O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
pulled over by the cops or some fuckhead crashes into you.
Milo’s attitude towards traveling may have seemed religious, and
maybe it was. He implicitly understood the divine nature of motion.
Sometimes, after he had been driving for a long time he sensed as if
his Monza was being chartered by some spirit, and that he was just
the chauffeur. The concept, then, that “getting there is half the fun,”
or “it’s not where you go, it’s how you get there,” was a kind of nod to
something higher, something religious even. In honoring the
message over the medium, Milo implicitly sensed that God was not in
what is, but in what was
getting there
.
For all their faults, there was a chance that epiphany machines
could actually transport people closer to the transcendent. Perhaps
Milo wouldn’t require a fake ID to get into the heaven he yearned for.
All he needed was an authentic and well-used driver’s license, stuck
firmly into the wallet of his soul.
And in this case, a condom as well.
“Damn! I knew I had one in here!” Milo complained, jabbing his
fingers into the various cavities of his billfold. “I can’t believe this!
Thirty minutes of begging, you finally give in, and I got no rubber!”
The hitchhiker just giggled at his frustration and poured herself
another tumbler of Strawberry Schnapps. Milo looked at her
imploringly.
“No way, dude,” she shook her feathered bangs, “You put that
infested thing anywhere near me without at least two rubbers on it,
and I yell ‘rape.’”
There was a knock on the window. Startled, Milo fell forward and
accidentally stubbed his erect penis on the hitcher’s bare belly.
“Rape!” she screamed, “Rape!”
“Shut up, crazy bitch,” Milo barked, pulling up his trousers and
checking to see who could possibly be so rude to interrupt him while
he was trying to parallel park his convertible. Still, they might have
rubbers. He turned off the radio and rolled down the window.
“Rape!” the hitcher continued to scream.
“Hey, man. You got any—uh—hey, check it out, I don’t even
know
this chick, man.”
Harvey had been just about to kiss Victoria when the music stopped.
Shocked back into awareness, he pulled his head away. It’d just been
so long since he’d held a woman that he became lost in the sensation.
The music over, people began to drift off the dance floor and
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