Monday, September 24, 2012

Fifty Tints of Beaver (Chapter One, Part Two)



Fifty Tints of Beaver
Chapter One
Part Two

I give the cat tuna, and the turning of the can opener has a peculiar effect on me.  Grind.  Grind.  Grind.  I like the way the can resists the strength of my wrists and fingers.  I fight with its feistiness.  I twist and turn, my whole body getting into the action until wetness spills out onto my thumb.  The can is open, and I can smell the wet tuna.  I slide my thumb into my mouth and lick it clean.  I discard the can top into the trash and dump the cat’s meal into her bowl.  I watch her eat.  Look how she devours it.  There is no shyness in her animal instincts.  Shyness is learned, and I’m tired of being a good little student.  I’d rather let loose my own inner feline, the one that’s been clawing and meowing at my cervix for almost 60 years now. 

The phone rings.  I answer impatiently.  A startled voice responds from the receiver.

“Mom?”

“Stefan.”  There’s silence.  “Stefan, is everything all right?”  He’d been having trouble in class last week.  Rather than seeking extra help from his professor or a counselor, though, he’d called to talk to me about it.  He calls to talk about everything.  Last week, even ten minutes ago, I would have cherished this attention.  Now, after the encounters with the books and the tuna, his constant need only makes me feel used up. 

“Mom, I have a problem.”  This news doesn’t surprise me.  “It’s Anna.”  I gasp.  “What’s wrong with Anna?”  There is more silence, then he says, “I don’t think she wants me anymore.”  I feel a tingle at the word ‘want.’  His timing is poor or perfect. 

“Tell me more, honey.” 

“Well, last time we . . .”  There is more silence.  “I shouldn’t talk about it,” he decides.  Is it wrong to ask for more information?  Is it sick to exploit Stefan’s openness with me in order to gain access to the love life of someone still in their prime, anyone in their prime? 

“You can tell me anything, sweetheart.”

There is more silence, then Stefan says, “I don’t think she’s satisfied with . . . with my manness.”  This conversation has crossed a line, but I can’t help myself.  I want to know more.  Like a car accident, or like a terrible book that you just can’t put down, my attention is fixed. 

“Did she say that?”  My voice quivers.  “No.  I can just tell,” he says.  I hear the mailman outside and turn toward the door.  When I do so, the phone cord wraps around my upper thigh.  I don’t adjust it.    

“How, honey?”  I ask.  “How can you tell?” 

“Well . . .”  he says.  I pull on the phone cord and turn three more times around.

“Do you rush?” I ask.  The other end is silent.  “Where do you put your hands?  Is she ready for you when you take her?”  The phone cord is now cutting off my circulation, and the pull I’m exerting on the line is squeezing even tighter, tighter.  I hear my son’s voice from the other end of the line.  “Mom, you’re freaking me out.” 

I blink and hang up abruptly.  He’s right.  This morning was exhilarating, but it was too forgiving.  Now, my insatiability has driven me to the brink of madness.   I’m out of control, and I need someone to take away my power.  I pull the phone cord from the wall.  It pops out with a satisfying flaccidness.  That will be a start, a start to my retribution.  But only a start.

Suddenly, I hear a knock on the door. 









Friday, September 21, 2012

Fifty Tints of Beaver (Chapter One)

Fifty Tints of Beaver*
Chapter One

I look in the mirror.  I'm wet, wet and dirty all over.  My old grey sweatshirt with a picture of a poodle on it's disheveled.  The bitch is peeling off, and I don't look much different.  I look like a tramp who's taken a long roll in the warm, moist, sticky hay.  It clings to me, to my thighs, to my fingers.  UghWhy today?  Why did I choose today of all days to mow the lawn?  My female pattern baldness is apparent.  The Bio-Matrix Strand-by-Strand hair treatment I got at Hairclub isn't taking hold.  It's all falling out again.  Part of me hates myself and wishes someone with authority would just throw me up against a radiator and remind me what it is to be a woman.  Or, if I can't have that, maybe at least the kids could call. 

I go the kitchen table and sort casually through a stack of books I got at the public library.  I'm filling in for Tina today, who normally runs our book club.  Today of all daysOn the day when we have to choose our next book.  Tina's in Costa Rica on her honeymoon.  She's young and spunky, with perky breasts and nubile thighs.  I imagine her husband grasping those slender, muscular hips, their hard bodies thrusting together beneath satin sheets.  I imagine her tying his wrists and climbing on top of him.  He sits up and takes her nipple in his mouth, reckless now like a wild beast, leaving a trail of man spit along her neckline.  My pussy jumps into my lap and snaps me out of it.  I can't think about Tina and her husband right now.  I have a book to choose.

I sift through the options.  We've already read Frozen Heat by Richard Castle and Love Unrehearsed, book two of Tina Reber's "Love" series.  They're both in the top 13 on the New York Times Bestseller List, but my encounters with them left me and the other ladies passionately unfulfilled.  I try to make an offhand gesture of dismissal, and my hand accidentally scrapes my nipple through three layers of clothing.  I feel a twinge I haven't felt since Al met Candee at the Vines Gentlemen's Club, where the women are purported to be high class.  I beg to differ.  Al didn't want a high class woman.  He wanted an insatiable young slut who's up for anything, who'll put anything in her mouth and roll it around with her tongue.  All men are like that.  They want a girl with a touch I've never had, a princess who will run her dirty toes along their shafts.  They want someone who will give and never ask in return, who will never need them to mow the lawn or pick up the kids from camp.  They don't want kids, in fact, and they certainly don't want to conquer the mother of those kids.  Not anymore.  All men are blind to the needs of a real woman.  They don't even know how to recognize her.  

Now I'm feeling stretched-out and angry.  I stop treating the books gently.  I throw them around, abuse them.  It feels good.  I take a copy of A Farewell to Arms I found on a back shelf and hurl it against the oven.  I tear three pages out of The Grapes of Wrath.  I put The Chronicles of Narnia under my foot and step on it.  I grind it into the kitchen tile like I'm a police officer and it's my incarcerated subject, helpless before my wrath.  I wonder for a minute why in all these 58 years I've never bought any knee-high leather boots.  I decide that changes today.  Right after I feed the cat. 

. . .

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* It's a Crayola color, you perv.