Song of Solomon (Us and Them)

Your uncle Benjamin was the only person in your community, wherever it extended itself in all the hills and valleys of the world, who wasn’t bothered by this new reality. The famous “One State Solution” the world – and every politician and pundit within it -- seemed to be celebrating.

“I never get tired of these lights,” he said, gazing over the banister.

Your mom sat, staring down at the blank face of the table.

“Don’t you agree?” he looked to you and your mother. “It’s like the future and the past all at once.” He motioned with a wide-open palm toward the city below. The Eiffel Tower shone brilliantly in the distance, like a conspiracy of stars against the black night.

“The future,” your mom repeated, in Hebrew.

Your uncle looked at her.

Your mom looked up at the other patrons, realizing her mistake. She looked back down and repeated the phrase in French. “Future,” she said with a forlorned sadness for something unspoken. She lifted her glass to her mouth and sipped from her champagne.

Your uncle came back to your table, pulled out his chair with the usual swagger, and sat down, facing your mom, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “And the future isn’t just here. It’s anywhere you’d like. Your husband is intelligence. The world turned on us, but they still need us. Hypocrites or no, NATO, Russia -- even China – someone who knows what your husband knows is just that much more of an advantage.” You couldn’t tell how much more was implied by that ‘knows.’ “Any nation that can get him. They’ll hook you up with a home, a family name. Nobody will even have to know you’re-“ he stopped talking and then leaned back in his seat. His one thigh falling over the other in the typical French fashion.

“Good,” your mom said. “And then we can disappear and fade into their world. They can’t kill us there. They won’t need to. We’ll do it to ourselves.”

Your Uncle Benjamin wiped at his nose. “Now you’re being dramatic. We’ve survived thousands of years. So what, they take our only state. We’ll get up, dust ourselves off, and make another. Just give it time.”

“Time?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“We were slaves in Egypt,” he said, staring into the side of your mom’s face. “Or so they say. You think living here is worse than that?” The Eiffel Tower, bright yellow-white, jabbed at the night behind him. He smiled in the corner of his mouth, portraying not just optimism, but confidence. It was easy for him to do so. As an adult, he had only ever truly lived in Paris. He would visit Tel Aviv every second year, and didn’t seem to appreciate it whenever he did. Though he did seem to enjoy seeing his sister again. His hand fell on her thigh suddenly. You looked down at it, through the frosted glass of the table which obscured it, though it was illuminated by the outdoor lighting. “You’re in Babylon now,” he said. “Enjoy it while it lasts.” His hand ran itself slowly, subtly against her thigh, as if in encouragement.

She suddenly looked up, looking directly into his eyes. “I’ll be able to fit in. I mean, I barely look Jewish.” She stared at him, her semitic fury and beauty both, as if she were amplifying each through some hidden skill, some reversal of the ability the western reactionaries pinned against your race (“Shapeshifters”). Your mother couldn’t look any more Jewish now. “I’m sure I’ll fit right in.”

He laughed to himself awkwardly, his palm sliding from her thigh, slapping against his own knee. He fell back in his chair, looking out at the city and all its various lights. “So… they have him in Cyprus now. When’s he coming back?” He meant your father.

“When he takes it back…”

His gaze snapped up at her. “Takes it back? Are you insane?”

“That’s why he’s there.” There was some bitterness in her voice.

“He’s there to coordinate refugee migration. That’s what you told me.”

“Ah yes,” she said, her thumb running against the edge of her glass. “And forget I told you anything else.”

“Jesus. They’re going to start World War III.” He looked up and above into the night sky. His uncharacteristic gloom faded quickly and he lifted his arms out like a prophet. “And risk all this…”

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said, again bitterly, not looking at him. “The Americans have abandoned us. The democrats run congress, they’re done with us. The president too. The republicans have nothing right now, but even if they did, there’s a growing cabal of jew-haters among them. It seems to be the new thing.”

“And it’ll pass,” your uncle said. The smile on his face shocked you, as it was proof that he really believed it. His hands rested on the back of his head. “It will always pass. Just wait ‘til the next bomb-vest attack. They’ll go back to hating them in no time.” You knew who ‘them’ was referring to. You heard that phrase, ‘them,’ your entire life.

Your mom sat opposite him. Her face unchanging, her eyes down at the table. She was oblivious to the beauty of the night. Her thoughts were filled with home.

Your uncle’s palm fell against her thigh. “Trust me.”

She didn’t say a word. She just sat there silently. You watched that hand through the frosted glass, fuzzy and indistinct, as it rubbed your mom’s bronzed flesh.

“Okay,” he said, coming into the room with folded sheets. He laid them as one clump on your mom’s bed. “Half for you, half for your mother.” He looked at you and winked. “Just try and share.”

Your mom was in the shower, her dress lay on the bed empty of her soft form next to where he laid the sheets. He looked over at the dress, just taking a peek at it, doing so with just his eyes.

The visual of him, years ago, standing next to your mom back home, his hand on the small of her back, his palm and finger stuck there as if magnetized, flashed in your mind. She stood by your father, waiting for the hot dogs on the grill to finish, her brother behind her, a beer in his hand, and the other hand holding…. her.

The water audibly slapped against her naked skin beyond the door of your uncle’s bathroom, and he stared at her empty dinner dress. That dress, sans the body which wore it, seemed to share in the bathroom’s water and steam, and his eyes, as if looking through that very same water and steam, were locked, magnetized, on its discarded shape.

You felt a strange sensation. You had watched her become nude earlier in this very room, while your uncle was still rummaging for pillows downstairs. You had seen her nude more times than you could count. You had grown up with it, seeing both your parents nude often. Your dad’s flaccid, sometimes half-hard penis bobbing with each step as he walked past your mom’s large gesticulating ass cheeks in their bedroom. You had grown up with these sights and lived with their memories with all the vividness that spilled in through those year-round open windows. The drapes billowed in or were sucked out by the desert atmosphere, and your parents, expressions as bland as any other day, moved nude through that milieu.

You did the same, not truly understanding just what you were seeing. It was recently that the preciousness of those experiences began to occur to you. You had been coming up on the age where you realized that not all possible shapes were equal. You were beginning to realize, that from the crown of her brunette head, down to the round ends of her toes, your mom was something unlike anything else. You didn’t just understand it. You felt it. Felt it so deeply you sometimes felt like you could burst. And you knew others felt the same way.

Today had been no different. As your mom’s form became obscured (but still hinted at) by her towel, and she left, shutting herself within the bathroom, you almost wanted to shut the bedroom door, locking yourself into the guest room with your own raging nudity (with only her dinner dress to keep it company). But you knew, even in your ecstasy, that your uncle would be there any second. And within a second, he came. But not before (‘innocently’) trying for the bathroom door. It didn’t budge. “She didn’t have to lock it,” he said, coming in with the sheets and a smile. “After all, we’re family.”

He was right. She usually didn’t lock it back home. Here it was different.

After he set everything down, admired your mom’s empty dress subtly, he motioned to leave. He turned to look at you, his palm resting on the doorway. “Don’t let her get you down, hey?” he pointed to the bathroom door. “Your mom’s wonderful, but she was still raised a Jewish princess.” He winked at you, turned to look at the door which contained her naked form, doing so for a second too long. Then he turned back, smiled, and, in just a fraction of a second, his eyes shifted away from you, past you to the lower portion of the opposite wall. Then he turned just as quickly and left, his eyes still on the bathroom door for as long as he was still in your sight.

You turned, looking down at where his eyes had been pointed. You could see nothing at first. But then, as if it were some spectre, you noticed it. It was a gap in the baseboard, a small insignificant one. You stared at it. You heard him still moving through the house, the sound of his footsteps faded within the soft sonic bed of running shower water. It occurred to you: the room over from this one was the laundry room. You felt a sudden rush. You shot forward, and, leaning down, you looked between the little gap. And that’s when you saw it. Your heart skipped a beat. It was a hole. A hole seemingly drilled into the wall. You could see the base of the stainless-steel dryer on its other end. It was a hole between worlds.

Your eyes fell shut, your mouth open. You felt a wave crash over you, one warm despite its violence. You recalled that one time, years ago, when you were too young to understand. Two arab boys, not much older than you, stood outside the communal festival showers, staring in through a chink in its surface. Their eyes were alight, electric, staring into a world they were forbidden from, not just due to their gender, but due to their race and religion with it.

You knew women stood within, all of them women of your race, all of them feeling secure in their privacy. You imagined your mom, her body bronzed with the rest of them within, her eyes shut, blissfully unaware, beneath the shower stream, the air alive with rushing water and a million pretty tongues speaking to one another in Hebrew. Two whispering Arabic voices sat at its outskirts, peering in with a joy you could only grasp-at faintly years later. Then you felt a hand on your young shoulder.

“Look at them,” a familiar voice said. You looked up to see your mom above you (this was before your growth-spirt). She stared at them the way one would stare at cockroaches. She then turned and pointed out the two boys to someone standing behind her.

Two policemen came and walked past her. By the time the boys realized they were caught, it was too late for them. They were grabbed and dragged off, their faces red, terror in their eyes.

Your mom stood there, staring at them. You stared at her in turn. Your expression just as blank, though you could see through her eyes that she felt some degree of justice was enacted, like the universe had only confirmed her consistent suspicion and also acted upon it in kind.

She let go of your shoulders. She walked past you, lifting up the plywood board that the boys had thrown to the dirt, putting it back where it belonged, covering the hole that no one would ever discover again.

Your mom, still in her bikini, a veil over her large bronze backside, wiped her hands on her bare flanks (sending a shockwave through her body, jiggling her thighs and bottom), and turned around. She came, grabbing you by the hand, and the two of you walked around the structure.

She then brought you to its proper entrance, within the showers with her. She removed your clothes first, and then hers, and you followed her large ass cheeks within. You stood there, one of the few young boys among a throng of naked women of all ages. Many looked down at you, saying hi (especially the older ones), smiling at your mother while complimenting you. You had no idea then how lucky you were that day.

You lay there, in Paris, chest-down on the floor of your uncle’s guest room, remembering. And somehow, even more than regretting that time lost, you imagined those two arab boys, regretting, as strange as it was to say, the one Jewish body among many they had missed that day. The body you stood nude and next to sharing the same steam, without their eager eyes on her.

The bathroom door opened.

You shot up to your feet.

Your mom came in, her body wrapped in her towel. “The water’s still warm,” she said. “It stays warm forever here.”

You smiled, walking past her to give her room.

As you did, your pulse rising, you heard the door to the laundry room open-up. From the doorway, you turned to look down at the little hole in your room. Then you looked up at your mom. Her towel dropped. Her big ass, both cheeks and crack, were bare to you. But not just to you. You looked down at the hole, seeing a shadow pass before it. You turned. You shut the door and you headed to the shower.

It throbbed up at you.

You stared down at it, seeing its pale shape. Its mushroom head almost pink, at odds with the rest of your bronzed form. You tilted your hips, watching your cock, feeling it move beneath the falling water, feeling those warm liquid fingers over it. You shut your eyes, and when you did, you saw those two arabs. You imagined them, taking it for granted that they were still alive, imagining what their cocks looked like now, big and stiff, on a half-functioning bed, looking down at themselves, imagining those golden bodies like King David taken in the open ass and breasts of Beth-Sheba.

Your cock throbbed again.

You reached down for it, now imagining another eye, a more familiar eye, one which had to be at work now, getting to see what those two boys missed, wanting to see it, perhaps only getting to when he was a lot younger, when she was so young she barely had anything to admire. You imagined his cock hard against the laundry room floor, his eye wide, as wide as the hole itself, as his sister, unawares, existed naked and large, eclipsing the very light above her from his uplooking sight. You imagined the bare sole of her feet, lifting and lowering as she stepped into her pajamas, falling to the floor near his eye. A nudity beyond the nudity, adding to its salaciousness. Adding to its taboo. A kind of nudity even those two arab boys never got their chance at.

You imagined it all with your eyes shut. And your hand massaged your testicles, your fingers working their way up to your cock, up its shaft, before they danced against its head like angels on a pin. You were about to-

“Oh.”

You shuddered in place, tilting forward to hide yourself.

“That must be from your dad’s side of the family…”

You opened your eyes. He was standing there, facing you at an angle, outside the glass of the shower, looking in at your erect and raging cock.

Without looking up and into your eyes, he placed a rolled-up towel on the counter. “You forgot this,” he said, still admiring your cock in the mirror. He turned around, took another look at it, and shook his head as he left. “Beautiful. Beautiful. My god.”

He shut the door with a slam.

You stood there, staring at the door’s face in shock, as if it were so defective, it could barely work to contain your nightmares from stepping in to your waking life.

But you knew, knowing your uncle, that the surrealism of the moment didn’t detract from its reality one tiny bit.

The water fell against the side of your burning face.

Your cock stood there, still just as hard.

You looked back to see your mom, her body bronze beneath the sun, as she lay back on the lawn chair, watching the two of you go. You couldn’t see her eyes beneath the shade of her large-brimmed sunhat. Only her nose and chin, and the shape of her body below, its every upturned inch baking under a French sun.

You turned back to find that your uncle, who walked along with you, was also turned to get a long, hard look at her before leaving. You were sure that if he knew she’d be sunbathing on his very own terrace that day, that he would have called his meeting off to stay home and watch her from the shade of the kitchen.

He was still turned, taking her in as he presumably guided you. It wasn’t until his crotch almost met a hydrant, that he turned around, adjusted himself, looked to you and smiled. “Thought I saw a missing tile on the roof,” he said. He looked back for a quick second. “It was just the sun in my eye.” You saw your reflection, looking sheepishly unconvinced, in the reflection of his sunglasses. “Here. Here,” he said. “Let’s cross here.”

You hurried through the crosswalk before the light changed, and you stood by the bus stop bench. He looked over, seeing a girl with red hair standing on the edge of the curb, presumably waiting for the bus you two were. He looked her up and down, his eyes crawling over the smooth skin of her thighs and calves, up past her skirt, before glaring at the side of her freckled face. She held a flat hand over her eyes like a visor, shielding them from the sun.

You watched her with him beneath the shelter. Then the bus pulled up, bathing you all in shade. And your uncle, almost forgetting you were there, moved forward, finding the first step up almost as quickly as she had found the second. He held his book bag hanging from his shoulder, following her, his kneecaps almost pushing in between her calves on the way up.

You followed, a step-and-a-half behind.

As you got there, you stared at the driver. He stared back at you, waiting for you to pay. You were afraid to speak, afraid of your own mediocre French, even more of your own accent. You turned to your uncle, who was still behind the young redhead, following her to the back of the bus. She found a seat and sat down, and then looked up at your uncle, her gaze going from careless to sceptical as soon as she saw him there. He stopped and turned around, and then went “oh” silently, and came back to you. “Yes, yes,” he said in French. Then he tapped his card against the machine. “He’s with me. Come, come.” He grabbed your wrist and brought you to a window seat. He set you down, and then sat down next to you nearest the aisle. “Beautiful day,” he said, sounding excited, but not in a way which was infectious. Almost in a way which put you on edge.

He sat there, staring at nothing, his elbows on his knees, leaned forward as if eager to fall into some future benefit, the kind he lived his life on, the kinds which enriched him. You found it hard to believe, looking at him now, that this was the man who stole such unguarded and private glances at your mom’s naked ass just the night before. It seemed so unjust, so rich with nihilistic irony, that anything like it could ever be the case. But you knew that it was. You had watched it play out and you had done nothing to stop it.

You looked down to see something, hard and serpentine, in his jeans. It throbbed there, as if it knew it were being watched, as if it were arrogant in its right to exist, daring you to say, or even think, otherwise. He rubbed his hands together. His book bag dangled off his shoulder. He then, as if remembering something, leaned back, lifting it to his lap. He reached in, seemed to apply some pressure, then pulled his hand back out.  You were surprised to see his hand empty when he did.

The red-head sat across the aisle and behind you, her one freckle-splashed thigh over the other, expressionless, only looking ahead.

He walked you down the streets of downtown Paris. It looked like a world apart in the daytime, the ethereal lights gone, replaced by the stony face of old brickwork, a series of paths, cobblestoned in far-gone times, with trappings, cars, chairs, and placards sitting atop it, as if they were anchors keeping it all from drifting, sinking below the negative buoyancy of lost time.

You followed your uncle. He looked like you did, swarthy, yet he fit in this landscape as securely as every drape or piece of signage in every window. You followed along, your muscles stiff, sometimes twitching, feeling hostility from the every piece of strange architecture. The faces which filtered past you in either direction didn’t take a look at you, even once, yet you felt the urgent sensation of being foreign at all times.

“There’s the ugly man!”

You looked over, startled, assuming that the words must have been aimed at yourself.

Your uncle moved toward two men sitting at a café table, his arms spread open. “Sons of bitches!” he said joyously.

“And look,” the other said. “He has a ‘mini-me’ with him.”

Your face went red.

Your uncle pulled a chair out for you, then he sat with untarnished swagger, even as one of these men, presumably a ‘friend,’ asked: “will you have money for a drink this time, considering you now have no apartheid state to send it too?”

“The money’s for God,” he retorted confidently, bringing his ankle up to the opposite thigh.

“Interesting,” one of the men said with a grin wide and smug. “How do you feel that God thinks they deserve your land more than you do?”

“It’s not my land,” your uncle said. He laughed. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been living here for the last thirty years.”

The other one spoke up: “Regrettably…”

Your uncle fished a cigarette from out his pocket, lighting it as he spoke. “Hey, if you have some place you think I should go, just give me some land and a plane ticket and I’m there.”

“We’re not falling for that one again.”

Your uncle pulled and inhaled, doing so out the corner of his mouth. “I guess we’re at an impasse then. You don’t want us here, don’t want us gone.” He took another pull. “So the natural question I have to ask: what do you want to do with us?”

There was a silence at the table, a tension everyone seemed to feel, except your uncle, who only took another drag.

“Bonjour monsieurs, what will it be for drinks?”

A pretty woman stood there with a notepad, a black skirt over her thighs. Your uncle leaned down, adjusting his bookbag against the pavement like he was nervous, but showed no signs of it in his face or mannerisms otherwise. “Mmm, whatever beer you prefer. You look like you have good taste. Any preference for you?” he looked to you earnestly. You stared back, too young to drink. “Get him the same. He’s not particular.”

“You don’t want to keep it kosher?” his ‘friend’ asked.

Your uncle didn’t even look at him, only looking up the waitress instead, cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “You have the body and blood of Christ on the menu? Or just regular bread and wine like everyone else?”

The woman blushed, writing down her favorite beer wordlessly. She then nodded. “I’ll be back with your- uh-“ she stumbled slightly in place.

“Sorry,” he said, leaning down to his bookbag to adjust it. “I’ll just get that out of your way.” He tucked it beneath his seat.

“He’s always leaving his shit around, even on the job site.” He looked at your uncle. “It’s like he thinks he owns the place.”

The woman nodded and laughed awkwardly, then turned and left.

“So, you done with those E11s, or do you need two more extensions?”

“I’m done.”

There was silence. Then: “you wouldn’t happen to have it in that bag you’re always lugging around.”

“No,” he shook his head.

“Okay, so when-“

“Tonight.”

“What do you mean, tonight?” the other asked. “You can’t send it onl-“

“Meet me at Chaplin’s.”

“Chaplin’s?”

“Uh huh. I’m going with my sister and nephew.” He motioned to you with his thumb. “Having some drinks. I’ll get it to you then.”

“Okay…” his friend (now becoming clear to you more as a co-worker) said, and he leaned back in his chair.

“Wait, wait, wait a second,” the other said with his hand out. “How about this. You were late on the E11, which is kind of the same as being late on a payment.”

Your uncle looked up into the corner of his eyes as he leaned to ash his cigarette on the street, with an expression as if he didn’t see the joke coming.

“So, naturally, I’m sure you of all people would agree, we—us two here—are entitled to interest.”

“Deal.”

They both froze. You uncle pushed the cigarette to the pavement. It sizzled dead.

One of the men looked as if he wanted to clarify that he was only joking, but your uncle continued. “Usery is no sin. Without it, there’d be no reason for the bank to loan any money at all. I’m game. Three E11s, plus interest. See you at 9.” He tapped you on your shoulder. “Let’s go.”

As you both got up, the pretty woman came to the table with your beers.

“For them,” your uncle said, pointing at his friends. He pulled out his wallet and threw a few bills on the table.

The woman smiled. “Have a good day.” She waved at your uncle awkwardly, then looked at you and did the same, her smile warming your insides. She turned and walked off, and your uncle watched her thighs, thick and succulent, as she did.

“Oh!” he said, and he leaned down and reached beneath his chair. “Almost forgot my bag.”

“You ever leave it home?”

“Never,” he said, patting it with his palm. “It’s worth more than you’ll know.”

You both walked off.

“Funny guys, hey?”

You said nothing, only nodding awkwardly, though he didn’t even see it.

“Yeah,” he said. “They make me laugh. Can’t wait to see them tonight.” His body suddenly shuddered, as if he were cold. “Here, look at this. You’re going to love this. I doubt they have stuff like this back home.” There was an escalator ahead, one which went up into a terrace, an area which looked to be an outdoor mall.

He seemed eager to step onto the escalator, but he turned around just before, and then he stopped. “Just wait,” he said. He pulled you aside. You stood there and watched as he pulled from his cigarette harder. You figured it was the reason why he stopped. Then you heard two voice, sweet, syrupy, speaking French. You turned around to see two French girls, not much older than you were, in short skirts coming up from where you had.

They walked past, and your uncle exhaled, throwing his half-cigarette to the ground, and walking briskly toward the escalator, then walking up until he was exactly behind the two girls. He shuffled his shoulder, and the strap of his bag bobbed against it. The bag bumped against your knee. You looked down at it. That’s when you noticed, it giving you a flashback to the night before, that at the end of its zipper, closest to the two girls, the bag remained unzipped. A little hole, black and impenetrable, sat at the end of the bag, directly between the thighs of one of the girls. You looked up at the back of her head, seeing her, blonde and oblivious, chatting with her friend. You looked down, seeing her giant backside within her skirt. You looked lower down at the hole in the bag, open and black, and a rush ran through you, not only knowing what must have been inside, but knowing that the very same thing you now realized he had been using all day was the very same thing he had used on your very own mother just last night. It had to be.

Suddenly, as if that wasn’t enough for you, his opposite hand came down, finding the hem of her skirt, and with perfect confidence and subtlety, he pinched and lifted it just slightly enough to make sure the device in his bag was getting exactly what it was aiming for. You stared at his busy fingers against that fabric, shocked. Then, when feeling you were being watched, looked up to see him looking directly at you. He made a clicking sound in his cheek and shot you a wink.

You both found level ground with the girls, then you followed him as he followed them, until they disappeared into an office building. You then followed him off to the side, against the wall. “I got the waitress too,” he said, looking down at his bag. “And, I don’t know if you noticed, but the red-headed girl on the bus too. I must have got a good shot when she went up those bus stairs.” He didn’t look at you at all when he said all of this, nor did he look nervous or ashamed. “You ever look up girls’ skirts?”

You shook your head. “No.”

He looked surprised. “No window peeping, nothing? It runs in your blood. Your grandpa used to look in at some of his tenants back in Poland. That’s probably the only reason you guys lived in Israel. One of the husbands caught him. The jig was up. He left everything. Your mom was still young then, but I was old enough to support myself so I stayed. Last thing I wanted was to live in a desert where everyone around you wants you dead. I guess being surrounded by the polish men and fathers you cuckolded is much worse though.” He was smiling at the thought. “I guarantee you he spied on quite a few arabs before he passed. ‘Never do it to your own,’ he would tell me. He was strange like that. Very race-conscious, I’m sure you remembered.”

He was racist. You remembered that about him more than anything else. “You know how ‘they’ are.” You heard the phrase a thousand times. It never occurred to you in all this time that such lust could coexist with such disgust, but thinking about it now, you couldn’t believe you hadn’t thought of it earlier. The two, rather than cancel, multiplied on each other, like girls digging bad boys, men often sought to conquer that which they couldn’t stand, and what better way to conquer then to violate sexually, to feel the every forbidden inch within an unconsenting, even squirming, form? And short of that, the ability to steal their nude and oblivious image for one’s own pleasure.

The thought sent a thrill through you, one which was extra potent after the thrill of those skirts on the escalator.

“It’ll be good footage,” your uncle continued. His bag hung against his knee cap. “You’ll see when we get back.”

‘Good footage.’ Again you throbbed, knowing that below the good footage he was willing (excited) to show you, hid an even more salacious heirloom he never could.

His palm fell on the back of your neck, almost fatherly. “Let’s go,” he said. “Wait ‘til you get a load of this.”

You heard the sound of rushing water ahead.

“A waterfall?” your mom said.

“A waterfall,” your uncle repeated proudly while placing his bag on the kitchen table.

Your mom stood there, her body bronzed in a t-shirt and bikini bottoms. “We have that in Israel,” she said.

“Ah yes, but…” he looked up at her with a sly look in his eyes. “Do you have a waterfall in the mall?”

“Yes.”

He looked over at you, betrayal in his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Your mom turned away and headed back upstairs, and as she did, your uncle watched her ass as she went, even leaning to watch her move up the stairway.

When she was gone from sight, he stood there, staring at nothing for a moment. Then, suddenly, as if a thought just came to him, he looked to you. “She continue the family tradition?” he asked.

“Traditions?” you repeated.

“Thee tradition. You know.” You didn’t and it was apparent. “She ever walk around the house without clothes?”

You blushed.

“Your grandma used to do that when we were young.”

It hadn’t been a thought you had considered before, but it made so much sense hearing it now. Your mom had to have gotten it from somewhere, and a part of you blushed harder at imagining her, the age you were now, being exposed to her own parents’ nudity, exposed to it often with your uncle in the room with her, exposed to the same.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding confident. “There’s no way she’s changed that tradition. Everything she is, she got it from her mom. She’s like a clone, honestly.”

You stood there awkwardly.

“You must have had a fun puberty.” You were stunned. He shot you a wink. Then he leaned to look up the stairway again. “And hers is even bigger than her mother’s. You know what I mean…” He had a sly smile. Then he shrugged. “Eh, at least someone’s getting a good look at her. Someone other than your dad, I mean.”

He then shot toward the kitchen table again without any awkwardness or pause. He picked up his bag. “Here, let’s see the goods we got today.”

You followed him with all the apprehension you had on the escalator. If anything, you only had more of it. You imagined that blond head of hair, the profile of that Parisian face, discussing gossip and trends with her friend, the perfect amount of distraction to give your uncle the poise he needed. That black hole looming silent beneath that skirt, watching.

Your uncle slammed the bag on the table next to his computer monitor. He fished within, looked over at you, and winked, making the same clicking sound in his cheek. Then he pulled it out. It had been affixed to something, you were sure, because it came out with a pop. He presented it to you. “Huh?”

You just nodded. It was unspectacular looking, kind of strange and angular, though its black lens contained an almost anthropomorphic humanity, not one which conjured up any comfort though.

He grabbed at a USB cord already attached to his computer tower, plugged it in and let the camera fall to his desk as if it were any other gadget.

The file came up automatically and he opened it.

They were images separated by date and time. Sure enough, he had one video from last night.

He cleared his throat, scrolling quickly past that one, to one in the middle. “Let’s see just what that server has ‘served’ us.” He clicked on it.

“You don’t want to keep it kosher?” You heard that above the sound of midday bustle, a thousand distant and indistinct voices, with only a shot of the sky above.

Then you saw a foot, feminine and dainty, visibly European, in a shoe step over the scene. The sky was blotted out first by a grey-brown darkness, only for the sight to adjust, the low-light being accommodated, and two inner thighs, both going up to meet below two big and thong-clad butt-cheeks, appeared within the confines of an all-surrounding skirt.

“Oh, perfect shot!” your uncle said next to you. “She didn’t even know what hit her.”

“You have the body and blood of Christ on the menu?” your uncle from earlier asked his target. “Or just regular bread and wine like everyone else?”

You could see the thighs of the girl, and possibly even her buttcheeks themselves, tensing, blushing even, from the question.

“I’ll be back with your- uh-“ The camera shook from a sudden violence, her butt cheek jiggled. She then stepped over it, blinding the view with a transfiguring light, one which faded into a blue, cloud-padded sky. The woman’s body, ass, thighs, and all, were gone.

“Sorry,” your past uncle said.

“I’m not sorry,” he said in the present.

“I’ll just get that out of the way.” The image rocked, stuttered, and then was scraped along the pavement until it was looking at the gum-stuck underside of his seat.

“He’s always leaving his shit around, even on the job site,” his coworker said. “It’s like he owns the place.”

You looked over at your uncle, seeing him beam with pride. The video went black, and he still stared at the screen, as if wrapped in a blissful thought. Then he reached for the mouse, shut off the video and clicked on the next one. A big giant blonde woman’s ass (you could somehow tell without even seeing the rest of her) filled the frame, jiggling with the vibrating escalator steps. Her voice came muffled through her own skirt, perhaps even muffled by the giant cheeks of her own ass. “Yeah,” he said. “Another keeper.” He reached out and grabbed the air with a pinch, mimicking the moment on screen when he did the same to her skirt. The camera’s view was clear. He clearly knew what he was doing. Her ass in stuttering stillness was replaced by her ass walking. You marvelled, hard as you’ve ever been, watching that ass tense and untense, her friend’s face above occasionally visible every time her skirt billowed out of the way. Then the camera watched harmlessly, like a child observing adults in play, as the two girls, and the one ass it had become so acquainted with, disappeared within the glass vestibule of a shop.

“That’s another for the site.” He right-clicked on the video file and named it: “French Big Ass Upskirt.” He did the same for the previous video: “French waitress doesn’t know what hit her.” Both of these were in English.

You watched the first of the three videos. An ass, visibly belonging to a red-head (you could tell by the fine, near invisible, fuzz contrasted against her ass-crack), jiggled its way up the brief steps of a bus. Then it tensed and untensed, jiggled and stopped and jiggled to the tune of a flat surface, until your uncle stopped. The camera caught her take a seat, then she settled and looked up at your uncle with some remnant of some distant suspicion in her eyes, though that faded as the shot spun around. “Oh, yes, yes. He’s with me. Come. Come.” You came into the camera’s view for a brief second, standing at the end of the bus aisle, a look of anxiousness in your swarthy features, all of it shot uncannily from below. He passed you and you could see him scan his fare card for you.

The camera than filmed the roof of the bus sliding past until it stopped. You then saw your face, again from below, framed by the bus window and the sky scrolling by, looking at him, bewildered, suspicious yourself, perhaps more so than the redhead. Then a big thumb pushed into the bag, coming towards the camera. When it made contact, the video ended.

“Red-headed whore gets her pawg ass exposed.”

You looked over at him.

“Good title, right?”

You nodded. “…yeah.”

He renamed the video.

You watched him then open a browser, and he opened a site. You saw he was already logged into it, that it was a pornographic site, one which specialized in video footage of unconsenting women, dressed or undressed, shot by men no different than your uncle. He uploaded the three videos, added tags, some of them you could have predicted (voyeur, hidden camera, candid, pawgs) but with others which surprised you (race play, Exposed Europe, Occupied Paris).

You sat there, watching the processing bar crawl across the screen.

“Yeah,” your uncle said, his voice breathy, almost trembling, but without any loss in poise. You had never, in your life, seen him lose poise. “Whatever that gene is, I inherited it from my father all right. Your grandpa was quite the connoisseur. When he left Poland, I checked through one of his old laptops he had left in the basement. He had videos from the showers and locker rooms of pools even. I even got to see many of my classmates in those. Not the Jewish ones though. He could somehow sniff out which ones were Jewish or not, even when it wasn’t obvious, and he’d blur those ones.” He seemed to be thinking to himself. “He must have spent hours doing just that. It’s strange.” He scrolled up and down the buffering page, seemingly without reason. “That’s all been preserved. I’ve kept the man’s hard work alive. All of it is on here. Literally a hundred ‘victims,’ quote-unquote. All ages. Old ladies even. He just wanted them exposed no matter who they were. As long as they weren’t Jewish.”

There was a silence for a moment. It took you a while to realize that the heavy breathing in the room wasn’t just his.

He turned to look at you. “You sure you didn’t inherit any of this?”

You didn’t respond, your mouth dry, your tongue heavy under its own unease and excitement in the moment. He must have taken this as a denial.

“Hmm,” he said, almost with some relish. “You really are your father’s son, then.” Before you could feel any misguided relief, he rolled your chair back slightly with you still on it, and motioned toward your crotch. “I mean, look at that thing.”

You stared down at it, the bulge in your pants, realizing with a quick and violent humiliation, you were hard.

“That’s bigger than your dad’s.” He reached down, and your stomach almost collapsed within itself. But instead of the worst, he only grabbed your zipper, pulling it down, doing so even as you contorted in your chair (sort of scrunching forward, as if you were afraid to wrestle away his hands with your own). He then grabbed the waist of your underwear pulling it down over your blushing cock. “That’s gotta be a full inch bigger, at least.” He pushed against the tip of it with his palm, less like a pervert, more like a doctor. “But it is your father’s. Birthmark on the balls and everything.”

You looked up, startled, into his eyes.

He looked into yours, very matter of factly. He stopped applied pressure to your cockhead and released. It flung upward and swayed for a few cycles before settling. While it did that though, he spoke: “But the rest of you is spotless. Like your mom. Not a blemish on her big ass. You’re the same.”

You stared at him as if you were staring at some foreign monster, one so strange it didn’t fill you with moral angst, only an existential terror.

He smiled. “You think your dad is the only one who worked in intelligence?” He tilted his head, your mom’s features mirroring themselves in his. “I don’t know how to tell you this, nephew. Your whole house is under surveillance 24 hours a day, minus a room or two. They literally packed my suitcase with equipment when I’d land at Tel Aviv. That’s why it always took me so long coming through customs. Your entire childhood is on a database somewhere.”

You didn’t feel anything. You wouldn’t have known what to feel if you could. The thought that he was messing around had occurred to you automatically, but his discussion of birthmarks sat there, ugly and verifiable, in a way that dashed this possibility to pieces.

“It’s a database they made me fill. That was the job anyway. They either got it out the country, or Hezbollah has it now.” His head tilted in both directions, as if leaning into either option. “It’s your dad’s fault, probably. That information he was selling to Russia probably made its way to Iran and helped with the invasion. At least that’s what our people were worried about. Hence why they need me to…” he trailed off, looking exhausted by the thought, by the pain of it which he had suffered for so long, it was no longer felt as pain, only fatigue. He then looked up with a smile. “You little creep, you. Don’t overestimate the extent of the technology these days. I couldn’t see into your mind or anything. But I do know you spent quite a bit of time in your bedroom, always starting almost minutes after seeing your mom naked, at least in those early, ‘I just started growing hair and my voice is changing,’ days. God! You couldn’t leave yourself alone, could you?”

You hadn’t moved, but you felt like you were viewing your uncle from some fallen place. He sat next to you, eye to eye, no taller than you, yet he seemed like a giant.

“All that stuff, by the way, is recorded on paper. You’d think the video footage would be enough. But no. ‘Target Rose has removed wardrobe. Target Big Man 1 followed her into shower. Target Big Man 2,’ that’s you. You should be flattered. ‘has begun his special activity.’ If you’re wondering, your dad couldn’t leave your mom’s ass alone. Out of all our targets, even the arabs and foreign diplomats, your parents have the highest sex-to-days-recorded ratio. It’s almost uncanny. Not surprising though. My sister’s ass is better than my mom’s, and my mom drove me crazy every time I saw that thing. You saw it, clothed and when it was past its prime. You should have seen that thing in its heyday, no pants, no underwear, nothing. Your mom still blows grandma out of the water though.”

He suddenly looked down at your lap, staring, almost in shock.

“Just like you blow your dad out of the water. Jesus, that thing’s perfect for my sister’s…” he stopped his thought. “Sorry. I’ll stop. Can’t have you nutting too soon. Not before-“

He turned suddenly from you and looked at the screen. His video was finished uploading and processing, but he didn’t seem interested. He clicked back on his profile, scrolled down past the recent uploads, and when you saw what was waiting there, big, unavoidable, and salaciously-titled, you gasped.

“Israeli Refugee Big Giant Ass Voyeur”

Above it, as advertised, was your mom’s naked and unaware ass.

Below it, there were 827 views.

“Wow,” he said. “Eight-hundred views in like… sixteen hours…. I’m proud of my sis.”

You felt convulsions move through you. He turned, catching something in his peripheral, and stared down at your hard, twitching penis. He laughed. “Yeah,” he said. “Real proud of her.” He pointed at the screen. “This is what all eight-hundred of them felt like.”

That only made the twitching worse, made the shame immeasurable and the pleasure immeasurable more, with both contributing to the other, expanding like a rolling snowball. You waited for the incline to level off, but it never did. You couldn’t even see the valley yet below the clouds.

“Oh, I wish your grandpa could see this,” he said again, looking at the screen, the video now up. Your mom’s ass, shot from below, just as you imagined, tensed and jiggled throughout the perceived privacy of that guest room. The camera itself shook, trembled even, as if it were an appendage on your uncle’s soul, victim to all its angst and desire. “Look at this,” he said. “You can see her butthole here.”

Just like he said, she bent over, grabbing her underwear from the suitcase on her bed, and her butthole, winking at its audience of ever-expanding number, appeared and then disappeared within those smothering butt-cheeks.

“The guys back home would never let me share that footage like this. It would be a national security threat, I guess. But not this time. This time, I’m filming her as a civilian. She’s mine to do what I want with. He looked over at you, clicking at you from within his cheek, and then winking. He then, with an open and upturned palm, gestured toward your cock. He looked up at his roof, looking beyond it, into the sky. “Sorry, Dad. But I have another ally now. Your son-in-law shouldn’t have sided with the enemy. Then your daughter’s ass wouldn’t be a feast for the world.” He then turned and looked at you, his mouth now more maniacal than even his eyes. You felt his palm, warm and calm on the back of your neck. “And the feast isn’t even over.”

He stared at you, directly into your eyes, directly into your soul, your shame, your destiny as their product, all while the fingers slowly floated toward his drawer, grabbing its handle with all the delicacy he showed grabbing that skirt. He pulled slowly. You turned just as slowly, as if the sound of the sliding drawer were the sound of your neck and shoulders craning. You stopped. Your mouth opened. Sitting there, in the direct center of that drawer, with nothing else to accompany it, was a little blue pill.

“We’ve made enough as a people by charging interest,” you listened to him say as you stared at that little blue pill. “I think it’s time to pay it forward.”

A little black eye, staring through a decorative hole in the laundry basket, sat there, lifelessly amongst your uncle’s dirty laundry, staring at the glass rectangle of the shower. It stared directly at those two giant butt-cheeks, soft and bronzed, as a bar of soap ran between them, almost disappearing within, before reemerging on its other end. Again, the bar ran up and down the ass, lathering it, before taking another trip through those butt-cheeks, until the bronzed ass was shimmering in the moody light of the bathroom, a purifying white.

It was a clean ass. And it would remain clean, the way it needed to be for the night’s festivities. The woman who owned it mumbled Hebrew folk songs to herself above. The ass, soaking, purifying in the white lather, just sat there silently, as silent as the little black eye which watched it.

It was then met by that warm stream, and all at once, the lathering soap was pulled from it, washed away, leaving it fresh, and bronze, and clear. A hand ran itself between the cheeks, jostling them with a severe jiggle as it rubbed. Then the woman leaned forward. As she did, on her way to the knob, she knocked the soap off its holder. She swore to herself in Hebrew. Then she leaned down, bending over to grab the soap.

The little eye watched. Her butt-cheeks parted, doing so momentously, falling to either side to expose the little hole which sat at its center.

A small trace of white lather adorned it.

And then it was washed away by the falling stream of clear water, and it was gone.

Your uncle had trouble hailing a cab. It wasn’t until your mom stepped out from beneath the shadow of the tree and hailed one herself that a cab stopped with a screech.

Your mom gave your uncle a sisterly look like he was incompetent. Then she got into the cab, the same part of her (now squeaky clean) which stopped the cab’s driver fell to its seat. She scooched it in a few times as she went until she was at the opposite window.

Your uncle, quickly, had cut in front of you, finding his seat next to his sister in the middle. You sat next to him with a nervous sigh. You shut the door, locking the three of you within.

The Paris streets flashed by in light, and the driver, an arab, looked in his rearview every few moments at your mom and uncle. Your mom’s pretty face never looked back at him, always distracted by her brother’s strange arguments and interlocutions (his hands flying about as he spoke).

Your uncle spoke so freely, so calmly, devoid of nerve, like he did on the first day when you landed, as he stood there, his arms up in the air, greeting you two with a loud and obnoxious French (you were unused to hearing him speak it at all). It was as if you weren’t refugees. As if you were just there for a little visit.

You sat next to him, feeling his calm, trying to absorb it into yourself through subtle contact, getting nothing.

The Eiffel Tower poked at the sky in the distance. You could see only its tip, with the rest of the city, that which rarely appeared on any brochure, obscuring it.

You looked out at the streets. French men and women made the lion’s share. But it wasn’t just them. You could spot a German, a Canadian, a couple from England or Spain, not with any accuracy, but you knew they were there. And even among that, the occasional face, black, or swarthier than even your ‘neighbors’ back home, would move among the fray. You knew that at one time, the population back home, their every ancestor without fail, being among these streets, Paris, Warsaw, London, Istanbul, Vienna, New York. All of them then, plucked up and gathered in one place, one tiny patch of land against the Mediterranean Sea, backed up there like a cat chased to its corner. And now, now it was all gone. And you were scattered again. Scattered amongst…

“Here it is,” your uncle told the arab in French. He tapped the man’s shoulder, and the man only nodded as he pulled over.

He watched in his rearview as you got out, watching your mom’s ass most of all, in its dazzling dress, as it bent sweetly on her way out, sliding its way across his seats until it did. Then she was standing, and he watched her with his eyes, seeing her as both companion and delicious meat, until there was a knock on his windshield. He looked up to see an eager Canadian tourist, one hand on his backpack strap. He nodded to the young man to get in, sitting where your mom once did, and soon they were off.

Your mom’s ass found a chair and fell into it. You and your uncle did as well. But there was room for two more. Your mom gazed at the empty seats for a moment, then she looked back up at your uncle.

The Eiffel Tower, now from the opposite angle of where you had looked upon it the previous night, stood surrounding your mom’s frame with its lights, almost to the point where she were a shadow, the shapely silhouette of femininity itself, sitting within it.

“Every restaurant is the same,” your mom said. “You made it sound as if Paris was a wonderland.”

Your uncle, without even looking at her, replied. “Every restaurant, the world over, is the same. You either get used to it, and enjoy yourself, or hold out on the hope that somewhere out there it’s different.”

Your mom didn’t seem as surprised by this strange and sudden wisdom (spoken plainly) as you did. She only looked down at the drink menu.

“Though,” he started, his usual devilry coming back to the edges of his tone. “I will say, the wine in Paris truly is different. Even ‘Alice’ would agree.” Your mom said nothing, only regarding the menu. You watched your uncle’s lips still moving, his teeth white within his darkening face in the night, mouthing what appeared to be: “We’re all mad here…” He looked at you with that smile, then winked, then you both turned and looked at your mom, her eyes down and occupied, regarding her as your little mutual ‘Alice.’ Though rather than tumbling down this rabbit-hole, and traversing this strange landscape with bafflement and confusion, she had flown there and now regarded it with mundane boredom. Her eyes dry and downcast at the menu on the table.

You stared at her, being barely able to make her out in the lowlight.

Then you heard a chair scrape the pavement. Your mom’s head turned in the darkness, and her facial features stuck out like a sore but angular thumb against the light.

“Ah, the cheapest restaurant in town,” one of the men said as he sat. “No surprises there.”

Your uncle was already fishing in his book bag. “I didn’t want to burden you with the bill.” He pulled out a folder and let it plop on the table.

“Ah,” the other man said. “That classic Pharisitic charity.”

“They’re known for that,” said the other. “Charity from above. Whistling as it drops. For women and children especially.”

You looked over at your mom in panic, her face, her angular profile still and unmoving, regarding the two men.

“Well, my good friends, I’d like you to meet my beautiful sister. You’ve already met her son. Now imagine him pretty instead of handsome and sitting in that chair next to you.”

The men blushed, and one of them leaned over the table with his hand out, squinting to see her face, wanting to know if she was offended. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too…”

The other shook her hand as well and they exchanged names.

One of them cringed subtly as he heard the name, hearing how Hebrew it sounded, and noting how Middle-Eastern her accent sounded while saying it.

“They’re my friends from work,” your uncle said, leaning calmly back in his chair. “They tease me, but they don’t mean anything by it. If anything, I was the first to open those flood gates years ago. Right Frenchie?”

The men nodded apprehensively in the dark.

You sat there, noting that up until now, you had yet to hear him say anything offensive to them, even though he had more than enough cause to do so at the café. And his racial attack on them now rang hollow if anything.

The two men sat there, partially illuminated by what little light existed. Your uncle sat across from them, his ankle on his knees, the light directly over himself. Your mom was the only one who sat entirely in shadow.

Your uncle talked with his friends, joking with them, bringing your mom into it when he could. They would turn to her every little bit to ask her a question or to bring her into the conversation, but you could tell by her silence that she didn’t feel right. She was never shy. Now she could barely speak.

The drinks kept coming, and the men at the table took little sips at theirs. You turned to your mom to see her head titled back, the glass, shadowy in her fingers, tilted upward. You thought about all the darkness was hiding, her smooth bronze legs, her pretty, exotic (even for back home) face. The way her thin waist expanded wide into her hips, and the ass she sat on top of, her “mother’s ass.”

You turned and looked at your uncle. He was smiling there, laughing, taking sips. At ease. You couldn’t believe how at ease he looked. Your mother sat there, the product of the night’s purpose. His sister, her body already nude on the internet for hundreds of eyes without her knowledge, and the sinister vibe of the night, while she was mistaken in its source, was unequivocally justified, only so many more times than she knew.

Your uncle though showed no signs of anything though. It was as if the version of him which sat there was fundamentally different than the person you had talked to, who you had hung out with, earlier in the day. It gave you chills. And then you reminded yourself, while looking at the crease in his laughing eyes: he was a spy. A spy for the most clever and cutthroat intelligence agency the world had ever known. A fact you didn’t even know until today. A fact your dad, who worked for the same organization, knew even less. Would never know.

Your mom suddenly shot up, braking you out of your morbid thoughts with a startle. She walked off toward the bathroom, and as she gained distance, you uncle began: “tik tok, tik tok, tik tok.”

Your mom had emerged within the light, and it was only then then you realized what he was doing. Her ass cheeks moved up and down, up and down, to the rhythm of tik tok, tik tok, tik tok.

And by doing that, as he intended, his co-worker’s noticed. They stared at your mom, realizing just now what they had sitting next to them this whole time.

“And yes,” your uncle said, turning to the two men, their stunned faces. “In case you’re wondering, I hit her with the third eye.”

They looked back at him, stunned. Your mom’s ass disappeared within the darkness of the woman’s bathroom.

Your uncle was pointed at the space above his two eyes, in the center. “Sister or no sister,” he said. “No one escapes.”

There was a silence. Then one of them spoke. “Wow, you people really are sick.”

“Ah,” your uncle said, pulling out a cigarette. “You’re saying I should delete the footage?”

“Well, I wouldn’t get too hasty.” The men laughed in the shadows.

“I already posted it.” He sucked from the cigarette. “Silly girl has no idea.” He then turned to you, slapping you on your knee. “Right?”

The two men looked to you, remembering you were her son. It showed in their eyes that it sat uneasy with them. Of course it did.

But due to nerves, and due to the fact that you knew you had no choice, knew there was almost more danger with not going along than with going, you sat silent. Not only that, but your face showed no sign of unease. Only nervousness, like you didn’t like being put on the spot.

“We were looking at the footage earlier. You should have seen this kid. I thought he was gonna bust the table with the hammer he’s packing. His cock is twice as big as mine.”

“So… two inches then…”

There was laughter at the table, and you felt relief at it. And then your uncle, looking past you, sucked from his cigarette, its cherry glowing bright. “I’m an idiot,” he said. His two friends also looked past you now. “I was supposed to do it while she was in the bathroom.” He looked at you with a raised eyebrow. Your stomach tickled with horrible nerves. “We’ll have to improvise,” he said low but pointedly.

You turned around, your heart racing, to see her coming back. The sourness you had imagined in her face while she sat here wasn’t there, her expression blank. “Will you look at the nose on her though,” your uncle said low behind you.

“I like it,” one of the men said. “It looks good on her.”

“That’s good,” your uncle said. “That’ll do nicely.”

You didn’t even turn around, but you imagined them turning to your uncle with confusion.

They must have, because the next thing you heard him say, said as if to remind them just as your mom got back to the table, was “’Interest.’”

Her ass plopped back down in her seat, and everyone heard the impact.

Your mom’s face sat there, as shaded as her body. No one looked at her, but everyone looked where they looked with her in mind.

“Did you fall in?” your uncle asked past his cigarette.

“Ha ha,” she said dryly.

“No, no,” he said. “You couldn’t. Neither you or mom could in a million years.”

She didn’t look up. Her face was still in the shadow. You regarded it to see any signs. Then you were interrupted in that aim. You felt a hand push against yours. It pried your fingers open softly beneath the table. You turned to look at your uncle, but he wasn’t looking at you. Only on ahead. His expression hadn’t changed at all, nor the rhythm of his in- and ex-halations. Your fingers were opened. Something chalky and solid was pressed into your palm.

You felt like you were going to fall apart. Even still, your fingers slowly closed over it.

The hand was gone, pulled back into the shadows.

“Why couldn’t they fall in?” one of the men asked after some time.

The other looked at him, shocked he didn’t get the joke.

“Their butts are too big,” your uncle said, matter-of-factly, and ashed out his cigarette.

Everyone froze, except your mother, whose head snapped to his in the dark. You could see the shape of her nose in silhouette.

“Please don’t tell me you subject your son to that thing the way mom subjected me to hers. Please.”

Her face was still, staring at him, then it turned, presumably toward the men. They sat there, their faces red, blushing.

“Listen to this. My mom used to walk up and down the house—back when we lived in Warsaw—with, I shit you not, not a single article of clothing. Imagine me, right. Young, in the throes of puberty, full of hormones, right, and then there’s this fat Jewish ass just going up-and-down, up-and-down all through the house. Tik-tok, tik-tok with every step. Holy fuck!” he shook his head, pulling his knee up to his chest. “When I saw my sister’s growing I was like ‘oh no! Poor kids if she ever has any.’”

She said nothing, only staring at him. But you could imagine her eyes in the dark.

“Tell me you don’t torture the kid, please!” He adjusted in his seat. “Tell me he at least had a normal childhood.” After the most awkward silence you or his two friends had ever sat through, he looked over at you. “Tell me. Tell me she at least wore panties on that thing.” It was then you noticed. His expression was one of genuine inquiry, his lips and his eyes and all of it. But then you noticed, at the very edge of his face, the slight tilt, the jerking even, being done in her direction. But after a moment more, you realized he wasn’t nodding toward her. He was nodding toward that which sat on the table before her.

He pulled his gaze away, then put his hands upon the table, lifting himself upward on it almost like a child. “These guys couldn’t keep their eyes off it when you were going to the ladies’ room, you should’ve seen ‘em. And they don’t even like jews.”

You turned and looked at the black cylinder sitting on the table, itself barely visible, with the liquid within, clear.

“You gave two anti-semites a free show. How does that make you feel, sis? Isn’t that a shame?”

“Be quiet,” she said, low and deliberate.

“Isn’t it?”

“Be quiet.” She said it through grit teeth. Your fear rose for her anger, but, more pressingly, for the task at hand. You seemed to be falling toward the glass, falling into it, though you hadn’t even moved.

“Why not get naked then? Give these goyim a show. All of them.” He waved around. “Let’s see if they hate everything about us, or if they have limits. Come on.”

“Stop!”

“Come on!”

“Stop!—I said!”

You shot forward, hand almost opening too early. But it went, as if it had a mind of its own, directly over her drink.

Only then did you feel the chalky pill drop fall slowly from your sweating palm.

It made a plop, no one heard it though over the racket.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” your mom hissed, her expression, whatever horror it wore, invisible in the dark.

Your uncle’s demeanour changed in an instant, and he fell back to his seat. He looked at the ashtray and played with the dead cigarette in it with the tip of his finger. “Nothing. I was just kidding.” He said it as if he was. Technically, it was true, yet the extent of it was so criminal, so monstrous, you couldn’t believe he could act as if it wasn’t. You knew then that he was the only one, other than you, who heard the plop.

She almost growled in the darkness, then you watched her, your stomach in revolution, as she lifted the glass and sucked it back.

He turned to look at you. “She won’t remember this all anyway,” he said. “She’ll be hazy in a few minutes, and then everything before the cab ride will disappear tomorrow.” You stared at him, shocked. He turned to his friends. “She won’t remember. Remember that. They never do. And I’m talking grown men. Jihadists and CIA guys.”

She slammed the glass to the table. It was as if she hadn’t heard him, her heart beating so hard in her ears.

“Did you hear me, wonderful?” he asked across the table at her. “You won’t remember this.”

She stared at him, again her face more swarthy an exotic than it would be lit.

“The little pill your son put in your gin will knock you out cold. You won’t remember this fight. I apologize anyway though.”

“What are you-“

“And you’ll be clean in the morning. Completely spotless. You’ll have no idea.” He shrugged as if realizing something, still playing with the dead cigarette butt. “Well- you’ll have the taste of two goys in your mouth. There’s that.”

Her head was still in a way that it hadn’t been all night. All the previous stillness was only metaphor for the frozen position it had now.

“Two goy cocks, getting all up in that shylock mouth. And your son, he’s going to watch your mouth get raped by these two. If what he was like earlier, when we watched the footage I took of your sweet ass changing, if that’s anything to go by, he’s going to go crazy watching this. Look, one, this guy here, is Assyria. And he’s Babylon. And you’re Israel and Judah, and you’ll be taking it from both ends. Like a stuck-pig, beautiful, believe me.”

He laughed, while your mom’s head only stared. The two men sat, mortified, shocked, but aroused, somehow intuiting, even through all their fear, that this couldn’t be a bluff, that your uncle may have been crude, may have been crazy, may have been perverse, but he was never stupid. His ‘type,’ despite everything, never were.

“And it’s all because your husband passed government secrets to Russia, and they leaked them to Hezbollah. Whoops! He’s lucky he got you out of there before the Palestinians got to that sweet thing. Too many girls back home weren’t so lucky, were they? Those arab boys must have thought they were living out prophecy. Some Russian pervert probably passed that information for the thrill. Was probably a jew himself. Had to be. Only one of ours could think of something that delicious.”

Your mom shot up.

Her drink crashed to the floor.

All the talk, all in beautiful French, stopped. Even those within the restaurant itself, sensing something was off, looked out through the window at its balcony to see your mom’s shapely silhouette, measured against the glowing Eiffel Tower, poised with anger.

She stood there for a moment, looking crazy, looking like she would do something, though nobody could predict what.

You looked over at your uncle, expecting to see his fear. If not of her, at least of the situation he (and you) were responsible for. Instead he only looked down at the ashtray, playing with that cigarette butt.

Then he began to speak. “And….” He started.

Suddenly, without even looking, you saw your mom’s shadow fall, smacking against the table, sending plates and glass flying.

“…there goes the walls of Jericho.” Your uncle stood up, brushing himself off. He looked to a waiter. “Sorry, she’s had too much to drink. I’ll pay for any damage to the table or the plates or whatever…”

“Let’s go,” he said to you. You went to grab your mom. And he waved you aside. “Let them do it,” he said, pointing to those two shocked, pinkening faces. He pulled out his wallet. “She’s theirs anyway…”

“Mind if she sits up here with you?”

The arab stared, your mom resting in her brother’s hands, her eyes shut, her mouth hanging open, the strap of her dress fallen to her elbow, her bronzed shoulder bare.

“Yeah, something tells me you don’t mind.” He put your mom into the passenger seat, then he got into the back with the rest of you.

As the cab began driving, your uncle, sitting cramped up next to you, spoke: “where are we going to take this piece of ass?”

The arab looked up into his rearview, then side-eyed your mom in his seat. She lay there, unconscious and defenseless, her brunette head leaning against the window.

“Your wife home?” your uncle asked.

“Yeah, she is…”

“How about you?”

His friend shook his head. “But my sister is…”

“Is she cool?”

His friend just stared at him.

“A square, huh?” He looked ahead at his own sister. Then he lifted his hip to reach for his phone. “An Air BnB then. Somewhere with short notice. Can’t have Ahmed here know where I live.”

The cabbie still kept going back and forth with his eyes, between your mom and the men in his backseat, including the loud one.

Your uncle groaned. “Nowhere.” Suddenly, he leaned forward, grabbing the cabbie on his shoulder. “You know anyone who can rent on short notice? We just need to find a good place where we can go so these two gentleman can have their way with my sister here.” There was silence. “I lost a bet…”

Your mom fell to the bed. Its springs squeaked.

“You think they have cameras here?” one of them asked, panting less from carrying her, and more from the rising thrill in his lungs. “I hear on the news they always have hidden cameras on their property, the arab guys.”

“Let them film,” your uncle said, and shrugged. “Guys live a hard enough life. Let them have this.” He looked around. “Oh, wait. Before you- Look at this.” He shot toward two chairs sitting in the corner. “Cuck chairs.” He began dragging them back. He looked to you with a smile as he did. “Perfect for two cucks.” He set the chairs so they faced the bed and then looked around as if there was someone else in the room. Then he said in a loud voice toward any possible camera speaker that could be listening. “You hear that, Ahmed? Two Jewish cucks. Yehudis.” He motioned to the two of you, “me and him,” and sat down.

You did too. And you conformed when he asked that you take your pants off. The men, unable to contain themselves, were already starting with your mom.

 Your cock fell out already hard, and he smiled at it, taking down his own pants, as if he were proud. “I don’t know why it would surprise me that my beautiful sister would have a beautiful son. She picked the perfect cock for her ass, and yours is now even bigger than that.” He settled in place, now completely nude from the waist down, his naked ass scooting against the wooden seat. “Let’s see what theirs look like.”

Their two cocks fell free.

“Oh, nice!” he said. He looked to you for proof. “Perfect for her ass, hey? Her mouth and her ass. I knew God made gentiles for a reason. Can you two hurry the fuck up? I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.”

“Uh, yeah,” one of them murmured, uncharacteristically tongue-tied. They looked at your mom below as if she were a precious jewel. Even more precious was the way she shot, as if hungry, for their gentile cocks upon seeing them.

The first thing you thought of as you watched your mom’s mouth being invaded, was your father, and it only made the absolute horror and joy of the moment that much more horrible, that much more joyous. You thought of his cock specifically, its similarities and differences with the cocks before you. You thought of the times you had seen it hard, the times always before their bedroom door would close on you.

Now, ‘the bedroom door’ was closed with you locked in beyond it. And the events you were always forced to simply imagine now happened in the flesh before you, but transformed. You thought of your dad in his duty, the seriousness that came with it to deal with existential threats (to ward off the consequences of his past mistakes), and the penis in his pants, the extended length of time it had gone untended, with these two foreign cocks, not his, tended by your mom’s face in its stead.

“Yeah, crowd around her head. I like that. I like it a lot.” Your uncle was stroking at a steady pace now. “How does that make you feel, that mouth on your prick?”

“Good…” the man grunted out, almost breathless from his own joy.

“Hey man! Share!” Your uncle insisted.

The two men, emboldened now, invaded your mom’s face nicely, using it for their pleasure, the spice to it being the beauty she still had even as all dignity had abandoned her.

You felt your uncle’s hand fall to your lap, then find your penis, giving it two tugs, before being pulled back to his own. “She looks beautiful, hey, your mom? Being fucked like this. You have no idea how fucking lucky you are. It never happened for your gran…” he just shook his head. His expression, as shocking as it was to see, was filled with real sadness.

That sadness though seemed to fade quickly as he absorbed, jerking off all the while, the sight of his sister’s face and mouth being violated by the two men he had known and jostled with for so long.

Your cock was so hard at this point that it was better to not even touch it. The way it pulled from the strength of the erection was stimulation enough, and you feared any attention to it would only make you blow. You couldn’t believe anything in the world could look or feel this good. And again, your dad, always strong and assertive, even in his absence (because of it really) was the spice on top.

“It’s a gene,” your uncle said feverishly. “It’s inside of us. Going back how long, I don’t even know. Maybe from Europe, or all the way back to the old kingdoms, but it’s there. And it has been for a while. In at least- oh god, that’s good. At least in some of us. It’s as genetic as your mom’s ass is. Who knows how far back that goes.” He jerked off in silence for a bit. Then he shook his head. “It’s got to be ancient… It’s got be…”

Like a stuck-pig, you thought, just as your uncle predicted. A smaller nation stuck between the invading forces of two empires. But it didn’t even have to be Babylon and Assyria. Your uncle could have said Jordan and Lebanon, their forces backed up by Iran and a dozen other arab or muslim states. Men with decades-long rage and horrible intention pouring into unguarded homes, dragging women out of their showers to their living rooms to use in front of their families, all as the warm desert air blew through the drapes of recently-smashed windows.

Apocalyptic calls to the followers of God’s final words. The same God. All sides of this conflict shared the same God. It was so senseless. And before you, two Christian men, fucking a woman who looked no different than all the earliest heroes, the Rachels, the Ruths, and even the Marys, of their very own system of belief.

The hatred was only meaningless, yet its effects felt so good. The celebration of the whole planet against your people, that old and illogical spectre which reproduced itself in the Christian and Arab world for two thousand years, perhaps a hatred toward the source of even their own civilizations; all of that now, in physical, sweating flesh before you, on a bed in a dirty room in Paris, your mom both object and subject, with you and your uncle loving every second of it.

The hatred for your people, the explosiveness of it, while senseless, must have always had some hidden purpose. And you knew somehow that your uncle, more than anyone else, knew it did. Your people had prophets, the most famous in the world, and you knew that whatever made them up internally must exist in small traces now. It was only in this moment that you realized it. Your uncle next to you, a sweating, swearing, smiling mess, had whatever that was. That Jeremiah-like expectation of destruction, whether divine or intuited from calamities of the past. That tendency to gloat in destruction of your own, to expect the failure of them, to warn them and to not be heeded, and then to enjoy what comes, not to say “I told you so,” but to remind them that God did.

Oh, but what a relationship, between the victimizer and victimized. Who knew what unseen motivations existed behind the scenes, unwritten in text, too unholy, yet still there, like a stain, through implication. The Book of Ezekiel, its reference to big, fat, delicious cocks which gush the seeds that bring forth new futures. References to Hebrew cities being sacked, its women taken as slaves by men of foreign persuasion. Men with cocks, beautiful or not, all their own.

Yes, it was in you alright, that hidden wish. And, like your uncle, you were both only making up for the fate your mom had regrettably escaped back home.

You now saw these men, looking like you imagined those two arab boys back home to look like in adulthood. Your mom, whether it was accurate or imagined, looked now just like you remembered her then. She was nice and violated, that sure look on her face when you looked up over your shoulder at her, gone. It was hard to look sure with a cock in your mouth. Especially gentile cock. There was something in it, you could feel, that was subtly corrosive and wrong.

But the bodies of your people, the flesh enjoyed and bemoaned upon by the Book of Solomon, his words, filled with love, but overfilling with their own frustrations:

“How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.” It was as if they were words written (Song of Solomon 7:1) for you mother in mind. A body so beautiful it had to be filled with the holiness of the divine.

“Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.” Words which aroused and titilated, yet they filled the most holy book of all, as if to exemplify God’s love through the celebration of the beauty he created, and the moments which came about through that beauty.

“Glhug, glhug, glhug, glhuk!” escaped from your mom’s throat.

“Thy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bathrabbim: thy nose is as the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.”

The sight of your mom’s nose, its exotic beauty in black, silhouetted within the shining ivory of the Eiffel Tower, came to you as vividly as the sight before you now.

“Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries. How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!”

It was a fair question, now more than ever.

“This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.”

And her ass? Why no mention? It was as if poetry of the ass were a new form, a new page in the unfinished holy book, ready to be poetesized by a new era of prophets.

“I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof:”

“now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples; And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak.”

"I can't believe it," one of the men said, watching down as his cock disappeared within your mom's face.

“She was born for their cocks.” You looked over to your uncle. He sat there, staring, his expression unchanged, only stroking his raging olive-colored prick. “We all were. Born for their pleasures. Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, the Turks, the French.” A look of wryness came to his brow. “Even the arabs.”

“I am my beloved's, and his desire is toward me.”

“Our messiah isn’t here yet,” your uncle said. His cock raged, one with this truth. “The one from nazareth showed them a lie.” He motioned to the men ahead, both too wrapped up sweetly in their own pleasures to notice the gesture or the words. “We are chosen. Still are. Always will be. Our day will come.” A joy, one beyond the irony, one beyond the cynicism, or humor, or erotic ecstasy, came to his eyes. “But not yet…”

Your mom, in her inebriated id, tried to change bodies.

She was thwarted. She lay there, bobbing, tugging, sucking, fucking and being fucked, between two worlds. Always between two worlds, precariously riding the world she held currently. That was the way it had always been for your people. You all knew this, knew it in your very marrow, which was ancient and wise. It was the struggle in your people that brought them their beauty. And God, who loved them like his children, had plenty more beauty to witness. That meant your hardships were far from over, and your beauty, holding those hardships at its source, would hold strong with them.

You knew it, every Jew did.

The two men, lying there, dissolving within their own ecstacy, knew it not. And that, always, had been the real divide.

“Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.”

A house, a dwelling in a now-quiet and dry suburb, sat there, its windows smashed to nothing, its furniture punctured and snapped. Flies accumulated throughout its square footage, finding their next meals, in bulk, waiting for them on the floor.

The back door had snapped open. A man, his face covered in a rag, dragged out a young 19-year-old woman, nude and luscious, who screamed as she went, by her voluminous brunette hair.

“Let us get up early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine flourish, whether the tender grape appear, and the pomegranates bud forth: there will I give thee my loves.”

He dragged her next to a prominent tree on the hill which overlooked the neighbourhood, a gharqad tree which her brother had been hiding behind. He had escaped out that very same back door, being shooed to run and hide by his frantic mother. He leaned over, hearing his sister’s voice approaching, shrill, seeing her being dragged to the opposite side of the very same trunk he clutched, dragged by a strange young arab man.

The arab man, young and bitter, had enjoyed naked jewish beauty before, at least with his eyes, as he once witnessed it, lovely and unassuming, through a notch in a public shower with his childhood friend.

As he stood there now, looking down at this weeping, bronzed beauty, her body rich with inviting jiggles every time she sobbed, he thought of that friend. The one he had lost on that day.

He knew that what he would do now, he would do for both of them. He grabbed his voluptuous treat.

“The mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved.”

The young boy peered beyond the trunk, watching his sister’s ass jiggle and bounce on the lap of the stranger.

The fear had faded. The confusion, the hint of sorrow. He only watched her ass as she rode. The sun set, shining orange, on the beautiful sight. Though, if one, taking a wrong turn, didn’t know North from South, nor the time of day, they could easily mistake the sun which sunk from the sky for a sun which was rising.

To the fresh wisdom of youth, North and South didn’t matter. It was all truly the same.