Mary says, “You’re a bas­tard,” and looks at me like I stuck her cat, a bad luck Bom­bay named Bat­man, in a blender. And blen­ded it.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“You’re a real bastard.”

She’s sit­ting like a Native-American in my desk chair, swiv­el­ing back and forth. Her blonde hair is hanging on for dear life. She’s incred­ibly naked. That’s my fault. She throws a pen at me—also my fault, but not as pres­ci­ent as it seems. I can’t believe this is already the third con­sec­ut­ive night we’ve ended up together. This third time we’re at my parent’s house, in my parent’s base­ment. I’ve already writ­ten her a story, and usu­ally I don’t write a story for a girl until at least the third date. What kind of writer do you think I am?

“Would you like to talk about it?” I say.

Mary bursts out of the chair and says, “No,” then steals my favor­ite sweat­shirt and tomorrow’s boxers.

“You’re not going to stick that,” she says, point­ing down at me, “any­where near me, until you write me a good story.” I’m happy to get off so easy.

“I have writ­ten you a story.”

“Jason, you said that wasn’t about me.”

“I know it wasn’t about you,” I say, “but I wrote it for you.”

“Then I want you to write a story about me. Also, it can­not be as bad as the last one.”

“That isn’t how I work.”

“So start.”

Some­how, she has acquired a rub­ber band for her hair. Not many people use rub­ber bands any­more. I don’t even know what they used to be for. I tell her it’ll lead to split ends.

“You’re a bastard.”

“See you tonight.”

“You’d bet­ter have some­thing good for me.”

“The best fruit smoothie you’ve ever had.”

Mary walks out the door wear­ing a rub­ber band, men’s box­ers, an extra large sweat­shirt, and a smile. I did my best.

I go from my bed to my desk and stare at the chair Mary was naked in. She left juice or goop or the liquid delight that lasts all night on the leather, but I sit down any­way and get star­ted. I think I’ll call this one ‘Fruit Smoothie’.

THE END

This story is about a girl I know. Me, per­son­ally. The nar­rator of this story—a piece I plan on titling ‘Whores Don’t Dance’. We went to school together and ran into each other on some cloudy Fri­day, shop­ping for con­doms in the town’s only lib­eral mar­ket. I figured we could turn it into a half-off sale if I took her back home and kicked out the girl who was asleep on my bed.

This girl—having replaced the tart on my bed—is named Marie. She’s going to have a great per­son­al­ity, a rare thing, so any weary reader is prob­ably going to take that out on him­self by mas­turb­at­ing. I hope this helps. Marie is two inches shorter than 5’10″ at a worldly twenty-seven years old. She’s got dark brown hair that curls three times before hit­ting her fourth spinal ver­teb­rae if you shake her. Her facial fea­tures are, on the whole, symmetrical—although her smile slants slightly to the left if you’re look­ing at her and she smiles at you. A but­ton nose with a small hori­zontal pier­cing and two extra holes in each ear. She was the child of a Ger­man wet nurse and a Filipino male nurse so her skin is pretty white. With brown eyes and full eye­brows. Those arcs are the most human ele­ment of her face. Her lip­stick is a poly­glot flu­ent in MAC and Seph­ora. The cheap stuff. She tells me it isn’t cheap. I say it makes her look cheap, like a used car that people used to smoke in and now they’ve got to put up a new air freshener before every test drive because you can never get the smell out. I don’t know any­thing about the lips beneath the paint. Her mouth tastes alkaline. The skin on her neck is soft, her whole body is soft. She’s got three tat­toos that read like those Rus­sian dolls on her upper back: ‘Ryan,’ ‘BRyan,’ and ‘I hate BRyan’. Her tits are soft too. Marie’s got the gazon­gas of a younger woman con­tained behind a 32B cup, but they can sup­port them­selves. Small nipples. I wouldn’t say top five all time, but I’ve seen a lot of them. She’s got a belly but­ton. Both of her legs are prag­matic tools for get­ting around. They’re not good for any­thing except com­ing apart like she’s mak­ing a snow angel under my sheets. Her girl parts are all there, scarcely tufted. Marie’s feet are Cali­for­nian, tanned around flip-flop straps. She paints her toes, fin­ger­nails, eyelids.

We made it back to the house that I owned free and clear. I told her this and she took her gym shorts off in my foyer. I tried to give her a blow­job and I couldn’t believe it, but she didn’t want one. She kept going on about how you can’t give girls blow­jobs, so I slept with her twice, then went to sleep with her.

In the morn­ing she was gone. I made it in to the office shortly before I was to be con­sidered “unfor­giv­ably late.” Dwayne was already in the cubicle next to me. There was a hole in the wall between our cells that we used to dis­cuss import­ant things.

“Dwayne.”

“Jay? Man, it’s late as fuck. This as late as Dwayne get a bitch every time she take his won­der­cock inside her.”

“What did you do last night?” I asked.

“I gave myself a hand job with y’all mamma’s hands and then the white devil gimme a sponge bath.”

“You’re not sup­posed to talk like that to me. I am your dir­ect superior.”

“Just because you white don’t make you super­ior. It makes you a racist mothafucker. You racist!”

Dwayne had a half-black grand­mother but if we got more sun in this town, I’d have darker skin than him. We’re friends any­way. He tells me all the time that when The White­po­ca­lypse comes he’s going to pro­tect me with his darkness.

“I’m not racist. Know why? I slept with a Filipino model last night,” I said.

“Alright, that’s what I been tel­lin’ you. Gotta talk to a girl then take her clothes off then stick your­self into her,” he said.

“That’s right, Dwayne. That’s right.”

“But at the same time, you is a cracker. How is Dwayne sup­posed to know that you ain’t payin’ a Filipino prostitute?”

“She’s a dan­cer,” I said.

“Ah, good point. Whores don’t dance. What the fuck was her name then, tor­nado bait?”

“Tor­nado bait! Nice, that’s a new one.”

“Yeah, I love keepin’ my race war rel­ev­ant, fresh as death. But don’t y’all change the sub­ject, cracker. I was edu­cated prop­erly. I know all about the times white dev­ils try and change the sub­ject. What was her name?”

“Marie,” I said.

“How white is that shit spelled?”

Dwayne was con­stantly offen­ded by white people spelling names with unac­cept­able let­ters. Kate with a C-I, Dylan with two Y’s. He had a news­pa­per clip­ping writ­ten by a girl named Sara o’Polo. With a C and an E. And a U. And also an H, because you were an acci­dent and your mother is Irish Cath­olic, you asshole.

“With an I-E,” I said.

“Damn. You sure she Filipino?”

“Yeah, she was too tight to be white,” I said.

“Damn. So, Frosty, what else? What happened?”

“Not much. She smelled real good,” I said.

“Mmm, love a woman smell good. What she smell like? Palm trees and sun­tan lotion?”

“She’s not from the Phil­ip­pines. You won’t like it if I tell you what she smelled like.”

“Why the fuck not, you cracker? Did she smell racist?”

“She smelled like water­mel­ons,” I said.

“You racist mothafucker!”

“I didn’t pick out her shampoo!”

“You smelled it though, cracker. How could you?”

“Sorry Dwayne, I didn’t mean it,” I said.

“Any­thing else racist hap­pen between you two racist hate-the-black-man in-white-love pieces of shit?”

“Nope. That’s pretty much the whole story.”

Dwayne wanted to get out of his cubicle one day and at some point became con­vinced that the best way for him to get paid in wire trans­fers was to become a pro­filer for the FBI, like his hero Shemar Moore. He wanted to learn how to walk up to girls and tell them their favor­ite color (because he thinks if you can tell a girl her favor­ite color she’ll suck you off), but there isn’t any way to pre­dict things like that so he takes it out on me.

“Then you a racist mothafucker today, cracker. More than usual, you racist mothafucker.”

“What the hell did I say?” I said.

“Alright, y’all said three things. First was, you said you slept with her. That means you didn’t enjoy it like Dwayne enjoy a sleep­ing with. You woulda come in here and tell me you got laid, maybe screwed a ho. Second thing, y’all call her Filipino like it a bad thing. You ain’t gonna get to fuck no more exotic bitches like that when you an old shriveled balls white man in five years—”

“I’m twenty-four! I’m going to be one year younger than you are right now in five years. Are your balls old and shriveled?”

“No, but that’s because I ain’t no fuckin’ white man gonna be all shriveled ass-ball white man in five years. That’s fo’ sho. Now, as I was say­ing before the white man come take my voice from me like I a slave, ain’t no way you woulda said you slept with a white bitch. That’s nor­mal for a cracka like yo’self. It’s dif­fer­ent if she a Filipino. Yo’ ancestor ain’t never own no Filipino.”

“You don’t know that,” I said.

“You right, ain’t no limit to how much of a racist mothafucker the white man gonn’ be. Thanks for cor­rect­ing my mis­takes, you gwelio. Oh, third. Sayin’ she a model. That some bull­shit. It means ya not attrac­ted to her. Least not as much as other people. Oth­er­wise, you say she hot. Attract­ive. Fuck, you white so pro­lly call the bitch beau­ti­ful. No bitch beau­ti­ful to Dwayne.”

“Thanks Dwayne. I feel bet­ter now.”

“Any­time Jay. Honky.”

At about eleven we received our mail from a fat woman who had a nick­name for all of us. She wasn’t very inventive—she called me JJ and Dwayne Bat­man. She must have done that one time too many, because Dwayne snapped when she said, “Here’s your mail, Batman.”

He leapt over the mail cart like Super­man and as he was beat­ing the mail car­rier to death he shouted, “Just cause I’m black don’t mean I’m Bat­man! I could eas­ily be Tiger Woods, you racist!”

#

“What is this?” Mary asks, throw­ing the pages back at me. She misses because she throws like a girl. Bat­man is now trapped under my sheets, and I’m under Mary’s.

“I wrote you a story.”

“Are you cheat­ing on me?” she asks.

“How could I be cheat­ing on you? We had sex for the first time like ten hours ago.”

“Maybe you’re just a cheater.”

“No. I’m not cheat­ing. I’m just not done with the story yet. Just thought you’d like to see it in progress.”

“It’s not as good as my stories.”

“I read your stuff. What do you think about burn­ing all of it?” I say.

“Ass.”

“What do you want me to say? You write like a woman.”

“I am a woman.”

“That’s no excuse,” I say.

It’s night, but it looks like dawn out­side Mary’s floor to ceil­ing win­dows, so I have no idea what time she is hav­ing this con­ver­sa­tion at me. She has taken over the couch I claimed as my own while she was at work, still wear­ing her black work uni­form on her legs. It’s sexy in a mod­ern way. I’ve seen so much deprav­ity that the only thing that feels erotic to me any­more is the cas­ual. A girl put­ting her bra on, in a hurry to get to work, has become more appeal­ing than a girl tak­ing her bra off slowly in an effort to make the act sexual. Mary takes off her uni­form and goes to the bath­room to brush her teeth.

“Wouldn’t you rather talk about my story than have sex?”

“A or E?” she asks.

“Than with an A.”

“No. Your story was worse than income tax.”

“State or Federal?”

“Fed­eral!” she shouts.

“Wow. Alright, how can I make it better?”

“You can’t. You can­not make it bet­ter,” she says, put­ting the tooth­brush back in the bath­room. I love a girl with fresh breath.

“I was think­ing about hav­ing Dwayne go on a mono­logue about gay people. Some­thing like, ‘Why do you hate gay people so much, Amer­ica? They’re not even black!’ and then Jay says that they can be and that those are the ones to really watch out for.”

“Oh my god. Will these shut you up?”

She takes off her bra. She is try­ing to entice me.

“Put your tit hol­ster back on. We’ve had too much sex.”

She walks to the bed I’m lying in. She takes off her glow in the dark panties and throws them at a win­dow, so the world can see that they say “CONGRATULATIONS.” She stands over me on the bed. I look into the gap­ing chasm of her vagina.

“Maybe we could do some­thing other than each other,” I say.

Mary sighs and snaps her legs shut, kick­ing them over the edge of the bed and lean­ing back to land next to me. She says, “Like an orgy?”

“No. Like what if we try to stay up as late as we can.”

“Are you eight? I can stay up as late as I want to.”

“No coffee.”

“Then I’d fall asleep,” she says.

“I don’t think you’re fol­low­ing me.”

“I’m going to bend over now.”

She bends over. I think that if this were a story, I’d liken her ass to two super­cili­ously vain­glori­ous pieces of ham that I’m about to honey glaze.

“Let’s com­prom­ise,” I say, stand­ing up.

“Okay.”

“We stay up as late as we can—”

“Dam­mit Jason—”

“But we start by see­ing how late we can still be hav­ing sex.”

“Hurry up then.”

Three times in as many hours. Bat­man is impressed. It’s still long short of day­light. I start to think about where else we can spend our bor­rowed hours. Mary’s place is a few blocks from an ambi­tious pond that man­aged to get itself titled a lake on recent land sur­veys. I drag myself out of bed and throw on a jacket and pants. She does the same and locks the door behind us.

We pass out, wrapped around each other on six yards of coast­line, as the sun starts to climb the ste­plad­der sky.

When I make cof­fee for us on the ridicu­lous machine she owns I acci­dent­ally make espresso twice before fig­ur­ing out how to make an hon­est cup. I like my cof­fee African but Mary is par­tial to octo­roon. I ask if she is try­ing to re-enact the one drop rule and she back­hands me. She is going to let me stay at her place again while she’s at work, and tells me to fin­ish my story the way a wait­ress asks if you want another drink after you’ve already paid.

I’m lead­ing Bat­man across the kit­chen tiles with a laser pointer when Mary puts on her digital watch and two sprays of per­fume that make her smell sweeter than the most for­bid­den fruit, and at least twice as forbidden.

“Have fun at work,” she says, walk­ing out the door. I don’t like to think about it that way.

I open my note­book and reread the piece, then con­tinue it.

#

The next day, after I slept with Marie and sailed into her brown har­bor with my dick—which is to say, I had both kinds of anal sex with her—I fool­ishly decided to ask Dwayne through the hole we shared what the most unusual or deplor­able sex act he’s ever com­mit­ted is.

“Con­sen­sual or non-consensual?”

“Non-consensual first,” I said.

“Well, one time I gave a girl a Flam­ing Amazon.”

“Jesus. Did it work?”

“No. She wasn’t pleased, and they didn’t grow back.”

“What about consensual?”

“Got involved in a circle of life. You know that story.”

Dwayne’s proudest moment was being involved in a circle of life. That’s when you go down on a girl who is breast­feed­ing her child at the same time. I’m not sure I’d tell the story every time I’m at a din­ner party with mixed com­pany and chil­dren like Dwayne does, but I’m not the one who had the circle of life. I sup­pose being that vital mem­ber, the hypo­tenuse of the circle, gives you cer­tain rights. But some­thing is wrong with Dwayne.

“You’re not talk­ing nor­mal,” I said.

“I got some bad news, man.”

“Oh no. The HIV.”

“No, not the HIV, mothafucker. Other things hap­pen to black people!”

“Sorry,” I said, relieved. I wasn’t about to lose Dwayne before he could tell me what happened on Amer­ican Idol last night.

“It’s about that girl you fucked.”

“Am fuck­ing. Present tense. I haven’t seen the other side of my bed in two days.”

“That makes what I’m about to tell you even harder, Jay. I want you to prom­ise not to tar and feather me.”

“Alright. I prom­ise not to tar and feather you,” I said, with my fin­gers crossed behind my back.

“She soun­ded famil­iar… so I looked her up in my little white book (Dwayne keeps a little white book—racial reclam­a­tion or some­thing) and as it turns out, I have tasted that taint. You have been where Dwayne has been.”

I made a snap decision between recoil­ing in hor­ror, pos­sibly fall­ing out of my fab­ric chair at the idea that Dwayne had widened Marie’s vagina irre­voc­ably, and tak­ing it in stride.

Tak­ing it in stride, I said, “It’s alright, man.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll just dump her. I’ve been work­ing on a breakup plan.”

“Only a roundeyes would work on a breakup plan?” he asks hope­fully. I laugh.

“Only a roundeyes like me, Dwayne,” I said.

“You is a racist cracker some­times. Not today though. Today Dwayne gonna treat you like you treated his ancest­ors. Like three-fifths a person.”

“Glad to have you back.”

“Felt like I was talk­ing to a plant­a­tion owner and he was debat­ing between me and some Filipino name like Marie with a I-E.”

“Do me a favor?”

“Sure thing, saltine!”

“Bring your sis­ter back to din­ner soon. I’d like to embargo that Maginot line again.”

Dwayne had one but­ton you could push: his half-sister. The girl, unlike Dwayne, was a white minor­ity. She was named Rhodesia. She is study­ing Greek Myth­o­logy at the best dir­ec­tional uni­ver­sity in the south­ern part of the state. After their mother and father died try­ing to get change out of a vend­ing machine, he adop­ted the girl and raised her like his own daugh­ter, even going so far as to change her name to Zimbabwe.

“You racist, trash bag, slave-owning, bottom-feeding… white man! Y’all mamma pussy fuck like a Chinese fin­ger trap.”

“For your Chinese dick, sure.”

“Nah, bel­eg­ana. Dwayne pack­ing eight double D bat­ter­ies in his light­house of a cock. And he never have to recharge. He’s like a hybrid. Regen­er­at­ive brakes!”

“Alright. Fair enough. But you asked for it. There was no reason to tell me that you had fucked Marie. I know what you always say.”

“What the fuck do I always say then, white devil?”

“Once you have Dwayne it just ain’t the same. Yo’ pussy, that is.”

I spent the rest of that day fil­ing paper­work and push­ing macar­oons (Dwayne’s “favor­ite fruit”) through the cubicle hole we shared, look­ing for­ward to my night-time deliv­ery. All too often girls had broken up with me. This was going to be the thing that allowed me to say in future, “Yeah. Every girl—except one—I’ve ever dated has broken up with me. But that one made it all worth it.”

Marie walked into my house with a smile on her face. I was wait­ing for her. I jumped to my feet, leav­ing my under­wear on the couch by means of a trick I learned in college.

“Your cunt is a nec­ro­polis and I’m leav­ing you!” I shouted, dangling aimlessly.

I put my box­ers back on and began to dance the Macar­ena on my cof­fee table.

#

After Mary got off work, she forced me to leave. But she came back to my place with me. Women. It’s a pity that she hasn’t brought Bat­man with her. The furball under­stands me.

“This is even worse than the first part. Jesus. You’re a hor­rible writer. What makes you think I’ll ever sleep with you again?” Mary asks, throw­ing the pages back at me like it’ll mat­ter this time. It doesn’t.

“Because you’re a nym­pho­ma­niac whose girl bits were built just for me.”

“Other than that? There are plot holes, and there isn’t even a plot.”

“What plot holes?” I ask.

“Dwayne beat a mail car­rier to death in the last install­ment. Why isn’t he in prison? Why are they just back to a nor­mal day at work?”

“Because he hired John­nie Cochran. Duh. It’s called show don’t tell.”

“No it’s not,” she says.

“Yes it is.”

“No it’s not!”

“Yes, it is. Who is the pub­lished writer here?”

“No, it isn’t! I don’t care if you were Jane Aus­ten, hir­ing John­nie Cochran does not con­sti­tute an example of show don’t tell.”

“Agree to dis­agree,” I suggest.

“Fine, Jason. Fine. You win. I’ve got bet­ter things to do than argue with you.”

“No you don’t,” I say.

“Believe me, I have so many bet­ter things to do than read your writ­ing about an octoroon.”

“That’s racist. What if I made him an occasion?”

She asks me what an occa­sion is, and I have to explain it to her. Who doesn’t know that an occa­sion is a per­son who is one-eighth Caucasian? Her only response to this dis­cov­ery is to lower her head and shake it dejec­tedly. She asks God (I think) how this could have happened to her.

“Listen, it’s just how it happened. Some stor­ies come out of my pen-pussy as teen­agers, some­times even adults. This wasn’t one of them,” I say.

“Your pen-pussy. Unbelievable.”

“Yup. My ball point uterus. You’re going to make a meta­phor­ical crawl up that Fal­lopian tube and after I gest­ate you for a period of approx­im­ately two weeks, you’re going to pop out in the truly grue­some event of cre­at­ive man-birth as a girl named Diana or Dana. You’re going to have to ride a roller­coaster with somebody.”

“That story sounds hor­rible. Even if it is about me, I hate roller­coast­ers. Also, I hate your writing.”

“That’s no way to get into my pants. Want to know how to get into my pants? Want me to scratch that non-infectious itch down in your cock pocket? Make praise love to me, Mary. Call me the kind of writer you wouldn’t want to read in translation.”

“Why not? Maybe the trans­lator could make it less shit.”

“This is shock­ing com­ing from you,” I say.

“What does that mean?”

“You write like a trash com­pactor dreams, babe. Sorry!”

“I thought you hated Tom Rob­bins meta­phors,” she says.

“I do. That’s a simile, to begin with. To end with, what would a trash com­pactor dream of? Turn­ing little garbage into big­ger garbage. You write the same way, you turn the little garbage of your life, like your shoes—your fuck­ing shoes—into big garbage on the page.”

“How about this for a meta­phor? Your dick reminds me of flash fiction.”

“Well, being a bet­ter writer than you, flash fic­tion to me does not mean that I can’t get to a good end­ing. It means I got to a good end­ing too soon. In your pussy. Does this mean you’ve been fak­ing it?”

“That doesn’t even make any sense! You’re a bas­tard. I’m just going to fuck the first guy I find. I don’t need you. Other things have cocks.” Mary looks around the base­ment I live in and spits on my floor.

“Fine. I lied. The story is about you.”

“No it’s not. Don’t lie.”

“There’s one part that is about you. The girl I’m mak­ing love to on a reg­u­lar basis—I’d even say dat­ing,” her eyes light up and I con­tinue, “she’s got a ton of pos­it­ive traits.”

“Then praise fuck me, Jason.”

“I’d love to. Your hair smells like water­mel­ons, your skin tastes like kiwis, I like to think of your vagina as my per­sonal banana peel, and your clit kinda reminds me of a raspberry.”

“What the fuck? Am I just a fuck­ing fruit smoothie to you?” she asks, as an angry rage comes over her face.

“I really like fruit smoothies.”

NOT THE END, ACTUALLY THE BEGINNING

Clay Heller is a writer who lives in Irvine. He has been try­ing unsuc­cess­fully to get his story ‘Fruit Smoothie’ fully under­stood by someone — anyone.