The man was a little buzzed, but not as much as the two women. They seemed fine in the club, dancing, laughing, talking loud to hear one another above the music. But when the three of them stepped out into the mild night on the way to the car, they were both a little loopier than he realized, one on either side of him, each clutching an arm and taking small, careful steps, punctuated by the occasional wobble. Of course, t...

She opens the notebook on her lap and takes out the pen and then shifts in her chair. Then she closes the notebook and crosses her legs and opens it, the notebook, again, and looks at him sitting in the love seat across from her. “So,” she says, “then what happened?” He shrugs. “What usually happens.” “Meaning?” “We had sex.” “That’s it.” “I’m pretty sure that’s what it was.” They’re silent for several seconds. She uncros...

They spread out amidst the flowers (Papaver rhoeas, he said). Waves of shimmering heat turned the blooms into a lush impasto, thick incarnadine whorls. High growths and grasses concealed them. Possessions sat by mute and offended, waiting for the attention they would never fully receive. Her insides boiling now, the sunlight roasting her brown, heaving back, the Bordeaux—no, they hadn’t opened it yet... she thought she fe...

This book, improbable as it is, would have been impossible without the help, care, feeding, and receptivity of various experts, friends, experts who became friends, friends who became expert at one thing or another, and the various benefits each and all provided. To everyone involved or engaged, even those with little or no knowledge of the project at hand, I extend my heartfelt thanks. Amanuenses, transcribers, keyboardi...

Smooth shaven pussies and taut erect nipples,Licking up thighs that the goose-flesh has stippled,Handcuffs and blindfolds and shiny cock rings:These are a few of my favorite things. Girls on all fours when they offer their asses,Nerdy girls who take thick loads on their glasses,Full lips all shiny where my semen clings:These are a few of my favorite things. Horny wet MILFs who talk filth with you fuck them,Bouncing soft b...

The Great Kings of Persia“A phrase keeps going through my mind: The Great Kings of Persia.”“What is it? Is it a story? A poem?”“It’s nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all. Just a phrase. A title.”“Storm drift. Something. It could be something,” said Dash. “That’s how ideas work. That’s how inspiration works, right? Something out of the blue. Unconnected, arbitrary. Unrooted.”“I get it,” she said.“Serendipitous.”“I said, I g...

Here between the great false dawn of the reflected cityFrom our kitchen window—Friday night—And the weedy dark of weekend’s oasis;Here, our cool-cocktailed nights, betweenThe small truss of parenthetical sleepSlept, naps napped, love made;Here, within the grotto, the inlet, the sheltered rock ledgeOf an unanswered phone or your penciled list;Here against swimming bits of televisionLike the flat bright flash of tropical fi...

O, love and summer, you are in the dreams and in me.--Walt Whitman, The Sleepers Wednesday was the last day of my little lawn service business. It was like so many other days in that summer of 1979, hot and close, the air an atomized poison of car exhaust and dew steaming off roof shingles. I was nervous about seeing Eleanor Kaminski one more time, afraid it was going to be awkward. I had already begun to feel a certain a...

I parked the car at the curb, several houses down from Eleanor Kaminski’s, and sat there for a few minutes before getting out and heading slowly down the sidewalk. I didn’t especially feel like being there, but at the same time, I didn’t feel right about standing her up when I told her that I would come back. There were lights in several of her windows but the front porch light was off, and I wondered if that was a sign,...

I punched in for my shift feeling a little seedy and worse for wear. For one thing, I could have used a shower. I washed up a bit in Eleanor Kaminski’s bathroom, but it wasn’t enough to completely purge the funk of our exertions on her floor. I kept catching stray whiffs of Mrs. Kaminski’s talcum-powder-suntan-lotion-herbal-shampoo-spray-deodorant-cigarette-smoke bouquet—a strange, cloying, chemical mix—with undertones of...

The next morning, the day of the wedding I wasn’t going to attend, Eleanor Kaminski was waiting for me at her back door at 9 a.m. She was wearing a man’s white broadcloth shirt, a little frayed at the collar, and nothing else, Like some model in a Swedish pipe tobacco commercial. She unbuttoned it as she led me through her kitchen, and when we reached the hallway she stopped and turned, dropped the shirt to the floor, and...

Eleanor Kaminski lay completely naked atop her bed, starfish-like. Her head was thrown back, stuck between a couple pillows and jammed against the oak headboard—some cheap, ugly French Provincial thing they probably got at Sheely’s after a long layaway. Her throat glistened. She kept saying “Oh my God... Oh my God.” The room—at my particular coordinates, anyway—smelled like cunt and dirty ashtray and a chemicaled pine fro...

The quotidian fuckfest that was the Suzie Bowen Experience continued apace. Unfortunately, the time we spent together that didn’t involve sex seemed more pointless than ever. Not that there was a lot of it. Her affinity for orgasms at someone’s hand other than her own was probably equal to mineOften we had to limit ourselves to quick blowjobs, handjobs, and finger fucks. One night, while her mother sat in the living room...

My other employers booked no daytime hours for me on Wednesdays so I could service my yardwork clientele. I mowed five different lawns all within a few blocks of each other. I started around nine in the morning, and it usually took me about six hours or so. The Kaminski’s yard was the last one on the list; its promise as well as the extra adrenalin it incited helped me push through the tedium and fatigue of it all. I fini...

Even though we waited online at the snack bar for ten minutes, it turned out neither one of us was hungry. I bought a large soda for us to share. As soon as we got back to the car, Suzie Bowen put the soda on the floor, got up on her knees on the bench seat, and stripped off her polo shirt again. She leaned forward and kissed me, then went once more for the button on my jeans.“Can you pull these down some?” she said, and...