Anal, Inc.

19) Featuring the True Spirit of Christmas

On the one hand: it was Christmas. It seemed like maybe I could get a day off, on this day - of all days.

On the other hand: Christmas Day, at any house with small children, was just the hangover from the orgy of tearing paper, finding batteries, and "some assembly required". Phizz could handle the diplomatic relations between our children, and then pilot them into bed. She didn't actually need me for anything (as she had implied many times before).

The person who had explicitly said she needed me was sitting in Room 26 of what turned out to be a more or less anonymous motel, just off the freeway. I was there in about half an hour, through light Christmas Day traffic.

Miriam didn't come to the door, in answer to my soft knock. She just said "It's not locked," and I stepped back in time about 10 years: to shag carpet of forgettable brownish-green, mass-produced paintings of bullfighting, some really ugly lamps, and a strange kind of disinfectant smell.

Miriam was sitting on the bed, her hands folded. Not reading. Not praying. Not knitting.

Just waiting.

The way you would sit at the bedside: waiting for someone to come out of a coma.

I sat down next to her, without touching her.

"I told her that I might be gone all night."

"Thank you."

"Will I be gone all night?"

"Probably. It would be a big favor to me."

She still hadn't made eye contact, so I took a longer look around. The curtains were open, so we could see the dour, misty Christmas evening outside. The whole day had been grey and featureless, as far as weather was concerned - without it being that cold.

Now it was at night that things started to glow - and get brighter. Little expressions of holiday hope, here and there. Reminders of people who were stubbornly insisting that there was something valuable about the season: and they weren't going to let it be taken away from them.

The motel staff certainly felt the spirit. They had hung tinsel around each room window - and, on the other side of the glass, flashing lights had been strung along the railing of the gallery that ran outside of the rooms.

With the curtains open, we could see all the decorations clearly. But, even with the curtains closed, the holiday light was colorful and insistent.

Quite a contrast with the mood inside the room.

Miriam didn't want to make physical contact with me. She didn't touch me - and I wouldn't touch her without some sort of green light.

But she did want to talk.

"I'm sorry about the other day. You were trying to be constructive, and all I did was make fun of you."

I was temporarily confused. But then it struck me that "the other day" referred to our conversation in her office, several weeks before, when I had tried so valiantly to get her to open up.

"I don't think it's anything you need to apologize for. I just took a chance. And I knew it would be early innings, since it seemed likely that it would be hard for you to cross all that emotional distance in your personal life-"

She interrupted me: abruptly standing up and going to the window.

"Careful what you wish for, I suppose."

I must have looked puzzled.

"You said my friendship meant something to you. But that's an obligation. When you say that, it's an obligation to accept ugliness or disappointment. You say that you're ready to take the good with the bad. Because it can never all be good."

"I understand that."

"I wonder if you do."

"Let the rubber hit the road, then. It already has, really. I'm here. On Christmas Day."

"Because - yesterday - I signed the divorce papers. Wayne's Christmas present to me: a parcel of legal mumbo-jumbo in a big envelope. Sign here. Sign here. Sign here. Initial there. I signed away everything. And that's why I ended up calling you."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't even know if I'm sorry. I just know that it's all gone for good. Everything I counted on."

"There's a Church ceremony to end it, too, right?"

"That's already happened. You're unsealed in the Temple. So the partners don't spend eternity together. Not everyone does that, of course. Because - if you've gotten to the point where you're getting divorced - maybe you don't take the Church's teachings about the afterlife all that seriously."

"The worst possible time of year for this to happen, when you think about it."

"I'm not sure what would have been a good time. A crappy time to be alone, though. And alone is what I am. The dark side of the Church. You know: being Mormon means belonging to a complete kind of life. 360 degrees. Complete. Family. Friends. All linked to your ward. Your Stake. To Relief Society. All the stuff you belonged to as a kid."

"Everything."

She nodded, staring out of the window again.

"Everything. As soon as the news started to fly that our marriage was over, everyone took Wayne's side. Just as I should have known. Just as I should have predicted in my mind. He's the priesthood holder, after all. If he's getting rid of me, then the problem lies with me - and nobody else wants to catch what I might be spreading. Nothing but distance, and denial. In the nicest possible way, of course. Out in the cold. As much as if I had locked you out of this room on this stupid, unhappy, empty, depressing day. The Nativity of our Lord, my ass. More like Siberia. The Gulag."

She found the curtain cord and brought the panels together: making the room seem much smaller - almost cosy.

"I was happy to make the trip to Siberia."

"The nice thing about being away from everyone: there's nobody watching."

She came back - and stood in front of me. She was still dressed for work: penny loafers, dense nylons, the inevitable navy blue skirt, and a pastel long-sleeved blouse buttoned up to the neck.

I wasn't sure that I was ready for the kind of emotional weight that seemed to be impending. Still, I had picked out this role for myself - and I wasn't going to back away from it.

"And - once you have one friend in the neighborhood - it's impossible to be alone."

“Is that what you are? My friend?"

“Trying to be."

"Most people will argue that sex destroys all that. Takes you to a different place. More complicated. Where you can't be friends."

“I don't agree with that. Sex is about caring. Friendship is about caring. Of course it depends on the people, and the mood of the moment. Sex can also be about not caring. A question of mechanics. That's where I started out with you, and your group. Push in...pull out. Push in...pull out. But now we're in different country. And I think I have established friendships with everyone...except Kriss, of course."

“Why is Kriss the exception?"

"I couldn't be her friend. I was madly in love with her."

"But not anymore?"

"No - still. But hoping not to be, eventually."

"Good idea. She's as cold as the wind blowing out there. As close to heartless as anyone I've known."

"But that was my impression of you. Distant. Cold. Remote."

She had been pacing up and down. Now she stopped, right in front of me.

“Feeling is hard work: especially when you're trapped in a marriage where you're punished for feeling. It was important for me to have a hard shell. A question of survival over months, and years."

"Survival? Life and death?"

"Call it spiritual survival. A hard shell made it easier. But now the papers are signed. They're going back to the court. It's Christmas Day - nobody's watching - nobody's paying attention at all - and I would just appreciate a change. To be someone more like what I once was. To have someone to hear me out. And someone to help me be brave: since brave is what I'm going to need to be - out on the dark ocean - all by myself."

I took her hand.

"I can handle the job."

She half-smiled.

"You're certainly ambitious. You're not running out of the room. Which is what I expected you to do."

"Kriss will explain to you that I'm a little on the stupid side. So I'm probably not seeing the whole landscape. It's just my feeling that you're an incredible woman, and that the best is yet to come for you."

“'Incredible woman'. You said that the first morning we were together. You don't think that's an exaggeration?"

"I meant it then. I mean it now.”

There was a moment of silence, while she continued to debate with herself what might - or might not - happen.

I probably should have kept my mouth shut. But I had a little more to say.

"We've got Christmas together. So let's celebrate Christmas. You only get so many of them, you know. Whether or not you think they're ruined. Whether or not you even think that they're good days."

"Maybe I'll just celebrate Christmas by celebrating simple honesty. That I can just stand in the open. Not running and hiding anymore. An end to all these secrets. Everything I've kept bottled up."

With the expression of someone resolving to push their terror aside, she took my hand and guided it to the small button at the neck of her blouse.

"And, of course, we need to exchange gifts."

"Do you have a suggestion?"

"I would suggest that you undo these buttons. That would be a start. And a hot shower, if you haven't had one lately. Hygiene wasn't an issue when you were unclogging my digestive system. But now we're working on something a little more ambitious."

She noticed my hands shaking slightly as I followed the buttons of her blouse down to her waist - and started to unfasten her skirt.

"Are you cold?"

"I'm excited."

"Excited to fuck me?"

"It's a natural reaction."

She sounded introspective as I helped her out of her skirt, and she slipped off her shoes.

“Just strange to think about it."

"Strange?"

"Strange that you'll be the first grown man to see me naked. We'll call that the first gift you get to open."

I carefully laid her clothing on one of the armchairs in the room as she stood, in camisole and pantyhose. I stepped behind her and wrapped my arms around her upper body: to tamp down my excitement a little - and so we could continue to talk in low voices.

"How is that possible? That I'm the first?"

"Wayne always insisted that I keep garments on when we had sex."

"What are those?"

"Just a special kind of underwear that you always have to have on."

"Have on always? Twenty-four hours a day?"

"Always. So we were never skin to skin - even when things got wild and crazy. And I was always happy to stay dressed, since it meant that it was less likely that he would remind me what a big disappointment I was."

"Disappointment?"

"You'll see. Right here. Right now."

She turned toward me again and guided my hands to the hem of her camisole, so - together - we pulled it over her head.

Ruth had told me that Miriam was pretty flat - but, once my boss was naked from the waist up - her gender would have been difficult to surmise from just looking at her chest.

She was watching my facial expression - which I guess I didn't hide that well.

"Gift number one. Big fat secret number one. And, let me tell you, it hurts to have people - especially your husband - making fun of something you can't help."

"Some men find this look very attractive."

"Which is you trying ridiculously hard to be nice before we have sex."

"But a lot of men do. These are huge nipples. Are they sensitive?"

Moving right away to experiment, I started sucking gently on the left one: getting a quick rush of breath as she closed her eyes.

"Oh my God! That's a new and different."

"Merry Christmas to you."

I moved over to right side, and then alternated between the tits for a minute or so - while I listened to the pattern of her breathing slowly change.

"I want it too bad to wait."

"But there's a sequence to all this. Just relax."

She didn't take my advice.

Once again, she guided my hands: this time to the elastic hem of her pantyhose, and I pushed the sturdy casing slowly down - pulling her wide, old-fashioned underpants along with the stockings - uncovering a pretty uncompromising bush, where her vagina was not even visible.

She stepped out of the pile of fabric around her feet, resting her hands on my shoulders for balance, and - before she could protest, or come up with a better idea - I started to explore her forest with my tongue: holding onto both of her buttocks, so she couldn't back away.

Which she wanted to do. At first.

But I started sensing a little more docility as I started investigating the salty crest of her clitoris, and - after a few minutes, and some noises from her I hadn't heard before - she shuddered to a climax, resting almost her full weight on my shoulders as her legs became more unreliable.

My mouth was still wet when I stood up. She took me into a close, almost desparate, embrace - and we held onto each other, as though we were standing in a high wind.

"You could have waited until I cleaned up a little."

“But I've gotten where I am by exceeding expectations."

“Well...it felt good."

"First time for that, too?”

“Oh sure. Wayne didn't believe in foreplay. He took my virginity while I was still in my wedding dress. It was a miracle that I didn't get blood on it. Not that he cared. As soon as we were alone in the room, he threw me down, ripped off the nice lace panties I had bought for the occasion, and just crammed it in. There was this stabbing pain, and a lot of friction. I didn't have time to get wet. But, 3 minutes later, it was all over."

“And they say that romance is dead."

"Maybe I'll find that funnier, later."

She ended our embrace and sat, naked, on the bed - waiting for me to get undressed.

"All the women in our Ward assured me that I would be filled with the radiance of the Holy Spirit the first time I was intimate with a member of the Priesthood."

"How much radiance was there?"

"It felt more like boot camp. After I was more or less raped on the couch, he informed me that I had 3 openings - and he was going to use them all. And then he did that. One after the other. That very night. I didn't get a vote. And I wouldn't have been a good voter, anyway, since I didn't understand a lot of what he was talking about."

"You didn't do any advance reading? Talk to anyone?"

"When I talked to people they told me that my husband would instruct me. A kind of mentoring. And they said this while they were looking so uncomfortable that I would just change the subject."

"In an ideal world...."

"Which was not my world. Instead of the radiance of the Holy Spirit, I went to sleep bleeding - from front and back - with the taste of sperm, and vomit, in my mouth."

"How did that work?"

"Gagging on his cock seemed to excite him. But my body sure didn't. He told me he was stunned at how out of proportion I was. But, being a generous guy - according to him - he didn't make an issue of it because I validated myself as a virgin by being so inept at everything he wanted me to do."

"You should have called the cops."

"Don't misunderstand the situation. He wasn't trying to hurt me. He was just going to go where he was going to go, and he wasn't going to let anything stand in his way."

"Is that more of a traditional thing?"

"More of a 'Wayne' thing. Worshipping his 'thing'. Thinking that he was doing me a huge favor by being sealed to me: a member of the holy Priesthood - Returned Missionary - all that stuff. All of them think they are talking directly to God when they pray. They all have endowments, and blessings, and high signs, and secret signs, and testimonies. And all the rest of it. So full of themselves you have to see it to believe it. They think they understand things. Things a woman couldn't possibly understand. But, in the end, what it comes down to is just being incredibly rude and self-centered sometimes."

With both of us naked, she led the way into the bathroom: where she adjusted the temperature of the shower while I unwrapped the tiny bar of soap the motel management had left for us.

Holding her hand under the spray, Miriam had to raise her voice a little.

"But he couldn't control everything. He made it official that I would be pregnant by the end of our honeymoon. Getting a head start on our personal kingdom. Our universe. It came as quite a shock to him that I was barren."

I wasn't sure I heard her correctly.

"Barren?"

"Barren. I can't have children. My eggs don't go to the right place."

"And did you-?"

She ruthlessly cut me off.

"I can't have children. And that's all you need to know about it."

The simple act of taking a shower together is one of the most sensible things that a couple can do: because it so quickly breaks down any kind of barrier of formality that might exist between a man and a woman. We soaped, and rinsed, and slipped a little bit, and bumped against each other in the tiny space - and she finally dissolved all of the adhesive that had been holding her hair in place: finally looking her true age, completing the transition to something like "the girl next door".

But maybe a girl next door with a persistent interest in cock, because her hands wouldn't leave mine alone the whole time we were getting wet. By the time we were finished, drying each other off, I was standing high - floating in mid-air - and just waiting for instructions.

"This is a lot different from all our other times."

"Blame it on the holiday."

She laid down on the bed, resting on her side, and patted the space on the bedspread behind her. Erection and all, I molded my front to her back.

"What's your pleasure?"

"Just for the hell of it, let's make a baby."

And she fitted word to deed: by guiding me into her vagina, where I rested for a few moments - without any motion - since I wanted to make sure we understood each other.

"No latex at all?"

"Who needs it? Every single doctor we went to - and we went to a lot of them, since Wayne wasn't taking 'no' for an answer - said exactly the same thing. No way to have children. Not Wayne's fault. All my fault. And a complete change in the way that Wayne thought of me, since there would be no legions of babies bowing to me as their celestial mother. No palaces in the Celestial Kingdom for me. All that a Mormon woman is supposed to look forward to is impossible for me. I can't even be a celestial concubine. What would be the point?"

"Except the pleasure of doing it."

"That's not part of the equation. I had a duty. Something I performed to be dutiful. Wayne never asked me if it felt good - or it felt bad. He even pretended that he didn't care if it felt good, or bad, for him. We were supposed to be fruitful and multiply. The fact that it felt good for him - most of the time - was just a happy accident."

"But this situation is different, right? I'm supposed to be encouraging repeat business."

One of the advantages of the position she had chosen was that I could encircle her upper body with one arm - stroking her nipples - and even turning her slightly so I could suck on the nearest one - while, at the same time, I had the other hand free to lightly stroke her clit.

Even though the position didn't offer a wide range of motion for thrusting, it meant that I held her in a total embrace. Which she seemed to like.

"It would be perfect to sleep this way."

"But I've got to have a way to finish. A guy can't stay hard forever."

"Aren't there some kinds of yoga that talk about that? Sex for hours, and hours, and hours?"

"Sounds a little boring. If you do it right, 7 minutes should be plenty. Then you have time skin-to-skin - which you can have that as long as you like. And then you have secrets. Which is really what women seem to want."

"We do want your secrets. It's so hard to get you to tell us what they are. We want you to close the distance, but all you do is fight us."

She brought her hand up to my head: pushing it forward so she could kiss me (something I couldn't have imagined her doing before she did it). I couldn't have imagined her being affectionate, or tender - and that night with her, on Christmas, was my introduction to that more accessible side of her.

She sighed.

"This feels good. Finally, I'm getting what everybody else has been getting."

I wanted to make very sure that she was getting what the others were getting, so I applied myself a little bit, and - soon - her breathing started to change.

"Hold me tighter."

She intertwined one leg with mine, to get some resistance, and she was crying out - short, intense syllables - when she climaxed the second time...before falling back into my arms.

There was a little more kissing, but - by now - the session had gone on so long without a result on my side that I felt like I was being mildly tortured.

I kissed her ear - then nibbled it a little.

"I need to finish."

"I'm open to suggestions."

"Let me see your ass when I finish."

"Full circle, huh?"

"What?"

"Full circle from the conference room."

"If you want to think about it that way."

There would have been several ways to accomplish my goal: but she admired the novelty of being on top, for a change, so she threw a leg over as I lay on my back, and mounted me: facing away.

I had to caution her.

"Don't get too dramatic. It's easy to pop out in this position."

She took my advice, and exercised some restraint, but the visuals were so inspiring - her naked back above, her shivering buttocks below - that I finished almost a minute before she shuddered to the top for a third time, her finger manipulating the magical place just above my cock.

She pretty much fell off me after that, and we lay apart for a few minutes: just listening to the sound of our own breathing.

She had another point of information for me.

"I'm not much of a cuddler in bed."

"Neither am I."

"And so Christmas comes to an end. I'm sure I'll remember this one."

END OF CHAPTER NINETEEN