The Best American Erotica 2001

When the first girl looks at Allen he feels unworthy to watch. He can hardly bear having her acknowledge him. He wants to ask her what she is staring at. “Can I help you?” he would have said if they were anywhere else. The girl is perfection and Allen wants her desperately. It’s a feeling so pure that he wants to cry. How terribly unfair that his whole self aches because of the shape of a shoulder, the soft lines of a hip. Allen stares at the girl’s legs, a deep black against the whiteness of the chair, and then up at the trained beckoning in her face. There is the glow of real personality behind the staged. “Touch,” she says. And Allen wants to touch her—to see if she is real. But he hasn’t yet responded, and the girl is moving toward him, long and graceful, the woman of his dreams. Allen is shaking again, as he did when he was a boy. And why shouldn’t he? A loyal husband, who, reaching out, touch ing, had always honored his vows. He does not move his hands or his fingers, just holds them against her wonderful skin, so warm, almost hot. The girl takes Allen’s hands in her own, presses them to her chest, and massages. It calms him. She does this like an expert, a masseuse, someone trained in an art. Allen hasn’t been so aroused in years. He wants to climb through the small window to be with this woman. But the partition starts to come down. His time has run out. In the split second that he has to make his choice, Allen takes back his hands. Leaning up against the wall in a panic, Allen tells himself that the fondling of this woman was an aberration, just like his coming up those stairs. He had only wanted a peep. He’d gone up the stairs a loyal husband and lover, a working man on his way home to the ’burbs. And now, minutes later, a different man emerges: a violator of girls and wives and matrimonial bonds. Allen con siders leaving the booth, though his legs feel hollow and un steady. And there is also his erection, diabolically hard, bringing to mind all the basest descriptions in pornographic magazines. Allen is so close to climax that he is afraid to move. He wants to get away without having to face the enormity of his pleasure. He remains still, his hand clutched tightly around the tokens, and thinks of Claire waiting at the bus stop, the

When the first girl looks at Allen he feels unworthy to watch. He can hardly bear having her acknowledge him. He wants to ask her what she is staring at.