When Ahmed was born those twenty or so years ago, the world was taking a piss. His mother screamed in agony as his overlarge head forced its way out her vagina. His father, preferring oblivion to the messy, bloody process that is childbirth, smoked himself retarded outside the whelping chamber. There was no family to watch and congratulate, to hold little Ahmed and coo over his cute little nose, adorable feet and indescribably precious fingers. This was probably a good thing; a few minutes after Ahmed clawed his way into this world, he threw up in the midwife’s face. Some of it got up her nose. She screamed. And then dropped him. Right on his face.

Ahmed led a relatively uneventful childhood, befitting someone born when the world was taking a piss. Like all boys his age, he was more interested in saving up change to buy snacks at the local supermarket than stopping global warming or curing avian flu. As he grew older, Ahmed began to think less about how much money he could use for crisps or how Omar had tripped him when they were playing football. Instead, he found his thoughts turning to Girls. Women. Girls and Women. Together. Apart. One Girl and Two Women. Two Girls and One Woman. Ahmed and Two Girls. Two Women and Ahmed. Ahmed and One Girl and One Woman. The permutations were endless.

Ahmed discovered another pleasure around this time: masturbation. While football and crisps were satisfying, they didn’t measure up to a transcendently rich fantasy about Two Women and One Girl or Ahmed and One Girl and One Woman. Indeed, Ahmed’s day soon began to revolve around where, when, and how he could masturbate. He just needed the time, the place, and a modicum of privacy.

We shouldn’t underestimate Ahmed, though. He had other thoughts besides when and where he could next jerk off. Secondary school was drawing to a close, and he began to examine his options for life after school. University would be too expensive. His family was not poor but was very close to it. And, even if he had been able to afford college, his grandfather had molested the president’s dog several years back. Their name was now mud with the people that mattered. He didn’t want to work in his father’s shop. Selling birthday cake supplies in a cramped, hot shoebox of a store was not Ahmed’s idea of fun. With customers constantly coming and going, he would have very little chance for privacy and even more work than he did now. After much thought, he resolved to become a taxi driver. They had it pretty easy. Just drive around, smoke cigarettes, listen to music, and in his case, jerk off to the point of chafage—stupendous!

After Ahmed left secondary school, his father set him up with an old Peugeot and a taxi license. Ahmed bought some tapes for his radio, hung an apple-scented air-freshener from the rearview mirror and loaded the dashboard with box upon box of tissues. He was ready. Money, women, cars that went faster than he could run. The world was his oyster.

As Ahmed grew older and wiser in the ways of taxi-driving, he began to be more selective about his customers. At first, he was willing to pick up anyone—but soon he realized that the real money was made in carting around foreigners. As everyone knew, foreigners always had lots of money and very little idea of how to spend it properly. And the best were the foreign girls. Ahmed’s fantasies increased by several million the first time a foreign girl got in the cab. Suddenly, the sultry, dark eyes and the sway of a generous rump seemed so…passé. Blond hair, blue eyes, perhaps a nice C-cup began to fill his mind. Germans. Greeks. Americans. Malaysians. Nepalese. Well, maybe not the Nepalese.

Furthermore, finding a secluded area in town for beating off had become too much trouble. There was that one time the little beggar girl had come up to the window asking for change. Another time, the police almost arrested him for public indecency. Plus, any time he didn’t have a passenger, he wasn’t making money. So Ahmed mastered the technique of masturbating while driving. It was easy, fun, and vaguely intoxicating. Occasionally, in the throes of an orgasm, he’d swerve a bit.

This one spring day, Ahmed was feeling especially horny. He had just dropped off three extremely enticing Lebanese girls (you know how they roll). His mind and pants were in an uproar. Such a tumult, in fact, that he almost missed the woman who would change his life. She had been trying to get his attention for the past three minutes and had started knocking on the window. She was obviously Italian (Ahmed had gotten very good at identifying nationalities—though the Americans always threw him). Her long hair was silky and her cocoa eyes smoldered. Her figure was perfect. He hastily adjusted himself and asked where she wanted to go. She gave the destination: Center City. Where all the most beautiful foreign women shopped. Ahmed had a brief spasm before croakily replying that yes, Center City was indeed an option.

So off they went. Traffic inched its way towards Center City. It was hot and Ahmed really needed to get his rocks off. At first a little hesitant due to the fact that they were stuck in traffic, he soon got over it and relaxed into the familiar rhythm. As he was finishing, he realized that he had run out of tissues. SHIT. What was he going to do with his stuff? He couldn’t throw it out the window—everyone would see. He couldn’t wipe it on his pants; it got all crunchy and his mom would notice when she washed his clothes. He thought for a bit, steering one-handedly through the throng. Only one option remained. He had seen it in the naked movies on his cousin’s cell phone and the women always seemed to like it. This was the chance to try it out for himself. He turned around and threw his junk in the girl’s face.

There was a pause. And then…

“OH!! IL MIO DIO!!” she screamed. “VOI PERVERTITO SCOPANTE!!” She kept on screaming and jumped out of the car.

“What?! What are you doing?!” he shouted, watching in disbelief as she ran, half-screaming, half-crying, down the street. “Where’s my money?”

Quite befuddled by her reaction, Ahmed wiped his hand on the seat and drove off. He began to giggle. Damn, it was actually pretty funny. What a story to take home to Italy—this random cab driver jerked off into his hand and threw it in my face. Soon Ahmed was in fits of laughter and needed to pull off the road. After recovering from the bout of hysterics, Ahmed decided to do it again. This time, the lucky girl was Russian. Leggy, haughty, and a bit too skinny, she screamed just like the first and ran off, scrubbing at her face as if his little men had been acid. “It’s not poisonous,” he shouted after her, before heading off in search of his next patron.

Before long, rumors of Ahmed’s spunk-throwing exploits had morphed into urban legend. At first, it was the alternative papers that wrote stories on Ahmed’s odd practice. Then, the big dailies added news briefs on it, then articles. Finally, the television and radio stations picked it up. And—as is the wont of television and talk radio—they gave Ahmed a nickname, “The Seed Flinger.” There was even talk of a documentary on public access. But Judy Woodward wouldn’t agree to narrate. The police became involved. They started sending out undercover agents to investigate. They almost never went willingly—except for Odd Harriet.

Born Imelda Hazid to a Finnish stripper and an Armenian hooker, Odd Harriet was the only woman on the police force. A loner and rumored dyke, she had two left hands and two right feet. And curves that would make Salma Hayek blush. She never really spoke to anyone at work. Her paperwork was in on schedule, neat and clean. No one knew much about her except that she had once worked security for a sex shop in Rotterdam named Harriet’s Hole-Sale. She said so during the office holiday party. Thus, Odd Harriet was born.

Growing up, Odd Harriet had always known she was different. But it wasn’t just because of her appendages. When she was fourteen her aunt took her to the local swimming pool and, while water-wrestling with the other children, she was splashed in the face. Instead of splashing back or crying, she passed out in ecstasy and almost drowned. From the time at the pool and other like incidents throughout her adolescence, she grew to recognize that she loved having liquids thrown in her face. And not just in an “ooo, that was fun” way but in an “oooooo, do it again” way. The “fluid-in-face” addiction got her into trouble a few times. Like when she stood in front of the water cannon during the war protest. Or when she passed out in the public restroom when the toilet tank exploded. As she grew older, Imelda began to realize that there weren’t many people who would spring for throwing their fluids in her face. In fact, no one ever wanted to do that—even when she worked security at Harriet’s.

“What?” they would ask on their way out, still hunched over from the beatings. “I’m not gonna throw my junk in your face. That’s crazy.” Sometimes they wouldn’t even spit. It was heartbreaking. Every person—man, woman, those people in between—everyone refused her. She finally ended up joining the police and settling for a life of self-satisfaction.

So, when Odd Harriet heard about The Seed Flinger, she didn’t know what to think. Could it be? She didn’t want to believe it was true. Just a hoax, she thought. A one-time incident—this guy can’t really, truly enjoy throwing his seed in women’s faces, can he?

To her surprise, Odd Harriet was assigned the Seed Flinger case. When the chief told her, she clapped her two left hands together, looking vaguely like a seal. She set off immediately, hopping in the first taxi she met.

Meanwhile, Ahmed had continued on his sticky way. But he soon realized that, although the sensation was orgasmic (literally and figuratively), it wasn’t quite so orgasmic to make only fifteen pounds a day. Plus, it was a bit depressing to have beautiful women call you filthy names and then run away screaming. Ahmed was smart enough to realize that films and television mimic real life. There is often a disconnect between fantasy and reality, he knew. But still, surely there was some girl out there who didn’t mind having strangers toss semen in her face.

Ahmed looks back on the day and knows that it had to be fate. It was hot and icky downtown, and not being a huge fan of heat or ickiness, Ahmed decided to drive out to the hills. He wasn’t really in the mood for beating it; the heat had taken everything out of him. On leaving, he saw a foreign woman with curves that would make Salma Hayek deeply, deepy ashamed. She was hailing him. It wasn’t until he picked her up that he saw she had two left hands. Woah, he thought to himself as she gave her destination. And a body like that? Perhaps it wasn’t too hot…