The CuisinArt

from dylan…

New school. Still within first month of attendance. Ms. Yammy’s third grade class. Time of day: 11:20 AM. Preceded by break for consumption of small ingestions. To be followed by break for consumption of larger quantities of intake entitled ‘Lunch.’ So is routine of day.

Alphabet cutouts pasted along the wall encircle your young narrator. Stalking him with their repetition. What a longueur. What a passionless ritual of singsong rhythm.

Saggy skinned Yammy, plump and near-sighted with a dictionary on her desk, adjusts her bifocals, trying to find a word meant to challenge female peer Malia Madrona.

Malia Madrona. Pigtails. Fingertips covered in colored paste, one hand blue, the other pink. An irritating nymph certain males swoon over.

Not this student. Not your narrator.

“Malia…” Instructing gorilla-Yammy, with rampant avoirdupois, clicks her mouth, scanning the pages of her dictionary. “Malia, please spell ‘Wreck,’” the bumbling fool requests.

Is easy. At risk of sounding ironic, is child’s play.

This narrator could stand and recite to this instructor the famed French poet Theophile Gautier. “A cat will be your friend, but never your slave.” But such outré behavior might flummox the old wench, so this studious pupil patiently watches the bane Malia struggle over the word. Such incompetence.

“Wreck…”

This narrator could stand and lecture menstruating Yammy on her antidepressants, which she swallows like candy, and how they cause her infertility. But no. Will not frazzle the esteemed instructor so. Yammy, the bulky knuckled creature, matronly, with a face packed with moles.

The young thing squeaks, “Could you use it in a sentence, please?”

“After the tornado, all the houses in the neighborhood were a wreck,” recites barren-wombed Yammy.

“Could you provide the language of origin, please?” This dilatory bastard child Malia intends to run me insane!

“It is… Middle English.”

“Wreck. R-E… C-K? Wreck?”

“I’m sorry, Malia. W-R-E-C-K.”

The dyslexic bitch sits and it’s time for the flabby-chested, child-starved Yammy to test this student - Your narrator.

“Humphrey…” The dirty hog runs her eyes along the tome’s dry pages, trying to find a suitable challenge for your eager pupil. “Humphrey…” Such a blind slug. She trails off and returns with this banal finish, “Please spell, ‘Wry.’”

Whip-snap, your narrator spits bullet letters at her – “R-Y-E.”

“Oh, no, Humphrey, sorry. That isn’t correct. I was asking for W-R-Y, the adjective. Not ‘rye’ the grain.”

What is this misandry!

Pox infested Yammy with her useless ovaries. Ms. Evolution-gone-aWRY. She motions for the next victim – beefy Stevie, a repugnant dork with Velcro sandals.

“Humphrey…” Phallus-deprived Yammy glares this narrator down. “You may sit.”

Inside his head, your narrator repeats to himself, “A cat will be your friend…”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

“All troops fire! Everything you’ve got! Now! Now! Now!” Bellowed Sgt. Vernon, as rounds fired past his face and those of his petrified platoon like swarms of insects on the warpath.

“Sarg! Why is this happening?” Cried Alfonso, a 19 year-old Peruvian. “One minute we’re sitting here, the next we’re bombarded!”

A horse and soldier enter the east end of the bunker. Vernon and Alfonso turn and shoot. Direct Hit. But, the horse evaporates, and in its place stands three African foot soldiers! Though ordered to engage anyone and anything that entered their land, the men never expected a dogfight approaching this kind of veritable savagery.
“What the hell was that?!” cries Eduardo. There’s no time- BAM! A grenade detonates 3-centimeters away, severing limbs of three young medics.
“Sarg! We’ve never had any conflict with the African Militia! It don’t make any sense!” Echoed Brazilian sniper, Carlos. “Why are they attacking!?”
Though plangent eruptions of mortar shells, landmines, and ululations of men’s final sentient moments flooded the air of the entire South American landmass, Vernon could not hear a thing.
“Brazil, Venezuela, and Peru have all fallen sir! We’re the last platoon! We must surrender!” Pleaded Enrique, the communications officer, with one ear the receiver to and the other to the rumbling terrain.
It happened so fast, and so unannounced. Vernon thought there was a cease-fire. He never believed in the war they were thrown, forced to fight in against their will. But now, minutes away from seeing his homeland, his family, friends, and enemies heretofore rearranged into a vassal state of Africa, he was no longer a Brazilian, but a South American.
“We surrender to no one!” He proclaimed. “If we die tonight. We die on our feet! Every man fires every piece of ammunition in sight!” Though knowing full well his last breath was moments away.
Outnumbered 10 to 1, it was a quick battle. But they fought to the end. Vernon watched his platoons expressions fall prostrate and frozen as they hit the ground, and suddenly disappearing from sight. Hallucinations?
“There is no logic or reason in this war we fight.” As he took his last breath, before crossing over, he heard a sonorous voice from above…
“Ha! You’re dead!” Exclaimed Anthony, as he moved his men into the continent of South America. “I’ll refortify six men to Venezuela, and take a territory card. You’re gonna lose!”
“Nuh-uh! Just wait till I explode out of Europe and spread like the plague across the entire board!” Countered Peter, as he placed 7 yellow plastic men onto the Risk board.
“Okay, I’m attacking Scandinavia from the Ukraine.” The boys pick up their dice and roll away.

Home, or what was home, was crushed by a space rock and is now a crater of smoking rubble.

For billions and trillions of years - from God knows when - dust slowly gravitated together and traveled through the cosmos - from God knows where – until it reached our solar system, rocketed toward this planet and crashed through this atmosphere to land square on my house and, subsequently, crush the body of my twenty-something girlfriend.

It could’ve landed anywhere. Out in a field. In the ocean. On my neighbors house. Point is, it had to land. Even lightning has to hit something. Just bad luck if it ends up in your body. Or your girlfriends’.

Certain things survived the blow: A pair of trousers here, some silverware there, the remote to the TV. You know, all the important stuff.

And the ringing from deep in the pit lets me know, somehow, a phone endured.

Digging through the sizzling wallpaper, the ruined centerpieces, the smoldering appliances, I find it. My cell.

Because of the smoking rock next to me, instead of saying ‘Hello,’ I just wheeze.

On the other end is my brother. “I’m getting married!” He yells.

And all I can do is cough.

“What’s going on?” He asks. “Aren’t you psyched for me?”

Through the rock’s toxic smell, I dry heave, “Who’s the girl?”

“Kim.” He sings her name.

“Kim’s the…” - more coughing here - “…the dancer?” My foot gets stuck in the icebox of a melting refrigerator.

“No, dude. Riley’s the dancer. Kim’s the one with the huge ass. Dude, you interested in Riley? I can hook you up. Or, no, you’re with whatshername?”

My foot sinks deeper into the sticky puddle of aluminum and I gag, “My house got flattened by a meteor. Her too.”

And my newly engaged brother, he says, “Again?”

Yes. Again. This has happened a few times before. Not an asteroid, necessarily. Doesn’t have to be. Traffic accident. Brain parasites. Could be anything.

Disney Land could destroy life as we know it. We’re still the ones paying the entrance fee.

Sorry, but how many times can you be surprised by a freak occurrence?

Not saying the whole world is out to get me, just the piece that landed on my girl.

I hack a long one.

“Three ways I see it,” my brother’s voice says through the phone, “One is chance. Two is freewill. Three is fate.”

So this rock came all this way specifically to find me and obliterate my new girlfriend’s bones?

I guess these things happen.

“The universe works in billions and trillions,” my brother says. “Scary, dude. The precision of it all.”

He said that last time.

I don’t know your name. But I know your still water. The azure jewel. The waveless beauty. The lonely duck.

I dip my toes; she breathes into me, and I into her. I submerge and exist inside of her. What is time, but spinning hands? I should not have left you.

Palatial bliss. Tonight. The plangent whisper of the world, afar. Diaphanous hymn of the sleeping sea. Disgust for my ignoble beginning, and middle, and all that is not now. I will leave tomorrow. P, I will return unto you. Limpid vision, I now own. I need no camera. The moon is my flash. I am Me. Recumbent blue of water and of sky. I miss you. I will return unto you.

Just the crumbs. I’ve wanted to be something I could not define. I am the pet dog at dinner. The meal, inches away. Destined to feed off the crumbs. But I am now the king. I have eaten the meal, and it tasted of crumbs. Spurious satisfaction. There are only crumbs. I am Magellan, and this, my Mactan.

I left you on a cold morning. I escaped the gull. I left you on a cold morning, long ago. I traveled to no place, but deserted many. These pages are but space to fill. I will not follow their order. I will leave without eponym. I will return unto you. Eponyms are illusions. So am I.
All is empty, and all is filled. Palatial bliss, exuberant defeat. Sandboxes and ducks. Symphonies of aspiration, fragments of achievement.

Two days heretofore, I spoke of my final sojourn. Two days heretofore, I gave money to a band. Tireless attempts to make sense of my departure. I can’t. I’m an old man. I am tir…

–

She stroked the rip in the crumpled, faded paper. Some coffee had spilled on it. Probably in the preliminary investigation.
“According to the airport employee who encountered him, he just began ripping pages out. Though, from what remained, it says he was gone for 23 days. Is this accurate?”
She continued to stare at the letter. She was not numb, nor emotionless, nor shocked. She wasn’t relieved or heartbroken. She just felt weak.
“Is this accurate?”
“No. He’s been gone two and a half years.”
“He became very aggressive in the airport and began ripping apart several notebooks he had on his person. He showed severe signs of dementia before the collapse.”
“They had begun shortly before he disappeared.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Silence. In the oven, toasted bruschetta burned. At an airport outside Puntacana, a trio of musicians kicked their hat at passengers, as they stepped off the plane. In a small town on the coast of the Black Sea, Atlan took his last picture before the small LCD went black. In Segovia a wind blew threw the town as the citizens celebrated a victory of the Spanish National Soccer team. In central New York, a duck approached a small dock outside of an unassuming lake house, where no one fed him.
“And I just want to confirm the spelling on your name ma’am, P-E-N-E-L-O-P-E?”
She stroked the corned of the crumpled letter and laid it on the table, next to the battered leather journal with a broken strap.
“My name is Katherine.”

I never wear socks when I sleep.  I couldn’t get used to it. But P persisted. “Dad, you need to keep your shoulders and feet covered.” The house was getting cold and heaven forbid I come down with something. She was right though, the temperature was sinking like a penny dropped in a tank of water, fluttering, but surely falling to the bottom.

–

The mornings were dark and this made waking up much more of a foe then I cared to confront at that hour; plus it was bitter cold. I hate waking up cold. There is a peculiar sense of pleasure when you go to bed cold: enveloped in a blanket, squeezing your muscles to produce your own heat or clutching at a pillow or partner until you finally and pleasantly just nod off. But in the mornings, the cold waits, like a contemptuous gull hovering above a busy shore of crabs. Just as soon as you forgot it was there, as soon as you’re asleep and cruising along the ocean floor, it rips you out into its beak and devours you.

I developed a proclivity to take long, slow showers at temperatures far hotter than I was previously accustomed to. The surface of my skin would burn and I would have to constantly shift positions. But whatever body part not absorbing the streams would shiver, and inside, underneath my skin I could feel my bones, trembling, and just feeling cold, as I stood there static and too distracted to think.

I arrived at Thursday, mid-morning. A low and hot sun welcomed me. I’d been gone for 23 days. Though a warm glow roasted my prostrated skin, and all around me were smiling faces: families on vacation, sorority girls on spring break, and the cold weather refugees just wanting to get away, I could scarcely focus on much more than P. No words spoken on that day, just a short note.

Segovia, a small village in Spain, was chilly the morning I left. I walked in wearing corduroy pants – grey, and worn, perfect for windy days – a long sleeve turtleneck (although I’ve never heard of a short-sleeved), and thick cotton socks. I could already feel my feet turning that sweaty and odious way they always do. My shirt dampened with each step. It’s not difficult to spot a traveler who arrives ill prepared.

The last straw was the typing. Exposed to the air, each finger stiffened one at a time, and I could feel it. No sooner would dexterity go than could I no longer comfortably make a fist. I leaned back and glared around the house at all the places where heat would escape: the windows, the doors, and the crack in the corner of the ceiling, above the microwave. I would sit on top of my hands, put them under my arms, down my pants - my loins - wherever heat was stored. But, for naught. My thoughts slowed, I could just think about the hands. I stared at the flashing cursor.

It was a small village in Istanbul that I decided to leave the camera behind. I left it with a young boy, Altan. He was the only person I spoke with during my tour of the U.A.E.

I didn’t take one to the UK, or France, or Hong Kong, or Seol. I took no pictures in Sydney, none of the Great Wall, or of the Pyramids. No rolling Scottish Hills, or Nepalese Mountains. Fragmented images were all the head of a somnolent old man - who’d grown weary and regretful from fulfilling his desires - possessed as I made my way from Argentina, to Paraguay, and up through Brazil. I became increasingly concerned that my desire to remember this trip had ebbed its way out of me- drops of nostalgia dripping off of my body at each place I visited, landing into streams, and mouths, and seas, all coming together in the southern Atlantic and navigating themselves to one place. That place. Did I remember to give Altan extra batteries? I hope he can find some.

MECHANICAL MAN by, Jessica Sansom

Though a sort of infamous recluse by this point, some are already hailing Raymond Chancellor as one of this generations’ greatest minds. But three months ago, the residents of Airway Heights only knew Raymond, if they knew him at all, as an advertising executive who sculpted as a hobby. Mostly, Raymond admits, he kept to himself. Not an “active social life.” Until, recently, when he has almost unwillingly been thrust into the limelight.

Now, the outside of Raymond’s house is a massive crowd of people from around the country – the majority of whom are present for religious beliefs. Some come to protest, others to worship. Raymond prefers to stay out the debate and hold up in his room. Occasionally peer out a window. Nothing more.

Back in July, neighbors of Raymond started hearing noises coming from inside the house. Also, around this time, Raymond stopped going to work. Co-workers recount his absence as particularly puzzling. A fellow employee, Kelly Reich, says Raymond “never missed a day of work” the eight years they’d worked together. After a few days, Kelly recalls phoning Raymond at home. Raymond answered, said everything was fine but he probably wouldn’t be back to work for some time. When asked if he was sick, the answer was a terse “No.”

Outside of Raymond’s home, the neighbors’ curiosity grew. They knew he was in his basement, but aside from the loud sounds and a couple sightings of smoke from a small basement window, no one knew what he was doing. Just some bellowing and billowing.

“Right before all this,” a concerned neighbor says, “Raymond had been in a funk. His mother had died and he was very closeted about the whole thing. I don’t even know if he went to the funeral. Stopped seeing him at church too.”

All this speculation came to a head last Sunday night when the mystery was finally “revealed” as the “Gloxy Oxtornity Device” – or G.O.D. as religious patrons call it. The Gloxy is a large, sleek machine of sorts. With its peculiar shape, it is inarguably a technical marvel and may or may not defy both science and nature in its structure. Scraps and pieces fitted together to create what is either one man’s labor intensive artwork, or what may very well be the most complicated piece of equipment man has ever seen.

“I knew Raymond was into art,” a friend said, “but I didn’t know he was doing this sort of thing.”

While Scientists investigate Gloxy’s operative functions, Raymond holds up in his room, trying his best to remove himself from all the attention suddenly thrust upon him.

Raymond has shut the world out since Gloxy was unveiled, but yesterday he granted us an exclusive interview… of sorts. There were some conditions he requested: He would remain behind a closed door at all times, never speak or be spoken to. The questions would be slipped to him under the door, hand written on paper, and he would respond in kind - writing his answer on the other side and sliding it back.

Unfortunately, the interview was not as informative as we had hoped. Raymond’s answers were sparse, to say the least. Clipped, cryptic and, most of the time, completely illegible.

When asked specifically about how his mother’s death influenced Gloxy’s development, Raymond wrote back, “It didn’t.”

When asked about the origins of the name, Raymond wrote, “I don’t know.”

And when asked how he was able to design such a complex machine without anyone knowing anything about it, how he gathered all the parts and assembled it with no assistance, how a man with no training in engineering whatsoever built this machine in a matter of weeks, when asked simply “How did you do it?” Raymond wrote back, “I just followed the instructions,” followed by a long unreadable paragraph whose only decipherable word was ‘failure.’

More questions were asked, but Raymond stopped responding. Leaving myself, all the denizens on his lawn, and the attentive nation to wonder what this all means. This modern marvel.

The effect Gloxy has on people is undeniable.

There is no Horton street. 6^th and 8^th avenue are useless. Head down the Sunset Highway, people have posted signs directing you to “Gloxy.”

To “G.O.D.”

Of course, if you’re Raymond, all you have to do is peel back your curtains and look out the window.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ny5BYc-Fs&feature=related

New from Dylan. Part 1…

The crate blocking Raymond’s front door stood almost six feet high and was made up of long planks of wood. Raymond wasn’t expecting any packages and it was far too early for the mail to have been delivered. Still, here was this thing.

His body tensed as the cold air chewed his skin.

Morning had come, as it had well over twelve thousand other times in Raymond’s life. But this was the first morning where there was something he couldn’t explain.

The sun had risen (as it had the tendency to do) and Raymond’s mind was lightning. In bed, on his back, head hanging off the side, he scribbled manically on a yellow legal pad. Quickly drawing diagrams and labeling them before their meaning was forgotten. Rough sketches of sculptures to-be. His hand almost couldn’t keep up.

That time of day was “dreamscape,” as Mkei had taught Raymond. Mkei was an underground African sculptor (who only went by his first name). He was Raymond’s favorite. At a seminar, Mkei had said to write when you first wake, when your mind is still somewhat in the dream world. Unfettered from daily hassles.

This particular morning, Raymond’s dreamscape session raged on for twenty sweat-filled minutes before his head felt about to burst with blood, forcing him to sit up and stumble down the stairs in a daze to grab the morning paper.

That’s when he came upon the delivery.

The crate with the red stamp on the side - a big circle with three lines through the middle. Below that, Raymond’s full name and address.

No mistake. Whatever was in there, it was for him.

“Embrace the unexpected,” Mkei had said once.

So Raymond figured the box should come inside. Lifting it was out of the question (far too heavy), so he tried to push it through the doorway. He positioned his hands along the beast’s sides and leaned into it. The box began to tip. Raymond struggled to keep hold, failed horribly, and the crate crashed down on top of his living room coffee table. The table’s legs snapped upon impact and the glass face smashed into a hundred pieces.

Raymond breathed out in frustration and looked behind him as if someone were there not bothering to help. That once notable piece of furniture had been rendered garbage. He’d be picking glass out of the carpet for months. But the crate was inside.

Step one complete.

“Always go one step beyond safe,” Mkei once said.

So Raymond squiggled his fingers between the planks and with a considerable amount of effort, ripped the top end off. Reaching in, he found a slew of loose nails and screws. Behind them, pipes. Even deeper, a set of gears. The box held the most vast array of mechanical parts Raymond had ever seen. Rods, cables, belts, wheels, wires, sprockets, coils, burners, sheets of metal, a surprising number of light bulbs, grates, blades…

Some objects were completely foreign to him. There was a cylinder of sorts with different sized teeth jutting out its sides that, to Raymond, had no conceivable purpose.

Toward the back of the crate, were the tools. Wrenches, screwdrivers, chisels, calipers, knives, a vise, clamps, saws, drills. Finally, a smaller box with a set of gloves, earplugs, a small surgical mask, safety goggles, and a tube of glue.

Raymond sat on the crate, exhausted. The living room turned to a junkyard. He scanned the spare parts, trying to piece it together. Nothing.

“Art is invention,” Mkei had once said. “And invention is expression of self.”

Raymond rose to his feet, lifted the empty crate with both hands, took it outside, heaved it over his head and began to shake it with frustration.

“The only time you’ve failed as an artist,” Mkei had been known to say, “is when you succeed on something that didn’t come from you. Unearned acclaim means nothing. Personal promotion is artistic death.”

Just as Raymond was about finished with his spleen venting, an envelope flew out of the crate and landed in the grass at his feet. Raymond dropped the box, picked up the envelope and opened it.

No note inside.

Instead, Raymond found a small handbook with the title “Gloxy Oxtornity Device” printed on its cover. The inside pages were a detailed set of instructions. Diagrams plotting out the construction of some sort of machine.

Raymond looked back in through his house’s open front door to the metal mess inside.

“Success and mass acclaim,” Mkei had said once, “is irrelevant to artistic growth.”

“Lovely day!” A neighbor on his morning walk called to Raymond as he passed by the driveway. And Raymond waved to the neighbor, though the wave meant nothing to either of them.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be something I wasn’t: I’ve been a child and wanting to be a teenager, a teenager wishing I were in college, in college impatiently waiting to become a man, and a man, wishing I was a better man. My whole life, I’ve felt like the pet dog at dinner, heeled, on the ground, snout on his master’s lap, hoping, waiting for a chance to have even a morsel of the meal that lay just inches away. With the smell assaulting me, I’d salivate at the thought of devouring it, but only managing to obtain a taste of the crumbs that fell from the kings that sat above me. I’m an old man now. I’m tired. I’m leaving.

The bad weather. It would come one day when the fall was over. We would have to shut the windows in the night against the rain and the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in Ithaca. Soon, the aesthetic pleasures of fall would be meddled with and wiped away by the white snowdrifts; our moods flew south with the ducks.

I am going to miss the ducks. They paddled close to my dock. I often went out there to read, or strum my old but trusty acoustic. It needed new strings. Penelope would always throw the ducks bread, and soon a crowd would gather. She loved to imitate their sounds and quacks. I would sit and smile. It was getting too cold to eat dinner out there, but we would often graze on bruschetta and full bodied reds while the main dishes finished cooking. She loved my cooking, as undistinguished as I thought it was, but that had always made me feel all right. The wine and the meal and perhaps a few beers were sure to keep me full, but with enough energy left to write after the sun had withdrawn under the stretching silhouetted tree line opposite our unassuming lake house.

Though still plenty of fine days to be had and enjoyed, the arrival of the dreaded weather was in sight now. Just a few minutes down a darkening road. Left with the choice to wallow or savor, I chose to exclusively wear Hawaiian shirts, drink spirits and work often and with my own heat - along with the new fireplace – that would be warmth enough to avoid the toil of winter living. Though as I architected this mantra, the voice of doubt, which I fought hard to ignore, sang its hymn deep and proud and in stereo. And eventually, it was all I could ever hear.

I left around eight on Thursday. I let P - as I called her, despite her disapproval – sleep, or more appropriately, I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye. I stopped in a Podunk gas station before departure. Gas, oil, wiper fluid; I would need coffee. “Do you need room for cream?” asked the clerk, a girl of no more than 20 with a pallid face still afflicted by the scars and memories of acne and adolescence. “Just leave room for the lid,” I instructed. I always took it black in those days. Her eyes told me she had 15 minutes left in this abhorrent shift of menial, meaningless labor; but the truth was that she had years. In the car, I alternated sips on an organic cigarette and freshly brewed cup to compliment each other for the five hours I had ahead of me.

I recalled that morning: the sky had less color than I could ever remember. When I looked across the endless pine covered landscape of central New York, the sun was nowhere to be seen. Not only that, the atmosphere looked as though the sun had never been there in the first place. I couldn’t stop looking. I knew of the sun. I loved it, it has been a source of friendship. But where had it gone? I looked in all directions. There were no traces of anything save for this endlessly bleak and bloodless sky and this troubled me. There will be eight minutes from the point of which the sun burns out, and the time we can no longer see it’s bright, and resplendent rays. Had that harrowing day arrived?

Hours later, the sky was black and clear and crisp and beautiful. I’d made it. The stars shone and reflected upon my windshield, which was finally clean: I ran out of wiper fluid two weeks prior and since I was driving with a suspended license, under the influence, and over the speed limit, I didn’t want a dirty windshield to arouse any suspicions among young officers who needed to fill their ticket quotas for the evening. I don’t know if it was recklessness, or just indifference, but the prospect of being arrested and losing my car, injected no fear into my bloodstream. I had other things on my mind, yet it was still far from wise to burn bridges I very well would have to drive over again. Ignoring my provident sensibilities, and a phone call from P, I pressed on into the night along the empty, bending road.

Once, in a magazine, he’d read that a liberal application of foreplay could compensate for a sub-par sexual performance. Using this as a template, he made his way down to frolic face first in her forested meadow. There he smelled familiar flowers, heard the soar of familiar moans above, and felt at ease. New plan. He would continue these oral acrobatics until she passed out—or at least until her parents came home.

Concerning gravity, what goes up must come down, while concerning foreplay, what goes down must come up. An unbreakable law of sexual thermodynamics, and it had slipped his mind. In time she wrenched his tongue from her nethers, and placed it between her teeth. He knew then that his plan had backfired. Instead of placation, he had achieved titillation, turning a presumed penetration into an inevitability.

The woman wasted little time. She reached across the bed and produced a condom wrapped in orange foil. Lifestyles. Ribbed for Her Pleasure. The man let out a sigh of relief. Good, the ribs will take care of everything.

The man understood the principles of what was to follow. Shaft. Hole. Insert. Remove. Repeat. But three years of rabid porn viewing had muddied his certainty about the particulars. Porn is a world of receded testicles slamming against prolapsed anuses, and 10x zoomed vaginas oozing ejaculate. Porn is a world concerned only with the ends: one that has little time to point out the means.

His penis, an object of unprecedented familiarity, felt suddenly alien and obtrusive. Confused, he started to poke her. Distraught, he poked harder. In a little under 17 seconds he managed to probe her navel, buttocks, and grundle without once making the slightest contact with her labia.

Then it came as a shooting star: sudden, explosive, ultimately fleeting. The nothingness of air gave way to a warm nestling, and even the woman’s face, previously contemplating the mold stains on the ceiling, showed a slight tweak of the eyebrows. But it left sooner than it had come, leaving him yet again to flap his latex sheathed rod in the wind.

It was then that the woman, in a quite literal fashion, took matters into her own hands. He did not mind the ease with which she slipped him inside, but her sudden change of direction left him suspicious.

Moans followed. Not sexy. Monotonous, rehearsed. Like vocal exercises in drama class. He checked her chest for clarification. No flush. No contractions of the vaginal walls, either. Certainly no increase in wetness. In fact, with each passing second he sensed an increasing aridness. Her moans turned to grunts. Her hands flailed, pulling and tugging at whatever she could find.

No, he thought to himself. Something is not right. There’s no way I’m this good. There’s no way I’m even fractionally this good. A woman flopping and floundering perhaps. But a woman writhing?

The revelation came with a swiftness he wished his hips could emulate. She was preparing to fake on him.

A man confronted with unspeakable evil has but two courses: submit and be consumed, or become that very evil in the hopes of destroying it. The man chose the latter. He chose to become what he feared most. He chose to fake his own orgasm.

The desertification of the vagina was almost complete. Time was of the essence. Using what little wetness remained, he built to a steady rhythm. He pulled out only as shallow as he dared, knowing if he slipped out entirely the lips would close forever. In time he began to palpitate his own breathing. Moments before she closed the deal, he pushed himself the full depth of her, closed his eyes, quivered his right leg and held his breath. After a believable three seconds he exhaled an exaggerated breath, fluttered his eyelids, and let a small droplet of saliva splash onto her breasts. He fell atop her, wheezing, snorting, his lips mashed against her collarbone. It was a revolting sight, no doubt. But she could not argue with its authenticity.

“Get off,” she grunted

Not one to upset her further, he pulled out and ran to the bathroom to dispose of the evidence. There he shed a tear of respect for the fallen condom, en route to sexual purgatory, never fulfilling its intended purpose. A face full of denim welcomed him back into the room. He peeled them off to find the woman already dressed, clacking bubbles with her lips, avidly tapping the keys on her cell phone. The man dressed with haste and silence, not quite sure what to say.

She took the initiative.

“Remember the number I gave you when we left the bar,” she asked.

“No,” he answered truthfully

“Good,” she cut.

But a wave of embarrassment did not follow. He felt instead a warm and impregnable numbness. As a somnambulist he left the room, head in clouds, toes dragging across the asphalt. There had been no ejaculation. No pleasure. No ecstasy. The whole experience had more or less resembled a siege on a castle wall. But he was no longer a virgin, because as long as you get it in it still counts, right?

That night he regaled his younger siblings with the mysteries of the fairer sex. He phoned friends, and hinted of a story to tell. A story, unknown to them, that he would embellish and transform at his leisure. No one needed to know every harrowing detail of room 24-17 B. He’d keep certain facts intact—lack of stamina, mismatched experience—for believability’s sake. But the rest was his to do with what he would. Once home, his newfound manhood would glisten and shine amid the drab virginity of his friends. They would flock to him, honor him, admire him, and with a gracious wave of his hand, he would bestow onto them all that he had learned.

In the land the virgin, the man who kind of, sort of, almost had sex is king.