bio

R. John Callahan is most widely noted and acclaimed for having authored the best-selling childrens' books "Everybody Dies" and "Teeth Are For Biting." He passes the time at his private ranch in Belgium where he is rumored to be assembling and training an unstoppable tarantula army. In the off season, he practices swallowing his own face. Don't get too close, and definitely don't feed him.

primary external link:
www.robcallahan.com

As The Worm Turns

She rubbed it all over her naked body. That jacket was getting better acquainted with parts of her than perhaps she was herself, and this had to have been some of the easiest money she'd ever made. There was, after all, no lonely old lecher for her to rub, to grind on, to get off for his hundred bucks. I'd paid her for the private dance in what they called the VIP Lounge, which turned out to be a musty little enclosure the size of a large closet with an uncomfortable couch and a security camera hanging in the corner. The mirrored ceiling was a nice touch, though, and it did add that certain Je ne sais quoi to the little hovel that was ours for the next half hour.

I can honestly tell you that I've never been more excited than I was on that couch, watching her caress the jacket, writhe around on it, lick it, and so on. She was easily the best looking stripper in the whole club, for what that was worth, and I wouldn't have shelled out that kind of money for anyone else. She was a dead ringer for Cameron Diaz from the neck up, and hers was a body cast from the same mold as Madonna's circa 1985. This was perfection to me, even though the other guys in the wedding party might have thought another girl was better, just as it had been all those years ago, when this girl was yet to hit puberty and her description belonged to Joanne.

Watching this girl wiggle around and seduce the jacket made me think a lot about Joanne. I'd spent the past seven years regretting my failure with her. I was too wild, too unstable, she told me while making the dump. What else could she have expected from me at twenty-one? I had asked myself that question more times than I could remember (and I probably always will) and the answer, when it came, was always the same. She wanted Billy. She wanted everything she saw in my best friend, only in me. I guess eventually she settled for just Billy, sans me.

"What else do you want me to do with it?" Alexis asked. There was an Alexis at every one of these places, sometimes more than one, but this one was different. Her voice was soft and seductive. It didn't matter if it was sincere or practiced, because nothing in these clubs was ever completely sincere. What did matter was that it sounded like Joanne's. Everything about this woman was Joanne, except that Joanne would never have done this. Despite her flawless body, she didn't even like to get naked with the lights off.

"I want you to rub it on your hair," I told her. Hair retains odor more than anything else on the body, and as this girl was cleanly shaved everywhere else, I would have to hope that there was enough of her scent in those delicious blond curls to stick to the coat. She moved it slowly across her body, brought it to her head, and gave the term "skull-fuck" a whole new meaning as I watched her with near orgasmic delight. What must she have thought of me, what bizarre fetish must I have had that had brought me to her so that I could watch her put a jacket through the most intimate half hour it would ever see? I didn't really care much about what she thought, if she thought at all, and resolved to feel good about the fact that she was not being made to perform these acts on me.

I did, however, have some concern about what the rest of the party thought of me. Billy didn't worry me. He was far too drunk to think about himself, let alone his best man, but I had seen the other guys exchange uncomfortable glances when Joanne's younger Doppelganger offered me her services and I accepted them eagerly. They didn't know that I'd spotted her in this club months ago and that I'd been waiting for this private dance ever since. As far as they could tell, tonight was a chance encounter and I had stumbled upon her by pure folly. With that in mind, they probably thought of what I was doing as a lonely and rejected ex-lover's final attempt to relive the time he'd spent with the girl of his dreams so many lost years ago. If that was what they were thinking, then so be it, and let it be all they thought as they tossed their dollar bills onto the rail from Sniffer's Row back in the main section of the club and shot the occasional glance at Billy as he slept alone at his table, away from the action and stirring occasionally only to fight back the urge to puke all over himself. He'd feel like complete shit in the morning, both with his combustible blood-alcohol level and his hazy memories of this place, but that's what he got for asking me to be the best man. I may have settled down over the years. I may have patterned my life more after his, driven by the all-consuming desire to regain my lost love, but I could still plan a bachelor party the likes of which he would never forget, no matter how much the liquor clouded the details.

The bouncer poked his head into the small room and told us our time was up, then disappeared the way he came in. Alexis sat next to me on the stiff, crusty couch and caressed the jacket lovingly. She looked at me with intoxicating eyes; I could have drowned in those eyes if they'd only been Joanne's and not this younger clone's.

"Do you want anything else?" The sound of her voice sent a chill through me and I forgot, for just a moment, that she wasn't Joanne. For an instant I wanted to ask for her, and with my brain being deprived of needed blood I almost did, but I recovered quickly enough to finish what I'd started. I took the jacket from her and smelled it. Her scent was on it, but it was faint. The smoke and pheromones in the rest of the club would diffuse it before we ever got out of the place.

"Will you spray your perfume on it?" I asked.

"That'll cost you fifty dollars," she said with a wince. She was convinced that my bizarre fetish was one of the sickest things she'd ever seen, and, had she known its true nature, she might have been right. I handed her another hundred.

"I want this jacket to smell like you when I wake up tomorrow," I told her. She slipped out of the room and returned a minute later, preceded by the overpowering scent of perfume and body spray. There would be no mistaking where the jacket had been. I thanked her, shook her hand, and went back to my party after the best half hour of my life. The group was exactly as I had left it. Everyone in our party was at the stage, drooling and placing ones folded lengthwise in front of them, and Billy was passed out face down on the table where we'd left him.

Poor guy. Joanne hadn't changed in all those years, and she would never marry him if she knew about his visit to this place. Oh, he'd break down and tell her eventually. He was just haunted enough by guilt and his protestant ethic that he probably wouldn't make it through the honeymoon. Of course, she'd see how sincerely he regretted it, and he'd tell her how we got him so drunk he didn't know where we were taking him, and that he spent the entire time passed out in a shallow pool of his own saliva while the rest of us indulged our piggish sensibilities, and she would forgive him. As long as he didn't come willingly, as long as he didn't partake in the services these women offered, she would find it in her to forget about this incredible fuck-up and put the whole sordid mess behind them. As long as he didn't enjoy himself within this den of sin, he would never be cast from the altar of her heart.

This is what I thought as I held the jacket tucked under my arm and approached him. Poor, poor Billy. He was perfectly still, except for the occasional retch and the mildest of shivers. It did seem a little cold in the place, probably due to the air conditioning which ensured the dancers remained perky. When I saw his condition, I did what anyone in my position would have done. Billy was my best friend, and I was the best man in his impending wedding to my one true love. I wrapped the jacket around his shoulders and turned his head to the side to keep him from drowning in his own spit, then I rejoined the rest of the guys at the rail.

"Hey," shouted Paul over the noise of the bad music and the mindless hollering of the men, "what'd you do with Bill's jacket?"

"I gave it back to him," I said with a nod in Bill's direction, "he looked like he could use it."

"Damn," said Paul, "You're a hell of a friend, you know that? An hour ago you were so cold we thought you'd go into shock without it."

"Must have been the booze." I brushed him off, "Bill was shivering over there. He needs his jacket more than me right now."

"Well here," Paul said with a newfound respect for me, "take mine then." He struggled awkwardly to slip out of the thick downy thing without distancing himself too much from the stage.

"That's alright, Paul," I assured him, "I feel much warmer than when I came in. I'm fine now."

She always said that if it wasn't for Bill, it would have been me, and soon I'd be finding out just how much she meant it.