Free Friction by Joe Stretch

maroon mouth.
    â€˜Have you told Carly?’
    â€˜No, I don’t think I will. How much do we stand to make, exactly?’
    â€˜Frankly, my boy, millions. All Autopen stock has risen six hundred per cent.’
    Steve’s lips sprawl awkwardly into a half-smile, all uneven, unsure whether happiness is quite the right feeling. But it is. Yes, it is, so he lets out a cautious chuckle. Frank and Steve invested heavily in the Autopen Corporation. Frank got the tip, the Relentless Bliss is going to go huge.
    The waiter returns with the coffees. There is tense silence as they’re placed down, then the two men lean forward and sip at the light brown lattes, their eyes meet, shining like silver coins in the sun.
    â€˜We’re rich, my boy,’ says Frank. ‘It seems as though girls are extremely keen on machines.’
    Steve sighs, a hand in his hair, his fingers tensed and spread equally like the bristles of a brush. He’d been reluctant to invest in the Autopen sex machines, had to be persuaded by Frank. Don’t you understand, boy, Frank had blared, Autopen is the future. All of us men, we will be replaced. Sexually, we are absolutely replaceable. This wasn’t an idea Steve was keen to agree with. The beauty of man, believes Steve, the beauty of himself, is the future. His hair of various shades of blond and its original black, his wonderful clothes, clean and distressed, his ringed toe,brass bracelets, necklaces, moisturiser, tattoos, perfume, gel. Beautiful man is the future. Beautiful me.
    â€˜I don’t buy it,’ says Steve. ‘It’s a fad. I say we sell soon.’
    â€˜You don’t think, Steve, that your darling, fuck-puppet, Carly, could be pleasured by a machine? Can you not conceive of that?’
    â€˜No,’ Steve replies, the tone of his ‘no’ failing slightly and becoming more of a ‘nahh’. He reaches for his coffee, gazing uncertainly beyond Frank’s huge left shoulder, which curves like the gradual, endless throat of a docile whale. It’s possible, I think, that on some level we humans know everything. That we choose simply to ignore the knowledge brought to us by the more cosmic, bowel-based, mystical senses. So it is that Steve shifts in his seat at the suggestion that his own lover could defect to the machines. Deep down, whatever that means, he knows she could. On some level, he’s suppressing the clouded, only vague image of Carly, spreadeagled in the cubicle of Versus, the machine moving in and out, vibrating fiercely and perfectly.
    â€˜No, Carly won’t go for machines,’ he says eventually. ‘I fuck like one.’
    â€˜I see.’ Frank leans back on to the layers of fat that congregate above his belt. ‘We will sell,’ he says, suppressing a burp. ‘In many ways, you’re right. Autopen is a fad. The Americans are far too keen on the idea of replicating penetration. It’s nonsense.’
    â€˜Nonsense?’
    â€˜Of course. Penetration is a trap we keep falling into, a needless homage to a Stone Age ritual. The future lies on the outside, in the superficial stimulation of the exterior, with electricity.’
    Steve bows his head, placing both his hands on the table.He looks at his diamond-encrusted watch. What is time doing? If I am anything, thinks Steve, I am a penetrator. Markets, fashions, cunts, arseholes, elites, parties, mouths. I’m a penetrator. Running out of time.
    â€˜I’m going to take a trip,’ continues Frank, his fingers fiddling with each other like lovers at an orgy for the fat. ‘I’m going to go to Japan, find the company with the best sex machine. Then we’ll invest. The electronic orgasm, that’s where we’re headed. Don’t look so glum, my boy.’
    â€˜I’m not glum, Frank.’
    â€˜Has Carly been robbing you again?’
    Steve moves his empty glass to one side. Milk dried like crystals to the rim. His