“My mouth is not worthy,” I said.
“What was that?” Ryan asked, standing back up and looking over his shoulder. His awesome, awesome shoulder.
Gary said, “Sam wants to bite—”
“Some food,” I said, cutting in quickly. “I want to bite some food because I’m so hungry right now. And you should put on clothes.”
He looked down at himself, then back up at me. “Why? It’s just us out here.”
“And no one can hear you scream,” Gary supplied helpfully.
“We having naked time?” Tiggy asked as he started reaching for the ties on his pants.
“No!” I said. “No naked time. There is absolutely no need for naked time. In fact, we should put on all the clothes that we brought to be the opposite of naked.”
“I’m always naked,” Gary purred to Ryan. “And you’ll have to forgive Sam. He’s a little bit… frustrated. I told him he should just go into the woods and mastur—”
“Masticate,” I exclaimed. “He wanted me to go and chew food in the woods, but I said, ‘Why? Why do that? We can just masticate here. At the camp. With ourselves. Because that’s what normal people do.’”
“Riiiight,” Gary said. “Maybe you and Ryan can masticate together?”
“Or not,” I said as I ground my teeth. “I like to masticate by myself.”
“And you’re so good at it,” Gary said. “The up and down motions of your… jaw. And then, upon completion, you swallow. Right, Sam? You swallow, don’t you?”
“Of course I do,” I said, confused. What the hell were we talking about now? “I always swallow when I finish. What am I supposed to do? Spit it back out?”
Ryan tripped and fell back into the river.
We all stared at him.
He sputtered as he came out of the water. “Tripped.” He coughed. “On a rock.”
“Or something that rhymes with rock,” Gary said.
“You tripped on your sock?” I asked him.
Gary said, “I just don’t even know why I bother anymore. Tiggy, darling. Let’s let the mens take care of dinner. You and I can have naked time and frolic in the river now. Lose the britches. It’s time to make the humans feel inadequate.”
Tiggy crowed his pleasure as he dropped his pants.
I looked down and whispered to my penis, “It’s okay. I don’t think you’re inadequate. You’re special in your own way. Except when you betray me. Like right now.” Because Ryan was climbing out of the water again and I hated everyone and everything.
Sighing, I picked up the firewood and turned away.
CHAPTER 14
The Ballad of Sam, Gary, and Tiggy
I LAY on my back looking up at the stars, listening to Gary and Tiggy snore. Gary would adamantly deny this, saying a lady of his stature would never snore, but he was a liar and a fat mouth and his snoring sounded like an orgy involving otters and bears.
The fire was getting low, but the night was warm and the sky was clear and so I wished for things in my secret heart, waiting for sleep to take me away.
“You watch the stars a lot,” Ryan said from somewhere off to my left. He was on first watch but hadn’t spoken in a while.
“I guess,” I said.
“Why?”