In Idaho I had a slow and not-so-meaningful encounter with a churchman on his way home, slow driving through the forest in his battered old sedan. He was elderly and it was a pity fuck. I felt magnanimous enough to give him that. He called me "Ruth" and I didn't care enough to ask why, but I let him take me home and feed me overcooked meat and soggy vegetables. I slept in his daughter's bed, surrounded by teddy bears and the stench of damp and decay.
Washington State was cold, even for July. The forests of damp-barked trees stretched out in military rows, dripping lichen and dank, dark water. It took me a while to get a lift, thumb outstretched on the back roads that I preferred. A woman picked me up, the first of the journey. She was stout and dressed in a touque and fleece pants. She reminded me of a pit-bull, all hard-eyed hackles and defense. She was going to save trees in one of the national forests outside of Seattle, she said.
She invited me along. I caught the flicker of interest in her eyes, but I was too tired to play the coy games of seduction that women need so I refused.
"Is it a man?" she asked me in frank curiosity.
I told her about Jonno, and the beaches, and the men I had used on this trip.
"Found your Washington fuck yet?" Her inquiry was blunt, like her sharp-featured face.
I shook my head and she smiled in satisfaction.
"Come and meet my brother."
It felt almost like prostitution, being led off to sleep with a stranger, but the border was close and I liked the idea of the decision being taken out of my hands.
Her brother was a lean, earnest man, shambling and skinny. He lived in a cabin on the edge of the woods, a hermit-like existence that had me hunting furtively for evidence of gunpowder and ransom letters. He was the sort of man who would cut you into small pieces and put you in his freezer. Liver for supper on Monday, shanks on Tuesday.
His sweet and tender lovemaking caught me unawares. I had expected a quick and desperate copulation, a quiet fitting together of sticky body parts, but the prolonged and crawling sex he gave me made me long for more. His morning beard rasped my skin as he kissed me without haste, sweeping his tongue into my mouth, fitting his lips to mine with great deliberation.
He undressed me with care, moving his mouth over my breast, suckling my nipple as his fingers crawled with agonizing slowness down over the planes of my belly, tripping lightly along the top of my cotton panties. I was sobbing with the need of him when his mouth followed the path of his meandering fingers. If I had known his name I would have been grunting it at that moment.
He pulled my panties away from my body, parted my thighs, and rested his head between. He studied me with great care, parting my sex with a gentle finger. I knew he would see me reddened and swollen from the not-so-sacred sex of the past few days, but he made no comment, simply slipped two fingers into me, swirling them around, stretching me open.
He put his mouth to me and I gasped with the suddenness of it. His long tongue lapped me like a puppy, stiffening to jab inside, then gentling to soothe my rawness. I came with an incoherent shout, my back arching up from the bed in a bowstring of tension, convulsing again and again against his mouth. He quieted me with stroking hands, gentling me like a skittish colt, then drove me up once more from my plateau into a second climax.
I was gasping like a landed fish when he moved up and over me, pushing in his penis, long and slender. I could scarcely feel him at first, but then he started to move, circular motions that changed the angle with each thrust so that he stroked my inner walls with every slight movement. I was so wet that there wasn't any friction. I tightened myself in counter to his strokes and reached between us to stroke his balls. They were small and hard, like marbles, tight up against his body. His lean and muscular butt tightened each time he pushed inside me.
He went on and on, showing no sign of coming. I came enough for both of us, pushing my clit against his narrow, hollow pelvis, wrapping myself around him, stroking his balls with wet fingers, spreading my moisture over him until he was as messy as I was.
It must have been an hour later when his sister banged on the door. "You ready?" she hollered through the leaning timber frame. "Come now and I'll give you a lift to the border."
He lifted himself off and out of me — his penis was still hard, wet and sticky. He hadn't come. Without a word he stood over me and brought himself off with three hard strokes. His spend dropped down onto my belly, landing in great gobs in my pubic hair, already dark and matted with my juice. He turned and left through the other door, walking naked out of the house into the forest without a word.
He never asked my name.
I rang Jonno from Vancouver, and found him at the bar where we used to drink. "Are you coming back, Moni?" he asked. "I miss you."
I smiled into the payphone. "I think I will."
"Take the coach," he urged.
"No." Anyone watching me would have recognized my grin for what it was; feral and predatory. "I want to hitch.
Chapter 8 — The God of Fuck
The editor's life: this is the final manuscript of the night, one of a large stack of fiction submissions I've taken to bed to read. The last, and by far the worst. Adam is stretched out beside me, quietly reading his weekly dissident rag. For the past two hours, he's endured my inane commentary, sighs of appreciation and snorts of disbelief, his only reaction an occasional sidelong glance of amusement or, less frequently, a peek over my shoulder to read for himself. But now, as I toss the pages aside with a groan, he lowers his magazine to make room for conversation.
"That bad, huh?"
"It isn't even a story, just a fuck scene. Big Throbbing Cock and Tight Juicy Pussy, nothing inventive. And Oh God! this and Oh God! that, over and over. I finally had to count them, because I couldn't believe anyone could write such lousy dialogue. Oh God! eleven times. No one says Oh God! that much when they're fucking, unless they suffer a deplorable lack of imagination."
With a dramatic sigh, I shove the litter of papers off the bed and snuggle under the blankets to wait for him.
He tsks in my direction, chiding me for my arrogance. "That's not true. You say it pretty often." He's smiling, playfully, and I'm not sure whether it's a joke or a challenge. But I am sure that he's mistaken, and my mouth gapes in protest as he discards his magazine and turns off the bedside lamp. "I wasn't counting," he adds, sliding beneath the bedcovers to curl his arms around me, "but I'd bet you said Oh God! a lot more than eleven times last night."
"I most certainly did not," I retort icily, resisting his embrace. I'm offended at the accusation and, even worse, aghast at the possibility that he might be telling the truth. I'd always imagined myself more eloquent than that, even in the throes of passion.
"Elisabeth, you say Oh God! all the time when we're making love," he insists, amused and undaunted by my reaction. "Why not just admit it?"
"Yeah, okay… maybe it slips out sometimes, once or twice, in the heat of the moment. But it's just a noise, a sound effect. Oh God! Like when you stub your toe or discover you've bounced a check. You make it sound like I'm praying for an orgasm or something," I complain.
"It does seem like a prayer sometimes. Especially when you're on your knees."
" Pffft," I say, missing the point of his humor. "I'm an atheist. I don't do that."
I consider the matter closed, and assume I've made whatever point I intended. Ready to forgive his minor transgression, I shift in bed and begin to move closer, but he's not finished yet. He's still having a laugh, too loudly, at my expense.
"I'm an atheist, too," he reminds me, "but I never say Oh God! And, definitely, never during sex."