He examined the curve of that line, the way it protruded, slightly at first, then bending upward starkly, almost erotically, into the highest possible latitude.
The front door opened and shut downstairs. The sound of it echoed up the stairwell, two floors, and down the length of the hallway. He didn’t hear it. He was staring at the beautiful hockey stick shape on his screen, its unalloyed abstract, when translated to the dollars it truly represented, kept climbing. “Murray is a genius,” he said, shaking his head with a grin. He was having trouble pulling his gaze away, it had been that way for years, ever since he found Murray, and was able to turn his tens of millions of inheritance into hundreds of millions just by placing it in the right places, the hidden nooks and crannies of an economy that only a privileged few, those who walked behind its curtain, had any hope of predicting in any way which could prove to be lucrative.
The stairs creaked. He was nearly deaf to them, even as your mom’s whistle echoed throughout the house, through its various nooks and crannies, reaching to its high ceilings, and even heard, as a muffle, in its basement. It wasn’t until she entered the room, her body with her, that he found something which could distract him from his screen.
Her body filled his peripheral with its unignorable shape. He looked over. She was looking down as she went, pretending to not notice him there, whistling innocently. He stared at her, her body never getting old in his estimation, never losing the power it held over him. She grabbed at the belt of her coat, loosening it, and she emerged from beneath it, dropping it to the bed. She grabbed at her shirt, unbuttoning it, turning to the bathroom, facing away from him, and she moved within.
She disappeared (her ass last of all) beyond its doorway. He stared at the empty space for a moment. There was an opposing flicker in his opposite peripheral. He turned back, a sudden flatline in the stock, then, as usual, another seismic shift upward. His moment of concerned panic (he had many of them) disappearing as soon as it came, giving way to his smug, self-assured grin.
He saw another flicker, beige and shapely, in his other peripheral. He looked over, seeing in your mom’s delicate hand, holding her delicate shirt, placing it on the sink counter. Her body, soft and smooth, only half-visible beyond the doorway, her blonde hair hanging over what little of her beige back he could see. Then she lifted her leg. Her skirt came off. She pulled it loose from her milksoft body.
He sat there for a moment watching. He watched until she turned, still whistling within the pristine bathroom (the one designed exactly as she liked it by the best home decorator in Manhattan), and she opened the glass door of the shower. She went in. He then watched, seeing glimpses of her body, glimmers of pink and beige, through distorted glass. His mouth began to water.
He pushed away from his desk, standing up, adjusting his tie. Then he moved, moving toward the open doorway of the bathroom, losing articles of clothing as he went, each falling to the floor like bread crumbs as he went.
He was nearly nude by the time he entered the bathroom. Your mom didn’t react, coy ‘til the very end. He shut the door on his own hairy nudity, and your mom’s smooth nudity, obscured behind the distorting haze of glass, was shut in with it.
As a smack could be heard without, even over the running water, the lines on the screen continued to flicker. They flickered, flatlining again as usual. Then they flickered, continuing to flatline, flatlining for an extended period. A longer period than Murray had ever allowed before. More smacks within, the sounds of kissing and flesh against glass and porcelain too. The line continued, flatlined. Then it, for the first time in a while, dipped. It flatlined. Remained flatlined. Then it dipped. Flatline. Rise. Stopped after not long, flatlined. Then it dipped. And it stayed dipping. Dipping. Dipping.
Another smack.
Your mom giggling.
Your dad’s groan.
Dipping.
thwap thwap
Dipping.
Your mom giggling dipping.
thwap thwap thwap
Dipping.
Dipping.
smack
Dipping.
FOR SALE
You stood next to your mom, her body, warm and shapely, shook next to you as she tried to muffle her sobbing with her palms.
“Yeah,” your dad said, phone to his ear, eyes obscured behind shade. “Yeah, the ad looks good. As good as…” he went silent.
You heard the voice on the other side after a moment, still rife with conjured empathy.
“Yeah…” your dad said. “Yeah… that’s…” he couldn’t finish a sentence. He just stared down at the ad.
Your felt your mom’s face, her body, its copious flesh jiggling with her sobs. The two of you stood in your living room, opposite your dad, in the house that was being discussed. The house that was always yours. Never expecting it wouldn’t be.
“Yeah,” your dad said. “81.1 million. Yeah. It’ll… It’ll pay off most of it.”
The voice on the line squeaked some more, something along the lines of “what will you do?”
Your dad stood there, his phone against his ear, silent.
You felt your mom’s face, her eyes against your shoulder. You felt your shoulder going damp and warm with her tears. Her body jiggled, warm and healthy, as it throbbed, sobbing next to you.
Trevor walked down the night street, hands in his pockets, taking in the peaceful Queens suburbia. The night was chilly, but he preferred it that way, and he moved through it with that sense of accomplishment, of fulfilled adventure that he lived for. It was a sensation rare in life, one which often passed one by if one didn’t grab it by its horns, and he, out of desperation, had become very accustomed to grabbing.
It was a blessing in disguise. The rising rent, the rising price of gas and food and entertainment. There was a time when, after a modest two weeks of work, he could afford to go see the ballgame or a movie. Times when he could watch his account build, build with every paycheck, then build some more, until reaching a given amount, and soon enough he’d be on a plane, just a backpack above his head in the stowaway, flying off to another adventure. Those times were gone now, despite the fact that he had been through multiple raises, and even a promotion. No matter how hard he tried to pull himself up, he felt himself slipping against the smooth tin of the bucket, its water rising, swallowing him and the million other crabs with him, with the rising cost of life.
Trevor wasn’t thinking about this now, instead just moving through the afterglow of the night, the image of her, lying there, soon to awake in a few hours, when the sun was up again. She would wake to a sickness, the feeling of a throb within her body, a sickening, violating throb unlike anything she would normally be used to, and a chill from being nude, her body (he couldn’t believe it as he stripped it bare) beautiful, the way it always had been, even hidden beneath that modest dress.
He imagined her confused face, its delicate touches (her button nose especially), and the blond strands of hair falling over her panicked eye. The fear which would come from the chill of her own nudity, the foreign nature of that bedroom she had passed out in (Playboy Carti posters on the wall), at a house party she had been invited to by a friend, one who abandoned her there the second she found a senior boy with a car. He imagined the panic rising when she felt the wet spot, first warm but had gone cold, which he had left on her right butt-cheek, its coagulated white globs which he could have wiped up himself (like he used to) but decided to leave there on her as his calling card, his evidence there to let her know he had been inside her, and that he had enjoyed being there, every inch of it, for some extension of time.
He smiled as he heard his footsteps on the pavement, miles away now (a car was out of the question, realizing how much he could save on gas and insurance when his last one’s transmission went). Life wasn’t what it used to be. That was for sure true. But his new, less expensive way to spend Saturday night, was a silver lining.
He had watched the girl, being thankful that he was still boyish enough in the face to fit in in a high school party. He had gauged, the way he had experience-in now, that she was a lightweight when it came to alcohol just by the bitter look on her mouth even at light sips. He could tell, by the way she held the elbow of her opposite arm, that she was uncomfortable there, that her friends had dragged her along, that they were the ones who’d assure her she’d have fun. And he watched, trying to keep his excitement down, these factors being his exact bread and butter.
She was a cute wallflower type, which made her interesting enough, but it was that slight turn, that slight turn to open the door for someone else out of consideration, which put her over the edge as his chosen mark. In that turn, that subtle and fateful moment, he could see, by the way her loose pants rested against the hidden shape of her ass, that she was the girl for him.
When he saw her, eventually without friend or acquaintance at the party, stumble down the hallway and to the bathroom, he followed her, standing in the darkness of the hall, himself barely buzzed among the inebriated fray behind him, and waited, hoping she wouldn’t pass out in there, sealing herself behind that closed door for the night.
When he heard the toilet flush, heard the faucet turn on and off, and heard the door click, he got ready. The moment the door clicked open, exploding the dark hallway with light, he snapped his hand up, snaking it over her shoulder and within the bathroom. She backstepped, flinching at its suddenness. He clicked off its light-switch, and he disappeared within the darkness, her with him. He reached out, feeling that body, the one he had eyed all night, filling his palms, and he grabbed her, palming her open mouth. He caught it by luck, and then took her with him, feeling her wonderful weight, to the open room at the end of the hall.
When he got her inside, he threw her to the bed. He spun around and shut the door, placing his ear against it to listen to see if the jig was up. He waited for the beating pulse in his ear to subside, then he took a relieving breath when he heard the party outside continuing at its same value. He turned around to see her there, writhing with confused aimlessness on the bed (the fact that she had even found the bathroom at all in her confused stumblings was a miracle).
He smiled at her, turned on the light to see her there, fleshy and real, waiting for him on the bed. Her ass now, despite still being clothed, betrayed itself much more clearly now in this position. And then it was no longer a question of being betrayed, after he pulled those pants from her cheeks in one feel swoop, and they jiggled there before settling, nice, plain, and bare, before his expecting eyes. He stood over her, removing his belt buckle with a face of stone.
The music and festivities outside were loud enough, he wouldn’t have to pull any punches, so to speak. This was good, as the contact of her big soft cheeks slapping against his hips and pelvic bone was intoxicating to the point of fugue. The sensation of her insides, and the weight of her torso held between his palms, send pleasurable shivers throughout his body. He’d always note how strong they felt in the strangest places. Right now, his tongue and gums, almost his teeth themselves, seemed to be trembling behind his lips.
When he was ready to finish, he let a little bit of cum gush inside her, and then, with discipline which surprised even himself, he pulled out and let the rest of it gush over the expansive surface of her ass. Each glob of it fell, in strings or spheres, against those waiting cheeks, meeting them, coating them in indignity. He looked up at the side of her face during, seeing, in its shut-eyed peace, the shock that would replace it in the morning.
He walked down, toward the light of the corner store, with a smile, the tongue behind it still tasty with the cheek of her face.
He had felt guilty the first time (the first time he had been late on rent), when he saw his first victim, an artistic brunette, stumbling home in the darkness that one Saturday. He remembered the disbelief and thrill he felt as he ushered her into a McDonald’s bathroom, realizing as its door fell shut behind him that he had crossed into a point of no return. Since then, after the naughty warmth of that night, her drunken, nude body held close to his gyrating hips withing the cramped space of the stall (even as patrons washed their hands outside), he had been on the prowl, perfecting his craft, doing so so that a night without success now had become something of a rarity.
He neared the light of the corner store, emerging from the darkness within the alley to get there. He had enough money left for a customary after-fun cigarette. He went inside, got his favorite, and paid at the counter, feeling relief when his card cleared. He then stepped outside, unwrapping the pack, letting its plastic fall, lifting a cigarette to his lips. Just as he was about to light it, he felt a bang against his shoulder.
The cigarette dropped, falling into a puddle below.
“Get the fuck out of the way,” he heard.
He stumbled out of the way, just from the momentum, ending up to the side of the doorway. He looked up, not only seeing the guy who had hit him with the door, but the two girls that giggled at his sides.
The guy motioned to a red sports car. “After you,” he insisted to the two beauties. They got into his car, giggling, the tall brunette clearly happy to get to the front seat first. He got around, and hopped in without even opening the door. The girls were vocally impressed. The taillights lit up a conspicuous red as he started the car. He turned and looked at his passenger with a mischievous smile. “Why don’t you work the stick, and I drive?” he said with dripping innuendo.
“My pleasure,” she said, dragging the second word, much in the same way. The car squealed and then it was off down the street.
Trevor watched it, staring as its taillights, so small, red, and opposed to the darkness, they might as well have been a dream, getting smaller in the distance, though somehow more red as they went.
He stared. The door opened up next to him. A stumbling man smelling of rum moved past him, almost bumping him in the darkness.
Trevor stood there, the cigarette pack in his pocket holding one less cigarette. His happiness for the day, his feeling like this was one of the good ones, was beginning to slowly fade and chip like paint in the humid air. As long as he knew those taillights, their red conspicuous burn, were out there somewhere floating like cinders in the night’s blackness, he couldn’t find peace.
As he stood there, disappointment slowly transforming to a venom in his chest and throat, the fallen cigarette sat in the puddle, interrupting the reflection of the store’s neon sign above. Its cherry was still lit, hanging on for dear life. Then the door opened again, a foot fell on it, crushing it out entirely with a wet splash.
Your mom sat there, her leg and foot bare beneath the tiny apartment kitchen table, the other tucked beneath her, her laptop open before her squinting eyes, a wikihow article on her screen. She scanned over each point. “Detergent…” she mumbled to herself quietly. Nearby, a garbage bag filled with the family’s accumulated dirty clothes sat by the table leg. She had gathered all of it, the way she sometimes used to, doing so with the same pep, as if she needed only to leave the bag (it was once a basket) by the stairs for the maid to handle it.
Now there was no maid. Nobody left to do it. And because she was the one with the most impressive wardrobe (at least what was left of it), she was the one most pressed to have it clean. She stared at the screen for a moment. Then she scrolled down to the next point. “Dryer…” she mumbled. She stared. “Is a dryer different from a washer?”
She heard the door open. She slammed the laptop screen shut.
You came in, sweaty and red in the face.
“How was work?” she said, her voice shaking, startled, acting pointedly as a way to hide it.
You took a while to answer, being much worse at hiding your discomfort. “It was fine,” you said.
She stared at you for a second, then she nodded, assured.
It was not fine. You never knew you could feel such shame. It had been weird. First you felt shame for being lowered to such a job, but once you had it, your job interview in that cramped office, though shaky, apparently going well enough, you seemed to brim with a strange pride. You weren’t even thinking of the money as you went home, feeling as if it were peanuts which you had been lowered to trying to scrounge for to begin with, but you still somehow felt a warmth in your chest as you waited for the bus (only learning how to ride a bus through wikihow that morning), happy to be needed.
A week of work since, and that excitement had all but deflated, eaten up by the life-pocked features of so many faces, their eyes intense with disapproval and annoyance, watching you as you scanned items slowly, sometimes scanning them twice, needing the supervisor (he being irritated to have to do it yet again) to enter the void code, dropping the goods, bagging them horribly, crushing them at the bottom of the bag, blushing, stammering, and going dumb whenever the customer asked a question you couldn’t answer, all but panicking whenever the line grew to more than two customers, and feeling yourself go numb when a customer finally broke, yelling at you, being somehow able to pinpoint your every vulnerability in a tirade which was evidence that your every flaw was glaringly apparent to all around you, and always had been, a realization that scarred you more than any other.
“Fuckin’ idiot,” he said, leaving the store to get into his rusted bucket of a car.
You smiled at that smugly, even through the humiliating heat in your face, doing so with supreme and alleviating arrogance, but only for a second, stopping after immediately remembering: you didn’t have a car. Not any more anyways. This cruel man, with his shabby clothes, mean temper, and death trap of a vehicle, had something over you now. A man you wouldn’t even think of spitting on a month ago, was now free to yell at you, directly to your face, and there was nothing you could do about it anymore.
You stood there, staring at the car as it peeled off, feeling your fear slowly rise until it had transformed to venom in your throat and chest.
“Excuse me?” you heard. You turned to look and you saw a beautiful blonde face before you, staring you in your eyes with her own eyes of piercing blue.
Below you were her things. You scanned them, your limbs shaking, not daring to look up and into her gaze, only noticing the way she looked down at your hands, the heat rising to your face at realizing it, your shaking only growing because of it.
“28.88,” you said.
“And what about this?” She nudged forward a bottle of dieting pills with her slender forefinger.
Your face, which was just beginning to cool, burned now with a rising heat. She giggled sweetly.
You scanned the final item, placing it in her bag with a dainty hand, then you adjusted the till screen. “51.51,” you said.
She smiled, presenting her card.
After ringing her through, she thanked you and walked off. You turned to look at her, seeing the rest of her body emerge to you as she gained distance beyond the counter. You marvelled at the shape of her, her ass like an apple within her red dress, the pale and pristine flesh of her thighs gesticulating wild eroticism effortlessly with her motion.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
You turned to see a male face looking in her direction, gazing upon her as if she were food. He shook his head.
“How I’d love to catch her drunk at a party…”
You stopped breathing.
He turned to look at you, a big smile across his face. “That’s a joke of course.” His smile was soft and disarming.
He placed a basket of things before you. It was filled with mostly bargain brand products. The only thing that wasn’t ‘the cheap stuff’ were the cigarettes. He seemed to stare down at them, eager to ensure they wouldn’t be crushed.
As you began to scan his items, you heard him suck in breath. You looked up to see him looking out the store front. You followed his gaze to see the woman getting into her Mercedes, her fat and musculature forming and reforming beautifully as she fell to its seat.
“Rich cunt,” he said. You looked at him, shocked. He was shaking his head, without humor or malice, just disappointment. Then he turned to look down at the counter. “How I wouldn’t love to catch a girl like that slipping…”
You heard the car, its powerful engine, driving off, growing fainter.
“Replace that silver spoon jammed up in her ass with a big…”
“16.81,” you said.
He made a face like he was in pain, his lips protruding, sucking in breath, then he handed you his credit card. “Please for the love of christ,” he murmured to himself.
You saw the name on the card: Trevor Robins. You ran the card, and when it cleared, his body jutted forward with eager relief.
“At least I still have one,” he said. “Bank must not have gotten the memo.” He looked up at you, smiled and winked.
You said nothing.
As you waited for the receipt to print, he looked up at you. “Any exciting parties for the weekend?” he asked. “Like, not a little get-together, but a big one. A rager…” He looked down at the desk and shuffled his stance. “…with lots of alcohol?”
You looked up at him, staring at his subtle grin. Then you shook your head.
“Shucks,” he said comically, looking down. You put your receipt in the bag then slid it toward him, very aware of how awkwardly you had stuffed his items within. You were relieved to see he didn’t notice. “Would love to go to a party with a girl like that though.” He looked out at the parking lot, at the space where her car used to be, now gone. “Imagine catching a hot rich blond with an ass like that deadass drunk.” He pulled the bag toward himself and looked at you, this time confident, unashamed in what he had said. A man seeming to have no place for shame anymore. Like he had already gotten his fill of it and had decided he was done. “I know we’re not supposed to say that out loud, but we’re all thinking it. You know what I mean…” He said it as if it could only be true.
He stared directly at you, into you, and though you didn’t speak, not knowing what to say, feeling terrified, as if you were sure you were being set up by something or someone, you still felt a weird feeling, one not too entirely unpleasant from the exchange. It didn’t help that his smile had a genuine warmth to it, one which made you feel like you weren’t alone, a sort of acquaintance which carried all the intensity of friendship within them, whose moments you mutually shared, however brief, stretched and expanded through their import to be about the size and shape of something more profound. Maybe even more profound than things experienced with those much closer to you, with those you knew for much longer.
He didn’t even wait to hear you answer. He just shot you a wink. “Anyways,” he pulled his bag from the counter, letting it almost fall within his grasp at the counter’s edge. “I got a date with a washing machine.” He began to walk off. He looked back at you. “Just pray for me I still have ten dollars left in my account.” When he reached the door, he turned back again. “Or at least enough for the wash. I’ll dry it on the line, believe me, if I have to.” He pushed the door open with his spine, shooting you a wink before turning around to leave. “I’ll even hang the shirts on my limbs like I’m a fuckin’ scarecrow…”
The door fell shut over his magnetic personality. He rounded the corner and was gone.
You stood at the front door of your new apartment, by the coatrack.
“Good, sweety. I’m glad to hear you’re taking to it well.”
Your face was blank.
She sat there at the kitchen table, one thigh over the opposite ankle, holding her bare foot as she stared at you. It wasn’t until you found the strength to walk forward, heading to your room, that she opened the laptop back up. She leaned forward toward the screen, its light reflected in her bright features. Her brows narrowed. “A dryer sheet? What the hell is a dryer sheet?”
“So, seven-thirty this Saturday then?”
“Yeah,” the young man said naively. “It’s going to be sick. Drinks. Maybe some molly. Everything.”
Trevor looked past the fresh-faced young man, seeing his raven-haired girlfriend behind him, bent over, her thrift store dressed pulled tight against her giant ass, as she pulled a modest amount of clothing from the dryer. He looked back at her boyfriend, who was looking back at him, smiling naively. “You guys ever do molly?” Trevor asked.
The young man shrugged with a mischievous grin, as if admitting to it would mean trouble. His girlfriend behind him though, not even looking over, nodded her head as she folded her dress.
“Good,” Trevor said. “Maybe I’ll have to come then.” He felt that warmth, that strange wandering vibration, rising within him. He looked over at that gorgeous ass as it bent over again to grab from the dryer, the fabric of its dress stretching over its large mass. “I could afford to let loose this weekend. Lord knows I’ve earned it…”
He heard a voice behind him. “Molly!” He shut his eyes, sad more than irritated.
The junkie behind him walked toward them, he could smell the man’s approach without even turning to see.
“Molly,” the man repeated. “You got any blue too?”
“Uh, no,” the young man said, nervous. “I- I don’t mess with that stuff.”
“What!?”
“You heard him,” Trevor said, turning. “He doesn’t know anything about it, man.”
The junkie looked at him, then looked at the young man, his girlfriend behind him, even in her beauty and shape, invisible to the junkie’s searching eyes. She, in all her curvy splendour, was not the thrill he was looking for, which exclusively came in little blue pill form. He shrugged, turned around slowly, and stumbled off.
Trevor turned back to the young man. He smiled his disarming smile and tilted his head knowingly.
Once the junkie was out of earshot, sitting on the furthest bench, sipping from his spiked bottle of coca-cola, the young man, with a look of newfound reflection, said: “Maybe I should slow down with the whole-“
Trevor interrupted him: “Don’t let him ruin your weekend fun,” he said. He looked past the young man, again to his girlfriend, who had turned around with her bin in her hands, the shape of her still visible from the front, one hip looming out beyond the edge of the wicker basket. Trevor’s eyes scanned over her entire figure, slowly and surely. “I know I sure as hell won’t…”
The young man smiled, again with that idiot smile. “You’re right, man. I work all week so I can party.” He turned around, looking at his girlfriend. “Okay, babe. You ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Trevor smiled at them, watching as they left the building, the two cheeks of her ass competing with one another in their perpetual fight, their eternal yin and yang forever in motion, both before and beyond the doorway leading out into the world. Trevor was going to enjoy meeting them again soon. This time, hopefully, his time with them would be much more intimate…
He turned to look at the washing machine, the one her dresses, bras, and panties had been swirling around in so freely. He grabbed his bag, dragged it to the open mouth of the machine, and poured it in. The machine still had enough detergent, enough leftover detergent from what she had poured inside. Enough for him at least. What was he anyway, an aristocrat? He had grown accustomed to saving a few dollars wherever he could.
He set the cycle, inserted his coin, and let it loose with a loving slap against the machine’s edge. His clothes began to spin, being decorated in time with rare hints of white froth. He stared at it, enjoying its tiny beauty through the concave glass, seeing in it a microcosm for everything. He turned to look at the junkie, who sat there, half-aware with the bottle in his hand. “It’s beautiful, the way the world turns, isn’t it my man?”
The junkie, catching the barest hints of sound through his stupor, looked over at the indistinct haze. He tried to lift the bottle, wanting the ‘blue’ saturated within the fizzy cola. He had to bend down to receive it. After that, he overturned the bottle, shaking it, making sure it was dry. He sat back down. He knew he had more blue in his pocket, and just enough change for another coke. But before he could find the strength to lift his arm, never mind the full burdensome weight of his body, the rocking music of the washing machine lulled him into a blissful silent oblivion.
Your mom shut the apartment door. She moved nervously down the hallway, feeling her jitters rising as she saw the doorknob to another apartment twisting, the door rattling, and then settling still again. She heard arguing from within as she passed it. “You’re not leaving.” “I am and there’s nothing you can do about it.” “I’ll call your brother.” “My brother’s in prison you dumb idiot. I told you that last week.” “What!? When!?”
She moved past it, her face down. She couldn’t believe how eager these people (and she failed to catch herself thinking with those exact words: these people) were to air their dirty laundry to the world. She held her dirty laundry to her hip, which supported it well. She got to the elevator, hit the down button, and waited at its single door. She heard its support cable creaking and she gulped. She entertained using the stairs, telling your father that she didn’t trust that elevator, not believing its sensor worked, never mind the very support cables which pulled and lowered it from floor to floor. He had assured her she was being paranoid. “If it’s that bad, it could have snapped at any time. There are dozens of people in this building. You think you’re unlucky enough that it’d only happen to you?”
She stood there, waiting impossibly long, wondering, in a building of only four floors, how it could possibly take this long. Your apartment in Florida (which was yours no longer), that your family stayed in during the coldest months of winter, had twenty-three floors (twenty-two if you counted the missing thirteenth), and the elevator seemed to glide to whichever floor she beckoned it to within moments, all from the simple push of a single finger.
She could hear the sounds from all four floors echoing up the shaft, as if they all existed as one. The thought of it somehow troubled her. Just as she was sure, hearing that gliding hunk of metal rising upward, that the door was about to open, she heard glass crash behind her behind the muffled influence of one of those apartment doors. She turned to see the same door from earlier, jostling with its knob twisting, stopping, and then twisting again. The voices within were shrill and erratic, one of them possibly drunk on top of it. Quickly, without thinking, she ducked off to the side, finding herself now in the darkness of the stairwell.
She took a deep breath, dreading seeing one of the stranger tenants coming up this way, fearing having to squeeze her body past his, watching his scowl turn to a grin as she did. It was a cramped stairwell, not even safe enough for fleeing the building in the occasion of a fire.
She didn’t breathe until she emerged out onto the yellow street. Bodies moved past her, some with a strange confidence, exaggerated and boastful, others with a heavy shame which seemed to slink their shoulders and necks. There seemed to be little within the in-between when it came to… these people. She had caught herself thinking it this time. These people. And because of it, because of her self-awareness of it, she began to slink herself.
She passed by a few men, their heads turning to watch her as she went. She had always had a feeling she was being watched like this, watched like this all her life, knowing how much past boyfriends, and your father for the past twenty-two years, seemed to desire her, face, body, and soul, but she had very little evidence of it from strangers. Within the past week, living amongst these…. (she adjusted the sack of clothes, clearing her throat), these people of lesser means, she was now acutely aware of just how eagerly watched she’s always been. It took men like this though to lack the shame enough to show it to her.
The fighting on the street – in this case, two screaming women somewhere in the rear distance – was becoming inaudible to her. It had come to her relatively quickly, a few days: the ability to numb out all this noise. But the whistle she heard when she passed another group of men, knowing what part of her they were staring at, their grinning faces as the sound was made, was impossible to stomp out of her awareness entirely. She wanted to walk faster, to get out of there more quickly, but she feared they’d see it, feared they’d take it as a victory against her. And the shame of it, the thought alone, made her pale skin burn a humiliating pink. She looked down, knowing now that whatever she did, they’d know how she felt. She heard a laugh behind her. She picked up the pace, again heaving the bag tightly over her shoulder, too embarrassed to even consider the task ahead, and its own little bag of embarrassments in waiting.
She saw the sign ahead, COIN LAUNDROMAT. She pressed against her pocket book, feeling for the coins. They were there. For the first time in her life, she had coins with her.
She neared the doorway.
She shouldered it, pushing inward, the bell above the door fluttered and sang.
Trevor could see it peeking up at him, a wondrous shine, from beneath the edge of a dryer. He wiped his face, looked up to see nobody there except for the bodies which past on the sidewalk, beyond the glass. He shook his head. “The fuck am I-“ and he kneeled down. He found his mental muscle-memory for shame, every time it reared itself up within him again, quite humorous. He was a nobody, a nothing now, a lot of people were. It had come up on so many so suddenly. Why hide anymore? Especially when the number of those who could relate was only rising.
He felt the metal between his thumb and forefinger, happy it wasn’t just foil, and at pulling it out and seeing a quarter, he knelt down onto one knee, looking beneath the machine for more, but only finding black dust and the sight of something scurrying. He shot back up to his knees, grimacing.
He looked down at the coin. George Washington’s side profile sat there. He smiled at it. “’Pursuit of happiness’ my ass,” he said. Even with the small irony, he held the coin in his palm, smiling equally at the small pleasure of its weight there.
Then he heard a bang.
He looked up to see the junkie standing there, staring at the vending machine with his inconsistently preserved teeth bared. He slammed it again, putting real force into it, more than would be expected from his skinny frame.
“Hey, hey, man,” Trevor said, putting out his empty hand.
“Cocksucker ate my quarter, man.” The junkie said it without even look at him. He hit the machine again. “Robbing me blind.”
“Hey, hey, stop.” He neared the junkie, trying to stop him with gestures alone, but the junkie was unfazed.
“I worked hard for the quarter,” he said, thinking of the hour of panhandling he did outside but an hour-and-a-half earlier. “How is I supposed to get my shit good if the city’s eating my shit?”
“A quarter, you said?”
“Yeah, man. Fuckin… It took everything but ate that fuckin’ quarter.”
Trevor looked down at the quarter in his hand as the man continued.
“I’s fucking just trying to spend the little I got, trying to get pleasure where I can get it.”
Trevor stared at the coin, enjoying the daylight which glimmered off it, the regal look of the landowner on its face. He smiled. He looked up. “You’re in luck, my guy.”
He extended his palm forward, displaying the quarter to the junkie. The junkie looked down at his hand, seeing only a blur, then turned to hit the machine and curse again.
Trevor grabbed him by the wrist and pushed the quarter into his palm. “There you go.” He pulled his hand away and wiped it against his pantleg. “Manna from heaven. Enjoy.”
He walked off, not even wanting a thank you, regretting touching the man.
When he turned around, the junkie just stared at him, giving him a look barely resembling gratitude (it was always hard to tell with someone that high). The junkie then turned around, inserted the coin, and hit the button for coke.
“Fuckin…” he mumbled to himself, but the rest of it was obscured by the sound of the tumbling bottle.
Trevor watched the spinning of the washing machine, then he looked up and saw the junkie standing there, awkwardly opening the bottle while trying to manipulate a baggie. A police officer walked by outside. Trevor shook his head with a vague smile as the cop passed out of sight. The junkie pulled his little blue pill, the last one in the baggie, and Trevor watched, somehow rooting for the degenerate and his shaky fingers, eager to see him getting the pill into that bottle without it dropping to the floor. When he did, he waited to see just how quickly the junkie would suck it back, feeling guilty for the curiosity, but he was surprised to see that rare restraint seen in some addicts, some trait of connoisseurship which allowed them to delay gratification just long enough for that perfect version of any and all highs they chased.
The junkie screwed the cap back on, then let the chilly bottle fall to his side. He looked around, not even seeming to be antsy, just waiting, Trevor assumed, for the pill to dissolve within.
Trevor stared at him, fascinated, seeing the world pass by beyond the glass outside. Names and faces, gaits and postures, uniforms and hairstyles, all passing by, none with any concern for the saga of this adventurous junkie. Only interested in their own worlds, their own miseries.
Trevor laughed as he leaned against a machine.
The junkie heard him. He looked over, the peace in his face leaving all at once suddenly. Then, behind him, sounding to him like lightning, the bell above the front door fluttered and sang.
The junkie spun just as he heard it, nearly falling to the floor. Trevor stared above the junkie, seeing the figure which walked within, her hands on her garbage bag, its bottom corner tearing. She clicked her tongue and groaned as she lifted it to her sight. Her body, curvaceous beneath the beauty of her face, and the angelic flow of her blond hair, peeked out from behind the bag, grabbing his attention as if he had been struck by lightning, as if she herself were electricity and he was now there waiting for her to jolt through him, killing him if she had to, to reach ground.
The junkie, dulled to all beauty but that which existed in pill form, moved passed her, nearly brushing her (and not caring that he did) on his way out the door. Trevor had been so fascinated by the junkie’s quest that he, even in this moment of extreme distraction, had noticed that the junkie held nothing in his hands any longer.
Trevor looked down, looking for the bottle on the floor, seeing nothing. Then he saw her reflection, as curvy as the real thing, though faded, on the polished tiles below. He looked up at her. She shook her head as she examined the hole in the bag with her fingers, then let it drop to her shins. She looked up. Seeing him there, she stared at him for only a second. He almost spoke. Then she looked away quickly. The electricity which had found him then had suddenly switched off to a hum.
Your mom dropped the bag, and beyond it she saw a face staring back at her. His eyes were wide, with his bottom lip hanging open. She stared at him for a second, shocked not at the intensity of the gaze aimed on her, but of its specific aspect, it containing none of the leering meanness of the other pairs of eyes she was way-too-rapidly becoming accustomed to. She turned away, embarrassed, and she quickly got to work. She opened the bag, a sock falling from its torn hole, to which she clicked her tongue again and exhaled.
She ignored it and moved to the machine, her heart rising to her throat. As she neared its door, she thought on how hard she was wishing, all the way here, that nobody else would be here to witness her. She was sure she’d make a mistake, and she couldn’t stand the thought of someone seeing that mistake, the shame of inexperience always being the most vividly felt of all shames.
The washer door clicked open, and she stared at its silvery nook for an extended moment, then, not believing it would be so easy, she poured in the dirty laundry for the week. She stood there, forgetting about the fallen sock, then she grabbed the door to the close it.
“Uh, uh, uh.”
She heard it from behind her, its chastising, mocking tone. Her eyes clamped shut as the heat rose to her cheeks.
“Not yet, not yet.”
She turned around as if she were facing a firing squad. He stood there, holding a sock. It was a pink sock. It was hers.
“Never know when you’ll need to wear both socks,” he said, smiling.
She took it from him gently. “Thank you,” she said, shaking her head as if to make tired.
“Don’t mention it.” He stood there, his hand up, as if he were still holding her sock. “Just spot me next time.”
“Huh?” she said.
“Just spot me next time,” he repeated, assuming she didn’t hear.
She stared at him. A panic began to rise in her. “Spot you…?”
“Uh,” he shook his head. “Forget it.” He turned around and walked off, looking back at her skeptically as he did.
He then turned and leaned against his machine. It rumbled against his hip. “Free back massage,” he said with a jittering voice, and smiled again.
She looked up, understanding the joke this time. She only smiled awkwardly, giving a fake giggle, enough to fit in. She turned back to her own machine. As she looked down at its interface, she thanked the heavens she could still recognize what was what, despite how differently each button was placed compared to what she had seen on wikihow. She began, slowly, to press the ones she was supposed to, doing so roughly in the correct order, feeling her confidence build with each moment of applied finger pressure.
By the time she was done, she was beginning to feel pretty good about herself. She hit start, and the machine began buzzing. She stared at it, holding on for dear life. It was only once the clothes, after being drenched in water and suds, began to rumble, and then to spin, that she felt as if she could breathe. Her shoulders, without her awareness, settled slowly into a position of relaxation. And then, as if taking it as a queue, he ruined her peace: “beautiful, isn’t it?”
She looked over at him at the first word.
He was staring at her. He looked back at the machine. “The way it spins, I mean. It’s like… it’s like the world itself.” He had a look of an acquired wisdom on his face, one built from experience. But his body, leaning on the running machine, betrayed him. It jerked, vibrating, with the machine’s rumbling cycle. He wasn’t aware of it then, but the sensation reminded him viscerally of the feeling he would experience every weekend, during his final moment watching his chosen target, whoever she’d be, at her moment of highest inebriation, before committing to his strike. It was that subtle tremble, once overpowering, almost world-shattering, now internalized one layer deeper within him, spreading itself thin and responsibly through his emotional palette. None of this reduced the excitement one bit, even if it did make it less acute. What it did instead, was it made him better at his little hobby. This is how they do it, he once mused to himself. The rich. They succeed in life because they’re not impressed in those moments of decision, not enough to falter. A sudden dread then washed over him at remembering his unpaid debts. …nor do they feel the fear.
She looked at him, just as blonde as his last one, just as shapely, but less thick. Her beauty was truly remarkable, especially for a white girl, here. It was the kind he was used to in the nicest neighborhoods of Manhattan or even upstate. She instead stood here with him, the world passing by outside, in this hole in the wall, doing her laundry from a torn garbage bag.
She looked back at the washer, seeing the clothes within spinning. And when she saw it, began gazing at it, began recognizing in it exactly what he said, the world itself. A spiralling chaos, its impermanence of place and position, the water which gushed through it, the diluvian washing of the slate, a debt forgiveness of the gods, or of one god in particular: Fortune. The one that giveth and taketh away.
She forgot there was anyone else there. She only stared at it that circling pagan circle, singing, in the voice of technology, her own wardrobe in celebration of her downfall, having prayed to their deity for it, and now in jubilee at its completion. Her expression wasn’t just sombre, it was bleak.
He felt as if she must have been through something horrific, something deeper than he could ever know, or could ever feel justified in asking. He rather not. Instead, he just used the moment, letting his gaze fall along her body, until it found the protruding mound that was her ass.
“Yup,” he said, apparently in reference to the machine cycle. “It sure is beautiful.”
Your mom’s ass sat there, motionless.
“I could stare at it all day.”
Your mom tilted her head, as if she was meaning to look over at him, but she did not.
“All…” he repeated. “day….”
She looked at him, and his gaze snapped from her ass, toward her eyes, immediately. He tilted his head amicably and grinned.
There was a silence on her lips. Then she said, in the dryest tone one could have: “All… day…” She suddenly pepped up, not from joy, but from an instinct for inquisitiveness, one innocent and automatic in a previous age, an age not too distant from the current minute. Now it was only force of habit, and at realizing the question she was about to ask, she froze, blushed in her cheeks, and looked back at her spinning clothing gushing out with soap water from the forming, collapsing, and reforming pockets between each article. All day, she thought, staring at the mundane sight, being hypnotized by its simple banality, feeling the faint hints of insanity which wafted from that thought and image, an insanity which whirred before her now. All day.
He stared at her body, thinking the same.
Your mom’s expression, suddenly, seemed to be interrupted, her sadness broken, giving way to some mundane desire, one simple and routine, but blissful in light of what conscious thinking brought to her. She turned to him, looking at him, as if needing something, then, realizing he couldn’t help her, she looked away.
He had already begun leaning forward, eager to help, when she turned her head, still in search. When she saw it there, the light from outside making it almost glow, highlighting her object of desire, she made a noise in her throat, then she looked down, reaching in her pocket for something. He tilted his head, watching her, soon realizing what it was she was looking for. It was money.
Beyond her, the vending machine sat, and she began pulling out the change she had, sifting through it with a finger to see if she had enough. She counted, counted again, then reached down in her pocket, came up with nothing, and then counted again.
He suddenly felt the urge to help, and he dug into his own pocket with more eagerness than she did hers. At feeling it empty, he had remembered the quarter, and he began to feel like an idiot. A crackhead…, he thought. You have an opportunity to make yourself look good, and you spend it on someone who doesn’t even know what planet they’re on.
She sighed, and then reached down to grab the empty garbage bag, and as she did, she froze. He didn’t hear it, not being quite close enough, but she did. That jangle. She shook the bag again. This time he could hear it too. He felt relief for her, feeling her thirst as if it were his own. She reached within the bag, and she pulled out a glimmering coin, one which must have fallen from a random jean pocket inside. The coin glimmered against the incoming sunlight, and her face, smiling, glimmered behind it.
She turned and went to the machine. One by one, she inserted each coin, and he watched, loving the sound (not getting to hear it nearly enough) of each welcomed coin within. It was like some wish, the wish of the consumer, was being locked into place with a muffled clank, as satisfying as a rifle action sliding bullets into a waiting chamber.
The lucky coin glimmered in between the others, a star, as she pushed each new coin into its slot. She reached for the quarter, grabbed it, plocked it in, and that’s when he heard it. She apparently did not, and continued with the other coins, each one with that satisfying click, the machine embracing it, adding it to its tally, ready to reward her for her savings. But that quarter… its clank… it never came.
His face went white, unable to bring himself to tell her. She pushed in her final coin and looked at her options: the digital interface spoke clearly. She was .25 cents short, at least in the machine’s reckoning. That .25 cents, if it ever existed at all, had been sucked into a void, one which sat, sucking within the body of every vending machine, perhaps some hidden tax, some lottery of misfortune, which always seemed to pounce with cruelty against those who could bear the setback least. Even still, she hit her button, and though no tumbling bottle could be heard, she, nearly in her shellshock, leaned down into the hole and pulled out, much to his wonder, a bottle of coca-cola. She held it there, still chilly and perspiring in the dusty sunlight.
She lifted it to her chin, seeming to feel some relief, and she came back to her washing machine. She opened the plastic bottle cap, and then she froze. And when she did, he had realized in that moment what he was looking at. He saw the crackhead standing in her place, not too long before, opening a bottle of a coke. He remembered that very same crackhead, jittery and paranoid, leaving the laundromat, passing her shapely body with his head down, with that bottle nowhere to be seen, not in his hands, not resting on a machine, not sitting on its side on the ground, not anywhere.
Now you knew where he had stashed that bottle.
Your mom looking down at it, her brows furrowed at the quick give of the cap, nearly shook her head. Then she shrugged, thinking nothing of it, and she, as he watched it happen in astonishment, lifted that bottle to her quenched lips. She sucked back nearly half of it before letting it fall to resting position. She pursed her lips rather than wiped them. She cleared her throat. And she screwed the bottle’s caps back on.
He remembered that crackhead, screwing on that cap, looking down at the black embrace of the soda, his eyes wild, excited to get to taste what was inside.
Your mom, her expression becoming strange, as if overtaken by some aftertaste, eventually did wipe her mouth with her wrist.
He said nothing, only staring. He felt a sensation, one like a tremble which ran through him, one strong enough to make his voice shake if he were to speak. One so strong, he felt as if he were visibly vibrating. The machine he leaned on sat still and silent. It had finished washing his clothes more than a minute ago.
Your dad couldn’t believe it. He was standing there, outside of the gate, looking at the intercom microphone built into its brick column. It had been four years since he last talked to him, not since he told your dad that he and his brothers would only be getting a fraction of the family fortune when he passed.
“Half…?” he remembered falling from his lips. He held the edge of an end-table, making it look as if it was habit, not as if he were about to fall.
“Half. It’s more than enough, I think.”
“But, where will…”
“To the downtrodden. The orphans… The working poor. The infirm of mind and body.” His father shook his head, trying to think of more examples. “I don’t know. The world is full of people who need it. Some of it, at least. I wouldn’t dare drop the whole thing on one man or woman. They’d squander it. They are where they are for a reason.” He patted his coat pocket, looking for something absent-mindedly. “But with a charity,” he continued. “-or a few- watching over it, they’ll know how to stretch that amount to the benefit of a few thousand unfortunate souls. Who knows, they might even find the cure to cancer with it. It would be quite the miracle if one of my dollar bills were the last straw to break that camel’s back, wouldn’t it?” His mouth was lifted cleverly, ambitiously, beneath his moustache.
His sons weren’t amused. Your dad, the youngest, least of all. The millions coming his way, the millions he already owned, sat within the shadow of his mind, with his father’s money going elsewhere, which had already started with the portions he knew were going to his brothers, sitting under a blinding searchlight, looking all the more appetizing to him, all the more necessary, the bigger that pile got, and the further it was pushed, as if by the cue of a craps dealer, from his clawing fingers.
He stood there now, in his least expensive clothes (because those were the ones that sold for too little to bother), staring at the faceless device, the one he looked at and saw that moustache through, that grinning mouth beneath it. “Just a few million,” he had recited on the cab ride over here. “Enough to get back on my feet.”
He stared now at the intercom, the button below, trying to build the courage, the callousness to shame enough to lift his finger and press it.
He lifted his finger just below, and before it could reach the button, the intercom crackled before him, startling him. It was a voice, familiar but different, either from age or from the reduced fidelity of the speaker. Your father turned quickly, and, with steadfast motion, walked away from the gate, away from the intercom. He saw the camera above, missing it coming in, and he looked down, refusing to give it any more satisfaction than what it had already extracted from him without his knowing. He disappeared down the lane and toward the cab a few gates down.
Your grandfather, from his study, watched your dad get into the cab and slam the door shut. As the vehicle pulled out and away, the relevant face within it gone, your grandfather’s face fell. His mouth, clutching a pipe between its lips, sat bent and sombre beneath his moustache. He turned away from the screen and left.
He promised himself not to bother your grandmother by telling her your dad had been there.
He couldn’t believe it. He had been in situations just like this, those of his own making, but now he was there, rushing for the front door, flipping its Open sign to Closed, and locking the bolt shut. After he did, he stood at the door, hearing the whirring within, locked inside the building with it.
He turned around.
There she lay, against the machine, its cycle still going, her head rocking against it. Her eyes shut tight, though with a worry embedded beyond that peace. He beheld her expression, assuming it to be the effect of the machine’s rumbling on her skull, and, by extension, her sleeping consciousness within it. He couldn’t imagine a woman like that having anything genuine to worry about, at least nothing which would plague her during the peace brought on by drug-induced rest.
On the ground, not far from her sleeping fingers, a coke bottle, nearly empty, sat with just a thin line of coca-cola, almost visibly saturated with blue residue, at its bottom.
He slowly approached her, hoping somehow, despite having the relevant knowledge, that she, as a visible non-junkie, wouldn’t open her eyes, and prove, through some freak occurrence beyond the explanation of science, to be above the effect of the drug. Whatever made a lifelong blue junkie high, he thought, would make a normal woman, or even the user of any other drug, completely incapacitated. He had known about it, known about its effect, and the only thing keeping him from taking advantage of it himself, as a tool for his little hobby, was the cost associated with it. And, maybe even more than that, though he never articulated it to himself, the fear that he, like so many lost souls before him, would give into the temptation to try some of the stash he’d have to have on-hand. He didn’t fear the addiction itself. He feared loving it more than he loved the helpless embrace of a big, soft, sleeping ass. So much of his identity had become wrapped up in this little hobby, even in just this short time, and he feared losing it as vividly as he feared losing himself. To him, at this point, the two were indistinguishable.
Her eyes were shut, and he still, somehow not believing it, knew they would stay that way. He slowly lowered himself into a crouch until his face was level with hers, and he stared at her with open eyes. Hers were shut, but when he blew through pursed lips a burst of soft air, they twitched and opened slowly.
She looked at him, and he could see in not only the lack of urgency of her gaze, but the lack of registration - not of him, not of the moment, not of anything – that he had her there. He leaned forward, his lips finding hers, and, unlike the girls he found drunk, who either lay there or kiss back indistinctly, sloppily, her lips responded to his, and, feeling it, blushing at her beauty, he lifted her to her feet by her elbow, knowing he was lifting her body with it. He rattled inside as she came to her feet, her full form before him becoming clear in its uniqueness, and him now being aware acutely that this would be his best, his personal high score.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered into her angelic gaze. “You’re in good hands. I’m kind of an expert at this.”
He leaned forward again and their lips met a second time. Her then suddenly grabbed her hips.
At seeing her ass appear in a quick burst below him, he gasped, realizing it looked even better bare than he expected it to. There was even an elegance to the shape of her cheeks, and the line between them which gave each definition. “Oh,” he said. “I’m an ass man. Someone up there knows this.” He frantically made for his belt buckle. “It’s got to be providence.” His zipper came next. “My ship’s coming in.”
He could somehow tell – he was sure he had this ability, wherever it came from – by the shape of her ass, that she had never been taken by force before. Most girls he stumbled upon hadn’t, and he was more than happy to be their first. He was glad to see that your mom was among them, feeling honored to be the first to do it to a woman so beautiful. As much as he loved discovering that which had been tested out by the cock and pelvis of another man, there was something about affecting a woman in such a way which made him feel as if he had some power in his life, however small. Something which gave him control, something which centered him.
“Get ready, beautiful,” he said to your mother. “There’ll be no going back now.”
Your mom’s insides, whether you’d be proud to know or not, were the best he’d ever felt. He groaned at the way her walls, like sweet dripping sugar, engulfed the full length of his shaft. She had only ever belonged to your father, and your father was considerably smaller than Trevor. The tip of his cock pushed to a deeper space within her ever reached, a place where the embrace was even sweeter because of its unviolated volume.
Her wedding band was in a safe deposit box in Manhattan, along with a few of the other things your parents just couldn’t bear to get rid of despite their financial predicament. He couldn’t see that she was married, that being only a fact of paperwork, but he could, again by her ass, that she was somehow taken.
“Your boyfriend must be the luckiest man in the world,” he hissed in rising pleasure, not knowing how untrue that had been as of late. “In some ways, he’s luckier than I am.”
“Then again,” he said with a trembling voice, one which tingled with the sensation of that sweet sugar, that grapefruit richness, running against the flanks of his cock. “I bet you he had to work hard to get this ass.” His thrusting was vulgar. “Us regular guys always have to.” His look of absolute bliss gave way to a smile. He cupped your mom’s butt-cheeks with his palms. “Unless it falls into our laps. Like this…” He began laughing to himself, half out of pleasure, and half out of a still vividly-felt sense of disbelief.
“You won the genetic lottery…. Ughh… I won the lottery of right place – fuck yeah - right time. Your boyfriend won the lottery in somehow finding you… fuck… locking you down. You see, even us peasants have our blessings too. Maybe it’s what we get in exchange for having to do our laundry with roaches and junkies.”
He said this, being able to tell everything about her by the shape and feel of her ass, the way its flesh gave, everything except for the most fundamental truth. That she wasn’t a peasant. Or hadn’t been one until only very recently.
Her ass, though more perfect than any other, gave way the same as any other ass he had enjoyed.
It was perhaps because of this, as strange as it was, that he didn’t suspect her of being anything more than what she seemed to be. It was as if he had internalized the idea of the rich being so much more than he was, that he couldn’t imagine them being the same underneath those clothes; or as if nudity, poverty’s most fundamental costume, was something the rich were never lowered to feeling the indignities of, like they existed, beings of pure spirit from the neck down.
Your mom had spirit, plenty of it, but she was also body too. And what a body. His saliva, its dripping volume crawling with bitterness, dripped down between her cheeks like any fact of nature, like gravity had dominion over it and her both, the same gravity which kept people like him and her where they were. The same gravity that kept someone sipping from laced bottles of cola. The same gravity which busted half the machines in this laundromat, and flickered out a third of its lights, casting shadows over it in the night, when people walked past its windows, only looking in for seconds before shifting their gaze over their own shoulders, watching for threats in the outer darkness.
The same gravity which brought down a random line in the stock exchange, one so singular amongst that messy web of bent and curving lines, a data-point within that wild mess, but one of such large consequence.
He held her chin, feeling as if he held something fundamental, the goddess of fate herself, Fortune the Greeks called her, cradling that chin, arching her back into archetypal sexuality and submission, just to pummel it with all the confidence of manhood, confidence stolen from him by the bleak crumbling of all possibility.
Now he held possibility, held its source before him, upside down, bleary, and panting, and he felt her body, rich and full, against the thirst of his own.
Your mom’s lips gave to his in a sort of desperate romance, one tucked beyond the furthest reaches of illusion. Illusions, shadows cast which birthed the material world. The world of matter and shape, a world imprisoning the throbbing hum of spirit.
In that world, further illusion birthed, so that every material, no matter how sacred, came equipped with a price tag, then, further, a barcode, slapped against it with a satisfying palm. All things commodified. All things except one.
He felt that one thing give then tremble against his fingers with that slap. He spat on it again, not out of disgust for it, but out of a deeper, more uncertain, love. He conquered, through conquering its fleshy, enticing mass, his own solitude, the chain which held him to the rock of his own dwindling prospects and bank account. It was one lantern, one source of glowing, beige but blushing light, beckoning him from within bushes in the darkness. All it required was for those bushes, with one enterprising and trembling hand, to be pulled aside.
A treat, a meal more refined than any in the most high-class Manhattan restaurants. The places with waitlists that stretched along expanding landscapes of papyrus scroll. Your mom’s ass, more than most, but in its fundamentals the same as the others, was worth so much more. Worth so much it couldn’t be given a price tag. And, because of that, it was pure.
Her cheeks gave in a way never described in any dry economics textbooks. Her body trembled with her moans, her flesh throttled by it, in a way which evaded Marx’s dialectic. Her soul sleeping within her, untarnished by Hegelian gobbledigook or Platonic musings and pomp. She was the perfect form alright, but not in any way known by the limited minds of philosophy or science. Her perfection itself jiggled ripe with imperfections to counter it. Marks left by age or lifestyle, squeaking in her voice, every few seconds being extremely non-sexual, a strange smell amongst the otherwise rosy scent wafting from her golden body.
This was the real perfection. A perfection of flesh, blood, and failure. A perfection sweetened and spiced by humiliation, humiliation for him and her both. Crabs in the same bucket, stuck there, looking up at a circular-framed sky, only ever feeling its touch when it dribbled with rain, the same rain which threatened to submerge them.
He clung to her shoulders and ass with desperate claws, bringing himself up the concave wall of that bucket, scaling its silver, toward its rim, toward the remote chance of escape, and she, with her sexuality, it dripping from her without thought, pulled him down yet again, down to where he belonged, comingling, body against body, with the crabs such as himself, the place where he rightfully belonged.
She was goddess and mortal both. Healthy nourishment and tooth-rotting dessert. The most priceless simplicity and the world’s most expensive commodity. Body and spirit, gift and curse, sun and moon, essence and void.
He spun her around, lowering her to her feet with equal parts aggression and care.
Her mouth found, then took his penis head, kissing it the way it deserved to be kissed. Like all penises, it was beautiful, the center of the universe as its place where most pleasure was felt.
Not in the bank account, not in the clothes which draped one’s shoulders. Not glimmering on the wrist of one’s arm, or rocking off the coast of one’s beachfront property. The sweetest richness ever known by a man, the greatest store of wealth, existed in scattered bursts along that nerve ending, perpetually waiting for the warm, sweet, wet tongue protruding out the mouth of a beautiful face.
He lifted her to her feet, raising her to his level. And as their faces floated there, their eyes locked onto each other’s, her tongue, more appetizing than ever, protruded toward his.
He met that tongue with his own, just like he had with so many others, tasting in them their loss and failure, making sweet romance with his own through them. Pussies, buttholes, and mouth, faces to rub his testicles or butt cheeks against, faces to piss on. Butt cheeks to prop in the air on thick, supportive thighs. Buttholes to be stuffed with television remotes or other paraphernalia within strange bedrooms.
This was often all a poor man had: rape. The most beautiful word in the English language for those who suffered poverty and its slings.
Your mom existed now as both his victim and his dance partner, the last rebel yell in a dying metropolis.
Her ass, which once knew nothing but velvet and Italian leather, now was cradled within those rough palms, her pussy fucked amongst grime, her paradise smelling like cheap soap and stale clothing.
Cock and ass, the two things which knew no social class, but were spread evenly among the population and world.
Your mom, raised for luxury by your grandfather, could still be bent over, still be lowered to the status of lesser mammal, a literal bitch being fucked by the luckiest of all junkyard dogs.
Her feminine smells wafting through the building, competing with detergent. The sounds of her slapping flesh echoing through the pillowy softness of her moans. The tangy palette of her lips, tongue, and ass. The feeling of her flesh against his, and its sights.
All brought upon and made base by a man of the lower caste.
His naked ass eclipsing her own as he thrust with joy against her, forgetting his troubles in her own.
Your dad, until now, had been the only man who knew the taste of her pussy and ass. Now that had changed. Her pussy sat there, staring back at him like a coin slot, awaiting a few dollars (it used to be cents before inflation), and he penetrated it without spending a dime. The best pleasures in life were free, or at least cost only in time, effort, good sense, and planning.
Your mom’s ass smelled like any other beautiful ass he had met up close. It smelled like roses, its own particular brand, or even perfume, but they all did. They all contained their own cologne, one which beckoned when found unattended, always eager to betray the woman they belonged to, stuffing themselves, like gluttons, on cock, and relishing like a big sister successfully tormenting the younger.
It was that feminine scent which seemed to call for each nearest rapist.
He looked at it with absolute reverence, and desperation, despite his current power over it.
Her butthole seemed to wink at him, bohemian, slumming it, and desperate for more.
In this wonderful sight, and the tastes which accompanied it, he knew was in conversation with the real woman, the soul of a woman, the parts of her off-limits to every law-abiding citizen. Sex being a system of awards for those who had wealth, one which motivated them to gain more, and preserve that which they held onto for dear life.
He penetrated your mom’s asshole with his fingers, kissed her cheek with his lips, doing so as if he were meeting an old friend. Your mom as she was, bent over, her face against the floor, only carried that real part of her, that universal spirit which he had known in so many other women, it changing drastically in shape but never in spirit.
Her ass had conspired against her, the same way all great asses do. And her poverty, which he had assumed had always been her lot, destined her to suffer the way the poor suffered.
He brought her hip back down to the floor, ready again to instantiate the lot of his caste through the body of one of its most pristine members.
What your mom lacked in youth, she had in tightness. He hoped she was a mother as he thrust into her, knowing it would only maximize the indignity. He imagined her kids, without visualizing you, thrift-clothing covered in stains, shoes worn after being handed down to multiple feet. The children of poverty and her both.
The violated pussy of a mother being the most magical of all places, all due to the webs of consequence it bound together in one place.
The pussy and asshole of a poor woman only being that much more valuable. The fate of society’s lower strata was to suffer indignity on top of indignity.
Just as it was the fate of society’s lower sex, and society’s lower races (of which white people, who usually walked with wide, preening peacock feathers when middle-class or rich, became as disgusting as crow or pigeon to public sentiment when poor).
The two most oppressed figures in the country lay there on that dirty floor, their bodies united in representing their lot as beautifully as possible.
The same police who could stop this busy protecting the property of the same rich who cut their wages, leaving him in this derelict playground to do what he liked.
And it was in these moments, this one most of all, that all the stale greyness of poverty evaporated and blew off into the distance like dust.
In these moments that he was somebody. Someone who would feel the heights of human emotion, the heights of human physical thrill, the extent to which one could leave their imprint on the lives of another. Coating beautiful asses and faces in man’s sticky white fluid. Never feeling guilt, only feeling glad. Just an example of the animal existence forced upon himself and her by the whims of the rich.
If he only knew how contrary to a heroic impotence his act now was. If he only knew just how close to wealth he had been, even if removed by time, how the pigeon he held against himself was no pigeon at all, but a prized parrot, its wings dampened grey, but the form beneath it as immaculate as a phoenix. But the flames were his alone to pull from her ash.
With a body rich no longer, he was getting the closest thing to justice the lowers classes would ever receive, outside of revolutionary vigilantism only seen in successful communist states, landowners in Russia, China, Cambodia, Cuba, struggling in vain to flee, only being caught and used by clawing proletariat fingers. Ukrainian kulaks, clutching the legs of their luscious furniture, as their wives, daughters, and mothers were used by the same peasants they once whipped into shape outdoors.
If only the rich knew how close at hand it could be. And if only they knew how the years of want had hardened said lower castes, giving them the wisdom to desire something a little bit more important than wealth.
Your mom sucked his cock the way thousands would when their mansions, villas, and even yachts are stormed by the angry throng, hungry not for food, clothing, or shelter, but for the bliss that the rich flaunt without care.
Welders, farmers, bricklayers, all receiving the pleasure they deserve, from the bodies that deserve their coming fate. Every rich woman violated deeply by the cocks they, explicitly or not, so cruelly denied.
No longer a Maoism for land, a Leninism for coins, guerilla warfare for a living wage. No, now the revolution would pay out in the most important resource of all:
Ass.
And your mom had a whole lot of it to give. She may not be the only one, but she’s among the first, a day soon at hand when the richest of neighborhoods will be the most dangerous for the fairer sex. Their own homes, shelter and resources with them, being the venue for such unspeakable, and, for the poor, the most joyful acts.
Sins and depravity, appendages in mouths and all holes. Mothers forced by Kalashnikovs to suck off their sons. Daughters forced to become proficient in devouring their mom’s asses to the cheers of a crowd. Toes in mouths, ass cheeks rubbed against faces, entire boxes of jewellery jammed up the ass of mother’s while bets are placed as to how much she can take, forcing their sons to pack it in deeper with their thumbs.
Circles of hairy flatulent asses surrounding elegant faces on all ends, her gold earrings running between their cheeks, the warmth of their buttcheeks rubbing against the cheeks and brows of her face.
Recipients of not just spit and cum, but urine. The indignities suffered by their victims brought back on them tenfold. Each woman escaping only as surely as a camel can fit through the eye of a needle. The poor being rich now, and the rich – finally - being poor.
All of this, like the fallen splinters of some great monstrosity tempting the sky, fell to this dirty floor, this non-factor in the city, a laundromat barely breaking even, being the venue for the revolution’s first nudge into irreversibility.
Of course nobody would know this now. A cop could have come in any moment, and witness what was happening, but it would only be another rape, a doped-up woman being used by a clever and conniving man, one stripped of his morals by the sucking void left where his intergenerational wealth should be.
He’d have gotten his beating, being hauled to the courthouse in chains, with the officer hoping the woman in question, when sober, would do her part for justice by speaking her peace (junkies often refused).
None of that would come to pass though. There was no cavalry for the poor. And your mom, being the poor herself now, would only get the one justice the poor was guaranteed: For her indignity to fade into obscurity.
The moment of release, of letting himself go in liquid form on the ass of his target, was truly something else. He could feel the world disappear in that moment. Nothing left except for him, his cock, and that ass.
It would always stare up at him, receiving his load, dripping with it in a sort of messy joy. Your mom’s ass was doing that to him now.
It was only once he was finished, one he was satiated, that the world began to suck back into being.
Even still, he was filled with a great affection for it, one all the more stronger now that his arousal had left him. Like a homeless man with his dog, a childless widow with her kittens as babies, it was his one last purity, his one last rub with a pretty world. The lone flower, bright and upright, in a world of leaning grey.
Your mother, his dance partner in this little ritual, this jubilee for the orphaned and ragged, smiled back at him with a dumb mouth, one which, despite its cluelessness, held a wisdom that he somehow understood.
They kissed, a true husband and wife, truer than any brought together by family, wealth, or station. The most pure experiences, the only pure experiences, being those of their means. And they shared in those means beautifully.
*knock knock knock*
“Where’s your mom?”
You threw your bedsheets over yourself, covering your throbbing erection.
“I don’t know,” you called weakly at the bare face of your door.
You heard your dad standing there, and, despite his silence, you knew he was seething. “Okay…” he said eventually, and he stomped, both irritated and solemn, down the hall. His stomps were few. The kitchen was only a few feet away.
You threw your bedsheets off yourself, your cock coming free. You pulled its head to your belly and let it snap back up again.
How I’d love to catch her drunk at a party…
You thought about the girl in the red dress getting into her Mercedes. You thought of that man’s words: catch her drunk at a party…
They were stuck in your mind. You tugged yourself, writhing against your sheets in that little room, your own room, as tough as it was to absorb. That ass, big and perfect and red, finding its seat in the beautiful car and driving off.
You imagined. A door opened, and a room, large and illustrious with stuff, pristine and golden, with a large king-sized bed, and that ass, big, red, and perfect, staring back at you. The woman’s face, her eyes shut, an empty bottle of champagne at her fingertips on the floor.
You stepped into the room. You grabbed the door to close it behind you.
*knock knock knock*
You threw your sheets over yourself again, trying not to cum.
“Hey,” your dad called.
You felt it coming, ready or not, and you hunched over beneath the sheets, ejecting anti-climactically into their fabric.
Your dad continued: “Do you know how to make mac & cheese?”
The bolt clicked open, and the door followed with a ding.
The owner came in, holding his keys.
A sour expression took over his face.
“Fuckin’”
He froze. He saw a woman, blonde and beautiful, laying against a machine in ragged clothing.
He moved to the machine, cautiously, fearing he’d wake her up. He opened it.
Inside were clothes, presumably her own. They had been left there, molding in their dampness, all night.
He looked over at her, shocked to see her eyes open. She looked back at him with just as much shock.
He looked back into the washer. He shook his head.
“Dumb bitch,” he murmured, and got up, heading to the backroom.
Your mom lay there, her face red, her eyes burning. She twisted around and looked within the washer, and then scowled at the smell.
She fell back on her thighs, feeling sore in her bottom. She assumed it was from falling asleep on the floor.
She sat there staring at it for a moment. Then she took out her phone, looking up what to do about moldy clothes on wikihow.
Wash them again.
Luckily she could.
The problem was she didn’t have enough money to dry them.