Seeds Of Fear (16 page)

Nothing would until the next time.

I went through a lot of boys in high school.

Now, men sharing the same desires that I have are called satyrs after those Greek half-horse, half-human things that pranced around in olden times and fucked, plucked, and sucked anything that moved. Woodland deities, the dictionary says. Right. Deities, my foot.

Women like me are labeled nymphomaniacs. A rather cold and impersonal term, if you ask me, and one that has more than a little disapproval attached to it. I tell you, we got screwed with the terms, too. How come it's not satyrmania? Anyway, most of the time that long term for the women gets shortened to nymphs, which doesn't sound too bad when coupled with satyrs, as it were. Of course, sometimes guys think women who want it more than once a year are nymphs. I'm afraid quite a few females get tarred unfairly with that brush.

Still, both conditions, as my onetime therapist explained, are characterized by an excessive desire for sex. A frenzy for coitus. What a way to put it.

Takes some of the pleasure out of it, don't you think?

If you have to do something, it's no fun, right? It's a duty, God forbid. A burden. A
chore.

And where's the adventure in that? Where's the enjoyment?

My pattern, after a number of years of fine-tuning, is fairly predictable.

I work, I leave at lunch, I find some guy to fuck. We screw our brains out. I leave him sleeping.

I go back to work. I get that feeling again. After work, I cruise by another bar, see what's being offered, get a good lay or two in. Go home and fix myself something to eat that's not human.

I get that urge again by bedtime. Sometimes I try to ignore it. Mostly I'm unsuccessful. Mostly I have to go back out one more time.

There's always room for one more, right?

I don't get much sleep, but hey, I don't seem to need it much anymore. I think my partners sleep enough for me. I like to lie next to them as they doze, snoring most times, and just watch them. I like to watch the rise and fall of their chests, like to trace the sweat across the mat of chest hair, like to lick the saltiness on their skin. Like to listen to them moan from some dream. I like to feast on them, sexually and visually.

I like it all, and I don't take weekends or holidays off.

I've slept with tall guys, little guys, skinny ones, chubby ones, bookish ones, and muscle men; even tried it with a woman once. Drew the line at a German shepherd, though. Just joking. About contemplating it with a dog, that is. I'm not
that
screwed up, believe me. The names, the bodies, the methods, have blurred after all this time. All I remember is the sex and the wonderful relief that it brought for me, even for such a short time.

Honey, I've tried it so many damned ways—I could probably add a page or two to the
Kama Sutra.
It's a wonder I don't walk bow-legged.

So what did I get out of all these hot and cold fucks, you wonder?

A lot of good sex. A lot of so-so sex. And a helluva lot of bad lays. But I think I had more first-rate times than bad. At least I remember the good more often than not. Selective memory, maybe, huh?

Maybe that was my hobby, after all. Finding the ultimate lay, the primo prick. The
creme de la cream.
Maybe.

After a while, after the years went by, after a decade or two passed, I decided that wasn't enough. I had to have the sex more frequently, with more partners, in many more variations.

I have to confess that, by then, my rather unbridled sex drive was frankly driving me up the wall. I wasn't having fun any longer. I didn't do anything but fuck. I was having a hard time paying my bills, going to work, even getting up in the morning and doing simple chores like brushing my teeth or getting dressed. My thoughts all centered on one activity. Sex, sex, sex. Too much of a good thing, as they say, sucks.

Something had to be done.

So I went into therapy.

What a mistake. Got nothing out of that except some exorbitant bills, and a clear understanding that those guys with the elaborate diplomas can pitch a first-class
theoretical
argument but don't know shit when it comes to real life. Plus they're not so hot in bed. Trust me on that.

So all the doctors I've ever visited have claimed this addiction, this craving, exists solely in my head. Not precisely. I know what they're saying, or rather what they're trying to express. It's fine for them to suggest one mode of therapy or another, it's fine for them, because they're not the one who experiences this
hunger.
I am. And believe me, it's inside me—not my head—and nothing they've ever recommended has helped.

Some termed it a fugue, but it's not that because I recall my acts afterward. Boy, do I ever. And some suggest a mania. "Excessive enthusiasm," says my dictionary about that word. Maybe that's the closest definition, because I am
very
enthusiastic.

The problem is, though, it's only gotten worse over the years. It's all I think about during the day. All I dream about at night. The only thing I crave.

I don't eat food much now, don't sleep much. Don't have any hobbies, or go out, except to pick up men. All I do is fuck.

I'm real tired—tired of fucking and being fucked.

Who's being devoured now?

I've given it a great deal of thought, and I think I know what I have to do to help myself, help get rid of that itching hunger inside.

I've made my preparations carefully, decided I've got to do something; can't wait any longer. I've gone to the store and bought what was necessary. I had the plastic bottle already, left over from one of the kits I bought some time ago. And I've mixed the proper amount—had to guess here, though, what with no recipe—of vinegar and water with the crystals.

These crystals are pretty potent, making my eyes water, and I have to glance away and take a deep breath.

It's all set up now. I sit down on the toilet, spread my legs, and reach for the filled bag.

Nothing like douching with Drano. A little dab'll do you.

F
or many years George Winters had fantasized about the same basic scene: two women, one of them his wife, making love, with himself as coach, director, onlooker, and commentator. "Pull the hair away from her face," he would say, having seen his share of hard core.

His wife, Karen, was a statuesque natural redhead, heavily freckled over her upper torso, with a long, slim neck, a chest that other women envied, and a little hint of tummy. Karen had kept most of her figure. At forty-one she still looked like a woman in her early thirties, and was just beginning to fight the battle of the middle-aged bulge. Her long legs were as fine as they'd been when George had first seen her, in the lobby of First Financial, where he was the junior lending officer in the mortgage department. That had been nearly twenty years before, and the sizzle had long since died between them. They still had sex, but it had become infrequent and routine. He thought that intercourse with Karen had become like masturbation with legs and a vagina. He could admire her aesthetically, still, but for the last few years he did not eye his wife with lust in his heart . . . unless he thought of her with another woman. Then—BOING! That was all it took. His fantasies, the way he looked at it, were saving their marriage.

When the spark had sputtered, George began spending more time reading the out-of-town newspapers he collected, much to Karen's chagrin. She claimed to be allergic to newsprint and paper pulp, but these days it seemed she was allergic to almost everything. He felt maybe she was really just allergic to him.

To ease the frustration of a marriage that seemed directionless, and over which he appeared to have lost complete control. George started writing. He plowed the darkest depths of his mind to come up with a pseudonymous self-help revenge book called
How to F
—
Somebody Over.
No one was more surprised than George when the book was actually picked up by a small company called Landfill Press, which sold it both in-store and by direct mail. One of the big chains picked it up. It became a publishing freak, a word-of-mouth success, even reaching the
New York Times
best-seller list. George made a ton of money.

When the sequel,
How to F
—
Somebody Up,
went into its second hardcover printing literally before the Landfill sales department finished the initial solicita-tion, he quit his mortgage-lending gig and started writing full-time. He'd been tremendously successful, and could indulge himself. That meant outcall ladies. Scenes.

One of these scenes had brought him Gayle, a lovely, smiling, bimboesque girl of twenty-two who was obviously selling her body as much for the taboo kick as for the dough. She was slim, small-boobed, with a great face, super ass, and a hot way about her that instantly turned him on. He made her model sexy lingerie for him while he beat off, and then she sucked him while he thought about how crazy it would get him to watch her go down on Karen.

That night he popped the question—for maybe the fiftieth time—to his bride of nineteen and a half years.

"I've found somebody for us. I know you'll go nuts when you see her," he told his wife, describing Gayle, the beaming bimbo, in minute detail while leaving out the precise details of their money-for-sex encounter. Karen's response floored him.

"She sounds quite fuckable, actually," she said in her soft, cultured tones. For the first time she agreed to participate in a three-way. A two-way, technically, as his thing was watching from the sidelines, as it were.

George asked why she was willing this time; what had finally made the difference? She said she was tired of fighting him, and besides, she said she'd been doing some fantasizing herself lately, and his constant harping about another woman had started her thinking along those lines.

"Most of all," she'd said, "I'm afraid of getting too old to try something new."

The big scene was arranged. Gayle lived some twenty miles away, so there would be an extra hundred to cover the "travel" both ways, which would, with her basic fee, buy her for the entire night. Camcorder loaded, wife primed and waiting nervously in the next room, he sat—vodka collins in hand— ready for company.

The doorbell went through him like a direct current of electricity. He couldn't recall being so up for a scene, both literally and figuratively, and he opened the door on Gayle's big, sexy smile. She had one of those MTM mouths with about a thousand white Chiclet teeth in it, full lips that were so youthfully pretty she didn't bother with lipstick, and a tongue she couldn't keep out of sight. She was always smiling, or holding her mouth open as she listened, or licking those thick lips, or pouting, or laughing or chewing on a finger—something. Very busy, that ripe mouth of hers. He couldn't wait to see her with Karen.

Drinks. Introductions. He was about to explode in his blue bikini briefs, which is all he wore under the black and red silk kimono. The women took to each other immediately. It was all he could do not to touch himself, he was already so hot with the anticipation of the event. They put their partially finished libations down and headed for the master bedroom.

George triggered the camera, surreptitiously, and took a seat near the bed, preparing to begin instructions and suggestions, but they were miles ahead of him. Karen pulled Gayle on top of her and they jumped into the sack like two schoolgirls, kissing with a kind of heat he found totally alien to Karen. This wasn't Karen at all—this was some sex-mad twat fiend who'd been released from dormancy. His wife ran every change imaginable on the more than willing Gayle, and it was unlike any scene to which he had ever been a voyeur. It was so exciting, he forgot to jack off!

They kissed as if they were writing a book on the art. Karen would open her mouth and sort of begin eating Gayle's lips, and then Gayle would imitate the same type of kiss, then Karen would try a face-sucking corner gobble, and Gayle would duplicate that, and then they each began innovating, working their way up and down and over and around. Karen was on those little breasts with a mad devouring passion that was amazing to behold, and then down on the shaved patch of snatch in the heart of Gayle's unsuntanned love triangle, going at it lickety-split. Then it was Gayle on Karen, then each of them after the other's asshole, just fucking incredible. The videocassette ran out. He went to the bathroom. He got tired of watching.

After Gayle's first visit, everything between Karen and George improved. Sex, naturally, warmed up; they lived off the event for weeks, but their attitude toward one another changed. Karen no longer treated him like a necessary evil in her life, she seemed to suddenly care about him again. There were other changes as well. She became a better housekeeper almost overnight. Now she was cooking the meals he liked again, and her constant criticizing had abated. In turn, he treated her with more respect, not being so critical of her every decision, allowing her more freedom. She loved to take hours and hours shopping, and now he let her shop till she dropped, and never threw it up to her when she came home. He even made sure she had plenty of extra money in her checking account, something he'd never bothered to do in the past.

George was so pleased with the way things had changed for them, he was stunned when he suggested a possible menage a trois with Gayle, whom they hadn't seen in some weeks, and she nearly jumped down his throat.

"Just leave Gayle the fuck out of our fucking lives, all right?" she'd shouted.

"Sorry," he said, meekly.

Karen became instantly contrite, and that night she made his favorite meal and served it to him as if it were going to be the last food she'd ever cook for him. The next morning he found out why. The phone rang. He happened to pick it up just a beat after Karen did.

"Hm-um," he heard his wife whisper into the phone, "can't right now."

"Ten OK?" Gayle's voice, he was certain.

"Yeah, gotta go."

"Love you," Gayle said.

"Me too," he heard Karen whisper. The two words ice-picked him in the heart. He fucking knew it all in that instant.

The next few weeks played themselves out in slow motion. He owed Karen something, and he was a man who paid his debts, always. With interest. He owed her nineteen and a half good years; she'd done a million things for him, held his head while he puked —back in his heavy-boozing days—loved his family as if they'd been hers, a zillion things he owed her for. He would pay her back with loyalty and friendship, he decided. Kill her with kindness, so to speak. It was the only decent thing to do.

He said nothing, never let on, just made his plans. Each day was one day closer to divorce—there was never a question in his mind. He knew Karen well, and he knew he was watching someone in love. Jesus, it was really pretty funny. The thing he wanted most finally happens, but it's so good, it destroys him. Very fucking funny. If he'd written it, no one would have believed him. Life was a certifiable bitch. And in this case, he'd brought the bitch home. He couldn't com-plain.

Karen? In love with another bitching
woman?
Nah . . . Yeah. Might as well face it, stud, he told himself, it would be bad enough to lose her to another man, but you lost your wife to a fucking
cunt,
you no-dick loser piece of shit. Then he was able to look at his twisted goofiness, immaturity, sexist pigitude, and the whole nine yards of torn cloth that let him fuck his own nice marriage into the ground, and he stepped back, laughed at himself, and took a vow of reasonableness. George would be a mensch and let this play itself out.

It did soon enough. Karen was just back from the grocery store, and he'd helped her put groceries away, and had asked her to help him wash and wax the Regal. She had on short shorts and a halter top and looked so suddenly sexy to him, he was irritated with his weirdness. Here he was rubbing the same spot with a chamois cloth, trying to look down his old lady's top at those nice, hard nipples he'd become so bored with. What was sex, and in fact marriage, but a nutty head game? The car shiny, chrome agleam, they emptied their buckets, wrung out their sponges, and went inside to cool off with some drinks.

She brought him a special treat, Hires in a frosty mug that had been icing down in the freezer. He took a sip of root beer and she told him, matter-of-factly, that she was leaving.

"You know this is over. I still care about you, but I can't go on like this anymore. I've found someone else. I'm moving in the morning." She began an itemized list of what she was taking and what she was leaving. He tried to keep an even keel, but it was difficult.

"I've withdrawn half the money—exactly to the dime," she said, with almost a hint of pride in her voice, "and I'll take the car. You can always buy another set of wheels, but I like the Buick and feel safe in it. You can keep the house," she said. That was big of her.

"You and Gayle setting up housekeeping?" he asked, keeping his face and tone neutral. She looked at him sharply.

"Yes." No
how did you know?
No hint of surprise. Letting him know with her equally flat gaze and tone that she didn't care what he knew or for how long. "Neither of us meant this to happen, you know."

They discussed the affair at some length, but Karen was not willing to divulge much. He could tell she'd slammed a door on any intimacy between them. He played to that, saying that he hoped they'd be very happy together. She relaxed a bit.

"I guess I owe you," she said, "since we'd never have gotten together if you hadn't insisted I meet her."

"That's true," George said with a chuckle. "Maybe I should become a matchmaker. You two are obviously in love. I could tell from watching you together how good it was for you."

"We're pretty
gushy,
I guess," his wife said, in that self-deprecatory way she had that drove him up the wall. They discussed the details of her move and he decided to follow through on his plan to be a real friend.

"I'm going to help you move," he said.

"No, I don't want you to do that."

"I insist," he said, and began producing suitable boxes, helping her call an appropriate moving company, and busying himself with the details of her imme-diate exit.

They worked most of the night packing boxes, and when the moving men arrived he was still in a sleepy fog, but somehow he got through the day, and by evening she came to kiss him good-bye.

"I'm just a few miles away," she said, gently, "and we'll still see each other a lot. I always want to be your friend."

"I'll always be here for you, Karen." They kissed and she left for the apartment where her new wife was waiting. Or was it husband? It didn't matter to him at the moment. He was crushed. Demolished. The house was screamingly empty without her. Nearly twenty years had just been flushed down the tubes. It was like a death. Worse, because the loved one was still around. Terrible. Devastating. All the cliches rang true. He was alone. Fucked.

Many tears later, many curses and prayers later, but only a month on the calendar, things were beginning to sort themselves out. It was true, those hackneyed phrases, like "one door closes but another opens." It was the beginning of a new life. And George was prosperous and healthy—being alone wasn't such a sentence after all. He would be able to rationalize his way back to some semblance of what passed for normalcy inside his head, in time. He'd work at it. He was strong.