Untitled (But please read!)

- 1st Draft - (PLEASE offer your feedback and respond to the several questions I have added added at the end of the story)


“Get your shit in the car.”

These were the first words exchanged between the two of us that day. Blunt and somewhat crude ways of starting face-to-face communication was part of our humor game. The ridiculous, overtly obvious rude introduction was a way to break the awkward introductory tension. It allowed us to avoid the cliché “Howz it goin? What’s up? It only took one incident of getting completely shit-faced and stoned together to forge a bond that we felt put us above all that. Plus, the two of us had dated the same ex-girlfriend, which in a way sort of made us on the level of lovers to begin with – we could and would share information on intimate levels most guys wouldn’t touch.

The trip this year was more significant then others, as it was sort of a pilgrimage down South to what we jokingly called the “holy land”. Our own mandatory trip to Mecca, in which we planned on dropping in on Lauren and taking her up on her many invites. She now had a new life with someone who evidently had outshown both of us, but we were over it now – were past the wonder phase, the denial and disbelief. A year ago we had traded stories of her favorite tickle spots, how her thighs suddenly seemed bigger right around Christmas time each year, and how her father had odd ways of striking up lengthy conversations with you when you were the unfortunate poor fellow to pick up the phone too early on a Saturday morning while Lauren was still in the shower.

Lauren’s new love was a Southerner not of common Alabama or Georgian stock, but of the unusual type found deep in the Mississippi delta – a New Orleans native, who had come up to the Midwest to become part of the outstanding art school at our University, but had failed and headed back down South, unfortunately bringing Lauren along with. Though we didn’t get along well with him, Lauren still talked frequently with us and it was on our latest Christmas card from her that she hinted we should both come down for a visit so we could all catch up.

Throughout the long car ride we would pick up the newspapers from each and every area we passed through. Gary would sit in the passenger’s side with the paper folded over to the editorial pages and proclaim his opinions after reading through the variety of submissions. “Holy shit, we’re headed into the heart of the Bible belt. This is another world down here. Listen to this.”

He would read each one in it’s entirety, article after tedious article, making it impossible for me to get a word in or interrupt.

“OK, how the hell can people talk in such vague terms about right or wrong. The devil – what the hell is with this devil thing? A person attributed to a moral judgment. What a bunch of shit. It’s the personification thing that drives me nuts – God sitting on the clouds – devil with horns. Stupid ass shit.” From my periphery I saw him crumpling up the tabloid-sized sheets and heard the paper folding crackle – his cupped hands smacking the wadded ball and then the tiny dull thump of it hitting the car floor. He loved to over-emphasize. “I know when I’m hurting someone. I know when I’m getting hurt”. I don’t need some insecure bible thumping fuck to tell me what I should and shouldn’t be reading or doing.”

I smiled. “I’m with ya, I’m with ya”. I reached over to the radio knob and switched it on to change the subject. I didn’t mind talking about this stuff with him but he was merely talking obvious stuff – his opinions we had gone over probably last car ride down South. Loud static smacked us in the face from the car door speakers and I beat his hand to the volume knob. I fiddled with the up and down buttons of the tuner till finally I came across what sounded like some sort of a ridiculous guitar solo. Then revelation – it was Garth Brooks. I laughed out loud my fake condescending laugh I had nurtured throughout college, and began singing out loud in parody.

Gary’s moral judgment and ideas had evidently come from his upbringing. The moral part of him must have come from his mother, whom he lovingly referred to as Betty. He called both his parents by their first names – Betty and Billy. The funny part of it all was that Betty wasn’t really his mom’s name, only a nickname he had come up with that stuck. Both his sister’s had been honored with second names as well, apparently characters from old Dylan songs, Greg told me. I hadn’t ever heard these Dylan songs. I got the sense that Betty had showed some love to him, and had witnessed a tiny bit when I had gone to his farm the one time. He would talk to her like on a friend level, about things she was doing at home while he was away at college for the week, and what was worrying her about the latest boyfriends her sister brought home.

But a farm life was different then what I was used to and when you met his father there was something very different in his stoic, chiseled face. I remember the time I had met him it was raining at the farm so he couldn’t work and he was laying there watching T.V. all alone in the family room on this old fashioned Victorian type sofa which clashed with his big solid farmer’s frame, overalls and filthy flannel shirt, watching some real old action flick that I couldn’t believe anyone would be interested in. Rambo or something. There was a brief interaction, a greeting and some comments on the weather, but it was clear that he was one of those father figures on a different level then the rest of the family, with an arrogance he had seen in some Jewish households back home – the male dominance forced down the throat of the rest, a man in his underwear passing through the kitchen where everyone was talking just to grab a bag of potato chips and then heading back to his throne in the family room to watch crap on T.V., no words no greeting to the guests standing there. It felt like something.

Gary was given love from Betty, probably the reason he had this odd sensitivity toward women, but had the cold-as-ice side of himself which came out often in his vulgar declarations and his awkward silent moments that I had to work hard to break on long car rides and when I had to introduce him to my other friends. Gary hinted at how “bad” his father was sometimes and it only made me wonder and make assumptions I probably shouldn’t have, but in a way I think Gary was trying to tell me things without having to display the awkward sensitive side of himself.

_____________________________

We arrived earlier then planned, as Gary insisted on putting in a straight fifteen hours from our small town in Illinois straight to Jacksonville, Florida, then a short few hours to New Orleans in the morning. We pulled into the tiny narrow streets by noon, spent the early part of the day wandering around looking for a cheap but not so seedy hotel, and then stupidly slept the rest of that afternoon. I couldn’t understand the hurry-up-for-nothing travel approach but Gary insisted. He had driven tractors in the field for eighteen hours straight and a fifteen-hour car ride was nothing in comparison. I expressed my concern that there were oncoming cars on the highway headed South, unlike the corn and soy been fields back near his home but of course nothing I could say was going to change him.

Later that night, we pressed our shirts with the hotel iron that leaked rusty water and took turns posing for pictures in front of the full length mirror/desk/chest-of-drawer combination, flexing biceps and giving each other the finger in what we called frat boy promotionals.

“Dude, you’re a babe magnet”

“Fuuuuck you, fuck you.” Even I could get a rise out of Gary with the frat boy talk.

In the early evening we headed to the outskirts of the main strip and grabbed some dinner. We then searched for a place that would serve up some cheap beer at normal prices. Neon grabbed our attention and we headed toward a brightly lit, normal but not too lame looking smaller club for what we called, “starters”. It was there that we started our ritualistic process. Gary went up to the long wooden-topped bar off the storefront styled-tavern and brought back two, so-called, authentic pint-sized mugs of Tenants. The place was of an English pub motif, though we had both been to Britain together a few summers ago and experienced nothing resembling the Americanized version of a bar we were in now with it’s Budweiser bottles neatly lining the top shelf above the bar.

“To the women we love.” Gary motioned with his pint raised over the table.

“Where are they?” I replied without pause – another of our games.

In the tradition of their outings they downed the first beers without talking. Three gulps, a few seconds to ease the cold sting in the pit of the throat, and then a few more deep swallows till the stomach bloating and smell required a hardy belch to make room. It must have been only a few minutes before I was up from my seat and headed right back up to the bar for my round with several heads of the locals slowly turning and following my path. I could feel the neighborhood patrons’ disdain for the tourist – the young, Yankee hoodlum who kept them up at night – the guys who hit on their daughters mercilessly, only in town for the cheap, stinking thrills of the city. Again the head turns as he headed to the midget pub tables. I made a point of striking the “tough kid” walk – shoulders stretching wide as I made my may with awkward chosen steps back to our spot. As I let my boney ass down a notch too hard on the sticky wooden chair I caught a glimpse of Gary following through with the discreet slip of his metal flask to his back pocket. Gary could drink in ways I just couldn’t. For every beer I would down – he’d match me, and throw in his two-second swig of Jack. He didn’t get hangovers. I did.

After a couple of rounds – I am guessing about four for Gary, we got into it.

“So whatya thing then – what’s the reason girls come down here after school in the first place? Why do ya think Lauren moved down here? Beside that ass hole?” Gary’s voice still wasn’t slurred but he was switching back to “philosophy major” and that was a good thing since it would slow the pace down a bit and lessen the amount of looks from the front bar.

“Fun”. I was having trouble switching back to that conversational mode now but was working on it. “Fun, adventure, new experience, new life I suppose. Not everyone stays in the suburban Chicago safe-zone. Some people do things to break the monotony of the life before they sit down one day and suddenly realize they are forty-eight years old, lining things up for retirement with no more adventure in sight. Lauren is hot, she’s smart, and isn’t afraid to try things. Here we are – two morons she left behind coming down here because of stories she has told us about wild times and places. See, she even feeds us the information she knows we crave. She knows we are on different levels then her and you know – she’s right.”

“We have the power to change and choose our paths – but we base our choices on the easy way and the easy way is what puts you at that kitchen table analyzing retirement plans while waiting for the kids to get home, dreading the day the doctor utters the words, six more months.”

“Well that’s bull shit.” Gary was giving me the intense scowl that meant he was indeed drunk and probably wouldn’t be afraid to admit it now if asked. The creases in between his eyes stayed engraved on his face for several long seconds longer. This was my sign – how I knew he was changing from hillbilly Gary to drunk hillbilly Gary. Speech rhythms were shot. Then finally, an incredibly long pause – “I am choosing to have fun and that’s why I came down here. I don’t know about you but I think life is fine the way it is. I get plenty a satisfaction being… monotonous.” He let out one of those silent belches. “The real reason she came down here is because of all of that weird shit that ass put in her head to begin with. She was the one taking the easy-out, listening to his preachy shit. You can’t deny it. You were the one who first witnessed her changing.”

What Gary was referring to was a seminal moment at the tale end of the relationship Lauren and I had experienced together during our last year at school.

We had been laying on the sofa for a few hours after class – our usual procrastination which took place every afternoon on Tuesdays and Thursdays when our class schedules coincided. Her head lay across my lap, her gaze affixed to the ceiling. I loved this. It was a ritual on our afternoon rendezvous – she’d lean back, offering up her beautifully delicate face to the pleasures of my own free will. There was a surprising amount of intimacy just having someone resting there with their head on your lap. I got off on having a look at her face from a new angle, having the weight of her head upon me. Today, I fed her red grapes from a glass bowl sitting there next to me on the sofa.

“What do you feel like today?” Her thin pink lips came together tight, forming a vertical smile.

“Feel like?” I plucked a grape off the vine with a tiny soft pop. The silence in the room drew us in.

It was the middle of winter and there was a heavy snowfall outside with thick white flakes that deadened any reverberations and made it feel like a thick heavy blanket enveloped the whole house. It was coming down heavy but bright sun beat through the windows still, so it was one of those spiritual days that kept you good inside.

I rested a grape on the top of her closed lips. She opened up slowly to let it slide in.

“I think you know what I’d like.” She had me going. I found my way up to her to her clingy ribbed top and let my hand slide up so it sat and rested on her belly. I wanted to kiss her, and be a part of her. I felt exhilaration and want, like I could release myself in those few seconds and turn myself over helpless to whatever. The thought of taking the moment gave me a throbbing rush and I teetered on that precarious edge where a split second one way or the other would change us good or bad.

Almost like it had its own free will, my hand slid higher up till it bumped up and pried right under the lacy, snug elastic of a bra cup. My fingertips poked at the soft underside of her breast and I was there, but I was a fool. I stopped like a poor bashful dork, afraid to let completely go before some sign that things were O.K.

She turned and our eyes locked… silent.

I smiled but she looked and looked, till I knew the look was a not the look I thought it was, and then I sat there sat there, fingers dumb and stiff. No thrill but instead a big fat awkward silence. Then as if one of my fingers had injected some sort of delayed needle prick she shot up quick, while pulling down her shirt and sliding across to the other side of the sofa completely, head turned away from me as she rested it on her hand, elbow on armrest.

“You know things are different now in my life and you have no clue about what I think about.”

“Oh kaaaaaay”. She was definitely right.

“I have no fucking clue”. Frustration now turned into being just plain pissed off. “What the hell where you just talking about when…”

“Shut up!.” She stood up and walked across the room, keeping her back to me as if our argument was some sort of mom/daughter high-school quarrel.

Another long silence. I wasn’t gonna be the one to break it.

“The Lord”

I looked up to see her turned and facing me, She had said it with a calm and conviction that to me just underscored how utterly, inconceivably stupid she sounded.

“The Lord”, she said again. “You may think I’m an idiot but the Jesus has told us what is right and what is wrong, and I know when something is just plain wrong”.

There was absolutely, positively no sexual connection between us from that moment on.

_____________________________________


Morality was a key factor in my life but religion was definitely not as I had an incredibly quiet and uneventful catholic upbringing.

Gary had some morality in him, but you wouldn’t know it till you found yourself in deep discussion, and he’d be in the process of judging you for something. “Well, you’d be an asshole then to push it when she had already made up her mind. Let her know how you feel and be done with it already.” I thought it was weird for such an insensitive guy to be sensitive about relationships with women.

I had had enough of this talking and really felt it was time to move on. “Lets grab one more and get outa here.”

I was floatin now and as we left the bar or pub, or whatever you wanted to call it, we began our drunken banter back and forth about women and souvenir shops we were passing by, and how much we both had to piss.

It was probably about ten o’clock now as we entered the main strip of the French Quarter, the streets were flowing and alive. They were electric, with groups forming on corners and darting in and out of open storefront postcard shops. This was one of those high-energy places you just couldn’t compare to normal every-day life. The decorative old-fashioned French railings seemed out of place with the modern day tourists and college kids walking about in their jeans and gym shoes, but culture being exploited and commercialized was the American way right? The excitement of a huge crowd of strangers.

My mind was feeding on it now, and I felt the volatile mix of adrenaline and alcohol in my veins as we immersed ourselves in the crowd. Gary kept getting ahead of me and I would purposefully wait back longer then I should till he would finally stop and turn around all pissed off to see me grinning five heads behind. Another one of our stupid games. The crowd was getting tighter as the street thinned and became one of those from the original, seventeen hundred’s downtown. As we got closer to the bars, shoulders, arms and butts began bumping against each other. I tried not to inhale the wisps of menthol-laced cigarette smoke and stale beer breath.

A few people right in front of me turned toward me seeking to find who Gary was looking back at. Others pretended not to notice the farmer kid glaring, rolling his eyes, and irritating those forced to pause as they tried to change course into the flow of others going by his sides. An overweight slow-walking woman with a huge purse to the left of me reached out to a young teen-age boy in front of her and pulled him back by the shoulder. “Stop your giggling Joel”. I saw his brother then also who was up front left smiling and looking down to avert his mother’s wrath. Then came the follow up. “You know that’s degrading toward women.” I looked ahead and saw just past Gary to see what the source of all this ethical talk was, and that is when I saw them for the first time. Just ahead of Gary, about four to five storefronts, about eight for me, was the grand monument stirring controversy. Over the walkway and perched above several tourist’s straining their necks to look up were two porcelain colored woman’s legs not just sitting for advertisement, but stupidly being thrust in and out of the upstairs window by some sort of automated mechanism. The high heel clad legs and garter belt quite clearly defined the type of establishment below - a gentleman’s club. Gary had not noticed it yet, but the overweight mother of two teen-age boys next to me had. I looked down to my feet hitting the walkway, bracing myself for what I knew was coming next.

“Hey Frasier!” He called me Frasier because of my big forehead, which I guess resembled the T.V. sitcom actor a bit.

“Would you look at the THIGHS on her!” I could see him turned around, reaching up as if he might somehow be able to reach the ridiculous plastic legs thrusting in and out of the upper level window opening. I could feel the weight of Ms. Righteous to the left of me. I could even here her thoughts – feel her wishing I would just disintegrate with the rest of all the porn-loving heathens that ruined her world on a daily basis.

“We’re going in. We’re going in.” He made eye contact with me for a brief second as he shouted across the sea of heads between us with his hand up to his mouth in a gesture that mimicked a pilot radioing in to headquarters. He threw me one last shit-eating grin, then turned sharply as if imitating a soldier at attention and disappeared through the entrance.

Now I felt awkward and anxious at the same time. There was a certain thrill that hit me with the knowledge that everyone surrounding me knew I was about to take a walk on the dark side. I would be turning my nose up at the politically correct and jump into the outrageous world of pure decadence. I would be Down-South sinning and the thought of doing it was a big turn on. I finished up the last few feet of my shameful walk and then with a euphoric adrenaline surge pushed over to the right with a cocky, “scuuuuuze me”. A gawky twelve-year-old girl with no clue banged up against me as I cut her off to get into the dimly lit entry of the club. which I now noticed was wallpapered with photos of peach-colored flesh bodies and black censor bars. “Live sex shows”. I didn’t think that was legal and somehow knew that wasn’t what was really on display. The largest bouncer I had ever seen in my life sat on a stool in the narrow entryway of the club. I smiled in embarrassment, as I dug through my pocket for my wad of cash mixed with crumpled up ATM receipts. His face showed absolutely no expression as he leaned over with unnecessary attitude, pushing an arm up against the wall next to me as if I had been trying to sneak on through or something. “Fifteen dollars”. I guess he was establishing his dominance right at the start – Intro to Bouncing, 101. He pulled back his arm and let me walk through. Clouds of filthy air made fuzzy smoke halos around the neon beer signs throughout the club interior which was a sort of old fashioned wooden-floored tavern altered to allow for a couple of runway type dance floors with poles so the girls could do their thing. I could see Gary’s blonde head of hair and gaunt face peering up like an obedient puppy from behind one of the runways. A blonde with shockingly fake boobs was leaning over to his side and waving her arms in an upward motion to rile up the small audience, or at least get some cheers out of the odd mix. I stood there for an awkward moment, and then Gary rescued me with an arm wave and a shout.

“Over here doctor.” again, another Frasier Crane reference. His hands were cupped around his mouth to project through the loud music. Even the stripper stopped her hand-motioning and looked at him. I twisted and turned my way through a maze of small tables, some of which were occupied with amazingly attractive, naked, or half-naked women standing on the actual tops for various patrons. Apparently, New Orleans didn’t allow lap dances.

I managed to grab a seat right next to Gary and plopped my ass down a little to hard so that it hurt. Yes, I was still drunk.

“Hey, you fucker.” I leaned over to his ear, rolling my eyes so he would know I wasn’t really upset. “You had me being judged by some conservative hot momma out there.” OK, I made her attractive for the hell of it. I paused, smiled. “Though it was fun being an evil scum bag.”

“Talk about hot momma, take a look over there.” He motioned with his head and eyebrows over to a table off to our far right were about five Chinese businessmen in dress shirts and loosened ties were ogling and laughing with cocky bravado as a woman treated them to their table dance. They had had a few drinks too. The girl was actually quite attractive, with long curly brownish hair that ran down her back and in front over one eye for a sexy, “come hither” look. She still had a skin tight top on that was cut short to show a taught belly framed by a subtle show of rib cage. She swayed her hips from side to side taking turns teasing individuals at the table, staring the puppy dogs down while she thrust forward in slow movements, caressing her stomach with one hand. Her fingers found their way lower to tease the contoured flesh right below her tiny, belly button indent. She wore a tiny G-string which made her more seductive then being completely naked. More to be left for desiring, more to bring forth crumpled dollars from the bottoms of deep tourists’ pockets.

“Just who is exploiting who here?” Gary squinted his eyes to show skepticism.

“You have a point there.” I nodded. We could hear one of the Chinese now speaking up louder, almost shouting as he encouraged his friend and waved a twenty dollar bill up in the air to the fingers that were just caressing and teasing a minute ago.

Whap!... Whap!...

She had now turned her back to the man and his friend that had handed up the twenty and was slapping her contoured half moon that made up her left ass cheek. The one man laughed slightly as if to acknowledge and then thank her while his stoic friend stared with an embarrassingly serious heir about him.

Whap!... Whap!...

Her delicate hand left a tiny red radiant mark. She bent her head back over her shoulder and flashed a coy smile as she bent down lower to show it off - another twenty now dangling from her G-string. More boisterous chatter rose from the table.

A waitress came up to us and offered, well, more like suggested, we have some drinks. I had forgotten, a two-drink minimum. I shed fifteen dollars for two Dixie beers the waitress held out to us from a trough full of ice from a bar right behind us that I had not noticed before. I tipped her five dollars to keep my dignity and Gary and I pounded them. There was something cool about sitting there in a bar of this type and just talking. It made me feel superior in a way to all the losers sitting there all quiet while they got their fix. We were there and could handle it. Didn’t need up close butt slaps and bull shit eye contact.

We got through a couple more fifteen dollar rounds, intermixing them with bathroom swigs from Gary’s precious flask, and after we felt good and loaded, got up and made our way through the maze of tables to get outside fresh air. We were feeling good. I was feeling like the captain of the high school football team. The King of The World DiCaprio would have put it. Our gate was more hurried now as we walked down the street of the Quarter, this time not so encumbered by the early evening tourists. We headed straight for a cheesy looking college type bar where most of the nighttime crowd appeared to be congregating which had it’s first floor viewable from the street due to large, wide open French windows you saw all over this strip. Polo shirts and Docker shorts filled the place, and girls, yes girls intertwined with the crowd.

“Not bad indeed” Gary slurred. I wasn’t sure who was more drunk now. Al I knew was that my steps seemed light and efficient, and our movement from the sidewalk to the street, to the inside of this place was hard to segment into orderly sequence. We were now part of the crowd we just were looking at from the street.

Like a school of fish the mass of people on the main floor had taken on a life of it’s own. People could be seen precariously carrying through large twenty ounce sized cups of beer, holding them up above the crowd to avoid getting them spilled.

The band was playing quite a lively number and towards the front of the stage area the rhythm of the music could be seen in the spastic grooves of hips and shoulders, hands held high in embarrassing waving and fist pounding coordinated with the music. I didn’t think the band was that good – whatever.

“What’s that song they’re playing?”

Gary just shrugged his shoulders. I forgot, it wasn’t Dylan or John Cougar. Back on the outskirts and more of the middle floor area, communal groups could be seen forming in small pockets of three or four. Gary became our spearhead and began nudging his way between bodies with his hand pointed out in front of him. We pried our way through the drunks, shuffling sideways to make ourselves skinny and picked out an advantageous position against the bar midway between the stage and the small pockets of non-dancers. I leaned back on the thick wooden bar rail. Gary’s head was like radar – turning to follow groups of cute girls as they passed us and made their way to the bathrooms. He was drunk enough not to care if anyone was noticing him. I could feel the dangerous effects of the strip club in my own system – butts and bellybuttons conjuring up repressed desires for thrusting, grabbing. Tremendous energy focused on primeval urges that men aren’t supposed to talk about.

We stared at the ebb and flow of legs and feet, arms, shirts and cute bob haircuts coming in front of us, then back again. We leaned back against the bar as we saw one after another cute girl get swept away in the excitement of mindless mob flirtation. The drink prices here were high too but Gary’s flask had run dry and there was no turning back now as we were at a prime hour and prime location it seemed. Still nobody talked to us – two stiff guys with red eyes and sweaty faces. The music was grabbing me in the gut – once again a pulsating bass line that was so loud it vibrated the drink I was holding.

When describing my apparition to others in later stories being told, I never actually used the term devil. It was not an encounter with the red guy with horns that Gary had made fun of during the long car ride down, nor was it an experience with the fallen angel depicted in ancient biblical writings, but I did come to realize that what I encountered that night was as close as I could have come to the real thing – an incantation of the human spirit gone bad. She appeared to me in the form of a woman. Not a woman I can really describe in accurate detail as my drunken state blurred image and memory. I remember long brownish curly hair and a loose fitting, mesh-type blouse of some type, but overall I recall mostly actions and simple phrases. I remember chunky foolish dancing and sucking down of large ounce drinks.

I know recognized the song being played by the band as a Rolling Stones tune, and the crowd had formed a tighter circle around the small bar platform that was a stage as the scrawny lead singer began a series of silly dances and body contortions that were to resemble Mick Jagger. I pressed inward as part of the crowd and found it somewhat a turn on to be scrunched up among the faceless bodies I could not identify as being male or female, blurting out classic lyrics in reckless disharmony, following the lead of the guy on stage who pushed his lips out to better resemble Mick. I heard a voice in my right ear matching his inflections to a tee, and not softly but loud – a girl’s voice carried above the lead singer in off pitch unison. Someone pushed up tight against me from behind and I felt myself losing footing. I fell forward against a big guy in front, then, felt more pressure from behind and I became helplessly sandwiched between a stumbling compilation of stomachs, arms, boobs, and jabbing elbows. I’m not sure if it was the alcohol but I somehow felt a sense of comfort and release as the normal fear of losing footing, of falling to the ground, being trampled on left and I was replaced with a relaxation and arousal. Like I was floating vulnerable to everyone in the group, coming unusually close and intimate with complete strangers. The crowd then loosened up again and I became sure-footed so I could turn and see the body connected to the voice beside me. She was now looking at me as her lips mouthed the words of Mick on stage. I stared. She mouthed more words with her lips curving upward in a sort of half singing smile. Another wave of the crowd shoved us directly into each other so I could feel two mounds of cushion up against my chest which I quickly identified as her breasts. Our faces, now only inches separated, exchanged beer and whiskey breadths. The forces of the crowd pushed from behind and packed us even tighter so that my hands were forced straight down in front to be painfully indented by sharp corners of someone’s metal belt buckle.

“All right, everybody just coooool out!” Mick was now yelling to the crowd in clever duplication of the classic words from Altamont.

I succumbed to my natural instincts as I realized two hands had found their way around to my back and were now pulling up at my shirt in order to get it untucked and loose. Our faces were so close I could see freckles on her forehead above her eyes and on the top of her nose. I felt her warm breadth again, saw her teeth moist with saliva as she opened her mouth to break her mystery silence, “whatcha doin comin down South like this?” It shocked me somehow to realize that she was a native Southerner. I could feel long nails digging into the skin on my back like I was hers to play with. She dug them in hard too, shockingly hard actually, to the point where I wasn’t able drum up an answer right then and there. The mix of pain and arousal was something new to me. The blatancy of her actions made me her subdominant toy, and it wasn’t helping that my erection was being jammed up against her uncontrollably.

“My friend and I just came down to have some fun, that’s all.” I leaned my head forward, bumped my lips up against hers to initiate a kiss but she pulled back so she could get a word out.

“Fun?”

I then felt our lips touch and a thin warm tongue dance about with my own. “Whatsa matter, am I hurtin ya?”. She spoke her words into my half open mouth during a brief interlude of our tongue dance. Her words took on funny inflections as I felt people knocking into us from behind her now. She didn’t seem to notice. The crowd loosened up finally so we could stand on our own two feet. She didn’t let go. Standing there, lips pressed together and eyes closed a few seconds, the whistles and comments came – cat calls from the side of us then the lewd and cliché, “Get a room!” She released our lip lock and yelled unfortunately right in my ear. “Fuck You!” The nail digging had stopped and the hands had found their way lower to my waste. I looked down to see her fumbling to undo my belt loop and instinctively I grabbed her hands to stop them. The fine muscles of her fingers were surprisingly taught and strong and moving at a fanatical hurried pace that I could only surround and hold as they succeeded in releasing the prong from my belt loop hole. I felt the button of my jeans release and then cold, busy fingers sliding down against my skin, probing, cramped but persistent till they found me.

She was smiling, proud of my embarrassment and pulled away as if she was actually trying to let others see around us the predicament she had put me in. Like the shock value was the turn on.

“Ya like that?” she asked.

I heard Gary’s voice, “Frasier is gay you know.” He was smiling at his own clever joke.

“Oh is that why his dick is hard? I bet you wish you had my hand on you.” Even Gary shut up.

There are drunken times when a person feels that they are not part of the world all around them, like they are an outsider put their to judge and observe the rest of the world. When I think back on the incident and the course of events that took place, I often imagine the way my actions must have affected the people around me that night at the bar. I imagine the others on the crowded dance floor, shocked but relishing in the perverse moment of voyeurism which was thrown into their evening unexpectedly, of how my snippets of perverse experience became interwoven into the stories they would tell of what they saw, what they couldn’t believe during their trip to New Orleans. I imagine those passing us by on the steep staircase as they heard her voice bluntly talk of sucking cock. And of course I mostly imagine the surprise and shock of the girl in the stall next to us in the upstairs bathroom as she suddenly heard my voice in dialog with a woman’s. I imagined how weird it must have felt for her to hear our voices next to her intermixing with the sound of her own urine, as it streamed in the porcelain bowl that she sat on.

My encounter with the devil lasted about five to ten minutes.

“Come here.” She ordered, pulling me into the stall by the arm. She sat right down on the toilet seat. It took me a second or two to realize that she had already pulled her pants down to the floor and I could see a pair of gray, ordinary, everyday panties suspended half-way down her calves, rolled and twisted into a thin piece of fabric being stretched between two muscular calves.

“No, we can’t do that” I said it quickly and calmly to make sure she knew the seriousness of my decision, for we had no condom and that didn’t seem to concern her. She was decisive and direct, for we had little time.

I thought of a hypothetical life the girl at home and the sex she accepts as being normal in her life. Rough sex, with bulging tattooed biceps pressed down on the mattress around her – of sweating, swearing, headboard rocking – burning friction sex that made her sore for days, and which only left her with a tiny ounce of pleasure.

I braced myself on the toilet paper dispenser, my pants down to my knees, as I pulled up on myself to avoid her from taking me with her mouth. “What ya doin? I love ta…”

“No, we can’t.” I repeated in my monotone, lazy drinking voice.

However, it wasn’t often thought that I saw a drunk, naked woman’s body in front of me. I let my hand find it’s way in between two thick thighs and realized what the heavy drinking and excitement of the night had prevented me from noticing earlier. She was a woman of some notable weight. My hand pushed under a soft belly which formed a sack of flesh as she sat. I purposely kissed her deeply, almost grotesque-like to insure that she noticed no change in our harmless fun. She pushed herself to a standing position and I lifted her shirt to release two flattened breasts that pointed downward in acute triangles. I put my lips to the brownish skin which obscurely outlined two darker tinted nipples. We were having a good time and sex was just sex – till it very suddenly became something much more.

Like she had caught a glimpse of a victim at a roadside accident, her body jerked stiff and I heard her gasp. Her eyes grew wide as they focused over behind me as we became victims of our own sort together, the words we heard broke the air like thunder over the muffled chaos from the main floor down below.

“We just wanna get in on what’s goin down in here.” There were two of them evidently. I heard heavy winded breathing that comes from men of large stature.

I could see the look of fear in her as her arms shot up in crossover motion in a feeble attempt to cover the nipples that I had just been sucking as I yanked up my pants and myself back inside them. Her eyes turned to mine for a couple of seconds I would remember for a lifetime, and I broke the stair to look down at the ground - at brown dirty boots wet with beer stains, scuffed from days of Southern outdoor living, ass and wife-kicking. I avoided looking at any human face and pushed open the heavy hinged bathroom door, stumbled down the stairs till I found Gary just outside the main entrance of the building, where he had obviously been looking for me for some time.

He flashed a sheepish grin as he walked up to me with an opened hand for shaking.

“Bless me FATHER, for I HAVE SINNED.” The smile was glued to his face as his hands went through the parody of a special priest’s blessing, with vertical hand and upward pointed fingers as if to emphasize each of his words.

I returned his smile with a nervous, forced one of my own. Didn’t say anything, just shook his hand and dug deep in my pockets for a few dollars that would get us a quick cab ride back to our hotel across town. The ride was long. Our conversation stilted, my responses minimal, and for once Gary respected me. He let things go.

That night I lay in the cold bed of the hotel room and listened to Gary’s obnoxious snoring mixed with the comfortable, soft droning of the window unit air conditioner and thought of how nice it would be to see Lauren’s face again – to kiss her on the cheek in friendly greeting sort of way at least, first thing in the morning.


Q U E S T I O N S

1) What are your overall thoughts regarding this story - of a general type?

2) What sections read and feel the best or most
effective? Why?

3) Do you notice any problem areas?

4) Do you understand the general plot? Is the plot
effective in that it pushes a climax enough? Does it fall short at the climax, or does it keep your interest?

5) Is it awkward because it is all written in 1st
person? NOTE - sometimes I think that because it is written 1st person and in the sense that someone is recalling something - that the details shouldn't be so complex - since a person telling a story wouldn't be able to recall fine details from a situation.

6) Do you think the woman in the bar near end of story needs more character development? Or is is better to keep her simple and vague.

7) Overall, I have a feeling it is too long of a story and draws out some of its best details in the middle sections rather then at the climax, which might prevent it from being effective. What do you think?

8) Is it too blatently sexual? In other words, does it cross that fine line of being too blatant and shocking and VULGAR for effect rather then artistic value?

Please rate the story.

Thanks,
Chataugua