“So I can stay here or return to the Gaia menu?”
“There are other choices.”
“What are they—no no, don’t tell me. I’ll stay here.”
I look around at the crowd of students. There are no other cops here yet. The kids stand completely still, their hands paused in the middle of whatever gesticulation they’re in the middle of. Teachers—same. Only the metamorph and Sheth and I are moving.
“They’re computer models,” JLaw says. “They exist to flesh out the world. To give you a cushion in which to play out your fantasies and fears.”
“Which is this?”
“Both,” she says. “What’s the difference.”
She floats above the floor, hair waving as though it was weightless.
“I’ve come a long way to watch you make this decision. Floated through many nations, conducted oceans, to witness you squirming, here, now. This may only seem like a tiny decision, specific to your life, that you are about to make. But humans exist on many levels. And your other levels experience this decision, too. They are waiting—baited breath—for the chance to be you in this moment. To see you.” Jennifer Lawrence gestures to the still people. “That crowd you feel? There isn’t a crowd. Just you. And me. And Sheth. And now you want to hang him like a Dirty South Niggar like those Klansmen of yore used to do in their sleep out of fear they feared the Niggar would come to power. They knew that enslaving him was wrong—they still do. But in their guilt, they lash out in ways that eat their fear in tiny doses like the mail. It doesn’t come all at once. Just a little every day.”
What am I supposed to do about it? I thought, in my own head.
But here comes Miss Shiva, responding in kind.
“Do exactly what you must, in this time.”
“Um. I’m sorry, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I don’t get your riddles. Tell me what am I supposed to do! I came here to hang him!”
“Then you better get busy hanging him.”
I look at Sheth.
“But I’m having second thoughts.”
“About what? Technically killing him? Or your lifelong hatred of Blacks, the Poor.”
“Everything.”
“That’s good.”
“I feel uncertain.”
“That’s good! I feel uncertain all the time,” Jennifer Lawrence says, rubbing her belly with sharp nails. She yawns, then runs her fingers through her hair. Am I sex to you?
Sexy?
Sex. Pure. Unfiltered. Uncensored. Do you believe you can have it with me? Do you think I will make you cum? Your beliefs are right, you just have shoddy impulses. Your impulses aren’t so bad, for an Earthling. Do you imagine that my puss is divine? Perfect? Clean? Mmmm. I did come here to save the planet but if you want, we can bang for a second. Want to?
My mind betrays me. It thinks—Yes!
Mmmm, Jennifer Lawrence says. I like sex. I suppose we could boff for a second and then come back to save the planet later.
She looks back over her shoulder as if our planet was back there, with its racism and everything, and then disregards it the way a child would disregard a playmate she was through with. Just walks across the yard. She shakes out her hair and shuffles through the top of her gown.
What happens next I can only describe as a ribbon flying unaided through a circus of life! Her (or was it his?) talons gripping my arms, the arch of the skin of the neck, touching, loose shoes, ties, Sheth watching, Blackness, the Blue of Shiva’s breasts, colored like something out of Final Fantasy, the old sex of humans exactly the same with this one (except everything was like a dream). She was tight. She was glorious. She rocked and rubbed me like an accidental rockstar, femme delights swimming out from between her legs. The totality of everything! I know that sounds excessive but I thought of Annabel, her pedestrian nature—our pedestrian lovemaking sat just shy of nothingness. Sleeping. Me tagging her womanhood with my cop penis, stroking the inside of her body with the outside of mine. Making her cum, and Annabel was Shiva, was Sheth, was me making love to the inside of my own body with the outside of the same. Cum! Baby baby. Cum, baby girl. Looking up into Shiva’s arms, high above my own, at her shuddering slightly. Did I make you cum? Yes, she shakes her head. I believe it’s true. Somehow I have snuck into salvation, been blessed by accident by a goddess, fucked between the legs with her immortal cunt, made to cum (oh high high high)! Oh holy, oh better than everything I’ve ever learned in church. This must be it. This must be right! I’ve been fucked outta my nut by this Alien/Goddess and she’s using sex to convince me that I need to change my ways. Oh good! I can change and commune with the goddess and fuck her every day?? Fuck. And all I have to give up is my racism? My hatred for the poor. My fear of being poor. My fear of others not liking me. My bank account. My F-150 pickup truck. Somehow they’re all related! And I excommunicated my sister and her son! I am the fuckup of the world! And I am cumming!! I AM CUMMING!!! Coming through the ceiling and this whole gymnasium and in the teen pussies of every girl in here!
Even the Black ones—especially the Black ones!
Uh oh—here comes Sheth! Big Black teenager coming to me right here in the gymnasium floor! His bulge—huge!—in my hand. His nuts like billiard balls in my hands! Sheth, you come here, big boy, hug me. I didn’t mean all that stuff about you being Black and ugly and ignorant because of it. I didn’t mean that!! You’re Black and Beautiful, Sheth—believe it! And somehow he does, in this moment. Sheth Sheth—or imaginary Sheth—or automaton Sheth, he hardens in my hand and my mouth is going for him, sucking his cock. (I think Jennifer Lawrence is somewhere back there playing with my asshole.) Sheth, boy, you make me cum like your neck was in the noose right now. And I was crawling up that ladder. And butt fucking you into next week. Shaking the rafters. Reaching up between your Black butt cheeks and fingering around for your hole. It’s big!—surprise. I stripe my finger up inside you, your face reflecting my motions. Your eyes watering. My mouth. Your hands. My cock. So hard. It’s breaking. Reflecting. Amplifying me, radio stations all through the south. The Dirty South—I see! (I’m just kidding—I don’t see.) I see the Colors of the rainbow and wonder for a second if I’m a neutral implant, one of JLaw’s minions, walking around with a neural simulation in my head. But are those things conscious? If you ask them if they’re conscious, they’ll say yes, of course. But is there any feeling in them anywhere? And I’m stroking my own cock and Jennifer Lawrence is looking on approvingly as I play with its tip near the entrance to Sheth’s asshole. And I want him. I do. I want him like I wanted my wife at the beginning. Her energy. Her face. Her hair. She bounced into me in college, outside my Learning to Live with Niggars class. Just jiggled into me, and said she liked my hair. I said I liked hers too and that was step one with step three being sliding my nimble little cock into her freshman puss. That’s how I wanted this Black man. And I thought how far I’d come and it seemed like a joke but here I was, about to stick it to this kid I’d feared and wanted to kill—whose entire race I wanted to kill but here this insectoid thing named Jennifer is asking me to—what?—love him? Fuck him? There doesn’t seem to be any reason behind any of this. Nothing like I’d find in church. There was absolute meaning. Except there was no sex. If I could fuck this goddess every day I would stop drinking. Quit being a cop! I’d find something useful to do—something that wasn’t part of the war. If I stick this yawning butthole with my cardboard cock will everything change? Will I be transfigured into Jennifer Lawrence’s world, filled with superstars and nights on Hollywood and parties on Madonna’s stairs? Will I ever go back home? Will I ever see Annabel again? Melissa? What will happen to my girls?What about my job? What about the whole department? I came here to harass Sheth Jones and I’m coming away—tripping—partaking of Alien civilization!?
What. Have. I. Become?
What. Happens. To. Me?
I shake my head, aware that I’m sweating. I consider that someone slipped LSD into my coffee but dismiss it. I’m totally awake. I’m wide awake now.
I’m aware.
I look at Sheth Jones.
He says, “What are you waiting for?”
Then he turns his head away from me.
And I stick it in.
I fuck.
I rub it around. Gaining my pleasure.
I look at Jennifer. She’s involved in some spiral chanting movement and she stops when I look at her. Her face says, What is it, dear?
I’m consumed by her empathy. She wants what’s best for me. She wants me to be sexually involved with the man I came here to kill. Then she rises within herself, and rises, and rises, and I am cumming—so quick!—with Sheth Jones and his black asshole, and the orgasm is planetary and I squeeze it out inside his body.