Moaning

Mark Richardson

Fall 2009

Orgasmic moans float through my open window and I get horny. It’s just before dusk in late September: hot and swampy, the season’s last hurray before the crispness of Thanksgiving and inevitable dread and gloom of another Chicago winter.

I just returned to my apartment, showered, pulled on shorts and a T-shirt, ate a sandwich, and now I’m ready to relax after three sweat-dripping sets on the tennis courts. The old brown stone building where I live has no air conditioning. Mine’s a corner unit and I’d opened the two windows on adjacent walls across from the front door, hoping to generate a cross-breeze. No luck. The air is heavy and I’m already starting to sweat a little. It still smells like summer, cut grass and burning charcoal. It’s through the window on the back wall, above the sofa—my apartment is high enough up that if I remove the screen, lean my head out that window and look east I can see white-sailed schooners cut across the lake. It’s through that window that I hear the moaning.

I sit on the sofa and tilt my head back for a better listen. She finishes off with some guttural moans and then one loud: AAAHHH! Sexy as hell. She’s Asian. At least that’s how she sounds. I had an Asian once, a few years back, a real little spinner—tight, round ass, but not much up top. Quiet as hell, though. Mousy, as you might expect a little Asian spinner would be.

Now Roxy, now that’s a different story. She was a frisky little minx—a real screamer. She moved here from California after her divorce. Bitter, I guess, towards men, at least she sure treated me like shit, always belittling me or nagging too much. My therapist would ask why I wouldn’t just end it. Sex. She had me locked down in a vaginal cuff. The things she said, things she’d let me do. And ten years younger with those big, fake tits. The good fakes, not like some I’ve seen. After hearing me bitch about my predicament for months—I let it go on for a good six months longer then I should have—my therapist said she needed to know the details of what, exactly, was going on. When I told her she, my therapist, leaned way back in her leather chair, and with a little frown said, “It’s not every man who gets to sleep with a porn star.”

Now that the moaning has stopped I walk to the kitchen and make a martini. Gin. The key to a good martini is to marinate olives in vermouth. I have a whole jar full. I add two olives and a pickled onion—I let ‘em soak in the glass as I take a healthy swig and go back to the sofa. I keep a bag of weed in the coffee table, along with some rolling papers, which I take out and use to roll a doob’. A nice fatty. I kick my legs up on the coffee table and alternate between hitting the joint and finishing the drink. Then I eat the olives and onion.

It’s just starting to get dark. We’ll get crickets later, but you can already see lightning bugs. Definitely more as it gets darker. I live in a good neighborhood, on the North Side, but even here you can hear kids on the street yelling and gunning their cars. It’s still hot as hell.

I turn on the TV and flip through the channels with the remote. I have a couple of porn channels, but I can’t deal with that now. Local weatherman: “The heat wave continues.” Yeah, no shit. ESPN. HBO. I land on the Andy Griffith Show. It’s one of the old ones, black and white. From what I can piece together a man, Roger Hanover, has come to Mayberry. He’s got an eye for Aunt Bee. Aunt Bee is enormous on my flat panel TV; she always wears that same dull dress. It seems Bee and Hanover dated 20 years ago, and now Hanover is trying to rekindle the flame. Andy, of course, disapproves. Little Ron Howard is not so happy about it either. So what’s so wrong with Aunt Bee getting some action for a change? It’s not like every dog in town is sniffing after that bone. But no, Andy needs Aunt Bee to cook and clean for him. Hanover, however, is annoying. He does this thing, he’ll stick his hand out, inviting Aunt Bee to shake, and just as she reaches out Hanover pulls his hand back and says, “Hang it on the wall, Aunt Bee.” After two times I catch on and decide to take a hit every time he says it.

Then the moaning starts again. There are so many apartment units in my building and in the identical one across the courtyard that it’s hard to tell where the moaning is coming from. Everyone’s window is open, most with fans propped-up and buzzing away. Someone’s giving it to this Asian moaner hard because she’s practically screaming. The whole block must hear. The guy who’s working her has a lot of energy let me tell you.

I’m starting to go out of my mind. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I grab my cell phone. I met a woman on the plane a while back. I fly so much I got bumped up to business class. You really see a different type of woman up there. There was this one chick—unbelievably hot, maybe early 20’s, and really put together. Nails, hair, make-up, the kind you’re sure has the full Brazilian wax. I couldn’t stop staring. And she’s with this old dude—balding, a gut, he must have been 52 if he’s lucky. And it wasn’t just a fling because she’s got a huge ring on her finger. You just know she processed the situation and decided to choose 30 years of good living—$1,000-a-night hotels, easy.

But I sat next to another woman, on the plane. She wasn’t in the same class as Ms. Trophy Wife, but not bad either. Mexican. A little hot tamale. Big rack. She lives in Dallas, so I’ve been working her slowly. Maybe she’ll fly up here? She’s into email sex, though. She’s the one who really got the ball rolling—women today are so forward. They want it more than we do, no doubt about it. I shoot her a quick text message: Hey sexy, wanna play?

I lean over, resting one arm on the table, and then lower my head. With my free hand I roll the semi-cold martini glass up and down the back of my neck. There’s a sweaty-patch in the middle of my back, and when I sit-up some of the perspiration from the glass works its way down and mixes with the sweat. A few more muffled moans from the Asian chick and then she goes quiet. Maybe she’s finally worn-out? Christ. I check the cell. No reply from the Mexican, so I speed-dial Jill.

“Hey, what are you up to?” Jill says on the other end.

“Sweating my ass off.”

“What a lovely image.”

“I’ve always had a way with words. What’s going on with you?”

“Just hanging in the ‘burbs. There’s a street fair in Evanston.”

I can see it: parents with their whiny, running kids, and loud, drunken college punks in khaki shorts and Izods. To be honest, I really don’t care what Jill is up to. But I play along. Jill is almost always ready to go. I don’t consider her serious dating material, but she gets the job done. On our first date, after a few cocktails, she was the one who recommended we go back to my place. Now I just gotta work her a little, put in some time.

I close the deal. Jill is going to break away from her friends. She should be here in thirty. I head back to the kitchen where I mix another martini. Fuck the olives, too much time. I drink it down fast and then send Jill a text: Bring the wig.

A few minutes later she calls.

“You want the wig again?”

“Definitely.”

“Well I don’t have it with me.”

“Go get it then. It shouldn’t take too long.”

“It will take a long time. I’d have to drive all the way back home. Can’t we go without?”

“No. Come on. It is so good with the wig.” I bought her this black, close-cropped wig a month or two ago. It makes her look German, or maybe Russian.

“It’s just me tonight, sweetheart. Take it or leave it.”

“What the fuck? Come on. Is that the right attitude?”

“You know what: forget it. You’re one messed up dude—you know that? I’m not running a call service. God, what am I doing?” And she’s gone.

I send a couple of text messages, dial her number, but it all lands on deaf ears. Fuck it. Who needs this shit, anyway? I fire-up what’s left of the joint, take a couple of pulls. The TV is still blaring away. I make my way back to the kitchen for another martini. I drink and my head starts to spin. On the way back to the sofa I stumble a little and bang my knee against the coffee table. I fall back onto the sofa and grab my knee with both hands; flashes of light blink around my head like indoor lightning bugs. When the throbbing starts to dull I slowly stretch out.

I must have passed out because after midnight the TV jolts me awake. And guess what’s on? It’s the same episode of Andy Griffith! I haven’t watched this stupid show in forever, and now the same episode twice. This type of thing happens to me all the time, though. I won’t have listened to a CD in years, I’ll spin it at home, and then go out to my car and it will be on the radio. Roxy—sex-kitten-new-age-California-bitch—she’d say I’m sending out a message and the universe is responding.

It turns out Andy was right to question Hanover’s intentions. Hanover threatens to wed Aunt Bee unless he’s paid off $400. But Andy blows the lid off the caper, and shuttles Hanover out of town. The show ends with Andy reaching out to shake Bee’s hand, but he pulls back at the last moment and says, “Hang it on the wall, Aunt Bee.” Laughs all around.

It’s black and quiet outside and a cool breeze is now flows between the open windows. I spread the throw-blanket that I keep over one of the sofa’s armrests across my body. There’s just a little roach left, which I light up, inhale deeply, and hold the smoke in my lungs. After a few beats I blow it out my nose.

As a buzz starts to kick in I think about Andy and Bee. If I were going to write an episode of Andy Griffith I’d sex it up a little. Instead of a character like Hanover, someone a little darker would roll into Mayberry, a Bonnie and Clyde type. That’s whom Bee would fall for, and she’d fall hard. Andy would try to keep Bee in Mayberry, but he wouldn’t be able to strong-arm this guy. The dark stranger would have a motorcycle or convertible. Bee would drop everything and join him on the road. They’d work their way all across North Carolina, Bee caught in a spell, her hair let loose and a big smile cut across her plump face. Now that’s the kind of show I think people could really sink their teeth into.