Chapter IX

	The bar I'm in right now isn't the kind of bar I like at all. This is
one of the goth or industrial or techno clubs that have been taking over
churches all across America, except this one's not in a church. This club has
rented space out of a modern hotel building. It's not like you can tell, though;
it's been sectioned off and given a different entrance so as not to scare away
the normal hotel guests.
	Everything in here is black on black. There's so much black it's
absorbing all the light, making it hard to see. Not that there's plenty
of light to go around. Everyone around me is wearing black. It's hard
for me to recognize anyone with their clothes swallowing any
illumination in the room. Any light I do see is usually reflected off of
sickly pale skin.
	This is grade school science: White reflects all light, and colors
reflect only their own wavelength and absorb all others. Black absorbs
everything. Pretty much the only colors you'll find here are white and
black.
	The process goes like this: Electricity is converted to light by a
string of Christmas tree lights that have been randomly stapled across a
flat surface somewhere - a ceiling or a wall that's been painted black.
Or it comes from a security guard's flashlight, who is making the rounds
making sure there are no underage drinkers. That light travels out and
hits a naked arm or leg or set of exposed tits and journeys back in the
opposite direction, only to be swallowed up by some wall that used to be
white drywall until some entrepreneur came in here with a liquor
license, a sound system, a couple hundred gallons of black paint and
renamed this chunk of the building "The Abyss."
	I like pubs. I like bars that are well lit with good music, and I like
the good music to be kept at a level where I can actually hear the
person who I'm drinking with. Here you can neither see nor hear much of
anything that goes on around you. Bars I like don't need security
guards.
	The security guys who walk around, they can either pray to Saint Matthew
the apostle or Saint Amand. Respectively, that's the patron saint of
security guards and the patron saint of bouncers, except, really, it's
any bar employees.
	I wait around till the couple that's sitting in the back corner get up
to go dance. It wasn't a long wait. All I had to do was stand there for
a couple of minutes until the sound system started blaring "Du Hast,"
and then they were gone, out on the dance floor, lurching around in
stoic contentment. Bodies wrapped in black vinyl. Boots up to their
thighs with industrial-strength metal buckles all the way up. Yellow ski
goggles that have never been skiing on top of their foreheads.
	I'm sitting in the back in my corner when Aisha comes in. I watch her as
she walks through the door. The entrance is the best lighted area of the
club because security has to check everybody for contraband. It doesn't
take long to check Aisha because she's not wearing much in the way of
clothing. I watch as she walks into the club and heads straight toward
me, not because she can see me but because this is where she told me to
be. Once she's out of the light from the entrance she disappears. Every
once and a while I catch a glimpse of her as some light catches part of
her body, only to disappear again. This continues until she disappears
into a crowd of people, and when she emerges she's right in front of my
table.
	I look at her as she walks up, and I take stock of what's in front of
me, bottom to top. She wearing black high-heeled shoes as usual, and
then from there I look to see what's next, and it's a long stretch of
nothing. There's a lot of bare skin that makes up the whole of her legs.
There are no nylons, no pants and no skirt. My eyes continue up until
they reach her black panties and a pink shirt with curvy black letters
across the chest that reads "angel tits."
	This would cause a lot of people to do a double take. But here, there
are a good number of girls walking around wearing less.
	I tell her I like her shirt, and she tells me, "Nice outfit. Way to wear
something that'll draw attention to us."
	Me, I look totally out of place here, but I don't care because in my
opinion I look good. I'm wearing black biker boots, blue jeans with the
cuffs rolled up, a white t-shirt and a red jacket with the collar up. To
me I look good, James Dean good. To everyone else here I probably look
like an asshole.
	That's not to say I'm the only one here who's a little out of place.
Every night you can count on at least a couple of frat guys who come out
to gawk.
	Aisha slides around the table and sits sideways on my lap. We're in the
back corner at the bar, and I don't think it matters how conspicuous I'm
dressed. I doubt anyone's going to notice or care if they do. Aisha's
sitting sideways on my lap with one arm draped around my neck. She's got
her coat covering her lap, and with her other hand she's already
starting to reach down between her legs.
	I say, "Hi."
	I say, "I'm fine." I ask her, "How are you?"
	She smirks at me as her hand goes down to my crotch and starts undoing
my belt and my jeans. She says, "Funny, since when have I been one to
waste time? I'd love to chat all night, but I've got work in the
morning."
	When Aisha was younger she used to masturbate before she went to bed at
night. After a few years it became standard that she had an orgasm
before she went to sleep. Her body got used to it, but it started to
bore her. So when she moved out of her parents' house and went to
college she started bringing guys to her dorm room or going back to
theirs. She still got her orgasm and found a way to make it fresh and
exciting again. But after a while even one-night stands got boring. She
just didn't have the time for it anymore. She needed something more
exciting. If she couldn't get turned on, she couldn't climax. If she
couldn't climax she couldn't sleep. She needed to up the ante. This is
where I'd come in, me and I don't know how many other guys.
	Earlier, when I called this a date - you know, how I said I had to get
ready for my "date" tonight? I apologize, but that might have been the
wrong word.
	I ask Aisha how her boyfriend Gregg is. She says, "Dick." I'm not sure
whether she's correcting me or insulting me.
	With her fingers she gets through the puzzle of my belt buckle and my
zipper, and she gets my cock in her hand. It's rock hard because I love
every minute of this routine. I'm not really sure why, but I love that
this girl doesn't like me very much. I love that she's a total bitch and
in a normal social setting we wouldn't be able to stand each other, but
right now she needs me. We don't much like to look at each other, but
right now we each possess something the other desperately needs to enjoy
this evening.
	She's trying to hold my dick and at the same time pull her panties over
with her thumb. She's trying to stroke my cock as she does this, but
really she's jerking me around harder than I feel is comfortable.
	I ask her if she's forgetting something.
	She rolls her eyes and says, "Right."
	She pulls her hand back up and reaches in the top of her panties and
pulls out a condom. She brings it up to her mouth. Her lips part, and
she takes the corner of the condom wrapper in her teeth and pulls. She
spits the corner of the wrapper off into the dark, and for a moment I
see it catch a stray bit of light from I don't know where, before it
disappears.
	She pulls the condom out of the wrapper with her teeth and drops the
wrapper to the floor. Then she takes the rubber in her hand and brings
it back down to put on me. I'm watching all of this, and it occurs to me
then that this might be the most useful function her mouth will serve
all night. She gets the condom on me and performs her little dance
maneuver with her hand, her panties, and my dick. I feel her weight on
top of me as I slip inside her at an uncomfortable and almost painful
angle. I shift her weight on top of me until I get her into a more
comfortable position that will still look somewhat innocent to
passers-by.
	I find it, and my prick slides deeper inside her. Her arm around my
shoulder, with her hand by my neck, I can feel her nails dig into my
neck in response to the penetration. I tell her to be careful; she knows
I don't like her to leave marks.
	She says, "And you're asking me how my boyfriend's doing?"
	I tell her that it's not like that. I tell her I have a job, a nice job,
and I don't need bite marks or nail marks on my neck for everyone to
see. This is more bullshit. I spend most my day locked in my office
working on campaigns. Most people don't see me for longer than the ten
minutes it takes me to get in and out of the building. I could tell
Aisha all about Shellie, and she wouldn't give a shit. There aren't any
feelings to hurt here. But there's no point in getting out of my habit
of denial for just one person.
	"Sure," she says, rolling her eyes and sliding forward and back on my
lap in time with the music. The way we're sitting right now, I'm inside
her deep, but there's not much freedom of movement if we want to stay
subtle. With the condom and our limited range of motion I can't feel
anything. She could slide back and forth on my lap for hours, and I
wouldn't cum. She on the other hand, she has no problems with this.
We've done this for hours before, she's came dozens of times.
	We always meet here. I never understand how something that's turned into
a routine can still seem like an adventure to someone like Aisha. Maybe
it will, like the other things. Maybe she just needs more time to get
tired of it. But we've been doing this for months, usually on Sunday
nights, always at the same table.
	Every time she calls me she gives me specific instructions. She tells me
what time to be there. I'm not to wear anything conspicuous. She tells
me what table to sit at. Almost always the instructions are the same. It
seems redundant to me, but it's important to her. We're careful about
the process, and we don't stand much chance of drawing too much
attention back here, but we meet here so much that I'm sure someone must
have caught on by now, no matter how cloak and dagger we are about it.
I'm sure by now someone's noticed and someone knows what to expect when
they see us walk in. Right now even though I can't see them, I imagine
dozens of pairs of eyes watching us from the surrounding tables.
	But probably not.
	Even this close all I can really see is Aisha's face and how it's all
	red on white. Red lipstick on ivory skin.
	I'm sure I'm just being paranoid. Tonight the music is loud, and there's
so much traffic walking through the club that I'm sure that no one's
paying attention to us. Aisha starts getting brave; she swings one leg
over my lap so she's straddling me facing away. She leans forward and
rests her arms on the black table in front of us. If I wasn't here it
would look like she was just sitting bored. If it wasn't for her ass
rhythmically bobbing behind her this could be innocent. Midway through I
feel this twitching in my right arm, on the top of my forearm. It
doesn't hurt. It's just an annoying muscle twitch. I try to concentrate
on Aisha, but my attention keeps getting drawn back to it.
	There's actually a patron saint against twitching; it's the skinless
Bartholomew I mentioned earlier. But I'm not going to pray to him.
Saying a prayer for something as trivial as twitching just seems
gratuitous. I start to pull up my sleeve on my jacket to massage the
twitching muscle.
	All of sudden Aisha stops in mid-stroke, and I can feel her cunt clamp
down hard around my prick, and now this feels better than I can ever
remember it feeling. Her whole body is tense, and she throws her leg
back over me so she's sitting side saddle again, and she's wiggling her
ass like she's trying to get my cock out, but it's not happening. That's
because I'm like granite right now and buried deep. Her insides are
hugging me hard from tension, and they don't want to let go.
	She's trying to stay calm, and I'm trying to ask her what's wrong as
she's spreading her coat across her lap trying to cover us up. She
doesn't say anything and is staring frantically into the dark. I follow
her gaze, and instead of dark I see two figures coming up to the table.
The figures resolve into two guys, both dressed in unassuming black
outfits. Black shirts, black pants with black pyramid studded belts.
	One of them waves at us as he walks up, and he says, "Aisha! What are
you doing here? Thought you said you didn't like it here."
	I hope this isn't who I think it is, but I know it must be. I pray to
God he's oblivious to what's going on and since he's still smiling I
hold onto that hope.
	He nods toward me and says, "Who's your friend?"
	I'm trying to think back, but as far as I can remember right now this
has got to be the most fucked-up situation like this that I've ever
been, in and it's turning me on like nothing else. Here I am sitting
here with Aisha in the back of a bar with my dick inside her, and her
cunt is clamped around it so hard it feels like she's trying to choke
the life out of it.
	I'm sitting here with all of this just fucked up and happening right in
font of me, and Aisha says, "Oh, I'm sorry. Dick, this is Jude. Jude
this is Dick."
	I don't know if it's the situation or the fact that she's gripping me so
hard that her voice reverberates down to her loins, but I just can't
take it anymore, and it's then that I come inside her.