Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Or is it? All characters herein are imaginary. Or are they? All events described here are fictitious. Oh, really? All locales described here are real and actual. If you had been to the unnamed places, you would recognize them. But this story is not to be taken seriously. Or is it? All sexual activity depicted here involves human persons at least 18 years old. Really.
--01-- (1965)
Your eye is a magic camera lens.
A scene opens before you, a birds-eye view of a colonial city, a tawdry slum maze in maybe Veracruz or Cartagena or Buenos Aires.
Your eye moves toward a nondescript hotel, towards and through a grimy window.
The room is not large, and its dirty-white plaster and paint are peeling.
One wall bears a calendar of the current year, 1965, topped with a garish color print of a half-naked woman with rather improbable breasts. A crucifix and its torn bloody figure adorn another wall.
Battered wood furniture furnishes the room: chifforobe, narrow table and chair, an old steamer trunk with its labels scraped off, a bedstand, a single bed with bedpan underneath.
The bedstand holds a clay water jug with a chipped cup over its top, and an open bottle of
aguardiente
, the cheapest raw rum.
A pale man sits on the bed, dressed in worn suit trousers, a shirt that was once white, loose suspenders, a muddy tie. He is old, balding, pudgy, tired.
His trousers and boxers pool around his ankles. Kneeling between his spread knees, a cheap not-young prostitute has his flaccid penis in her mouth, gamely working at his arousal.
He reaches for the rum bottle, drinks, lies back on the bed, and waits for release.
His frayed suit coat hangs on the hard chair next to the table. In the coat pockets are cigarettes, matches, a few bills of the local currency, and his United States passport.
Your magic camera eye opens the passport and reads.
NAME: Carl Phillip Denham
BIRTHDATE: July 14, 1901
BIRTHPLACE: Trenton, NJ
OCCUPATION: Impresario
Denham is a restless man. A fugitive. After the dramatic events over three decades ago, with the deaths and damage caused by the great beast he had unwittingly released upon New York City, he has been hiding from police and survivors and lawyers and their hirelings.
Beauty may have killed the beast, but the beast certainly destroyed Denham's life. All that remains of his life is contained in his trunk: newspaper clippings, posters, photos, a big envelope stuffed with shanks of the great beast's hair, other mementos.
Denham is tired of life on the run, tired of everything. He has decided to return stateside as quietly as possible. Nobody will notice if he crosses the border at Nogales. He needs to see the Driscolls. He owes them explanations, and more.
Denham finally ejaculates into the prostitute's mouth. He pays her; she wipes her face, and leaves. Dehnam looks abstractly at his room, not really seeing it. The great beast still fills his mind's eye. He shakes himself, stands, packs his loose belongings into the steamer trunk. He rolls the trunk out the door.
Your magic eye closes for now.
--02-- (1969)
Susan Driscoll yawned herself into near-consciousness. She crawled out from the sprawl of sleeping bodies surrounding her and staggered into the commune’s biggest bathroom. She relieved herself and found her way into the shower. An icy drenching snapped her eyes open. Warmer water finally arrived; she soaped her long chestnut hair and lean body, scrubbing away the night’s residues.
"Shit," she thought, "I could use a good brainwashing right now, too." She tried to remember how many cocks and cunts she had consumed the night before, and the nights before that, and failed.
She did not mind the sex. Sex was just fine and groovy. But jeez, was she the only person here who ever *washed* themselves? The label "dirty hippies" was apparently coined for this crowd.
Sue was born in the last days of World War II. She had graduated from Berkeley with a worthless Liberal Arts degree during the "Summer of Love" and had fallen headfirst into the freaky subculture.
These last two years had seen her drifting among communes and crashpads and rough campsites. The kaleidoscopic life had been fun for a while, but was rapidly growing old and moldy.
"Maybe I should go back home, spend some time straightening out my head and reassessing things," Sue thought. "At least I won’t catch any more lice there."
Sue managed to choke-down a communal breakfast of raisin oatmeal and Mormon tea. She loaded her backpack and started thumbing her way home. Eventually, she arrived.
-----
Jack Driscoll and Ann Darrow had married and built a life for themselves after their terrifying encounters with the great beast. Jack had quit the transoceanic freighters, settled in the sheltered port of a small fishing village on the Mendocino coast north of San Francisco, and bought a small trawler. Captain Jack's life now was solid, not exciting. He liked it that way.
The Driscolls never talked about excitement.
Their youngest daughter Susan jumped out from her last ride, a pickup driven by a grubby and grabby lumber mill worker. Sue hiked down from the two-lane coast highway, through the village, to the built-out grey saltbox where she had been raised.
She walked across the neighboring yard on the familiar shortcut to her front door. A blond woman in the shingled house's side yard looked up from her laundry-hanging task, dropped her work, and came running.
"Sue! Sue! You're back!" Kathy yelled as she embraced and kissed Sue, shoving the pack from her shoulders.
Sue hugged and kissed her best friend hungrily in return. Sue and Kathy had grown up in these two houses, inseparable buddies from kindergarten till the day Sue left for university. When they discovered boys, they had also discovered each other. They taught each other about sexual pleasure during their sleepovers.
Kathy and Sue both liked hunky boys, too. Kathy, then just 17, married a classmate one week after they graduated high school. Dave Carwell had quickly worked his way up to supervising a lumber crew.
Weeks before their first child was born, a drunk driver killed Kathy’s parents. The young Carwells moved from their apartment into the old family home Kathy inherited.
Kathy kissed Sue again and looked into her eyes.
"Sue, your folks are up in Eureka for a few days while the trawler's engine is overhauled. You *are* going to stay with us till they get back, and don't you dare argue! C'mon in, you look like you need a drink."
Kathy linked one arm in Sue's, hoisted the backpack with her other hand, and dragged Sue through her door.
"Shower first, drink later," Sue said. "I have lotsa miles to wash off me."
"We'll do both," Kathy said. She grabbed a screw-top wine bottle from a shelf and pulled Sue to the bathroom.
They stood together under a spray of hot water, sudsing their hair and bodies, rubbing and kissing and laughing, drinking from the wine bottle and spraying sultry shots into each other's mouth.
"Now you're coming to bed, no arguments, y'hear? We have at least an hour before the girls are home from school. Dave sure will be glad to see you this evening, too."
Their lovemaking soothed and fulfilled Sue much more than the communal orgies she had experienced for so long. And Sue avidly awaited Dave's return. On her previous visits home, he was an active and sensitive participant of her sleepovers. She dreamed of his smiling face, his track-star physique, his long cock.
But right now was for Sue and Kathy alone. Their tongues and fingers maneuvered across and into their total landscape, tip-top to toes, to tits, to fingertips, to twats. They 69'd with lazy fervor, slowly drowning in flavor and juice and flesh and lifelong love and hope. They finally rolled apart, gasping.
"Oh shit, look at the time, we've gotta clean up and get dressed, the kids'll be here any minute now."
The pair of cute tow-headed first- and second-graders broke from their cluster of classmates and ran squealing when they saw Aunty Suzy standing in the doorway with their mom. Sue managed to hold one girl in each arm as they assaulted her. They told Sue that she smelled like Mommy. Sue and Kathy just giggled.
Dave arrived after dusk. His sweaty face split into a huge grin when he saw Sue. Dave and Sue hugged and kissed passionately, long and hard. Kathy circled her arms around her best friends and lovers.
"Whew, Dave, you sure do stink! And Sue, you've got kids' slobber all over your face and arms. You two better go jump in the shower right now."
Sue squatted in the shower. She savored Dave's engorged cock, teased with her tongue, and inhaled the rigid rod as deeply as she could.
They shifted. Sue's shoulders slumped against the tiled wall as Dave's groin slammed against her from behind, his balls slapping her tasty flesh, his cock pounding into her love-drenched portal.
They shifted again. Sue and Dave passionately held and frenched each other as their grime and fluids and tensions washed away down the drain.
They emerged from the bath dried and draped in light robes. Kathy had changed into a similar robe, the Carwells' usual eveningwear. After dinner, two animated young girls swarmed Sue in her easy chair, demanding stories and kisses, and yet more stories.
Fatigue eventually triumphed over excitement. Little Nancy and littler Julie were carried to bed.
Kathy and Dave snuggled into Sue on the couch. Their arms were loose around each other.
"Damn girl, we sure have missed you! Me and Kathy just don't feel whole when you ain't here. We're sure glad you can be with us for a while. So, why are you back here? What's actually happened with you? I know you couldn't talk about it when the kids were up. You been having hard times, or what?"
"I feel like I've been royally fucked, and not in a good way. When I left Berkeley, I thought, 'Hey, I'm a grown woman now, I can handle anything.' Fuck that. Here I am, almost twenty-five, and I haven't done piss-all for myself or anyone else. At least I have an idea now of what *doesn't* work for me. So I'm going to stay home for a while, think about possibilities, about how I want to spend my life."
"You're staying here for now? Hot damn! I guarantee we'll help you feel good about yourself."
