Read Online House of Holes by Nicholson Baker - Free Book Online Page A

and a croissant at the terrace restaurant overlooking the Garden of the Wholesome Delightful Fuckers. Zilka was wearing a striped shirt with the collar up. Her hair was amazing. Shandee wanted to know more about how she had lost her clit, but she didn’t want to ask her about it right away, so instead she asked how Zilka spent her days. Zilka said she helped Lila, and after work she went out to the Trou or hung out at the Darkrooms. “The Darkrooms are good because you can just talk to a guy,” Zilka said. “Before I lost my clit I would have been dancing or sleeping with somebody—not now.”
    “So—how did it happen?” Shandee asked.
    “When I was a stripper, I headlined at the Wiggle Room in San Antonio for almost a year, and I flew all over the Midwest. I was going through security, and this awful woman with bad hair stole my clit from me.”
    “That’s terrible,” said Shandee.
    “Yeah, it kind of is.” Zilka was sad and silent for a moment, and then she pointed. “You see that cable over there? That’s a ride called Fuck the Lake. Over there’s the midway, where you can do Spank the Pretty Ass, or Hold the Young Hung Hard-on. The Masturboats are over on the river. They’re moored right now.”
    “Zilka, can you tell me how it happened?” said Shandee.
    “Oh, I was at the airport in St. Louis, and they told me my flight was out of a certain gate in Terminal O. I thought, Hm, I don’t think I’ve been to Terminal O before, even though I’d flown through St. Louis a lot. But there was a security line, and the guy checked my ID, wearing the pale blue glove, and I got in line and took my shoes off, took my belt and my necklace off, and my bracelet off, and I put them all in the tray, and I walked to the metal detector, which was like a doorway, and I saw the man on the other side. He had a classy smile and short hair, and he lifted his hand and said, ‘Come on through.’ So I walked through in my stocking feet, and when I did I was fwooshed into a different mind zone, and all the men around me were the same but they were naked from the waist down.”
    “That’s strange,” said Shandee.
    “Yeah, isn’t it? They didn’t seem to care that they were naked below, but they definitely were. They looked up and nodded at me, because I like to dress kind of sexy, and I was amazed because I’d never seen so many penises on public display. Cocks were swinging everywhere, every size and shape. Even though I’d been a stripper for a few years, I really hadn’t seen all that much in the way of cock. Then I heard ‘Bag check on three,’ and the nice guy who’d gestured me through started going through my carry-on in extreme detail, and every move he made made his thingy bobble around a little.
    “He said, ‘We’re professionals. I know it may seem a little strange to you that we don’t have pants on.”
    “I said, ‘Well, it’s not a bad thing, really.’ Then he said, ‘Uh, we’re going to have to perform a secondary. Would you like it in private or in public?’
    “I said, ‘Well, what are you going to do?”
    “He said, ‘Well, we have to check your tits and your nipples, make sure you’re not concealing anything in your undertit area, and we’re going to have to inspect your mouth with our dicks to be sure you’re not concealing anything in your mouth area.’ ”
    “Jeez!” said Shandee.
    “I know, and I said, ‘What the hell?’ And he said, ‘Of course we’ll perform the search very politely, with full consideration of your privacy, blah blah. But we’ll probably have to ask you to ease open your tight crotch hole so we can check what you’ve got down there, too.’ ”
    “Oh, please,” said Shandee.
    “And as he said this I looked down, and his cock, which had been uninterested up till then, seemed to be doing a strange loop-the-loopy thing. It had come alive. I said, ‘Give me a break, Mr. Airport Bag Check Man.’
    “And he said, ‘You know how important national