Leaner

I hadn't had sex for two years when I discovered how to fuck a crowded subway car.

The last time was with this girl Demetria. I rolled off her and it was as if the blood in my veins turned to frozen slush. She tried to rest her head against my shoulder but I stiffened up and I saw the truth. I knew what sex was. Intimacy. And I didn't want it.

The fuckspree of my youth had left me sickened, jittery, and morose regarding all human contact. Every time I went home with somebody, it was as if I were following a script. We'd flirt, I would compare them unfavorably to girls I had already slept with, I would decide to fuck them anyway just to be nice, and then I would make sure to establish permanent emotional distance as soon as I came back from the bathroom. I could cut them off for good with merely a sharp phrase or the slant of my shoulders. I may have been a naïve immigrant, but the City was my emotional abattoir.

“I want you, but I don't love you! I want to be part of you forever, but I never want to see you again!”

After Demetria, something in me snapped and I lost my nerve. At first I kept looking for other conquests, but each awkward failure was like another layer of plaster drying around my stiff and frozen frame. Finally, to protect myself, I shut everything down for good.

I quit playing drums with the band, but I didn't want to become some kind of social isolate or misanthrope and make everyone worry about me. Instead, I simply established a routine that narrowed all my sexual options down to nothing. My life became cold, solitary, and silent, filled up with chummy acquaintances but completely lacking romance. I wanted it that way. I no longer went to bars on weekends. Instead, I went out by myself to parks and the theater, always carrying a novel with me to read as a wall to end any unwelcome conversations before they had a chance to blossom into opportunity.

Luckily, women could sense there was something wrong with me and they scattered from my reach as if I were a shark cutting through a school of fish. I had no clique or cohort they could identify. There are no politics here in the City; people merely advocate for their favorite vices. Mine had once been lust, but now I had no group, affiliation, or party.

Surprisingly, even though I started to feel numb inside, I was less lonely. I looked at all the other people on the streets -- all the twisted faces reflecting broken dreams and worn-out lives -- and I felt anonymous sympathy from them that I'd never felt before. I was still young, but I was no longer trying to stand out. I moved with people instead of against them, and I may have been a pusillanimous fuck-shocked wretch, but I wasn't dangerous anymore to men or to women. I was neither threat nor competition. All the dough in my dick had hardened into crusty bread: too hard for anyone to chew, not worth shaping into a fun roll, the stale shit you mark down, mark down, mark down and then throw away.

The band was sure I would come back, but eventually they stopped calling me. I took a job at a combination grocery and hardware store called “Goldy's.” My responsibilities were simple: every day for an hour I restocked the shelves and then for six more hours I worked the register. For another hour I restocked the shelves again and then I went home. I made my own lunch every day and ate it in the break room by myself, reading a novel, trying to keep my mind empty so that I could stay on script and not freak out a customer by saying something too colorful or dynamic.

Here was my script:

“Hi, how are you doing?”

“Is there anything else I can get for you?”

“Have a truly excellent afternoon.”

Then a big smile. The big smile got me awards for customer service and ensured that I kept getting my twenty-five cent raise every six months. That big smile was my signature, even though I hated every single one of my fellow employees, my regular customers, and my managers. I hated them so much that I ran the script on them too whenever they tried to talk to me, except I replaced the middle part with a question about the weekend.

“Hi, how are you doing?”

“Did you have a good weekend?” or “Do you have any interesting plans for the weekend?”

and then:

“Have a truly excellent afternoon.”

Slowly, I lost my ability to be aroused by, intimate with, or even interested in other human beings. It was as if I were allergic. I moved from work to home like a captured beetle pacing in a matchbox, unable to understand what was wrong with me, convinced I was suffering from some sort of spiritual crisis. Was this how people were elected to the priesthood? Did all their sexual energy disappear in a puff of revelation like a dry fart? Would I become fat, jolly, and drunk, losing my soul to God, becoming a lackadaisical avatar of divine castration?

But God was not interesting to me either. I prayed, but I did not pray for change or for revelation. I prayed for acceptance, which is the same thing as giving up.

And then, on a hot and sticky Monday in late July after two years of casual celibacy, the miracle happened.

I normally take the orange line to work and back. But on this particular Monday, the orange trains were all running local due to construction, and so after work I walked three blocks and went underground to the purple train. This was out of the ordinary for me. For one thing, the closest purple train stop was a mile from my apartment, and for another, by the time I got onto the purple train at rush hour from work, it was already so crowded that I was always pushed to the wall. Forget about getting a seat or reading my book. But I was exhausted from a long day of wishing people a truly excellent afternoon and all I wanted was to sit in my apartment in the dark and listen to atonal jazz. I didn't want to wait for the orange train to hit every local stop like a nosy security guard, creeping along slower than a horse and buggy. So I decided to risk it. I figured a brisk walk home from the purple stop wouldn't kill me and it might even help me build up an appetite for dinner, which was something else I was beginning to lose.

I waited underground on the train platform with the other dayjobbers, staring straight ahead and bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet. The train was late. Everyone on the platform was irritated and panicky. The platform was full of people craning their necks into the tunnel, checking the time on their cell phones, clucking, whining, and crinkling their shopping bags.

Finally, the train roared into the station. We had all given up on it and so it took us by surprise, making us all step backwards since we were all crowded together over the line.

The train stopped and we could see that it was already full. And this stop wasn't a hub or a transfer, so the train only lost a few travelers when the doors opened. They threaded out through the wall of people as if they were slipping through the bars in a jail cell.

“There's another train right behind!” shouted the conductor. “Move back! There's another train coming!”

I had been waiting for a long time and I wasn't about to keep waiting. Luckily, one of the train doors opened right in front of me. I squeezed onto the train and several others pushed in after me, sealing me in. The doors opened and shut five or six times, pinching off passengers from the other doors like blots of frosting from a squeeze tube. We were as tightly packed as I'd ever been on a train, and I was surrounded on all sides by six different people: a pretty young woman with deep stress lines on her forehead that cracked her pearly white make-up, a short old woman with cross tattoos who was missing most of her teeth, two male Italian tourists who were tall and hairy and who each wore sunglasses and gold chains, a tense black guy trying to read “The New Yorker” by pasting it to the ceiling of the train with one hand, and a Korean woman holding her baby daughter in her arms.

I wasn't sure which way I should stand. To whom should I turn my back? At whom should I point my cock? I was trying to solve this etiquette problem when the train took off and we were all jostled forward, solving my problem for me. The old woman readjusted herself so that she was right underneath me with her ass grinding against my thigh and the black guy shifted over a few inches to let the young woman perch under my arm. The black guy didn't stop reading “The New Yorker.” He just sighed and turned the page. I could smell the cologne from the Italian tourists who hovered over my shoulders. The Korean woman and her baby were at my elbow.

We were all standing, but our little scrum was pressed up against two old men who were sitting down. One of the old men was huddled inside a trenchcoat and he shivered in the subway's ice cold air conditioning, looking straight ahead through bloodshot eyes and the fiery red veins of his face. His two massive hands rested like pallets of brick on an ebony cane with a gold handle. Thick, pulpy creases shaped his face into a permanent leer and we gave him room to move, even though it meant we had to push harder against each other.

The other old man had his hand on his friend's shoulder and was sleeping, smacking his lips and moving his jaw as the train rocked him back and forth.

I marveled at how fast the train went, even though it was carrying four times the usual load. Maybe they had to go fast when the train was full on account of the momentum. If the train crashed now, there would be more meat than metal in the wreckage.

The toothless, tattooed old woman ground her ass into my thigh with lurid severity and I knew she was enjoying it. She looked over her shoulder and smirked when I tried to step backward, spreading her feet a little and really slotting my thigh deep into her junk. She was a leaner; one of those people who take advantage of crowded subway cars to grope handsome strangers. I looked over at the pretty young woman for sympathy, but she was staring off into space, worrying about something other than how I was being molested.

The Italian tourists were trying to flirt with her. One of the tourists said something to the other one in Italian and they both laughed.

I was looking the other way when I heard several people gasp and shout. I whipped my head around to see what was going on, grateful for the distraction from the old woman's perversity.

Suddenly, the little Korean girl began to scream and I saw what had happened. The old man in the trenchcoat had fallen out of his chair and was having some kind of shaking fit. He had thrown his cane when he fell, and the steel knob had swung out and hit the little girl in the side of the head.

Her mother turned her away from the old man and everyone began to talk and shout at once.

The black guy and I helped the old man back into his chair, and by this time, his friend had awakened. The old man in the trenchcoat was pissed that we had touched him, and he was moaning at us with wide, goggling eyes. He looked around for his cane, embarrassed and enraged, appealing to the crowd for sympathy. But the little Korean girl was still screaming, and the crowd glared at the old man, hating him for making a child suffer.

His friend grabbed the old man and turned him away from the malevolent stares of the packed train car. His friend began to move his fingers in wild motions while mouthing words. He was signing. Now we understood. The old man in the trenchcoat was deaf. The deaf old man watched his friend sign for a few moments, and then lay back against the plastic bench, covering himself in the flaps of his jacket, hiding his face away.

As the train roared onward, the little girl's screams gradually mutated into gasping sobs. A deaf old man was equal to a screaming little girl when it came to sympathy, and so the crowd's righteous anger was forced to dissipate into nervousness and unease. But the anger had already been stirred up. It had to go someplace.

And here was the miracle.

In the ensuing silence, I realized that I had become massively aroused.

I realized that I had an erection that strained against my pantsleg, pooching open my zipper and dribbling a single tear of pre-come down my leg.

Horrified, I put my hand in my pocket and tried to rearrange my business. But as I reached, my hand brushed the old woman's arm and she smiled at me again, leaning hard against me, rubbing her bony ass against my erection and slipping my cock inside her jutting tailbone. Now we were joined. I shut my eyes and tried to focus, but rainclouds of lust sotted my agitated brain like a perfume-soaked handkerchief pressed against my nose. She wanted me to follow her home. But I knew that I would lose all my desire the moment I stepped out of this crowded subway car.

I leaned back against the old woman and put my hand on her hip, shifting her ass into a more comfortable position. What was it that had turned me on? The vulnerability of the old man? The screams of the small child? The crushing flesh of so many tired, angry people? The intimacy? Oh god – the intimacy?

The old woman moved against me and I tried not to panic. The train stopped and the doors opened. But instead of anybody getting out, more people got on and we were pushed closer together. Now what the old woman and I were doing was invisible. Everything below the neckline was a dense shroud of slacks and skirts. The subway car was a sea of eyes trying not to make contact, each set gazing at a different middle distance in order maintain dignity, individuality, and poise.

As the train journeyed onward, the old woman did amazing, clever things to the head of my cock that made the whole shaft ache and buck. On the last stop before we pierced the surface and went aboveground, a trio of mariachi musicians got onto the train, each one entering through a different door. They looked at one another over the heads of the squooshed throng. Then they each took a deep breathe and began to sing and play.

As blaring mariachi music swelled the car, the old woman's gyrations against my cock become more intense and more focused. She wasn't trying to entice me to follow her home anymore. Now she was trying to get me off right here in the car.

I tried to focus on philosophy to keep myself sane.

The skyscrapers on the surface above us were all massive phallic objects, built as priapic symbols of power, striving to inseminate the heavens with all the little sperm who wandered to and fro within. Each construction worker, stockbroker, drug lord, and secretary competed against their avaricious equals, showcasing a mindless, cutthroat hunger for success. To rise! But the subway was something else. A tube, a tunnel, a womb, a grasping muscle, a vagina. Here underground, in a sleek subway car constructed like a skyscraper turned on its side, the City was fucking itself, every day, every night, restlessly, constantly, and without love. The City fucked itself and all its citizens, building up a wild froth of passion that generated new ideas, new tortures, new culture, and new money. But the froth churned underground, impotent, never shooting up into the sky through the tops of the erect buildings.

If the City ever succeeded in getting off, people would shoot from the skyscrapers like fireworks to impregnate the clouds. But they never did. And here I was underground too, dry-humping a toothless recluse twice my age as a participated in the City's perpetual mechanical masturbation. I was just being a good citizen.

The old woman looked over her shoulder at me, but I looked away. I caught the eye of the deaf old man in the trenchcoat instead, and then I caught the eye of the pretty woman with the cracked make-up. She was looking right at me and smiling. I leaned harder against the old woman and pretended that I was actually deep inside the young one. The skin around my balls tightened, prickling like goosebumps, and my anus began to pulse like a ringing telephone, or like the accordion of the mariachi musician beside me.

The Italian tourists at my shoulders began to make lewd gestures at the pretty young woman and she grew annoyed and turned away. I caught the eye of the black guy reading “The New Yorker.” He looked at me, sighed, and turned another page.

The little Korean girl had stopped crying and was staring, entranced, at the tall mariachi musician with the stand-up bass. He winked at her. The old woman grabbed one of the Italian tourists by the arm and buried her sunburned face in his bicep. The deaf old man began to cry, silently, tears streaming down his cheeks like rain sneaking along the window of a passenger jet. His friend, oblivious, massaged his temples, trying to read “The New Yorker” under the black guy's arm.

I was going to come. I reached out and put my hand on the cold glass of the subway car to feel something strong. The pretty young woman smiled at me again and then picked up her bag, readying herself to get off at the next stop. The old woman began to grate against me with short, hard, expert strokes and I shut my eyes, trying to smell everyone and everything. The sweat. The perfume. The fear. The rage. The madness. The pain.

I leaned my head back as I came. The subway shot out of the darkness into the brutal sunlight and the old woman cackled and grabbed the other Italian tourist for support. He brushed her off with an irritated snort. My boxers were soaked, but I managed to keep semen from shooting out of the hem of my pants. I felt lazy. Satisfied. Goofy. No one had seen a thing.

The subway made its first stop aboveground. Half the people got out, including both women next to me. The old woman was damned decent: she just looked over her shoulder and waved the tips of her fingers. A seat opened up across from the deaf old man and I took it, hiding my stained pants with my novel.

The deaf old man stared at me and I stared back. He was still weeping.

“I want you, but I don't love you,” I mouthed to him. “I want to be part of you forever, but I never want to see you again.”

I got off at my stop, shuffling away with my back bent. My belly was sticky enough to curl my shirt. The hairs of my navel were matted into a gooey sheet that was starting to itch.

I thought I was ready to leave the City forever. I thought I had finally had enough. But I realized that the trains got crowded twice a day on weekdays, before work and after. It wouldn't take much experimentation to find the trains that were the most jam-packed; the most clotted and intimate; the most erotic and generous.

All I had to do was lean.

Wedding Toast

Father Kuppler sat in the confessional booth with his legs crossed while all the veins in his forehead throbbed like tapeworms crawling along an emaciated belly. The hour to hear confession was almost over. While he waited in the darkness for someone to unburden sins to him, he sharpened his fingernails with a small paring knife and a rasp. He wasn’t trimming his fingernails or pushing back the cuticles to make his fingers appear more elegant. He was actually sharpening his nails, trying to put points on them sharp enough to shred clothes, tear flesh, and leave scars.

When he was satisfied that his fingernails were each sharp enough to cut glass, he put the rasp into his mouth and began to sharpen his bottom teeth. His eyes went milky and out of focus, and bone powder flecked his bottom lip in drifting arcs like sawdust beneath a band-saw.

There was a knock on the confessional door. Father Kuppler spat blood onto the floor, hid the rasp in his robes, and cleared his throat. He slid open the dividing window.

“Yes, my child,” he said. “I am here.”

Two searching eyes filled the window. Young eyes. Male eyes. Cynical and wry eyes, faded to the same light toothpaste green as the bottom of a waxy leaf.

“I am supposed to talk to a priest,” said the man. “I am getting married this weekend.”

“You are Catholic?” asked Father Kuppler.

“No,” said the man. “Not anymore. But my fiancée and I were both raised that way. She insists that I confess my sins before we wed. She is waiting in the car, actually. She says that I must have a clean conscience when we take our vows.”

“Confession is an open sacrament,” said Father Kuppler. “If there is something you need to get off your chest, then I will hear you no matter what state of grace you are in.”

“But there’s nothing I want to confess,” said the man, laughing. “I have no regrets. I’ve learned from every mistake I’ve ever made, and I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I haven’t enjoyed the pleasures of my life.”

“It’s your eternity,” said Father Kuppler, casually checking his watch. The man was trying to shock him. To shake him up like a spoiled teenager testing society’s boundaries by driving fast without a seatbelt. “So why are you here, then?

“There is something I want to talk about,” said the man. “I need advice.”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

The man’s green eyes filled the dividing window again, peering into the narrow confessional closet, trying to make out Father Kuppler’s features.

“You can come in here, if you like,” said Father Kuppler. “The dividing wall is for your anonymity, not mine.”

“Yeah, let me get in there,” said the man. He opened the door to the confessional. He brought in a chair from outside and set it down directly across from Father Kuppler, shutting the door behind him. Now they were knee to knee. Father Kuppler sized him up. He was a young man, handsome in a boring way, tall and blonde with perfect bone structure.

“What happens if somebody else wants to confess while I’m in here?” asked the young man, putting his open palm on the dividing window.

“Then I guess we hear them together,” said Father Kuppler, smiling. “Why don’t you tell me what’s on your mind?”

“Okay,” said the man. “It’s very simple. I am getting married in two days, but I don’t know how to make our wedding night special.”

“Every wedding night is special,” said Father Kuppler. “Two souls become one. The union of divine opposites.”

“Sure, that’s great,” said the man. “Plus, the tax breaks and health care are great. Also, she won’t have to testify against me in court. Which is great. But I’m talking about where it counts. I’m talking about seck-shoo-a’lee.”

“What do you mean?” asked Father Kuppler.

“It’s like this,” said the man. “Once upon a time, people used to wait until they got married to have sex. It was the law. Before every wedding, the groom’s mother would test the bride’s virginity by sticking her gnarly finger up the bride’s frilly white dress to poke at her hymen as if searching for a hole in the toe of an old sock. Then, the entire wedding party would gather round the honeymoon suite and listen for the howling anguish of the bride’s deflowering. When the deed was done, the groom would crash out of the bridal chamber and proudly show the blood on his hands. His groomsmen would parade him around town on their shoulders like he’d just scored the game-winning touchdown.”

“I see,” said Father Kuppler.

“Don’t they teach you anything in priest school?” said the man. “That’s the sort of night you remember for the rest of your life. Riding around the streets of your hometown on your best friend’s shoulders, your new wife’s hymen blood on your hands, your whole life right out there in front of you. Meanwhile, she is laying there with her knees curled to her chest, trying to suck your seed into her womb to breed your first child. It’s not like that anymore. Me and Imogene, we’ve been together for six years now and, to be frank, we’ve done everything there is to do. I lost my virginity when I was sixteen. Imogene lost hers when she was twelve. We met at a rave in the Bowery, back when AIDS was such a raging fire that when you found somebody who was clean, you did everything you could once you got your clothes off. Nowadays a good sex life is all about getting deep with somebody. About exploring every inch and kink. And I think we’ve done everything possible. Legal things and illegal things. And now I don’t know how to make our wedding night special, even though I want to remember it forever.”

“That’s a very spiritual attitude,” said Father Kuppler.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said the man. “We’ve already had some nights I’ll never forget. The first night we met each other, I’d been reading in ‘Popular Mechanics’ about how to trick your brain into releasing bonding hormones to form permanent relationships. According to science, if you have sex with somebody three times in a row, you’ll be bonded to them forever. As soon as I met Imogene, I knew I was in love with her and that I never wanted to be with anyone else. So the first night I took her home, we fucked for eight full hours, only taking breaks for food and band-aids. She told me to cut a notch into her thigh every time one of us came. To remember. She was kind of a mess back then. I came five times; she only came twice. She’s got the scars to prove that I was a selfish lover when we first met.”

“God forgives you,” said Father Kuppler.

“Then there was the Christmas Orgy. That was the first time we ever had anal sex. I didn’t pressure her into it or anything, so don’t look at me like that. We were at this Christmas party upstate and all of these degenerate publishing reps lured us into the basement, where they were drinking giant paper cups of tequila and talking about their sexual frustrations. We were the only happy couple and we wanted to show off to make them all shut up. We started making out. There was cocaine everywhere. Before I knew it, she had my pants off and was sliding me into her ass as if we did it all the time. Everybody in the basement was stunned and scared. The other girls started shrieking. One guy threw up because he was so nervous, watching us. Finally, Imogene pulled one of the younger reps over to us and made him take her from the front, too. After that, nobody wanted to be left out. When we left the party that night, the orgy was spreading out of the basement and crawling up to the second story of that fancy upstate house. Everybody always wants to be like Imogene. Everyone is always copying her. I love that girl.”

“A strong woman is tremendous consolation in these fallen times,” said Father Kuppler.

“And boy, is she strong!” said the man. “After the famous Christmas Orgy, she said that anal sex between us had to be an equal, reciprocal sexual trade. I resisted, of course, but I woke up one morning to find myself hogtied to one of the steel trash barrels that she brought in from the street. I was naked except for some argyle socks. She sodomized me with a strap-on she borrowed from one of her lesbian friends. I’ll never forget that morning. The head of the strap-on’s blue dildo had Elvis’s face carved into it. Old Elvis. With sunglasses. While she fucked me in the ass, she sang “Love Me Tender” and took black-and-white art photographs that we blew up and framed and that now sit over our bed. Is that a sin? Is it a sin to make pornography if it is with someone you love?”

“The Bible is not as clear about that as you might think,” said Father Kuppler. “Look to your conscience.”

“Then there was the time she made me clean her whole body with my tongue while we were backpacking through Europe and couldn’t afford a hotel room or a shower,” said the man. “Each night, I spent ages on her asshole alone. Do you know what the sweaty asshole of your lover tastes like after a full day spent walking through stupid castles and stupid museums?”

“I am the bride of Christ,” said the priest. “The bride of Christ.”

“I don’t want you to think I am some kind of submissive wimp,” said the man. “I give as much as I get. One time, after she forgot my birthday, I made her call all of her ex-boyfriends in order and apologize to each of them for breaking their hearts while I backed her up against a wall and fucked her with her legs dangling and her high heels clanging against my sweaty, skinny ass. You wouldn’t believe how close we became after that. We talked for hours. Just talked. About our dreams, hopes, and fears. She was like a ship that had unloaded its cargo and was now riding so high on the water that you could scrape away all the barnacles. And that’s what we did. We scraped away all the barnacles of her past. I’ll never forget that night. She tells me she doesn’t even think about any of her ex-boyfriends anymore. That it was the guilt that was keeping her from being mine completely in body and in soul.”

“As you can see, confession can be a very therapeutic act,” said Father Kuppler.

“But don’t you see my problem?” said the man. “How am I supposed to make our wedding night into something memorable? I haven’t even told you about all the blowjobs, footjobs, rimjobs, bukkake bowls, whips, chains, body piercings, threesomes, foursomes, gangbangs, bestialities, saran wrap, hot wax, and toobers. I haven’t even told you about my romantic side. I’ve surprised her with dinners on zeppelins, front row tickets to her favorite concerts that took me months to get, warm sweet nights filled with chocolate and murmurs and washing her hair as we joked about heaven and whispered our deepest secrets. We have fucked on rooftops, in circling cabs, once in a stable while horses watched us and chewed carrots. She mentioned once that she had a thing for pirates. I rented a pedal boat at Prospect Park and hired some actors to come board us and take her away. I was explicit to them about what they could and couldn’t do. I never asked her what happened, but when she returned the next day she didn’t say anything: she just kissed me, blushed like a rose, and made me a big, thick steak.”

“Weren’t you jealous?” asked Father Kuppler.

“There’s no such thing as jealousy when it comes to real love,” said the man. “Real love is about making your partner as happy as you possibly can while letting them do the same. About fulfilling their wildest dreams and fantasies with as much creativity and joy as you can muster while letting them fulfill yours. We live in a new world now. A world without all the old barriers and miseries. But don’t you see my problem? Don’t you understand? I am out of ideas. Or rather, none of my ideas are good enough for our wedding night. I intend to be with her forever, and we will only have one wedding night. If I blow it, how will I be able to live with myself? You are a priest and celibate. You’ve heard more sins than I can ever dream of and suffered more desperate longings than a whole hotel full of perverted deviants. In your vast experience as a man of God, can you tell me how to make my wedding night special? How to make sure that my wife and I are the most intimate we’ve ever been on the night that our souls are conjoined and we become one flesh, one heart, one mind?”

“You want my advice,” said Father Kuppler, leaning forward and putting a hand on each of the man’s knees. The man looked at the priest’s hands but did not move them.

“Yes,” said the man. “Tell me how to make her remember our wedding night for the rest of her life.”

“You want to know what I think you should do?” whispered the priest, searching the man’s eyes and making sure the man could smell his stale, sour breath. The man’s nose crinkled in involuntary disgust.

“You want my OPINION?” asked Father Kuppler.

“Yes,” whispered the man.

“Kill her,” said Father Kuppler. “Wait until she is asleep and then put a pillow over her face and smother her until she stops struggling. Kill her. Kill her dead.”

The man looked at Father Kuppler, waiting for the punch-line. Father Kuppler only smiled, showing his sharp little teeth and squeezing the man’s knees. His sharp little fingernails punched through the man’s corduroy pants and drew beads of blood.

The man stood up, knocking the chair over behind him. He raced out of the confessional and out of the church, yelping, looking over his shoulder as he ran; not quite screaming.

When he was gone, Father Kuppler knelt down in prayer. He chuckled to himself and tried to find God. Father Kuppler knew the man wasn’t the murdering type. He’d looked in his eyes and seen nothing but a scared little boy. Why did people always think they could shock a priest? But the man had asked him for advice about how to make his wedding night special and the priest had given it to him.

Now, no matter how banal and boring their wedding night sex act, no matter how anticlimactic their first sacred coupling after years spent fornicating across the whole wet rainbow of explicit and transgressive coitus, even if they laid down like babies with their eyes closed and their legs locked and their mouths joined, rutting with the same boring animal lust as Adam and Eve, the smell of incense would come into the man’s nostrils, he would hear the hallowed silence of this church, this chapel, this God, and the priest’s words would drift into his mind no matter how hard he tried to fight them off.

And the priest’s words would echo through the man’s mind until his new wife could hear them, too, in her wedded heart. Their bodies would fill with an intensity that the priest would never know. Their souls would expand and overlap and merge. Their frenzy would drive them momentarily mad. They would thrash together like the chemical soup at the center of an exploding star.

And it would be the most powerful sex of their new lives. Because in this world, opposites are not only as far apart as magnetic poles, they are also right next to each other, joined like old friends or an old married couple.

Murder is the willful ending of a human life as an act of hate, rage, or revenge.

And marriage is the opposite of murder.

Role-Playing Game

It was game night, and I have rules about game night. One of my biggest rules is that no one can be early, because I need the time to meditate and prepare my last minute details. That’s why when I heard the knock on the back office door I hesitated and wasn’t going to answer it. But then I thought: maybe it’s the delivery guy with yesterday’s missing shipment of Battlegear Ruby miniatures.

I opened the door and there was Gretchen standing there with tears streaming down her face and her neck flushed bright red. Her watery blue eyes were rimmed with piggy pink. I tried to shut the door on her but she dropped her shoulder, crashed into the jamb, put her hand on my face, and shoved me backwards. My glasses came off as I went sprawling. I cursed and sputtered as I felt around for my displaced spectacles on the hard carpet.

Gretchen came inside, shut the door behind her, and locked it.

“You’re early,” I said. “Way early. You know my rules.”

I finally found my glasses next to a box of shitty government comics about tooth decay and put them on. Now I could stand up and properly menace her.

“You have to help me,” she said. “Felix is bringing a new girl to the game tonight and I am freaking the fuck out. It’s either me or her. It’s not fair.”

Felix and Gretchen had been a couple for as long as we’d been campaigning together. They’d broken up over Christmas, and it had been awkward for everyone, but they’d done as I asked and kept their personal problems at home while we were gaming. They’d continued coming to my store twice a week for our gaming session, but I had noticed over the past few months that Felix had become increasingly glum as Gretchen persisted in her false hope that they would be getting back together soon.

I suspected that they were still sleeping together after our gaming, even though they were technically not a couple anymore. They always left together, anyway. And during the course of our games their avatars always managed to have a conversation that seemed loaded with themes of “renewal.” Gretchen’s thief “Pico” and Felix’s werewolf-barbarian “Grimtar” talked about future things, like buying their own pirate ship together or creating an army of ghouls and using them as shock troops in deep, impossible future dungeon crawls.

Creating an army of ghouls TOGETHER.

And now Felix was bringing a new girl to the campaign. Typical of Felix. He didn’t call. He didn’t ask. He was just going to bully us all into accepting this new girl and bully Gretchen into dealing with it. Still, though -- the sadistic bastard was my best friend and we went all the way back to grade school.

“That sucks,” I said. “But what do you want me to do about it? If he wants to bring somebody new, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t ban him from the game. You guys aren’t a couple anymore. Maybe it’s time to move on.”

“NO,” said Gretchen. “I know he still loves me. He’s trying to hurt me and make me jealous.”

“Fine,” I said. “But that doesn’t explain why you are here early.”

“I want to ask you a favor,” said Gretchen. “Something really important.”

“I won’t ban her from the game,” I said. “She has the right to roll up a character and play it just the same as everybody else does. You know my rules, Gretchen.”

“That’s not what I want to ask,” said Gretchen. “I want her to play. But I want you to make her look bad. I want you to make sure she has a terrible time and that she doesn’t want to come back.”

“What do you think that will accomplish?” I said. “Come on, Gretchen. Don’t be territorial.”

“Will you do it or not?” asked Gretchen.

“You want me to compromise my ethics as a Dungeon Master -- as your temporary God -- and you don’t offer me blood tribute? Have you learned nothing from our campaign? Supplication of the cold and malevolent deities of the Outer Planes requires flesh sacrifice, otherwise you could suffer permanent wisdom damage.”

“It’s me or her,” said Gretchen. “Do you want me to leave right now?”

“I need incentive,” I said. “I need goals to shoot for.”

“What kind of goals?”

“I need treasure. You know what I like.”

“Alright,” said Gretchen, thinking. “If you promise me you’ll do it, I’ll give you a kiss on the cheek when this is all over.”

“Bah,” I said.

“Aaaaand if you can start a fight between them, I’ll give you a kiss on the lips with tongue.”

“What if I can make her leave the game in tears and make Felix run after her, apologizing the whole time like an asshole?” I asked.

“If you can do that, I’ll give you a deep tissue massage,” said Gretchen. “Shoulders only. With your shirt on.”

“What if I can make her leave in tears and make Felix stay here and NOT run after her?”

“I’ll give you a deep tissue massage with your shirt off,” said Gretchen quietly.

I considered this. Gretchen was a big girl with thick arms, a thick chest, and massive slabs of healthy, glowing skin that radiated confidence and hunger. She always wore giant black bras that barely contained her tremendous and powerful breasts, breasts which had the same effect on me as a “confuse” spell. I could keep fighting, but sometimes I wanted to attack my friends.

Could a massage with my shirt off lead to something dramatic?

How high was my charisma? Really?

“And here’s the big prize,” I said. My tongue was dry. “What if I can make them break up?”

Gretchen was quiet.

“I don’t know,” said Gretchen. “What do you want?”

“What are you offering?” I said, trying to sit down in my computer chair. I missed the seat on account of being so excited and I almost fell on my ass, but I caught myself just in time.

Gretchen was too preoccupied to notice. She bit her lip and cocked her head. She glared at me, thinking. We heard voices from the sidewalk outside the shop. They were here and headed this way.

“A handjob,” said Gretchen. “That’s as far as I’m willing to go.”

“Deal,” I said. My heart beat so fast I thought I might pass out.

Felix, Joel, and the new girl were already in the shop when Gretchen and I met them at the cash register.

“Who’s this?” I asked Felix, looking at the new girl with feigned confusion.

“She’s with me,” said Felix.

“Oh hey,” said the new girl. “I’m Annalisa. It’s nice to meet you. It’s so amazing that you have your own comic book shop. I just love comics.”

“Oh yeah?” said Gretchen. “What do you read?”

“I like everything,” said Annalisa. “I like the art form itself.”

“Totally,” said Joel, sucking the last drops out of a Big Gulp and flinging the plastic cup at the trashcan in the corner.

He missed.

“Scheisse,” he said jogging over to put the cup in the trash for real, his chain wallet jangling at his side like sleigh bells. Joel only cursed in German. It was one of his ten “things.” I had been friends with Joel for years, and as far as I knew, his entire personality was entirely reducible to ten affectations:

1). He only cursed in German.
2). He smoked Lucky Strike unfiltered cigarettes.
3). He obsessively collected loose change and saved it up in a giant aquarium in his living room.
4). He would light any lady’s cigarette with his classic pearl Zippo, but never a man’s.
5). He always wore a green porkpie hat and a chain wallet.
6). He always wore shorts and black socks, even in the dead of winter.
7). He had immaculately sculpted sideburns that were always shaved so sharp that they appeared to be drawn on the sides of his face in black marker.
8). He claimed that his father was in prison.
9). He was writing a screenplay about a hitman.
10). He collected swords.

I suspected that Joel was gay and didn’t know it yet, but I didn’t let it affect our friendship.

Annalisa and Felix looked strange next to one another. Here was Felix, a towering, shovel-faced brute with a thick mane of coarse black hair and an oily ponytail that looked like a wet dishrag. Annalisa instead was a slight, willowy girl with wire-rimmed glasses like mine, a crooked nose, and bright, sunny features like a newly-awakened baby. Where did Felix find these girls?

“It’s nice to meet you, Annalisa,” I said. “Have you ever done any tabletop gaming before?”

“No, but it sounds awesome,” said Annalisa. “Just like acting.”

“I hope Felix has not filled you full of lies and false hopes,” I said. “This is a very high-level game. Although I would be happy to help you create a character that you can play for the evening, there’s almost no chance that your level one character will survive the sorts of carnage and horror that you will be facing today.”

“I was thinking that maybe she could just sit and watch,” said Felix. “You know, get a feel for it.”

“Hmmmm,” I said. My biggest ally in destroying Felix’s new match was going to be Felix himself. “Here’s a thought. Why don’t you let her play your character?”

“What?” said Felix. Felix’s level thirteen werewolf-barbarian Grimtor was a difficult character to play, even for an experienced gamer. He shapeshifted into his uncontrollable canine form every time he was enraged or scared unless he was able to pass a very high will check. As a werewolf, Grimtor was unpredictable, dangerous, and suicidal. Felix had been working on Grimtor for two years now and through cunning and some smart gaming decisions, he had acquired several rings that boosted his will and kept him from transforming all the time, letting him benefit from the werewolf bonuses without having to deal with the inherent weakness of violent emotional instability.

“It will be a good introduction for her,” I said, licking my lips. “Why don’t you let Annalisa play Grimtor so that she has a good time, and you can play some disposable level one character? It will be a fun challenge for you.”

“Okay,” said Felix, glaring at me. “If you are going to allow it, I guess I see no problem with that.”

“Are you afraid she’s going to kill Grimtor?” asked Gretchen, smirking.

“Seriously, guys,” said Annalisa. “It’s no big deal. Why don’t I just sit this one out?”

“No,” I said. “This will be fun.”

“It’s cool,” said Felix, smiling, putting his hand on Annalisa’s shoulder. “Just, uh, don’t do anything stupid.”

Gretchen and Annalisa both winced and looked at each other. They shared some kind of girl moment.

“I won’t do anything stupid,” said Annalisa cheerfully.

I led everyone over to the gaming table in the back behind the bookshelves full of graphic novels. I studied Joel and Gretchen’s character sheets and saw what they had done over the weekend as far as assigning bonuses from the last game. Joel was playing a level twelve dwarf sorcerer named “Blazefist,” and Gretchen had been playing “Pico,” the same level fifteen thief, ever since we’d started gaming together.

I let Felix have a disposable level one character that I had made for another game a long time ago – a fighter named “Questix” – and I filled in the back-story on our current campaign for Annalisa’s benefit. She was trying her hardest to pay attention but I could tell she was losing me, so I tried to sum it up and give her just enough information so that we could begin playing.

“After searching the abandoned fishing village of Narwhal for clues, Pico, Blazefist, and Grimtar – that’s you -- have discovered that the sleeping sickness that has struck the Sword Coast, and left it open to hordes of gibberlings and kobolds coming down from the mountains, has been caused by a necromancer named Festulent who has an underwater keep only accessible by enchanted submersible. You have undergone all the necessary quests to build the submersible, and have followed Festulent’s evil lampreys deep into his lair, fending off giant squid and the drowned dead who serve as Festulent’s bodyguards. You have broken into his inner underwater sanctum and are hunting him through the bone-and-steel caverns that he has erected to protect himself from the forces of light and justice. As you move out of the airlock, you discover that a young knight named Questix has stowed aboard your submersible, seeking revenge against Festulent for the death of his sweetheart when the fishing village of Narwhal was attacked by undead from the sea so that Festulent could harvest human hearts in order to perform stronger demonic magic.”

“That sure is a lot of names,” said Annalisa. “I don’t know if I can remember all that.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “It will all soak in as you play.”

“What do I do?” asked Annalisa.

“Just try and imagine what a seven-foot tall werewolf-barbarian would do in each situation, and remember to use all your powers,” I said.

Annalisa looked at her character sheet and bit her lip.

“The inner hatch to the airlock is sealed by a stinking green mess of seaweed and animal bile,” I said. “There are both magical locks and mechanical ones.”

I rolled a hundred-sided die behind my Dungeon Master’s shield and smiled coyly at Gretchen.

“The thief Pico can tell that the airlock hatch is trapped,” I revealed.

“All this is utterly beyond me,” said Annalisa. “Maybe I could just hang out in the shop and read some comics.”

“No,” I said. “It’s easy. What do you want to do?”

“I guess I want to go through the airlock?” speculated Annalisa.

“Better let me handle this one,” said Gretchen. “I attempt to unlock the inner airlock using my Arcane Lockpick Set.”

Gretchen rolled one of her dice from her little purple drawstring bag. It was a high roll, but fuck it.

“You succeed in unlocking the airlock,” I said. “But as you cut through the seaweed barrier, the demon soul of the ensorcelled fiend who guards the door blows through the chamber like a hurricane of magic razorblades, causing twenty points of damage to everyone.”

“Well fuck,” said Felix, ripping his character sheet in half dramatically. “I’m dead.”

“That was quick,” said Annalisa.

“Fickenhunchen,” said Joel. “Brutal.”

I smiled as everyone subtracted the damage from their sheets. “The body of Questix explodes in a spray of blood and screams. The airlock whizzes open and you see Festulent himself sitting on a throne made of mermaid bones and black ebony. He throws his head back and laughs as he beckons you to enter his throne room.”

“Should I go in?” asked Annalisa.

“You are the strongest and toughest,” I said.

“Do whatever you want,” pouted Felix.

“I guess I go inside,” said Annalisa. “And I say ‘We are here to get you, Festulent. You’d better give up.’

Felix rolled his eyes at Gretchen who smiled back and looked very patient.

“Festulent stands up from his throne, still laughing, and raises his arms,” I said.

“I cast shield on Grimtar!” said Joel, interrupting me.

“Grimtar ignites in a glowing blue force shield,” I said to Annalisa. “That means you are now immune from physical attacks, but not magical ones. What do you do, Pico?”

I turned to Gretchen.

“I try to hide in the shadows,” said Gretchen.

“You are successful,” I said after rolling a die. “Grimtar?”

“Uh, I go up to Festulent and I swing my axe at him,” said Annalisa.

“What?” said Felix. “No…”

“As you raise your axe to strike, Festulent casts chain lightning on all three of you. But since your axe is raised up, it acts like a lightning rod and draws in the full force of the attack. Your body sizzles and you howl with animalistic rage.”

I rolled a die.

“You take fifteen more points of damage,” I said.

“Change into a werewolf!” shouted Joel. “Werewolves are immune from most magical attacks!”

“How do I do that?” asked Annalisa.

“Ignore Joel,” I said. “It has to be nighttime. Or you have to be enraged or scared. But your rings, unfortunately, keep you from changing due to fear or anger.”

“It’s not nighttime?” asked Annalisa. “And why can’t I take my rings off?”

“Even though you are underwater, it is still day,” I said. “And your rings are cursed and can’t be removed.”

“Goddammit,” said Felix. “Let me play.”

“Quiet,” I said.

“You can play if you want,” said Annalisa. “I don’t mind. I’ll just go wait outside.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Gretchen.

“I’m sorry,” said Felix. “But don’t just stand there and get killed. You should try and run away.”

“Festulent raises his arms again to cast another spell,” I said.

“I cast acid arrow!” said Joel.

“Your acid arrow misses,” I said, rolling a dice.

“Sheisse,” said Joel.

“Festulent’s hands glow with ethereal fire and he turns, still laughing, to Grimtar,” I said.

“Run away!” said Felix.

“I run away!” said Annalisa.

“You really want to turn your back to him?” I said.

“No,” said Annalisa. “I hit him with my axe again.”

“You have like five points of health left!” said Felix. “Come on! This game doesn’t count!”

“I’m sorry,” said Annalisa. “I didn’t mean to ruin your character.”

Gretchen cleared her throat.

“I come out of the shadows,” said Gretchen. “And I chop off Grimtar’s left hand.”

“Oh my god!” shouted Annalisa, standing up. “Your ex-girlfriend is crazy!”

“No way,” said Felix. “That’s really fucking smart.”

“The rings,” explained Joel.

I nodded to Annalisa.

“She just saved your life,” I said.

Annalisa was still standing, slowly looking at each of the three of us as if realizing we were insane.

“As your hand falls to the ground, you lose the will protections from your two Rings of Mind Steel and you suddenly transform into an eight foot tall, snarling werewolf. You howl in Festulent’s face. His hands falter as he tries to go through the motions of his magical incantations. You are berserk with pain and rage, and you swipe at his face with your right paw…”

I rolled a die.

“…knocking him down and tearing a huge gash in his throat. He lies on the ground bleeding, and he is laughing no more. He will never laugh again.”

“I come over and stab him in the heart,” said Gretchen.

“He dies,” I said. “You have defeated him.”

“Thank you,” said Felix to Gretchen, covering her hand with his. “Seriously. Thank you.”

“This is fucked up,” said Annalisa. “I’m going to go.”

We all watched Annalisa gather her purse and leave my store. Felix took her chair as soon as she was gone, tightening our circle.

“We weren’t really dating,” said Felix. We could all tell he was lying. “She said she liked games so I thought I’d bring her along. Sorry about that.”

“We should go through Festulent’s horde and see what enchanted items he’s got,” said Joel.

I picked up a pair of dice and shook them in my hand suggestively, back and forth, back and forth, until I caught Gretchen’s eye. She looked at me and then she looked back at Felix, nervous. Felix looked glum. Resigned. A little bit sad. I shook the dice in my hands some more and then I blew on them like a gambler on a hot streak. I shook the dice back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until Gretchen’s face went red. I couldn’t tell if she was mad or embarrassed. I tossed the dice and leaned back in my chair, crossing my legs. Someone kicked me under the table and I fell over backwards. My legs came up and smashed into the gaming table, ruining all the pieces and knocking everything onto the floor, ruining everything.