The Rubber Vagina Club (cont.)
 

Two hours later I was home.  I had called Lila at the bar, so she offered to pick me up, if for no other reason than to hear my story.

Lila and I sat in her maroon Plymouth Laser outside my building. I told her I needed to pick up my car at the bar the next day, and Lila offered to come get me. We talked about when she might return to Los Angeles. She would stay East until her mother recovered. Or until she died.

My thoughts shifted to the fake vagina in my closet; Lila's dying mother came a distant second.

"Would you like to come up?"

Lila looked at me, surprised by the invitation. She opened her lovely lips in a circle of astonishment, then recovered with an anxious smile.

She took my hand and spoke, "I have to get up early tomorrow and finish packing. But thank you."

I wasn't even looking to save myself. I wanted to be with Lila. I wanted her to want to be with me. Or, at least, I had convinced myself that I did. We kissed with light and friendly lips and I rubbed her soft, tanned skin with the bottom of my callused thumb. Divine, divine, divine, divine. Her taillights disappeared at the end of the street, two red-hot coals cooling, and then she was gone.

I ripped apart the stapled top of the paper bag and pulled out the four-color press-art box. Inside was a plastic bag that contained the vagina. No instructions.

I dumped the contents of the bag out onto my bedspread, and it lay there lifeless-bathed in the red and green light of the colored bedroom lamps.

It was a triangle-shaped piece of fleshy-looking material with the injection-molded lips of a pussy in the center leading down to a permanently clenched anus. From the back of the vagina, a foot long rubber tube flopped lengthwise on the bed. I kneeled next to the mattress and poked at it. It was soft but resilient. I put my finger in between the lips; the thing had a pretty severe grip. I smelled my finger. It reminded me of the time, as a kid, I played inside a new toy Indian tee-pee made from vinyl. Inside the tent, the odor of vinyl was overwhelming and intoxicating.

I played with the lips for a moment and, then, out of curiosity, I licked it. I shrugged at the futility of foreplay. I thought for a second, "Should I do this?" Then I realized I had gone too far to turn back, and I undressed. I used a moisturizing cream to lubricate and put a porno tape in the VCR.

Seconds later, I put myself in my fake vagina. It was stiff and barely yielded to the pressure. It almost hurt and was certainly going to rub me raw in spite of the lotion. After a while of stroking, I decided it was time to do something more conventional and I moved to a missionary position. I let all of my weight fall on the device so that it wouldn't move while I went in and out of it.

It felt.real. Not quite as warm, not quite as soft, but very, very close. I suddenly was overcome with energy and I fucked it mercilessly. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. A half-hour. Finally after 45 minutes, different positions, and fantasizing about old girlfriends I began to realize that I wasn't going to finish. This bothered me. I didn't want to have to develop a relationship with my rubber vagina just to get off. Sweaty and defeated, I rolled off. I lay there in the blue glow of the television for hours. Or maybe minutes.

The phone rang. I got under the covers and answered it afraid that it might be the rubber vagina police.

It was Lila. She was crying.

Her mother had died.

"Charlie. About earlier?" Lila asked quiet and vulnerable.

"Yes?" I said, in tentative anticipation.

Was Lila going to tell me that she was in love with me? Maybe she needed me now that she was sad and desperate. I eyed the rubber vagina and sneered at it.

"I know I said that I would take you back to your car in the morning but is there any way you could take a cab? I have to get on an airplane first thing."

Oh.

"Sure," I said. "I'm sorry about your mom," I said.

Awake now and sober, I put on some clothes. Might as well pick up the car.

Outside I waited for a taxi as a fresh misting rain came down from a moonless sky. Two Armenian men sat on the grass frontage of my building playing a late night game of backgammon on a portable table. They argued violently and then one paid the other off with a wad of 20-dollar bills.

After the transaction, they stared at me like they could see everything I had just done. One of them stuck his palm out and felt the drops. Without a word they packed up their table and vanished into the entry of the building. Rain ran through my hair and streaked down my cheeks like tears. It was the first rain in as many months as I could remember.

Kevin Burke is a former editor of Film Threat Magazine and contributor to Might. He wrote a book called Saturday Morning Fever that was published by St. Martin's Press. You can still buy it. (Pick this up!) Now, however, Kevin has settled into a new life as an exotic dancer in Torrance, CA.