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I thought we had something. Instead, we lost something. And not just body parts. A couple dissolving will dodge facts like the law. We tried diversions. Two of every kind. Louis became Louise-A and we leased Louise-B cheap. We threw ourselves into highly volatile adventures and caught on fire.What's left when the oxygen sustaining a fire exhausts itself? Ashes? Yeah. A brain and a butt full of ashes.
This ought to be fun, cracking Big State's access codes, changing our credit records. My genetic insurance profile says I'm cancer prone from prostrate to brainbox.Disc arrays squeeze out my story like runny toothpaste. Med school dropout with unpaid loans. Twice shot Quickee Mart cashier. "Downsized" cruelty-free product sales rep. How void of vitae reads my curricula vitae.
"Poke my butt," shouts Louise-A, sifting through her own unremarkable datafile. Her skin grafts have almost healed. I guess that means it's OK then for her simulated robot sister, Louise-B, to perform the slip and slide with her MechanicalHands™ (sold separately)."Get this. They salvaged the E-mail I got in kindergarten."
What we three won't do for a laugh. Anything to forestall our creeping dissolution. We erase our comrades consumer profiles (chic now, nostalgic Eastern bloc lingo).Big State's grouped us all as credit discards. Nothing sentimental then to keep us from tampering with who they think we are.
This ought to be fun but it feels like work. I ask Louise-B to keep her MechanicalHands™ inert. It's liable to get too messy for sex when I start torching hard copy files. I dab keyboards with creosote, douse rows of ticking monitors with ethanol. Reminds me of our old cult compound baptisms.Yes. I'm separating work from play. Trying to avoid a repeat of January's botch job.
That cramped vivisection lab emitting its stench of smoking chimpanzee fur and bar-b-cued human flesh is still too intense and personal 20 terrorist acts later.
So call me the sensitive type. I admit it. What I fucking enjoy more than fucking after a tactical diversion is a cup of hot cocoa.
A curl of steam lifts from my ceramic mug. I wander through our stolen surveillance-equipment littered apartment. Louise-A shrieks like a big girl, Louise-B thrusting into her dutifully, like a man.I remember those frolic filled years when Louise-A was a big boy built like a super hero.
"It's better having a girlfriend than a steroid-jumped, competition crazed boyfriend, don't you think?" She smiles.
I'm speechless. Inorganically pussy whipped. If I could only derail my memory coils as easily as she detached her genitals.
No, I enjoyed the days and nights when Louise-A was Louis and his heavy machinery pummeled me like no automated surrogate's arousal-attachments ever could.
Who cares if your android partner's spewing latex soup on the sheets and ceiling? "You're the best, baby" moaned from a computer chip is a climax line about as comforting as a catheter.
The "full-figured" proletariats helping us crash Big Statess system are Louise-A's confidantes. I couldn't give you one name. I've never been successful bonding with Olympic class bulldykes who've handed over their medals to younger women.They slide Louise-A keys, passwords, and security blueprints to information central. I wonder what kind of quid pro quo she's promised them.
They look me over like hunters jawing about deer.
"Make our bad credit disappear." The one in chaps snarls.
They proceed to drink themselves blotto over a game of darts. I want to say thanks, but how do you thank a rowdy bunch of gassed up cowgirls with jock itch?
"Burn, niño, burn." I rally, the golden fire filled structure reviving me like a jolt of outlawed ephedrine. Jerks like myself dive from flame engulfed windows. A pounding seizes my groin as another jumper splats against the concrete. Suddenly, I'm as hard for Louise-A as I got for Louis.Her grafts annoy and excite me. They're tangible acts of our flammable togetherness. This relationship burning us both, and at both ends.
It sounds recidivistic, but I'd give up my remote controls to engage in a lifetime or two of old-fashioned, heartfelt, man to man fucking.
I guess adolescence officially ends when it becomes obvious one's spent the best years of their life tossing pennies down a rat hole instead of a wishing well.
We fight while Louise-B busies herself in the real world swapping sex for grocery items and spare parts."I thought we agreed --"
"Your ideas all. The sexchange. Acquiring Louise-B."
"I got her for us both. To ease the transition phase." Louise-A stammers.
"Like I want to change my sexual orientation. You and your neural reprogramming crap."
"You could learn to enjoy being a top. I learned how to be a woman."
Back already, Louise-B limps past us with steaming invertebrates and name-brand street circuitry."What happened?" I inquire. "You're limping."
"Necessary roughness. Don't ask."
She peg legs it like a pirate into the dining room.
We continue our now one, now the other battle between the sexes."What's it take to get a little Christmas around here? You haven't given me a present in months." Louise-A pouts.
"Hard to muster that Holiday spirit without a tree or any balls to look at." I scoff.
"C'mon. You teach that thing of yours something new everyday. Why won't you try out your new dick tricks on me? n
"Alright. Give me the goddamn re-programming manuals and let's eat."
I leave her perfumed chamber, savoring its memory as a musky, all beef meat locker. I know. I'm lazy. Inflexible. By this time next month, with some aversive conditioning under my belt, I'll probably get the hang of being a pig instead of a poke.
I half expect to be dodging silverware by dessert. I'm caught off guard when it's Louise-B who throws the tantrum. (Not to mention various whored for gearage.) Luckily, her pitching skills are off.Her arms spin around. 360deg. of loud, autistic flailing.
"She picked up a virus downtown. It's screwed up her kinesthetic sensors and inhibition circuits I shout.
We shut her down. Louise-A looks relieved.
"You guessed what it was-like that." Obligatory finger snapping. "I'd never have suspected anything so rudimentary."
She nudges me toward the bedroom for dessert."See, you're good at men things. When you don't have to think about it."
In the sack, I ride Louise-A like a pony. I've got a pole of cane sugar and it's clear this filly's bit off more than she can chew.We go a couple laps. She clears the finish line. I can't help thinking, "this sucks." She's sticky and sated and I'm just winded. I want a saddle on my back. I want a go around the track with a jockey hot to stuff unrefined sweetness up my swishing tail.
I stare hard into her droopy eyes.
"Thought we were running the daily double ."
In a strange way, Louis's operation legitimized our relationship. Unfortunately, he didn't lose his cruel, aggressive edge nor his social panic by switching genders. What he lost were the sure fire sparks that could turn me into a submissive kitten or an anatomically correct, 3-in-1, all night sucker, vibrator and massager.Fuck it if passion isn't acceptable between two inheritors of X and Y chromosomes. An invitation to the Governor's mansion for an evening of traditional values has rarely caused me to pump out buttloads of semen in spasms of pure delight.
Louise-A's away when I awake.I notice the reconditioning guys spent their night shift debugging Louise-B. One of those rare instances I'm glad we opted for an extended warranty.
Enhancements include Louise-B's gossip-ability. She describes a guarded moment from the past. Louise-A's clinic tryst with a frustrated Schwarzenegger-built pre-castrate hoping for better luck in the Ms. Olympia. One steamy last go for them both on top.
Nothing like a little gossip between a man and a machine to start the day off wrong. On a sour note. A bullet through that sonofabitch's no good, cheating heart note. (Not a good idea springing indiscretions on me until I've had my coffee.)
I open my mail. There's an item on-line about revenge, torture and cannibalism. I'm hoping it will take my mind off Louise-A or give me ideas.I see my one-lunged Grandfather is back on the entertainment circuit. So soon? Must have drunk up the earnings from his last ghoulish tour.
The Vietnam Vets with Traumatic Stress Disorders Show is visiting midwest magnet schools again.
I've seen the home video. Camouflage netting parts and Grandpa slithers on stage. He successfully navigates the hokey Mekong Delta set.He creeps up soundlessly behind a life-size sex doll posed in a rice paddy. Surprise! He snares the doll's neck with a shank of piano wire. He huffs and puffs, choking the air out of the inflated vinyl.
A serrated survivalist knife with compass handle glints between his bared false teeth.
"I Single Handedly Choked Damn Near a Hundred VC Bastards When I Caught a Piece of Shrapnel in my Fuckin' Chest." That's Grandpa's segment in this traveling history lesson/confrontational therapy sideshow.
Louise-A bursts into the room. My porker's learning something new."That'll have to wait," she says. "Let's go dancing I'm still pissed, but righted Maybe twistin' the night away will patch up our crumbling love thang.
"C'mon Louise-B, you too."
We strap on blades, helmets, kneepads and surf the concrete. Three angry air to surface skaters whipping by like exhaust. Through ghost gulches. Over tar pits. Past the handgun outlet mall and shot up public assistance prefabs.We skid into the Parallel Universe, a trendy alternative lifestyles smart bar and become three virtually real bodies shaking our butts.
Louise-A's pals with the ditzy bouncer from way back (her punker Louis days) so we get in Free. Free. Free.
On the cube-o-lights dance floor, Louise-A's gettin' down tonight. Louise-B's, of course, doing the hustle. Me? Funky whiteboy, gold medallion, kung-fu fightin'.
"Hey y'all, we're Cootie Picante and the Sweat Lodgettes." The all girl group's nom-de-plume reverberates off the smart drugged crowd. "We're taking a 15 minute break, but y'all stick around."
These cud pies are straight from Texas and about as straight as a circle. Twangy college girls have to make a living too, you know. It's not all scholarships and sucking academic teat for rent money these days.Not for Cootie Picante and the Sweat Lodgettes taking a 50, not a 15 minute break. They mingle with the adulating Wednesday night audience. Mostly twenty-something lesbians.
Cootie and her perspiring ensemble are what you call a cult item. Only so many twenty-something hipster lesbians appreciate "live" god awful disco sung with an inbred drawl.
Our dart throwing crew with new credit histories stray from their naugahyde lair. They cat call Louise-A over to their table. We didn't get in free, after all.The gals titter that I must be wearing the antlers in our family nowadays. No longer a deer they're jawing over, but a buck. They renew their hunting licenses?
I feel so straight around these gals' gals it's alienating. This two gender relationship wasn't my idea.
And while we're on the subject: Louise-B's MechanicalHands™ aren't simply a guilty pleasure, a throwback to when I was the "femme." Those mitts fill the empty hole Louise-A's detached scraps used to feed.
I could kick myself for enrolling in Louise-A's night class. The dismal hours of show and tell. I never wanted "straighta A's. Just my own gym locker and Lou's sweaty shorts hanging inside it. I miss the old playground where we beat each other into ecstasy.
Louise-A, we gotta talk. Man to woman. But not in front of these women's women. Not while you're spread eagle on the pool table, drunk on neurotransmitters, bawling "8 ball in the side pocket" like a rodeo calf.Virtual fun, my ass. This game rape ain't simulated.
Remove your MechanicalHands™, Louise-B and don these MechanicalBoxingGloves™. I'm the antlers in our herd and I say we're blowing this diskless interior (after you mosh a few faces). I'll torch this hip hop fucker later.
We get home. The smart cocktails have only upped Louise A's libido. She wants us to do flash card drills on the kitchen table.
But I'm in no fucking mood. That's right. I'm cutting class. I'd rather be a dropout than some nerd who's mastered the missionary position. I don't need a technical school diploma, tonight or any night, Louise-A. I need a man.
I wake up and you're gone again. "Out looking for a man most likely." Not a bad idea, really.It can take 6 months to realize the guy you love isn't coming back. (Even if your girl used to be your guy.)
I choke on cold embers for nearly an hour while packing my bags. Then I choke another hour, kissing Louise-B's MechanicalHands™ good-bye.
I think I'll spend some time licking my wounds, waiting for scabs to form before I heat seek out the world of the loving again.Maybe I'll go on the road with Grandpa. Both of us abusively drinking, bellowing out summer stock show tunes, and did I mention drinking?
"Rad Neuroses Spawned by the Atom Bomb." Now that's a vegetarian menu only dinnertheatre musical-comedy not to be missed!
