Mitchell Rogers kept staring at my mother's parts all through dinner.  My father pretended not to notice but I could tell it bothered him.  Mitchell's gaze was blatant.  Whenever he spoke, he addressed my mother's breasts.

    "More roast, Mitchell," my mother asked.

    "Yes," he told her boobs. "It's lovely."

    "Oh, good," she said.  "I hope you're saving room for desert."

    Mitchell drummed his gut and smiled.  "I think I'll have room," he said to Mom's freckled cleavage.  Mitchell's lust was more obvious than many of the teenage boys in my class, and their hormones could have powered a whole town.

    My mother stood up from the table to get dessert and Mitchell fixed his eyes to her ass as if it were the last bite of meat.  When she disappeared into the kitchen he looked down at his food and greedily forked the remains of his dinner.

    My father and I kept our eyes on him. We didn't look at one another, just at Mitchell and then back to our plates.

    "I'm sure glad you could make it to dinner tonight, Mitchell," said my father. "I think it's important to get to know people outside of the office."

    "Yes," grunted Mitchell, no hint of comprehension in his voice.

    "After a while you start to think of people as extensions of their desks, don't you think?  You forget the people you work with even have legs."  My father laughed, as if he hadn't told my mom the same thing in despair a thousand times before.

    Mitchell didn't laugh. "I don't forget your secretary's legs," snorted Mitchell. "How could you ever forget legs like that?"

    "Ho, ho," my father laughed, a little helpless.  He'd told my mother that he'd gotten a new secretary but he hadn't mentioned she had unforgettable legs.
This dinner was going all wrong for my dad.  He'd invited Mitchell over for supper in the hopes of making an alliance at the office.  Dad was afraid that he wasn't liked at the company and blamed this for his failure to advance through the corporate ranks.  Month after month, he watched as promotions were offered to less capable men, simply because, my father thought, they knew how to talk bullshit with the boss. 

Mitchell Rogers was the boss' third cousin or some such distant and meaningless relation.  My father wasn't even sure what Mitchell did at the company, only that he almost never came in on time, took two hour lunches, always left at five on the dot, and had a larger office and a more impressive title than my father.  Senior Director of Management.  There were no Junior Directors of Management at the company as far as my father could tell, but still Senior lent more distinction to the title than his own: Assistant Production Manager.

    My mother returned from the kitchen wearing oven mitts and holding a warm butterscotch pie with freshly whipped meringue on top.  My father watched her nervously.  He told my mother butterscotch pie was a strange dessert to serve, but my mother insisted.  Butterscotch was my favorite and this was my reward for sitting through dinner.

    Mitchell watched my mother's crotch as she crossed the room with the warm pie.

He was obese and his weight hid his age. His small black eyes were vacant and ageless, and his open huffing mouth exposed little more than a thick horse tongue.

    "Yum," said Mitchell.

    "Butterscotch," said my mother with a smile.  "It's Joanie's favorite."
    Mitchell and my father both looked at me as if I'd done something impressive.

    I smiled back at them.

    "You daughter has good taste," said Mitchell.  I couldn't stand his filthy wet pig eyes on me.  "I bet she gets that from her mother."  He turned to my mom's tits and smiled.

    Mom and Dad both laughed like sit-com parents at a scripted joke. My mother cut the pie and dished heavy slices onto our plates.  Mitchell asked for another sliver after he finished, and my mom gave him another whole piece.
    "It's great pie.  Isn't it?" asked my father.

    "I'll say," said Mitchell.

    "Maybe I'll have another small piece, too," I said.  My parents looked at each other and frowned.  They were ‘concerned' about my weight.

    "Of course, Dear," my mother said, her voice just a bit too eager.  She cut me a thin slice.
 
    Mitchell and I finished our second helpings.  My parents watched intently.

    "Well," said Mitchell, with the last bite of pie in his mouth, "I'm stuffed."

    "I just hope you liked it," said my mother.  "I think I might have cooked the roast a little too long."

    "Nonsense," wheezed Mitchell.

    "I'm still not quite the cook Roger would like me to be.  Am I, Honey?" 

    "Well, you're perfect in every other way, Toots," said my dad.
   
    "Yes," said Mitchell, "I'd say she is."

     My mother blushed.
  
    "And your daughter seems to be blossoming into just as lovely a creature as her mother," he said, smiling blankly into my face.

    "Luckily, she didn't inherit much of her father's ugly looks," said my dad.

    "Lucky," said Mitchell.

    "She does have her father's eyes," chimed in my mother.

    "Yes, I've been meaning to talk to you about that, Joanie," said my father in a tone of mock sternness.  "I'm going to need those back.  I can't see a damn thing without them."

    The table erupted with laughter.  I faked dry heaves over my empty plate.  No one noticed.  

   
      After dinner, my parents invited Mitchell to watch television with us.  I think the offer caught him off guard.  It was a corny thing to ask a near-stranger.

    "No," said Mitchell, short and distracted.  "I don't watch television."
  
    "Who doesn't watch television?" joked my father.

    "I don't," repeated Mitchell. "Anyhow, it's late."

    It wasn't even nine o'clock.  Mitchell was ditching us.

    "Well, thanks again for coming," said my father.  He handed Mitchell his coat.  My father looked like he was holding heavy, gray drapes.

    "None of it," said Mitchell, "the pleasure was mine."  He wrapped the long curtain over his shoulders.

    "You'll have to come again soon," said my mom.

    Mitchell stared into her bosom and smiled.  "You'll have to invite me again soon."

    "Don't hesitate to call, either," added my father.  "For any reason, business or otherwise.  I want you to know that you can depend on me for anything, Mitchell."

    I couldn't look my father in the eye as he groveled to the wheezing beast.    Mitchell stood with his head down in a concentrated gaze.  "Well, there just happens to be something," said Mitchell. "But, I wouldn't want to put you out."

    "Just ask," said my father.

    Mitchell looked up from the floor.  "As you probably know, I have a vacation next week, and I've been having the damnedest time trying to find someone to feed my fish."

    Silence. 

   My parents and I stared at Mitchell.  Mitchell stared at the floor.

    "Fish?" said my father like he'd never heard of them before.

    "Tropical fish," said Mitchell.  "I never even wanted the stupid things.  This girl I was seeing convinced me to get them."

    I don't think any of us believed Mitchell had ever seen a girl.

    "What do they eat?" asked my mother.

    "Fish food," said Mitchell.

    "Sounds easy," said my father.

    "It's real easy. I'd ask the girl, but we're not seeing each other anymore," said Mitchell.

    "Oh, that's a shame," said my mother.

    "You know what they say," said Mitchell.

    None of us knew.  We looked at him expectantly.
 
    "There are many fish in the sea."

    "Ha, ha, ha," they all laughed.

    I made pained winces as if my appendix was bursting.  Mitchell looked at me and stopped laughing.

    "Maybe your daughter could do it," he suggested.

    "Maybe," said my father.  And I already knew it was decided that I would.

    Mitchell and my father made a final agreement and shook hands.  He kissed my mother's hand, patted me on the side of the head , took one final look at my mother's chest, then left.

    The smiles on my parents' faces faded as Mitchell's tail-lights trailed off into the dark.  We all stared at the window in silence. 

    "Where is he going on vacation?" asked my mother.
 
    "I don't know.  Some island," said my father.  "He's been going to a tanning bed every night this week to get ready."

    "He can fit into one of those things?" asked my mother, mildly astonished.

    "No," said my father drolly.  "They have to tan the overhang separately."

    "Oh, Roger," said my mom.

    "Oh, Dawn," said my dad.

    They looked at each other slyly.  I wanted to butt their heads together.

    My parents were both fitness freaks.  If they succeeded at nothing else, they'd at least look good failing.  My mother had a tight hour-glass figure with firm breasts that popped out of her chest to meet you.  She was short and lean, perfectly curved like a sculpture of a fertility goddess.  My father was tall and well-toned.  His arms were not thick, but solid and defined.  I was a formless blob, a good forty to fifty pounds overweight depending on what scale I used.  I was exploding into a trollish version of my mother, rather than blossoming into ‘just as lovely a creature'. 

    To my parents, this was a source of endless chagrin.  The fact that their own offspring was a fat feckless groaner made them unsure of themselves.  I was a constant reminder of their flaws, a heavy-bottomed, sharp-eyed suggestion of their negative potential.  I was a fat girl.  Their fat girl.  They constantly did little things to help.  My mother bought me outfits that were a size too small.   "I thought you'd look great in this, Joanie," she'd say, holding a blouse or dress up to her own perfect frame, "if you just lost a couple pounds."   But, I did not lose a couple pounds.  I got bigger and her clothes fit tighter over my thick body so that I had to pull and tug at them until they stretched to my form.

    My father offered to buy me a gym membership or take me on his after-work runs.  "We'll go at whatever pace makes you comfortable," he'd say.  I'd tell him I didn't see any reason to run unless you were being chased.  He would smile, then look at my mom gravely.  "She'll grow out of it," they would agree, "once she discovers boys."

    But, I was already sixteen years old and had long since discovered boys.  Boys were mindless little animals full of smirks and grins, endlessly smug and unsure.  Boys were dumb, frightened, little men who did not yet know how to feign interest or hold polite conversation.  Boys were under-grown Mitchells waiting to happen.  Unfortunately, some boys also looked very good in jeans and these boys terrified me to no end.  Because these boys not only disliked fat girls, they were downright cruel to us. 

    "Where does Mitchell live," asked my mother.

    "I don't know," said my father.  "I'll find out tomorrow."

    "Don't you think it's strange?" asked my mom.

    "What?" asked my father.

    "I mean, we barely know the man."

    "He must be hard up.  For friends."

    "I bet his house stinks," I said.

    "Joanie," said my parents.

    "Did you smell him?" I asked.  " He smelled like a bowel movement doused in old spice."

    "That's not polite, young lady," said my mother.

    "What about the way he looked at you all night?  Was that polite?"

    "What do you mean?" asked my mother indignantly. 

    "That's enough, Joanie," said my father.  "Mitchell Rogers is a co-worker and a friend.  What if I remarked on the hygiene of one of your classmates?  How would that make you feel?"

    "Everyone at my school stinks too," I said.

    My parents frowned.
 
    "Mitchell Rogers does not stink," said my father angrily.

    "Okay," I said, "okay, I'm sorry."  There was no point in fighting my parents' delusion.  It might just undo them.  But, Mitchell Rogers did stink.  I could  smell a trace  of his reek in the foyer as my parents looked at me with their sad simple eyes.  My mother's were narrow and dark, my father's sky blue and wide-open, just like mine.  

    Mitchell Rogers lived a good fifteen-minute drive outside of town.  I feigned annoyance when my parents asked if I'd mind feeding his fish for the next week but secretly I reveled in the chance to use my mother's car.  (Dad's 76 Ford Mustang was out of the question.)

    Monday after school, I took my mother's car for a drive before going to Mitchell's house.  I drove down Main Street, past the dueling antique shops and the travel agency. I drove past the movie theater that was recently converted into a Methodist church with the marquee that read, ‘Christ Saves', as if it were a Hollywood blockbuster.  I drove past the men's tailor shop and the local Moose Lodge.  Past the Spanish grocery store, the sports bar, the beer pub, the pool hall bar, and the Mexican bar.  Past the main strip of town, I drove straight out into the flat land my parents wistfully referred to as ‘the country' and floored the Sierra to seventy.

    I drove for miles.  My parents never let me use their cars and I wanted to get the most out of this opportunity.  I rolled down the window and sank into my seat.

    Mitchell's house was set against a young forest of pine trees.  A narrow limestone path trailed from the road to his single-car garage.  Mitchell's house was small.  It looked more like a shed than a home.  It had white aluminum siding, a black tar shingled roof, and matching black shutters closed over all the windows.  His door-mat read, ‘wipe your paws' with dog paws embroidered under the writing.  I lifted the mat and found the key.  I held my breath as I unlocked the door.

    The rooms were strangely scentless, like a show house, old but unlived-in.  The odor of new carpet and interiors had faded but hadn't been replaced with any human scent. His walls were bare white, like blank sheets of paper.  I could see why his ‘ex-girlfriend' had suggested he buy fish.  This house needed some proof of life.

    Mitchell's  aquarium was placed in the living room, centered inside his unused fireplace.  I shook a can of dry fish flakes over the water and watched the little creatures go at it with their dumb mouths.  None of them were colored very brightly or exotically.  Leave it to a man like Mitchell Rogers to get the dullest tropical fish possible.  I fed them some more.  I looked around for Mitchell's television, but he didn't have one in his living room.  Just the aquarium in the fireplace and a tan love seat.

    I got up and walked into his kitchen.  My guess was that Mitchell and I had one thing in common, a deep and abiding lust for food.  This one thing would explain his surroundings.  We had a singular focus that took up most of our time and energy: overeating.

    But Mitchell had almost nothing in his cupboards, nothing besides health food junk, cans of fat-free soup, vegetable curry mixes, granola, and unsalted baked tortilla chips.  He had unflavored rice cakes, for God's sake.  How was he so fat?  I looked to his refrigerator and saw a weight-loss poster with before and after pictures of a woman.  It was typical self-improvement propaganda.  The ‘before' picture was small and showed the woman's back side in a bathing suit as she looked expressionlessly over her shoulder..  The woman looked like an ugly fat hun.  The ‘after' picture was large.  It filled the frame of the poster.  It was obviously taken in a studio.  The now-skinny woman stood with her arms akimbo, an obscene smile on her face.  She was still ugly.  Super-imposed over the bottom of the poster were the words ‘you can do it' in a bold-face yellow script.  Obviously, Mitchell could not do it.  He was just about the fattest person I had ever seen. 

    I opened his fridge and, on a shelf, a light-sensitive plastic pig started oinking and blinking red light out of its eyes.  Mitchell had skim milk and egg-beaters. His freezer was filled with Healthy Choice dinners and one small container of non-fat Vanilla frozen yogurt.  His diet was as bland as his home.  The man had a non-aesthetic.  I knew there had to be food hidden somewhere.  And, I made it my mission to find it.

    I searched all over his house.  I looked in his utility closet behind his linens.  I looked in his bathroom cabinet behind his bath towels and plumbing chemicals.  I looked under his couch and up his fireplace.  I even looked on his screened-in patio in back of the house.  I looked in his desk drawers in the den and his file cabinets between his tax return folders and life insurance policy.  Then, I searched his bedroom.

    Mitchell's  bedroom smelled different than the rest of his home: wet, almost musty, an old scent, like stale glue.  His bed was king-size and it had an indent the size and shape of his body.  I looked under it.  Nothing.  I looked behind the TV/VCR combo by his bed. Lying bastard.  Probably all he did was watch television.  I rifled through his drawers, which only held  clothes.  I opened his closet, a walk-in, full of suits and coats, all neatly pressed and hung.  Then, I noticed a red trunk in the corner, with a pile of shoe-boxes stacked on top.  It was the size and shape of one of those old chests you see in movies, the type kept in attics with war medals and treasure maps hidden inside, except this trunk was new and red and pad-locked. 

    I lifted up the trunk up a little and looked for a key.  It was hidden underneath, like the one to his house.  People were so obvious.  It was depressing.  I undid the lock and opened the chest, careful to keep Mitchell's shoe-boxes in order.  There was no food in the chest.  Only video tapes.  Black unmarked video tapes.  I started pulling them out of the chest. One layer of tapes revealed another.  At the bottom, I found Polaroids.  Dozens of them.  They lined the bottom of the chest.  And they all contained just one image, Mitchell's gigantic penis.

    My heart raced and I screamed.  Then, I blushed, both from the sight of his penis-I could tell it was Mitchell's because it was framed between a pair of hulking thighs-and the fact that it had made me scream, alone, in his empty house. 

    I hadn't seen many penises in my life.  Once, when I was a little girl, I glimpsed my father's as he was coming out of the shower.  All I remembered was a blur of bald pink flesh that looked like a limp thumb.  Later, in sex-ed classes, I got a better look at the things in drawings and diagrams.  I learned the urethra served not only as a urinal canal, but also as a genital duct.  I knew what dicks looked like and what they could do, but no one ever told me they could get so big.  I was horrified. I couldn't touch the pictures.  I studied them as they were, scattered across the bottom of the chest.

    Mitchell's dick looked almost a foot long erect and maybe seven or eight inches flaccid.  He had plenty of pictures of it both ways.  Some were taken head on, reflected in a mirror. Some were taken at arm's length from his crotch.  Sometimes he held his cock with his free hand.  Sometimes it dangled freely.  Engorged, the tip of his cock was blue like a bruise.  Limp, it took on a yellowish hue, like the skin of a sickly child. 

    The pictures made me nauseous and wild.  I left his closet and went to the kitchen to get a drink of water.  I watched his fish for a moment, ate some of his granola and drank another glass of water.  I walked back to his closet.  I looked in his full-length mirror on the closet door and pictured Mitchell's fat naked body reflected back at him in the glass.  It unnerved me to see my reflection in the mirror where Mitchell's own image had appeared so many times before.  I felt goose-bumps on my arms.

    I got in my mother's car and drove straight home. I couldn't stop looking over my shoulder.  When I got the car parked in our driveway, I fidgeted to get the key out of the ignition for nearly a minute before I realized the car was still running.

    "Where've you been, Joanie," asked my father.  It was eight o'clock.

    "I'm sorry, I didn't know I was being timed." 

    "Your mother needed her car tonight.  She had to use mine.  You know how she hates to drive stick." 

    "I'm sorry," I said. 

    "Dinner's in the fridge.  It's probably still warm.  Did you have any trouble finding Mitchell's place?"

    "No," I said.  I didn't want to talk to my dad.  I had trouble just looking at his face.

    "Well, thanks for doing it."

    I started for my room.

    "Joanie," said my father ominously.  I froze.  "Bring the car straight home tomorrow in case your mother needs it.  She's no good with the stick shift."  
This was not true.  My mother was fine with a stick shift.  My father just didn't like my mother driving his car. "Okay," I said, but nothing was.

    The next day, all through school, Mitchell's dick kept popping into my head.  I saw it everywhere.  Boys' fingers.  Teachers' bald heads.  Pencils.  Flagstaffs.  There was dick in my ham sandwich at lunch.  The hallways of my high school were big genital ducts.  The rank scent of sweat in the gymnasium during phys-ed reminded me of the smell of Micthell's bedroom. I couldn't get it out of my head.  Dick.  Dick.  Dick.  Even in short moments of distraction, I was aware of dick and the fact that I was not thinking about it.

    After school, I took my mother's car directly to Mitchell's house.  I drove quickly trying not to look at all the telephone poles posted along the country roads.  I ran into his house and stacked the videotapes back into the chest over the Polaroids, careful not to look at any of the pictures.  Once this was done, I felt a little bit better. But I couldn't help wondering what was on the videos? Visions of Mitchell's dick in moving pictures rushed through me in a shudder.

    I couldn't force myself to watch one but I couldn't close the chest either.  I bent over, and I could see my ass-crack in Mitchell's mirror behind me. I was wearing pants my mother bought me.  I took a video from the chest and walked to the kitchen. I ate some frozen yogurt.  It had freezer burn. ‘You Can Do It!' read the weight loss poster.

    I went back to Mitchell's room and put in the video.  I did not sit on his bed but stood in the space between his bureau and his bed, inches from the television.  A porno came on the screen right in front of my face.  I felt mildly relieved.  I knew what these were: the movies in the backroom of the video store rented only by pathetic men like Mitchell.  They were what the old feminists deemed exploitative and degrading and the new deemed a legitimate and empowering business endeavor.  I'd read things.  I'd even heard a women's forum on the radio on pornography with Gloria Steinem and a surprisingly well-spoken Adult Film Actress.  But, I'd never seen one before.  
Mitchell's porn was titled ‘The Fireman's Daughter' and it starred a blonde girl named Sable.  She looked like one of the girls that worked at my mother's beauty salon, with a ridiculous perm and overdone make up.  She was pretty despite the stupid faces she made as she tried to act.  She wore a lace slip and sat on a bed covered with stuffed animals.  Suddenly, a fireman busted through her door.  His hair was permed too but he was not handsome.  He had a big forehead and a snub nose.

    "I thought there was a fire in here," said the fireman.  He wore a fireman's coat and hat and held a hatchet.  That's how you could tell he was a fireman.
"There is," said the girl as she slid her slip down past her chest to reveal her double D plastic boobs.

    "You know how to handle a hose like this?" asked the fireman.  He was naked underneath his coat.  He had a hard-on the size of Mitchell's. 

    "Oh," said Sable. "I think I do."  Then some bad music with horns started and Sable put her mouth on the man's dick.

    I stood transfixed, watching it like a nature program.  I imagined narration: Once the wild man's penis is engorged and the woman's vagina is properly lubricated, he inserts it thusly rocking to and fro not unlike the spiecies of human known as music video dancers.

    I watched the entire video, then another. This one was about a team of cheerleaders called The Cum Squad. The actors changed but the corny dialogue remained. It was as pointless as my parents' dinner conversations. Why did they bother? I like the movies better when they were just sex. The sex was fascinating and it made me forget about Mitchell's cock.

    That night I got home late, at about ten. My parents were waiting for me in the living room.

    "Where have you been, Joanie," my mother asked, more angry than worried.

    "Nowhere," I said.  Suddenly, I remembered Mitchell's fish.  I had forgotten to feed them.

    "Now look here, Joanie."  My dad always said that when he was angry but he never indicated a specific place to look.  "We gave you this responsibility because we thought you were adult enough to handle it.  But if you can't, we'll just have to do it ourselves."

    "Do it ourselves."  I imagined this leading into a porno sequence in which my father turned my mother over and pulled down her pants as the bad horn music keyed in. Then, I imagined Mitchell Rogers walking into the scene with his twelve-inch-long ‘love wand,' putting my father to shame.

    "You gave me this responsibility because you didn't want it," I said.
"Don't take that tone with me, little girl," said my dad, his temper rising.  My mom nodded. 

    They repulsed me. "I'm not a little girl."

    "Well, you're certainly acting like one," said my father.

    "Fuck off, Dad."  I couldn't stop myself.

    My father stood up but did not move towards me.  "Fuck off?" he sounded stunned.

    "Apologize to your father right now, young lady," commanded my mother.
But I wasn't sorry, so I said nothing.

    "That's fine, that's fine," said my dad in a quiet voice on the edge of hysteria. "Let her say whatever the fuck she wants.  What's the fucking difference."  This was my father's lame idea of making a point, by throwing the offense right back in my face.

    "I'm sorry, Joanie," he said. "You're obviously not a little girl.  You're a big fucking woman to be able to talk to your father that way."

    "Oh, shut up, Dad. You're just mad because you got a little dick."
My mother went white.

    "You're fat," my father snapped. He froze, pointing his index finger in my face.  He didn't yell at me again.  He didn't say much at all.  What could he say?  We'd just insulted each other in the worst possible way, with the truth.  I was fat.  That wasn't a revelation but it was painful to hear my father say it.  My father did have a small cock.  I was sure now.  Why else would he return the insult?  He even acted like a man with a little dick, defeated and angry, never one hundred percent sure of himself, much like his overweight daughter.  He compensated with working out and driving a Mustang.  My mother was part of this compensation.  I couldn't figure out what her inadequacy was, though, other than being a dumb bitch.  She put her arm around my father and looked at me.  My father was blushing.

    I heard my mother whispering something into his ear.  He shook his head.  Then, I ran out of the house.  No one followed me outside.

    I got in my mother's Sierra and drove straight back to Mitchell's house.  I locked his doors.  I left his lights off and wandered through the dark.  I fed the fish.  I shook the fish flakes over the water again and again until there was no food left to feed them.  Their little fish mouths gulped at the flakes maniacally.  Nothing in their dumb fish brains could tell them they were full, so they kept eating and eating. 

    The phone rang and I let the answering machine get it.

    "You've reached the home of Mitchell Rogers.  Please leave a message."
Beep.

    "Joanie, this is your mother.  Joanie if you're there, pick up.."
But, I did not pick up.  I went to Mitchell's room and put on a porno.  I lay down on his bed and watched the television sideways, my head propped against my arm.  The phone rang again and again but I did not pick up.  I turned up the volume.

    My parents brought this upon themselves by having sex like the dumb actors I watched on Mitchell's TV.  That's how I happened. That's what was behind the boys smirks in school, the notes girls passed in class, the after-dance parties at rich kids homes with the alcohol and the swimming pools.  My classmates were learning to be adult film stars in the back rows of darkened movie theatres and the backseats of their parents' cars.  They were learning what my parents had already learned and what their parents had learned before them.  They were learning to body ram each other like dumb animals only to breed more dumb animals who would grow up and learn to body ram each other like dumb animals.  But not me.  Not Mitchell Rogers.  Not the chubby girl or the fat man with the king-kong dick. For us there was something else. We had butterscotch pie and pornography.

    On Mitchell's television, a short man in glasses gave it to a wild-haired blonde from behind from a short man in glasses. The man was skinny. The skin around his cheekbones was so tight that his head looked like a skull.  He made short grunts between his teeth and determined, evil faces as he pumped the blonde girl. The blonde made awful sounds. The man's brow was sweaty. His jaw was clenched as he pulled the girl's hair.  I wondered if my father grunted,  if my mom faked it that loudly when I wasn't home.  I wondered if Mitchell Rogers moaned as he lay on his bed watching other men.  I thought about the boys at school.  I imagined their weak little adolescent voices breaking in short squeals as they pumped and thrusted.
 
     I squirmed in the indent of Mitchell's bed and touched my hand to the bare skin of my belly.  The grunting excited me.  It sounded raw and dirty.  It sounded naked and pure and awful and beautiful.  I slid my hand between my fat thighs.  I thought about Mitchell's Polaroids.  I wondered how it would feel to look at my own crotch on film.

    I touched myself like the women in Mitchell's videos.  I started to feel things. Heat in my fingers and toes.  The warm air of his room like breath on my skin.  A thousand tiny thrills running over my body in warm, slow trickles.  I felt like I would turn into light, like something was  going to consume me from the inside out.  I felt like I'd burst through the ceiling in a blinding ray and hurl straight up into the sky like an ascending star.  Then the feelings started to ebb, and I stared into Mitchell's TV, blank eyed and nauseated.
 
    Later, my parents drove to Mitchell's house looking for me.  They pounded on the front door and screamed for me to open up.  They walked around the outside of the house knocking on windows and yelling my name, or at least that's what they told me they did the next day.  If they did, their voices just echoed though the pine trees, unheard because I'd  already fallen asleep, lulled to dreams by the grunts and screams of people fucking.