one in particular.
No one answers. This doesn’t stop him.
“A priest checks into a hotel and says to the clerk, ‘I assume your porn is disabled.’ The clerk answers, ‘No, Father, it’s normal porn, you sick fuck.’”
Moreau chuckles. Sweetness guffaws. I smile. I never thought to practice laughing.
“Somebody tell a story,” Milo says.
Sweetness asks, “What kind of story?”
Milo thinks about it. “A fuck story. And it has to be true.”
No one volunteers.
“Kari, you taciturn bastard. Tell us a story.”
I’ve never told a sex story, although I have a number of them. I spent years as chief of police in an area with a major ski resort. A perk of being a single cop in a tourist area is the availability of women looking for short-term affairs—vacation entertainment. I never went overboard with it, but if I felt the need, women were almost always there for me. I’ve seldom listened to sex stories, either. The kind of people I’ve mostly spent my life around don’t brag about intimacies, don’t need that kind of self-esteem reinforcement. I decide I’ll try it, just this once, to see what it’s like, even though I know this is some kind of brain surgery post-op quirk manifesting itself.
“OK. This one time. Some years ago, back when I lived in Kittila, it was the night before Christmas Eve. I was making rounds, stopped in Hullu Poro, a big bar there. I was in civilian clothes but had my Glock in a belt holster. This girl comes up to me. She’s a half-Arab and half-German aerobics instructor, about five foot five, had on a tight T-shirt and jeans, and I could tell she had a six pack and an ass so high and firm you could sit a beer can on it. Skin the color of milk chocolate. Black hair down to her ass. Perky breasts. Around twenty-five years old. A beautiful girl. She took a plane to Levi by herself for Christmas on a whim.
“She walked up to me, I didn’t even see her coming. ‘Can I see your gun?’ she asked.
“I said ‘No.’ She asked if I was a cop, and I said ‘Yeah.’ ‘Will you show it to me later?’ she asked. I said ‘Maybe.’
“She asked me what time I got off and I said midnight. She wanted to go techno dancing and asked if I would take her. I said I would be honored. She said it was too bad I was a cop, she’d like to do some X.
“As it happened, I busted some Austrian Eurotrash rich kid that night for speeding, going about a hundred and thirty miles an hour. Baron von Dogfucker or something like that, who had brought about a hundred of his closest friends to celebrate Christmas with him in Levi. He had enough Ecstasy with him for all of them to celebrate in high style for days. He had a baggie full of the shit and I had never tried it, so I thought,
“After work I went up to her room and brought a bottle of wine. We had a glass, I said ‘Surprise,’ and took a couple of tabs out of my pocket. We ate one each. I didn’t like it at first, it felt like my mind was shaking apart, but it didn’t last long and then it was a really enjoyable high.
“I took her to a place where they were spinning techno. She kept falling over, laughing, had no sense of up, down or sideways. I kept scooping her up and setting her back on her feet. She swept all the drinks off the bar with her arm. I bought us more.
“She wanted me to take her home. She wanted to hear Finnish language and asked me to read to her, so I pulled a Bible off the shelf and opened it at random to the book of John. Just when I got to ‘and the Word was made flesh’—I’ll always remember the citation. It’s 1:14—she made her move and we started fucking. The floor, the bed. The sauna. The snow. You can do it in the snow after the sauna for a few minutes when your body temperature is high enough, just don’t get your genitals in it. I tacked a sleeping bag to the roof and we climbed up and fucked under the moon.
“And she was an expert at sucking cock. Every time I came, she sucked me again and made me hard, over and over. At some point, we took the other hit of X. She loved 69, had almost no bodyweight. I was three times her size and turning and lifting her was no more difficult than rolling myself over in bed.
“The date lasted thirty hours. After maybe the tenth time, my orgasms were dry, just powerful contractions. We did it nearly twenty times. Afterward, my dick was so tender it was hard to touch it without discomfort for days. I took her back to her hotel. She called me to say good-bye and I gave her a ride to the airport. We never spoke again. I never wanted to do it again. The experience was unrepeatable. At Baron von Dogfucker’s hearing, I learned that the Ecstasy was in four-way hits. We were supposed to break them into pieces, so we were
“Damn,” Milo said, “that was a good story. I didn’t know you can fuck in the snow.”
“Milo,” I said, “you can fuck in the burning sands of the Sahara. People always fuck. Always find a way.”
“Got any more stories?”
A failed experiment. I took no pleasure whatsoever in relating a sexual adventure. “Yeah, but you only get the one. Now it’s your turn.”
He grips the wheel with his knees to steer while he cracks his window and lights a smoke. “I would if I had any. I don’t have that much experience. I’ve had two semi-long-term relationships, three or four short-term, and no one-night stands. I have the feeling I’m a lousy fuck, just don’t know what I’m doing.”
Moreau says, “It’s hard to be a lousy fuck, unless you have a problem with premature ejaculation or are impotent. Let’s face the facts. Sex consists of heat, lubrication and friction. If those things are all in order, your sexual performance is probably at least adequate.”
“You’re a man of the world,” Milo says to him. “You must have some good stories.”
“I haven’t had a girlfriend for more than twenty years. I have sex exclusively with prostitutes. And never the same woman twice.”
This intrigues both Milo and Sweetness. Their heads turn toward him. “Why?” Milo asks.
“Relationships and the emotions they entail are time-consuming and a distraction from weightier matters. However, like most men, I enjoy sex. A business transaction has no complications, and I have no concerns such as yours. The experience is solely about my pleasure. And why never the same woman twice? It guards against ennui. I never sleep with African women, because the AIDS rate is so high. I most prefer Southeast Asian woman. They tend to be beautiful, accommodating, and I find their vaginas interesting, reminiscent of elephant skin. There’s something both exotic and erotic about it. I seldom engage prostitutes there anymore, either, though, for the same reason. AIDS is a danger.”
There’s something exotic about Moreau himself. He’s a strange man. I’ve never met anyone quite like him.
“Sweetness, that leaves you,” Milo says.
Sweetness reddens and takes a long pull from his flask. “I don’t have any stories.”
We’re all quiet for a moment. We take his meaning and don’t want to embarrass him further. Not even Milo.
“I’m between a rock and a hard spot,” Sweetness says. “I’m in love with Jenna. I don’t want to be with anyone but her, but I can’t do anything about it. She’s my third cousin once removed.”
Milo and Moreau burst with laughter. I bury my face in my hands in disbelief. Milo loses control of himself, has to pull the car over to the side of the road.
Sweetness drinks more, fights back tears. His face is the color of strawberry jam.
I reach over the seat and put a hand on his shoulder. “If she’s that distant a cousin, it’s not incest. There’s no danger of a genetic-related birth defect.”
He looks back at me, blinks, unbelieving, afraid I’m teasing him. “Really?”
“If I fucked Mirjami,” Milo says, “my aunt’s daughter, our child might have eight arms and three heads. But you have no worries.”
He takes this in for a while. “Still, she’s only sixteen.”
“She’s of legal age,” I say, “and you’re only twenty-two. That’s between you and her, and you and your conscience.”
“For what it’s worth,” Milo says, “cousin or not, I would fuck the daylights out of Mirjami if she let me. That’s why God made birth control.”
“I wonder if Jenna has feelings for me too,” Sweetness asks.
