Not just porn, but shredded porn, as though somebody had stripped the content from hundreds of obscene publications in a masturbatory frenzy. The pages were everywhere, covering the counters, filling the sink — the floor was hardly visible. In some places, the creased and crumpled stacks of tits and balls and assholes nearly reached my knees. Sean tugged the dangling cord of the ceiling fan, and several scraps of paper fluttered to the ground. I bent to pick one up. A disembodied hand pried apart a set of hairless labial folds with scarlet fingernails, revealing a small brown clitoris adorned with a silver ring. Sean kicked off his shoes and gingery laid himself on the bed.

"Do you want to fool around or something?" I said weakly.

"Do you want to take your clothes off in this room?"

I did not. Sean seemed to fall asleep easily.

Oh, God.

I had two options. I could wet myself, adding to the stains of centuries, and pray that Sean would assume that the fresh stain was there already. Or I could see what the bathroom was like.

No, I thought. I will not sink to this level. I am toilet trained, and as God as my witness, I shall remain so.

The bathroom looked like the rest of the apartment — small, filthy, thickly strewn with photographs of genitals — but I scarcely noticed as I dropped my lacy underpants and squatted above the crusty toilet, nearly crying with relief. The moment of truth arrived when it came time to clean myself up. Naturally, there was no toilet paper, but what was I to do?

A t-shirt was draped over the towel rack. It looked clean, almost prim. I reached for it, and once it was in hand, found that the entire front was smeared with shit, obscuring the Dinosaur Jr. logo. Screaming as though I'd been burnt, I flung it into the filthy tub and lunged for the faucet.

There was no water.

Wildly, I wiped my hands on the wall, then grabbed one of the glossy sheets of paper that blanketed the floor. In the photograph, a woman crouched on all fours, dressed in a studded leather harness. At the edges of the picture were two enormous black cocks: one dribbling ejaculate onto her outstretched tongue, the other thrust decisively up her ass. I felt tears prick my eyes.

Carefully, I folded the page until only her bent legs were visible. Then, wincing, weeping, I wiped.

Gentle Reader! If only this were the lowest point of this sordid account of travel and woe! But no, that came when I called Olivia that morning from a convenience-store pay phone downtown.

What is the moral of this cautionary tale?

They say that when you travel, it takes your soul a few days to catch up with you, and when you return, your soul takes a while to find its way back. And sometimes, on dark days, I feel like my soul is still there in Lincoln, wiping itself with a soiled sheet of hard-core pornography, as its tears fall quietly into the toilet bowl.  n°

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
	Rachel Shukert is the author of Have You No Shame? (Random House/Villard). Her work has also been featured in Best Sex Writing 2008, Best American Erotic Poems, and 2033: The Future of Misbehavior. She lives in New York City with her husband and her cat. Her website is rachelshukert.com.