ThirstForFire fall 2009

EDITOR
Taylor Durden
SOLICITOR
Nate Tyree
FOUNDER
Devan Sagliani
PUBLISHER
disproductions
FEATURING
Adrian Stone · Mel Bosworth · Matt DeBenedictis · Nate
Innomi · Gregg Williard · Kenneth Radu · Jim Parks ·
Roxane Gay · Ben Spivey · Mark Richardson · Michael J.
Martin · David Erlewine · Ethel Rohan · Margaret Chrsti ·
Teresa Houle · Will Spires · Black Conrad
CONTACT
thirstforfire.com
fire@thirstforfire.com
 from the editor
I’ve had a great time being part of putting this,
the first issue since 2006, together with my
cohort Nate Tyree. My thanks to P. H. Madore
for asking me to be a part of this project and to
Devan Sagliani for lighting the fire back when;
it’s been a party in my panties where the cops
are called and there are naked people and
dancing and some light drug use.
I hope you enjoy these dirty little gems as much
as I’ve enjoyed mining them for you. Thanks to
everyone who submitted and to the authors
whose work appears in this quarter’s issue. You
are the worm in my mezcal!
Yours,
Taylor Durden
Ryan Long
Richard's Grave //Adrian Stone

Richard was shot to death last night and now we are

working on his grave. At first, the digging was easy,
as the ground was soft and cool, but a foot down we
hit clay and sand. I am using a spade, carving out the
earth six inches per scoop. Tom is using a flat-
headed shovel. He is panting and sweating, cursing
Richard's death. He pushes on the curved lip at the
back of the shovel with his foot, cuts the ground
three inches and flicks a spit of clay into the pile.
“Damn it,” he says as the shovel freezes against
a hidden stone. “God damn it, why don't we just put
him out there?” He points to the river, hidden under
the moonless sky. He lays down the shovel and lights
a cigarette.
“And risk him being found by some hick
fisherman?” I ask, joining him in the break. “Good
thinking, maybe we can paint him orange to make it
easier to spot him.”
“We could, you know, cut him up. The crabs'll
get him.”
“Jesus!”
“I know it's...uh..”
I interrupt, “...barbaric? Savage?”
“Yeah, barbaric, but I think it's the best option.
How far you think we goin' to dig before we can't no
more?”
 TFF|FALL09 //5

I do not reply. Instead, I smoke my cigarette,

hoping that he will drop the subject. Richard was
more than food for bottom-feeding bugs. He
deserves a proper burial.
“I know what you're thinking.” Tom says,
butting out his cigarette in the loose dirt and lighting
another, “but he wouldn't've givin' a damn 'bout what
happened to his body. You know that.”
“That ain't the point.”
“And he wouldn't have wanted us to get caught
neither.”
I turn to him, looking him in the eyes. “And
what? You think he would've wanted you to shoot
him in the face?”
“It was an accident. Jesus, you know I loved him
like a brother.”
“And you want to chop him into bits. Man,
brothers don't shoot each other.”
I think of Cain and Abel.
I have never understood why people would kill
for grass, but Tom and Richard seemed to know well
enough. They were obsessed with security, setting
up traps to catch and kill trespassers. They strung
razor wire between trees, hid bear traps under piles
of dead leaves and disguised Claymores as rotten
tree trunks. They were intent on protecting plants
with death and disfigurement.
While we never had trouble with outsiders, Tom
and Richard had problems communicating. Simply:
Richard was checking the grounds the same time as
Tom, neither of them knowing the other was there.
Richard got a shotgun blast to the back of his head;
Tom got to realize how damn foolish their
protectiveness was; I got to clean up the mess.
“He shoulda called me.” Tom says. “I shoulda
called him. Look, we both fucked up, but it was an
accident. God, it was an accident.”
“I told you damn fools this would happen. 'It's
just pot.' I said. 'It ain't worth killin' or dyin' for.' I
wish you would’ve listened to me.”
“We shoulda.” Tom says. “You were right.”
“But it's too late now.” I say, picking up the
spade. I start to dig again.
“Damn it, Phil.” Tom says, throwing down his
cigarette. “You are always thinkin', so think now.
Look at this place: ain't nothin' but land waitin' to be
flooded.”
He is right. When the spring storms start this
place will be an extension of the river. There is no
way Richard's body will stay hidden. Sooner or later,
the ground will erode and expose him. Leaving him
here will result in a game in which we wait for the
 TFF|FALL09 //7

cops to come looking for us.

We should have thought this through. We
should have had a plan. But how often do we need to
get rid of a body?
I throw down the spade and look at Tom.
“Then we go somewhere else. I know a place in
the mountains that might work.”
“Ain't now way I'm drivin' three hours with him
in my car.” He says. “It's too damn risky.”
“But...” I say.
“....What if we get pulled over?" He interrupts.
“Even if we did, ain't no reason for them to look
in the trunk.”
“You really wanna chance it?”
No. The air coming off of the river carries a
sharp chill. I smell the turned earth at my feet. A
branch cracks. Tom clears his throat. The burlap bag
that holds Richard's body is still.
“Shit.” I say.
“Yeah,” Tom says, taking a hit from his flask,
“shit.”
He offers me a drink and I oblige. It is foul and
filled with a low heat. It burns my tongue and causes
my face to involuntarily contort in repulsion. Tom is
a whiskey man.
 “How?” I ask, passing the flask back to him.
“I got a toolbox back in the car. It's got a saw in
it. I think I got a hatchet somewhere in there, too.”
I light a cigarette and he goes to his car. I sit
and watch the branches above moving in the wind.
“Sorry it had to happen this way, Rick.”
Tom comes back carrying his toolbox. He sets
it down next to me and opens it. “I couldn’t find the
hatchet, but I got this.” He says, pulling out a
hacksaw. “I was thinking that spade should work
good too.”
“I can't believe this.” I say, shaking my head.
“Which do you want?” He asks.
“Neither.”
“C'mon. I need your help. Which one?”
“Guess I'll stick with the spade.” I say, standing
up and grabbing it.
“We got some time,” he says. “Sun don't come
up for a few more hours.”
“Yeah.”
“You ready?”
“No.”
He walks over to the burlap bag. He opens it
and Richard's leg falls out. He grabs the bottom of
the bag and pulls up, the rest of Richard falls out. It
 TFF|FALL09 //9

reminds me of birth.
“C'mon.” Tom says.
“After you.”
Halfway //Mel Bosworth

I took the stairs, two at a time. Todd was in the

bathroom, brushing his teeth. I’d noticed his black
eye the day before, and I’d asked once, but he still
hadn’t said anything. The door to my bedroom was
open a crack, fresh sunlight squeezing through onto
the hardwood in the hallway. The light made the dust
bunnies in the corners look more animated than
usual. They shimmered, dancing. Todd said they
were the easiest pets in the world to care for because
they didn’t drink any water and they found their own
food. I considered killing them with the Swiffer, but
then decided against it. Todd was having a rough
time, and I didn’t need to antagonize him. I’d wait
until the black eye cleared up, or until he found the
courage to say something.
Marsha was sitting on my bed, smoking a
cigarette. Her back was to me as she looked out the
window. I was about to tell her to open it, then
noticed it already was. But the air was still, curls of
smoke filling the bars of sunlight. It made me wish I
hadn’t sold my camera.
“You cut your hair,” I said. Marsha didn’t turn,
but nodded. She wore one of my dress shirts, a blue
button-down that had a stubborn mustard stain on
the back of the collar. Todd had pinched it the other
 TFF|FALL09 //11

day while eating a hotdog. I hadn’t noticed until I

went to wash it. I’d worn it to work like that, but
people seldom noticed the back of my collar. My legs
were far more interesting. I sat at the foot of the bed
and took them off. Marsha exhaled. I asked if she
was sad. She said she was just tired.
“Lay down,” I said. “Go back to sleep.”
I pulled the guitar case from beneath the bed
and opened it. I put my legs inside.
“Your hair looks pretty. Did you cut it?”
“Yes,” she said, turning. She tugged lazily at my
empty pant legs. I told her she needed to get out
more, that her face was pale.
“We should go to the park later,” I suggested.
“We’ll bring a blanket and some snacks.”
The bathroom door slammed. Marsha and I
jumped. We listened to Todd thump down the stairs,
then she kissed me.
“Let’s sleep now,” she said.
We wrapped ourselves in blankets, and slept. I
dreamt I was a racecar driver and that Marsha was
the head of my pit crew. She looked good in a
jumpsuit. Todd was in charge of putting out fires. He
stood on the ladder of a truck, waiting. I took the
turns hard and fast, feet stomping the clutch and the
gas. When I woke, I could still smell the hot rubber
and motor oil. I massaged Marsha’s earlobe until her
eyes fluttered open, then I nibbled her forehead. She
pressed her fingernails into my hip. She said she
hated this. Then her lips disappeared. All I could see
was her front teeth. They were yellow.
I told her she needed to get clean again, that
she should even try to quit smoking. She rolled her
eyes, got out of bed. She pulled off the dress shirt
and threw it at me. She paced naked, fingers twisting
and pulling the thick rings that hung on her nipples.
I sat up on my elbows and watched, studied her
sleeve tattoos, looked for raised red dots. She knew
what I was doing, so she stopped and lifted her leg.
“My toes,” she said, crying a little. “Between my
toes.”
As she balanced on one leg, I held her heel in
my palm and pulled her toes apart. I kissed the top
of her foot, then let go.
“Get dressed,” I said. “I’ll pack a lunch. Bring
your poetry.”
Her shoulders sunk, head tilting. I should’ve known
the kick was coming, but she’d been so good lately I
thought I could trust her. There was a wet
 TFF|FALL09 //13

popping sound when her heel hit my nose. The pain

was like a spike between my eyes. I didn’t see her
go, just heard the front door slam. I slouched on the
bed, dirty sock pressed to my nose. It caught all of
the blood. There wasn’t as much as I’d expected. I
put my legs back on and went downstairs. Todd was
sitting on the couch, flicking a Zippo.
“Marsha ran out. She was naked.”
“I know.”
“What happened to you?”
I frowned, told him I’d be right back. Marsha
was on the front lawn. She lay on her back, arms and
legs spread wide. Cars slowed as they drove past,
and an old man stood on the sidewalk. He kept a
little Pug on a short leash. He wore a beige jacket
and a look of concern. His eyes narrowed as I ambled
toward Marsha.
“You shouldn’t drink so much, boy,” he
scowled. I stopped, pulled up a pant leg. The dog
barked. The old man craned his neck forward,
incredulous. Finally, it sunk in. He shook it off like a
bad dream, kept walking.
“You can’t be outside like this,” I said.
“Fuck you.”
 Someone honked, shouted out a window.
“Nice pussy!” Then, “Fucking freaks!”
I scooped up Marsha. She was light, didn’t
resist. Todd came out as I took short steps toward
the house.
“Can’t go in,” he said.
“Open the door, Todd.”
“House is on fire.”
I thought he was lying until I saw smoke
coming from the windows. I asked for his Zippo. He
slipped it into my pocket, eyes low.
“Let’s go next door,” I said.
The three of us walked between the hedgerows
to the neighbor’s. Todd knocked on the door, then
quickly stepped behind me. A woman answered,
said, “Goddamn!” then shut the door. A few
moments later, a man answered.
“Can you please call the fire department?” I
asked. “We have a fire next door.”
The man looked the three of us over, let his
eyes linger on Marsha’s body. He stepped back,
hesitated, then asked us to come inside.
I sat on the couch, Marsha cradled in my lap.
Todd stood, stared out the window.
 TFF|FALL09 //15

“Smoke’s getting worse,” he said.

The woman filled the doorway to the kitchen,
glaring at us, weighing everything. I looked over,
nodded, said, “Thank you.” The man spoke to
someone on the phone. He waved to the woman,
took her hand.
When I asked Todd if he’d considered what
would happen to the dust bunnies, he started to cry.
Marsha’s face was buried in my neck. I felt her smile
break open against my skin.
It Will All Burn //Matt DeBenedictis

When he said burn. When he said fire. When he said

damnation. His eyes lit up and his wrinkles formed a
hidden smile.
It will all burn. He said. His face was full of
smiles crouching under folds of old flesh.
What will? I asked.
You, your friends, this building, all the bunnies,
the white house, your cock. It’s all going to be
gulped down like a delicious snack by the flames. He
said.
That’s not good. I said. I took another bite out
of my corn dog, my 4th street corn dog, which is far
better than the corn dogs you can get on 7 th street.
The batter is the difference.
This man was starting to get on my nerves.
This show of dark theater was past intermission;
everything that made me laugh was now making me
turn sour and thick on the inside. A taste of an old
sickness was breeding scabs in my blood. Veins were
getting congested; I could feel my feet disappear.
God loves us too much to see us suffer. He
said.
Last time I heard that was when I felt the heat
from her lips. We were intertwined, almost one—but
 TFF|FALL09 //17

not. Both of our breaths were meeting, they greeted.

I could smell hers and she could smell mine. Hers
was a lime rose. Mine was whatever it was back then.
She put her hands on my chest. I became lava. She
pushed me back, just a bit, a quarter of couch
cushion length. I became dirt. Then she said those
words about God, love, and suffering and how we
weren’t supposed to kiss until God told our hearts it
was time.
Just read this, boy. He said. And he handed me
a photocopied mini-book. It was poorly cut and no
bigger than my palm. I quit looking him in his eyes.
I finished my battered dog and dropped the
stick onto the concrete. It made no noise.
I began to flip through his book. The pages
were firm and not easy to turn, as if the pages had
been cut from a rock and designed to fight back. The
front page should have been enough information, a
large red flame coiled and crashed all over the cover.
You in hell, it said inside the flame with a simple
font. Ariel Bold.
Most of what the man had been yelling at me
was in the pages of the book but written inside of
other hand carved and colored flames. The waves of
the flames were jagged as if a hand stuck in the
position of cup holding formed the lines. The flames
kissed no symmetry and held no romance with
fluidity.
Your friends.
Written inside flames.
Papyrus.
This building.
Written inside flames.
Lucida Grande.
Bunnies.
Written inside flames.
Ariel Bold again but with two fluffy knife-tipped ears
connected to the word.
The white house.
Written inside flames.
Comic Sans MS.
Your cock.
Written inside flames.
A picture of a penis was indented in the flames,
joining the word, giving it comfort, like a partner in
death.
 TFF|FALL09 //19

You don’t preach to women do you? I asked.

I would never waste my time. He said.
I took a deep breath. As I exhaled my toes
began to wiggle and remind me that they can feel.
Let’s talk graphic design. I said.
Was that a 7 th street corn dog? He asked. His
lips quivered a little revisiting their last taste.
Go fuck yourself. I said. It’s a 4 th Street dog.
Let’s talk branding.
The Frame Maker //Nate Innomi

At one time or another, everyone will see my work. I

bring clarity and vision to all the great artists. I chose
to emphasize Turner’s Snowstorm by using a matte
black to parallel the ship. Van Gogh’s cypress tree
was truly front-and-center behind my dull, dark
wood finish. If you need framing, I am the man to
see. Me, Tray, I make them worth the paper they are
printed on. I bring out their intellect.
“What does this mean to you?” I ask the
customers.
I am the unrecognized intellectual judging the
ignorant.
Ninety percent of the time, they just like it. I
want to throw them out on their asses, but my
manager frowns on assaulting the clientele.
“Should I emphasize the ants or the egg?” I
condescend.
“What does the Metamorphosis of Narcissus
mean to you?” I scoff.
“Which came first, the chicken or the egg?”
I am the corrupt looking away.
A gray-colored mat with a dull black frame will
draw the viewer’s eye to the egg. A cream one with a
glossy black frame will bring out the ants.
 TFF|FALL09 //21

Alone with my tools and stock-piles of wood, I

bring meaning to cheap reproductions. I draw their
attention to the mass-produced elements I want
them to see. I determine their point of view. I create
the vessel that receives art, enhances it.
My own attempts at creating were miserable
failures. Misshapen forms and overly defined lines
plagued my sketches. Abandoned canvases littered
my walls. Dried pastels turned to dust long ago. I
had no artistic ability of my own, but I did have a
keen sense of things—color, contrast, repetition and
composition.
Tattoos seemed to be the next logical step in
my search for self-expression through art. There
isn’t a more fantastic canvas than the human form.
It’s sculpture; three dimensions with shadows and
texture, pits and valleys.
I can still remember my first tattoo. The way
the needle punched and bit my skin was bittersweet
below the drumming buzz of the gun. The smell of
my blood was euphoric as it was ripped from my
veins, replaced with ink to create art. The vibrations
fulminated through to my bones and into my spine.
Inhale.
“It’s an expression of yourself.” Everyone told
me.
Exhale.
I found this saying to be particularly amusing
as I was picking out my piece from the artist’s book.
This wasn’t an overworked printing press. These
were original concepts—true, original art that could
never be reproduced in the same way.
For a week after, I purposely wore shirts with
shorter sleeves so the bottom edge of my ink would
catch everyone’s attention. I wanted them to ask
about it.
Their eyes would wander towards the streaks
peeking out of my sleeve and I’d stop what I was
doing, expecting some engaging question about the
meaning. Notice the stark contrast of thick black
outlines cutting the pinkish hue of my skin. Admire
the use of color to draw the eye through the whole
piece in one fell swoop. Inspect the canvas and
contour the silhouette of the frame.
Instead, all I got was:
“Did it hurt?”
Prick yourself and tell me:
I shouldn’t have expected any more from them,
especially my boss who quickly put an end to the
 TFF|FALL09 //23

brandishing of my self-expression. She said tattoos

were unprofessional and that our customers might
be offended. After weighing my options, it was only
out of enjoyment for my work that I covered myself
up. Staring at my contribution combined with theirs
made my groveling worth the incoherent grunts and
groans.
I started wearing long sleeves to work, but
rolled up the sleeve on my right arm. That’s the side
that gets dangerously close to the spinning blade.
I’m like a battered woman, making excuses.
It’s cold in here.
My pride is covered.
I fell down some stairs.
My covering is my pride.
I ran into a doorknob.
The full sleeve covering my left arm became a
blessing. My skin—my canvas—was covered and free
to be created upon.
I filled my entire arm with tattoos. Next, I
covered my legs and my back. I filled my chest up to
the neck line of my collar. I lived, worked and
breathed to cover the soft hue of my skin with bold
blacks, blues, greens and reds. Thick outlines
contoured abstract shapes. Confined cells were filled
with careful gradients and accent colors, faux light
shining down on figures and shapes.
Before long, I wasn’t a blank canvas.
Often, while at home, I would stand naked in
front of the mirror searching for virgin skin. I was
fixated as if staring at my reflection in a placid lake.
There, looking back at myself, I realized
something. This work I had become wasn’t my
doing. I was someone else’s art; walking, breathing
art. The canvas was my contribution and my legacy.
I took a knife from the kitchen.
Do what comes naturally.
The first incision was across my left collar
bone. Next, I pulled the knife across the right. Using
the tip of the blade, I traced the outlines of work
running down my right side. Next, I traced my left.
As if I was peeling an orange, I used my thumbs to
pull my skin off my chest. Finally, I cut across my
waist and held up the canvas to admire it.
There was no more definition or contour where
the muscle had been. It was flat and stagnant. I used
the canvas of one of my botched attempts at acrylic
painting to mount my chest. I had hoped the
 TFF|FALL09 //25

mounting would bring back the contours my torso

had come to call home, but it was a failure. The cuts
around the edge were too rough and messy. Blood
dripped from behind the skin, staining the canvas.
This solution would not do. My masterpiece, my
sacrifice deserved more.
I turned to my leg and squatted awkwardly to
dislocate my hip and rotated my leg outwards as I
slid the knife through my loin, across the ball of my
joint. This is how you butcher a whole chicken
properly.
The form is in the execution, follow through.
I emptied the blood onto my failed attempt at
oil painting, spreading it evenly with my fingers.
Finally, I pinned my severed leg onto the canvas. It
was perfect. Crimson behind my leg enhanced the
reds in my tattoos and drew special attention to the
meat hanging from my incisions.
Rinse and repeat.
The night went on and I repeated the process
with my other leg and right arm, but there was still a
framed, botched acrylic left. The torso-sized canvas
mocked my inability to remove skin from my back or
separate it from my body. I toyed with the blade,
holding it behind my neck, but quickly decided to
save the integrity of the work rather than myself. My
head and blank arm would have to protrude from the
work. They were not worthy.
I stained the canvas with my blood, leaned
against it and waited.
Blood pooled generously in the carpet and
spotted the walls. I bowed my head before my
creations and watched my reflection in the crimson
glass as it slowly turned to stone.
Cleaning Lady //Gregg Williard

The cleaning lady steps off the bus and thinks, “That
man’s voice sounds the way shoe polish smells.” She
walks to the office building she cleans and thinks, “A
witch is just a female bartender ahead of her time,”
and “Chicken manure spells the beginning of the End
Times,” and, “Ship of Fools is a book by Katherine A.
Porter,” and, “My sister dated Hitler,” and, “Rob Petrie
washed the Petri dishes,” and, “13 Ghosts required
blue and red glasses,” and, “Are you a Mexican or a
Mexican’t?” and, “Are you a muffin mom or a muffin
maun?” and, “Swing your part, nerd!” and, “Of
bicycles there can be no richer sport, than to speak
of spokes clothes-pinned with a royal flush,” and,
“Live life as if the next toilet is the Grail,” and, “The
story of the saints is written in menstrual blood that
sings Karen Carpenter,” and, “The bent prong is like
a curl in every port,” and, “Loss of tattoos is the boss
of taboos,” and, “Of algorithms and albinos,” and,
“The stop here bucks,” and, “The California paint
comes in no-fault flamingo and rose.” She goes into
the office building, down to the basement, opens the
housekeeping closet, rolls out her cart and gets to
work.
Beauty //Kenneth Radu

“We don’t need to ask what the poet means, just

what he feels. Better yet, Adam, what do you feel
when you read these lines?”
“What lines?”
The guys chuckled; one or two guffawed in that
attention-gathering way of hulky jocks. Oh dear,
perhaps her marked preference for athletes and
other beefy males had become too obvious, once
again. The more serious, academic-minded boys
disappeared from her range of vision, although she
encouraged their poetic sensibilities because, after
all, it was a poetry appreciation class. One or two of
the students had literary aspirations which she, of all
people, would be the last to discourage. Not a poet
herself, Mandy understood the creative impulse. She
painted swirling, delicate water colors inspired by
dream imagery, studied Indonesian dances at the
Java Institute in Montreal when not teaching, and
meditated in the lotus position under a print of
vulvar flowers by Georgia O’Keefe.
The less physically gifted among her students
benefited from the presence of jocks who helped to
spread good cheer in her class room. Most of the two
dozen students consisted of males who belonged to
one college sports team or another. Five girls sat in a
 TFF|FALL09 //29

corner, smirking more than smiling she noted, giving

each other pregnant looks. Everyone passed. She
awarded A’s liberally, if they wrote anything like how
she talked. Assigning a mark was easy. She didn’t
correct grammar or structure because Mandy was
certain they benefited more from her comments like
“I enjoyed the soul of your essay.” No one had ever
complained about a high mark.
“Were you paying attention, Adam?”
“Yes, miss. I was following your lines, miss.”
In the library study carrel last week before her
evening class began at seven, not expecting but
delighted to see him, they had found a secluded
spot. She had unwound her batik sarong, purchased
in Jakarta where she had taught English as second
language for a few months before too many clucking
tongues in the market place, and that incident of
betel juice spat in her face, indicated that it was time
to leave. During his penetrating embrace of her
jasmine scented body on the third floor near the
philosophy stacks, Adam had repeated, “Oh, miss,
miss, oh God, you’re so hot, miss.”
In cooler moments Mandy agreed. Unlike many
of her female colleagues she had not lost sexual
allure simply because of the pedagogical imperative.
She had never believed in the traditional hierarchy of
education, or the arbitrary barriers it established
between student and teacher who were more or less
the same age, give or take six or seven years. Well,
that wasn’t as true as it used to be, since time
inexorably pushed her further and further away in
years, but surely not in desires.
That commune in California had taught her the
joys of openness and the role sensuality played in
developing the mind. Logic and rationality had
corroded the Western spirit. And how beautiful the
boys! Those chiseled, muscled bodies, the curvature,
the firm thighs, the long strong legs, the lips and
hips, the flat washboard or smoothly hard stomachs,
the bright and sensitive eyes awash with healthy lust,
the vigor of their fingers; oh, glory be, their
manhood! The classical Greek sculptors had it right,
Michelangelo had it right. They understood the
power of beauty.
Students learned so much better if they were
also loved. Occasionally Mandy experienced a twinge
of guilt when she thought about the girls, but she
had always encouraged them to loosen up, to join in
the camaraderie of the classroom, and not assume
that resentful look of romantic heroines who
 TFF|FALL09 //31

wondered if their boy friend really loved them.

Ah, love, love, love was not simply a subject of
sonnets or pop songs. It was thrilling physicality like
Adam’s provocative chest, his nipples pushing
against the tightness of his black t-shirt. Oh lovely
nipples. She had licked them almost within reaching
distance of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
True, times were a-changing: a lesson
emphatically made clear at the end of her first
teaching year in that Connecticut private school
where the head master suggested that her methods
and their curriculum were irreconcilable. At least the
good man had written a glowing letter of reference
to ease the transition and avoid unpleasantness.
Here, Mandy believed she had a permanent home
when she was hired three years ago. This college had
opened in the heyday of countercultural movements
and prided itself on innovation in pedagogy and
non-traditional teaching techniques.
In the early years of its existence, several
teachers had been hired on the basis of real life
experience in the work world, alternative knowledge
gained in the Third World, and not upon standard
degrees which they did not all possess. Half the
faculty had revolutionized the sixties, or tried to.
Despite grayness and sagginess, many still wore
jeans and not a few of the older teachers sported
pony tails. Yes, she had been born after the fact, but
her parents had smoked, toked, chanted, meditated
and protested all over the United States before finally
emigrating to Canada to escape, they declared, the
conservative shutting down of freedom and the lies
that had betrayed the spirit of America under Nixon.
Her sojourn in the commune was the result of an
impulse to explore heightened consciousness and
liberation shortly after graduating from the
University of British Columbia.
There she absorbed Eastern Thought in a
totally non-structured way, walking through a forest
with one guru or another, men who had transvalued
themselves and emerged, well, transcendent, above
the muck and mire of mere American materialism.
They had elevated coitus to a platonic ideal without
sacrificing the physical. They freed learning from the
tragic tyranny of marks. Three gurus taught her
tantric sex which she tried to convey to her student
lovers, but they tended towards impatience and
quick thrusts, satisfying in their way, but not entirely
spiritual. Oh blessed boys, who had such pleasure in
them to give, who had so much to learn.
 TFF|FALL09 //33

“Jean-Claude, what do you feel about

Whitman’s lines? Please read them aloud first, so we
can all enjoy them again.”
He did not look at her sitting on the desk in
front of the blackboard, one leg crossed, and
sandaled feet visible beneath below the hemline of
her sarong. The muscled structure of his shoulders
apparent beneath his jersey, Jean-Claude shifted his
legs and leaned forward, hunched over his book and
read the lines:

Are you the new person drawn toward me?

To begin with take warning, I am surely far different
from what you suppose;
Do you suppose you will find in me your ideal?
Do you think it so easy to have me become your
lover?

Dear heart, he read English with a heavy

Québécois accent that made her bones tingle with
pleasure, although today his voice had a hurried,
hard quality today. So demanding when he made
love, a bit too insistent. After the fourth time last
month, they had a little tête-à-tête about jealous
possessiveness, and not expecting more than the
ecstasy they shared in the moment. Really, he
mustn’t think of breaking up with Rachel of the
auburn hair and distinctly pouty expression, who sat
in the back row. Surely, Jean-Claude didn’t believe
that Mandy could ever replace his girlfriend, such an
intelligent young lady. He had stormed out of her
apartment. Ah, the sensuous texture of his skin, like
hard silk impervious to the abuse of football.
Conceivably out of pique Rachel had spoken to the
Dean who in turn requested a meeting. She had been
careful to give the girl high marks, and the boys were
all over eighteen, well, except for one, maybe two,
but no one knew about them, she didn’t think.
The meeting with the dean, her department
head, and a union representative was directly after
class. Why had the union become involved? A student
had complained about her marking methods, that
was all she had been told by the chairperson, that,
and “other issues” which required consideration. The
matter could hardly be a question of labour
relations. She taught her classes well, her success
rate above average, students contented, indeed,
happy. To be sure, disaffected students always
existed; even the most talented of teachers suffered
those in a class from time to time. Had her marking
 TFF|FALL09 //35

been too generous?

Perhaps it would be wise not to put Jean-
Claude on the spot, so Mandy turned towards, well, a
female seemed advisable, but not Rachel. Louise had
golden frizzy curls just like hers, although the girl’s
body tended towards the Rubenesque which, great
for a painter, did not appeal to athletes.
“Thank you, Jean-Claude. Let’s get someone
else involved. Louise, what do you feel about the
lines Jean-Claude just read?”
Louise mumbled an answer to which Mandy
paid scant attention because the class had come to
an end. Jean-Claude unfortunately rushed away. She
wanted a word with him. Surrounding her as usual,
Mandy couldn’t dally with the jostling athletes. Adam
slipped her a note which she read as she sauntered
toward the dean’s office on the second floor. Mandy
wondered if she should agree to meet Adam on the
weekend. The dean’s secretary was decidedly cool in
her greeting. That did not surprise Mandy as much
as Jean-Claude sitting hunched over as usual, almost
panting under an official school portrait, but did not
reply to her question. The dean opened the door and
personally motioned for Jean-Claude and Mandy to
enter his office.
A Death in the Life //Jim Parks

It's a living. Maybe that's why they call it the life. I've
often wondered.
It's depression proof, recession-proof, proof
positive that men and women are just right for each
other, but - and this is the hell of the story - it just
isn't bullet proof. As outlaw and raunchy as the life
is, it just isn't something that is done any which old
way. There are rules, ways of doing things, little
courtesies and not a few tender mercies - all in the
eye of the beholder.
So.
I don't think anyone was surprised when the
shootist came looking for the Jack of Diamonds,
Diamond Jack to most who hadn't played the game -
but just plain Jack to we who lived on the row.
The row.
You have seen it all before, whether you knew what
you were looking at - or not. You may have caught a
glimpse, just a glimpse, from the window of a
squealing, grating, hooting, farting train rolling
slowly in or out of town, or through the windshield
of a taxi as you waited out one of those inexplicable
traffic jams that happen most any afternoon in any
big city as you made your way from the airport to the
expense of the hotel accounted for through
 TFF|FALL09 //37

departments and committees and controllers and the

rest of the bureaucratic maze of mazes of mazes of
amazing fortune, the fortunes, the fortunate.
It's what remains of America's hell towns, the
little settlements that ebbed and flowed in the path
of the railroads, the gold rushes and coal fields and
oil strikes and land grabs and wars of attrition and
racism and just plain old sorry-ass hate.
Hate.
That great equalizer, that pulse in the right arm
of the world, that gleam in the eye of the beholder,
that bright, sharp and white hot pain shooting from
nerve ending to nerve ending across endless
synapses facilitated through the unknown chemistry
of the chemistry of the chemistry of the chemistry of
the mind, the nerve, the muscle and grit and bone
and sinew of that which is only experienced, never
fully understood, moment to moment to moment.
The life is all about who has what and how they
got it and how much they will scratch, bite and fight
to keep it—sweat and stink and peep and hide and
bribe to pay, pay, pay that mordida de mordida de
nada de nada de nada de nada.
No one was really surprised when the shootist
showed up with a suitcase and a satchel made of soft
Mexican goat leather that showed the shape of a
take-down shotgun through its supple skin.
Those who know, know; those who don't are in
the dark, the darkness on the margins of the
Rotarian, the libertarian, the booster and bouncer
and the romantics in the reserved nickel seats, the
ones that are reserved for the unknowing.
Diamond Jack probably never knew he was
touching off a war when he fell for the dark-eyed,
petite, sporty little new chick they brought into the
spot joint on one end of the cost differential and loss
leaders of the row and he flipped when he got a load
of her looks and her figure and her soft voice and
the depths of her eyes and the light and lilting
manner of her stride.
Ramona.
No other name, just Ramona.
Diamond Jack, pimp. He broke the most basic
rule of his profession, that cardinal point on the
compass card that keeps the whole enchilada on
course, keeps the platter from spinning madly out of
control and away and gone.
He fell for one of the ho's.
Ramona.
 TFF|FALL09 //39

Now, this girl knew she was just passing

through, knew it better than she knew her street
name.
Ramona.
She knew how she got to that particular part of
the row, that funny little spot joint down at the end
of the row where the pastel glued sawdust panels
and aluminum window frames and phony, phony,
phony little colored lamps and iron balconies and the
nasty-smelling little swimming pool all conspired to
put the finishing touch on any john's thrill on the hot
sheets.
Diamond Jack, pimp.
He just couldn't accept the fact that this
seemingly docile taste from nowhere could turn
down - spurn - his advances.
He conspired in various ways to keep her from
hopping the bus with the rest of the crowd and
easing on to the next spot on the tour of the tank
towns where those chicks work between stops in
Nevada and Idaho and South Carolina and all the
other silly places where they sell romance by the
minute and it's okay, just fine, just another matter
for the pussy posse to police, prod, massage and
prune to the local tastes of the local
—ah—community.
Yes.
So.
Diamond Jack, pimp.
Wiry little mean little evil little fool.
Diamond Jack, pimp.
He got a little bit evil and he started tying her
up and standing her up tied between two iron pipes
in an out of the way loft over an old warehouse
where they put on freak shows in that part of the
row, made her stand there wide-eyed while he threw
darts at her eyes and she dodged and screamed,
whimpered, wet her pants, struggled against the
ropes.
She had bit his chin while he hurt her one
afternoon - a total no no on her part, a total no no
on his part, to jack around with the help, try to hurt
her, try to - oh, you know.
She paid with the loss of sight in one of her
eyes, some deep and ugly scars on her forehead and
a lifetime of completely freaked out ways of thinking
and looking at her fellow humans.
Ramona.
Life for her was far from over, but life as she
 TFF|FALL09 //41

had known it was over for her—forever.

Sociopath that Diamond Jack was, he never
stopped to think of the consequences of all this.
After all, there are ways to do things and the
kind of people who organize the business of
shipping ho's from one spot joint to the other, taking
and raking their dough off the top and up front, they
don't tolerate that kind of behavior. Somehow, his
sociopathic mind never even registered the fact of
the matter.
So, when the shootist arrived driving a plain
Jane Chevrolet in shade of dirty white with a very big
engine and smiling that oily, charming smile some
men smile from behind their shades, he didn't give it
much of a thought. Diamond Jack didn't have enough
sense to go crazy or he would have gone crazy long,
long before.
The truth is that Diamond Jack was as unwitting
as a rat suddenly dropped into the cage of some
lethal pet snake while the freaks in some 24-hour
dope house sit and watch with sick fascination to see
how the snake takes him, takes him in, then
swallows him whole.
Yeah.
The shootist caught him sitting down to a
poker game in a crib on an alley way, way downtown.
He kicked the door in with a combat engineer's lace-
up steel-toed boot and ushered Ramona across the
threshold,
the old Model 97 .12 gauge Winchester "Trench
Sweeper" leveled, his finger on the trigger of that
thumb buster.
He covered that crowd of pimps and other folks
like the daily news; he'd done it all before.
He nodded at Ramona. She nodded her head
back at him and squeezed a round off with the
government model .45 she held in her two tiny
hands, sighting down the slab-sided barrel with that
one eye. The bullet caught Diamond Jack with his
mouth open - an expression of total surprise in a
perfect circle of flesh and teeth and jawbone -
slammed into his shoulder and flipped him ass over
tea kettle, backward, away from the table. The
shootist squeezed the trigger and started pumping
the old gun for all it was worth, the .12 bore
belching fire and black powder smoke and double
ought charges and wadding with each stroke. When
he stopped to reload, no one was there to register
with ringing ears the sudden fact of the sudden
quiet.
 TFF|FALL09 //43

He drew the other government model from a

cross draw holster threaded through a two-inch gun
belt on the waistband of the cheap suit he was
wearing while he cradled the trench sweeper in the
crook of his left arm and slowly, with not a small
amount of ceremony, circled the table, putting the
coup de grace in each man's forehead.
Then he winked at Ramona and covered her as
she backed out of the room, following her down the
stairway to the Chevy and a quick, quick ride out of
town to the darkness where it creeps in from the
prairie, driving circles and squares and making a
false start down one way and then another before he
doubled back and checked out the flashing lights
and sirens from a completely neutral and brand new
direction.
He put the car in a slow turning high road gear
that eats the miles and cruised at a legal speed to an
airport in a town a hundred miles distant, dropped
Ramona at the departures lounge, and doubled back
again, driving back through the town at a slow
speed, just smiling and living the life behind his
shades in the new and sudden dawn.
He had done it all before. Old timers like the
shootist know that it's the getaway that counts.
Anyone can do the rest; not everyone can make that
getaway.
So.
A Field Guide for Nocturnal Vehicular
Deer Hunting //Roxane Gay

If you’re driving alone in the dead of winter, at 3 AM ,

along that lonely stretch of US 141 in Michigan’s
Upper Peninsula 100 miles out from Houghton, at
that point where the landscape is so desolate that
you begin to imagine that some great catastrophe
has wiped out all of mankind, and then you hit a
deer, do the following:
i. Pull over immediately. If you’ve stopped with
only one axle over the deer’s corpse, slam your
foot on the gas. It’s like pulling a tooth. Best to
get it over with quickly.
ii. Release your grip on the steering wheel. Take a
deep breath. Try to drive away. There is no shame
in plausible deniability.
iii. If your car is unable to drive in a straight line,
pull over again.
iv. Turn on your emergency lights on the remote
chance that another car will a. drive by and b. not
carry a serial killer and c. stop to offer assistance.
v. Try to call AAA. When you are unable to find a
signal, remember where you are. Shake your fists
at the sky.
vi. Carefully approach the deer. If the deer has
antlers, count the points and score the buck. Try
to recall the significance of these points as
relayed by your boyfriend, ad nauseam.
vii. Get back in the car to warm up. Take stock of
your situation, making note of potential survival
supplies. [Remember: in a crisis, even the most
innocuous items can be a tool in your salvation.]
viii. Get out of the car and take a picture of the
deer (a 12 point buck according to your scoring)
so your boyfriend will be jealous.
ix. Try your cell phone again. Point your phone
toward the moon at different angles and in
different directions. Play a quick game of
Solitaire.
x. Worry about people who will be driving down
the highway in a few hours if the world has not
come to an end. Prepare to move the deer to the
shoulder first by donning gloves in case the
animal is carrying rabies.
xi. Grab the deer by the antlers, much like one
might grab a bull by the horns. [Remember: Be
sure to bend your knees as you pull. Back safety
is always important.]
xii. Once the deer is safely on the shoulder,
choose one of the following movies to serve as
inspiration: a. Red Dawn or b. The Empire Strikes
Back.
 TFF|FALL09 //47

a. Search your car for a sharp tool and some

means of conveying liquid, stab the deer in
the neck as close to the carotid artery as you
can. If you aim correctly, and blood begins
to flow, collect said blood in your means of
conveyance. Drink freely, allowing some to
stain your chin. Pound your chest. As Patrick
Swayze says, “You have to do it. It’s the
spirit of the deer.” Now you are a true
hunter.
b. Search your car for a sharp tool and take
a deep breath. This next part will be
difficult. When ready, slice deer open along
underside. Remove entrails. Crawl inside
warm space to survive the night just like
Han Solo saved Luke by gutting a Ton-Ton
on the frozen planet Hoth whose environs is
similar.
xiii. When you can no longer feel your
extremities, say a quick prayer for the deer.
Return to your car. If you catch a glimpse of your
bloodied self in the window, do not be alarmed.
[Remember: In survival situations, we often have
to make difficult choices.]
xiv. When you begin to experience hunger pangs,
carefully cut away some meat from the deer’s
corpse. Lay the pieces across the hood of your
car. When the sun rises, they will begin to dry and
you will have venison jerky for later.
xv. Write a brief history of the world in case, as
you strongly suspect, some great catastrophe has
indeed wiped out all of mankind so that whatever
survives will find your record of humanity. Things
you may want to discuss in your history include
Madonna’s 1992 coffee table book entitled Sex,
the mating habits of contemporary adults, fast
food, and reality television.
xvi. When, hours later, a car finally drives by,
stand well inside the shoulder and try to flag
them down. If they speed away, perhaps
frightened by your blood-stained face and hands,
pack your venison jerky, clean yourself with some
nearby snow, and begin walking North.
Gossamer //Ben Spivey

It took half an hour to drive to the place. I cursed the

entire way. Swerving like a maniac over lanes, around
cars; I was a real danger, a complete fool. Stretched
my mouth wide, completely obtuse, full, vertical.
That's all I could remember from the drive, no stop
signs or changing of lights.
I was later standing just off stage, beading
sweat on my bushy brow. Holding a copy of my
book, titled, You Can, and You Can Too, Now. I hated
the title, but my publisher insisted it was clever.
About to give what was my eighty-ninth motivational
speech, I still felt nervous before walking to the
microphone.
“Give a welcoming applause to our very special
guest. Malcolm Blackburn,” said a man with a big
grin, with greasy hands, with a bald spot in the
center of his head.
I walked paced and rhythmic from behind the
curtain. From stage right wing, moving toward the
center, waving to the gathering of students,
professors, walk-ins, regulars, anyone, sporadically
seated in the auditorium, in chairs with fuzzy backs.
These things never gathered a full house,
maybe once or twice, three times.
When I looked at the audience, my eyes swirled
through the heated-lens of the spotlight’s rays,
twinkling in the tip-top of my eyes; the spotlight
which followed my steps to the podium casting my
shadow in a crescent of light, and then in an
adjacent angular sphere to my back, hidden to the
attendees.
“Good evening, thank you for having me, and
thank you for attending,” I said paced and rhythmic.
My smile was wide. My hands were energetic; I thrust
my book forward as if I was saving souls, rehearsed.
They clapped equally rhythmic and rehearsed.
I told them how to save money, how to leave
their deadbeat jobs, how to gain promotion, how to
stand out with out being stood on, and my favorite,
how to think positive therefore be positive. I cleared
my throat.
The spotlight was bright; I eventually did
something that I would not normally do. I opened up
to the audience like I was on one of those television
talk shows. At first my mouth paused open, my brain
rummaging thoughts, weighing on scales. Then, I
pissed truth, flipping it off my tongue, I told them
my life was not going in the direction I desired, in so
many words.
I paused. Shook my head, visibly unaffected,
 TFF|FALL09 //51

as a proper speaker should appear. Selling myself to

the crowd. With a big smile I said, “Like some of you
in crowd, some of you know what I mean.” Next I
shouted, “My wife left me this morning, cold as ice.
She left only a few hours ago, and I’m supposed to
tell you people that your life will be better when you
take my advice. But really, who believes this
bullshit?”
The place was dead silent.
I broke the silence and said sarcastic: “I know, I
can't believe it either.”
Then to myself whispered, ‘I probably deserved
it.’
I had loosened my grip and the microphone
was sliding out of my hand slowly, pulling the sound
with it.
Some people laughed.
“I think I will be going away from a while,” I said
at last. The microphone picking up my voice small
before it made a dull thud when it crashed to the
ground, like so many things unexpected.
I walked off stage. They did not clap, maybe
one or two people did.
The way that I see you and the way that these
people see you is not the same as you see yourself.
You’re much less pathetic to them, gawked the
sparrow; it landed on my shoulder, I brushed it off,
“Please leave me alone,” I said honestly, talking
toward my shoulder.
I hurriedly signed a few books on my way out
of the building. By hurriedly I mean really fucking
fast, like a scribble, or something like a scribble,
nothing legible, harsh. I don’t even know why anyone
wanted my book signed anyways, after that mess.
Out the door I entered, I made a dash for the
parking lot.
A young woman was leaning against my truck,
her legs were long, and her hair was pulled over one
shoulder, southern.
“Can I help you?” I grumbled, just wanting to
get away.
Her lips pouted, “I was listening to you in
there.” She took a step closer to me, putting her left
foot in front of her right. Briefly the air smelt like the
sea, as if a long drawn gush of wind traveled a
hundred miles from the coast to my nostrils.
“You're an obvious wreck,” she said. “At least,”
she purred, “you seem very stressed.” She took
another step closer, her right foot in front of her left,
 TFF|FALL09 //53

“Are you stressed?”

A breeze, sea salt air flowed her hair from her
shoulder, pushing it, flying it in the invisible current.
“I want to help you,” she continued, “I want to
help you relax. Like in your book. The chapter about
helping other people.”
I could see her bra strap diagonal on her
shoulder, black, lace. She was half my age, I was
sure.
She moved her fingers, drawing a circle on the
hood of my truck.
“Are you going to let me help you?” she asked
again, voice almost static, almost like the clicking
sound of a turning dial.
I opened the passenger door. She got in, legs
first. “Will you sign your book for me?” she asked. I
noticed her eyes, blue. “You left so quick I couldn't
catch you, but I saw you drive up. Thought I’d wait
for you here.”
I signed it. I wrote x.
She touched my crotch, giggling, culled teeth.
I tried not to think about my wife, my ex,
recent, fresh, dark-cloud over head, the memory was
heavy: but the girl, young woman, she looked so
much like her. Her smile, for the moment, stitched
me. She unzipped my pants and pulled my penis
through. My organ filled rapidly, nervously,
anxiously.
She pulled it up and down.
“I don't usually do things like this,” she said,
licking lips. “Honest, just watching you in there was
pitiful,” her voice was a higher pitch, almost
annoying, “I think you need this, like that chapter in
your book, something to take your mind off of your
troubles. And maybe, just don’t tell anyone, and just
don’t touch me. I mean, I’d feel better about it if you
didn’t.”
After that she kept talking but the things she
said were only registering in my brain as segments,
fragments, and concepts. Some of the words I heard
fully; some of the words I only heard as first or last
syllables. Some of the words sounded otherworldly.
Some of the words made sentences. Some of the
words sounded like changing radio stations.
Then I only noticed her mouth moving. Then I
noticed no sound.
Her mouth became still, solid-clasped-shut,
with words pouring out. None of them stayed with
me, all of them fleeting, everything fleeting, and
 TFF|FALL09 //55

meaningless: except for my bad seed, except her

opinion of my failure.
“Are you going to come?” I heard clear as glass.
“Yes,” I said. I nodded. Feeling a little
embarrassed, a little out of place.
She, though, bless her, hair draping, long, over
her hand, touching the tip of my penis occasionally
as she positioned her head, reminded me in many
ways of the love I lost only hours ago, what beauty,
what simple beauty.
Maybe I’d lost that love years or months ago.
She reached with her free hand, her left hand,
into her purse. She was squeezing my penis with her
right hand, preventing my gush; with her left, from
her purse she produced some tissues, convenient. I
let go my load, flow, splash like memories, a
receding wave (waves are moving memory: natures,
collective conscious of the human mind), go; she
caught it in the tissues.
We looked into each other’s eyes, taking away
in that moment a shared of understanding, a
genuine connection of us, of two people as human
beings.
“Thanks,” I said, unsure of what to do next.
 I extended my hand to hold hers.
She met my hand and I began to suck her
fingers.
“No touching,” she said blushing, pulling back
her hand. “Will you take care of this?” She asked,
holding the balled up tissues.
I nodded.
“You don’t talk much do you?”
Smiling, “I guess not. Not always,” I said
running my fingers through my hair, sweaty, “thanks
again.”
“You already said that.”
She pulled the handle on the door to open.
“I better get to class,” she said, “it was nice to
meet you.”
“Will I see you again? Can I see you again?”
She shrugged. She exited the truck and ran off.
I watched her become smaller and smaller, farther,
and father away; eventually she went into a building;
as quickly as she appeared she was gone again.
Moaning //Mark Richardson

Orgasmic moans float through my open window and

I get horny. It’s just before dusk in late September:
hot and swampy, the season’s last hurray before the
crispness of Thanksgiving and inevitable dread and
gloom of another Chicago winter.
I just returned to my apartment, showered,
pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, ate a sandwich, and
now I’m ready to relax after three sweat-dripping
sets on the tennis courts. The old brown stone
building where I live has no air conditioning. Mine’s a
corner unit and I’d opened the two windows on
adjacent walls across from the front door, hoping to
generate a cross-breeze. No luck. The air is heavy
and I’m already starting to sweat a little. It still
smells like summer, cut grass and burning charcoal.
It’s through the window on the back wall, above the
sofa—my apartment is high enough up that if I
remove the screen, lean my head out that window
and look east I can see white-sailed schooners cut
across the lake. It’s through that window that I hear
the moaning.
I sit on the sofa and tilt my head back for a better
listen. She finishes off with some guttural moans and
then one loud: AAAHHH! Sexy as hell. She’s Asian. At
least that’s how she sounds. I had an
Asian once, a few years back, a real little
spinner—tight, round ass, but not much up top.
Quiet as hell, though. Mousy, as you might expect a
little Asian spinner would be.
Now Roxy, now that’s a different story. She was
a frisky little minx—a real screamer. She moved here
from California after her divorce. Bitter, I guess,
towards men, at least she sure treated me like shit,
always belittling me or nagging too much. My
therapist would ask why I wouldn’t just end it. Sex.
She had me locked down in a vaginal cuff. The things
she said, things she’d let me do. And ten years
younger with those big, fake tits. The good fakes,
not like some I’ve seen. After hearing me bitch about
my predicament for months—I let it go on for a good
six months longer then I should have—my therapist
said she needed to know the details of what, exactly,
was going on. When I told her she, my therapist,
leaned way back in her leather chair, and with a little
frown said, “It’s not every man who gets to sleep
with a porn star.”
Now that the moaning has stopped I walk to
the kitchen and make a martini. Gin. The key to a
good martini is to marinate olives in vermouth. I
have a whole jar full. I add two olives and a pickled
 TFF|FALL09 //59

onion—I let ‘em soak in the glass as I take a healthy

swig and go back to the sofa. I keep a bag of weed in
the coffee table, along with some rolling papers,
which I take out and use to roll a doob’. A nice fatty.
I kick my legs up on the coffee table and alternate
between hitting the joint and finishing the drink.
Then I eat the olives and onion.
It’s just starting to get dark. We’ll get crickets
later, but you can already see lightning bugs.
Definitely more as it gets darker. I live in a good
neighborhood, on the North Side, but even here you
can hear kids on the street yelling and gunning their
cars. It’s still hot as hell.
I turn on the TV and flip through the channels
with the remote. I have a couple of porn channels,
but I can’t deal with that now. Local weatherman:
“The heat wave continues.” Yeah, no shit. ESPN. HBO.
I land on the Andy Griffith Show. It’s one of the old
ones, black and white. From what I can piece
together a man, Roger Hanover, has come to
Mayberry. He’s got an eye for Aunt Bee. Aunt Bee is
enormous on my flat panel TV; she always wears that
same dull dress. It seems Bee and Hanover dated 20
years ago, and now Hanover is trying to rekindle the
flame. Andy, of course, disapproves. Little Ron
Howard is not so happy about it either. So what’s so
wrong with Aunt Bee getting some action for a
change? It’s not like every dog in town is sniffing
after that bone. But no, Andy needs Aunt Bee to cook
and clean for him. Hanover, however, is annoying. He
does this thing, he’ll stick his hand out, inviting Aunt
Bee to shake, and just as she reaches out Hanover
pulls his hand back and says, “Hang it on the wall,
Aunt Bee.” After two times I catch on and decide to
take a hit every time he says it.
Then the moaning starts again. There are so
many apartment units in my building and in the
identical one across the courtyard that it’s hard to
tell where the moaning is coming from. Everyone’s
window is open, most with fans propped-up and
buzzing away. Someone’s giving it to this Asian
moaner hard because she’s practically screaming.
The whole block must hear. The guy who’s working
her has a lot of energy let me tell you.
I’m starting to go out of my mind. Fuck, fuck,
fuck! I grab my cell phone. I met a woman on the
plane a while back. I fly so much I got bumped up to
business class. You really see a different type of
woman up there. There was this one
chick—unbelievably hot, maybe early 20’s, and really
 TFF|FALL09 //61

put together. Nails, hair, make-up, the kind you’re

sure has the full Brazilian wax. I couldn’t stop
staring. And she’s with this old dude—balding, a gut,
he must have been 52 if he’s lucky. And it wasn’t
just a fling because she’s got a huge ring on her
finger. You just know she processed the situation
and decided to choose 30 years of good
living—$1,000-a-night hotels, easy.
But I sat next to another woman, on the plane.
She wasn’t in the same class as Ms. Trophy Wife, but
not bad either. Mexican. A little hot tamale. Big rack.
She lives in Dallas, so I’ve been working her slowly.
Maybe she’ll fly up here? She’s into email sex,
though. She’s the one who really got the ball
rolling—women today are so forward. They want it
more than we do, no doubt about it. I shoot her a
quick text message: Hey sexy, wanna play?
I lean over, resting one arm on the table, and
then lower my head. With my free hand I roll the
semi-cold martini glass up and down the back of my
neck. There’s a sweaty-patch in the middle of my
back, and when I sit-up some of the perspiration
from the glass works its way down and mixes with
the sweat. A few more muffled moans from the Asian
chick and then she goes quiet. Maybe she’s finally
worn-out? Christ. I check the cell. No reply from the
Mexican, so I speed-dial Jill.
“Hey, what are you up to?” Jill says on the other
end.
“Sweating my ass off.”
“What a lovely image.”
“I’ve always had a way with words. What’s going
on with you?”
“Just hanging in the ‘burbs. There’s a street fair
in Evanston.”
I can see it: parents with their whiny, running
kids, and loud, drunken college punks in khaki
shorts and Izods. To be honest, I really don’t care
what Jill is up to. But I play along. Jill is almost always
ready to go. I don’t consider her serious dating
material, but she gets the job done. On our first
date, after a few cocktails, she was the one who
recommended we go back to my place. Now I just
gotta work her a little, put in some time.
I close the deal. Jill is going to break away from
her friends. She should be here in thirty. I head back
to the kitchen where I mix another martini. Fuck the
olives, too much time. I drink it down fast and then
send Jill a text: Bring the wig.
 TFF|FALL09 //63

A few minutes later she calls.

“You want the wig again?”
“Definitely.”
“Well I don’t have it with me.”
“Go get it then. It shouldn’t take too long.”
“It will take a long time. I’d have to drive all the
way back home. Can’t we go without?”
“No. Come on. It is so good with the wig.” I
bought her this black, close-cropped wig a month or
two ago. It makes her look German, or maybe
Russian.
“It’s just me tonight, sweetheart. Take it or
leave it.”
“What the fuck? Come on. Is that the right
attitude?”
“You know what: forget it. You’re one messed
up dude—you know that? I’m not running a call
service. God, what am I doing?” And she’s gone.
I send a couple of text messages, dial her
number, but it all lands on deaf ears. Fuck it. Who
needs this shit, anyway? I fire-up what’s left of the
joint, take a couple of pulls. The TV is still blaring
away. I make my way back to the kitchen for another
martini. I drink and my head starts to spin. On the
way back to the sofa I stumble a little and bang my
knee against the coffee table. I fall back onto the
sofa and grab my knee with both hands; flashes of
light blink around my head like indoor lightning
bugs. When the throbbing starts to dull I slowly
stretch out.
I must have passed out because after midnight
the TV jolts me awake. And guess what’s on? It’s the
same episode of Andy Griffith! I haven’t watched this
stupid show in forever, and now the same episode
twice. This type of thing happens to me all the time,
though. I won’t have listened to a CD in years, I’ll
spin it at home, and then go out to my car and it will
be on the radio. Roxy—sex-kitten-new-age-
California-bitch—she’d say I’m sending out a
message and the universe is responding.
It turns out Andy was right to question
Hanover’s intentions. Hanover threatens to wed Aunt
Bee unless he’s paid off $400. But Andy blows the lid
off the caper, and shuttles Hanover out of town. The
show ends with Andy reaching out to shake Bee’s
hand, but he pulls back at the last moment and says,
“Hang it on the wall, Aunt Bee.” Laughs all around.
It’s black and quiet outside and a cool breeze is
now flows between the open windows. I spread the
 TFF|FALL09 //65

throw-blanket that I keep over one of the sofa’s

armrests across my body. There’s just a little roach
left, which I light up, inhale deeply, and hold the
smoke in my lungs. After a few beats I blow it out my
nose.
As a buzz starts to kick in I think about Andy
and Bee. If I were going to write an episode of Andy
Griffith I’d sex it up a little. Instead of a character
like Hanover, someone a little darker would roll into
Mayberry, a Bonnie and Clyde type. That’s whom Bee
would fall for, and she’d fall hard. Andy would try to
keep Bee in Mayberry, but he wouldn’t be able to
strong-arm this guy. The dark stranger would have a
motorcycle or convertible. Bee would drop everything
and join him on the road. They’d work their way all
across North Carolina, Bee caught in a spell, her hair
let loose and a big smile cut across her plump face.
Now that’s the kind of show I think people could
really sink their teeth into.
Door //Michael J. Martin

I tried to flush my sister down the toilet. When I was

nine and she was four. Who knows why. I just did it.
But she was too big. Her arm fit to the elbow in the
eye of the bowl and she grunt-whined, pulled
against my precision-guided aiming. If I couldn’t
flush her, she should’ve at least got stuck. Her
awkward slaps with her opposite hand poked me in
the nostril and I let her go. She ran up the short hall
holding her soaked arm like it had just been ripped
from a tightly wrapped suture, and the wound
needed to be as far from her body as possible to
heal, which wasn’t that far from some sort of truth.
Except you can’t take out that middle-place between
your gut and those coils below your heart or higher
brain area, wherever pain is I guess. You can’t
remove that and air it out. Not really.
She ran outside crying Mommy! Mom! Mom! to
the cicadas and skunk-babies owning the night. The
screen-door quietly eased back. Punched holes in
the mesh framing her shoulder up, slight sigh of
wind wiggling the tips of the ragged mesh-edge like
it wanted to tickle her neckline.
Mom wouldn’t be home for hours. She’d run all
the way to where mom tells us she works if she knew
how to get there. At some point I’ll have to go find
 TFF|FALL09 //67

her, holding a flashlight, grinning, figuring if I had

Sounder this’d go a whole lot nicer. Mom works
three jobs. Two real, one imaginary. I could think
about those movies I found in that one man’s
briefcase and wonder if that’s what my mom did. I’ve
never seen a stripclub, even when I was 21 and in
Toronto with friends cheering me on. Someone said
happy endings happen in the rear. When I got older I
thought for years whether that was a double
entendre.
My sister’s shouts and foot-stomps began
fading into the music of the black country night-
heat. The heat had presence. Another layer behind
the light-absence... string theory for the rural I
guess. I was already biting the dry skin off my lips as
I routine’d myself down the road, following. I called
out to her and felt stupid and certain she shouldn’t
have any doubts about trusting me. Calling at her, I
made up some lie about ice-cream, high as the
ceiling fan, no topples. I promised her all the candy I
had stashed and tried not remembering when I
talked her into eating a bunch of Flintstones vitamins
with me. Around our 20th Barney things didn’t seem
right and we had to go get our stomachs pumped.
 My sandals kept slipping and pebbles wedged
under my sole-arches. I couldn’t hear her hurried
stomp-steps anymore. She usually got tired of
yelling, throat yelled out, in a zombie dragrace of
limbs, going forward but wanting to die, her feet
slapping the road echoing. Nothing. I worried. A
distant lamp-light dopplegangered my own and I
clicked mine off then on to see if anyone was sitting
on the porch. The lamp-light twin’d and I jogged.
He was sitting on the second tier of porchsteps
hidden by the railing, blue-crystal balls staring
through wrinkly eye-flaps, face obscured and jail
barred by the gap-slats. I knew even then he hadn’t
smiled in a while. He stayed seated while we
discussed something other than my sister at first. I
can barely remember now. But I know it wasn’t the
filterless cigarette he ashed into the wind. With his
smoking hand he pointed further into the dark and
birthed a set of stadium-bright white teeth behind
corner crusted sun-spotted lips. I wouldn’t call it a
smile. More a byproduct of knowing things I did not.
Something intangible. Something beyond my frantic
sister pushed me further away from this man. Maybe
the way he expertly tapped his cigarette. Squinted
when unnecessary. His perfect teeth. I don’t know. I
 TFF|FALL09 //69

wanted to throw a rock at him. The currents of being

unnerved drifted me onto the road. And he became
the darkness again. I twinkled my flashlight as I
broke and shouted Lacey I’m sorry! Come’on back!
for so long, until I was forcing myself to hear her
responses in the tangles of my wants.
I remember relief when I found her sandal. I
remember that clearly. I remember thinking how
stupid a sister is. Especially that one. So everything I
didn’t want in a sibling. So smart and cute and good
souled. I laughed. Then I saw the other thing. And
whimpered. Up til that time I hadn’t realized the
disparity of a whimper. Dogs whimper; it’s sad. To
us at least. Why? Your first whimper, first real
whimper, thinking back on it in correlation to all the
others experienced from the dossier of the living
world, the others still don’t seem pained and
wanting. Only yours.
I kneeled toward the blue underwear slightly
dust covered and unthreaded. My stomach cramped.
There are some things brothers and sisters don’t
want to know about one another though proximity
and incidental circumstance teaches. I know she
liked to plant broccoli in potted soil and slide it
beneath her bed to make it grow into a tree. Knew
sometimes she could predict a coin-flip thirty times
in a row. And we knew one anothers favorite
underwear. I saw her name printed in Sharpee on the
elastic border boxed by smiley faces. Where did
everything go? I dropped the flashlight and absent-
mindedly watched the egg-plant shaped lightcone
illuminate a different angle of what I didn’t want to
see. I dropped the flashlight and my brain returned. I
whimpered again and went frantic like someone was
trying to flush me down the toilet.
The man on the porch. His pearly smile. His
young eyes spilling cold over me. Spilling a sickly
fear into the walnut of my cerebellum. I held the
flashlight backward, the beam giving me a tightly
wound tail of excited photons, and walked to where
he had been sitting. To where a newly dropped
cigarette burned tobacco/paper toward company ink.
I knocked on the door. I banged on the door. When
my mom came home and asked where Lacey was, I
was still banging on that door. For years I banged on
that door. I gripped the knob to the left of the bone-
pellets on my breastplate and opened the door of my
chest to watch myself remove the half dozen potted
broccolis from under her mattress. To watch the
damage of my body evolve. It was always that door.
 TFF|FALL09 //71

Filling out the MP report, eating breakfast in a

Chicago hotel room for an abduction news special;
that door. Getting used to needles by donating
blood; drinking stupor’d, licking lime residue off the
rim-ridges, later my stomach being pumped. Door.
Witnessing the stressed features of my mother’s self
finally going soft, surrounded by machines–banging
on that door. Knuckles blood-skinned. Even now,
waiting for the heroin to cook down, [a moment ago
rummaging through the ribcage of some guys
cabinets], squinting at a cartoon’d vitamin bottle, I
can see it. Everywhere.
TFF|FALL09 //73
Ground //David Erlewine

My wife’s uncle apparently used to make her sit on

his face until he passed out. I found this out shortly
after his funeral, right after we got married. She and I
were driving on the Jersey Turnpike, and she told me
all about the fun they used to have. I was tired, and
we were stuck in traffic, so I guess I wasn’t thinking
all that clearly when I said it could have been worse.
As I often do, I mistook her innocent look as an
excuse to explain further. I said the guy could have
made her blow him, raped her, maybe even
sodomized her.
Later that night, as I was flossing, she snuck up
and stuck her head in my boxers, licking my
unshowered asshole. I jumped, of course, and tried
to shake her off. Her nails digging into my thighs,
she kept licking and hissing all sorts of filthy things
about how dirty I was and how awful I smelled. She
got up and pushed me into the shower, screaming,
“Clean yourself now!” As I did, she watched, before
dragging me to the tiled floor, my hairy, clean ass
atop her face.
The next morning, she acted as if nothing had
happened. At breakfast, I was surprised to see she
hadn’t set out a cup for my coffee. Later that day, I
bought her roses with a note saying, “I’m sorry for
 TFF|FALL09 //75

being such a, well, asshole.” That did the trick and

she forgave me for awhile.
All these years later, the kids in college,
sometimes she’ll come home from work after a shitty
day. On such nights, often I find myself sniffing her
ass. Sometimes she’ll slap me away, but other times
she’ll grind me into the floor, speaking in a voice I
hardly recognize, until I can’t hear anything and go
to sleep.
Like No One's Watching //Ethel Rohan

The day I birthed our son, my husband’s and my first

and only child, my libido died. Eight years on, my
husband’s sexual frustration is a thousand times
bigger than our wiry, loping, green-eyed boy.
“I have needs,” he urges.
In recent months, he’s added: “I couldn’t be
blamed for straying.”
It’s not that we don’t make love. We average
twice a month, give or take. It’s that I don’t ever
want to make love.
“A waste,” he says whenever he sees me naked,
or dressed-up. “People would never imagine.”
At least I believed I didn’t care if I never made
love again until I dreamt the other night about
having panting, thrashing, sticky, wet sex with the
dad of one of our son’s classmates.
The next morning, in the schoolyard, I saw the
dad I’d dreamed about: tall, lean, and black-haired,
regular and rugged, but striking. His large eyes and
lips. I hurried past, pretending not to notice him.
Minutes later, as I drove home, I fantasized
about him, imagining my meeting him at a party and
admitting: “I dreamt about you.”
Somehow, at this party, there’s no one else
 TFF|FALL09 //77

around. He touches his thumb to my right

cheekbone, and slides the digit down to the pulse at
the side of my neck. I moan, too loud. He dips his
head, touching his thick, cool lips to mine. We kiss
hard. He smells of oranges, of happy ever after.
Tastes of danger. We knit tongues: the deep, sweet,
drowning lock of the damned.
I pulled my car over to the curb, my insides
contracting, on the verge of another birth, and
death.
A Death of Something //Margaret Christi

She wore a black corset, her hips shoving into the

space between us with tea cup dips. He wore the
black suit he’d been married in, while I wore boots of
black candlestick butter that stuck to the seat.
From atop a tower we watched her, her hips
still cutting, her ankles tied. Her words had tossed us
where we watched her, her backside gathering
bruises. Her rich olive skin burning from the outside
in, fist sized blotches spreading to her thighs.
I turned and by chance caught the face of a
man long gone from my past. My hair grazed his
face as I leaned close and asked him his name. I felt
my lips numb as I told him mine.
He had been my mother’s lover when I was
young and as his hands which had hugged me
slipped over his unclothed friend to bring her
pleasure, I turned my head.
The Last Date //Teresa Houle

“I’m going to eat your face with my pussy,” she said,

hovering above his gawking face, open legs exposed.
She lowered herself onto him and savored his
face. She tasted his tongue and she liked it.
Becoming ravenous for him she ate and slurped and
consumed until his face was a wet, chewed mess.
“You should wash up,” she said, pussy full of
him and needing rest.
No answer.
Not again. My super is going to get suspicious.
The Wall (on Which She Hangs)
//Will Spires

Deep in the Gallery of Women, down through the

Blue and Purple Rooms, there was the White Room,
and that is where Jenny was. Like the other girls, she
was nude, her body placed upright on the wall, black
straps around her wrists and ankles, invisible plastic
holding her across the waist and breasts. If she was
not comfortable, she never let on. Her feet were
about five yards off the floor, so that all of the men
that came to see her had to look up. Sometimes I
would come and watch her sleep. It was
indescribable how beautiful she looked.
I visited her frequently. Usually at night, so we
could be alone. The other women on the walls did
not distract me. She was the one I came for.
“How’s it going?” I’d ask.
“Good, Peter.” At night her voice had a way of
carrying, as if it were the only sound in the world.
The Gallery of Women was a great gift, an
institution. Women would volunteer from all over the
world to be hung. Each room had its own
color—Green, Yellow, or White like Jenny’s—and the
walls would be filled with nude women, hung for
men to come and admire, ponder. Men would come
to talk with the girls, look at them, or just spend
time with them, waiting for the odd moments of
 TFF|FALL09 //81

discontinuity, like when the women cried or pissed

and streaks of urine would stream down the wall.
“I’ve missed you, Jenny,” I said that night. “A
great deal.” I first met her three months earlier, just
before she decided to join the women in the Gallery.
We had spoken frequently, and made love, but she
was not happy with life—miserable, in fact—and her
dissatisfaction caused her to leave. She liked it better
on the wall, where she could look down at men and
feel them loving her with their eyes.
She did not respond. Most nights she wouldn’t.
I never knew if she was happy to see me there.
“I’ve brought you a gift,” I called to her. I held
up a wonderful necklace, and held it high so she
could see it. It had a golden band and a large white
pearl. “I’ve spoken with the guards. They’re going to
allow me to place it on you.”
She looked at the necklace but did not smile. I
could tell there was something wrong from the
furrow in her brow.
“I don’t understand,” I said. Her unhappiness
puzzled me. She had become one of the most
precious commodities in the gallery. Most days
dozens, if not hundreds, of men could be found
standing by her feet, gazing upon her. She was
envied. Considered perfect. Loved.
She still did not speak. I sat for about forty
minutes, waiting for her to divulge.
Finally, her mouth opened and she began to
talk.
“It’s all gone wrong, Peter,” she said.
I did not know what she meant. I waited for her
to continue.
“I can feel it, Peter. I know it’s there.”
She didn’t speak again for some time, and in
those moments, I began to realize what she meant.
She had been on the wall for two months. It was
possible, I understood with horror, that we had
conceived a child, and its presence was what had
darkened her countenance.
“Is it...” I stared, my lips quivering.
Her eyes were closed.
“Yes.”
I felt my fingers stiffen. I knew what would
happen, had seen it before. A pregnant woman is
disgraceful, especially in the Gallery, and she would
be ridiculed, jeered, hissed at. I imagined her
stomach growing, looming large, casting a shadow
upon the men gathered underneath her.
 TFF|FALL09 //83

“Oh dear,” I muttered.

“I will be hideous,” she said, and began crying. I
stood by her feet, letting her tears drip from her
chins and splash down upon my face.
I shared her sorrow.
My eyes cast down to the necklace I held in my
hands. The fluorescent lights above shined
spectacular off its golden skin. I imagined how it
would be but a mockery, a gild upon her distorted
body.
When she stopped crying, my hair was soaked
from her teardrops. Time had passed, and I went to
the guard and showed him the necklace in my hand.
He brought the Great Ladder over to where Jenny
hung, allowed me to scale it. I was at her level now,
and I touched her cheek. I cast my eyes down and
slid the gold necklace up under her chin, the white
pearl resting firm in the center of her throat.
I leaned over and kissed her soft blonde hair.
There was a time when she was man’s perfect
image. The Gallery had never seen a woman with a
finer aesthetic.
I pulled the chain of the necklace tightly. I
heard her throat contract, her breathing become
strained. I pulled tighter, tighter.
In short time Jenny’s body would be taken from
the wall. For a matter of hours, the wall would be
empty, and men would weep for her. But soon she
would be replaced, and the men would gaze
admiringly upon the new woman, her eyes bright as
jewels, her body thin and clean.
As I write this, I look around my cell. The walls
are dark and solid, made of stone. The ghost of her
is there, watching me every day.
This is the wall, now, on which she hangs. A
memory. Fair, bright, and lovely.
Angry Anus //Black Conrad

1.
It was Kevin who got the game for Christmas. Angry
Anus, the latest board game from Milton Bradley.
None of the kids were playing it. Kevin got it from
his parents because it made a cheap gift.
We stood around a desk in his bedroom on
Boxing Day—Kevin and I—trying to decipher the
instructions and figure out how to play the game. On
that desk was the Angry Anus itself: a plastic
rendition of the lower human torso in a pinkish hue.
The torso itself was utterly sexless: no penis or
vagina to denote any kind of sex. All there was the
beginnings of two legs, which the game stood
upright on, and the Angry Anus itself. That in
question was a plastic asterisk squeezed between
two flabby half moons of plastic. On top of the flat
upper side of the torso was a screw-top opening,
which appeared to be used for pouring the dark
liquid contained in a pouch that also lay on Kevin’s
desk. There was also a sliding compartment on the
side of the torso for batteries to be placed.
Littered around the desk were various implements,
like plastic logs and twigs. There were also plastic
rocks and other knick-knacks to be used, like tiny
plastic combs and scissors. The game
itself rested on a sheet of newspaper on Kevin’s
desk, lest things get a wee bit on the messy side.
This is what it said on the instruction sheet:

Angry Anus: The Ultimate Party Game From the

Makers of Operation!
Players: 2 to however many you’d like.
Ages: 8 to 80

There were then diagrams on assembling the

anus to stand upright, which I skimmed over, and
also a blurb about filling the torso with the dark
liquid from the packets. There was a warning that
seemed a little cheeky (Careful: contents may be
somewhat toxic! Just kidding!), but I just glossed
over that, too, for the time being, along with the part
about the game needing two AA batteries to operate.
Then I got to the fun part.

Instructions: Game play starts when one player

shoves one of the many items scattered in the
enclosed kit up the Angry Anus. Careful, though, that
the anus doesn’t get angry and cover you in feces! It
really doesn’t like getting things shoved all up in
there! Before that is about to happen, a buzzer will
 TFF|FALL09 //87

sound to adequately prepare player for the spillage

about to occur.

Remember: When the anus gets mad, the player who

gets pooped on is the loser. Game play resumes with
remaining players who continue to add items into the
rectum. Game play concludes when there is only one
winner left, and that winner hasn’t been shat upon.
It’s that easy!

You could tell just from the way the

instructions were written that whomever was tasked
with writing them knew the game was destined for
the Remainder Bin.
“First things first,” I said, pointing to the
sachets of dark liquid. “You got to put the shit into
the game before you get to play it.”
I let Kevin do the dirty work, and watched as he
carefully ripped open a slit in the liquid pouch and
poured it into the game. There were instructions on
the sheet that I held about how to order more liquid,
if it came down to that. I bet they were hoping that
someone would probably want to play this game
more than once. Just hoping.
Once that task was done, Kevin capped the
Angry Anus and stood back, almost if he were
admiring his work.
“Next step: batteries,” I said.
Kevin then filled the compartment on the side
with the two AA batteries. With that step out of the
way, then he grabbed a log from the game’s box and
looked over at me, grinning.
“Well, do you want to get started on this?” Kevin
asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Might as well see what kind of
kicks we get out of this thing.”
And with that, Kevin approached the Angry
Anus and jabbed his log into the plastic rectum. He
literally went to town on the device, pushing and
pushing the log further and further into the plastic
membrane. I could tell just by Kevin’s efforts that the
purpose of the game was to be the loser. He wanted
the Anus to get very Angry, indeed.
But this Anus wasn’t going to let Kevin off so
easily. Nothing happened. The Anus simply took its
punishment and swallowed part of the plastic log.
Kevin pushed and pushed for awhile, but nothing
seemed to happen.
“My turn,” I said, picking up one of the tiny
 TFF|FALL09 //89

rocks from the game pieces after Kevin had finally

given up.
I was surprising even braver, using the tips of
my fingers to push the rock up into the anus to the
north of Kevin’s stick. The Anus surprising was able
to stretch and accommodate the rock with ease, with
simply no trouble at all. I pulled my fingers back and
waited.
Nothing.
“Hmmm,” said Kevin. “Let’s try something else.”
Kevin tried to shove the little plastic scissors
that came with the game up the Anus. He had
trouble at first navigating around the log and the
rock that had been shoved up there already.
However, he was able to get it up into the plastic
membrane, which gobbled up the pair of scissors.
And still nothing happened.
Kevin seemed suddenly unimpressed with his
gift, I could tell. He had now crossed his arms and
had a sullen look on his face.
“Maybe this is like Jenga, in which nothing
really happens until, like, the tenth move,” I offered.
“This game sucks,” said Kevin in return. “It’s
your turn.”
 I took a plastic twig, one of the other game
pieces, and did my best to shove it through all the
objects that had been placed up there. I didn’t want
to break Kevin’s game, but I also got a little more
violent with my move than I had been previously. I
jimmied the twig up into the anus, past all the other
pieces that were up there.
Still nothing. The Anus was dead still.
That’s when we decided to get a little more
experimental.
We got rid of all the materials that had
accompanied the game from the Anus, and tried
other items around the house. A butter knife.
Nothing. The arm of a Barbie doll owned by Kevin’s
little sister Katherine. Nothing. A cigar wrapped in
plastic owned by Kevin’s dad. Nothing. Everything we
put in greeted nothing but inactivity on the Anus’s
part.
Finally, we both realized that nothing was
going to work.
“This game must be broken,” Kevin said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Something must be wrong
with it.”
Kevin seemed to be a bit upset at this notion,
 TFF|FALL09 //91

as his face was now turning red.

“Maybe you can exchange it or get a refund on
it,” I offered. “Sometimes if you mail things back to
the company, they can fix it.”
“Whatever,” said Kevin. “Let’s do something
else instead.”
And that was that. The end of our Angry Anus
playing experience. We went off and watched a
movie downstairs, leaving the Anus to itself on
Kevin’s desk. If it did something diabolical outside of
our presence—like buzz and drip brown fluid—I
never knew. And that was, at the time, fine by us. I
have to admit I shared Kevin’s disappointment.
Angry Anus, it seemed, to be a very boring game to
play. There seemed to be nothing to it; the Angry
Anus was not particularly Angry, as it turned out.
And that’s why when summer finally rolled around, I
thought I was safe in asking to borrow the game
from Kevin. Because I simply thought nothing would
happen.
 2.
Summer was about when I discovered porn for the
first time, quite accidentally. I found a new channel
on the satellite dish my parents had, and I quickly
discovered there were other things that could be
shoved up anuses than sticks and twigs.
I called Kevin up breathlessly on the phone.
“Kevin, you still have that Angry Anus game,
right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “But I haven’t played it with
anyone since that time we played at Christmastime.
It’s broken, remember.”
“You didn’t do anything with it?”
“Nope. I didn’t want to get the parents pissed
off by telling them it was broken,” he said. “I’ve
brought it out from time to time and played with it
myself just to keep them happy. It still doesn’t do
anything. I even tried to stick my sister’s fuzzy gerbil
doll up it, and you know how big that thing is. Still
nothing.”
I couldn’t help but have a grin across my face.
“This is great,” I nearly blurted out. Instead I
said, “That’s cool. I was hoping that I could borrow it
for awhile, if you didn’t mind.”
 TFF|FALL09 //93

“Borrow it?” asked Kevin.

“Yeah, I just was feeling like giving it another
go,” I said. “There’s got to be a way to lose at the
game. Nobody can play and be a winner all the time.”
Kevin was silent on his end of the phone for
what seemed like an infinitely long period of time.
Then he said, “OK. I’ve got it in its box. You can
come over any time you like and pick it up. It’s not
like I’m going to need it for anything. I ain’t playing
it.”
My heart raced at the prospect, and I hung up
and immediately went over to Kevin’s place to pick it
up. As I came home with the box in my hands, I
could barely contain my excitement. What a perfect
way to experiment, I thought. Nobody would ever
need to know, either.
When I got home, I entered a completely empty
house. My parents didn’t happen to be at home yet,
as they were out looking at a new lawnmower at the
hardware store. I had my bedroom to my private self
and lonesome.
I raced to the desk and got about taking the
Angry Anus out of its box. I could tell it’d been
barely used. The rectal membrane hadn’t been
punctured, and there hadn’t been any kind of
damage to the game that I could see. Perfect!
I quickly unzipped my jeans, pulled them down
to my ankles and pulled down my underwear, too.
Then I did what I set out to do: jabber the Angry
Anus with my penis with it on my desk. By the point
I’d gotten my underwear down, I was about as hung
as a bull. I don’t know why I was so terribly excited,
but there it was. It wasn’t even like it was a gay
thing, either. Most of the movies I’d watched were
men on women, grinding away in the back end. I’d
masturbated frequently to those films when my
parents were away, in the half hour or so window
that I had after coming home from school.
I pushed myself right into the game, and
started moving myself back and forth inside the
thing. It was the most peculiar sensation. It must
have been like what fucking with a condom on must
have felt like, because it seemed that my penis was
surrounded by a thin layer of plastic. I tried to be
careful, I didn’t want to bust up Kevin’s game, but I
couldn’t help but trying to move around inside
violently, find some level of purchase in which I
could whack off successfully.
I didn’t know what would happen if I actually
came in the game, which is something I started to
 TFF|FALL09 //95

think about lazily as I humped the Angry Anus. I

hoped that the game wouldn’t gobble up a damp
cloth dipped in some water to get the semen all out
of it. I didn’t give too much thought to it, though.
Instead, I closed my eyes, pushed logic aside, and
tried to re-enact one of those scenes from those
movies that I’d seen on the dish. Tried to be like a
porn stud driving himself into some bitch’s little
tight ass.
And that’s when I heard it. The buzzing. Before
I knew it, the entire Angry Anus started vibrating.
And spitting, too. I could suddenly feel something
wet on my cock, and I looked down to see black fluid
starting to get knotted up in my pubic hair. I
panicked and tried to yank my toweringly erect penis
out of the game, but for a minute, I thought I was
stuck. Nothing was happening. I couldn’t get myself
out. I felt like a loser. Which I was, according to the
game rules, I guess.
I finally held onto the base of my penis, and did
my best to step backwards without falling down and
killing myself. That worked. My penis freed itself
from the game with an audible ‘pock’ sound. I
looked down at it and it was covered in back fluid.
Meanwhile, the Angry Anus continued vibrating
on my desk. Spitting out black fluid, diarrheic feces,
all over my desk. I hadn’t even thought to put a
newspaper down on the desk to protect it from the
mess. After a few moments of wildly oscillating, it
finally settled down, but not before covering my desk
and part of my wall with fake shit. What a mess it
made! I’d have to clean it up before the parents came
home. But I had more pressing business.
I went into the bathroom with my jeans and
underwear around my ankles, and used a washcloth
to clean myself up the best I could. Then, after
pulling my clothes into their appropriate position
around my waist, I went into the kitchen, picked up
the phone and called Kevin.
“Hello,” he answered.
“You were right all along,” I said breathlessly
into the phone. “That game of yours?”
I paused, unsure of how to break the news. I
had to, though. To make sure that Kevin knew
nothing was wrong, that he would never suspect a
thing.
“It still doesn’t work. It’s definitely broken.”
Thirst For Fire is a disproductions magazine.

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