The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels (40 page)

Turning her head, Pell looked down Arc’s long body. Steel and copper, electronics she didn’t understand. High-impact ceramics, “intelligent” plastics, artificial skin.
She looked at Arc and saw materials and machinery. They were beautiful in their design, elegant in their purpose.

Pell looked up at her and saw their purpose.

She didn’t know what to do. The future was dead, frozen – the world was just her, her tiny apartment and her sudden understanding of Arc. The paths that she could go were fuzzy,
unimportant against the pain, the revelation: she would go back to her father. She would live on the street. She would be conscripted and die – her epitaph like Jare’s, an automated
email message saying “DEATH NOTIFICATION” but meaning a young man’s body in the jungle. She would sell some drawings, some paintings, earn enough so she could afford flesh and
blood, and not have to settle for steel, iron, copper, plastic. Fuzzy futures, part of someone else’s history.

Suddenly, she needed Arc. Needed her complete and whole. Needed to touch her, to make contact.

It had been a long time since that other Pell appeared – the brave ghost that lived somewhere in the young girl. The last time had been blood-red wine on a white dress, a burst against San
Francisco black. She had been alone, needing company and love. Then, there, on her bed in her little place, she had the same feeling again.

Getting up, she crawled up Arc’s long body. Seeing her coming – click, click, click – the tall woman turned a slightly frightened face her way, looking down her body. Then she
sighed, a heavy sound ringing of exhaustion and – maybe – fear. She ground out the smelly cigarette on Pell’s battered nightstand, blowing out the last of the smoke with two jets
of blue smoke from her narrow nostrils.

Pell kissed her, tasting the reality of the harsh smoke on her breath. She was straddling Arc, her heavy breasts and tight nipples pressed against Arc’s smooth chest. She hoped that she
was wet, hoped that her cunt was dripping – but honestly didn’t care. Spreading her legs, she dropped herself down till her cunt-lips spread over the coolness of Arc’s prosthetic
left knee.

No, not that. She wanted reality, honesty. She wanted the real person, the real woman, Arc. Moving again, she slid herself against Arc’s upthrust leg, breaking their kiss and pushing her
breasts against Arc’s face. Tender kisses – hesitant but with a restrained hunger, landed on their slopes, skipped across her nipples.

Pell knew what she wanted, knew in an instant – but she didn’t have the tools to ask, didn’t have the tools to even frame the request.

She wanted one of those metal, plastic, alloy, legs off. She wanted the raw reality of Arc’s stump, the chopped-off harshness of her. Real flesh, real blood, real scars. She wanted to make
love to that, to take it into herself – through her mouth, through her cunt, through her heart. She wanted it, could see it, taste it, feel it. An abrupt mass of scars, like a tightly closed
mouth. The black dots where the electronics emerged to mate with the limb. It wasn’t the ugliness of what she knew was between Arc and her limb that had her weak, pulsing with desire; it was
the thought of finally making love to Arc, the real one, the painful and raw one.

A hand between her legs, slipping between her thighs. A hand between her legs, slipping between her cunt-lips – finding her clit. A gentle tap, a smooth rhythm, and with it Pell let her
mind race, let her mind go where her lips couldn’t.

A loosening of the socket, a few minor adjustments to divorce rubber gasket from leg, then the peeling of rubber from raw stump. The smell of it, like old worn clothing, like a well-exercised
armpit. Maybe dirt, maybe something like earwax. But real, solid, raw. She’d like to taste it, to bring a bit of Arc into herself. Something like snot, maybe something like cunt-juice when
she hadn’t washed for a while. Real, though – so real.

She wanted that reality in her. She wanted to lie back, to spread herself as wide as she could, to swallow that actuality – to have Arc move herself, position herself to those scars, that
tissue, was pressing harder and harder against her lips. She wanted Arc inside her, wanted the pure skin, the pure gristle, the pure essence of Arc inside her cunt, inside her. She wanted Arc to
make love to her – with nothing in the way.

There, right there – the thought of stump pushing aside lips, of wetness closing around scars, of a bigness beyond any fist, pushed Pell over. The come wasn’t something really
physical, though it did have all the notes, all the tempo: it was a shaking, an emotional blast through her body. Like a come, she shook and squirted clear liquid down onto Arc’s fingers,
soaking the bed once again. Like a come, she felt faint, felt her heart hammering in her chest. Like a come, her breath was short and quick.

Unlike just a come, the feeling lasted, a cool sadness. A knowledge of futility. Only in her dream, only in her fantasy – raw reality. Only in her mind, the real Arc, the real flesh, the
real bone.

She wasn’t tired, but she crawled up and curled up onto Arc’s body. She knew she must have been heavy, but didn’t care. She felt her sweaty skin slide over Arc’s cool
body and, slowly, she positioned herself so that all she touched, all she made contact with, was nothing but Arc.

Arc left in the morning. If she would come back or not, Pell didn’t know. She cared, of course, but didn’t know if Arc did.

She sat by the dirty window for close to an hour, feeling the revelation, the secret knowledge. At the end of that hour she wanted Arc all the more, feeling privileged at
having touched as much as she had.

Pell had finally seen Arc, herself. That was the real time ahead, the real choices: maybe Pell would leave – walk away from the memories of days with Arc. Maybe she would stay, and watch
her lover barricade herself within an artificial body – retreat against Pell’s caring, her love.

Maybe she’d be back, maybe with more parts, maybe with less. Maybe she’d never return, her details fading into a simple melancholy at the sight of cool metals, plastics replacing
flesh. Two roads, two ways to go. But one thing was certain, as sadness or as love, Arc would be whole and real in her mind.

But, for certain, if she returned, Pell would be there – to touch as much of her as she could, for as long as there was something to touch.

THE COMFORT OF WOMEN

Michael Hemmingson

ONE

I’d been celibate for five years. I didn’t think I was a bad-looking man – women had found me appealing in the past – but between the ages of twenty-two
and twenty-seven, I hadn’t touched a woman and a woman hadn’t touched me. I’d created my own isolation, going from one dumb job to another, spending my time alone in a studio
apartment, writing. My first novel was published in an irregular paperback format by a small press operated by an enthusiastic fellow, reminiscent of those old City Lights Pocketbooks. It fitted
easily in my back pocket and not too many people read it, despite all the good reviews. The whole matter was a solitary experience with no one to share it with.

One day, I received a letter from an English professor at the local university, Barry McGinnis. He wrote that he’d gotten my address from the publisher of my book, and how the book was an
unknown work of genius, and that he’d like to meet me.

I put the letter aside.

A month later, the professor called on the phone.

“Your publisher is an old buddy of mine, a former student, in fact,” McGinnis said. “Hope you don’t mind. I got your number from him.”

“No,” I said. “I meant to call you. I did get your letter.”

“Listen, why don’t we meet for a beer?”

I met the professor at a pub near the campus, and listened to him talk about how great he thought my work was. He’d not only read my novel – and assigned it to one of his classes
– but had seen my work in various and (quite) obscure literary journals and underground publications.

“You go by Nicholas?” McGinnis said. “Or –”

“Nicky.”

“Nicky, Nicky Bayless – where’d you go to school?”

“College?”

“Yes.”

“Never went.”

“No degree? No creative writing program?”

“No.”

“Probably a good thing,” McGinnis said, nodding his head, his long grayish-black bushy hair bouncing. “But you know, I bet I could get you into the MFA program here.”

“With no BA?”

“Hell, your published work will vouch your worthiness,” the professor said. “I bet I could get you a nice fellowship, too.”

And that’s just what Barry McGinnis did.

I met Alexia in one of the graduate courses Barry McGinnis taught. She had a quirky look to her I found appealing – thick, dark-rimmed glasses; a white streak in her
otherwise jet black hair; an odd-assortment of attire, cool in this age of awkwardness; when geekiness, coupled with intelligence, was sexy. She was one of the regulars who hung out at the pub
where I first encountered McGinnis – often this crowd was orbiting around him, a charismatic man in his own right. He was at the pub three nights a week, and I soon found myself there as
well. Alexia was there. I was sort of the oddball, I felt, brought into this circle by McGinnis because of my book and not my academic struggle (and I had a new book, a collection of stories,
coming out from another small, obscure publisher).

One night, at the pub, McGinnis wasn’t there, and many people departed. I sat drinking beer with Alexia and Bart (a blond surfer poet) and his bombshell blonde girlfriend, Randi. We all
decided to go to a different bar and play pool – Alexia was
insistent
on this particular bar, telling us all we’d like it very much.

It was an OK bar. Bart and Randi wanted to play pool, which wasn’t my thing. Alexia bought a pitcher of beer and we sat together.

Bart was bending, ready to take a shot at the table, his rear end very close to us. “Get your butt somewhere else,” Alexia said, “or I’ll take a pool stick and shove it
up –”

“
Oh
,
yeah
,” said Randi.

“That’s not very nice,” I said. “How’d you like it if someone stuck a pool stick in your ass?”

Alexia raised her brows. “I just might like it.”

That was the first clue I didn’t get – I wasn’t paying attention. I’d recall in hindsight, yes, as well as overhearing her talk about how her favorite scene in
Last
Tango in Paris
was when Marlon Brando put butter up his young lover’s backdoor before sodomizing her.

Bart and Randi left (we’ll get back to them in another chapter), and Alexia and myself finished the pitcher of beer.

“What will you do now?” Alexia said.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Drink more?”

“I don’t know.”

She took her glasses off and looked at them. “I live a block away, you know.”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t know.”

This was the second clue – and I wasn’t paying attention.

“Well,” she said.

“Maybe we can go there,” I said.

She put her glasses back on. “OK.”

We walked up the block to her place, which was a small cottage. It was nice, a little messy. I asked how much she paid for it.

“Nothing,” she said. “My parents own the property.”

“Nice.”

“I don’t work,” she said. “I go to school. Like you.”

“I used to work. I worked too much. Dumb jobs, blah blah blah. Now I have a fellowship.”

“What about your book?”

“I don’t make any money from that.”

“Oh. I have it, your book.”

“Really?”

“I didn’t read it.”

“That’s OK.”

“Dr McGinnis said I should.”

“
Listen
to him.”

“I have beer, I think,” she said, going to the kitchen.

I sat on the couch in the small living room.

Alexia returned with two Budweisers. “Yes, I have beer.”

She sat next to me.

I don’t remember what we talked about. On the floor, I noticed an action figure of the Warner Brothers Martian from the Bugs Bunny cartoon. “I always loved that Martian,” I
said.

“Me, too,” she said, going to the floor and picking it up. “Marvin the Martian. ‘I’m going to destroy planet Earth!’ ” I touched her hair. She put her
head in my lap. It was nice to touch somebody.

“I, um, I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“What?”

“I haven’t been with anyone in a while.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true.”

“It’s a line,” she said. “Do you like me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I like you.” She got on the couch with me and we began to kiss. She had to take her glasses off: they were getting in the way. We kissed for a long time. She pushed me back on the
couch, and lay on top of me. I grabbed her ass, put my hands down her skirt.

She pulled her mouth from mine. “
Bad
boy,” she said.

I grabbed her head, and we kissed more.

When I tried to touch her cunt, she stopped me.

“No,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, and we kissed.

When I touched her breasts over the fabric of her blouse, she pushed them away. “Now, now,” she said.

“Sorry,” I said.

She took one of my hands and put it back on her ass. “Play with that.”

I did, and we kissed. My hand, and my second hand, were all over her butt.

“Hey,” Alexia said, “rub my asshole.”

“What?”

“With your finger,” she said, and I found her asshole with my finger. “In small circles,” she said, “yeah, like that –”

She pulled away from me, and sat. She took the finger I’d been rubbing her with, put it in her mouth, sucked on it. She smiled, and gave my finger back. She put her glasses on.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, moving to her, wanting to kiss her more.

“Nothing,” she said. “I have to pee.”

“Hey.” I grabbed her hand as she stood up. “Can I watch?”

“You want to watch me pee?”

“Yes,” I said.

“I need a commitment before I go that far,” she said.

“We hardly know each other.”

“Exactly,” she said, and went to the bathroom.