlessly into whatever whim that rippled through his flesh.
Being quiet, keeping his hands by his side, turning down the volume on his headset when in a library, or refusing to text while rollerskating on a halfpipe. These were things other people did.
His friends always said, "That's just Kody being Kody." Now it didn't feel like such a compliment.
Within a few minutes, royal purple arose out of the edge of the sea as if chasing away the darkness. Diana Morning Starr. In her purple robe that he joked was the color of his penis. Her long red hair around that freckled pale face.
Kody realized why she gave herself that name. For this one brief shining moment, it fit. Despite her bookishness and her incessant gabbing, Kody thought he saw something else in her beside a plaything to laugh at.
"She's a sensitive soul. Whatever that means," he whispered.
The Sun rose higher for several minutes, followed quickly by a large ship heading toward them. They were being rescued. At this point, Kody Jarama, who never cared for anything else except his penis, his screamo band, and passing out from prescription drugs while displaying his stupidity through his webcam, wondered what Diana was truly thinking. It had been nearly an hour since he found here there, and she still didn't know he was watching.
"Kody will be so pleased," he heard her say quietly. "Time to get him and get off this island."
Diana turned to see him standing there in the nude, as usual. To her surprise, his usual priapism was gone. He sniggered sheepishly, strutting back to get his clothes before the boat arrived.
Later, as they rode off in a small motorboat back to the fishing trawler, Diana Morning Starr wondered if she made any significant impression on Kody. She had doubts, even while deciding he opened her mind up to a different, if not entirely responsible, way of existing in this world.
He was mute crossing the choppy waters, not uttering a single word. The salty current caused his blond hair to flicker stiffly over his pretty blue eyes, his natural prowess more obvious to Diana now than ever. And for the first time in his life, Kody Jarama didn't feel like laughing.