Willard and His Bowling Trophies Read Online Free Page B

being spread-eagled if he didn’t stretch her arms and legs out too tight, but sometimes he did. She “preferred” to have her hands tied directly above her head, but that didn’t turn him on very often, so . . . actually, what she wanted was a long vacation from bondage and minor-league sadism. There was very little thrill to it anymore and she wished that he didn’t have the warts in his penis and he hadn’t changed sexually and they could go back to fucking like they used to. She was not a sexual prude but she did not like their whole sex life devoted to sadism.
    If only her novel had been a commercial success as well as a critical success and she hadn’t felt so depressed and insecure that she had one-night-standed with the lawyer, even though she loved Bob very much, and brought the venereal warts home with her. Also, because her novel had failed, she had to go back to modeling, which she hated. She felt that it degraded her but Bob couldn’t work anymore because he was too abstract and she had to support him.
    So now . . .
    “Constance Marlow’s novel After Class shows great promise and it is a privilege to welcome her to American letters.”
    — The New York Times Book Review
    she “preferred” to have her hands tied
    “Miss Marlow’s book is a delight to read in a very sad way.”
    — Saturday Review
    directly above her head
    “Hurray for Constance Marlow!”
    — Chicago Tribune
    but that didn’t turn him on . . . so
    “A brilliant young stylist goes to the head of her literary generation.”
    — Los Angeles Times
    so . . .

Ritual
    It always happened this way: After he came his penis would slowly soften inside of her and their bodies would be very quiet together like two haunted houses staring across a weedy vacant lot at each other. Then always with a slight feeling of abstract disgust, he would pull out of her, get up and take the rubber off, carefully not looking at it, with his back to her and leave the room, and he would walk dream-like down the hall to the toilet. He hated the way the wet warm rubber occupied his hand like a dirty joke from outer space.
    Carefully looking away, he would drop the rubber into the toilet and flush it, feeling by now terrible as if he had been part of something very obscene.
    He would wash his penis very, very carefully, still not looking at it, and then dry it with a special towel that he wouldn’t allow Constance to use because he was afraid she might get the warts again and he couldn’t stand that.
    No, that would be too much.
    It would be the end of him.
    Then he would walk slowly, dream-like, back to where Constance lay, still bound and gagged, waiting for him to untie her, so they could go on with the rest of their life together.

Events leading up to the
    One evening the entire Logan family, except for the daughters who were elsewhere again, went to a drive-in movie. Their mother brought along a giant sack of cookies. Going to a movie was a very rare thing for them to do. They thought the picture they were going to see was about bowling, but it turned out to be about playing pool and starred Paul Newman.
    The Logan brothers were very disappointed and could not figure out how they had made the mistake of thinking that the picture was about bowling when it was actually about playing pool.
    They tried to blame it on one another.
    “It’s your fault,” one of the Logan brothers accused another Logan brother.
    “You’re full of shit!” was the reply.
    “Don’t talk that way in front of your mother,” was their father’s immediate response to that remark. He had been listening to a transmission in one of the cars in the movie before his son started talking dirty.
    “I’m sorry, Mom,” was the apology.
    “You’re forgiven, son,” was the acceptance.
    “How could we have been so stupid to think that the movie was about bowling,” one of the other brothers said, voicing extreme disappointment.
    “Let’s forget it. It’s done,” the Logan