Why I love being a saucy Brit

By Jacqueline Applebee (Guest Blogger)

Stiff upper lips aren’t the only things getting hard.

I am a happy Black British woman. I’ve lived in London all my life. London is a buzzing, multicultural city, with something happening all the time. There are numerous alternatives scenes where you can lose yourself for an evening or a lifetime. Are you into latex and corsetry? There’s an official walking tour of rubber fetish shops that you can do in Islington. Into erotic stories and cupcakes? There’s a series of events that run all year long in fashionable Hoxton. There are also two fetish markets, sex parties galore, and lots, lots more.

London is a global city. I can hear accents from around the world on a daily basis, however listening to regional accents from around the U.K is still a rarity. It is something that makes me tingle from ear to clit in a flash. I love to hear my language spoken with a lilt; the musical tones and cadence that makes me incline my head to hear just a little more. I’ve let people with West-Country accents press me up against walls, have their naughty way with me as long as they don’t stop crooning in my ear. I become breathless when someone with a clipped British accent speaks to me. And if they talk dirty, well that’s even better. As you can see, I have a weakness for aural sex…

The U.K is full of friendly and incredibly sexy people who contrary to popular belief are not reserved at all. The drop-dead gorgeous women in Newcastle, who will happily wear micro-minis and six-inch heels in the middle of a blizzard always make me gaze in awe of their beauty and hardiness. Sun-kissed men who go surfing on the Cornish coast, all lean and athletic make me lose my senses. There’s nothing like a dripping wet man with all his features outlined in skin-tight wetsuits to make me glad to be here.

I still live in London, and I have set many of my stories in this bustling city. The following extract is from “Old London Town”, which appeared in Where the Girls Are, published by Cleis Press.

****

The next time I pointed my arm, it was to the left, where Tower Bridge lay, spanning the wide Thames. This was what I thought of, whenever I thought of London. Sure it was famous, and well known, but there was something so grand and magnificent about it too, that my unease faded, replaced by a sense of pride.

I kept hold of Mae's hand as we stepped onto the bridge. Her touch made me tingle; little sparks that grew stronger over time, until I fairly crackled with energy. I was so excited; I seemed to have bypassed the lovesick teenage stage, and had gone straight to happy little girl mode.

"This was built in 1894. It's old, but not really that old," Mae stated, and then she made a silly face. I hit her playfully as we both giggled like children.

Mae looked up, straining her neck as she took in the mighty stone towers that stretched above us. I gazed at the real attraction, and then swept a finger over her exposed throat, over the dark delicate flesh, so kissable, and so beautiful. All my apprehension evaporated as I stroked her. She stilled beneath my touch, and then turned slowly to me with a smile that made my eyes water. She moved closer, rubbed her nose against mine, and then captured my mouth in a gentle kiss. I could taste the spices from our meal, the sweet passion-fruit juice that she had gulped down, but most of all, I could taste her. Mae was earthy, salty, and so very delicious. I wanted to feast on her. How could she be here for just a few days! Hundreds of tourists swarmed about us as we stood on the bridge kissing. Cars hooted at us, a few people whistled, but I didn't care; this was my town, and this was my home. My thoughts were interrupted when Mae slid a cool hand beneath my T-shirt; she found my bare breasts beneath the thin fabric, and she brushed a fingertip across an over-excited nipple. I quaked where I stood; I had to get this woman home.

I looked around us, at the position where we stood, precisely in the middle of the bridge. I could spot the line that separated one half of the edifice from the other, the place where each side of the bridge would open and raise, whenever a tall ship would sail through. I felt as if we were in the centre of the universe; that all the people, and all the planets circled us in a full cosmic sweep.

"I'm staying in a hostel in Greenwich," Mae whispered into my ear. "Will you come back with me?" I said nothing in return, just held her hand tighter, and pulled her across the busy road.

We caught a river boat down the Thames, and we sat in the shade at the back of the vessel as it sped through the water. Mae massaged my sensitive hands, stroking once and then twice whenever she hit a particularly promising spot. I gasped and mouthed soundless groans into the air as she stimulated me. My clitoris begged for attention, my nipples needed to be sucked, and I wanted to kiss every inch of Mae’s body.

"Hungry, aren't you," she drawled with a suddenly strong accent. "I think I can take the edge off your appetite before we get home." Mae made a reach for the hem of my skirt, and I suddenly froze, aware of where we were. "Everyone's up top, snapping photos. We're all alone down here," she continued, and before the words were even out of her mouth, she lifted the hem of my frayed denim skirt. I looked over her shoulder to see if anyone was about, but for some strange reason, my vision suddenly blurred. Two of Mae's fingers pressed against the outside of my knickers; she ran them up and down the elastic on each side, murmuring happily, and smiling like the sun whenever I trembled in her grasp. I heard footsteps coming down the staircase that led to the lower deck of the boat, and I tried to pull away, but she wouldn't let me. Public sex always seems like a good idea, until you actually attempt it; I didn't want to perform for a crowd. This country girl was starting to make me look bad. The footsteps I'd previously heard halted, and then retreated back to the upper level. I sighed with relief, and then almost screamed as Mae pinched my clit. Her fingers slipped on my juices, but she still tugged on me, grinning a wide country girl grin as I bucked and shook.

"What do you want, Lesley?" she teased me, purring her silky voice against me. I kissed her, sent the message directly to her mouth, straight down her throat with every press of my lips to hers. Her fingers slowed down, but they pushed harder instead. Old London Town swirled around me, twisting into a thin wavy line that became the river we sailed on. I couldn't see, couldn't breathe … she tweaked my clit in a cruel movement, and I stifled a yell as I came hard. How had she done that? How had this country girl known?

I felt the pull of the ship's brakes, and Mae yanked me bodily off the boat. She dragged my weary backside through the streets, and up the steep hill to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. The mature green trees on the pathway dappled the sunlight to shadows, like doubts chasing around my big city mind. Mae let go of me as we entered the main yard, where a thick brass line ran across the paving slabs, marking the Prime Meridian Line. I knew this place, knew it was special, but right then, my sex-clouded brain was refusing to cooperate further.

"This is the start," Mae announced. "All time on Earth is measured from this spot, and all space is measured from this place." She stood with strong brown legs straddling either side of the brass marker. "Let's start something, Lesley," she said, looking at me shyly. "Let's start something right now."

"But you're only here a few days," I said, and I felt ashamed for my whiny words.

"Don't you get it? You can always reach me; whenever you come here, you'll always feel me." She pulled me to stand beside her. "Each of your feet is in different parts of the world, Lesley. One is in the West and one is in the Eastern hemisphere. Each step you make here will bring you closer to me."

I've lived in London all my life, loved the big dirty city with all my heart, but right then, I would have happily given it all up if I could follow Mae to her volcanic island in the blue Caribbean sea. I didn’t want her to fly away from me, to leave me all alone in this old town. Her words had softened the hard city girl within me; the part of me that was cold, tough, and always moving, always consuming. I didn't want to listen to her, I just wanted to go home, and forget this strange amazing woman, but as I shrugged out of Mae’s grasp, I felt something strange; a tingling sensation that ran from the Meridian line, up my legs and straight into my cunt. I felt the miles from my home to Mae’s diminish, felt the power of the spinning globe we lived on as it twirled time and space into a single moment, a single step, from one side of the world to the next.

I looked up at Mae in wonder, and my smile shone like the sun.

****

If you’d like to read more about sexy shenanigans in the U.K, please take a peek at my anthologies, Erotic Brits and Sexy Scotland, both published by eXcessica.

Jacqueline Applebee

www.writing-in-shadows.co.uk

@applewriter on Twitter

Soul Exposure

Writers create characters. Sometimes those characters are queer. Depicting them honestly is the writer’s job. Maybe my long association with the GLBT community makes it easier for me to understand the difference between queer sex a nominally straight person having sex with someone of the same gender, but once the story is in front of a reader, my “qualifications” don’t mean a damn thing. Reader perception is everything.

The first story I sold under the pen name Jay Lygon was Green Mountain Boys. Childhood friends from a small Vermont town spend their last summer day together before one joins the military and the other goes off to college. They’re really childhood sweethearts, but don’t act on it until they’re faced with their final hour together.



Green Mountain Boys (Inside Him, edited by Joel Tan) by Jay Lygon

A smile quirked at the corner of his mouth. He had nice lips. Girls at our high school used to talk about Matt’s mouth, how they knew he had to be a great kisser because of how full his lips were. I always thought his eyes were his best feature.

Matt cocked his head to the side. Locks of hair swept across his face, so he brushed them back. He really had nice eyes. Bedroom eyes. I gulped.

“What’s up, Kurt?”

Until then, I almost had it under control, but I blurted out, “I thought you were coming with me.” I was all shaky inside. Nothing felt real.

“I forgot that Mom mentioned something about a going away party tonight. You know how excited she is that I enlisted. Christ, they probably have cake and ice cream. Do you want --?”

“To come over?” I looked down the lane. Lights glowed from every window of the two-story bed and breakfast. From that distance, I could still make out the gingerbread trim and the white wicker rockers on the long front porch. Tea lights marked the paths through the small herb garden and along the front of the inn.
“No. I’m going home.” That was a shitty way to say goodbye, but there was no way I’d sit there eating cake while Matt’s mom gave me sideways glances, as if she expected me to swipe her good silver.

“Wait a minute. I gotta show you something.” Matt took his time looking up and down the road. “Come on,” he shoved at me until I followed him up the rise and around a bend.

He put his hands on my shoulders first, but moved them to my face. Somewhere between, the touch became a light kiss. Then he stopped. “You gonna hit me?”

I couldn’t even breathe.

“Say something, Kurt.” He looked worried.

Stunned, it took a couple seconds for me to react. I was so relieved that it wasn’t just me. He felt it too.

There was no way we were going to leave it at that little kiss. One kiss meant nothing. I lunged for his mouth. His lips were chapped, but the rough felt good. He turned his head and spit out his gum. That time, we parted lips and tasted tongues. Maybe it was just a kiss, but I felt it everywhere in my body. My heart tried to pound through my chest, and it felt as if every nerve tingled as my dick swelled.“Sweet Jesus, Matt.” I shook all over.

“Don’t you dare get religion on me tonight.”

Matt took my hand and pulled me after him into the woods. We only had moonlight and stars, but it was enough to see our way around the thin white trunks of a stand of beech trees. A firefly zoomed ahead of us, flickering, until I lost sight of it.

~~~
Looking back, I’m amazed that I haven’t written more lesbian stories. I think I only have two published, and one is a ghost story with sensual elements, but I wouldn’t call it erotica. So Don’t Fuck With Country Girls is, I suppose, my first published lesbian erotica story.


Don’t Fuck With Country Girls (Lambda Literary finalist anthology Where the Girls Are, edited by DL King) by Kathleen Bradean

My clit is fat and sassy. She peeks out between my lips to lick my panties as I walk up the stairs to the metro station. She knows I’m taking her to you.

People stream out of the station and head to their cars. Few people go into the city this time of day. I can’t understand that. Why desert it just as things are getting interesting? They run to rural Connecticut; I get the hell out.

I close my eyes and count the stations. Then I open them and check the picture of you I printed out. Close cropped blonde hair, an easy smile. You look like the type who laughs in bed. The picture is strangely long and thin though, as if you cropped someone out. Peering closely, I see a disembodied hand on your shoulder. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s no one. My clit tingles and drags my mind back on track. You have nice legs. I can believe it when you say you bicycle everywhere in the city.

The trees outside the train give way to graveyards that seem to go on forever. I’m closer to you. I want to slip my hand into my panties and give my clit one friendly squeeze, but pure intentions have a way of knuckling under my fingertips, so I don’t.

By the time graffiti-covered steel girders surround the train, the wet spot on my panties is slick, and I’m crossing and uncrossing my ankles in frustration. At the station, I push past the people trying to board and take the steps two at a time to the tracks below.

The late summer swelter is trapped underground with nowhere to go. Thermals rise from between my legs and bring the ocean flower scent to my nose while my clit buzzes like a drowsy bee. I clench my thighs closer together and squirm until it feels too good. At the next station, I give up my seat and cling to the overhead bar. The sharp scent of girl sweat makes me close my eyes, as if that will block out the other human smells around me.

The sun is set when I reach the right station. It’s packed, but with the kind of people who never leave the city. I’m swept up the stairs along with them. Laughing to myself, I think of salmon on a spawning run, and then call myself a dork. On the street, my pace keeps up with everyone for a couple yards but slows until I’m standing still, searching for street signs.

You sent good instructions, but they don’t make sense until I turn back and retrace my steps to the right door. The slim bouncer is as impatient as I am. We fumble as we thrust ID and hand stamp between us. Then I’m inside, and I’m frozen, because I don’t want to be caught checking your picture again. I already feel out of place enough. Everyone else wears a polished city patina on their skins. My shoulders slump a little.

If I weren’t there to meet you, I’d work it harder with the girl behind the bar. Her Botticelli hair is slowly escaping the clip that tries to hold it down. Freckles are thick across her nose and continue down into the vee neck of her blue polo shirt. She’s flirty, but I suppose all bartenders are, so I don’t take it personal. Besides, I’m there to meet you, not her.

It’s almost an hour before you come in. My mood has gone through the steps. Denial: Maybe I misunderstood what time you meant. Anger: No I didn’t. Where the fuck are you? Bargaining: You have exactly twelve minutes to show your damn face. Depression: You’re here but you’re hiding from me because I’m not what you wanted. By the time you walk in the door, I’m at Acceptance: Whatever, bitch.

Even though our eyes meet and recognition is plain on your face, you don’t come directly to me. You walk around like some goddamn hostess, leaning over tables and squeezing women’s shoulders as you talk to them.

Your gaze flicks to me, but more often it goes to the slim brunette sitting across the room with two other women. That table you ignore.

Yeah, your legs are great and you’re the type that turns me on, but you’re pissing me off too. My clit retreats, sullen, to stew in her own juices.

~~~

Erotica writers tend to mine their fantasies for story material, but even we have personal spaces we don’t often show to the world. Challenger Deep is the closest I’ve ever come to writing myself. It’s one of those stories that meant a lot to me to write, but I cringe at the idea of other people reading it. It’s almost too personal.

A bisexual transgendered bio-woman goes to Guam to spread her father’s ashes over the Challenger Deep trench. She’s been struggling with her need to transition to male. Out on the open ocean, where’s there’s nothing to hide behind, she bares her soul a stranger she’s sure she’ll never meet again.He pleads with her to let her past go and move forward, even though he’s trapped in his regrets.


Challenger Deep (Cream, edited by Lisabet Sarai) by Kathleen Bradean

There were large padded captain’s chairs at the back of his boat for fishers, but I settled onto the worn red cushion under the sun shade and propped my feet on a cooler. I sipped from a cold beer. “Your brother told me that you go out to the Mariana Trench a lot. If there’s nothing there to see, as everyone keeps telling me, why do you go?” I asked.

Tano stared at the water. Damn, pissed him off, and I wanted to sweet-talk him into a little bump and grind. He was just my type-- a jock. It was going to be a very long day if he wasn’t going to talk.

Tano did talk though. His eyes focused past me as if he were remembering a distant, hazy past. ”About three years ago, I was unhappy. I was in love. There was a man... He consumed my heart and soul. I lived for the sight of him. On the day he married a woman, I sailed to the edge of the trench. I hung over the railing, staring into the deep, wondering if I had the balls to jump. Instead, my tears fell. Maybe, they are still falling.”

“The trench is deep,” I agreed. “Seven miles from the surface to the bottom of the Challenger Deep-- the lowest spot along the trench. Pop told me that you could toss Mount Everest down it and still have a mile of water left.” I almost touched the cap, but saw Tano’s teasing smile and held onto my beer instead.

“Big enough to hold all the sorrow in the world.”

Tano leaned far over the side of the boat. It was body poetry, the arc of his lean brown torso, the grip of his long toes on the railing of the boat, the way his hand slapped against the rising waves.

After he swung back onto the deck, he dragged wet fingers across my lips. I licked the drops away.

“Tastes like tears, doesn’t it,” he asked softly.

Our bodies touched.

We stayed there, pressed together, staring down into the water as if it held answers.

“Pop once told me that the human body is mostly seawater.”

Tano smiled slyly. “Does that mean we’re mostly sorrow?”

It was my turn to stare off at the intensely blue water. I ran my fingertips over the lumpy white A on the front of my cap. “Some of us.”

***

I had to move under the faded red sun shade to stay in the short shadows. Noon already.

He watched me out of the corner of his eye. “It’s a strange thing to be doing, burying your father. Usually the son does that, around here.”

I peeled the label off my beer bottle with my fingernails, trying, as usual, to take it off in one piece. Another superstition. I wasn’t even sure what curse a whole label blocked.

What the hell, he came out to me.

“I’m not a woman. I mean, not inside. Just on the surface.” I got the big label off and worked on the smaller one at the neck of the brown bottle. “I was supposed to be a boy. I have two older sisters. They’re girls.”

I knew that sounded stupid. I set aside my beer.

“I mean, they’re girly-girls. Real girls. Inside and out. Not me. See, everyone knows if the two older kids are the same sex, the third child is the last try for the other. Mom even told me that the only name they had picked out was Eric. In the hospital, they slapped the A on the end to make me Erica.”

I pulled off my hat. I worked my hands around it in an unending circle while I spoke to the inside of the cap. “I would have made a great boy. I hung around Pop and helped him work on the cars. I was the only one who went to baseball games with him. We both liked gingersnaps and root beer.” As if that described the bond we shared that excluded my Mom and sisters. I was Pop’s son in every way but the one that mattered to me.

Tano asked, “Do you like girls?”

I gave him that frank look that I learned in bars, the one that got men to follow me to dark corners. “The individual person matters more than the gender. Men, I understand. Women are like a separate tribe with weird rituals and a different language. I don’t get women, but I like making love to them. I like men too. More.”

“You like everyone except you.” He sipped from his beer. “I only like men.”

***

Wave. Trough. White foam. In the distance, the water was unrelenting blue, but the crest curling off the bow of the boat was green and gray. Nothing was different, yet primal instinct told me that I was in danger.

Intense pressure squeezed my chest as if I dove into the depths. “What is it?”

He answered in a whisper, “We’re over the trench.” He cut the engines. Even the waves were hushed, as if we’d stepped inside a great cathedral.

The swells knocked the boat.

“Is it always like this?”

He nodded. His pale eyes were as wide as mine. It didn’t seem possible, but we could feel it, the void below us. I stared up at the azure sky, afraid that if I looked down, like a cartoon character, I’d fall.

I didn’t think I believed in such things, but I swore I felt the immense presence of god.

I wanted to run. I wanted to hide. I lurched to my backpack and pulled out the box of Pop’s ashes.

“Maybe you shouldn’t drop your father over the side. Maybe you should throw in your sorrow, like I did. Let it sink.”

“It’s not that easy.”

Tano snatched my A’s cap off my head. He tossed it onto the waves like a Frisbee.

“Hey!” I was too afraid to jump in after it even though I was a great swimmer.

That much water could drown you, I thought. The weight of it would drag you under the surface. You’d never see the sun again.

My hat bobbed on top of a far wave, disappeared on the rolling surface, reappeared even further away.

“That was the A at the end of your name. Now, you are Eric.”

My mouth open and shut like a hooked fish.

“Your life as a man has begun.”

He was an idiot. He didn’t understand. “It isn’t that easy. It can’t be that easy.”

“But what if it is? That hat was a gris-gris, a magic charm. Throw it away, and throw away the A that made you into a girl.”

Anger welled up behind my eyes.

Tano pleaded with me. “Believe just enough to make it real. Go back to shore as a man. You don’t know when to being? Begin now! Right now! Because the now is the only time you ever really have.”

My throat was too tight to breathe.

“I let my moment pass. I’m stuck in a now that never ends, the man I want living with someone else. Before that happened, I should have acted,” Tano told me, and I saw tears in the corners of his eyes. “Don’t waste your now, your chance.”

The hat slowly absorbed water, growing darker. The big white A on the front sank lower as it absorbed tears. When it was full of them, it fell below the surface. Feeling as if I were drowning, I gasped in salt air.

“You can only tread water so long before the misery will pull you under. It’s not sink or swim. It’s sink or fly.”

The hat was gone. Could I cast off my outer self as easily as he cast away my hat? I inhaled again and relaxed my fists.

“I only like men,” Tano reminded me.

He came to me, wrapping his arms around my waist. I felt his dick against my thigh. He kissed me, and it was like kissing the sea. I tasted the salt on his mouth and felt the tug of his chapped skin over my smooth lips. His skin was hot from the sun.

“Fly.”

I was Eric. Kissed, suddenly I was a prince.

~~