she got up and stirred two packets of sugar into it, shaking the packets to ensure she got every last granule.
"Why'd you do that?"
"Why do you keep your sugar in packets?"
"If I buy it by the bag, the bugs get it."
"So let 'em." She drank the glass down, not even stopping for breath. Then she grinned, fox-head grin. "I feel like I'm underwater," she said. "And that I'm burning."
She put the tape back on. She played it over and over again, until I couldn't watch anymore and sat quietly getting drunk. When I looked at the clock on the counter, I was surprised to see it was only four o'clock. I wouldn't even be home from work yet. I'd forgotten to leave a note, but it jseemed so worthless I didn't care. Maybe the Funhole had finally gotten all the way inside my head and was driving me painlessly crazy.
I got so drunk I fell asleep on the kitchen floor. When I woke up the first thing I did was crawl to the refrigerator and get another beer. Nakota was still in her perched posture on the couchbed. The TV light was the only light in the room. Raining outside and thatjhe only sound, it really was like being underwater. The world's most piquant aquarium. And you are there.
"You're watching that like porno," I told her. It came out so garbled I wanted to laugh, but she was, a ritual masturbatory excess, maybe she even was jerking off. The perfect avant-garde stroke tape. Boy was I funny tonight. Too bad no one was laughing but me. Or even listening. Nakota sure wasn't. I fell back to sleep with a mouthful of beer, woke again to the toll of a monstrous headache, beer soaked and clammy on my shirt and skin, TV buzzing and Nakota fast asleep, back curled like a question mark and hands, childlike and defenseless, loose-fingered against her cheek as a shadow grew on her face like a cancerous smile.
"Did they ever say anything?"
Nakota drinking Sweet'nLow and mineral water, elbows resting on the slippery bar, trusty rag between us as my own elbow nudged my empty beer bottle. Near Monday midnight at Club 22, just Nakota and me and the lonely scattering of hard cores she served in her bitchy desultory way. Just now their particular glasses were full, mine too for she poured again, draft this time, cheap but what did I care, for me it was free.
She lit another cigarette. Black smoke, yeah. "Did they?"
"What, about the camcorder?" I shook my head. I didn't apologize and she didn't mock. Will wonders never cease. Not as long as there's a Funhole, they won't. "I don't think they noticed, but if they did they're not talking."
"Every time I see it," dragging on her cigarette, "I see something different."
I didn't. I nodded as if yes, I agree, but I was lying, surprising how easy it was to lie. I didn't tell, then, or later at my flat, when she came drifting to the couchbed, me already on the troubled cusp of dream, the lines of her bare body sculpted by innocuous TV light, she'd left it on to find her way but not on the Funhole tape, just plain shit TV, commercials flashing like headlights. She pulled at the quilt, low enough to insert herself, place her coldness to my warmth but I was cold, too, cold all the way inside. I held her, her fast breath on my chest, felt myself harden but did not move and she didn't touch me further, a shared delicacy so complete as if by agreement. When we woke, not morning but lightening, the cold air tinting pink, I was so hard it hurt and still I did not move, but her hands found me, in silence and cold, a few hot strokes and I came and as I did she rubbed herself, half on me, tight against my thighs and I heard her come, a tiny croaking cry, and she said without taking a breath, "Watch it with me."
I didn't say no. But I didn't watch.
I was right the first time: to Nakota it was like a stroke tape. For a mindfuck.
Since the tape's inception she was in my flat as much as even I could want: Zen and poker-backed, focused on the screen, day after day and no more disappearing acts, staying on till
"Why'd you do that?"
"Why do you keep your sugar in packets?"
"If I buy it by the bag, the bugs get it."
"So let 'em." She drank the glass down, not even stopping for breath. Then she grinned, fox-head grin. "I feel like I'm underwater," she said. "And that I'm burning."
She put the tape back on. She played it over and over again, until I couldn't watch anymore and sat quietly getting drunk. When I looked at the clock on the counter, I was surprised to see it was only four o'clock. I wouldn't even be home from work yet. I'd forgotten to leave a note, but it jseemed so worthless I didn't care. Maybe the Funhole had finally gotten all the way inside my head and was driving me painlessly crazy.
I got so drunk I fell asleep on the kitchen floor. When I woke up the first thing I did was crawl to the refrigerator and get another beer. Nakota was still in her perched posture on the couchbed. The TV light was the only light in the room. Raining outside and thatjhe only sound, it really was like being underwater. The world's most piquant aquarium. And you are there.
"You're watching that like porno," I told her. It came out so garbled I wanted to laugh, but she was, a ritual masturbatory excess, maybe she even was jerking off. The perfect avant-garde stroke tape. Boy was I funny tonight. Too bad no one was laughing but me. Or even listening. Nakota sure wasn't. I fell back to sleep with a mouthful of beer, woke again to the toll of a monstrous headache, beer soaked and clammy on my shirt and skin, TV buzzing and Nakota fast asleep, back curled like a question mark and hands, childlike and defenseless, loose-fingered against her cheek as a shadow grew on her face like a cancerous smile.
"Did they ever say anything?"
Nakota drinking Sweet'nLow and mineral water, elbows resting on the slippery bar, trusty rag between us as my own elbow nudged my empty beer bottle. Near Monday midnight at Club 22, just Nakota and me and the lonely scattering of hard cores she served in her bitchy desultory way. Just now their particular glasses were full, mine too for she poured again, draft this time, cheap but what did I care, for me it was free.
She lit another cigarette. Black smoke, yeah. "Did they?"
"What, about the camcorder?" I shook my head. I didn't apologize and she didn't mock. Will wonders never cease. Not as long as there's a Funhole, they won't. "I don't think they noticed, but if they did they're not talking."
"Every time I see it," dragging on her cigarette, "I see something different."
I didn't. I nodded as if yes, I agree, but I was lying, surprising how easy it was to lie. I didn't tell, then, or later at my flat, when she came drifting to the couchbed, me already on the troubled cusp of dream, the lines of her bare body sculpted by innocuous TV light, she'd left it on to find her way but not on the Funhole tape, just plain shit TV, commercials flashing like headlights. She pulled at the quilt, low enough to insert herself, place her coldness to my warmth but I was cold, too, cold all the way inside. I held her, her fast breath on my chest, felt myself harden but did not move and she didn't touch me further, a shared delicacy so complete as if by agreement. When we woke, not morning but lightening, the cold air tinting pink, I was so hard it hurt and still I did not move, but her hands found me, in silence and cold, a few hot strokes and I came and as I did she rubbed herself, half on me, tight against my thighs and I heard her come, a tiny croaking cry, and she said without taking a breath, "Watch it with me."
I didn't say no. But I didn't watch.
I was right the first time: to Nakota it was like a stroke tape. For a mindfuck.
Since the tape's inception she was in my flat as much as even I could want: Zen and poker-backed, focused on the screen, day after day and no more disappearing acts, staying on till
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