"IF YOU HAVE SEX WITH YOUR OWN CLONE..."

        “If you have sex with your own clone, is it gay or masturbation?”

Pookie and Dean sat with their backs to one another from opposite sides of the apartment. Pookie’s thumbs jumped around his controller, sending undead viscera coursing through the post-apocalyptic air. Dean was seated in his papasan, leafing through his dictionary for a word he had discovered in a Burgess novel. “Why would I have sex with my clone?” Dean responded.

“No,” Pookie shot back. “Don’t change the subject.”

“I can’t answer the question, since I would have no desire to have sex with my clone.”

“Doesn’t matter whether you’d want to.”

“Yes, it does. You can’t honestly answer a hypothetical you have no inclination to entertain.”

Pookie smirked to himself. “Ooooooh! Methinks thou dost protesteth too stronglyeth!”

“That’s too many ‘eth’s,’” Dean stated with a complete lack of enthusiasm for the subject at hand.

“You’re evading.”

Dean spun to face Pookie’s back. “I am not.”

“Then what do you think: gay or masturbation?”

“I can’t answer -- ”

Pookie paused the game, placed the controller on the floor, and turned around. “Okay, fine. You don’t have a choice.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t have a choice. You have to fuck your own clone.”

Dean blanched. “Why?”

“What do you mean, ‘why?’ Why don’t you have a choice?”

“Yes. Do I have a gun to my head?”

“You want me to paint the picture for you? Is that what you want?”

“Yeah, I do!”

Pookie barked a condescending laugh. “Okay. It’s a dark and stormy night.”

“Just tell me -- ”

“You’re bicycling down a craterous road knifing through a dead field. You come to a stop at an isolated intersection populated only by a decrepit farmhouse at the corner and what remains of a raven’s carcass. A sepulchral odor wafts into your nose and your skin chills with pinpricked goosepimples.”

“I am impressed with your prose, I have to admit.”

“A giant gash opens in the sky and a pirate ship flies out!”

“There we go. And the figurehead has three breasts.”

“And they’re huge! The ship comes to rest above you before the tractor beam grabs you and starts to draw you aboard. You scream and flail about like the littlest of bitches.”

  “Really? Am I wetting myself?”

“You already have. The ship draws closer when a face leans over the fo’c’sle, a face of Lovecraftian grotesquerie. Maws within maws. Skin a dripping reptilian film. And oh god it’s eyes! WHAT HAPPENED TO ITS EYES!?!”

“I’m Mia Farrow?”

“You lose consciousness. When you come to you are surrounded by these mutant space-pirates and your clone. He’s naked and furiously rubbing his laughably flaccid member.”

“Shut up!”

Pookie chuckled maniacally as he continued, “The captain steps forward and tells you they’re willing to return you to Earth but only after you’ve had sex with your own clone.”

“So the mutant space-pirates abducted and cloned me to watch me have sex with my it.”

“Yes.”

“Who’s the dominant one in this pairing?”

“Uh, does that matter?”

“Yes. Since I have to have sex with my clone, I’d rather be the dominant one.”

“And if the mutant space-pirates tell you you have to catch, what are you going to do, refuse?”

“C’mon, man!”

“Would you refuse?”

“What happens if I refuse?”

“You have sex with all the mutant space-pirates, and you’re still catching.”

Dean threw up his arms. “Fine! I’ll catch!

“So you wouldn’t refuse?”

“No.”

“Well at any rate it’s your choice,” Pookie said and resumed his maniacal laughter.

Dean threw his dictionary to the floor as he leapt to his feet. “Then what was that all about?”

“Dude you’re too easy.”

“You’re an asshole.”

“No argument. So,” Pookie clapped his hands together, continuing, “now that we’ve established that you would have sex with your clone is it gay or masturbation?”

“Masturbation.”

“Wrong.”

“I’m wrong -- just like that?”

“Yeah you’re wrong.”

“How am I wrong? I’m having sex with me.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes, I am. If it’s a clone, we share the same genetic makeup.”

Pookie stood up. “You don’t share a consciousness. Your hand doesn’t have its own consciousness. Does it?”

“Your hand is just a tool that you use to make yourself ejaculate.”

“So’s anything you put your dick in whether it’s sentient or not. But if it’s sentient then you’re engaging a partner in sex which means you’re not masturbating which means it’s gay.”

“I disagree.”

“Prove me wrong.”

“There is no wrong. It’s an opinion.”

“No. I just proved it.”

“You did not.”

Pookie marched across the room. “Refute my logic. Go ‘head,” he said into Dean’s face.

“Get away from me.”

“Do it. Prove me wrong.”

“Why?”

A satisfied smile shot across Pookie’s face.  “I think you want it to be masturbation. That way you wouldn’t have to admit you’d have sex with a dude.”

“I don’t want to have sex with a dude!”

“Of course you do.”

“You didn’t have to invent a pretext to call me gay.”

“Look it’s no big deal.”

“Shut up. Shut up!”

“I’m serious. Everybody’s a little gay.”

“You would have sex with a guy?”

“Jesus, listen to the phobia dripping off that question.”

“No, no, no! Now you’re evading!”

“No I’m not. I admit it.”

“You’ve had sex with a guy?”

“No but -- ”

“Have you ever made out with a guy?”

“No.”

Dean’s eyes widened with vengeful satisfaction. “Then how do you know?”

“I’m not dismissing it outta hand is what I’m saying.”

“But how do you know?”

“Iggy Pop.”

“Iggy Pop!?!”

“Sure. I mean I wouldn’t go after ‘im or anything. But if he came on to me then why not?”

“He looks like a month-old cornhusk!”

“Well now he does. But on the cover of Raw Power, you’re tellin’ me you wouldn’t hit that?”

“I’ve never seen the cover.”

Pookie grabbed Dean’s arm. “C’mere!”

Dean tore out of Pookie’s grasp. “No.”

“C’mere! Look at it!”

“Get off me!”

Pookie wrapped his arms around Dean with the singleminded force of an enraged gorilla and started to wrestle Dead across the room to the computer. Dean writhed, turning himself around, and slapped at Pookie with what strength his fettered arms could muster. “Protesteth! Protesteth!” charged Pookie. Dean backpedalled, knocking over the coffee table and sending both he and Pookie to the ground. “Lemme go!” screamed Dean. Pookie, carrying Dean on his belly, crawled on his back, the rug searing his neck and shoulders in the process. Reaching the computer, Pookie quickly flipped over, landing on the floor on top of Dean. “Owww, you bastard!” Dean bellowed. Pookie put one knee into Dean’s neck and held him down as he grabbed the mouse and raced to open his music files. Dean screeched, “You’re gonna break my neck!” “You’ll thank me!” yelled Pookie as the album cover filled the screen. 

Pookie hoisted Dean to his feet and jammed his face to the screen. “Look at that! Look at it!” 

“Get off me!”

“That is sex! Admit it!” Pookie hit the mouse again. The rippling guitar and pounding rhythm of “Penetration” filled the air. “Just look, damn you!”

Dean stopped struggling and silently stared at the photo of the lithe, sleek rocker as the music bored into his head, suffusing itself into his marrow. As the guitar solo started to blister the speakers, Dean’s muscles eased. He found his gaze traveling up the ripples of Iggy’s sternum to his iniquitous, sirenic mouth. He ceased to stare down Dean like a monolithic sentinel. He sang to him with winsome danger, inviting him to close his eyes and fall into the picture of menacing seduction.

Pookie’s hold relaxed as he watched his friend slowly come to the understanding. He let his hands drop to his sides and began to nod. “See.”

Dean sighed. “Is this what you wanted.”

Pookie shook his head. “I just wanted to kill time until Holly gets here.”

The doorbell sounded.

“There she is. Later.”