PRACTICES, POWER & THE PUBLIC SPHERE: DIALOGICAL SPACES & MULTIPLE MODERNITIES in Asian Contemporary Art 
an online showcase curated by Maya Kóvskaya
 

 

BLACKTOP EDEN

by Jordan A. Rothacker

 

 

It was their dream come true, blacktop earth, sprawling six square miles of it. Their paradise. They paid for acres, but no one could remember how many, and they couldn’t measure that way anyway. From the center, where Suzy and Amerasian Lilly set their tent, you could look out three miles in each direction, and see nothing but black breaking horizon, the edges of their world folding like the corners of their street dreams. They pooled money and bought the desert, a square of it, and laid this sheet of steaming black diamond down themselves. The fumes coated and ate at your nostrils, like they did the boys black hands. When Jaime hacked and spit, the glob dangled and swung from her lower lip in the way of Hot Rod’s rod as he danced around naked in the sun. He was saying to her, that’s it baby, smell that, take it all in, let us know it is real and working. One day it will all be covered, all of it, Cam Shaft shouts, as he practices sliding across the hood of his GTO in only cutoff jeans and checkered vans. Face down, ass down, back and forth, on either side of his car. It doesn’t look like he is even trying to land on his feet; only taste more of that gelling, drying, steaming blackness.

Yesterday the boys finished. Last night was celebration. This is flat freedom, this is motor heaven. There were only two speeds and no possessions. Fast and stop and everything free. Amerasian Lilly, skin like yellow suede and twin tower tits rising and falling as she alone took Hot Rod and Cam Shaft in the tent last night. Do you think she can ride a dual jet engine, they asked the others before they went in. And she did. The three without heard the rumbling and roaring from the three within. 

The dawn popped and was bleeding. The blacktop steamed in toxic dew. Cam Shaft and Hot Rod slept it off sore, crusted denims for pillows. But Amerasian Lilly took nothing lying down. After four hours sleep, she had the funny-car four-on-the-floor, tearing new marks where the boys had not been. Suzie had shotgun and screamed high and shrill between pulls of morning Redbull and Spirulina. Into the border of new sun, across the line drawn between shadow black and shining dark, they rode to the edge of their world. The eastern border was on fire. They were Apaches riding a burning Thunderbird. A sun shower. Heat lightening. To the west they saw the glinting. Then it was gone. It was Jaime at the line in the light, stepping back into the dark, coaxing the light back to her. Thirteen gauge nipple rings, aureoles tatted with green scales. Nipple-knobs bursting with surgical steel. Venus flytrap inked labia around six dangling clit hoops. From behind her back she drew the checkered flags and standing in the sun flashed out the flickering light by waving the flags across her tits and flytrap. The space between the sisters closed. Shrieking, rumbling, and flags flapping in a gravitational pull. Sisters on the concrete plain. Suzie and Jaime who shared the same parents. Amerasian Lilly and Jaime who shared a bed. And underwear. And bubble gum. And strap-ons. And Suzie. All sisters.

They told the boys what the edge was like at dawn. It took dawn courage; the edge was the saddest part of their world. The saddest place for them all. One day there won’t be one. One day they will ride over the mountains. With new shocks and struts they will bunny-hop the desert peaks. One day they will be nothing but asphalt ant hills. They dreamed together as they rode. Out between a bloody sky above and black sunshine below.

Meow, meow, this pussy wants to ride, purred Suzy, the youngest, the sweetest, the blondest, the tightest.  Every morning, everyone pitched in to lotion her down and up. A cocoa-butter kitty, she smelled like the beach and said fuck you to the sun. On the hood of the GTO, the burning metal was hot from within and without. She danced and purred, threatening the paint with her claws, like a cat on a hot tin roof. White pointy ears on a fuzzy white band held her white hair back. Her little ass wiggled its white tail tight in the white tight body suit. Mad Dogg scratched around the tail and down the crack of her ass and she just meowed and meowed. Down the inner white fishnet thigh he pinched and plucked, rubbing, and she turned on him with claws bared. The big hand smacked her ass and nose before she could react and slid roughly into the car and behind the wheel. You want a ride pussy, I’ll give you a ride, he said to her and revved up hard and fierce. Suzy landed on her feet on the asphalt and the others all laughed so hard they pissed and cried.

Amerasian Lilly and Jaime were making their tits kiss. Their asses stretched bikini bottoms on the simmering ground and they giggled and writhed. From where Mad Dogg circled and howled they were just two spots, one honey-yellow and one shoe-leather brown. He could not see the chocolate on chocolate nipples kissing those of pink on green. He knew it was happening, but he didn’t care. Neither did Cam Shaft as he grilled the meat. Neither did Hot Rod as he poured beer into the chili and his mouth. Neither did Suzy as she licked her wounds. They were all hungry and amusing themselves. Biding their time. At dusk they would race. The hour of the wolf. When the sky and the road shared one reflection. And the exhaust. Gray on gray on gray.

 

 

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