Free The Cloaca by Andrew Hood

themselves trying to take the relentless candles out of the cake. And then everyone standing around sucking their fingers. And then more wine, and some let-down mushrooms. And to end the night Frances had disastrously fooled around with a girl nearly half her age.
    Bad Service, the café that Frances had been working at on and off for thirteen years, had recently hired a fresh crew of first-year university students to replace the graduates who left in the spring. Frances’s party had been at the café, and the new hires had brought along all their buddies. They quizzed Frances about bands and books and movies that she had never heard of, acting flabbergasted and slighted that she was unaware, advising her with a medical severity that she really should check them out. Emboldened by whiskey, Frances started to fabricate art that she could act shocked that these kids were not experts on.
    â€œYou’ve never heard Oedipus and the Motherfuckers ? Oh my god, you really should check them out.” “You’ve never read Louis Tully? Jesus Christ, you need to track down a copy of The Confabulators like fucking ASAP.” “How have you never seen Elbow Kissers ? You wouldn’t think that watching an old man try to kiss his elbow for two hours could be so moving, but holy fuck. I nearly fucking cried. Fucking. Cried.”
    By midnight Frances’s friends her own age had all gone, apologizing about things they had to get up for the next day, leaving just Frances and these moody, cawing nineteen-year-olds. One kid with big boxy glasses like Frances’s mother used to wear, an old Toronto Blue Jays ringer, and the left side of her head shaved, had taken a sloppy shine to Frances, had kept winking at her.
    Around dawn, as she was bluntly kissing this youth back at her house, Frances had wondered what she’d even been doing in 1991, while this kid whose hand was now starting to rub her crotch like a migrained temple was being born. Watching The Cosby Show probably, like everyone else, except more alone and more cynically and, eventually, a bit drunk and in love with Denise Huxtable.
    In the heat of what Frances assumed had been passion, or what was supposed to look and sound like passion, this teenager had moaned “Teach me!”
    Before Frances could ask, this girl, Betsy—who could probably still count how times she’d been drunk—started fumbling clothes off, snagging feet and catching earrings. “I want you to teach me stuff,” Betsy said, trying to do a sexy voice while struggling with her own bra. Frances hadn’t even decided yet whether she wanted this to be a no clothes thing or not.
    â€œWhat do you mean teach you stuff? What stuff ?”
    Betsy nudged at Frances’s breast with her foot and winked. “I want you to show me whatever you want me to know about.”
    And that’s when Frances sobered enough to understand that this girl believed she was with an older, travelled woman. She expected Frances to impart her years of bawdy wisdom all over her body, a bit chubby with baby fat still. But what the fuck did Frances know about sex? Fifteen years on the job and all she had figured out was that the people who think they know what they’re doing, or have a store of stuff that they do, are the creepiest, and are probably bored with sex. These people just want at your bum. What the fuck did Frances know about anything for that matter? In the end, she and Betsy had done some pedestrian, Junior High-grade stuff until Betsy left to puke.
    â€œThat’s me,” Frances agreed with the clipboard. She smiled at the art teacher, and the art teacher smiled back. She was one of those local hippies who, though they didn’t shave their legs and were covered with as many as seven scarves at one time, had perfect white teeth and carefully shaped eyebrows.
    â€œAnd Frances is on her way?” The teacher looked past Frances, down the hall, still