Pages Torn From a Travel Journal Read Free Page A

me & filled my head with the most obscene images, i.e., Nate’s creekers, “sick in the head for d—.” Did such creatures genuinely exist? Thus far, I had seen none, & the more decent side of my reason hoped that the indelicate mechanic’s promises were pure invention. But . . . what of my less -than-decent side?
    & all the while, that bathroom graffito left me helpless but to ponder what it insinuated. Such thoughts never occurred to me; they were useless thoughts, they were a waste of my precious faculties & shameful to be entertained by someone of erudite persuasions such as myself. I’d walked perhaps a mile down the trail, until it grew impassable; whereupon I retraced my steps, but after an undue amount of time I realized, 1), that the nature walk had indeed, finally, purged me of those obsessive sexual images which so distracted me, &, 2), I’d over-bound my starting point. Where was the exit spur back to the main highway &, further, the garage?
    It was now that my “lightning-rod” analogy socked home. I heard–or thought I heard—a sound like the tiniest squeal whose tenor did not let on whether it be a squeal of panic or a squeal of delight.
    Through some bushes, then, I thrust my head.
    Like a great glimmering mirror, a small lake shined back at me–of course, Nate had mentioned a lake close by, hadn’t he? To wither the 3 roughs had repaired for a bout of fishing. However, when my gaze circumscribed the modest body of water, it revealed no signs of the men themselves, though 3 fishing rods were indeed apparent, each with its haft stuck in the ground at the shoreline.
    Then it was the squeal that came to my ears again, & then?
    Another more deliberate sound.
    Crack!
    Yes, a hard, wet smack, quite akin to a palm hauled across the cheek in violence. Behind a sprawl of unruly bushes I rose on tiptoes to afford a view—
    & stood in utter shock.
    There, several yards off the lake’s edge, I beheld a most primal congregation: the 3 surly roughs on their knees in the dirt, & whom they all knelt about was the huge-bellied Brit mother. All 4 of them were naked as proverbial jay birds.
    The woman lay squirming, her knees painfully jacked back nearly to her shoulders as one of the lean rubes fornicated with her so vigorously it could only be described as savage. Her breasts & belly jolted with each pelvic thrust. “Oh, I’ll get another ‘un off in ya, I will,” grunted the man.
    It boggled my mind to see such ferocious intercourse with a woman so close to term; yet it was the other 2 ruffians who disturbed me all the more. One leaned over, & there could be no mistake that he was biting the woman’s left nipple, after which she cringed & shrieked. & the other?
    crack!
    It was this 3 rd rube who laid his open palm hard across her cheek.
    Clear to me then it was–in my investigatory nature-stroll–that I’d stumbled upon an overt rape & beating; & while I am not a man made for imbroglio—
    crack! crack! crack!
    –I knew that I must come at once to this woman’s defense, & with only my meager fists & barely existent muscles as weapons. But as I made to do exactly that, knowing well that I’d be thrashed to a spindly pulp, the most shocking truth of all unveiled itself.
    After the most recent crack across the face, the woman inclined up with a fuming frown, & her accent rang: “What is it with you yanks, anyway? When I say bite me, I mean no less!” & then she glowered at the fornicator, who’d stopped mid-thrust–“and can’t you fuck a bird’s minge harder than that? ”
    The man’s naked chest gleamed in sweat, while his face crumpled in perplexion. “Well, dang, we each done put two in ya already! I’se humpin’ hard as I can!”
    “Well hump harder, love, like you mean it,” she griped, & then, to the 3 rd : “And if American blokes can’t slap a woman with any more spunk than what you’re doing, how’d you managed to whip us in two wars?”
    So yet again, the cosmic laugh was on