As soon as 1 entered the arrivals terminal, I heard my name over the public address system. It turned out to be Bill, on the phone.
"How the hell did you know I was here?"
"I have to tell you I love you. I've always loved you. From the moment 1 laid eyes on you, I wanted to suck your cock."
I was so flabbergasted the only thing I could say was, "We've only known each other for three weeks."
"Thinking about your big hard cock has been my raison d'etre. That bus station's Jeffrey Dahmer territory. Many of the guys who pick up homeless men are sadists. I was nuts to go off with you. I just couldn't control myself."
"But what about the lap dancing club, the wife and the kid?"
"The wife and kid were classic defenses. I was covering up my gay side; all the male bonding about pussy and gangbangs functioned the same way-as camouflages for homoerotic drives."
"But I didn't notice you acting with the disgust most fags have towards tits and cunts."
"Why do you think we were talking about Foucault? Keeping a deconstructionist French queer in the conversation was akin to having a life raft. Personally, when I see pussy, which isn't often, I feel like I'm drowning. I start to gag. I can't breathe."
I realized there and then that all my problems would be solved if I could only become gay, a distinct possibility since I have nothing against cocks, but the idea that I might ever be disgusted by the thing that was such an ongoing source of pleasure and torment was a risk I wasn't ready to take.
"1 don't love you, Bill. You're a great cook and a nice guy, but 1 hope you're not hanging on to the notion you'll be dining on my prick."
"Can we talk about this? I was sure you were closet the minute 1 laid eyes on you, and 1 have a great track record. All these obsessions with her are either a fantasy or a massive defense over the-to you-horrifying notion you're gay."
1 could have let my mind go in the direction Bill was talking about. 1 could have bought the gay S&M magazines with the big black inmates who'd easily propose marriage to a fellow like me. But 1 didn't want to be anyone's wife. Not yet. 1 wasn't ready for such a paradigm shift. Hot cunt was the foundation of my universe, and hers in particular was my world. Addicts won't give up their addictions if they don't get the idea that what they think is pleasure is really a form of pain. I was still at the stage where I didn't care what it was called. I had to have the thing that kept my dick as hard as a rock-even when the rock-hardness, which could come on me at any hour of the day and night, might hurt and even be damaging to my prick's vascular structure.
A radical and revolutionary change in my definition of pleasure, which would affirm the self while allowing for the kind of selfless transcendence I'd been experiencing, was what was required, but not before I fucked her at least one more time. The usual romantic jargon I need to hold you in my arms was meaningless. 1 had never held her in my arms. Generally my arms were locked on the bed posts, which I used to launch ever more powerful thrusts of a dick that could have freed itself from the gravitational pull of the earth if its energies had not been diverted. My dick would have made Werner von Braun proud.
I told Bill I had to go, even though I didn't know where the hell I was going, but not before reminding him about the meatloaf he'd promised to make me.
"Just because I want you to get your mind off my meat doesn't mean you have to forget the beef"
"I feel sad."
"Bill, I really like you-as a friend." Even as I was talking, my eyes were scouring the airport parking lot. You never could tell. I might easily hone in on her like a heat-seeking missile. Reason was thrown out the door when it came to her pussy, and weird things happened in the fever of passion-things that defeated all rational explanation. Yes, I didn't know what she looked like, where she lived, or anything about her, but I would find her. She could be in the white 1972 Lincoln Continental pulling out of the space marked A4104, just as she could be the slender stewardess in Midwest Air uniform, walking smartly through the main lobby pulling her carry-on behind her.
I couldn't imagine her appearance, as hard as I tried, but when I spotted her as I came out of my favorite pizzeria, I knew-this time with real surety-it was her. I knew her the way a dog knows his master. You know how dogs start barking even before anyone is in sight or even in smelling distance? I just sensed it was her. 1 have to admit I was a bit disappointed. I like fleshy women with big firm tits and large aureoles, the kind of women who don't need to go to the gym five days a week to have a perfectly rounded ass. She had a boyish frame and short cropped hair. She actually looked like one of those Shakespearean characters, a woman who looks enough like a man to disguise herself as one. For the first time I forced myself to think before we engaged with each other. I made a mental note remember what she looks like. I started to follow her, and when I was only a few steps behind, she spun around, unzipped my fly, pushing me at the same time into the vestibule of her building. Before I had a chance to get a word out, she had my dick in her mouth.
We had a lot to catch up on and we were doing it in our usual wordless way. I could tell she had noticed I was gone by the vehemence of her attack. I had generally had enough control of my senses to tease her hole before going in for the kill. But before I had a chance to use the ratiocinative elements of my lovemaking capacity, she had her finger jammed up my asshole. I was reminded of that climactic scene of a children's movie called Old (1955), when the mother bear spots her missing cubs at the bottom of a steep, winding trail and barrels down, a huge top-heavy presence on a steep trail, in defiance of the laws of gravity. I was yelling like a cowboy subduing a bucking bronco in the rodeo. However, in my case, none of it was for the audience. I was too out of myself to have any awareness of my actual performance. At one point in our lovemaking I remember thinking You've got to stop, you have to put an end to this, to talk to her instead of fucking every minute. Yet once it started, there wasn't anything that could hold us back, and afterwards I found myself wandering the neighborhood, happily satiated, proud of my prowess as usual, and suffering from the same amnesia for what had transpired between us as I had so many times before.
We had fucked so hard, and were so spent when it was over, that I never got a chance to ask if she would leave her boyfriend for me. It wasn't even a question. We were like marathon runners. Both of us lay on the bed totally exhausted. Being a male, I was actually like a shot putter in the Olympics after all that thrusting. But what would have happened if I'd asked her? I'd have been vulnerable. Would she have regarded me as too dependent and needy? Would our chemistry have been lost once I expressed the intensity of my feelings for her? Even if it was true, how could I say she meant so much to me when I never really knew her? I felt hampered by a history, by a past that gave me the exultation I felt and prevented me from attaining the stability and predictability I yearned for.
1 had some big decisions to make. Every time I walked out of her apartment, 1 departed without any guarantee 1 would see her again. 1 had no way of getting assurances. My passion was all based on faith. 1 never knew what would happen next. Wouldn't it be better to have transcendental sex plus the security of an ongoing relationship, where she, not Bill, was cooking my beef? But if 1 tried to make things different, I might destroy everything.
I was getting myself into a state of hysteria.1 arrived home to find that Bill had sacrificed his business-fare ticket and hopped the next plane. He'd made me a surprise meatloaf dinner. I went on and on about how wonderful it was, how surprised I was, how special the smell was, but I had no appetite. How could I? I didn't even know what time it was or what day of the week. I forced myself to eat, all the while having to pretend I didn't notice Bill's eyes fixated on the perpetual bulge in my crotch. Eating that meatloaf was like a brutal workout, like doing wind sprints and pushups in 100-degree heat. I had to force my mouth to chew-all the while using up energy with my torment. What should 1 do? Yes, 1 would fuck her once more, but what about the time after that? If 1 brought up the question of having a real relationship, she might bolt and I would never see her again. 1 belched loudly. Bill's eyes were filled with infinite compassion, the infinite compassion of a gay Buddha who'd turned rough trade in bus terminal bathrooms.