Cruising Altitude

Somewhere north-northeast above Los Angeles, I’m getting sore, so I ask Tracy if she
will let up for a minute. This is another lifetime ago.

With a big hank of white spit looped between my knob and her lower lip, her whole face hot and flushed from choking, still holding my sore dog in her fist, Tracy settles my back on her heels and says how in the Kama Sutra it tells you to make your lips really red by wiping them with sweat from the testicles of a white stallion.
“For real,” she says.
Now there’s a weird taste in my mouth and I look hard at her lips, her lips and
my dog the same purple color. I say, “You don’t do that stuff, do you?”
The door handle rattles and we both look, fast, to make sure it’s locked.

Nothing’s worse than when a little kid opens the door. What’s next worse is when some man throws open the door and doesn’t understand. Even if you’re alone, when a kid opens the door, you have to, fast, cross your legs. Pretend it’s an accident. An adult guy might slam the door, might yell, “Lock it next time, ya moron,” but he’s still the only one blushing.
After that, what’s worse, Tracy says, is being a woman the Kama Sutra would
call an elephant woman. Especially if you’re with what they call a hare man.
The she says, “I didn’t mean that to sound the way it did.”
Let’s just say that even if somebody didn’t believe the accident story, I would

never get convicted of more than a lousy misdemeanor.
The wrong person opens the door, and you are in their nightmares all week.
Your best defense is, unless somebody is on the make, no matter who opens the
door and sees you sitting there, they always assume it’s their mistake. Their fault.

I always did. I used to walk in on women or men riding the toilet on airplanes, trains or Greyhound buses or in those little single-seat unisex restaurant bathrooms. I’d open the door to see some stranger sitting there, some blonde all blue eyes and teeth with a ring through her navel and wearing high heels, with her G-string stretched down between her knees and the rest of her clothes and bra folded on the little counter next to the sink. Every time this happens I would always wonder, why the hell don’t people bother to lock the door?
As if this ever happens by accident.