Opposites Are More Fun

Sacchi Green

When your main characters are of the same sex, you have to differentiate them in other ways than by gender. In actual relationships similarities may be fine, even necessary, for permanent bonding, but in fiction characters with pronounced differences are much more fun to play with. Maybe not entirely opposites, but diverse enough to be bringing different things to the metaphorical table. Their differences could be complementary, as in one athletic and outgoing, one analytic and introspective, and together they solve…oh, wait, never mind, that's just in detective stories. Or they may be combative, from different sides of “the tracks,” or different cultures or political tribes, enemies at first sight, flint to steel, striking sparks. And then there are the power play ploys, dominant or submissive, master (or mistress) or slave, and then age differentials whether actual or another kind of play. And it goes without saying that in same sex arrangements one character may identify as masculine-of-center while the other is clearly of the femme persuasion.

*Edited--see note at the end.
Some of these differences matter the most during sex scenes, while others have as much effect on the development of the plot or story arc, but they're still equally essential to the story as a whole.  

Now I get to steer all this into my turn for promo! My latest book, Wild Rides and Other Erotic Adventures from Dirt Road Books, is a collection of some of my own work, both reprints and new (or new to most readers) stories. I’ve been posting ‘teaser” excerpts from some of them on Facebook and my blog, www.sacchi-green.blogspot.com, and I intend to do more, but right now I’ll see how far I can twist some of the stories into representing the attraction of opposites and what happens to them later.

Let’s see. I use this example too often, but in my story “Pulling” (which is included in the collection) the erotic charge is very much a matter of opposites. Ree is a big farm girl showing her draft horses at a county fair. Carla is a midway barker luring guys to her dart-and-balloon arcade concession with sultry banter, but with no intention of letting any guy get under her short skirt. When she and Ree get together at a cheap motel, Carla brings clamps and mardi gras beads from the balloon game, while Ree, who is also a veterinarian, brings a tube of horse lube. Vive la difference! What happens then? Carla disappears after their second night together. Not surprising. But there’s a two-years later sequel  in the collection, “Findng Carla,” that brings them together again, Ree more sexually experienced now, Carla with a desperate need for ordinary respectability. Here’s an excerpt:
_______________

Finding Carla
Sacchi Green

“Keep your skanky hands off me!” The words sliced through drifting aromas of coffee and pancakes and bacon. “Touch me again, and those fingers won’t be able to fuck your own sorry dick!”
I’d know that voice, that attitude, anywhere. A truck stop where Vermont slopes into New Hampshire wasn’t high on my list of places to look, but how much, really, had I ever known about Carla? Apart from the way she sounded in hip-swishing, femme-top command of any situation—or with her hips so entirely out of control she couldn’t shape gasps into words—or steeling herself to mount my huge draft horse. We hadn’t had much time for the getting-to-know-you parts.
I couldn’t see into the dining area past the family with fidgety kids ahead of me. Getting by without trampling them didn’t seem likely, but I was giving it a try anyway when a skinny whirlwind shot from around the cashier’s counter and whacked me from behind.
“Ree Daniels, move your butt!” The manager forged her way through the milling kids like an icebreaker. I was twice Lyddie Brown’s bulk and a foot taller, but I followed in her wake anyway.
It was Carla, all right, her pot of scalding coffee poised right above the hastily withdrawn hand—and the crotch—of a middle-aged truck driver I’d seen around before. On the skuzzy side, usually on the make, but Carla could’ve handled his kind in seconds with a sly quip, back when she’d been working arcade games on the county fair circuit.
Now her face and body were tense, brittle, close to panic. She looked as near to being spooked as any horse I’ve ever handled. What the hell had got into her? And what was she doing here?
It was my turn to shove Lyddie aside, with a look meant to convince her I knew what I was doing. “Hey, Carla.” I moved in close. “Let me help you out with that.” My hand curled around her fingers on the coffeepot’s handle. My body edged hers away from the customer. “Let’s put it down over here, okay?”
The wildness in her dark eyes mellowed into recognition, and something I hoped was deeper. That last morning, while I was still asleep, she’d cleared out without any clue as to how to find her, and for nearly two years I’d figured all she’d seen in me was just a hot enough two-night stand to pass the time with. If she’d thought that was all I’d seen in her, she’d been dead wrong. Okay, I lied about the getting-to-know-you bit. Two days and nights was enough for me to discover the vulnerability behind the bravado, the steel determination that overcame fear—and to want to know more.
“Sure,” she said now, “anything you say, big girl.” Her voice shook, but the old low, intimate tone was still there.
Remembered lust surged back in a rush. Carla had always radiated sparks of bad-girl eroticism. Even with her waves of black hair confined in a knot and her waitress uniform just skimming her curves, she shot off pheromones that could pierce a Humvee. I’d have felt some sympathy for the driver if he hadn’t started to bluster.
Lyddie rolled her eyes, jerked her head toward the office, and went into damage control mode.
I got Carla to the coffee station and deposited the hot pot. In spite of interested observers at every table, my hand settled into the sweet spot where waist curves to hip as I steered her into the office and kicked the door shut.
She was shivering when I put my arms around her. I’d never imagined Carla so shaken. Physically wary, sure—my big horses had scared her before she’d discovered the delights of naked bare-back riding at midnight—but nothing like this melt-down. “Oh, honey, what’s the trouble?” I used my soothing-skittish-fillies tone. “It’ll be all right.” I stroked her black hair, glossy as my Percherons. It came loose from its prim knot, falling into the wild mane I remembered whipping back and forth over my sweaty torso as she rode me.
“No it won’t,” she muttered against my chest. When her head lifted I saw that the glitter of tears in her eyes came as much from rage as from despair. It was oddly reassuring. “There goes another job! That bastard! But I can handle his kind without lifting a finger. Usually.” Carla searched her breast pockets. I took pity and grabbed the box of Kleenex from Lyddie’s desk.
I dabbed at her damp eyes. No makeup beyond a subdued shade of lipstick. She still exuded that seductive air that had grabbed me the first time I’d seen her, but something else as well that grabbed me harder, even as I shied away from examining it too closely. “So, what went wrong?”
“Me. I went wrong. ‘Sorry, I’m not on the menu’ didn’t do the trick, but I could’ve just smiled and moved away. When he put his hand on my butt, though, I felt…I wanted…dammit, Ree, I needed to be touched so bad it hurt, but not by his kind!”
I could recognize a mare in heat long before I earned my veterinary degree, and my experience of women had tuned me to the similarities. Women aren’t as easily ruled by their hormones as mares, though. For Carla to go off the deep end, there must be as much turmoil in her head as in her body. Dangerous territory.
Just the same, my hand went to her thigh and would have traveled farther if Lyddie hadn’t charged into the office just then.
Carla tried to pull away. I kept an arm around her shoulder. “How’s it going, Lyddie?” I hoped my grin still had the tomboy charm that used to get me extra pie as a kid. The manager had known me all my life, and my family even longer. We’d always stopped here when I was helping my dad transport horses to New Hampshire farms and fairs. The grin could have got me a whole lot more than pie if I’d been so inclined, once I’d grown up, cropped my straw-yellow hair short, and shown that I knew who I was and where I was going.
Lyddie looked us up and down, hands braced on hips, head shaking in exasperation. “Might’ve known you’d be acquainted. There’s gotta be an explanation behind this, but I don’t have the time or patience now.”
“It’s the old story,” I said. “Farm girl meets carnival huckster at the county fair. The Lancaster Fair year before last, when my team was in the pulling trials.” I realized too late that Carla might not have included the midway balloon/dart concession on her résumé.
“Judging by such a touching reunion, maybe you wouldn’t mind taking Miss Volcano-mouth off my hands for a couple of days until all this drama blows over.”
Carla stirred under my arm. “I’m sorry, Lyddie. I should just move on. Thanks for taking a chance on me, but I’ve always been bad news.”
I wanted to shake the old arrogance back into her. On the other hand, if it had been just a shield, I wanted to know what was behind it.
Lyddie softened. “You’re not bad, honey. You’re just drawn that way.”
Carla was right on it. “Thanks, Lyddie. Jessica Rabbit is my role model.”
“You’re a fine cashier and waitress,” Lyddie added. “Never did figure out what you’re doing in a place like this. You could make a lot more tending bar in the city or the tourist area over by Mt. Washington. At least bars have bouncers.”
Carla’d begun to relax, but now she tensed and glanced away from Lyddie. “Can’t blame a girl for wanting to try out respectability for a change.”
I was tired of being left out of the conversation. “If riding in the cab of a horse van rates as respectable, I’d be glad of the company. I’ll be back this way tomorrow or the next day. We’ll see how things look by then.”
“Just let me get out of this uniform and grab a few things.” Carla wriggled out of my grasp. Lyddie and I watched her go, both our gazes fixed on her slender back and swaying ass, both of us exhaling when she’d gone. But Lyddie’s sigh was somber.
“Can’t get a job at a bar these days without a background check,” she said. “A police record will shoot you right down. She’s a whiz with numbers, too, took some accounting courses she says, but the same goes there.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” But I knew.
_______________

The story ends with them together, but some rocky times ahead. I intend to take them through those in another story, still very different characters. You never know, maybe a novel will come of it.

Some of the other pieces in my collection concern opposites of one degree or another. A cowgirl from Montana with an equestrienne from Amsterdam; so far there’s only been a hint of future connection. A self-centered top-drawer model trying to break into movies, and a much older rock-climbing photographer who knows just how to give her what she needs to feel real; I’ve written three stories so far about those two, and there will probably be more.
Let me think. I guess the young future pirate and the dragon goddess in Ha Long Bay don’t count, or a perky boi with a fetish for gargoyles on a honeymoon trip to Paris with a gruff older butch.  Or the young army mechanic rescued from an explosion by an older Staff Sergeant who then becomes paralyzed going back to save someone else. Or the jeep jockey in Vietnam and the female journalist determined to cover the ”real war.” None of these really rate as opposites. And the pair of prison inmates who clash in more ways than one, a stone cutter unintentionally mixed up in a drug smuggling operation versus a former Russian Olympic wrestler hired as an enforcer by a Chechen drug lord in the US, are very much the same at heart, and not that far apart in body. There are other stories in the book, too, with pairings that aren’t exactly representative of opposites, but distinctive in their ways.

Opposites or not, though, I like to think that all of my characters are distinctive enough that a reader can tell by their dialogue which one is speaking. Opposites may not always be more fun, but at least you always know who is who.

* EDIT
Here's the stupid way I said this at first:
"Some of these differences matter more in erotica, while others play more of a role in stories with plots or story arcs. I like to think that my work qualifies as both. That’s probably a delusion, but usually I get away with it."
[I totally blew this part, in spite of being on a mission for years to promote erotica as being the equal of any genre in terms of complex characters, story development, creativity, and brilliant writing in general.]