Life of a Lady: Part II

Life of a Lady: An Autobiography of Sorts. By Lady Molasses

This is Part II of Life of a Lady, the serialized novel-in-progress of Lady Molasses. Part II starts at Chapter 20.

For Life of a Lady part I, go here: Chapters 1 - 19

PART II

Chapter  20. Fox Prints 

Who do you think has the cleanest feces of all of the human race? That’s a question you can just think about while I write. See, I thought about this a lot back in the 90’s. AIDS was pretty big, and it got me thinking about the stuff we have in our bodies. Sometimes you can tell how disgusting someone’s insides are just by seeing their outsides. We all know people who we’re certain have disgusting insides, and make the worst poop and pee and puke imaginable. But we also know people who seem delicious and whose poop and pee and puke might not be that bad, might even be good enough to eat or drink. I spent quite some time in the forest after running aimlessly from the Platters estate with two murdered Platters in my wake, and during that time I was able to lend my mind to important matters like this. I made mental lists of people whose body fluids I would consume and those whose fluids I wouldn't even touch. David Duchovny was one whose feces I was definitely planning to touch and probably devour at some point. He played Fox Mulder in The X-Files. I didn’t really watch that show because it didn’t make sense to me, but every time I accidentally watched it I got a little wet for Fox. I’d call my panty stains Fox Prints.

I didn't know how long I was in the woods, exploring caves, swimming in rivers, eating branches, poop, and grass, and communicating with animals. No animals could talk like Oscar and Claudia back home, but I didn’t expect that. Wild animals don’t grow up knowing English and I accepted this. There was no one to speak with in the woods but myself, and I started to hate my own company because I never had anything new to say that I didn’t already know. For the first time ever, I missed Oscar and Claudia. I even missed my sons, Diamond Dick and Harmful Harry. That vacant hole in the guts that people talk about when they miss someone really bad or have lost something - I never understood what it meant. To me, all vacant holes could be filled with a man's flesh sword and swirling fluids, or a woman’s fist, or a zebra’s hoof. Now there was a hole that I could tell wouldn't go away with any amount of physical violation. Rats were the closest thing I had to a family. I hoped they were doing alright without me. I guess they always did alright when I was gone. My sons would probably be covering the floors in New Yorkers for the rest of the family to eat, so I didn’t worry about them starving.

After something like four days lost in the forest I lost track of the days and the weeks and the months, because I'm not good at counting and doctors say my time-sense is bad. I noticed seasons coming and going, but they didn't make sense to me without a TV or seeing people's clothes and cool styles. I had a lot of time to think deep since I didn't know how to do anything else. It was while in the woods that I thought about people’s poop. After only a few weeks I learned that all animals have tasty poop that has rich (probably vital) nutrients, and the worst kind of sickness you can get is just days of vomiting, diarrhea, blood farts, cold and warm fecal sweating, tongue infections and parasites. I’d had worse.

When I’d sleep at night, usually on a bed of rocks and sticks, I’d dream about David Duchovny’s lips meeting my lips, and every single time, our lips would touch and we’d start kissing by exchanging spit, but shortly that spit turned to shit and it was like our tongues were mud wrestling in a mucus bath inside two wet caves. At first the soundtrack to these dreams was performed by the Spin Doctors. David and I would shit-kiss to the tune of Two Princes. He seemed to like the song. But over time I started to forget the sound of music, and this song, and my memory slowly lost all recollection of the Spin Doctors' tunes. I had vowed never to speak to Mark or the boys again. Somehow, David remained in my dreams and we couldn't keep our lips off each other. I'd wake from these dreams wet in the pants but hard in the nips, and started to miss human interaction. My Fox prints were telling me I needed to get back to civilization, and also probably that I was consuming too much woodland shit for my own good.

The eyes of the animals in the woods looked at me with sexual hunger every time we met. I could feel it in the gaze of the hawks, in the peering stare of the wolves, the snarling smiles of the coyotes. My libido was on overdrive while being as one with nature, but I wouldn’t dare engage these beasts in fornication. Because in the woods, all sex is done on the terms of the beast. Though many  had accused me of being wild at heart, I knew my inner beast was no match for the beasts who were one with the forest.

I had learned long ago that it was wrong and the moral mothers of right and wrong would frown on me if I fucked a beast ever again. But the animals, after so long tracking me and lusting for my flesh, smelling the sweet scent of my sweat and disease, were somehow not in tune with what humans perceived as right and wrong. To them, what felt good was right, and what felt bad was wrong. It was that simple. The nature of the beast is something I've always felt aligned with. Some nights they would lay with me, sexually. It was never my choice, I verbally and physically said no – at first. I refused and fought their advances through the nights of the first weeks, but when wolves, and owls, and snakes, and mountain lions, and  bears want you as you want David Duchovny, there is no escaping the fuckstorm. On these nights I was raped savagely by wild animals and made to bleed where holes became caves. But I loved every minute of it. I guess it wasn’t rape if I welcomed it, but it was so rough it sure felt like a good old fashioned raping.

I was on the move every day, but I didn’t know where I was going. Although I'd lost track of the days and the months, and was clueless about seasons, I felt the change in the wind. After a little while, the temperatures dropped down to cancer-inducing levels in the evening, and I knew I was going to die in the forest sooner or later. Drinking water from the lakes and rivers was giving me a bad case of blood pee, and I was puking almost every day from some kind of disease or ailment. But, at least for a time, I was saved from this lifestyle of sickness.

One cold morning, I was climbing a tree, chasing what I thought was a tree-dolphin, and fell from the weakling branches onto a mound of rocks. I had built the mound of rocks over a few days because I thought that was how mountains were made. In my delirium, I envisioned myself living comfortably in a luxurious mountain home. I wanted a mountain home pretty badly, so I decided I could spend my time in the woods making one. When the rocks never sculpted themselves into a fully matured mountain, I gave up and abandoned the mound for the tree-dolphin I had seen out of the corner of my eye, hopping to the top of the tree. I was hungry and I knew a tree dolphin had to be full of protein. 

I was lucky to land on this mound, and lied there for a whole day, exhausted. I only moved when I heard the sound of gnawing at the rocks below me. When I looked down, over the edge of the mound, I saw six hungry foxes chewing at my rock mountain. I was thrilled, and immediately reminded of Fox Mulder, my X-Files prince. Thoughts of this Fox prince bestowed upon me fresh Fox prints. My fresh prints were the only thing going for me in my life at that point.

I shouted down to the foxes and invited them up onto my mountain, thinking they'd get a kick out my moist button, but they weren't listening. When I looked closer, I realized they weren't foxes. No. Not foxes at all. Fucking wolves. I yelled at them to go away for a really long time, but wolves are immune to the sound of the human voice, I found. I started throwing rocks at them. I threw hundreds of rocks and they wouldn't leave. Eventually, hundreds of rocks became thousands of rocks, and I'd thrown my entire mound of rocks at the pack of wolves who were too stubborn to go anywhere. When I was defenseless, without a rock fortress, and finally on ground level with the wolves, they had me where they wanted me. I was expecting wolf-rape, but something else happened. They adopted me into their family. I became an honorary wolf. 

The wolves taught me how to hunt, how to prowl, how to howl, how to share, how to respect others, and how to fuck. Our bond grew through blood and honor. The weather was cold, and snow began to cover the ground. If this was winter, it wasn't going to be a lone wolf winter. Not for me. It would be a winter filled with wolves and terror. When the wolves ate a dead beast, their  faces were red and white, as snow mixed with blood, and I always laughed at their silliness but admired their ferociousness. They were never ashamed. Since I could speak to rats, I tried to speak with the wolves, but  never received a real response and couldn't understand their names. We ate like royalty. My gums and teeth grew sore over the months of never brushing, and most of the time when I found blood in my mouth I figured it was something left over from the food.

I stayed with the wolves for a pretty long time. There were warmer days ahead, and colder days still. It was like a cycle. Days got hot and then, after a while, cold. I started to realize that these temperatures had patterns. It was interesting, but not interesting enough for me to notice that this was simply the nature of seasons. When the next winter returned, my teeth had started to fall out. By spring, I had five teeth left in my mouth. Eating was difficult, and fattening up was almost impossible. I hated seasons. The wolves didn't care about seasons. They spent the nights embracing me, holding me like a doll for comfort, and they spent the days hunting and proving themselves to me. Then, without warning, they attacked me. 

It happened one day after I caught a fish from a river, my first real catch. When the head wolf (I called him Wolfman after my favorite character from Top Gun) approached me and signaled that he wanted me to share the fish with the rest of the pack. I presented it to him like I always present my fish to the men, with my legs spread and my eyes closed. Somehow, the wolves took this the wrong way and attacked me. All of them. They jumped me from all six regular directions and shredded my flesh and what clothes I had left. Throwing the fish into the air was the only way to distract them long enough to get myself free. As they caught and devoured fish flesh, I crawled away to freedom. I looked back regularly to make sure they weren't following me, hunting me, prowlin' on me. Since I knew how they hunted, I knew after a time they weren't coming after me. I crawled for endless passages of the sun overhead, and ate wood and ants for the next days and nights. Some of the ants must have been poisonous or high in fructose, because I wasn't feeling healthy at all. The wood destroyed the last of my teeth, and they fell from mouth in blood and spit. I knew I was going to die.

Luck was somehow on my side, because as I was blindly crawling (there was mud caked in my eyes) along the ground in pain and dehydration and covered in vomit and blood and shit for a whole week, I came to a small town. I could tell it was a town by the smells and sounds, and by people asking me if I was alright.

“I’m blind, not sick,” I told them. “And I’m blind because there’s mud in my eyes. But I’m actually sick, too. I think something’s wrong with me. I’ve been in the woods for my entire life and I need to get out. I need food.” I didn't know how long I'd been in the woods, but I make a habit of lying if I need something.

Someone sprayed me in the eyes with gasoline, thinking it was water. They apologized, but luckily I love the taste of gasoline. A few men took me to a truck stop + cafeteria, and helped me rinse away the blood and vomit and excrement with hoses, and asked me where I had come from, since my beauty was stunning to them and they wanted to go where more people looked like me. I was so very thin from my time in the woods and my recent toothless starvation, and they could see my sexy ribs, my alluring pelvis, and my sensual spine. I explained I was from New York, and had gotten lost in the woods of West Virginia. 

They made it sound like I was in Ohio, because they kept saying I was in Ohio. I didn’t want to be in Ohio, so I thought of places I could go from here. The men asked me how long I was in the forest, and I told them I wandered in there sometime in the summer of 1993 with a Spin Doctor who abandoned me. As it turns out, it was now 1996 and I was older. The world was a different place. I didn't know if I'd be able to survive in this new, man-eat-man, post-nuclear, postmodern world, but I would try.

I touched the men as I spoke, to lull them into my power. It worked just as it had worked in 1993, and as I flirted and spoke of dirty things, they each offered me gifts and services to convince me to stay with them. Muff dives, clam pokes, pork chops, screaming steamers. Even though I was desperate for human companionship and thirsty for sex, I wasn’t feeling up to it at the time. I didn't know how human sex worked in the future world, and I was afraid to try. My newly toothless mouth made me feel unattractive, but the men insisted it wasn’t true. A timid man named Bean Soup was introduced to me as the town’s orthodontist. He said he could give me new teeth that would be better than anything I’d ever had in my mouth. The men took me to his home and watched him work miracles on me in the name of oral science. After only a couple of hours I had a whole set of wooden teeth, nailed into my gums and jaw bones. It hurt, and the blood wouldn’t quit spilling out for a couple days, Bean Soup explained. He said the teeth were oak. Half the people in town had oak teeth, thanks to his services. I was wowed. The taste of oak and iron filled my mouth that night.

I could tell who the alpha male of the group was, and his name was Dank Wanklin. He was tall, fat, and had one of the nicest moustaches I’d ever seen. His teeth were strange, but I didn’t say anything. You make a man feel funny about himself, and he stops being the alpha male. I needed an alpha. After hours of flirting with the men with my new wooden smile, Dank asked me to come home with him.

“Lady,” Dank said, “you seem like you’ve been through a lot of hell in your life. What do you say you come to my house, use my shower, get cleaned up, and we get you back home?”

“Thank you, Dank you,” I said. “I would love a hot shower right now.”

We returned to his home and he introduced me to his bathroom, which I came to know intimately with a shower, and then I sucked his penis as a way to say thanks. I spit his semen into the toilet because I wasn’t hungry or thirsty after the men fed me at the cafeteria earlier that day.

Dank was a truck driver, and that night he told me he was making a trip the next morning to Chicago, but he’d be back in two days to take me to New York. I said I’d prefer to go with him to Chicago, and he agreed to take me. I’d never seen Chicago in my life, and wondered if, like New York City, it had anything good to offer me. Speaking of good things to offer me, Dank's feces were really good for me. While he slept, I explored his clogged, unflushed toilet, and was given an insight into his insides. I didn't know if this was worse than David Duchovny's, but it really wasn't bad. Some people think of truck drivers as having gross, greasy, road-worn, brutal shit. In my experience, it wasn't that way at all. It was gentle, frothy, solid and healthy, harmonious in flavor. Before I fell asleep I wondered if Dank would want to try mine, but I had only known him for a day, so I was too shy to ask. Plus, I thought I heard him crying in his sleep, which made me feel too awkward to awaken him just to ask if he’d like a taste of poo. Maybe later.

Chapter 21. In the Fisting Chapel

Early the next morning, Dank loaded me into his heavy duty semi-truck and latched my fragile, nature-beaten body to the seat. We set off to the west. Or, really, northwest.

"The last time I was on a road trip with a man, he left me in the woods," I told Dank. 

"I ain't gonna leave you in the woods, pretty Lady," he said. "You're too pretty for all the wolves out there." He winked and laughed, but didn't know he was laughing at my past romantic partners and family members. My nightmares. I tried to fake a laugh, but it's not like faking an orgasm. Milk came out my nose. I wasn't even drinking milk. 

Some time passed, and I looked out the window at windmills, trees, and other cars. It was nice being back in civilization, but a part of me missed the wolves, the bears, the creatures of the forest. 

"Lady, you got any kids?" Dank asked me, interrupting my serenity. "Got some offspring to call your own?"

"I have kids," I told him, looking him deep in the soul. "They're not really mine, though."

"You ain't got custody, huh? I'm having the same trouble in my world. Ex-wife has the kids and I got payments to make every month. It's why I drive this truck."

"I could never have custody," I tried to explain. "The boys, my sons... they're not what you would call human boys."

"They Mexican?" Dank  asked. 

"No," I said. "Not really."

"You mean Chinese?"

"Not Chinese, either," I said. 

"The fuck? What are they?"

"They're rats," I said. Dank was silent. "Well, half rat, half human. Ratmen. But they're my sons, and I suppose I love them. I haven't seen them in years, I don't even know if they're still alive. I got pregnant with them because when I was in New York City I lived with a family of rats who did dirty things, and by living in their shit-world, I became pregnant through an encounter with rat semen. On the upside, I can speak to rats, now."

Dank nodded as he stared straight ahead. "Makes sense," he said. He lit a cigar and smoked it while he drove. 

"What about your kids?" I asked. "You said your ex has them. What's the story, Dank?"

"It's a painful story, I'm afraid." He took a long puff on the cigar and was quiet for a moment. "I met my wife when she was a man and I was a woman."

"Come again," I requested. 

"I wasn't born the brawny man you see before you," Dank said with his deep and husky voice that rumbled my bowels and quivered the lips below my hips. He fingered his mustache. "I was born a girl, my name was Sportsdrink Wanklin, daughter of Hank and Sardina Wanklin. We traveled a lot, my dad was a fighter pilot in the Navy. I had no friends for long because we was always movin' around, living on airbases and such, which is typical in the life of a military man. Combat was papa's first love; I was a distant fourth or fifth, past my mother, past whiskey, and unsure if I was ahead of or behind the love he had for Lou Gehrig, pre-disease. After Lou got the disease they named after him, I think papa loved me more, of course. Hard to really say, before that. Had a couple boyfriends in high school, but never really could get into the whole boys-puttin'-their-penis-in-my-zongo-bongo business like my girlfriends could. I knew I was supposed to like it, but I couldn't."

I rubbed Dank's arm to let him know I was listening. "Dank, I'm sorry. The penis is a wild ride. I wish you had known its might."

"I knew it in a sense, but didn't care for it," he said, still puffing his cigar. "I had an urge for the clunge of a fellow woman, but never got a taste when I was young. I started to hate my own slit and wanted a penis, a cock to call my own. I had a job as a waitress right outta high school at a diner called the Sixty-Nine Scuffle. I was all dolled up, wore a nice, short dress, shaved my legs, the whole nine yards. But I tell you what, I didn't feel like a woman, like a waitress. I felt like a waiter. You know, a man. A man whose loins were cryin' out for the embrace of a tiny woman, whose tragic lack of a penis was the downfall. The man within me was still stuck tight inside the girl I was. 

"While working at the diner, I met a beautiful boy named Trynt Tropers who always wore a leather jacket and had his hair in his eyes. He wasn't the kind of boy mom and dad woulda let me date, but that just made me want him harder, made my thoughts of him so intense and full of moisture. I'd never wanted a boy before that, but he was special. There was something about him I couldn't figure out. I wrote notes to him on his check when he ate at the diner, and made a little code out of it.

“Over a month he pieced the code together and came into the diner with a rose for me. That's what the code was, it was just me tellin' him I loved roses for their smell and their soft caress, and wouldn't mind getting one. He didn't just give me a rose that night, he gave me a kiss. When I got off work, he took me on his motorcycle and we rode fast and hard through the wind, all night, under a full moon of wanting. But as I got to know Trynt, I found he had a strong feminine side that complemented my masculine side just right. When we kissed, I was on top. I'd reach for his penis like it was a vagina, and always felt disappointed when I realized it wasn't a slice, but instead a stick. Only took a couple dates before I told Trynt I wanted to be a man, and that if he really loved me he'd love me as the man I wanted to be."

"What did he say?" I asked, totally spellbound by his story. 

"He said it was alright, it was what he wanted, too. It was beautiful. He said he wanted to be a woman. We rode away on his motorcycle together to get sex changes in Rhode Island. Saved up enough money from my job as a waitress and his job as a sock puppeteer at a traveling kid's show that was stuck in our town and couldn't continue traveling. A few weeks later, he became a woman and I became a man, and we started our lives together as young, transexual lovers in the prime of our lives, living fast and hard with new bodies and new hormones. Our hearts had known for years what our brains took forever to learn, and we were happy and vibrant with desire."

"So what happened?" I asked. "Why are you a mustached, lone trucker, cruising the highways of hedonism?"

"Well, Trynt, who now went by Tryntona Wider, said she wanted to get married. I was a man now, and was ready to propose to her when the time came. But the time came sooner than I thought, because I made her get pregnant a lot of times and we had some kids. We got married after the first one, but they kept poppin' out."

"I didn't know transexual women could give birth," I said. "And I though transexual men were sterile."

"No, Lady. We can reproduce. But, come to think of it, we had kids before we got our operation. At least two of them. I remember giving birth to two boys before Tryntona and I had our operations. Young Jobobo and Lurvin were born of my womb, came from my gulinga forest. Then we transexed, and had a few more. But I don't know if Tryntona spit them outta her body or what. I don't recall much around that time as I developed alcoholism from the sudden overwhelming stress of being a man.

“We got married after the sex change, but I was drunk for the wedding. I was workin’ while Tryntona stayed home with the kids. I worked and drank all day, as a sailor and fisherman, grew muscles on the job, stank of fish and seaweed when I came home, and only wanted a bottle of whiskey to calm my nerves each night. It was my drinking that pushed the kids away, but it was my smoking of cocaine that brought them back - for a little while. Tryntona had me arrested for sharing my drugs with the kids at the motel room I moved into when she kicked me outta the trailer I bought. We got divorced, I spent nine years in jail, and lost custody of my children. Part of that was cause I’d accidentally killed our first child, Jobobo. It was an accident, it was cocaine related. Maybe meth. Not sure. Anyway, he died. Prison ain’t kind to men who used to be women. Also ain’t kind to men who manslaughter children. I cried every night in prison. Every morning, every afternoon. Always, I cried."

"That's horrible," I said. I wanted him to know I was sympathetic, but I had no way to show him that his story only kind of interested me, now. "I’m sure Jobobo knew, when he was dying, that you loved him. When did you see the rest of your kids last?"

Dank looked at me and tossed the cigar out the window. "It's been too long. I've been outta jail six years come November, and haven't seen them since visitations in the slammer. I've got no idea where they live today, or what they're up to."

"I hope you find them, one of these days," I said. "I bet they're so excited to see you again, out of jail!" I wasn't serious. Dank's rancid stench of darkness and misery were part of his charm. These things drew me closer to him, made me want him more. If he reconnected with his children, he'd be happy, and no longer the mysterious broken man-sexual I had just recently decided to adore.

When I’d broken through enough of his tough, she-man shell, I asked Dank about his teeth, as I rubbed my tongue over my own. The wood in my mouth still hurt, but I couldn’t take my eyes off Dank’s wicked grin. His top teeth were sharp, like a dog’s teeth. His bottom teeth were small, like a child’s. Turned out, that’s exactly what they were. The top teeth he’d taken from a family pet that had passed away before they had their first kid, Jobobo. Had his own teeth removed just for this dog’s teeth. The same night Jobobo died of an overdose in Dank’s motel, Dank had gotten his bottom teeth knocked out in a bar fight with a Charlie Daniels roadie. Said he went home to ease the pain with drugs, and made his son die in the process. Had his boy’s teeth put into his mouth after the funeral, and proudly sported his  dog’s and his son’s teeth everywhere he went, to everyone he met, as a man of pride and sentimental appreciation. There were so many things to admire about Dank that it gave me odors in hidden places, and soaked my down-belows when I thought about it.

Dank unloaded the truck in Chicago and offered to pay for a hotel so we wouldn't have to sleep in his truck all night. His man muscles made him perfectly cut for spending long days in the truck while delivering goods to bosses and captains and managers of every color, but my frail woman frame made it impossible for me to stay in there too long. I looked, and felt, like an anorexic super model. Dank was going to treat me like one. 

We stayed at a big, tall hotel called the Fisting Chapel. It wasn't a chapel, but a gleaming, golden tower of power. Our room was luxurious, covered in gold and velvet, and the air and carpet smelled of cinnamon and blood. Within the first few minutes of being in the room, Dank started rearranging the furniture. He moved the bed across the room, situated the couch (there was a couch) so that it sat facing the wall it sat only two feet from, put the TV under the love seat, and stacked the dresser and a desk up against a wall by the window. I asked him why he was doing this but he shrugged and said he didn't know, it was just something he did at hotels. Minutes later, a man knocked on our door and delivered champagne to us for only a ten dollar tip. 

"Do we have ice for this bubbly?" I asked Dank.

"Check the freezer," he said. I checked the freezer, which Dank had set under the bed. 

"Nothing in here except cold air, Dank. What do I do?"

"Down the hall," he said, waving his hand sort of in the direction I had to go. "Ice machine, Lady." 

I didn't know what an ice machine was, but I knew I could figure it out. I walked down the hall, slowly toward a large gray box - an ice machine, the first ice machine I'd ever seen in my life. I looked inside to see cubes of ice sleeping together without saying a word. 1996 was a new place, an almost alien place. Machines could make ice, now. But what were they using to make it? That was anyone's guess, because it was technology.

While I had been out in the woods, when I wasn't dreaming about David Duchovny and awakening to Fox Prints, I once had a dream that all of the earth's robots and machines and appliances and high-tech creations were the work of a single wizard named Bambarello, who had crawled out from under the shadow of the moon during an eclipse at the equator, and cried at the world. When his crying was over, he decided to do something about the world before him and crafted spells of high-level enchantment on all who he could see. They were blessed with golden watches, monocles, calculators, credit cards, coffee makers, voice modulators, pregnancy tests, televisions, cars, airplanes, satellite dishes, kitchens, and electricity. I had this dream a lot.

Bambarello never gave me Fox Prints, or wizard prints, but his anger and his creativity were a spark that sometimes gave me light residues in the early hours of morning. Enough of these residues over my years in the forest, with one pair of panties, combined with all the Fox Prints I'd been getting, meant I had built quite a collection of stains in my undergarments. I was still wearing these same undergarments in the hotel. It was my way of keeping FBI agent Fox Mulder and dreamweaving wizard Bambarello close to me. Anyway, it seemed to me that Bambarello could be the reason for this ice machine. He must  have created it for desert people who didn't know the concept of ice.

I climbed inside the ice machine before I took anything from it, bathing in the frozen pit of water cubes. I put some in my mouth and some in other parts of me, freezing me all over, inside and out, tingling and twinkling from the arctic tundra of touch. I hadn't seen ice like this since the dreams of Bambarello freezing entire oceans so cities would un-flood themselves during the Great Plagues of Passover, when, according to my dreams, women and first-born children spent all of Passover vomiting into coffins and large, echoed hallways, and the men had to sit by and watch while their loved ones died. This was made more problematic by the flooding of their towns and villages. Bambarello saved these people from the floods, in my dreams. But he never saved them from the Great Plagues, as far as I knew. The ice felt good on my skin, but I knew it would feel even better in the champagne. 

I loaded a bucket up with some ice and returned to the room. I didn't see Dank, so I thought this was a good time to drop some poop into the toilet, so he wouldn't hear my splashes and grunts later on, and tell me it meant I was wealthy and gluttonous. I opened the door to the bathroom and Dank was in there finishing off his own plop drop. 

"Whoops!" I shouted, and backed out. 

"No, Lady!" He said. "Come in here!" 

I peeked back into the bathroom.

"Come here, look at this," he said, standing up and turning to look into the toilet. There was brown smeared around his butt, and he was wearing a white mask. He pointed into the bowl. 

I looked in the bowl and saw a chocolate snake curled up for what must have  been miles. It was only a couple feet, but I couldn't see where its head began and its body ended.

"Just finished it," Dank told me, from behind his white mask that made him look like that guy from that play about the phantom inside the opera house. "Whattaya think?"

I had feared Dank's gaze upon my own excrement, but he appeared to welcome mine upon his. Did he know that I had even consumed his? He might have known, but  I didn't know for sure. Was it safe to tell him? Not yet.

"Dank, you are a behemoth!" I said so excitedly. "Have you tasted it?"

"I just finished making it, Lady," he said. "There's time for that later."

I couldn't believe it! He was open to the idea of devouring even his own popo. Or that's what it sounded like. I had to be sure. I reached into the toilet, grabbed the brown mess he'd left, and pulled it up, a few inches out of the water. I dunked my head into the bowl and smeared Dank's waste in my face. I smiled while I did it, and looked up at him, brown in the mouth, and my eyes twinkled at him. 

"Lady," he said, "I feel your wanting, and my wanting is the same." He knelt down beside me at the toilet, still without pants, and joined his tongue with my face for a taste test he wouldn't forget. My mouth and his mouth gnashed together, and my wooden teeth grinded away on his child teeth and dog teeth, and shit wedged between our gums and tongues. Tastes were exotic. His shit was top of the line. I knew he'd be getting hard in the pants  (if he'd been wearing them), so I took one hand out of the toilet and grabbed his Johnson with my shit-soaked hand and smeared it across his flesh. He fit his meat inside of me while our champagne sat by the bed, waiting for us, unknowing of our carnal, excremental lust just feet away.

Within minutes, we finished our activities  in the bathroom, and Dank left so I could do my business in there away from his eyes. It would have been embarrassing for me to defecate in front of that masked gentleman. When I finished, Dank had a glass of champagne waiting for me on the bed. My glass was filled with ice while his was without it. As I sipped the disgusting drink, and let the bubbling alcoholic waste combine with the sordid human waste still clinging to my gums and teeth, Dank rested on the furniture stacked against the wall, and made himself appear comfortable when I knew he surely wasn’t. If there'd been any discomfort in his face, it was masked by the mask upon his masked face. His mask confused me, so I asked why he was wearing it.

“This face protects me from the pains of the world, my Lady,” he answered. “It reflects the bad vibrations away from me and makes a safe hole of vacancy wherever I am. I forget my emptiness because the world has no influence.”

“Sounds intense!” I shouted. I was already drunk. I hadn't had an alcoholic drink in years and this was going straight into my veins.

Dank lit another cigar and slid it under his mask, into his mouth, puffing away like a dragon hungry for the fire. “When there’s a deep, gaping wound in the soul… Ya need a bandage to soak up all the blood. That’s what this face does for me. Soaks up the blood.”

“I thought it reflected bad vibrations,” I remarked, confused.

“Both,” Dank said. “It does both. Bad things stay out, and the lifeblood of my spirit is soaked up and recycled, put back into my body for further use.”

This talk of soul and spirit and blood reminded me of Dank's wet dreams the night before. Not wet in the pants, but wet in the eyes. “Did you know you cry in your sleep?” I asked him, thinking he’d been told this once or twice.

"I do what?” He stopped smoking his cigar, and sat awkwardly on his furniture pile. He tried to cross his legs to continue to give the look of comfort, but I could tell it was fake.

“Just a little bit, like some light whimpering.” It was weird that a grown man didn’t know he could cry in his sleep. “At least, that’s what you were doing last night. But Dank, I don’t judge you.”

He adjusted his mask. “I don’t cry when I wear this face. Keeps me strong and immune to the poison of emotions.”

I started to understand Dank’s reasons for positioning the furniture in our room into such strange arrangements. At least, I thought I had an idea. His life was a big fat bag of chaos, and he had no control over any of it. When he re-arranged the furniture in some strange, new place, he probably felt like he was in control, like he called the shots. The furniture was a manifestation of his desire for order. This was the first time in my entire life that I felt smart. It  was also the last. I had no more insights into Dank’s life and treated him like the gentle spirit I could tell he was.

“What do we do tomorrow?” I asked him, changing the subject.

“Tomorrow we go back to Ohio.”

I didn’t know what to say, because I didn’t want to leave. I enjoyed the smell of Chicago and the taste of its streets. I had to stay. “Dank, I… I’m not going back.”

"The fuck?" he unhappily exclaimed. "I can't leave you here. This city will crush you like a jizz pecan in a tulip garden."

"How's that?" I asked. "I've lived in the city, before; New York City."

"Lady," he started, "you've been in the woods for the last 3 years. The world's a different place, now."

"I know, I saw the ice machine."

"Great, isn't it?"

"Like a dream," I said. "But I want to stay here, I can handle the future. I'm a new woman, now. I came from the concrete jungle of New York City and then survived in the real life jungles of America, sleeping with wolves, prowling hard and dirty through the nights."

"America has no jungles," Dank said, raining on my parade. "I don't mean to rain on your ego, or nothin'."

It turned out he was raining not only on my parade, but my ego as well. He doubted me, but I knew what it was all about. "You think 'cause I'm a woman I can't handle myself?"

"I didn't say that, Lady, I didn't say that at all. But yes. That's basically it. You're a fragile creature, just look at you. You're thin and delicate, like a woman should be. I want to bend you over my tower of seats and tables over here and give it to you up the dirt road."

"I want that too, Dank, but I'm tough enough to survive Chicago's worst. I'll show you, you misogynist bastard."

"Show me in the morning," he said.

"Yes sir," I replied. I went over to him and his tower of furniture so he could bend me over and plow me like a farmer. 

Dank didn't cry that night. He wore his mask, and spoke of silly things in his sleep. I lifted his mask to kiss him on the mustache, and then fell asleep myself, straight into dreams of Bambarello casting spells and creating magical tornadoes, forth from which sprung trains and tall buildings, and taxis and bicycles and yachts. His whirlwind magic created a metropolis in front of him, and the movement of his fingers guided invisible forces to build the city that would become known as Chicago. I watched, and for the first time, Bambarello's magic gave me prints in my panties that were just as moist and distinct as my Fox Prints.  

Chapter 22. Wax On – Wax Off

I walked into the hotel room carrying a large potted bamboo tree, stumbled over some rearranged furniture, and set it down by the window to join five other potted bamboo trees. I poured water on the plants and kissed each on leafy lips, stroked the stalk a bit and opened the window so the trees and I could get some fresh air. 

"Is this a beautiful day or what, friends?" I said. No answer came. They were trees. I sat down on the bed, removed my jeans, and began shaving my legs. 

Dank and I had been in Chicago for three months. He'd taken an indefinite break from his job as a trucker and was giving me the life of a princess like he said I deserved. He took up a job as a garbage man so we could afford to stay in the hotel and he could take me out to nice dinners at least a couple times a week.  It was a really expensive hotel, so Dank’s savings account was exhausted by the third week. I was so happy to be living the high life in the big city again.

As far as big cities go, Chicago and New York City weren’t very much alike.  Even though in New York I lived with rats who murdered people and left rotting, decomposed corpses on my floor, they shit all over the furniture and walls, and there was little air circulation in my apartment, my home smelled better than the rest of the city. I’ve been told that I seem to be pretty keen on filth and that I embody everything that is rotten and nauseating about humanity, but New York City still made me have to queef more than usual. I could eat my own puke from the toilet or eat food sold on the street and I never was able to tell the difference. People in New York thought I was homeless because I didn’t wear new dresses and I never drank coffee or talked about my job. Dank said the word for the people in New York City is “neurotic”, but I don’t think he’s right. I told him that’s the kind of dancing I used to do when I lived in L.A. The people in New York were nothing like the cool people in L.A.

Chicago was weird to me because it didn’t smell like a sewage and bile holocaust and there wasn’t garbage and slime on every sidewalk or street. I had forgotten that you could talk to people outside and they would talk back without yelling or running or spitting on you. It was like an alien world. Dank wanted to know how Chicago’s theaters compared to New York City’s theaters, but I had no idea there were any theaters in New York. I never saw plays because I didn’t  have friends. I also didn’t give a shit about them. Dank took me to a few big shows and they bored me to death, so it wasn’t a mistake for me to miss that trash when I was living in New York.

The pizza in Chicago wasn’t much better than New York’s pizza - it was just fatter and messier and made my body just as bloated with grease. I still ate hot dogs and hamburgers and spaghetti all the time, because food was food.

Neither place was Los Angeles, though. Even Chicago didn’t have as many Mexicans as L.A., and the strip clubs definitely weren’t as trashy. New York City at least had some sleazy, back alley strip clubs I could catch a disease at if I wanted to, but nothing like the smut and festering decay I could have walked into on any night in L.A.’s best neighborhoods. I learned you’ll never live somewhere that has it all, so I just accepted this place for what it was.

The door to our hotel room flew open and Dank walked in, letting his gut hang out like he always did, and burping to announce his arrival.

“Finish up your legs, little Lady,” he said. “I’m takin’ a shower then we’re goin’ to get some fish. Krigsford from work told me about a new place that has the largest Lake Michigan carp anywhere. Said he ate a ten pounder last night, filled with carrots and shrimp! He let me taste the residue that was still on his tongue and it’s gotta be the best fish in Chicago.”

“That sounds so good!” I said. “Let me just finish these patches on my inner thighs and I’ll be ready.”

***

Our table at Hammond’s Salmon Crammin’ Boat & Bar, which was neither boat nor bar, was right in the center of the restaurant next to a huge fake lake. I dunked my head into the water to look the fishes in the eyes and had Dank time me to see how long I could hold my breath. I held it for a minute and a half and kissed three fish with a new kiss I called a fish kiss. Real basic and simple.

“Hi, folks,” said our waiter, interrupting my deep sea expedition. “I’ll be your server tonight, my name’s Brady Charleston. Can I get you started on an appetizer or interest you in some of our cool Tuna based beverage specials?”

“No thanks, Brady,” said Dank. “I think we’ll need a few more minutes here to decide. Maybe just a couple Eel Juice Cocktails for right now.”

“You guys have fish sticks?” I asked.

“Of course, ma’am,” Brady said. “We have them in 30 different fish types, from Salmon to Stingray.”

“Stingray fish sticks?” I was already salivating.

“I’ll go get those drinks and give you a few minutes to think it over,” he said, and walked away.

“So Lady,” Dank started up. “I guess you know money’s been getting tight for me. For us. I’m making good money as a garbage man - always wanted to be one. But it’s only good enough for living in a real place, not a hotel.”

“Are you saying we have to downgrade?” I asked.

“Well, I know you like the hotel and its fancy gold trim and expensive furniture. I like it too. But my job alone ain’t enough to pay $150 a night for that room anymore. I’m exhausting all my money. Truck driving was a good gig, but now my more fulfilling work isn’t gonna keep us afloat. I’m hurting. We’re hurting.”

“What do we need to do?” I hoped he didn’t intend to cut me up and feed me to the locals.

“Lady,” Dank said, “I’m thinkin’ it would real good for you to get a job. You could help pay the hotel bill and even buy some food. I can’t do it all alone, anymore.”

I sighed. “Dank, I can’t work. I’m still, you know, weak and stuff.”

“Weak? From the woods?”

“Right, from the woods. Still can’t do anything too physical, and I have flashbacks and stuff like that. I hear wolves and I’m like, ‘what, where are the wolves? Someone help me.’ You know?”

“Lady, you’ve put on a good 20 pounds now. You’re a curvy, sexy, beautiful young woman again. I know you’ve got strength because I feel it in our throes of passion.”

“That’s different, Dank. That’s just sex muscle. You know that’s not the same thing. I can’t use that strength for anything but fucking.”

“You can use it to get a job and do some work so we can afford to stay in the hotel.”

“No I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“You’re not my boss. I’m unemployed and living in a boss free zone, faggot.”

“You’re livin’ in a hotel zone, and it’s because I’m payin’ for it!”

“So what? This isn’t about who pays for what. We’re red hot lovers, Dank. You pay, I lay. Isn’t that how it works?”

Our waiter returned with our Eel Juice Cocktails. “Here you go, folks. Ready to order?”

“Yes, I’d like to order something,” I said, as I took a big gulp of my cocktail. “I’d like to order a restraining order on this man.”

Dank got angry for some reason. “Lady, I’m serious, we need to talk about this!”

“I’m serious too. Waiter, restrain this man.”

“Um… should I just come back when you’re ready to order?” Brady said.

“I just ordered,” I said. “I told you to restrain this man. You want your tip, you’re gonna restrain him.”

“That’s not even what a restrainin’ order is, Lady,” Dank told me, rudely.

“Shut up, idiot,” I said. Our waiter backed away, probably so he could go find someone stronger to come restrain Dank as I had ordered.

“I don’t think I’m bein’ unreasonable. I’m just askin’ you to help out a little. Don’t even gotta be a tough job, just enough to make you a few hundred bucks a week. That’ll go a long way for the two of us.”

I finished my drink. “I don’t like how you’re talking to me. You asshole, you think I’m not a princess?”

“What do you mean?” he asked. “I never said -”

I threw my empty glass at his head. “Fuck you, Dank! I can’t work!”

He fell out of his chair and grabbed his head to make a big scene. He was bleeding but it was no big deal. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Lady?” Now he was shouting.

I stood up and took a knife from the table. “Nothing is wrong!” I screamed. By this point everyone in the restaurant was looking at us and had stopped eating their delicious looking food.

“Lady, I’ve done everything for you since we’ve been up here. I’m just askin’ you to lend a helpin’ hand!”

“You’ve done everything for me? Really? Have you ignored all that I’ve done?”

“What have you ever done?” he had the nerve to ask.

“I watched those fucking Karate Kid movies over and over again so I could learn the whole wax on – wax off thing! Wax on with right, whacks off with left! You think I invented that on my own? Nope! I had to repeatedly watch those movies to get it right! I did this because I like to make you feel good!”

Brady Charleston came back to our table and had two other men with him.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” said the large black man with Brady. “I’m Winford Topplestone, the manager of Hammond’s Salmon Crammin’ Boat & Bar, and we need to ask you to stop causing a scene.”

“This is all his doing,” I said, pointing to Dank, still lying on the floor.

“Ma’am, this isn’t about whose fault  it is, this is about maintaining a comfortable and enjoyable dining environment for our guests – something which you are currently making impossible by yelling, throwing glasses, and brandishing our silverware as a weapon.”

I held the knife tighter and pulled it close. “He told me to get a job.” I would explain the situation if I needed to.

“We don’t need to know the details, we need the two of you to leave right now.”

Dank stood up and only made things worse.

“Mister,” he said, “I apologize about this. I didn’t know things would get so out of control like this.”

The manager took Dank’s side. “We know, sir. We’ve observed the whole thing. This isn’t your fault, but we need to ask the two of you to leave so our guests may return to enjoying their experience at Hammond’s Salmon Crammin’ Boat & Bar.”

“I understand,” Dank said. He pulled out his wallet and stuffed a fistful of cash into Brady’s hands. “This is for the drinks. Please keep all the change. I’m sorry about the trouble.”

I lunged at Dank with the knife but was tackled by the manager, Brady, and the other guy who was with them.

“Get the fuck off me!” I shouted. “I just wanted fucking stingray fish sticks! Give them to me!”

The men took my knife, lifted me up, and carried me out of the restaurant. Everyone in the place applauded as they took me out, probably to show me support. When I was dropped outside, Dank came to the door.

“Lady, I’ve had it. I’m headin’ back to Ohio tomorrow. Gonna go back to truck drivin’. I’m leaving the trash force and leavin’ Chicago. You’re not comin’ with me because you’re out of your fuckin’ mind. You didn’t wanna get a job, but now it looks like you got no choice. And I’m stayin’ here to get some fuckin’ fish sticks. You can come get your clothes from the hotel tonight, but I don’t wanna see you until then. I didn’t become a man so I could take this kinda shit from you or anyone else.” He turned around and went back into the restaurant.

“Fuck you, Dank!” I shouted to him. But I could tell he wasn’t listening. “Dank Wanklin cries in his sleep! He wears a mask… he’s a woman! Got a vagina inside his penis! I saw it.”

I tried to go back inside but there was now a man stationed at the door who seemed to be put there specifically to keep me out. Three hand-job offers later I realized I wasn’t going to get back in. I turned and walked in the direction I thought the hotel was in so I could get my clothes. As I was about to walk across a busy street, someone tapped me on the shoulder.

“Where?!” I said as I spun around. A woman was standing in front of me.

“Hello,” she said kindly.

“Who are you?”

“I was in the restaurant just now. I saw the fight between you and your husband.”

“He’s not my husband. We just fuck.”

“Everyone in there thought you were wrong for standing up to him like that, but not me.”

“You’re wrong. They were clapping for me.”

“What was that man doing to you?”

“He told me to get a job, but I can’t work, I have lady bones. I don’t need a job! I need to have more time in the hotel for the TV.”

“Pig!”

“Excuse me? Me?”

“No, that man you were with. Sounds like a typical male chauvinist. A misogynist. A standard cisgendered heteronormative straight white male.”

“I’ve never heard any of those words before.”

“Those words mean he’s using his maleness to try to oppress you. He thinks that being part of the privileged class means he can treat you like a second class citizen. But you’re not a second class citizen.”

“I’m not?”

“No, you’re just as good as a man. Better, even. You are part of the oppressed and beaten down class. But you’re strong and you’ll stand up against this. You’re a woman.”

“I am a woman.” I liked what this girl was saying. She was right about the things I could confirm.

“Men have always tried to maintain the status quo and silence us. They think they rule the world. And maybe right now they do, but that’s going to change. Women have a voice and we will be heard.”

“I like the cut of your glib,” I  said.

“You mean jib?”

“What did I say?”

“Glib.”

“Hmm.”

“Are you interested in - ”

“What does glib mean? I think I meant jib.”

“I don’t know.  Are you int - ”

“Jib.”

“… Are you int - ”

“Jib, it was definitely jib. I like the cut of your jib, Miss.”

“Thank you! Are you interested in learning some more about this stuff?”

“What stuff?”  

“Feminism.”

“Sure. But right now I have to think about what I’m going to do. All my clothes are in my hotel room. I have no money. That fuckface said he’s leaving me in Chicago, so now I won’t have a place to live.”

“You can stay with me at the clubhouse!” the girl said.

“You have a clubhouse?”

“Yes! I am part of a feminist organization, the biggest one in Chicago! We have an entire warehouse that we’ve turned into a meeting place and headquarters. Some of the girls and boys live there. The ones who don’t have jobs.”  

“Boys live there? But I thought we want to kill boys.”

“No, we want equality! We don’t want to kill anyone.”

“I think I understand. You say I can live at the clubhouse? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely! What’s your name?”

“I’m Lady Molasses.”

“I’m Klunti! Klunti Hardstroke. So nice to meet you, Lady. I can tell you and I are going to get along really well. You’ll be a great addition to our organization because you’ve got fucking ovaries!”

It was true. I did have ovaries. This girl, Klunti Hardstroke, seemed to know a lot about me. I stared at her.

“That’s kind of our way of saying “you’ve got balls!” like men say, but, you know, for women. “You’ve got balls!” implies that you need to have testicles in order to be brave or strong. That isn’t true at all!”

“You sure know a lot. I think I’m really going to like living with you and the team.”

I got my stuff from the hotel room, which just included a bag of clothes Dank had bought for me shortly  after we arrived in Chicago. I inhaled the scent of the room for the last time as I stood there with Klunti, knowing I’d never be back.

“I’m gonna miss this place,” I told her.

“Smells like cinnamon!” she said.

“And blood,” I added.

“Do you have everything?”

“I guess so. This is all I own. I lived in the woods before this, so I lost pretty much all my things.”

“You lived in the woods?” she asked, seeming genuinely interested.

“Yes. But before that I lived in New York City, which is like a dirtier, less civilized version of the woods.”

“Oh, I love New York City!”

“Let’s get out of here. Wait… do you think I could bring these bamboo trees with me?” I showed her the five potted plants I had by the window.

“Sure. I’ll help you carry them!”

“You’re a sweetheart.”

Klunti showed me the Feminist Inquisition Syndicate Territory. It consisted of a huge warehouse that had been fixed up to meet the needs of the organization, and the entire block surrounding it, which Klunti said all belonged to the group.

We walked through the well lit, brightly painted, nicely furnished warehouse carrying my clothes and bamboo trees while Klunti explained things to me.

“FIST was started in 1967, during the second wave of the women’s movement. Chicago played a very important role in the movement, as you might know. Our brave founder, Penez Modard-Freulian, murdered her husband Deck Freulian, who was known as an abusive man and hateful man, and she sold his napkin making business. She kept the warehouse, however, where the napkins were made, and that’s what we’re standing in right now.”

“Wow…” I was impressed. “It looks so pretty now.”

“All of us here at FIST take part in painting this place, furnishing it, fixing it up, making it livable and comfortable for everyone. Penez Modard-Freulian recruited very serious young women in the late 60’s to help with her cause, and to fight against the patriarchy in every fathomable way.” We stopped in a hallway, and Klunti pointed to a long row of portraits of what appeared to be the the same person.

“Who’s this handsome man?” I asked.

“Lady, this isn’t a man. This is Penez Modard-Freulian, our founder. These pictures were taken of her in action, throughout her heroic life of activism.”

I looked at the pictures as we walked down the hall. The first one was dated June of 1958. A young Penez was standing in a full body swimsuit with a peach fuzz mustache on her lip and angry eyebrows. She frowned while two boys around her smiled. The next picture was dated September of 1964, and a less young Penez, with a darker mustache and angrier eyebrows, lifted weights and flexed for the camera with her mouth wide open. She appeared to be shouting at something.

The picture after that one had the date January 1966 and showed Penez making a fist at the camera with one hand, and giving it the finger with the other. The following picture was dated August 1967, and Penez was standing in a courtroom, on trial for the murder of her husband. Her head was shaved but her eyebrows and mustache remained bold. The next picture, from 1969, had Penez burning bras. The one after that had her burning dresses. After that she was burning panty hose. All through the 70’s her pictures showed her burning things, including flags, images of American presidents, books written by men, dolls with the faces of famous men in movies and music, and G.I. Joes. Through the 80’s Penez had a powerful mullet and sported a number of great looking sweatshirts and themed shorts. I commented on each of them, letting Klunti know of my appreciation for Penez’s style.

The pictures ended in 1989. The last two pictures were a coffin and a tombstone. “I don’t get it,” I said. “I don’t see her in these pictures.”

“Penez died in 1989. She had  a stroke in our swimming pool while doing a backstroke. It was horribly tragic. Some of us found her shortly after the stroke, but she died before she got to the hospital.”

“Whoa. You guys have a pool?”

“Yes, Lady. And it’s open to everyone. I think you’re going to like it here.”

“So now that Penez is dead, who’s in charge?”

“I am! She had appointed my mother vice president of the group in 1985, so she took over as our leader. But mom met a man two years ago and got married. We all voted her out of the group and I took control. I’ve been the leader ever since.”

“How cool. So, where will I stay tonight?” I asked. I was getting tired from all the exciting change in my life.

“I’ll show you your new room.”

We took an elevator to the third floor, the top level of the warehouse. We walked past a bunch of doors, all which sounded like they had cool stuff going on behind them. I was getting so wet in the pants. I was going to have friends again! Neighbors! We stopped in front of a door that looked like all the others.

Klunti knocked. “You’ve got a roommate, so I’ll introduce you guys and then let you settle in.”

The door flew open and a girl with tattoos all over her arms and neck stood there looking at us. “Hey Klunti,” she said. Then she looked at me and froze.

I froze too. This girl looked familiar. Our faces stared at each other.

Klunti introduced  us. “Lady this is Sage, Sage this is Lady. She just joined us! She’s going to be  your new roommate.”

“Lady!?” Sage said.

“Sage… Sagepuss?” I said, timidly. “Is that you?”

“Oh my God… Lady. Yeah, it’s me. I can’t believe it’s you.”

“You two know each other?” Klunti asked, sounding surprised.

“Yes,” Sagepuss said. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.” She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the room.

“Well, great! I’ll let you guys catch up!” Klunti set down the bamboo plants she was carrying inside the room, turned and left down the hallway.

Sagepuss slammed the door behind her.

“Long time no see, Lady.”

“Yes… So… How’s the farm?” I asked, setting my bamboo plants next to the others.

Chapter 23. Cunt, Dyke, Whore, Slut, Faggot, and Bitch

Sagepuss didn’t answer me. Instead of waiting for her to fart some words out of her mouth, I opened my arms for a hug and flew in like an airplane to give her a tight squeeze with my friendly wings. But she pushed me away and showed me a mean stare.

“Lady, you’ve got a lot of nerve acting like we’re on hugging terms. We’re not. Not even close.”

“What do you mean?”  This was news to me.

“Sit down, we need to talk.”

It hit me that Sagepuss wasn’t happy to see me. She almost seemed angry that I was here, like she had been filled full on a liquid diet of hatred and bile. A bile that she wanted to spit in my mouth.

I went over to a small couch. Sitting down, I finally took a glance around the room to see what it looked like.

It wasn’t as big as the hotel room at the Fisting Chapel, and not nearly as nice. The walls were bricks and cement blocks, but they’d been painted over. There was a small window on the far wall, and lots of posters and pictures plastered all over the place. Other than the couch I was on, there were two beds and a desk. Not much else. My bamboo trees were really going to spice the place up.

“So whattaya wanna talk about?” I asked.

Sage sat down at the desk. “I wonder if you know that my sister went to prison because of you.”

“Yeah, I knew that. I sent her a nice letter when I found out!”

“So you should know why she was in there. You murdered a woman, and my sister took the fall for it while you ran away, never to be heard from or seen again. Like a fucking coward.”

“But… Sagepuss…”

“I don’t go by Sagepuss anymore!” Sagepuss said. “That name is dead to me now. I cut the puss off my name, I cut my name in half just like my heart that was cut in two by both of you. You and Barbalay left me when you ran away to be strippers, and I was left with nothing. I had two sisters in the two of you, and then I had none. And then I had one, again. And she was in jail. And then I had none again when I stopped hearing from her. And now I have one again? I don’t fucking think so, Lady.”

I couldn’t even start to follow her so I just shook my head, but it didn’t feel right, so I began nodding in hopes that was the motion she was looking for. “Sage, I didn’t know your sister would take the blame for my shit-murder. It was an accidental death that I never intended!”

“Listen, Lady,” Sage began, “I know you didn’t intend for anything bad to happen by killing a woman. It was a Twisted Sister show, I know this sort of thing happens. Barb wasn’t mad at you, at first. She just hoped you were somewhere safe. We didn’t think she’d end up getting convicted, but it happened. There was nothing we could do. Papa paid for the best lawyers he could afford, but it wasn’t enough to save Barb. The judge just had it in for her. Fucking Judge Squambles, the sonofabitch. Male chauvinist dick.”

“Squambles?” I said. That name sounded familiar. I felt like I had known a man by the name of Squambles, but I couldn’t remember when, or where.

“Yeah, Judge Glibbord Squambles. Disgusting man, a sickening human being.”

Glibbord Squambles. I knew this name. I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to visualize some kind of memory tied to the name. I saw images of myself squatting over a bucket, shitting into it, filling it deep with my waste. I saw a man tackling me, pouring the poop out of the bucket and smearing it all over my body. He then gathered the poop into his hands and tried forcing it back into my anus. Of course – I was at Appledance. Glibbord Squambles had been my most valued customer. The man with a fondness for my unwashed ass, who was in love with my shit and had experimental scat-sex with me each time he came to the club. This man was a judge? I didn’t immediately say anything about my realization to Sage.

She continued talking. “Barb eventually confessed to having witnessed you murder the woman in the bathroom that night. The judge wouldn’t hear her and denied her attempts to tell her story. He called her a liar and said she was in contempt of court! He had no reason to do that! He’s a fucking bastard example of the patriarchy imposing its tyrannical rule over all women.”

“Sage, I didn’t murder anyone! It really was an accident! I didn’t know the woman was going to die.”

“Fine. Call it manslaughter, then. Barb said she witnessed you ‘manslaughter’ that woman.”

“Womanslaughter, you mean.” But Sage was in no mood to be corrected.

“Lady, you ruined Barb’s life. She spent years in prison. Prison life changed her. She went in there pure and decent, loving life and with dreams of a future filled with money and luxury, endless love, and all kinds of delicious food. But quickly Barb became hateful to everything and everyone, and was abused by other prisoners and the wretched guards.”

This news was horrifying. I didn’t know if I could bear to hear about the terrible conditions of Barbalay’s stay in prison.

“We used to send letters back and forth,” Sage explained. “She once told me about a horrific sexual experience where she received something called a peppermint.”

I tried to look as ignorant as possible, like I didn’t know what she was about to tell me.

“It’s an abhorrent act where a woman is eaten out until she cums. Then, the person giving her cunnilingus bites down hard on her labia or other parts until she bleeds. If she cums enough, the goo comes out of her and mixes with the red. The eater-outer then swirls their mouth to draw the lines of  blood inward, toward the vaginal opening. When they pull their head away, it’s supposed to kind of look like one of those red and white peppermints. And this is supposed to be enjoyable for people!”

“How disgusting!” I said. “Like the candycane!”

“What?” Sage asked.

“Nothing, that’s just gross, I mean. Candycanes are disgusting and that also sounds disgusting. Too.” I wouldn’t bother telling Sage about Fresca D’Lishus’s other signature move that she had passed on to me in the slammer. It seemed Fresca’s tricks were making their way across the country.

“It’s barbaric is what it is,” she said. “The sickest part is that Barb started to really like it and sent me photos of herself getting and giving peppermints to other girls in prison.”

Barbalay’s time in prison sounded rather  similar to my own time in the joint. It was kind of refreshing to see that two best friends, separated by the length of an entire country, were still living pretty similar lives.

Sage went on. “I was already having a hard enough time learning how to be a functioning teenager with an older sister who was a felon, and an ex-sister, which is what I considered you, who abandoned me and the family. These photos and Barb’s extremely detailed letters didn’t make it any easier for me to be normal. I could see that she was changing. So I had no choice but to change myself. When I was 16 I dropped out of school and ran away from the farm. I stopped talking to the few friends I had and made new friends in the gutters and streets, where I could be absorbed in smut and filth and drugs and sex and anything that I wanted.”

Sage’s life didn’t sound too much unlike my own. I didn’t know if I should be proud of her for following in my footsteps without knowing it, or if I should say something like, ‘what a bad idea! You shouldn’t have done that!’. But I didn’t say anything because she wanted to keep talking.

“That couldn’t go on forever, though. It was good for a while, but then I met the right kind of people. People who saved me from all of this and guided me in the right direction. I was digging myself into a hole that would end up being my grave, and they knew it. They cared for me, and didn’t like seeing me do this to myself.”

“Who were these people?” I asked.

“Feminists. They spoke to me when I came by a homeless shelter one day. I used to go there to give blowjobs to the homeless guys in exchange for miniature vodka bottles and syringes, and to get hot soup when I felt like it. But mid-blowjob a girl came to me and told me to quit what I was doing. My mouth was full of cum from a previous job – I liked to mix it up, a bit – so I couldn’t talk to her. She put her hands out for me to spit into. I spit and she asked me my name. After I told her, she asked me if I had heard the good news. She told me what it was, and that it was the best news I could hear. It was the news that because I was a woman, I could be saved. She held the cum from my mouth the whole time that we talked. That’s how much she cared about me.”    

“Oh my!” I exclaimed. I had been on the edge of my seat with her story and this was a clincher. The rich characters were popping out at me and I could picture all the vivid imagery she painted with words like “cum” and “blowjob” and “homeless”. I hoped she would continue.

“These people came to the homeless shelter every weekend to protest the men who tried to get hot soup, they were a group of girls who said they were fighting something even bigger than homelessness. They were fighting the world of men, a world where women are lower on the totem pole of privilege than men, a world where women are slaves and barely citizens and barely human. They said it was a war, and they needed me. I didn’t know it at the time, but, as they explained it, I needed them, too.”

“Wow. That is really incredible, Sage.” I was sweating as a result of the raw emotion in her tale. I could almost feel the heat of the war she spoke of. It was so real to me. I didn’t know what the war was, but I knew what the word “war” meant.

“The Los Angeles chapter of FIST asked me to join, and I never looked back. I came to Chicago two years ago because this is the world headquarters of FIST. Klunti took me in and made me feel like I had a home for the first time in years. I got back in touch with my sister, who was by now a totally different woman. When evidence finally came through that she wasn’t the bathroom killer, she was released from prison. She was now devoted to one thing in life – finding  you and destroying you.”

I gulped a bit. It was a nervous gulp.

“When she was out, the last I’d heard from her was that she was going to meet our uncle in New York City. They had been plotting to find you and do you in. I haven’t heard a thing from her since. Since you’re here, it looks like they failed. Or never tried.”

I said nothing and tried to look confused  or dumbfounded, two looks that came naturally to me. It worked. “I guess they never tried,” I said, with a mouthful of sugary lies.

“But I’m over that, Lady. Barb lived her own life and was set free. She made her own choices, and never tried to visit me or seemed too interested in my pathetic life. I can’t blame her. She had her own shit to sort out, like we all do.”

I didn’t know what Sage meant by this. I had no shit to sort through because ever since I’d been out of the woods, back in civilization, I flushed every day, every night, without any exceptions. I didn’t try to correct her, though. It was clear she wouldn’t be having any of that on this night.

“Lady, I don’t know what you’ve been through in the last 11 years. Fate must have brought us back together, and I want you to know I forgive you for putting my sister in prison. Maybe I’ll see her again someday, and we’ll make up for lost time.”

I smiled an unknowing smile. An unknowing smile that I hoped didn’t say, “your sister was killed and mostly devoured by my two half-human, half-rat sons years ago, and her remains are scattered about the floor of my apartment back in New York City.” I was sure my smile didn’t say this. After all, it might not have been true. That apartment probably wasn’t mine anymore. I hadn’t paid rent in years.

“But until then,” she said, “I want to make up for lost time with you.”

I took this to be an invitation for a two-woman fuckfest of tongues and fists and bodily holes dripping with saliva and secretions. My pants flew off and my shirt was on the other side of the room in an instant. I was already wet and wanting – I was sure she could smell my oils of desire. Sage had grown into a lovely tattooed woman and it was now my duty to test her abilities as a woman and compare them to her abilities from our childhood. This was a duty I was willing and able to perform.

“Put your fucking clothes back on,” Sage commanded. “I’ve come a long way since our days on the farm. I’m not a goddamn sex object. Neither are you.”

I shamefully put my pants back on, and Sage threw my shirt to me.

“You may be a woman, Lady, but you’ve got a lot to learn. You sure seem to act like a man when it comes to sex, with your primitive minded views on lust and treating other women as sexual objects.”

“I do?” I asked. I hadn’t realized I had this problem.

“Yeah, you’re just like a man. You objectify women. I can tell you haven’t  changed since I last saw you.”

“But I – I objectify men, too!” I said.

“Pssh, Lady. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care. You can’t do this to women. We’re not pieces of meat to be gawked at and drooled over. We’re human beings who have brains and intelligence and real emotions and feelings.”

I knew that already,  being a woman myself. “I know this, Sage. I’m a woman, too.”

“Well you sure don’t act like it,” she said. “Don’t worry, we’re going to get you on the right track. We’re going to show you the light, so to speak. You’ll see things from the correct perspective soon enough – the feminist perspective.”

I was so excited to hear this. Sage had apparently found my biggest flaw, the thing missing from my life, and was going to fix me up with the help of FIST.

           

Sage and I arranged my bamboo plants in the room that night, adding a lot of character and flare and other things of a decorative nature to the place. She sure had grown up since our  days on the farm. What had once been a cute little, innocent girl who wasn’t afraid to have farmland fun with her sister and me, had now become a kind of scary he-woman with hatred for all men and a bloodthirsty desire to make women rule over all of an enslaved mankind. She was so fucking cool now. I wondered if I looked half that cool to her. I probably did, but she was so cool she wouldn’t have said so.

“I like  your tattoos” I told Sage, while we were getting ready for bed.

On her arms and shoulders she had the words Cunt, Dyke, Whore, Slut, Faggot, and Bitch written in bold and scary looking letters. They looked like they were carved into her skin, but it was just ink.

“Do you?” she asked. “Are you even aware of what they mean?”

I laughed. I never thought I’d have to explain these words to anyone. “Sure Sage. A cunt is a vagina, which we both have. Dyke is a lesbo, like a girl who likes other girls. I guess you and I are kind of that, too. A Whore –”

“Goddammit, no. Lady, they’re words that are damaging to women. Words designed by men to inflict pain and humiliation on women. Just another act of violence toward women. Each of these words carries centuries of hurt and misogyny and vitriol that has helped men push women down into the dirt. These words are the steel-toed boots of bigotry. They’re words of hate and ugliness, don’t you see?”

 “I see,” I said. I didn’t see. “Then why are they all over you?”

“These are scars, Lady. Each of these words represents scars on my body and on my psyche from years of torment from men. They’re the words that have been used against us to bury me and other women under the heap of inequality that plagues every corner of the civilized world. I put them on my skin to show that I’ll  never forget what these words are, and what they mean – but that I’m now too strong to be affected by them. I’m a woman who stands defiant against these hateful words. Call me a cunt, a whore, a dyke, a slut. I don’t care. I am a bitch! I am tough as nails and always will be. Me and every other woman in this place. Feminism is here to stay, and we will fight forever to get what we want. We’re not going to be beaten down and oppressed by these words any longer. We’re standing up and getting in the face of men, shouting, “you no longer hold dominion over me! I am not a thing, I am not a toy, I am not your maid, your trophy, I am a human being and we will never rest until we have equality!” That is our message. Someday, these scars will mean something more. They’ll be seen as the catalyst of a revolution. We will crush the world of man and replace it with the world of woman.”

Sage was starting to sound like a cunt. “Oh. Well, that’s really very interesting. I just thought those were some cool words. Aren’t ‘faggot’ and ‘dyke’ kind of the same thing, though?” I asked.

“Typical,” Sage said arrogantly, dripping with sexiness in her manly feminine authoritative voice. “How you can be older than me and not understand these words is really kind of alien to me. It’s pitiful.”

“Can you explain?” I said.

“Nah. If you need an explanation then you’re helpless.”

I was learning so much from Sage. I hoped that in my time around her some of her coolness would rub off on me and I could start to climb up to her level. It would be a long haul, but I wanted it bad. I wanted her to know I was cool, too.

“Will you teach me more about feminism?” I asked. “I really want to learn more.”

“Yeah. Tomorrow you’ll meet the rest of the people here at FIST, and we’ll start your tutoring. With my help, you’ll be able to reach the 7^th Plane of Feminist Enlightenment in no time!”

“Wow! That sounds amazing! What is that?”

“It’s the highest level of feminism awareness there is, Lady. It’s when you understand all there is to know about feminism and our fight against the patriarchy, inequality, masculinity, gender roles, sexuality, and society as a whole. You’ve got a lot to learn, but we can get you there.”

“Great! This is getting me fucking damp!”

“Goddammit. No. You can’t be like this, Lady. You can’t be a sexual object or even treat sex like it exists or matters. That’s not in line with feminist ideals. I know you’re new to this and you don’t know that yet. But you have to cool it. Sex is simply a tool invented by man to try to show he’s superior and in control. That’s the only role it serves. Don’t give in to it.”

I was so embarrassed. I’d just made a fool of myself in front of the coolest girl in the room.  I could see I still had so much to learn about this club’s movement, and was excited to be here with a whole group of people who were going to change my life for the better.

“Sorry, Sage. I’m still learning. Thanks for teaching me, though. I can’t wait for tomorrow!”

“No worries. Goodnight!” Sage turned off the light.

“Hey, Sage?” I whispered in the dark. My curiosity had been getting the best of me while we talked. “Does Glibbord Squambles still have mutton chops and a Swahili doctor’s rattail?”

She was silent for a moment. “What do you mean, “still”?”

“I mean, like back when I worked… oh, nevermind. Goodnight.”

I could feel Sage’s eyes on me while I tried to fall asleep. I didn’t know why she was watching me, but my best guess at the time was that she was imagining herself in bed with me, kissing me lightly on the breasts, while my fingers probed her tattooed orifices. It wasn’t quite sex, but at least it was something. I masturbated under the covers to these thoughts, and sniffed loudly each time a squish or a squirt erupted from my body. I secretly hoped Sage would join me. But she did not. We both fell asleep in our own beds, mine a little wetter than hers.

Chapter 24. The Way of the FIST

Down in the art-covered walls of the warehouse, I was introduced to the other feminists of the FIST house. It was a strange smelling mixture of body odor and perfume that filled my nose, and it made me hungry. It was mostly women who filled the warehouse but some men were there too, probably happy to be around all these wet cunts and desperate holes. I was still wet from my bedtime secretions the night before, but a little crusty in some places that had been given enough time and space to dry out. My hope was that by the end of the day, my dry areas would again be moistened by the soft tongues of my fellow woman, or man.

Klunti walked to me and handed me a lemon slice on a plate. “Good morning, Lady,” she said. “How did you sleep? Must be nice seeing Barb again!”

“Good morning!” I shouted into her head. I took the plate from her. “I slept alright, a little wet and a little dry. Can’t complain. Barb’s really happy to see me, I think. It’s been so long since I’ve seen her… not since we were young farm girls among the cows and horse-like animals.”

“Is that how you know her? From a farm?”

“She grew up on a farm and I grew up in a closet, and then on the streets. But our paths crossed at the farm and our hearts, for a little while, beat as one.”

“That’s awfully poetic, Lady,” Klunti said with the glint of adoration in her eyes. Her face seemed to say to me things that her mouth wouldn’t – words of sexual power and suggestion. I could have touched her with my fingers right then and she would have become weak with orgasm if I wanted it to be. But it was too soon to molest her in a sexual way. I'd have to feel it out.

“What’s the lemon for?” I asked.

“Put it in your mouth,” she said, “and suck on it.”

“I thought you’d never ask,” I said, winking at her. I sucked on the lemon right about the time I noticed other people around the room with lemons in their mouths.

She watched me for a minute while I bit down and sucked the juices from the lemon. My face crunched up from the painful sour and it became hard for me to hold it in.

“Keep it in,” Klunti said. “Get all the juices out.”         

Her words made my brain imagine intimate sexual events, but the taste in my mouth was creating conflict between my sensations. Was this sex or was this food? I didn’t know, anymore. I kept sucking the sour and bitter tastes in hopes it would make more sense soon.

“This is how we start the day,” she said. “The sour of the lemon contorts our faces just right so that our brains follow suit, and are in a constant state of hostility, bitterness, and argumentation. Makes us strong for the fight we have to bring to the world every day.”

I nodded while the juices went down my throat. This wasn’t going to turn sexual and I felt a spear penetrate my heart as soon as I made the realization.

“Do you like the taste?” she asked.

I shook my head and muttered, “mmh mmphh.” My tongue was crying.

Sagepuss joined Klunti and I and ripped the skin of a lemon out of her mouth. “Hold it in there,” she said to me. She could sense my suffering. “Give me your skin.” Again, I hoped there was a sexual meaning behind these words, but I knew there probably was not. I peeled the skin of the lemon from my mouth and handed it to Sage. “Did you tell her about the lemons?” she asked Klunti.

Klunti nodded. “When everyone’s ready, we can start introducing Lady to our ideas and philosophy.”

“I heard about the 7^th Plane of Feminist Enlightenment,” I said. “Sage said she thinks I can get there really fast!”

Klunti laughed at me. “Oh Lady, I’m sure we can get you there. But you’ve got a lot to learn, yet. You’re still on the sublevels of normal human knowing. You can’t move past that without the Feminine Tug.”

“You’ve got a good start, though,” Sagepuss said with a reassuring confidence in her highly sexual voice. “If I remember correctly, you were a very sexually liberated woman when I first met you.”

“Oh yeah?” Klunti responded. “You never told me that, Lady.”

“Yes, I do love sex,” I said, felching the lemon juices up from the bottom of my throat and letting them dribble from my lips. “Juicy fucking and sour sucking, I’ve been known to crave sex from time to time.”

“We’ll talk more about that very soon,” Klunti said. “I’ve had some of our better artists at FIST prepare some little presentations this morning to show you the Commandments of Feminism. It’s how we educate our newest members to a suitable level. Gives them the information they need to be proper feminists, okay?”

“OK,” I said. “I can’t wait!” It was like I was in kindergarten again, with performers using their incredible talents to teach me about the basics of life and the world.

“Everyone!” Klunti shouted to the thirty or so people frolicking around the main room of the warehouse, “I’d like to get started!”

Like obedient slaves called by the master, the feminists crowded around and stood silently with Klunti as their focus. Tattooed girls, fat girls, ugly girls, angry looking girls, and a few stylish people with trendy haircuts and expensive clothes stood around in odd postures and with faces eager like troops ready for war. It was time for them to do what they did best – use their vague, possibly non-existent, artistic talents to illustrate the meaning of feminism to me, to show me the eternal beauty of the movement and tickle my brain with educational minutes full of flopping limbs, lisping tongues, rasping vocal cords, and hateful lips. I had no idea what was in store for me.

“Anita and DuMontly,” Klunti pointed to two people, a frumpy looking sad girl in a sweater, and a khaki pants wearing boy with sideburns, “you’re first.”

The frumpy sweater girl and the khaki pants wearing boy walked to the front of the crowd and everyone backed away to create a space for the two of them. I slurped the lemon juices loudly in anticipation of what I would see.

Anita started a free form dance, flailing her arms through the air and stomping on the ground without rhythm. She hummed while she did it, and I felt like I needed to shit as I watched. The feminists in the room nodded their heads in random rhythm to her dance. Her humming turned into an oscillating howl that resonated within the cement brick walls of the warehouse. She sounded like a dying animal.

In a sudden violent strike, DuMontly jumped into the scene and threw Anita to the ground. She let out a startled cry while he kicked her and tore at her sweater and pants with his stringy fingers. He was growling and overpowering her innocent howls with the terrifying roars of a monster. He pulled off his pants and removed hers, and got on top of her. I couldn’t tell if Anita’s tears were real, and I clenched my fists in nervous dread while I watched DuMontly rape her on the floor in front of the group. I didn't know if it was supposed to be funny, so I giggled only a little bit between my slurps of lemon.

“Should we help her?” I whispered to Klunti. “Or join in? Or… what?”

“No, Lady,” she whispered back. “Anita’s representing the free spirit of a liberated woman, and DuMontly is the ferocious, oppressive man coming into the world of the woman, inflicting violence upon her, holding her down and raping her figuratively and literally, wiping out her freedom and enslaving her in chains that bind her to the misogynists’ agenda.”

I nodded slow. “Oh, I think I’ve got it.” The sour in my mouth was moving into my pants as I watched the fake rape before me. I wanted to be Anita.

Anita stopped moving, and DuMontly stood up, flexed his weakling muscles, and growled. The man had just conquered the woman. He’d raped her into living submission. My understanding was that this is exactly how it happened in real life. Then the room broke out in applause.

“That’s real!” shouted someone. “Amen!” shouted another, as the applause  continued. “Truth right there!” said somebody else. More than just a couple people were crying, some of them even girls. They’d been moved by this performance in a way I couldn’t understand. My undersides were wet, but my eyes weren’t.             Anita stood up and took a bow with DuMontly to the applauding feminist crowd. I clapped, too, because I hate to be different when it doesn’t bring me attention or glory.

As the two performers walked back into the crowd, another girl came forward from the collective and stood before us.

“This is Naomi,” Sage said into my ear, showing the first sign of a smile I’d seen from her since I arrived. “She’s really good.”

Naomi shaved her head on the sides and kept it long on the top, and had pierced eyebrows connected by a chain to piercings on her nose. She wore cut-off jean shorts and black stockings covering her legs. The room fell silent while Naomi stood still without making a sound. I was still swallowing the juice I’d collected in my mouth during the last performance and couldn’t wait to see what this girl was going  to share. There probably wouldn’t be enough wetness left in the lemon to feed me.

Naomi reached into her pocket and pulled out a small pocket knife. She opened the blade and spread her legs wide like a peace sign, but without the third leg. So far I liked where this was going. She began cutting her stockings from around her legs and ripped them off to reveal legs hairier than I remember my own father’s being. The room was still silent. Next, she slid the knife up her shirt and cut  it from the inside, sawing down the front of the shirt until it was cut almost in half, and took it off. Her body wasn’t bad, and again I found myself salivating and entertaining sexual ideas inspired by what I saw in front of me. With a slow slice, she cut her bra off at the center, between her breasts. I found myself beginning to soak. When the bra landed on the floor, she removed her jean shorts and cut a hole in the bottom of her panties.

I let my eyes dance around the room to see the faces of the feminists around me so I’d know how to react to Naomi’s behavior. Everyone was giving knowing nods to her, as if saying, “yeah, yeah, right on, keep going, this is great.” So I did the same. I smirked and nodded with an enlightened essence. Sage was smiling, and looked entranced at the sight of Naomi’s performance art.

The knife fell to the floor, and Naomi reached into the hole she cut at the bottom of her panties and stuck her fingers into her vagina. After a moment of tugging, she pulled a bloodied tampon from within her and let it fall to the ground. She then stood, legs spread wide, over a small circle traced on the ground. A look of pure will and empowerment came across her face and she closed her eyes and threw her head back. Blood dripped from her vagina, through the hole in the panties, and splashed into the circle on the floor. As she stood there, holding her head back and eyes closed, the flow of blood increased and filled the circle.  She then opened her eyes, picked the knife up from the floor and used the blade as a razor to slice the hair from her legs. She positioned her legs over the bloody circle and let the hair fall slowly to the small puddle of blood.

When she was finished, she dropped the knife again and fell to her knees. Her hands moved to her left breast and she began to fondle her nipple, squeezing it and pulling it with the trained motions of a professional squirt technician, until a white substance finally dripped from the tip and fell into the circle of blood and leg hair. The longer she squeezed, the more milk she pulled from within her, and she let it all drip, drip, drip to the floor. There were some light claps and shows of approval from the audience. I showed my approval by biting my lips and holding the lemon tight between my cheeks.

When her nipple appeared to run dry, Naomi got on all fours and mixed the milk, blood, and leg hair together with her hand, and licked it up from the floor with dog-like tongue demonstrations. The crowd broke into wild applause. She wiped her hands through the puddle, then wiped them on the pants of the people who stood closest to her. She pulled on their clothes, begging them to come down to their hands and knees with her. They each did as she commanded, and they opened their mouths in a sign of obedience and acceptance. She smeared her blood, milk, and hair on their tongues and lips, and had them consume it like it was a delicacy. Each person swallowed it happily. Before too long, she’d finished all of the blood-milk-hair soup, and stood back up to take a bow. The applause grew louder, and we shouted our approval and whistled our admiration. I was floored by the beauty I’d just seen.

Sage turned to me, clapping loudly. “See?” she smiled big.

I saw. And I was pretty sure I came. I came, I saw, I clapped loudly.

“Did you get it?” Sage asked. “Not everyone understands the meaning of Naomi’s performance when they first see it.”

“It was a one woman show of Hansel and Gretel, right?” I guessed. I didn’t want to look stupid in front of my new friends.

“Lady, it’s a performance piece about the essence of a woman; what makes her strong, what she must shed to become weak for society’s acceptance, and how she overcomes it with self destruction and humiliation. All because of man and his world he’s created where women are second or third class citizens who exist to serve. But she needs to stand up and reclaim her place in the world. She sheds what makes her a woman in the eyes of men in the process. Don’t you get it?”

“Sure,” I said. “That makes sense. I get it. I get it.”

Naomi collected her clothes and her discarded shreds of threads, and returned to the crowd.

A third performance was about to begin, as a timid looking fat girl with baggy jeans waddled into what was by now clearly the designated performance space.

“This is Sarah,” Klunti said. “She’s a brilliant feminist poet. Her words are so well crafted that you won’t be left with any confusion as to what her message is.”

Sarah reached into the bucket-sized pockets of her baggy pants. After probing three different pockets with her sausage fingers she found what she was looking for – a folded up piece of paper. She unfolded it and cleared her throat. She read from the paper to the crowd of hungry ears.

“You influence me from birth

With your smutty, slutty pictures of dirt

You control me, deflate my worth

And feed me ideas that make me hurt

So my guts, they bleed so long

The blood of a woman is not wrong

The blood of a woman – it is strong

I could cry, but that would make you think

That because I am a woman, I must be weak

Your pornographic pictures try to make me into meat

Your sexual attraction tells you I’m a sexual treat

But you’re wrong, because I’m not

Not my breasts, and not my twat

Not my body or my mind

Not my front, and not my behind

Your images of sexuality

Have destroyed my entire gender

Locally and internationally

I hate you so deep and fully

Your penis is a missile, a symbol of war

My vagina is a window, into the cave next door

Where the peace corps reside

With Dr. Jeckyl, and Mrs. Hyde

You’ll never expect

Me when you erect

Your disgusting fucking phallic sword

When I remove it as my own reward

To hang above my bed at night

I’ve castrated the holy knight

Your manlike sexuality is the mud in which the pigs crawl

It’s festering and shameful – be embarrassed of it all

Men must be smashed for their sinful, hateful ways

All men hate women, and children, and blacks, and gays

We will never open our legs

Like the taps on your frat party kegs

We protest lust and sexual attraction

We destroy enjoyment and carnal satisfaction

We raise our fists in antisexual demonstration

Fill our glasses with the red blood of menstruation

Recite our war cries in the face of the man

Burn him, crush him, destroy him how we can

We hate the man

We hate the man

We hate the man…”

The crowd joined in the chant that Sarah started, and a glorious chorus broke out.

“We hate the man! We hate the man! We hate the man!”

I wasn’t about to be caught with my pants down or anything like that, so I joined in with the rest and proclaimed my newfound hatred for men. It felt so good. It felt freeing. I could finally feel like a woman in the presence of other women. This is what it meant to be  a woman. This is what feminism was, I finally realized.

When Sarah finished, we applauded her and people once again shouted their praise and worship of her performance. I was wide-eyed with admiration and desire.

“Sarah’s words ring true,” Klunti said. “They’re what we’re all about here, Lady. Sexuality is a demon that infests our world, fed by men. Sage said you’re a very sexually liberated woman.”

“Well… oh… yes. I am. Or I used to be? I don’t know what I should say.”

“Sexual liberation used to be important for feminism,” Klunti said. “We openly and freely expressed our sexuality to show men that they couldn’t contain us or control us, or have dominion over our bodies. We could be every bit as open as they were, unashamed to be women and sexually active and obvious. But soon, it became apparent that men enjoyed our sexuality. Men liked women being sexually open and free.”

“I see,” I said.

“We couldn’t have that. We don’t do it for men, we do it for us. So we got smart and fought against that idea, the idea that women could be sexually liberated. We fought it hard when men began to show interest. Their lust and sexual urges got out of control, so we changed our minds. We hate sex, now. We hate being seen as sexual beings who are capable of anything sexual because it’s much more sophisticated and intelligent to pretend that we’re asexual entities who find nothing of interest or value in sex. We are enemies of sexuality, and have declared war against it.”

“Oh my,” I said. “I had no idea. I feel so bad, like I’ve made a lifetime of mistakes. My sexual drive has just been like one long waterfall – like Niagara Falls, constantly flowing and with no end in sight.”

“It’s male sexuality we hate. It’s OK for women to have sexual desire or lust or to look at men in a way that admires their good looks. We can do it. It’s freeing and liberating for us to do it. But when men do it to us, it’s Nazi Germany all over again, with their rape-filled minds like a battle ground full of landmines. It’s dangerous and needs to be stopped. They can’t treat us this way. As long as we don’t actually have sex with them, it’s fine. We hope to eradicate sex from the world as soon as possible. Sex is a weapon that only we yield. It puts control back in our rightful hands so that the world is better run by women than incompetent men.”

“Should we run the world?” I asked. “I didn’t know that was an option.”

“It’s not just an option,” Sage chimed in, “it’s a necessity. This world is fucked right now and the only way to unfuck it is for women to take over. History shows that women would do a far better job of running, well, everything, than men would.”

“I  didn’t know that,” I said. “I forgot all about history.”

Klunti nodded. “That’s right, history. Take all the wars and fuck ups of men and then put women  in their places. Everything reverses. Our world suddenly works better and we’re happier. That’s what would happen if we were in control, Lady. History shows us that.”

“When we’re in control,” Sage corrected her.

“Right,” Klunti said. “When we’re in control, that’s how the world will be. Suddenly happy, safe, magical, equal, and always perfect.”

I was absolutely amazed. These girls knew everything, and I was like a sock puppet with their hands up my back side as they taught me every secretive truth about the world that I needed to know.

“What are some of the most important issues in feminism?” I asked. I was getting high on knowledge, and the lemon in my mouth was twisting my face to the point that I felt like I’d been a feminist for years. I just needed to know more.

“Great question,” Klunti said. “Let’s go for a walk around the base, we’ll show you a little more about our operations.”

Sage, Klunti, and I went on a walk through the warehouse so they could show me more than what I’d seen the night before.

“Our primary strategy,” Klunti said, “is to hijack issues that already exist, and take them for our own purposes. We distort them to become feminist issues when they aren’t.”

“Wow,” I was impressed. “Like what?”

“Like human trafficking,” Sage said.

“Yes, like human trafficking,” Klunti agreed. “It’s really a human rights issue, but we take it and spin it into a women’s rights issue so we have something to rally around and get up in arms about.”

“Getting up  in arms is a vital component of feminism, Lady,” Sage explained. “Rage and bitterness drive us toward excellence.”

“Speaking of that,” I said, “could I get another lemon? Mine’s running out.”

Sage pulled the lemon wedge out of her mouth and handed it to me. “Most of mine’s still going, I think.”

I stuck it in my mouth and continued to suck. “So, rage and bitterness and excellence?”

“Yeah,” Klunti said. “Feminism fuel. We pretend that human trafficking and sexual slavery are women’s rights issues because we focus on the fact that so many women are kidnapped and forced into prostitution. It happens to men as well, but we downplay that significantly because it has no relevance to our agenda. It happens to children, too, but we’ve sort of hijacked children as a feminist issue, too.”

“Cool!” I shouted.

“Yep!” Sage said. “So, like, women and children are kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. So we focus on this and use this to fuel feminist agendas, which isn’t a hard thing to do. We basically have free reign to do what we want and we’re never questioned.”

“Never questioned by who?” I asked. “Wait, whom? No, I mean who.”

“By anyone,” Sage explained. “If anyone questions our methods or our actions, it’s very easy and profitable for us to slander them publicly as  being anti-feminists, misogynists, male chauvinists, ignorant assholes, and all of that. The rest of the liberal world will automatically side with us and demonize our opponents until they have to run into hiding and change their names in shame.”

“Hahaha, that’s great!”

“I know!” Klunti offered me a high-five and I took it. It felt good.

“We immediately portray any enemies of feminism as horrible human beings,” Sage said. “It’s our number one defense and it works wonderfully.”

Klunti continued to explain things to me. “Speaking of hijacking children’s issues and spinning them to be feminist issues, we do the same with children in families. We look at families as two opposing teams. There are mothers and children on one side, and men on the other side. The fathers are generally enemies of the other side, they just don’t always know it.”

“That makes so much fucking sense,” I said. It was like this knowledge was hot oil-butter being poured on the popcorn that was my brain, making it ready for devourment.  I couldn’t wait to be as smart as these two inspiring ladies.

“It’s usually in women’s best interest to go against their husbands at some point, and to use the children as leverage or as black mail. For instance, all we have to do is say that we were raped or our children were beaten, and the man goes to jail. Don’t need to prove rape occurred, and we can get rid of any burdensome men in our lives. Rape is a great weapon if you wield it wisely. It’s no problem to get your children and get your husband’s money, and end your marriage so you can find something better. Or just  use threats about rape accusations or abuse accusations, and a lot of times you can get that man to give you anything to keep you quiet.”

“That’s right,” Sage said. “I’ve lost count of how many false rape accusations I’ve filed in my life. I’m never scrutinized and I can put any man in jail when I regret having sex with him. It’s fucking easy! This is useful for any women, but especially a feminist. We’re above other women because we’re above the primal human urge for sex. So if we make the mistake of having sex like a normal human, we just have to say we were raped. Because it’s basically rape, anyway.”

“That’s incredible!” I said. “So if I have sex and I regret it, I can say it was rape? Will I get in trouble?”

“If you’ve ever had a drink before sex,” Klunti said, “then you’re not responsible for your actions. If you drink, you’re inebriated and, as a woman, no longer responsible for any decisions you make. That’s especially true for sex. If you have sex with a man under the influence of alcohol, it was rape. He raped you, and he belongs in jail.”

“But what if he was drunk, too?” I asked. “What if he was more drunk than me?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Sage said. “He fucked you. He consented to it and you didn’t.”

“But what if I initiated the sex? Like, I wanted to have it and he knew it?”

“You’re drunk, so you can’t consent. He’s a man, so he’s a rapist. It’s very simple.”

“Oh my god… I’ve been raped so many times!” I shouted, spitting lemon juice from my mouth. “This is horrible!”

Klunti and Sage hugged me, soothed my nerves to let me know it wasn’t my fault. They were right. I realized that none of the sex I’d ever had was my fault. I was a victim. I’d been taken advantage of.

“I don’t know what to do!” I cried. “I… I’m… so scared!”

“Let’s keep moving,” Klunti said. “We’ll get you into rape counseling later, Lady.”

We walked past a room filled with computers and a bunch of very hip, very stylish looking young people typing and clicking away on them with busy eyes and stoic faces.

“What’s this room?” I asked, wiping the tears away from my eyes and the lemon juice away from my lips.

“This is the FIST Defamation Confirmation Computer Station,” said Klunti.

We walked into the room, and I saw it was packed with more computers than I could see from the outside.

“Like I said, we need to hijack issues and make them relevant to us so that our movement stays alive. So each member of FIST is assigned to take shifts in the FIST DCCS to scan the internet, news channels, television shows, radio broadcasts, printed media, and any other form of publicly visible media to look for any instance of some kind of activity that can, in any conceivable way, be interpreted as an attack on women, or women’s issues. This room runs twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, every week of the year. It’s non-stop in here. You can see we currently have ten people on shift right now. A shift lasts for six hours, and then new shifters come in to take their place. All they do is sift through these media outlets and take note of things that aren’t 100% politically correct. We don’t just worry about women’s issues, but we take things out of context for just about anything we can to see if it’s racist, homophobic, misogynist, or can just at least be spun to be interpreted this way. We find hundreds of things a day, usually. Not too hard, once you’re trained  to see it where it doesn’t even exist.”

“So, will I get to work a shift in here someday?” I asked.

“Of course, Lady,” Klunti said. “Sage or I can train you to find the kind of stuff we’re looking for. It isn’t obvious, or intuitive. It’s the kind of stuff that any healthy, normal, objectively oriented mind would gloss over as being innocent, silly, or inconsequential. But we train our shifters, our FISTers, to be petty, overly sensitive, politically correct, pedantic, bleeding heart creatures with high level detective abilities. They’re trained to see things others will never see because they’re not really there. But if we say we see it, and we whine about it enough, complain about it enough, others will be too afraid to admit they don’t see it, and they’ll pretend along with us, they’ll climb onboard, and we’ll tear this shit down. We’ve got to tear shit down, as feminists. In case you weren’t aware, we’ve got close ties to the anarchist movement. We need to bring shit to the ground, you must understand.”

“What kinds of things will I be looking for?” I asked.

Sage led me to a notebook next to one of the computers. “This is just one of many notebooks kept by one of our shifters. You’ll find that in only a few days you can fill up an entire notebook with shit. Let’s see what’s in here.”

“Video on talk show of child disrespecting mother.”

“What’s that mean?” I asked.

“Check the notes below this,” Klunti said. “The shifter will explain the reasoning or draw conclusions from this.”

“Idea that it is acceptable to disrespect a woman’s commands is supported by the show not explicitly criticizing the child’s behavior, and not showing the child being punished. The idea is then that it is OK for anyone to not listen to a woman or to treat her like her words are meaningless.”

I didn’t know what to say. I was dumbfounded by the display of unbelievable intellect in this writing. I had to read more.

“Sitcom makes joke that black people don’t tip well. Clearly a racist stereotype. Show must be exposed for its racist tendencies and further analyzed for additional non-PC concepts and messages.  If this is allowed in, it is inevitable that jokes at the expense of females are going to be present. Black jokes are essentially sexist jokes, too. They come from the same seeds of hate.”

“Halloween costumes at a popular Halloween store exploits all stereotypes. There is a Japanese Samurai costume – racist and harmful to Japanese people. There is a costume of a Mexican, and while it is unclear what the Mexican is supposed to be doing, it sports a large sombrero, which is a stereotype – this is racist and harmful to Mexican people. There is a costume of a pimp – this is racist and harmful to African Americans. There is a costume of a cheerleader – clearly intended to be a sexualized costume that exploits women womyn. This Halloween store is racist and it’s awful that they’re getting away with this. We will expose them in the paper and organize a protest if need be, until the place is forced to shut down after losing all its business.”

“Found magazine article in a popular science magazine stating that men and women womyn are not of equal strength. It claims men are generally stronger than women womyn and have different physical attributes. This goes against the idea of equality, entirely. Magazine will be written to and told to remove the offending article, or we will expose it to all for its sexist and possibly racist content. We will expose it anyway.”

“Article in economic magazine states that the pay disparity between men and women womyn is a myth, and that the actual disparity comes from men and women womyn not having the same education, not putting in the same hours, not staying at the same job long enough, and/or having different job titles entirely. This opposes our agenda that there is a wage gap and that women make less than men because of the tyrannical control over industry that men have, and the oppression of women womyn. We will bombard this magazine with opposing views and expose them for their misogynist writers tirelessly until the magazine is ended or this writer is fired.”

“Man on news show confronts woman who was accused of cutting off her husband’s penis. He asks why there is no public outrage over her actions, and asks why women womyn all over the country are supporting her criminal acts. He then says if a man cut off a womyn’s clitoris, it would be treated differently by the public. He says the man would be cast as a monster and demonized and hated by all. This man is lying and needs to be exposed for saying these absurd, misogynist things and not understanding that this womyn was within her rights to do what she did because she’s empowered.”

The more I read, the more my mind felt like a pig choking down knowledge that was almost too thick and rich for its throat. I had never seen such brilliance in my life. This made so much sense to me. I couldn’t wait to be trained to find this kind of stuff and expose the world for its hateful, unfair ways. I was going to be a servant in a league of heroes.

My second lemon was running dry so I let it fall out of my mouth. By now my face was contorted into a fully bitter shape, my mind was inspired by the rotten things I’d just read, and the influence of feminist ideals was seeping into my skin. I could feel the transformation within me.

Sage looked at my face. “Seems like you’re learning, Lady.” She smiled into me and I smiled into her with lemon flavor soaking my bending mouth.

“We’ve got more to show you,” Klunti said. “Right now we’re going to see the protest room, where our girls and femomen work together to make protest signs and slogans for standing up against the empire of man. We’ll teach you the tricks and skills for making effective signs, how to capitalize off of misunderstandings and intentional misinterpretations that serve to forward our agenda, how to portray everything as an issue of equality even though we’re actually for the feminization of men, the strengthening of women, and overthrowing the man’s world. Our protests and awareness campaigns start from the very beginning of life and go all the way to the end.”

“What do you mean?” I wondered aloud.

“We campaign against people having boys, and encourage them to give birth to girls, instead.”

“But… how can – ”

“We educate parents, mostly mothers, on how dangerous it is to have boys and how much better girls are. We’ve got legions of eager people, women and fem-men alike, who are hard at work on this worldwide campaign to encourage having girls and not boys. If parents are unfortunate enough to have boys, we give them information on abortion clinics and offer to help pay for part of their abortion, depending on how well off they are.”

“But how can they control what –”

“Did you know,” said Sage, “that boys are 80% more likely to abuse animals or other children than girls? Did you know that boys are 99% more likely to use their urine to deface property or harm other individuals? Did you know boys are 63% more likely to wreck a car? Did you know that girls get on the honor roll more than boys, because they are smarter and make better grades? Did you know that boys are more likely to be sexual deviants at a young age, and 10000% more likely to grow up to be perverts and sex offenders? Boys are rapists and girls are not.”

“I didn’t know any of that,” I said.

“Did you know,” said Klunti, “that men abuse their children way more than women do? Official statistics say it’s the other way around, but we happen to know that this is false. Our own statistics collection methods have shown that men are more abusive than women, as well as that official statistics are false.”

We were walking down another hallway, toward the protest and campaign room, and my curiosity was running wild.

“What other amazing things do we believe as feminists?” I asked.

Sage put her hand on my shoulder. “Well, Lady. We are very spiritual people, in general. We have a library filled with feminist literature and other books that have influenced our thinking. You’ll see a lot of books on astrology in there, and star charts with detailed information on the zodiac.”

“Wow! I love astrology,” I said. “Like Jupiter, and the sun, and the moon, and galaxies. I used to  look at the stars every night when I lived in the forest.”

“Yes, Lady. Astrology is central to our feminist understanding of the universe. Astrology operates on the basic idea that we don’t have control over our destiny or how our lives play out. We believe that, to an extent. That’s why we women are the underprivileged and men are privileged and with power. The stars control all of it.”

Klunti offered her input on astrology. “Scientists are against astrology because they say there’s no scientific basis for it, no empirical evidence that it is even remotely reliable, true, or real. They say there’s no physically possible way that some perception-dependent alignment of stars and planets millions or billions of miles away, framed within an imaginary, man-made calendar could possibly have life-altering influence on our lives. Sure, these idiots can say what they want, but I don’t think I have to tell you, Lady, that scientists are mostly men. So it’s clear what their agenda is. The ideas that revolve around astrology are very appealing to us because, like our own system of beliefs and actions, they don’t come out of evidence, proof, or conclusions supported by what others perceive to be real. Not from the patriarchy. They come from within the mind and our loosely formulated design that might seem flawed to logical minded people, but still manages to pass down through the generations to influence the lifestyles and choices that people make each day. Please be aware, Lady, that logic is a tool and creation of men, of the patriarchy.”

“So astrology is as cool as I always thought?” I asked.

“Of course it is,” Sage said.

We walked into the protest and campaign room, and Klunti and Sage spent the rest of the day teaching me the methods of the feminist force. The things I learned helped my face twist and deform without the use of a lemon, disfigured in the face of the world of man. I cried, I laughed, I learned lessons about equality and inequality, and when and how to make a scene in public about issues that were important to our movement. Both of my friends told me that I was the perfect person to join feminism because my mind was fragile and easy to mold.  This was the nicest thing anyone had ever said about my brain. I knew these women were real friends, and would change my outlook for the better with their genius words and inspiring knowledge. Finally, I was in a place that I belonged.

Over the next weeks I was taught everything about feminism, and particularly FIST, that I would ever need to know. The FIST warehouse was the only place where we were to be completely honest with one another about everything. The warehouse was where all the planning and strategy was developed for our actions and public relations.  I learned that feminists didn’t really believe in a patriarchy, or equality. They believed in female superiority and conquest. To achieve this, despite our physical weakness compared to men, we would use harsh, hate-filled tactics of blame, victimization, red herrings, logical absurdities, and slow but progressive change in the framework of the world. For years, the movement had been proponents of the conspiracy theory of the patriarchy that was so laughable that we had plenty of jokes about it back at the warehouse, but outside the base we treated it as a fact. And every day new people bought into it.

The most appealing aspect of feminism was the concept of victimization. Females were being convinced, every day, that they didn’t have to take responsibility for their actions, for their failures, or for anything in their lives except for their victories. Women were made to believe that any shortcoming they had was the fault of men, a result of widespread misogyny. When that misogyny was questioned, the strategy of “berate, berate, berate until tears start to flow, use emotion for the upper hand, never give in to logic or reason, accuse dissenting opinions of being the plagues of hatred” was always engaged. When women made a bad choice, they were taught that this choice was made by the influence of men. But then, when they accomplished something wonderful, the girls were told they had overcome the blasphemic hatred of Man-kind to triumph in the face of evil. This was so appealing an attractive to people that feminism grew through the country. This was already in line with my worldview. Women with little self-worth and no work ethic loved the idea of feminism. Men who hated themselves loved the idea of feminism. People who were bad at thinking, like myself, were invited to join the ranks. People who could lie effectively were treated as heroes. This wasn’t something I was good at. FIST had some trouble with my bad lying skills, and decided to never let me go into public to spread the word of feminism. They said I still had much to learn.

Chapter 25. Bamboo Children

I couldn’t pull my eyes from the computer screen. One hand was on the mouse, clicking on a small zoom-in scroll bar, and my other hand was under my panties. The chest hair of the man on my computer was enchanting, dazzling, a spectacle to behold and be hailed. The patterns it made were so dreamlike and holy to my eyes, not too long and not too short, and distributed just right across his pecks, swirling around his nipples, tracing along his abdomen, and diving below his jeans that were held to his manly skin with a leather belt. I was salivating a waterfall with this man’s body in my thoughts. It was hard to tell if the puddle on my crotch was from the lips on my face or the lips under my garments. It didn’t matter. Wet is wet. If I’d had the time, I’d have counted each individual hair on this man’s torso, arm-hair included. By the time I noticed he had a mustache, I was dripping, definitely below the belt, and clenched my legs tight and flexed the muscles around my vagina to keep me firm and contained. A shake moved through my lower parts, the kind of shake you get from trying to keep your orgasms quiet and appropriate for public. I didn’t always force my body to do it silently, but after enough scolding from Sagepuss and Klunti over the past seven weeks, I’d learned to be afraid of my own sexual expression.

There were nine other people in the FIST DCCS that night, each browsing the internet for content the FIST bosses deemed politically incorrect, filthy, obscene, offensive, or harmful to women. They wrote notes in their little notebooks beside them while they used the technology at their fingertips to find unsuitable things from all around  the web. I was on shift in the back of the room, and like I did on all of my shifts, I’d found myself distracted after less than ten minutes by browsing porn and delicious smut that made me wet in all the places of my body that could produce moisture. This happened every single time. I’d write things in my notebook, but they were never the things I was trained to write. They were mostly ideas, things I’d thought about while finding new porn sites. I’d heard about the internet for years, but I’d never actually used it until coming to FIST. What a magical fucking place. You could find anything on the internet’s massaging arms. There was a never ending supply of muscular, hairy men at my disposal.

If we’d been allowed to touch one another in a sexual way, I’d have enjoyed the touches of hairless men and hairy women in the warehouse, too. Most of the men didn’t grow body hair, and all of us ladies were as hairy as could be. Under Sage’s tutelage, I’d stopped shaving my legs. It was the foundation of fighting back, she explained. Makeup wasn’t allowed in FIST, but that wasn’t a problem to me. Never cared for it, anyway. Some of the notebooks lying around the DCCS were filled with images of “socially idealized men and women”, including pictures cut out of magazines, with huge red marks colored over them, and scribbled words that said things like “this is all wrong” and “this is not beauty” and “fuck this”.

My notebook was filled mostly with my own sexual thoughts, musings, and other words that mean to think. The girls and even the guys at FIST weren’t sexually active at all, which was a surprise to me since all the guys had AIDS and at least four different girls knew an awful lot about syphilis. They knew more than someone who’s never had syphilis could possibly know. Because these new friends of mine weren’t responding to any of my normal sexual advances or standard routines, I had been without proper sex since Dank and I had last fucked in the hotel. That’d been almost two months ago.

I wasn’t allowed to leave the FIST compound without supervision of other feminists, so I’d been hanging around the place making friends, talking about things like the patriarchy, or how sexuality should not be celebrated or talked about in anything but a negative light. It wasn’t easy hiding my sexual desires from the FIST family, but I managed to do it. I didn’t know if there were any telepaths in the group, and this worried me at first. They’d have heard my thoughts, my musings, my other words that mean to think, and they’d have reported me to Klunti as soon as they could have. Since I’d never been in trouble I was pretty sure there were no telepaths around. Unless they were sharing my thoughts and wanted the same things I wanted. For about a month I wondered if this was a possibility. I tried to project my sexual thoughts, musings, and other words that mean to think all around the FIST compound, to let it be known that I was sexually starved and looking for a buffet of intercourse. No one responded to me, physically or telepathically.

Right about the time my series of silent orgasms came to a close, Klunti walked into the DCCS, entering at the front of the room, and went over to stand next to Sarah – the girl who’d recited the beautiful feminist poetry on my first day at FIST – and bent over to look at something on her computer screen. I took my hand out of my pants and started pecking away at the keyboard while I closed the 33 new windows that had popped up with flashing purple and yellow and red porn advertisements while I’d been indiscriminately clicking on naked bodies. The computer was crawling along with a loud hum while I kept pretending to type, and  I stared at Klunti and Sarah as I pecked at the keys. I still didn’t know how to type the right way.

Klunti paged through Sarah’s journal and nodded her head a little. It looked like she was satisfied with something Sarah had done, which I guess was nice –for Sarah. In all the time I’d been at FIST no one had told me, “Lady, you’ve done a good job.” But really, at no point in my life had anyone ever told me, “Lady, you’ve done a good job.” It wasn’t something I expected to hear. “You’re doing it wrong,” and “get your hands out of there,” and “put your clothes back on,” and “that’s not even alive,” and “you’re not supposed to eat it,” and “that’s how diseases are spread,” and “those bees aren’t going to come out of your vagina if you keep pouring honey into it,” and “that’s illegal in every country in the world, even in places where people eat each other,” and “I’ve never seen anyone inject their own shit into their bloodstream before,” and “yes, of course women shit – you’re a woman, you should know that, because I’ve even seen you shit, while eating, while taking public transportation,” were things I was used to hearing. Some of it was kind of like praise, I guess, but most could probably go both ways.

I thought it would be nice, though, for Klunti to be proud of me. Someone once told me, I think it was Sage, that the words “proud” and “Lady Molasses” would never appear in the same sentence together. I wanted to prove her wrong. Klunti might be impressed by the sexual plans I’ve outlined in my journal, I thought. They’re very detailed and exciting. But then, Klunti is pretty much against sex, like everyone else around here. Maybe I can show her all the porn I’ve found. Everyone at FIST keeps saying we need to keep track of all the porn on the internet so we can have a case to bring to the Supreme Court when the time comes to bring the hammer down on sexually suggestive material. And this is all because it’s harmful to women, or something. Yes, I thought. I’ll show her the porn.

I opened Netscape Navigator again and clicked on the browsing history like Sage had taught me, and I Netscape navigated to a few of my favorite sites. I sat for a  moment forcing a disgusted expression onto my face instead of one of interest and total satisfaction. Once I was sure I looked convincingly grossed out, I called Klunti over.

“Hey Klunti! Hey, what are you looking at over there? You wanna come see what I found? Klunti! Hey! Klunnnnnti! Klukluklukluklukluuuunti!” This is how I always called her name.

She looked at me and set down Sarah’s journal. “I’ll be right with you, Lady. Just a minute.”

She was going to be so proud.

For a few seconds I entertained the idea of masturbating while I waited for her to come over, because already the urge was swelling up in my groin, begging me for a second coming, screaming for a revival of the vulva. But I waited. I remembered my goal, and for the first time in my life, I demonstrated some kind of planning ahead and made a personal sacrifice so that I could achieve something wonderful. I was being responsible.

“What is it, Lady?” Klunti asked, with her dry crusted lips, approaching me.

“I found some real filth on the internet, Klunti.” I turned the fat, heavy-as-an-anvil computer monitor toward her so she could see the pried open labia of an Asian girl with two eels poking out of her, one from the vagina and one from the ass.

“My God, Lady. Wow. Have you written down the URL? That’s sick.”

“What’s a URL? Oh, wait, right. Yes. I wrote it down. There’s also this.” I clicked to another browser window, to a picture of a girl shitting into a man’s mouth, while a second man shit into the girl’s mouth, and the first man was ejaculating onto the second man. “It’s so gross!” I lied.

Klunti covered her mouth and let out a pre-puke belch-gag, and looked away. “Fuck! Lady, just write down the information so we can report this ungodly content. What have you written so far?” She shielded her eyes from my screen and reached for my journal. “Now that I think of it, I haven’t really evaluated your work in here. I’m sorry about that, we’ve been so busy tracking perverts, shutting down offensive businesses, the usual.” She looked through my journal and didn’t immediately seem impressed, but her eyes got wide, which was a good sign.

“Those are my ideas. I work on those while I’m in here.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Ideas? Is this, like, what you’re seeing on these sites? This shit’s on the internet? Oh my lord. Where are you finding this stuff? Surviving by… inhaling queef air? Helicopter blades inside a vagina? ‘Gonna taste your ribs from your anus’? Rubbing steak from someone’s anus, across the ground to a fire ant mound? Pubic hair growing into someone’s face to bring two lovers together forever? What in the world is this? You found this stuff online?”

“Yyyyyyyyyyyyyes? Yes. That’s just… stuff. That I find on these sites. Not my own personal fantasies.”

“Dear God, this is disgusting.”

I smiled at Klunti, showed my woody teeth for aggression, and asked, “are you impressed? Maybe even… proud?”

“Let’s not get carried away. This is good work, although right now I’m more concerned with what Sarah’s found. It’s something we need to deal with quickly.”

My smile died and I looked up toward Sarah. “Why? What did she find?”

“Something far more serious than disgusting fetish filth. She’s found a website filled with disturbing information about its creator, as well as an entire section of… well, I’ll show you. Follow me.”

We went to Sarah’s computer, and Klunti asked Sarah to show me what they’d been looking at earlier.

“I haven’t seen anything like it,” Klunti said.

Sarah started typing things and clicking links and going places on her computer that I couldn’t even begin to follow. I watched as she worked like a hornet buzzing for control of a child’s crib.

“So I’ve been posting at a message board,” Sarah explained, “undercover. It’s a forum full of gun enthusiasts. I knew it’d be the best place to find offenders of the leftist ideology, so I’ve been doing some deep snooping. One of the users posted a link to another forum, a forum for sexual abuse survivors, and he claimed that some girls there were, quote, making lies about him. I checked out the forum and the accusations were pretty wild. A girl made a post claiming to have been held, against her will, at a man’s farm for over a week, forced to shoot guns, and do all kinds of other terrible things. Other girls started replying to her, some making similar claims. They were all from the same area, somewhere in New York. The guy they were talking about, the guy on the gun forum, never denied it when he was asked about it by the other people on the forum. He was basically kidnapping girls and keeping them at his house, fucking them and making them shoot guns and build things. Then he’d kick them out.

“So I checked out his website, which he had a link to in his profile. Here it is.”

The computer monitor was covered in animated gifs of cowboys, horses, chickens laying eggs, cows being milked, shotguns blasting holes in the webpage’s background, and other beautiful, tasteful things. The image at the center of the screen was a big farm.

“Doesn’t look so bad,”  I said. “I’ve seen worse.” I’d established credibility –  the kind feminists valued.

“Just wait,” Sarah said. She clicked on the picture of the farm and the image slowly faded to an image of a large room filled with marijuana. Then it faded to an image of a bunch of very huge guns, with a few words under the picture: “my illegal arsenal.” It then faded to a room filled with naked women chained to a wall.

“Oh, I see,” I said. “That is… bad, right?”

“Very bad, Lady,” Klunti said. “It gets worse. Show her the other part.”

“This next section is sort of an exclusive members only type webpage,” Sarah said. “After seeing these naked women chained to the wall, who this web designer claims are just models posing for a few fun photos, I knew it would get darker. It does. We had to pay to see this next section. And it was disturbing, what we found.”

She clicked on an animated gif that said MEMBERS ONLY, and spun in circles, with 3D letters. She entered a name and password, and the screen faded to a brown, red, and yellow background. Then small images appeared on the side. She clicked on one to make it bigger.

It was my picture. My naked childhood pictures I’d taken with my dad’s Polaroid camera.

“Holy fuck!” I yelled.

“Child pornography!” Klunti yelled. “I know! This is huge! Jackpot! We’re going to annihilate this motherfucker.”

Lamp Post had done it – he’d made my dream a reality! My dream of being a sex symbol, a superstar, an icon of beauty and glamour –  it had come true. My heart was racing to a finish line it would never reach, and I was sweating like a Chinese middle-schooler in a sweatshop. I had made it. Lamp Post wasn’t lying when he promised to bring my dreams to fruit, or whatever it was he told me.

“Click on another one,” I said.

Sarah and Klunti looked at me like they didn’t know if I was serious.

“I’m serious, just one more.”

Sarah clicked on a picture of me. I was squatted, with my head tilted to the side like I was saying, “who, me?” I loved that picture.

“We suspect this creep has this girl chained up in his basement with those other women,” Klunti elaborated, “and he’s probably raped her along with the rest of them –  hundreds, if not thousands of times.”

“So, what’s the plan?” I asked. “Are you calling the cops?”

“Are you kidding?” Sarah butted in. “Fuck no. Cops are part of the patriarchy. The most blatant and quintessential example of it, in fact. They’re part of the problem. They won’t handle this properly. They’ll march in there only to ‘check on him’ and ask him some questions like, “sir, are you harboring a collection of sex slaves on your farm and posting pornographic pictures of children on the internet?” and he’ll say no, and they’ll be on their way. Happens all the time.”

That was good news. I remembered Lamp saying he hated the pigs trying to stop him from living his life. I knew my friends in FIST wouldn’t want to stop some guy from living his life.

“Instead,” Klunti said, “we’re going to take a FIST trip to New York, alert the media of this man’s crimes, and have them meet us at his farm. We’re going to violently and angrily protest him to get some coverage and attention while the cameras are rolling, but as soon as the news crews leave we’ll attack his home, throw Molotov cocktails into his house, drag him out by the neck, and slaughter him like a pig. We’ll mutilate his genitals and hang them from a public building to let everyone know FIST means business.”

“I’m working to find his address right now!” Sarah excitedly said, with what sounded like a raging hard-on for adventure in her voice.

I couldn’t bring myself to be as excited, for some reason. Maybe it was the thought of my new friends killing my old friend. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I returned to my seat at my computer and stared at the image on my screen. What could I do? I looked at the girl eating shit, shitting into a man’s mouth, and the man cumming all over the man shitting on the girl. I stared at it for close to an hour, sitting idly in my chair, not even fingering myself to orgasm or dampness. I was worried about Lamp Post. My own personal dreamweaver was the target of my new friends’ violent, rampaging, hateful hearts. I had to save him.

Maybe I could alert him of the danger? What was it called, the thing where you sent someone a message over the internet? Email? It was email. I could email him to warn him of FIST’s plan. But I didn’t know anything about email. I’d only just learned about websites and computer mice, and that took me weeks to learn. I was typing three words a minute and that was after caffeine pills and coffee.

I looked  at the clock on the computer. 4:03 pm. My shift was over. I grabbed my journal and walked out of the DCCS. Sarah was right behind me.

“Sooooo, Sarah,” I said, turning around slowly, un-awkwardly. “Funky website, huh? Really out there!”

“I know, right?” she replied. “Disgusting and horrible. Can’t wait to gut that guy.”

“Yeah, so, do we do a lot of that? Gutting people? Killing them?”

“Haha, Lady. I wouldn’t call them people. We gut and murder perverts, psychopaths, oppressors, enslavers, enablers, disablers, sexual deviants, sex offenders – you know, men like that. They’re not really people. They’re animals.”

“They are? But I thought animals were covered in hair or scales or feathers, and not –”

“You don’t have to be an animal to be an animal, Lady. You know that, right? These men are barbarians who will stop at nothing to keep women enslaved or controlled, reduced to venison and worse. They enforce flawed ideas about nature and reality. Cisgendered heteronormative white males, specifically.”

That was the second time I’d heard those words together. “That's the second time I’ve heard those words together. What do they mean?”

“It means men, white men only, who are heterosexual, and who obey an arbitrary code of sexual identity that they have invented and imposed on everyone. This is their social programming, their way of destroying humanity.”

“That’s horrifying,” I said. I meant it.

“They enforce a heteronormative bias that looks down on all other sexualities, claiming heterosexuality is the only valid sexuality.”

“And it’s not – right?”

“Absolutely not. They claim that anything else is a sexual perversion, sexual deviancy. Sexual abnormality. They’re fucking pathetic.”

“Wait. I thought we were against sexual perversion, too. And sexual deviancy. You just said –”

“That’s different. We’re against different kinds of perversion and sexual deviancy. They’re actual perversion and deviancy, not the shit straight white men make up.”

“What makes them different?” I was so confused, but I was learning so much.

“Well, Lady. OK. Society is against homosexuality and transgendered people, generally. They don’t accept them as they should. Society sees them as a threat, and for no good reason – like they’re dangerous, or harmful. For so long, homosexuals were looked down on, cast out, treated as subhuman for their sexuality – for something they couldn’t control. They were discriminated against for something they couldn’t control. Sexuality isn’t a choice. It’s part of who you are. You can’t change it. Same is true of transgendered individuals. They were oppressed, abused, hated. And for no good reason. Simply because they were different.”

“Oh, so we’re for that?”

“No, Lady. We’re against that. People have been getting better, but the world is still full of bigots. We’re against bigotry. We’re for equality. We believe in equality of sexuality.”

“I see.” I didn’t see. I wasn’t understanding, but I was eager to grasp her ideas. If I could learn more, I could understand why Lamp Post had to be destroyed.

“But we are totally against sexual deviancy and perversion.”

“Oh… OK? But…”

“So, like, by that I mean pedophiles, necrophiles, zoophiles – people with truly deviant sexuality.”

“But you just said that… wait. You said… OK, hold on. I don’t… alright. What’s a zoophile?”

“Someone who is attracted to animals. Or who fucks animals.”

“Oh, gross. I would never do that.”

“Yeah, so those fucking people – pedophiles, necrophiles, zoophiles – you see how they’re sexual deviants who need to be crushed. It’s not even about their actions – the fucking. That’s just a result of the real problem. We strike at the root of the problem itself, their sexuality. The attraction, the sexual attraction.”

“Hmm…. And…You’re for equality?”

“Yes.”

“For who?”

“For everyone. Except perverts, sexual deviants, and cisgendered heteronormative white males.”

“But… why?”

“Because what they do is wrong. What they believe is wrong. Their sexuality is wrong.”

“I thought you said sexuality isn’t a choice… you just said you were for equality of sexuality.”

“Except for –”

“Except for those you don’t agree with?”

“Yes, that’s it. But we don’t agree with them for good reason. They are sexual abominations; dangerous, and harmful to society.”

“Oh, like homosexuals and  transsexuals!” I was starting to get it. People have always spoken unkindly about my brain, but I was starting to feel really smart.

“No! Not like homosexuals or transsexuals! Not at all! Homosexuals were oppressed and abused and discriminated against for things they couldn’t control! Transsexuals, for the same reason! They don’t choose to want to be the opposite  sex, it’s something that’s inherent to their psyche, to who they are. Don’t you understand!?”

“Oh. I think I see the difference! So… perverts choose to be perverted? Pedophiles choose to find kids hot? Necrophiles choose to be attracted to corpses? Zoophiles choose to be attracted to animals? Heteronormative people choose to be heterosexual?” I could see how this made perfect sense.

“Absol- uh… I don’t know… particularly… the details. It’s a difficult… topic. I’m not a scientist, Lady. Sexuality is a very complex thing, you know.”

“You’re telling me!”

“It’s not like it’s just black and white. Or gray. It’s… it’s like, a really complicated thing. You know, I don’t think you’d understand. I’m really surprised, though. After being here, what, two months now? You still don’t understand the finer points of leftist logic. I’m really disgusted.” Sarah clutched her notebook to her chest and marched away from me.

“I’m trying to learn!” I shouted after her. “By the way, did you find that guy’s address? The internet guy?” She didn’t answer me. Clearly I’d upset her because I was a brain-dead idiot who didn’t get it. I hated being an idiot. I would never understand logic, it seemed. These feminists were just too damned good at it. They had all the answers and I was too stupid to learn.

Now that Sarah was gone, I went back into the DCCS and sat at her computer. I opened Netscape Navigator and checked the browsing history. After clicking through a few anarchy websites, How-To instructional sites for effective protesting, pictures of men impaled and disemboweled in acts of war, and vegan recipe lists, I found Lamp Post’s website. I clicked around to look for an email address. I didn’t see anything. I went back to the browser history and, after sorting through newsletters about wage gaps, found the gun enthusiast message forum that Lamp posted on. I found the thread he’d made, and discovered he was going by the name “Farmer Post”. I clicked all over his name in hopes  something magical would happen. Something magical, gifted to me straight by the blind god of winter himself, happened. A new window opened, entitled “Private Message”. I could  send Lamp a private message. And so I did:

Lamp Post,

This is an old friend of yours. I hope you remember me because I remember you. I still think about you when I can. It’s me, the girl on your website! It’s Lady Molasses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have so much to tell you right now, but I should get right to the important thing. I’m in Chicago right now, living with a large group of feminists, called FIST. They’re really terrific people, they’re my new friends. They’re so nice, so smart, so on the ball with everything it seems. I have learned so much. The only problem is they want to kill you. They saw your website. They saw my pictures. They want to murder you, and they plan to do it. I think soon. I don’t feel the same way they do. I love the website and think it is really artistic and pretty, and I love that you’ve made my dream come true. I wish I could see you right now. Please don’t let yourself get killed by FIST. Goodbye.

 -Lady Molasses.

I clicked send, and the window disappeared. I didn’t know if it worked. I hoped it did, and closed the browser. I took my journal and went back to my bedroom.

***

I was watering my bamboo trees when Sage came in. “Lady, did you hear about it? Oh wait, you were there, right?”

“Here about what? Wait, I was where? What?”

“The New York man, the guy with the sex slaves and child porn. We’re gonna get him! Klunti’s telling everyone, and we’re organizing a huge FIST trip out to New York! Everyone’s going!”

“Oh my, that does sound really fun. When do we go?”

“Soon, I think. Klunti hasn’t really said. I think Sarah’s been working at finding out exactly where his farm is. Anita and DuMontly, you remember them? They’re out scavenging the city for vans, to get enough transportation for all of us. Me and Naomi and a few others are making food for the trip. I think Klunti and a few others are preparing the Molotov cocktails and getting our knives together for the gutting ritual! What part do you want to help with?”

“Um, can I… water the plants?”

“These plants? The bamboo?”

“Yes, the bamboo.”

“Fuck the bamboo, Lady. We’ve got something massive going down! We don’t get to do this very often! It’s time for celebration and, more importantly, preparation!”

“I don’t know what I can help with.”

There was a knock on the door to our room.

“It’s open,” Sage shouted.

The door swung open and Klunti walked in, with Sarah behind her.

“Lady,” Klunti said. “Can I speak with you?”

“Sure. I’m just watering the bamboo.”

“Should I leave?” asked Sage.

“Not necessary,” Klunti said. “Lady. Sarah tells me you’ve been asking some very pressing questions. Some questions that cast doubt on FIST, on feminism, and on our entire operation.”

“What? No! I don’t doubt you – us. I don’t doubt anything. I just want to learn about things. Learn the answers. Learn how to think.”

“You’ve been here almost two months,” Klunti replied. “We’ve been teaching you how to think every single day. What’s the purpose of these questions? Are you trying to undermine our organization? Why do you question simple truths?”

“I just want to know what’s right and what’s wrong!” I shouted. “I can’t think for myself very well.”

“It’s dangerous when you try, that much is clear. Maybe you should keep your mouth shut, instead of trying to undermine a movement that is more powerful than you will ever know.”

“I’m sorry, Klunti. I didn’t know what I was doing was wrong.”

“Well, it was. It was very wrong. Don’t do it again. When you want to question the authority of feminism, you keep your fucking mouth closed and your thoughts to yourself. You understand me? Don’t try to stir up trouble.”

I said nothing, and nodded.

Sarah smiled as she and Klunti walked out of our room and shut the door behind them.

“Wow, Lady. You really should behave yourself,” Sage said.

She didn’t even know what I’d done and was already against me. I was such a fool, a real pain in the ass. I felt like running away, because once again I’d disappointed everyone. But I wouldn’t do it. I’d made a habit of running away from my problems for too long. My entire life, really. I was 27, and part of me decided that this meant I was almost an adult. I would try to start acting like I was almost an adult. Adults run away from things less often, I thought.

Besides, I had these bamboo trees. I couldn’t take all of them with me if I ran away. I loved them too much. I’d named all six of them, they were like my children. My children who weren’t also rats, who didn’t eat people.

“You’re still a fuck up, Lady,” Sage said. “But I guess it’s OK. You’re with us for the long haul. We’ll fix you up just right.”

“Thanks Sage, that means a lot to me.”

Suddenly the door to our room flew open again, and Klunti was standing there with Naomi and Sarah.

“Lady,” Klunti said. “Since you’ve committed a pretty severe crime against FIST tonight, we’ve discussed your punishment.”

“My punishment? There’s punishment involved?”

“Yes. Your trees. Get out of the way.”

“What? What are you doing?” I shouted, tears starting to wiggle their way out my eyes.

Naomi and Sarah walked into the room and I saw that they each held in their hands a pair of hedge trimmers.

“Alright girls,” Klunti said, “cut ‘em down.”

“No!” I screamed. But Sage held me back, and Naomi and Sarah went to each bamboo tree and cut it, in multiple places, ensuring that they each died by the blade, tragically, silently. I cried out, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t save the bamboo trees. Their disconnected parts scattered the floor of our room.

Naomi and Sarah pulled the stumps out of the pots, and cut the tiny roots to pieces. By the time they’d finished, my tears had blurred my vision too much for me to see what was happening. I fell to the floor crying, mumbling about my fallen children, and curled up into a ball of fear and grief.

“Behave yourself,” Klunti said, as Naomi and Sarah walked out of my room. “And you guys sleep well. Tomorrow we leave for New York.” The door slammed shut behind them.

“They’re  just trees, Lady.” Sage said. “Not even trees, really. Bamboo. Get a grip.”

I stayed curled in a ball on the floor. Nothing was holding me back from running away now. But FIST security was too strong. Those boys with AIDS were always awake, always watching the doors. The girls with shaved heads were always down there too, and they loved to fight. I’d never make it out of FIST. I slept on the floor that night. In the morning, we’d be leaving to find and murder Lamp Post, the man who made my dreams come true.

Chapter 26. Fist vs Farm

The sun coming through the bus windows the next morning hurt my eyes. Anita and DuMontly had somehow come into acquiring a Greyhound bus while they were searching for vans to transport all the residents of FIST to New York. All 40 of us had packed into the bus and were on our way east. Klunti Hardstroke was at the wheel. Sage sat next to me, and Naomi was behind us, sitting with Sarah, who I kind of wanted to throw under the bus and watch die. Everyone on the bus was in high spirits, talking loudly about fun things, and laughing at jokes whispered in un-whispered voices. I wasn’t feeling the same as my FIST friends that morning. I was mourning the loss of my bamboo children and felt sick in my guts at the thought of watching Lamp Post die when we got to New York. I was in pre-mourning for my old friend. I couldn’t handle this much death. I sat looking out the window and threw glances to my friends so they’d know I was normal and would not suspect me of being deep in thought at a time when laughs were to be had. They didn’t know I wasn’t capable of deep thought.

“Can I get a fag?” asked Naomi. I noticed she had a British accent for the first time, because it was the first time I’d heard her talk.

“Yep, sure,” said Sage, as she reached into her shirt, and under her braless boob to pull out a cigarette. She handed it back to Naomi.

None of the girls wore bras. Bras weren’t allowed because of their oppressive nature. That was probably my favorite thing about being in FIST. My tits sagged low, like inverted hot-air balloons. But they weren’t full of air, they were full of meat and nerves and dream centers.

“So, who’s gonna take the first blow at this ol’ farmer boy?” asked Naomi as she puffed away on the cigarette. “I say we hang him by his feet, cut out his testicles, cut out his eyes, put his testicles in his eye sockets, put his eyes in his ball sack, stitch it back up, cut off his dick, put it up inside him, and then set him on fire. What ya say to that?”

“That’s a good idea,” Sarah said. “But Klunti and Sage have kind of come up with a plan, right Sage?”

“Yes,” said Sage. “We’ll be doing it like we usually do our raids. It’ll be like the assaults we’ve done with antifa groups and ARA in the past, or the midnight raids we’ve done at the homes of sexists.”

“Like the restaurant gig?” Naomi asked. “With those antifa gangs, and we all stormed the restaurant that night and robbed the customers, spit in their food, set fire to the tables, and beat the shit out of the staff and other guests? Because their boss was a fuckin’ Nazi, wasn’t it? What a fucking riot that was!”

Sarah laughed. “That was a great night!”

One of the boys on the bus looked back at us and pumped his fist into the air and nodded a couple times. Two others did the same. One of them shouted, “yeah!” or something. Like I said, spirits were high. I wanted to be high, myself, but, as much as I loved my new friends, they’d probably be buzzkills.

“No, it’s not gonna be like that job,” Sage said. “Turned out that guy wasn’t an actual Nazi, anyway. But he did go to Nordic festivals, so he probably has strong Nazi ties. We did good.”

“This is gonna be more like what we do at shows?” Sarah asked. “Like, when we see someone wearing a fascist, racist, or sexist shirt and beat them to a pulp for it?”

I looked at Sarah. “They make racist and sexist shirts?” I had no idea.

“Yeah, Lady. Real sick stuff. There are all kinds of hate groups out there and people who support them. Irish Pride shirts, we’ve seen those some, especially in places like Boston. We bruise up those fuckers real good. And Nordic pride, don’t even get me started. Anytime we see someone with some kind of Viking memorabilia or something, we go apeshit. Doesn’t get much more racist than that. Oh, look at me, I’m so white and I’m shouting it to the world because it makes me so fucking hard!”

“Ooh, and I’m such a man!” shouted Naomi, sounding angry and British all at the same time.

“And they make sexist shirts, too?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” Sarah said. “Basically any shirt you can buy at a truck stop or in a shopping mall is sexist.”

“Really?”

“Yep.”

“Lady, sexist clothing is everywhere,” Sage said. “It’s hard not to see it wherever you look. Look at low cut shirts for women – sexist. Look at baggy shirts for men – sexist. Look at shirts with writing on them, objectifying women, saying things to the effect of us being sexually beautiful – sexist. Look at dresses – sexist. Look at high heels – sexist. Look at tennis shoes for men – sexist. Look at it all, it’s all fucking sexist and produced to reinforce gender roles and to sexualize women, to make us second class citizens.”

“You think you’re thinking for yourself,” Naomi said, “but you’re not. Clothing manufacturers are doing your thinking for you, just like the media, the television, the movies. They’re doing your thinking. It’s fascism. We use force to resist these ideas. We use violence to resist fascism. And we use brute strength and bloodshed to enforce our code on the world, because our way is the right way – it’s the way that needs to be followed. We know what’s right, and others don’t. They’re brainwashed, they’re mindless.”

“What is fascism, anyway?” I asked. These people always used big words around me because they must have thought I was smart. I tried my hardest to be smart around them, but sometimes I got the impression it just wasn’t enough.

“It’s an authoritarian dictatorship,” Sage said, “in which violence is used to suppress opposition, different ways of thinking, and to enforce ideas of nationalism, racism, and total control of a society.”

I nodded my head for what was probably a good, solid minute. “We don’t like the last parts. But the first parts we like, right?”

“What? No. None of it. We don’t like any of it, Lady. We’re against fascism.”

“But you just said, well, Sarah just said… that we go beating up people and attacking people we don’t agree with.”

“Yes, what’s your point?” Sage said. “That’s totally different.”

“I guess… I don’t know.”

“Lady, are you trying to start something again? You want me to tell Klunti?”

“No! For the love of shit, no. Don’t tell Klunti! I’m sorry.”

“Then shut up about this, and stop trying to spin this shit around. You don’t understand anything and you probably never will.”

I was already too sad for Sage’s words to bring me down any further. My emotional intelligence has been described by some as being so far below normal that there’s no human made vessel with a hull strong enough to explore anything that deep and cavernous. I don’t know what that means, but I think people say it because I have just a few limited emotional states. I have one level of each. If I’m already sad, nothing can make me sadder. I don’t have a next level of sad. There’s just sad.

Anita and DuMontly walked back to sit at a seat across from Sage and me, one of the few seats that was open.

“Sage,” Anita said. “We wanna know how long the drive will be today. Where exactly we going?”

“It’ll be 10 hours,” Sage smiled. “We’re going somewhere around Buffalo, right Sarah?”

“That’s right,” Sarah said. “We have the farmer’s address, and are packed up with means of killing him.”

Naomi threw her finished cigarette out the window. “Sage, you never did explain exactly what our plan is.”

“It’ll be just a bit similar to the other raids,” Sage said. “We’ll rush into the farm, find the farmer – probably in his house or out tending to his crops – and we’ll grab him, beat him, hurt him, and take him somewhere where we can torture him. We’ll perform cruel and sadistic things on him, the kind of shit he probably does to those poor girls in his homemade prison.”

Klunti overheard the conversation and looked back at us from the driver’s seat. “And then we’ll gut him!” she yelled.

Everyone on the bus cheered. I threw my hands in the air to mimic the excitement, but just wasn’t feeling it. The only thing I was excited about was stopping for dinner.

But we didn’t stop for shit. The ten hours on the bus were spent as a straight trip, all the way from Chicago to right outside Buffalo. No stopping, except for gas. We were lucky to have a toilet in the bus, which I took a few shits into after my bowels rumbled too long. As for food, we had to eat the stuff the party-planning committee of FIST decided to bring – brownies, cupcakes, hotdogs, meatballs, ice cream – feminist cuisine. Anything high in fat and unhealthy was packed into freezer bags to hold us over until we got to New York. Since body image was something we were supposed to be oblivious to, and “counter-beauty” was so important to us, we were all about getting fat and eating unhealthy. It was empowering.

Welcome to New York. The Empire State. The sign that told us we were in New York looked like it was lying. All I saw around us were trees, fields, some hills, and lakes. I didn’t see a skyscraper, I didn’t see anyone shitting in the street, I didn’t see rats flooding out of restaurants. This wasn’t the New York I remembered. It was way too green.

It was a little after 7 o’clock when we stopped the bus on a dirt road out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by trees. The sun looked like it’d be setting soon. I knew that because Klunti had taught me that the sun sets in the west, and when it’s close to the horizon, which is where earth meets sky, it’s about to get dark.

“Alright, gang,” Klunti said, pulling the parking brake and turning around to face us. “Here we are. It’s almost night, so we have darkness on our side. According to Sarah’s investigation, the farm we’re looking for is right off this road. We go down a ways and there should be a clearing in the trees. Through there is the farm. Grab your tools, your toys, whatever you want to bring. This is going to get violent, like always.”

  We spilled out of the bus and stood around for a minute while Anita and DuMontly opened the luggage compartment on the bus’s side. They pulled out three large boxes and set them on the ground. Naomi, Sage, and Sarah opened the boxes and began handing out weapons that seemed expertly fashioned from knives, broken glass, gasoline, and other things that hinted at danger.

“Everyone take at least something,” Sage announced. “We have cutting tools, stabbing tools, burning tools, and even greater burning tools… for his house and his farm.”

A girl I didn’t know, one of the lower ranks of feminism, I’m sure, asked Klunti a question as she stepped off the bus.

“Did anyone call the news groups? I thought we were going to get this some media attention. Shame this guy publicly, before we killed him.”

“We decided against it,” Klunti explained. “Too much media attention and our operation runs the risk of being delayed, or worse yet, becoming impossible. This makes it easier for us.”

“What about the prisoners he keeps chained up?” one of the boys asked. “Like on the website.” He pushed his fingers through his faux-hawk.

“We’ll get to them after we deal with the farmer,” Sage answered. “He’s our target. Everything and everyone else is secondary.”

“Alright, everyone understand? Everyone armed?” Klunti was ready for war.

In my hands I was holding a Molotov cocktail. It was one of the greater burning tools, as Sage called it. I was supposed to throw it at Lamp’s house, or one of his barns, so we could watch his farm burn with the same fires that burned in our feminist hearts. But I wasn’t feeling it. I was nervous. Conflict boiled in my lower guts. My new friends had taken me hundreds of miles to kill my old friend, to gut him like a pig, and burn down his farm of oppression, a symbol of the patriarchy. And all because of my childhood Polaroids. In the boiling sensations I felt in my lower guts, I knew this was all my fault.

“Sarah and I will guide the way,” Klunti shouted. “From this moment forward, until we have the farmer cornered, everyone needs to be quiet. Say nothing. This isn’t like our strikes on restaurants or random capitalist establishments – we can’t just storm in running and screaming. If farmers get startled, they go for their shotguns. Phallic empowerment, all of that.”

Sarah and Klunti each had long spear-like weapons, and led the rest of us down the dirt road, toward a clearing in the trees just ahead. We marched quietly, 40-strong, weapons in our hands. The clearing opened into a huge field, and probably a thousand feet away was a really nice looking farm house. It had shutters, it had doors, windows were glass, there was a roof.  Really, a nice looking place. The sun was setting by this point and it was getting dark. The house was dark. But off to the side a little ways there was a barn. The door was closed, but light came out from underneath it. That’s where Lamp is, I thought. A lump formed in my throat.

We walked toward the house, but stopped at a mailbox. A big white note was taped to the top of it, and Klunti stopped to read it. She said something to Sarah, and a couple other people, and then changed the direction of our march. Now we were heading toward the barn.

As I walked past the mailbox I looked at the note. 

Fed-Ex guy, I’m in the barn all day. Please bring my packages out here. – Lamp.

The lump in my throat turned into a colossal swelling. The closer we got to the barn, the closer I got to a nervous breakdown. I was sweating so much I started drinking my own drip-drip-drips, as I caught them in my hand. It didn’t help. My thirst remained and my nervousness grew. Anxious farts escaped me with every step I took, and the closer I got to the barn the more foul and murderous the smells of my insides became. Since I was in the back of the line, I was swimming alone in my stench. Maybe when it was my turn to do some damage, I’d drop the Molotov cocktail on the ground, accidentally setting some grass on fire. I couldn’t intentionally do anything bad to Lamp or his nice looking farm.

Finally, we stopped in front of the barn’s massive door. Light was poking out from underneath.

“Quazipad, Jenga, Mallory, Dimples, Hillary, Laurie, Lorie, Laury, Selma, Anderson, Nubs, Prickle, and Julie,” Klunti whispered – she was addressing a few of the FISTers, people I barely knew – “you stay out here. If our man gets out of the barn, you take him down. The rest of you, we’re going inside. Follow my lead.”

Slowly and quietly, Klunti and Sarah slid open the huge barn door, just enough for a single file line of us to enter. After everyone was in, Klunti and Sarah came in and closed the door behind us. They walked to the front of the line.

The barn’s insides were just like those of the barns I remembered seeing in my youth, at Sage’s dad’s farm. The light we saw from outside seemed to be coming from a small room at the far end. The unmistakable sound of a man whistling was coming from the room. My heart raced.

I grabbed Sage by the shoulder, looking for a way to distract myself from the nightmare of violent doom I was about to witness. “This barn bring back any memories, Sage? Remember the horses? I taught them human-speak.”

“Shh,” she whispered. “Quiet, Lady. We can talk about barns and horses all you want after we’re done. We have a job to do. No more words.”

Then, as suddenly as a very sudden and unforeseen thing that takes you by surprise, the ground fell out from beneath us and we fell, all 27 of us, into a dark pit with hard floors and high walls. Every one of us screamed a little when we fell, and groaned or yelled when we hit the bottom. I landed on my back and stared straight up. We’d fallen at least fifteen feet. Then we heard gunshots. Fast gunshots, then terrified and pained screams, for a short few seconds. They seemed to be coming from outside the barn. None of us in the pit spoke, we lied or stood or sat there quietly until the sounds of a rampage ended. I could tell by the looks on my fellow FISTers’ faces that my heart wasn’t the only one beating rapidly, now.

We were terrified, unsure what to do. Klunti ran to the walls, with a limp in her leg, looking for a ladder or something to climb onto. Sage and Sarah did the same.

I sat up slow, with the Molotov cocktail still in my hand. Luckily for us, it didn’t hit the floor. I turned my attention to the rest of my friends, and none of them looked as happy or excited as they had looked a few seconds ago. Anita was in the corner, crying, claiming that she had broken her leg, and DuMontly was kneeling down next to her. Others, whose names I didn’t know, lied on the ground in pain, searched for a way out of the pit, or stood around looking scared.

Then we heard the barn door open. It opened slow, and some yellow lights on the ceiling of the barn turned on, brightening the place up.

All of us stopped what we were doing, if we were even doing anything at all, and looked up to the top of the pit’s walls, to the barn.

A group of naked women, tits the size of the Great Alps, and vaginas like an alligator’s mouth surrounded the opening of the pit, stared down at us, and brandished large rifles. They were beautiful, and their legs were shaved, as were their vaginas.

A brown-haired girl who was probably my age, and whose tits were by all means really great, but not as large as my own, yelled off into the barn, in the direction of the glowing room: “alright, turn on the gas.”

White mist sprayed from holes in the wall of the pit, filling the area with what, after a few seconds, I realized was probably the gas that girl had been talking about. It made sense. Klunti and Sarah and Sage were yelling obscenities, others were screaming too, throwing their weapons up, out of the hole, not willing to be gassed without a fight. The naked chicks up top had disappeared, leaving FIST in the gassy hole. It didn’t take long for the stuff to knock us out.

My eyes opened, and for a moment I imagined I was on an alien ship being probed deep by a green man or a gray man, whoever got to me first, their vibrating information rod deep in my holes. The things they were learning about me and the human race must have been wonderful, and the way they played with my DNA to suit their needs was like magic.

But I wasn’t on an alien ship. When I could see clearly, I saw I was somewhere else. But I wasn’t in the hole anymore, either.

“She’s awake,” I heard a girl say.

The sound of feet shuffling quickly toward me, a table of expensive things being knocked over, and heavy breathing filled my ears.

“Lady,” came a familiar voice. “Lady Molasses. Are you alright?”

I sat up from whatever soft pillowed bed I was lying in, and locked eyes with Lamp Post. His face hadn’t changed, and his eyes were sugar plums to me.

“Lamp Post!” I shouted, or rather screamed feverishly, as I jumped off the soft surface and wrapped my arms around him. “Are you alright!?” I shouted, my face right next to his ear. Hopefully all the sound got in there.

He pulled me off of him delicately, and said, “yes, Lady, I am alright. Are you? I hope the fall didn’t hurt you.” His smile was the warm star I remembered.

“My back does hurt a little, but I think I’ll be OK.” I touched his face like his voice touched my heart. He was real. Lamp Post was alive. “What happened?”

Lamp walked over to a computer, and only then did I see the naked girls standing around in the room with us, eyeing me curiously, or maybe jealously. They had their rifles strapped to their backs, and they were passing around the biggest joint I’d seen since my days with the Spin Doctors. It smelled like a weed factory took a shit in a skunk’s mouth.

“I received your message, Lady.” Lamp motioned toward his computer, showing me the brutal machine that he must have used for his doorway into the world of the web. “Logged onto the Gun Brothers forum last night and read your words in your voice, as if you were whispering them into my ear. To hear from you after all this time was a blessing. A miracle. You saved me.”

“I didn’t know if you would read it in time,” I said, shyly. “But it’s good you did. They want to kill you, Lamp. They hate you and they don’t even know you. They saw my pictures, the Polaroids you put online for me. They were disgusted and angered and said you had to be destroyed.”

“Of course they said that. They don’t understand things of beauty, like you. They want to be the fire that eradicates the field of roses. I know all about FIST. This isn’t my first dealing with them, you see. New York City has its own chapter, too. They’re just a little bit insane, Lady. They aren’t fighting for women’s rights or equality, like they claim. They’re radical feminists, the kind of people the word feminazi was created for, or maybe cunt. A movement that was at one time sensible and meaningful has been hijacked by these wild beasts of hate and misandry, not in an effort to promote equality and understanding, but to fuel the imaginary war between men and women, to turn it into a real war, that they control, that they engineer. They’re projecting their own hatred on what they perceive to be the opposition, playing the role of the victim for their entire lives, and using everything they can as an excuse to fight and to hate and to destroy. It’s just trouble, Lady.”

I didn’t pick up on any of that during the time I spent with FIST, but I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

“I didn’t want my new friends to hurt you, Lamp! After I saw what you did for me, the beautiful website you made, I knew you were really a man of your word. You helped me, so I helped you. But what happened to FIST? Where  are the rest of them?”

“Oh, come with me.” He led me out of the room, and the naked women followed, still passing around their joint.

The room led out into a hall, and the hall took us to a lavish living room. We were in his beautiful farm house, on the farm he’d told me about years back.

“I’m finally on your farm, Lamp. I’ve dreamed of this and hoped that someday I’d see it with my own three eyes.”

Lamp smiled at me and his eyes drifted downward, looking into my pants, where he knew my third eye lived. He wet his lips. “I can give you a full  tour later. But first things first.”

We left the house and walked out toward the barn. It was night time, and the moon sat in the sky looking down on us, smiling and probably thinking about space and which planet it liked best, besides Earth.

“My girls here took care of the FISTers keeping watch outside the barn,” Lamp said.

When we got to the barn door I saw all thirteen bodies lying in pools of blood, full of holes, their flesh and clothes torn by what I imagined to be a storm of bullets. My imagination, it turns out, was spot on.

Lamp pushed the barn door open and we walked inside and up a set of stairs to the side. I looked toward the barn floor but couldn’t see the pit.

“Where’s the hole?” I asked. “It’s gone.”

“You’re right, Lady. After the gas knocked all of you out, my girls removed each of you so I could find you. Once I identified you, Meg and Mag took you back to the house.”

Two girls who looked like twins smiled at me.

“Then I had the girls round up the others and separate them… into groups. You’ll see, soon.”

We continued onto the second floor of the barn, where no light pierced through. Lamp flipped a big handle on the wall, and there was a zapping sound, like bolts of lightning flying through the air. Bright bulbs turned on, over the hallway of the second floor. At the end of the hall was a door, and we went in.

“Here they are,” Lamp said, as I walked in past him.

The room was bigger than I thought it could be, because it stretched out like a gymnasium and had a high ceiling. It was bright, and in the room there were three large chambers, with windows facing us.

Inside the chambers were my FIST friends, knocking on the glass trying to break free, and yelling in confusion and fear.

“I broke them up into three groups, you see,” Lamp explained. “I watched every move the group made once you were off the bus. My surveillance here is second to none. Exquisite. I saw those who were leading everyone onto my property. They are in Chamber A.”

Lamp pointed to the farthest left chamber, where I saw Klunti, Sarah, and Naomi, as well as a few others I didn’t know, who had been at the front of the line.

“There were those who handed out the weapons – who armed everyone to kill me. They are in Chamber B.” He pointed to the middle chamber. Anita and DuMontly were inside, along with close to ten others.

“Then the stragglers. And the one I saw you talk to, who you seemed to know better than the rest. They are in Chamber C.”

In the last chamber I saw Sage, pressed up against the glass with a mean look on her face, and a few others behind her, throwing themselves into the glass in attempts to break it.

“They’ll never break through,” Lamp said. “That’s three inch thick glass-clad polycarbonate. Beyond bulletproof.”

“What’s going on in here?” I finally asked. “What are you doing with them?”

“Lady, this isn’t something I find joy in doing, but you must understand… they came here to kill me. I’m simply defending myself.”

I became silent and looked at the FISTers stuck in their chambers. Their sad faces said a lot, right about then. When they saw me a new emotion was added to their faces – a look of betrayal, like I’d been part of the plot to stick them in these cages.

Lamp walked over to a desk with a control panel on it that was covered in flashing lights and little gizmos from the future. He motioned for me to join him.

“Watch Chamber B. I figured I’d give them the benefit of a relatively easy demise.” He flipped a switch on his control panel, and the whirring sound of a powerful fan kicked in.

I looked into Chamber B, and Anita’s hair, and the long hair of others, flew like it was in a wind tunnel. Some covered their ears at the loud sound, and looked more horrified even than before.

“It’s creating a vacuum,” Lamp said.

After a minute, people began gasping for breath, grabbing their throats, gaping their mouths wide open like fish, and dropping to their knees. Anita and DuMontly hit the window but grew weaker with each slap. I watched everyone in the chamber slowly suffocate until they died. In less than ten minutes it was over. Lamp  flipped the switch again and the fan stopped.

“Basically painless,” he said. “Loss of air, blacking out, death. Not so bad.”

“Oh my God,” I said. “You killed them.”

“Like I said, they were going to kill me. Self defense. Now look to Chamber C. A little less easy for these folks.”

He flipped another switch.

The ceiling of Chamber C began to descend, and in just a couple seconds everyone in there realized it. They began screaming and yelling, hitting the glass even harder, and some were crying. They didn’t look pleased. The ceiling was at about seven feet, getting close to some heads.

“Now, I’ll make it interesting.” Lamp flipped a different switch. “Watch this.”

The sound of lightning returned.

The ceiling was now about six feet from the ground, and people were crouching down. But some decided to push against it to try to force it up. When they touched the ceiling, their bodies went into convulsions and they fell to the floor.

Lamp burst out laughing. “The ceiling’s got about 20 milliamps of current running through it! Electric shock for anyone who dares fight it!”

The ceiling continued to drop, and everyone in the chamber fell to their stomachs or backs to avoid the shock and the inevitable crush.

“I can’t watch this,” I said, covering my eyes.

“I understand. She’s your friend, isn’t she? The tattooed girl.”

“Yes. I’ve known her since I was sixteen. I can’t watch her die.”

“Very well. Do you wish to save her?”

“I can do that? I have a choice?”

“Sure. But only for her. You can only save one. And you may want to decide quickly, that ceiling’s getting awfully low.”

“Save her!” I shouted.

Lamp flipped a switch, and the ceiling quit its descent  about two feet from the floor. “Get the one with tattoos out of there,” Lamp told one of his girls. “But get her out of the barn. Take her to the house and keep her there til I get back.”

The glass wall of the chamber was opened from the bottom, and three naked girls pulled Sage out of the chamber while others tried to crawl out, but were kicked back. A black bag was put over Sage’s screaming and crying face, and she was dragged out of the room.

Lamp flipped a switch and the ceiling continued to drop, until it finally crushed everyone in Chamber C. I tried not to watch, and plugged my ears to block out the screaming and the sounds of crunching bone.

“Now, of course, those in Chamber A are going to have it the worst of all.” Lamp flipped a switch, and a steady hissing sound was emitted from Chamber A.

Then, in the blink of an eye, fire exploded from the walls of Chamber A and filled the chamber, engulfing each and every person in there. Klunti, Sarah, and Naomi pressed their burning, screaming bodies against the glass, and I watched the fire consume them. Everyone was screaming, and the fire looked just terrible.

Again, I looked away and plugged my ears. Lamp put his arm on my shoulder and rubbed me like a boyfriend would. He was so gentle, and so understanding.

“It’s over,” he said a few minutes later.

I looked up to see black ashes and burned, smoldering skeletons on the floor of Chamber A. Some were still on fire, but none were moving.

“Do you think it was painless?” I asked, hopeful that my friends didn’t suffer.

Lamp glanced at all three chambers and nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

I sighed with relief.

“Looks like this chapter of FIST is finished, huh?” Lamp joked. We both laughed a little, but mine was kind of a sad laugh, the kind of laugh you do when you watch a lot of your friends die at a young age with so many years to be had ahead of them and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“What do you say we go back to the house for some lemonade?” Lamp suggested, heartily. “The girls have probably made dinner by now. We’ve got so much catching up to do!

“I’d like that,” I said, smiling for the first time that day. “I’d like that very much.”

Lamp put his arm around me, and yelled to his girls: “Clean up in chambers A, B, and C!”

Chapter 27. Money and Fame and Property Investments

The living room of Lamp’s house was as immaculate as holy ejaculate. A tasteful fireplace rested in the wall, and there was plenty of chairs and sofa space for guests. The floor was a place where rugs and woods met like warm hands in a man’s cozy pocket. There was nothing queer about the night air that drifted in through the open windows, and there was nothing gross about the lemonade served to me in a tall glass by one of Lamp’s naked ladies.

But there was something a little awkward about Sage sitting in a chair in the middle of  the room, with a black bag over her head, her hands bound behind her, and her feet chained to the floor. A big pair of industrial-strength looking earmuffs were stuck on her head, over her ears.

Lamp sat down next to me on the sofa, and smiled his same old New York farmer’s smile I remembered from before. “You don’t look happy to be here, Lady.”

“Oh, no, Lamp, I am! I’m very happy to be here. It’s just…” I sipped some lemonade and looked at Sage, then whispered, “what’s going to happen to her? You won’t kill her, will you?”

“Naw. I wouldn’t  have spared her if I was going to kill her. She’s your friend, and I’d like to think that any friend of yours is a friend of mine.”

I smiled with my lips closed so the lemonade wouldn’t fall out. Lamp’s sweetness was just like the sweet, sweet lemon juices in my mouth.

“But,” he said, always fond of the buts, “I know that cannot be. I’ve murdered too many of her comrades for her to make peace with me. Any peace she did try to make with me would be a facade, a trick, a ruse. She’d do it so I’d drop my guard, ease into comfort around her, and make it easier for her to strike. She undoubtedly still wants me dead, so I’m gonna have my girls do something about that.”

My smile turned to a frown, and some of the lemonade dribbled down my face. That’s when I realized lemons weren’t sweet, they were sour. Lamp sounded sour.

“Nothing drastic or violent,” he assured me, “I assure you. I’ll have the ladies take your friend here far away from the farm, somewhere she’ll be safe, but unable to find her way back.”

“That sounds good. She won’t get hurt, will she? I’d hate to see old Sagepuss get hurt on account of something I did.”

“Something you did? You did nothing.”

“I told you we were coming.”

“Hmm. Yes. But that was so nice of you to do, Lady. You’re what the French call a true friend.”

Lamp gathered some of his naked militia sluts around the couch and started talking about things to do with Sage. He used code words and hand signals and neck movements to tell them something like, “take her out of here, far away, leave her there, I don’t want to see her again.”

Three of the girls grabbed Sage, unchained her feet from the floor and pulled the earmuffs off her head.

“If you wanna say goodbye,” Lamp said, “this is the time to do it. They’re gonna take her away.”

I got off the couch and sat on a wooden chair, then pulled it slowly across the wooden floor, over a couple rugs, to make my approach heard by my friend, so she’d know someone was getting close.

“Who the fuck is there?” she said, sounding scared, like a woman who was face to face with a Wampus cat.

“It’s me, Sage, Lady. Boy, what a day, huh?”

“Lady, what the fuck is happening? Where are we? Who were you talking to?”

“You’re about to be taken away, and we’re in a house, and I was talking to Lamp.”

“Bullshit, you were talking to someone. I heard it.”

“Yes, Lamp.”

“No, person.”

“Sage, I’m sorry about all of this. I know it isn’t fun.”

“Fun? Lady, life isn’t fun. I’m not asking for fun. Where is everyone else? Did they make it out of that, uh, room? What the fuck were you doing? Why weren’t you in there with us? Is everyone OK?”

“That’s really a lot of questions, Sage. I don’t know how to answer most of them, but how does yes sound? Yes, to all of the above.”

“They’re alright? Everyone? Even Klunti?”

“Oh. Actually, no. Everyone’s dead but you and me.”

Like you might expect, Sage started screaming and crying and kicking her legs in the air, toppling over her chair and just going fucking nuts. The naked ladies restrained her.

“And I’m so sorry about your sister,” I said, as compassionately as I could, not thinking what I was saying.

“What? My sister?”

“My sons, they did… this thing. You understand. I’m so sorry about Barb.”

“Barbalay is dead?”

“My sons. They were so hungry, Sage.”

“You fucking murderer!” she finally was able to yell, when her screams took the form of actual words. “You fucking whore’s cunt, you rusty shit eating bitch of lies and garbage! I fucking hate you, Lady Molasses! You’re a rotten sack of human waste!”

I didn’t say anything more about my sons and the brutal extermination of Sage’s sister. Thought I’d keep it quiet. She was losing her shit so I tried to help her gather it back up. “Sage, I’m really sorry. But look, you’re OK. Right? See? My friends here are going to take you somewhere where you’ll be safe and happy! You know what? You’ll even be able to get more tattoos! Maybe, when you find a good artist, you’ll find someone to tattoo a new word onto you. A new title to go along with Cunt, and Faggot, and Dyke, and Whore, and Slut, and Bitch. A really special new word. A word that represents what you are – Lady. Get Lady tattooed on you! And it’ll also help you remember me.”

Sage didn’t respond to my soothing words the way I thought she would, and screamed louder and shook her head like a hyena’s child. “You monster!” she screamed. “These words aren’t fucking titles! Words that damage women!” she stopped going wild for a moment, and relaxed. “I will get Lady tattooed on me. Lady is damaging to women. Lady is a horrible word, a dishonorable word, a scummy word for scummy things. It will remind me of you – the person I want to kill.” Then she started losing her shit again.

I sat there, watching her wrestling with three naked ladies, still bound at the arms, chains dangling from her feet, and a black bag over her head. It wasn’t something I’d expected to see that day, but then again, just a day earlier I hadn’t expected to be sitting in Lamp Post’s living room after watching the entire Chicago chapter of FIST get suffocated, shocked, crushed, and burned to death. Life is a wild storm of surprises, sometimes.

When her words turned back into sobs and crazy screams, the girls dragged her out of the room, still yelling. Her last words to me were, “Lady Molasses, I will fucking find you! I will fucking kill you! You will die at my hands!” She screamed all the way to the truck out in front of Lamp’s house, and I could hear her until they got to the road.

“Seems like a nice girl,” Lamp said, pouring me some more lemonade. “Kind of bummed I didn’t get to know her. But you might want to lay low, you know? She sounded upset.”

“You think so? Might have just been that time of the month,” I said. I’d been around Sage for almost two whole months, and our periods were almost tangled up together in sync. I felt like my own vagina was ready to fart out a bloodfall any minute, so it was possible Sage was just perioding all over the place with some fake anger.

“I know real womanly anger when I see it, Lady,” Lamp said. “She had it in spades. She wants you dead because she somehow feels you’re responsible for her friends’ deaths. And her sister’s. But you’re not. It’s hard to say who is. It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries, I think. Death. Huh. It’s sad, but it has to happen.”

Lamp and I drank lemonade long into the night, while his naked ladies got high, drank liquor, and practiced their shooting outside the house. I mourned the loss of my friends and cried a little bit while the faces of Klunti, Sarah, Naomi, Anita, DuMontly, and nameless others soared through my head. Their corpses and other remains were buried in the field besides Lamp’s property, and I said a few words of mourning and encouragement to their spirits. Lamp exercised his bulging, throbbing empathy muscle by listening to me complain about death, and wept softly with me when I needed it. I worried for Sage’s well being and had him assure me over and over again that she would be fine. I knew he was right.

Eventually, crying took its toll and I had run out of emotions. We changed the subject to something more important than dead friends, and shared with each other what Lamp called “friends-catching-up-chit-chat”. He explained to me what he’d been up to over the past few years, and detailed his many escapes from the police, as well as his ongoing war with the law. They still came by his farm once every few months, he said, to search for drugs and to disrupt reported religious cult activities. They usually found nothing, but if they did, violence erupted.

As he told his story, I came to learn that the naked ladies walking around with guns were the rumored sex slaves he’d told me about years earlier. They loved him and he loved them, and they served him sexually, intellectually, spiritually, and in other ways that he said I was too young to understand. I told him I was 27 going on 28, but he said I’d have to be many lifetimes older to understand the relationships he had with his beautiful children. I asked if they really were his children and he kissed my cheek with the palm of his hand, and laughed.

The women worked on Lamp’s farm, built things for him, kept everything running smoothly, and enjoyed battle as much as fornication. Their breasts hung like moons over their sexual curves, and their vaginas looked like treats you’d find in a magician’s trick basket.

Lamp explained to me that my naked photos from childhood were lost, having been destroyed in a fire, or in a shoot out with the cops, or a farming ritual, or a power outage, or something dangerous. But he’d been able to get them on the internet first, where he said it was much harder for fire to destroy precious things. He said he had something very important to give to me.

“Lady. Your childhood beauty was something so new and fresh to the world that your pictures were the single most popular thing on the internet.”

“On the whole internet?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“The whole internet, Lady. I got the site up and running not long after Mark got back from dropping you off at your aunt’s house in Delaware.”

“What? That never happened. Never been to Delaware.”

“Oh? Well, whatever. Mark got back from somewhere, and you weren’t with him, and shortly thereafter I finished the website. I thought I’d charge four dollars for daily access, and release one picture a day for members.”

“Wow! So how many people signed up?”

“Ten.”

“Oh.”

“Thousand.”

“Oh!”

“Ten thousand people, on the first day. I raised the price of membership to ten bucks per person. Released one picture a week, instead. But that was still asking too little. In less than a month, over one million people had full membership.”

“Oh my God!”

“We raked in millions, Lady. But I didn’t know where to find you. I spent some of the money on repairs around the farm, defense systems, some weaponry, on parts for big projects, like those chambers I showed you and your friends –  and you know, other expenses. But now that you’re back, you deserve your share. After all, it’s you who really pulled in all the clientele.”

“How much is left for me?”

“Two million dollars. Give or take a few hundred.”

Four of Lamp’s naked girls hauled two massive bags out of a closet at the far side of the living room and dropped them in front of me.

“All two million dollars, my dear,” Lamp said.

“Holy fuck. It’s in there?”

“Well, it’s not in the banks, that’s for sure. I don’t use them. Never have, never will. All cash. It’s all hidden around the farm, the rest of it. I’ve only got a few thousand left for myself and the ladies, but that’s more than we need. We make money by other means.” He took a joint from the hands of one of the girls and smoked it, passed it to me, and I smoked that shit deep.

“I have two million dollars, now?” I asked, as the high crept up on me like a rapist on a newscaster.

“Yep.”

“I’m a millionaire.” I took another hit from the joint. “I’m a motherfucking millionaire.”

The next morning I woke up just in time to see the truck pull up in front of Lamp’s house. The three naked girls who took Sage away walked inside and made themselves breakfast. I’d passed out on the floor of the living room, and Lamp had passed out on the couch.

The girls wouldn’t talk to me unless I got naked, so I stripped down and asked them where they took Sage. They explained she was dropped off in the mountains of New York, and would probably be found by Yankee mountaineers before she starved to death. This warmed my heart.

Lamp awoke a few hours later and sat around with me the whole day to discuss my plans for the future, which, I said, I didn’t have. Now that my dream of being a sexual icon had been achieved, I felt that I’d almost accomplished all there was to accomplish with sexual liberation. I didn’t know what the future held for me, and I sort of didn’t care. When I asked if I could live with Lamp on the farm he declared that keeping me as a lover and spiritual vessel would be shameful, and disrespectful to me. He said I was a dog-legged butterfly who needed to soar free with the eagles, and sing songs of liberty from the clouds. He said that my spirit was the most holy and beautiful thing that he had ever known, but that it would have been selfish to keep it for himself. I was honored and humbled, and turned on.

I asked Lamp if he still went back into New York City, but he said his old apartment had been invaded by the police, then the FBI, then the Russian mob, then the FBI again. He said he hadn’t stepped foot in the city since shortly after I’d left town because he had no safe place to go. But his dream was to have a place in the city where he could en-hugen (he said it was a word that meant “to make bigger”) his internet empire. When I asked why he couldn’t do it from the farm he got into technical words and laser tongues and future speak that I wasn’t about to try to understand. I just laughed and told him to shut the fuck up and kiss me. But he wouldn’t kiss me with his naked ladies around. I was still naked, and I told him I was just one of the girls now. He didn’t accept that.

For the next few days, I stayed at Lamp’s farm and learned how to assemble, disassemble, clean, and shoot every kind of gun he had, learned to plant and care for all kinds of crops whose names I would never know, learned how to use the internet better than what FIST had taught me, tried my hand at building torture devices and security installations around his 50 acres of farmland, was eased out of my sex-fearing mindset and “re-un-programmed”, as Lamp put it, participated in cellar-based orgies with Lamp and his women, got high as Dick Mountain every morning, afternoon, and night, and even got to milk some pigs and cows. Pig’s milk turned out to be the best tasting drink I’d ever had. The days passed like a montage, with the music from one of Lamp’s old psychedelic records accompanying the thrills. Being back on a farm was a dream come true.

None of the cows on Lamp’s farm knew English, which meant I’d have a chance to teach them if he let me. But he said he’d never let me, because it was almost time for me to get going.

“Lamp,” I said. “You’ve given me a beautiful time these last few days. You made my dreams come true, and you’ve also given me two million dollars, which is something I never thought I’d have. I want to do something for you.”

“You’ve already given me two candy-canes a day for the last five days, Lady,” he said, sounding scared. “I don’t know that I can handle anymore, though I really have missed them. The splinters you give me with your new teeth really are something I’ve never had before. Not down there, anyway.”

“No, silly. You said you wanted a place in New York City so you could enhugen your internet empire. But you don’t have the money for it after all the expenses on your farm, right?”

“That’s about right, Lady.”

“I want you to come to New York City with me. I want to take you there and buy you a place. A place to call your own.”

“Oh Lady, I can’t let you do that.”

“I want to do it, Lamp. It’s the only way I can say thanks after you made my dream come true. I’m an internet star, now, and I want to help you. Please let me do this.”

“It’s an enticing offer, Lady, but there’s one problem. I don’t go anywhere now without my ladies, here. They provide my protection and security. In New York City, a place that has tried to destroy me so frequently in the past, I need them more than ever. All I have is a couple trucks. We won’t fit in those. I was gonna just give you one so you could be on your way. Kind of like a memento.”

“Lamp, I’ve got it taken care of.”

I took Lamp and his ladies down the road from the farm and showed them the Greyhound bus, still sitting where the FISTers had left it.

“Lady,” Lamp said, smiling a sunshine gift of a smile into my face, “I think this will do just fine.”

* * *

Early the next morning, and a hundred abortion jokes later, our Greyhound bus plowed through New York City, with one of Lamp’s women at the wheel, and the rest of us relaxing with maximum skill and efficiency in various seats and covering such a vast spectrum of positions there was no way a painter of Renaissance art could have captured us. Lamp was resting his head on my shoulder, and ten naked ladies were playing board games and comparing breast shapes. We moved freely throughout the cabin as we wished, and munched on the food leftover from the FIST road trip.

Lamp looked out the window and squinted at the sun as it stared down on us. “Just like I remember,” he said. “Buildings are still tall and the people drift like soft pigeons through the air.”

“Those are pigeons,” one of the girls said.

I nodded in agreement, kind of agreeing with both of them. Those were pigeons, but the buildings were also tall. They were both right.

“Which building do you want?” I asked. I didn’t know how much a building cost, but I remembered Lamp once said they could cost millions. I had two millions.

“Lady, we should look into property investments and infrastructures and things like this.”

“What does that mean? Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“Yes. Yes it is. I’m just trying to appear helpful. I don’t know anything about buying buildings. I’ve never done it.”

“Neither have I,” I said. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. We were in this together.

We spent a week taking the Greyhound around town to each neighborhood, stopping by all the pretty buildings, and asking the management of each if they would sell us their property. Most laughed at us, some called the police on us, some threw food at us, but a few considered our offers. However, as soon as they found out two million bucks was our limit, they kicked us out and unleashed their hounds on us. It was starting to look like buying a building wasn’t going to be easy. It was a rich man’s game, and we weren’t rich enough.

Sleeping in the bus wasn’t bad, and going a whole week without bathing was something I liked to do anyway. But we were all becoming less and less excited about building-buying, and just wanted it to end. A few times some of the girls joked about driving the bus into the ocean so we could all die. I love jokes but that one made me sad. It reminded me of dead friends, and dead dreams, things I had a lot of. Lamp was good at keeping our spirits high, though, and kept us motivated and focused on the mission. A building would be ours – we refused to leave the city until we had one.

As a last ditch effort, I devised the perfect plan. I knew it had to work. We stopped the Greyhound bus in front of a familiar building – Donald Trump’s massive corporate headquarters.

“Stay in here, Lamp,” I said. “I’m going to talk to an old friend of mine. I think he can help me.”

“You know Donald Trump?” Lamp asked. “The Donald Trump?”

“Lamp, who doesn’t know the Donald Trump? Of course I know him. He was my first real boss at my first real job, and he taught me how to behave in public. He’s helped me out of jams worse than this. I’ll be back in a little bit.”

I ran inside the building with things called zest and glee coming out of my body, flowing like tears and blood all over the ground. Boss man Trump was going to figure this out for us. I knew he’d be so excited to see me that he’d do anything to help me out.

Less than five minutes later I was being escorted out of Donald’s pompous, dickhead building by two security guards with Donald Trump hairdos on their fat heads. I was thrown to the curb and told never to come back.

I climbed on the bus with my head hung low in shame. “Sorry, guys. Not going to happen.”

“Donald won’t help us?” Lamp asked.

“Donald won’t help us,” I said. “We're on our own.”

“Thanks for trying, Lady. A building would be nice, but two million just ain’t enough to do it. I guess internet empires aren’t in the Good Lord Jesus’s plans for me.”

“The fucking good lord Jesus can suck a goat’s milky dick,” I said. “I’ll get you a building, Lamp Post. You’ve made my dreams a reality and I’m gonna do the same for you. I think I’ve got one more possible resource. I know who I can talk to.”

Lamp gave me a look that seemed to say, “who, Lady? Who can you talk to?”

I replied, “I know some rats with good ideas. They’re like parents to me.”

Chapter 28. Family Values

Our bus pulled up outside a building that scraped the sky. It was my old apartment building, my New York home, my temple of memories. Something was different about it. The yellow tape surrounding the base of it that said CAUTION: NO ENTRY was part of that difference. The tank surrounded by military men that sat right outside of this yellow tape was another part of that difference.

I got off the bus with Lamp and his bitch-squad close behind. We marched through the street while smoky eyes of military men raped us close to the skin and poured salts into our rape-wounds. We didn’t  mind it, we soared like grounded eagles toward the soldiers by their tank.

“What’s happening, here?” I asked, my voice naked with hostility and anger. “I need to get inside that building.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” said a sky scraping military man with a shaved head and black goggles for eyes. He held a machine gun and I got the impression his dick was as hard as the bullets his gun fired. “Civilians aren’t allowed. No one goes in but us. This building’s been declared a war zone. A singular, self-contained, massively hostile warzone. You and your, eh, party of ladies, may not enter.”

“We’re going in,” I said, signaling with pointy fingers to Lamp and his women to run forward to the apartment building. But no one moved.

“The Lady and I,” Lamp said, talking to the goggled military man, “need to get inside. What kind of war you got goin’ on in there? Maybe we can help. I’m a man, after all. I can solve problems.”

The man seemed to look us over, paying special attention to the naked women and their machine guns, though it was hard to say exactly what he was looking at since the goggles covered his eyes. He shook his head. “Can’t let you in. Most who go in never come out. Even our own soldiers are dying in there.”

“They’re not real soldiers then, are they?” I said. “Real soldiers don’t die.”

“Excuse me?” he said, sounding like a little angry dinosaur was vomiting madness from his throat. “You fucking get away from here. Get these strippers out of here, get back on your bus. Go home.”

“This is my home,” I said. “I live here, and I need to see my family.”

“Woman, there ain’t no families left in this place,” he said. “No one’s lived here in over a year. No one except… something.”

“Sir,” said Lamp. “Mister Platoon Sergeant Commander, what’s going on? Where’d the families go?”

“People started going missing in there a couple years ago,” the military man said. “Visitors at first. Then the landlord himself disappeared. Police who went to investigate never came back. Soon, body parts started showing up in the hallways. Whole families would go missing. FBI came in to see what the deal was. Found a large hole in a missing family’s apartment wall. It led to the next apartment. That family was missing, too. Another hole to the adjacent apartment. The couple in there were gone. No evidence left behind. Just large claw marks and scratches on the walls, some blood, and these fucking holes. Finally, they trace the holes from all the apartments on that floor to one room. Everyone on that floor had disappeared. The hallways were littered with arms and bones and legs and guts. The agents broke down the door to that room, and no one heard from them after that. So the FBI comes in and blocks off the whole floor.

“Every agent they send up there disappears. At night, more residents go missing. In no time, more floors are void of human life. So the military comes in. We evacuate the whole building. Everyone leaves their belongings behind, says goodbye to their home, real emotional and stuff, and makes way to greener pastures. It ain’t long before the whole building becomes a death trap. The FBI hands control over to us, wiping their hands clean of the whole mess. Now we’re fighting an unseen, unknown enemy. No one who sees it makes it back alive. We send as many as ten men in at a time and they disappear.”

“No idea what’s up there, huh?” Lamp asked.

“My first guess was black folk, or the Chinese,” said the military man. “They call me in, they say, ‘Get Captain Nailbone in there, this is now his operation! We might have blacks or yellows in there!’ I specialize in dealing with blacks and yellows. So, I been here a couple weeks now.”

“Weeks?” Lamp said. “Amazing. Why haven’t you just bombed the place?”

“The owner of the property doesn’t want that. Can’t blame him. Not a problem, we’ve got it contained. Mostly under control,” the captain said.

Someone screamed from an open window on one of the upper floors of the building, then machine guns fired. I covered my ears, but the captain just looked up like it was regular old job stuff. A few deep yells followed the firing, and I heard someone shout “run, run!”. We were quiet, listening closely to the chaos.

A bloodcurdling roar shook the air, even the ground we stood on, and the sounds of things ripping and tearing seemed to come from the apartment, while pained screams of human men cried out. Then it was quiet. Two bodies burst through a window on a higher floor, and fell limp to the street. They were mutilated, shredded, bloody, and hardly looked human.

“Ew, don’t touch,” I suggested.

“Danforth and Germain,” said the captain. “Fuck. Someone grab them!”

A team of medics ran to the two torn bodies and put them on stretchers. We could tell they were dead, but no one said anything.

“So,” I said. “What if I told you I could fix this?”

The captain laughed, and Lamp tugged on his collar like a nervous man might do. The women didn’t respond, because they were typically emotionless and wouldn’t acknowledge anything anyone said who wasn’t Lamp.

“Woman,” said the captain, “this isn’t the place or time for jokes. Can’t you see this is serious? Men are dying, here.” But he laughed anyway.

“I know who’s responsible for this. For all of it.”

“Right. And that would be?”

“My family. My sons, in fact.”

After an argument about family values the captain let us through the yellow tape and told us he wasn’t responsible for our deaths. Lamp and his flock of seagulls followed close behind me, each woman tightly holding her machine gun to her bosom. I told them they wouldn’t need them, but as screams of dying men flushed through the open windows of the building, they insisted I was lying. Whores.

We walked through the front doors of the building. I used to need a key to get in. Now they were hanging by their hinges, like welcoming arms. Immediately we were hit with a stench I recognized. It was the smell of death. It reminded me of the time I returned to my apartment from my holiday with the Spin Doctors. Rotting corpses were strewn, if strewn is even a word, about the lobby, and no lights were on.

“Smells like a toilet someone died in,” one of the girls said.

“You’re half right,” Lamp said. “This place is a toilet.”

The elevators weren’t working. I hit the button repeatedly, and cried with frustration after each hit didn’t result in the doors sliding open. One of Lamp’s ladies tried the button after I gave up, but Lamp put his hand on hers and shook his head. We could all see it was useless. We took the stairs to my floor. Human remains filled the stairwell, and flies and bugs of different colors buzzed and whizzed around in the messes like it was Thanksgiving. I wished it was. The darkness covered us like a blindfold covers a boy who won’t touch your legs. Our blindness made it hard to climb the stairs without our feet sinking into rotting flesh, so we stopped trying to avoid it. After a few floors, it became normal.

A scream shot out from behind the door to my floor. I pushed it open to see the screaming body of a soldier being dragged into a room at the far end of the hall, where my apartment had been. When he was out of view, his scream of fear started to sound a lot  more like a scream of pain, and the sound of bones breaking and blood flying was unmistakable. They were sounds I knew because I’d seen more than a few movies with the same sounds, and I always got a little bit dry mouthed when I heard them. My mouth was really dry. We stepped out into the hall, and the girls cocked their weapons, flipped off the safeties, and prepared for war.

“Turn off your guns,” I whispered. “Don’t shoot my sons.”

“You saw that! That man was ripped to pieces!” one of the girls said, in a whisper-yell. “I’m not getting ripped to pieces.”

“We don’t know that he was ripped to pieces,” Lamp whispered. “He may have only been impaled, or disemboweled, or decapitated. There really are so many different ways - ”

“We’ll be alright,” I said. “As soon as they smell me, everything will be OK.”

Our feet made squishing and crunching sounds as we walked with sensual slowness down the hall. The squishes made me tingle in the pants, but I knew I needed to focus. There’d be time for squishes, later. I was also hungry, but I wasn’t about to pull guts out of these corpses and shove them into my mouth. Who knew how long they’d been sitting there?

The sounds of other feet scampering rapidly on the floors behind the apartment doors to each side of us made us stop for a moment. They were scampering toward the far end of the hall. Larger, louder, more thunderous footsteps rattled from the same direction. It’s my boys, I thought. Mama’s home.

As we stepped closer to the door of my room, I heard the girls readying their guns again. I shook my head, slapped a girl in the face, and kept walking. My point was clear. No guns on my sons. We reached the door to my apartment. I whistled a light chirp, like a bird looking for its mother. It was really a chirp intended for a mother looking for her bird-child, but no one would know the difference. I’d never used this form of communication with my boys before, but I hoped it would impress Lamp and the ladies. I’d seem like a real woman of the world.

There was only silence from the room. After nothing responded to my whistles, I peeked around the doorway, then exposed my whole body. The sounds of infestation flooded my ear canals.

Rat squeals and beast moans raped and pillaged each nerve in my head, tackled my eardrums, and kicked the shit out of my mind. It was paralyzing, and each of us fell to the ground with almost complete frozen helplessness. Two towering hulks of hair and flesh and blood rose from crouched positions, standing so tall they had to bend over beneath the ceiling. Their mouths were hateful death traps, with fangs bigger than my hands, red with blood, and wet with juices of the body. They stared down at us like wolves looked at prey. Slowly, their expression turned from savage hunger to savage love. I made eye contact with both of my boys, and they let out hurricane howls that sent shivers of maternal instinct down my spine.

“My boys!” I yelled, or squealed, jumping to my feet. I lunged forward, and Diamond Dick and Harmful Harry caught  me in their titanic arms. Our hugs were landscapes of fruit trees, colorful, nutritious, and sugary. I cried and petted their dirty, bloodied fur, and they wept rat-man tears into my tangled hair, and petted me with brutish hands.

A soft nibbling sensation appeared at my feet, so I looked down. Leviathan and Eugene looked up at me with rat grins on their adorable rat faces. Tears fell from my eyes straight into theirs, and we each let out audible yelps of weeps and sheer gladness. As soon as Harry and Dick released me, I picked up Eugene and Leviathan, who nibbled on my body parts as lightly as they could, and crawled through my hair. It really was a mess and I was more than a little embarrassed. But love was in the air.

“I’d know that smell anywhere,” came a familiar Australian accented voice.

Eugene and Leviathan jumped off of me, and Oscar and Claudia waddled out from the darkness of my old bedroom.

            “You haven’t changed a bit, Lady!” Claudia shouted over the mess of bodies and gore that covered the floor.

“Oh my fuck!” I shouted, and dropped to my hands and knees to crawl to them. My hands and knees and feet sloshed through guts and bones and pools of blood and separated heads and fecal matter until I met Oscar and Claudia in the middle of the room, and embraced them.

“Oh, not so tight, Lady!” Oscar said. “We’re fragile old creatures.”

“You’ve become so strong!” Claudia said. She seemed sincere.

“I’ve missed you guys so much,” I said, letting them go. “You won’t believe the adventures I’ve had! I lived in the woods! With wolves! For three years!”

“So that’s where you went,” Oscar said, sounding perturbed. “We were really worried about you. Thought you up and got eaten by another family of rats, somewhere.”

“After a little while we just had to move on,” Claudia said. “Harry and Dick, here, were always hungry. You weren’t bringing any food in, so Dick and Harry started going through the walls.” She pointed to a hole at the opposite end of the room, that led into a neighboring apartment. “Snatched up all kinds of meals for us!”

“Got a little crazy after a while,” Oscar said. “People just started coming in all the time, like they wanted to be eaten. Still, we get those men with guns in here practically throwing themselves into our lair!”

“That’s the military, Oscar,” I said. “They’re real bummed out about all this stuff. Like the death, and stuff.”

“Say, Lady,” Oscar said, “who are your friends?” He pointed to Lamp Post and his naked ladies.

“Oh! This is Lamp Post and his naked ladies! Stand up, you guys!”

With slow, awkward movements, Lamp and the girls stood up, their eyes glues to Diamond Dick and Harmful Harry, like they’d never seen twelve foot half-rat, half-human beasts before.

For the next few hours we sat on the unlit, gore-swamped floor of my once-fine apartment, as Lamp and the girls got to know my rat family intimately. I told Lamp and the babes my story with the rats, Claudia and Oscar filled in what happened in my absence, and I told the rats how I met Lamp, and the adventures that led me back to his hand-holding friendship. It was an evening of tales and tells, tails and smells, hugs and kisses. By the third hour, Lamp and Eugene were high-fiving, Dick and Harry were swapping spit with a couple naked babes, and Claudia and Oscar were fucking in front of us, while some of the girls and I taught Leviathan how to put on shoes.

Oscar finally asked what brought me back, and I told them of our need for a building for Lamp’s internet empire. Oscar and Claudia, usually so helpful in my times of need, could think of no solution to our problem. Buildings are expensive, they explained, and they’re hard to manage. I complimented their management of the building we were in, and said I really liked what they had done with the place. It was a joke, and everyone got it. We laughed like children on a day of parades. Tears came from our eyes, but they were the tears you shed when you’re sitting with family in a field of corpses fouling up the air, and laughter has lost its meaning. Our tears held meaning.

Lamp said the apartment building would be a great one to buy, but Oscar and Claudia said its owner lived far away in a place we would never find, and he could never be contacted through mail or telephone. When I asked how she knew this she explained saw it in a vision. When Lamp asked for details of the vision, I asked why the fuck she believed these visions were true. It was then Oscar explained to me that in old age, all rats achieve a celestial oneness with the universe, and develop psychic abilities that put even the greatest wizards and mental chainsaws to shame. That didn’t make sense, so I asked why I had to tell them my story with Lamp and FIST and the forest and the desire to purchase a building, and they said they knew it was all true because they saw my thoughts. Claudia hinted that this ability had been developing within them since I first met them, and it was this psychic connection to the fabric of reality that allowed them to know things about me they couldn’t have known, like my rabies and my pregnancy.  I didn’t know how to refute these bizarre claims, so I left it at that. But Oscar and Claudia decided to read my thoughts and recite them back to everyone in the room to prove to me their amazing abilities. I was floored, and all were speechless. One of Lamp’s girls puked at the recitation of my thoughts, a typical reaction.

“And because of this great ability,” said Oscar, “it’s come to our attention that those men outside wish to do us harm.”

“They don’t understand you,” I explained. “They’re human, you’re rats. They don’t yet know how to co-exist. But once I talk to them, or they see Diamond Dick or Harmful Harry, and how beautiful a rat-human hybrid can be, they’ll see the light.”

“We see inside their minds, Lady,” Claudia said. She turned to Oscar. “I said we do, because I know you do too, because I can see inside your head, honey.”

“I know, love,” Oscar said. “I love you.”

They rat kissed.

“How long will the six of you stay in here?” Lamp asked. “They won’t send you food, forever. You’ll have to leave to find food.”

“Speaking of food,” I said, “I’m getting hungry.”

“You know, me too,” Lamp said.

Harmful Harry and Diamond Dick perked up from their curled up resting positions on the floor, their ears stood up in a macabre mutation of human and rat parts together as functional organs. And they began sniffing.

“Oh, someone’s come up to play,” Oscar said.

Harry and Dick jumped to their feet and jumped through the massive hole in the wall. The thunder of their feet carried down the length of the building until we heard a large crash, and a couple very human screams of terror, then, wait for it… yes, then of dying. In a few moments, the thundering footsteps came back toward us, and Harry and Dick marched in through the doorway, each with a human body in their jaws. They spit them onto the floor, mangled, and bloody.

“You said you were hungry?” Claudia said, crawling closer to the bodies. “Dinner is served!”

All six rats nestled their mouths into the corpses and fed like starving raptors at Applebee’s. As the rats ate, the girls started to look sick. At least three of them puked, one fainted, a couple more had panic attacks, and Lamp said he changed his mind about being hungry.

I hadn’t changed my mind. I crawled closer to my family of rats and nudged my way  between Claudia and Leviathan.

“May I?” I asked.

“Please,” Claudia said, splitting the dead man’s ribs open so that I might have easier access to his guts. “It’s really all the same, so just dive right in.”

I shoved my face into the man’s chest and tore blindly at flesh with my wooden teeth, ripped it from the organs, and chewed it like the meat it was. It tasted salty, rich in iron, dangerous to the soul. I pushed my face further down, consumed more of the human buffet, and came up only for air. I turned to Lamp and smiled.

“Join us,” I pleaded.

“You shall eat the flesh of your sons, and you shall eat the flesh of your daughters. Leviticus, chapter 26, verse 29,” Lamp said. “The Lord’s alright with it. Come on girls. This might be our last meal for a while.”

The girls who hadn’t puked, fainted, or had panic attacks crawled over to the corpses with Lamp and stuffed their faces into the open wounds to share with us the meats of triumph. We laughed, we joked, we ate meat, and we drank blood. Intestines split open in our jaws, spleens squished between our gums, livers were swopped from mouth to mouth, stomachs entered our own stomachs, lungs dazzled our tongues, and hearts were delicacies that we shared.  It was a veritable orgy of gore.

            By the time the sun had set, Oscar and Claudia had decided it was time to leave the apartment building for good. They knew they weren’t safe for long. They said the mysterious owner of the apartment building had a psychic tornado swirling around him that suggested a deep wisdom and the possession of answers to questions unknown. Oscar wanted to find him. I told him that was a romantic idea, but until they could tell us where he was, it was useless. Claudia tapped into some primal energy with what Oscar described as a “psychically superior female rat brain”, and saw that the mysterious man lived in a land of lights, whores, ruined lives, and hot sand. Lamp spoke up, saying the rats were invited to come with us to find this mysterious being in Las Vegas, since we possessed a bus large enough for all.

“What the fuck’s Las Vegas have to do with this?” I asked.

“Just a hunch, Lady.”

“What about the farm, Lamp? You don’t want to go back?”

“The farm will be alright without us, for now. I think the ladies and I are thirsty for more adventure and danger. I know I am. After this, this incredible experience with English-speaking beasts, and the taste of human flesh, a holy experience I always feared I’d never have, I’m ready for more. An internet empire doesn’t pop up overnight, Lady. If we want to make this work, we need to find that man.”

“This is the most beautiful thing anyone’s ever said to me,” I told him. “My two families, together on one bus.”

“How we gonna get out of here, though?” one of the girls asked. “The army’s down there. They won’t just let us walk out with them rats, you know.”

“I think it’ll  be easier than you think,” said Claudia. “Harry and Dick have been digging tunnels for years around here.”

We ended up in the sewer. The rats felt right at home sloshing through sewage and scum, and I was really alright with it, and Lamp didn’t seem to care, but again, his girls had problems. Sewage swept into their vaginas and they complained when it burned or stung, and cried when it did both. Eventually they climbed on Harry’s and Dick’s backs, clinging to their wet fur for the rest of our sewer trek. We traveled a few blocks until we came up on a ghetto street where the only people hanging around were people the cops wouldn’t listen to anyway. I knew we’d be alright.

“You guys hang out here while I go get the bus,” Lamp said. And he was off, like a dark boy in the night, jet skiing through the shadows of New York City’s ancient streets and hidden slums.

In ten minutes the bus flew around the corner, busted a fire hydrant that shot water into the sky, and stopped in front of us.

“Told them we wiped out the enemy and the apartment is theirs to claim  for victory” Lamp said, as he opened the Greyhound’s doors. “Chalk another one up for the US military.” Then he saluted the air.

Harry and Dick ripped a few seats out of the bus and threw them onto the street, so they’d have room to lie down during our voyage. Kids from the street, hanging out without parental supervision at 2 in the morning, swarmed the newly arrived seats and admired them like they were gifts from Heaven’s urethra. Everyone was happy. I sat in a chair as one of Lamp’s girls took the wheel.

“Time to get fuck out of here,” Lamp said, coming to sit by me.

“My first trip out of the city!” cried Claudia. “And with my family!”

“Mine too, honey!” cried Oscar.

Harry and Dick, curled up in a massive pile of muscle and bloody hair, roared approving roars, and snarled approving snarls. Eugene and Leviathan squawked approving rat-squawks, and the girls rubbed each other’s naked bodies clean of the blood and sewage that soaked them.

This was my dream team. A bus of  love. A clusterfuck of family. The bus’s engine boomed, and we blasted out of New York City.

Chapter 29. The Psychic Whirlwind is Strong

I take what I want, when I want it.  When I need something, I take that, too. And when I see something I know belongs to me, I make it mine, no matter how much fighting and screaming it takes. That’s why when we walked off the bus onto the Las Vegas strip we had six kids with us. They weren’t with us when we left New York. We collected them on our trip.

I saw the first one in Youngstown, Pennsylvania, when we stopped at a strip mall so we could buy a pound of salmon steak for Dick and Harry, and some canned tuna for Eugene and Leviathan. Lamp and I were in the store when I spotted him. A fat Mexican boy, no older than seven. He was eating pizza and trying to catch flies. There were thousands of flies in this fucking store. Lamp paid for the meats while I followed this boy around the store, and watched him lure flies close to him with the aroma of his pizza, only to try to snatch them with his fat little fingers. If he caught them, I knew he’d eat them. He caught my eye because of his shirt. All the kids we took had a shirt like this. Across the front, in big letters, it said “Tommy Hilfiger”. My heart jumped into my neck at the sight of it. My pits moistened and my fingers shook. I knew what it meant. I was looking at my son.

The thoughts rolled around in my head as I followed the kid around the store, trying to make sense of a new jumble of information that found itself in my mind. The logical explanation I came up with, because nothing made more sense than this, was that the last time I saw Tommy, I’d somehow, through the act of performing a candy cane on his delicate missile crisis of a dick, made him pregnant. No one told me women were the only ones who could get pregnant, so I didn’t see a problem with the idea. If the kid’s shirt had Tommy’s name on it, the logical conclusion was the little punk was Tommy’s son. My parents did the same thing to me when I was allowed in public at a young age. My shirt had their names on it: Property of Gene and Jean Molasses. I was glad to see in 1996 this sensible trend from twenty years prior was still alive.

I chased the fat little thing through two aisles before I grabbed him and dragged him from the store. He didn’t scream, he didn’t fight, he continued stuffing his face with pizza. He was pulling it out of his pockets and just shoveling it in his mouth. This convinced me he was my child.

When I got him on the bus I introduced everyone to my son. The pizza gave him a heavy tongue, so he didn’t speak much (“much” is Spanish for “at all”). He ate and passed out. I called him Tommy Jr., and held him to my breast as we drove, and I let Dick and Harry put their hands on him so they could feel their half brother’s flesh while he slept.

We stopped at a gas station outside Joliet, Illinois. To my heart’s motherly surprise, I saw another child with a Tommy Hilfiger shirt. I was shocked, and felt betrayed that so many children could have come from my lover and he never once tried to tell me. She was a girl, fourteen years old. I had a couple of Lamp’s women help me pin the girl down and sedate her with laxatives and candy corn, a concoction I’d learned in prison. She fell into my arms, and I carried her onto the bus to let her lie next to her Mexican looking brother.

In Des Moines, Iowa, it happened again. Another gas station, another child with a Tommy Hilfiger shirt. A boy, nine years old. Lamp and I lured him to the car with Polaroids of  Claudia and Oscar. This kid loved rats. Wasn’t hard to get him to snuggle up with Dick and Harry once we were on the bus. Leviathan and Eugene cuddled with him, too.

Kearney, Nebraska. Denver, Colorado. Beaver, Utah. I found kids around each of these places with Tommy Hilfiger shirts on their backs. In different ways, with different tricks, and the help of my friends, I got these kids on our bus. I told them I was their mom, and was really happy to finally meet them. With barely much fighting or screaming, we got these kids under control. How these motherfuckers were spread all over the country, I had no idea. But by the time we got to Las Vegas, I knew what it had to mean: Tommy Hilfiger had left a trail of children in his wake. He had traveled from New York to Las Vegas, popping kids out of his body along the way. He was leaving bread crumbs for me to follow. That romantic son of a bitch.

The streets of Vegas were like I remembered them. Families walked side by side with women of the night, magicians’ faces gazed over the town with digital smiles, and lights invaded the brain in ways only conquistadors could imitate. It was almost midnight. The air was warm, and music blared from at least six casinos within a block of us.

“If you’re so smart,” I said to Lamp, “where’s this all-knowing being you said we’d find here?”

He shrugged. “Never said I knew where he was. But if Oscar and Claudia are seeing things right, he ought to be nearby.”

The six kids we’d collected seemed tired from the drive, and were whining to one of Lamp’s girls about hunger and their parents and how much they hated flashing lights.

“Shut up about your parents,” I said. “I’m your mother. Why won’t you fucking things believe me? We’re gonna find your dad in this city, you brats.”

“Lady,” said Michelle, the fourteen year old girl, thin as a hungry twig in the winter, her cheeks wet with tears, “you’re insane. We ain’t your kids. We told all ya’ll that like a hundred times. I want to go home!”

“Me too!” cried Jose, the fat little Mexican boy. Then he said something in Spanish that sounded volatile and horrible. The other kids blurted out bullshit about not being my children, each wanting to go home. The nine year old boy from Iowa started crying, the eleven year old girl from Nebraska spit on my shoes, the twelve year old boy from Colorado kicked Lamp in the leg, and the thirteen year old black kid from Utah, who looked like a boy but sounded like a girl, sat on the sidewalk and didn't say anything.

“You little fucks,” I shouted, “You don’t treat your mother like this. The whole ride out here you were human. You acted right. Suddenly, you’re fucking brats. Shut your mouths, we’re getting a hotel, and you little shits will go swimming and eat candy.”

That made them shut up. Their tears disappeared, and the next thing I knew they were laughing, jumping around like little idiots, and befriending one another.

“You’ve got a way with children,” Claudia said, smiling. “I knew you’d be a good mother, and I know someday your children will see that.”

“So where’s this mystery man?” I asked. “Let’s find him so I can find Tommy.”

“We’ll start looking tomorrow,” Lamp said. “Like you said, let’s get a hotel. It’s late. The kids can go swimming, maybe gamble, meet some other kids, find some porn on the street.”

“Wise choice,” Oscar said, picking ticks and other bugs out of Leviathan’s and Eugene’s fur. “Tomorrow we can form groups. We’ll cover the city ‘til we find our man.”

“We don’t even know what we’re looking for,” said one of Lamp’s naked women. I noticed that, in Las Vegas, these women finally didn’t seem out of place with their tits hanging out and their vaginas on display for the world.

“That’s true, Emilia,” said Claudia, who’d assigned a name to each of Lamp’s women during the drive, names the rest of us didn’t bother to learn. “Tonight, when we’re settled, Oscar and I will put our psychic minds into the cosmic stew, in sync, and we’ll form a clear image of the man we seek. Being so much closer, it should be easy to see his face.”

I walked next to Dick and Harry, whose hulking bodies were attracting a lot of attention from tourists and gamblers and magicians and prostitutes. “Boys, I want you to behave yourselves while we’re here. No attacking, no maiming, no killing, no eating of any people. Understand? We’re here on a mission of peace.”

“That’s right,” Oscar said, crawling up behind me. “Listen to your mother, boys. Not like those full human shits over there.” He pointed to the six children who were jumping around like idiots, laughing like brats, and sharing with each other stories about their own lives. “You’re ambassadors for the rat race, sons. Act nice.”

“Alright everyone,” I shouted. “Let’s shut the fuck up and get some rest.”

We found a hotel and casino called Grand Manster’s Hortel and Slots right off the main strip with broken lights, a sign that misspelled words like “cable” and “television” and “bathroom”, and enough empty parking spaces to park the bus. We got six rooms for Lamp’s twelve women, a room for Lamp and me, a room for the rats, and two adjoining rooms for the kids. After an hour of whining by the kids about not having swimming suits or any other clothes, for that matter, they finally went swimming in the dirty pool, and I gave them enough quarters to play arcade games all night.

Bambarello appeared to me in my dream, that night. I stood on top of a hill, watching a giant fuck a volcano, then cried out as he screamed at the lava erupting from the volcano. The giant tumbled from his position of power, and was burned to a smoldering pile of ashes within minutes. The lava that surrounded him took the form of the mystical wizard I knew from my dreams. He transitioned from dried lava to the form of a fleshly being in seconds, then sent tornados into the hills, pulled lightning from the sky, and braided it into a swastika. My  heart jumped. He threw the lightning swastika like a Frisbee into the path of his tornados, and thunder was born. He finally turned to look at me with burning eyes, and whispered thunder into my face.

“These storms are my canvas, dear Lady. Upon them I paint the images of life, the colors of emotion.”

It was the first time I’d heard Bambarello’s voice, but it was familiar. And maybe it was only because he said it, but I  did notice a beautiful range of colors on his landscapes, that he painted with fire, wind, and flowers and blood.

Up from the grass of the green hills sprung vines that took the shape of human beings, which quickly took the shape of automobiles, which then took the shape of fish, then creatures I’d never seen, then bizarre and unearthly shapes.

“It’s quite a world of feelings, out there, Lady.”

The dream didn’t get any more coherent after that.

“Why do you think we’re your kids?” asked Michelle, the next day,  as we all sat in the rats’ room, planning our day’s mission.

“What do you little brats have in common?” I asked. “Look at yourselves. Think hard.”

Jose raised his hand. I pointed at him, saying, “not a classroom, Jose. Spit it out.”

“Our shirts. Tommy Hilfiger shirts.”

“Mexicans are fucking smart. And yes, that’s right. You kids know who I am? I’m the one who fucked Tommy and created you little brats.”

Jose raised his hand again.

“Fucking talk, Jose. Not a classroom.”

“If you’re our mom, and Tommy is our dad, then who are the people we live with back home?”

“How the fuck should I know?” I said. “That’s a stupid question.”

“If we all have the same parents,” Michelle said, “then why is Jose Mexican, but I’m white? And Adrianna is black. And Melville is white. And Miyuki is Japanese. And Quinn is mixed race.”

“First of all, I don’t know. Second of all, who the hell are those people?”

Michelle pointed to the other kids. I looked at the kid from Utah, whose sex I didn’t understand.

“That kid,” I said, pointing at it, “who’s that?”

“I’m Adrianna,” the kid said.

“You’re a girl?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said, acting embarrassed.

“I’m proud to have a multicultural family, but I can’t answer your questions, Michelle. I don’t know how this works. I’m not a scientist, I’m a human being. I’m a woman. I’m a mother.”

“You think that because we’re wearing Tommy Hilfiger shirts, our dad is Tommy Hilfiger?” The boy from Nebraska had a shit attitude about him.

“You think I’m wrong?” I asked.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he said.

“Which one are you?”

“I’m Quinn.”

“Fuck you Quinn, and shut your mouth. You kids are going to the casino while the adults look for a master of knowledge and owner of buildings. Don’t fucking leave the casino. Here’s two hundred dollars. Eat food and gamble. We’ll come get you when our search party is over.”

 I distributed money to the children, and kicked them out of the room. They’d be fine without adult supervision. This was Las Vegas, not a prison.

Claudia and Oscar distributed a sketch they’d made that morning of our mystery man. I stuffed it in my pocket and opened a suitcase full of clothing for tiny people I’d bought that morning at a thrift store. The rats took the clothes and dressed themselves to blend in among Vegas humans. For Dick and Harry, I had two large suits, which Oscar and I dressed them in. They didn’t fit, and ripped down the seams, with rat hair protruding from beneath. It was cute in a revolting kind of way. We placed top hats on their heads, and they looked nice. I told them how handsome they were, and that I’d secretly always love them more than my children with Tommy.

We broke into groups. Claudia, Oscar, Eugene and Leviathan were one group. They looked like hairy midgets with rat faces. Dick and Harry were joined by four of Lamp’s girls, Lamp and four other girls made a group, and I would lead the final four of Lamp’s sexual warriors. Lamp handed out walkie-talkies to group leaders: Claudia, Dick and Harry, and me. He kept one for himself.

“Four groups,” Lamp said. “ Everyone have a picture of our man?”

We nodded.

“Walkie-talkies to channel 3. Keep in touch. Let’s go.”

Bursting out of the motel, Lamp’s group  ran off down one street, Dick and Harry’s group went down another, and Claudia and Oscar’s went another way. Knowing the four cardinal directions, it then became easy for my group to make a decision. We went north.

The girls walked behind me, chirping on and on about ammunition types for their rifles, which they’d wisely left on the bus, and about boys’ faces, which they noticed came in different sizes and shapes, and even colors. But I was preoccupied. I hadn’t looked at the picture of our mystery man. I didn’t give a fuck. I was looking for Tommy.

“Tommy Hilfiger,” I shouted into a payphone, moments later. “I need his address or number.”

“Ma’am,” the idiot operator said, “is this a local call?”

“Yes, of course. Tommy Hilfiger.”

“Nothing’s coming up under that name. Can you spell ‘Hilfiger’ for me again?”

“No. Thanks for nothing.” I slammed the phone down.

“We’re not here to look for Tommy Hilfiger,” said one of the women, wearing bows over her nipples and green panties, the same as Lamp’s other women, so their nudity wouldn’t make them suspicious. She was holding what looked like a machine gun in her arms.

“I need to find him first, then we’ll find our mystery man,” I said. “What’s that? You were supposed to leave your guns on the bus.”

“This is no gun. It’s a rock launcher. I weaponized a glass bottle, elastic waistband, and a can of condensed air I found in a trash can a block back.” She put a rock in a small chamber lying above the glass bottle, and flicked the top of the air can. The rock shot across the street with the kind of speed that would blind a man, but only dent a woman.

“Fine. The rest of you gonna be weaponizing shit on our journey?”

They each nodded, like it was inevitable.

“Great. We’ll look for this asshole so he can sell us a building, then I gotta find Tommy. Everyone understand?”

No one nodded.

I pulled the wadded up picture out of my pocket and opened it. That face. I knew that face. Old, grey, hairy, unhappy, eyes like flickering candle flames, and wrinkles that never ended. E. Puberus Poonam, the psychic witch-doctor stared at me from the sketch. His voice hummed in my mind as I recalled the curse he’d set on me years earlier, and flames glowed behind my eyes while I saw his shop and home engulfed in flames.

“New plan,” I said. “Take this, find this man, come find me when you do, but for the love of shit, don’t bring him with you. Just tell me how much he wants for a building. I’ll be gambling.” I held out my arm with the drawing, motioning for the nearest girl to grab it.

Two rocks hit me in the stomach, sending sharp, nauseating pain throughout my entire body. I fell to the ground, curled into a ball before I knew what happened. The drawing landed lightly next to my head. The four near-naked women stood above me. By now, they’d each weaponized garbage lying around the Vegas sidewalks into rock propelling death-dealers. They held their weapons on me.

“You promised to help Lamp,” said one.

“You’re going to make good on that promise,” said another.

They helped me up, touched me with their clever hands to help dust me off, and handed the drawing back to me. I got back on the payphone, with an operator.

“E. Puberus Poonam, please,” I said. “Home address.”

“We don’t do addresses. Phone numbers only.”

“Phone number, then. Fuck.”

In a parking lot outside a small building with tinted windows, and a sign that read “Poonam’s Cosmic Wonders, Psychic Readings, Blackjack, Roulette, Crystal Balls, and Horoscopes”, Lamp and the girls with him met me and my four ladies, and Claudia and Oscar and their sons.

“That was fast,” Lamp said. “You sure he’s in there?”

“Positive. We’re waiting on Dick and Harry. Then we’ll go in.”

“The psychic whirlwind of a million cosmic vortices are very strong here,” Claudia said. “It’s like the inventor of time himself is within our reach. Lady, you’ve found him. This really must be him!”

Moments later, Dick and Harry, and the girls with them, joined us in the parking lot, blood covering their tightly stretched suits. The girls were injured, bleeding, and blood was running down the mouths of my sons.

“What happened!?” shouted Oscar at the sight of such suggested violence.

“There was some trouble,” one of the girls said. She spit blood onto the blacktop of the parking lot. “Someone at the MGM had a problem with Diamond  Dick’s suit. Said he hated pinstripes, security got involved, it got messy.”

“Everyone alright?” Lamp asked, smoking a joint with the girls from his group.

“Sure,” said the girl. “We’re fine. Can’t say the same for the security team at MGM, or some of the guests, but I think everything’s resolved.”

“Shouldn’t have let you boys out in public like that,” Oscar said. “Guess that’s our fault, Lady.”

“Whatever. Let’s get this over with.” I led everyone inside the small building, and looked at the crumpled old woman sitting behind a desk.

“May I help you?” she wheezed at us, taking five times as long to say it as anyone with teeth would have taken.

“I spoke to you on the phone not long ago,” I said. “We’re here to see Mr. Poonam.”

 She pressed a button on a machine next to her phone, and a small crystal ball glowed pink. She spoke into it. Seconds later, a purple curtain behind her desk flew open, and a familiar old man stepped out.

“You’re back,” he said. He stared into my eyes, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t look away. “I wasn’t expecting you until nightfall. Guess the old cosmic connection’s a bit loose.” He hit his head.

“Hi, Poonam. I’m really sorry to intrude.”

“You know this man?” Lamp interrupted.

“Oh, she knows me. And I know her. And she fears me, for good reason. I see you brought everyone. Guess we’ll begin.”

Poonam walked backward into the room behind him, and ‘come-hithered’ us with his fingers in a mesmerizing motion as he drifted into the dark.

“Wait, begin what?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. So the twenty of us followed Poonam into his dark room, while the old woman secretary smiled into the electronic crystal ball on her desk. The curtain closed behind us.

The room, about the size of a middle class man’s bedroom, was slowly illuminated by candles that each lit at the same time. Poonam sat in what looked like a golden throne, and a large rug on the floor was a nice enough seat for the rest of us.

“The psychic whirlwind is strong, in here!” Oscar said in a shouting whisper to Claudia.

“Do we need to put this out?” Lamp asked, holding a newly lit joint.

Poonam shook his head. Lamp and the girls continued passing it around.

“How has your adventure been, Lady?” Poonam asked.

“Quite nice, I think. What adventure do you mean?”

 “The whole thing. Prison, rabies, the Spin Doctors, the website, the forest, your friends in Chicago, the journey of finding yourself?”

“How… wait. How do you know about these things?”

“I’m psychic.”

“Then you should know how the adventure’s been.”

“I don’t read emotions. I do everything else. Only you can know how the adventure has been for you. No one else can tell you that. Not even me.”

“It’s been a wild ride. Is that good enough? Why aren’t you yelling at me and shitting on my face, or telling me horrible things, or setting me on fire? Aren’t you mad?”

“I cursed you. Do you remember? I can’t take revenge and remain mad at you. Doing both would be selfish. I’ve had my fun, see.”

“I don’t see.”

“Sorry to interrupt, again,” Lamp said, blowing smoke into tight rings of glory, “but we understand you’re the owner of a number of buildings, one of which is in New York City.”

“Stop it, Lamp,” I said. “I’m reconnecting!”

“You’re correct,” Poonam said, in his grave, old man’s voice. “I know why you’re here. We’ll get to that in a minute. I believe the Lady requires some filling in.”

“My holes are dry right now,” I shared, “but I can get them wet in seconds.”

Poonam smiled. “I’m sorry for the misfortune that has befallen you on your quest through life, Lady. I know these last seven years have been rough.”

“The last twenty seven years have been rough, Puberus. Nothing different about the last seven.”

“I think prison, going on tour, getting lost in the woods are different than what you’re used to. Those don’t seem unusual?”

“You have no idea, man. Are you trying to say you’re responsible for all that?”

Poonam shrugged, with a smile.

“Bullshit. I’m responsible for that shit. That shit happened because of what I did. I made it happen. I fucked beasts, I went to prison. These rats bit me, I got rabies. I fucked the Spin Doctors, I went on tour with them. I took pictures of myself naked, met Lamp, made a webpage.”

“Cheers!” said Lamp, followed by a cough that smelled of marijuana and good times.

“It’s all me, goddammit!” I shouted.

Poonam’s smile didn’t leave his face.

“I’m happy to hear you say this,” he said. “And how do you like Bambarello?”

“What the fuck? I’m so confused.”

“Wizard of Creation, Wizard of Time, Wizard of Galaxies, he is called many things. But his name is Bambarello. Creator of time, of worlds, of technology.” Poonam’s smile disappeared. “Of humans.”

“Curses and wizards!” exclaimed Claudia. “This certainly is the eye of the vortex of cosmic psychic all-ness!”

“I worship Bambarello. And I evoked his spirit that day I cursed you.” Poonam spoke with dark sounds and ominous tones. “If nothing else, it put his presence deep within your mind’s eye, ready to spring into action when his services were needed.”

“What services? He never did anything for me. He just appeared in my dreams. All magical and shit. Tornadoes everywhere.”

“So, let’s discuss business,” Poonam said. “You’re here about a building.”

“Fuck,” I said. “Stop changing the subject. And, fuck. How do you know we’re here about a building?”

“He’s psychic,” Oscar whispered.

“Super psychic,” Claudia said.

“King of the psychics,” Lamp said, taking another toke.

“I’m sorry to say,” Poonam continued, “that the apartment building in New York City has been destroyed. I gave the OK just this morning. It was decimated an hour or two ago.”

“Your dream,” I said, turning to Lamp. “It has been decimated. I am so sorry.” I hugged Lamp, then turned angrily to Poonam.

“You knew we wanted that building. I came here to buy it from you, Puberus. Why would you do that?”

“I own many buildings,” he said. “That one served you as a home for too long. Tainted with death, now, it no longer seems a proper place to harbor life. Its soul is dirty.”

Harmful Harry and Diamond Dick let out simultaneous growls that seemed to acknowledge their parts in this, but that suggested no remorse.

“ I own properties all along the west coast, as well,” Poonam said, pulling a spoon to his mouth. He was eating what looked like soup, but I didn’t ask about it.

“What do you think, Lamp?” I rubbed his leg. “If you want an internet empire, a pornographic empire, the west coast would be the place! Right?”

“I don’t know, Lady,” he said, passing the joint to Harmful Harry. “We got the farm, and everything. I can’t just leave it behind. My life is there.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Poonam said, slurping his soup. “Someone’s found your farm in your absence. Someone with rage in her heart. Someone with a bone to pick. She brought the police. The farm’s been taken.”

“What do you mean?” Lamp asked, too stoned to care too much. “We’ve got security devices in place. Millions of dollars worth of tactical technology to defend the farm in my absence.”

Poonam closed his eyes. “The defenses worked, at first. Many were slayed in attempts to take the farm. Police brought helicopters in. Finally, the SWAT team came in. A grand war between machines and man was underway. For two days, blood was shed, gears were blasted, screams echoed through the hills and trees. But victory came to the humans. The land has been seized. The machines have been destroyed. The traps have been found. Fresh graves your ladies dug have been uncovered by investigators. The wrath of a woman has brought this.”

“Sage,” I said, under my breath.

“My… life,” Lamp said. “My… empire.”

“This means we go west,” I said. “Rats, what about you?”

Harmful Harry coughed a cloud of smoke over the room, and roared a determined roar of ancient  horror.

“We’re fine with that,” Oscar said. “I’m so sorry to hear about your farm, Mister Lamp.”

“Mister Poonam,” Claudia said, shyly, “my husband and I are honored to be in the presence of such a powerful and wise psychic. We  were wondering if you had any insights you could offer us, or advice.”

“Sure,” Poonam said. “First, your husband’s going to die tonight.”

“What?” Oscar gasped. “Me? Why?”

“Old age, I’m afraid,” Poonam said, solemnly. “ The two of you have been so very happy together, and it’s very adorable. But old age comes to us all. You will die in your sleep, and it will not hurt. Bambarello will come to you, to lift you away into the glowing, shimmering cosmic void. You will feel peace.”

Claudia and the other rats started crying, hugging Oscar, and I began screaming.

“Just what the fuck are you trying to do?” I screamed, as I stood up and put my face in Poonam’s.

“I’m doing nothing. I’m sharing my psychic visions. And there are more. Lady, you’ve come to the west looking for Thomas Hilfiger. You’ve kidnapped six children you believe to be your own. They are not. They are not related to you, nor are they related to Tommy. Tommy is a clothing designer, now, and those children were wearing his shirts.”

“You’re wrong, Poonam!” I shouted, still right in his face. “I know my kids when I see them!”

“Then why don’t you hug your children, as their father is going to die tonight.”

I made my way into the rat pile, hugged my sons, and kissed Oscar on his smelly, dirty, but comfortable rat fur. Then I cried.

While we cried, and held Oscar, Poonam stood from his chair and sat beside Lamp, among the women.

“There’s more,” he said. “I’ll be quick. The police are coming. That ruckus at the MGM caught the attention of the law. They’re looking for scantily clad women, and extremely huge men in rat costumes covered by nice suits. The clock is running out. They’ve got dogs on your scent. I don’t know how long it will be, but they’re coming this way.”

 I pulled my arms from my sons and my lips from Oscar’s fur. “We need to get going.”

Lamp stood up, stretched his arms, and helped the girls stand.

“We need to move fast,” he said.

“And I do feel bad about this horrible news I’ve had to share with everyone,” Poonam said, standing up. “When you arrive on the west coast, give me a call. I’ll cut you a deal on your real estate. You’re just shy of two million. I’ll give you a spectacular building for one million.”

The rats stood up, Harry and Dick cradling Oscar in their arms, Claudia sitting atop Dick’s head, crying. Eugene and Leviathan crawled with sadness toward the curtain leading out of the room.

“Thank you, Poonam,” I said, shaking his hand. “We’ll call you when we arrive.”

Our party of twenty arrived back at the motel, and crowded onto the bus. The sound of sirens in the distance didn’t seem too far away. They were getting closer.

“We’re just heading west, as fast as possible,” Lamp explained to one of the women climbing on the bus. She would be driving.

“Lady,” Claudia said through tears, “what about the children? They’re somewhere in the city. They’re in the casino!”

“We don’t have time for those brats,” I said. “They’re not my kids, anyway. Let ‘em find their own ways home.”

Our bus raced down the strip, with sirens not far behind. Lamp’s female warriors readied their weapons, propping them from the windows. As the sun set on Las Vegas, gunfire erupted from a police car that pulled alongside us. It was on. The guns hanging out our windows fired back, reducing the police cruiser to a pile of burning metal in seconds. Three more police cars appeared behind us, and were quickly shredded by gunfire. A helicopter approaching from overhead was shot down in seconds, landing in the streets behind us, with towering flames and smoke exploding from its guts.

In minutes, the sirens had ended. We floored it out of Las Vegas with smoke and fire behind us, and the sun setting in front of us.

Oscar died that night, in his sleep, just as Poonam had said. I wondered if he saw Bambarello in his final dream. We stopped somewhere around Pacheco State Park, in California, for a funeral for Oscar. Well said words, we shed tears that never wanted to end, and comforted one another. Lamp and his girls showed  emotions I hadn’t seen them express in my time knowing them. As Oscar requested, we dug into his body and consumed him. Harry and Dick ate the most, and Claudia had a sizeable serving. Eugene and Leviathan were happy to eat as much as they could, and Lamp and I ate only a little. Oscar’s body nourished us, and Claudia said his spirit was smiling at us from the stars. Before he went to sleep, Oscar told Lamp’s girls that they could make weapons from his bones, and he told his sons they could make toys from them. After we ate his meats, his bones were crafted into weapons, toys, and tools by rats and women alike. Claudia used Oscar’s fur to create a scarf for herself, and I kept one of his claws in my pocket.

When we arrived in San Francisco, we called E. Puberus Poonam about a building. He directed us to a magnificent skyscraper by the coast, which he sold to us, through a local agent, for slightly less than a million dollars.

Lamp fell in love with the building, and immediately put the women to work on renovations, interior design, and business proposals. Lamp had the entire 6^th and 7^th floors re-done to accommodate the rats, who made their home there. He installed all sorts of internet things that made no sense to me, and sounded alien in their purposes. But he said these were the kinds of things successful internet companies needed. He invited me to live in the building with him, the ladies, and the rats, but I told him I couldn’t impose. I bought a condo not far from the skyscraper, with a beautiful view of the San Francisco Bay, and easy access to the parks. The weather was nice, and the ocean smelled like heaven.

Chapter 30. Regular Days Ahead

Living in my condo was the first time I’d truly been alone since my time in the woods. Only a few months earlier I’d lived a primitive, filthy life with wolves and beasts of the wild. Constantly rolling in my own shit, eating the week-old shit of unseen animals, drinking water tainted by the urine of many creatures, and learning the laws of the wolf pack seemed so far removed from my life in San Francisco. I had more money than I could count, amounts reaching numbers inconceivable to my mind. I now bought food for myself regularly, paid bills, and bathed every few days. It was like New York City all over again.

There were no wolves watching out for me,  no mustached trucker paying for my lifestyle, no group of young go-getters sheltering me in their massive compound, and no Lamp Post cradling me like a baby on his farm. I was independent and free, a new woman with youth, a fresh outlook on life, stomach-fulls of energy, and millions of dollars in my pockets and closets.

Spring of 1996 washed in on San Francisco, and I spent most days taking long walks around the Bay Area. The smells were nice, so different from New York, Chicago, or Vegas. Even LA, just down the coast, smelled different than San Francisco did. This place was clean and fun, air that whistled to you if you let it, and kept you cool if you asked nicely. I saw young, hip people hanging out around town, taking pictures, laughing, eating food together, skateboarding, and talking about their facial piercings and tattoos. Some even had green hair. I liked that they took pictures, and I wished I could do the things they did. A few weeks later I had a camera, blue and green hair, a pierced lip, and a tattoo of wolf heads on my lower back. I made sure my shirts were short enough to let my wolves be seen.

Every day was the same routine. Wake up around noon, eat sausage and pasta, watch TV, walk around town taking pictures of walls and people, buy something for my condo, and go home to talk to myself. The idea of making friends didn’t seem safe to me, since my last group of pals were all dead. That kind of pain took a while to fade, and it started to dawn on me that people who got close to me died sometimes.

The first few months in San Francisco I visited Lamp’s skyscraper once every few days, talked to the ladies, visited my rat family, and watched Lamp’s quick progress with his empire. But after he showed me how to set up my own  email account, and even how to explore the internet with ease, I started to visit less and less. I bought my own computer, which Lamp helped me set up, and spent hours a day on the internet, bookmarking every cool animated GIF I could find, absorbing information on hot and trending topics, and sending emails to people I never saw. When they wrote back it seemed like sorcery. Once I started looking at internet porn I had to stop. It reminded me of FIST, and tears quickly took over my face. Sexuality still felt dangerous, despite Lamp’s best efforts to convince me otherwise.

Christmas of 96 was wet and hazy, spent with Lamp and his ladies, as well as the rats, who didn’t care for holidays or gifts. 1997 would be a year of change, where old habits died and new ones took their place. Some of the new ones were actually old ones. Really old ones.

I turned 28 on New Year’s day, and for my birthday Lamp gave me back the Polaroids I’d taken of myself as a child. He said they were part of internet history, now. He didn’t know he still had them, we’d feared they were lost with his farm. I cherished the pictures and put them in frames around my bedroom. Like rock stars who frame their platinum records, or movie stars who frame the posters of their biggest films,  photographs of me as a naked child covered the walls of my condo. It seemed that framing and showing off one’s source of success and riches was just something people did.

One morning I was watching people jump off the Golden Gate bridge, disappearing into the fog hovering right over the water, and wondering where they would reappear. I met a tattooed boy named Bludd, with heavily pierced ears and even a daring eyebrow ring. He complimented my wolf tattoo and said he dug the colors of my hair. We got to talking about grunge and alternative music, and I casually mentioned my time with the Spin Doctors. He thought I was so cool that he took me to the skateboard shop he worked at and introduced me to his friends.

Bludd’s friends were just as cool as he was. They listened to stuff like Nirvana, The Pixies, Skunk Anansie, Slowdive, and the Smashing Pumpkins. They told stories of being arrested by the cops just for skating around town, and taught me how to tag the sides of buildings and the undersides of bridges. I’d watch them skate at the skate park, and after a while they even let me use their cool cameras to film them skating around town, busting their lips and noses open, and breaking bones. One time I even got punched by a cop in the side of the head for filming Bludd’s best friend while he got handcuffed for throwing a stick in the cop’s bike wheel.

Bludd and his friends started coming over to my condo, and I started using drugs again. Just weed at first, then I drifted into cocaine, peyote, acid, and mushrooms. It was like I’d never left them. As I spent more time with my new friends, almost always high, I found sexuality returning to the forefront of my mind. We tore one another up in drug-induced sexual frenzies, sometimes physically numb to the sensations, other times mentally numb to the erotic realities of our actions. But when the drugs and alcohol were balanced in our blood, both physical and mental stimulation were at their peak. Mind, body, and soul were in rapture.

They introduced me to other groups of dudes and dudettes around town, and I quickly fell back into partying hard and late, waking up after days of alcohol or drug binges, forgetting weeks at a time, sometimes going days without food but not feeling it until my body told me I had to.

Vague memories and foggy images haunt most of my recollection of 1997. I remember Bludd and a few of his friends attended a Hanson concert with me, all of us having just tried a drug called pussyfist for the first time. According to pictures Bludd took that night, I kissed Taylor Hanson below the belt, stuck my hands in Zac’s pants, and made Isaac grab my breasts, all while wearing my own vomit as a shirt.

Bludd got a girlfriend sometime later in the year, and she was upset about a band called the Cocteau Twins breaking up. I didn’t know anything about them, but after her and I did an eight ball all by ourselves I told her I wanted to cock two twins as soon as I could, at which point she called over her twin brother so the three of us could have sex. It was a good night for all of us, and Bludd made beef stroganoff while he watched us get dirty in his apartment.

My drug use started to wane in early 1998 when Bludd and his girlfriend died of dual heart attacks in a skating competition in Fresno. I watched them die on those ramps, falling limp to the sick grinds they busted. The rest of Bludd’s crew either got heavier into drugs and wiped themselves out, or quit and took up softer hobbies like yarn culture or Frisbee, which was getting pretty popular at the time.

As Spring rolled around, I began planning a European vacation. The easy routine of Bay Area life was really getting to me, so I thought I’d find relaxation elsewhere. Money wasn’t an issue, so I booked housing in the most expensive hotels I could find. I flew to Oslo, Norway and was arrested almost immediately when I peed on a street musician’s guitar amp. I was fined a few hundred kroner, which I never bothered to convert to real money. When I got to Sweden I met an old man named Voland who insisted I stay with him instead of the beautiful hotel I had booked. He made love to me in his tiny stone castle in ways American men never had, and scared me each night with tales of cannibalism and human sacrifice. He said he tasted the oak in my teeth and begged me to let him distill Swedish vodka in my mouth for a year. I didn’t let him. When it was time for me to catch my flight to France, Voland came with me so that, in his words, I wouldn’t be “thrown into the maws of mud-blood brothers, and pulled asunder by the rapers of Europe.” I never got an explanation, but I think he thought poorly of the French.

Voland was arrested in Paris when he touched a man the same way he touched me. He escaped the jail and found me in my hotel room that night. We walked the streets, and he offered money to a young American couple to come back to our room so he could film them doing a long list of sex acts he’d written up on toilet paper while in jail. After we filmed them, Voland admitted he had no money and expected me to pay the couple. I refused and he punched me, then the American man punched Voland, and Voland tried to take the man’s organs out of his body with a letter opener that he traveled with. The American woman called the police, who arrested Voland again, this time putting him under maximum security surveillance. I never saw him again after that.

A few days later I traveled to Germany and visited a small remnant of the Berlin wall. I got into a fist fight with an old woman who compared my complexion to the busted up fragments of the wall, and was arrested and fined a few thousand Deutsche Marks. The rest of my stay in Germany was like this. The Germans drank with me, they also fought with me.

I went to England and was arrested for fucking a handsome boy at Stonehenge in the middle of a thunderstorm. When I fought back, I got knocked out. Apparently the countries of Europe speak to one another, because my crime record was brought to the attention of the constable who arrested me. He explained what a menace I was to the entire continent, and had me deported to America. Pissed off at people trying to tell me what I could do, and where I could do it, I traveled to Mexico.

Not knowing any Spanish meant I could just fake things until I got what I wanted. Hitchhiking in Mexico was the best idea I’d ever had, and I traveled to all sorts of tiny villages and colorless towns with dirt and wild chickens in the streets. When I tried to explain to a man who picked me up that I was from San Francisco, he must have thought I was asking for a place to go. For days we traveled together down the west coast of Mexico until we stopped at a town called San Francisco Ixhuatan. He left me there. I met a family who took me in, fed me rice and corn, and let me kiss their chickens. They called themselves the Herreras. I didn’t understand anything else they said.

I lived with them for a few weeks, gave them money for food, and helped them repair their home from a storm that had hit months earlier. So I was pretty shaken up when a drug cartel came through the city and murdered the majority of the people on their street while I was accidentally locked inside the house. When I freed myself, I walked outside to find almost a hundred bodies lying in the streets. The Herreras were among them. The survivors flocked to me and accused me of things in their Mexican tongues I couldn’t understand. I was chased out of town, and just kept running until I stumbled across another town. This one was called San Francisco del Mar. By this time I was feeling homesick for the real San Francisco. I didn’t know how to get back to America, so I stole a bike from the first kid I saw, riding it away fast enough so he couldn’t catch me, but slow enough that the cops could catch me when they bothered to show up. I was fined hundreds of pesos and sent back to America.

I was glad to be back. Being able to talk to other humans felt good. When I got back on the internet I had almost a hundred emails, and discovered that Lamp’s porno empire was starting to take off. The website he’d had a couple years earlier seemed to be back. But it was so professional looking this time, and he even had videos of his girls committing the kinds of sex acts I’d almost pay to see. I was happy for him.

Sometime in the beginning of 1999 Lamp called me to tell me he’d put my pictures back on the internet, and they were really taking off again. This made me ecstatic. But he said right now they were free-to-see, so we weren’t making money on them. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be seen. Lamp said his empire was growing at a tremendous rate and he couldn’t see it slowing down. He was bringing in close to a hundred thousand dollars a month. Being a worldly woman by this time, I asked him what kind of currency that was. Kroner? Pesos? Deutsche Marks? Pounds? He said a dollar is a dollar and I told him he was wrong, we fought about it, and didn’t talk for a little while. I set out to prove to myself I knew all about money by buying a boat. I didn’t know anything about boats, but I knew about money, so I knew what I was doing.

As it turned out, I didn’t know as much as I thought I did, because I sunk my boat on the first outing, hitting a rock at something like 50 knots. I was flung from the boat and survived only because of the life jacket I wore. I regretted my recklessness, but was happy to know I could afford to be so reckless in life and still come out ahead.

It was around summer of that year that Lamp and I started talking again. He asked me if I’d heard about Y2K and I told him of course I hadn’t, because I only listened to classic bands like Twisted Sister, Bob Seger, and Rush. I also said I was into world music, since I’d traveled the world. I listed off some obscure European bands he pretended he’d heard of and reminded him of the time I traveled to Europe. He said he was impressed, then tried to explain Y2K to me.

Needless to say, it sounded like the most devastating and horrific thing imaginable. I cried for days after he described the wretched and sickening world I could expect to see after the Y2K bug annihilated every computer on the planet. In my mind, I saw skyscrapers, like Lamp’s, crumble to the earth, and robotic beings fall off of Golden Gate bridges, and televisions and clock radios explode with anger and sadness, killing their owners and their owners’ children in flashes of light. I saw airplanes falling out of the sky, and computers screaming in pain as they died in homes around the world. Every friend I’d made on the internet through email and strange websites I saw murdered by their own email accounts, bloody and dead in front of their computers as their screens displayed my messages.

 I didn’t leave my condo for a very long time, and lived in fear for a number of weeks. When I finally decided to survive the apocalypse by building a shelter I spoke to Lamp about the likelihood of survival. He said the odds were against it, but he’d help me any way he could. I had him count all my remaining money. I had $1.1 million left. I made the smart choice and decided to put all of it into a top of the line fallout shelter, stocked with enough food to last me decades.  

Over the next few months I had the shelter built underground, right beneath my condo, by a talented contractor and his building team. I didn’t tell them what the shelter was for because I didn’t want to have to fight them off when the apocalypse came. It was a pretty state of the art little shelter, 400 square feet, with an electrical generator, walls lined with shelves, and enough space to sleep and do jumping jacks. It ran me only 700,000 dollars when it was finished. Next, I stocked it with enough food to last me 30 years, which ran me another 200,000 dollars.

When I told Lamp that my shelter was finished and invited him and the rats to stay in it, he said he’d already built his own, large enough for him, the rats, and his ladies. He invited me to stay with him but I refused. I told him I’d hope to meet up with him decades after the apocalypse, when it was once again safe to come into the light of the world. He understood.

In the months leading up to New Years Eve, I lived extravagantly, spending most of the 200,000 dollars I had left on booze, expensive clothes, parties, occasional drugs, meals at the best restaurants, and a few last minute supplies as I thought of them.

The last day of the year, I said my goodbyes to Lamp, his ladies, and Claudia, Eugene, Leviathan, Diamond Dick, and Harmful Harry. I cried while they walked into their shelter, then walked back to my condo to say goodbye to the walls, to my couches, my bed, and all my electronics. I kissed the computer goodbye, and hugged the TV. I knew when I next saw them, they’d be mangled bits of circuits and metal and whatever else electronic things were made of. They’d be dead.

I walked down the flight of stairs to my shelter, took one last look at the world above me, then closed the door behind me.

I spent almost two years in the shelter. My concept of time became warped before too long. I only had a watch, and its battery died fast. I had no TV or radio, and decided to try to read books for enjoyment as I had seen other people do. Most of the time I ate the food I’d stocked up on, and listened to CDs on my pretty bitchin’ CD player I’d bought before closing up for Armageddon. I started to think about old friends, like Donald Trump,  Dank Wanklin, Tommy Hilfiger. I hoped they’d all known about Y2K, and prepared themselves. I hoped they survived the madness and chaos and world destruction, and I wondered if I’d ever see them again. When inspiration hit, I’d write notes to them and stick them to the wall. Over time, I became convinced I should write responses to myself, imagining they were from the recipients. I had so much fun writing back and forth to Donald, Dank, Tommy, Sagepuss, Lamp, Mr. Poonam, Diarrhea Jackson, even Hamport, and Mark from Spin Doctors, learning what they were up to in my imagination. In my mind, they all lived and survived, and couldn’t wait to see me in the decades to come. I started listening to the Spin Doctors again and couldn’t appreciate their music like I once had. It just didn’t hit me the same way. But my favorite songs still had some charm to them that got me to dance in my small shelter. With my eyes closed, I could pretend I was dancing with a best friend, or a husband.

The shelter wasn’t as watertight as I had hoped, and mold began to grow on the walls after rain seeped through long enough. It took a long time, but it started to grow outward, becoming visible and green and annoying. One particularly gloomy day, when I was suffering something like a mental breakdown that might have been due to living in a small room for months on end, I decided to taste the mold. It wasn’t bad. It tasted better than shit. I ate more. Over the next couple days I ate almost all the mold. My vision started suffering shortly after. Hallucinations didn’t take long to kick in. Nightmares and daymares became frequent, and I couldn’t tell if I was asleep or awake for long periods of time. Dead friends and family members, like Barbalay and my parents visited me. Oscar came by, too. He slept with me, and I squeezed his little rat body so tight that he turned inside out and turned into a ball of liquid chocolate that spoke alien languages to me when I was hungry. The ancient wizard Bambarello appeared to me many times after I ate the mold, and he told me of impending doom. Every story he told me was different. None of it made sense. He told me stories that took place millions of years in the future and told me to be ready. He told me about the past and to be afraid of it. He said pre-human races were out to get me, and since they lived underground they wouldn’t have to look very long to find me. His final  words were that my identity would become confused and my sexual self would be replaced by something alien and new. It worried me, but as the mold’s effects wore off, I became less worried. I became very thirsty.

When I was clear of all mold, I realized it’d been days since I'd eaten food. From that point forward I didn’t stop eating. I ate all day, every day, and hardly moved. The toilet in the corner worked like magic, and I hoped it kept working, because I knew all plumbers would be dead.

I didn’t have a scale in my shelter, because that’s a waste of space. But I was putting on weight. Lots of it. Months went by and I stuffed my face with cakes and donuts and hotdogs and candy and everything I’d been smart enough to buy pre-apocalypse. I learned I hated reading. I hated thinking. I hated sitting by myself in the remains of planet Earth. I ate to numb the pain. I ate in hopes I would die of cholesterol.

Trash disposal was something I hadn’t considered when having my shelter built, so over the period of almost two years a mountain of trash had grown in the middle of my floor. I slept in garbage for months until a stroke of genius soaked my brain. I’d flush my trash.

It worked for a little while. Small wrappers and tissues went down the toilet with ease. But when I started to flush boxes and cans things got messy. The toilet backed up, overflowed, and filled the floor with pissy shit-water and more garbage. For a few days I lived in ankle-high brown water that smelled like a sewer. Trash was floating in it, and for the first time since the apocalypse, I noticed bugs swimming in the swampy mess. This meant there was still life on the outside. If bugs survived, I knew it was possible a plumber might have survived. I had to find out.

Wearing a toga made of trash bags, since my clothes wouldn’t fit over my bulging, bulbous flesh, I hobbled to the door and squeezed my way out of the shelter for the first time. Climbing the stairs back to my condo was a trial of might and impossible tribulations. By some incredible fortune I made it to the top, with just a couple breaths to spare. To my surprise, my condo was exactly as I’d left it. Walls were intact, the TV was resting on a shitty little table, my computer looked healthy. And I heard noises from outside that sounded almost human. I waddled to the front door and looked out upon San Francisco to see cars driving on the roads and human beings walking and talking like this wasn’t the end of the world. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I rubbed the gunk and scum out of my eyes and looked again. Everything was still there. They must have rebuilt, I thought. They rebuilt my city. It was beautiful. Tears poured down my cheeks and I smiled a sugar-coated smile. The will of the human race was strong, and this proved it. My people were resilient. I was overcome with pride in humankind. The sun was low in the sky and the temperature was mild. The sight of life put me at ease with the world.

I left my condo with no shoes, my socks soaked in shit, and walked down the street to search for a plumber. I didn’t know how this thing worked but I'd find one. On a glorious day of human victory like this, I knew I’d find whatever I needed.

I hadn’t walked more than a block before I was exhausted, so I stopped  in a coffee shop. There were millions of them, and I remember this one was a favorite hangout of some of Bludd’s crew. I stumbled inside to see everyone in the place staring at a TV at the other end of the shop. There was a skyscraper with smoke coming out of it. I waddled closer and saw it was New York City.

My heart leapt for joy, so I sat down on a chair, listened to it creak under my weight, and watched what everyone was watching. It looked like it might have been some sort of victory parade thrown in honor of defeating Y2K, but I couldn’t be sure. No one in the coffee shop seemed particularly excited, which I thought strange.

When an airplane was shown on the screen crashing into another skyscraper right next to the first one, a scream of horror came from everyone in the coffee shop. Myself included. Y2K hadn’t been defeated after all. Premature victory had been declared! I screamed and fell out of my chair, crying, and waddled out the door, back to my condo. I looked to the skies to make sure no airplanes were coming for me, but everything seemed regular. It’s like the horrors of New York weren’t yet in San Francisco, but I knew they would be. I had to return to my shelter. I followed my shit-colored footprints all the way back to my condo, and fell down the stairs to my shelter only to find it entirely flooded with shit-water and trash. The water was three feet high and communities of bugs and vermin swam in it, eating chunks of shit and pieces of floating food. I couldn’t go back.

Because I hadn’t paid my electric bill in almost two years, there was no power to my condo. When I had it turned back on I was able to catch the news and learn it was a terrorist attack, not Y2K that had blown up those buildings on TV. I didn’t know if that was better or worse. Either way, it was some sort of menace and thing to fear. I was afraid. But not as afraid as I had been of an unseeable terror like Y2K.

I got back in touch with Lamp sometime after the terror-scare really set in with the rest of America. He and the rats had come out of their shelter only weeks into the year 2000. Claudia had died of old age while they were down there, so Harry and Dick ate her and shared her parts with everyone else. Lamp said it was a beautiful cannibal-funeral service. I was sorry I missed it. Eugene and Leviathan had run away north, and Dick and Harry, Lamp said, were out terrorizing other parts of the west coast. They’d been at it for well over a year. I’d missed so much.

I was out of money so I asked Lamp what kinds of share I got of his pornographic pie. He said I got nothing because the cops had shut down the portion of his site with me on it. I had to find work.

One of Bludd’s old friends saw me riding a power wheelchair through the park a couple days later. He said he’d hardly recognized me after all the weight I put on. I told him I was looking for work and he said he knew just the thing for me.

He introduced me to the owner of a pornographic production company called Money Shot Studios. The man simply went by the name Mr. Money Shot. He also directed and wrote all his films. He was a charming, handsome man whose looks would fill my dreams for days to come. I must have impressed him, because he offered me a job as a secretary for his production company. I wasn’t excited to work, but I was excited to make money again.

By 2002 I was working regular shifts at Money Shot Studios. Mr. Money Shot had a special desk and special chair built for me to support my size and special weight. I spent my time taking calls, reserving sets, helping hire new talent, planning shoots for Mr. Money Shot, and was overall too busy to think about anything else. And that was fine. Nothing else was going on in my life. I became good friends with Mr. Money Shot, and he even took me to lunch most days to tell me about filming and to talk shop. I wasn’t a star, but the boss listened to my tales of exploits and sexual adventures, and liked using these in his films. The studio started breaking into fat-fucking, a beautiful genre of pornography where whale-sized humans are fucked by normal looking people. Mr. Money Shot said my 515 pound body would be perfect for the new face of sexuality he wanted to explore. He said my life story was one of  inspiration and beauty, and wanted to make a film of it. For many months I worked with him on writing and producing a full length porno film of my life, called JO for JO, Blow for Blow: The Story of Lady Molasses. I was the star, and doubled as casting director. I casted only the most delicious of men, and treated them as my toys for tits and twats.

One morning we started shooting a scene depicting an all night party in Los Angeles, taking place during my stripper days. The boy I was going to fuck was a young, twenty year old stud. We shot for six hours together, juiced every hole, and shared only a few words in all that time. When shooting wrapped up I had the boy give me a sponge bath in my dressing room’s specially designed tub. He introduced himself as Strygler. He said he’d been acting in porn for a year, and this was his biggest role yet. He joked about big roles and big rolls, and squeezed the fat bursting from my guts as he laughed. The name Strygler struck me as funny.

 “Strygler,” I said, “tell me about your mom.”

 “I never knew my biological mother or my father,” he said, scrubbing soap suds under my tits. “My mom gave me up for adoption when I was born. Alls I know is she was thirteen when she had me. I had a photograph of her for years, but I lost it in a house fire.”

 “So weird. I had a son when I was thirteen. I named him Strygler. That was in 1982.”

 “My full name is Strygler Mascara Parton. What’d you name your son?”

 “Strygler Mascara Molasses. I guess you’re not him.”

 “My adoptive parents are Partons. So, you know… I’d have their last name.”

 “Strygler Mascara is probably a pretty common combination of first and middle names, though. What if you were my son? Wouldn’t that be funny?”

Strygler stopped sponging me and looked down at his naked body. He started to cry.

 “What the fuck’s wrong, boy?”

 “If you’re my mother,” he said, dropping the sponge to the ground, “I… I’ve waited my whole life to meet you. You have no idea what this means to me.” He hugged me tight, his arms slipping on my soapy skin, and cried salty tears into my hair and mouth.

The moment of silence passed and I replied, “if I’m your mom, it’s kind of funny we just spent six hours fucking.”

           

Strygler dropped out of the film, but we stayed friends. He was determined to have a DNA test to see if I was his mother. In the meantime, I finished shooting JO for JO, and introduced, for the first time, the candy cane into pornographic cinema. The film was released in September of 2002 and was a monstrous success. In its first few weeks it sold over eight million copies. JO for JO, Blow for Blow: The Story of Lady Molasses was the biggest pornographic picture in the world. Mr. Money Shot was thrilled. I was thrilled. The industry was thrilled. But I think more than anyone, the fans were thrilled. Our film was hailed as “a revolution in erotic cinema”, “a groundbreaking piece of hardcore pornography and immaculate story telling”, “a tour de force of sensual delights, of sexual discovery, and imaginative character study”. It took the world by storm. And most importantly, it filled my pockets and closets with money.  

For Part III of Life of a Lady, click on this.