As the months rolled by I remained impressed. By the ingenuity of the fantasies (the black man tying up the white husband with his necktie and riding the wife to fruition two inches from the husband's nose). By the sheer kinkiness (the husband who arranged to sniff his girlfriend's feet while she was fellating other fellows). Like reading Voltaire or Nabokov, it enlarged my sense of the possible. From my dubious perch outside America's bedroom window, I found myself in a position to be able to monitor national trends. I was astounded by the amount of sheer animal sensuality that was abroad in the land: the hot summer air caressing the bikers riding to an assignation, the sexualization of the cigarettes they smoked afterwards ( She rolled her cigarette around that pouty wet mouth of hers like it was a small erect cock). The ayatollahs were right: We were a shamelessly sensual culture. Brawny, lunatic, infantile and brave: By evidence of these letters, America was a force of nature.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Did it get old? Hell, what doesn't? Abetting the process were repeated phone calls during dinner telling me I had "trespassed considerably."

"How do you mean?"

"It's close-trimmed pussy, Daniel. With a hyphen! Whenever you have two adjectives describing something, you have to hyphenate."

My wife passed the jar of strained pears for me to open. "I'll try to remember, Chastity."

"Please do. And 'S&M' has an ampersand. Haven't you memorized the style sheet yet?"

Problem was, I had it too memorized. I went over the rules in my sleep. "G-spot" was always capitalized. "Cocksucker" was one word, but "cock-tease" was a hyphenate. "Ass-cheeks" was hyphenated, but "asshole" was not. Mine was not to question why. Mine was to see if I could get health benefits.

My computer was also acting up, auto-correcting such words as "cumputer." The evidence was mounting that I had polluted my hard drive, and this the machine upon which I transposed my fears and dreams. It felt a little like I'd lent my high school sweetheart out to a motorcycle gang for the weekend. Nor was my grammar immune. At a black tie dinner party, I heard myself say "suck on" instead of "suck." When talking to the lady at 411, I was adding and subtracting commas inappropriately (What is, the number, of Richard Spunk please?).

But much worse than this, much, much, much worse, was the fact that I was no longer aroused by the pinups in Joystick. I would glance at a cover girl and see with the curse of clarity that she was just a heavily made-up dropout pushing her sun-freckled boobs together rather pitifully. My eyes were beginning to glaze over, just as Green had warned. I would stare at a video capture of a dirty movie in the review section and think, "Is his face covered in pussy juice or covered with pussy juice?"

- - - - - - - - - - - -

"Morning, Chastity, how're tricks?"

"Everything's fine, except we're letting go of all freelance copy editors ..."

A thrill went through me that was almost sexual. To be fired by Chastity: Here was a sadomasochistic buzz that was almost a category by itself: Cut Off by Editrix (she was strangulating my income and I was staring into her sea-green eyes ... she hoisted me in chains above my creditors as I sputtered my innocence ... ).

"Fired, Chastity! Was it something I said? Was it something I didn't say?"

"Well, to tell the truth, all you copy editors were getting a little literary there."

"Literary?"

"Peripeteia. Onomatopoeia, up the wazoo. Whatever. It was like you couldn't control yourselves."

"I guess this means you won't be paying those chiropractic bills I forwarded, huh?"

"Pretty definitively not, I'm afraid ..."

So I was history. And just when Canada was loosening up, too. The day I got my walking papers I also received a bulletin from the Canadian Customs Department revising "the administrative guidelines contained in Memorandum D9-1-1 elucidating Tariff Code 9956 with respect to the provisions dealing with anal penetration." Butt-surfing, in other words, was at last OK by the Canadians.

Too late for me. Dudley Do-Right could force-feed it to Chastity, for all I cared. The kid came out of extended day care. The new kid arrived on the scene, doubtless armed with enough prenatal X-vibes to scandalize his future shrink. Style sheet in hand, stained ascot in place, my wife and I ventured back to the nuptial bed where -- a happy ending for you, and a good night to all -- we proceeded to hyphenate like bunnies.

Recent Stories