44 Chapters About 4 Men (20 page)

I’d learned how to drive fast back when I was dating Harley. There had been an abandoned housing development down the street from his mom’s house where people used to race. Everybody called it The Track because the streets had all been paved, but not a single house had been completed before the builder went belly up. And because it wasn’t technically private or public property, we could blow off steam without the cops fucking with us.

Whenever I pushed it too hard and threw a belt or something, Harley would just call his redneck buddies from the shop where he worked, and they’d come out with their big-ass trucks and their headlamps and their Natty Ice and fix that shit while singing David Allan Coe songs like we were all in
Snow White Trash and the Seven Hicks
. Thanks to them, I now have the lyrics to “Don’t Bite the Dick,” “Little Susie Shallow Throat,” and “Cum Stains on the Pillow” tattooed on my brain.

But I also know how to tail-brake a corner without spinning out.

In fact, that particular memory actually seemed to calm my nerves. My consciousness was back, and it decided to press the Play button on “You Never Even Call Me by My Name” for a little nostalgia.

I was drunk…the day my mom…got out of prison…

Just pretend like you’re back at The Track, B. You used to do this all the time. It was fun. You’re having fun.

Redlining in second gear, I braked hard just before the next turn to transfer some weight to my front end before cutting the wheel. As soon as I was halfway through the turn and my RPMs were at a perfect 3500, I punched the gas and hit the straights, shifting into third within seconds.

“Damn, Bumblebee! Where the fuck did that come from?”

It was the first thing Hans had uttered since we peeled out, and I could hear the surprise in his voice. I glanced over and found my rock-star boyfriend gripping the Oh, Shit bar (I don’t actually know what that handle hanging from the ceiling in cars is called. In the South people just call it the Oh, Shit bar.) with one hand and the center console with the other, a look of shock and awe on his face. It was all the encouragement I needed.

After spending almost a year feeling inadequate around this man, I’d finally found a way to make my mark, to set myself apart from the hordes of ho-bags beating down Hans’s door. I could drive this fucking Mustang, and I could do it topless. My consciousness turned up the volume:

And I went…to pick her up…in the raaaain…

I redlined her again and muscled through the last turn in the neighborhood. I could still hear the sirens right behind me and see the occasional reflection of a blue light off a house or a street sign, but I’d managed to keep enough distance and turns between us that the police hadn’t been able to get a visual on me.

The next turn would make or break us though.

But before I could get to the station in the pick-uuuuuup truck…

If I could pull out of the neighborhood and onto the highway without having to stop, we’d be home free. I could have us tucked away into the club parking lot within ten seconds. I downshifted to second and held my breath as we approached the intersection.

Please be clear, please be clear, please be clear…

She got runned over by a damned old traaaain!

“It’s clear! It’s clear! GO, GO, GO!” Hans was on the edge of his seat, looking left and right and left again, making sure I wasn’t about to kill us both.

Ha!

I crushed the accelerator with all forty pounds of wet steel and leather strapped to my right foot and was rewarded with a satisfying yelp from my well-worn BFGs (that’s what the rednecks call BF Goodrich tires) and an even more satisfying glimpse of Hans’s head being slammed backward into the headrest by the torque.

I flicked on my headlights as I raced toward the entrance of the club’s parking lot, just a little over a block away. A few hundred yards, and we’d be in the clear.

Two hundred, one hundred…

Hans was now turned around completely backward in his seat with both fists gripping the headrest and wide, excited eyes scanning the expanse behind us for any sign of the police cruiser. I bit my lip just in time to squelch the very smug, very self-satisfied grin threatening to destroy my cool, took a deep breath, and made the final turn into the parking lot, barking the tires a little just for show. The instant all four tires were off the highway, I killed the headlights and careened into the first available parking spot I could see.

Hans erupted into a fit of hysterics, pounding the headrest with his fists and yelling “WOOOOOO!!!” as if he were greeting a sold-out stadium.

I’d never seen anybody so amped in my life.

The moment I killed the engine and turned to face him, Hans had his giant hands around my shoulders and was practically shaking me like a rag doll.

“Holy shit, Bumblebee! You lost ’em! You motherfucking lost ’em!” A manic grin split his face. “You turned into fucking Angelina Jolie from
Gone in Sixty Seconds
back there! Where the fuck did you learn to drive like that?”

Ever distractible, I watched Hans’s eyes flick down to my still-exposed breasts mid thought, and his hand impulsively reached out to stroke one of my nipple rings. Hearing my gasp, Hans glanced back up at me, as if he’d just remembered where he was.

He shook his head and continued in a more serious tone, “That was the sexiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Before I could formulate a response to all that flattery, I found myself plastered against the driver-side door as seventy-five inches of tall, dark, and tattooed ravaged my mouth, neck, still bared breasts, and still swollen pussy with every appendage in his arsenal. I’d never seen Hans so ravenous.

And knowing I had done that to him made me feel like maybe I was special after all. Maybe, just maybe, I did have things to offer him that other women didn’t.

From that day on, anytime my old familiar insecurities reared their ugly flat chests, I would simply pull that shiny memory out of my pocket and rub it like a talisman until all the self-deprecating feelings melted away in a blaze of twinkling lights and churning black water and hushed
I love yous
and high-speed pursuits with happy endings.

1
Fluorocarbon emulsion is what the 1989 movie
The Abyss
called that pink-liquid oxygen shit that the divers had to learn how to breathe in to dive deeper into the ocean.
I’m pretty sure James Cameron must have gotten the idea for it after a mid-July layover in Atlanta.

Dear Journal,

So…I might have gotten a little carried away with my last SPJTKINNATRE entry. And I was really starting to enjoy having never been punched in the face, too.

Not to make light of domestic violence or anything, but you know how every once in a while you hear about some crazy bitch getting smacked by her boyfriend/husband/girlfriend, and you think,
Good. That skank had it coming.

No?

Well, guess what, Journal? Pretty soon, I’m going to be that person in your life. I’m going to be the person who makes you question all your wholesome morals because when Ken reads that last entry and promptly kicks the shit out of me, you’re going to think,
Good job, Ken. I hope you punched her in her smelly whore cunt
.

Then, you’re going to have to go to church and say, like, a zillion Hail Marys to get rid of the guilt and waste your whole Sunday getting right with the Lord again. So, basically, I owe the entire world an apology, including God and especially my children, who will probably be placed in protective custody what with all the domestic violence flying around at our house.

It might even be worth it if that journal entry had been true. In reality, the best sex I ever had was significantly colder, dirtier, and just all-around more dungeony. Rather than a luxurious, magical, liquid fairyland in the sultry heat of summer, the actual act took place in a dingy linoleum-floored, wood-paneled basement…in a bed blanketed with dust and mouse droppings...in the dead of winter. And instead of being enveloped by the majesty of a million twinkling lights, we were surrounded by Hans’s hopefully sleeping bandmates, who happened to be scattered all over the floor.

After most of their shows, Hans and the rest of his Phantom Limbs bandmates would head over to the lead singer’s illegitimate redneck father’s little shack of a place to crash for the night. (Trip—short for his stage name, XXX—got every bit of his perverted personality from his father. The first time I went to his dad’s house the man stumbled over, reeking of brown liquor and creepiness, winked at me, and then handed Trip a tiny flashlight, “In case things got freaky.”
No shit
.)

Exhausted from a particularly badass show and wasted beyond belief, the guys shuffled into the basement one by one and pretty much passed out the moment their faces met the linoleum floor. Except for Hans.

Watching him perform always turned me on, but on that particular night I was ravenous. I couldn’t keep my hands off him in the car on the way to Trip’s dad’s house, and once we arrived the only thing on either of our minds was finishing what we’d started on the ride over.

By the time we made it down to the basement the place looked like a crime scene. Unconscious bodies were strewn around the room as if a bomb had been detonated nearby. There was no rhyme or reason as to why the guys landed where they did, especially considering that they left the bed in the corner of the room untouched. It did have a bunch of boxes and shit piled on top of it, so maybe through their beer goggles it just looked like too much work.

Hans and I tiptoed over his snoring bandmates on our way to the bed, removing the debris—and our clothing—as quickly as possible. Within seconds we were joined under the cover of some scratchy woolen nightmare, trying our damnedest to be quiet. The bed was squeaky, so we had to move slowly and deliberately. We paid attention to our breathing, our pace, every sound, every movement. While it seemed at first like a pain in the ass, all that care and intention caused us to be more present. Every exquisite drag and pull felt
significant
. Time moved fractionally, if at all, and each time we returned to one another, three tiny words always seemed to escape on a sigh, despite our best efforts to be silent. Fallout bed be damned, Hans and I were cloaked in a silken womb of soul-baring love, and it transcended our meager, mothball-littered surroundings.

I like to think of that experience the way people describe the first time they smoked crack. They say the first time is always the best, right? So maybe love is just like any other drug. Maybe the reason I haven’t experienced that magical interconnected love-bubble sensation since that night in the basement is because I’m simply doomed to chase that high for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t matter who I ended up with—a cold, limp fish or a sensitive artist.

But deep down, I know that’s not true.

I
could
have that feeling again. In fact, every time I close my eyes and go back to that night, I feel it. It’s not some elusive high I’m chasing. It’s accessible. Simply remembering how the ambient light in the room turned Hans’s kohl-rimmed gray-blue eyes into liquid pools of mercury, the way my hands slid over his tattooed torso and found a home in his unruly black hair, the way his lips caressed my ear like butterfly wings as he whispered the words, “I love you,” has that exact combination of pheromones and endorphins queued up and ready to go…for nothing.

Whenever I try to initiate a love volley like that with Ken, he simply throws his hands up and takes a step backward, as if I just tossed him a live rattlesnake. It’s like he’s an extra on
CSI: Miami
. There might as well be a chalk outline around his body while we—no, while
I
have sex.

If Ken would just have a fucking feeling once in a while, make a little eye contact, cup my face in his hands, press his forehead to mine, say something sweet—I’m not even looking for complete sentences. He can fucking tap,
You are beautiful
, into my ass in Morse code if it’s really that excruciating for him to express himself out loud—that entire entry would have been about him. Actually, that entry wouldn’t even exist. There would have been no need. We’d be John and fucking Yoko. In fact, the only time I’d get out of bed would be to go fill another prescription for ciprofloxacin due to all the sex-induced UTIs I’d be getting.

Complete and utter lack of passion aside, I still love the shit out of Kenneth Easton. In fact, he’s my all-time favorite person. I think I even like him more than our kids.

He just accepts me and supports me and quietly goes about making all my dreams come true without the need for affirmation or thanks of any kind. He’s the kind of man who waits to eat until everyone else is seated; who stands on the train, no matter how many seats are empty; who folds the laundry simply because it needed to be folded; and who always lets me choose the restaurant. Despite his inherent sense of responsibility and courtesy, Ken also curses like a sailor (even in front of children, and not just our children, either) and never fails to shoot me a smart-ass one-liner whenever I acknowledge any of his gracious gestures. And somehow, he manages to be both the most handsome and most humble man in any room.