Удушье (Choke)

And she says to shut up and let her concentrate.

And I try to give us both a good time, but this is the sex equivalent of rubbing your stomach and patting your head. Either I'm focused on her or I'm focusing on myself. Either way, it's the same as a bad three-way. One of us is always getting left out. Plus the vibrator is slippery and hard to hang on to. It's heat­ing up and smells acrid and smoky as if something's burning in­side.

Gwen opens one eye just a sliver, squinting down at my flog­ging the dog, and says, 'Me first!'

I'm wrestling my dog. I'm snaking Gwen. I'm snaking Gwen. This feels less like I'm a rapist than I'm a plumber. The edges of the Femidom keep slipping inside, and I have to stop and pick them out with two fingers.

Gwen says, 'Dennis, no, Dennis, stop, Dennis,' her voice coming up from deep in her throat. She pulls her own hair and gasps. The Femidom slips inside again, and I just let it go. The vi­brator tamps it deeper and deeper. She says to play with her nip­ples with my other hand.

I say, I need my other hand. My dice draw up tight and ready to trigger, and I say, 'Oh yeah. Yes. Oh, yeah.'

And Gwen says, 'Don't you dare,' and she licks two fingers. She pins her eyes on mine and works her wet fingers between her legs, racing me.

And all I have to do is picture Paige Marshall, my secret weapon, and the race is over.

The second before you trigger, that feeling when your asshole starts to clench, that's when I turn toward the little spot on the towel Gwen said. Feeling stupid and paper-trained, my white sol­diers start to toss, and maybe by accident they misjudge the tra­jectory and toss across her pink bedspread. Her whole big soft puffy pink landscape. Arc after arc sprays out, in hot cramping gobs of all sizes, all over the spread and the pillow shams, and the pink silk bed skirt.

What would Jesus NOT do?

Spunk graffiti.

'Vandalism' isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

Gwen's collapsed on the towel panting with her eyes closed, the vibrator humming inside her. Her eyes rolled back in her head, she's gushing between her fingers and whispering, 'I beat you . . .'

She whispers, 'You son of a bitch, I beat you . . .'

I'm tucking myself back in my pants and grabbing my coat. White soldier gobs are hanging all over the bed, the drapes, the wallpaper, and Gwen's still lying there, breathing hard, the vibra­tor angled halfway out of her. A second later, it slips free and flops around on the floor like a fleshy wet fish. It's then Gwen opens her eyes. She starts to push herself up on her elbows before she sees the damage.

I'm halfway out the window when I say, 'Oh, by the way . . .' I say, 'Poodle,' and behind me I hear her first scream for real.

Chapter 28

In the summer of 1642

in Plymouth, Massachusetts, a teenage boy was accused of buggering a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves, and a turkey. This is real history on the books. In ac­cordance with the Biblical laws of Leviticus, after the boy con­fessed he was forced to watch each animal being slaughtered. Then he was killed and his body heaped with the dead animals and buried in an unmarked pit.

This was before there were sexaholic talk therapy meetings.

This teenager, writing his fourth step must've been a whole barnyard tell-all.

I ask, 'Any questions?'

The fourth-graders just look at me. A girl in the second row says, 'What's buggering?'