Oliver Benjamin
his skin and the stones beat him blue. He roared and raged and cried
and fought as the goddess had her way with him and though he might
have died he didn’t.
Something screeched. Outside and he tasted. Blood in his mouth.
Holy.
The dancing light coming through the thatched roof painted tiger
striped lines on the mud walls of the large, circular hut and on the
face of a beautiful Ethiopian girl who dabbed his forehead with a
damp cloth. Her eyes bored tunnels through his skull. They seemed
to cauterize the nerves screaming inside his head. He could not
believe how lovely she was. He wanted to say this but realized he
could not speak. She began asking him questions in Amharic that he
could not comprehend and he moved his mouth as if he was
answering but nothing came out. Salt fell against his lips. She wiped
away the tear with the cloth.
He was wrapped in a shamma, the long cotton shawl that
Ethiopians often wore even over their business suits and evening
gowns. He had a tremendous erection and wondered if that meant he
was dying. Hanged men were often said to ejaculate upon death.
English poet John Keats grew insatiably horny the closer he came to
the end, screwing everyone in his tuberculosis ward. Why else would
he be aroused? Well, there was the girl, of course. How old was she?
Young. Sixteen? Not much more than that. He closed his lids and
tried to sleep in the warm linen cocoon.
She spoke some words to him but he was exhausted and didn’t
understand nor respond. He closed his eyes and a minute later felt
the shamma lift and fold and her small hand move gently inside to
take out his penis. Too surprised to react, he lay there motionless as
she stroked it curiously and carefully as if it was a pet. She thought he
was asleep. He had no idea what to do. Telling her to stop would
embarrass her so he continued to pretend he was sleeping but
something was building inside and he could not parry it, rising and
falling and then rising higher while the circumference of the
sensation grew wider until it suffused his entire body and then it
broke and they both gasped. Angel gore sprayed out all over the
snow-white shamma. Waves of pleasure started to recede and he felt
her trying to clean and rearrange his shamma but footsteps were
already rushing in from outside and an agitated conversation took
place between the girl and an older man. All the while Roy pretended
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