Body Surfing

seemed to tickle every nerve ending up and down its length. He buried his face in her chest and let himself sink into the slick, enveloping heat. Jesus, did it feel good. Oh Jesus. It felt like everything .
    But even as he thrust into and out of her, he felt somethinghappen within him. No, not in him. In Jarhead. It was as if Jasper’s spirit were retreating inside his host’s flesh, becoming smaller. He was no longer able to touch the edges of Jarhead’s body. The sensations of sex—not just the warmth of Shawna’s vagina, but her nails digging into Jarhead’s back, the gritty concrete floor beneath his knees and the heady smell of spilled alcohol—all seemed to be fading. In some remote part of his brain Jasper knew that he was dying. Dying for real this time. He was surprised how eager he was for it to be all over.
    He heard Shawna’s greedy moans far away, Jarhead’s answering grunts as he pounded into her. It was almost all Jarhead now. Jasper was just along for the ride. He felt as though he’d shrunk to a pinprick of light inside the vast interior space of Jarhead’s body. Then he realized the light wasn’t him, but rather a hole that had opened up between the body he was trapped in and the vast universe beyond. An infinite vacuum sucking him into the void.
    Jasper took one last look at the inside of Jarhead’s retreating body. It was a cosmos unto itself, splayed before him like an interstellar map. A thousand miles away the muscles in the penis quivered. The prostate contracted, sent its shot of clear liquid into the urethra, the testes pumped their load of semen up the vas deferens to mix with the prostatic fluid, and the seminal vesicles added their load of fructose so Jarhead’s swimmers would have food during the journey. From this vantage point it was like watching a star go supernova. Like watching the Big Bang. The end of one thing, the beginning of everything else.
    With a start he realized he’d lost Jarhead’s body. It was gone, and with it all sensory feeling. He couldn’t see or hear or feel. But almost immediately the voices came. The thoughts. The same thoughts he’d heard when he died the first time. They were faint still, but getting louder.
    Never seen anything like this before…Seems ridiculous to me…I hate it when she looks at me like…Only a few more hours before I can…Look, it’s a new media thing…I can’t wait till the parade next year…Next stop Iraq…A doughnut? Yeah, maybe a doughnut…God, is everything this loser says total BS?
    At first Jasper left himself open to the voices, let them wash over him on his way to…to where? Who knew? He was afraid, yet it wasn’t a particularly threatening feeling. Not when there wasn’t a body to feel it. This was death. Death was just another step.
    He felt simultaneously reduced to nothing and infinitely large, as if he were being squished into a little ball and pulled in a billion different directions all at once. The voices were screaming now, countless voices in countless languages. Not just voices, but entire consciousnesses, entire beings. The things they saw flashed in his mind’s eye, the things they heard, smelled, tasted, felt were all present to him, and all at the same time. All their emotions, from the most noble to the most vile. Murders, orgasms, broken hearts and broken minds. All of it, all at once. He felt as though his brain was erupting like a volcano. Dear God, it was horrible. Horrible. Horrible!
    To fight the feeling, he thought of all the people he hadn’t said goodbye to. His father, Q., Michaela.
    Michaela. God, how he wished it had been her. Just once. If only he’d made love to her once.
    For a moment it seemed to him that he could see her. Not Shawna—Michaela. Her shape seemed to flicker in all that vast emptiness, and he found himself grabbing for it desperately. No, he thought. This isn’t right. I’m supposed to be leaving. But he couldn’t let go. The voices dimmed as he found himself rushing down on her. He could almost see her now, could almost hear her breathing. Could almost feel it. He—he was going into Michaela!
    And then, like a punch to the stomach, he was whirled away. Leo , he thought, as the voices shrieked back in his head. A picture of Larry’s smarmy grin flashed before him. You fucking lied to me again!
    And then, just as quickly, the voices were gone.
    Silence.
    For a moment that’s all there was. Pure nothingness. Then feeling began to return. Very