How to Have an Affair and Other Instructions. Michael Hemmingson
painting was something he knew he was good at. He returned to England. He had gallery showings; people bought his stuff. He sculpted and did pottery. He began to write poetry. He went back to America in the 1980s and traveled a lot with a young girl he met (there were so many of them). Women! Oh there were many women, many women, and he learned a lot about fucking, about love-making, about how to keep his cock hard for hours: those ancient techniques. Yes, lots of women, but he was never serious with them; he never married or fell in love; when a woman became too close, he sent them on their way, damn the tears! Back to Queen and country he went, broken hearts behind him. No, Edward Kaff never knew love, until he met Kathleen. How absurd, yes! But it happened. And we know how it happened: one day Edward Kaff was nearing his sixtieth birthday and all his art crowd friends in London wanted to throw him a shindig/birthday party at a gallery. Kaff thought about his wild sexual days in the 1970s, recalling a party he was at where three women masturbated as a show for all the attendees. How marvelous would that be? Kaff was going to hire a call girl to do this, until one day he was looking at some classifieds and saw Kathleen’s ad.
VIII.
And so the big night finally came. “Are you ready?” Kaff asked Kathleen and she said: “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Then let’s put on a show they’ll never forget,” said Kaff, giving her a light kiss on the cheek.
The gallery was located central London on Charing Cross Road. It was a big place with three levels and on every wall was a painting by none other than Edward Kaff himself. Kathleen didn’t know much about art, but what she saw seemed okay—a lot of it was violent and sexual and, well, weird. Everyone attending looked rich and cultured; there were about 100 people and they were well-dressed, of all ages, and mingled about, drinking imported champagne and talking and laughing and looking at each other and, Kathleen assumed, gossiping. She was glad she didn’t have to be around them; they were from a different world and they weren’t the kind of people she would ever want to know. She was here to do a job and get the rest of her quid. So: she entered the gallery completely naked, holding a bag of assorted sex toys. Needless to say, without a doubt, and completely to Edward Kaff’s plan, all chatter stopped, jaws dropped, eyes widened as Kathleen made her way though the people in the splendor of her skin.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” announced Kaff, wearing a tuxedo and looking rather dapper, “may I present to you—my slut!”
No one knew what to make of this.
Kathleen walked over to a large beanbag that was placed in the center of the gallery. She lied on her back, spread her legs, closed her eyes, and went to work with her hand.
She could feel all the eyes on her, the heat of bodies closing in, the warmth of the lights…mumbles, confusion, fascination, one woman saying, “She has a small and pretty pussy.”
“Fear not!” said Kaff, “for this is all part of the show. This young trollop, this lover of mine, this luscious piece of girl meat, this comely little whore who loves to diddle—she is my new canvas, my finest work of art, my erotic masterpiece!”
Hearing his voice…doing this…the people around her…the excitement of the strange…it made Kathleen come, and she was quite vocal about it.
Scattered applause.
“You see,” said Kaff, “magnificent!”
She reached into the bag and took out the first sex toy—a small dildo.…
She peeked through her eyelids: so many faces and eyes watching her with blasé interest.…
“And now,” said Kaff, “I shall read a very long poem. If you get bored, have a drink, have a finger food, watch the girl jill-off…it is all part of the show.”
He read his poem, which took about an hour. She half-listened to it, paying more attention to her pussy and making herself come, going from the small dildo to the bigger one and to an even bigger one, as well as a butt-plug… fucking herself with the rubber cocks as Kaff read his words that were filled with images of Europe and travel and vampires and music and Russia. What it all meant, she had no idea. She was no longer concerned with the people watching her…it didn’t take long for most of them to become bored and go back to mingling, whispering, and drinking.…
When Kaff was done reading, he went to her, joined her, touched her, kissed her, put his mouth to her vagina…
“More avant-garde theater, Eddy?” someone asked with an appropriate amount of sarcasm.
“You haven’t seen nothing yet,” he replied.
He undressed, and began to fuck her.…
IX.
…and fucked and fucked for many hours like planned and promised and practiced. Most people got bored and left.
Then it was over.
“And so my latest art installation ends,” said Kaff.
X.
“Here is your money,” he said, handing her the second check.
She didn’t look at it.
“Where will you go from here?” he asked.
“Your home,” she said. “I would like.…”
He said, “I would like that too,” and that’s what they did.
KARIN
It’s night—the middle of summer—August—in a place where the summers last deep into September, creep into October, trickle into November. It’s sweltering, tonight in a club where we go because the nights are too hot to sleep, too hot to dream. Here on the evening when I meet Justine.
The walls are tiled green like a high-school gym. The mattress on the floor in the middle of the next room is covered in a bloody plush, like velveteen. The sheets are emerald polyester. The club, where we go because there’s nowhere else to go, where we go to escape the sun-baked streets, is a haphazard mess of textures, the scent of sweaty bodies juxtaposed with hair oil and wheatgrass.
When I meet Justine.
She is sitting at the bar doing shots of grenadine. I spot her. I approach. I conjure a line or two. Blah, blah. Skip to the sex scene:
I lick the delicate curls of her cunt with a nervous tongue. Swirling betwixt the swirls. She whinnies softly. I need to please her. Need to badly. My sex organs are engorged with the blood that mounts in her thighs. My senses are inflamed with the pounding acid of her juices. We are thick, clasped together mouth to cunt. Her flesh shivers. Cut to the inciting incident
The night is thick with thunder. She says she has something to show me. I don’t know what she means. “Show me, slut.”
The showing involves eating a weird, dried plant; and the plant doesn’t taste very good. I vomit into the sickly green tile wall of the club, into the wall that is sealed white without a chink.
This is how the story begins:
* * * * * * *
Alone, together, sequestered in a small room like prisoners in a cell, she ravages my asshole. Justine has no interest in my cunt, which I find odd for a girl like her. All she wants to do is play with my ass—wants to torture it, hurt it, please it, make me go places I didn’t know my ass could go. She shoves her fingers in, shoves her whole hand in—a hand well-greased with lube. She says: “Karin, Karin, how far do you want me to go?” I want her in deep. Her hand goes in deep. She has my wrists tied, I can’t stop her. Fist-fucking my asshole is not enough. My cunt wants her attention, but she’s not going to do this. She has a huge and thick black dildo. She waves it in my face and I can smell its rubber shell. She says, “Just pretend a black dude with this really big dick is fucking you,” but it’s no use telling her that I am tired of black dudes fucking me with their big dicks and Justine sticks the dildo in, she shoves it deep, she makes me hurt, she makes me shit and bleed, she pulls it out and says I should see how wide and round my ass is, but I know oh I know, I have seen my ass stretched to its limits.