were greeting a sold-out stadium.
I’d never seen anybody so amped in my life.
The moment I killed the engine and turned to face him, Hans had his giant hands around my shoulders and was practically shaking me like a rag doll.
“Holy shit, Bumblebee! You lost ’em! You motherfucking lost ’em!” A manic grin split his face. “You turned into fucking Angelina Jolie from Gone in Sixty Seconds back there! Where the fuck did you learn to drive like that?”
Ever distractible, I watched Hans’s eyes flick down to my still-exposed breasts mid thought, and his hand impulsively reached out to stroke one of my nipple rings. Hearing my gasp, Hans glanced back up at me, as if he’d just remembered where he was.
He shook his head and continued in a more serious tone, “That was the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Before I could formulate a response to all that flattery, I found myself plastered against the driver-side door as seventy-five inches of tall, dark, and tattooed ravaged my mouth, neck, still bared breasts, and still swollen pussy with every appendage in his arsenal. I’d never seen Hans so ravenous.
And knowing I had done that to him made me feel like maybe I was special after all. Maybe, just maybe, I did have things to offer him that other women didn’t.
From that day on, anytime my old familiar insecurities reared their ugly flat chests, I would simply pull that shiny memory out of my pocket and rub it like a talisman until all the self-deprecating feelings melted away in a blaze of twinkling lights and churning black water and hushed I love yous and high-speed pursuits with happy endings.
* * *
1 Fluorocarbon emulsion is what the 1989 movie The Abyss called that pink-liquid oxygen shit that the divers had to learn how to breathe in to dive deeper into the ocean. I’m pretty sure James Cameron must have gotten the idea for it after a mid-July layover in Atlanta.
I Was in a Basement, Surrounded by Phantom Limbs
December 7
Dear Journal,
So…I might have gotten a little carried away with my last SPJTKINNATRE entry. And I was really starting to enjoy having never been punched in the face, too.
Not to make light of domestic violence or anything, but you know how every once in a while you hear about some crazy bitch getting smacked by her boyfriend/husband/girlfriend, and you think, Good. That skank had it coming.
No?
Well, guess what, Journal? Pretty soon, I’m going to be that person in your life. I’m going to be the person who makes you question all your wholesome morals because when Ken reads that last entry and promptly kicks the shit out of me, you’re going to think, Good job, Ken. I hope you punched her in her smelly whore cunt.
Then, you’re going to have to go to church and say, like, a zillion Hail Marys to get rid of the guilt and waste your whole Sunday getting right with the Lord again. So, basically, I owe the entire world an apology, including God and especially my children, who will probably be placed in protective custody what with all the domestic violence flying around at our house.
It might even be worth it if that journal entry had been true. In reality, the best sex I ever had was significantly colder, dirtier, and just all-around more dungeony. Rather than a luxurious, magical, liquid fairyland in the sultry heat of summer, the actual act took place in a dingy linoleum-floored, wood-paneled basement…in a bed blanketed with dust and mouse droppings...in the dead of winter. And instead of being enveloped by the majesty of a million twinkling lights, we were surrounded by Hans’s hopefully sleeping bandmates, who happened to be scattered all over the floor.
After most of their shows, Hans and the rest of his Phantom Limbs bandmates would head over to the lead singer’s illegitimate redneck father’s little shack of a place to crash for the night. (Trip—short for his stage name, XXX—got every bit of his perverted personality from his father. The first time I went to his dad’s house the man stumbled over, reeking of brown liquor and creepiness, winked at me, and then handed Trip a tiny flashlight, “In case things got freaky.” No shit.)
Exhausted from a particularly badass show and wasted beyond belief, the guys shuffled into the basement one by one and pretty much passed out the moment their faces met the linoleum floor. Except for Hans.
Watching him perform always turned me on, but