To my dismay, I was only able to cruise I-5 in re-energized contentment for several minutes, before what had been fairly smooth sailing turned into a barely moving jam. Big rigs lined the right lane as far as I could see. There were no giant orange signs announcing road work ahead, there had been no cones funneling us into one lane or the shoulder, everything just came to a slog. One guy got out of the passenger seat of his car, as his wife drove, and simply walked along with the flow. After awhile, as we climbed like snails over the squat mountain ahead, a narrow but thick plume of black smoke rose in the distance, maybe another few miles in front of us. It would take almost two hours to travel those few miles to the accident site, where a tangled and burned mess of a vehicle was being pored over by investigators, ambulances long gone with victims, if any could’ve survived what looked like the aftermath of an explosion.

During the delay, I had fired off a text message to BeFree, letting her know I’d be late to town, probably seven or so.

“Just in time for my finale!” she texted back. “See you soon, handsome.”

Handsome? Gulp. And I started to get very anxious again, worried that I already knew too much about her, and she about me; I feared that there was no mystery and could never be any, only a doubled, if not greater, dysfunction. This concern had been stoked initially as we’d gotten intro chit-chat and life stories out of the way online in the week before I’d left. It had started with one quite obvious question on my part. And, like the weirdo I am, I printed out the conversation to read, over and over, which I’d also done again as I’d waited in traffic.

“How does one get into your line of work?” I’d asked like a greenhorn.

“I guess you want a reason to forget about me, eh?”

I answered without thinking: “You should be the one forgetting. I consider myself a loser without peer.”

“Well,” she wrote back with twisted confidence, “now you have one. A peer, that is. If you are a loser, then I am The Hyperloser. Give up, you can’t win.”

Once again I typed without thinking and sent my response just as quickly. “I haven’t had an orgasm in seven months. That is a loser.” Immediately, I was horrified that I’d sent it, I wanted it back, you creep, but BeFree wasn’t fazed in the least.

“I haven’t had vaginal sex in five years. What do you call that? Freak loser is what.”

I thought about her site: this could be true, but still… “I hope we’re both joking, but I’m not. I can’t even get romantic with myself anymore, I just don’t like the guy.”

“Well I’m not joking either. And I was born with hair everywhere, too. The amount of shaving and waxing I do is unacceptable.”

“I have a hair fetish.”

“You do not.”

“Okay, I don’t, but I do have lipomas. Ever heard of those?”

“Ick, no.”

“Thank you.”

“Forgive the ick.”

“I’ll try.”

“What are lipomas?”

“Imagine a dozen golf balls of benign fatty tumors all over your body.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Neither would I, but I have them.”

“I understand how you feel about them, but with me…who cares? Again, what do I do for a living? Seriously, have you ever looked into a camera while another girl had four fingers up your ass?”

“No, but ‘so what’ back at you. Again, what do I do for a living?”

“I have no idea.”

“Nothing. I got laid off, I don’t even have a job.”

“Come work for me. With me.”

“Uh…”

“The offer stands, think about it.”

“I will.” Even though I wouldn’t. “I hate online seduction. Because in person it’s never the same.”

“Maybe this is,” she replied. “Maybe this is the oddity.”

Oddity seemed a perfect word. “I am willing to consider the possibility. But you still haven’t answered my original question.”

“How did I get into this line of work?”

“That’s the one.”

I remember it took her awhile to reply, maybe a half hour. “F-ck it,” she eventually wrote. “Why try to hide?” So she rattled it off: She’d been a foster kid from the age of three, had no memories of her real parents or family. At nine she was molested by a foster uncle, which lasted for about a year, providing her more memories than any mind could block out (“And I don’t care how many porn people say they were never molested,” she wrote. “Happy as hell for them, but I was molested. And I know it mattered”). As a teenager, she became so sexed up that she was almost uncontrollable. She got pregnant three times, twice miscarrying, the third time terminating during what she termed the single most depressing afternoon of her life at a free clinic. After this, at 16, she gave up on sex and proceeded to smoke a haystack of weed, but thankfully tried nothing worse (she didn’t like booze back then, she said, and was too scared to do any coke or acid or anything harder, and if she had tried the harder stuff, she was absolutely certain, you’d have never seen her again, ever). At seventeen, when she was a junior in high school, after meeting a youth pastor at the mall, she became a born-again. That only lasted 5 months, however, until her youth pastor tried to put his tongue down her throat, and his hand down her pants, one night after a potluck dinner and Bible study. She said she stopped him by cracking him over the head with a bottle of soy sauce some girl had brought with her fried rice casserole. After that, BeFree went to the local library and found books about psychology and abused and foster kids, and she read about how sometimes kids who have been molested become hypersexual later in life, as a way of retaking their sexuality, asserting it as boldly as they can. That knowledge made her get wild again, and this time without guilt or reservations (which would ultimately lead her to starting the website). She’s remained wild and undomesticated sexually ever since, almost a quarter of a century now.

“Thanks for the honesty,” I replied to her story. “You’ve had quite a trip. You sound absolutely self made.”

“Nah, I’m just another factory made widget. Anything else you want to know about the titillation topic? Might as well get it out of the way now.”

I thought for a moment. “Any work related injuries?” I inquired genuinely.

She confessed to one stint on the disabled list, but qualified it. “That was when I’d just started out and didn’t really know what I was doing, and it was nothing serious, nothing Prep H couldn’t take care of.” Now she’s a pro, she said, and knows it’s all about bodily persuasion. “You have to romance your ass.”

“That’s certainly one way of putting it,” I replied, which seemed to annoy her.

“Listen,” she shot back. “What if I were a baseball pitcher, contorting my arm and shoulder grotesquely ten thousand times a year? And then I blew out my rotator cuff or ripped a tendon or both, is that any more natural a way to hurt yourself than what I do? Is it?”

I couldn’t say it was. Score one for BeFree. Or one more, I should say.

“How’d you meet your husband?” I asked, changing the subject.

“At an orgy.”

“Of course.”

They had met atop a heaving mound of bodies in 1999 (“That old Prince song was even playing in the background at one point!” she added proudly). She and Trey fell in love fast, lived the alternative lifestyle to the hilt, they even saved for two years so they could take a belated honeymoon to the Hedonism Resort in Jamaica, partying and f-cking and orgying 24/7 for ten days straight. But Trey was eight years younger than BeFree, and when 9/11 happened, he was one of those young and angry and patriotic guys who enlisted the next day. He was supposed to be deployed out of San Diego, she said, which would’ve been ideal, but at the last second they ended up in North Carolina. The beach was beautiful, but it was still the deep south, and she could not deal. They agreed that she could move back to Ashland, which she did. When Trey would come home on leave, she’d temporarily move east. While he was in Iraq on his first tour, she started the website after he’d given her the idea and lots of prurient encouragement from the other and bloodier side of the globe. The reason was simple: like everyone else, they needed to scare up more money, badly.

So she did it, she started the site, and she became very good very quickly, building her membership steadily, as well as her film and photo library, gaining massive underground word of mouth for her gaping prowess. She emphasized that she really likes to think of herself as a fetishist and not a pornographer, but doesn’t mind the latter, though she will correct whoever attempts to label her as the latter. After a few years of internet success, she was making enough to quit her waitress gig, the occupation she’d been toiling at since she was 16. BeFree was living the lifestyle fulltime and making good money from it, more than good some months. Trey, however, was enduring three tours of duty, and it wrecked him like war always does to men. On his last tour in Iraq, he’d ended up working security on an investigative team sent to the sites of roadside bombings and car bombs and explosive mayhem of every sort. The team’s job was to sift through the steaming chunks and charred hunks of mutilated bodies and cars and buildings, picking through the smoking remnants, to determine what explosives had been used and, most importantly, what insurgent groups were known to use those same materials and, thus, were most likely to have committed the act. That job tipped him over the edge, she thought. Because of this, she was more than happy when he decided not to re-up like he said he was going to.

“I think the website and all the sex and freedom, it saved him sort of,” she wrote. “For awhile anyway.”

For awhile. The truth was when Trey was discharged in ’08, unbound life of f-cking or no, he’d never stopped having a tough time. He was on good meds, was seeing a therapist, but still, as BeFree wrote, “There’s some things that are so horrible you can just never make them right in a person. I understood it probably better than any woman he could’ve been with, I’d survived a lot of horrible shit, but it was different, and it wasn’t enough. Sometimes understanding is worse. That’s just they way real life is, you know?”

I did know. And well. But I was still concerned with my own hide. Not only was he tattooed and studded and ripped, but Trey was a war vet with combat related issues. More than enough to scare off most men, I was sure. (And yet there I was on that drive, headed for Ashland, it wouldn't be enough to keep me away.)

“So why did he leave you then? And are you sure it’s really over?”

“Believe me, he’s long gone, he’s not even on the planet really, you have nothing to be concerned about at all, if you are. But it’s too messed up to talk about. Maybe later.”

Not on the planet really? Was he dead? I didn’t feel comfortable asking her to elaborate, so I asked why she was closing up her website. “Why send the cash cow to slaughter?”

“A lot of reasons. My marriage is over, I’m forty in less than a hundred days. But that’s not entirely it. I can’t explain it easily. It’s like that movie Adaptation, did you see that?”

I hadn’t.

“Well, when the weird toothless guy Meryl Streep is writing the orchid story about explains why he stopped collecting tropical fish, when they had been such an overwhelming passion, he just shrugs and says very matter-of-factly: Done with fish. That’s me. Done with my ass.”

We both paused, and I had no idea how to respond to that one. Fortunately, she relieved me of the burden. Sort of.

“So what about you?” she inquired.

I sighed as I typed. “It’s too messed up to talk about.”

“Aren’t we the pair?”

“We’re a pair?”

“This moment we are. Now come on, let’s hear it. Even the sanitized version is okay for now.”

So I told her the edited version. “Suburban L.A. boy, from a messed up family of messed up kids, messed up ideas about love, messed up choices WITH love, bad college choice, bad career choice, bad wife choice, couldn’t have kids because my sperm underachieve and her eggs are missing yolks, or some combination like that. Then came the bad real estate decisions, the financial implosion, and during it my mom died alone in her Hoarders-like apartment. Two days after the funeral, I get laid off from my marketing job, and I discovered pretty fast that I’m just old enough to be too old to compete for a new job. I got depressed, got fat as a hippo, then my wife, who was assistant chief of staff for a state senator, went on a trip for work and she met a wealthy former bankruptcy attorney turned fashion model. She’s with him now in L.A.. And voila, I’m thin again!”

“He is not a model!” she insisted

“Seriously, I kid you not, it’s sickening. Last week at the dentist, I opened an issue of Men’s Health and there he was in a goddamn Lectric Shave ad!”

“That’s horrible. You shouldn’t have to see the guy like that.”

“And she told me he just shot a TV commercial.”

“Come on.”

“I’m not making this shit up. I think it’s for Cialis, too. Or that expensive Eskimo vodka from Norway. Same difference. I’ll have to avoid television for at least a year. Why couldn’t he do tampon or detergent ads, stuff they never show during sports? Thoughtless as-hole.”

“I refuse to believe any of this,” she countered.

“I tried denial,” I typed in return. “Didn’t work.”

I must have reread and relived this dialogue three times as I waited in rural Oregon gridlock on I-5, until I passed the smoldering accident and got up to speed again, which for the sputtering Sentra was a multi-stage twenty minute process. The setting sun was silhouetting mountains and hills and the furry points of treetops, a fading orange disc descending further with each rotation of my tires, until soon it was gone and a cobalt blue darkness surrounded me. Miles past the accident, as I rattled north in the Sentra, I replayed the dialogue in my head.

“I tried denial. Didn’t work.”

But it kind of does, doesn’t it? I mean, we’re all going to die, and we all know it. But you can’t worry about dying all the time, you’d never have the mental space to live. So that’s a pretty big form of denial, I thought, the most important kind humans engage in, and it serves a vital purpose in our weak and mortal minds: simple emotional survival. I kept thinking, which isn’t always a good thing. Denial, it seemed, was just as important as breathing, in its own way.

I needed BeFree like I needed to breathe.

Good lord, I chided myself, way to put the pressure on yourself and, more acutely, on her. Have a good time, you pud, whatever happens happens. Don’t be an idiot and marry the woman before you meet her. But she had been the one to say it was fate, hadn’t she? Might as well have said she believed in magic. Did I believe in fate? Seriously. Come on, you horny fool, be honest.

No. I didn’t. But so what?

I grinned and shrugged and accelerated, which for the Sentra wasn’t really about going faster so much as it was about making more noise, the tiny engine wailing. I thought about BeFree’s wit, and those emerald eyes; her shapely nose, the one I wanted to kiss; and her Michelangelo-sculpted ears, the ones I wanted taste; and those toes of hers, always painted, just the way I loved them. And yes, even that superstar ass of hers, her best and most literal commodity, even that too. For her, I easily could’ve seen myself becoming an ardent fanny fanatic.

(Here I have to ask myself: Do you believe in fate now? Today? That’s a much tougher question. Which I suppose tilts the scales a bit. But I just don’t have that confident an answer anymore.)

                          *   *   *

I wish I could say I rolled into Ashland under a glorious sunset, or at least on a clear and beautiful day, not in the complete moonless night that I did. Darkness clones things, makes a sameness, and, when I pulled off the freeway and settled onto her surface streets, Ashland looked no different than anyplace else. I could’ve been visiting my cousin on Long Island, the darkness painted everything a dim shade of generic American junkfood neutral. Turning off the main drag, I rolled slowly along BeFree’s street, counting off house numbers, and also looking for the broken down red VW Rabbit supposedly at the curb in front of her place.

“And the house kind of looks like a double-wide,” she had written to me. “Kind of. But it’s not a trailer, and I’ll whomp anyone who says it is.”

Soon I found the red Rabbit, its front end crunched like an accordian, spider webs and thick dust already accumulating on it. Minutes later, as I stood on her doorstep in the surprisingly cold November air, and though I could see how someone might think the house a trailer, I mostly thought about something else: that this was my last chance to back out and return home unscathed. I could hear music playing inside, and I knew the song. It was “Remedy” by The Black Crowes. I’d owned that album since it had come out twenty years ago. My wife, my ex-wife I should say, used to hate it. She liked Kenny G, and Celine Dion, and Michal Bolton, all the stuff I couldn’t stand. But that was why I had married her. I needed normal and stable, or so I thought, but that had only morphed into abnormal and unstable. I didn’t trust my instincts, but I didn’t trust my anti-instincts either. It was then that knocking on the door ceased being an option.

The door opened.

And she was standing before me in the flesh: Bedonna Freedu, aka BeFree.

She was even prettier in person, those green eyes gleaming despite the poor light. Copper locks halfway pulled back, the other half hanging enticingly around her face, she wore baggy blue sweat pants and a green Bob Marley hoodie, and no shoes, her glorious toes painted an electric blood red. I had the urge to drop to my knees and worship them on the spot, but somehow resisted. She had a laptop in her hand, and at her side stood the biggest housecat I’ve ever seen, a tan and black beast of a kitty, with an enormous head that rose above its owner’s knees. If you asked me, the creature was genetically at least one-quarter mountain lion.

“I knew you were here,” she beamed at me. “I bet you were standing there for awhile.”

“No, I just walked up.”

“Liar. I was watching you.”

I smiled guiltily. “Oh. Oops. You caught me.”

“What about me? You think I’m calm Cathy here?”

“Let’s start again. Hi, I’m Brad.”

She sized me up. “Look at you, so trim and fit. You look awesome. You wear your heartache well.”

“Thanks, but I look better when I’m not shivering on a doorstep.”

“Come in, please, forgive me, such a rude host, arguing with you on the porch.”

I paused, looking down at her circus-sized feline.

“Is your pet puma there gonna maul me if I come in? That thing is big enough to be at the zoo.”

“Gonzo is a teddy bear, don’t be silly, come in.”

I entered, the warmth of the fireplace heated space enveloping me graciously. It was simply furnished, if a bit cramped, with the kind of salt and pepper hi-lo carpet that landlords love to install, to hide stains and dirt. The black leather sofa and chairs seemed a bit tattered and worn, but they were probably still being paid off. There were prints and photos on the wall, some Ansel Adams mixed with Picasso and a Bob Dylan/Tom Petty tour poster from the 80s. The décor seemed eclectic, if not simply random. The faint smell of a litterbox lingered in the background, but not too heavily, which couldn’t be an easy thing to accomplish. With a cat that big, sheesh, it was like having a person crap in the box. Then I noticed a tall glass bong on the floor next to the couch. It was more like a sculpture, a piece of blown art, rather than a mere smoking implement.

“Do you want a snack or something to drink?” she asked.

“No, I’m good for now. Maybe we can get dinner later.”

“We should.”

She smiled and moved to me, giving me a little hug, as much as she could while holding a laptop in one hand. And she kissed my cheek.

“I’m so glad you came. No reason to spend all that hotel money.”

“I hope not.”

“You’re not worried about anything, are you? Sit down, please.”

“No, I’m not worried. This is just, you know, so new. Very 21st century, hooking up like this.”

“Then you think this is a hookup?” she asked with a sort of playful fake seriousness.

I think I blushed. “You know what I mean.”

“You’re so cute, turning all red. Sit down already, before you fall over.”

She sat on the sofa with the computer and cat, while I plopped into a chair. We looked at each other for what seemed an altogether unavoidable long moment of silence. Mega-cat purred on her lap, loud as a tiger. The music changed at this point, The Black Crowes southern rock replaced by the southern beats and raps of Arrested Development, another album I’d had forever. We had common musical ground, at any rate. Not a poor starting point in any relationship.

“So what kind of marketing did you do?” she asked kind of awkwardly.

“Do we have to talk about it?”

“That bad, huh?”

“The last job I had was with a company that did marketing surveys and research. We’d get fifty housewives and college students together, and other people that had the free time and wanted to make fifty to two hundred bucks for a couple of hours. And we’d do our thing with them.”

“And what was that?”

“Anything and everything. Watching a TV pilot, tasting a new chicken sandwich, listening to a bank executive run their latest ad campaign by you. And then they tell us what they think, maybe a few stay longer for a smaller focus group, make another fifty or hundred bucks. Basic market research.”

“I like chicken sandwiches, and TV, banks not so much. But at least it was something different every time.”

“I used to think that. Until they tossed me into the toilet and flushed me like a dead goldfish.”

“At least they flushed. That was polite of them, I hate when people don’t.”

“You’re an optimist, how nice.” I rolled my eyes sarcastically and smiled. We had a chemistry, I couldn’t deny it. Another silence ensued, this one much more brief.

“Well,” she finally said, “at least you got here before my show starts.”

“I don’t know,” I joked. “I’m worried you might get me stoned and tempt me on camera.”

“Hey, you just gave me a great idea.”

“Shut up.”

She laughed. “You’re funny. But I can’t get stoned before a show, it feels like cheating. And especially not my finale.”

“Very honest of you. You must hate those athletes taking steroids.”

“As long as they’re not on the Ducks. Or the 49ers.”

“That’s right, a football girl. I like it. Ducks played today, didn’t they?”

“Bye week. Sucks the life outta the whole state. We have Wazoo at home next week though. Rout time.”

I started to make a Wazoo/rear-end joke, but I was fortunately interrupted by her computer, which suddenly grabbed her attention (and I say fortunately because it was, in retrospect, definitely a blessing that my questionable butt pun never made it out of my mouth). BeFree, staring intently at her laptop’s screen, spoke as she typed, pitching me her latest project.

“Sorry, I just have to do this here. I was waiting for this file to finish loading, it took forever. I’m working on a porn bloopers DVD. For after I close the website. I’ll sell it for download mostly, but I have a good connection with a DVD manufacturer. And I guarantee you that my site has the best sex bloopers in the history of the genre. The most obscene outtakes you can imagine. Blowjobs that turn into uncontrollable laughter, naked people falling off tables, ill timed farts and noises from every orifice imaginable, flaming vibrators, butt plugs flying across the room, you name it, I got it.”

“Should be a, uh, goldmine,” I told her.

“Not really, but it’s a few extra bucks. Maybe more, you never know.”

“You never do.”

She glanced up at me with a sly grin, as she saved her file and placed the laptop on the brown wooden coffee table. “Done. For now. You sure you don’t want something to drink, I have beer, wine, soda…”

“Can I get an order of potato skins and whatever you have on tap?”

She laughed again. Was she already high? “Seriously.”

“I’m fine, really. I’ll let you know when to feed me, and when to clean my box.”

More laughter as BeFree stroked her humungous cat and closed her eyes. She seemed to meditate happily for a few seconds.

“How much does your cat weigh?” I asked.

“Twenty-five pounds,” she answered, opening her eyes. “He’s a big boy.”

I was amazed. This was not an obese cat at all, just huge. Long and tall and thick. “Maybe he’s a dwarf mountain lion,” I said. “You never know, they could exist.”

“He’s just a big normal cat, trust me. Gonzo thinks he’s a dog, though, that’s what really makes him different. He got raised as a kitten with a puppy, our dog Igor, who we just had to put down six months ago.” She pointed to a large picture in a frame over the fireplace, where wood was popping loudly as it burned. It was a photo of Gonzo curled up next to a brindle Great Dane that took up the entire sofa, both animals so big they looked like a napping horse and pony. “Gonzo’s been pretty bummed ever since. And when Trey left, too, it’s only gotten worse. He hardly plays anymore, and he doesn’t even like his walks very much.”

“You walk your cat?”

“On a leash, you bet.”

Gonzo settled deeper into BeFree’s lap, his purr as loud as an idling Pontiac.

“Wow, it’s almost time,” she suddenly declared, sitting up and startling her mountain lion. “I have to go get ready. One more basketball up my rear and then I’m done with it all.”

“Really? A basketball?”

“Women’s size. It’s a little smaller.” She winked, and I’m fairly certain it was meant to reassure me, but it didn’t. I had paid for my weeklong membership, after all, I’d perused the site and I’d seen some of the things she’d managed to wedge up there, so a basketball didn’t sound that far out of the realm of possibility.

“So I assume you’re not participating,” she said, “but you can still be in the studio and watch. You wanna do that? I understand if you don’t, but I had to offer.”

“Well, if a basketball’s involved, I don’t know.”

“I was kidding about the basketball. But I have eight thousand viewers on three continents waiting to see my backdoor farewell. I have to give them something special.”

“Maybe you should just try to fit me up there.”

“That would be cool, I can see the headlines now: Woman Sits on Man and He Disappears, Video Goes Viral.”

“On second thought, maybe I’ll stay out here and thumb through your copies of Bon Appétit.”

“Coward.”

“Guilty.”

She pretended to be disappointed. “Fine, be that way. But you can tune in any time you want on my laptop, I’ll just leave it on the table. The site’s already up and running if you get curious. I made Chex Mix, the tin over there is full of it. Make yourself at home. I have diet soda, iced tea, and there’s a bunch of liquor in the cabinet over there. And now you’ll have to excuse me, but I have to clean up, then put a fire extinguisher up my butt.”

“Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Are you ill? Of course not. You’re way too easy. See you in a bit.”

She headed into her “studio,” which was a converted extra bedroom that had its own bathroom. I sort of followed behind her to peek into the room. She turned around in the doorway.

“You wanna see what it looks like?”

I caught a glimpse of a bed, some extra lighting over it, and a desk with dozens of dildos on it, from small ones to monsters that belonged on a whale or an elephant. It shocked me to see it all for real, and I felt myself blushing again.

“That’s okay,” I told her. “I should just stay out here. Really, I’ll be okay, you can show me later.”

“You sure?”

“No, but…just go, please, I’ll just be a nuisance in there.”

I gently pushed her through the door, reaching to close it behind her.

“Are you blushing again?”

“It’s the red wine, it does that to me sometimes.”

“We didn’t drink any wine.”

“Good luck.”

“You’re so priceless. Thank you.” She kissed me on the cheek again.

With that, my cheek atingle, BeFree closed the door behind her. In a few minutes, she’d be performing feats of ass magic that only the most skilled and trained artist could endeavor to undertake. A grand finale it was sure to be. What on earth would she cram up her backside tonight? Earth itself, a globe? I felt like the wife of an old quarterback, hoping he doesn’t get hurt in his final game. But she would be fine, she knew what she was doing. I was the one with nary a clue. Gonzo the mutant kitty looked up at me from the sofa and meowed. It wasn’t really a meow, though, it was more like a mini-roar.

I wanted to watch BeFree’s show, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to be in the studio, but I didn’t want to be. Then I got a brief fear that Trey, her husband or ex-husband or whatever and wherever he was, would walk through the door any minute and reclaim his position as man of the house by stomping me into a pile of mush with his combat boots. But I couldn’t take off on this woman. I was already convinced I might never leave her. I might even burst through that studio door and make sweet filthy love to her right there on camera. I didn’t care who saw us or who knew about us. Then I remembered how my own pale, droopy, mid-40s ass had looked in the mirror the previous morning, when I’d caught a glimpse while putting on my clothes. Two big lipomas on the right cheek, all those other ones on the rest of my body. No one in their right mind would put that ass in front of a camera. That would require a wrong mind.

I moved to the liquor cabinet and opened it. I wanted to drink, and I didn’t even need a glass.

(To be continued...)