Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man - Lawrence Block [9]
Good taste does seem to have gone by the boards, doesn’t it?
But one evening in March, probably a day or two after you two commenced your playlet of star-crossed lovers, Fran and I went to bed, and stroked and petted in the usual fashion, and then I crouched on hands and knees and paid oral homage to the little man in the boat. (We had gradually weeded soixante-neuf out of our repertoire, on the theory that it was better to concentrate on one thing at a time.)
Fran had herself a nice hearty orgasm. I’m sure she didn’t try to tell you that she and I stopped balling in the course of her affair with you, but it’s possible she fed you some shit about not having orgasms with me, or faking them. I wouldn’t blame her for that lie, and neither should you, Steve. Just a white lie, after all. And I don’t imagine you would have been stupid enough to believe it, anyway. You know what Fran’s like when she comes. All those delicious contractions, and the subtle taste of egg white. She could no more fake that than Vesuvius could counterfeit an eruption.
When the lava stopped flowing, I flopped on my back like a beached whale and let her return the favor. No point in describing all that. No doubt you’re as familiar as I am with the ministration of those lips and that tongue.
Ah, I shall not entirely cease to miss you, Fran—
But to the point. She did her work well, as always, and I got where I was going, and then she inexplicably began gagging and coughing and ran to the toilet, where she relayed my gift to her to the New York sewer system. The toilet flushed and she returned with a vaguely troubled look in her eyes, muttering something about something having gone down the wrong way.
I don’t think we screwed any less frequently after that, Steve. She never pleaded a headache when I was in the mood, and as a matter of fact, she occasionally initiated things. But she stopped swallowing. I wish there were a couther way to say it, but there isn’t. She stopped swallowing.
Funny how there are levels to intimacy, isn’t it? An echo of adolescent dating behavior, when there were things one could do on a first date and other things one could do on a third date and still other things one could do only when one was truly in love. We all of us have different levels, different cutoff places. Some women with a far lower threshold than our Fran would find it impossible to sleep with two men at the same time. Others would find it possible to engage in the act, but could only achieve orgasm with one of the two partners. Others might manage intercourse with both lover and husband, while withholding fellatory delights from the latter. But this adorable girl has yet another set of standards. Her lips were never sealed, just her esophagus.
Why am I telling you all this? I’m sure you can guess my baser motives, but there is one altruistic impulse involved as well, old buddy. If you two are going to live together, you ought to know as much as possible about one another. And you also ought to be able to know when someone has begun to replace you in her affections.
The day she spits you out, old buddy, is the day you’ve been replaced.
This typewriter is really chockfull of surprises. I honestly never meant to write you any of this. I didn’t mean to write you at all, as I said. I was going to write Fran and tell her how I spent the weekend. When one has been jilted, one wants to get a little of one’s own back, ignoble as that may be, and this was a sensational weekend, and writing to Fran about it would constitute a symphonic chorus of “I can get along without you very well, believe me….”