My Sex Appeal Can Kill a Man at 10 Paces

My Sex Appeal Can Kill a Man at 10 Paces

We Should Go Out!

We should go!

We should go out!

We should go out in our shiny firework tops, sleek and constructed like architectural wonders in leather pants and compass-drawn brows.

We should go out and blind the crowds with our crackling white-hot sex appeal.

And guess what? It worked!

The reviews are in and they love us. 

A guy fainted when he saw me. Knocked out cold. See that man over there with the blood-soaked napkin? No—not him. Him! With the napkin pressed to his face! He gouged out his eye with a fork when he saw me. An offering, he said, an oblation to my beauty. 

Oh yeah?

Well, I cracked a man’s neck with my ass. 

Okay, well, I killed a man! He’s dead. Dead from my sex appeal!

Next is the rooms. But first, the magical carpet ride inside the mid-size sedan. Window down, head hanging into the night like a panting mutt, smiling, smiling. Just happy to be here!

Where are you from? we ask the man with the clean car and the glinting dangle on the mirror. He answers in low tones from a faraway land. Far away from home but luckily he’s here to dutifully drive our carriage. Thank you sir! Yes, five stars! Thank you, goodnight! Do you think he wants to come in? No, he doesn’t. No, I suppose not.

Perhaps I was just delaying arrival at the rooms.

The rooms are always night, poor-person cupboard bare and always with the bad overhead lighting. Lights so bad they must stay off.

Do you want a drink? Can I interest you in a piss beer or a warm plastic liquor? Ah yes, my favorite! I indulge.

Luckily there are a plethora of friends on the menu. They are offered up like nightly specials: here we have long-haired stringy stoner (herpes), swoop-hair polo shirt with repressed gay (hot) (the gay, not the repressed), and we have quiet acne who is incel or shy (both?).

We silently confer. Choose your fighter!

But just wait, there’s more! And it’s . . . (drumroll) . . .

bumps off an unfinished wooden coffee table! Line on dirty linoleum kitchen counter! (Audience Ooohs, Ahhhs.) Not your style? That’s okay, we also have my personal favorite: Stick your manicured nail into this unidentified white powder and we’ll see what happens! The classics never go out of style!

The powder works (thank god) so we go into the infinite rooms with the floor mattresses and rejoice to the hymns of the infinite zipper sounds. We lie in repose, channel woman at a wake (casket, not guest), and let our heavenly bodies be hot and thin and toned in the company of others.

Then comes the part where I’m a fish, going after the bait, gobbling it down so good. Good girl. I’m caught then, wriggling, pondering escape. Shouldn’t have taken the bait then, girl! Hook line sinker. Then come the hands to unhook me, tell me I’m safe. Shhhh, shhhh, I know. Sometimes there is gentle hand inside (good, rare), but mostly there is rough hands gripping, squeezing.

Hands around my small-boned fish neck—wrapping, crushing. I gurgle, choke. It’s so good. Feels so good to go dark and bliss out of my body. Out. Out we go. Should I, though?

Should we?

Should we go out?