In the Box Called Pleasure

Kim Addonizio's fearless, original voice is simultaneously edgy and tender, dark and light. She writes sensitively and intelligently about sex and the human condition, with a clear and lucid eye. In the Box Called Pleasure is a book to read, savor, reread and savor again and again. —Janice Eidus, author of The Celibacy Club

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BUT

They'd known each other a month and had decided to marry, but two days before the wedding she hit him over the head with a beer bottle during an argument and the paramedics had to come and he got sixteen stitches but what the hell, they reconciled as soon as they were sober. And then the wedding, a party in the warehouse space he lived in, and everyone still drinking and dancing as they headed off to a big hotel in the city. But the friend who was going to loan them a Lincoln to arrive in style never showed up, so they took the groom's old car and pulled up and staggered into the lobby, but with his bandaged head and the two of them being pretty wasted and some kind of complication about the name on the credit card—another friend had arranged for the room—the hotel refused to let them register. So back to his car, the old car that had no passenger window and now wouldn't start. He tried to hotwire it but somehow pulled out the ignition wire instead, after a while he got the car going but it had started to rain, hard, and they had to drive back home with her getting soaked and him holding one hand out the window to help the wiper blade sweep back and forth. At home the party was still going but by now the two of them wanted to be alone, and a nasty argument broke out between the groom and a few revelers who didn't want to leave, but finally they did and the newlyweds went to sleep after the bride threw up in a hand-painted ceramic pasta bowl someone had given them. In the morning they made love and things seemed better but when she got out of bed to pee she stepped on a piece of glass from a broken bottle, maybe the one she'd broken over his head the other night or maybe one of the several that had been broken the night before, and it was back to calling the ambulance and now no one has seen them for three days but they're probably fine, just holed up together in marital bliss, not killing each other with one of the guns he keeps, sometimes things start out badly but get better, by now they're surely better, they couldn't possibly screw things up any further but maybe they could.

 

THE FALL OF SAIGON

(excerpt)

      When Dennis met Angel she was pregnant and seeing two men, only one of whom knew about the other. There was no question which one was the father; it had happened, she was sure, that night in the tiny booth at the topless place where, for a quarter, you could have privacy and three minutes of flipping channels from orgies to masturbation to scenes with whips and leather and complicated equipment. You could hear what channel was playing in the next booth, so it really wasn't all that private. They'd had to be quiet, especially in the in-between seconds when the time ran out on the loops and they had to stop and put more money in.
      But now all that was over. A couple of hours after seeing Dennis walk into the bar where she worked, serving him shots of schnapps and watching how his left hand occasionally, unconsciously, moved to stroke his chest, at last call Angel had scrawled her address and phone number across the front of his white T-shirt. The next morning she made two short phone calls to tie up the loose ends, and Dennis put his scuffed black combat boots next to her spike-heeled thigh high leather ones, and the two of them proceeded to drink and fuck their way through the rest of the week.
      Meanwhile she was throwing up in the mornings.
      "It's cool," Dennis said. He loved her ass. He loved the black tattooed thorns that circled her waist. When he put his hands there, he thought he could feel them, pricking him slightly. He was twenty-four and had never been in love. Before meeting Angel, he'd been bored out of his mind. Being with Angel was better than any drugs he'd taken so far.
      "I have to go to the clinic," Angel said.
      "No problem," Dennis said.
      "I can't have a goddamned baby." She was crying. He loved how she cried. He loved wiping her face after she threw up, as he was doing now. She crawled into his arms in her bathroom, and he stroked her red hair. Angel's bathroom was filthy. There were brownish rings around the sink and inside the toilet bowl.
      Angel made little whimpering sounds as she cried, and rubbed her eyes with her fists.
      "I'm so fucked up," Angel moaned.
      Dennis took one of her hands in his and marveled at it--plump and white and sweet as cookie dough, with daggerlike nails painted metallic green. He loved her brown roots, her smeary black eye makeup. He rocked her in his pale, skinny arms and thought, I am your man.