Craig Davidson - Rust and Bone - Stories

“You smell like a girl,” Ellie says and for a moment I’m filled with a dark and predatory dread until I realize she’s talking about the perfume.

“Spilled some of your mom’s smelly stuff on me. You don’t like it?”

Another shrug. “Okay, I guess.”

I settle my arm around her shoulders and squeeze. Feel the movement of her chest and try to match my breathing to hers, our lungs expanding and contracting in perfect synchronism until I fear hyperventilation. We watch in silence; I’m content to simply be near her, drinking in her warmth and calm as a camel does water for a long desert trek.

Lisa comes in with a tray of milk and Fig Newtons. When she hands me a glass our fingers brush and she pulls away as though burned. Ellie finishes one cookie and reaches for another.

“No more,” Lisa says. “Too much sugar before bed gives you nightmares.”

“I like nightmares,” my daughter reasons.

The program reaches a heartwarming conclusion, riverbank denizens throwing a party. The hamster’s zipping around in a miniature motorboat, shiny black eyes bugged out in abject terror. Sitting with my daughter’s head rested in the crook of my arm watching the rodents frolic all I can think about is female genitalia, a sheer wall of vaginas like some sort of cliff, furred pussies, shaved pussies, blond and black and ginger-haired pussies, and I’m standing at the base of this forbidding structure stark naked wearing a pair of blue-tinted skigoggles and then I’m climbing, grabbing onto labias for purchase, searching for sure handholds in the loosest ones, jamming toes and fingers into moist slits wishing for crampons or a bag of talc. Ellie shifts against me and I’m trying desperately to think of anything else, marigolds–seahorses–merry-go-rounds but nothing works, I’m stuck with the pussy-cliff, scaling its slick alien veneer like an intrepid mountaineer tackling the perilous northface ascent on K2.

What kind of person harbors such thoughts? I mean, really, what kind?

Addicts are frequently beset by bitter self-loathing in response to erotic fantasies over which they exercise no control.

“Well,” I say, “about time I hit the dusty trail.”

“Stay,” Ellie says. “ VeggieTales is on next.”

Giant talking cucumbers. Yes, just what the doctor ordered.

“I’d better not, honey. Got to get to my meeting. See you this weekend, ’kay?”

Give her a big hug. Crumbs on her top lip, breath smelling of milk. Lisa follows me to the door.

“You’re good with her, Sam. I’ll give you that.”

“What can I say. I love her, I guess.”

She smiles in a way that makes me sad. Perhaps intuiting something, she asks, “What are you thinking about?”

Scaling a cliff of vaginas.

“Oh, nothing.”

“C’mon.”

“Well, okay … I was reading this book the other day. There was a character who … well, he screwed watermelons. At night he’d cross into his neighbor’s melon patch, cut a hole in a watermelon with a penknife. The Moonlight Melonhumper. And I guess I got to thinking it wouldn’t be so bad, would it—balling melons? Grow some in your backyard or just, y’know, keep a few on hand. Whenever the urge struck you could slip away and take care of business. What I’m saying is, it’d be possible to lead a normal life.” A brittle laugh. “Humping watermelons. Jesus Christ, Lisa, wish that did it for me.”

“Is this something they advocate in your group?” she says. “This kind of … frankness?”

“Sort of. I’m not certain.”

“Well,” she says stiffly, “goodnight. I’ll drop Ellie off Saturday morning.”

It’s 8:45, giving me fifteen minutes to make group. Crossing the front lawn the cellphone buzzes in my pocket. It’s set to vibrate on account of the pleasant shiver it sends up my balls; I’ve been known to slip it into my underwear and ring myself from payphones.

“It’s me,” says Danny Dewson.

“It’s you. How goes the battle?”

“Well, Samuel, I’m gonna level with you—”

“Always pays to keep things on the level.”

“Right. So here it is: I’d really like to stick my … rod … through this … hole .”

“Where are you?”

“That peepjoint off Sanford. Between the second-run porno house and the strip club.”

“Right, a ways up from that place with the secret knock.” Unlock the car, settle into the driver’s seat. “I think it’s okay this time. As setbacks go, it’s minor.”

“That’s true, isn’t it? Not like I’m some kind of devil for wanting to do this, right?”

“Of course you aren’t, Danny. Of course not.”

“And hey, there might not even be a girl on the other side, right?”

“Sure,” I tell him. “Who knows what’s on the other side.”

“So you think it’s okay? This one time?”

“Gonna give you a free pass.”

“Hey, that’s super, Samuel. Just super.”

“Stay strong, brother.”

My name is Sam. I’m a sex addict.

Welcome, Sam.

Nothing extraordinary. My dad was a freelance contractor;Mom a teacher. I can only imagine their sex life was normal,maybe a bit dreary. It wasn’t like Dad would’ve beat me had he caught me masturbating; Mom didn’t breastfeed me till I was fifteen. Hope I don’t come off like an asshole, but I think the Deep Dark Secret rationale is a crock. Don’t know why I am the way I am, but it doesn’t boil down to one particular event or deep emotional scar. No one’s to blame. Some people are built differently, that’s all. The problem I see is when we stand against our nature, try to be someone else. The whole martyr mentality makes me sick—the nobility of suffering, to hurt is to love, all that bullshit. Somewhere along the line it’s become fashionable to be who we’re not, squeeze ourselves into cubbyholes, spend our lives in abject misery to disguise our basic selves. Hey, if your nature is selfless, giving, honorable, open, unabashed, forthright, decent or whatever great—wonderful, bully for you. We’re not all built the same way. Doesn’t mean we’re degenerates.

SEXUAL COMPULSIVES ANONYMOUS gathers Tuesdays in the Louis Riel Library’s conference room. I frequent several groups: Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (Wednesdays in St. Peter’s parish hall), Sexaholics Anonymous (Friday afternoons at the Live and Let Live Club), Renewal from Sexual Addiction (Sundays at First United Methodist). Every once in a while I’ll spot a familiar face on the street or in a restaurant and realize I am part of a secret cabal, a roaming addictive underclass inhabiting this, and every, city.

Nod to the librarian, eyeing her legs, weave my way through periodical racks and paperback carousels and newspapers threaded on wooden dowels to the conference room. The room’s decorated in a Thanksgiving motif: shellacked gourds and ears of maize, pie-plate turkeys with tissue paper tails. Table scattered with crayons and children’s books left over from the Reading Buddies program: Digging Dinosaurs, Where the Wild Things Are, Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes . The usual suspects: Baney Jones and Owen and Bette. Seat myself beside the fourth person, who I’m surprised and more than a little excited to find here.

“Hey,” I say to her. “How’s Wayne? He going to be alright?”

“He’ll be fine,” the fluff girl answers in a whisper. “Ambulance guy shot him up with morphine so he wasn’t feeling much of anything. I’m going to check back on him tomorrow.”

“Great news. Maybe I can come with?”

She shakes her head. “Don’t think so. Wayne isn’t your biggest fan.”

“Why—what did I ever do?”

She cocks an eyebrow.