Edward Lee - Quest for Sex, Truth & Reality

The waitress brought the beers, and stooped to converse with Lisa. Smith used the distraction to take a good look. A black velvet choker with a tiny silver penis at its center girded her throat. Her hair hung perfectly cropped in a straight line, cut at the same level as the choker; it was lank and shiny as black silk. Barlight and shadows diced her face into a puzzle of hard, pretty angles. Her eyes were so big and bright they dominated her face almost surrealistically.

Smith’ hands tremored. He drained half his beer in one hit. Perhaps here was some of the very truth he felt bereft of. This was more than a girl — this was his past coming back to him, a reclamation. But what had his past been? Innocence? Smith frowned. Not innocence as much as intimidation and failure. He couldn’t see between the lines. Was this his past coming back? Or his weakness?

The waitress ignored him and sauntered away when he pulled out his wallet. “These are on the house,” Lisa told him. “In case you haven’t guessed, I work here.”

Smith had already figured as much. “What, waitressing?”

“Something like that.”

Probably a hostess or manager or something. Smith didn’t push it. For the next twenty minutes they talked, chatted to no account about innocuous things. She didn’t seem the least impressed that he was making a living as a writer.

It caught him off guard, however, when she observed, “But you’re not happy with your writing. You’re not fulfilled.”

She knows how to hit the nail on the head, Smith thought. Could he be read that easily? Or had his despair merely steepened to the point that it now showed? God knew he’d seen it happen to other writers. “I have this absurd and completely egotistical compulsion about… I don’t know. About the truth of things.”

“We all have our compulsions,” she remarked. She was looking right at him, smiling bright. “Nietzsche said there is no truth, right? And Sartre said it’s only in yourself. But I think they were both wrong. Truth is all over the place. You just have to know what door to look behind, or what face.”

Smith was bewildered; he could’ve laughed. I’m sitting in a strip joint with a girl I haven’t seen in ten years, talking about epistemology and abstract existential dynamics. Happens everyday. He wanted to comment. He wanted to make some sophisticated, highly intellectual observation, but it all felt suddenly sucked out of his head. He could not assess a collision of opposites so diverse. The charm, the silver penis, dangled at her throat like a finger waving. He could think of no reply. When he looked back at her, he realized the only obvious truth: She was beautiful.

Then, oddly, she continued, “But even truth has a price.”

Change the subject! his thoughts commanded. Say something, you ass! Anything! “We used to come here every now and then in college. You know, have a few beers, take a look at the…speculative dancers.”

“Boys will be boys,” she returned. “Don’t be timid in admitting that you’ve been here. Christ, I work here.”

“When did they start this live sex stuff?”

“About a year ago. Washington’s always been one step behind New York and LA. It’s a free country, right? Besides, every night is packed.”

Smith barely heard her. Her face seemed as puzzling as the night, an inexplicable perfection. A decade ago he’d dreamed of it, but what now? Where was the truth of it now?

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

“Everyone is. If you look closely enough.”

He was shivering. He couldn’t believe what he’d just said. Sitting with her, talking to her and merely seeing her was like trying to decode a cipher. Her smile never wavered. She squeezed his hand. “I would’ve gone out with you, you know, in school.”

“Oh, yeah?”

The smile turned sad. “But you never asked.”

The whole thing was too depressing. Smith knew he should leave, get out, go somewhere else for his sorry plight. But then the aura popped. The Anvil’s din rose to a wild roar. Some huge young man had stepped onto the stage, grinning and taking bows as the audience whooped. The guy looked like a body builder, all shining skin and corded, flexing muscles. He probably weighed 220 without an ounce of fat. He was completely naked but for a studded black-leather collar and wrist bands. That and the mustache and shoulder-length hair gave him the appearance of a Barbarian. But Smith could only gawk at what everyone else in the place was surely gawking at. The guy’s penis, though limp, was huge. It dangled between his legs like a flap of steak.

“Excess is the name of the game at The Anvil,” Lisa commented. “How’s that for a donkey-rig?”

Smith gulped. He’d never felt right talking to girls about sexual details, much less penises of extraordinary size, but even he had to half-chuckle. “It looks like something that should hang in a smokehouse. I hope his partner has a good health plan.”

“His name’s Do-Horse. A real scream. We didn’t hesitate to hire him once he showed us his qualifications.”

Smith had always believed that morality was relative. He was not a Christian, yet he knew travesty when he saw it. He stared at Do-Horse. The dense, pumped-up muscles and brash grin made him not a man but a caricature, a personification of moral desertion.

Lisa let out a long, uneasy sigh. “You always were a gentleman. Aren’t you going to ask me what I do here? Aren’t you even wondering?”

“I’m wondering,” Smith admitted, spewing smoke.

“Pay attention and you’ll see.”

With Smiths’ low groan came images of beauty defiled, like dropping fresh-picked flowers into pits of excrement, like pissing into spring water. The applause grew deafening as Lisa wended toward the stage. She stepped up and shed the plastic overcoat; her sudden nudity glowed in the stagelight. She turned and bowed, raised her arms, giving the crowd its visual appetizer. She was a caricature herself — of desire unbridled, a living object of men’s lust. Her body was long, willowy, very slender, but with large, high breasts and sharp contours. Her hips turned to highlight her pubis, which was hairless and smooth, a protuberant cleft. Do-Horse strode the stage a last time, flexing softball-sized biceps and tensing the rippled musculature of his back. Then he sat spread-legged in the chair. Lisa knelt at once and took hold of his cock. It drooped like a fat, lazy snake.

Smith felt paralyzed, hands flat on the table, eyelids glued open. This was awful, a passion play from the abyss. Do-Horse had come erect instantly. The glans, large as a baby apple, seemed to pop into Lisa’s mouth. She blew him in long, suffocating strokes, while applause surged like machine gun fire.

The thing must’ve been a foot long, and Smith actually jolted when every inch of it slid quickly down her throat. “Deep throat, my ass!” someone shouted. “This is deep stomach!” Smith thought he saw hunger in her bulged eyes. Her cheeks looked stuffed, her stretched-open jaw made her face long and narrow. My God, Smith thought. My God, my God.

Do-Horse lifted her up, pulled her mouth off. Her ass spread against the leather strap when he placed her in the harness. Long slim legs hung loose; she looked levitated as she grasped the suspending cord. Do-Horse knelt to plow her sex with his tongue, which, like the rest of him, seemed inordinately large. The hot lights beat down; sweat shone on her flesh like lacquer. All the while, Lisa squirmed in the harness, her feet pedaling the course of this oral preludial. When Do-Horse stood up, the shadow of his erection played over her belly, a ghost-serpent ranging over white valleys. Lisa reached up and caressed the equally large testicles, then began to stroke the shaft. In time, she guided the dome to her sex. The dome disappeared. Do-Horse grinned, paused, then shoved it all into her at once.