The Mammoth Book of International Erotica

– Isabelle? Isabelle, where are you? Oh Jesus… I had this dream, you see. I want to tell you about this dream. We were in this gulag – this prison – somewhere, and they were torturing us. They called us names we didn’t like. There seemed to be no way of getting out of there. One night, the watchmen left their stations. They just bailed. The path was clear. We could have left, escaped, ran away. We could have been safe. We were weak but we still could move. We didn’t. We stayed. We maintained to the familiar. We didn’t take advantage of the situation.

– and then I was on the floor of the trailer, the killer was leaving. Margo was dead, I was dying. Isabelle crawled to me, to hug me, to bleed on me, to die with me.

I said it was all a fantasy, it was all a dream.

Isabelle said it’s all we have that matters.

And she died.

I woke up then, not certain if I was awake or in the dream, or dying from gun shots, and maybe I was dying or dead, or in a motel, running with Isabelle through Amerikan landscapes of the haunted, the chimeric crux of the matrix, but I saw that I was in the trailer, in the bed, and Isabelle, peaceful, was asleep next to me. My head was clear, I saw what I had done, and knew my dreams had told me what my life may be like. I did not want any of this, I did not want this at all, this terrible mistake, this error in judgment, this second of silly lust and reverie; maybe one day I would pay for it, but I had to go! I had to run like I ran in the dreams but I had to do this one solo so I carefully, quickly, quietly got out of the bed, put on my clothes, took one last look at Isabelle and the blood that was dry, and I left, I left her, I never looked back.

We sit there, looking at one another, and Cynthia says maybe we should put her to bed. I tell her I think that’s a good idea. She says will you help me? and I say I will and we both lift Kathy – she stirs but does not wake – and take her to her room, place her in bed, the bed we had been making love in not but a few hours ago, and we cover her with a blanket, and we look at each other, Cynthia amp;I, and we look at Kathy, and we leave the room. In the hall, we stop, immediately kiss. She says we have to go to her room. She takes my hand, she leads me there, we undress and lie on the bed. She says I am not like Isabelle, I am not a young virgin. I say I’m not like Daniel, I won’t need instructions.

She says you mentioned an engagement once.

I say in the Isabelle story.

True?

What?

Were you engaged?

Yes.

Beth was her name?

I don’t look at Cynthia when I say yes, her name was Beth.

What happened?

Don’t remember.

She smiles, kisses me, reaches down and grabs my cock. I’m not quite hard yet. I lay back. Cynthia goes down and sucks and I think about the four times Daniel came in her mouth. I want to do a lot of things to Cynthia. I pull her PJ bottoms, I reach into them, running my finger along her asshole, thinking of Beth. She says she likes that. It could be Beth’s voice. She looks at me, my cock against her cheek.

She says I want you to fuck me the way you fucked Kathy.

I say do you?

She says you can do anything to me tonight, do anything to me you did to her. Do anything to me you didn’t do to her.

I tell her that I had wanted to fuck Kathy in the ass but Kathy doesn’t like that, wouldn’t let me.

She says I know.

Do you?

She says that’s why you’re playing with my asshole now.

I say you like it that way?

She says I like getting fucked any way.

She stands, opens a drawer in her dresser. First, she steps out of her PJ bottoms, leaving the top on. She takes from the drawer a small jar of Vaseline. She scoops some on her fingers, squats, applies it between her buttocks. She takes another scoop, comes to me, rubs the jelly on my cock.

I say you’re not kidding.

She says I’m burning; all this tension; all this talk; all that we have done tonight. I need to be taken in a terrible way; the worst way.

I feel deviant; I feel perverse; I feel as though I am in the celluloid of one of those triple-X movies I watch now amp;then. I have often thought that no one truly leads such nice pornographic lives, doing all those kinky things, thinking these thoughts in solitude when I have rented amp;watched pornos, but recalling that, yes, in fact, I have, now amp;then in my life – as I am in this moment of my life – acting out, in flesh, my most vile fantasies. And when I have rescinded such, as I am now, when I have thought back, looking into my head for those nasty bedroom spectacles, I conjure the image of Beth, Elizabeth, crazy sweet Beth and her vampyre-look and anal sex carnalities; that is, to say, my former fiancee, Beth, could only get off if she was getting it up the ass; there was just no other way, she had to have it in that forbidden girth, and she would rub her clit going to town! she’d say going to town! as I fucked her in the ass, and she’d come, come hard, come unlike any other woman I have ever known, and I would just look at her, in stupefaction, asking myself where did I find such an odd femme? In fact, I could ask myself the same thing, as I hover over Cynthia, Cynthia on her stomach, with her rear hoisted in the semi-light of her bedroom, Kathy dreaming her angel dreams in the other room. Cynthia whom I am about to penetrate in the same manner as I had wanted to enter Kathy, as I had entered Beth numerous times in our past life together. I could ask myself how did I get into this situation tonight and I should feel lucky, for indeed, many men would feel fortunate, many men would have envy, some would call me a sick pig, some might raise their brows and some may deem me an anti-feminist, a user of women, a taker, as it were; but all in all, here I am: in this apartment with two women and I have, in the course of the night, had them both in the most intimate way possible, as I have fucked my memories as well. Cynthia lets out a deep sigh as I enter her, but not with the same ease I used to have when going into Beth. Cynthia is tight, resists, but finally succumbs. I push Cynthia’s rear down, wanting her to be flat on the bed, and she does this, turning her head to look at me, blonde hair in eyes, asking how does it feel? I tell her it feels good and she says the same. She bunches the pillow, places her head on it like a delicate object of renown, looking to the wall, as I begin to fuck her. She emits small noises from mouth, closing eyes.

I reach under her, to find her cunt, her button, hoping, at first, she might do this herself, but knowing it is a job I will have to take on myself, for she isn’t Beth, she could never be Beth, no one could be Beth; when I used to reach for Beth’s cunt, she’d tell me she wanted to do it herself. She’d say there was a special way she did it that no one else in the world could so she’d do it and she just wanted me concentrating on fucking ass. Beth, oh, Beth, what happened? I remember the first night I met her, in that underground club, where they were playing dark gothic music from England (how I wound up in that club I don’t know, I had dropped acid that night); Beth was dressed like a ghoul: with a torn black lace dress, knee-high leather boots, very pale skin, purple-dyed hair that fell past her waist, and black lipstick. In my state of mind, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen; I had to talk to her, so I did, and we seemed to get along well. She had a soft, low, sweltering voice, almost like a child’s at times, and sometimes like a grown woman’s who has seen too much of the ugly orb. She said she wrote poetry; I asked what kind. She said the kind about the nightfall of life. I laughed. She said what’s funny? I asked her age. Twenty. I asked what do you know about life’s darkness amp;twilight? She said she did. I told her I was frying on acid. She asked if I had any more. I said I did. She held out her hand, the devil child expecting a treat. I fished from my jacket pocket a tab of LSD and she took it and said let’s go someplace. This is what I really liked: at the time I was heavily into fry and didn’t know that many girls who cared for the drug as much as I, with the pious fervor of an impassioned Baptist. Where we wound up was at her small apartment. She had a room covered in purple, draped, mantled, assuaged with that goth-favored color; on the walls were posters of The Velvet Underground, Jim Morrison, Ian Curtis, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus and The Cure. She wouldn’t stop giggling; the acid was very strong. We were drinking red wine, which she dribbled down my chest, told me was blood, the