Nicholson Baker: House of Holes

“Do you now?” asked Henriette. “Good for you. What else do you have?”

“Basically, that’s it,” said Ruzty. “Everybody is trying to keep going, but then they turn out to be broke. The size of what they owe is how rich they are. If they can borrow a billion dollars, that makes them rich. Really they have nothing. But never mind, because I have”—he pulled out a folded sheet of paper and patted it—“an ass-squeezer’s license, signed. This means I can walk up to a girl like you with a big, beautiful ass and tell her I want to squeeze it, and she has to let me.”

“Let’s see the license,” said Henriette.

Ruzty waved it at her.

“Very well. Where?”

“My hotel.”

They went up to his suite at the Portalino Extended Stay Suites.

“How do you want to squeeze it?” Henriette asked.

“I want you up on the bed, as soon as possible.”

Henriette took off her roomy denim ass pants and arranged herself bending forward on the bed like a person skiing down a slalom course.

She felt his hands on her, squeezing their way along her backthighs and finding her lower backcheeks and massaging her deeply, with an interest in all her cores and centers. Then she felt his cock pushing strangely at the seams of her underwear. “No, now, Ruzty,” she said. “You have an ass-squeezer’s license, not a pussy-fucker’s license.”

“Wait a second, yes, I do, I do, I just forgot to show it,” Ruzty said, rummaging in his pockets. He had a slightly desperate sound. He waved another folded piece of paper. “I’ve been saving it for this moment.”

Henriette looked the paper over. “You just typed this yourself and printed it out, didn’t you?”

Ruzty looked chagrined. “Yes.”

“Is the ass-squeezer’s license forged as well?”

“Yes,” he said. “Daggett said he couldn’t give me a real one because there are too many. I was wrong, I know it now. I went outside the proper channels.”

Henriette said, “Ruzty, you very bad boy.”

Ruzty said, “I’m sorry.”

She looked at his eyes, which traveled to her ass. Then she caught sight of his remarkably solid but curved piece of equipment. She made a tiny hissing sound and said, “Oh, might as well go ahead anyway. Fuck me, horny sailor.”

Ruzty’s dick bounced with gladness. Henriette gnawed the sheet and waited. She felt his cock helmet finding the sloppy gates. Then impulsively she turned onto her back. “Take me where I can see you,” she said.

He sank over her, and she led him inside, forcing his cock to unbend. She gave him the Cook’s tour of her innerness. His backbone worked lithely; his bottom, swiveling, rose and fell.

Henriette straightened her knees, so that her feet were up in the air, running. She laughed because it felt so good, and she said, “Ruzty, you are a swervy-dicked master of the fuck! Don’t stop! Fill my bitchgroove!”

He squeezed her very hard to him and breathed in her hair and shuddered out everything he had into her. “I give you everything,” he said.

Later in the shower, Henriette remembered this and got on her knees and said, “Oh, Ruzty, oh, Ruzty,” and came.

Mindy, the documentary filmmaker, was standing in her room at the House of Holes Hotel, working on a jigsaw puzzle of marbles in a bowl and listening to “32 Flavors” by Ani DiFranco. There was a knock on her door. She opened it and saw a long-haired, dark-eyed man standing in the hallway, wearing a fringed suede jacket. He was wildly handsome, and he smelled like old cigarettes.

“Hey, I’m Dune,” he said. “They took away my penis, and I wonder if you can help me.”

“If I can I will,” said Mindy. “What happened?”

“Well, they did a switcheroo on me,” Dune said. “I’ve got a vagina now, and it’s a hot one, but every day of my life I want my own tackle back. You’re Mindy, am I correct?”

“I am,” said Mindy. “Would you mind if I set up a video camera and got your story? I’m making a film about this place.”

“That’s what I heard.”

Mindy kicked the tripod mounts out and got her camera running.

“Should I sit here?” Dune sat down heavily. “Hoo, I’m wiped.”

“Would you like something to eat? I could make you an omelet.”

“I’d love an omelet,” said Dune. “I’ve been flying a pornsucker around Providence, Rhode Island and I ache all over, and frankly I need the attention of a good woman.”

Mindy cooked him a three-egg omelet and he ate it. “That was fine food,” he said. “What’s your secret?”

“Butter and salt.”

“So simple. Butter and salt. I’ll be fried.”

Mindy cleared the plate away and clipped a microphone to Dune’s lapel. “So how exactly did you lose your penis?”

Dune told Mindy all about when he lost control on the midway and stuck his pinky into Shandee’s pussy.

Mindy, nodding encouragingly, checked the sound levels to be sure she was getting all of it.

“So then I went to Lila and she said, ‘Okay for you, Mr. Pussyfinger,’ and she called in this woman who said she needed her own penis and a pair of balls — the whole desk set. She got what she wanted, from me.” Dune looked down and laughed sadly. “Ah, Mindy, you don’t want to hear my problems. I’m just broke, and I don’t have money for smokes.”

Mindy brightened. “I have a couple of those little Winchester cigars in my purse for emergencies, hold on,” she said. “I just quit smoking, that’s why I’m doing this jigsaw puzzle.”

“Thanks.” Dune lit the cigar and took a long squinty drag. “Hm, a nice little Winchester. My dad smoked Winchesters. ‘A whole nother smoke.’ ”

“Dune, do you think you could show me your genitals? I’d like to get that on video.”

Dune tapped his cigar. “A week ago if you’d have asked me if I’d bare my crotch for you, I would have said, Sure thing, right away. Now I’m a bit skittish. Everything has its price.”

“The price is sometimes steep,” said Mindy.

“You got that right, hot goddess. Lila’s got us all doing the fucky-fuck and the sucky-suck and the humpy and the squirty and the juicy-Lucy and the ooh, ah, ooh. Everything we do they keep track of, and they know what we want most, and they want to milk us till our money’s all gone and our balls ache, if we have balls, which I don’t at the present time. Because it’s the House of Holes, and is there anything worth paying court to more than a woman with a pretty face and two good titties and one hot switchy ass she wants to shove in your face? Hmm?”

Mindy took that as a rhetorical question. “I’m more into men,” she said. “I like men. Sometimes I like smoky men in dirty suede.”

“Course you do, Mindy,” he said. “You’re a lovely lusty woman and you want to be a part of this whole slumber party. You want an ‘experience.’ And you will have that at the House of Holes, believe me. If you haven’t already.”

“I already got shrunk down and squirted out of a man’s urethra.”

“Well, then, there you go.” Dune was tiring. “Listen, would you mind if I moved to the couch for a sec?”

“No, go ahead,” said Mindy. “Let me just unclip your mike.”

“I just need fifteen minutes of downtime. Thanks for dinner, thanks for the smoke.” He closed his eyes and was asleep almost immediately.

Mindy watched him sleep. When he sat up an hour later, she had a second Winchester cigar ready for him. She said, “What was she like? The woman you switched with. You mind if I turn the camera back on?”

Dune stretched. “Sure, turn the camera on. Are we rolling? Marcela was her name. She was nice, very friendly. She’d put in a request to do Dick for a Day.”