House of Holes Read online

“Sure, I’m game,” said Shandee.

  “You’ve arrived here on what’s called a work-study scholar-ship,” Lila said. “We’ve got dozens of men arriving every day, with their wallets. The rush is on. We scan them for badness when they rematerialize—we’ll find any of nineteen diseases, cough, runny nose, STDs, of course. Is it nineteen, Zilka, or twenty-three now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Zilka.

  “At least nineteen diseases, plus any tendency toward thieving, scamming, or violent behavior. Which doesn’t mean some real a-holes don’t get in.”

  “For instance, what’s his name, Pootie,” said Zilka, folding Ruzty’s pants.

  “Pootie was awful. So we screen them. And we know that some of these arrivals are nervous and uncertain, as well as extremely good looking, and they need a good friendly penis scrub. That’s what we want help with at the moment. From you.”

  Ruzty was standing completely naked, his hands crossed over his crotch. “Excuse me?” he said. “Hello?”

  Lila turned. “Hon, what’s your name, sir?”

  “Ruzty. I’m from Vermont.”

  “Well, Ruzty from Vermont, I don’t see how you can have a problem with getting naked for a brief Penis Wash tutorial. We need to show Shandee the way we do it here at the House of Holes—the old-fashioned up-country way. Zilka?”

  Zilka guided Ruzty onto the massage table, and the three women leaned over him. Zilka stroked his short hair. Lila stroked his chest muscles and right shoulder. “Aren’t you a smooth sight, oh my,” she said. “A regular Marky Mark.”

  Shandee caught Ruzty’s eye and smiled at him. He rolled his eyes. “Sorry,” he said, in his fetching accent.

  Zilka held up two orange mittens. “Okay, so your job is to put on these sponge mittens and go out and wash the men who pass by you on the line. It’s like a car wash. And the way you do it—”

  “Excuse me, let me just interject,” said Lila. “It’s like a car wash with only luxury sport coupes, Ferraris, Miatas, etcetera. The men who go through the Penis Wash are personally selected either by me or by Aunt Maven or by somebody in charge. They are some of the tip-toppest-looking men who come in. So it’s an honor to be washed on the Penis Wash, and it’s an honor to be a penis washer. Both. Now carry on, Zilka, you’re doing good.”

  Zilka held up her mitten. “Now we don’t have any warm-water sprayer in here to show you, but on the wash station you have a sprayer that hangs from the ceiling, and you have foot pedals and you spray the man down, like this, shpffffffssssssh, all around his crotch and his scrotum, get it all wet and sloppy, and then you pull down the soap hose, and you spray that on him and then you take your gloves and work the suds all up like this, squoosh squoosh squoosh.” She made pretend scrubbing motions an inch over Ruzty’s crotch. Ruzty crossed his hands over his chest and beamed at Shandee.

  “Can I talk to the man as I’m scrubbing him?” asked Shandee.

  “Yes,” said Zilka.

  “Of course you can,” said Lila. “They don’t really know what’s happening yet. They’ve just arrived, and this is the first time that they’ve been naked here. So yes, talk to them if you want. It’s a matter of style. This experience is important, and your job is to make sure that they’re clean and they’re happy. Happy and clean.”

  “But you can’t take too long,” said Zilka, “because you’re at a spray station and you only have a few minutes, and you have to be sure they’re all rinsed off.”

  Lila made a conceding nod. “You don’t want to be leaving them soapy,” she said. “And you can scrub them all over, not just their crotches, obviously. But try not to spray directly in their faces, unless they want you to.”

  “I think I’ve got the basic principle,” said Shandee. “Can I see how the gloves feel?”

  Zilka handed them to her, and Shandee put them on. She winked at Ruzty and began an aerial simulation. “So I spray him all over, fffffff, and then I suds him up, like this, and I suds around all over his nice chest and his stomach and I suds all around his thighs, and higher up, and I get to his balls, and I suds his cock, like this—”

  “Look at him,” said Zilka. “And look at his cock, wow.” Ruzty’s cock was leaning dramatically to one side.

  “Oh my goodness, our boy’s got a banana cock!” said Lila.

  “That’s why I am shy,” Ruzty said. “When it gets hard it curves sharply to the left. Almost a full ninety degrees when it’s very hard, as it is now. It has been true my whole life. Once I had a girlfriend who said it was my progressive penis. But actually I’m a libertarian.” He lifted it to show them. It was heavy and hard, like a shepherd’s crook. “It can straighten some, you see? I am trying to overcome many years of embarrassment because some women say that they like a strong curve.”

  “Oh, some women love a curve,” said Lila. “Am I right, Shandee?”

  “Sure, I guess,” Shandee said. But she was in shock. She hadn’t seen that many penises in her life, and she had never seen one shaped like that. It was extreme, and it was extremely exciting. Also there was something distracting happening low down on her leg. She looked toward the floor. Dave’s arm was gripping her ankle and squeezing it fussily. “Oh, I’m sorry, Davie,” she said, “did you crawl all the way over here from my bag? Oh, my dear. Isn’t that sweet. I’m sorry.” She gave the sponge mittens back to Zilka and lifted Dave’s arm. Then she felt flummoxed. “You two have met, I think,” she said.

  Lila wanted to wind things up. “And we will help you find Dave,” she said. “But now it’s time for you, Shandee, to go to your hotel and check in. Tomorrow you’ll do the Penis Wash for real. I’ll watch over Dave’s arm back here, if you don’t mind. He’s such a heartbreaker, isn’t he? I do love a veiny hand.”

  “I think I’ll take Dave with me, if that’s all right,” said Shandee, a little crisply.

  “Of course, hon,” said Lila. “And Ruzty, thank you for being our teaching aid. I really think you’re going to have to adopt a sideways stance at the cumshot competition.”

  Ruzty sat up—his penis, fortunately, had subsided. “Yes, I will stand almost sideways,” he said. “But I will still make my come go quite far that way, I think.”

  “Good for you,” said Lila. “And thank you, Zilka, for your tips, and let’s see if we can get Ruzty in on tomorrow afternoon’s penis scrub with the other men, if there’s a slot, and we’ll put Shandee on the main station, okay?”

  “Is this how I should be dressed tomorrow?” asked Shandee. “Just a man’s shirt and crocheted leggings?”

  Everyone nodded enthusiastically. Ruzty couldn’t take his shining eyes off her.

  “Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing,” said Lila. “Tomorrow, if you’re inclined, go ahead and stroke the men’s penises. Make them feel good. But gently. Do not ever, ever jerk them through to a climax. If you do, their enthusiasm will flag, and they won’t spend their life savings on activities here at the House. Scrub, don’t tug.”

  “Scrub, don’t tug, got it,” said Shandee. “I guess I’ll get back to the hotel now.” Like never before, Shandee felt the blood slamming in her bursting clit. She was beside herself. She had to get somewhere private. “See you soon, Ruzty,” she said, putting every emotion she had into her good-bye smile.

  “See you,” said Ruzty.

  Zilka took her to the hotel room. Shandee said good-bye to her and closed the door and took off her clothes. She pulled out Dave. “Oh, Dave, I missed you so much,” she said. “I want to sit on your hand so bad. Can I sit on your hand?”

  Dave’s fingers wiggled yes. Shandee positioned his hand on the corner of the bed, and she sat down on it and crushed her pussy into his fingers and worked her hips in circles. “Give me a couple of stiff fingers up there, Davie,” she said. She felt them slip up inside her, and whoo that was good! She bounced up and down on Dave’s hand for a while, and then saw a bowl of fruit and said, “Wait, Dave, I want you to hold this orange.” She put a navel orange in his palm and then sh
e lowered herself onto its thick bumpy skin, cool against her opening pussyhole. She circled around the orange for a while—rocked and rolled on it—crushing Dave’s knuckles into the bedspread.

  Then she pulled a green banana off the fruit bowl. “Dave, please hold this big banana straight up for me.”

  He did, of course, being a gentleman of an arm, and she admired how curvy and upsticking it was—“a banana cock,” Lila had said of Ruzty. She remembered the sight of Ruzty’s cock getting hard in Lila’s office. “Dave, I want to fuck this green banana so bad,” she said. She pulled her pussy open so that she could see it push in, and Dave’s arm held it steady for her. She felt the unripe fruit drive curvingly deep inside her till she was well and truly socketed.

  “Dave, please help me come,” she said. “Please fuck the banana in me.” Dave moved it and jiggled it, and she circled her fingers one way and then the other over her crimson clit. She started to come with her legs and her hips, and she smashed herself down on Dave’s banana fist and ground into it and said, “Grrrr,” and watched herself in the mirror humping on the corner of the bed. As her orgasm found its way up her legs, her whole body went clong, clong, clong. “Oh, that’s it, Dave,” she said. But in her mind she was thinking, Ruzty, Ruzty, I love your eyes and face, and I wish you could see me coming.

  Cardell Has a Sherry Cobbler

  Cardell worked at the planning office of a small city, planning brick crosswalks and trying to figure out where people could park. It was interesting work, but he wanted to meet a nice, smart, sexy woman, so he went to a lecture on the history of the municipal water supply and sat down on a folding chair next to a woman with mustard-colored stockings. There was a good crowd, but unfortunately the lecturer had a boring singsong voice. Cardell’s assbones hurt from sitting and his mind was aswirl with obscene imagery, cocks being stuffed everywhere, women’s eyes suddenly going wide in surprise. He began to think more and more about the woman next to him. He liked her mustard-colored knees poking out from the hem of her skirt. She had a little notebook and she was drawing a picture of a cocktail glass. Below that, she’d written “He doesn’t know anything” and underlined it twice.

  When the audience questions began, Cardell leaned toward her and asked her to the roof bar of a nearby hotel. “I noticed your doodle,” he said, in his thrummiest voice.

  “You naughty man,” she said. She gave him a speedy once-over and made a single nod. They left as unobtrusively as possible. Turned out her name was Jackie. She sat on a dark-red bar stool and addressed the bartender. “Can you make a sherry cobbler?” she asked.

  He nodded, sure.

  “I’ll take one, too,” Cardell said impulsively. He turned back to Jackie. “What’s a sherry cobbler?”

  “It’s my life’s work,” said Jackie, and moved an eyebrow provocatively. She told Cardell where she taught, and they talked about a big video store near there that had closed recently.

  “Rented a lot of movies there, back in the day,” said Cardell, closing his eyes in nostalgic reminiscence. “Before everything streamed.”

  The drinks came, with straws poking out. Cardell took three enormous sips and nodded, blinking and smacking his lips. The drink was incredibly sweet and strong. And good. “So that’s a sherry cobbler,” he said. “Not particularly subtle—but then, who needs subtle?”

  Jackie sucked hers down greedily. “Damn delicious. I never tire of it. Would you like me to tell you the history of the sherry cobbler?”

  “Tell it in the minutest detail,” Cardell said.

  But Jackie had an odd look. “Wait a sec,” she said. She began breathing strangely and put her hand on Cardell’s arm. “I need your help with something. Stand behind me.”

  Cardell stood behind where she sat on the bar stool. She leaned forward, so that her head was almost on her arms, and pushed her bottom back toward him so that she was almost off the stool.

  “What’s happening?” Cardell asked.

  “Put your hand under my dress.”

  “Here?”

  “Yeah, just pretend you’re whispering something to me. I’m trying to lay an egg.”

  The end of the bar where they were was dark and nobody else was sitting nearby, so it was possible to do as she asked.

  “Now what?”

  “I’m not sure.” Jackie sat for a moment, leaning forward. Then she straightened and brushed the hair out of her eyes. “Nope, not quite yet.”

  Cardell sat back down and finished his drink. “Ah, Nelly!” he said.

  “The great breakthrough,” Jackie was saying, “came in 1842 when Charles Dickens came to the U.S. on his speaking tour. Somebody served him up a big, ice-cold sherry cobbler. It was the first drink made with crushed ice, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Cardell said.

  “Oh, yes. And the first drink people drank through a straw.”

  “Doubly revolutionary,” said Cardell. “Did Charles Dickens like it?”

  “Loved it, and he had his character Martin Chuzzlewit drink one.”

  “Ah, old Chuzzlewit,” Cardell said, in a wuffly English accent. “And where do you come down on the question of the size of Dickens’s dick? Big? Little? Doesn’t matter?”

  “We just don’t know,” said Jackie, with a look of mild ex-asperation. “It’s one of the great mysteries. Now shush and let me tell you about the sherry cobbler.”

  “They’re real good,” said Cardell.

  “Then let’s have two more immediately,” said Jackie. “They’re best drunk as fast as possible.” She ordered with a practiced move of her fingers—this woman knew her way around a bar. “Watch out for the spins, though. There’s a book of Oxford bar recipes that says that sherry cobblers have ‘more than once induced vertigo.’ Published in 1827.”

  “1827, that early, really?”

  She pointed at him. “You see, the straw allowed you to drink the mixture in a supercooled state.”

  “And that’s why Martin Chuzzlewit’s eyes rolled back in his head and he said, ‘Good Lord Nelson O’Reilly, what is this marvel?’ ”

  “Right, he gets totally smashed,” said Jackie. “I mean squashed. And that, you see, ushered in the so-called golden age of the sherry cobbler.”

  “Can I say,” murmured Cardell, wobbling his head seductively, “that I loved feeling the hot heat coming from under your dress?”

  “That’s what it’s there for,” said Jackie.

  “That’s what what’s there for?”

  “My li’l pussy.”

  “Oh, your li’l private space heater. Your hot wet—pooter. Your kitten. Mhm. You know—”

  The second set of drinks arrived. Cardell took a long, cross-eyed slurp from the straw and then sighed hugely. “Cold,” he said.

  “Very. They drank it through straws from a straw-hat factory, and they cooled it with crushed ice from a lake in Massachusetts,” said Jackie.

  “In England, they used American ice? That’s kind of loony.”

  “No, it’s rational, because the Wenham Lake ice was the best ice, and the ice salesmen went over to London and Oxford and Cambridge, and they got the word out. They said, ‘Make this sherry cobbler from our recipe, but you have to use real imported American ice, not the dirty ice from the dirty fish shops and the dirty British rivers, because that ice will make you ill.’ ”

  “And then of course you’ll upchuck, and the spins are no help with that.”

  “Right, ‘Buy our clean innocent ice from the land of America, where there are clean green tree frogs, and clean shiny fish, and a few noble savages going skippity doodah in their immaculate moccasins.’ It was a big business, the transatlantic ice trade. Charles Dickens bought five pounds’ worth of Wenham Lake ice in 1850.” Jackie pointed at Cardell. “We know that for a fact.”

  “Interesting,” said Cardell, rubbing his face vigorously. “You know, the English talk a good game, but they’re such hypocrites. All that business about how vulgar it is to have ice in drinks. Look at th
is freaking peach cobbler!” He held his palms toward his drink. “Just have a look at it!”

  “Now, Cardell,” said Jackie gently, patting Cardell’s hand, “the peach cobbler is a bit different. It’s baked in an oven.”

  “Of course, what am I thinking? Peaches and you bake it. Very different. Very hot. So hot you have to let it cool on your fork or you’ll burn your delicate mouth tissues. This is with ice and a straw and you suck it up greedily.”

  “Shall we summon another?” said Jackie. Again she made one of her expert signals to the bartender. Then she paused, listening. Across the room, the pianist had begun playing.

  “What song is it?” asked Cardell. “It’s very familiar.”

  “It’s Hoagy Carmichael, of course,” she said. “ ‘I get along without you very well.’ ”

  “God, these names. ‘Martin Chuzzlewit,’ ‘Hoagy Carmichael.’ You know, when I’m sitting in some lecture hall, listening to some talk by some really deadly historian—no offense to your profession—my head just gorges itself on obscene images. I can’t help it.”

  “Like what obscene images?” Jackie said. “Be specific.”

  “Oh, you know—” Cardell did some quick self-censorship. “Specifically two people tied together at the knees. Loosely tied together.”

  “Not tied. Oh, please.”

  “What?”

  “That’s such a tired trope—people tying each other up and peeing in mayonnaise jars and whatnot,” said Jackie. “You don’t want that, do you?”

  “Well, no, of course not, but.” Cardell could feel a joywave gathering, a tingling in his lips at the exhilaration of saying what was now in his head. “Imagine two chairs, facing each other. I’m in one, you’re in the other.”

  “Please, Cardell, let’s not make it quite so personal.”

  “Okay, Charles Dickens is in one chair—”

  “Not Dickens.”

  “Okay, that hunky bar pianist is in one and you’re in the other, but you’re not really you, because your mind is gonzo on apple cobblers. I mean sherry. Shorry. And you’re both in your fashionable underwear, and your knees are tied together with long colorful scarves.”