Bakery Girl by Tara Ison "He tugs her past a tall rack of wedding tiers awaiting their roses, toward the far corner, behind stacked tubs of hydrogenated oil, and turns her to face him." /fiction/
Scanner by Sarah Hepola Today on Hooksexup's sex and culture blog: Sienna Miller and Drew Barrymore in a battle for your bedroom. Also, Ralph Fiennes gets the ride of his life.
The Screengrab by Bilge Ebiri Today on Hooksexup's film blog: Coppola's next movie. Plus: Dear God, is THAT how they're promoting Zodiac?
Southern Exposure by Justin Clark The case of Georgia vs. comics-store owner Gordon Lee, who is accused of corrupting children. *comics issue*
FICTION
posted 1/10/2007
promotion
"Want more?"
I shake my head. The liquor is still burning inside me.
"I'm boring you?" His eyes unsure, searching mine.
"No. Not at all. On the contrary. Go on."
Seeing how riveted I am, and eager to establish his credentials as a wild, oversexed outlaw, he launches into tales of his Russian parties. I admire his choice of details. Moonshine vodka. Two chicks for ten guys. Bottlenecks crashed against the wall because they couldn't be bothered to unscrew them. Girls' underwear hanging from the chandelier (unexpectedly baroque note, that chandelier). I have a vivid image of him standing in the middle of a cavernous ballroom, grabbing a woman by the crotch with his thick hands, lifting her like a bird and impaling her right on the spot, kneading her with both fists, ramming into her till she erupts into an orgasmic scream. A cheesy porn scene, but set in Moscow unhinged by Perestroika, it takes on a forbidding, almost medieval allure.
He grabs me by the waist and sits me on his lap. He shoves his hand between my legs and probes me with his thumb, pops it in and out. Like with that first shot of vodka bottoms up, an intense burn zaps through my body. He looks down at my naked crotch, pulls my pants all the way to my knees and sticks his thumb back in. All the time peering into my eyes, with the same watchful expression he had when I was tasting the caviar, as if I were the female of a strange species he has never encountered before.
"You like if I'm rough?"
"Not too rough."
"But a little, yes?"
There's a term, I vaguely remember, for the Russian cavalry sweeping down to fight the Tatar invaders and raping every girl in their path without losing a breath. Cossacks? Or is it Hussards? No, the Hussards might have been Hungarians, renowned for their bold and reckless fighting, but never mind. It's all happening in the
A cheesy porn scene, but set in Moscow unhinged by Perestroika, it takes on a forbidding, almost medieval allure.
far eastern end of Europe at the edge of Asia, deep into the steppes where moujiks bang their fists on kitchen tables demanding bread and potatoes, and Cossacks — or whoever they are — hitch up women's skirts and fuck them standing up against a wall. Yuri, whose sexual imagination obviously leans in that direction, has tapped right into this fantasy, and is hurrying to make it come true.
I'm lying across the couch, my bra and tank top pushed up under my arms, my pants hanging on the arm of the couch, my naked legs spread open, my panties dangling from one of my ankles (flash of underwear dangling from the chandelier), and he's taken off his pants and his dick sticks out of its nest of pale blonde pubic hair, red and imperious. He roughly gets me ready with two fingers of one hand while whipping out a condom with his free hand, and, kneeling on either side of me, folds my legs against his chest and takes me straight up till I scream. No finesse, but who needs finesse when hunger is so ferocious.
He unfolds my legs from under him and tosses them on his shoulders, one at a time, and this new posture allows him to penetrate so far in I moan in pain. He coaxes me like a stubborn child. "Relax, let yourself go. Don't you know pleasure comes past pain? It's like yoga." The rest is a jumbled montage of images, ending with this closeup: I suck on his mouth, on his tongue so savagely I taste blood, and I rock under him, creased like an origami paper girl, pliable and docile, yielding to the sure hand of a master until my flesh melts and abandons all resistance. My screams are the signal he's been waiting for; a long, deep wave takes us over. My legs thrown on the arm of the couch, limp like those of a rubber doll, I can't stop laughing.
"What's so funny?" He pulls out of me, making a face as he lets the condom drop to the ground. He slips a playful finger into me and teases me with it. "You were well fucked. That's why you're laughing. That's how you should always be fucked."
And we both erupt into big, enormous waves that leave us breathless.
In the gray, dirty light of dawn, my outstretched arm, palm open, with the thin beaded bracelet tied on my wrist, looks detached from me, a limb abandoned on the twisted sheet. I doze off while Yuri clears the table and puts the food away, but his hoots of laughter wake me up later from a deep sleep. He is sitting on the couch watching Mr. Bean — I recognize the British accent and the silly jokes from the videotapes my mother brings us from Europe — and I sit down next to him. Mr. Bean wriggles out of his little blue car and then tries to wriggle out of his pants to change into his bathing suit, hiding behind a beach towel, until he realizes the man sitting a couple of feet away from him is blind. HaHaHa! I am in no mood for Mr. Bean, and I disappear into the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I come out Yuri is bent over my clothes, picking them one by one and studying the labels stitched on each one.
"What are you doing?"
He straightens up and quickly puts the clothes back.
"Nothing."
Before I leave we go and buy two cups of coffee on Ocean Parkway and carry them back to a bench by the ocean. Couples still dressed for winter weather, the women in fur coats and hats, and the men in heavy overcoats, stroll, arm in arm, on the boardwalk, which looks, in the pale sun, with its smoky colors, like a sepia photograph of the past century.
"Does the shore here look anything like the Baltic Sea? Or like the Black Sea?"
He shrugs. "I don't know, but I'd like to buy house on New Jersey shore one day, and Mercedes." He sets his cup of coffee on the bench between us and opens his hands a foot apart.
"The extra-long one. You know which one?"
I shake my head.
"And then one day, maybe I'll get married and have kids. But first I have to get legal status. I know Russian woman. She has U.S. citizenship. I pay her $6,000. I move in with her and get married so that I can have papers."
Ah, yes. A green card and a family. The immigrant's dream. It was my dream too. I never thought about what would happen after it would have come true. That I would find myself like a sleepwalker, my arms stretched ahead of me to feel my way out of the darkness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Catherine Texier is the author of four novels, Chloé l'Atlantique, Panic Blood, Love Me Tender and Victorine, and a memoir, Breakup. She was also coeditor of the literary magazine Between C and D. Her work has been translated into ten languages. She lives in New York City.
