Blame It On Midnight

  Val was already at the bar when I arrived. She was sitting at a stool at the far end, gazing into a glass of Southern Comfort, swirling the fiery liquid around. She was dressed in her workout togs and her short black hair stuck sweaty to her forehead. She hadn't been there long.

     "Gimme a tall one, Al," I told the barkeep, plopping down on the stool beside her. The jukebox was all John Cougar Mellencamp, howling about
pink houses for you and pink houses for me. Two drunks hung over one of the three pool tables, cursing, missing easy shots and spilling their beers.

     "So, you
did show up," she said, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. I took a long pull on the frosty can of Bud and fired up a Marlboro.

     "I said I would, didn't I? Don't I
always do what I say I'll do?"

     "Why do you always answer a question with a question?" she asked in an irritated tone.

     "I don't, you didn't ask a question," I replied. "You seemed to express surprised that I had showed up in a rhetorical fashion."

     She grinned then. "Don't try to snow me with fancy talk. And I am surprised, sort of...After the last time, figured that was that."

     The juke changed configurations. It was time to blame it on midnight, shame, shame on the moon. I hummed a few bars, wishing I were Rodney Crowell, wishing I could write a song like that. Wishing, maybe, that I could fuck Rosanne Cash like Crowell did.

     Val seemed to read my mind. "You could write songs like that if you'd try, make some effort," she said. "Your problem is, you don't give a damn. You get chances but you never stick with anything."

     "Well, you're partially right." I took another long draw on the can, emptied it, and motioned for another. "I certainly don't give a damn, about anything. As for the song, yeah, I might be able to do that."  I didn't bother to tell her that I'd sold my guitar for last month's rent. It would only have increased the tension.

     This seemed to be turning into a continuation of a conversation that had been going on for three years. During two of them, I had been married to Val. The third, we had remained at least semi friends, meeting every once in a while to rip one anothers guts out. She was usually better at it than I.

     "You know," she said, a melancholy tone in her voice, "I sort of miss it."

     "Miss what?"

     "Everything. All the great fun, the music, everything. . . even the arguments we used to have, all the screaming and breaking things. You shooting off guns through the ceiling, driving your pickup through the front wall. Beating my mother with that board..."

     "I apologized for that," I interrupted. "I
did get a little carried away that time."

     "Yeah, I miss that, but you know what I miss most of all?"

     "No, what?"

     "The sex. I
really miss that."

     "We had some fun, didn't we?"

     She took a big swallow of liquor. The sound it made going down caused me to think of the swallowing noise she used to make when she sucked me. Suddenly, I felt thebeginnings of a quick rise in my jeans with the memory. She was so damned good at it.

     I glanced over at her. She was staring straight ahead, an odd look on her pretty face. She had small, delicate features, almost like a porcelain doll. Her neck was long and thin, arched like some sort of arrogant swan. She was somewhat flushed now, probably a combination of the conversation and the liquor, and the color rose on her cheeks, spreading a light crimson pool around eyes green as Ireland. The clean smell of sweat swam out of her raven black hair and mixed with the faint leavings of her cologne, its effect like some sort of rutting musk to my horny nostrils. She'd been at the gym  faithfully doing her aerobics; I recalled how I used to grab the white cotton panties she'd remove after such exercise sessions and smell the sweet woman funk of her starch and sweat on the crotch, and how it always made my dick pig iron stiff.

     "I've got an idea, " I said. "Wanna hear it?"

     "What?"

     "Let's go fuck our brains out."

     She smiled, shaking her head. "I wish it was that simple," she sighed. "Just go and screw away for hours, forget everything else...Maybe if it wasn't for Ted..."

     "Fuck Ted," I retorted. I didn't like to hear about her new man. It galled me to think of another man nestled up between those slim thighs, plowing into
my nookie.

     "You probably would if you could get away with it," she giggled. "But really, I shouldn't be unfaithful to him. I would feel guilty, it wouldn't be fair."

     "You can bet your sweet ass he's not faithful to you," I shot back, a little angry. "I don't know a damned cop who doesn't screw around and your Teddy is no different!"

     She stuck her forefinger into her glass and stirred. She pulled the finger out and put it between her lips. It was one of those things she did that pissed me off so badly when wewere together. Now, it didn't bother me at all, in fact it was kind of a turn-on. Now, I probably wouldn't bitch if she drank milk out of the container like she used to.

     "Ted's
not the greatest in the sack," she said finally. "He's OK, but nothing special."

     "And I am, or was, the best you ever had?"

     "I didn't say that. But you
were good."

     "Shit, if I can't be
great, I don't want to be anything." I couldn't determined if I'd been compliment, damned with faint praise or outright insulted. She turned and looked me full in the eye.

     "OK, you were
the very best, are you happy now, " she said. "Remember how I used to call you the 'man with the golden tongue'?  I wasn't kidding  you one bit. No man has a tongue like yours."

     "I knew that," I replied. And I did, because other women had said things very similar. And I
was good at eating pussy, probably because it was something I put my heart into--not to mention a whole lot of tongue. "I'll bet that sweet little pussy of yours is getting wet just thinking about it, isn't it?" I could imagine that gleaming dew gathering in the pink folds of her pussy, little beads of nectar awaiting my lips.

     "Christ, why do you do this to me?" she asked, exasperation creeping into her voice. "Huh?"

     "What?"

     "Get me confused, get me hot," she replied. "The truth is, I'm horny as hell!  I have been for some time. "

     "Well honey, we can cure that right quick."

     She cocked her head and looked me up and down for a couple of seconds before answering.

     "What the hell, it's not like we're strangers," she said finally. "It's been too long."

****

     Had I lived in the Old West and had the mark of a real man been the ability to undress instead of slap leather, I would have been Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp rolled into one. About five seconds after entering my dump, I was butt-ass naked and crashed out on the bed. Val had one LA Gear and one legging off. She had insisted on taking a shower first, but I had insisted just as strongly that she not. I wanted to smell that sweet sweat on her neck, her tits, her pussy, wanted to taste her salt.

     "I see you're still practicing for the Olympic undressing team," she teased me. It was an old joke between us, the speed with which I could disrobe. I took a big drag on my cigarette and shook "Jackson," who had raised up in all his glory, at her.

     "Me'n Jackson wanted to get here fast so we could watch you undress," I laughed.

     "Old Jackson still seems to be all in one piece, I was wondering about that," she grinned. "I hope he has been a careful boy, hasn't picked up something?"

     "Don't worry about Jackson, he knows his business." I knew she was worried about AIDS and I was glad she didn't come right out and asked me if I'd been practicing safe sex. I'd have hated to lie to her, but I would have. A hard dick has no conscience, as they say. Jackson is even more radical; he has no conscience limber.

     Watching her undress was almost (almost) as good as fucking her. See her, I recalled all the times in the years we were together when I didn't even bother to notice things like the perfect tight swell of her ass or the way her belly rounded off to the front of her slim, muscular thighs. Watching the sweatshirt come over her head I marveled that a woman pushing thirty-three still had breast that taut and firm, the nipples coned upward, surrounded by sweet pink flesh.

     "You're fucking beautiful," I said to her. "Not simply pretty, but absolutely beautiful."

     "So, you finally noticed," she said, her cheeks going even more red as she rolled the sheet back next to me and climbed into the bed. "No need to con me, Jimmy. You'regetting what you want."

     "And so are you."

     And she did, and I did. We fucked and sucked and humped until we almost crippled one another. We went sixty-nine for at least an hour, her burying Jackson down her throat and then, in a style unlike any other, twisting her head sideways as she backed away, putting the most sensual move on my dick it had ever felt. I ran  my tongue as far up her sweet tight cunt as I could, jamming it so hard that finally the little tag of skin that attaches it to the floor of the mouth bled. We did it every way imaginable: me on top, her on top, side by side, cross-scissors, doggie-style, lap-sitting; once, we even stood up with me holding her inverted, licking between her legs while she sucked my cock upside down, her hundred pounds so light that I might as well been holding a small sack of sweet sugar. I came more times than a thirty-seven-year-old man should be able to. I have no idea how many times she got off, after a while it was like a pan of popcorn going off on a hot stove eye, one after the other.

****

     "I think we've hurt ourselves," she giggled, rubbing the sweat on my belly. I'd fetched a couple of cold beers from the frig and she lay stretched out with her head on my arm,eyeing me over the top of the can.

     "I think you've hurt me more than I have you," I said, still somewhat breathless. Three packs of smokes a day do little to enhance one's wind power, I determined.

     "Are you complaining?" she asked.

     "Hell, no! It was great."

     "Ummmm, I think so, too. In fact, I may want an...uh...encore before I leave." She grabbed a soggy and limp Jackson and gave him a playful little tug. "Maybe you could put the ring in him like you used to?"

     "He may be too sore for that," I replied.

     "Aw, c'mon, don't be a kill joy," she said. "I haven't had that in a long time. I like the way it feels inside me."

     "You didn't think it was so good the first time you saw it," I reminded her.

     "I didn't know people did things like that, at least not around here...Maybe in California or some place where everybody does weird stuff. I'll bet you're the only man in Catlow County with a pierced dick."

     "At least the only one you know about, huh?"

     "That's for damned sure!"

     "Have you been looking?"

     "You should know better than that. You know I'm not loose, I don't just screw every man who comes sniffing around. I have to feel something."

     "I know. I was just shitting you."

****

     That all happened about six months ago, and we haven't been together since. Oh, I've seen her in passing once or twice, driving by down the street, but we haven't talked.

Somebody said she was going to marry Ted the cop. Good fucking luck, lady, cops are bad news, their family lives usually turn out not very stable. But then, I didn't want to marry her again, no matter how attractive she'd become to me that last time. It was great pussy, something I'll remember for a long time.

     Nowadays, I'm fucking an unattractive girl. Not junkyard dog ugly, but someone you won't be seeing on the covers of any magazines. I'm fucking her because I don't want to fall in love again. Love just hurts too fucking much, makes too many demands on a guy.

     Besides, pussy is pussy in the dark. I can close my eyes and pretend, you see. I can fuck anyone I wish easy as pie, just clamp down the peepers and dream on. Last week, I humped Sharon Stone, Daphne Zuniga and Dana Delaney. Stone wasn't as good as I had thought she'd be, but Zuniga was a hell of a lot better, man she could work that tight little ass! Delaney, well she was OK too.

     I don't know who I'll have a go at tonight. Maybe I'll fuck Val again in my dreams, that wouldn't be bad. Hell, blame it on midnight. Shame on the moon. Maybe shame on me.

(Originally published in Bouillabaisse #4, 1994)

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