Nicholson Baker - The Fermata

She took a vacation day on the day the back-ordered vibrator was due to arrive. When the UPS truck hadn’t shown by almost one o’clock and when Marian, already on her third pair of underpants, found herself holding a mother-of-pearl hand mirror up to one of her nipples and watching the aureole get wrinkly backward and then trying to push her nipple through a buttonhole of her linen shirt, she decided it was time to do something — to mow the lawn, which did need mowing. She changed to a full loose gypsy skirt with nothing underneath and a ribbed black camisole with no bra and drove the mower out of the garage into the yard with her freshly batteried Van Dilden resting in her lap. She hopped off in the middle of the front yard, and in full view of the world (though too fast for anyone to see really what she was up to), with her back to the road, she licked the vibe’s inch-and-a-half suction-cup base and stuck it firmly on the seat of the idling green machine and turned its little switch on. She regarded it trembling there on the seat, this enchantingly obscene blurred tube of realism shaken simultaneously by its internal mini-motor and the macro-motor of the ridem, and her slype ached to feel it push her open. She slapped it once; it flinched a little to the side but didn’t unsuction itself. She wanted to mow now; she wanted to mow that fucking lawn like she had never mowed it before.

Planting her feet on the floorboard of the ridem, holding on to the steering wheel, she demurely flounced her skirt over the seat, and then, arching the small of her back and closing her eyes, she slowly lowered herself until she felt the buzzed brainless head of the Van Dilden nudge into her underthigh. She only had to readjust herself slightly, ticklish trickles moistening open her self-aware slypelips, and she was ready to be upfucked: she looked out smiling at the cars driving by and stamped on the throttle, and with a long groan that was masked by the sudden rev of the engine, her slopping cunt-ness was forced back and down on the full hand-poured width of the Van Dilden. She sat heavily down on it and mowed and mowed, and as she mowed it was as if the whole lawn was concertedly fucking her: every little hummock, every undulation of turf, every tough clump of thistle stalk was telegraphed directly via her autodick-fitted ridem directly into her boggled cervix, while all twelve pistoning horsepowers added their internal combustions to the party as well. She worked the lawn for ten minutes or more, risking a numb-out but successfully avoiding it, smiling again at the traffic because they couldn’t know the supreme full-pelvic cuntfucking she was giving herself as she mowed. She was lowering her head forward toward the steering wheel, just on the point of allowing herself to crooningly come, when she noticed the UPS truck pull over to the side of the road. The driver waved his clipboard at her and walked up with a long oblong box, stowing his sunglasses in his shirt pocket. Marian straightened and tried to collect herself. There was no way to turn the Van Dilden off without pulling up her skirt. She was covered with sweat. Above human hearing, her nipples were screaming for any knowledgeable mouth. She signed where the UPS man pointed, line 27, hoping the idling motor would hurry him off, and he almost handed her the box, and then said something she couldn’t hear.

He gestured to the front porch questioningly with the box; Marian nodded. She watched him jog to the porch. He ran like a coach. She hadn’t noticed before that his eyes were attractive; his helpful hesitation was quite sexy when she was able to contrast it with the idea of the molded thing that was fucking her right at that moment. Nonetheless, she wanted him to drive off so that she could finish mowing.

He was halfway down the slope to his truck when he stopped and came back with a “May I trouble you for something?” expression.

“Yes?” she shouted.

He said something she couldn’t catch. Reluctantly she cut the mower engine. “Sorry — what?”

“Oh, you didn’t have to turn that off,” he said. “I was just wondering if I could hose off my head. I’m burning up. It must be over a hundred in the back of the truck.” Suddenly he frowned. “You hear that?”

It was the vibrator. It felt so good. She smiled and closed her eyes. “What exactly do you hear?”

“Is your engine still on?” he said.

“It’s nothing,” said Marian. “Go hose your head, by all means. The hose is right up on the side of the house. Oh,damn — I had to turn off the water in the basement because it leaks.”

“Never mind then, that’s okay.” He was backing away. He did look uncomfortably hot. She liked the idea of his hosing off his head.

“It won’t take a second to turn the water on, just let me get off this thing.” Marian held out her hand and he steadyingly took it. “Oof,” she said. She lifted herself carefully off the Van Dilden and dismounted from the mower. The gleaming cockshape continued to buzz away trustily on the slick, and in places even frothy, seat. “Pardon me,” she said, waving dismissively at the sight. “I was just experimenting.”

“Is that …?” he said, slack-jawed, pointing. “Did I deliver that the other day?”

“You did. Come on and I’ll get the hose going.”

“Wait.” He took off his shirt and draped it over the dildo.

“Thanks,” said Marian.

While the UPS man bent at the waist and spluttered and snorted in the cold hose-flow, Marian opened the new box. The lean double-headed length of the Royal Welsh Fusilier lay bent in half within.

“Is it what you wanted?” the UPS man inquired, wiping the water from his eyes. “If not, I can tape it up for vou and send it right back now.”

Marian held it up and experimentally slid its two foreskins back. “No, it’s more or less what I expected.”

“What do you plan to do with that? My name’s John Westman, by the way.”

Marian introduced herself and they shook hands. She felt his eyes flicking over her nipples. “I know what I’d like to do,” she said, “but unfortunately I can’t do it on my new ridem lawn-mower because what I have in mind needs a little more privacy.”

“Well, what about the back of my truck?”

“I was just thinking that. You have to drive, though. I’m not going to have sex with you — is that okay?”

“Sure, I guess. I’m just intrigued. You’ve gotten me all intrigued.”

Together they retrieved his shirt and her Van Dilden.

“Lick this, will you?” she said. He licked the suction cup and she affixed the dick to the metal floor of his truck. Boxes were piled high on wire shelves on either side of her. There was a narrow opening to the front seat. The UPS man got in the front and sat watching her. He was squeezing his crotch through his pants.

“No, just drive,” she ordered, lifting her skirt and kneeling over the Van Dilden. “Find a dirt road and drive on it. I want this truck to bounce.”

“My pleasure,” he said. She turned the vibrator on to full and slid halfway down on it. While she squeezed Astroglide on the two ends of the Fusilier, he turned onto a dirt road in low gear. The truck rocked and lurched. “Oh, that’s it,” she said, feeling herself filled with unexpected lateral UPS-truck fuck-motions. Already aching from her earlier mowing, she was impatient. “Now stop for a second. I want you to stick one end of this in my ass.”

She pulled her skirt up over her ass with one hand and leaned forward and passed him the double-headed vibrator. The head of the Van Dilden was still inside her.

“Should I turn it on?” he asked, examining the little remote controller.

“Yeah, I guess, but, mmm, the main thing is to stuff it in my ass right now.” He turned it on, using the little control box. The two buzzings were at slightly different pitches, wowing in and out of phase. Marian felt something hard push against the muscle of her ass. “That’s it,” she said. She relaxed against it and let its head go in. “Push it a little further. Wow. Now drive — oh fuck, just drive this fucking truck.”