Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

'It means it happens. People who aren't full seek sustenance elsewhere.'

The minute that followed was a long, silent one.

'Maybe this job is my way of filling myself up,' she said.

'Is it?' Yes, maybe I am willing to allow you that much. For a little while. And by the way, what am I filling myself up with? 'If you're sure you want it, then you should go for it.'

She pushed him on to his back and began kissing his neck, his chest, pushing his shirt up. 'I'm not sure. I'm never sure about anything.'

'You're not?'

'No one is.'

'Oh.'

'It is kind of scary, but exciting, too.' She nibbled at his waist.

'You don't get scared.'

'Yes, I do.'

She was waiting for him to put her fears to rest, to explain what was eating him up. But he hadn't been able to find the words, not when she was preparing to leave. She rested her head on his stomach. He was immediately aroused. She noticed and popped him free. The unexpected movement and sheer heat of her tongue made him groan. A minute into it, she'd paused and looked up, speaking in a voice as faint as a radio transmission from Iowa.

'I need you to know something,' she said.

'Whuh?'

'What you walked in on. It wasn't what you thought. I admit it was very close, and wrong. But it wasn't sex.'

Amazing. A little three-letter word. Timed right, it was a sledgehammer.

'Please, don't,' he said.

Her grip remained firm but the stroking had ceased. Her eyebrows arched and she bored into him.

'Look at me,' she said. He sat up on his elbows. 'I've never been unfaithful, Conrad.'

He did not accept her words, but neither did he disbelieve them. They just hung there between them. He wanted to throw her off and throw her out. He wanted to roll her over and fuck her until she wept.

He fell back and covered his eyes.

She started to cry and he hated her for that. His balls were ready to explode and he hurt worse than that in worse places. But no, he wasn't going to comfort her. That Fucker Jake had been there. Whatever had or had not happened in the house, Jo had fallen asleep in her panties and his Sebadoh and That Fucker Jake had been there.

She pulled herself up and rested against his shoulder, releasing him when she felt him softening. Even if he wasn't so sure about the past, he believed she was being faithful now. What were dropping bad habits and moving away to start a new life together if not faith that your marriage would work out?

'I guess we're both a little freaked out here,' he said.

'I'll make it up to you next time, okay?'

What if there is no next time? a nasty little voice shot back.

'I just want you to want this as much as I do,' he said. Meaning, in that male way, the sex and the love and the marriage and the house. They were inseparable to him.

'I do.'

It seemed a trade he'd failed to make - his comforting words for her sexual favor. A small thing, perhaps. A lost opportunity on both fronts.

And so, 976-wife rejecting his person-to-person potty mouth, Conrad's frustration deepened until he caved in and embarked on one last running attempt to get the job done by himself, if only to prove that he still could (and so that he might last more than thirty seconds when she returned). His tall and beautiful Jo was out of town, but there was a high-speed pipe and a portal of infinite titillation at his fingertips.

The overture to the main event arrived courtesy of Visa and a mega site that humbly billed itself as ShavedPussyEmpire.com He searched in vain for something less Chesterish but the tamer domains like NiceYoungGirlsYourParentsWouldApproveOf.com and ArtfullyDepictedNakedLadies.com had been blown out of the water early in an Internet porn arms race toward mutually repulsed destruction.

Knowing this, he hesitantly Googled 'free sex movies' and got the universe of porn, none of it free. Settling upon a site that appeared somewhat legit (ho ho), he linked around until he had eliminated the most ghastly fetishes and entered, 'The World's #1 Destination for Shaved Pussy!' After failing to become aroused by the thirty-second free sample clips, he fumbled his credit card and tried to shoo the dogs out of the office, but the door wouldn't stay latched. Luther kept nosing in, and there was simply no way he was going to perform an act of onanism with his dogs staring at him.

He finally shouted loud enough to stop their scratching at the door and logged in, only to find himself staring at so many hairless girls in pigtails and academy plaid performing such unnatural acts of faked arousal, the 'director's' distracting and often mean-spirited verbal cues lobbed at the coke-addled nubiles, that he was overwhelmed (okay, nudged) by guilt and couldn't bring himself beyond a plumpie, let alone to climax.

After five minutes of frustrated tugging, he angrily logged off, waddled to the bathroom (the door latched, hallelujah), his pants sliding down around his knees and launched into act two, standing over (no, not the sink, you filthy pig) the bathtub, eyes closed, visions of Jo riding him reverse cowgirl style with the lights on (she had done it once and only once, on the living-room couch, pretending not to remember when he'd made the request several times since, which only made it more precious) dancing in his brain.

As he ramped up to the third act reveal, his mind performed a sort of miraculous shuffle function, a libido iPod playing every song in its pitiful six-soul library of ex-girlfriends, adding several Hustler Honey of the Months that had been burned into his memory from the teen years when you only had the one magazine and protected it like fire for the tribe, the iPenis playing them all at the same time at full volume, parading every girl and woman Conrad had ever bedded or seen naked before his mind's lubricated eye like a carnival wheel, round and round she goes and where he comes nobody knows, all of the breasts and hips and hair and necks and asses and lips and moans and grunts shuffling again and again until Jo slew them all and claimed her rightful spot on his lap, the ultimate authority who knows what her man needs to finish the job, the Tarot card that read simply The Wife, riding him with such hip-flexing force and the gleaming crystal reality that can only come from memory, never fantasy, that for a minute he forgot he was bent over the tub and alone in this strange small town in this huge strange house, a man with a past he desperately wanted to forget, and he lost himself in the backs of her thighs and the dimples and fine black hairs above her ass above him, her wetness wetting the length of him and he felt huge, enormous yet fully enveloped, just so fucking owned by this animal called woman, this being called Joanna, this entity that was physically larger and infinitely more complex than he would ever be and he slipped out ready to burst and she grabbed him and planted him back inside without missing a single stroke, she was so tuned-in, and best of all he was giving her this moment too, sending her fears away by making her come and she slowed, crunching down on him, squeezing him in contractions, her voice heavy, almost male in its animal need until she came and he came with her, there inside her and here, now, in the bathroom, his fantasy and lonely reality coalescing so forcefully he felt her anger and weight clap into his body and her face - her face, the other face, the sepia woman in the photo staring at him from inside his head, her crooked smile exposing her sharp teeth - and he fought her back too late, crying out in repulsed terror as he began to ejaculate -

And an invisible lead weight slammed into his neck, dropping him to his knees, stopping the blood flow to his brain and sounding an alarm of pain that stretched from his shoulder to his forehead.