Justin Taylor - The Gospel of Anarchy

What time is it, anyway? A few minutes past ten. Not bad.

“We should wake him up,” Katy says.

Liz thinks maybe they should let him sleep.

“Nah, come on, he’d want to go with us.”

“I guess so, yeah.” This is what most arguments with Liz are like. Not that this is an argument by any stretch. Also, when do they ever argue? What could they possibly even have to argue about? So, conversations then. Anyway, this is how it is with her, and there are days when all Katy wants in the world is for Liz to want anything other than whatever Katy wants. But then there are all the days between those days, aren’t there? Katy smiles. Love is baffling. Isn’t that the best thing about it? Top three at least.

Katy grabs the hem of the canary-yellow sheet they’re sharing and with an assured flick of her wrist whips it free of the bed, exposing all of their nakedness. She leans in and takes David in her mouth, goes to work while the sheet drowses groundward, transforming the heaped clothing on the bedroom floor to some anonymous mountain range smothered in sun.

Not that she wouldn’t be doing this regardless — who needs a reason to screw, after all? — but a few nights ago when they were all really wasted, and in the sloppy process of stumbling to bed, David got this sort of crumpled look on his face and said he had to tell them something. Katy had one of those moments she sometimes gets where she doubts God’s abundant and everlasting grace. For like just a flash of a second, but still. That’s another way of saying that she thought he was going to tell them he had some fucked-up STD. But no, it was nothing like that — more like the opposite of that, if the word opposite makes sense here, which in terms of how Katy views the world, it does. David had for some reason felt compelled to make confession. He talked a lot about the Internet, which Katy knows nothing about; and porn, which bores her because there’s no reason to watch something you could be doing yourself; and about an old girlfriend, which interested her mightily — who doesn’t like to hear about their lovers’ lovers? — and these topics seemed to all relate, somehow, to one another as well as to a larger thesis about how much he had hated his life, for so long, without ever having consciously realized it until the night he met all of them. Drunk as she was, Katy couldn’t quite put all the pieces together, though as Liz pointed out the next day, given how drunk he was, it was distinctly possible that he’d left out whatever might have been the keystone idea. The upshot, basically, was that it was messing with his head to be living what — let’s be honest — is basically every straight guy’s number one jerk-off fantasy. Part of him couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he’d lost his mind — was in some institution, dreaming all of this, as if Katy and Liz were actually just vivid and resonant hallucinations, perhaps induced by acute pornography overdose.

The girls hadn’t been sure whether that last thing was supposed to be a joke or not — or if David even knew — but Katy as usual followed her peerless instincts and took him in her arms like a mother and held him while he bawled, rocked him like a big drunk baby, and made pissy faces at Liz until she finally relented and hugged him, too. They hadn’t screwed that night, only held each other, and Katy had whispered over and over again that there was nothing to be ashamed of or angry about, that everything was bound to be okay, in fact already was okay. As she spoke, Katy hoped both her lovers were hearing this message and taking it right to each heart, where it could mean unto each as each needed, world without end, amen.

But starting the very next morning, hangovers be damned, Katy began — and now, this morning, continues — a relentless campaign of fucking David, having David fuck Liz, him watching the two girls, and as often as possible all three of them in ecstatic triangles — anything Katy can come up with (and ply Liz into trying) in order to drive home the lesson she wants him to learn, which is that no light-box, no machine , can ever come within a country mile of the sweat-blind holy thing itself. This, this , is the truth and the life.

So that’s the subtext to David’s morning hummer. Meanwhile, somewhere behind her, Liz is between Katy’s legs, making her feel perfect and loved, but Katy’s trying to stay focused on David, who’s awake now — she can tell it from the way he draws breath, and the fact that certain other parts of his body are now also beginning to stir. He says something she doesn’t catch, it might in fact be not-words, a yawn. Now his searching hands have palmed her swinging tits, steadying them, pointer fingers lazily circling round her nipples. Good morning, sunshine.

Things have been nice this week, with David here. Katy hopes he stays and it seems like he’s going to. He doesn’t give the best head Katy’s ever had, but he can hardly be blamed for not being some magical outlier in what is a fairly substantial body of statistical evidence. And to give credit where it’s due, he’s somewhere in the upper-middle range of the bell curve, no mean feat in itself. What he lacks in pure skill he makes up for in determination and exuberance. Truth be told, there’s a way in which his earnest questing, be it hit or be it miss at any given moment, is actually more fun than getting it from Liz, the ace, the aficionado, who can play Katy like some video game, and bring her to the YOU WIN screen in record-setting time. Which is — whoa — basically what’s happening right now. Katy’s going to come in like a minute, and the gathering ache makes the world behind her closed eyes brighter, Dear God of Earth and Heaven I thank you for the orgasm I am about to receive , but there’s this other restless part of her that can’t help feeling like home again home again, jiggety jig —sigh.

Katy decides to see if she can get David to come at the same moment Liz makes her come. That’ll be interesting, right?

About twenty-five seconds later it turns out that the answer to both questions is yes. Katy wipes her chin and collapses theatrically on top of their boy. He’s breathing hard and stroking her hair. Liz lies down on her belly beside them, in the spot where Katy sleeps rather than in her own, and watches the two of them with these sort of moon eyes that Katy’s worried are maybe just a little too dewy to ignore. Why doesn’t Liz look as proud of herself as she usually does after making Katy come? Katy slaps her girlfriend on the behind. Playful, no pain, but the crisp rapport of the palm on the cheek says atten-TION . And like a bucket up from a well here’s Liz back from Neverland. Two blinks and the dew is gone, her eyes lasered on Katy’s, ready for instruction.

“Flip over,” Katy says. “It’s your turn.”

“Nah,” Liz says with a little shrug. “We have to get ready. We’ll be late.”

“We won’t,” Katy says. “Come on .” Katy can feel Liz’s hesitation. On the one hand, she’s into the whole self-denial-as-sign-of-devotion thing. On the other, Katy obviously wants to do this for her, in the name of equality, anarchy, or just wanting to, and the prime directive of Liz’s life is whatever Katy wants .

So she does it, flips her body over, full yield, take me , and tries to release herself into the feeling of being open to feeling good. David is kissing her and playing with her breasts while Katy is working on her downstairs — she loves Katy so much — and she’s starting to breathe a little heavy. She even makes a halfhearted play for David’s cock, expecting to find it limp, but it turns out he’s already ready to go again. Startled, she jerks her hand back. No thanks. A few minutes later her partners switch spots, and this, actually, is much better, because even though part of her doesn’t really want David inside her, at least now she’s getting to kiss Katy, and hug Katy, and grab at Katy’s breasts, which are bigger than hers — meaty and soft, like all of Katy; how unlike nubby, skinny tight-titted Liz — and she pulls Katy forward— smother me with you, lover —and pivots her pelvis so David pops out of her, and he gets the message and sticks it in Katy instead, Katy who is a blast furnace, dynamo, sun raging over and lighting up and making possible the world. Liz can feel Katy’s heat, radiation and rain, the raw and blessed pleasure her girlfriend takes and produces. God is both the knower and the thing known, as well as the act of knowing that unites them, unmasks the wholeness that always already existed and exists. This is a slice of infinity made manifest, reified, captured in Katy’s act of fucking and being fucked, by Liz, by David, by whoever and however many — and these thoughts elate Liz but also hurt her, in a certain sense, like in the sense of her maybe not mattering to Katy (though of course Katy always claims otherwise) or if she does matter, if she is loved, maybe it’s not enough ( but what would, what could ever be enough for you, Liz, really, being in your own way as insatiable as tireless Katy? ) or even when it is enough and she knows it, is it enough of the right kind of love ( you bad anarchist, you Little-faith ) but Liz, making the most of what faith she does possess, pushes these thoughts away, forces them out, replaces them with one, one alone, singular and all-encompassing like God is, one thought that makes her infinitely happy because it is the beautiful truth ( this is what prayer is Lord she’s my altar may I worship You forever ) and the beautiful truth is the thought of Katy’s pleasure, and thinking these words to herself over and over— Katy’s pleasure Katy’s pleasure Katy’s pleasure Katy’s Katy’s Katy Katy —a chant in unsprung rhythm, she blots out the chattering doubts of that demon her consciousness and there in that throbbing vacuum finds a space both limitless and impossibly close, where she is fearless and safe, prone in joy and trembling, the tremble that becomes the bodyquake, and even though she doesn’t want to break her mouth away from her lover’s, she simply must issue a strangled, triumphant cry through teeth gritted as if in tremendous pain.