My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One Night Stands

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-

Night Stands

Cover

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands

LOOK WHO'S HAVING SEX WITH MOMMY

I WAS SEVEN years old when my sister told me she'd give me five dollars to run upstairs

into my parents' room while they were having sex and take a picture. At that age I had heard

of sex but had no idea what it looked like. I knew for sure that my parents were sexually act-

ive. My father had impregnated my mother on six different occasions, all of which she decided

to keep, so it was clear to my siblings and me that there was a definite attraction. There were

many times when we would hear loud bumping and raucous laughter coming from their bed-

room. My brothers and sisters always reacted with disgust and, being the youngest, I would

follow suit, but was never sure why. Without knowing exactly what the act of sex entailed,

there wasn't any real reason to be revolted, but it had become second nature to pretend I

knew something I didn't.

I was always up for a chance to make easy money. I had been wearing hand-me-downs

since I was born, and by the age of seven was already sick and tired of my second-string

wardrobe. I may not have known what sex was, but I did know that I needed to step up my

wardrobe in order to be taken seriously in the first grade. “No problem,” I said. “Where's the

camera and how do I use it?”

I tiptoed up the stairs leading to my parents' bedroom with my sister Sloane following

close behind. Their door had a lock on it, but it was old and didn't secure inside the doorjamb

anymore. If it was locked you weren't able to turn the handle, but if you smashed your body

into it, it would open.

I checked and saw it was locked. I would have to use physical force. Sloane crept back to-

ward the top of the staircase. I set up for a running start.

“Ready?” I asked her.

“Go!” she whispered.

Seeing your mother naked is not something you easily recover from. Seeing your mother

naked and jumping from one side of a king-sized bed to the other with a nurse's hat on while

your father, who is also naked, is chasing her with a bandanna around his neck, is reason to

put yourself up for adoption. Fortunately, I took the first picture before anything had a chance

to register. The second picture was of my father heading toward me with a belt.

My sister was already down the stairs when I came running out of my parents' room. I

jumped all the way from the top of the stairs to the bottom. Luckily, I had perfected this jump

months earlier during three consecutive snow days. I did not dare look behind me to see if my

father and his penis were chasing me; I just kept running. We lived in a split-level house, so at

the bottom of the big stairs, there was a shorter set of stairs to the right and to the left. I went

left and my sister went right. I saw her head for the basement and followed her in. Our base-

ment doubled as the laundry room; the one room in our house my father had never been in.

“Lock the door!” she barked, as she scrambled to hide under a pile of dirty clothes.

“Oh, my God, Dad has a belt,” I told her.

“What?”

“A belt! He has a belt! I think he wants to hit us with it!”

“The one he wears with his pants?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I think he wants to belt us!”

We were too scared to cry. This was it for me, I was sure of it. I was going to be murdered

in my basement by my naked father, with a belt. I had never been hit by a belt before but had

heard stories about it happening in poorer neighborhoods. Suddenly, there was the sound of

footsteps coming down the stairs and then banging on the door.

“Open the goddamn door! Now! You two are gonna get a smack and you're gonna get it

now!”

I stared at Sloane with big eyes. I wanted her to think of a way out of this mess. She was

twelve and she needed to take charge.

“Ask him if it's with the belt or his hand,” Sloane said.

I looked at her to make sure she was serious, then yelled back, “With your hand or a

belt?”

“What?!”

I went closer to the stairs that led to the door. “Are you going to hit us with the belt or your

hand?”

He was shaking the handle now. “No one's getting hit with a belt!” he shouted. “One . .