Girl Scout Cookies

The sensation generally lasted as long as it took for a limb to go dead or for one of them to unleash a post-coital fart, the latter the signal for a game of Dutch ovens, which she always lost. Squealing in the hot purulence, she was fascinated by the hydraulics of his detumescence. Did George and Paula do likewise? Did she suck his prick like those whores in the video? Did she fantasize about being double penetrated, one man up her arse and another in her cunt? Regina felt a defensive tightening of her arsehole as she recalled the scene -- O'Malley and the undercover cop, both screwing the dark-haired whore in a prison cell. You want to brawl? All right, I'll brawl. She put her tongue between the heads of their touching penises, which Regina had thought was a bit queer. Also, when they had both simultaneously penetrated her, it had seemed that her only purpose was to be a medium in which the two men might copulate. The extreme close-up of their ejaculating penises against the backdrop of the woman's used orifices had become abstract after a while, the sense of alienation enhanced by the apparent mental breakdowns of the voice actors. George was right about dubbed films.

'Ah Jesus Christ, lads.' Paula had looked over at her, crooked-mouthed with drink. 'Their mickeys are touching...'

'Here's the orgy coming,' said Con.

Are gee. Regina realized at that moment that he would die alone...

...Her headache had subsided but she felt bloated and sugar-mouthed from the lemonade she had drunk. And dirty. She wanted a bath even though she'd only had one the day before. The immersion cost a fortune to put on. Paula had told her that getting a shower in was much cheaper. She'd bug Mike about it...

Through the half-closed slats of the venetian blinds, she could see the washed-out light of morning proper, bland in comparison to the colours of dawn. Mike said it looked like bruises. All of the whores in the film had them to varying degrees. She noticed that she had a new one too, where she had banged her shin getting into the car as they were leaving Con's. It complemented the one on her other leg, just below the knee, which was from the previous weekend. You didn't feel a thing with drink on you. Not until the next day. Perhaps it was the same with the dope the whores were on.

Analgesic, she read from the Anadin tube. You couldn't spell it without anal. She had thought it was something only frustrated animals and homosexuals did but according to pornography, it was every person's ultimate desire. Nancy had begged Roy for it, hadn't she? Why wouldn't he have been feeling cordial?

She had received an intimation of the act's discomfort (and dubious hygiene) on that first evening in Corfu when Mike was still incapable of telling one hole from the other. It was just wrong. She couldn't fully explain her odium but its profundity convinced her that it came from some primal instinct, far removed from conditioning. But maybe the wrongness was the appeal. She thought of defecating during her period, the horror and fascination on beholding the communion of blood and shit upon the toilet paper. Hormonal turmoil weighed heavily upon her flesh, made her conscious of every atom of her gross physicality. At such moments she scorned men and their blithe idiocy concerning fortitude. They hadn't a fucking clue, really...

Her anger was attended upon by a phantasmagoria of violated taboos, one that seemed entirely appropriate to such a state of bodily abjection. Menstruating vulvas getting fucked; shit soiling the tip of a bugger's penis; the brutal sex murders of various bitches she despised. The contrition she felt afterwards was half-hearted, as when she reeled off the Hail Marys of her penance after confession. 'Bad thoughts' was one of her shopping list of sins. The priest was always bored, on auto sky-pilot. Remember Our Lady and the strength with which she bore the trials and sorrows of her own life... She wasn't sure which she resented most, the subtle contempt of his manner or the negative comparison. They used Mary as a stick to beat you with. Especially if you were named for her...

The physical and spiritual emptiness she felt above and beyond her knee-jerk guilt was curiously restful. Through the gap in her thighs, she would stare into the putrid lagoon she had made of the toilet water, feeling a species of the relief that comes with the disappearance of long-suffered pain. (The cramps, however, were never too far away).

The idea that evil could be as analgesic as the Ponstan she ate like sweets made her uncomfortable and she would push it hastily to one side, summoning up memories of her wedding day in its stead. Her mother's hat had dominated an entire pew. Her father was still drunk from the previous night as he led her up the aisle to her equally inebriated fiance, but none of it mattered. The laces of her corset branded x's along the length of her spine as Father Sweetman, who had a speech impediment, spat his way through the ceremony. There were droplets of saliva upon her fingers as Mike gave her the ring. What's this Con had called it the night before? The money shot. She had fretted at it all through the reception, unaccustomed to its presence. It had been easier to manipulate it back then, upon those slim, newlywed fingers...

Happiness makes you fat, her mother used to say. During the speeches, she had caught an occasional sight of the old lady's face, mock-enchanted beneath her enormous, wilting hat. The sourness was still evident in the corners of her mouth. It wasn't so much that she resented well-being as relished misfortune. Funerals and reports of terminal diagnoses were more her style. Cancer. God love us. There was a jauntiness to the pitying shake of the head.

Out on the dancefloor, Regina felt her joy undercut by the purest hatred for both of her parents. It was permitted now. She was free of them. Mike misinterpreted her tears, assuming they were for his benefit. You'll be crying later on, too, he breathed into her ear. He was right as it turned out but it had nothing to do with him. He spent most of their wedding night alternately vomiting and scuttering diabolically (the potato salad -- lucky for her that she hated the stuff) while she lay on the bed in her new slip, weeping her mascara into the pillowcase and begging God to forgive her ingratitude. An unfettered sense of worthlessness had lulled her to sleep. I'm free. It was her last thought before unconsciousness...

I'm free... She laughed as she repeated the words aloud to the hissing kitchen. Her hangover was lifting. She walked to the back door and opened it, looking out upon a world that a heatless sun made appear as if refracted through tears. Cold, lustreless grass, the slabs of the path through its heart like uninscribed gravestones. She wound one end of her coat's undone belt about her hand as she looked up at the bedroom window, wondering if the dick up there was still as hard as it had been earlier...