"What's this?"

I look up, startled and guilty. I mean, she knows I watch porn, but I've never actually been caught in the act, and God knows I've never watched porn with her. It's just too weird. I glance behind me and try to figure a subtle way of moving a pillow from the couch to my lap, just so she'll stop staring at my crotch. I settle for drawing my knees up, as close to my chin as they'll go.

"I.... Carrie." I clear my throat. "I mean--. Weren't you supposed to be coming back tomorrow?" Which is worse, shutting off the video or just letting it run like nothing is...odd?

"You're blushing." She's smirking. I blush harder. "Whatcha watching?"

"Oh." I fumble for the remote and grope for the power button. "Nothing, really."

She sits on the floor beside me, taking off her shoes and squeezing the antique shag carpeting with her bare toes. Our shoulders brush, and I fight the desire to move away from her.

"C'mon, Josh, turn it back on." I've never been able to ignore a direct order. The DVD menu pops up, asking if I want to continue or begin again.

"Well?" I ask. "The beginning?"

"Sure. Do you mind?" She rubs the top of my bare foot, and I flinch. I can't help it. She doesn't seem to notice, and winds her fingers between my toes.

"Nah, it's fine. I'd just started."

She smirks again and glances at my lap. "I can see."

Any blood that had been making its way to my groin backtracks and heads to my face, so I stretch my legs back out in front of me, moving my feet out of her reach. The movie restarts with the obligatory bah-chicka-bowow music, backed by ominous synthesized drums. A full moon fills the screen, and Carrie giggles at the visual pun. A 1940s-newsreel style title spins into view, almost invisible where the white text crosses the pale yellow moon.

"Hee," she says. "Heinlein porn."

"Not really." I'm getting defensive. "They just took the title. And the moon as a setting. That's all. It doesn't have anything to do with overthrowing an evil government."

"I thought you'd just started it." She gives me a look that means to be teasing but seems leering.

"Just what I got from the back of the DVD."

The camera zooms in on a woman with short dark hair and wearing a tunic and thigh-high boots. She carries a whip. She is improbably tall and muscular. "I didn't know you had an SM kink."

"I don't." I speak too fast and try to take a breath. "I just got this because Eric recommended it when we went to Good Vibrations. I was just there to look for your birthday gift. I thought it would be funny."

She puts her hand on my thigh and rubs, a little too high. I want to leave. Maybe I want her to leave. What I really want is for her to have stayed away the extra day, like she'd said she would. Then none of this would be happening. I'd be watching aliens, explosions and porn centering around a muscular woman with a whip. All at once.

The character on the screen is talking, and I'm not sure whether to pay attention or to try to tune the whole thing out. She cracks her whip at a blonde man, tanned to a deep bronze, on his knees.

"Please, Princess Lolicia. It was an accident," the man whimpers. "Forgive me."

The Princess cracks the whip again. "Traehearn, you have displeased me. You have disappointed me with your carelessness. The floor must be cleaned."

Traehearn removes his loincloth--the only piece of cloth in evidence--and scrubs the invisible mess on the spotless tile floor.

"Ok, wait," Carrie says. She grabs the remote from my lap and pauses the movie with the man's frighteningly large cock centered and slightly out of focus. "I know that whips will crack on the moon. The speed of sound won't be significantly different, if the air molecules are approximately in the same ratios as on earth. But watch this dude. He's moving along like his knees hurt. On the moon, he'd weigh 1/6 of what he would on earth. He should be gliding along. Did they actually read the book before they made this movie? They should know that."

I stay very still and quiet. This is not going even a little well. Carrie pokes play, and leaves her thumb on the pause button. The man makes his way toward the Princess on his hands and knees, head down, focusing on his task. The Princess brings the whip down on his back with the awkwardness of someone not being paid nearly enough.

"She's stoned," says Carrie. "Look. A real top would've laid a straight line on his back. That's just sloppy."

My cock shrinks another couple of millimeters. Carrie continues to rub my thigh. I think of going to bed, claiming that I'm tired. Carrie would see through my ruse. I would be not punished but mocked for disappointing her.

The scene shifts abruptly. A black frame, as if there had once been a commercial break, provides the transition. A slim, dark-haired man on a dais protests Princess Lolicia's iron rule to a large, cheering group. The group cheers, and I cringe, expecting an orgy to erupt.

"See! It is Heinlein porn," Carrie says.

"Eric didn't say anything about this part," I mutter.

"Looks like they could've used better sound production," Carrie continues. "Shit, GarageBand could've done better."

"GarageBand didn't exist when this movie was made," I say. I stretch and move slightly away. Carrie lays her head in my lap.

"And they probably couldn't have afforded it on their budget," she says into my leg.

The dark-haired man leaves the dais and wildly searches for someone, spinning people toward him at random.

"It's a cast of tens," Carrie says. "I know I've seen that one red-haired woman three times already."

Finally, he finds who he's looking for - the blonde man from the first scene. "Traehearn. You must help me," he says. "We mustn't live under this tyranny any longer. You're my only hope."

"They'll never take...our freeeedom!" Carrie cries. I bite back my shut the fuck up, not wanting to hear the inevitable double entendre. I shift under the weight of her head. Her shoulder digs into my leg even harder.

The dark man touches Traehearn's back, and examines the smear of blood on his fingers. He brings it to his lips. "Why must you put yourself in these situations?"

"It's for you, Gavril. But we mustn't be seen together."

"Come with me."

Carrie takes my hand and pulls it to her head. I absently pet her hair. It's my favorite part of her body. Soft.

The two men are in a small room, floating. Well, suspended from wires that are almost invisible.

"Ok, that's just wrong." Carrie sits up and finds the pause button just as Gavril smoothly unties Traehearn's loincloth. "Why, on the moon, would there be a room with no gravity? And why would they go to a room with no gravity to fuck? This plot makes no sense."

"It's porn. It's not supposed to make sense." I hold my breath. Carrie pokes play and jams the remote against my crotch. I grunt and Carrie mutters an apology. Traehearn's loincloth floats away, and he yanks down Gavril's pants.

Carrie presses pause again. She's agigitated enough that she can't sit still. Traehearn's frozen head is level with Gavril's erect cock. Carrie turns to look at me. Her face is set to Physics 101 lecture. "Even more wrong. Let's say there's no gravity here, ok? That's why they're floating. Stipulate that?" I nod, playing the dutiful student. "So, they have no gravity. The whipped guy--what's his name--"

"Traehearn," I say. She ignores me.

"--pulls the other guy's pants toward the floor. It's not down. There's no down in zero G. In this case, Newton's third law of motion states that with no gravity, the other guy is going to go toward the floor in the direction of the force, and the whipped guy will go shooting toward the ceiling. Equal and opposite force. And the pants will stay attached. Sex in zero gravity is just stupid. No way around Newton's third law."

"Do you just want to turn it off?" I plead. I know longer care about her disappointment.

"No, this is fun."

My penis is a dead bit of bloodless flesh between my legs. Please.

Traehearn took Gavril's dark penis into his mouth, making a show of stretching his mouth around the girth and of working his tongue along its head, tracing its slit, slowly working down its shaft. It glistened. The expression on Gavril's face tells me Traehearn knows what he's doing.

"This is hot," Carrie says. She lays her head back in my lap and moves my hand to her breast. I squeeze it gently, tentatively. She pushes the pause button again. "Did you know this was gay porn?"

"It's omnisexual porn. It's not gay porn."

"It's hot. I can't believe you bought this, though."

"Eric..." I say. I think better of saying anything. Gavril's come splatters on Traehearn's face, and the camera zooms in, just a little too late. They throw back their heads in mirrored ecstasy. The door opens behind them, and they float gently to the ground. The Princess is silhouetted in the doorway. She cracks her whip.

"She's still stoned," Carrie mutters. The Princess strides in, shoulders thrown back, leather tunic pulling tightly against her breasts.

"In 1/6 gravity," Carrie says, "her boobs wouldn't sag that much."

The Princess motions behind her and two other men arrive, flanking her. "They must be punished," she says, gesturing with her whip.

"Just relax," one of the new men stage-whispers to the dark hero. "We're on your side. We will overthrow her. We will be free."

"Here's the orgy," Carrie says. "I thought it would happen back at the speech." The Princess joins the foursome, apparently overwhelmed by the display of testosterone. Carrie is quiet and traces the inseam of my pants with her thumb. I may as well have been watching a prostate exam on The Learning Channel.

Carrie presses pause again and rubs my hand against her breast. "This may be 'omnisexual' porn," she says. "But it's definitely not made for straight men."

"I'm a straight man," I protest. "We don't all want--" She reaches into the flap on my pajama bottoms. Her watch catches and she twists it loose, roughly shoving my legs apart. Her fingernails dig into my skin.

"Prove it."