Corrupting Power
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Three Days In February
🕑 Added 2023-02-15 10:39:51 +0000 UTCThree Days In February
(a Jonas Silversmith story)
Feb. 14, 2015
Maybe I’ve never told you this, but I truly hate Valentine’s Day. I get that it’s meant to be a romantic holiday and a celebration of love, but in thirty plus years, I’ve had someone to celebrate it with exactly once. But every year, I go out to a bar on Valentine’s Day, just out of some sense of obligation, that I should be at least trying to fill this hole inside of my soul.
My name’s Karl Hines, and if there’s a prize being given out for shittiest luck with women, I’m pretty sure I’m the lifetime record holder for most successful wins of it. I know, I know, you’re used to dude in bars saying they have the worst luck, but I mean it when I tell you that there’s something weird going on in my life.
What do I mean? Okay, look, I’m going to answer your question, but when you say you don’t believe me, you need to remember that you only have yourself to thank for this for this surrealistic sob story. You know the old expression, ‘any port in a storm?’ Well, I’ve never docked in the same harbor twice. Not by choice, mind you, but it seems like after one night with me, any girl turns and heads for the hills.
I, my swarthy bartending friend, am the King of Being Ghosted.
My best friend Neil calls me the Sex Magician, because all I gotta do is fuck a girl and she disappears. And I’m not just talking, like, doesn’t call me back or doesn’t visit the same bars I do anymore. I mean literally vanished. At least from my life, anyway.
You’d think I would take it personally, and I guess maybe I did? At first anyway. The first time it happened was high school, and back then I guess, I wrote it off as typical high school bullshit. I was dating this girl, Erika with a K, and we went to prom together, and things were going great. She’d even gone out of her way to get us a hotel room to go after we left the dance. We were both 18 and felt like it was time we started acting like adults. We weren’t allowed to stay out all night, obviously, but she had it in mind that our first time having sex should be in a bed, and I can’t say that I disagreed with her. We’d done most of our fooling around in the back of my beat-up old car, but neither of us wanted to lose our virginity that way. It just seemed… cheap.
Anyway, after prom we went to the hotel, and we had a wonderful time together. It wasn’t perfect, but shit, nobody’s first time is. I like to think that I handled myself pretty well, and put in plenty of effort to make sure she got off as much as she could before we got down to the main event, where I don’t think either of us put up that much of a remarkable performance, but we got it done. And I made sure not to fall into any of the usual dumbass traps that boys usually do at that age. I made sure to cuddle her before and afterwards. We talked a lot; I told her she was pretty and special and how important she’d made me feel by trusting me with that moment.
But there was a distance to her that hadn’t been there before we’d fucked. I didn’t know how big a distance. I couldn’t even fathom how big it was, and to this day, I still don’t know why.
I’d picked her up every day for school, but on the following Monday morning, I went out to my car and found an envelope in a plastic bag on my windshield, I guess in case it rained or in case the morning dew tried to settle in.
It was the first Dear John letter I’d ever received but was extremely far from the last one. I keep them all in a scrapbook at home. Neil says I should publish them in a book or something, but I’ve told him like a dozen times that since I didn’t write any of them, I couldn’t fairly be called the author of that book. Besides, they all sort of blend together.
No lies, it’s like a clustering of misery, sympathy and “it’s not your fault” over and over again, in a few dozen different tones. Sometimes these days it’s a text message, or a series of them. I’ve gotten a handful of emails. There was a voicemail once. But it’s usually a letter. It’s never an in-person conversation, nothing where I’m allowed to talk back or defend myself or ask questions.
They tell me something isn’t sitting right, that they felt so intense before but now there’s nothing left, and they don’t feel like it would be fair to be with me and just going through the motions, that I deserve better, that I deserve someone who makes me happy. They tell me they aren’t good enough for me, and that sooner or later, I’ll find the right person, so I just need to keep on getting out there. It’s almost uncanny how similar the contents of all the damn things are, but I keep hoping that at some point I’m going to break the cycle, to figure out what’s causing it and to move beyond the weirdness that seems to be stalking me.
The one common thread about all of them is the lengths they go to convey to me, to stress fundamentally that it isn’t my fault, and that I didn’t do anything to cause it, nor should I in any way feel guilty about it all. Like, it’s happened so much that I can’t tell how many times I’ve gone around and back from suspicious to confused, just over and over again. There’s something so very strange about all of it, how these women all have the same sort of undercurrent to their opinions about what’s stopping them with being with me.
And! And and AND, I should add, only after we’ve fucked! Always the day right after we’ve fucked! I’ve tried different things! I’ve tried stalling out the sex for as long as possible, I’ve tried rushing into sex with, like, basically not getting to know the girl whatsoever. No matter what kind of influence I try to exert, the result is always the same – we fuck, they bail, game over, man, game over!
When I tell you they bail, I want you to know I mean they really bail. With the exception of Erika, they all fucking disappear after we’ve fucked. And I don’t mean, like, they changed what bars or whatever they go to. I mean they upend their lives and they get the fuck out of town. The power of my tainted cock is so great that apparently it can drive women to break leases, abandon friends and even switch national allegiances. I certainly caused a good handful of girls to switch universities mid-semester, so much so that girls I was friends with warned their friends not to fuck me, because they thought I was cursed.
After I got out of college, when I first moved out here, the first girl I hooked up with, she took me back to her place, we fucked, we fell asleep, and when I woke up in the morning, she’d moved all her shit out of the apartment while I slept, and I never saw her again. Her roommate asked me what the fuck had just happened, and all I could tell her was that I hadn’t the slightest fucking clue.
Neil has put this to the test because he didn’t believe me. He and I have been best friends, mostly, since junior high, and when he moved out to the West Coast after me, he set me up with one of his coworkers at the tattoo shop, somebody he was convinced was too situated and well-established within the local community to ever pull that kind of stunt. Her name was Opal, and she assured me that there was no possible way my dick could be so life-changing that she would ghost me. I begged her not to go through with it, because she seemed to love who and where she was, and I didn’t want to ruin any of that for her. She said there was no possible way that fucking me would make her leave.
Wanna guess who was right?
Since then, Neil’s respected how weird all of it is, and we’ve both agreed that it’s probably better if I don’t sleep with anyone I really want a long-term connection with, right? That said, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to go a long period of time without sex, but lemme tell you, brother, it fucking sucks.
So, after about twenty years of this shit, I came to a conclusion. Just last fall, truth be told. Nothing I do has changed anything, so why fight it, right? Just go with the flow and enjoy things whenever I can.
I mean, there’s one other option, but it’s not one I’m particularly eager to get into, because it would mean I’d be lying to whoever I hooked up with. I could claim I’m impotent. Oh sure, I’d go down on her or finger her or use toys on her, but I’d have to find some way to prevent myself from getting hard all the fucking time, and on top of that, the shame of lying so much would probably drive me out of my fucking skull.
My life has been an open book from start to finish, and I’ve done everything I possibly can to not lie, not to anyone about anything. Shit, I’m not even very good at telling the little white lies I’m supposed to tell to make people feel better or to not hurt their feelings. I probably shouldn’t have told your coworker Athena that her boyfriend really hated that Taylor Swift concert she dragged him to last month, but she was going on and on and on about how surprised she was that he got into it.
Anyway, this is my first Valentine’s Day out since I decided there wasn’t any point in thinking about consequences for my actions when it comes to finding love. I can struggle or I can just ignore it and have fun. The key is to not build any real attachment to anyone I end up hooking up with, and to understand that they’re going to take off, and that while it might sort of be my fault, nothing I did caused it to happen.
What’s that, friend? Sure, I can answer a couple of questions for you. Oh! Excuse me, darling, didn’t realize you were trying to sit down. Oh, your girlfriend, huh? Heh. Well, then she’s absolutely safe. No fear of you up and disappearing on us, my dear. Anyway, I didn’t catch your name, barkeep. Jonas? Like the guy who got swallowed by the whale? Sorry, I bet you hear that all the time. I’ll do better, I promise.
How’d you guess I was adopted? Yeah, you got me. You know those weird stories about people being found on the doorstep of an orphanage or the mayor’s house or whatever? I was apparently left as a baby just outside of the oldest bookstore in Chicago. The couple that ran it took me in and raised me as their own, even though they’d just become grandparents the week before. I sort of grew up thinking of their two real kids as my aunt and uncle more than my brother or sister.
Well, sure, I think anyone who’s adopted has tried one of those genetic tests to figure out where they came from. Mine’s sort of a headscratcher, though. I mean, look at me. Blonde hair, blue eyes, hairy as all get out. You’re thinking the same thing everyone thinks – he’s got to be, like, some weird combination of Northern central European, and you’d pretty much be right. Like, there’s a bunch of German, Swedish, Norwegian and Dutch rolled up into one big mess, but there’s also this block that they don’t really know what to make of. They think it might be some odd strain of Egyptian or Northern African that they haven’t seen much of, but it confused them enough that they gave me a refund on the test. They said that stripe probably came from one of my grandparents, and they simply didn’t know what to do with it. Being adopted, it’s not like there’s anybody I can really ask about my family history.
Hey, good guess. You’re right, whatever weirdness there is in my genetic lottery, it’s also made me nearly bulletproof. No broken bones, no major infections, no cavities, no trips to the hospital except the one time, when I was eight, but boy, was that a doozy.
I mean, there’s not really a whole lot to tell. It was a weird, freak accident that still doesn’t really even make much sense to this day. Me and a couple of other kids from the neighborhood were out playing catch at the local park. Scotty’s older sister, Jill, she was like fifteen and babysitting us, but she was mostly reading her Anne Rice novel while we were out playing. Anyway, this big gust of wind kicks up and blows a bunch of sticks and branches at us, and this sprig shoots up at me and stabs right into my shoulder.
The memory’s all kind of jumbled, since I wasn’t all that old, but I remember feeling like my whole body was just being drained of energy. Jill’s freaking out, Scotty’s freaking out, and they picked me up and took me to the hospital, but I have this vague memory of a doctor pulling the sprig out of my shoulder and then suddenly feeling like everything was going to be okay again.
Yeah, right? It really was mistletoe, too. My adopted dad called me Baldur off and on for the rest of his life. Weirdest thing.
So yeah, that’s my story. Anyway, after his divorce, Neil said he wanted to leave Chicago and have a new start, so he moved out here. He and I moved into an apartment up here in the city late last year. He and his new girlfriend Rachel are out tonight while I’m doing whatever it is single guys are supposed to do on Valentine’s Day – go out on the prowl for the next Miss Disappearing Act, I guess.
Thanks Jonas. I hope shit gets better for me too.
I don’t think it will, but shit, never hurts to hope.
Feb. 14, 2020
Hey! Long time no see, Jonas! How the fuck have you been, man? What’s it been, three, four years? No no, the place hasn’t changed that much. You were still the best bartender this little San Francisco watering hole ever saw, but it makes sense. We all got it. You and Kelly just needed to get out of the city and see something new. Yeah, Athena, you remember her? Well, she went off and married her boyfriend, and they moved off to Tennessee, so it’s just the two Timmys running the place these days. Big Timmy and his boyfriend, Luis, they finally tied the knot last year. Little Timmy’s still dating Georgia, although God knows she’s gonna grow sick of his inability to commit sooner or later. Heh, yeah, I know, I know, and you’re right, she would hook up with me in a heartbeat, but then she’d just be another Dear John letter in the book, and I couldn’t bear to do that to her. She’s a sweetheart. Besides, she’s, what, 25? And I’m gonna turn 40 here in a few weeks. Girl like that has her whole life in front of her.
Yeah, I guess not that much has changed with me, either. Me and Neil ended up buying the house down in Sunset and splitting it in two, sort of. I mean, yeah, it’s still one big house with only one kitchen, but other than that, him and his old lady live on the lower floor and I live upstairs on the second floor by myself, so we’re kind of roommates and kind of not. I was actually thinking about installing lock on my stairs, but I guess I’m glad I didn’t.
What the fuck do you think?
Sorry. Sorry, that came out harsher than it should’ve. My bad.
Yeah, the curse or whatever you want to call it is still in effect. I tried leaning into the whole “meaningless, emotionless sex” thing, but I’m just not fucking built that way, man. It was hard as hell trying to just be that ‘fuck and forget’ kind of dude, and I kept telling myself that since I knew they were going to be gone tomorrow, I didn’t have to invest any sort of emotional weight into meeting them. But it never seemed to take.
I know, I know, I said that I wasn’t going to let it get to me, but there’s only so much of a life a person can live without a real connection to anybody else, you feel me? Years and years of knowing that any relationship I got into was going to end with a guaranteed ghosting, that does something to a man, or least it did to me.
And then there was Virginia. Yes, like the song, dickhead. We got to be very good friends, and she wanted more, and god knows I wanted more too, but I know the score, right? I know the rules I have to live by, and I knew that if we slept together, in the morning she’d be gone on the wind, and we were getting to be very close friends. Like, talking about meaning of life stuff and legacy stuff and, y’know, the fate of our personal universes and shit.
Virginia’s younger than me, like, a lot younger than me, but that doesn’t seem to matter. She’s 23 and just getting started in the world and I’m closer to twice that than I am that. She is, well, was, I guess, a brunette with kicking curves and this sort of angelic smile that made you feel like you’re the only person in the world that matters. We met at a Smashing Pumpkins concert. You remember when they played their residency at the Fillmore? Me, Neil and Neil’s old lady Rachel went to a couple of the shows, and we met Virginia at the second of them, and we were having such a good time, we invited her to come with us to Buster’s for our traditional post-concert late night cheesesteak.
After that, she and I start hanging out two or three nights a week. That goes on for a few months. One night she wants to stay over, and I know where it’s heading, so I start to panic and tell her that I don’t know if that’s good idea. She tells me if I’m worried about the age difference that it doesn’t mean a fucking thing to her, and I tell her that’s not it. Then she tells me, straight up tells me, that she’s in love with me, and she knows I’m in love with her, and why the hell I won’t act on it, and why I won’t let her act on it, because believe me, she’d tried more than a couple of times and each time I’d had to try and let her down easy.
Anyway, last December, like a week before Christmas, she comes over to my place, demanding an explanation. And I figure, fine, fuck it, she’s not going to believe me, but the truth’ll be out there, and I won’t be able to say I haven’t tried. And so, I just come out and tell her. I lay the entire tale out, sparing no detail, explaining the whole weird fucking sordid past.
At first, she laughs, and I don’t blame her, because, you know, who wouldn’t? The whole thing sounds fucking stupid on its face. But then I show her the scrapbook, with all the Dear John letters, and her expression goes from insulted to scared. I cry a bit, and she cries a bit more, and she asks how the fuck I’ve been living with this for as long as I have without going crazy. I tell her I’ve probably gone crazy and back a few times over the years, but at the end of the day, I can’t think of anything else to try and solve the problem, and that’s why, despite how much I fucking love the shit out of her, I can’t fuck her, because if I do, she’s going to disappear, and that’s going to fucking break my heart, and I just couldn’t live with that kind of disappointment.
The next day, she comes over to my place again, and this time she’s got her friend Genesis with her. Now, lemme tell you, Genesis is an utter fucking smokeshow but she’s also kind of a hot mess. Not that she’s not smart, because she is, but Genesis just doesn’t have a lick of common sense in her brain. She’s this gorgeous natural northern California surfer hippie girl with long golden waves of hair and skin that looks like she was born tanned. She tended bar down in Santa Cruz, so we only saw her a few times a month, but I’d sort of made it a rule not to hit on any of Virginia’s friends, because I didn’t want them to up and vanish on her.
And that’s when Virginia tells me that’s exactly what Genesis is there to do. She’s going to fuck me while Virginia watches, and come tomorrow, whatever crazy spell is on me is going to be gone, because it’s all in my head and it doesn’t really exist and if it really does exist, she has to see it for herself because it’s been driving her crazy. But because she wants to respect me, she’s just gonna watch me and Genesis fuck.
Genesis tells me it’s just sex and I shouldn’t think about it so much and I shouldn’t get in my head about it because I’ve got some negative energy about me and once she helps me lift that cloud, I’ll be able to get on with my life. She’s one of those free love chicks who genuinely thinks the whole world will fix itself if she thinks enough good thoughts at it.
I beg Virginia not to make me go through with this, that I’m only going to ruin her friendship with Genesis by doing it, and both of them laugh. Genesis tells me they aren’t that great of friends, and that nothing, literally nothing will make her leave her hometown of Santa Cruz.
Virginia tells me that if I want her to believe me, this is what it’s going to take.
So yeah, fuck it, man, I did it. I fucked Genesis, and it was great, she was great, even if it was a little weird with Virginia there telling me what to do, what to say, how to do it. Maybe that even kinda made it hotter? Even weirder, Virginia told me over and over again that I could imagine Genesis was her, if it would make me fuck her even harder, and that she wouldn’t mind. In fact, she wanted me to fantasize about her while I fucked Genesis.
And God help me, I did it. I fucked Genesis, imagining that she was Virginia, hoping that maybe, just maybe, this whole thing would be gone and I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. And after Genesis and I fucked, she and Virginia both crawled into bed with me, and we all fell asleep.
Well, I’m sure you can guess where this is heading.
In the morning, as promised, Genesis was gone, and so was her car. Virginia was still there, though, and when I woke up, she was reading the Dear John note that Genesis had left behind. It was three words.
“I’m sorry. -Genesis”
Virgina and I didn’t really talk much that morning, but after an incredibly silent cup of coffee, Virginia said she was going to find out what was happening to me, no matter what it cost her. Those were her last words to me.
It turned out that Genesis had left Santa Cruz. She’d driven back early that morning, packed up all her shit into her pickup and just… she’d just fucking left. That unbreakable bond she’d had with her hometown of Santa Cruz? Apparently all it took was one fuck with me to shatter it.
A week later, Virginia’s car was found abandoned on a Santa Cruz beach. Nobody’s seen her since. Neil and Rachel were going to fly out to see Rachel’s folks for Christmas, and when they headed off to the airport, I hopped into a warm bath, popped a handful of Vicodin and attempted to slit my wrist. As it turned out, their flight got cancelled and they came home to find me passed out in the bathtub. Neil said it was the damnedest thing he’d ever seen. The bathtub had, like, a bunch of my blood in it, but the cut on my wrist wasn’t severe at all. I knew it should’ve been, though, because I ran that blade deep into my fucking arm. The paramedic said it sounded stupid when he said it aloud, but it was almost like I’d bled out into the tub and then my arm had just regenerated, and that the blood loss wasn’t enough to do me any real damage, regardless of how awful the bathtub looked.
I mean, look at it. Look at my fucking wrist. This was barely two months ago, and you can barely even see a tiny little hint of a scar, but I swear to you, I cut deep and hard with a straight razor. I know I fucking did. I mean, I get that I’ve got quick healing – believe me, Neil finds it hilarious every time he gives me a new tattoo, because most people are still wincing in pain a couple of days later, but I’m completely fine. Don’t even get me started on how baffled he is why the ink never really fades in my skin.
So yeah, here I am again, completely at a loss of what to do. ‘Cause it seems like I can’t even commit suicide right. I know, shouldn’t be so funny, but it is, right? It’s like that old joke I remember about the idiot trying to commit suicide who says, “If I don’t get this right, I’ll kill myself.” I know, I know, I shouldn’t laugh, but at this point, if I don’t, I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day.
What’s that? No, I don’t even recognize that word. Okay, translates into ‘dragonborn’ from what language? I’ve never even heard of it. Okay, because at this point, my life is full of enough weird shit that I guess I’m going to believe you. Oh, sure, sure, only one-eighth dragonborn. I mean, how often do you meet anyone who’s even half dragonborn these days? Well, what kind of stupid defense mechanism is that? Okay, but what if I don’t want to live to be 200? I mean, if I can’t have emotional connections or whatever, what’s the point of living that long?
Hey, at this point, Jonas, I’m just trying to go along with whatever you’re telling me, because you were, like, the only person other than Neil to believe me the first time I told you this story.
Well, shit, man, if you knew there was a way for me to fix all this, why didn’t you tell me that back when I first told you the story? Right right, but that’s my choice to make, Jonas! If you’d asked me back then, I’d have told you the same thing I’m telling you now – I don’t care if it means I don’t live as long, or if it means I might get sick more often or even if it means that I might die tomorrow. That’s part of being human. That’s the risk anyone takes just being alive.
Okay, but I promise you, no matter how hard you think this thing I’d have to do is, I’d fucking do it. What do you mean ‘interesting window of opportunity?’ Look, explain it to me and let me decide for myself.
…
Yeah, I see what you mean about it being a real bitch. An entire year where I don’t see or talk to any more than two people face-to-face? That does sound like it’d be an utter bitch to go through. ‘Going to happen anyway?’ What the fuck are you–
Okay, I get it, Jonas, you’ve always seemed to know a little more than you should about anything and everything, but saying I’m going to get limited like that anyw–
No, I don’t think ‘knowing it’s happening to everyone’ is going to make me feel any better. Oh sure, if it has to happen, maybe I should take advantage of it. Like I said, I’d do fucking anything to bring Virginia back to life again. I didn’t even fuck her, and I still lost her. I, just… I don’t know what to do any more, Jonas. I’m at the end of my rope now.
Yeah, I can follow instructions but–
Yes, I know the myth of Orpheus and what a dumbass he was for looking back right at the v—
Okay.
Okay.
Right.
These specifically?
Sure.
Exactly this size, and directly over my heart. Understood. No, I got it, and if I tell Neil a tattoo can’t change at all from the reference, he’ll do it exactly how it is in the reference. I mean, you had him do that tattoo on your girlfriend Kelly and he even used that exotic blue ink you gave him, so him using this pattern and these inks won’t be too much of a problem.
Wait until the last day of March before we do it? Really? Okay, I get it. I get it. You’re the guy who knows things and I’m the guy who needs to trust the guy who knows things. But tell me how it’s going to work.
Right, so last day of March he puts the tattoo on me, in the exact spot, using the exact inks. Then I can’t talk to anyone else in person other than him and his old lady for a whole year, but it won’t be a problem, because there’ll be a lot of that going around. And then, on Valentine’s Day, 2022, the whole curse will be broken, and my life will start to make sense again?
I’m not going to lie, Jonas. It sounds like a load of horseshit, but at this point, I am willing to try just about anything. But, I have to ask, why do this for me? Ha! That’s funny, Jonas, but if you say so. No no, I totally believe you… grandpa! C’mon, if you were really my grandfather, shouldn’t you look older than me, and not, y’know, younger? I mean, shit, I think you look younger now than when we first met! Oh right, right, dragonborn regeneration…
Look, whether or not I believe you makes no real difference. I’m going to do what you told me to, because I don’t have anything else left to try, and because I’m at a point in my life where I’ll do literally anything to get out from under this curse. I guess I’ll tell how I feel in a couple of years’ time.
Wait, what do you mean I won’t ever see you again? How the hell are you going to know if it worked if I don’t? Heh. Okay man, I guess you’re right – trust does go both ways.
Well, whether or not it works, I guess I should say thank you anyway. For at least giving me a little bit of hope and a fighting chance to try and get this funk out of my life. So, y’know, thanks for that. No no, don’t worry about it. You and Kelly’s drinks are on me. I got it.
Hey Jonas?
I, um… I really hope you’re right and this works, man.
Thanks.
Feb. 15, 2022
Neil. NEIL. Wake the fuck up, man! That’s why I’m whispering, man, so I don’t wake Rach! C’mon, we need to talk out on the porch! Then grab the blanket from the living room and put on a hoodie! I don’t care how fucking cold and early it is! This shit’s important!
…
Thanks. Yes, I know how fucking early it is. My watch says the same thing as yours, quarter ‘til five, so don’t you think I wouldn’t wake you up if it wasn’t this fucking important? You remember that weird tattoo I was so particular about a few years back? Yeah, the one I had you do here in the house, after the pandemic started. Well, that was from Jonas. Yeah, no, I figured you’d guessed that based on how particular I was about it, and how I had you use those specific inks he gave me. I didn’t want to tell you, but he said it was going to break me of the Dear John curse.
Right, and that’s why I always made you or Rachel go out and get the groceries during the pandemic, and why I didn’t ever answer the door for the DoorDash guy or whatever. Because for a year after you gave me the tattoo, I wasn’t allowed to see anyone other than you or Rachel, or, I dunno, or the shit wouldn’t work or something, I dunno. Jonas gave me some speech about Orpheus and how if he’d just trusted and not looked back, he could’ve gotten his lover out of the underworld, and I took that shit to heart, man, and I wasn’t going to look back for any fucking reason at all. So when he said don’t talk to anybody else, I didn’t fucking talk to anybody else.
That’s what I’m telling you, dude! It worked! The tattoo you gave me based on his designs using his inks? It did what it was supposed to! The curse is fucking broken! How do I… Fuck you and Rach must’ve been zonked last night, because I have no idea how you slept through… all of that!
Okay, right, from the top. So, I told you I was going to go out to The Staggering Poet again, now that they were opening back up, right? Well, I get there, and the first thing when I walk in the door, guess who’s tending bar again? Athena! She and her husband split up last year apparently. She decided to move back to San Francisco, and last night was her first night back, and since the bar is dead quiet, she’s basically just spending most of her shift talking to me at the end of the bar since there’s fuck all else to do.
But eventually a couple more patrons came in, and here’s where shit gets strange. The door opens and it’s Virginia. She’s not dead, man! It turns out she went to the Santa Cruz beach to think and a rogue wave came and washed her off the beach and out to sea. She must’ve hit her head or something, but apparently this fishing boat found her down way past Monterey and she was comatose without any ID on her, so they just put her in a hospital, where she was until, like, the middle of the pandemic, when she couldn’t leave the hospital. She didn’t remember anyone’s number so she had to wait until someone could actually bring her back up to San Francisco before she could get ahold of anybody. Even weirder, Virginia wasn’t alone – she had fucking Genesis with her.
Yes, that fucking Genesis! And they’re laughing and giggling, and they spot me at the end of the bar and rush over and practically fucking two-team tackle me in this massive hug. And Virginia’s crying and I’m crying and we’re both laughing, and it’s super weird because Genesis is there, but she says she’s back. Like, whatever had driven Genesis away, like it was fucking gone now. She’d left and yet, about a month ago, she felt like it was time to come back to California, back to Santa Cruz. She’d been living in Australia the whole time, completely unable to put into words why she felt like she had to stay away from Santa Cruz, but like a month ago, it just… evaporated. And she wanted to come back, to come home.
I told Virginia the whole story, everything Jonas had told me, about how I was one-eighth dragonborn, and how dragonborn were generally cursed to walk alone forever unless they either mastered magic to such a high skill level that they could do whatever the fuck they wanted, or they renounced their supernatural healing. Jonas had told me how to get a tattoo to do give up my healing, and I done it. I wanted to know if we still had a chance. I couldn’t promise her that I was going to be able to make it work, but I wanted to try with her, because I’d missed her so fucking much.
Somewhere in the middle of it, she kissed me, tears streaming down her cheeks, but tears of joy, and she told me that she and I were going to make it work even if it killed us. But! But, here’s where shit gets weird, man. Genesis asked… she asked if it was okay if she joined us. Like, she said the sex with me had been the greatest thing in her life, and that the time before when she’d had sex with Virginia before she met me, it had been the second greatest thing in her life, so she kinda wanted to try and combine the two together.
At first, I thought they were putting me on. I mean, right? No girl wants to stick around for a repeat performance and now she wants to pair up with another girl? But! But, dude, I’m just getting started! I laughed and tell Genesis I don’t believe her, and so she grabs me and kisses me up against the wall hard enough that everybody else in the bar is cheering her on. And when the kiss breaks, I look to Virginia, because I’m convinced she’s gonna be freaking out or punching me, but she just picks up where Genesis left off, and she takes a turn pinning me against the wall, jamming her tongue down my throat. And when that kiss breaks, I’m trying to catch my breath, and then Athena hops in to take a shot, and she starts kissing me like that one dream I had back when she was just starting to date Bobby, long before they got married or divorced.
So, there I am, having just kissed three different women, all basically within the span of two minutes, and the bar is howling like I just won the World Cup. And I’m completely unable to speak at that point when Athena asks Virgina if it’s an open party, and that she’d like to get in on the action, if they don’t mind one more play partner, to which Virginia says the more the merrier. Athena stresses she doesn’t want to be around for just a good time, but a long time, and Virginia says, I swear to you, on my life, swear to you, she says, “We’ll make it work. He’s earned it.”
Athena calls up Little Timmy and tells him to get his ass down to the bar, because he’s covering the rest of her shift for her, because she’s invoking the hook up clause, which is apparently a real thing at The Staggering Poet. We hang around until Little Timmy shows up to relieve Athena, and then the three of us pack into my Rav4 and start heading back to the house when Virgina asks me to make a quick stop at the 7-11 along the way, and so I’m thinking, right, right, they want me to pick up condoms or something, but Virginia hops out of the car with me and leaves the other two laughing and joking in the back seat as we head into the 7-11.
“We’ve got one last thing to pick up,” she tells me, leading me into the back, by the coolers, where I start to think, oh, we’re going to get soda or water or something, sure, I get that. But that’s not what we’re there to do.
Leaning with her back against the cooler, looking far more beautiful that I could’ve possibly even imagined, was Erika with a K. Yes, dude, our fucking Erika! From back home! The one we grew up with! And holy shit does she look fucking good. I mean, she was fucking hot back in high school, but now she’s, like, Julia Roberts, Taylor Swift and Alexandria Daddario all rolled into one, dressed in a cut off t-shirt that’s left most of her toned stomach exposed, and sweatpants, her jet-black hair covering her face. And she looks up at me, and I swear to you, for, like, a minute, I think my heart stopped. And the first thing she says to me is “Took you long enough.”
Then I realize, she’d not talking to me¸ but she’s talking to Virginia, who’s standing next to me. “Yeah, well, he parked further away from the bar than he used to, so it was a bit of a walk.”
“E-e-Erika?” I finally stuttered.
“Didn’t I tell you we had a pick up to make?”
“It’s good to see you again, Karl,” Erika said as she walked up to me and folded her hands behind the back of my neck. “Lemme show you how good.” And then right there in front of the drinks cooler in the 7-11, she just kisses me like she’s trying to top all three of the other girls I’d been kissing just a little bit ago.
We still got a couple of two liters of Coke to go anyway.
When we got back to the house, you and Rach were in the living room watching that ridiculous rom-com you watch every Valentine’s Day, and I think I was afraid if I told you we were home, they’d all vanish like I was Orpheus. Yes! Like Jonas said a few years ago!
So, the five of us go upstairs and close the door to my bedroom, and Virginia heads over to the stereo, turning it on and dialing it up a bit. She even put on my favorite Charlatans album, “Some Friendly,” with the funky Hammond organ setting the perfect sexy backdrop.
I’m not sure where to start, but then I notice, the girls are starting without me, and they’re all peeling off their clothes like there’s no tomorrow, like there’s no place I can look in my own bedroom that isn’t covered with gorgeous naked girlflesh. And then just as quickly, there are eight hands practically ripping my clothes from my body. They toss my clothes all around the room and shove me back onto the bed, and at this point, I’m convinced that I’m dead, that I stroked out and that I’m a corpse sitting in my car outside of the bar or something.
But before I know it, they’re crawling all over me. Thank god I didn’t have to make any decisions, because I wouldn’t have known where to start, but Erika tells me they’ve decided to fuck me in chronological order, to make up for lost time. She stresses that Virginia gets two in a row, though, since she hasn’t even had a first go yet.
Erika crawls up into my lap and just shoves her pussy down onto my cock, and I’m thinking to myself, all the other girls are going to be so pissed, but I glance over and they’re circled around me, one of each of their hands touching me while the other’s between their own legs. And they’re all smiling.
I don’t know where I got the energy, but shit, the five of us fucked until at least four, and I mean they wanted it all. A-frame, double blowjobs, together, in shifts, I fucked Virginia in the ass because she demanded I do it, and I watched Genesis lick my cum out of Erika’s cunt and… no! I’m not kidding! I have no idea where all this endurance came from, but my cock was ready to go each time one of the girls even so much as looked at it.
But here’s the thing, man… they’re all still there. Nobody’s snuck out. Nobody’s said they need to go. In fact, in the middle of all the fucking, they were talking long-term plans. Like, how they were going to need to completely strip out the closet so they’d all have room for all their stuff.
All their stuff, Neil!
I thought they were talking shit about all sticking around but–
…
One of them is right behind me, isn’t she?
Oh, hey Virginia! You remember Neil, right? Yep, he still lives here, him and Rachel. They own half the house. I was just…
Okay.
Okay?
I mean… are you sure?
All of you?
No no, I get it, you’re tired. You should sleep.
Heh. Yes, I promise, I’ll be back in the pile in just a couple of minutes. I wanted to let Neil know that you four said you were planning on sticking around for the long haul, now that I’m human after all. Hey, those were your words, not mine! Ha ha. Okay. Give me, like, two minutes, tops. Love you too.
They’re staying, Neil. They’re all staying. Forever.
Twenty-five years of never waking up with a girl in my arms, and now I’m always going to wake up with four of them. Can you slap me, just so tha– OW!
Yep. Not dead, not dreaming.
Fuck it man, the nightmare is over; long live the dream. I’m going back to bed, and we’ll get up whenever the fuck we feel like it.
This tattoo right here? You and Jonas saved my fucking life, man.
Hope he knows just how much…
…
…
…
Holy shit, I wonder if that means he really is my grampa?
Comments
Ronan
This is one of your all time best.
OkieDokeDude
Wow! Very clever the way this tale was spun. Even one sided it pulls you in. I am most impressed. Very well done!
Joel M Frye
Absolutely the best of the lot!
Loneshot
This is the first Silversmith story I’ve read. Probably should have started in order, but jumping in with both feet and wow! Now I have to go and read the rest of them. Great work!
Old Dragon
Wow ....... just wow .....!
Anthony Samora
This was wow
SC
Bravo Sir, bravo! A writers head would be the most fascinating place to visit. You never know what you’re going to find around the corner, tucked into a cubby, under the desk calendar.
