The Line Timothy Robbins “No one ever mentions his flesh opening to take the three nails.” The line came just before the foreman entered me and I breathed it on his neck, causing him to pause for just a sec. I tried it on a few other guys and got puzzled grunts and a pair of sighs that were either irritated or not related to this erotic proto-haiku. Marvin reacted as though he’d been waiting to hear it since his first sticky sheets, and had planned what to say and do. “Oh Kitten, your mind’s as sexy as your flat tummy,” his voice quivered and he trembled. “Yes,” I confessed, “I’m lily-livered; I’m your brave little coward.” He shook like a Whirlpool dryer with an unbalanced load, a car whose flat tire pulls it convulsing to the side of a sketchy road, the last un-sired Shaker touched by God before being covered with barren sod. I had accidentally called him a powerful name he didn’t know he had and so he clutched me with all the strength of panic, as though I were his only kid and we were trapped on the Mary Rose, the Lusitania, the Titanic.
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