Craig Davidson - Rust and Bone - Stories

“Are you sure?” the fluff girl asks him. “Really, I don’t mind.”

“Well, if it’s no bother.” Wayne smiles. “But please view my lack of arousal as an expression of my physical limitations, not a comment on your skills.”

The two of them fall into an easy repartee, the sort Wayne excels at: meaningless and lighthearted, subjects ranging from recent movies to stale jokes to articles he’s read on some humanitarian topic: Save the Monkey-Eating Eagles, Liberate the Goatherds of East Timor, Thalidomide Babies March for World Peace, et cetera. She even laughs at Wayne’s ghastly puns: I once knew a bailiff who moonlighted as a bartender, my dear. He served subpoena coladas . Get the girl off and she won’t even pay attention to me—how’s that for gratitude? My nose is distinctly out of joint.

Before the final scene we experience what might be charitably described as a “technical malfunction.” More pointedly, Wayne’s prosthesis … well, explodes . The guy’s pumping up, cock rising steadily, then this panicked expression crosses his face and he’s scrabbling at his crotch crying, “Sweet lord!,” clawing at his balls and I’m wondering is he looking for the pump in there, an off switch or something and his cock’s just monstrous, I mean red and swollen and Wayne’s staring down with an expression of sick dread then this pop, not loud exactly but percussive like a pistol fired under wet sand and his cock—Christ, it expands and Wayne’s on the floor screaming bloody blue murder and there’s this noise like when you blow up a balloon and let go except it’s coming out his pisshole .

“Man down!” hollers the director. “Jesus, man down! ”

Wayne’s rolling around with his eyes rolled to the white, mouth open but no sound coming out. Two minutes ago you’re cracking one-liners and detailing the plight of East Timorian shepherds; now your penis is curled like a fishhook and blood’s leaking out. It’s a funny old world.

The fluff girl kneels beside him. “Call an ambulance!”

I snatch Kitten’s cellphone—she’s actually talking to someone as all this goes on—and dial 911. “God, man—are you okay?”

The way Wayne’s glaring at me— yeesh, if looks could kill. Of course, I’ve now found myself on hand at both his penile catastrophes. Could he think I’m somehow responsible—a voodoo doll? A miniature wax penis stuck full of pins?

When the ambulance arrives the attendants look puzzled, then, after a quick examination of the set and its players, get the idea. They

heap cold packs onto Wayne’s groin, strap him to a stretcher. “Look on the bright side,” the cameraman says. “Makes for a dilly of a lawsuit.” The fluff girl insists on accompanying Wayne to Emerge. I offer to tag along but the attendants won’t allow it. As the ambulance pulls away she’s staring wistfully out the rear window—who’s she looking at, if not me?

My name is Sam. I’m a sex addict.

Welcome, Sam.

Thanks, everyone. So, what have I lost—that’s tonight’s question? Everything, I guess you could say. Job, family, security. The normal life. Not that you’d find it surprising. The support of such systems requires some sort of a … veneer . A veneer of normalcy, right? Repeat the mantra: Happy family, happy family, happy family. But the secret was doing more damage than the truth. Told my friends, my boss, my co-workers. Full disclosure; the unobstructed facts. Four hundred sexual partners over the past five years, nameless and unremembered. What else can you do? Beg forgiveness. Grovel. I was demoted but kept my job. My wife and I entered counseling. Inside I realized it couldn’t last. The person I was desperately trying to be—the husband, the family man—was a fraud. I’m incapable of that change. It’s not that I’m weak or spineless: the process of transformation demands you become a whole new person . I’m not saying change is impossible or that you or you or you won’t make a clean break; I sincerely wish it for everyone. But it’s simply not in me and I won’t apologize. Right now it’s about learning how to cope, make my way as best I can without hurting anyone. That’s why I do dirty movies: no commitment, no lies, no guilt, nobody gets harmed. Love and responsibility do not factor into the equation. Like those signs you see in national parks: Take only pictures, Leave only footprints .

EARLY EVENING by the time we wrap. A crease of sunset lines the horizon, interrupted by the high rises of downtown: buildings I’d once travailed in, wheeled and dealed, buildings I’m now effectively banned from. Bright pinprick spires burn in foothills beyond the city, derricks venting sour gas, flames frayed by a south-blowing wind. A pale crescent moon sits like a toy boat in the gap between two dark mountains. Across the road an empty lot hosts abandoned shopping carts, old tires and castoff watertanks rusting in the nettles, a junked car with garbage bags taped over its shattered windows. A huge scavenger bird with a raw boiledlooking head perches on the car’s spavined roof: a buzzard, though to the best of my knowledge such creatures are not native to this part of the planet.

Take a Phillips screwdriver from my glovebox, remove the license plates from Wayne’s Buick Century, screw them to my Chevy Cavalier. A dastardly deed but Wayne won’t catch any heat: got to figure he’ll be laid up for a week. Ironclad alibi. Settle behind the driver’s seat, doff my trousers, arrange a layer of Kleenex between my spread legs. Rev the engine, pull out of the lot.

This old Western movie crystalized it for me. Black-and-white, which generally I cannot abide. There was this cowboy and his horse, a Palomino. The cowboy doted on his mount—fed it apples and sugar cubes, brushed cockleburrs out of its mane with a wire comb. Towards the end they’re on a wagontrain trekking through the Sierra Madres when the horse is slowed by a split hoof. The cowboy jams his pistol to the horse’s eye and pulls the trigger. Why’d you do that? the wagon-master says. Thought you loved that horse . The cowboy spits and says, Nossir, but I do love horses. That is to say, I cherish the nature of horses— hardworking, reliable, docile. But alla them is that way. Can always find y’self another horse .

Now, it’s conceivable to cherish the nature of women, right? They’re beauteous and supple, willing to accommodate the man who knows how best to stroke them. But that’s on a whole: you might feel nothing on a case-by-case basis. A sex addict’s relationship is with sex, not people . For addicts it’s crucial to break any object of desire down to its base elements: tits, asses, lips, hips, cocks, cunts. The process of dehumanization is like a moral imperative .

I dearly cherish the nature of woman.

Cruise streets in the gray twilight, past decrepit rowhouses and shops with gated windows, homeless persons and lean winter dogs hunched at the mouths of go-nowhere alleys, a boarded church cloaked in the shadowy overhang of tall maples, through cones of lamplight casting their blue nocturnal glow, on over a swing bridge spanning the blighted waterway. Mammoth construction cranes stand still as obelisks against the quilted sky. Difficult to shift gears with my pants rucked around my ankles.

Scan the sidewalks but fail to spot a suitable candidate: here a bagwoman, less human being than agglomeration of filthy ponchos trundling a shopping cart with a frozen wheel; there a chick resembling an ambulatory fire hydrant, bull-dyke by the looks of it, hieing a chowdog on a length of heavy-gauge chain. Real slim pickens. Call my pal Danny Dewson; we co-sponsor one another through Sexaholics Anonymous.