Martin P

by Judy Slitt

I went to the strip club because I wanted to see Martian pussy, or as Reddit called it, “Martin P.” Can you blame me? I mean, they’d been on Earth for, like, a year, so I’m sure the characteristics of their boobs, pussies, taints, etc., were well-documented by all interested parties, but I was never that much of a porn girl, and wouldn’t have believed what I saw in porn anyway. If an exec thought they’d make more money with Martian ladies queefing rainbow sparkles, they’d pay a special effects guy to make it happen. 
          I wanted the real deal. 
          Yeah, I had a girlfriend. No, it wasn’t cheating. I mean, Tessa and I had even gone to a strip club together, back when we were first dating—Isn’t this kooky? We’re the only dykes in this place! Look at how open-minded we are.
          If I had asked Tessa’s permission, she would’ve said yes. I think. But I didn’t want to. She’d been more insecure about her weight lately, and may have been jealous of the rail-thin Martian ladies gyrating their flat non-butts. Why risk it?
          As soon as I entered the establishment and my eyes adjusted to the darkness, a Martian girl appeared at my side. She was naked apart from sequin pasties on her flat chest where her nipples would’ve been, had she been a human. She must’ve been eight feet tall. I was used to always being the tallest woman in the room, but she peered down at me with her gray oval eyes. “Hello, I’m Borg-Pforgia. Are you waiting for someone, yes?” It took me a second to make out her accent. 
          “No,” I said. My fingers played with the cuffs of my trench coat. “It’s just me.”
          “Oh, okay,” Borg-Pforgia said. “So you here to try out. Be dance girl.”
          I laughed. “No, no. I’m here to watch.”
          Her irises glowed gold. “You like girls, then.”
          “Yeah,” I said.
          She put her hand on my arm, excitedly, as if sharing a secret with me. “Me, too.” Do Martian ladies blush? I couldn’t really tell, but something beneath the scales in her cheeks glowed pink. She wrapped her spindly gray fingers around my wrist.
          “That’s cool,” I said. “You like Martian girls? I guess?”
          She nodded quickly. “All girls. Also Earthygirls. And you?”
          “I haven’t had that much… I don’t really know Martian girls. I haven’t met that many.” Of course, I’d seen some Martian women, cleaning my hotel rooms, handing me my Starbucks, begging for pocket change in the median by the Whole Foods. But I didn’t know-know any. 
          “Well,” Borg-Pforgia said. “You see now.” She held my hand and led me to a side stage. It was like holding hands with a frog. 
          She jumped onto the stage in her stilettos and giggled. “You know chicken dance?” She put her hands in her armpits and flapped her elbows.

● ● ● 

Was the chicken dance a Martian form of seduction? Who knows, but I guess it worked on me, because we ended up back in my apartment, snuggling under the covers. Tessa would be out of town for a work conference for the next few days, so I told Borg-Pforgia she could stay over. 
          Borg-Pforgia kept wriggling closer to me, as though she couldn’t get close enough.
          “Earthygirls so warm,” she mumbled into my chest. “Earthygirls so soft.”
          “What did your parents think of you being gay?” I said. 
          “Hmm?”
          “You liking girls,” I said. “Were they okay with that?”
          She laughed. “They want me to be with Martian boys. But Martian boys stinky. Not like Martian ladies.”
          “Oh?” I said. Now I was the one blushing, and I didn’t have any scales to hide it.
          “Yes,” she said. “We smell like mangos. Want see?”

● ● ● 

Martian pussy did not smell like mangos. At least, not to my human nose. In fact, it didn’t have a smell at all. It was an expanse of gray scales with a pinprick hole in the middle.
          Like a gray wintry day, a barren field, a desert.
          Empty.

● ● ● 

Borg-Pforgia lay on my living room floor for hours, her spindly gray fingers stretching out toward my orange cat, Henry, who snored on his dumpling bed. 
          She startled when Henry meowed at her. “What this mean?” she said, turning to me, her eyes wide. 
          “Oh, it just means he wants attention,” I said.
          “Attention,” she said, reaching out to massage Henry’s pink toe beans. “Okay. I give attention.”
          Henry purred and rubbed his cheek on Borg-Pforgia’s hand.
          “Oh!” she said. “Yes. You do that.”
          Her fascination made sense—animals weren’t a thing on Mars. To live with one must have seemed especially strange. 
          Borg-Pforgia loved the movie “Home Alone,” and insisted on watching it a few times a day. She clapped when Macaulay Culkin’s booby traps made the robbers fall down the stairs. “This boy!” she kept saying. “So smart!” 
          She grabbed the sides of her face with her hands and gaped, her mouth wide open, no teeth. I broke out in goosebumps. Then I realized she was imitating Macaulay Culkin. 
          “Oh,” I said. “Haha.”
          Her laugh sounded like this: kree - kree - kree - kree. 
          Borg-Pforgia whispered in my ear, “Back bed. More sexy time.”

● ● ● 

The day before Tessa came back, I told Borg-Pforgia she’d have to leave. “I have a girlfriend,” I said.
          “Yes,” she said. “Me.”
          “Uh,” I said. “No. Another girl. But this was fun. I feel... Enlightened.”
          Borg-Pforgia tilted her head.
          “I mean, I know more now,” I said. “I know more about Martians.”
          “Ah.”
          “You have a place to go, right?”
          “Yes, yes. Is fine.”
          She texted me for the next few weeks, but I didn’t respond.
          Remember chicken dance for you? So funny!
          You better than Martian boy
          I miss cat
          I imagined her in one of the high school gyms set up for Martian refugees, huddled in a sleeping bag on a cot, her gray scales shimmering in her phone’s glow. Our president kept cutting funding for Martian immigrants, saying they should go back to where they came from. But Earth was the only place they could go. The Wars had seen to that. 
          Borg-Pforgia’s last text came through when Tessa and I were packing to see her parents for the holidays. “Do we really both need to bring yoga mats?” I was saying, when my phone buzzed.
          It said: You give attention? MEow? 

Judy Slitt lives in Virginia. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Bright Flash Literary Review, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Moss Puppy Magazine, M E N A C E, Crow & Cross Keys, and BULL. Her website is judyslitt.com.