His new job was to handle people who called in to cancel their A.O.L. They provided a specific phone line for cancellations and at the other end of it was him. He got twenty dollars every time he talked someone out of cancelling and was docked five dollars every time they went through with it. What kind of stuff do you use A.O.L. for, he would ask. It was meant to sound like a technical question, like, maybe the web sites you’re looking at use up too much bandwidth, and that’s why your service is so terrible. Maybe you need to clear your cache. But really it was meant to get them remembering their internet fondly and start blathering on about their lives. The pictures of their grandkids they looked at. They would get a warm feeling, remembering a less lonely time, and a positive emotional connection to A.O.L. would be established. They had tried to ship the job to India but the Mumbai college kids weren’t able to establish the same empathy; there was something untrustworthy in their accents. At $199.99 per subscriber per year the stakes were too high. You had to pay an American.
The job got to him. Conning old people out of their cat food money. And of course the screaming, the cursing, the threats. God dammit you cancel this right the fuck away or I’ll call the Attorney General and have your job. There were follow up calls he had to make to people who’d backed out and it was always how DARE you call me during DINNER! Well don’t answer the phone then, jerkoff. But it hurt. To do the job well you had to open some part of yourself up to these people and when you were opened up they’d scream at you. Back then he was killing himself to get through those ten hours and get back home to her.
The new medications were covered by insurance. It was a pill in those days; you took it with breakfast and forty five minutes later you ceased forming new memories. He was nervous, but on the first day he came to swimming in and out of remembering in his car, and there was a post-it on the dash. He had beaten the office’s all time one day record for customer retentions. On the passenger seat was a joke trophy the guys kept in the break room. You knew, when you were “under,” that it all didn’t matter. You were the same person but you knew it would be like it never happened. You sucked it up and you kicked ass and baby got a new pair of shoes.
He had gotten ahead. Or so they told him. He was the top retainer of customers in the division and supervised a handful of his fellows. Emily didn’t have to work anymore. The cars got better and the houses got bigger. Every day he came home bright and fresh as a daisy, smiling. Emily was there with a chicken pot pie. The light of his life. She had cleaned the house and carefully rolled out a thousand layers of pastry for the chicken pot pie crust, which she layered in a becoming manner across the top. He was 44 now, although he hadn’t experienced about 10 of those years.
One day, about a half hour before his shift ended, his stent broke. And he was awake.
He was on all fours. His belly was full, impossibly full, something big and hot was pushing into him and it hurt. He craned his neck around. A black man the size of a Tyrannosaur was palming his ass with a hot hand while he forced what felt like a yule log into him. The man was covered in shiny black painted-on latex and was not smiling. He himself was wearing a dress, a ballerina’s dress, and there was something in his mouth. It was a ball gag coated in something like Vick’s Vap-o-Rub that made his eyes water. He scrambled away on his hands and knees, screaming into the gag. It took what felt like minutes to squirm off the startled guy’s member. He was in a huge room, impossibly huge, a cathedral lit by fire and all around him impossible horrible things were happening. A long dining room table with children eating from a tureen of human shit, an elderly woman skewered by a screaming stallion, everywhere dozens of people and animals were being fucked, being tortured, screaming, laughing, crying. High above at a podium Saul Krauss, of the Connecticut Krausses, Chairman and CEO of United Los Angeles Times/ America Online Incorporated, was overseeing it all, issuing commands, laughing and masturbating.
He got the gag off, screamed again, got up, tried to run, but found he had a diaper around his knees. Waddled wildly until he could get if off. There looked to be a door under a rack where a naked man was wired to a car battery, shrieking. He ran for it. Great Merciful God, it was unlocked. It opened into a beige hallway with synthetic carpet and florescent lights and acoustical tile. A poster of a man climbing a mountain encouraged DETERMINATION. He ran. He wanted the way out but realized he had barely ever seen the inside of his office while he could remember. Out a window he saw cars. The parking lot. To the left. Many stairs, and then he tripped and scraped his knees on the asphalt. He tasted salt. He was weeping, and the seed of many men was smeared across his face. He puked, and ran some more. The parking space, in fucking Siberia. He sped home, gibbering and crying.
She wouldn’t be expecting him for half an hour yet. He could smell the leftover chicken pot pie reheating. He ran up the stairs. He was still in the ballerina dress but he had to see her, had to tell her. They were raping people. There was no job, no company; the whole thing was just some rich guy keeping slaves so he could jerk off. We have to get out of here. Move to out to the desert. It’ll be hard with no money but I can live as long as I know you love me. She was in the bathroom; the door was half open. Her hand was in the crook of her arm, turning on her medication.
Tell Me Your Fantasy, She Says
I mean: I want to fuck you. That’s it. You know what fucking is like. The dick goes in the hole. Maybe I’ll put your wrists behind your head but I’m not gonna choke you or any of that shit on the first date. My cat will probably come in the sliding door I’ve left open, walk in the room, and meow. We’ll have a little chuckle. The mood will be ruined. I will continue shuffling my flagging erection into you in a workmanlike manner but I won’t be able to cum. I’ll jokingly apologize and get up and get more booze. Give the cat a can of food. Then you’ll stand behind me as I read shit on reddit. We’ll laugh but you’ll be thinking: what the fuck? This guy could have my wet young pussy and he wants to watch Russian dash cam videos? I’ll be thinking: who cares. I fucked her. Check. Now I can not think about it for a while. Also, unlike these World Star Hip Hop fights, the fucking Russians know how to break it up with a left occasionally. Black guys it’s just right right right right right.
I want to fuck you. I don’t want to hit you or pretend to rape you or shit on you or put an ice cube in your ass or dress you up as a pony or have you peg me. I want to fuck you. If you need an explanation of the mechanics I can direct you to many fine video clips.
The one thing I do want is for you to be sweaty from the airplane. I want the musk of your ovulating 25 year old cunt to have stewed and marinated on the long flight. I want your clothes to smell like Southwest Airlines recirculated air and the crumbs from the honey mustard pretzel and Doritos mix, now nut free. I want your mouth to be stale and I want you to be wearing shitty shoes and shitty jeans and I’m still gonna throw you on the floor and pull them off; give myself rug burn kneeling over you and slipping it in you too fast and laughing you off when you ask me to put a condom on. I want to nut in you without asking you if you’re on birth control but I don’t have the balls. I want to fuck you as soon as you’re off the plane and we’re in a room alone and then I’ll cum and realize I don’t know you and you are staying in my home for several days and what if you snore. I want you to spend money to get on a plane and come see me because you’re hot in your facebook photos and you were born when I was in junior high and how am I gonna say no. Then I want to fuck you for a minute and a half and sheepishly blow about 20 high pressure ropes of jizz on your stomach and think: now what.