I cleaned up after a sex party. It wasn’t in my job description and I didn’t know I would be doing it, but then I had the opportunity and when a gem like that is tossed your way from the celestial funkiness you jump on it the exact same way we used to hit the ALL SKATE roundabout when Super Freak by Rick “Mutha Fuckin” James came on. I can’t tell you my age or where I was working because about a hundred people who read this blog and are currently putting me in prayer chains after they read it and laugh their asses off would know the people that surround it and I don’t want to embarrass or humiliate them because I am not angry or a complete dick. It was long ago and I was younger when my boss said “hey, ride over to BLANK’S house and wake BLANK up and help him clean his place.” I got in the company vehicle and went to BLANK’S house and there had been a quaint get together. The yard was scattered with beer cans and Free Bird was still playing on the outdoor porch speakers and cars were parked everywhere, as if some war angel had been playing with them like puzzle pieces. I knew there would be naked women inside. Since I really loved vaginas I realized I was about to be the miner 49’er who tunneled into the nookie lode, so I went inside. A body was blocking the door and although it wasn’t dead it was moaning and was nice enough to roll out of the way so I could enter. He said “hey lil’ Jack.” I replied “oh hell yes, daddy mac,” or something to that extent and he said “we blew the motherfucker out” and I said “shoulda’ called this pimp,” trying to sound cool or fly, though I’ve never been either. It smelled like someone had been clipping shark fins or doing an autopsy on a dinosaur, but that’s what happens when piles of naked humans fornicate in a wad in a house with a furnace in the dead of winter. There were oh, about twelve sexies therein and they were assorted about on the couch and floors and someone was asleep in the bathtub. The women were all wonderfully skanky and overweight (read my other blog about thick women. I like them thick) and there were seven of them nakedly delicious and lying about here and there like the LOVE GUN poster I had on my wall as a boy. I think you’re supposed to soak rubber dicks and butt plugs in warm soapy water after use, or put them in the dishwasher (read the directions), but someone had failed to do so and I tripped on a couple and finally fell face first into some woman’s ass (maybe on purpose) and she woke up and said “hell fire junior! You shoulda’ been here!” I immediately fell in love and then proceeded to wash my nose with isopropyl alcohol in the bathroom straddling a local minister who came awake long enough to say “gimme six and put ‘em on my tab!” At this point my penis was so erect I was having mild heart palpitations. I was in a sweat hut once with a bunch of weird naked Boy Scouts without an erection and it felt like that. And yes, I am an Eagle Scout. (: The person I was looking for then came into the bathroom with a thong speedo on and I wanted to thank him for creating this wonderful moment for me but he was too busy thinking he was peeing in the commode, but was actually peeing on a lady I thought was in prison, but was currently in the bath tub. Good times all around. When he finished he said “we knocked the bottom out of it till about five” and I replied “you shoulda’ called me” and he said “if I would’ve that’n in the tub yonder mighta bit your biscuits” and I replied “wow, she’s a looker” and he said “her pussy is like sandpaper” and I replied “oh.” I helped him clean around the bodies and then I went outside and picked up the yard and found somebody else walking around in the woods behind his house naked and coked out of his mind and we decided to go bird hunting later or play checkers or do some other ordinary thing. This was how we finished the conversation. He is no longer with us.

“How does one of these get started?” I asked him.

He replied “you don’t plan them. A sex party isn’t there and then it is. Like a cloud you see it from far off and whether dark or puffy white you know it’s coming and then it’s there. You’re both sure and unsure it contains anything at all as it shapes to drift over. Will it spurt on you or not? This is the question. Then you stand underneath the motherfucker and see what happens. It’s beautiful in its own way. I’ve snorted too much blow. My mind is overheated.”

In forty-seven years on this punishing earth I estimate I’ve read somewhere between 5,500 and 6 thousand books of mostly fiction (because that’s my job). But I can assure you, without trepidation, that whatever profound quotes came from any and all of those books, what that son of a bitch said is in the top five. And I’m sorry he’s dead. The world needed his words. It required his being. Thanks for reading. JBS

Postscript

A simple request. If you’ve bought TORMENT and have read it, or are reading it, may I ask you to please give me a review on Amazon because I would like to know what you think. People have already been telling me “it makes my head hurt” and I’m glad. You’re a sharp public. I wrote it for you. Again, I appreciate it immensely.