Between the Worlds

by Jean Roberta

In 2010, I was interviewed in the media (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) because an antique set of laws controlling the sex trade had just been struck down as unconstitutional, and sex workers were being asked for their opinions. At that point, I had not turned a trick in many years. I was Ye Olde Harlot, but because I was willing to admit publicly that I had worked for two escort agencies in the 1980s, I was apparently considered eligible to speak for Scarlet Women in general.

It became even clearer to me in 2010 than it was in the early 1980s that out-of-touch laws arose from out-of-touch attitudes to sex. The interviewers seemed amazed that I could interact sexually with total strangers in shady hotel rooms, then go back to my Master’s thesis, a work in progress, and discuss it with my faculty advisor. According to them, I had been living an unheard-of double life.

What the mainstream media has never heard of could fill a library. Why does no one interview women who somehow manage to hold down paid jobs, then rush home to cook meals for their families, do laundry and tend children? Couldn’t this hectic lifestyle be considered a double or a triple life? From what I’ve seen, graduate students in general have to function in several other roles as well, since they usually can’t complete a thesis while living entirely on student loans, scholarships or modest honoraria for providing teaching or research assistance to tenured faculty. Sex work could be considered a part-time service job, and it can be made to fit a grad-student’s schedule.

We live in a culture and an age in which adult women, in particular, are expected to switch from one role to another with ease. If I was living a double life, who hasn’t?

On the subject of double lives, let’s consider notorious men who juggle two or more wives and sets of children without holding down a job (other than manipulating other people out of money), and never admit anything to anyone – until it all comes crashing down. Let’s also consider the world of espionage, and especially double agents who collect information for two very different governments while maintaining at least two cover stories. This is the kind of double life I’m sure I couldn’t handle. At some point, I would drop all the balls.

Writers, scholars and other nerds (such as devoted fans of television or movie series, or on-line role-playing games) live double lives which don’t require dishonesty. Erotic writers are only a sub-category of writers in general, and all of us live in the world of our imaginations whenever we can, even though reality (in the form of dirty dishes and Significant Others) often hauls us rudely away from there.

Over the holidays, I finished reading a three-novel series by my colleague Jes Battis, writing under a different pen name, Bailey Cunningham. In his “parallel parks” fantasy saga, four graduate students at the local university discover a portal to a different world in the large local park, which actually exists. In the novels, the very believable characters make regular visits to a version of ancient Rome, a city named Anfractus, which exists in a parallel dimension. It is clearly inspired by role-playing games, and the real-life characters have different names and different roles in the other world. For example, a sensitive young man named Andrew becomes “Roldan” in Anfractus, and he acquires useful information as an “Auditor,” one who can hear the voices of the lares, elemental spirits who coexist with humans in the city. A young man who lives in a cheap apartment over a sex shop in the real world (and I’ve often seen it in downtown Regina) becomes an enchanting musician named “Babieca” in the imaginary city. Shelby, a young woman of First Nations descent, becomes, Morgan, a “Sagittarius” (archer) in Anfractus.

The characters, who are all supposed to meet regularly with their faculty advisors to discuss their academic progress, are understandably distracted by the parallel lives they lead in the alternative world after dark. At first, they strenuously try to avoid even talking about their lives in Anfractus when getting together for real-life activities such as grading student assignments, but conflicts in the other world threaten to spill over into this one.

I thought about the double and triple lives that are described in the novel. Graduate students as a group are in a kind of limbo between the school life of teenagers and the working life of adults. To earn degrees, they must spend much of their time in the alternative dimensions of fiction or history or theoretical systems. Yet as human beings living in real bodies (which are usually young and healthy), they must live in the real world too, which means constantly adjusting to current circumstances.

In the novel, a female character (an education student in real life, a knife-wielding gladiator named “Fel” in the other world) becomes pregnant by a male “meretrix” (courtesan) in Anfractus, and gives birth to her son in the real world. She decides to raise him, with much help from her loyal brother, and must eventually decide how much to tell her precocious child about where he came from. On some level of his mind, he seems to know.

I could relate to this. In some sense, all children exist as fantasies or abstract concepts before they materialize in the flesh. Those of us who read, write and have offspring could be considered creators in several different ways.

Thinking of double lives, I wonder who actually lives only one.
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Traveling, Reading

By Lisabet Sarai

I am writing this two weeks ahead of time because on the day it posts, I’ll be far away from my home and my computer. I’ll be traveling for twelve days, and I won’t be able to access the blog, even to reply to comments.

So far in advance, I’m not sure what I’ll be reading, but I know I will be reading. Indeed, reading is one of the joys of being on the road. A fourteen hour plane trip provides a lot of opportunities to lose oneself in a book—not to mention the hours waiting to board or to make connections. I may be doing an all-day train ride as well. Meanwhile, since I’ll be in a rural area at least part of the time, I expect that there will few activities in the evenings to compete with reading.

What will I bring with me? Well, my tablet, of course, stuffed with at least two dozen titles, many of them erotica. Thank heavens for e-books. They definitely lighten my luggage!

I’ll also be carrying George R.R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, the last (so far) volume in the Game of Thrones series. I’ve been rationing my consumption of that series, saving it for long journeys. I read the first half of this volume (five hundred plus pages) on my last international odyssey. I’ll finish it on this one, then feel frustrated, I’m sure, because just like real life, these books never tie up the loose ends.

That won’t be enough, though. After a while, I get tired of reading on a screen. I’m sure I’ll want to bring at least a few more print books, even with our limited luggage allowance (low cost airlines... argh!) But which ones?

At the moment, there are all sorts of candidates on my bookshelf. Riven Rock by T.C. Boyle. Sweet Caress by William Boyd. Books by Umberto Eco and John Crowley, Thomas Pynchon and Salman Rushdie, not to mention half a dozen titles from Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series and (as a stark contrast) Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Lots of less well known writers, too—we have access to some excellent used book stores!

One needs to use special criteria choosing books for travel. They need to long enough to justify carrying them, but small enough not to take up too much space. I look for books that will really hook me and pull me in, to distract me from delays, backaches, hunger, bad smells, and other inevitabilities of travel. At the same time, for me at least, a travel book can’t be too intense, complex or intellectual. I’d rather read those books at home, where I have a wider selection and can put them down to pick up something else.

Anyway, I really can’t tell you in any detail what I’ll be reading as you read this. Very likely, though, I’ll be enjoying it.

Every Word is True (#fiction #imagination #autobiography)

By Lisabet Sarai

“Is it a true story?”

When a reader asks an author this question, she usually means, “Is this autobiographical? Did this really happen to you?”

When it comes to my tales, I can answer yes in a surprising (or possibly shocking) number of cases. Yes, I did drive topless in a sports car along Mulholland Drive, as Ruby does in Nasty Business. Yes, I was fucked with the wooden finial unscrewed from a bedpost, like Kate in Raw Silk. Yes, I got up on stage to dance with the go-go girls in 1980’s Bangkok, though my costume was somewhat less revealing than my heroine’s. Gregory’s emails to Kate quote word for word from the letters my master sent me during his long-distance seduction. The sex clubs and orgies I describe in Incognito borrow heavily from my experiences in New York and Amsterdam.

The settings of my stories, especially, are true. My characters walk the streets I’ve walked myself. They live in apartments I rented. They shop where I shopped. When they travel, they visit the same attractions and eat the same food.

However, even when I create stories that deviate from my personal experience, I work to make them “true”, in the sense of “genuine”. As I’ve matured as an author, I have moved further away from autobiography. At the same time, I’ve learned to create more complex, nuanced and plausible characters. Ironically, these characters are more true than my early heroines, who tended to be somewhat shallow fantasy versions of myself.

Over the last few years, I’ve gotten better at allowing characters to speak for themselves. Rather than consciously “designing” them beforehand, I set my protagonists (and my villains) free to act and react as the book unfolds. If I am successful, these characters acquire a sort of organic quality, a consistency and depth. If I told you these characters were based on actual people in my past life, you’d probably believe me.

There’s another kind of truth in some of the stories that are closest to my heart—the truth of what might have been. Quite a few of my shorter tales are set in an alternative reality in which I did not split up with my master, but instead made a life with him. I’ve imagined, again and again, the trials and joys of living in a committed D/s relationship. In these stories, I can express the emotions I’ve mostly had to stifle in real life. I can also consider the difficulties involved in such a relationship, as it is tested by time, external circumstances and the inevitability of imperfectly aligned desires.

In fact, I’ve spent so much time in this parallel universe that sometimes I forget it doesn’t exist. I smile when I think about that long-ago kinky trip to Rocky’s Ace Hardware. I remember the time I came from just a spanking, without any sexual stimulation. I recall, with queasy excitement, the night my master cut his initials into my flesh. These incidents are as real to me as yesterday’s news—more so, really, because I care more about them than about politicians and movie stars.

I’ve shared some of these visions here at the Grip, so I think you’ll recognize what I am talking about. My post from the last topic cycle is a perfect example.

This vignette, like much of the BDSM I write, is fueled by fantasy and wishful thinking. Still, it bowls me over whenever I re-read it. Maybe I am flattering myself, but I suspect most readers will sense the depth and power of the feelings in that piece. It’s totally fictional. Yet every word is true.

I’ll Give You Something to Cry About

by Annabeth Leong

The story below is fiction (normally, I write nonfiction for The Grip). Note that this story includes themes of age play and references to childhood abuse.

Five years ago, I didn’t think I had the guts to do this scene, no matter how many years I’ve thought about it.

Five years ago was before I met Janine. She knows how to get into me like nobody has since I was small. I’d have run screaming from most people with that quality, but the key is I trust Janine, even when she occupies the deepest parts of my psyche.

What she looks like matters less than how she smells and sounds. When I wear her blindfold, her boots on the wooden floor sound like judgement itself, and deep down it’s hard to remember she’s on my side. Her smell, though—that always reminds me. She is comfort food and leather, an aroma that has become the definition of transcendence to me.

“You’ve been bad,” Janine grumbles, her voice grouchy and not her own.

I know that turns some people on, but not me. My stomach drops into my toes. I can’t help struggling, both against the ropes that bind me and against the cloying sense of failure that quickly clogs my throat and makes my eyes sting.

I hear her take a breath in sharply. It’s hard for Janine to see me like this, I know, even if she wants to see every part of me. I know she feels distressed when I’m distressed, and that these echoes of the distress I felt when I was small awaken even more resonance in her. Her fingers brush my arm briefly, the touch her own rather than that of the character she’s playing.

Then she says the line, her voice growing strange and strident. “Are you crying, little girl? I’ll give you something to cry about.”

As it always did, that line makes me cry. My sobs transform from silent, half-hidden things to loud, ugly spasms. Janine doesn’t let up, because I told her not to when we negotiated this.

“Be quiet,” she threatens, “or I’ll give you something to cry about.”

The rough edge of a wooden spoon runs up the side of my arm. In the past, she has hit me with a flogger designed to draw blood, and I have smiled through the pain and mumbled endorphin-drugged words of love. None of that matters now, though. All the blood my tops have drawn, all the marks they’ve made on me, all the times I felt strong or was told I was brave—none of that takes away my small-animal fear of the wooden spoon. I take a slow breath. It won’t even hurt that much, I tell myself, but that’s the wrong approach. It’s not about how much it hurts. It’s about what it means.

“I can’t,” I say. It’s the line I’m supposed to say, and Janine takes it to mean I can’t stop crying, like she’s supposed to. I also sort of mean I’m not sure if I can do this scene. “I can’t.” I’ve got to communicate more clearly. I owe that to her. My brain is swirling, though, and it’s hard to remember that I chose this.

“Quiet,” Janine says.

She draws the spoon edge back less than an inch and returns it to my skin a moment later, the impact too soft to break even the surface tension at the top of a glass of water. It’s more than enough to break me, though. “Yellow,” I say. I force the rest of the words out. “I don’t know if I can get through this after all.”

She changes her touch back to her own. She puts a hand on the side of my face. Her fingers smell of the potatoes we peeled earlier for dinner. She pulls my head against her thick, leather-clad thigh. “You’re a good girl,” she murmurs in her own voice. “You’re so good. You can get through this if you want to. But we can stop now if you don’t.”

She gives me time to think about stopping. I close my eyes and breathe her in. Saying that I feel safe with her isn’t quite right because she can scare me to the point of tears and desperation when we decide to play like that. But I feel clear with her, like I would never lose myself. Like she would never lose herself. I think that no matter what we do, we are always Emma and Janine, people who love each other. When we act out old dramas together, we know that’s what we’re doing.

My heart pounds. Regret starts. I wish I’d never told her about this idea. On the other hand, I want nothing more than for her to tear me open in the midst of this, to find a way to the soft places I lost long ago. Janine is big and strong enough to take my anger, fear, and pain, just as I am big and strong enough to take her force and menace and need for my tears.

“I still want to,” I whisper, and immediately start crying harder because I can’t stop thinking about the wooden spoon.

Stick candy, my father called it. The first time he threatened me with it, I thought he was offering me a treat. Would you like it? Yes, I would. I’m going to slap that smart mouth right off your face. Are you crying, little girl? I’ll give you something to cry about.

Janine lets go of me, steps back, and becomes terrifying again. “Are you crying, little girl? I’ll give you something to cry about.”

“No, please…”

She manhandles me into position, my ass up to receive my licks. Her fingertips tremble against my waist. She pulls my pants and underwear down roughly. I am shaking harder than I’ve shaken as an adult. My throat is too tight to swallow my saliva and a bit of it drools out the side of my mouth and onto the bed. I’m glad I can’t see, that Janine has given me the privacy of my own darkness.

The wooden spoon comes down across my ass, carrying both the sting of the present and the ache of the past. I can barely stand the sensation as it spreads over my cheeks, but I don’t get to dwell on that because Janine keeps the blows coming fast and hard.

This is not pain that feels good. This is pain that blazes like hellfire across my skin and through my heart. This is pain that burns me out and cracks me apart, that I keep thinking I’m not going to be able to take anymore. I hold my safeword at the back of my mouth the way that, as a child, I clutched my favorite glow-worm doll to my chest when I had to go out to the garage alone in the dark. Even if I don’t need to use it, I need to touch it, to take comfort in its presence.

My sobs have become silent again, body-wracking. They contort me. They add an element of breath play to this already intense scene because I can’t get control of my lungs while this is happening to me. I am not crying soft, pretty tears. I am crying tears that make my face muscles seize, that make snot pour from my nose and onto my upper lip.

The inside of my mind goes black. There are only a few things left in my world. The spoon. The safeword. The tears. Me. Janine.

There’s a clatter as the spoon drops to the floor. Janine grabs my ass and squeezes, her palms hard and cold against my heated, tender skin. She is shaking so hard I hear her teeth chattering. She reaches one hand forward and brushes her knuckles over my wet cheeks. I hear a sucking sound that makes me think she’s sucking my tears off the back of her hand, and I realize the privacy of the blindfold wasn’t only for me.

I know what she wants to do. We talked about it. The tension of the moment stretches out. She told me ahead of time that this would be the part she might not be able to do in real life, no matter how hot it made us to fantasize about it in the dark.

Her fingers return to my face, wipe the snot off my upper lip. “You’re disgusting,” Janine says, but her voice cracks out of character.

She pauses for so long that I think she’s going to stop the whole scene. I’m too scared to move, poised on the brink of too many things. “Yellow,” she says finally. “Yellow. I don’t fucking know if I can talk like that.”

I discover then that I can get some control of myself after all. I slow my crying enough that I can whisper to her, give her a message from the Emma of the real-life present. “You’re good,” I tell Janine. “So good. I love you.”

I am aching for the rest of what we talked about, but I remind both her and me of the truth: “We can do this another time if we need to. If we want to.”

She smoothes a hand down the side of my thigh. Her fingers tighten cruelly, and I gasp. “I want it now.”

My body answers with a long shiver, a sense of impending catharsis. “Green,” I tell her, and she answers with a slap to my reddened ass.

“You’re disgusting,” Janine says, her voice stronger now. “You’re still crying, little girl? I’ll give you something to cry about. I’ll fucking give you something to cry about.”

She forces her fingers between my legs, finding my cunt. I don’t know when I got wet. I haven’t felt any pleasure so far this scene. My body somehow got ready, though, as if my tears lubricated my cunt as well as my face.

Janine attacks me with spearing fingers. “You take that, you fucking disgusting girl. Is that something to cry about? Is it?”

I can’t answer her. I’m crying too hard. I’m feeling too much. I’m in a place past bad and good, a place beyond memory or the present. This was my childhood. This wasn’t my childhood. I am big and strong enough to take the desires that make Janine feel ashamed. She is big and strong enough to give me something to cry about.

I cry and cry, for myself, for the small parts of me, for the lost parts of me, for the places I can’t open anymore, and for the ways I can’t properly close, not even when I want to. And eventually, Janine finds her way so deep into my cunt, which feels just then like my life and like my soul, that I come for her, still crying.

I'd like to acknowledge the influence of Xan West on this story. If I hadn't read Xan's excellent book Show Yourself to Me, I don't think I'd have had the guts to write this.

The Way It Feels At the End

by Annabeth Leong

Angst - (in Existentialist philosophy) the dread caused by man's awareness that his future is not determined but must be freely chosen
--from dictionary.com

This is an excerpt from an unpublished early erotic story of mine, “The Way It Feels At the End.” The main characters, Siri and Liz, can’t get over their angst about the events of Siri’s drunken binge a year ago.

###

Siri ran her fingers down Liz’s now-naked calves, a light layer of stubble roughening the smooth curve of the muscle. She wanted to put every part of her lover in her mouth, but had refrained in the past from paying too much attention in odd places. Now, she swirled her tongue over the back of Liz’s knee, and pressed her lips to the swell of the calf muscle and sucked hard.

Liz swayed, gripping the shower curtain rod with one hand and a shelf with the other. Siri looked up. “Don’t move. Stay just like that.”

She rose to her feet, stretching the stockings out so they weren’t lumps anymore. “I’ve heard we should have some word to say in case something goes wrong and you want me to stop.”

“How about ‘tequila?’” Liz said, raising an eyebrow.

Siri dropped her gaze. “It fits,” she said, and busied herself with attaching Liz’s wrists to the bathroom fixtures. When she’d finished, she stepped back to look at her lover. Her chest felt contracted from the reproach in Liz’s choice of safeword. Still avoiding Liz’s eyes, Siri unbuttoned her lover’s shirt, tucking it open and watching the water hit her nipples. She pulled off Liz’s skirt and panties and dropped them on the bathroom floor outside the shower stall.

Then Siri stepped back and stared at the body that had been her object of desire for some seven years now. She knew the trail of beauty marks that went down Liz’s left shoulder. She knew how she’d gotten the scars on her knees. She felt the full force of all her mixed emotions, the build-up of lust and guilt, despair and love. She stepped out of the shower and closed the curtain to put a screen between herself and Liz.

“Where are you going?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Siri said, forcing her voice to stay light and teasing. She watched Liz’s shape through the filmy curtain. Not stopping to question her impulse, Siri reached back into the shower and turned the water all the way to cold. Liz screamed as the water changed, and the sound sent a shiver all the way up Siri’s spine.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Siri tore the curtain off the rod, ignoring the water spraying out of the tub. “Do you want me to turn it off?”

Liz jerked her arms against the restraints. “Jesus! Yes! What the hell?” The sight of her lover wet, cold, and struggling sent a sudden surge of desire through Siri’s body.

“You know what to say if you want me to stop,” Siri said. She pulled off her own soaked clothes and dumped them on the floor, ignoring Liz’s continued shrieks of outrage.

Siri stepped back into the shower, stifling her own shriek when the cold water hit her body. Liz’s skin, covered with gooseflesh, felt stiff and cool to the touch. Siri flicked her fingernails against the hard tips of Liz’s nipples. She kissed Liz hard, shutting off another shriek. Her mouth tasted flame-hot. A shiver rose from deep in Siri’s spine, half from the cold and half lust, and she didn’t know her own hands as they clutched and clawed at Liz’s back, arms, and legs.

Siri pulled back from the kiss, Liz’s panting breath loud and hoarse even above the sound of the shower water. She reached between Liz’s legs and pushed two fingers up inside. “Cold,” Liz gasped. “It’s cold. It’s cold.”

Siri lifted Liz’s chin and looked at her face. “Now tell me whatever it is that’s on your mind.”

“Are you serious?”

Siri shifted so the full force of the cold water fell on Liz again. She forced herself to meet her lover’s eyes and keep her gaze hard and her fingers inside Liz’s pussy harder.

Liz tipped her forehead toward Siri. “I never forgave you,” she said, the words coming out tight and sharp.

Siri closed her eyes and reached for Liz. “Say it all.”

“I don’t trust you. When you go away, I’m always afraid you’re not coming home. I fucking hate that you slept with another woman. When you touch me, I always wonder how you touched her.”

“Keep talking.”

“I left you because you were leaving me,” Liz said. “That’s what you never seemed to understand.” Siri slid her fingers in and out of Liz, toying with her body as the painful words flowed over her with a deeper chill than the water. The words began to slow as the sensations took over. Liz gave a full-body shudder and arched her neck back. Siri leaned forward and bit hard at the base. Liz went quiet. Siri felt her trembling under her hands.

“You’re wet,” Siri said. She continued to work her fingers in Liz’s pussy, and went in for a deep kiss. She rubbed her thumb against Liz’s clit until again she felt Liz surrender something. Her lover’s hips began to swirl, and the chill of the water faded into the background. Siri kissed so hard her jaw began to hurt. She stroked Liz’s tongue, the inside of her cheek. She wanted something from Liz that she didn’t know how to get--to be inside of her, to fuck her, something beyond just making her come.

###

If anyone would like to read the whole story, shoot me an email, and I'll send over the whole file!

Road Tripping

Oh, how I love road trip stories. I have written several, including this one simply called "Road Trip." It originally appeared in Ultimate Lesbian Erotica 2006. It's a fun, dirty little story about two girls on a road trip from Virginia to Florida. I've made this trip many times. But it never went quite like this...

Road Trip

Kristina Wright

“Your parents are going to hate me.”

“You are brilliant, fabulous and I love you.” I glanced at Laura, my girlfriend of six months, one week, and grinned. “They will tolerate you for my sake and then talk about you as soon as we’re out of the house.”

“Thanks, Jackie,” she glared at me over the tops of her pink-tinted sunglasses. “You really know how to make me feel better.”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’ll be okay. Promise.”

We were making the pilgrimage from our apartment in Alexandria, Virginia to my parents’ house in Miami Beach because Laura had passed the test few of my girlfriends ever survived—the six-month mark. For whatever reason, despite my bitchy, moody nature, penchant for late night junk food binges, obsession with the entire WNBA and fondness for collecting animals (real ones, not stuffed), Laura had stuck with me. To reward her for her devotion to me, I was going to introduce her to Mr. and Mrs. Uptight, the wonderful couple who raised an intelligent, thoughtful, animal-loving lesbian and were still bewildered by the whole idea that I would not be settling down with the boy next door and popping out a few grandbabies for them to spoil. If this little get-together didn’t send Laura running for the hills, grandchildren might still be a possibility.

“Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Laura said, staring out the window at the scenery, which consisted only of sunshine, scrub brush, flat land and little old ladies crawling along at ten miles below the speed limit. Florida is a beautiful state, but interstate driving leaves much to be desired.

“As I recall, it was your idea.” I moved into the left lane to avoid one of the blue hairs who seemed more intent on staying between the lines than holding to any particular speed. “In fact, it was you who said, ‘Take me to meet your parents.’”

“I think you’d just gotten me off for the fourth time in an hour. I was delirious.”

“Exactly. Why else would you want to go see my parents?”

We’d bickered about this trip since I’d called my parents two weeks ago to tell them we were coming. Every time I was sure Laura had changed her mind, I’d offer to call and cancel, only to have her change it back. I was starting to get a little annoyed.

“This is the longest drive ever.”

I bit my lip and counted to ten before saying anything. “We could have flown, but I know you hate to fly.”

“Sorry.”

We rode in silence for a little bit. Then Laura started squirming again. “Is that as cold as the air-conditioning gets?”

Another familiar argument. “The mustang is sixteen years old. Yes, that’s as cold as it gets. No, it doesn’t bother me because I bought it for the convertible top.”

Which, I didn’t bother mentioning, I hadn’t used much since meeting Laura because she was a natural redhead with the pale, easily burned skin to go with the hair.

“Sorry. I’m just bored.”

“No kidding.”

She let out a sigh that sounded like a slow leak. “I don’t want to fight.”

I gritted my teeth. “Okay.”

She leaned over the center console and put her head on my shoulder. “Really, Jackie. I’m sorry. I’m just nervous.”

“It’ll be okay.” I’d said it so many times, I felt like I should have it tattooed across my forehead.

“You just need to relax.”

“Stop telling me I need to relax.” She was whining now. “I know I need to relax. I just don’t know how to relax.”

I decided we were never going to make it to my parents’ house. We were going to have to pull off the side of the road and kill each other. “God, Laura, you’re driving me nuts.”

I didn’t have to look at her to see she was flipping me the bird.

I reached over and smacked her bare thigh. “I saw that.”

“Ouch! That hurt.” She rubbed her thigh. “I should smack you back.”

“Rule number one: the driver is in charge.” It was an old road trip joke, going back to when I was in high school. “Rule number two: no hitting the driver.”

“Very funny.”

I spared her a sideways glance. “I’m serious. Now sit over there like a good girl and be quiet.”

Something in my voice must have told her I really was serious, because she sat back and stayed quiet.

I smirked just a little bit. “Since you need to relax, maybe you should start by loosening up your clothes. It’s hard to relax when you’re clothes are tight.”

Laura stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. “What?”

“Undo your shorts.”

“What?” she said, louder.

“I’m trying to help you relax. Undo your shorts.”

She hesitated so long, I didn’t think she was going to do it. Then, slowly, I saw her hands moving at her waist. I heard her pull down the zipper on her khaki shorts. I couldn’t keep from smiling now.

“Good girl. Now the tank top.”

“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked, her voice just a little breathless.

“Take it off.”

“Jackie! I can’t!”

She was right, she really couldn’t. That was just asking to be pulled over by a cop. “Fine. Pull it up.”

That suited her better. She hiked her pink tank top up over her stomach, to just below her breasts. “Okay?”

“Higher.”

“Jackie.”

“I mean it, Laura. Higher.”

She pulled it up, over her breasts. I stared so long I almost ran us off the road.

“Jackie! Shit! You’re going to get us killed.”

I focused on driving, the image of her perfect, hard, pink nipples ingrained on my brain. “God, you’re hot. I just want to pull over and fuck you.”

She laughed. “Then we’d never get to your parents’ house.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Just shut up and drive,” she said.

I glanced over quickly and saw she had her hand down her pants. “What are you doing?”

“Jerking off.”

I groaned. “Show me.”

She didn’t hesitate this time. She squirmed and wiggled until her shorts and underwear lay in a pile on the floorboard. Then she turned toward me and propped one foot on the dashboard. Her cunt glistened, covered with the same beautiful red hair as on her head.

“Damn girl, I think you want me to get us killed.”

“That would keep me from having to meet your parents,” she said with a wicked grin.

“You’re going to have to do more than flash your coochie, doll.” I turned my attention back to the highway. Thankfully, traffic wasn’t too heavy. “We’ll be there in less than an hour.”

I heard a soft whimper and looked over to see that she had two fingers buried inside her. I bit my lip. Hard. The girl was going to be the death of me yet. For once, I wished I had cruise control so that would be one less thing for me to concentrate on. As it was, it took all my willpower to stay on the road.

“Mmm,” Laura moaned. “Too bad you’re driving.”

She was finger fucking herself quickly, shoving her fingers deep and then drawing them out and over her engorged clit. I knew how she would taste if I licked her right then, her clit swollen between my lips, her juices sweet and salty, the skin of her thighs silky soft against my cheeks.

“Go on, baby,” I whispered hoarsely. “Fuck yourself.”

She did. She twisted in the seat so that her back was against the car door, one foot propped on my headrest, the other wedged up on the dashboard. She was spread wide open and I couldn’t do one damn thing except watch. I loved it.

“God, I’m soaked,” she said. She slipped her fingers from her cunt and leaned toward me.

“Here, taste.”

I sucked her fingers between my lips. She was delicious. I kept looking for somewhere I could pull off, throw her in the back seat and fuck her senseless, but there was nowhere to stop on I-95 on a sunny afternoon. I groaned.

“This was your idea,” she teased, reading my mind. “Now you just have to watch.”

I knew by the change in her voice that her fingers were back inside her cunt. I glanced over, staring so long that I drifted into the next lane. The blare of a horn jerked me back into reality and made Laura gasp.

“Stop that, you’re freaking me out.”

I had a thought. “Fine, I’ll keep my eyes on the road, but you have to let me touch you.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“It’s safer than teasing me like this,” I argued. I didn’t know if it was safer, but I knew I couldn’t wait another minute to touch her. “Let me get you off.”

She didn’t say any more as I nudged her hand aside and slid a finger, then two, inside her. She was warm, wet. So wet. She scooted lower in the seat, sliding closer to me. Her left leg was now draped over the car seat, her right leg braced against the dashboard. I pushed a third finger into her and twisted my hand, feeling her G-spot swollen and spongy against my fingertips.

“Oh, there, right there,” she gasped as I stroked that sensitive spot. “God, that feels so good.”

I kept fucking her, keeping my eyes on the road. I didn’t need to see her to fuck her. I could feel her thigh muscles tremble, her cunt clench against my fingers, hear the sweet sounds she made as I angled my hand up and stroked her clit with my thumb. I held the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip with my left hand and fucked her slowly and steadily with my right.

“Fuck me, fuck me,” she muttered, raising her ass off the car seat to thrust her cunt against my hand. “Harder. Please.”

I braided my fingers together and drove them into her, fucking her hard and deep, her cunt slick and hot around my hand.

She started to pant, breathing through her mouth like a woman in labor, only she was sucking my fingers into her instead of pushing them out. I was fucking her as hard as I ever had, staring at the highway in front of me and seeing only her cunt in my mind, nearly swallowing my hand.

“That’s it, come for me, baby.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” she moaned, then screamed. “I’m going to come!”

I looked over then, I couldn’t help it. She sounded too fucking amazing to not at least get a glimpse. Her hands were on her breasts, pinching and squeezing her nipples as if she couldn’t help but touch herself. Her head was against the window, her back arched, her thighs straining as she thrust her cunt up to my hand. Her whole body was taut, humming with pent up energy. And then she was coming, her juices soaking my hand, trickling down to wet the seat underneath her. Her cunt felt like a glove around my hand, so hot I could barely stand it.

She gripped my wrist tightly, as if afraid I was going to take my fingers away. I let her guide me, hold me, as her orgasm wrung her out and left her limp.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she panted, still holding my wrist and keeping my fingers inside her. “I’m still coming.”

I could feel it, too. Her cunt rippled around my fingers like an exotic sea creature, clinging to me, wet and swollen. “Oh baby,” I whispered. “God, you’re so hot.”

She grinned at me, her eyes half-closed. She looked like a cat, undulating in the car seat, stretching her limbs in the sunshine. “Thanks. That was amazing.”

I withdrew my fingers slowly, hearing her groan of disappointment. My hand throbbed, hot and wet and feeling bruised. I licked my fingers, tasting her clean, salty taste and aching for the moment when I could bury my head between her legs and drink from the source.

She nudged my thigh with her foot. “I’ll take care of you later.”

“Oh shit,” I said, smacking the steering wheel with my still wet hand. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Laura sat up, jerking down her tank top even while she swiveled around in the seat. “What? Cop? What?”

“No,” I sighed. “I missed the exit.”

The Curse of Saturn

Have I raised a viable crop of stories on the barren ground of reality? Well, many of them have been published. At worst, this fact suggests that I’m not the only person who likes what I like.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I promised my current spouse I would never write about her in my fiction. If I were married to a writer, I would probably ask for the same favour.

Yet fiction, however creative, fantastical or overblown, always has roots in reality. How do I fictionalize my life? By writing about relationships based on the attraction of opposite types who come to understand and believe in each other. Sometimes it takes the characters awhile to get to the Happy-Ever-After or Happy-For-Now ending, but after scaling a few mountains, they reach a flower-strewn valley.

In real life, I’m still climbing.

According to my horoscope, I have the planet Saturn in the sign of Libra. Apparently, this means that one-to-one relationships are a challenge for me – or a “learning experience.” (It's hard to imagine a person for whom this would not be true.) Whether or not star-crossed love is my inevitable fate, this seems like a fair description of my relationship history.

Consider the plot of my life. I was born to academic parents when my dad was earning a Master’s degree at Stanford University in the Bay Area of California. After a few false starts in other parts of the U.S., my parents settled in southern Idaho, where Dad had a teaching job at the state college. This is where I lived from age four to the summer I turned sixteen.

I might as well have parachuted into the semi-desert, working-class Mormon environment of Idaho as a green-skinned baby from another planet. The anti-Communist paranoia of the McCarthy Era was at its height in my early childhood. Intellectuals in general were suspected of being part of a Communist conspiracy to overthrow the government by using too many “fancy words.” Everything evil was associated with book-learning.

Growing up there, I learned early that I was the strange child of sinister parents who seemed “foreign” in some sense (un-American as in “House Un-American Activities Committee,” a committee of the federal House of Representatives, whose mission was to sniff out traitors). Everyone I tried to befriend either backed away at some point, asked why I was “so weird,” or tried to “save” me from the influence of my parents. God forbid that I should go to college and become as alien as they were.

I was told that “girls” (females of all ages) with ideas are even worse than men with ideas. Presumably, the only cure was to marry soon after puberty and begin having babies. I was told that if I didn’t marry sooner rather than later, I would be miserable.

Trying to explain myself usually proved fruitless. I thought of myself as weird, and not in a glamorous, nympho-from-outer-space way.

I became more-or-less resigned to an unmarried life. I decided that a friendship-with-benefits would suit me much better than the kind of love affair which leads to marriage. In my last year of high school in Canada, I had an affair with a boy who came to resent me for being “too straight” (conservative). This was his perception, not mine.

In university, I had an affair with a man who seemed at first to be my fellow-leftist. The first time I said no, he raped me. Before he left, he pointed out that I hadn’t really been raped, and that if I made such a claim to anyone, I wouldn’t be believed. This seemed like a sign from some Ultimate Authority that my reality was just not credible for earthlings.

I was nineteen years old. I knew I came from a family line of long-lived women. The prospect of being alone and despised for another seventy years, more or less, was too much. I tried to kill myself. I failed at that too.

The aftermath of these events included a psychiatric diagnosis and a firm belief in my family that I was out of touch with reality. Wanting to escape from my role as the Madwoman in the Attic, I married the first (only) man who seriously proposed to me. I was delighted that he still wanted me after hearing the ugly truth. He was a Nigerian who seemed to think my parents were both wealthy and generous enough to provide for us. After the divorce, I came to realize that he probably saw me as an unmarriageable girl whose parents would be grateful to the man who would take her off their hands.

At the time, I looked forward to the deep bond that Husband and I would develop, based on our mutual understanding in the face of prejudice from a philistine world. Remembering my naivete is a cringe-worthy experience.

Fishing for dates in a different pool (the local gay bar) changed the setting and some of the conventions, but not the usual outcome. My first woman lover was an alcoholic who had dropped out of high school. When I met her in the bar, I thought I saw the gleam of a diamond in the rough, a creative spirit who only needed my emotional support to develop her potential.

Since then, she has developed her larcenous ability to con and steal money and other material things from women, men and organizations. She has a criminal record that would discourage any legal employer from trusting her.

In my dreams and my fiction, trust is mutual and justified. Soul-mates recognize each other across a crowded room or a cultural barrier. In that world, hot sex is not a snare and a delusion, but a sign of intimacy on a level that is deeper than the flesh.

Do I think my “realistic” (non-fantasy, in a generic sense) stories are true to life? No. Not from what I’ve seen. As Jean-Paul Sartre said: “Hell is other people.” (It sounds better in the original French.)

The lizard tattoo on my shoulder is my emblem: a stubborn little animal, descended from dinosaurs, that survives in the desert by dreaming about rain.
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