MAKING AN ASS

I had a dish washing job back then. It was the summer of '65 and I had
just graduated from Northeast High. Viet Nam was starting to heat up and
sooner or later a draft notice would arrive in the mail. Meanwhile, I
figured I could earn a couple of bucks and maybe, maybe even lay enough
aside to pay for a semester or two at the state college. Not that I
cared much about school or book learning, but I didn't much care about
anything else either. Until that summer.

There were two of us back there in the dingy backroom of that dingy
roadside diner. The wheezing ceiling fan periodically annointed us with
blasts of dust and dead flies. Dense clouds of rank-smelling steam gave
the place its distinctive atmosphere. We called it the Swamp.

I was the one in charge of the pots, scraping congealed grease off the
heavy cast-iron griddles and frying pans, and cleaning the remains of
cement-hard mashed potatoes out of dented aluminum cauldrons. Marnie
did the plates and silverware in a chipped ceramic sink the size of
a washtub. The ancient electric dishwasher sometimes lent a hand --
on the infrequent occasions when it was working.

Marnie was probably still in her early thirties, but she looked older.
Much older. Her hair was starting to streak gray and her face was
wrinkled and a bit leathery. She had been married twice and had three
brats in school. She didn't have much in the way of formal education,
but she was surprisingly well-read and had a lively intelligence.

Ah, the conversations we had. I felt completely at ease in her presence.
I could talk to her about anything without worrying about making an ass of
myself. There was more to the world than baseball and hot cars and girls,
and Marnie was the one who first gave me a glimpse of wider horizons.

"You really oughta stay in school, Dave. How're you gonna make
something of yourself unless you put something inside that empty head
of yours? You're smart, I can tell. Why're you wasting yourself in this
shitty little dump of a town, anyway?"

"Because, well, I was born here and anyway where'm I gonna go?"

She just stood there and smiled. She had a luminous smile.


Well, we got to be quite good friends. I told her my troubles and even
got to the point where I could talk about girlfriend problems with her.

Girlfriend problems? I wished I had them. Girls had been avoiding me
like the plague. Unsurprisingly, I was still a virgin. Virgin? I had
kissed a girl exactly once, and that was more of a brother-sister kiss
than a passionate one. For that matter, I was still kind of fuzzy about,
you know, the "birds and bees" stuff. This was back in the early 60s, you
see. The Dark Ages. Before universal sex education. Before Universal Sex.

"Dave, look. You're not ugly or anything. It's just that . . . well,
it might help if you took a shower every once in a while, and maybe even
brushed your teeth. You know, take care of yourself, show a little pride
in your appearance. Learning a few of the . . . what we used to call
'social niceties,' that might not kill you either."

I didn't know quite what to make of that, but gradually it got through
my thick skull. I stank and had bad breath. And I was a clod. That might
just explain a few things.

It stung. I gritted my teeth as I scraped the remains of half a dozen
Blue Plate Specials into the plastic trash barrel. *I stank.*

"Oh, it's not all that bad, Dave. You're young. You'll learn. By the
time you're my age, you'll probably have gone through quite a few wives
and girlfriends. And besides, underneath several layers of dirt -- and
your youthful ignorance and clumsiness -- you're actually kinda cute."

"Damn it, Marn, you're just saying that to take the edge off the kick
in the the teeth you gave me a minute ago. Damn you! Damn it all! Just
about all the girls I've ever known think I'm poison, and you're saying
it's all my own damn fault. How the bloody hell do you expect me to feel?
Grateful?"

"I'm sorry. Dave, I have an even worse flaw than body odor and bad
breath. I'm an insensitive bitch. A bitch! You're basically a good
guy. And you're my friend. We've helped each other over many a rough spot
in these few weeks we've known each other . . . and here I am crapping
all over you. Now *I* feel like shit."

We stood there silently for a few minutes -- I scraping away at an
encrusted pot, and she industriously scrubbing a sink full of dirty
dishes. Then she turned around and looked at me. She had a twinkle in
her eye.

"Let's see if I can make it up to you in a small way. Hold on to your
hat."

She turned around, and then, and then . . . dropped her skirt, bent
over . . . and flashed her bare behind at me. Christ, those full round
globes! I couldn't stand it. I had to do something. I had to --

At that very moment we heard loud footsteps in the hall. Mr. Biggins!
"Bigshot" Biggins himself, head fry cook and owner of the joint. When
the door creaked open, we were both busily doing our jobs, sudsing away
merrily as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Well, that was pretty much the end of it. Marnie continued being friendly,
but that was the last of her bare ass that I saw that summer. She coolly
rebuffed any suggestion that we might . . . whatever. It was as if nothing
out of the ordinary had happened that one hot and sultry afternoon in
the backroom of the diner.

All the rest of that summer it tormented me. Those plump buttocks, and
that mysterious line of shadow in between, and just a hint of red. I
could see it with my eyes shut. That magnificent naked ass. If only . . .

We went our separate ways, Marnie and I. The last I heard of her, she
had remarried and moved out west somewhere. I hit the books. Hard. The
more I heard about the fun and games and jungle fighting out Nam way,
the less I wanted any part of it.


That ass. Those bare cheeks haunted me. That gleaming round ass popped
up in my dreams and I found myself obsessing about it when awake. My
fantasy of the "perfect woman" had an ass like that. The hell with the
rest of her, just as long as she had that *ass*.

Well, I finally lost my virginity to a woman with a big, plump ass like
that. Livia was a grad student at school.

Yeah, I wound up in college after all. For a while I considered studying
mechanical engineering, of all things. Why not? After all I had gotten
pretty good at fixing the balky old dishwasher at the diner. But by then
I had discovered a special aptitude for finding hidden patterns in stone.
I began to sculpt.

Livvy and I were lovers for about a year and I almost fell in love
with her. I would have, too, if it hadn't been for the memory of Marnie
. . . and Marnie's ass.

Later on, I ended up getting married. Twice. And in between times I had no
lack of girlfriends. I had learned my lessons well, you see. Exceedingly
well. But I never found happiness. I was always in search of the perfect
ass. It eluded me. I had by then concluded that Marnie had the patent on
perfect asses.


And so here I was. Founder of the "Buttock Art" movement. My
"double-cheek" sculptures, the ones with an uncanny resemblance to a
bare female posterior, had become quite the rage. They were on display
in a fair number of museums and galleries. In fact, I *owned* four of
those galleries. By age forty, I was worth a couple of million. I had
achieved every one of my goals in life. Except one.

And then *she* dropped into my life again.

I was the guest of honor at the opening of my exhibit at the East River
Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. The centerpiece was a two thousand
ton slab of gleaming alabaster that I had managed to jackhammer into
a passable semblance of -- you guessed it -- stark naked female buttocks.
There was special attention to detail on this one, all the way down
to the exquisite pucker of the foot-wide sphincter, not quite coyly
concealed within the massive cleavage. It had drawn raves from the
critics . . . and snickers of disbelief from the public.

Someone was circling the sculpture, staring at it intently from all sides.
Whoever it was, she certainly had a nicely filled-out butt. Come to think
of it, that ass in those too-tight slacks looked strangely familiar . . .

"Marnie!"

"Dave . . . Dave. You've come a long way, I see."

She didn't look a day older. Well, maybe her face had collected a few
more wrinkles and her breasts drooped a bit lower, but that *ass*. It
was still the same ass that had launched a thousand sculptures.

"Thanks to you. You broadened my outlook and gave . . . gave purpose to
my life. I'm grateful."

"I did? Why yes. Of course. You think I didn't recognize that hunk of rock
over there? It's me, my own . . . ass. Right down to the very dimples. I
think I ought to be flattered, but I can't help wondering if the part
of my anatomy that I sit on really rates a monument. Just think, my ass
has been immortalized. Gosh."

"Well, Marnie, there are asses and there are asses. And yours just
happens to be the finest one in existence . . . and I missed my shot at
it back then. To my eternal regret."

"Dave, we all have regrets. I certainly had my reasons for not wanting
to get involved with a kid half my age back then. Don't think I wasn't
tempted. I'm not made of stone, you know. But . . ." She turned and
favored me with a mysterious smile. ". . . You know it's never too late."

In an uncharacteristic fit of sentimentality a few years back, I had
bought the Greasy Spoon Diner from old man Biggins when it finally
came time for him to retire. I had wanted to preserve a local landmark
. . . and an icon of my lost youth. It was where I had gotten my first
notions of Higher Truth. And now that's where Marnie and I were headed.

A well-known technique known to artists is to restage -- literally
recreate -- certain pivotal events in one's life. And that's what we
were about to do. Recreate one certain pivotal event.

It was still dank and steamy there in the Swamp, the backroom of the
diner. But it was *our* place. Ours. Marnie had laughed when I had told
her where we were going.

There she was, bent forward over the sink. She had dropped her drawers.
Once more. Again her bare globes taunted me with their voluptuous charms.
Now those charms were mine for the taking. And old man Biggins wouldn't
be walking in on us this time. He was resting his weary bones in a resort
somewhere in the Florida Keys.

"I've been waiting for this for ages, Dave. My ass is yours. All yours
after all these years. If you still want it (need I ask?). Do what you
will with it. Take it. Take it all. Now."

I had thoughtfully arranged everything. The classy ambience. Complete
privacy. And, of course, lube.

I slid right into her. Into her hot and welcoming tunnel. Her back door,
of course. I wasn't about to content myself with pussy when I could
have her ass.  Her marvelous, luscious ass. I was finally *making*
her ass. The only ass that had ever counted.

It was the best sex I had ever had in my life. It must have been good for
her too, because she looked in my eyes, smiled, and kissed me lovingly
when we were done. Then she pulled up her skirt and I buckled up my
belt. And we turned around and washed the sink full of dirty dishes.