Удушье (Choke)

At least that was the plan.

What happened is a lot of these men raced to the hospital emergency room with their dicks mangled.

At least that's the myth.

That old urban legend about the surprise party for the pretty housewife, how all her friends and family hid in one room, and when they burst out and yelled 'Happy birthday' they found her stretched out on the sofa with the family dog licking peanut but­ter from between her legs . . .

Well, she's real.

The legendary woman who gives head to guys who are driv­ing, only the guy loses control of his car and hits the brakes so hard the woman bites him in half, I know them.

Those men and women, they're all here.

These people are the reason every emergency room has a dia­mond-tipped drill. For tapping a hole through the thick bottoms of champagne and soda bottles. To relieve the suction.

These are the people who come waddling in from the night, saying they tripped and fell on the zucchini, the lightbulb, the Barbie doll, the billiard balls, the struggling gerbil.

See also: The pool cue.

See also: The teddy bear hamster.

They slipped in the shower and fell, bull's-eye, on a greased shampoo bottle. They're always being attacked by a person or persons unknown and assaulted with candles, with baseballs, with hard-boiled eggs, flashlights, and screwdrivers that now need removing. Here are the guys who get stuck in the water inlet port of their whirlpool hot tub.

Halfway down the hallway to Room 234, Nico pulls me against the wall. She waits until some people have walked past us and says, 'I know a place we can go.'

Everybody else is going into the pastel Sunday school room, and Nico smiles after them. She twirls one finger next to her ear, the international sign language for crazy, and she says, 'Losers.' She pulls me the other way, toward a sign that says Women.

Among the folks in Room 234 is the bogus county health of­ficial who calls to quiz fourteen- year-old girls about the appear­ance of their vagina.

Here's the cheerleader who gets her stomach pumped and they find a pound of sperm. Her name is Lou Ann.

The guy in the movie theater with his dick stuck through the bottom of a box of popcorn, you can call him Steve, and tonight his sorry ass is sitting around a paint-stained table, squeezed into a child's plastic Sunday school chair.

All these people you think are a big joke. Go ahead and frig­ging laugh your frigging head off.

These are sexual compulsives.

All these people you thought were urban legends, well, they're human. Complete with names and faces. Jobs and families. Col­lege degrees and arrest records.

In the women's room, Nico pulls me down onto the cold tile and squats over my hips, digging me out of my pants. With her other hand, Nico cups the back of my neck and pulls my face, my open mouth, into hers. Her tongue wrestling against my tongue, she's wetting the head of my dog with the pad of her thumb. She's pushing my jeans down off my hips. She lifts the hem of her dress in a curtsey with her eyes closed and her head tilted a little back. She settles her pubes hard against my pubes and says something against the side of my neck.

I say, 'God, you're so beautiful,' because for the next few minutes I can.

And Nico pulls back to look at me and says, 'What's that supposed to mean?'

And I say, 'I don't know.' I say, 'Nothing, I guess.' I say, 'Never mind.'

The tile smells disinfected and feels gritty under my butt. The walls go up to an acoustical tile ceiling and air vents furry with dust and crud. There's that blood smell from the rusty metal box for used napkins.