32...

Bryan slowly and quietly followed Frank back in to the bedroom. Frank found a pair of jeans on the floor and quickly put them on over his striped boxers. He began to tuck in his Sonic Youth T-shirt before thinking better of it and pulled it back out again. He went to the milk crate in his closet and pulled out a pair of socks. He moved back to that chair at his desk, fully aware that Bryan was watching him, but ignoring him all the same. He forcefully straightened out his socks by slapping them on his thighs and then roughly put them on.
“Frank, man.” Bryan tried in a calm voice.
“What?” Frank looked up with anger pounding from his eyes.
“What’s really the problem? I mean you’re not really pissed about the stupid porn story are you?”
Frank got up and began rummaging around for his shoes. He found one, picked it up and began spinning in a small circle, attempting to sniff out the other. After about forty-five seconds of this, Frank threw the one shoe down on the floor and sat down again.
“I don’t know Bryan,” Frank said, his voice lightly marked with faraway tears. “I’m fucking beat. I’ve been on this crazy roller coaster morning and I think I’m starting to lose it a little. I feel completely out of control, and the fact that I try to hold it together and act like my life has some semblance of normalcy makes me feel like driving a spike through my head.”
Bryan had found Frank’s lost shoes sticking out of a pile of laundry. He grabbed it and the thrown one and gently handed them to Frank.
“And yeah, the stupid bathroom fuck story was just the last straw. I know it’s not a big deal, and I know it’s supposed to be cheesy, stupid, raunchy porn for sad suck suckers to rub one out to, but… I don’t know…”
Frank was looking out the dusty and encrusted window high up on the bedroom wall. Bryan could see his mouth fighting with the words trying to come out, as if he were tasting them before serving.
“For a second there it represented abject fucking failure in a way that… I could see this round window set in a stucco wall that was somehow the embodiment of expectation…”
Bryan was sort of waiting for the joke, but realized it wasn’t coming. He didn’t think that Frank was talking to him anymore, and frankly he couldn’t understand what he was trying to get across anyway.
“…I knew that desire will destroy you, but at the same time, in a very real way, desire is the only thing that will keep you going. It’s like this beast that eats itself and survives. No, it’s like this flower that just keeps opening up on itself and you keep seeing these rows of paper-like petals, in glorious colors and you keep thinking, there can’t possibly be more coming. But it just keeps opening out… And I realized that man, I can rationalize my way out of anything, and where does it fucking stop? Where do I stop it? I just kept seeing this hall of mirrors… No, this endlessly opening flower, and I flipped out a little bit.”
He looked up at Bryan as if he were lost and shook his head a bit. Slowly his eyes cleared and he looked down at the shoes in his lap. He began to put them on.
“Sorry man, I didn’t mean to snap at you,” he said, as he slowly laced up.

31...

Frank leapt from his chair and stormed off towards the bathroom. He stepped inside, spun to look at Bryan’s giggling face, and firmly closed the door.
“What’s wrong man?” Bryan asked with a smile. “Getting wood?”
“Hardly,” came Frank’s muffled reply from the bathroom.
“But it’s just getting to the good part,” Bryan said as he rattled the paper and scanned the newsprint, still grinning like a hunter who’s just caught something particularly wily. “The janitor comes in with his pet parrot.”
“Seriously, Bryan, enough!”
Bryan closed the paper, careful to keep his finger tucked inside, marking his place. He leaned against the bathroom door and listened for a moment. He tried the knob, found it wasn’t locked and opened the door. Frank was sitting on the toilet, giving Bryan his patented impatient look.
“Do you fucking mind?”
“What’s wrong man? This shit is funny.”
“I’m gonna wipe, do you wanna watch?”
Bryan, still grinning, turned his back towards Frank and leaned against the bathroom doorway.
“Seriously, what’s got you all worked up?”
Upon hearing the toilet flush Bryan turned back around. Frank was leaning against the sink and staring at himself in the mirror. The only light was coming through the window and that in itself was the only available light reflected off the building next door. The bathroom was a square of shadows.
“It pisses me off that somebody got paid to write that,” Frank finally said. He grabbed his toothbrush from the chipped coffee mug on the sink and added a little bit of toothpaste.
Bryan again opened the paper at the spot he had marked with his finger.
“Yeah… Chuck Peevesly,” Bryan said.
“Wha?” Frank asked around a mouthful of foam.
“Chuck Peevesly wrote it; probably got a couple hundred. What’s the big deal? It’s cheesy porn.”
Frank spit out a healthy wad of saliva and toothpaste.
“Exactly, it’s cheesy porn. At least be original about it, push the boundaries a little. ‘Oooh, you are being a dirty girl…’ Please.”
“Maybe Chuck couldn’t get published anywhere else. I don’t know, the way I look at it is, at least he’s writing.”
Frank rinsed the toothbrush, tapped it hard against the basin and tossed it back into the coffee mug. He walked towards Bryan stiffly. Bryan shrunk against the doorjamb, holding the Wank issue against his chest to let Frank go by.

30...

“I was out on the town, partying it up with my girlfriends at a swanky, downtown bar. After a couple of cosmo’s, I went into the ladies room to freshen up. As I walked in I nearly ran right into a man standing right in the middle of the ladies room!
“I double checked the door, embarrassed that I may have walked into the wrong room, but no, he was the one who was wrong. He immediately realized what had happened and looked at me sheepishly.
“‘Am I in the wrong bathroom?’ His shy smile was gorgeous. I could see his muscles under his tight shirt and the bulge in his pants.
“‘That’s okay,’ I said with a giggle. ‘Mistakes happen.’
“As he started walking out, he accidentally brushed against me with his hot, hard arms. I don’t know what happened, but it was like a spark shot between us, and before I could react I realized we were kissing each other and hard.
“He was shy at first, just rubbing his big hands all over me, but I couldn’t help myself, I immediately reached down, unzipped his pants and grabbed his enormous c*ck. He gasped with delight, and quicker than I was expecting, he reached up my tight dress, into my panties and put two fingers in my p*ssy.
“‘It’s so wet,’ he said as he started rubbing my cl*t with his thumb.
“‘Take me into the stall,’ I whispered in his ear, I was close to c*ming. He picked me up and gently, but quickly, put his throbbing c*ck inside me and carried me into the stall.
“No sooner had he closed the stall door than I started to c*m. I could feel my hot c*nt grabbing onto that pulsating d*ck. I nearly passed out. Just then I heard the bathroom door open and the unmistakable sound of my roommate Heather’s voice asking where I was.
“‘I’m being a dirty girl,’ I said as this stud f*cked me hard.
“Heather opened the door and smiled her naughtiest smile.
“‘You are being a dirty girl,’ she said as she came in and closed the stall door.
“Heather was always a take charge sort of girl. She asked his name.
“‘Tommy,’ he said, gasping.
“‘Tommy,’ Heather said with a smile, ‘I want to s*ck your c*ck until you f*cking c*m.’
“Before I knew it, Tommy’s enormous tool was out of me and deep into Heather’s hungry mouth. Tommy lifted my up with those bulging arms, put me on the toilet and began tongue f*cking my hot, wet c*nt.
“Just then…

“Enough Bryan!” Frank yelled.

29...

“Obviously. I can read on the cover here that it’s a copy of Wank. What are you doing with it? I didn’t think you were into porn.”
Bryan began thumbing through the issue. Lipsticked and half naked cover girls did a spastic dance as he shook the paper, laughing.
“Oh no, I’m heavy into porn,” Frank replied with a smile. “I was just bemoaning the fact last night that that isn’t dirty enough for me.”
“All the bad words are starred out!” Bryan was laughing to the point of tears.
“I know!” Frank was nodding emphatically and laughing. “What kind of porn censors the words even?”
“The kind of porn you get out of vending machines on the sidewalk I guess.”
Bryan’s eyes were wide as he peered through the paper. It couldn’t have been the barely mildly titillating pictures that were keeping him interested.
“Ha,” Bryan uttered, but he didn’t sound that amused.
Frank looked around his desk for a moment. He saw the card that the Wank guy had handed him and picked it up. The card was remarkably plain; just white with only the name Tad Winslow and a phone number underneath that. There wasn’t even the mention of Wank. Did delivery guy Tad Winslow make up his own cards? Frank was suddenly very intrigued by the guy. He remembered the vaguely creepy feeling that the guy had given him the previous night. He felt something snag inside his brain, this invisible little hook that would not let go. Frank also grabbed his wallet from the desk and slowly placed Tad’s card inside it.
“Hey, listen to this! This is an actual quote/unquote story in here,” Bryan was loving this. By the tone of his voice he was also a little ashamed that he was loving it. “’I’m a bad girl. I used to peek through their door and watch Mommy ride Daddy just like I always wanted to ride a horse.’ Are you fucking kidding me?”
Frank sat back and got comfortable; it was fun to see Bryan get so excited about something.
“It goes on to tell about her encounter with a painter who uses his quote/unquote brush in a naughty way. She ends up with the handle of a roller brush in her p-star-s-s-y. Man, oh man. I can’t believe how cheesy this is.”
“Bryan, weren’t you a featured player in a little video movie called Randy Ranch Hands, where you used your cock to bitch slap a midget in a Little Bo Peep costume?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at Frank for a moment above the paper. “It paid a thousand bucks.”
Bryan went back eagerly to the Wank issue and Frank shook his head.
“Oh!” Bryan exclaimed with glee. “Check this out…”

28...

Frank dropped the telephone receiver back onto the phone with cold frustration. He stared at the machine intently, cocking his head slightly to the left, and then with a violent rush pushed the whole thing off the desk and onto the floor. He smiled slightly at the loud clang it produced. Lighting a cigarette and leaning back in his chair, Frank stared at the ceiling while Bryan came around the other side of the desk and picked the phone up off the ground. Frank knew somehow that he was going to do that.
“What’s going on?” Bryan asked with a barely perceptible smile at the corners that he just couldn’t bring himself to hide. To Bryan, this would probably beat the hell out of any soap opera out there.
“The guy sounded like a god damn speed freak!” Frank muttered, spitting smoke at the sky. “He sounded like Jeffery did in the end.”
“What’d he say?” Bryan was leaning on the desk, leaning in closer.
“He said that some guy showed up in his apartment one day looking for Alexis, and that this guy said that Alexis had killed someone.”
“But you don’t think it’s true? You think it’s just tweaker ramble?”
“Sure, it’s probably true. Why not?” Frank began to smile as he took another drag. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
“Because if you knew this guy, if you new Lou…” Frank leaned forward and looked into Bryan’s eyes with a fiery, red intensity. “This guy was Joe Fucking America, the perfect guy, right? He was good looking, nice body, athletic, smart enough, really nice… I mean really nice, you just wanted to slap him around a little bit he was so nice. Essentially, you just wanted to find a weakness in this guy, you know? Find that one thing that would bring him down closer to your level. I wanted to find out the guy was a drunk driver, or hit like a girl or ate puppies; anything. But he was just a nice guy.”
“That’s hateful.”
“Bullshit, that’s human.”
“And so hooray, you finally found his weakness.”
“I finally found his weakness,” Frank repeated in a monotone.
“He’s a speed freak,” Bryan was quickly losing interest and was glancing around the artifact site that was Frank’s desk.
“No!” Frank practically gleefully shouted. “Alexis is his weakness. His involvement with that vixen left the man broken. Me, still kicking and looking for more.”
Bryan looked quickly back up towards Frank with a look of theatrical disbelief and feigned annoyance before setting his fingers to randomly rummage through a stack of papers on the floor.
“I’m stronger than Lou Deeds.” Frank said proudly as he stamped out his cigarette.
“Hey Superman,” Bryan asked with a smile painting his voice a bright blue. “What is this?”
He held up a rumpled mass of newsprint triumphantly. With a matter-of-fact voice that showed no hint of the embarrassment Bryan was hoping for, Frank replied:
“That, my dear Bryan, is a copy of Wank.”