Mojo - 36. Chapter 33: An Abject Low

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Chapter 33: An Abject Low

“You. Did. What…?”

I held up the five one-hundred-dollar bills; they’d become moist lying on the blanket under the almond trees. “Half-a-grand, honey….”

“Geeze. Un-fucking believable.”

Despite my husband’s shock and anger, I couldn’t help but notice how cute he looked in his elotes uniform. The desert twilight, enveloping Crotones as the fiesta mellowed into an outdoor drinking symposium, bathed my boy and me in the room of our third-story posada. The town leaders had put us all up in a three-hundred-year-old hostel in the center of the city.

“Look”—I tried a reasoning snicker on for size—“no point in getting yourself railed up. It was a flop encounter anyway. And. I’m sorry….”

He paced the room, nearly glowing ghostlike as Gordon silhouetted his profile against the light of the open window. “It’s don’t get riled up; riled.”

“So it’s ‘run out of town on a rile’…?”

“No. Run out of town on a rail.”

I blinked. “Same thing, right? Or close enough.”

“It’s not.” He sighed. “Even what we perceive of as small differences matter.”

“Um—”

“It’s like this. So, a cop pulls over a driver. ‘Sir, you failed to come to a complete stop at that stop-sign back there.’ Driver laughs. ‘Big deal, officer. I slowed down, didn’t I? A slow-down is as good as a stop.’ The cop starts punching the man’s shoulder as hard and as fast as he can. Man says ‘Owww! Quit it!’ Cop says ‘Now, you want me to stop, or just slow down?’”

I chuckled. “Cute story, babe.”

“Oh, my God.” The frustration got the better of him. He placed hands on his chino-clad waist and strode up to me. His beautiful brown eyes were so full of hurt, I had to look down.

He lifted up my hand with the cash. “Kohl, what the fuck. We don’t need money in this place, and we shouldn’t be hustling out in the open in such a small town. You’re exposing us to danger.”

A part of me knew he was right. My boy – my wonderful man, my spouse – had always been much smarter than me. “Um—”

“Don’t give me any more bullshit. I need to know what you are thinking.”

I blurted in a well-rehearsed stream: “You’re right. It was for more than cash. I needed to see if the god cursed my dick for women too. I want to ‘prove’ myself, and maybe Priapus will allow it to work when—” My tirade had slowed with every single word until it came to an abrupt stop. The withering look of ‘cut the crap’ in Gordon’s eyes made me hesitate.

“Kohl—”

“It worked on Doris! I was just wanting to see if Estallida could give…yours truly a”—I had the distinct displeasure of realizing I was saying way too much—“blowjob, like on Catalina…behind Lloyd’s house.”

He let go of my hand. Back to pacing, he exclaimed to the exposed rafters, “Unbelievable.”

“But, I did. She was able to—”

“Kohl.” There were nearly tears in his voice. “Let’s be truthful with one another. For God’s sake – the real, absolute truth.”

“I don’t know what you mean, honey.”

“I mean, for example, there is no way in hell Alcibiades rose a virgin from the philosopher’s bed, despite all the fake-ass whitewashing, and moralizing, and using it as an example of a bull-shit purity that does not exist.”

“I get it. But, I told you my—”

“Spare me the diatribe of ‘your truth,’ the one you’ve made up in your mind to make you comfortable – like Socrates’ supposed lack of a sex-drive. So, I’m asking you one more time to not give me the sanitized ‘truth,’ but to give me the real stuff and tell me what’s going on.”

I sighed, hearing him completely and giving up my embarrassment. “Gordon, I wonder what part of me is still a man. Without that part of me, how much of me is real…? I’m desperate.”

He lifted my chin to face him; the light framed the back of his head like a halo. “Being a man, Kohl, doesn’t mean, isn’t defined by sleeping with a woman. It’s shown by being a faithful person to the one you love. To the one who loves you – who has given up everything to be with you.” He started to cry, but his tears of rebuke were angry ones. “How right is it that you walk around, accusing me all the time of being a slut, when you’re the only one with real faithlessness in your heart?”

“Gordon—”

“No. No!” He regulated his thoughts and took a step back. Wiping his tears, he said plainly, “You wanna be a man, then let your husband fuck you. I need that connection too, Kohl, or maybe there is no you and me anymore. You won’t let me love you all the way, and yet you pimp your ass to some random woman! That’s disgusting. It makes you gross.”

Internally, I agreed. I felt utterly disgraceful.

Our door suddenly burst open. Behind it was female laughter; Cáliza and Squiffy sauntered in, the perfect picture of relaxed familiarity.

“This is not a good time,” I told them.

Ignoring me, and only smiling more broadly, both approached us. Squiffy held up the maid’s hand. In it, a plastic baggie held half a dozen little blue-green pills. It was the first time I’d seen a genuine expression on the TV cook’s face; a happy one.

“What’s that?” Gordon asked tersely.

“La mosca española.”

I asked Cáliza, “What?”

“The Spanish fly, my boy!” Wellington was so excited, he was ready to burst. “Here it is at long last.”

“El Señor Esquiffy is right. This is the real estuff.” She opened the bag and displayed two of the encapsulated aphrodisiacs in the palm of her hand, telling me, “You must take it and wait twelve hours. Get a good esleep for it to take effect.”

My husband asked, “What is she talking about, Kohl?”

The maid copped a businesslike scowl for Gordon. “My mistress has already epaid and esspects eperformance in es-change.”

Gordon turned to me, more anger flaring. “You agreed to see her again?!”

“Oh…” I stammered, and then smiled. “Didn’t I mention that…?”

Cáliza said, “Have esex with her or epay back double the money. That’s what you esaid.”

“Steady on,” Squiffy said in my defense.

“No!” exclaimed Estallida’s servant. “It’s eput up, or eshut up time.”

Gordon talked reason to Cáliza. “We’ll get you the money. Kohl, give back the five hundred now.”

I hesitated, fingering the dirty wad of lucre still in my south paw. Glancing at my man, tragically, for just the briefest of moments, I lunged for the pills in Cáliza’s palm with my right hand. A split second later, they were traveling down my throat with an unpleasant burning sensation…. Because…I had swallowed them….

I couldn’t look my Gordon in the eyes.

˚˚˚˚˚

The next morning found me determined to make my re-scheduled attempt with Estallida a success. In my hand was a piece of paper Cáliza had given me. I checked the address again for the hundredth time looking for the place of my rendezvous. The house numbers were actually house names in Spanish: Casa cuerno de rinoceronte; Casa bulbo de orquídea; Casa filtro muscari.

The sounds of the third day of the fiesta drifted to my ears. It seemed uncomfortable reminder of how mad my husband had been last night, but he was made even more so when I kicked him out of bed, explaining that I was worried the fly would kick in all of a sudden. I didn’t want his errant tickling of my side undercover to sap my strength, if indeed any had returned. I felt I had to prove myself, thready pulse and pounding headache be damned.

At last, I turned the corner and found the Casa de las ostras. Cáliza met me there with a wicked grin.

“How is El Señor Pena today? The mosca help?” She glanced down suspiciously at my fly.

I shrugged. “It feels, tingly,” I said, but then so did the rest of me.

The maid took us to a darkened room with no windows and only one door. All the walls were draped in pleated black fabric; a single bare bulb hung from the ceiling.

She sat me at a little table. On it were strange things to eat: a jar of honey still oozing from the comb; a plate of oysters; sliced avocado; figs stuffed with hunks of chocolate; watermelon; and most strangely of all, a bowl of red-hot chili peppers.

Cáliza poured me a shot of tequila. I downed the glass, becoming aware of the maid putting something on my wrist. It was a broad leather cuff with sturdy stainless-steel rings.

She poured me another, and I drank it while she did up my other wrist.

Cáliza pointed to a stack of clothes. “Eput those on.” She left.

I stood and discovered the term ‘clothes’ had been generous. All that was included was a pair of ankle cuffs, a leather harness and a pair of cod-less short-shorts.

Dressing in the ensemble, I tried to stay focused on my agenda, but afterwards, felt funny about my dangly bits dangling out in the fresh air. I pulled my boxers on top of the fetish-dudgeon lederhosen.

There was a sound behind me; Estallida. “Well – my deedless dandy, my featherless cock, my smothered flame – have you brought all of yourself to play with today?”

The woman was in a black spandex one-piece: long sleeves, but cut low in front. The floor clicked beneath her knee-high stiletto boots, strapped with a half-dozen buckles, each. For accessories, a silver and turquoise belt hung loosely about her slender waist and broad hips. Around her neck was a string of black pearls.

I chuckled. “Do the best of your work, señora. Don’t ask me to tell; rather give me a try for yourself.”

In truth, the charm of this seductress I’d felt under the almond blossoms was greatly diminished in this dingy sex vault.

‘Stay focused,’ I reminded myself.

She picked up something from a bench. “Be careful what you wish for. Present your neck.”

Gulp.

I did, and the matron placed a studded leather collar on me; a chain was attached, and she maintained a firm grip on my leash.

She tugged it and drew me backwards to the wall.

“Um—”

She lifted one of my hands, and clipped the cuff to an iron ring revealed beneath the wall-fabric.

“Um…. Maybe—”

“Do you believe in fate, Kohl?”

I couldn’t answer; couldn’t think. I simply watched her as she attached my other wrist to the wall.

“Um—”

Estallida laughed sharply and clapped her hands.

Cáliza entered pushing a rattling medical cart. On it were ‘toys’ of the most non-innocent type: clothespins; a leather flogger; dick cages; a dildo chastity belt; an e-stim apparatus with dangly wires and sticky pads for the skin. However, most sobering of all was down below, for taking up the entire bottom shelf was a bullwhip coiled like the devil himself around the tree of knowledge on the day of Creation. It lay in wait for its mistress to unwind and use its multi-forked tongue on Man – on me!

“Um. This is not what I had in mind. You can let me go now—”

“¡Silencio!” Estallida screeched in full dominatrix mode.

The women bent down and attached a wooden bar between my ankles, clipping it in place and making my stance uncomfortably wide and helpless.

Estallida then picked up a huge pair of scissors, like the kind used to shear bolts of tailoring fabric.

I didn’t want to look as she strode up to me, but tugged my chain hard and forced my head down to her task. “Don’t….”

I felt the frigid bite of metal against my inner thigh. She cut away my drawers.

She stepped away, leaving me relieved but also as cold as Greenland in spring down there.

“Let me go. This is not the way to rouse yours truly.”

“No? This is the way normal men get turned on, when an estrong woman takes control.”

Gulp.

‘If so, then those poor straight buggers,’ I thought.

Funny thing was, this woman – who in dappled sunlight rose ‘magic’ enchantment in me – now became a bruja of horrifying ordinariness. She was older and more wrinkled than I let myself see in the beginning. This was no Doris II; Estallida was the kind of girl a guy marries in the blindness of lust, and then gets home only to discover the girl’s mother has moved into his bed.

She came up to me, applied her lips to mine and aggressively pushed her tongue in my mouth. I again had flashes of Prussia projected on the back of my closed eyelids, but they didn’t help!

Estallida’s hands were like potato mashers against my chest, tummy and thighs. The fury of her sloppy smooches became vacuum-like and robbed me of air. I grew light-headed.

At long last, foreplay at an end and me gasping, her palm laid on my noodle, which was as flaccid as any Republican’s moral stance.

The woman was furious. She stood back, akimbo, and berated me. ”¡Puto! You esissy man – or half an esissy man! You disgust me, faggot.”

Cáliza took her mistress’ hate-speech hard.

Through welling feelings of anger and self-loathing, I held Estallida’s stare. “You’re right. When I agreed to try and have sex with a woman, it’s about the gayest thing I ever did in my life! So excuse me, Hautia. If I can’t get it up for a harpy slut, it’s because I’ve hurt the one I love to even try to fuck a publicly traded commodity like you!”

The woman was stunned, grumbling: “¡…el puto malo…!”

Estallida picked up the cat-o-nine-tails with slow deliberation, stroking the long tendrils of punishment. Each leather strip was tipped with a cruel-looking metal stud – a pointy cone facing up, and flat metal rivet on the back.

She struck me. The stainless steel dug into the flesh of my lower back on the left side, and then raked forward to the searing stripes she had just raised on my tummy.

She went at me again, this time doing the same motion, but breaking the skin over my right kidney.

I wanted to flinch, become angry at the injustice, but I couldn’t.

Instead, as Estallida grew more reproving with each flog and hit me harder and harder, I glanced up and held my tongue and tears. In my mind’s eye, I saw my Gordon doing this to me, and accepted every bitter lash as a mild form of retribution, considering all the pain I’d put him through.

The woman’s breathing resounded with exertion as she cracked me the hardest yet. She’d moved lower and hit my upper thighs and backside.

Cáliza looked distressed now and cleared her throat. Her glance to Estallida caused me to hold my tormentor’s eyes as well.

The boss-lady appeared furious. “Why don’t you cry, puto! Why don’t you act faggotty, whine and whimper like all the rest of your kind and beg for me to stop? You think you some kind of man and can take it!!”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, knowing I was not going to snivel for the likes of her: a stranger, a meaningless nobody to me or my story. Nevertheless, I did tell her the truth. “Do your worst. My penance is not you, but to my beloved husband. Whatever misery you cause me, I know I hurt him worse.”

“All right,” Estallida said like cracking ice. “You want to hurt worse, I can help you with that.” She frowned towards the bullwhip, letting the bloodied flogger drop to the floor by her stiletto boots.

Cáliza arrested her employer’s motion to the cart. “Enough, señora. You knew he was a-gay right from the beginning, so just let him go.”

Estallida, more incensed that ever, made a clicking sound with her mouth and bent to pick up the whip anyway.

Cáliza immediately snatched it out of the other woman’s grip. “I esaid no! This low-aclass man whore is epunished enough. Now, let him go.” She curled up the leather snake and hid it behind her back.

The dominatrix retorted sarcastically: “Want me to let him go…. How about this, eh, Cáliza…? I let you both go. Get out. You’re fired!”

Estallida plodded out of the room, her heels sounding loudly on the hard floor. At the door, she paused and shouted at the top of her lungs for more servants.

Cáliza quickly undid me, but not before four burley men of the casa pounced and dragged us to the front door.

A horrible thump later, we were lying in the middle of the street, and one of the men dumped my clothes into the muddy gutter.

Still in the fetish gear, bruised, bloody and nearly naked, the passersby howled with laughter while I crawled over the unforgiving cobbles to find my trousers.

˚˚˚˚˚

An hour later, the sounds of the town’s fiesta still drifting in through the window, I was back in our room alone to lick my wounds, both physical and those to my stupid ego. I tried to drive the repulsive notion out of my head that this is how poor straight bastards feel every time they have to debase their pure manly energy just to copulate with a female. It was enough to make me shudder, so I did.

Once thrown out of the Casa de las ostras, a tearful Cáliza moved off mumbling something about the washed-up TV host; I didn’t pay too much attention, for she was gone quickly. And hurriedly was the way I had to dress in the middle of the street too – just slamming my clothes over Estallida’s bondage outfit. Then I ran as best I could to our inn barefoot.

At the front desk, the woman seemed concerned, pointing to her cheek, so I guessed there was a cut on mine. I told her I was sick and asked everyone to stay away.

“¿El Señor Grayson también?”

“¡Sí! Especially him….” I ran away before I started bawling from shame.

An hour ago, I had wiped the blood off the nick on my cheek, and stripped to finally be rid of the woman’s restraints. I saw plenty of bruises starting on my body, and was relieved to think they, like my internal anguish, would be easy enough to cover.

Now I sat on the floor, wearing a set of sweatpants and a tee-shirt, and gaping mindlessly out the window to the desert-blue sky.

The weirdest notion yet entered by beleaguered brain; I scrambled to my knees, folding hands together, and casting meek eyes to the all-seeing ether, prayed:

“Oh, you – powerful god – if it was faith

You sought to drive home in my heartbeat,

I humbly beseech you to hear my plea.

Priapus – delight of Bacchus and Nymphs,

Still secretly adored in wooded places

Where your power has never been questioned

By the mistrusting minds of modern man –

Great Blue One, lend attentive ears to me,

For though nothing about me is sinless,

You have feebled me, drove me as exile,

For an affront I did not mean to give,

And are not the ignorant meant to be shown

A loving leniency once the lesson

Is taught, and the supplicant shows remorse?

Such a one am I. Debasement now beats

Throughout the shambles left of my being,

And yet, I cling to hope for one reason;

That the joy so long delayed between me,

And the boy who so patiently endures,

Will be rewarded in ultimate bliss.

For that reason, not for my own selfish

Outcome in this miserable twilight

Of being only half a shell of a man,

I say: ‘Do your worst, but after, forgive.

The only hope of Man is that our gods

Are more absolving and perfect than we.’”

 

Settling back on my haunches, I began to feel angry. What injustice never leads to frustration and spite? Where’s reason now if by complaining we ease our discomfort – but do the blind curse their feet; do the lame, their eyes? Do actors on stage cover their ears when they see a horrible sight? Do dentists speak of moral decay into their patient’s mouth; the shamster preacher of the importance of flossing to his flock? No. So why blame god when my prick is at fault; why pretend I have anything to blame other than the offending member?

I pulled down my waistband, exposing the object of my disgrace. After smacking it a few good times, I addressed it thus:

“And you, coward, who at one time

I could depend upon to stand

Suited up and armed to the teeth,

Ready to charge into battle;

You who cried courageous mottos:

‘Hold back and fire only when

The whites of the eyes you can see’;

‘Damn torpedoes, full steam ahead’;

And no divebombing Zero could

Rend the air with a more frightening

Shout of ‘Tora! Tora! Tora!’”

I beat my Benedict Arnold some more.

“But now see your disgraceful state!

How like a Sherman tank are you:

One with its gun turret pulled in;

Or like a cowardly army,

Sent into total disarray,

Retreating into the safety

Of your all-protecting ‘helmet.’

Your stiffened spine has now become

Limp macaroni, so I should

Pluck and stick a white feather in your cap,

Set you on a pony and give a slap.”

A key sounded in the door.

I quickly crawled into bed and pulled the covers up to my chin.

Gordon entered with a tray; he was in his roast-corn uniform.

He set it down, and said while closing the door, “They told me you are sick. I brought soup and some bread.”

He sat on the bed. Never was my husband’s caring nature on more annoying display.

He touched the top of my hand. “You want to eat?”

I shook my head, drawing my hand out of his grasp and placing it below cover.

Now he looked concerned and a bit of a shield appeared. “How did it go with that woman?”

Gordon must have already heard about my public humiliation. Was he just rubbing salt into the wounds?

Angry, I said, “Fine. You’ll be happy to know I could not perform—”

“Kohl. Please.”

“No. You asked. You should get the details.”

“I don’t want details.”

“Then what do you want?!” I demanded to know. “I was wanting to be left alone.”

He was silent for a while. A tear formed, which oddly only hardened my heart.

“I’ll go then—”

“Tell me one thing though.”

“Anything, Kohl. I have no secrets from you.”

“That night – the night – you ran away from yours truly to fuck around with Assauer, was he content to leave you alone, or did he take his pleasure away from you by force?”

He stood up, shocked and unhappy. As he paced, one hand was on his beltline while the other shielded his eyes in a gesture of disbelief. My inquiry had sapped all the good humor out of the boy who’d arrived so jovially.

“What exactly is it you think you are doing, Kohl? I know this can’t be easy on you, but how much do you think I can take? Look around. I’m the only one who cares enough to be in your life anymore.”

I sat up in bed, pissed off and picking road-dirt out of my nails. “Maybe it’s your devotion to me that beggars the imagination.”

“First of all, it’s ‘buggers the imagination,’ and secondly, is that your honest opinion? Really. You can’t understand why I’m here?”

I shrugged. “Does opinion really matter?”

He walked up and looked over me in bed. “Well, what I think is you’re playing a game, trying to mislay blame by acting the fool. And trust me, there’s nothing more deceitful than a ridiculous opinion.”

My silence made him stomp off. But as he was leaving, he paused in the doorway to tell me, “And by the way, to answer your question – no force was needed.”

SLAM!

Tears came. I wondered what in the hell I was doing…. Just heaping more hurt onto my boy….

I’d come to an abject low, not knowing how things could be worse, or which way to turn.

Then, in a sudden, inexplicable flash of clarity, I realized why Crotones’ spring church had always been vaguely familiar to me.

I rose out of bed, drawn by the drifting smell of good food and the sounds of fiesta music to stand by the window. Through my blinding tears, I could look across town and see sunlight glinting off the structure’s dome. From this distance, the building atop its manmade hill, I was able to recognize the place from my Priapus dream.

‘Maybe,’ I thought, as I wiped my eyes with a forearm, ‘he has been leading me to this spot the whole time.’

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