The Erection Set

The years were catching up. I was tired and annoyed and it wasn’t fun anymore. I thought I was put of it, but nothing would let go. Somehow it was like waking up and thinking the dream you just had was real, then you saw a different room in the cold light of a bright sun and knew the dream was fake and what the judge said was the true thing and if you waited a little while longer you’d hear the feet coming down the corridor, feel the scissors against your leg slicing the trousers and sense the razor shaving that small bald spot on your skull. You could wait a little more after that and they’d put the hood over your face with the metallic plate under it, then somebody would hit the switch to let the voltage sweep through all the tissue in one monstrous sheet of pain and you could call it quits for good.

Or was life and memory so accelerated at that last moment you lasted for another lifetime of absolute agony smelling the searing flesh and knowing the excruciating pain of muscles knotted in horrible spasms? Was it really like that?

Maybe I had seen them die too often. Maybe I had been on the line one too many times. You shouldn’t think about things like that. Or was the thought for somebody else? I used to believe they went quietly, realizing that it was their time, and almost glad to go to be away from all the things that led up to that last second. Two of them had even smiled at me because eventually the wheel would turn and I’d be the one dropping off. I had lasted longer than most of the others, but now it was the ninth inning, the score was tied, two out, nobody on base and I was up to bat with a hostile grandstand behind me.

Kelly at the bat. Forget Casey. Now it was Kelly.

“What are you thinking about?” Sharon asked me.

“I’m thinking why the hell you don’t put some clothes on.”

“After all those naked females tonight I’m positively decent,” she said.

“Not in a chiffon nightgown with nothing on underneath.”

“You haven’t felt me yet. How do you know?”

“I can see your snatch, kid.”

“Like it?” She grinned at me deliberately.

“Love it, so scram, virgin.”

She handed me the coffee cup, spooned in the sugar and added the milk. “You resent my maidenhood?”

“Horseshit, lady. After a while it’ll get tough rubbery.”

“Not according to medical statistics.”

“So it’ll atrophy from disuse,” I said.

I got another of those funny smiles and she turned and sat down opposite me, making a project of crossing her legs. The nightgown split open, exposing those lovely legs and her eyes laughed too. “How many women have you had, Dog?”

“Plenty.” I took a pull on the coffee and burned my mouth.

“Virgins?”

“Numerous.”

“About how many?”

“What kind of question is that? Come on ...”

“Make a guess.”

“A dozen. I never made it a practice of fooling around with virgins. They were all accidents of nature.”

“Does it hurt?”

“How the hell would I know!”

“Well, did they scream?”

I burned my mouth again and put the coffee down for a cigarette. “They all scream when I’m laying them.” I thought that would shut her up but it didn’t.

“I mean the first time.”