MOBY DICK

“Gin and Molasses” by Alexander Chee

The innkeeper told me he was full but sold me his own bed. I didn’t trust him, though, sure he meant to attack me in my sleep, and so thus did I spend part of the night prepared for murder, half asleep, half awake in torment, my harpoon in my hand by my bed, until the door opened, and in, with a lamp, came the one I would soon call Ishmael.

He blew out his lamp and, saying nothing at all, crawled, meek as a lamb and as sweet as one, into the bed.

My new bedmate smelled of gin and molasses—a sign he had no doubt been drinking downstairs with the rest of the seamen who filled this lopsided guesthouse. I assumed he was lost, and despite his seemingly harmless appearance and the relative quiet—he was asleep instantly—I knew, drunk as he was, he would not remember where he was come morning, and the sight of me might cause me trouble with him. So I stood, dressed myself such that I would not alarm any guests downstairs, and went to speak to my host.

“He was asleep on a bench!” the innkeeper explained in frustration. “Look at this!” He had shaved down the bench so it might be more comfortable for my new friend, only for the drunken young man to discover it was too short. “Do you really mind so much? It was my bed, after all. I’ll be sleeping on that bench now. Or you can have this.”

Well did I consider that it was a kind of luck that had brought me the young interloper upstairs and not this innkeeper as my bedmate. At the least, I knew I could handle him in a fight, provided he did not attack me in my sleep. I was still put out by the disturbance, however, and the late hour, despite the logic of this argument.

Worse, the innkeeper insisted on speaking to me in an insulting pidgin, despite my ability with his language. “You sabbee me?”

“Yes,” I said. “I sabee.”

I returned to the room. My invader slept still, deep under the covers, his hair the only visible sign the bed was not empty—he was a slight young man, still very young. Something of a Robin Goodfellow, despite the utter skilamalink surrounding his being there in my bed. He did not seem to have been to sea a day in his life, much less outdoors—his skin had that softness that comes from a life lived on land and mostly inside. I went to my bag, to be sure all was as I had left it, and nothing had been disturbed.

Thus reassured, I undressed again.

He didn’t make a sound as I entered the bed, but I was sure he was awake, the silence then that exact noise a held breath makes at night. As I held up the coverlet, I could see he had gotten up in my absence, undressed, and now wore just a nightshirt. But his calves showed and glowed in the candlelight, as did the nape of his neck, and to my own surprise, the sight of these tender places on his body kindled me.

I had stripped naked, my own preference for sleep. I paused, uncertain if I should get into the bed or wait until my unexpected excitement had passed. I looked down at myself, to see the tattoo left by my last lover, the coil of a sea serpent that tangled up my leg to rest its head around my cock, within my own short hairs, almost a reproof. I know I can’t claim or keep you, he had said, but I want you to remember me, whoever else you’re with.

The memory of him, which he had thus ensured, was sufficient that the shadow of my member extended now to the bed, a dark arrow on the sheets.

I was too tired to wait much longer and climbed in. The bed was smallish but big enough for us both and clean, at least. Certainly, this young man was sweet smelling enough as I lay down. I turned on my side, away from him, to let myself calm, blew out the candle, and was nearly asleep when his heel gently brushed my own and an electric dart shot through me.

With that, I was awake again, hard again. He was awake, too, I was sure of it—was the touch of his foot then deliberate? An invitation? If so, I certainly wanted to accept—to turn around, pull the nightshirt up, lift him across me, take him any way I wanted. But instead I counseled patience to myself. It just might be an accident, and I did not want any violence now. So I waited, uncertain if I should move my foot away, or if I should let it stay—and the delightful agony of the indecision increased, which meant I let my foot stay, as did he. And so the dart soon became a current.

I wanted him to say something, anything, to make things clearer between us. Or was this delicate foot both his messenger and his message?

Our heels stayed together for how long I don’t know, and then eventually, sleep snuffed me out.

When I woke, I was still hard. To my surprise, my arms were tightly around him, as if he were what I had left to hold on to after a shipwreck. I had slept that way with my old lover, back on our ship in the sea of Japan. He would smile to see me miss him so. My excitement had either returned or remained with me in the night and was now pressed fully against the small of his back—there was no hiding it from him now. His neck was almost against my mouth, and my left hand had even gripped his left wrist.

He had not leapt to his feet; he had not cried out. I still could not see his face. In fact, his feet rested atop my own, the smooth silk of the bottoms of his feet making me ache with lust. He remained still, as if asleep, except that I could feel his breath across the back of my hand, the back and forth almost like the regular stroke of an affectionate finger.

The sure, regular breath of someone who was awake.

Was there a way to let go, to slowly smooth my hand down the front of him, to discover that way whether he was a yay or a nay? I needed both relief from this and yet I also was unsure how to let go. Or to go as far as I wanted, though how far that would be yet was also unknown to me.

I did not want to let go. I would not want to let go, in fact, for quite some time. That I would follow him, this bedtime invader, was not at all certain to me then. But it would be shortly. In the meantime, overcome and wanting some resolution, I pressed my mouth against his neck, ground my hips against him so he gasped, and knew my first answer. He was awake.

“Queequeg!” he said, and reached up to push against the hand on his wrist. I suppose the innkeeper had told him my name. I decided I would have a little fun, and did not immediately let go. “Queequeg,” he said again, trying to turn to face me. The struggles he made up against me in the bed were too pleasurable to let go still. I faked a snore, as if still asleep, so as to linger a little longer. “Queequeg! In the name of goodness, Queequeg, wake!” At this I knew I needed to calm him, so I began to blink, as if I were just waking up and did not know where I was. He wriggled further, increasing my pleasure and the pressure of his bottom against my pike was enough to make me squeeze tighter. He kept saying my name, over and over, with various differences in emphasis and expostulation, all the while pushing against me.

It was heaven.

At last I let him go—I knew I had gone as far as I could with my little game, and if I was to go further, I needed to spare him any more for the time being. Also, my harpoon had fallen across us, and the point was dangerously near his smooth cheek. I sat upright, pushing it off us, staring about me as if confused. It was all I could do not to laugh, however, as I was entirely erect as I sat there and we were both of us startled by it. No modesty could save me now.

I leapt from the bed. Sure enough, he could not take his eyes off me. Especially my manhood, which swayed with the effort. I gestured at the basin and water on the table. “I will bathe first,” I said, sensing it would be sufficient to bring about what I desired.

He nodded.

I meant to turn away from him but saw he stared, shamelessly, at what I meant to hide.

I instead poured a bit of water into the basin and stepped into it, before pouring more across me and down my front. I took a bit of tallow soap and began to lather myself. He watched every journey the soap made. I felt as shameless as any whore, all the while astonished at how much I wanted him. I could scarcely believe the force of the desire in me. But I knew this bit of theater, this little carnival act I was performing for him, was bringing me closer and closer to my goal. He was shy, nervous, had not seen much of the world, but he had a great curiosity in him, this was clear. Especially for what was between my legs.

I made it bounce to tease him, and when I did, his eyes widened. I pretended not to notice and did it again. He blinked, flustered, but did not look away. It would bounce the more for him soon enough.

Tip the innkeeper, I thought to myself as I raised my head finally and Ishmael’s eyes lifted up to mine.

“Captain Ahab” by Nate Waggoner

And now, a recently discovered deleted chapter from Moby Dick entitled “Every Time Captain Ahab Had Sex.”

In the interest of the reader’s full edification, I feel I must take it upon myself to detail the woefully limited and unusual carnal aspect of the great monomaniac’s existence. Those of us strong of Christian faith and innocent of the stranger varieties of intimate contact will turn away in horror and disgust—but what is human life but a series of unspeakable interactions, what then the purpose of the written word but to articulate that which is too gruesome, too sublimely pleasurable, for public discussion? Surely no one shall gather in the future to hear these words performed; surely no one shall ever applaud these vile acts in any kind of respectable company.

Precisely one year after Ahab was wed, our devil captain’s sweet and resigned wife, Muriel, had an uncharacteristic moment of impudence, driven by that mad desire with which kings and sailors and beasts alike must reckon. She asked, quite sweetly and resignedly, for her husband to please, for the first time ever, perform his husbandly duties. In such a resigned and sweet manner as to make one think he was hearing the voice of the Christ child himself, our windblown Penelope mewled thusly: “Gimme that big-ass whale bone, my dude. Take your bitch to the South Seas, if you know what I mean. Sink your harpoon hella deep in my shit. Plow your big boat all up in my salty ocean. Lemme see that white whale, bro. Ya girl is tryna get straight bathed in sperm, son. I’m grindin’ on that wood, grind-grindin’ on that wood. Eat me by my own light, dawg. Dive into those depths, you big ambiguous-metaphor chasing hunk of hubris.”

Fearing this day would come and knowing the only desire he felt was for revenge against the white whale and that the only true romance he would ever know was one of mutual hate between himself and a beast, Ahab formulated a plan. He found within their humble bed quarters a sheet of white fabric, great in size and thickness, of inexpensive material, specifically of the type manufactured in the Orient during—

So at this point it goes into really long-winded detail about this piece of white fabric that Ahab has. And then there’s several pages about the history of fabric manufacturing in general, and it’s really beautifully written but completely extraneous so I’m just gonna skip it for the sake of time.

He wrapped sweet and resigned Muriel in this fabric. He then drew a bath and in it placed several fresh cod, a few tuna, and some seaweed. Confused but still wild with anticipation, Muriel acquiesced to Ahab’s request that she enter the bath whilst covered in white cloth and make a kind of lowing, crooning sound. Our ungodly madman of a captain then mounted his sweet and resigned wife and performed the marital act in as wild and ecstatic a frenzy as may occur in any Nantucket house of ill repute.

He wrapped sweet and resigned Muriel in this fabric. He then drew a bath and in it placed several fresh cod, a few tuna, and some seaweed. Confused but still wild with anticipation, Muriel acquiesced to Ahab’s request that she enter the bath whilst covered in white cloth and make a kind of lowing, crooning sound.

In the months that followed, Ahab remained ashore, insatiable. Scarcely did a moment go by without sweet, resigned Muriel turning to face a freshly impassioned captain-husband—the two lovers missed meals, let daily chores go neglected. Dishes piled higher than Babel. Bathtub fish rotted away. Finally, the effervescent bride’s enthusiasm did wane for our obsessive captain’s bizarre requests.

One night, as the couple entered into what had become a nightly—nay, hourly!—ritual, Muriel in her crude whale costume, descending into the tub, adorned with seafaring sundry, proposed an escalation of variety in their congress: First, she endeavored to apply metal clamps to the nipples of our whale-fixated captain, pinching and twisting and turning, now fast, now slow, causing the old salt to howl with infernal delight. The clamps she procured from a clamp-manufacturing concern, whose—

So again, Melville here spends around four pages just talking about the type of metal used in making the nipple clamps and the process of forging the metal. It’s rich with wonderful description, allusion, and symbolic meaning, but I’m gonna skip ahead again.

The kindly young bride then pushed her nubile, whale-suit-clad form several inches heavenward and let loose a torrent of liquid waste upon Ahab, as though he were a commode in the form of a man! The warm liquid spilled across his chest and over his face and into his mouth, and he cried out in joy.

For her finale, the unassuming maiden wrenched forth Ahab’s mutilated leg and unscrewed his ivory appendage. A smell as if from the very depths of Hades blasted forth, but Muriel could not be deterred. She strapped the leg to her nether regions and commenced to use it as a kind of artificial phallus, pegging it forth into Ahab’s most absolutely ungodly orifice. It is a gift to humanity, a rare hint of providence, that the captain’s pleasure-mad utterances were never recorded.

In time, Ahab would inevitably ship out and go mad with thoughts of revenge against the white beast. But even now, in his defiant final steps to his watery grave, he remains ever haunted by Muriel’s perfectly ladylike, obedient utterings of, “Aww, fuck yeah, my dude. You better take this pussy to the damn boiler room! Fuckin’ put it in my Marianas Trench, Papi! I’m tryin’ to learn some marine sexology! Pirate this fat ass, my man! Now entering Port of Pound Town, population you!”

“Fedallah” by Ryan Britt

Call me Fedallah. Seriously. Do it. It turns me on soooo much. I know it’s not for everybody but what can I say? I guess I like thinking of myself as the kind of person who will remain a muffled mystery to the last. I know a lot of you DickHeads get turned on by thinking of yourself as the whale and I totally get that because we’ve all been through that phase and who doesn’t love acting like the Dick?

But if you’re the Dick, you’ve only got one move, really—total domination. Sure, being the Dick lets you flirt with your beloved, be the elusive thing beneath the depths of their desire. Being the Dick is like swiping left on Tinder, but somehow asking that rejected person out on Tinder anyway. It’s aggressive and hot as fuck to be sure, but what kind of variety of moves do you really have in the bedroom if you’re the whale? Plus, if your partner is Ahab, that dom/sub situation gets pretty boring pretty fast, amiright? I mean, how many times has someone’s safety word been Pequod or Stubb or Hey, I don’t want to be Ahab anymore? Plus—and I know my fellow DickHeads will agree—being the whale means group sex gets super boring. Too many harpoons and not enough boats!

Because I’ve been a DickHead since like way before there were like a million podcasts (the Carpet-Bag was the first and best y’all), I’ve already imagined every permutation of becoming the whale and fucking Ahab or becoming Starbuck and fucking the whale while Ahab rides him, or transforming into Starbuck from that old TV show Battlestar Galactica while fucking Starbuck from the canon. By the canon I mean, the only book that matters and if you’re not a DickHead and you’re reading this it’s a little weird, but maybe you’ll get turned on and want to become a DickHead. Also, I’m totally into the idea of being Fedallah and fucking Starbuck from the canon while he’s in a cannon.

Anyway. As you can probably tell I’ve got a really bad case of FOMOOFS. If you’re unfamiliar, I actually feel a little sorry for you. But just in case: FOMOOFS is “fear of missing out on fictional sex.” And a lot of us DickHeads have it. But other fetish groups have it, too, I guess. I’m friends with a guy who is in the Baker Street Irregulars, which I’m sure you’ve heard is a big Sherlock Holmes fan group. Uh-huh. Well, the “Irregulars” might think they’re kinky but honestly how many times can you say, “Oh, now you put on the hat. Let me smoke the pipe,” etc. Plus, I was at one of those parties one time and these two guys were just whispering “elementary” to each other over and over and even though it was kind of sweet, it wasn’t hot. As DickHeads, we’ve got a little more going for us.

Dugan was the guy who introduced me to all of this way back in college, way before everyone claimed to be a swinging DickHead. He’d switched from being an Irregular to being an OliverTwister, which are people who only play as Oliver Twist characters, which is great, but there’s way too much singing at those parties. Like, the second you put your keys in the bowl at one of those, someone is on their way out with “Cheerio and Be Back Soon,” which is a massive turnoff. To me, anyway.

Anyway Dugan is TOTALLY the one who taught me to play as Fedallah because it’s all about power dynamics. We were in his dorm room eating Pop Rocks and I was complaining about how I was always the one who paid when we went out for grilled cheese sandwiches—and the Pop Rocks, for that matter—and he was like, “You’re my Fedallah, bitch!” And I was like “What?” And he was like, “I’m Ahab, and you’re my little Fedallah.” It was hot enough then but later, when “I got it,” it was even hotter.

Suddenly Dugan was on top of me—he was wearing a Phoenix Sun’s jersey, I think Charles Barkley, but it might have been KJ—and he started quoting from the canon. I think he was doing it to get himself hot and you know, it was hot.

“All ready there, Fedallah?”

“Ready?” was my half-hissed-sort-of-crackly reply. The Pop Rocks were working, too!

“Lower away, then, d’ye hear!” Such was the thunder of his voice, that in spite of my amazement, I came like in two seconds. Then a bunch of Dugan’s friends busted into the dorm room! There were like three of them, and they leapt goatlike, rolling down my side and on my front and there was a lot of tossing. Dugan had hardly pulled out from under me when one of his buddies (I’d later think of him as a “Starbuck”) rolled up on my windward side and started like rubbing his hands on my shoulder like he was rowing me. He and Dugan were rowing me. I felt like an old man. It was heaven.

I came again and again, each time in a mannerly fashion, but I felt a sort of an unaccountable tie as to why I was linked to Dugan and his “sailors.” Later, when the others left and I was lying on my starboard side with Dugan and looking up at the ceiling while running my fingers in little whirlpools on his Phoenix Suns jersey, did he explain it to me thus:

“Fedallah,” he said to me, cooing like someone who really should stop smoking or at least switch to menthols, “You are linked to my peculiar fortunes; nay, you have some sort of half-hinted influence. Heaven knows, but you might even have authority over me. But none of the others can know.”

Fedallah! Of course. I paid for everything and no one knew it. Which means even though it seemed like I was subordinate to Dugan, the reverse was true. He was my bitch. I secretly paid for the grilled cheese, paid for the Pop Rocks, ran the ship. I was the elder statesman (or woman?) of this party, but I was slick about it. Among DickHeads now, everyone knows me as one of the best Fedallahs. When I walk on the deck, someone will drop an ore, a harpoon, or peg leg in amazement and lust.

Because when you’re a Fedallah, no one can sustain an indifferent air concerning you. You can call out in the air, “Spread wide, boys! Spread wide! Down! Down! Down! BLOOOW!” But you don’t have to, if you don’t want to, because it’s, you know, implied. When you’re a Fedallah, you are a creature of sexual civilization, seen only in the dreams of those who now and then glide among the unalterable countries, which, even in these modern days consort with the daughters of men and whales and also… of devils…

“The Whale” by Danielle Henderson

The least imaginative always start with the blowhole.

Here I am, twenty-eight yards of slick, white wetness eager to feel those calloused nubs glide over my silky smooth fins, and you keep throwing yourselves bodily into my breath hole without even so much as an “Amen!” I like a good suck fest as much as the next girl, but you may as well be throwing a hot dog down a hallway for all the pleasure it brings. I’m eighty-five feet long and a third of my body is a head made almost entirely of jizz—you’re going to have to work a little harder than that to get me off, honey.

My top hole might seem like a steamy pleasure pocket to you, but it’s certainly not as thrilling as the way you swim lithely along my underbelly or caress the flat ends of my fins. I fuck sailors for fun but I still appreciate a little romance, you know? The complicated process of blowing you idiots back out of me is made easier by the way your hair tickles the sides of my slippery passage, but my insurance company simply won’t cover it anymore, not after the Ahab Incident.

Did he tell you I bit his leg off in a fit of whaleish rage? He’s just saving face—I’m a docile motherfucker! He couldn’t admit that he broke his leg at the knee in three places being shot out of the blowhole of a sexually aroused leviathan and still maintain the respect of his crew. When he looked down and saw the ragged shards where his knee used to be, the dirty bastard asked me to chew it off so he’d have a good story, and being the kindhearted girl I am, I obliged. I was completely okay being a patsy, but I drew the line when he used my cousin Glenda’s jaw to fashion a new leg for himself, after those French Bouton de Rose bastards offed her in a snuff film. That’s a bridge too goddamn far, Ahab—a bridge too goddamn far.

Before I broke it off, we really were in love. Our little game of hide-and-seek did wonders for building sexual tension. I’d echolocate until he found me, clicking away in anticipation, and then he’d sneak away on his little boat for a night of wanton concupiscence. We did all the moves—the Lofty Pulpit, the Impregnable Quebec, the Connecticut Diddler, the Queequeg Quickstep, the Starbuck and Stubb, the Kokovoko Stinger. The man hadn’t set foot on dry land in forty years and it showed! There was one night my craggy libertine and I shared night after night of orgiastic passion so strong we once flooded a seaside village, chuckling as children screamed on hilltops while the limp bodies of their lifeless parents washed out to sea. There were good moments, you know? We had a time, we really did.

He couldn’t tell his crew that they were the unwitting passengers on a sex cruise, so Ahab snuck away those first few nights to rendezvous with me far out in the ocean where no one would see. That nosy new guy, the one who never shuts up and talks in monologues almost exclusively? Ishmael? He almost blew our cover once but didn’t know what he was looking at as Ahab slid his unctuous legs between my phonic lips to caress my distal sac. It’s hard to see with the naked eye, but trust me when I say I felt the titillating reverberations from head. To. Toe. He was a man of few words and many, many caresses.

I broke it off with Ahab after I saw him stumping around on what used to be Glenda’s mouth. I slipped farther away into the abyss, but he kept following me to an obsessive degree. I guess the old adage is true—once you give over to the salacious advances of a raunchy whale, you never go back.

I admit my anger got the better of me that fateful day. He finally caught up with me; I was trying to get over him and just wanted to be alone, but when I saw him hopping around on the same jaw Glenda used to gobble up squid, I lost it. And to hear him! Screaming, over and over, “There she blows! There she blows!” Like the bard says—we found love in a hopeless place, Ahab, and you reduce me to sport? What am I, a common gutter whale?

The last straw was the harpoon. I’d only ever had one rule: I don’t fuck with harpoons. You can strap me down with all the hemp rope your little hands can carry, but the minute you pierce my skin with a harpoon is the very moment I tell you to pack your bags and take that S&M shit somewhere else! Try that den of iniquity act on the octopi, buddy! The moment his rod hit my skin, I knew that it was either him or me. When I reared up and crashed his boat in half, I knew that dragging him to his death would be my only chance to be free.

What? No, I’m fine. I didn’t even realize I was crying.

Anyway, thanks for listening to the code of conduct and rules of consent, guys. You boys sign those release forms, keep your cocks away from my blowhole, and we’ll be on our way to Fuck City!

“Thar She Blows” by Maya Rodale

It was a dark and stormy Sunday morning. In church. And God was watching. Father Mapple rose and made his way to the unusual pulpit. This, and so much of the décor, was a throwback to the priest’s days spent as a sailor among the seamen and the wet, salty seas.

This particular pulpit was crafted like the bow of a ship with dark wood, soft to the touch, weathered from the elements having their way with it: salty ocean waves pounding hard against it and the craftsmen lovingly rubbing it with a slick and pungent oil from a sperm whale.

Father Mapple displayed a reverential dexterity as he mounted the rope ladder, such as one finds on a ship, with shaking hand over shaking hand as he climbed. Did anyone in the congregation notice that their clergyman was taut and trembling with anticipation of what lay ahead? Under his robes, his cock was already half aroused at what would happen next.

Upon reaching the pulpit, Father Mapple climbed onto it. He saw perplexed faces in the crowd as they wondered why he was pulling the rope up after him. Did he really think anyone would dare to climb up and interrupt him as he gave his sermon? No. The truth was between him and God and Mary Sue, a delectable widow tucked on her knees, snug in the crook of this pulpit, which blessedly provided just enough space and just enough cover for her lithe little body so she could do wicked things to a man of God.

No one in the congregation could see anything remiss. However… a painting hung behind the pulpit, and Father Mapple glanced back at it: a dark ship thrusting into the dark heaving waves, each capped with white froth. An angel gazed down at the ship… or maybe the two sinners in the pulpit. Hastily, he turned away.

In a mild voice of unassuming authority, he ordered the scattered people to condense. “Starboard gangway, there! Side away to larboard, larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! Midships!”

There was a low rumbling of heavy sea boots among the benches and a still slighter shuffling of women’s shoes. There was a rumble of thunder outside. He drummed his fingertips on the hard wood of the pulpit, impatient, especially when he felt a rustle of his robes as Mary Sue’s soft little hands skimmed up his legs higher and higher, skimming through the rough wiry hair on his legs. As she lifted his robes, he felt a rush of cool air on his arousal. “Good God, woman!” he yelped, and then, correcting himself somberly, addressed the congregants. “Good women of God. And gentlemen.”

Mary Sue ducked underneath his robes and let them fall over her head.

He paused a little. Folded his large brown hands across his chest. He uplifted his closed eyes and offered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed to be kneeling and praying at the bottom of the sea. In truth, he was thanking the Lord God his savior that the rain outside drummed out the sharp hiss of his breath as Mary Sue’s tongue teased circles around the tip of his cock. It was now hard. Throbbing.

He opened his mouth to speak just as Mary Sue took him in her mouth. “Ahhh…” and “Mmmm” and in such, uh, reverential tones he commenced reading the following hymn:

“The ribs and terrors in the whale,” he began as her hot little mouth closed around him. Alas, just the tip. Damnation!

“Arched over me in a… a…” He arched himself, thrusting forward, forcing more of himself down Mary Sue’s blessed throat… dismal gloom.

Somehow the words poured forth. Even though he was… distracted.

“While all God’s sunlit waves rolled by, and lift me… deepening down…” Sure as hell, Mary Sue was deepening down. She took the hot, hard length of his cock deep down in the back of her throat. “… to doom. Mmmm.

“I saw the opening maw of… oh hell,” he swore as her nimble little fingers kept busy, rubbing the sensitive flesh between, well, never mind what it was between, and inching back toward…

His manner changed toward the concluding stanzas as Mary Sue grasped his cock and bobbed her head to the rhythm of the hymn, moving her mouth in and out. In and out. In and out.

His voice burst forth with a truly, truly genuine pealing exultation and joy and—

“With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell—oh, Oh, OH I was plunging to, uh, ah…”

Plunging indeed. Mary Sue was taking him in deep down to the depths of her throat and then pulling back to suck in a deep breath of air. Deep down and out his throbbing cock moved in her moist mouth.

“In black distress, I called my…” He forgot the words entirely as Mary Sue did something downright wicked with her tongue. And her fingers. In the darkest nether regions of his body. At the same time. “My God… OH MY GOD!” he bellowed. He glanced down at the damn Bible, the hymnal, whatever the hell had the words he was supposed to being saying. Singing. Ah there… “Nearly all joined in singing this hymn, thank the Lord Baby Jesus, which swelled high above the howling of the storm, drowning out his own desperate cries to the Lord God for salvation and mercy from this erotic frenzy seething and churning within on the verge of explosion and then the crash, like massive, powerful waves pounding down, sending a salty spray over everything in the vicinity.”

A brief pause ensued at the end of the hymn; the preacher fumbled with the pages of the Bible and at last found the proper page and said in a hoarse voice: “Beloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the first chapter of Jonah. “‘And God had prepared a great fish to’”—he gulped, and so did Mary Sue—“‘swallow up Jonah.’”

In the back row of the church, Louise murmured to her friend with whom she’d been sitting for the duration of the service, “Father Mapple seems very… inspired today.”

“Indeed,” said Mary Sue with a wicked smile.

“Ishmael” by Maris Kreizman

Call me Fuckboy.

Call me whatever you want.

Call me whatever you’re able to pronounce.

Some years ago—never mind the exact time or place, just trust me, bro—I got real bored. I yearned to escape the drudgery of day-to-day postcollegiate life by taking to the sea. I decided to participate in the age-old tradition of packing up one’s old carpetbag and embarking on a philosophically uplifting ocean voyage. I would become a sailor on a whaling boat and exercise my mind and my body. I would go cruising for Dick.

Perhaps a hunky old sea captain would order me to do menial tasks such as sweep the decks at the butt crack of dawn or shine his shoes or cut his meat, and I would handle such degradation with grace. Yes, I was a privileged white guy, but aren’t we all slaves, in the grander scheme of things? In fact, don’t all of us mortals exist to serve the Fates? Aren’t we all subject to the whippings and thrashings of the gods, their treacherous ass-slappings and their tender mercies? Perhaps spending some time slumming as hired help would broaden my horizons.

Little did I know that my seafaring adventure would begin well before I climbed aboard a ship. In fact, it began in a motel called the Spouter Inn, a hole-in-the-wall whose “No Vacancy” sign was flashing in neon when I arrived, weary and cold and hungry, at the check-in desk. Alas, it seemed that the motel was completely full of seamen.

“Sir, I’m afraid I cannot offer you a room,” said the proprietor. “This motel is covered wall to wall with seamen.”

However, he must have noticed my despair, for he added, “But if you’d be down for this kind of thing, I can let you share a room with another guest.”

My curiosity was aroused.

“There’s this dude staying with us,” he continued. “He’s got a real weird name that’s hard for me to pronounce without butchering so I won’t bother trying, but let’s just say he’s a real intense and exotic guy, his abs are super tight, and he’s got a couple of sick face tattoos. He’s out peddling his wares right now, so I can’t introduce you at the moment. But it just so happens that the heater in his room is broken, so I’m sure he’d be okay if you wanted to hop into bed with him for the sake of keeping each other warm.”

Here it is, I thought. My chance to learn from and be inspired by someone really different from me!

How could I refuse? The sea gods had clearly ordained it.

That evening I had a few drinks with some fellow guests and we gossiped the way one does when a few shots of Fireball have loosened one’s tongue.

“Oh man, I hear you’ve gotta shack up with that religious freak with the weird accent tonight,” said a dude whose name I didn’t catch.

“The one who carries the tomahawk around with him all the time?” asked a fellow imbiber. “I hear he likes his meat really, really rare.”

“Yeah, he seems like the kind of guy who might chop you up and eat you,” said this guy Brad. “But I mean, he does have a bunch of pretty dope tribal tattoos.”

That night, I lay awake awaiting my bedmate’s arrival, feeling equal parts terror and excitement. I must have drowsed, for I was startled by the appearance of a menacing yet undeniably beautiful beast of a man. We tried to make small talk, but we became so tired that the only sensible thing we could do was cuddle each other to sleep. We did not exchange many words, but the heat from his Big Spoon warmed up my Little Spoon almost instantly.

When I awoke the next morning, I knew that my life had changed forever. “Queequeg,” I purred, “I feel like we are so firmly bound to each other, we could be man and wife. We are such a cozy, loving pair and I am ready to learn all about your pagan religion and your life philosophy.

“I want to fetishize your otherness for all of eternity,” I said, looking to my noble savage for a response.

“Hey, Ishmael, shut the fuck up and suck-ee me cock.”

I complied.