Amsterdam Two: Why Amsterdam?

How had I arrived in Amsterdam? What caused me to unseat myself from my American ennui?

One night in October, 2007, I finished an index. It was midnight and I attached the document to an email and sent it to the publisher. My deadline was the following day but I worked until midnight to finish it so I wouldn’t have to bother with it any more. I had two indexes scheduled but each of their respective due dates were more than a month away. After working like a dog for six months, day after day, week after week, I finally had a rest in front of me.

But as I sat watching my screen saver—waves crashing on a beach—my mind was a blank. I didn’t have a thought in my head except for a vague wondering “What do I do now?” All I knew in my post-divorce life of six months was a constant stream of work. My social outings consisted of going to the grocery store and a gas station. I passed what little free time I had in front of the television watching HBO on Demand. I was particularly drawn to a show called In Treatment mostly because it was a quality drama that dealt with individuals with depressing psychological issues. In other words, I could relate and somehow watching fictional characters struggle to deal with their lives made me feel less alienated and lonely.

But I’d watched all of those episodes and all episodes of every other series I liked. In this new workless state there was nothing appealing to me at all. I did not want to go out to a bar—I’d done that in Chicago for nearly a year post-separation before I decided I needed to escape from that lifestyle; that was why I had moved to Madison in May of 2007. I didn’t want to check my email and I didn’t care about surfing the Internet for music, news, or anything else. Nothing appealed to me. Nothing.

I sat in front of my computer watching wave after wave rush the sand. It was hypnotic, soothing. I felt empty but also calm. I didn’t feel the gnawing ache that accompanied my depression. This was, perhaps, the first time I’d just sat and stared mindlessly, almost meditatively, since before my then-wife had told me she wanted to separate on Thanksgiving Day in November of 2005. Even in the mornings when I’d wake memories came crashing into focus, memories of S., memories of our life together, an almost eerie sense that I’d never feel anything but sorrow or numbness ever again.

As I watched my computer screen without really seeing it a thought arose. It came into focus quietly. It seemed to float downward like a leaf from a tree on a windless day. The thought was from my teenage years lived in Arizona, a bleak time twenty years earlier in my life. I remembered the thought vividly after a few moments. I had promised myself that if I ever felt even remotely close to committing suicide that I would allow myself at least one day to do anything I wanted to do no matter what the cost or consequences.

The thought brought a smile to my lips. When had I last smiled? I couldn’t remember. The smile was sincere, the genuine article, and the thought was the first inkling of hopefulness I’d had perhaps in years. But what did I want to do? I had five figures in my bank account, over $30,000 available through credit card limits, and no debts so money wasn’t an issue.

For a time, I just enjoyed the sensation of knowing I could do whatever I wanted. It felt like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders, that I’d been let out of a cage and allowed to roam free again. As I sat there basking in my newfound freedom I knew what I wanted to do. S. and I had gone to Europe for our honeymoon in 1998. We booked a flight into Amsterdam because it was the cheapest we could find online. Kuwaiti Airways: great food, tiny seats with no leg room. Our itinerary took us from Amsterdam through Germany into Austria south through Switzerland into Italy and then northbound to Paris and finally back to Amsterdam to fly back to the States.

Amsterdam had been included in the itinerary only because of the flight but once we arrived and found our way to the center I fell in love with the city. By the end of the trip when we returned I found myself thinking that Paris had nothing on Amsterdam when it came to romance. The canals in particular are postcard perfect and, frankly, postcards do the canals a grave injustice. They just continue endlessly and have a life of their own. The city veritably breathes through them.

S. and I returned to Europe in 2000 and 2004 on other trips, both of them flying into and out of Amsterdam. I took a 10-day trip of my own to Amsterdam in 2001 while S. made her painstaking decision about where to attend law school. Each time I returned to the city I loved it more. I tried to talk S. into renting an apartment there so we could taste what it was like to live like locals, to really immerse ourselves in the culture, but S. always wanted to travel from place to place, to take in as many sights as possible. In my heart of hearts, I longed to live there.

As I reminisced while staring at the computer screen which had long since gone black I knew without a doubt that the answer to my question was Amsterdam. If I could do anything I wanted I would rent an apartment in Amsterdam. I was so sure of this that there was no competing interest vying for attention.

I snapped out of my haze and opened my browser. I googled “Amsterdam apartments.” I slowly discovered that this was not going to be easy. There were few apartments available to residents outside the European Union. The only apartment listings I found were through rental agencies and they charged an arm and a leg per month. It was cheaper to rent a hotel room for a month than to rent an apartment! But then I remembered my ultimatum: If I ever felt so low that I didn’t think I could go on living then I’d allow myself to do whatever I wanted for at least a day. I decided, “Forget a day. That might have been enough in high school but I need a real fix!”

I booked an apartment for a month through a rental agency. I entered my credit card number on a rental website and, voila, I was booked for five-plus weeks starting in early November of 2007. The cost was 2900 Euros, about 4200 U.S. dollars. I didn’t even check for flights before I committed to the apartment and it was mid-October. I had a small panic attack when I realized the flight might cost a bundle but then I realized I didn’t care. I was going to Amsterdam to save my life! As long as there was a flight available it didn’t matter the cost. Fortunately, there were flights with reasonable rates because it was the off-season for travel to Amsterdam.

By 3:00 AM I had made all of the necessary arrangements. I had booked a one-bedroom apartment in the Plantage neighborhood just east of the city center near the zoo. The apartment was located on Entrepotdok in an old warehouse building that had originally been used by the Dutch East India Company. I saw the photos of the apartment. It was decked out with contemporary furniture, appliances, stereo system, wireless Internet service, satellite TV, and all manner of George Jetson gizmos to make living easy. I’d be able to work on my indexing projects from the apartment and at nearby cafés.

By searching a little more online I discovered the jam band moe would be playing at the Melkweg in late November. I booked tickets for both nights. My Amsterdam trip was developing into an exciting adventure. As I sat back with my work done, my apartment rented, and my flight booked I shook my head in disbelief. I’d done something proactive to jumpstart my life.

Amsterdam One: Conversations

At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves—that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home that we encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially are.—The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton.

…

Peter looked up at the backward-running clock. “Do you ever wonder why we’re here?”

I sat silently for a few moments chewing on another bite of uitsmijter. I swallowed and said, “I’m here because I’m hungry.”

Harrumph. “No, I mean why we’re alive. Do you ever wonder why we exist?”

“I have wondered at times.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“And?”

“I don’t know, really. I’ve never come up with an answer.”

“I see.”

“What about you? Have you come up with an answer?”

“Sometimes I have. Sometimes I haven’t.”

“Well, what were some of your answers? How about one of your answers? The best answer I guess.”

I put down the fork, took a sip of coffee, and I sat up straight on the barstool. “Let me think about that for a minute.” I looked around the brown café. There were only a few patrons at this hour in the morning. A bald fellow who looked familiar sat at the other end of the bar talking with the manager and bartender, Kasper. They were speaking Dutch in the way that they do here. Pleasant to my ears, the sound was like a familiar lilting English but indecipherable to me. The guy with the long white beard was playing that odd game of pool, I forget the name, but he was trying to pocket one of the two red balls after banking the white off of three rails. It was the only game I had ever seen anyone play at Eik en Linde.

I looked back at Peter. His de Koninck was all but finished. It’s never too early in the day for a beer, I suppose. “None of my answers were very good, you know? The best answer was just ‘Hey, we’re here.’ Makes no difference what the answer is because even if you guess wrong you’re still here. Life’s pretty forgiving in that sense.”

Peter nodded his head slowly. His forearms rested on the bar as he held the glass by the tips of his fingers with both hands. He arched his back a bit and tilted his head down at an angle as he peered over the top of his glasses at me. He smiled wryly. “Are you sure you’re American? You’re beginning to sound like a Dutchman.”

We both laughed. Peter took another drink. “Okay, so we don’t know why we’re here, but we are anyway. Who are we, though? What makes us us?”

“Do you think I know something you don’t?”

Peter rolled his eyes and clicked his tongue. “Ah, you’re in a strange mood today. You’re usually the one telling me this or that about everything. I figure if you know everything then you must know these things.”

It was my turn to laugh. “What can I say? I have my days when I’m filled with the romance of the city and it feels like everything is simple, right there within my grasp. And everyone else’s, for that matter. Then there are other days …”

I took another sip of coffee. I had finished my uitsmijter. The backward running clock read 1:15. Almost eleven o’clock in the morning. I had actually asked myself the question Peter had asked me only a few weeks ago. In fact, I had been asking it continuously for as long as I could remember. Answers that last come slowly, building up over decades, but when they finally come they feel like electricity, the lightning bolt that can only come if all of the conditions that create it form in the right way over distance and time.

“We are what we make of ourselves,” I finally shot back. “We become what we are when we make decisions and then will our bodies to act on them. Or not make decisions and not act on our indecision. Either way, that’s what makes us us.” I took another sip of coffee. “Maybe.”

Kasper walked toward us from the other end of the bar. “Michael, how was the uitsmijter?”

“Delicious. Thank you, Kasper. Could I have an espresso?”

Kasper smiled. “No.” He paused and blinked. “Of course.”

Peter spoke up. “Another beer, too.”

“Ja, okay.” Kasper walked back to the center of the bar.

Peter sighed before turning to me. “I’m not satisfied with your answer.”

“Neither am I, but what can I do?”

“You could start drinking beer, for one.”

“True, I could, but I have to get some work done today. I brought my laptop even though I never get anything done here … nor anywhere else in the city, to be honest. I was stubborn about it at first, but I’ve finally just accepted that Amsterdam is for the enjoyment of life rather than for getting things done.”

“Thank goodness for that!”

I heard Kasper laugh as I clinked my coffee cup against Peter’s empty beer glass.

Peter shouted, “Hey, never do that! It’s bad luck to toast an empty glass. Kasper, you’re laughing too much and pouring too slow.”

Kasper shot back, “I swore I just heard that Amsterdam is for living well instead of working hard.”

Peter shot back, “That’s only true if everyone’s glass is full!”

Everyone in Eike en Linde laughed. There were a few more people now. A young, fashionably dressed British couple—a man and a woman, though one should never assume here (nor anywhere else, but especially in Amsterdam)—had wandered inside and found a table near the front window on the far side of the cafe. A distinguished looking blond gentleman with an ochre-colored sport coat came in not long after they had. He was emphatically Dutch with a collapsed umbrella in one hand and a folded newspaper tucked under his other arm. He sat a few stools away from Peter and I near the dark-brown wooden support that separated the barstools into an uneven split. Peter and I were seated at the fat end with its curly-Q tip that allowed people to sit as we were on the rounded end or on either side facing one another.

Kasper glided through the walkway in the middle with our respective drinks. “There.” Kasper stood for a second looking at Peter. His lips were made into a devilish smirk and his dimples winked. “Are you happy now?” he asked in Dutch.

Peter answered in a mix of Dutch and English “No. I’m not happy at all. That has nothing to do with you, though. What is there to be happy about?” It was impossible to tell if he was being serious. It always seemed to be that way. The Dutch sense of humor? It’s diverse, actually, but there is a strain of it that took me awhile to catch, a dry, sardonic wit that, beneath the surface, has the spirit of a child at play, a purposeful dourness poking fun at itself. Just another one of the endless ways the Dutch create gezellig atmospheres, the inhalation of the seriousness and tension in the world and the exhalation of easy and engaging laughter that defines the culture’s breathing. No one ever seems to be left out in Holland. It is an extraordinarily welcoming and inclusive society.

Few countries welcome friends and strangers in quite the way the Dutch do. Of course, I haven’t traveled everywhere in the world. Not by a long shot. It doesn’t hurt that so many of them speak English here, many fluently, some better than most Americans will ever dream of speaking their native tongue. It’s remarkable—to me, anyway. I’m in love with the place. If it was possible to get hitched to a city, I would have proposed to Amsterdam long ago.

As it stands, I’ve written her long love letters sealed with kisses. I’ve walked hand-in-hand with her along her curvy canals, side by side with her gabled houses, and step by step up and down the paths of her parks. I’ve danced alone with her under the moonlight pedaling a bike over bridges early on Monday mornings. I’ve smiled lovestruck buying dozens of flowers along the Singel with the intention of simply leaving them one by one everywhere the city touched my heart. But as many flowers as there are in the city every day, there simply may not be enough to cover every centimeter. Every cobblestone deserves a tulip of its own, every brick a rose, and a wreath hovering above the head of every man, woman, and child.

“So, are you going to give me a real answer or not?” asked Peter impatiently. He had emptied half his glass. I sipped the espresso, shaking my head as I broke into a smile while placing the cup on the saucer.

“There’s no answer I could give that would satisfy you. I know this much about you at least. But no answer at all would be even less fulfilling.”

“Ah, the American in you comes out. Great taste, less filling. Sorry, there’s no Miller Lite on tap here.” Laughter from Kasper and the other two men at the bar.

“You know Miller Lite?”

Peter rolled his eyes. “What? You’re the only one who travels in this world? Is it such a surprise that I’ve visited the United States? It couldn’t possibly be that we know anything about you, is that it? How could we not know about you?! You’re everywhere! You see a country without a Coca-Cola for sale and you send in the troops to make sure the suffering herds will have a vending machine on every corner!”

Uh oh. Is he getting drunk? Peter has a pointed wit when he gets sauced. How long had he been drinking before I arrived? Nah, he’s just trying to get in a few digs. More fun if I throw it back at him. “As you know, Peter, most of us in America came from Europe if you go back just a little ways. We may have left Europe, but we haven’t quite gotten the imperialism out of our system just yet. Hey, we’re young and we still think we’re going to live forever. That’s why we all get hair transplants and boob jobs. Hell, I didn’t even realize we were actually in Iraq until I came here. For years I thought it was just a really bad television show. Well, not bad by American standards, but bad nonetheless. Besides, you’re in Iraq right along with us and your sitcoms are even worse than ours!”

I took another sip of my espresso and as I did I noticed the well-dressed Dutch fellow sitting nearby raise his eyebrows and just slightly curl the corners of his mouth into a smile. When I looked back at Peter the glass sitting in front of him was almost empty. He had squared his shoulders toward me with his right hand on his hip and his head cocked back with a look of on his face that said “Nice uppercut, kiddo.” He turned back to the bar, pulled a pack of Galoushes from his coat pocket, and fished out a cigarette. He was about to put it in his mouth and light it before he realized he couldn’t. Amsterdam had gone American and had passed a no-smoking ordinance in cafés. That shocked me, actually, because on my first visit to Amsterdam in the late 1990s people were wandering around the Schiphol airport puffing away. The Dutch are tolerant, but also health conscious. Still, it’s weird because you can still smoke pot inside the coffeeshops. Contact high? Not a problem. Second-hand tobacco smoke? Problem.

After putting his pack back in his pocket, Peter said, “Touché. But now I know you’ve got some Dutch in you. You’ve been here too long.”

“I have?”

“Of course! No one can belittle their own culture like the Dutch. Americans, they beat their chests and say, ‘We’re right and you’re wrong!’ The Dutch answer back, ‘Well, you’re half right. We are wrong.’”

I laughed heartily. There’s nothing like wasting a day going back and forth about everything and nothing with the Dutch. They’ll talk with anyone and they’ll do so endlessly—until the beer runs out, anyway. Then they’ll switch to jenever. And when that runs out they just might smoke a little pot. But not everyone. Not all that many, really. It’s mostly the travelers and the tourists in the coffeeshops unless they’re way off the beaten path. Even so, hanging out in a coffeeshop getting high all day is not really what the Dutch do. Maybe it was different in the past, but most coffeeshops I have visited are populated by Americans and travelers from the rest of Europe. Hell, the rest of the world.

I mentioned these two things to Peter, about the artistry of Dutch conversation and my surprise that the Dutch don’t get high in the coffeeshops.

“Well, you could call it art, I guess. It’s the art of the cow. The cow shit.”

Kasper yelled from down the bar. “Bullshit. A bullshit artist.” He was rinsing glasses in the sink, smiling to himself while listening to us and, as far as I could tell, talking here and there with others in the bar. He was always in motion but always at ease within his motion. He was born into it, his parents owned the bar and he seemed to be managing it now, along with his mother who was sometimes working during the day, too. There were others working as well, but usually later in the afternoons and at night. I rarely stopped in at night. Too crowded and filled with a cacophony of Dutch voices. It was a neighborhood café in The Plantage on the edge of the city center. It was just right for me, but then again I loved being around the Dutch. If I wanted to hang out with American tourists I might as well just stay in the United States. Or I could just head over to the Dam and find them in spades.

“Yes, a bullshit artist. A cow is a woman and a bull is a man. Yes. Sorry, my English is not so well.”

“Maybe your vocabulary isn’t as extensive—although that’s the first difficulty I’ve heard from you—but your English is probably as good as mine.”

“Well, that’s not a surprise. You were stuck in American schools. I won’t hold it against you.”

More laughter from all corners. The British woman was at the bar smiling, but sheepishly. Gorgeous. Hardly noticeable, though, after being in Amsterdam this long. Dutch beauty? Dear Lord! There are so many beauties in this country that they don’t even seem to realize they’re beautiful. I found it rare to meet a Dutch woman who is full of herself for being hot enough to melt titanium.

The British woman tried to speak a little Dutch as she ordered a white wine. Not too hard, really, but she used French and German. A blanc wein, bitte? Ouch! Kasper, gracious as always, simply smiled with a hint of amusement and said “No problem.” It has to be great to work in Amsterdam and be confronted with such sincere but mangled efforts to speak their language. You’d think it would be tiresome, like it is for the French, but the Dutch are too kind-hearted to be anything more than amused. Okay, sometimes they’re patronizing. No one’s perfect. Well, Kasper might be. I’ve never seen him anything other than friendly and even-keeled.

Peter shook his head but didn’t comment. Instead he turned back to me and said, “It’s not true that the Dutch don’t smoke. They just don’t do it in coffeeshops so much. That’s more for a party or at home. Only the tourists and the young people stumble around stoned and happy all day and night. The respectable Dutch walk around drunk and happy instead.”

“It never ends with you, does it? You could just go on and on like this forever, couldn’t you?”

“No. That’s not true. I’ll die someday.”

“Well, there’s that.”

“Yes there is. But you still never answered my question, did you? You are not just an American Dutch, you are an American Dutch politician.”

“I gave you an answer but you didn’t like it!”

“I know. You have to give me an answer I like.”

“I do? Is it a Dutch tradition or a Dutch law?”

“It’s neither. It’s just what I want.”

“And you always get what you want?”

“No, I never get what I want! For example, I wanted another beer a minute ago, but Kasper decided to help the pretty English woman instead. Not that I blame him. I would, too.” Peter turned to the British woman. She was still waiting for her wine as Kasper was grabbing an order of food from the little window near the floor at the other end of the bar connected to the lowered kitchen. About a half dozen people had entered Eike en Linde over the past ten minutes. It was well after eleven A.M. Well, maybe it was well before eleven A.M. Damn backward running clock.

“Your Dutch is impeccable, my dear. If it wasn’t for the English accent I heard when you walked in I would have pegged you as a Dutch girl from the south.” An invisible insult to the woman and a visible dig at Holland South. It has an unflattering reputation amongst Amsterdammers.

The woman smiled meekly and turned away.

“You’re incorrigible.”

“I’m a dirigible?”

“Ha! Sorry. No, incorrigible. It’s similar to irredeemable.”

“So, now you are just making fun of me with your fancy English vocabulary. Maybe you went to school in Europe after all.”

“You can’t be reformed!”

“Ah, like a criminal.”

“Well … sort of. You’re impossible, though.”

“That one I know. Okay. You’re right. I’m proud of my impossibility.”

“Of course you are. You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Nor could I—unless you paid me! I don’t take traveler’s checks, though.”

“Well, I’m not really traveling so that’s okay.”

“You’re not traveling? You’re an American in Amsterdam. What do you call it?”

“I don’t know, really. I don’t really live here but I’m also not staying at a hotel or just for a couple weeks, either. I’m trying not to call it anything.”

“Do you call it nothing then?”

“I don’t actually think about it unless I’m with someone like you.”

“Like me? There are others like me?” Peter whipped his head around and put his hand over his eyes as if peering for someone he might recognize as himself. “I think I’d like to meet myself. Can you introduce me some time?”

“I don’t think you could handle it,” I said with as much dead-pan humor as I could muster.

“I’ve looked into the mirror and asked myself a question or two. I think I can handle it.”

“Yeah, but did the mirror talk back?”

“Yes, it said the same thing I said at the same time I said it.”

“I would hope so.”

“I’m not sure you would.”

“I—” I laughed. Hard. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to keep going, but I broke.

Peter didn’t, though. “Ah, see? I thought so. Now, I asked you what makes us what we are and you have to answer now because you laughed.”

“Okay. I’ll try again.” Kasper came back with the woman’s drink and Peter grabbed Kasper’s attention. “I’ll have a beer. Michael said he wanted one, too. You did, didn’t you?”

I just shook my head and shrugged. “Yeah, I’ll have a beer, Kasper. La Chouffe.” It still wasn’t noon, but what the hell? I wasn’t going to get any work done, anyway. In fact, as I thought about it a little, I figured I’d have a couple beers and then wander aimlessly through the city to enjoy the spirit. It was drizzly, but not too cold.

“All right, Peter. What makes us what we are? I have your answer. We are our bodies. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s it.”

Peter opened his mouth as if he was going to say something and then he closed it. He seemed to be considering what I’d said a little bit more seriously. He started to open it again, but again he stopped himself. He smiled a bit and nodded his head.

“Okay. I’m okay with that.”

“What?! Wow, I’m stunned. I didn’t think it was possible to satisfy you.”

“I didn’t either. I’m surprised I am. I’m glad you cut yourself off there, though, and didn’t try to make us into anything more. I’m impressed.”

“So am I. Not with my answer, mind you, but with the fact that I shut you up!”

Kasper was chuckling as he brought our beers. “I can’t believe it either. Michael, this one’s on the house. Anyone who can stop Peter in his tracks deserves a free beer. And Peter, yours is free, too. It might be another decade before anyone silences you again.” Laughter up and down the bar. The place was filling up with regulars now.

Truth be told, the answer seemed the same to me. Reduced to an essential, but otherwise the same statement with fewer bells and whistles attached. I had been examining what makes me “me” during this trip to Amsterdam. Divorced nearly a year earlier and separated almost two years. I had lost my sense of self when that relationship ended. During my first month-long stay in Amsterdam in November of 2007, just a few months earlier, I’d started to regain it. Not that I possessed an identity—nor that an identity can be possessed; it can only be created—but I started creating one in earnest during November.

Peter was holding his drink in his right hand and staring at me impatiently. “Are we going to toast or what?” he asked.

I lifted my glass, gently clinked mine against his, and I said, “To being here.”

Peter responded, “Yes, to beer!”

Population Control

I wrote this for an English class when I was in high school. It was before the Columbine school shooting and all of the other well-publicized school shootings. If I had written this and submitted it after Columbine I likely would have been flagged as a potential school shooter and hauled in by police or even the FBI. But, as I said, I wrote it before all that craziness. So ... what happened? I received an "A" for the paper and wound up with an "A" in the class. Apparently, my teacher focused more on the writing quality or narrative coherence than on content. It's not great, but for a high school student it's pretty good. Without further ado:

...

A man in a gray flannel suit walked up to an old woman in a red jumpsuit and laughed in her face. The old woman, startled, began to cry. The man in the suit pulled a switchblade from his pocket and stabbed the old woman. She grunted and slumped to the ground. Crowds walked by the two on the busy New York City street as if nothing had happened. The man in the gray flannel suit knelt next to the dying old woman and smiled kindly at her before slashing her throat with his knife.

The man in the suit, Bernie Snodgrass, picked up the dead woman and carried her to a nearby mailbox and stuffed her inside it. Bernie looked at the legs sticking out of the mailbox and laughed. Still, the crowds passed as if nothing had happened. Bernie shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

For Bernie this was not an unusual incident. For many years he had been killing people in his efforts to eliminate overpopulation in New York City.

As he continued walking down the street, a young hoodlum jumped out from an alley waving a small club at Bernie. He demanded money. Bernie gave him what little he had, although reluctantly. The young punk, dissatisfied with the amount, snarled at Bernie and swung his club. Bernie was hit in the midsection, doubled over, and then fell to his knees. The angry youth swung his club again and cracked the side of Bernie’s face, shattering his cheekbone and rendering him unconscious.

Bernie woke hours later. After several unsuccessful attempts, he managed to get to his feet. He slowly made his way to a nearby convenience store. He sought help from a young clerk. The clerk looked at Bernie without sympathy and told him to get out of the store. Bernie, in intense pain and barely thinking coherently, reacted with fury and lunged across the counter and cut the man’s face with his switchblade. The clerk stumbled backward and Bernie slithered over the counter wildly swinging his knife. He sliced the man’s chest and stomach. The clerk fell to the floor but tried to crawl away. Bernie jumped on top of him and stabbed him repeatedly in his upper back and neck until the life drained out of him.

The customers in the store all fled to the exit. Bernie picked himself off the floor, his pain returning now that his adrenaline was dropping. He saw a telephone on the counter and picked up the receiver. He slumped to the floor before he could dial. He laid on his back looking at the ceiling and soon blacked out.

Bernie woke up in a hospital bed. He couldn’t see out of one eye because it was bandaged. He felt pain in his face, but not as intense. He otherwise felt numb and figured he must have been given morphine. Bernie remembered he killed the clerk at the store. While he was happy he had taken another step in the fight against overpopulation, he realized he had to get out of the hospital. He felt sure that he would go to prison if he stayed. He tried to get up but was too weak.

A nurse and a police officer came into the room. The nurse checked Bernie’s vitals and said something to the policeman. The nurse left the room and the officer pulled up a chair next to Bernie’s bed. He asked Bernie if he could answer a few questions about what happened at the convenience store. Bernie drifted off shortly thereafter. The police officer left the room disgusted.

Bernie woke a few hours later. AA nurse came into his room with a tray of medicine and other items. She put them on a table next to the bed. Bernie saw a syringe and grabbed it. The nurse screamed. The police officer ran into the room and squeezed past the nurse to get at Bernie, not knowing he had a syringe in his hand. Bernie plunged the needle into the policeman’s neck and broke it off at the base. The officer stumbled backward, gasping and gurgling. He crashed to the floor and the nurse, panicked, cowered in a corner.

Bernie felt much better and got out of bed. He grabbed the policeman’s gun and ran out of the room toward an elevator. He went to the first floor lobby and ran out of the building in his hospital gown. He searched for a getaway car in the parking lot. He spotted a young couple getting out of a car. The man was helping his wife, who was pregnant, get out of the car. Bernie aimed the gun at the man’s head and told him to get away from the car.

The man, startled, instinctively covered his wife to protect her. Bernie, thinking the man may have been trying to get a gun, shot him in the head and killed him. The woman screamed as she cradled her husband’s lifeless body in her lap. Bernie pulled the man from her and grabbed her by the hair. He yanked her from the car and slammed her head into the hood. He repeated the action several times until she stopped screaming and slumped to the ground.

Bernie went back to the man and rummaged through his pockets for the car keys. Bernie heard sirens. He realized he was not going to be able to escape. He was filled with sadness and was on the brink of despair. He briefly thought of all his accomplishments. He knew there would be only one last person to kill in his quest to solve the overpopulation problem. Bernie opened his mouth, stuck the barrel of the gun inside, and pulled the trigger. 

ridiculous, just ridiculous

The Parthenon was built as a ruin by visionary women who predicted tourists would prefer decay.

The mathematics of the future will use blood as a constant.

I saw a newborn in a stroller who was weeping. The woman pushing the stroller was ignoring the baby while talking with another woman. They were both wearing yoga pants. I picked up the infant and set it on the ground to liberate it. It just sat there and wailed. Ingrate.

I delight in popularity. I used to be a high school cheerleader, but now I'm a comedian telling realistic stories about serial killers. For my next attack, I will create a cheer for Ted Bundy and call it art.

My political ambition is to spur associations. I will create the Pebble Movement which I define as a project to sustain the existence of pebbles as pebbles without giving them a mythology distorting their reality. By creating an affirmative movement a counter-movement will arise to oppose it. In this way, I will create a pebble mythology that will grow over time. Radio talk show hosts will likely identify pebbles as potential terrorists leading the Pentagon to persuade Obama to invade every country with pebbles in order to eradicate the worldwide threat. Thus, I will create a new global war. You're welcome.

If everyone would agree with me about everything I believe then the world would be as I believe it should be. But people trust powerful sociopaths and narcissists instead of me. Clearly, I haven't caused enough suffering for anyone to trust me. 

I want a future in which everyone beautiful must remain homeless until they become ugly. Then they can squat in abandoned buildings and kill rats for sustenance. 

I gave birth to Andy Warhol through my anus. He was my first white turd and thus became a famous artist by presenting mundane works and celebrating himself as a genius for fooling people into believing he was a genius. 

I shit Bill Gates and tried to flush him down the toilet but he used malware to clog my pipes. I plunged the toilet and finally flushed him. He survived in a sewer for twenty years and learned how to multiply crap into billions of dollars. My bad.

I'm hoping that my new line of belly button fruit piercings will become a hot fashion trend, Right now I have a twenty-five pound watermelon dangling on a foot-long chain pierced to my navel. Fucking hurts, but that's what makes it hip.

My new restaurant is called Tasty Testicles. It's like a doughnut shop. I serve different sized fried testicles with the centers removed so they look like little donuts. There are glazed and ... glazed. Pretty much just glazed testicles. 

I get bored thinking about things. "Things" are generalized nothings without any attributes at all. Why would I be interested in thinking about them?

 I am going to tell you the truth about me, about how I really feel. I'm not going to lie or misrepresent myself  as something I am not. What I'm going to convey to you is true. This is the real McCoy. No bullshit. Not going to fuck with your head. I mean it this time. There's nothing dishonest or deceitful about what I'm going to share with you. This is not a manipulation. This is the truth:

My heart is filled with love. I use silliness and disturbing stories to embrace you because no one wants to be told that they are loved by a man who isn't wearing an orange robe meeting with heads of state. I am not the Dalai Lama. I have no love credentials; I wasn't chosen by an entire culture to represent the embodiment of loving-kindness. When I walk up to a stranger and tell him I love him I am punched in the face or stomach. When I walk up to a woman I don't know and tell her I have love in my heart for her I am doused with pepper spray. Direct expressions of love are not wanted. I was saddened by this for a long time, but I began observing how others embraced one another. I began to mimic the words and behaviors of others. I'd declare to guys I didn't know at country western bars that I hated Muslims and they'd high-five me, pat me on the back, and say, "You're alright in my book, man. A fucking patriot, that's what you are." When I'd see a woman sitting alone at a coffee shop I'd walk up to her, smile, and ask if anyone was using the empty seat to her left. She'd smile and say no in a very pleasant voice. I'd look into her eyes in a non-threatening way and say, "Do you mind if I use it so that I can sit at that empty table over there?" She'd continue smiling in a vacuous manner and exclaim with no enthusiasm, "Of course." Our interaction would come to an end and I'd know we'd just made a sincere and heartening love connection. I realized, ultimately, that I had simply misunderstood how others love. I thought sharing affection and kindness were acts of love, but I was wrong. Everything but kindness and affection is considered love. Now I know.

I believe an acorn would make a better U.S. Supreme Court Justice than Clarence Thomas.

I think Barack Obama would make an excellent assistant manager at a Verizon Wireless retail store.

If a woman grimaces while removing your underwear to give you a blowjob just assume she has acid reflux.

Do you think it would help the re-election chances of a Southern white Senator if he walked to the floor of the U.S. Senate in blackface singing "Swanee" and tap dancing?

I, as genius, differ from all of you in that you are not me. It is always I who brushes my teeth in the morning, not you. If you were to brush my teeth in the morning, though, you might become above average. If you were to clean my ass after I shit I would say you are toadie who washes the ass of a genius.

The only difference between me and a schizophrenic is that I'm schizophrenic.

A naked woman drenched in sweat should never be covered except by clouds.

Beauty goes well with Pinot noir. As I sip and swirl I taste hints of high cheek bones, symmetrical eyes, and full breasts.

Killing is a sure way to end life.

A life without work is a life worth living.

Creativity is better than sex ... no, wait, creativity is sex ... no, wait, sex is creativity! Fuck it, they're both great.

I used to be the lead singer of Radiohead back when they were called Victrolahead.

My foot's asleep. Why is it that my nose never sleeps like that? Weird.

Many countries use animals as symbols. In the United States, it's the eagle. I think countries should start using body parts as symbols instead. I'd like to nominate the perineum as the national body part of the United States. Canada and Mexico could fight to see who gets the anus and who gets the vagina--assuming they'd go with a woman's body parts. It'd be a tough call to say which symbol either of those countries would want. Would you want your country to be known as an asshole or a pussy? All I know is that the U.S. fits in between them.

Telepathy

I have telepathy. I didn’t before last weekend, but now I’ve got it. I used a condom so I have no idea how I got it. No matter how I got it, it’s there.

I discovered I had it on Saturday afternoon. I was in the library looking for an erotic book to distract me from my nightly visions of unicorns frolicking with puppies. I never get any wood with that vision and it’s really fucked up my love life. I can only have sex during daylight hours which makes it difficult to nail women I’ve just met. They often want to go out to dinner or to a club after dark and, of course, I’m having visions of unicorns and puppies by then which ruins any chance I have to get sexually aroused. The hottest, sexiest women have gone home crying because I, a mere schlub, just shrug my shoulders and say, “Meh,” when they kiss me and grab my crotch. I’m completely flaccid when they do this. It never happens to them so they start to doubt their sex appeal. I’m ruining hotties left and right. That’s not good for anyone.

As I was saying, though, I discovered I have telepathy while at the library. I was looking through romance novels and books about whips and chains when I accidentally bumped into a woman. I turned to apologize but before I could say anything I saw the cover of the book she was holding. The title was, “Having Sex with Strangers in Libraries.” I took this as a sign that I might have a chance to hook up with her. I don’t know why I thought that. My significant powers of intuition? Maybe. I thought it was probably due to the fact that I can read and happened to know the definitions of all the words in the title combined with my contextual acumen: Book about having sex with strangers in library; I’m a stranger to this woman holding the book; ergo, she may want to have sex with me.

I didn’t want to make assumptions, though. Instead, I poured on the charm, “I’ve read that book. It only works if you follow through. I’m willing to help out if you want to test the hypothesis.” I believe in advancing the interests of science so a sexual experiment seemed in order. She looked at me in a way that I could only interpret as ready to rip off my clothes and fuck me in the aisle of erotic books. I began to unbutton my shirt, but as I was doing so I heard a woman’s voice in my head.

“Who is this loser? My God, I’m completely creeped out. Now he’s unbuttoning his shirt. Luckily there are three other people in the aisle so I don’t have to worry about being raped. This guy can’t possibly be this stupid, can he? Does he really think I’m turned on, that because I’m holding this absurd book I’m interested in having sex with him? I’ve never felt my pussy so dry in my life. Somehow it’s getting even drier. If it gets any worse it’s going to crumble. Tourists are going to visit my pussy believing it’s a Roman ruin from two thousand years ago. Tour guides are going to say, ‘Here is a once glorious pussy that was desired by men of all types. It was always moist and glistening in its day until it looked into the face of a sexual deviant, a sort of Medusa of the vagina, and the pussy turned to stone and quickly crumbled leaving these ruins you see before you. If you squint you can see the cracked clit that had given Gloria profound pleasure and countless orgasms.’”

I was stunned. I stopped unbuttoning my shirt. I noticed I had no life in my penis. It was daytime, but there was that damn unicorn frolicking with a puppy. That fucking bitch! No, no, she didn’t say that aloud, she didn’t know she was completely destroying my sexuality. I frowned and began buttoning my shirt. I said to Gloria, "Your pussy isn't going to crumble and become a ruin visited by tourists." As I turned to go, I heard a thud. I looked back and saw Gloria had dropped the book. Her whole body was limp, her mouth was open, and her eyes were filled with confusion and terror. Fuck, why did I say that? Well, it’s not like I’d had a lot of experience being a telepath.

Gloria said, “How did you …” She trailed off. I didn’t know where she was going with the potential question. I was confused. My intuitive powers weren’t working. Fortunately, I now had telepathy so I tried listening to her thoughts. Nothing. A total blank. Maybe it had been a fluke. Why couldn’t I hear her? I stood there for almost a minute and then I heard her inner voice, “Oh my God, what was that? Did he hear my thoughts? Can he hear these thoughts?!”

I blurted out “Yes,” and then covered my mouth with my hands. Fuck, why did I say that? Of course, I knew why. I have no impulse control. I’d gone years just doing whatever I felt or thought without thinking about it first. A friend told me to see a shrink so I did. The fucker diagnosed me as having some sort of impulse-related disorder. I can never remember the name. Anyway, knowing the diagnosis didn’t help and there are no pills for it. Well, there are some pills, but they completely shut down my sex drive and my desire to get out of bed … ever … so I stopped taking them. I huff airplane glue now because I believe it helps. I don’t know. I like the brief high, though. Kills brain cells they say, but that’s bullshit. I mean, look at me, I’ve been having visions of unicorns and puppies and now I have telepathy. We don’t even need brain cells, anyway. The ability to think comes from ideas that have no physical substance. They descend from clouds which is why I choose to live in environments with plenty of precipitation. There’s a correlation between intelligence and cloudiness. It’s a proven fact because I believe it is. Like I said, I’m into science.

Anyway, this chick, Gloria, she’s standing in front of me even more freaked out that I said “Yes.” I decided to alleviate her fears by getting back to the subject of the book she dropped. I said, “Look, we should probably have sex. You were looking at the book and you thought it was ridiculous, but I think there’s plenty of merit to it. Plus, it’ll take your mind off of my telepathic powers. Just visualize my cock going in and out of your wet pussy. It’s a sure fire way to make it happen. Trust me, my wrestling coach in high school always told me to visualize pinning my opponent before a match. I did it and every time I did I got pinned so obviously it works.”

Gloria was shaking her head during the entirety of my brilliant advice. She started thinking when I stopped. “Oh my God, he’s mentally retarded. I’m standing in front of a mentally retarded psychic. This is absurd!”

I said, “Gloria, it’s not nice to call people retarded. It’s politically incorrect and rude.”

Gloria said, aloud, “No, mental retardation is a real condition. It’s not politically incorrect at all.”

“It is if you think it in a mean way.”

Gloria thought, “Huh, he’s got a point. I guess I may as well think directly to him since he can hear my thoughts. Um, I’m sorry. You’re right, I was being rude. It’s just that, you’re acting like a buffoon.”

I interjected. “Buffoon? Is that like a cartoon buffalo?”

Gloria laughed so hard she doubled over. Finally, my good nature was winning her over.

Gloria said, “You are an idiot, but your cluelessness is surprisingly endearing.”

Ah, she did like me! I felt my supreme confidence returning. My dick was getting hard again, too. “So, are we going to have sex or what?”

Gloria started laughing again. This time her eyes were watering and snot shot out of her nose. I don’t know why, but that made me even more turned on. “Gloria, just imagine how good the sex would be. I’d be able to hear your thoughts and if I was doing something you didn’t like I’d know instantly. You’d think something like, ‘No, not that hole, you moron,’ and I’d know to try one of your other holes.”

Gloria couldn’t stop laughing. Snot was flowing out of her nose and as she bent over drool was dangling in a long string between her mouth and the floor. I estimated it was a good three feet of unbroken spit. Impressive. It broke, though, once she started convulsing, guffaws forcefully expelled through her mouth. It was like she had dry heaves of laughter, like she’d been binge laughing and had laughed up all the chunks of laughter. I was worried her stomach lining would be coming next.

I walked to her, bent over, and said, “If you convulsed like that while I was fucking you, I probably wouldn’t last a minute. Seriously, it’s hot.” Gloria fell to her knees. Her face was red. I looked up and other people were glaring, clearly upset at the noise. A librarian came and asked us to leave. She was mean about it, but I figured she realized how close to having sex we were. I understood her concern. There were kids present and I didn’t think it would be right to have doggy-style convulsive sex in front of them.

I helped Gloria to her feet and led her out of the library. I stopped on the way and asked if she wanted me to go back to get the book about library sex with strangers and she started laughing all over again. I quickly escorted her from the building.

I took her to a bench outside and sat her down. I sat next to her. She was sighing laughter now. I had an impulse to pull out my cock and masturbate, but fortunately I’d huffed turpentine that morning. Instead, I said to Gloria, “The way you laugh is incredibly arousing. You already had me hooked so you really didn’t need to put on that display for my benefit.”

Gloria looked at me with tears rolling down her cheeks, snot bubbling out of her nostrils, and a mixture of mucous and drool covering her lips and chin. Her face was pink, a shade or two less intense than the lobster red she’d been displaying inside the library. I wondered if these were primal signs of a woman’s heat.

Gloria tried to become more serious. She said, “You have to stop. Please, I am begging you not to say anything about sex any more. You’re killing me!”

Had I given her multiple orgasms just by talking about sex? Was she at the point where another laughing orgasm could kill her? I decided to back off and let her recover. I hadn’t realized my words could make a woman cum like that. I was a little worried, though, that she’d just want me to talk fuck her again later. What about my cock? How was I going to cum if she just kept having orgasms whenever I spoke?

Aha! I have to stop talking! She’ll undoubtedly beg for my dick once she realizes I won’t please her sexually with my words.

Gloria asked me a question. “Why are you so obsessed with sex?”

I thought about the question. It seemed obvious to me and I was about to answer, but then I remembered I didn’t want to give her another talking orgasm. I began to see her game. She’d ask questions, tricking me into saying things, and then she’d start cumming again. Some women scream or moan when they come, but Gloria laughs. Interesting.

“Well?”

I blurted out, “Because it feels so damn good.” Fuck! Damn, she was good at this. Combined with my impulse control issues I was no match for her. I was beginning to feel used. I didn’t mind it, but I was trying to stop. I couldn’t even say, “No, I don’t want to answer any more questions,” because that, too, might get her off. When will women realize that silence means no?

I felt the shift in the dynamic. Gloria now had the upper hand. I wasn’t used to being so helpless. I felt aroused, but in a way I never had in my life. I felt like she was mind-fucking me. It was hot! Shit, what was I going to do?

“Well, that makes sense. The problem is you go about it all wrong. You can’t seriously believe your unbearable approach works with women. It doesn’t, does it?”

Fuck, another question. Stay strong, don’t give in, keep your mouth closed. I could feel my lips dying to part, words forming in my throat, and my tongue ready flutter. Fuck, I can’t stop myself! “Oh, it works. I mean, look at you. You’ve been having laughing orgasms on and off for fifteen minutes or so. You had one laughing orgasm that lasted almost ten minutes. Snot was flying out of your nose and you started convulsing. Believe me, it was hot. Honestly, I’d never word-fucked anyone who came like you did.”

Gloria sniggered and said, “Oh, shit, you’re going to make me laugh again. Fuck!” She started laughing full force.

Fuck. I threw up my hands and said, “I was trying not to say anything but you kept peppering me with questions. I’m onto you. You’re trying to get me to say shit so you can start cumming again. But what about me? My words are the equivalent of eating your pussy. I’ve been word-eating your pussy for nearly half an hour, but my cock isn’t getting any play at all. I almost whipped it out earlier to start masturbating while you were laughing. I was getting tired of you having all the fun while I was doing all the work!”

My words, as usual, just made Gloria laugh harder. She lied down on the bench squealing with laughter. Her head was in my lap and I thought to myself, “Well, finally!” I struggled not to say anything and resisted the urge to unzip my fly. No, let her do the work; I’ve been doing all the heavy lifting. Now it’s her turn to please me.

Gloria’s laughter slowed to a stop. Her head was resting in my crotch and she looked up at me. Her eyes were red but she had a look of sweetness in her eyes, maybe even affection. My cock had been half-hard but now I was becoming fully erect. Gloria said, “Dear Lord, I can feel you getting hard against the back of my head.”

Before she could say anything I gave her my tough guy sexy look and voice. “Just go with it, Gloria. You know you want it.”

She started laughing again. Fuck! I guess once she gets going every word can make her squeal. It’s like once her mind clit gets stimulated the shortest word can send her into a frenzy. I said to her, “If I stop speaking will you be able to stop cumming and give me a blow job?”

Gloria sat up like a shot. She was laughing hard again. She managed to speak, “You … have to … stop … I can’t … take it! Holy fuck,” she settled down a little, “I take back what I said earlier about you being an idiot. You’re a fucking genius!”

Finally! I wondered what it was going to take for her to recognize my sexual prowess. As I was thinking, though, I heard her thoughts.

“He’s fucking Andy Kaufman, just over-the-top moronic brilliance. He never veers from the persona. Unbelievable. Huh, I actually want to fuck him now.”

I sighed with satisfaction. I guess if you linguistically pleasure a woman long enough to give her multiple orgasms she’ll finally be ready to get physical. Word play is foreplay. 

Where is Everyone? Eight: Sexy Sex

Ari leaned in and kissed Harold, first gently but then with more force. Without even realizing it Harold opened his lips and gave Ari even more access to his mouth, to his libido. Their lips were moving slowly, rhythmically in a dance as Ari lifted Harold’s top. Harold raised his arms and Ari momentarily pulled back to completely remove the top. Ari tossed it aside and lunged forcefully back into Harold’s lips. Harold gasped, felt his breath drawn away from him by Ari’s gulping kisses.

Harold abandoned himself to Ari, single-mindedly obsessed or possessed as she was. Ari roughly yanked Harold’s bottom from his hips, scratching his skin with her fingernails. Ari knelt down while pulling Harold by the neck with one hand and tugging on his bottoms, never letting her lips drift from his. She deftly removed the belly-dancer’s skirt and panties that Harold had been wearing while gently lowering Harold onto the pillows. She went from hard to soft, slow to fast in moments, constantly adjusting the tenor of her movements based on both her feelings and those she sensed from Harold.

Harold was somewhere close to heaven, a pair of lips being probed by lips that felt like they might be even more intimately part of him than the lips he felt as his own. His chest was heaving, his breath rapid. He could feel his nipples hardening, becoming ever more sensitive. They were so hard they hurt. He was arching his back, feeling his stomach muscles softly ripple as he did so. He simultaneously wanted to squeeze his legs shut and throw them completely open. The flesh of his thighs were covered in goose bumps. He’d never felt so naked, so vulnerable, so willing to abandon himself to another.

Harold could feel Ari’s hand behind his neck slowly lift his head as they kissed. Harold had one hand wrapped around Ari’s neck and his other caressing her chest hair. He was surprised by how excited he was by feeling her chest. It was much more muscular than he’d remembered it being when he occupied that body. He also had a brief flash of a conversation he’d had with an evolutionary psychologist who claimed that women were attracted to men’s “cage,” the thickness of their rib cage, the breadth of their chest and shoulders. He hadn’t given it much credence at the time, but now, in this sensuous woman’s body, he fully acknowledged how hot Ari’s cage was making him. Part of her chest was rubbing against the side of his breast, her chest hair tickling his areola and nipple. Harold moaned whenever the flesh of her chest lightly touched his nipple.

Ari’s other arm had been lying across Harold’s stomach and his hand had been gently caressing her muscular forearm. But as Ari ran the fingers of her right hand up through Harold’s long wavy black hair, she slowly slid her left hand down Harold’s belly into his pubic hair. Harold squeezed Ari’s neck with his left arm, pulling her mouth deeper into his own. Harold shoved his tongue into Ari’s mouth as he felt his sexual pleasure increasing to a threshold that changed the nature of his experience of living. Ari simultaneously moved her left leg over Harold’s left, curling her foot under his knee and pulling it toward her, underneath her, widening the spread of Harold’s legs. Harold gasped, sucking air from Ari’s mouth as his pussy spread slightly apart, exposed to air for the first time since Harold had assumed this body.

Harold became aware of just how wet he was; the pubic hair on either side of his lips were soaked, sticky, clinging to flesh. His lips felt like they were drenched and that there was liquid sitting like a tiny puddle in his vaginal opening with occasional drips sliding past his perineum, over his anus, down either side of his ass cheeks, and onto the pillows underneath. Harold’s clit was throbbing, achingly engorged. He could feel air on it as it clearly had swelled beyond its hood.

Ari’s cock was rubbing against the side of Harold’s ass and hip. Harold could feel it throbbing against him, as if blood continuously flushed into it and never drained back out. He didn’t know if it was because he was in a woman’s body or if he had just misjudged the size of the cock when it was his, but it felt huge against his ass and hip. That excited him even more and he slid his hand down into his pubic hair, over Ari’s hand, and stopped just short of the hood of his clit.

Their kisses had become open mouths pressed against one another, each of them breathing in and out of the other’s mouth. Ari was overwhelmed by the feeling of her cock. It was swelling so much she thought the skin might burst. But, God, did it feel goooood rubbing up against the silky skin of Harold’s ass and hip. Her cock was pulsating and it felt to Ari as if the base of her cock started at the lower opening of her anus. The entire region was a mass of nerves and the heat, dear Lord, the heat coming from her crotch was like an volcano. She had remembered heat in her loins as a woman, but it was different than this. This heat seemed to be centered right beneath the scrotum—which had shriveled and all but buried itself into her crotch—and emanated outward in every direction covering her entire body. Her crotch was sweaty, yes, but her whole body seemed to be covered in a mist of perspiration. She could smell the mix of her musky scent intermingled with the aroma coming from Harold’s juices. She was surprised at how much the scents from Harold’s pussy turned her on. It was everything she could do not to mount him and fuck him like a demon.

Instead, Ari slowly moved her hand down to the slickness of Harold’s hood and then his clit. Harold threw his head back and moaned loudly. Ari opened her eyes and watched Harold’s face, his mouth wide open and his eyes squeezed shut. She smiled and began gently probing around Harold’s pussy. Ari knew it well; it had been her own for countless years. Still, she wasn’t sure how to use a man’s hands to make it feel like she liked it when she had used her own as a woman … or as other women had used their hands on her. She hadn’t mentioned it to Harold, but she had never had sex with a man as a woman. The body she was probing now was that of a virgin, at least when it came to men. Ari smiled to herself as she realized she was going to be the first man to fuck her former body. She tried to suppress a laugh, but couldn’t.

Harold didn’t hear the laughter at all. With his eyes shut and his open mouth emanating a silent scream, he felt nothing but the fingers of Ari playing his pussy lips, gently caressing his clit, teasing his vaginal opening—he tried thrusting his hips downward to force his vagina onto Ari’s fingers, but Ari pulled them away every time. If Harold could have spoken he would have agreed that Ari knew exactly when, where, and how to touch his body. He hadn’t lost consciousness, but his consciousness was not something easily discernible as consciousness. It was experiencing a kaleidoscope of sensations and feelings, unable to function in any way but sexually. Literally. Harold could not have come out of his sexual trance even if another began shaking him. He had somehow created an experience too extreme for the concept of abandonment to capture. He was lost and didn’t want to be found.

Ari moved her leg off Harold as she laid Harold’s head on a pillow with her right hand. She then moved her right hand down along his body. She placed her left hand between Harold’s legs and used it to prop herself so she could hop over Harold’s left leg. Her body landed in the middle of Harold’s legs as she slid her right hand down Harold’s belly, through his pubic hair, and onto his inner thigh. He slowly lifted and pushed out and up as he did the same with his left hand on Harold’s right leg. Ari looked at Harold’s pussy. She marveled at it. She’d never seen her former pussy from this angle. She was in awe. It was so beautiful, so perfect, so deliciously wet and ready to suckle.

When Harold felt his legs opened wide and pushed back he felt all the air in his lungs heaving from his chest through his throat and mouth. He tried to take a breath but the muscles weren’t working. It seemed like a lifetime passed before he sucked in a new breath. As he inhaled he swallowed words: “Oh my God.” It would have been a scream but there was not the capacity. The sensation was a scream, though. Harold smelled more fully the aroma of his own wetness. He instinctively felt embarrassed and briefly retracted his earlier abandon. He remembered, though, how much he was aroused by that scent as a man and trusted that Ari wouldn’t be turned off by his soaking pussy or the strength of his scent.

Harold didn’t need to try too hard to let go of those thoughts because Ari quickly buried her head in Harold’s crotch. It wasn’t forceful or rough, but there was a sensation of fullness as Ari’s entire mouth was around the whole of Harold’s pussy. As Ari slowly closed her lips into a kiss with Harold’s lips, he lost track of his thoughts again. He thrust his hips forward but Ari reacted well. She pressed down against his thighs, firmly holding Harold in place. Ari flicked her tongue lightly over Harold’s clit and then swam up under his hood, playing with Harold's clit like a cat with a ball of string.

This time Harold had the lungs to really moan. Ari looked up toward Harold’s face. She saw through his finely-haired pubes the bottom of his chin between two lovely mounds of breast. Ari moved her tongue down to Harold’s vagina and circled the opening before thrusting it in as far as she could. Ari felt her head yanked forward as Harold had partially sat up and grabbed the back of her head with both hands. Ari could barely breathe, but she gave Harold what he wanted, darting her tongue in and out of her vagina. Ari pulled Harold’s hands off her head, inhaled deeply, and then moved her mouth up to the lips near Harold’s clitoris. She wrapped her lips around Harold’s hood, clit, and lips and sucked them in her mouth all at once. She probed with her tongue, found the clit, and began to flick her tongue from side to side while her lips were still suckling Harold’s lips and hood.

For the first time, Harold screamed. He had never screamed while having sex as a man. Moaned? Yes. But he’d never screamed. It was a long scream, a blaring siren of sound that signified Harold’s shock and pleasure at having his pussy eaten by Ari. Harold had laid back against the pillows after Ari removed his hands from her head. When she had taken him in her mouth and rabbit-flicked her tongue across his clit he arched his back. Ari responded by pushing Harold’s legs further back and up, but then let go of the left leg with her right hand and brought it down between Harold’s legs. While she was still suckling Harold’s lips and tongue-bathing his clit, she slipped a finger and then two into Harold’s vagina. She began slowly but rapidly increased her pace as Harold’s breathing increased.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Harold couldn’t stop saying it, but as Ari moved her fingers in and out faster and faster Harold ceased being able to form words. He screamed again, but this time the scream didn’t stop. There were momentary gulps of air but the scream just kept rolling forth. Harold’s arms and legs began to quiver and shake. Ari dug in and fucked Harold as hard as she could with her fingers. Harold didn’t realize what was about to happen, both because he’d never experienced it previously and also because he couldn’t think at all. Nothing existed but an unbearable pleasure, a pleasure so vast and timeless that there seemed to have never been anything but. Who knew pleasure could be so total that it completely encompassed pain as well?

Ari knew what was coming. She recognized the signs, the volume of the scream as well as the twitching and shaking of the whole body. Her arm was exhausted and she felt like her tongue was blistering, but she also knew she had to continue and even ratchet up her movements. Sweat was dripping off her forehead onto Harold’s pubic hair. Harold’s screaming and shaking was so arousing to Ari, though, that she wouldn’t stop even if it meant her own death. Bringing a woman this much pleasure would be a fine way to go.

Just as it seemed Harold wouldn’t be able to take it any longer, a flash of white blinded him and his body tensed. His eyes opened wide and from his mouth nothing audible emanated. There was a scream, though, that of a different nature. Dogs from other dimensions were howling from the shriek. Harold’s back arched so much that he was propped up by the top of his head on the pillows. His hips flew into the air when his feet hit the ground after his legs slammed forward and down. Ari reacted just in time, saving herself from a broken jaw by quickly pulling her legs up under her. She was face-to-crotch with Harold who, at that moment, had his first orgasm as a woman.

Ari’s face was lightly splattered by an opaque fluid ejected from Harold’s vagina. More juice flowed down over his anus and dripped onto the pillows below. Harold’s voice returned and his orgasmic scream began as a whisper but gradually increased in volume until Ari had to put her hands to her ears. Within a minute, Harold fell to his side. His body lightly convulsed and his arms and legs twitched. Harold’s eyes were open wide and he let out unintelligible gibberish. His lips were quivering and it almost seemed as if he had come in from the arctic, half frozen to death. Ari moved over to Harold and put her hand on Harold’s shoulder to comfort him. Harold yelped and batted her hand away. Even the slightest touch was a pleasure too intense to endure.

After several minutes, Harold slowed down; he was still breathing hard, though. He repeated, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” over and over again. He turned his head toward Ari. She was holding her hands over her mouth, partially in awe and partially worried about Harold. Harold’s eyes were filled with the deepest gratitude, affection, and love Ari had ever seen. She removed her hands and said, “Oh, Harold!” She smiled at him and her heart melted. Her happiness was for him, but it was still her happiness. Ari felt for the first time what it felt like to be a man in such a situation. She felt pride, an almost childish brashness: “Yeah, that’s right, I made you cum so hard you almost died. No need to thank me; your screams of pleasure were all the thanks I needed.”

Harold, meanwhile, felt a beauteous warmth emanating from his pussy. It was as if his pussy was communicating its joy to the rest of his body. He couldn’t stop smiling and his eyes continued to alight with affection and love. He was speechless again, having finally stopped uttering “oh my God,” like a mantra. There was something akin to thought, but not verbal. He reminisced even as he enjoyed feeling the lovely relaxed, peaceful, and giddy bodily sensations. The orgasm was so unlike a male orgasm that he wasn’t sure if what he’d experienced was an orgasm. He thought it had to be. If it wasn’t then he didn’t think he could survive a real orgasm.

It had been an orgasm, though. Harold didn’t think he could describe what he had felt. The experience was unique and thus he had no referents. The best he could say was that it was like becoming whole as a being, completely self-realized. He didn’t know if that was an accurate description, but he didn’t know how else to describe it. The physical experience of love? Maybe. Ecstasy? Yeah, ecstasy was experienced but that word and feeling didn’t describe anything approximating the whole of the experience. It was all too much, like lifetimes of different types of pleasure felt within a few minutes.

That was the other thing Harold noticed, how much longer the orgasm was than any he’d experienced as a man. He was increasingly sure it was an orgasm. He also imagined that the orgasm easily could have kept going. He was grateful that it didn’t. He wasn’t sure his body could have taken another minute. He thought it might be possible that his mind might never return after a really lengthy orgasm. In a way, the experience of a woman’s orgasm was similar to Harold's thinking about how losing one’s mind might be like: pure chaotic ecstasy and euphoria accompanied by a terror that it might never end … as well as a fear that it could end too soon. There were contradictions all over the place; a new mathematics would have to be created just to chart the universe of a woman’s orgasm. Harold thought to himself, “And that was just one orgasm. Could there be variations in types of orgasms?”

As Harold was basking and lazily thinking, Ari hovered over Harold and kissed him. For a few moments, Harold had forgotten Ari even existed. Harold kissed back lightly and then disengaged. He looked up into Ari’s eyes and said, “You are amazing. Oh my God, I thought I was going to die!”

Ari laughed. “Yeah, you looked like you were being transported.”

“I think I transcended.” Harold giggled. “Or maybe I just ascended. Either way … wow.” Harold laid his forearm across his forehead, breathed deeply, and sighed contentedly. He was shaken by a thought, though: “Ari! Oh my God! You.” Harold looked over at Ari and his eyes found Ari’s cock. It was standing at attention. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I was floating away on cloud nine and here you are dying from blue balls!” Harold remembered what it felt like to be in that state. It could be painful. “I’m being selfish.”

Ari said, “No, no, Harold! You’re not at all. I want you to be happy; you just experienced your first orgasm as a woman! Celebrate it! Indulge in it! Are you kidding me? It’s a major turn on just watching you glow like this. I hate to say it, but I’m feeling like a badass. I made you cum like a motherfucker!”

Harold laughed so hard he rolled over onto his side. He coyly looked up at Ari, covered his face in his hands while pretending to be embarrassed, and then looked up again. He batted his eyelashes and whispered, “Yeah, you did.” Harold bit his lower lip and as he did he felt like he’d never been anything but a woman. “I can’t describe how you made me feel. Was it always like that for you when you came?”

Ari grinned. “Yes and no. Believe me, I recognized what was happening, but there is such a diversity of experiences while cumming that I can’t say it was always like that.” Ari moved closer to Harold and put her hand on his breast. She gently massaged it. Harold laid back and enjoyed the sensation. Before he got too comfortable, though, he asked Ari, “Do you want me to, um, make you feel good?” He licked his lips and sexily sighed.

Ari pursed her lips as if considering the request. “Actually, I’m pretty much revved up and ready to go. What I really, really want to do … is fuck you.” Ari had that look in her eye, a panther ready to pounce and devour. The look got Harold excited again. He felt a little light-headed and said in an unintentionally sultry voice, “Anything you want. I’m yours.”

Ari allowed his fingers to roam between Harold’s legs. His pussy was wet again and Ari slowly moved between Harold’s legs. Harold spread his legs and pulled them back to give Ari access. He leaned his head forward to look at Ari’s cock. He wanted to watch him enter her. He said to Ari, “Pin my legs back. I want to watch.”

Ari felt her cock jump when Harold said that. “Holy shit,” she thought, “Harold’s a fucking vixen.” Ari looked down at her cock. She marveled at it. She loved the way it looked and she loved having it. “That’s my cock!” thought Ari. She was also looking at Harold’s pussy, his pubic hair a mixture of dried juices and fresh wetness. Ari did as Harold asked and pinned his legs back. Ari crept up and leaned forward on her knees. She positioned her cock to enter Harold, but she missed. “Damnit!”

Harold quickly grabbed Ari’s member and helped guide it into him. He had remembered what it was like his first couple of fumbling attempts to put his dick in a woman’s pussy. He smiled inside at the remembrances. As soon as the head of Ari’s cock was fully inside Harold, though, his recollections disappeared. The further Ari’s shaft drove into Harold the more he lost his thoughts. The only thought that came up was, “God, that’s fucking huge! Fuck that’s good!”

Ari, meanwhile, was completely losing thought. The cozy, warm moisture of Harold’s vagina around her cock was unlike anything she’d experienced as a woman. The sexual experience was so different as a man. She couldn’t help but gasp as her cock went deeper into Harold’s pussy. She couldn’t describe the feeling. The closest she could come to a description was that her cock felt like a giant clitoris. The feeling of a giant clit in a vagina, though? There were no words to describe the sensation. Even a mouth on her clit had never felt like this. She’d just had her fingers in Harold's pussy and while it felt good it was nothing like this. It was like her cock was inside an entirely different type of hole than the one she’d fingered. Her cock simply felt different than anything else that existed. Even saying it was like a giant clit wasn’t right; it was just the closest comparison there was out of all the body parts she knew. The bottom line was the feeling of her cock inside Harold's pussy was incredible! No wonder guys drool over pussy!

Once Ari buried her cock to the hilt, she stopped. She could feel her cock pulsing and so could Harold. Harold felt filled up and the rippling pulsations of Ari’s heated member—which was somehow hard as a rock while still feeling fleshy—caused him to squirm. He looked up at Ari with a hunger of his own. “Fuck … me!”

Ari pulled her cock out fast, all the way out of Harold’s pussy. Harold gasped, open-mouthed. He looked up at Ari with wonder; Ari looked back with conviction. She pressed the head of her cock against Harold's opening and gently pushed in the head. Once the head was inside, though, she thrust hard to the hilt giving Harold a jolt. She slowly pulled out half-way and then jammed it all the way in again. Harold was getting overloaded. He couldn’t believe the heat given off by Ari’s cock. Her irregular rhythm was also getting him hot in other ways; he didn’t know when or what to expect.

Ari enjoyed this position. She had all the power. She was teasing Harold at times and then dominating at others. She could do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. The feeling of her cock in his pussy was extraordinarily pleasurable in and of itself but combined with the control over the rhythm of the intercourse and Harold’s reactions to the irregularity? Ari experienced an entirely different type of sexual high than she’d ever had previously. She thought to herself, “This is one of the best feelings I've ever had.”

Harold, on the opposite end of the spectrum, was also amazed. He’d never felt so vulnerable before in his life and he couldn’t believe how turned on he was by it. He was even more excited by the look in Ari’s eyes, the total command and obviously wicked pleasure of fucking him this way. He loved it, loved seeing the pleasure she got from owning him in these moments.

After a couple minutes, though, Ari developed a more regular rhythm, a sort of three-quarter speed thrusting, her cock going almost all the way inside and most of the way out. Ari felt her arms getting tired, though, and turned Harold onto his side. She grabbed the top of the thigh of Harold’s top leg with both hands and began thrusting hard, in and out.

The position was comfortable for Harold, but the penetration wasn’t as deep. For Ari, though, there was greater sensation and it was much easier to thrust hard while maintaining the speed. She could feel herself building toward a feeling that might be close to an orgasm. Her breathing was heavier, she was sweating more profusely, and she was digging her fingers deep into the flesh of Harold’s leg. She began speaking, not even aware of what she was saying. Mostly it was, “Fuck, motherfucker, oh fuck,” and so on.

Even though the penetration wasn’t as deep, the power of the thrusts were greater and the speed was increasing. Harold’s whole body was jerking with each thrust. He was getting turned on by the pain in his leg from the pressure of Ari’s fingers and hands squeezing and clamping while simultaneously feeling the pleasure of her cock driving in and out of him. He was breathing harder, but felt incredible.

Ari continued ramming, absolutely losing herself in the process. Her whole body and mind was in service of her cock which was feeling increasingly tender and sensitive. Ari's cock was on fire inside Harold’s pussy. It seemed to Ari that Harold's pussy was thick with lava. She began grunting as sweat flew from her face and dripped onto Harold’s ass. She was almost grimacing as she began to move as a blur, every muscle of her body working together to fire her hips back and forth as fast as possible.

Harold didn’t notice the look on her face as he was starting to get too hot for awareness of such things as facial expressions. He heard the grunts and groans, but he couldn’t tell if they were his or hers. He was being annihilated by a battering ram and loving it.

Ari kept going but noticed, briefly, that she might not be able to maintain the pace much longer. She could feel that she was about ready to cum, though, so she forced her body to work even though it was crying out for relief. Harold, meanwhile, was beginning to feel soreness in his vagina. Being fucked was still pleasurable, but the friction was becoming more and more irritating.

Just when Ari’s body was about to give out and Harold was about to complain about the soreness, Ari felt electricity charging from deep in her crotch through the base of her cock along the length of her shaft and then she gave out a wild howl as she ejaculated into Harold’s pussy. Her eyes closed shut and her mouth opened wide. A series of guttural moans powered from Ari’s lungs as each discharge rocketed from her cock.

From Ari’s perspective, it seemed like she unloaded a gallon of semen. From Harold’s perspective, it also seemed like a gallon of semen. The feel of the warm, gooey cum inside Harold’s vagina, along with Ari’s lingering cock, felt so damn good he purred. He didn’t want Ari to pull out and he wanted the cum to stay inside him forever.

Ari had no intention of moving; in fact, no ability to move. Her body was completely spent. She collapsed on top of Harold, panting, wheezing, and sweating. Harold loved the feel of Ari’s weight on him as well as his moist, warm sweat. The sound of her panting made him sigh with delight. Her musky scent made his toes curl. Harold thought to himself, “Okay, maybe I don’t need anyone else to feel really good sexually, but I wouldn’t want to give this up for anything in the world. I want to fuck Ari again and again and again.”

He had to admit, though, that as much as he liked being fucked by Ari, he preferred being fingered by her while she licked his pussy. On the other hand, he wanted to be on top next time and see what that was like. He’d have more control in that position and he wondered how that would change the dynamic. He figured Ari would probably like to try everything he wanted to try—and maybe more! He also wanted to experience intimate love-making as well, to look deeply into Ari’s eyes while she was more gently moving inside him, with each of them caressing one another’s bodies. There was so much to explore, so much he wanted to experience. Though it had only been hours since they swapped consciousness, Harold believed these had been the best hours of his life.

Harold stroked Ari’s hair with his hand. He kissed the top of her head and reached down to caress her shoulders and back. Ari sighed contentedly. She was shot, though, her muscles like rubber. Harold rolled her over and her cock slipped out of Harold’s vagina. Harold climbed on top of Ari and rested his head on her chest. He felt Ari's heart racing. Harold could still feel Ari’s cum inside her. It was beginning to slowly ooze its way to her vaginal opening. The sensation was divine.

The air was thick with sex. Harold and Ari lied in an exhausted heap on top of sweat and juice stained pillows. As they gently caressed one another, White Jesus and Black Jesus whipped open the flap of the tent and said, “Harold, you wanna play—” They both stopped moving and speaking. As they took in the scene and scents, they stared dumbstruck as their jaws dangled open against their chests.

…