ANGUISH

How many guys have you slept with? You began tentatively with your high-school sweetheart, but you earned your hard-core diploma when you recalled your teenage summers in Mexico City and your lover escorting you to the rooftop of his apartment complex where he ate your pussy while you sat spreadlegged on a ladder before he fucked you dog-style as a neighbor watched from a distant window. I exploded as you remembered making eye contact with the spectator. I shot my wad a half-dozen times in a 24-hour period as you went through a list which included the rebound affair, the Monterrey drummer, the doctor, the one-night stand, the lawyer and the stockbroker. In my most expansive moments I estimate that I have screwed a 1,000 women. You told me at the initiation of our relationship that you liked the fact that I had cut a wide path. I didn't realize that my excesses provided you a cover for your excesses. I should have been more suspicious. Brett Donovan, the newspaper's photographer, invited me to his house for dinner. During the conversation his wife pronounced that she had no problems with his attendance at strip clubs. He beamed. I smell a rat. Sure enough. As soon as he departed she would call her latest lover and fuck him on Brett's bed. Her legendary exploits, like her legs, were widespread. She would fuck anyone anywhere. A few drinks at a local wateringhole and she was ready to fuck. When Brett discovered the truth about his wife, she left him with no apologies. I wish I could find a happy medium, but I can't. Rudy is standing over our bed. I am driving and the doctor is sitting next to me in the car. I stop for a drink and Eric is drumming on my head. Buddha would slap me silly for my wretched state, but I'm an animal who can't transcend his instincts. I can't escape my nature. I roar like an animal. I bleed like an animal. I defecate like an animal. I will die and my bones will bleach in the sun like an animal. I am the victor, but it is a shallow victory, the fruits of my conquests devoured by the beasts who preceded me. Among other strategies, I am power-walking in order to find tranquility. I walk at a brisk pace, my arms pumping, my stride normal but quickened, my eyes staring blankly ahead, my chin tilted forward and my stomach tucked into my spine. I intone "I'm" as I inhale and "going to die" as I exhale. I combine the musical theory of starting and ending on the same note with the "M" sound that is a staple of Oriental chanting. I walk through my leafy neighborhood for an hour when the gringo disrupts my serenity. He collects you at the airport, leaving your baggage at a hotel before taking you to his place. Did he fuck you within an hour or two? Did you even bother going out that night? I can't accept that you had a life before me. I can't accept that others have touched you. You're telling your lawyer that tonight is the night. After he has besieged you with kisses and run his hand across the outside of your blouse, and your tummy is full and your head is light, he asks you if you're ready to go to his place. You rub up against him. For the next three months he pillages you. You were the best experience in his life. When he took you to bed for the first time, his opinion of himself soared: "I'm fucking Fabiola and she's loving every second of it. I must be a badass motherfucker!" Tell me about those first times. Were you drinking? Where did he make the first move? Where did he take you? Did he come in you? What did you say to each other? How much time did you spend making love that first night? Did he come in you? Did he eat you after he came in you? Did you suck his dick? Did he come in your mouth? Did you stay with him the entire night? Did you have a quickie in the morning? Did you take a shower together? Did you eat breakfast with him? How quickly were you on the phone with each other? When did you get together again? Why were you attracted to him? Was he affectionate? Was he good? Did you sixty-nine? Did you ever do anything funky like fuck in risky place? Did you shave your pussy for him? How often would you get together every week? Did you go for dinner? Did you go to the movies? Did you hold hands in the theatre? Was it understood that you would end those nights fucking? Iliana must have contacted a curandera who gave her a doll into whose head she is sticking pins. A symphony of sex once played in my brain, but there is no music in my mind these days. Iliana is lighting candles to a just God. You have told me that you have never loved anyone more than me, but if I were dead, you would be fucking someone in a matter of weeks. So why the bullshit! I don't excite you. You have grown tired of my kisses and caresses. You were delighted after Marcos' birth when you pointed to "no intercourse for four weeks" on your instructions. I married you. Don't I have the right to know everything? You talked about friends with privileges. I want to know why the woman with whom I've spent my most glorious moments would give herself so easily? "I can be faithful" you said at the outset. What does that mean? When you weren't in a relationship, you could go from one man to another? On a trip to the beach the night of your high-school graduation you stripped and ran into the ocean with your classmates. How many one-night stands did you have? Did you keep two lovers at the same time? Did you participate in orgies? What was the quickest you met a guy and jumped into bed with him? You said you lost your virginity in the backseat of a car. Did you bleed? And how long was it before the second lover entered your life? And the third? And the fourth? Those gifts, that seemed so fresh and new, had already been given countless times, all those butts buffing you, their Cheshire mouths mocking me. As much as I try to excise these images, the broader their big-ass grins become. Perhaps too much sex has rotted you. Perhaps you have fucked too long and too well for your own good. With 25 years of age difference between us, your libido will be raging long after I 'm dead. What am I gaining from this love? It has cost me my two sons. My mother's remark rings in my ear: "I'm sorry to hear that your family has come to an end." Shortly after my divorce from Iliana, I met a woman who filled me with delirium. She told me that she had been with six guys, one of them being her ex-husband. I had eaten her pussy and was on the verge of slipping it into the groove (sex can be a game of inches in more ways than one) when she asked me to stop. I believe this was a slamdunk and figured that the self-restraint on my part would convince her that I was the man of her dreams. I was wrong. I never got within scoring distance again. You, on the other hand, were kind enough to allow me to score a touchdown on the opening series and I am penalizing you for lack of defense. I have met a person who has consigned her past to a learning experience and is willing to entertain me with her knowledge. I feel like I'm committing a sacrilege. How many more chances is God going to give me before he condemns me to eternal damnation? Why is a person willing to risk his love, his life, his children, his health, his job and his reputation for a moment's pleasure that he immediately regrets? You are putting your faith in me, but I am demanding that you walk on water. But wasn't a woman giving herself supposed to be a special gift to the man she loved? Am I little more than the latest recipient in a long, anonymous line? Am I in temporary possession of someone who will be ravished by scores in the future? You were everything to me, but too many have possessed you and now you are nothing. I thought that I might be taking you to the edge of the envelope when I mentioned that I enjoyed nothing more than making love after smoking a joint. You said that you had smoked dope too, but in your experience it didn't compare to ecstasy, which you informed me to my chagrin you had been consuming on a steady basis for the last several years. You said the drug made you sensitive to the slightest touches and turned you into a nymphomaniac. Once the urge imbued you, you had no second thoughts about when or where. You could have said for political purposes that you had limited your use to a few occasions, but instead you had used it numerous times and had gotten the shit fucked out of you. I was no longer quaking with jealously. I was out of control. The woman I most loved had been manhandled. You might be giving me your undivided attention, but I can't escape the thought that you are damaged goods. It doesn't make any difference that I might be the most hypocritical person on the face of the earth. I am a person with no standards imposing the highest standards on somebody else. When we take off our clothes and I'm playing with your pussy and your playing with my penis, I can't help but think how many times you have been through the same ritual with somebody else. Who is Iliana banging? Has she eschewed all men because there can only be one, the father of her children? When tension arose between us, I would fuck someone else. But Iliana endured. I believe she would take me back now, fall on her knees (perhaps giving me a blowjob at the same time) and expressing thanks to God that the family had reunited again and remain with me until the end. I don't have that confidence in you. You can sleep with anyone. How can I have confidence in you? Why did you marry that bum out of high school who is making a living selling drug these days? How could you ever be attracted to an ignoramus who must weigh more than 300 pounds? Both of your brothers are failures who bounce from one job to another. Your mother is a born-again Christian who suffers from hypochondria and your father spends all his leisure time drinking beer. How could you party with such recklessness while your children stayed with your parents because you needed to get fuck? You leave me; I leave you. You die; I die. Your twelve previous lovers, and the several others you have chosen to hide from me, are gathered around a Thanksgiving table sharpening their knives and forks as you lay on the platter. We have had eleven opportunities in the last week and you haven't fucked me once. Jack me off! Give me a blowjob! Let me fuck you in the ass! I don't have to fuck you every night, but do whatever it takes to make me come. My time is short. Every day I don't fuck you is an irreparable loss for me.