by Jean Roberta
The first calls-for-submissions I saw for lesbian erotica were fired, like cannonballs, into the lesbian-feminist media in the midst of the Feminist Sex Wars of the 1980s.
This was a time before the culture of the internet. Women who disagreed with each other were likely to do it, loudly, in real life, often at large conferences. The event that started the whole mess was the Barnard Conference on Sexuality at Barnard College in the spring of 1982. It was the annual Scholar and Feminist conference for that year, sponsored by the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Previous conferences on topics of interest to women hadn’t started World War III, so apparently the organizers didn’t expect this one to be horribly divisive. Many feminists of the time vaguely assumed that we all wanted the same things: peace, freedom, love, equal rights.
A group named Women Against Pornography objected to the theme of the conference before the event. They didn’t see how a whole conference about sexuality could really be empowering for women. They wanted freedom from patriarchal sex (abuse, violence, the treatment of women as objects), and they seemed to have little faith that sex could be reformed enough not to be male-centred. The conference organizers wanted room to talk about the kinds of pleasure women actually wanted. They didn’t want to be silenced.
I wasn’t there, but the accusations and mutual excommunications that took place at that conference affected feminist culture for the rest of the 1980s, and much of the 1990s. I liked to think I had been a feminist since the very beginning of Second Wave feminism (about 1970), and I “came out” as a lesbian in the same year as the Barnard conference, so then I thought of myself as both a feminist (a believer in the need for gender equality) and a lesbian (a lover of women), but what the fuck was feminist sex, and could it possibly coexist with sex between women? Could lesbian sex ever NOT be feminist? Or did it depend on who did what to whom?
The small, incestuous local lesbian community was as divided as lesbian communities elsewhere. There was the butch-femme crowd, in which butches proudly fucked femmes, and supposedly the favour was never returned. (Except that it was, and that was something my butch dates would never confess to their buddies.) There was the university-educated lesbian-feminist crowd, for whom most sexual activities seemed to be a backward sign that some women still identified too much with men.
In 1988, I went to the Third International Feminist Book Fair in Montreal, partly to promote my new collection of lesbian stories, published by a one-dyke publisher. That was where I saw the call-for-submissions for lesbian erotica to be published in a new anthology. I was intrigued. And terrified of possible consequences.
While I was arguing with myself about whether to try writing about sex, several lesbians I knew told me what they liked about my book of stories, and what they wanted more of. I noticed that the story that came closest to describing sex between the two major characters seemed to attract the most attention from readers. The one-woman publisher had pulled out the most intense passage from that story and put it on the back cover as a teaser. One reader told me the story was frustrating because I hadn’t “come to the point.” I thought I had made several points about the relationship between the two characters. I could only assume the “point” my reader wanted to reach was an orgasm.
I wrote three sexually-explicit lesbian stories, and snail-mailed them to the editor/publisher who had posted the call-for-submissions. In due course, I got a delightful letter (on paper, mailed from the U.S.) saying that all three had been accepted. Then the small publisher went bust, and the anthology never appeared.
My ability to write publication-worthy erotica lay dormant for several years until my sweetie and I acquired a computer in the 1990s. I surfed the ‘net looking for writers’ groups, and found the Erotic Readers Association, originally a spin-off of a romance writers’ group. (At the time, ERA was only two years old.) I read other people’s erotica, and liked the diversity of the writers in the group, and the colorful array of stories and poems they posted. I posted stories and poems of my own, and exchanged critiques with other writers. I saw new calls-for-submissions, mailed out several manuscripts in manila envelopes with self-addressed envelopes inside, and started getting work published.
To my great relief, I was never trashed by outraged anti-porn feminists – at least, not for writing about sex. I was puzzled by the contradictory responses I often got from women who knew I wrote erotica. Several told me this was okay as long as I wasn’t writing “porn,” but where was the line between that and literary fiction with explicit sex, and who made the rules?
After getting a few stories published in the fledgling market for lesbian erotica, I tried writing about other sexual pairings. I had had sex with men, and had often liked it, so I wrote about it in unusual contexts. (I couldn’t bring myself to describe a traditional wedding as a “happy ending.” It hadn’t been that for me.) I even wrote a few m/m stories, though I was always afraid of getting the details wrong.
By now, lesbian erotica is no longer the experimental field it once was. The golden age of lesbian erotic anthologies may have come and gone, but a lot of it still exists. For better and worse, lesbian writers who write about the sex they know don’t have to break new ground, and the word “transgressive” has become a cliché.
Here is a scene from one of my first erotic stories, “Something Natural.” The title was a sarcastic response to the anti-porn feminist theory that all sex toys were unnatural (oppressive, male-identified, products of late industrial-capitalism). Just writing this made me break out in a cold sweat:
-------------------------------------
Fennel had been after me for a month to let her use a dildo on me before I finally agreed to it as an experiment. It turned out to be a hard pink plastic strap-on device that was shaped, to my horror, exactly like a man's cock. Because I had already agreed, I gamely spread my legs and tried to pretend I didn't feel like a rape victim as Fennel began to pump. "Do you like this?" she asked cautiously, already knowing the answer.
"No. I like you tongue and your fingers, Fennel. This isn't the same. I don't want an artificial man." She slowly withdrew from me. I couldn't tell from her expression whether she was disappointed. "I'm sorry," I mumbled.
"It's all right, chick," she assured me. She sometimes called me that to provoke me. I was too apologetic to react.
"How was it for you?" I persisted, wanting to know.
"You weren't opening for me the way you usually do," she said softly, running a hand over one of my breasts. The nipple immediately hardened. "I can't enjoy it if you don't want it," she explained. "It's kind of a chemical reaction. If the ingredients aren't all there, it won't fizz."
I knew she was right, but I also knew that she could make me fizz anytime, anywhere, without using something that wasn't part of her body.
"I'm not into sex toys," I told her. "I don't need them."
Fennel continued to play with my breasts, but she was obviously distracted. "You like being filled inside," she reminded me. I squirmed from embarrassment as well as from the waves of sensation she was wringing from my nipples. "I can't believe you never masturbated with anything," she said bluntly.
I was overwhelmed by a rush of memories. How had she ever guessed what I used to do with the handle of the bath brush? Or the perfume flask, so conveniently shaped? Or even (in a pinch) candles or the necks of pop bottles?
Fennel's expressive face watched me with interest. "You did!" she announced. "Tell me, bad girl, what did you use?"
"Whatever came to hand," I admitted, feeling foolish but also aroused. "But I think I would have felt too self-conscious using something that was made for that purpose. So I looked for objects of the right size. You know, it had to seem natural and spontaneous. And if my parents ever found that stuff lying around my room, they would never guess." I wrapped my arms around Fennel, feeling her laugh.
--------------------------------------
After writing that, I never looked back.
(Note: "Something Natural" was published in 1999 in Batteries Not Included, after a delay of several months. The editor, Alison Tyler of California, apparently thought of giving up after the original New York publisher went bust, but a British press, Divabooks, rescued the book, and published it with a cheeky half-naked model on the cover.)
Showing posts with label lesbianism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lesbianism. Show all posts
Friday, September 11, 2015
Friday, May 22, 2015
Rolling In It
by Jean Roberta
I recently reviewed a scholarly book, The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565-1830, by Susan Lanser. As the author shows, “woman + woman” (primary relationships between women) were described during the period under discussion as 1) impossible (especially if they included any activity that could be called “sex”), 2) new and “modern,” despite the general belief that the poet Sappho, from the Island of Lesbos (circa 600 BC) was the original foremother, and 3) a dangerous epidemic that could destroy civilization. This book includes evidence of “the sapphic imaginary,” including much speculation by anxious conservatives about the debauched practises of women who supposedly had too much freedom.
There needs to be a book about the “slut imaginary,” and maybe there is. At various times in my life, most of the people closest to me have accused me of “wanting it all the time,” and even of doing it all the time, presumably with no breaks for eating or sleeping, let alone earning money by holding down a non-sexual job. According to some men (e.g. my late ex-husband), too many women are Biblical demons who have no other function except to tempt men to spill their seed.
Accusations of sluttery are often motivated by political bias other than contempt for women in general. Queen Jezebel in the Old Testament wasn’t necessarily an adulteress or a nymphomaniac. According to the story, she was the foreign wife of a Hebrew king named Ahab, and she brought the worship of “false gods” to her husband’s people. In the centuries since her story was first written down, it has been assumed that such a “pagan” woman would be a slut. Most visual images of her focus on her lush, sinful curves.
Skip ahead to the late 1700s, when Queen Marie Antoinette of France was still known to her enemies as “the Austrian woman,” a foreign invader who married the dauphin of France when she was a teenager. On the eve of revolution, written stories about her “furious womb” (uncontrollable need for sex) circulated widely.
Note that King Charles II, who ruled England from 1660 to 1685, was a famous “libertine.” Historians estimate that he fathered between 12 and 19 children outside of marriage. (He had a wife, but she couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term.) Apparently no one suggested that he was unfit to rule because of his prolific sex life. At the time, more of his Protestant subjects seemed shocked by rumours that the king was a closeted Catholic!
When I was still fairly young and horny, I learned from experience that no one can really do it “all the time.” (I’ve also been accused of writing “all the time” as well as reading “all the time.” If there are only 24 hours in a day, how can time be multiplied?) Males, in particular, have a disadvantage if they want to do it “all the time.” Most guys, no matter how healthy and full of juice, need some reloading time after ejaculating before they can fire again. Girls/women are capable of multiple orgasms, but not for hours at a stretch. Human energy is limited.
The general Western (Christian?) fear of “excessive” sex really seems like fear of the impossible, much like a medieval fear of having one’s crops or general well-being destroyed by a witch’s curse. Nonetheless, I’m sure I wasn’t the only girl whose parents recommended “therapy” of some kind (medical or psychiatric) to eliminate those inappropriate feelings. The only alternative to being a “fallen woman” who presumably wanted it all the time was to be a “nice girl” who was supposed to do it only with her husband, but not to like it.
The flip side of traditional fear and dread of uncontrolled lust (especially in women) is desire for unlimited pleasure. My earliest “porn” stories (as I thought of them) were about some other country – it might have to be on some other planet – where my sexual ability would be admired, not sneered at or punished. I could have high rank (i.e. be an earthier kind of Disney princess), be initiated into sex in some public ceremony, and not lose any status because of it. Au contraire; my “people” would love my sexual generosity.
The surrealistic plots of Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novels, Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872) seem like reactions to the Victorian social order, and even though they don’t include any mention of sex, they do include a surprisingly assertive young heroine. In my fantasy story, “Becoming Alice,” she accelerates through puberty by drinking a magic potion (one of the bottles labelled “Drink Me”), and then makes her debut, her presentation to the King and Queen, in a sexual sense. In Wonderland, this is all as it should be. (This story appears in my single-author collection, The Princess and the Outlaw, and in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 13.)
For a brief time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I thought a Sexual Revolution might really be on its way, and it would liberate people in general from undeserved guilt and shame. That revolution never arrived, and I probably won’t see it in my lifetime, which is probably more than halfway over.
In the meanwhile, I can only imagine a world in which sex would never be considered a problem unless 1) it was forced on someone who didn’t or couldn’t give meaningful consent, or 2) it resulted in unwanted consequences (pregnancy, disease), or 3) it interfered with other aspects of life (eating, sleeping, working). Otherwise, an “oversexed” person could be considered an “overachiever,” someone who accomplishes more than the rest of us.
I recently reviewed a scholarly book, The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565-1830, by Susan Lanser. As the author shows, “woman + woman” (primary relationships between women) were described during the period under discussion as 1) impossible (especially if they included any activity that could be called “sex”), 2) new and “modern,” despite the general belief that the poet Sappho, from the Island of Lesbos (circa 600 BC) was the original foremother, and 3) a dangerous epidemic that could destroy civilization. This book includes evidence of “the sapphic imaginary,” including much speculation by anxious conservatives about the debauched practises of women who supposedly had too much freedom.
There needs to be a book about the “slut imaginary,” and maybe there is. At various times in my life, most of the people closest to me have accused me of “wanting it all the time,” and even of doing it all the time, presumably with no breaks for eating or sleeping, let alone earning money by holding down a non-sexual job. According to some men (e.g. my late ex-husband), too many women are Biblical demons who have no other function except to tempt men to spill their seed.
Accusations of sluttery are often motivated by political bias other than contempt for women in general. Queen Jezebel in the Old Testament wasn’t necessarily an adulteress or a nymphomaniac. According to the story, she was the foreign wife of a Hebrew king named Ahab, and she brought the worship of “false gods” to her husband’s people. In the centuries since her story was first written down, it has been assumed that such a “pagan” woman would be a slut. Most visual images of her focus on her lush, sinful curves.
Skip ahead to the late 1700s, when Queen Marie Antoinette of France was still known to her enemies as “the Austrian woman,” a foreign invader who married the dauphin of France when she was a teenager. On the eve of revolution, written stories about her “furious womb” (uncontrollable need for sex) circulated widely.
Note that King Charles II, who ruled England from 1660 to 1685, was a famous “libertine.” Historians estimate that he fathered between 12 and 19 children outside of marriage. (He had a wife, but she couldn’t carry a pregnancy to term.) Apparently no one suggested that he was unfit to rule because of his prolific sex life. At the time, more of his Protestant subjects seemed shocked by rumours that the king was a closeted Catholic!
When I was still fairly young and horny, I learned from experience that no one can really do it “all the time.” (I’ve also been accused of writing “all the time” as well as reading “all the time.” If there are only 24 hours in a day, how can time be multiplied?) Males, in particular, have a disadvantage if they want to do it “all the time.” Most guys, no matter how healthy and full of juice, need some reloading time after ejaculating before they can fire again. Girls/women are capable of multiple orgasms, but not for hours at a stretch. Human energy is limited.
The general Western (Christian?) fear of “excessive” sex really seems like fear of the impossible, much like a medieval fear of having one’s crops or general well-being destroyed by a witch’s curse. Nonetheless, I’m sure I wasn’t the only girl whose parents recommended “therapy” of some kind (medical or psychiatric) to eliminate those inappropriate feelings. The only alternative to being a “fallen woman” who presumably wanted it all the time was to be a “nice girl” who was supposed to do it only with her husband, but not to like it.
The flip side of traditional fear and dread of uncontrolled lust (especially in women) is desire for unlimited pleasure. My earliest “porn” stories (as I thought of them) were about some other country – it might have to be on some other planet – where my sexual ability would be admired, not sneered at or punished. I could have high rank (i.e. be an earthier kind of Disney princess), be initiated into sex in some public ceremony, and not lose any status because of it. Au contraire; my “people” would love my sexual generosity.
The surrealistic plots of Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novels, Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872) seem like reactions to the Victorian social order, and even though they don’t include any mention of sex, they do include a surprisingly assertive young heroine. In my fantasy story, “Becoming Alice,” she accelerates through puberty by drinking a magic potion (one of the bottles labelled “Drink Me”), and then makes her debut, her presentation to the King and Queen, in a sexual sense. In Wonderland, this is all as it should be. (This story appears in my single-author collection, The Princess and the Outlaw, and in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 13.)
For a brief time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I thought a Sexual Revolution might really be on its way, and it would liberate people in general from undeserved guilt and shame. That revolution never arrived, and I probably won’t see it in my lifetime, which is probably more than halfway over.
In the meanwhile, I can only imagine a world in which sex would never be considered a problem unless 1) it was forced on someone who didn’t or couldn’t give meaningful consent, or 2) it resulted in unwanted consequences (pregnancy, disease), or 3) it interfered with other aspects of life (eating, sleeping, working). Otherwise, an “oversexed” person could be considered an “overachiever,” someone who accomplishes more than the rest of us.
Friday, January 2, 2015
First Time
by Jean Roberta
(Note: This is a true story. A much longer version, named "Family Gathering," can be found in Up All Night: Adventures in Lesbian Sex, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and Stacy Bias, published by Alyson Books, 2004).
The woman I met in the gay bar is sitting on my hide-a-bed, the place where I sleep. She calls herself a dyke, but I suspect it would be rude of me to call her that.
“How do you like to do it?” She is smiling, licking her lips.
I don’t know how I might like to do it with a woman, underneath a woman, on top of a woman. Or a dyke. “I never did this before,” I blurt.
I feel mortified. She looks delighted. “Oh, I’m gonna love this,” she promises, wrapping me in her arms. Her lips are hot. Her hands feel careful but determined.
“Mom!” My four-year-old is awake. “I hear noises! I think an animal is in our house!”
“There’s no animal in our house, honey. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m scared!”
“Sorry,” I mumble, standing up. I go to my daughter’s bedroom, and find her sitting up, wide-eyed.
“Why can’t that man or lady go home?”
“It’s okay,” I insist. I’m not convinced. “You sometimes have a friend stay for the night. I can have a friend stay with me.”
“No.”
Grown-up laughter wafts in: dyke-language competes with child-language. I have to multi-task.
---------------------
(Note: This is a true story. A much longer version, named "Family Gathering," can be found in Up All Night: Adventures in Lesbian Sex, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel and Stacy Bias, published by Alyson Books, 2004).
The woman I met in the gay bar is sitting on my hide-a-bed, the place where I sleep. She calls herself a dyke, but I suspect it would be rude of me to call her that.
“How do you like to do it?” She is smiling, licking her lips.
I don’t know how I might like to do it with a woman, underneath a woman, on top of a woman. Or a dyke. “I never did this before,” I blurt.
I feel mortified. She looks delighted. “Oh, I’m gonna love this,” she promises, wrapping me in her arms. Her lips are hot. Her hands feel careful but determined.
“Mom!” My four-year-old is awake. “I hear noises! I think an animal is in our house!”
“There’s no animal in our house, honey. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m scared!”
“Sorry,” I mumble, standing up. I go to my daughter’s bedroom, and find her sitting up, wide-eyed.
“Why can’t that man or lady go home?”
“It’s okay,” I insist. I’m not convinced. “You sometimes have a friend stay for the night. I can have a friend stay with me.”
“No.”
Grown-up laughter wafts in: dyke-language competes with child-language. I have to multi-task.
---------------------
Friday, June 7, 2013
Against Fate
by Jean Roberta
Ancient Greek tragedy has fascinated me since I was in elementary school, and I’ve often wondered if its basic premises are true for all times and places. The audience can see that the central characters are doomed, but they don’t see the writing on the wall (or hear the wailing chorus – strange, that) until it’s too late for them to undo whatever act of hubris set the plot in motion. The ultimate hubris (an almost untranslatable word meaning arrogance and self-trickery) is to think you can outwit the gods, or fate, or the Way Things Are. Yet this delusion keeps the characters going until they crash to the ground, get walled up in a cave, or get stabbed or strangled by an angry relative. (The Big Three tragedians--Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles—showed the world how dysfunctional a family could be. No matter how much dysfunction is attributed to “modern life,” these guys still cast a long shadow over modern literature.)
Believing that you’re going to wake up, day after day, in good health and with good things waiting for you, is hubris. But if you didn’t have it, you probably wouldn’t want to wake up at all. The hubris sets up a contrast with the tragic ending. Without that contrast, there would be no plot, and no point.
So if a hope of happiness, or an unjustified sense that one is entitled to be happy, is an essential element in any story, a Happy For Now ending seems reasonable to me. It's not the ending of a life, just the ending of an episode.
When I began writing stories about lesbian life, the Happy For Now ending seemed like the perfect compromise between grim realism and the unconvincing Happy Ever After ending of a traditional romance. A formula ending that promises happiness until death seems to me like a sign on the front door of the newlyweds’ house that says: “Don’t ask. You don’t really want to know what happened after the honeymoon.”
When I began dating women, of course I hoped this lifestyle would be better than the place I came from, where men could erupt into rage at any time for no logical reason, and where a fair deal was hard to find.
Like many other newcomers in sexually-defined communities, I was taken aback by the conflict, rivalry and dishonesty in it. In short, I found that people have human flaws however they define themselves. The raw truth seemed to be that: 1) everyone is essentially alone, and hooking up with another person, for a night or for 50 years, doesn’t change that, and 2) long-term proximity doesn’t necessarily enable two individuals to understand each other.
There are also specific disadvantages to living in the social margins. If you’re fishing for a date in a relatively small pond, you have fewer choices than you would in the ocean of the social mainstream. And if you’re a woman supporting a child alone, your date is not likely to have a better income than yours, or a great interest in co-parenting.
But I was not resigned to giving up hope.
While thinking about my next lesbian erotic story, I read about a sub-genre of erotic fiction (and a sexual sub-community) called “splosh.” It’s about the thrill of wallowing in messy substances, or pouring them on your sweetie. Splosh! Here’s a pie in the face. Splosh! Here’s a spray of cold water to wash it off you. Sploshing seemed like a perfect metaphor for the messiness of life.
In my story, “Ariadne’s Thread,” Ariadne is a young woman living in the modern world, but she is a doomed character from Greek tragedy. Instead of being accompanied by a chorus chanting “Woe!” she is rescued by two friends who are determined to change her luck, her outlook and her mood. I was determined to give Ariadne a “Happy For Now” ending, dammit.
-----------------------
"Let me in, girlfriend."
The sound of Zoe's voice assaulted Ariadne's ears where she sat in the funk of her misery. Dirty dishes covered her tables and counters, pungent clothing littered her floor. Her curtains were closed, leaving the apartment in perpetual gloom. "Go away."
"Come on, baby. I know you're not feeling good, but there is life after a breakup, you know? We've all gone through it. You need company." Silence. "Ari, come on. I don't want to stand here talking to you through the door. Do you want all your neighbors to hear this?"
A dark, swollen eye appeared at the peephole, then the thin wooden door was yanked open. Ariadne Megalopolous blocked the entrance, taking up space out of proportion to her girlish, fine-boned, high-breasted body. The smell of her sweat and her contempt for the world confronted the brisk assertiveness of her friend Zoe, who stepped back before she could stop herself.
Ariadne sneered like a damned soul, her white face framed in greasy black hair. She held onto the doorframe, slouching in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans so old and dirty that they held the shape of her ass and thighs even when she wasn't in them. Her presence was so intense that Zoe felt it in her clit.
Ariadne filled the silence. "What are you, Zoe, human Prozac? If you think you know how I'm supposed to feel, then fuck you."
For an instant, Zoe heard her say, "Fuck me." What a pleasure that would be.
“Okay, you wanta be a good Samaritan, you can come in and wash my – Jesus.” Ariadne had stepped far enough into the hallway to see Carter lurking a few feet away from Zoe.
Suzanne Carter, who preferred to be known by her last name, was wiry and wily. As an employee of Child Protection Services, she took bewildered, mistreated children away from their violent or distraught parents after warning the adults of the legal consequences of their behavior. Carter dreamed of being a secret agent for the federal government.
Carter grabbed Ariadne by the arm before she could slam the door on her two friends.
Zoe tried to soothe her with words. “Ari! We’re concerned about you. We just want to—“
“Help me get her inside,” grunted Carter.
Zoe worked for the Department of Social Services, like Carter, but in a milder role. She specialized in job-readiness counseling.
Ariadne saw through the good-cop/bad-cop act. “Fuckin’ Christ!” She made no effort to control her volume. “You two dykes are a fuckin’ joke! What is this, a scene for World’s Worst Videos?” She wasted so much energy expressing herself verbally that Carter had no trouble forcing her back into her apartment. This didn’t prevent Carter from glaring at Zoe for awkwardly trailing behind and closing the door quietly instead of helping to restrain the prisoner.
Carter’s pale, spiky hair seemed to bristle more than usual. It was naturally blonde, and Carter tried to compensate for the baby-chick color by keeping it short and artificially stiff. Zoe suspected her of using starch.
“What the hell do you want?” Ariadne was still hostile, but quieter.
Carter loosened her grip, and slid a hand up to Ariadne’s chin. “Why didn’t you answer your phone for a week, Ari? Don’t you think anyone cares what happens to you?”
Ariadne backed away. She seemed to be wondering whether anyone in the world could actually worry about her. “You didn’t have to spaz out. You knew Denny dumped me so she could be with whatsername. Everyone knows everything in this community. There’s no flippin mystery here, okay? That’s why the fuck I didn’t answer my phone.”
Ariadne still gave off a dull-red glow, but Zoe could feel her exhaustion. Zoe offered traditional advice. “You can forget her, Ari. Denny didn’t deserve you. You’ll find someone better.”
Ariadne fended off a hug by pushing Zoe’s hands away. She looked like a cornered animal. “You can go to hell, both of you.”
“Hey!” Carter objected.
Ariadne wasn’t finished. “Damn social workers get all your lines out of a book. I’m not gonna find someone better. You know that damn well.”
Something in the air chilled Zoe to the bone. It was the presence of death, lured in by the despair that lingered in the smell of stale food and body odor.
Zoe had watched the luck drain out of Ariadne’s life, one event at a time, for the past seven years. She had had to drop out of university due to lack of funds and lack of credit. She had found a good job at an advertising agency, but a volatile male boss had first groped her and then ridiculed her ideas until she quit. Her mother had died and her father had moved his girlfriend into the house a few days after the funeral.
A series of alcoholic girlfriends had wrecked or taken all of Ariadne’s most treasured belongings, including her car, her good-luck stone and her grandmother’s earrings. She had given notice on her apartment after accepting Denny’s invitation to move in with her, then Denny had changed her mind after a one-night bar hookup with someone else.
Like her namesake in Greek mythology, Ariadne seemed to be lost in a maze with a monster at its center, and no one had given her a thread to guide her back to the open air.
“Just leave me alone,” she said. The dark eyes in her puffy face said something else.
“We can’t do that,” Carter told her, unconsciously imitating the coolly-dangerous voice of a cop in a crime show on prime-time. “A stupid little thing like you can’t be trusted alone.” Carter seized her by both arms from behind as though she were planning to handcuff her. Ariadne’s T-shirt was pulled against her small, perky breasts and her hips bucked provokingly.
Zoe was appalled at Carter and herself.
Carter looked at her like a conspirator. She kept speaking to Ariadne. “Besides, if you can’t find anyone better than Denny, you’d be lucky if we do you a favor. Everyone knows everything in our community, honey, and we’ve heard all about you. We know what a greedy little pig you are, and you have nothing to lose.”
Ariadne looked at Zoe in disbelief. “Oh please. You’re not going to try cheering me up by fucking me.” It was more of a question than a statement.
The heat of evil joy spread through Zoe. “She said please,” she told Carter. “We both heard her.”
-------------------------------
And thus begins a three-way orgy in which Zoe and Carter make Ariadne dirtier in every sense so they will then have a reason to wash her clean. Ariadne reaches catharsis (another ancient Greek concept) and Zoe, the witness, is moved. Here is the conclusion:
-------------------------------
Carter looked more shaken than Zoe had ever seen her. The two conspirators formed a pungent sandwich with Ariadne as the filling, and they kept her balanced between them.
The three women swayed together, slipping against each other. Zoe wondered if they had fucked open a new crack in the universe, a way out of no way. She felt as if they had all fought a monster, and it made her love the other two like crazy.
Zoe knew there was plenty of time for them to clean up the mess and continue their game, or vice versa. She could hardly wait to offer her own ecstasy, an explosion out of her skin, to whatever gods might be watching.
--------------------------------
This story is in my e-collection, Each Has a Point, by publisher Love Your Divine/Alterotica, which will be closing soon because the owner has health problems that no one should have to cope with. But there it is: life (and more specifically, the U.S. health care system) often sucks.
I know that happiness and success are both against the odds. But sometimes I manage to give my characters a little satisfaction as a consolation prize. Sometimes defying the gods just feels too good to resist.
********************************
Ancient Greek tragedy has fascinated me since I was in elementary school, and I’ve often wondered if its basic premises are true for all times and places. The audience can see that the central characters are doomed, but they don’t see the writing on the wall (or hear the wailing chorus – strange, that) until it’s too late for them to undo whatever act of hubris set the plot in motion. The ultimate hubris (an almost untranslatable word meaning arrogance and self-trickery) is to think you can outwit the gods, or fate, or the Way Things Are. Yet this delusion keeps the characters going until they crash to the ground, get walled up in a cave, or get stabbed or strangled by an angry relative. (The Big Three tragedians--Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles—showed the world how dysfunctional a family could be. No matter how much dysfunction is attributed to “modern life,” these guys still cast a long shadow over modern literature.)
Believing that you’re going to wake up, day after day, in good health and with good things waiting for you, is hubris. But if you didn’t have it, you probably wouldn’t want to wake up at all. The hubris sets up a contrast with the tragic ending. Without that contrast, there would be no plot, and no point.
So if a hope of happiness, or an unjustified sense that one is entitled to be happy, is an essential element in any story, a Happy For Now ending seems reasonable to me. It's not the ending of a life, just the ending of an episode.
When I began writing stories about lesbian life, the Happy For Now ending seemed like the perfect compromise between grim realism and the unconvincing Happy Ever After ending of a traditional romance. A formula ending that promises happiness until death seems to me like a sign on the front door of the newlyweds’ house that says: “Don’t ask. You don’t really want to know what happened after the honeymoon.”
When I began dating women, of course I hoped this lifestyle would be better than the place I came from, where men could erupt into rage at any time for no logical reason, and where a fair deal was hard to find.
Like many other newcomers in sexually-defined communities, I was taken aback by the conflict, rivalry and dishonesty in it. In short, I found that people have human flaws however they define themselves. The raw truth seemed to be that: 1) everyone is essentially alone, and hooking up with another person, for a night or for 50 years, doesn’t change that, and 2) long-term proximity doesn’t necessarily enable two individuals to understand each other.
There are also specific disadvantages to living in the social margins. If you’re fishing for a date in a relatively small pond, you have fewer choices than you would in the ocean of the social mainstream. And if you’re a woman supporting a child alone, your date is not likely to have a better income than yours, or a great interest in co-parenting.
But I was not resigned to giving up hope.
While thinking about my next lesbian erotic story, I read about a sub-genre of erotic fiction (and a sexual sub-community) called “splosh.” It’s about the thrill of wallowing in messy substances, or pouring them on your sweetie. Splosh! Here’s a pie in the face. Splosh! Here’s a spray of cold water to wash it off you. Sploshing seemed like a perfect metaphor for the messiness of life.
In my story, “Ariadne’s Thread,” Ariadne is a young woman living in the modern world, but she is a doomed character from Greek tragedy. Instead of being accompanied by a chorus chanting “Woe!” she is rescued by two friends who are determined to change her luck, her outlook and her mood. I was determined to give Ariadne a “Happy For Now” ending, dammit.
-----------------------
"Let me in, girlfriend."
The sound of Zoe's voice assaulted Ariadne's ears where she sat in the funk of her misery. Dirty dishes covered her tables and counters, pungent clothing littered her floor. Her curtains were closed, leaving the apartment in perpetual gloom. "Go away."
"Come on, baby. I know you're not feeling good, but there is life after a breakup, you know? We've all gone through it. You need company." Silence. "Ari, come on. I don't want to stand here talking to you through the door. Do you want all your neighbors to hear this?"
A dark, swollen eye appeared at the peephole, then the thin wooden door was yanked open. Ariadne Megalopolous blocked the entrance, taking up space out of proportion to her girlish, fine-boned, high-breasted body. The smell of her sweat and her contempt for the world confronted the brisk assertiveness of her friend Zoe, who stepped back before she could stop herself.
Ariadne sneered like a damned soul, her white face framed in greasy black hair. She held onto the doorframe, slouching in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans so old and dirty that they held the shape of her ass and thighs even when she wasn't in them. Her presence was so intense that Zoe felt it in her clit.
Ariadne filled the silence. "What are you, Zoe, human Prozac? If you think you know how I'm supposed to feel, then fuck you."
For an instant, Zoe heard her say, "Fuck me." What a pleasure that would be.
“Okay, you wanta be a good Samaritan, you can come in and wash my – Jesus.” Ariadne had stepped far enough into the hallway to see Carter lurking a few feet away from Zoe.
Suzanne Carter, who preferred to be known by her last name, was wiry and wily. As an employee of Child Protection Services, she took bewildered, mistreated children away from their violent or distraught parents after warning the adults of the legal consequences of their behavior. Carter dreamed of being a secret agent for the federal government.
Carter grabbed Ariadne by the arm before she could slam the door on her two friends.
Zoe tried to soothe her with words. “Ari! We’re concerned about you. We just want to—“
“Help me get her inside,” grunted Carter.
Zoe worked for the Department of Social Services, like Carter, but in a milder role. She specialized in job-readiness counseling.
Ariadne saw through the good-cop/bad-cop act. “Fuckin’ Christ!” She made no effort to control her volume. “You two dykes are a fuckin’ joke! What is this, a scene for World’s Worst Videos?” She wasted so much energy expressing herself verbally that Carter had no trouble forcing her back into her apartment. This didn’t prevent Carter from glaring at Zoe for awkwardly trailing behind and closing the door quietly instead of helping to restrain the prisoner.
Carter’s pale, spiky hair seemed to bristle more than usual. It was naturally blonde, and Carter tried to compensate for the baby-chick color by keeping it short and artificially stiff. Zoe suspected her of using starch.
“What the hell do you want?” Ariadne was still hostile, but quieter.
Carter loosened her grip, and slid a hand up to Ariadne’s chin. “Why didn’t you answer your phone for a week, Ari? Don’t you think anyone cares what happens to you?”
Ariadne backed away. She seemed to be wondering whether anyone in the world could actually worry about her. “You didn’t have to spaz out. You knew Denny dumped me so she could be with whatsername. Everyone knows everything in this community. There’s no flippin mystery here, okay? That’s why the fuck I didn’t answer my phone.”
Ariadne still gave off a dull-red glow, but Zoe could feel her exhaustion. Zoe offered traditional advice. “You can forget her, Ari. Denny didn’t deserve you. You’ll find someone better.”
Ariadne fended off a hug by pushing Zoe’s hands away. She looked like a cornered animal. “You can go to hell, both of you.”
“Hey!” Carter objected.
Ariadne wasn’t finished. “Damn social workers get all your lines out of a book. I’m not gonna find someone better. You know that damn well.”
Something in the air chilled Zoe to the bone. It was the presence of death, lured in by the despair that lingered in the smell of stale food and body odor.
Zoe had watched the luck drain out of Ariadne’s life, one event at a time, for the past seven years. She had had to drop out of university due to lack of funds and lack of credit. She had found a good job at an advertising agency, but a volatile male boss had first groped her and then ridiculed her ideas until she quit. Her mother had died and her father had moved his girlfriend into the house a few days after the funeral.
A series of alcoholic girlfriends had wrecked or taken all of Ariadne’s most treasured belongings, including her car, her good-luck stone and her grandmother’s earrings. She had given notice on her apartment after accepting Denny’s invitation to move in with her, then Denny had changed her mind after a one-night bar hookup with someone else.
Like her namesake in Greek mythology, Ariadne seemed to be lost in a maze with a monster at its center, and no one had given her a thread to guide her back to the open air.
“Just leave me alone,” she said. The dark eyes in her puffy face said something else.
“We can’t do that,” Carter told her, unconsciously imitating the coolly-dangerous voice of a cop in a crime show on prime-time. “A stupid little thing like you can’t be trusted alone.” Carter seized her by both arms from behind as though she were planning to handcuff her. Ariadne’s T-shirt was pulled against her small, perky breasts and her hips bucked provokingly.
Zoe was appalled at Carter and herself.
Carter looked at her like a conspirator. She kept speaking to Ariadne. “Besides, if you can’t find anyone better than Denny, you’d be lucky if we do you a favor. Everyone knows everything in our community, honey, and we’ve heard all about you. We know what a greedy little pig you are, and you have nothing to lose.”
Ariadne looked at Zoe in disbelief. “Oh please. You’re not going to try cheering me up by fucking me.” It was more of a question than a statement.
The heat of evil joy spread through Zoe. “She said please,” she told Carter. “We both heard her.”
-------------------------------
And thus begins a three-way orgy in which Zoe and Carter make Ariadne dirtier in every sense so they will then have a reason to wash her clean. Ariadne reaches catharsis (another ancient Greek concept) and Zoe, the witness, is moved. Here is the conclusion:
-------------------------------
Carter looked more shaken than Zoe had ever seen her. The two conspirators formed a pungent sandwich with Ariadne as the filling, and they kept her balanced between them.
The three women swayed together, slipping against each other. Zoe wondered if they had fucked open a new crack in the universe, a way out of no way. She felt as if they had all fought a monster, and it made her love the other two like crazy.
Zoe knew there was plenty of time for them to clean up the mess and continue their game, or vice versa. She could hardly wait to offer her own ecstasy, an explosion out of her skin, to whatever gods might be watching.
--------------------------------
This story is in my e-collection, Each Has a Point, by publisher Love Your Divine/Alterotica, which will be closing soon because the owner has health problems that no one should have to cope with. But there it is: life (and more specifically, the U.S. health care system) often sucks.
I know that happiness and success are both against the odds. But sometimes I manage to give my characters a little satisfaction as a consolation prize. Sometimes defying the gods just feels too good to resist.
********************************
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Chapter One: Cupid's Cruel Aim
Here is part of the first chapter of The Flight of the Black Swan, my novella-in-progress.
After young Emily is betrayed in love (in Chapter One) and still suffering from heartsickness, she meets one of the Green Men (refugees from Her Majesty's Navy who want to avoid being hanged for their sexual inclinations)and agrees to run away with them in an old sailing ship renamed The Black Swan. They cross the Atlantic to intercept a blockade-runner in the American Civil War, and appropriate a precious cargo of cotton and tobacco. Along the way, Emily gets married and falls in love (not with the same person) and everything works out to her advantage.
This tale is a kind of sequel to an earlier pirate novel set in the nineteenth century, and published in 1939.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Almost the worst thing that can happen to a young lady is to be loved by her parents.
Consider it: attentive mothers and fathers do all in their power to protect their daughters from risk and notoriety--in short, from every experience which gives savor to life. Fortunately, I approached the age of majority with my most exciting memories of childhood intact. They kept me from dying of ennui, especially after I lost my dearest friend.
I am Emily ---, born on the island of Jamaica to English parents who placed me with my brothers and sisters on a ship bound for England when we were young. At length we arrived, of course, but not before being kidnapped (as the newspapers termed it - "waylaid" would be more accurate) by pirates.
If you have no knowledge of my history before the beginning of this narrative, please forgive me for closing the door on that chapter of my life. I prefer to begin a new acquaintance with no preconceptions on either side.
Suffice it to say that when I was restored to my Mama and Papa at age eleven, no effort was spared to give me a "normal" upbringing. My mother even tried to arrange for my presentation at Court when I would be of age. She went into contortions to show me the proper way to curtsey to the Queen, and I was to be outfitted with three feathers for my head like a horse in a procession.
Pity the fate of a well-bred daughter! I would as soon be sold at an actual slave auction in America than to be displayed to all of Society.
What of marriage? I hear you ask. Dear Reader, it was never my goal. As things turned out, however – well, read on and you shall see.
My Mama was always exclaiming over my silken brown hair, my eyes as blue as the sky, my rosy coloring and the gentle curves of my figure. She seemed intent on assuring me that my physical beauty, at least, had not been spoilt by anything which might have happened to me earlier. I was no more capable of explaining myself to my parents than if they had been ancient Picts with no knowledge of English.
Lucy, my dearest friend at school, was a lively girl who understood me better. Yet even she believed that I carried unspeakable knowledge like hidden treasure under my clothes.
I learnt this one day when we were both fourteen, as I watched her aim an arrow at a target. She had been rehearsing for a school play, and she still wore her costume, which consisted of stockings, a man’s white shirt and feathered wings attached to her back with straps. Her flair for drama was never confined to the stage. As she drew one strong, flexible arm back to give the arrow speed, I felt as if she were aiming it at my heart.
The school archery range was deserted except for us. After looking around quickly to make sure she wouldn't be overhead, Lucy spoke to me. "Emily," she told me in a low voice. "I don't care what those dreadful men did to you. They didn't steal your spirit. I hope you never marry because you’re too good for a man, and I want you all to myself. Am I horribly selfish?”
“Yes,” I whispered back. "You're not a proper lady, and I'm glad." She let her arrow fly, but turned her head to throw me a quick glance, and it pulled her trajectory to the left.
I felt absurdly proud that I could distract her so much. “Focus on what you’re doing, Lucy,” I told her, trying to sound like a schoolmistress. “We must go away together after graduation. We might have to become hunters and trappers in the wilderness, beyond the laws of civilization.”
She laughed loudly. “I doubt that, dearest! I only need to wait patiently until I’m twenty-one, when I get my inheritance.” She switched her attention to her target, released another arrow, and watched it land quivering in the center. “Whoo-oop!” she shouted.
That night, I crept into her bed when all the lights were out, and eased myself under the bedclothes. She pretended to be asleep until I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her on the lips. She couldn’t maintain her facade, and burst into giggles. Her hips moved beneath me.
“Ssh!” I told her, fearing discovery.
“Our nightgowns are in the way,” she whispered. “Move a little so we can take them off.”
When we were both naked, we admired each other as best we could in the dim light from the nearest window. Lucy grabbed both my hands and brought them to her exuberant, womanly breasts. “Emily, I want you to have me,” she whispered as urgently as she could, holding the counterpane over us to muffle the sound. “I want you to do whatever you like. We can both be fallen women together. We’ll have our own code of honor, no matter who scorns us.”
She reached beneath the mattress to bring out the candle she had hidden there. I had no doubt that she had already experimented with it alone. I was equally sure that she believed a real loss of virginity must be a two-person undertaking.
Dear Reader, the pleasures of Venus are too thrilling to be covered by a blanket of silence. Surely you knew when you embarked on my story that it would prove thoroughly candid.
I didn't know what to say, so I wrapped my arms about Lucy and gently pressed my lips to hers. For a long while, we kissed like bosom friends. Then she pushed her tongue in between my lips and my teeth, and the intrusion gave me the strangest feeling between my legs, as though she were tickling me there.
She withdrew from me to see my expression. "That's a French lover's kiss," she whispered. "It's in Mademoiselle Rosier's French book about the arts of love."
"Did she lend it to you?" I could hardly believe it.
Lucy laughed. "No, silly," she answered. "I can unlock doors without a key. I'll show you later. Do it to me now, Emmy."
She wanted to be unlocked, invaded, burgled and read from her head to her toes. I wanted to do every intimate thing described in the filthiest of French books, but I didn't want her to think I lacked finesse. I decided to proceed cautiously, by degrees.
I caressed her breasts and felt the weight of them in my two hands. I nuzzled my face between them, enjoying the sound of her sighs. The tender buds that crowned her bubbies grew hard beneath my fingers. Feeling her beneath me was the sweetest experience imaginable.
Like a flower, she had her own distinct fragrance, which grew stronger as I nuzzled her neck with my lips and left a trail of kisses ffrom her collarbone to her breasts to her waist and the soft skin of her belly. I could hear her breathing as I nudged her thighs apart and enjoyed the aroma of the dark curly hair between them. On impulse, I kissed her hairy cleft. When she squirmed, I imagined that her cunny was an animal with a mind of its own.
"Emily darling," she whispered. "Use your fingers. I want you to."
I slid an index finger into the sucking wet heat of her, and stroked her inner folds. She was like an oyster inside. I had touched myself there when I was sure no one would discover me, but discovering Lucy's inner sanctum was like exploring a new continent.
"Em!" she urged me. "Don't be afraid." She seized my hand and showed me how she wanted to be ravished. "I'll tell you if it hurts."
And so I sneaked a second finger in beside the first, and played her like a violin while she moved her hips in response.
I found a little button of flesh inside her lower lips that grew hard when I touched it, so I teased it unmercifully.
Lucy shivered violently, but didn't ask me to stop.
"Use the candle, darling," she told me, sotto voce. "You can pretend you're a pirate and I'm your captive."
"Pirates don't-" I began, but I had only had a very particular experience with them, and was hardly an expert on the whole salty tribe. I supposed that real defilement by criminals would be altogether less enchanting than Lucy seemed to imagine, but I wanted to fulfill her utmost fantasy.
"Don't scream," I threatened, making sure to growl as quietly as possible. "No one will save you, my girl. I have you now." And so I pushed the bigger end of the candle into her very wet opening, watching her closely to decide how to proceed. She clasped me with her arms and legs, urging me on with the most delicious of bounces and shimmies. I marveled at how much of the candle she could accommodate.
I lay on her belly, wrapped in her heat, feeling the rhythm of her beating heart as the increasing force of her breath stirred my hair. Knowing her this way made me realize how much more I wanted to learn about her.
"Oh!" she moaned when her crisis came. "I -- love -- you!" I withdrew my waxy love-spear one inch at a time, and felt it slippery with her juice. I had no way to tell whether I had made her bleed, but if I had, I hoped she was glad of it. What was done could not be undone.
"My love," she whispered, her breath tickling my ear, "that was the best! You'll see." She reached between my legs, but I seized her hand and held it.
"What're you doing?" demanded an accusing voice from another bed. There were shiftings and heavings in the beds around us, like the beginnings of an earthquake. I was afraid of a full-scale eruption that would leave us as shelterless as a real cataclysm.
“Nothing," I answered the accuser. I pulled Lucy back down under the bedclothes. "I’ll come back tomorrow,” I whispered in her ear. I pulled on my nightgown as well as possible, and slid out of bed as silently as I could.
(to be continued)
---------------------
After young Emily is betrayed in love (in Chapter One) and still suffering from heartsickness, she meets one of the Green Men (refugees from Her Majesty's Navy who want to avoid being hanged for their sexual inclinations)and agrees to run away with them in an old sailing ship renamed The Black Swan. They cross the Atlantic to intercept a blockade-runner in the American Civil War, and appropriate a precious cargo of cotton and tobacco. Along the way, Emily gets married and falls in love (not with the same person) and everything works out to her advantage.
This tale is a kind of sequel to an earlier pirate novel set in the nineteenth century, and published in 1939.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Almost the worst thing that can happen to a young lady is to be loved by her parents.
Consider it: attentive mothers and fathers do all in their power to protect their daughters from risk and notoriety--in short, from every experience which gives savor to life. Fortunately, I approached the age of majority with my most exciting memories of childhood intact. They kept me from dying of ennui, especially after I lost my dearest friend.
I am Emily ---, born on the island of Jamaica to English parents who placed me with my brothers and sisters on a ship bound for England when we were young. At length we arrived, of course, but not before being kidnapped (as the newspapers termed it - "waylaid" would be more accurate) by pirates.
If you have no knowledge of my history before the beginning of this narrative, please forgive me for closing the door on that chapter of my life. I prefer to begin a new acquaintance with no preconceptions on either side.
Suffice it to say that when I was restored to my Mama and Papa at age eleven, no effort was spared to give me a "normal" upbringing. My mother even tried to arrange for my presentation at Court when I would be of age. She went into contortions to show me the proper way to curtsey to the Queen, and I was to be outfitted with three feathers for my head like a horse in a procession.
Pity the fate of a well-bred daughter! I would as soon be sold at an actual slave auction in America than to be displayed to all of Society.
What of marriage? I hear you ask. Dear Reader, it was never my goal. As things turned out, however – well, read on and you shall see.
My Mama was always exclaiming over my silken brown hair, my eyes as blue as the sky, my rosy coloring and the gentle curves of my figure. She seemed intent on assuring me that my physical beauty, at least, had not been spoilt by anything which might have happened to me earlier. I was no more capable of explaining myself to my parents than if they had been ancient Picts with no knowledge of English.
Lucy, my dearest friend at school, was a lively girl who understood me better. Yet even she believed that I carried unspeakable knowledge like hidden treasure under my clothes.
I learnt this one day when we were both fourteen, as I watched her aim an arrow at a target. She had been rehearsing for a school play, and she still wore her costume, which consisted of stockings, a man’s white shirt and feathered wings attached to her back with straps. Her flair for drama was never confined to the stage. As she drew one strong, flexible arm back to give the arrow speed, I felt as if she were aiming it at my heart.
The school archery range was deserted except for us. After looking around quickly to make sure she wouldn't be overhead, Lucy spoke to me. "Emily," she told me in a low voice. "I don't care what those dreadful men did to you. They didn't steal your spirit. I hope you never marry because you’re too good for a man, and I want you all to myself. Am I horribly selfish?”
“Yes,” I whispered back. "You're not a proper lady, and I'm glad." She let her arrow fly, but turned her head to throw me a quick glance, and it pulled her trajectory to the left.
I felt absurdly proud that I could distract her so much. “Focus on what you’re doing, Lucy,” I told her, trying to sound like a schoolmistress. “We must go away together after graduation. We might have to become hunters and trappers in the wilderness, beyond the laws of civilization.”
She laughed loudly. “I doubt that, dearest! I only need to wait patiently until I’m twenty-one, when I get my inheritance.” She switched her attention to her target, released another arrow, and watched it land quivering in the center. “Whoo-oop!” she shouted.
That night, I crept into her bed when all the lights were out, and eased myself under the bedclothes. She pretended to be asleep until I wrapped her in my arms and kissed her on the lips. She couldn’t maintain her facade, and burst into giggles. Her hips moved beneath me.
“Ssh!” I told her, fearing discovery.
“Our nightgowns are in the way,” she whispered. “Move a little so we can take them off.”
When we were both naked, we admired each other as best we could in the dim light from the nearest window. Lucy grabbed both my hands and brought them to her exuberant, womanly breasts. “Emily, I want you to have me,” she whispered as urgently as she could, holding the counterpane over us to muffle the sound. “I want you to do whatever you like. We can both be fallen women together. We’ll have our own code of honor, no matter who scorns us.”
She reached beneath the mattress to bring out the candle she had hidden there. I had no doubt that she had already experimented with it alone. I was equally sure that she believed a real loss of virginity must be a two-person undertaking.
Dear Reader, the pleasures of Venus are too thrilling to be covered by a blanket of silence. Surely you knew when you embarked on my story that it would prove thoroughly candid.
I didn't know what to say, so I wrapped my arms about Lucy and gently pressed my lips to hers. For a long while, we kissed like bosom friends. Then she pushed her tongue in between my lips and my teeth, and the intrusion gave me the strangest feeling between my legs, as though she were tickling me there.
She withdrew from me to see my expression. "That's a French lover's kiss," she whispered. "It's in Mademoiselle Rosier's French book about the arts of love."
"Did she lend it to you?" I could hardly believe it.
Lucy laughed. "No, silly," she answered. "I can unlock doors without a key. I'll show you later. Do it to me now, Emmy."
She wanted to be unlocked, invaded, burgled and read from her head to her toes. I wanted to do every intimate thing described in the filthiest of French books, but I didn't want her to think I lacked finesse. I decided to proceed cautiously, by degrees.
I caressed her breasts and felt the weight of them in my two hands. I nuzzled my face between them, enjoying the sound of her sighs. The tender buds that crowned her bubbies grew hard beneath my fingers. Feeling her beneath me was the sweetest experience imaginable.
Like a flower, she had her own distinct fragrance, which grew stronger as I nuzzled her neck with my lips and left a trail of kisses ffrom her collarbone to her breasts to her waist and the soft skin of her belly. I could hear her breathing as I nudged her thighs apart and enjoyed the aroma of the dark curly hair between them. On impulse, I kissed her hairy cleft. When she squirmed, I imagined that her cunny was an animal with a mind of its own.
"Emily darling," she whispered. "Use your fingers. I want you to."
I slid an index finger into the sucking wet heat of her, and stroked her inner folds. She was like an oyster inside. I had touched myself there when I was sure no one would discover me, but discovering Lucy's inner sanctum was like exploring a new continent.
"Em!" she urged me. "Don't be afraid." She seized my hand and showed me how she wanted to be ravished. "I'll tell you if it hurts."
And so I sneaked a second finger in beside the first, and played her like a violin while she moved her hips in response.
I found a little button of flesh inside her lower lips that grew hard when I touched it, so I teased it unmercifully.
Lucy shivered violently, but didn't ask me to stop.
"Use the candle, darling," she told me, sotto voce. "You can pretend you're a pirate and I'm your captive."
"Pirates don't-" I began, but I had only had a very particular experience with them, and was hardly an expert on the whole salty tribe. I supposed that real defilement by criminals would be altogether less enchanting than Lucy seemed to imagine, but I wanted to fulfill her utmost fantasy.
"Don't scream," I threatened, making sure to growl as quietly as possible. "No one will save you, my girl. I have you now." And so I pushed the bigger end of the candle into her very wet opening, watching her closely to decide how to proceed. She clasped me with her arms and legs, urging me on with the most delicious of bounces and shimmies. I marveled at how much of the candle she could accommodate.
I lay on her belly, wrapped in her heat, feeling the rhythm of her beating heart as the increasing force of her breath stirred my hair. Knowing her this way made me realize how much more I wanted to learn about her.
"Oh!" she moaned when her crisis came. "I -- love -- you!" I withdrew my waxy love-spear one inch at a time, and felt it slippery with her juice. I had no way to tell whether I had made her bleed, but if I had, I hoped she was glad of it. What was done could not be undone.
"My love," she whispered, her breath tickling my ear, "that was the best! You'll see." She reached between my legs, but I seized her hand and held it.
"What're you doing?" demanded an accusing voice from another bed. There were shiftings and heavings in the beds around us, like the beginnings of an earthquake. I was afraid of a full-scale eruption that would leave us as shelterless as a real cataclysm.
“Nothing," I answered the accuser. I pulled Lucy back down under the bedclothes. "I’ll come back tomorrow,” I whispered in her ear. I pulled on my nightgown as well as possible, and slid out of bed as silently as I could.
(to be continued)
---------------------
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)