The Gay Commie Muzzies had heard the speech before and they knew exactly how to reply: “Long live the empire! Long may we suck her!” Their slogan became a chant and their chant, accompanied by someone playing a snare drum in a military march, became a song. The drum then went silent and another member took up the guitar, playing the Marche Funèbre by Chopin.
I looked at Ali Ansari. He had moved off to a corner of the basement, near the bathroom. He winked at me with a cloth in his hand and gestured for me to follow him inside. He said he wanted to play a game with me. I trembled and followed. After his speech, I wanted nothing more than to please him.
The bathroom was dark, lit only by a flashing strobe light. The mirror had been scratched up and had black paint thrown over it. The window was boarded shut, though I could hear the screechy scraping of a windblown branch. The toilet had been duct-taped shut and resembled an iron throne. The unused duct tape sat on top of the seat.
The most obvious modification was the bathtub. There was a long, inclined wooden board over it. Ali Ansari grabbed the duct tape and handed it to me. With his mouth near my ear, in a whisper, he instructed me to tie up his wrists. I obeyed him without thinking, making three turns around. Next he had me duct-tape around his chest, pinning his shoulders to his sides. The first time around I was too limp with the tape and he pecked me on the cheek and told me to do it harder, stronger. I accepted his challenge and, with one arm around his torso and arms, wrapped him so hard that he needed to take multiple long breaths to adjust his breathing.
Once he was tied up he walked over to the wooden board and laid upon it. He put his feet on the elevated side. Between deep and steadying breaths he told me what needed to be done and how to do it. I told him I wouldn’t be able to do what he wanted. But he looked at me with pleading eyes. Said he needed it. It was his only drug. When I demurred further he told me that this was a prerequisite to joining the Gay Commie Muzzies. If I wanted to stay I had to perform. I had to serve.
I placed the cloth over his forehead and ears. I took a watering can sitting on the ground, filled it up, drenched the cloth, then lowered it until it covered his nose and mouth. Per his earlier instructions, I applied a little pressure to the cloth so it went into his mouth, and counted to fifteen. During those fifteen seconds I continued pouring water onto his head from the can. Around the tenth second Ansari’s feet started twitching. Around the fifteenth second a grotesque gurgling sound came from his throat and he started maniacally shaking his head and twisting his body, trying to remove the cloth, trying to make the water stop. I was unprepared for the violence of his movement and dropped the can. The cessation of the water allowed Ali Ansari to get his bearings and he wriggled out from under me, sitting upright, gasping, laughing, crying, wheezing, mewling. He opened his eyes big and blinked as if in a daze, then coughed. He pointed to a pair of scissors sitting on the windowsill and had me cut him loose.
When he was free he took a deep and steadying breath and put his head on my stomach, kissing it feverishly, telling me I was welcome, telling me we had shared something special, telling me that I would never again be alone. I held his head against my body. I wanted to fit him inside me, so he could live within me, so he could teach me how to survive a drowning.
* * *
No one had noticed our absence and when we came into the basement, we were quickly swallowed by a group about to start a video game marathon. There was something wrong with the console, however, and Ali had to wade behind the trolley to untangle the cords.
Tot took our separation to sidle up close to me. “Hey, bro, you want to hear about the Divine Cunt?”
“The what?”
“The Divine Cunt,” Ali called out. “Yes, Tot, tell him all about it.”
Tot adjusted his turban. “I want to talk to you about the relationship of the phallus to the vagina. You see, the purpose of the penis is to penetrate and the purpose of the vagina is to receive. Right? This seems straightforward. But what happens when we take this question into the realm of rape, into the realm of consent? My view is that it means that rape isn’t real, rape doesn’t exist. You see, since it’s the vagina’s inherent characteristic to get wet in order to receive the penis, it doesn’t matter whether consent has been established or not. The vagina will get wet even if it is entered in a state of aggression. In fact, it will get wetter the more insistently the cock enters it. Are you following?”
My face twisted. “That is a juvenile opinion and a medical falsehood. Sex is about love. Not aggression.”
Tot tittered in Ali’s direction. “What if I told you I can make a whole theory of love from this? It goes like this: Since a vagina gets wet even when the penis enters without consent, it means that women are the most merciful and forgiving creatures in the universe. It stands to follow that God, who is the height of mercy and forgiveness, must be a woman as well. In other words, God is the Divine Cunt, the place of absolute warmth and unquestioning moisture.”
“Divine Cunt!” some members of GCM shouted from a distance.
Tot ignored them and continued, pulling Farkhunda by the hair toward his groin. “Now if God is the Divine Cunt, that makes God the woman. We humans in our wickedness and selfishness are the equivalent of the male. We are the penis. We penetrate. We do these nonconsensual things. But the Divine Cunt gets wet no matter what we do. Wetness is forgiveness. It is salvation. It is woman. It is love.”
“That’s self-serving, if you ask me,” I said.
“You think I’m just talking shit?”
I turned to Ali, pleading with my eyes to start the game. But he wasn’t finished subjecting me to Tot’s treatment. Even Farkhunda took longer breaks to look up at him.
“Well, it’s not shit, bro,” Tot declared. “This thing I am telling you explains everything in the world. Down to September 11.”
“This I would like to hear,” I said.
“Well, it’s pretty simple. I posted it on my blog if you want to read about it. But basically it goes like this: Most people that evaluate September 11 think of the two towers as America’s phallus and the two planes that knocked them out as a kind of blade that emasculated America. Now all America can do is to arm up and go out into the world to try to recover its lost masculinity by engaging in all sorts of violence.”
“That makes sense to me,” I said.
“Total nonsense,” Tot offered. “Those two airplanes in New York, they are the phallus. The two towers, standing right next to one another, a few yards apart, are like the vaginal lips of America. The penis forced itself in between the lips. It was not emasculation. It was sex. America has just been the recipient of thorough intercourse. One that it enjoyed!”
“If America liked it so much,” I replied, “why did it make plans to go out and bomb everyone and their mother back to the Stone Age?”
“Because America wants more,” Tot said. “After centuries of watching the Muslims of the world fornicating with Europeans, America was finally probed, and it liked how it felt to be the object of desire, the woman. It liked it. The only way to get more was to take off the chastity belt and go out among the rapists. That is why America will go into one Muslim country after another. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Iraq. Yemen. America is like that virginal girl who becomes a nymphomaniac after she’s taken by force for the first time. Kind of like Farkhunda here. Everything America does from here on out will lead to exacerbating this conflict. If America was really serious about avoiding violence, it would shutter up and shut up. But what it wants is more of what transpired. More intercourse. Through the lack of consent, a consent has been established. Isn’t that right, baby?”