Summary

A motel guest overhears and is aroused by the passionate lovemaking of his neighbors, Billy Bob and Chloe, only to later discover they may be ghosts from a tragic past.

Abstract

The narrative unfolds in a motel where the protagonist, a bookish and introverted man, is subjected to the auditory experience of the couple next door engaging in loud and vigorous sex. Despite initial irritation, he becomes a willing listener and participant in his own imagination, masturbating to the sounds of their intimacy. The couple, Billy Bob and Chloe, are depicted as wild and uninhibited, their sexual escapades described in vivid detail. The protagonist's own sexual release is described as less dramatic in comparison to theirs. Later, a conversation with an old client reveals that Billy Bob and Chloe had died forty years prior in a car accident, suggesting that what the protagonist experienced might have been a supernatural occurrence.

Opinions

The protagonist has a complex relationship with his father's memory, recalling his mother's disapproval of his father's infidelities.
He views himself as unsuccessful with women and lacking in social skills, which contrasts with his vivid imagination and appreciation for literature.
The protagonist seems to envy Billy Bob's sexual prowess and Chloe's uninhibited sexual expression, as evidenced by his own arousal and participation in the events through masturbation.
There is a sense of irony and foreshadowing in the protagonist's hope that God would not place the noisy couple next to him, which is later compounded by the revelation of their ghostly status.
The protagonist's description of the Chevy and the couple's near-miss with a tanker truck adds a layer of nostalgia and a connection to a bygone era, which is further emphasized by the revelation of their historical demise.

Some Motels Have Thin Walls

The walls are so thin I swear I can hear her slurping on his cock.

A screech of tyres had announced them about an hour before. I’d poked my head out of my motel room window to see two youths jumping out of the Chevy before it had barely stopped. Both in their twenties. She, blonde, white blouse and tight red jeans. He. dark-haired, blue jeans and a check shirt. They were both hollering and whooping for no apparent reason. Please God I thought, do not give them the vacant room next to mine.

God was not listening. They were hardly through the door before they started messing around. That’s what my ma called it when pa was late home. ‘He’s been messing around son. Don’t you turn out like him.’ She would say to me with the meanest staring eyes I’d ever seen.

I am not my father’s boy. I’m mild-mannered and have a love for literature. I also have a natural propensity for book keeping which would account for my lack of success with the ladies so far. I know plenty of fancy words but trying to put them together to resemble something that might be regarded as repartee of a sparkling kind is beyond me. All the women I have known so far have been paid for. Cash in advance. Plenty of loss and not much profit. That’s my life so far.

I lie on my bed and try to ignore their loving. I get up and switch on the fan hoping the whirring might drown them out. After a while though I give in and lie back on the bed and listen intently to every nuance of their fucking.

His name is Billy Bob and hers is Chloe. Not a lot of talking takes place. Mainly grunting and groaning from Billy Bob and squealing and a prolific use of unladylike cuss words from Chloe. Plus slurping, sucking and squelching sounds aplenty.

I get my cock out and start to masturbate, imagining I am in there with them.

I could do without his grunting but, to be fair to Billy Bob, if it wasn’t for his excessive vigor Chloe might possibly not be making those shrill fuck-me noises that are delighting me beyond imagining. My cock feels about as good as it ever has done. Like a Chevy going full gas on the highway.

Billy Bob and Chloe eventually jackhammer to a climax with a cacophony of screaming and shouting that might be more associated with a ritual slaughter from ancient times. By comparison mine was a feeble affair.

In my mind I see his cock engulfed by Chloe’s meaty lips. Her pubic hair soaked in sweat and the cream from her tub. As he pulls out his cum seeps onto the nylon sheet.

That was pa’s favorite cuss word. He’d say to ma, as I tried to sleep in my room with my hands over my ears, ‘I’m going into town tonight and I’m going to fuck me some tubs and you can just like it or lump it.’ Exit pa followed by a door quietly shut. He never slammed it. Even if he didn’t know it, his timing was impeccable.

I wake later. It is two in the morning. All is quiet from the neighbors. The flickering of the motel sign lends a sickly yellow glow to the room. I get up to close the drapes and down below I see Billy Bob and Chloe get back into the Chevy. Chloe drives it out with one big sweeping curve, straight onto the highway just missing a speeding tanker truck coming hot from hell.

‘Put your lights on Chloe.’ I whisper.

The next day when doing my book keeping in town I tell my old client about the Chevy, how smart it looked. A real classic. I leave out about the sex but I mention the young couple.

It sends a chill down my spine when he says their names.

‘Billy Bob Kerrigan and Chloe Spittlegate. I knew them very well. Forty years ago, you understand.’

‘You must have seen their ghosts.’ He chuckles. ‘By all accounts their lovemaking could wake the dead.’

‘No. They were real enough.’ I say.

‘That’s as maybe. But forty years ago, the Chevy you’ve just described — with such affection I might add — was pulled out of Miller’s Dike looking slightly worse for wear. As indeed were Billy Bob and Chloe.’ He paused for a moment, before saying with a tinge of sadness, ‘I rest my case.’

By Cousin Pons