"All sins tend to be addictive; the terminal point of addiction is damnation."
-- W. H. Auden
* * *
"Is this what you want to do?"
Once his cum erupted deep within her she fingered and gripped at her cunt and with that all his tautness fled from his body. There was a dull sigh, carried away by the desert wind, as the orgasm peaked and faded. She paused. There were still sweat stains and tear marks that she had been carrying with her all that day, mixed in with what was happening right at that moment, but she didn't care. She wanted to keep feeling that sensation -- of where he had licked her, of where he had even tried to bite her. More cum clung to her hair, her lashes, her chin. Her swollen nipples looked as hard as his cock had just felt a few moments ago. Her left hand was still between her parted legs, as she squatted above him, looking down at him, peering into his upturned face, trying to see if anything visible had changed now that she had just climaxed and all the while her fingers moved across her clit in slow, lazy circles.
"Yes, this is what you wanted to do, isn't it?"
Sex, they say, changes everything. The desert had never flooded the way she was feeling right then. She was fucking Niagara Falls, which she had seen once, right after a heavy ice flow. Already she could feel him softening inside her, little by little, as his blood-shot eyes rolled up in his skull, as she listened to his rhythmic, labored breathing, a creaking noise deep in his throat as if he were trying to talk. Was this the best that he could manage right at that moment? Pillow talk was definitely a dying art. What was it with the 19th century? If science could invent penicillin, she reasoned, couldn't it do something about post-coital conversations?
Then, again, she hadn't fucked him for his witty bon mot.
She shifted her ass, trying to get more comfortable, and in doing so felt his limp cock
plop
out of her, lay cooling against his own thigh. So that was that, it would not rise again. Sort of like the South, in that regard. Let Appomattox be a syphilitic metaphor for Johnny Reb putting his cock somewhere it didn't belong and all the maladies that weak-willed men reap upon themselves when avarice, greed and rapacity whisper in their souls. She had read that the first well-documented outbreak of syphilis had occurred less than four-hundred odd years ago, in 1494, afflicting one Bertholmeu le Jandre, a French soldier stationed at Chastenay, and that
"the disease transformed his body, its pustules covering him from the head to knee, causing the flesh to fall from his face, leading to death within months."
Wasn't that what the whole so-called Confederate States of America had been suffering from? A form of syphilis no Northern government could cure? The terminal point of all those dark, selfish desires that had run rabid through the Antebellum South? Perhaps. She could tell by his accent that this bit of mortal clay hailed from somewhere southeasterly of the Mason-Dixon line and so it naturally got her thinking.
She had been thinking a lot of late. When one has left home and has no idea where to go then thinking comes easy.
She had been thinking as her wagon swayed over the hill and the mask on her face slipped a little --
what a friggin' pain in the ass!
-- getting grit and Arizona alkali dust underneath into the deep fleshy purple parts. She groaned. She could either stop the wagon, go into the back and look for a salve, or keep going. She rubbed her knees together under her calico dress in irritation. She knew where the salve was, under the frying pan. She knew that because it was where she had flung it during the last time this happened. Biblical lepers didn't get as much grit under their skin as she did. She hated grit. It got ... everywhere, except inside her wagon. She made sure of that. She needed the illusion of cleanliness for her trade. Anyone entering would see that the floor of the wagon was beautifully carpeted with an ancient tapestry taken from the looms of pre-Christian Armenia. It was a house divided so that the far end comprised a little hidden berth, the suggestion of a nun's cloistered pleasure-garden, or, if the customer had never seen a nun, then perhaps it reminded him of the bunks aboard an Orkney dory or a Chinese junk. A customer could almost make out the silhouette of a bed, draped, like the four cheery windows, with splendid green and gold and red veils. The fore part of the wagon functioned as a kitchen, a girl had to eat somewhere. It was fitted up with a stove, the sort whose tin-pipe chimney passed through the roof in a crooked, jaunty manner. In theory, the stove was built to burn coal, but out here dried buffalo dung also worked and had the advantage of being free. The small space also contained a larder, several bound chests, a great pitcher of water with a lead stopper to prevent spilling and a few cooking-knives, kettles and pots. These latter indispensables were hung upon the wall on a curious cork-board all of her own design that allowed them to sway in unison as the wagon crested every rise in the hills and hit each pothole in the prairie, bouncing around like pendulums on an armless clock or great bullgod testicles set between the thighs of the most flaccid of all eunuchs.
Fucking grit. She decided to keep going. Irritating, though the itch was, she did not think stopping would solve anything. Scratching at it just made things worse. No, better to gaze steadily ahead and ignore the itch.
Twenty minutes later she had officially stopped for the night, ransacked the kitchen until she had found the tube of pink, foul-smelling ointment. Bless the Chinese and all their medicine, she thought as she lathered it across her face, feeling the cool blunt chill sink deep down into her infected jaw, numbing everything it touched. Why couldn't life be more like this? Numb. That's all she really wanted. Well, yes, numb but with the ability to still feel pleasure. She wasn't going to give that up when it came her way.
Pleasure. It was a glorious, glorious word to say on a glorious, glorious night. It was a black, moonless sky; a sky made to create fear in the heart of mortals. Fear and pleasure. She sat on the little back porch of her wagon and stared up into the cosmos. Her wagon brought her pleasure. It was less a wagon, really, and more a cottage on four massive wheels. Brass brackets supported the fabric and the walls were highly decorated with ornate scroll work and carvings taken from
The Song of Songs,
rude figures running around the length of the wagon. Didn't they always?
She listened for signs of life. Not even the soft sigh of the wind greeted her ear. The vaulting heavens, a great, incomprehensible dome, seemed within the touch of her hand. Didn't it always? All she needed to do was stretch a little bit more.
Instead, she dropped to the ground, letting the day-hot sand burn its way into her toes, her curved nails, the flat pads of her feet. It tickled, but not in a bad way. She took a step forward, the sand grinding beneath her. Another step and then another. Wasn't this what life was all about? These sensations; primal as salt motes pressing against the soles of her feet. There was great joy in just being able to move her toes about.
She moved forward across the sand, maskless, naked, her breasts swaying, the wild fire hedge of her crotch ablaze, the great yew-boles of her ass cheeks rising and falling as she moved, all her flesh shivering and glittering as the day's sweat evaporated, leaving behind dozens of secret, salt-dried tracks, as if snails had crawled hither and yon across her body. They say the only light in a desert at night are shooting stars and scorpions feeding upon their young. But scorpions are not the only bodies that know how to glow when the moon does show its face. She stood still in her tracks, listening once more to the oppressive silence. She was alone on the high plains, alone in the great world, the last living heart beating in a million years of stone.
"God damn it!" a voice croaked, breaking the spell. Then, "I say, howdy, woman! Got any wet?" The voice appeared to have erupted down at her feet, like a gnawer suddenly thrusting its snout out from the hot sand. "Heh. Got thrown this morning. The mare but kicked me a good one right before she left. Been crawling all day. Strike me a match, will you? God damn, but it's dark!"