Choke (19 page)

Paige, the whole time with the stethoscope in her ears, just listened to her own heart.

The angels on the ceiling were painted over. The light through the stained-glass window was thick and gold and swimming with dust. The light fell in a thick solid shaft, a warm heavy shaft that spilled on us.

Attention please, would Dr. Freud please pick up the white courtesy telephone.

A world of symbols, not the real world.

Denny looks at me stuck and bleeding from the rose thorns, my clothes ripped, lying in a bush, and says, “Okay, I mean it.” He says, “This is, for sure, last call.”

The smell of roses, the smell of incontinence at St. Anthony’s.

A dog’s barking and scratching to get out the back door of the house. A light comes on in the kitchen to show somebody in the window. Then the back-porch light comes on, and it’s amazing how fast I tear my ass out of that bush and run to the street.

Coming the other way on the sidewalk are a couple, leaned together and walking with an arm around each other. The woman rubs her cheek on the man’s lapel, and the man kisses the crown of her head.

Denny’s already pushing the stroller, so fast the front wheels catch in a sidewalk crack, and the baby’s rubber head pitches out. Glass eyes staring wide open, the pink head bounces past the happy couple and rolls into the gutter.

To me, Denny says, “Dude, you want to fetch that for me?”

My clothes shredded and gummy with blood, thorns stuck in
my face, I trot past the couple and nab the head out of the leaves and trash.

The man yelps and pulls back.

And the woman says, “Victor? Victor Mancini. Oh, my God.”

She must’ve saved my life, because I don’t know who the hell she is.

In the chapel, after I gave up, after we were buttoning our clothes shut, I said to Paige, “Forget fetal tissue. Forget resenting strong women.” I say, “You want to know the real reason why I won’t fuck you?”

Doing up the buttons of my britches, I told her, “Maybe the truth is I really want to like you instead.”

And with both hands above her head, making her black hair brain tight again, Paige said, “Maybe sex and affection aren’t mutually exclusive.”

And I laughed. My hands tying my cravat, I told her, yes. Yes, they are.

Denny and me, we get to the seven hundred block of, the street sign says Birch Street. To Denny pushing the stroller, I say, “Wrong way, dude.” I point behind us and say, “My mom’s house is back there.”

Denny keeps pushing, the bottom of the stroller making a growling sound against the sidewalk. The happy couple are drop-jawed, still watching us from two blocks back.

I trot along next to him, tossing the pink doll head from hand to hand. “Dude,” I say. “Turn back around.”

Denny says, “We have to see the eight hundred block first.”

What’s there?

“It’s supposed to be nothing,” Denny says. “My Uncle Don used to own it.”

The houses end, and the eight hundred block is just land
with more houses on the block after that. The land is just tall grass planted around the edges with old apple trees, their bark all wrinkled and twisting up into the darkness. Inside a bunch of brush, blackberry whips, and scrub, more thorns on every twig, the middle of the land is clear.

On the corner is a billboard sign, plywood painted white with a picture across the top of red-brick houses built against each other and people waving from windows with flower boxes. Under the houses, black words say: Coming Soon Menningtown Country Townhouses. Under the billboard, the ground’s snowed with peeling paint chips. Up close, the billboard is curling, the brick townhouses cracked and faded pink.

Denny tips the boulder out of the stroller, and it lands in the tall grass beside the sidewalk. He shakes out the pink blanket and hands me two corners. Between us, we fold it, and Denny says, “If you can have the opposite of a role model, he’d be my Uncle Don.”

Then Denny flops the folded blanket into the stroller and starts to push the stroller toward home.

And I call after him, “Dude. You don’t want this rock?”

And Denny says, “Those mothers against drunk driving, for sure, they threw a party when they found out old Don Menning was dead.”

Wind lifts and crushes the tall grass. Nobody but plants lives here now, and across the dark center of the block you can see the porch lights of houses on the other side. The black zigzags of old apple trees are outlines in between.

“So,” I go, “is this a park?”

And Denny says, “Not really.” Still walking away, he says, “It’s mine.”

I pitch the doll head at him and say, “For real?”

“Since my folks called a couple days ago,” he says, and he
catches the head and drops it into the stroller. Under the streetlights, past everybody’s dark house, we walk.

My buckle shoes flashing, my hands stuffed in my pockets, I say, “Dude?” I say, “You don’t really think I’m anything like Jesus Christ, do you?”

I say, “Please say no.”

We walk.

And pushing his empty stroller, Denny says, “Face it, dude. You nearly did sex on God’s table. You’re already shame spiraling big-time.”

We walk, and the beer’s wearing off, and it’s a surprise how the night air’s so cold.

And I say, “Please, dude. Tell me the truth.”

I’m not good and kind and caring or any of that happy horse-shit.

I’m nothing but a thoughtless, brain-dead, loser dude. That I can live with. This is who I am. Just a puss-pounding, seam-reaming, dog-driving, fucking helpless sex addict asshole, and I can’t ever, ever let myself forget that.

I say, “Tell me again I’m an insensitive asshole.”

How tonight’s supposed to work is I hide in the bedroom closet
while the girl’s taking a shower. Then when she comes out all shiny with sweat, the air steamy and fogged with hair spray and perfume, she comes out naked except for a lacy bathrobe. Then I jump out with some pantyhose stretched over my face and wearing sunglasses. I throw her on the bed. I put a knife to her throat. Then I rape her.

Simple as that. The shame spiral continues.

Just keep asking yourself:
“What would Jesus NOT do?”

Only I can’t rape her on the bed, she says, the spread is pale pink silk and will spot. And not on the floor because the carpet hurts her skin. We agreed on the floor, but on a towel. Not a good guest towel, she said. She told me she’d leave a ratty towel on the dresser, and I’d need to spread it on the floor ahead of time so as not to break the mood.

She’d leave the bedroom window unlocked before she got in the shower.

So I’m hiding in the closet, naked with all her dry cleaning sticking to me, the pantyhose over my head, wearing sunglasses and holding the dullest knife I could find, waiting. The towel’s spread on the floor. The pantyhose are so hot my face is running with sweat. The hair plastered to my head starts to itch.

Not by the window, she’d told me. And not by the fireplace. She said to rape her near the armoire, but not too near. She said to try and spread the towel in a high-traffic area where the carpet wouldn’t show as much wear.

This is a girl named Gwen I met in the Recovery section of a bookstore. It’s hard to say who picked up whom, but she was pretending to read a twelve-step book about sexual addiction, and I was wearing my lucky camo pants and cruising her over a copy of the same book, and I figured what’s one more dangerous liaison.

Birds do it. Bees do it.

I need that rush of endorphins. To tranquilize me. I crave the peptide phenylethylamine. This is who I am. An addict. I mean, who’s counting?

In the bookstore coffee shop, Gwen said to get some rope, but not nylon rope because it hurt too much. Hemp gives her an inflamed rash. Black electrical tape would work, too, but not over her mouth, and not duct tape.

“Pulling off duct tape,” she said, “is about as erotic as getting my legs waxed.”

We compared our schedules, and Thursday was out. Friday I had my regular sexaholics meeting. No chits for me this week. Saturday I spent at St. Anthony’s. Most Sunday nights she helped run a bingo event at her church, so we settled on Monday. Monday at nine, not eight, because she worked until late in the evening, and not ten because I had to be at work early the next morning.

So Monday comes. The electrical tape is ready. The towel’s spread, and when I leap at her with the knife she says, “Are those my pantyhose you’re wearing?”

I twist one of her arms behind her back and put the chilled blade to her throat.

“For crying out loud,” she says. “This is way out of bounds. I said you could rape me. I
did not
say you could ruin my pantyhose.”

With my knife hand, I grab the front edge of her lacy bathrobe and try to tug it off her shoulder.

“Stop, stop, stop,” she says and slaps my hand away, “Here, let me do it. You’re just going to ruin it.” She twists away from me.

I ask if I can take off my sunglasses.

“No,” she says and slips out of her robe. Then she goes to the open closet and hangs the robe on a padded hanger.

But I can’t hardly see.

“Don’t be so selfish,” she says. Naked now, she takes my hand and presses it around one of her wrists. Then she slips her arm behind her back, turning to press her bare back to me. My dog’s nosing higher and higher, and her warm slick butt crack’s gumming me, and she says, “I need you to be a faceless attacker.”

I tell her it’s too embarrassing to buy a pair of pantyhose. A guy buying pantyhose is either a criminal or a pervert; either way the cashier will hardly take your money.

“Jeez, quit whining,” she says. “Every rapist I’ve ever been with has brought his own pantyhose.”

Plus I tell her, when you’re looking at the pantyhose rack, they have all those colors and sizes. Nude, charcoal, beige, tan, black, cobalt, and none of them come in just “head-sized.”

She twists her face away and groans. “Can I tell you something? Can I tell you just
one
thing?”

I say, what?

And she says, “Your breath is
really
bad.”

Back in the bookstore coffee shop, while we were still scripting, she said, “Make sure and put the knife in a freezer beforehand. I need it to be really really cold.”

I asked if maybe we could just use a rubber knife.

And she said, “The knife is very important to my total experience.”

She said, “It’s best if you put the edge of the knife to my throat before it gets to room temperature.”

She said, “But be careful, because if you cut me by accident”—she leaned toward me over the table, jabbing her chin at me—“if you even scratch me, I swear I’ll have you in jail before you can get your pants back on.”

She sipped her herbal chai and set the cup back in its saucer and said, “My sinuses would appreciate it if you didn’t wear any kind of cologne or aftershave or deodorant with a strong scent, because I’m very sensitive.”

These horny sexaholic chicks, they have such a high tolerance. They just can’t not get banged. They just can’t stop, no matter how degrading things get.

God, how I love being codependent.

In the coffee shop, Gwen lifts her purse into her lap and digs around inside it. “Here,” she says and unfolds a photocopied list of the details she wants to include. At the top of the list it says:
Rape is about power. It is not romantic. Do not fall in love with me. Do not kiss me on the mouth. Do not expect to linger after the act. Do not ask to use my bathroom.

That Monday night in her bedroom, pressed into me naked, she says, “I want you to hit me.” She says, “But not too hard and not too soft. Just hit me hard enough so I come.”

One of my hands is holding her arm behind her back. She’s grinding her butt against me, and she’s got a kick-ass tanned little bod except her face is pale and waxy with too much moisturizer. In the mirrored closet door, I can see her front with my face peeking over her shoulder. Her hair and sweat pools in the crack where my chest and her back press together. Her skin has that hot-plastic tanning-bed smell. My other hand is holding the knife, so I ask, does she want me to hit her with the knife?

“No,” she says. “That would be stabbing. Hitting someone with a knife is stabbing.” She says, “Put the knife down and use your open hand.”

So I go to toss the knife.

And Gwen says,
“Not on
the bed.”

So I toss the knife on the dresser, and I raise my hand to slap. From behind her, this is really awkward.

And she says, “But not in the face.”

So I move my hand a little lower.

And she says, “And do not hit my breasts unless you want to give me lumps.”

See also: Cystic mastitis.

She says, “How about if you just slap my ass.”

And I say, how about if she just shuts up and lets me rape her my way.

And Gwen says, “If that’s how you feel, you can just take your little penis and run along home now.”

Since she’s just out of the shower, her bush is soft and full, not
matted down the way it is when you first take off a woman’s underwear. My free hand creeps around to between her legs, and she feels fake, rubbery and plastic. Too smooth. A little greasy.