“There Is No Remedy for Love but to Love More” — Henri David Thoreau (literary erotica; memoir)

Memories

I press rewind and play, rewind and play. Sometimes I don’t need the remote at all, scenes flashing on without invitation: there I am goading gaudy women into squats, leg presses, pushups, chin; aiming Garth’s second hand Jeep Wagoneer onto the 401 to the Whitby Mental Health Hospital; flying back to Toronto to pick up Talon at Dalemount Elementary; brewing supper ingredients in the condo’s galley kitchen, Garth and Talon sprawled out on the leather sofa with Spawn on TV; back again to the nighttime women— Russians, Israelis, the Polish accountant with purple hair to spruce up a life ruled by columns of numbers, immigrants with proletariat bodies. Caroline, only twenty-one, shoved away in a mental institution, pressed in by criminals, patients who grin and piss on walls and dream of matches. She chooses to rename herself. Her mother is dead, she says. Two years. When I bring her home, she slaps me. On my face, across my chest. I don’t blame her. She sits still, all quiet, and then shrieks like a wild crow.

Josie flies back home from Israel along with Shiva, an Israeli friend who reads Tarot cards. One weekend a month, she retreats to a communal cabin in Northern Ontario where she meditates, keeping a vow of silence for eight days. She returns bloated by her triggers and unspoken words. Garth complains about the incense: Sai baba Nag, Champa, Auromere Ayurvedic from India, Nippon Kodo from Japan, Nandi Incense from B.V. Aswathiah & Brothers. One day Shiva packs up and zooms off with four guys with tattoos in a beat-up truck. The smell of incense remains. At last it’s spring. In every room I open windows and, off the dining area, the sliding balcony door.

Late Night on the Subway

It’s around one in the morning and I’m on the Yonge line northbound. Or maybe it was the reverse: it’s nine in the evening and I’m southbound, intent on the TTC map posted above the subway door.

“I got fifteen guys wasted,” says one guy, swinging round a subway pole.
“Sure. Me, I love older women,” the other says, winking at me. “My girlfriend is older.”
“Show her a picture—how old are you?” asks the guy with shoulder length brown hair. “Forty-two, forty?”
I shake my head. Passengers are turning around, casting sideways glances. “
You’re too nice, boys. Enough.”
“I love dark hair. She has dark hair, y’see? You’re giving me a hard-on,” the shoulder-hair-kid says, grabbing his crotch with both hands.
“Let’s go. We gotta go,” says the kid with the older girlfriend.
“Hey, she has green eyes. Will you look at that!” says the shoulder-hair-kid as the doors slide open at St. Claire. “Man, did you see that? Green! You know I’ m crazy about women with green eyes!”
I had to smile. Because that was sweet. Fucking sweet and nice as music, anyday.

Garth swore he would he would never leave me again. At three-twenty on a Wednesday summer afternoon, he left a phone message: “I’m glad you aren’t home, so I can leave you this message. What I wanted to tell you this morning was quite the opposite of what you understood. I am calling to tell you that I want you in my life, married or not, as my permanent romantic partner. You’ve been great.”I am still waiting for one of Garth’s size fourteen and a half shoes to drop. “Listen,” he tells me, “I’ve realized the error of my ways.”I remind him: “Forgive my cynicism, but you’ve been leaving me for eight out of almost ten years. And anyhow, if you’re staying out of honor, you’ll create a scenario so I’ll be the one to walk, even with my old hips.”Garth is always pissed off at me for one thing or another.

Peering out from a window seat on a train ride to visit my mother, eighty-four and possibly dying, frames of Colville, flat fields, square wood houses painted white or red brick, a bridge painted hospital green, I write longhand about the bright red vibrator Garth has recently purchased. For a fifty-seven-year-old ex bodybuilder, a train ride causes knees to ache, a right leg to numb, pain sweeping outward across a lower back. Passengers stand, adjust clothing, walk down the aisle to the bathroom. For twenty-five minutes, the pressure of accumulated urine bears down on my bladder. I’m a short-sighted astigmatic fugitive on VIA 1, car 91, seat 48, bound for Montreal. When I’m feeling shy, I take off my contact lenses. I’ve trained myself to seek out positive purposes whenever I’m in a bind, so I reframe: that mix of pressure and holding it in—it’s sex! Whether from piss or a man’s cock, it’s sex. And that’s the power of the reframe.I often wonder about my future with Garth. I love him as surely as I breathe. I hold my breath, sometimes, to escape from loving him. I like the way his shadow cloaks me and his good eye makes sure I’m safe. He walks slowly, but he’s steady. Sometimes he can’t fall asleep because his mind is still plodding along. I guess he could walk clear across town nonstop or that with one giant step, he could traverse across a continent. His mind works in the same way.
After he bought the bright red vibrator, I asked him what he was thinking about when he walked into the store.

“Why do you insist on asking me questions that you know will cause friction?” he said.
“What?”
“Like that other message you sent.”
“Which one? Oh the one where I asked you what you thought when you first heard me coming for you over the phone? I didn’t mean every time, but the first or in general, you know. When you had your eight hundred number and we were new and fresh and I’d lie on the floor in the Indian Road house and come for you. I’d say, now I’m putting my index and middle finger on my clit and I’m rubbing, harder, faster―all that shit―and I’d sigh and moan for you. And you know what you said, the only thing you said?”
“No. Although I know you’re going to tell me.”
“You said, ‘You’re using up my 1-800 minutes.’”
“That’s what I mean,” Garth said, perturbed, “It was ten years ago. Why would I remember something that happened ten years ago?”
“Because I remember. I’ll never forget as long as I live.”
“That’s you. What I want to know is why you even bother to think about these things, and although I can’t understand why you do, why you purposefully annoy me?”
I inverted the Ajax container over the toilet bowl. I’m outta here.“Because,” I lied, “I’m writing a book. I wanted to know how you think. You’re supposed to be interested in the mind of the person you’re fucking.”
“I walked in, looked around, saw a vibrator, paid, and walked out.”
“You visualize or even think of me, when you were looking around, I mean?”
“No.”

In all my fifty-seven years, this was the first time a man had stuck a vibrator up my cunt or ass. We were lying down, side by side down and kissing and Garth said, “Just a minute, got something for you,” and walked across the room to his dresser. He was wearing his usual black t-shirt, the one that comes down to the top of his balls. He came back to bed, kissed me, and put his arm around me which was unusual for him.“Will you come for me?” he asked, in a low seductive voice that only a select few can truly achieve. He didn’t say, “Will you come for me, baby?” because it wasn’t his way. He never calls me baby, sweetie, sweetheart, or darling, although the next time he fucked me, when he bit my ass so hard I cried out, he said, “How about my girl?” “I like it!” I said. He did his best.

“Lie on your back,” he said. He rubbed my clit with his index, his middle up-yours finger near my cunt hole. I moved his hand higher. I like when Garth rubs directly on, not hard-pressed on, but short, repetitive, moderately fast motions across, which is an important bit of knowledge to pass on to subsequent generations, of which Garth is one.Garth excels at timing. He knows when fast is preferable. When to go slow and ease in. When to put his large hands on my neck, on my hips, thighs and breasts, when to squeeze my ass or one of my nipples. He’s good at what he does. Sometimes he bites into the flesh of my ass. I know I will recall these times when I am older. There are those who reminisce about a shared sunset or a lover’s starry sky. I wish for more brightness and depth in his eye when he first catches sight of me, a softening in his face. But Garth is blind in his right eye, something about a pencil being lodged and his mother His psyche is similar―alternately insightful and blind.

The vibrator trembles continuously; it shudders and churns my insides. I prefer the real thing―Garth’s cock with its wonderful width, its sweet musky scent, and the burnt sienna pubic hair surrounding his balls. I love his cock. I rub it over my face, on my neck, across my mouth. I breathe deeply when I’m on an outing with his prick. Garth has a powerful prick with Zen inspiration. Even when he’s short with me, I look at him with admiration and lust. He’s a fine figure of a man. There is no doubt about that.

Meanwhile he’s really into this vibrator thing. “Do you mind if I take over?” I ask.“Suit yourself,” he says. After nine years, I still don’t know his predilections or whether he has any. I know he likes it when I talk: “Tell me what you’re thinking.” “Why do you like it?” “Tell me which you prefer and why?” Multiple choice might be easier. I feel with my mind when Garth fucks me, which is altogether different. Garth hammers me about being argumentative. Fucking is the only time when the game is almost real. I know who we are when he’s slamming my cunt, crammed up my ass and pulling my head back by my hair, when he positions his prick at the very back of my throat.

Anyhow, he’s shoving this red V inside me as I rub my clit, tensing my legs and pointing my toes. He kisses my mouth. He kisses me after I’ve been sucking on his cock; he kisses me deeply after he rims me. The man is transforming himself. He doesn’t see when I start to grin. When I’m about to come, I stop, and he takes over. I imagine myself hooting hollering screaming, and resolve to work on my vocalizations. Garth says I have a standard range that I pretty much stay within. I can come two or three times in a row and when Garth leaves the room, I come three more times. I’ve discovered the sexy warmth of coming accompanied by piss. Not a bladder full, just left-overs. Garth adores his bed so I save this new adventure for my own private wanderings. I believe that altering my come song is a sound beginning. I want to yell when I come, to discover unchartered territory.“Come. Come now, my girl, and spray all over the bed,” he says. Which pleases me immensely. He’s full of surprises, although he delivers them sparingly.

I think in time I might grow to appreciate the red vibrator. Or not. On this introductory night Garth carefully inserts it up my ass while he fucks me in our now decade old kneeling on the floor, leaning against the sofa style. When I grow older and less able, I’ll never tire of this position. “On all fours,” he says in his low mellow voice. Our first couch was a black, fake suede curvaceous piece. After that a tan, also fake suede, more traditional style sofa, and now a light beige leather love seat. Pumping and fucking away, with the hum of the red plastic inside me, he asks:“What are you thinking of?” “How does it feel?” “Why do you like it?”“I just like to please you.” “I like it when you’re up my ass and my cunt all at the same time.” “It feels like it never ends, that my ass is connected to my cunt.”And will you get that damn thing out cause it feels like a fucking turd and it’s fucking plastic for shit’s sake—but baby, let’s play it anyway. On my way home I feel, back-to-back, the end of my cunt and asshole. No pain, but I shift my position a few times as I drive and maybe I need to pee, or maybe it’s the beginning of a urinary tract infection.

Juicing Up
Garth is juicing up. He says his balls have hardly shrunk. Next time I suck on his balls, I’m going to see if I have to suck one in and then the other or if I can slurp both in at the same time. When Garth first asked me to give him his shot, I refused. I was worried about being an accomplice in potential ill health consequences and subsequent afterlife recriminations. Also I have to admit to a slight queasiness at stabbing a needle into his flesh. Garth is thick- kinned as well as thick-minded (due to his low sensitivity quotient, not his intellectual prowess). I phone him. “So what did you do?” “What could I do?” he says. “I went elsewhere.”

I like being involved in Garth’s life. It brings us closer together and shines through into our sex life. When it’s time for his third shot, jealousy prompts me to swab a swatch of skin on his upper left glute with alcohol, stretch the flesh, jab the needle straight in, steadily depress the syringe with just the right speed sending the shit into his body, then quickly, without delay, withdrawing the needle. He’s using Deca in this cycle. Next cycle he’s going to use Winstrol V. We both have a fondness for V. You can see the results within three weeks; you become bigger, leaner, stronger. Sometimes I miss my building days. The truth is, within all my years of training with builders, I’ve never seen such raw size and enormous potential as Garth possesses. When he lies on his side and bends his leg, his thigh, his fucking quads and hams are mammoth as all hell, one fucking huge Redwood tree trunk. I love and envy his size.

Garth is cranky, morose, and short-tempered, while I ache for gentleness and surrounding warmth. He worries about me and I like that. Like the time I felt dizzy for two days and he lay awake for three hours, going over my family’s cardiac history and my potential health risks. He wants to go down as a man with some heart. I think I love him too intensely, though it’s true I embrace passion. I cast him out of my life at least a dozen times a day and miss him in my bed at night. Tomorrow he might fuck me, kiss me with his big hands.

Pissing
Writing an erotic story is the neatest thing. It’s such a fucking turn on. It’s true that the words, how it all comes out or doesn’t, causes my right leg to shake while I type, first one leg and then both. The tapping (legs and keyboard) has a jazzy, syncopated beat. If I walk away from the computer and take a few deep breaths, I might relax. Instead I rock ten times in my black office chair. Then I count off twenty-nine steps to the bathroom.

When Garth heard my voice this morning, he said “Have you ever thought of taking up yoga?” I pee and wipe myself. My mind is like a manual typewriter, images and phrases streaking through―woman on the floor, ping; woman rubbing clit, ping ping; woman, ping ping ping; intake of breath, ping; lower case c, o, upper case MES, ping. A come is a come, solitary or joint. Garth should know that. Either way, it’s release. Or should I hold off like an athlete, revving up my words with pent-up energy?Lately, I come with my ass as well as my cunt because Garth is performing all this rimming and my nerves are waking up. Still, there’s something missing when my come whishes through. I’m tired of streamlined arrivals and departures.

Garth’s office is nestled inside a beige brick and glass building on Willowdale Avenue. To get into his office, you have to enter a general waiting room. Two doors lead off the room. One leads to a small corridor that folds into a rectangular room of about ten feet by sixteen feet. The furniture is functional; a sturdy black wood L-shaped desk surrounds him at one end of the office and a soda-fountain-high wood dining table with four upholstered chairs stand self-consciously in the centre of the room. There are no pictures on the walls. The desk holds the usual accoutrements: a computer, papers (piled), assorted pens (in a blue kitchen glass), and a photo (outdated, of his son).

Garth still has his mail sent to my apartment because one day he’s going to buy a house and he wants to improve his credit rating. Even though I live ten minutes away by car, I rarely drop by. That’s an issue between us.
“I work,” I tell him. “What if you had a conventional girlfriend who worked at an office?”
“But you don’t,” he says.
“It’s different. You should know—there’s Caroline.”
“Yes,” he says. “I know.”

On this occasion, I’m wearing some perfume, actually an oil. Egyptian musk. Two dabs on the inside of my wrist, rubbed in, and then massaged onto each side of my neck. Lisa says it’s a subtle approach.
“You took a bath in it just to annoy me,” Garth says.
“What?”
“You come in here, after I practically beg you, and you know how your perfume affects me.”
“It’s Body Shop, Garth. Two dabs.”
“If you say so.”
“Listen. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“To annoy me? Yes.”“
I don’t know why I bothered. I left my writing. I left Caroline when she was sleeping—I put a note on the table and some food and her meds. And I took a shower and put on just a touch of this oil, Garth, just a touch. I was sad for almost twenty-eight years my first time round—add that with our time, maybe thirty-five.”
“I don’t need this,” he says, “there are plenty women who would be glad to have me. Is it too much to ask for a happy simple life?”
“Fine. You find your little woman.” My throat swells up when I’m upset, its walls becoming dry like caked earth. Words escape parched and brittle.
“If you go out that door, you’re not coming back,” he says in his low flat voice. “Go. Get it over with.”

It’s an ordinary door. Smooth surface. Painted white. He’s tired, he says, of sending people out of his life, of forcing a final decision. “Go or stay, I don’t care anymore.” He leans back in his office chair, his face immobile as he plays solitaire. The clicking as he sets cards in place and moves others from or to the pack makes my skin itch. I slap my skin. It’s black fly season, the air thick with buzzards swarming and landing.I ask for some kind words before I leave; after one decade such a memorable moment should be played out with grace.

“The situation doesn’t warrant positive words,” he says. “Make a choice,” he says and gets up. “Excuse me. I have to leave my office for a moment.”
“Why?” I say.
“Nature doesn’t stop for quarrels,” he says.

I wait with restless eyes. Perhaps he thinks I would choose to exit; he’d return and I’d be gone—a shadow on the walls of his office and narrow corridor, slipping into the street. My throat is a noose. When he returns I ask him what he wants for himself although I know I cannot offer him those things he needs—to settle down, his wife in his bed at night, a quiet life. I ask for friendship. “Drink some water,” he says, “it’s important to keep your body hydrated, it’ll help your joints.” He offers me his water bottle.

“Come here,” he says. “There’s something I need to do.”
“I haven’t showered since this morning.”
“I could smell you.” he says.
“That’s nice.”
“Really. Your smell changes when you’re thinking of sex.”
“I was thinking I would miss you, how I would be sad.”
“Come.”

I walk around his desk. He swivels around in his chair, pulls me to him, and holds me. It’s uncomfortable but I don’t move. I look outside his office window beyond the heavy-lidded Venetian blinds. There’s a grooming pet store across the street. Occasionally a body and pet walk south to north or the reverse.

“Your blinds are open.”
“Look at my car. Can you see through the windows?”
His car is silver with shaded windows.
“No one can see through the blinds and dark glass. Same thing.”
“You sure? You’re not getting off on a peep show and we’re the show?”
“No,” he says.
“I’ll suck you off, but I don’t want you to rim me.”
“Why not?”
“Because, this is your office and not your bedroom.”
“I can see that,” he says. “So?”
“Well, I can’t come in your office and it’s such a pleasing thing, this rimming thing you do. I want to be in your bed.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“But I would love to suck you off.” Which at this moment is not true.
“I’ve lost the interest.”
“It would please me, as well as you.”
“I have to leave in twenty-two minutes anyhow.”
“Just turn around then.” He pulls my jeans down. “Lean across the desk.”
“But I can see people.”
“Look the other way or close your eyes.” He rolls his desk chair back. “Can you bend over the desk?” He worries about my back pains. He bites the left cheek of my ass. He licks the line from my asshole to my coccyx and kisses me on the other side of my ass. He puts his finger up my cunt and rims me. I close my eyes so I can feel the light from his tongue. He flicks his tongue in my asshole and he says, “That’s what I needed, that’s what I have been waiting for.”

I use my all-purpose double-consonant. “Mm,” I say.
“You’re as wet as you were last time. It seems that we’ve taken the next step.
“What?”
“Ass fucking without lube.”
“Sounds scary,” I say. “I don’t feel that wet.”
He twirls his middle finger inside me and draws a thick circle on my thigh.“How do you want it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe in the traditional way.”
“But where exactly?”
“Not in my mouth and not up the ass, which would leave only one hole.”
“Are you sure?”
“I think so.”

He puts his prick up my cunt and I say “ow” although he’s actually gentle. “Sure you don’t want it in the ass?” he asks and I say, “Yes, I’m sure,” because his cock filling my asshole takes some getting used to and I’m tired. So he fucks me hard in the cunt, ram ram ram. “Let’s just test that,” he says and stands up beside his black wood desk with his cock out and ready. I want to see if his balls are normal size because he’s juicing up, but I worry about ruining the moment, so I tell him the drops at his cock’s tip look like stars. “I only hope you can find another broad who loves sucking and swallowing the way I do,” I had said earlier when I thought I was leaving. What an odd pair we are, certainly. I realize that afternoon as I must have before, not that I couldn’t leave, but that I don’t want to and that perhaps I love him with the ferocity one reads about in coveted novels with worn covers. I love my girls more than my own life, I often say. There are some moments when I think I love Garth even more. And that’s one secret.

The Story Ends, Part Two

The story ends quite simply. It stops. The words stop. I am no longer able to tap out exotic messages to panting men. Garth will not allow me into the gym at the same time as he is there. I’ve embarrassed him in the past, he says. Once I lay under the vertical leg machine, pressing three plates and a quarter on each side for reps. Afterwards I got up and started to cry. I lost it. Garth walked away. “Even strong women cry,” I said. “Not at the gym,” he said and walked away.He says he has his own reasons for his refusal to admit me. I know he’s training Marion because he needs the cash. He trains with her and she pays him; she sidles up to him after his set and wipes the sweat off his forehead with her palm. Marion wanted to fuck Garth even when he was living with me and I was training her at the prissy Women’s Workout. I’m responsible for her metamorphosis from scrawny to moderately muscled although her upper torso is way too long and she has a straight bony back. Garth has wildly overstepped his bounds. I love this harsh man. Whether my book with its stream of words is published, is equally undisclosed. That I seek out love as a reason for living―such wishes dim suddenly and gradually, flicker and expire. My mind, kicked in its stomach, keels over. The family doctor puts me on antidepressant medication. I wish life would stop. Not end. Just a welcome freeze frame. There’s a line in Moonstruck when Olivia Dukakis confronts her straying husband. “You’re going to die anyway,” she tells him.

Men trickle back into my life. “Sorry, sorry,” Mark finally writes. His alcoholic friend was sacked. Mark was spending his days reading and writing dirty emails. He has relocated. He has a new job. Lenny is coming to visit. From time to time he reviews the CD of my artwork. He says he might fall in love with my soul if he stares at my work too frequently or for too long. The prospect of Lenny’s visiting thrills me. I feel alive for a morning and part of the afternoon. Robbie calls me “hot mama” and wishes to see me naked. I send him a picture of me and Josie. We’re both in jeans, our heads and fingertips touching. Sometimes I phone Abie and cry. He likes to give advice. I love my girls. And that is the beginning and the end.

When It Is Summer at the Lakeshore
Is this how a woman allows a story to end? Selling her soul? Pimping herself out? Have I not learned anything in my two-and-a-half-year search, ignoring truths I stumbled on in my nine-year run with Garth, my grueling twenty-eight-year trek with Abie? Are these the lessons I want to teach my girls? The printed words I offer them in memory? Are these my ashes? The pride I gather around me when all else has been lost or taken? The story is too fucking sad. Bag ladies leer at me, their screeching haunts me at night. It’s cold inside.
It’s only a cunt baby. It’s only an asshole. But honey, it’s my cunt, my asshole, my soul you’re ramming the lights out of.If I check my soul, can I reclaim it later? Do I weave and smile and bob? Have I grown soft, honey?

After all this time, I still can’t distinguish between love and need. And you know it’s funny, because you go up to your man and tell him what a fucking asshole he’s been and he says “Who me?” I used to think my father was the messiah; that Abie would keep me whole and safe; and finally, that Garth with his powerful body and treacherous mind would prevent harm from breaking and entering.But waves like hungry sharks pursue me, and men are either unwilling or unable champions. Gathering at the shore’s edge, they track my bobbing figure: “Now her head is submerged. Now she’s coming up and gulping for air. Nope, she’s going under again.” From the receding shoreline, men wearing black ankle socks in leather lace-up shoes shout out advice and directions.

Robbie with his magnificent dreadlocks emailed his six-scene play to be critiqued and has written few words to me since. Mark, with all his coolness, leaves his final message, “All I can say is I sure do miss you JCT. It’ll take a few more weeks, two, or three, until it all gets back to normal.” He phones from an airport, his voice slurred. “I just landed in Los Vegas. I’m going to do little gambling. We’ll be here a couple of days. Talk to you soon. I trust that you’re doing well, OK babe?” In the end they just want to fuck you one way or another. And yet, my darling daughters, when it’s summer in town at the Lakeshore and the moon is up and full, grab your young man, let your heart slide down into your arms, and hold him tight.




“There Is No Remedy for Love but to Love More” —Henri David Thoreau

I like my words to fill the room. “Fill in all the white space,” my grade school art teacher used to say. So I’m always late, sometimes fifteen minutes and up to thirty, which makes coloring in Dr. B’s forty-five-minute hour easy. I don’t like pauses or boredom. As Dr. B. arrives at the inner door to his office, I make a B-line toward to the clock on the end table. Sometimes I offer up a reason for my delay. Usually I don’t. Not after all these years. He says I look younger than when we first met in the later part of the nineties. I list off my procedures: lower lids, collogen, laser, botox. Being upfront pleases me and makes me laugh. People think I’m being honest. This round I’m back with several goals in mind: to de-traumatize after the evictions, poverty and instability; to embrace Caroline whose head roots about as she talks to everyone and no one in particular; to build my Josie a tree house; to transform the fear base from which I operate; and to bring closure to my relationship with Garth whom I love quite obsessively and who has repeatedly announced as he did last night at around eleven o’clock that he is number one, the only number that matters. “It’s my well being before anyone else’s,” he said while I sucked the come out of his inflated prick.



He’s a professional trumpet player who has performed at three presidential inaugurations. He’s played with this and that notable, and this and that notable have played with him. He also burps, farts and pisses while he talks to me. The more I talk to him, the more his talk transforms into a series of snorts and grunts. I say something about my pain. “Where baby oh my baby where?” he says. “My ankles, my knee, my groin,” I say. He perks up when I say groin. “I’m the man to fix that one.” He laughs and snorts again. He travels across the country. He’s an in demand classical trumpet player although he plays jazz and experimental on occasion. He has a fine collection of sweaters.

A tall man delivers a used dining room table with clawed feet. Even though John in the gatehouse calls up, I start and then freeze at the double knock on the door. The mover looks at my art work. He loves art work, he says with a French accent. He is wearing a dark grey straw hat and he’s as tall as night. I decide I must have him.

He moves in for two weeks. He phones when he’s coming home. I have supper waiting for him. He eats everything. He listens to Caroline and teaches her how to play drums on his soundless drum kit. Garth thinks I’ve taken a stranger in to protect him from immigration and that’s true. “You’re a fool,” Garth tells me and advises me to call the cops.

Kema’s prick is longer than Garth’s. I choke. Maybe it’s because I have less practice. Because I’m alone a lot. I want my hair to fall across a man’s chest, I want him to bruise my lips with his kisses, to sweep my hair across his thighs, his neck his face his cock. That’s all that I want. Is it asking too much? Do you think?