Exact Warm Unholy Read online

  Tiffany rewards him with a flirtatious smile, but I manage to keep her from saying anything by putting the glass to her lips. Delicious. “Much better. Thanks.”

  With a last glance at Daniel, he goes.

  “Where were we?” Daniel is frowning, ever so slightly. I don’t think he’s aware of it.

  “Talking about your hotel room.” Tiffany cocks her head and leans on the table so her blouse gapes open enough to show off her lacy bra. “Is it next door?”

  He swigs his beer, on firmer footing, and puts his hand on Tiffany’s knee under the table. She doesn’t love that, but I keep her there and don’t move to stop him. If I let them chicken out, we’ll never get laid. “Or we could go to your room.”

  “I’m not staying nearby. Yours will do.”

  Tiffany finishes her drink. Too fast, because I really wanted to savor it, but time is running short. The pink lipstick barely shows on the glass. Tiffany is ephemeral.

  We get up to go. “Don’t you have a coat?” Daniel asks.

  “Can you believe I left it in the cab this morning?” Tiffany laughs, sounding drunker than she is, and loops Daniel’s arm around her shoulders. “You’ll have to keep me warm.”

  “I can do that,” he assures her.

  As we go, I wave at the bartender, a carefree, Tiffany wave, more a flutter of fingers. He nods, taps his finger to his temple in a sort of salute, then turns back to the man chatting him up.

  Daniel’s room is immaculate, his clothes put away and no suitcase in sight. His laptop sits neatly on the desk, the cords arranged just so. I stop to review Tiffany’s appearance in the mirror. She still has her perfect shine. Daniel hands her a vodka rocks, no doubt still thinking of the Cosmopolitan, and I set it aside, even though Tiffany wouldn’t.

  He kisses me, politely, a brush of lips to test, then deepening. I usually love this moment, the first taste of a man. There’s nothing like that first kiss, the first unveiling of the body I wear to another. Despite the sameness of the act, each man’s approach to sex is as different as the capillary map of his retina. As each man sees me, I’m patterned upon his eye in a new way. Always someone I’ve never been before. When I come for him, I lose a little more of who I used to be, purified in the mikvah of carnal lust.

  Daniel is careful with Tiffany, which is only what she deserves. He undresses her and she lets him, making little sighs like butterfly wings on ice. He tells her she’s beautiful, but he doesn’t mean it because he barely looks at her. His phone rings, a song from the seventies, and he hitches before ignoring it. He helps Tiffany sit on the bed, watching her as she stretches out, languid, passive.

  He undresses, hanging up his suit. He has his own condom. Tiffany doesn’t offer to suck his cock as she doesn’t really like to. She’ll do it if they insist, but grudgingly. She never swallows and they don’t much like her gagging.

  Daniel works her clit deftly enough and she comes for him, light as a breeze, and then again when he’s inside her. She clings to him, breathing in the expensive aftershave, lifting her pelvis so he goes deeper. But that’s me. Tiffany doesn’t know to ask for that. I learned it from some of the others, the ones I love best.

  In the end, it’s not exact, but warm enough.

  When I wash Daniel from Tiffany’s body, I study her in the mirror. She’s abashed and vaguely guilty, though not certain why. When she gets back to her hotel, she’ll stop at the pantry by the front desk and buy a pint of ice cream, then eat all of it while watching a pay-per-view movie she treats herself to.

  Both will be better than sex with diffident Daniel.

  I won’t miss Tiffany. She’s maybe a little too familiar.

  As I walk home, I pass Circle2. The lights glow golden and welcoming. The bartender is laughing at something before glancing out at the street. He can’t see me on the other side of it. Still, I’m tempted to go in and order another Black Velvet.

  But Tiffany is already dying and I can’t go as myself, so I go home.

  The wig itches and I can’t wait to take it off.

  ~ 3 ~

  Tonight, my name is Sydney.

  Call me Syd. She’s easy to dress as she doesn’t worry much about clothes. Plain cotton bra—no underwire because they pinch—and her panties have colorful unicorns on them farting rainbows. Syd isn’t all about the books; she has her whimsical side, too.

  Her hair is dark brown, a simple square cut with heavy bangs. She wears glasses with thick black rims and a hint of a cat’s eye horn at the edge. All of these things are important because I can’t put too much obvious makeup on her. Syd’s getting her master’s in comparative religious studies and she’s particularly interested in the question of vanity and mortification of the flesh to purify the spirit, New Testament style. I can’t go near the Torah anymore.

  I go with darker foundation for her skin, not so much that it will look funny when she’s naked, but enough to distort her mouth and cover the putty on her nose—the only features that really show. I go with a matte lipstick for her, the kind that looks like none at all, and add a cherry ChapStick overcoat, then stick the tube in her jeans pocket. Dark brown contact lenses for her eyes, which look intense even behind the unfashionably thick lenses of her glasses.

  Even without the underwire, Syd’s tits look pretty good in the tight sweater. Enticing enough to reel in a college boy, anyway. They’re always hard up.

  The college guys aren’t there, however, though it’s a Tuesday again. Disappointing as the thin crowd doesn’t promise much. Maybe Syd will sit at the bar, read a book and nurse her drink. A girl like Syd might go home alone. She doesn’t have to get laid.

  But I do. After disappointing Daniel, I need to get off. Badly. I’m restless with it, edgy. Probably I should have been someone else for tonight, to score the really good bang. I nearly went for Caitlyn and couldn’t. Too soon after Tiffany. I still miss Mary. I’d had to force myself to burn that wig, lest I break down and wear it a second time. It never works to be the same woman twice. Too much like my life before, the forever trying to be the right person and forever failing. I want to be Mary again, but that way lies disappointment and more of that might break me forever.

  The only other disguise that appealed was Sydney’s dark wig and obscuring glasses, so that’s what I did. I’ve learned to go with instinct.

  Syd chooses a stool at the darker end of the bar, as far from the televisions as she can get, and puts her book on the glossy golden wood.

  “Be right with you,” the bartender calls out, and Syd nods, opens her book, clips on the little reading light. A guy down the bar a bit raises a glass to her. She smiles. A bit shy, but she’ll warm up. He’s her type, academic-looking, not a suit. I’ve had enough of the business travelers for a while.

  “What’ll you have?” the bartender asks. He tosses the towel over his shoulder. Tonight his T-shirt says, in faded white letters on soft black, “There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.”

  “Ha! Love the shirt,” Syd says before I can stop her. What happened to shy?

  “It’s always interesting who gets it,” he replies, with that grin I like. He peers at my text. “Confessions of St. Augustine?”

  “The saint who gave up wealth, wine, women, and excesses of all kinds to purify the spirit.”

  “Yeah—but at the end of his life. I’m not sure it counts when you indulge for sixty years and then go all holy when you can’t get it up anymore.”

  “How do you know he couldn’t?”

  “Who gives up sex when they can still do it?”

  I grin back at him. There’s the zing, the spark I’m craving. The bartender is better looking than I thought. The kind of guy who grows on you. He has nicely muscled shoulders and the T-shirt looks old and touchable. I’d like to run my hands over his chest and then slide them up beneath.

  But I shouldn’t do that because then I’d have to stop coming here. The ritual is both precise and delicate. So Syd pulls
out her ChapStick and layers on another coat, to give herself time to think. He doesn’t recognize me, but talking this much—and with a man about sex even—is fun for me. I’ve never had this experience. Before, we never discussed it, never used any of the words, as if sex didn’t exist outside the bed where he penetrated my body in the dark of halakhic obligation. With the men since, we talk only enough to get to the sex.

  It’s never occurred to me that talking about sex could be a kind of foreplay. I’m wanting to take over the conversation, which makes it harder to let Syd exist. The bartender has cocked his head, waiting for an answer, to at least the drink question.

  “I’m pretty sure he was more like thirty,” I finally say, letting it go there and handing the reins to Syd. “I’ll have a Harp,” she says, though she really wants a Black Velvet. Another Irish beer is close enough. He nods and moves away to get it. Something happens on the television and people cheer. Academic guy dips his chin at the bottle and pint glass the bartender sets down.

  “Let me get that for you.”

  The bartender raises a brow at Syd. She digs a crumpled ten out of her jeans pocket and gives academic guy a reproving shake of her head. “I can buy my own drinks, thanks.”

  “I was trying to be nice, not make a statement on feminism.”

  “You heard the lady,” the bartender inserts. “Ah, woman, I mean.” He winks at me. Academic guy mutters something in a disgusted tone and gets up like he wants to check out something on another television. Oh well, he didn’t ring my bell anyway.

  “So,” the bartender says, lingering while keeping an eye on the other patrons. There aren’t many. I really shouldn’t come in on a Tuesday again, even at the prospect of hot college boy sex. “Are you Catholic?

  “Not so much,” Syd answers. “But it’s interesting. I’m doing grad work on a comparison of how Christians interpret the Old Testament compared to the same texts that make up the Torah. You?”

  “Lapsed.” He shrugs. Nice Irish Catholic boy, I’m guessing. Maybe a crucifix under that T-shirt, gleaming silver against his chest, which is a more erotic image than it ought to be. Just a little hair on it, dark and wiry like on his forearms, which flex as he dries a glass with long fingers. I’m mesmerized enough that I realize he’s asking a question and I’m not listening. “What’s your hypothesis?”

  “The field doesn’t work like that so much.” Syd should stop there. Hell, she should have stopped a long time ago, but she doesn’t. This is more than I’ve talked to anyone not work-related in…months. It’s easy to lose track of time. The bartender has good eyes, on the hazel side, maybe even mossy green in daylight. I take a pull on the Harp, surprised to hit bottom. The bartender takes the empty and moves to grab me another when I nod. What the hell.

  “Okay, this is my idea. Did you know that people call the clitoris the devil’s doorbell?”

  He cracks up. “You’re kidding! What people? I don’t know those people.”

  Syd waves a hand. “There are Internet sites you wouldn’t believe. Female pleasure is wicked is the idea, leads to sinfulness.”

  “Not in my book.” He’s not flirting, exactly, but he’s talking to Syd more than he has with any of the others. Maybe she’s more his type. Or maybe because she’s talking to him and it’s a slow night. He’s studying me, eyes locked on mine.

  “It’s more a Christian idea, that women lead men into sinfulness with their bodies. Judaism embraces female sexuality. Did you know a husband is obligated to divorce his wife if he doesn’t give her pleasure? The Talmud specifies both the quantity and quality of sex that a man must give his wife.”

  “See, now there’s a holy obligation I could get behind.” He’s leaning folded arms on the bar now, eyes glinting with mischief. “Where do you come out on the debate?”

  A dangerous path I’m treading so I decline to answer directly. “You know how people always say that it’s Eve’s fault that she and Adam got kicked out of Eden?”

  “Because she handed him the apple of knowledge and invited him to eat it.”

  “Or told him to, or tricked him, depending on who you ask. Anyway, what if the real meaning of that story is that woman recognized they’d never grow in paradise. If they stayed there they’d just be God’s little goody-two-shoes pets forever. Maybe Eve deliberately handed Adam the opportunity to wake the fuck up and see they could have more out of life than being kept.”

  “Some people want to be kept,” the bartender points out. “It’s comfortable.”

  “No, that’s complete and utter bullshit.” I say it too strongly. I’ve shocked him, so I take a moment. Syd pushes up her glasses. For her it’s all theory. She hasn’t lived through what I have. “They make you think that, that you’re comfortable, that you’re happy and cared for. But it’s all lies. Just like Eden. Dressed up to look like paradise—look at all the pretty fruit! And animals for you to name!—but it was prison. Eve was goddamned thrilled to meet Satan.”

  The bartender looks thoughtful. I haven’t offended him. But hey, he’s a bartender. He’s heard worse than my rant. “But when they ate of knowledge, they knew shame and tried to clothe their nakedness.”

  That makes me think of Tiffany, which only depresses me. I take a deep swig of the beer. “Yeah, well, it’s a theory in process. I’m working on it.”

  The bartender considers, polishing a glass. He’s contemplating his reply and I’m no longer angry. I’m…curious as to what he’ll say. Me, not Syd. For a moment I’m confused, forgetting who I am and what point I’d argued for.

  “Hi.” A guy in a black leather jacket sits beside me, straddling the stool with lanky legs, and holds out a hand for me to shake. “I’m Alan.”

  He’s got an attractive scruff and eyes that are just a little hard. Not a nice man. Syd wants him to mortify her flesh in a big way. This is what she came her for. Real sex, not the conversational variety. She takes his hand. It’s callused from some kind of manual labor. There won’t be a laptop in his hotel room, no high school sweetheart wife calling to check up on him. He’ll be rough, maybe a little mean, and Syd needs that. Her pussy clenches with heat.

  “Sydney. Call me Syd.”

  He points at my nearly empty. “Can I buy you another?”

  “Sure.”

  “I haven’t seen you in here before.”

  “My first time.”

  The bartender sets down a fresh bottle, flicks a glance at me, and moves a short distance away, turning to watch the game on the screen above the bar. I drink deeply and Alan puts a hand on the back of my neck, under my hair.

  “Don’t touch my hair,” I say.

  “Why not?” His fingers stroke my neck and the heat grows, blessed distraction.

  “I don’t like it,” I tell him, and his lips twitch, eyes on mine like he’s thinking about kissing me.

  “What do you like?” The question is a caress.

  “Everything else.”

  “I can do that.” He picks up my beer and finishes it for me. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Next round is on the house,” the bartender says, catching my eye. “Hang a while.”

  He’s never tried to get me to stay before. All that conversation has changed up the ritual, just as I’ve feared.

  “Hey, thanks, dude.” Alan snugs an arm around my waist and pulls me tight against him, taking the decision out of my hands. “But I’ve got someone to do, if you know what I mean.”

  I go with him, not waving goodbye to the bartender this time.

  Alan isn’t cruel, but he treats Syd harshly in the back seat of his extended-cab pickup. I’m happy it’s not a hotel room, but I can’t watch her the way I like to. With the dark, though, it doesn’t matter when he takes off her glasses, or that he mushes her nose out of shape while kissing her hard before stripping her out of her clothes.

  “Such fucking honeypot under here, aren’t you?” he mutters, touching me everywhere at once, then shoving two fingers into my slick heat. I cry out and he smiles,
teeth white in the dark. “A hot little cunt.”

  Syd comes, pleasing him even more. He starts to climb onto her, but I need to see. I clamber up and bend over the back of the seat to the front. Suddenly I’m face to face with her naked brown eyes in the rearview mirror. Alan cackles and smacks her ass. Her eyes dampen with incipient tears.

  “You like that, huh?” Alan spanks her again and again, anchoring her there with a rough hand in the small of her back. She’s crying now, her mouth open in sobs. “I heard you spouting that Catholic shit. You pious girls are all the same.” He drags moisture from her cunt up to her asshole, thrusting in. “You all prefer anal so you can pretend you’re virgins. Isn’t that right?”

  Syd is crying too hard to answer, so he spanks her several more times. “Answer me, little virgin angel. You want me up your ass don’t you? Dirty girl.”

  “Yes!” Syd gasps out the admission. “Do it.”

  Even with the high ceiling, he’s forced to bend over her, his harsh breath hot on her neck. It hurts and Syd’s face blurs in the mirror. The contortions I can make out, however, are of genuine pain and look just the same as orgasm. When she comes, it’s wrenchingly hard.

  Convulsive.

  Unholy.

  ~ 4 ~

  Tonight, my name is Bobbi.

  As in Bobbi Socks. For her I dye a wig bright blue with magenta tips, then scrape it into spikes with paste. I go with Kiss-style makeup, but of Bobbi’s flavor—black and white greasepaint, scattered with Day of the Dead rose petals. She wears buckled biker boots, torn fishnet stockings, a barely there skirt, and a net midriff-baring top over a black lace bra. There’s a retro-punk band at Circle2 tonight, so I can get away with the outfit.

  That’s what gets me to go there again, though I’ve stayed away for nearly a month this time. Circle2 should be crowded and full of different people. No chance of being tempted into risky conversation with the bartender. I’ll blend into the crowd. All of this is an excuse, because I really want to go. The flyer flapping in the October wind blazed a fluorescent omen, an answer to the grinding question of whether I dared go back.