I felt Kirk’s chest rise and fall with visible irritation. “There’s only one dick, sweetheart. Believe me, he’d never get laid if there were two.”
She coughed out a noise that was somewhere between fascination and relief. “How long’ve y’all been…”
“Conjoined twins?” My chest rose and fell along with Kirk’s this time as we both filled each of our lungs with air.
Of all the questions we got asked, this was by far the most ludicrous. I’d long gotten accustomed to the frightened stares and looks of horror. We had a mirror at home. I knew what a strange sight we made walking down the street. Two heads. One set of legs. One set of arms. We grew out of each other’s torsos like spliced branches on an apple tree. Kirk had two shoulders while I had one and a half. We shared one stomach, one heart, one set of intestines, one spleen, liver, pancreas. Our arms moved independently for the most part. We both controlled the legs, but neither of us could explain how we walked in tandem—nor could modern medicine, which we’d given up on years ago. As far as I could tell, it was a matter of wills and whose was the strongest. Which usually meant Kirk got his way. He itched, and I scratched. He farted, and I said, “Excuse me.” He drank, and I started singing hymns at the top of my lung.
It was inevitable that our predicament raised questions. But this one in particular was maddening in its stupidity. How long have we been conjoined?
How long has breath filled my body? How long has wax stopped up my bad ear? How long has the earth turned or clouds waltzed across the sky?
I said, “We were born this way,” before Kirk could give his usual “accident at the nuclear power plant” remark, which I was half afraid this girl would believe.
“Freaky,” she said, her fingers pulling blindly at the zipper on her dress.
“Keep those out of his face,” Kirk warned, an edge to his tone. “You’re with me, not him. Remember that at all times.”
She finally gave up on the zipper and pulled the dress off over her head. I tried not to, but I couldn’t help but glance at her firm breasts, the gentle curve of her stomach sloping into her darker lady regions.
Kirk’s head snapped around, and I pretended to be interested in working out the kinks in the headphone wire. Still, I felt my cheeks flush. I was in the wrong here. We alternated our days—always had. It was the best way to keep the peace, and it made sure no one, namely Kirk, could screw things up too badly. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays were mine. Kirk got Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Sundays we split down the middle so that I got to go to church and Kirk got to do exactly what he was doing right now. Being honest, I think he did it on purpose. Saturday was all his. He could’ve debauched himself silly and given me time to recover. But no, as soon as I got home from church, he was spraying on cologne, greasing back his hair, and ironing our tight, low-rider jeans for his big night out.
“All right!” Kirk clapped our hands together, making me drop the headphones. “Let’s get this party started.”
With no preamble, she mounted Kirk, her leg wrapping around mine by necessity. I felt a quiver in my ball, the tightening of my asshole. I tried to ignore both as I put on my headphones and started the movie. Little Women. Not the remake with Winona Ryder, but the original with Katharine Hepburn. Classy lady. Angular, athletic. More my type than the needle freak currently bouncing in my half of our lap like an elasticized jackhammer.
“Yeah,” Kirk groaned, lifting his hips up and down so fast that I got a kink in my neck from trying to keep my head from slamming into the window. “Ride it, baby. Ride it.”
Not for the first time, I wished I’d had the forethought to take some Dramamine. Motion sickness took over as I tried to concentrate on the movie. I would never admit this to Kirk, but his head lined up more squarely with the rest of our body. Mine angled out a bit, which was hell on my neck and made me look more like a thorn growing out of his side. Which was often how Kirk referred to me, and I will tell you right now, if you think that’s funny, then try being attached to a sex-crazed egomaniac whose idea of a joke is to power-slam bran at every meal so that his asshole—an asshole he doesn’t have to deal with, by the way—rages as wild as the Colorado.
“Come on,” Kirk coaxed. “Work it hard, baby. Work it hard.”
Her hand touched my half shoulder as she gripped onto him. I could feel the hard grip of her pinky and ring finger digging into my back. Her nails were long. The skin under my shirt felt almost pricked. Kirk was pumping like a puppy on a bolster pillow. Her thigh tightened around mine as she tried to keep her head from hitting the ceiling.
Boy, I knew how hard that was. But it was none of my business. I wasn’t here to give this woman sympathy, or even attention. This was Kirk’s private time. A deal was a deal. And even though he was going to hell for it, we each had our own lives no matter whether or not they were lived concurrently.
I chewed my lip and stared at Katharine Hepburn. She was dead now. A pity. They didn’t make movie stars like that anymore. They were all celebrities, even if they’d never done anything other than be rich, rail-thin, and peroxide blonde. Even if they had never—
“Oh!”
The gasp had come out of my mouth, not Kirk’s. I tried to turn the sound into a clearing of my throat, but I was no Katharine Hepburn. Or even Winona Ryder. Kirk’s head jerked around sharply. I stared at Jo and Marmee, feigning interest in the comings and goings of the March household. I had to hold on for just a few minutes more. Whatever was going on over there on my right was getting close to an end. My prostate had already started doing that thing that Kirk didn’t know about.
Yeah, there were things Kirk didn’t know about. Lots of things he would know if he didn’t have his head so far up—well, not his asshole, because that was my territory, but the fact remained that Kirk never took much notice of anything to do with me, unless it was to find fault. Of course, he was the Big Man on Campus because he controlled the penis. Mr. Six Inches. Mr. Lady’s Man. He was too self-centered to even consider what went on in my side of the body. That I could feel his heartburn when he ate tacos. That his sleep apnea left me feeling tired all day. That my solitary ball could feel the same things his ball felt. That my sexual sensations were a free gift with his purchase.
“Giddyup!” Kirk yelled, slapping the woman on her bottom. “Let’s go!”
A bead of sweat ran down the side of my face. My ball tightened up like taffy being pulled on the boardwalk. I glanced at the woman. She smiled at me. Her hand loosened its grip around my shoulder and started to slide down. I closed my eyes, letting the sensations take over, all the while wondering somewhere in the back of my mind why this was happening. She was so far from my type she might as well have been an orangutan. And yet, I was getting as het up as a schoolboy googling his first porn site. Kirk paid women all the time. Sometimes, they paid him if he let them take pictures. Why was this particular woman getting a rise out of me?
I couldn’t help myself. My mouth opened. I took in a lungful of air.
“Wait a minute!” Kirk screamed. He batted at my headphones. “Are you feeling this? Are you—” He pushed the woman off us. She fell back, banging her head against the closed door. “Did you touch him?”