Monthly Archives: September 2013

2013/09/19

Hedonic Well-Being

By dsholloway

She was my favorite client. She wasn’t very pretty and her body was grey with age, and what she asked for was creepy. But she never tried to touch me or to get me to fuck her in weird ways.

K and I would compare stories once in a while. He would go on about So-and-So demanding him to do Such-and-Such. I had rival stories, and I shared them with enthusiasm, but I always kept her and her request to myself.

The first time she asked me to drink her urine I thought she was joking. Then she pulled a jar out of her Bottega and handed me $800, double my hourly rate.

She came every Wednesday. And every Wednesday she pulled the same jar out of the same Bottega. And every Wednesday I drank her urine for $800.

She came yesterday. I drank her urine.

I’m going to die tomorrow, she said, after I was done.

I know, I replied.

She wanted to know how I knew. So I told her I could taste it in her urine.

She wanted to know what death tastes like. So I told her death tastes like many things, but her death tastes like tears.

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2013/09/15

Much of Madness and More of Sin

By dsholloway

K lay in bed wondering if he had dreamed the whole thing (if he had, this little story would naturally be over), and also wondering if the sound in the distance was really what it sounded like (it was, for the same reason) . He sat up and peered out the window.

Then he turned on the TV.

The woman in the pantsuit was visibly concerned–as though concerned specifically for K–and as she spoke, she did so in the manner of a soloist singing a sad song on a sad occasion: Women are in the immediate vicinity; take shelter now.

He hadn’t taken the appropriate precautions against more women. He managed to survive the last onslaught–though the toll had been considerable–and just sorta figured there wouldn’t be any more for a while.  They had taken everything already; what more could they want? what more could they take?

They were getting closer. He needed provisions–food, water, nails, wood, knives.

K got dressed and fled down the stairs (he slept upstairs) and opened the door. But it was already too late.

Excuse me…

Her eyes were blue and she was beautiful.

Can I use your phone?

His head started to swim.

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2013/09/07

An Impulse to Violent Gratification

By dsholloway

K showed up wearing a new Alexander McQueen belt. (Everything else he had on was dumpy, but his belt was nice.) He refused to look at me or even talk to me. He smelled good, but he was in pain.

K liked pain. He devoted himself to it. The things he did to his body, the things he did to mine–pain was his “affective medium,” as he put it once in that way he puts things. But this pain was different. There was no pleasure here–aesthetic, sexual, whatever. What he was now experiencing was the dull, throbbing pain of heartache, the kind of pain that has no purpose, the selfish kind of pain that is only of and for itself.

He might later tell himself that he will learn from this pain, that it has taught him to never get involved with someone like me again, or that it has taught him things about himself because if he wasn’t how he is none of this would have happened. So it is not pain without purpose, after all, he might tell himself.

But that would require him to speak.

And I need to leave soon. I have things to do.

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2013/09/04

Prosthetic Emotions

By dsholloway

I sent a glass of vodka over to the woman like they do in the movies, primarily because she didn’t have a drink in front of her but also because men do those things hoping for sex. She was sitting at the bar in an expensive dress probably purchased by a guy no longer around. The bartender set the glass down in front of her and gingerly gestured my way while saying something appropriate. The woman said nothing and neither did she raise her gaze from where it was–down. The bartender  shrugged her shoulders and went about her business.

The woman  took the glass in one well-maintained hand and with eyes still downcast poured it [the glass of vodka] out all over the bar top. She then set it [the glass empty of vodka] back down in front of her. What she did next was odd: she rose from her bar stool, unzipped her dress, and let it fall from her shoulders. She was wearing Agent Provocateur; I could tell because I once bought the same matching underwear set for a girl no longer around.

She turned and walked away from the dress at her feet and also, from me.

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