After Midnight (15 page)

There's a stairwell to our right, and I have yet to explore it. Suddenly I'm curious. “What's downstairs?” I ask her.

She says, “Private video booths where you can watch porn and jack off, and rooms with curtains for anonymous sex.”

“You're kidding,” I say. And then I blush at how naïve I must sound. Of course that's what's downstairs. I'm at a sex party, in a porn theater. What the fuck did I think was down there? Storytelling hour? She looks at me quizzically, trying to gauge my interest in getting fucked before she says, “Okay, babe. Let's go.”

It's cooler downstairs. The air is fresher. And it's much quieter. Steph is holding my hand, playing tour guide. She's telling me about the glory holes in the video booths but I only half hear her. My thoughts are on the sailor. The way she lit my cigarette, the way she looks from the back. The way she walked away from me. I'm dimly aware that Steph is dragging me into one of the booths.

“Let's watch some porn,” she says. “Come on, baby.” She leads me in and shuts the door. “Don't worry, the doors lock.”

How handy
, I think.

She puts some quarters into the slot, and the TV lights up. The boys on the screen are really young. Barely eighteen, I'd guess. They're pretty and hairless, so I pretend they're cute butch girls pretending to be fags. One girl is bent over a chair getting fucked. She's moaning. Her cock is rock hard and she's stroking the hell out of it. Steph slips her hand under my T-shirt and pinches my nipple so hard I hiss. I feel the throb in my clit.

My cunt becomes a liquidy place, like my head.

Usually when Steph and I fuck, I think about her hand in my
cunt. I concentrate on the sensations, the rhythmic circling or the pounding, the feeling of her skin on my skin. I think about how happy she makes me. But on this particular night I can't concentrate. My mind is too cluttered. I imagine the young boys on the screen. Their asses, their hard cocks. I'm overstimulated. Steph's hand is working me, playing me. She knows how. She's so good. She knows just where to stroke and how hard. She's doing it so right. Just like she did it to me earlier, just like she'll do it to me later. But it's no good. I can't come. I'm not even close. “Come for me, baby,” she whispers in my ear. “Show me how much you love me.”

Frustrated, I turn away from her and face the wall. She follows me and pushes me down toward the small stool in the corner. I start to protest, not wanting to be on my knees on the floor of this booth where random guys have sucked random cocks, but I catch a glimpse of something through the glory hole that makes me change my mind. My sailor is in the next booth. She's leaning against the wall with her pants unzipped. She's not doing anything really, just staring at the screen with a blank expression. I position myself for a better view and this makes Steph happy because she has better access to my cunt. I feel her hand run down the crack of my ass before she pulls it back and smacks me hard. She does it again and this time I lean into it because it's something I can feel.

I can see my sailor clearly. She's staring intently at the screen. I wonder if she's watching the same two young boys I was looking at a few moments ago. The video is still playing. I can still hear them groaning. Her blue eyes are half-closed and her hair is a little messy, like she's run her fingers through it a few times and broken up her hair gel. She looks better this way. Hotter. Looser. Something.

She slips down her pants and briefs and slides a hand
between her legs. I watch her fingers disappear into the vertical folds of her cunt and reappear glistening over and over, making that slick
tic tic
sound. Her face is expressionless; she's just staring at the screen, jerking off in the most perfunctory of ways.

Steph is still fucking me, but suddenly I can feel her more than I did a few moments ago. A cloud has lifted, and now my swollen crotch demands attention. “Fuck me harder, baby, please,” I say to her and she does, taking the opportunity to slide another finger in. She leans over me, presses her body against mine. Fingers buried to the hilt in my pussy, she nuzzles my neck with her teeth. I adore her so much. She's an amazing lover and a loving girlfriend, but right now I'm thinking about the stranger in the next booth and Steph's hands on my body.

Steph is really turned on. I can tell from the rough way she's pushing into me. It must be the porn working its magic on her. I'm hot too, and very close to coming, but I hold on for sailor boy's sake. When I feel Steph's thumb at the opening of my cunt, I gasp, ready to take her whole hand. I love it when she fucks me like this, so raw and so forceful. And the sensation of her pushing into me brings me back to where we are, and who she is and why I love her so much. “What are you thinking about, baby?” she says. “Where are you? Come back to me. I want to feel your cunt on my hand.”

I can see sailor boy's hands moving faster over her clit, and I wish I could reach her with my tongue. I groan and push back against Steph shamelessly in a way I know she loves. My sailor's mouth is open. She flicks her clit a few more times and tenses up, pressing her fingers down into a pussy I didn't get to touch or taste. It's enough though, and it pushes me over the edge and I gasp as the wave of orgasm hits me.

Steph stops moving momentarily, her fingers still inside. The
sweat that's collected between our bodies has dried and our skin is stuck together. “Don't move,” she says to me, and I obey. We stay like that for a few moments, and when I look again, my sailor is gone.

 

 

 

 

 

M
y mouth had a bad habit of getting me in trouble. That's why I found myself walking up the path to Shea's house with an overnight bag. I usually spent my weekends hiking around the surrounding mountains, discovering rarely used trails and communing with nature. It helped me to release the stress of the workweek, recharge for the next, and return prepared to handle the major and minor crises that invariably cropped up. This weekend would be different. This weekend I had to pay off a bet that should have been a sure thing.

It had started innocently enough. Shea and I were watching the Phoenix Mercury versus Houston Comets basketball game at Misty's, a lesbian bar on Indian School Road. She had been harassing me since the start of the WNBA season about how the Comets were going to wipe the floor up with the Mercury. It had been Swoopes this, the Comets that for two weeks. She had even sent me an e-gram with a comet crashing into the planet Mercury.
The planet had disintegrated, and in its place was Sheryl Swoopes moonwalking on top of Diana Taurasi's prone body.

I let her have her fun. Let's face it, the Mercury weren't what you'd call consistent. They were still a young team trying to find their legs. So when the Mercury were up by seventeen points at halftime, I thought I'd do a little razzing of my own. That's where all the trouble started.

“You think Van Chancellor is in the locker room reminding his players they're not on a cooking show?” I kept my eyes focused on the television set to hide the smirk I knew was on my face.

“Why do you say that?” Shea said. Out the corner of my eye, I saw her eyebrows furrow.

“They have more turnovers than Betty Crocker.” I busted up laughing. I even slapped the bar to make sure she knew how funny my joke was.

“Oh, shuddup.” Shea play-punched my arm. “It's obvious the refs are blind. They're calling the Comets for ticky-tack shit while the Mercury should be arrested for mugging.”

“You're right.” I nodded solemnly as if in agreement. “That's the first time I've seen a foul called for just plain sucking.” I was laughing so hard I couldn't drink my beer for fear of choking.

“Just wait till the next half,” Shea said with underlying faith. “They'll come back.”

“Come back? First they got to show up.” I laughed some more. “I think they're still at the mall shopping for shoes.” I knew I was pushing it, but I couldn't help it. Since the inception of the WNBA, the Comets have been the bane of the Mercury's existence.

“You'll see.” She took a sip from her beer. “Never count the Comets out.”

“Diana Taurasi is going to get a hand cramp from writing all those thank-you notes to the Comets players,” I laughed, feeling
pretty sure about the outcome of the game.
“Dear Comets players, thank you very much for gifting us with this win, allowing us to jump ahead of you in the standings.”
I mimed writing in the air above the bar. I should have stopped while I was ahead, but the beer was flowing and Shea had it coming after all the ribbing I'd endured the past two weeks.

“Care to make a wager?” She kept her eyes on the television set, which showed a commercial of a woman jumping on a mattress.

“A bet?” I couldn't understand why she'd want to make a bet when her team was down by almost twenty points at halftime.

“Sure.” Shea glanced my way almost nonchalantly.

I reminded her of the obvious. “The Mercury
are
up by seventeen points.”

“Then you shouldn't be worried.” She sat there with her shit-eating grin, drinking her beer like it was her team up by seventeen.

“I don't know,” I said, testing to see if she was serious. “It's not inconceivable for a team to come back.”

“Well, if you're scared…” She drained her beer and waggled the empty bottle at the bartender to get her attention.

“No, it's just that seventeen points really isn't that bad.” Although I was starting to question her sanity, I was also curious what the punch line was. “What are we betting?”

“Loser is the winner's slave for a weekend.” She paid for the two beers Danni placed in front of us.

“Slave?” I glanced up at the TV again. The score was still thirty-seven to twenty, Mercury.

“Yeah.” She grinned at me and winked.

What the hell? Now I was feeling very confused. She did know the score, right?

“Well, I don't want to be washing dishes and stuff all weekend,”
I told her. Even with her cockiness, I wasn't feeling nervous. I just wanted to see what her game was.

“Oh, so you're admitting the Comets will come back and kick the Mercury's asses?”

Damn, it figured she wouldn't bite. “No, I just think it's only fair you agree ahead of time what I'm allowed to make you do. I wouldn't want you to think I was taking advantage because your team had an off day.”
That ought to shut her up
, I thought. I took a drink of my beer feeling smug.

“If I win you have to stay at my house for an entire weekend. That means Friday night till Monday morning.” She laid her arm along the back of my stool and whispered in my ear, “And have sex any way I choose.”

What the fuck? I choked as my beer went down the wrong pipe. “S-sex w-with y-you?” My inability to formulate words had nothing to do with the beer searing my lungs.

“Any way
I
choose.” For a full minute I stared at her, speechless.

“But we're both…I mean you are…and I'm…” I was having a hard time figuring it out. I felt like two trains were colliding in my brain.

I considered us both butches, and sex with her wasn't something I'd ever contemplated. I mean, she was my best bud, not my girlfriend. We knew each other's fantasy women and what we wanted to do in those fantasies. We weren't supposed to think about each other in a sexual way. We were more likely to slug each other in the arm than hug. I took a big swig out of my beer, trying to picture it in my head. It didn't help. Damn it, this was Shea. We didn't even flirt. It just would not compute, and I was afraid I might fry what little brain cells I had if I continued to try to make sense out of it.

“What?” Shea seemed a little insulted. “I know I'm not all
femme like those bimbos who keep rejecting you, but I'm not butch either.” Technically, that was true. Although she didn't wear dresses and makeup, she didn't wear jeans and muscle shirts like I did, preferring slacks and blouses. But damn it, she knew stuff, like the first time I tried to use a strap-on and I fell out the window. I thought that damn paramedic was going to have a heart attack, he was laughing so hard.

Mentally, I started to take a tally. She's five-six and can carry a hundred-pound bag of cement without breaking a sweat. She wears earrings, but they're usually shaped like dolphins or parrots, not those dainty pearl types. She knows how to change spark plugs. She likes to cook. She doesn't carry a purse, preferring a backpack. She likes babies. She knows who Brett Favre is. Her favorite color is purple. She didn't cry during
City of Angels
, but she did cry at her sister's wedding. We'd seen each other puke, for fuck sake. What the hell was I thinking?

“Boxers or briefs?” I asked, trying to think of anything that would make the picture clearer, not that I was really that worried about losing the bet. I just needed something to erase the butch-on-butch action from my short-circuiting mind.

“Commando.” Even if she was teasing, that one word made my heart pound in my chest. Was she trying to kill me? What kind of power trip was she on? “You'd better decide fast. They're starting their warm-ups.”

I glanced up at the monitor. The score was displayed prominently across the bottom of the screen. “Okay, but you're camping in the Superstitions with me,” I said, referring to the mountains east of Apache Junction, famous for their Lost Dutchman's gold-mine legend. “I mean the
whole
weekend this time,” I said pointedly. The one and only time Shea had agreed to go camping with me, she ended up crossing paths with a scorpion and refused to stay for even one night. It took me
hours to decoupage her desk at work with photocopies of the definition for the word
camping
as my way of revenge. “And the whole slave thing still applies.”