She lets you do whatever you want; it’s what you’ve always liked best about her.  She’s fine if you put her arms this way, her legs that way, flip her over and boost up her hips until her body looks like a triangle.  Curl her fingers, open her mouth, spread her legs, it’s all okay with her and there’s never a protest.  Sometimes her joints creak or crack or pop and then you laugh and tease her about her age.  You tell her you’ll have to replace her soon.  Even that, she accepts. What a great girl.

                 Sometimes she sits and watches you as you work.  Sometimes she lays naked on the floor. You sell coupons via the Internet and so you don’t have to leave the house much and you make sure she never does.  When you leave, she waits for you.  Wherever you tell her to.  In bed with the covers thrown back, poised to accept you as soon as you walk in the door.  In the hard wooden chair, ready to stand up and bend over the back, presenting her ass to you.  Once in the closet.  She waited there for three hours.  You deliberately stayed out longer than normal, just to see if she would move, would topple out in a panic, and you might find her face down, supplicant, on the floor.

                 There have been others, but none who stayed this long.  No one else who was able to tolerate for long the closed and drawn windows, the locked door, only you for company.  The others all broke down, fell apart, and had to leave.  This one, she does everything you tell her to. And you like that. What a great girl.

                 You take great pains to make her comfortable.  You keep the climate cool and dry, the a/c on high, dehumidifier humming, gentle air against her constantly nude and ready body.  And you try to only use her once a day, though sometimes, that marathon urge comes over you, that experiment urge, how many times, how many ways, in how many hours.  Her compliance, her willingness, and her longevity are the biggest turn-ons you’ve ever had.

                 She doesn’t say no.

                 She never leaves.

                 And the only thing she’s there for is your pleasure.  Hers doesn’t matter.  You don’t have to think about her at all.

                 There is such freedom in never having to offer cliché candy or flowers.  No workday, “I was just thinking about you!” phone calls or emails.  No remembering of anniversaries.  Not even having to say, “How was your day, hon?”  No comforting, no consoling, no laughing, no loving, just take what you need and even what you don’t because you’re already full, but she’s still there, ready, so why not?   No need for talk.  You can be silent for days, except for the grunts you emit when you fuck her.

She lets you do whatever you want. And you like that. What a great girl.  You hope this lasts a long time.

                 So you ignore the smell at first, when it sets in about three weeks after you get together.  You ignore it for another week.  Then you decide to create a lotion, a special lotion made just for her.  Women like lotions, don’t they?  Scented sprays and gels and splashes with pictures of fruit and flowers on the bottle?  But yours will be unique, just for her.  You shop and buy a special combination of chemicals and fruit derivatives which you believe will keep her skin flexible, sweet-smelling, and firm, even without sunlight or bathing or fresh air.  You apply it with a small paintbrush, a brush you used on your tiny blue bathroom walls, and the sight of those bristles bending and smoothing over her body excites you and gives you ideas and when you fuck her with the handle, she lets you.  You ejaculate on her shiny thigh.  Still, you know, you know this means that while she looks good on the outside, she must be falling apart. She’s falling apart where you can’t see.  Maybe she is like other women, caving in under her skin.  Becoming a big, black, messy abyss that will someday come howling out at you.  Seeping through her silent exterior.  She lets you do whatever you want, but maybe somewhere inside, she resists.

                 Then you break her leg, by accident, trying a new position, her legs held straight, ankles pressed against her ears, you hold them down while you pump. You can see every stroke, your shaft shiny with your own juices and what might be hers.  And then you hear the snap.  You splint her, she lets you, you don’t even have to say you’re sorry.  Looking at her, her leg ace-bandaged in a zig-zag pattern between the poles from your mop and your broom, you again wonder how long she will last.

                 Until her hand falls off.  Comes away right in yours as you clench her wrists behind her back, her face away from you, hefting her up and down on your penis while you stand spread-eagled.  Like lifting weights.  She’s a barbell that jacks you off with her ass.  But her hand flies away, her body lists quickly to the side, her shoulder thumping the floor. And oh, the smell.  Her skin like a plastic casing over rotten sausage.

                 She falls apart. And it’s time for her to go.  But she was a great girl. She let you do whatever you wanted.  And you like that.

                 The thought of finding another exhausts you.  You need to grieve for a while.  A week.  A week of lonely self-abuse with the curtains thrown back and the windows open.  Then cool and dark again and off to the bars.

                 There are supposed to be so many great girls out there.  That’s what your mom says, your sisters say.  They tell you to go to church, the grocery store, the internet.  Your father only smiles his sideways smile and whispers, “How many did you bag last week, boy?”  Your brother, secure with his own wife, asks if you’re gay, then slips you the phone numbers of his wife’s friends. Yammering duds.  There are only a few girls, you know, who hold still long enough, grow quiet, stay quiet.  And let you do whatever you want.  That’s what you like best.

                 Like with this one.  Miss Long-Laster, as you think of her now, though you remember her saying on that first night, under the soft rose-hued lights in the booth at the back of the bar, that her name was Anne.  She let you do whatever you wanted.  And you liked that. What a great girl.

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