Free The Complete Lockpick Pornography by Joey Comeau

the liquor store I buy the biggest bottle they have, something that says XXX on the side, like in a cartoon. Or no, maybe it says something realistic on the side of it. I can’t tell. I lift it up to my lips and drink it right there in line.
    The girl at the cash register doesn’t ID me. She takes the money and gives me a receipt and a paper bag to drink it out of. She knows. Walking to Michelle’s house, I drink right from the bottle, the cap in some gutter on the way, and the bottle in its paper bag. I drink it down like I’m my mother.
    I remember the way. When I get there, I’ll have to speak like I’m drunk. You have to use the right words in the right order. I’m the drunk man, showing up to fuck her. I have to remember to be obnoxious. There’s a script to be followed.
    And why not? I mean, what makes a man and a woman different? What is it that makes people like Dr. Verge wrong about family, about homosexuality, if it isn’t the fact that we’re all the same person with different masks on? How can one mask be better than another? This XXX shit burns going down, but that just means I get to grit my teeth and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Tough like set theory, but easy like home economics.
    Michelle’s at home when I get there, and I push past, into the apartment. I storm to the back and find the bottle of painkillers. “I’m stealing your pills,” I tell her, and I put two on my tongue and wash them down with liquor. Pills and liquor, pills and liquor. We’re getting really dark and gritty now. Everything is shot through a blue filter.
    â€œAlex is a boy now. True or false?” I say. “Richard isn’t some bisexual candy-ass faggot failure. True or false? We should take off our clothes and get right down to it. I’ve never done anything more than gnaw on a girl’s fake cock, and you clearly just need a good visit from the cock deliveryman. True or false?”
    â€œAre you drunk?” Michelle says, reading from the script. She’s the sober woman who’s visited by the drunken lecherous male. She’s reading the script with her hair all shaved off like a dyke, but we can squint and picture any one of the dozens of appropriate TV actresses. Anyway, isn’t this the part of the movie that everyone’s been secretly waiting for, where the lead character and the awesome dyke character get together? It’s awesome that they’re fags and all, but “Kiss! Kiss!”
    â€œOf course I’m drunk,” I tell her. “My nose is red, isn’t it? I’m hiccupping, aren’t I? Now, pencils down! Take your pants off and let’s see if you passed. I want to see what it’s like to enjoy heterosexual privilege. This is what God intended, isn’t it?” Wait, no, that’s not my motivation. I put my hand out to steady myself on the wall. Focus. “I mean, if gender’s nothing, then what the fuck is lust? I’ve been getting hard over a concept, haven’t I? I’ve fucked post-op trannies, dickless and satisfying, because I knew they were men. Well, you’re a man. Spread your fucking labia or whatever the shit it is.”
    â€œI’m not a man, and I’m not going to fuck you,” Michelle says. “I’m not into men. I like women. You know that.”
    â€œSo you don’t think that gender’s just a construction then?” I say, and she shakes her head.
    â€œI don’t care what it is,” she says. “It gets me wet to think about my body with another woman. The idea of a penis makes me physically ill. So I choose orgasms. They’re satisfying and plentiful, and if I have to buy into a constructed ideal, so be it.”
    Out in the street I drink some more. The bottle’s bottomless. I start walking again. There’s got to be a bar here somewhere, close by. There’s got to be a place with a middle-aged woman drunk in