An excerpt...
In memory of
Henry Gaines & Tony Albano
Montreal, Spring 1989
The Main is smog-choked, packed with discount shoppers and squeegee punks, delivery trucks blocking traffic. I turn into the stinking alleyway beside Schwartz’s smoked meat house and press the button next to a steel plated door. When the buzzer sounds, I struggle up two flights of rickety stairs full of junk mail.
Slim’s place looks different than the last time I was here. Maybe the latest boyfriend was swapped for a new guy - or a roommate. In the kitchen, the snazzy glass table is gone, replaced by an old door held up by a couple of sawhorses. The living room is furnished with a scavenged psychiatrist’s couch, mismatched chairs and a wood-plank bookshelf filled with paperbacks, busted phones and camera equipment. A couple of blown up black and white prints are tacked to the wall – so huge I can’t tell what they are. Park porn – M. Ant. is written on them in red magic marker.
I find Slim in one of the bedrooms, just out of the bath. Her hair drips, lean polecat body wrapped in a beach towel. She mutters a greeting while ducking into the room’s sloped corners to sweep out dust and debris. She dumps a pan full of hair and furballs into a trash can then drops her ass onto the bare futon on the floor. I watch her peel away crusty condoms stuck to the orange-crate nightstand. She holds them over a lit match. Each one sizzles and flames before she lets it fall into an ashtray. The burning latex and petrified sperm give off an acrid plastic odor. I plop down next to her and she lays a pair of tiny packs between us.
“You’re a peach,” I smile and begin to set things up.
“So… Warlock told me Jane still hasn’t come back.”
“She will.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts, Johnny. You’re pretty miserable when she’s around.”
“Yeah, well, so’s she. That makes us even.”
Slim lights a cigarette, smoke curling from her lips. “That English guy who was staying here, Trevor, he’s gone too. Went kinda crazy on me.”
“I’m not surprised. You seem to have that effect on people.”
She leans back on her wrists, ankles crossed. “Trevor,” she says again, both amused and fed-up. “He told me he had nightmares about you.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You should be. I think he had a big crush on ol’ Johnny.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“When do I ever try to be funny?” Slim gets up and grabs a small square of foil off the bureau. It has a hardened brown puddle on it. She fires up a lighter and heats the underside. As the puddle liquefies, she uses a foil tube to inhale a few hits. I watch her undo the towel and let it fall to expose purple and gold bruises on that tight ass of hers, down those long legs.
She turns and sees the empty little folds of paper next to me, scowling as I do the shot. “Fuck, Johnny, do you have to be such a pig? I hope you’re not going to nod out on me.”
Her pupils are contracted to pinheads, eyes almost completely green. “What about you? You’re high as a fuckin’ kite.”
Slim stands over me, looks down with a mean little smirk. “I’m a girl. I’ve got a button.”
I barely run my fingers up between her legs, get a hint of how wet she is. She begins to sway back and forth ever so slightly. I take her knees and raise my chin. Her pussy lands right on the tip of my tongue, perfectly balanced. She tastes of soap and heat. Slim groans deep in her throat as my tongue curls in and she grabs a fistful of hair, grinds against my mouth, thighs trembling, then reaches down for herself. The momentum builds fast. Within a couple minutes I feel her tense and shudder, a bit of come washing over my lips. Man, it sure must be nice to have that tiny button.
“That wasn’t too bad,” she grins, hanging onto her pussy with both hands. She wrinkles her nose at me. “But I want the big one. Y’know, the backbreaker.”
Slim drops to her knees, straddles me and opens my shirt. Her teeth latch onto my shoulder. Fuck - her bites really hurt, deep incisions that bring up a flash of anger and a smear of blood. She’s drawn toward earlier wounds, to re-open them. She undoes buckle and button and zipper, yanks off my boots and pants and my two-dollar Montreal Expos wristwatch, throws it across the room and cackles happily when it smashes to bits.
“C’mon,” she mutters, turning her ass toward me.
I smack it hard. She yelps when I take a bite then lick the two red arcs left behind. “You know why the Quebecois do it doggie style, doncha?”
“Yeah, yeah,” she drones at the old chestnut. “So they can both watch the hockey game. C’mon, already…”
I drag her up by the hips and those long fingers snake down to play with us. She looks round at me. “So you think you can come?”
“I dunno. I’ll try...”
“Yeah, let’s... it’ll be good…”
See, when you’re not too high, your entire surface lights up, every pore shimmers with a smoky, electric lust. But the thing is – having a serious, head-busting orgasm while under the influence also becomes a deeply potent contradiction, a monumental struggle where you must pound the absolute fuck out of each other. Every muscle and tendon screams at the limit, and you can sense it’s right there, just out of reach, inching closer then it recedes, cockteasing yourself into lunacy. If you’re with a woman who hasn’t used, then sure, she can come and come again and yet again and she thinks, yeah, okay, it’s great and all but how long is this going to take? He’s still fucking the living hell out of me and I’m getting kind of sick of it. I’ve got to get up and go to work in the morning.
But Slim’s got nowhere to go right now so we’re soon curled chest to back as the motion builds and it all drives into a red horizon. I yank on her bleached hair and Slim laughs with frustration, her voice skipping along. “Fuck, man, this feels so good… I really wanna come. Fuck!…”
And that little button does help her tremble out another partial convulsion. But it also makes the deeper itch worse so she rolls over to face me, pulls me back in and the room whirls. I’m engulfed as those green eyes glare and urge me beyond the dying flesh, the river of isolation. Slim knows she must sweet talk me, purr to me, keep me working. “C’mon, baby, you can do it. Yeah, c’mon, fuck me. Fuck me.”
We burn with friction as our pubic bones bash, deep bone bruises that will hurt for days. Slim’s knees come up high to squeeze my ribs, one hand dug into my neck, the other snaking between us, jacking herself to our rhythm. She’s all the way off the bed now, ass against my thighs while I hold her up by the tail and slam into her. I’m on the verge of a stroke or a heart attack as we snarl into each other’s mouths and our fucking becomes a frantic reaching then finally – finally bodies and souls shattered and shrieking and the back of my head blown away…
HO-lee shit... My heart thumps in my ears as we roll apart, sweat soaked and utterly wrung out. I can barely raise my arms. While it all slowly subsides in trembles and twitches, Slim shows me our come mixed together on her fingers. “Congrats, baby.”
Good thing I have enough of a functioning brain filter left. It intercepts my vocal chords before I can gush a load of maudlin nonsense that would instantly turn me into a big fucking drag, into one more dipshit guy who won’t leave her alone.
