His chest felt so tight he could barely breathe. “In a minute, I’ll lose it…”
“Yeah?” She didn’t sound convinced. She brought her thumb and forefinger together, and slid the ring slowly up and down, the pre-come pouring now. There was so much anyone would have thought his penis had been drenched in baby oil. “Relax, you’re just nervous. Look, the barmaid’s going back for ice!”
Flood didn’t even bother to look.
“I know you’re gonna come, I know you are,” she insisted. “Get it. Come all over my hand…”
Flood kept his eyes closed. This was another oddity—his erections never lasted this long, save for last night during the beating. But there was no beating here, no violence, just perfect, unselfish lust. Perhaps his affliction was wearing off after so many years. Oh, God, I can only hope… If the Devil was sitting on the next stool, Flood knew he’d sell his soul just to come.
Her strokes quickened. Flood filled his mind with images of her: her hairless pussy in his face, his cock sliding between the consummate tits. He imagined the taste of her as his tongue spun circles over the clitoral nugget. He could imagine her own tongue cradling the back of each testicle like a spoon cradling an egg.
“Get it, get it. Let it all come out…”
Then the image ruptured. It wasn’t his cock anymore on the verge of eruption. It was some other man’s. And it was Felicity’s hand, not Carol’s, and Felicity’s voice maintaining the secret whisper, “Get it, get it, shoot it…”
Flood’s erection died in her hand to total limpness.
She pulled her hand out, perplexed. After some silence, she said, “What happened? Was I doing it wrong?”
“No,” his voice crunched like gravel being walked on. He regained his breath, humiliated. “What did you say earlier—your rates, I mean. Was it five hundred for an hour?”
“Yeah, but…I can’t charge you anything for that. I wouldn’t feel right.”
At least she’s got some real character in there somewhere, he thought. “No, I mean now.” He glanced to make sure the barmaid was out of earshot. “I’ll give you five hundred right now, just to listen to me. I just want to talk.”
Before she could agree, he slipped five bills from his wallet and handed them to her beneath the counter.
“Wow, I—”
It was a lark, Flood knew. But what the hell? The only person he’d ever talked to about this was Dr. Untermann. Back in Seattle, and Seattle was a long way away.
“I want to tell you about this problem I have,” he began.
“Okay. Sometimes it’s good to talk about a problem with someone you don’t know, and someone you’ll probably never see again. It feels better afterwards, and sometimes a different perspective helps. An anonymous one. You can talk without worrying about what the other person might think of you.”
“Yes,” Flood said. “I’m hoping so, anyway. And I’ll try not to bore you.” Then he began: “I have a sexual dysfunction which my psychiatrist charmingly refers to as a thematic-erotic inversion with ejaculatory incompetence and sequent erectile failure. How’s that for a diagnosis?”
“It’s a mouthful, all right.” She popped a shrimp in her mouth, then whispered, “But they have stuff for that now.” Then she held up her wrist purse. “If you need a Viagra, I’ve got ‘em.”
“It doesn’t work, none of that does.” He tapped his temple. “It’s all psychological. It’s like a toggle-switch in my brain. When I’m with woman, and it gets past a certain point, that sexual switch gets turned off, by a single image, a single memory.”
“What memory?”
“My ex-wife. Even after three years, it’s like sabotage.”
“Do you still love her?”
“Yes, and I know that’s ridiculous and illogical. She ruined me—lied, cheated, stole, and left me—but after all that, I know deep down, I’d take her back without thinking twice.”
“Why?”
He gave an honest shrug. “Because she was the best sex of my life, and now I can never have that again. My psyche’s still obsessed with her; it’s not even a conscious thing, at least that’s what my therapist has told me. And I believe it. What else can I believe?” Flood’s eyes panned over the nearly nude breasts and pubis, all that erotic flesh showing through the net—one of the most erotic images of his life. His penis—and his heart—felt like dead meat. “It’s like I’m being haunted,” he dragged on, lowering his voice. “It doesn’t matter what the circumstance is sexually. Whenever I’m with a woman, right at the moment before I’d…come…I lose my erection, and…no orgasm. As if, right then, right at the moment of my pleasure, the woman I’m with becomes my ex-wife, and all that anger and negativity shoots right into my head, and kills all sexual function.”
Carol’s eyes blinked as she thought. “Okay, so…what about…”
“Masturbation? Same thing. Whatever image is in my head…while I’m doing it—whatever beautiful, stimulating woman— changes into her. Felicity.”
“Maybe there’s something you don’t really know about yourself,” she suggested. “Have you tried to get it on with guys?”
Flood winced, shaking his head. “No, no, no. I’ve never been attracted to men, never.”
“What about porn?”
“Tried it, doesn’t work. Oh, I’ll get hard, I’ll get excited, but—”
“Right before you’d get off, you lose it.”
“Yes,” he groaned. His heart had picked up while he’d been telling her, his blood-pressure shooting up. Any reference to Felicity did that, it put him in a state of subdued terror. “Porn, call girls, oils, lubes, herbs, oysters, prescription drugs, even penis-pumps—” He was beginning to blush—“I’ve tried it all, and it all fails. That toggle gets turned off. Then—nothing.”
More contemplation. She’d replaced her hand on his thigh, ran her tongue over her bottom lip as she thought. “Well, now that you’ve talked about it to someone else, maybe that unplugged the toggle. Let’s try…” Her eyes darted off. Now the barmaid was conversing with a bus boy at the other end of the bar, chattering away. Before he could look back to Carol, her face was in his lap, his waistband hauled down. She suckled his balls in her mouth, one at a time, then slipped the deflated penis past her lips. She worked the limp meat like a milking-machine nozzle on a cow teat. When turgidity requited, the action became more dainty, her tongue-tip running slow, excruciating lines up and down the shaft, tracing the veins. She even seemed earnest when she stopped a moment and whispered, “Don’t let her come into your head. Think about me,” and then she commenced with what he could only guess was the finest act of fellatio ever performed in the history of human sexuality.
His mind felt squashed with images of her, and just when he would fill her mouth with the horrendous back-pressure of sperm—
Felicity fell into his head like a guillotine blade; an instant later, his penis was a tiny and pathetic strip of nerveless meat.
There was nothing to say, yet she smiled just the same and offered, “Jake, whatever this problem is of yours, I know you’ll get over it in time.”
Flood doubted it but he nodded anyway. He ordered another round of drinks in silence while she patted his thigh in a lost condolence. “And when you do get over it,” she continued, “find that card, fly back here, and call me.”
“I will,” he said uselessly. Now it was all gone, any rapport that had been there previously. He drained half his beer in one slug, trying to think of small-talk, but a sudden encroacher saved him:
“Hi, guys!”
An unseen arm was around him, and what felt like a very firm and very large breast pressed against his back.