"THE CATCHER IN THE RYE" PARODY SHORT STORY CONTEST WINNER: "Holden Caulfield Visits Sally Hayes"***
"HOLDEN CAULFIELD VISITS SALLY HAYES"
by David W. Landrum
Download the MP3, recorded while aimlessly walking around Central Park
Holden Caulfield knocked on the door of a Bronx brownstone. When Sally Hayes answered, he stood there, gawking. She waited for him to speak. When he did not, she burst out laughing.
"For Christ's sake, Holden, are you going just stand there with your dick in your hand or are you going to come in?"
He snapped out of his surprised-induced trance enough to cross the threshold and stomp the snow off his shoes as she closed the door behind him.
"Good to see you," she said.
He turned to her but once again stood still and gawked.
"Are you just going to stare at me? You can still talk, can't you?"
"Sorry. You just . . . look so different."
"So do you," she said, taking his coat. "I think it's a real hoot that back then you were the one with buzzed hair and I was after you to let yours grow out. Role reversal, wouldn't you say?"
He smiled, still mostly staring at her.
"Have a seat. What can I get you to drink?"
"Beer." The word fumbled from his mouth as he sat down in a threadbare chair. He watched her cross the room. Her hair was cropped short and dyed blue and pink. She wore a pair of tight lycra shorts and a tank top. He marveled at the tattoos on her shoulders, arms, and ankles. She was barefoot. Rings adorned all her fingers and three of her toes. She brought him a Sierra Nevada IPA.
"Here. This is all I got. I like beer with a little bite to itâ€Â"no piss-water for me."
He sipped the beer. Its bitterness made him shudder. Sally sprawled on the ragged sofa across from him, head back, legs apart.
"You're looking good," she commented.
"You too," he repliedâ€Â"then added, "And different."
"Well, I was kind of the Barbie-doll-debutante-preppie girl back then. Not anymore."
"I guess not. What do you do?"
"I write. Novelsâ€Â"like the one you wrote."
"I hope you weren't offended by what I said in my book. I mean, I was a little messed up when I wrote those things."
"I thought it was hilarious. I like the part where you said I went to the skating rink and put on a skating skirt just because I wanted to show off my ass."
"I'm sorry, Sally"â€Â"
But she cut him off with a peal of delighted laughter.
"Don't apologize. You were exactly right. I wanted you to notice my butt because I wanted you to fuck me."
He did not reply. He took another sip of beer. Despite his best efforts, he shuddered again.
"Strong stuff," she commented, her eyes merry.
"You live here alone?" he asked.
"I have a roommate lover-girl named Erica."
"Lover-girl? You're a lesbian?" Alarm sounded in his voice.
She reached into her purse, got out a cigarette, and lit it.
"Smoke?"
She held out the pack.
"No, thanks. I quit."
She threw the pack over her shoulder and inhaled deeply.
"I'm surprised you stopped. You smoked like a chimney back then. But to answer your questionâ€Â"it's complicated. Erica and I live together, sleep in the same bed, and occasionally fuck each other; but both of us fuck guys too, and seem to like that just a little more."
"So you're bisexual?"
Sally struck a pose, holding her cigarette high and lifting her nose in the air. She spoke in a mock-French accent.
"Monsieur Caulfield should remember that such binary views of sexuality are violent and exclusionist, as Foucault and Derrida have taught us."
She looked at him, laughed, stubbed out her cigarette, crossed the room, and wriggled into the chair with him.
"You're just as fucked up as you were back then," she said.
He did not answer. She let her hand fall on his crotch.
"And just as horny," she observed. "I could tell your cock got hard from looking at me. I could see the big bulge all the way across the room."
Before he could reply, she had his pants unzipped, had it out, and had it in her mouth. After only a minute or so, she lifted her head and let it slip out with a loud smack of her lips.
"This is too good for a bus-station style blow-job," she said. "Sit still."
Moving with remarkable speed and adroitness, she crossed the room to the stand by her bed, returned to him carrying lubricant cream and a condom, andâ€Â"holding the silver-wrapped condom between her fingers and the cream under her armâ€Â"peeled off her lyrca shorts and kicked out of her pink panties.
"This lotion is great stuff," she said as she put the condom on him and then lubricated him and herself. "Erica and I use it when we finger-fuck."
Then she climbed up in the chair, straddling him, and lowered herself down on to his stiff cock. After she settled, she began to move.
Holden gasped, his eyes wide, hands and arms twitching. In a short timeâ€Â"surely not more than two minutesâ€Â"a spasm shook Sally. She jerked so hard she hit her head against his chin with a loud crack. She stopped shuddering and lay still a short time, cooing with pleasure; and then she began again, going up and down furiously, grunting and squeezing her pubococcygus muscle. In an instant he ejaculated violently, jerking and flailing in the chair until the wave of pleasure rolled past.
Then they both were still.
After a while she patted the back of his neck.
"I waited quite a while for this," she said.
"You did?"
"Sure I did. In the memoir you wrote how I put on that short skating skirt and walked in front of you so you'd see how cute my little ass looked. Well, you're exactly right, and I was all ready to let you get some of it. Then you came up with that harebrained idea of running off together. I was thinking of getting a room, and I wanted to tell you that, but you got so loud and strident . . . well, you know what happened."
She paused and leaned into him.
"Was I good, Holden?" she murmured in his ear.
"Yeah." He hesitated and then said, "Of course, I've never had it before."
"I didn't think you had. But you were very sweet. And you don't have to worry. I'm not planning to sue you like Mr. Antolini and Bob Ackley and Dick Slagle are doing. I don't mind that you said those things about me. Anyone who reads your book can tell you're just a washed-out fuck-up who thinks he knows everything about everybody but really knows nothing about anything and has some serious, serious problems. I caught you, though."
"Caught me?"
"Jesus! Don't you even remember the things you write? You said you wanted to be the "Catcher in the Rye." The poem you misquoted was:
Gin a body met a body
Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?
It's a Robert Burns poem about a custom in Scotland: if you meet your sweetie-pie walking through a field of rye grain, you get to kiss her right there on the spot. You got it all wrong, of course, like your little sister told youâ€Â"you write about that in the book too. But I kissed you. I caught you, Holden. Maybe I can save you after all."
Holden sat in the chair, his member still hanging out, while Sally got cleaned up. She came back in dressed in a short, pleated skating skirt and a sweater. She turned around and shook her bottom.
"Cute little ass,' she said. "I thought that was so funny!"
She had a damp cloth in her left hand. She wiped him off and told him to zip up.
"Holden, you need help. I'll keep catching you so you don't fall off the goddamned cliff. Come back next week. I'll introduce you to Erica. We'll have a ménage a trios."
He stayed a little longer. On the way back to his dingy apartment he stopped by the skating rink at Radio City Music Hall. He remembered all that happened those many years ago.
He realized it was happening again.
David W. Landrum teaches Literature at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. His fiction and poetry have appeared in many journals, including The Cynic Online, Amarillo Bay, and Blood Lotus Review. He edits the on-line poetry journal, Lucid Rhythms, www.lucidrhythms.com. Years ago he read Catcher in the Rye and thought Holden was a jerk and Sally was a babe.
Posted by miracle
on Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:38:55 -0400 -- permanent link
