Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica (12 page)

That was a long time ago and styles are different now, but the women are somehow the same, and the smell of stale beer and smoke. The younger butches are starting in on that James Dean look again. Even today the butches hang out over there in the darker corners skirting the pool table. It's some kind of
butch thing, half in the flare of the table light, half in the mysterious dark. See the one with dark short hair flipped to one side? She just bent her head to light a smoke. Cowlick's just like Tony's.

Butches were everything I was not: aggressive, brave and strong, cigarette-smoking, pool-shooting, brawling, swaggering dykes and proud as their ducktails. In a way I loved them all, the butches I've been with over the years, but there was only one who left her mark on me.

After this particular fight with Danne I can't avoid remembering. My own special ghost is holding me tighter than a living hand ever did, curled in the hair at the back of my neck. I can pull on a draft and hear the hum of conversation over the CD player. A CD is smooth and sleek, with all the dirt, sweat, and moans cleaned right out of it. But I don't need a jukebox playing to remember Tony.

Her name was Tonya, and no one can step into her boots. I called her Tony, but just about everybody else called her the Scrimshaw Butch. Or Scrim, or just Butch. I was about twenty-five when we met, and I'd had my share of loving. But this woman held me loosely so I could float and at the same time had a net around me made of so fine a weave that if I strayed too far my body would fall to pieces.

She talked to me for three months before she ever bedded me, and when she finally took me she knew the most minute and intimate details of my life. And like everything she attempted, it was perfect. When she was with me, there was never an instant when her attention wandered.

She owned me, she's dead, and I'm still hers, even after twenty years, because most of me is dead now too. I felt the connection go when she did. The energy band that was between us since the first day we met broke into about a million fragments, but it didn't lose its shape. Like the glass they put in windshields these days, you know, it cracks up but doesn't shatter all over
your face. And those bits and fragments are connecting me to her still, pulling me slowly where she wants me to be. With her. Because, like she'd say, that's the way it is.

Scrimshaw Butch. Sounds a little silly today, but she wore it like she wore her bomber jacket and sunglasses. Always, and with a whole lot more than pride. Her name, even the “Butch” part, was who she was. Tony was upper-crusty even though she looked working class. All the butches did in those days. Jeans and a work shirt, solid colors only, maybe a stripe but never flowers or prints. Leather boots, the jacket and the shades. Simple, but the cloth was always good, and she smelled clean, like laundry detergent. No matter what kind of sweating she'd been doing, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, she hung out in this dive we're sitting in now, with Danne and Cass, Gina and Rachel and Terry—women who worked in jobs guys do—and with me and the other girls, Bette and Suze and Jamie, Jackie and a couple others. Danne and Terry and Gina all worked construction when they could get away with passing as men; Cass and Rachel did dock work and sometimes painting. Tony hung out with some of the gay boys, too, and they kind of looked up to her in a weird way I never did understand. Tony was an artist, but she wasn't full of herself like most rich people.

She started out in art school but dropped out when she met Old Emmett, the scrimshaw artist. He was just an old rummy hanging out at the docks carving on stuff that looked like white chocolate, or maybe something a little harder. Like bones. One day she went right up to him, friendly but tough, with that walk she had that said she owned the dock and everything on it. Kind of a swagger without the threat. I get carried away, sometimes, remembering the simple things that made me burn.

Odd how fresh it all is after all these years. I even adopted a kid fifteen years ago who's grown and gone now. Guess that
makes me really too old to be femme anymore. I don't know. Old habits die hard.

Anyway, Tony asked this ratty old guy a question. She wasn't afraid of anyone, no matter if they had red eyes or boozy breath or filthy clothes. No matter if they were bigger than she was or meaner looking. She walked right up and asked him what he was doing in that tough butch way of hers, with just a few words, only the necessary ones. And he surprised her by not saying a word in response. He gave her this “You just can eat shit and die” kind of look and turned his back on her. That pissed her off, and if it was anyone else, she probably would've decked 'em and forgotten all about it. But the scrimshaw man ate at her, like the constant lapping of the tide or the ever-present scree of gulls.

She started to hang out at the dock with her sketch pad in her shirt pocket and her pencil behind her ear. She watched him staring at the last of the riggers, the clipper done up like a museum, in its own specially fixed-up berth. She didn't get too close, didn't watch him work right off. Just stayed right on the edge of his peripheral vision, letting him get used to the scent of her.

She tailed him to the dealers where he bought his bone, and hanging just out of sight she learned what to look for: color, hardness, shapes that would take the blade. At the store she could sometimes even get away with watching as he etched a few quick lines in a piece he'd just bought. He'd cut, look close, then cut again, crosshatching heavily then lightly, then he'd grunt and rub it all over with his blue-stained thumb. He'd sell small finished pieces for food and blue dye, which he used for the deep-etched grooves. He saved the big pieces for liquor.

After a couple visits Tony got to know Marty, the shop owner. Marty told her who the old guy was. He said he didn't know how this sour old coot from New England had ever
managed to wash up in Galveston, but he said Old Emmett was the greatest scrimshaw artist alive, maybe that had ever lived. Even showed her this yellowed magazine cover with the old rummy's face on it.

Before that summer was over she knew she was going to learn scrimshaw.

She hung out down to the docks every day from sunup to sundown, staying just outside of what he might notice or complain about. In the long warm days that followed, they never talked to each other, never waved or recognized each other, never even nodded their heads. But each of them knew. Day after day the shadows crawled over the dock.

One day he left a half-etched, half-weather-worn piece of whale bone out on the bench next to Marty's. I don't think it was an accident. It was one of his practice pieces that showed all the different marks you could make. Of course she learned them all, then left it back on the same bench.

I didn't worry about her out at the docks alone. We didn't have that kind of relationship. But I missed her fist in me and her teeth on me. I'd never know when to expect her, and all of a sudden she'd be there, stinging like a mud dauber, sudden, fast, sharp and sweet. Then she'd be gone before I could get my breathing back to normal, before my heart rate could slow. And the marks of her passing were on me. In her wake swirled the strange comfort of familiarity: the half-remembered pirate of innocence, the painful spark of pleasure.

On a couple of occasions that summer, when I was too bruised from our last time together, she'd lay me back in her arms and stroke the aches out of my body, touching me gently, tenderly. Then she'd talk to me about the life she'd found at the dock. She'd talk about the people, the expressions on their faces that showed the stories of how they'd lived. The way she talked, I saw images of faces etched on people like scrimshaw is etched on whalebone. She talked about the sea and
its moods, and how she felt connected to the earth and to me when she felt it move. She said I was like the ocean. And she knew she was one of the old-style clippers, fast and smooth but mean as the dickens and ready to stand tall in any storm. A lot of her talk was about the talent of that old rummy living in a paperboard shack down on the dock.

She had taken to marking me early in our relationship. The butterfly touching, soft-on-soft stuff didn't get me off. Just made me feel nervous. I wanted a strong lover who would take control, give me an order, tie me down, and fuck me hard. I guess I just couldn't feel it the other way. Sometimes her strong, short-fingered, powerful hands touched me in gentle ways that scared me away from her. Sometimes I ran straight into someone else's arms, but she'd just wait for me and I always returned.

For me the marks are lessons learned, badges like in the girl scouts. My Butch striped and welted, cut and pierced me with just about any implement you could name and a lot she'd make up on the spot. She always knew just how to use something on me so it felt perfect, even if she'd never practiced. She made sure we both got our pleasure, more than enough, every time. When my mood changed fast, from hating her to wanting her to being frustrated with her to being so far up in Heaven I couldn't even see God anymore, she would just climb on and ride, using me like a stone to sharpen herself.

She turned out a lot of scrimshaw, and even took to the idea of selling her stuff to tourists. I came up with the idea, and while I thought it was all still talk, Tony and Cass piled into Terry's pickup. They bounced and jostled their way over to the lumberyard. Then of course, they were out in Cass's garage all night long, building, we womenfolk watching those sweet butch curves and bringing them beers.

Danne dubbed that little shack the “Scrimshaw Butch” and even painted its first rough sign. Danne was always a little bit
in Tony's shadow, but she looked up to her like a boy looks up to his older brother. And sometimes I think the shadow of a gravestone is too hard for her to live under. Too hard for anyone.

Anyway, after I got the permit they hauled that thing down to the boardwalk and Tony was set. The business turned a fine profit in season, and in the fifth year they moved her into a permanent store with four walls, just up the beach from Marty's place. The back room was where she'd take me, tied to the boards in a million configurations, or chained to the wall, or wrists and ankles tied over a sawhorse or two. The room where she did all her scrimshaw, where all her creative energies got spent.

As I'm telling this story I remember one scene in particular because I still feel what I felt then when I play it over in my mind, and I can always do with remembering that feeling. It had been weeks—almost a month—since I'd seen her. I got a little crazy with wanting, a whole lot angry she'd left me hungry for so long, and I was only just a hair away from begging her. Somehow she always knew, and I never reached the point where I actually had to beg. I know she wanted me to, but she could never quite manage to contain herself long enough for me to break down and beg. Or maybe she was just being kind.

She called after that eternal three weeks, and the liquid melt of her voice flowed down my ear and dripped into me. My body shimmered, crushing, burning, wet, sprung from pores and pussy. She said only, “Hello,” and I could only sob and grind my panties into the stool by the phone. I was tension and desire and her telephone tongue issued commands sweet as peppermint candy and terrible as a cane. She needed me. Now.

I dressed exactly as ordered, too anguished even to tease at rebellion by wearing white garters with my black silk hose. Then I hurried to the corner store and guiltily spent money
on the luxury of two avocados, one large and hard for me, a ripe one for her, and a small tin of smoked oysters. The weeks of waiting, and the hard avocado I pushed in quickly in the market's tiny washroom, stretching me, had built me to such a pitch of desire that I knew that at a fingertip's touch I would come. The lips of my sex were swollen, firm and drenched, my slit open and quivering.

I walked the strip down near the docks with a quick, firm step that caused my breasts to chafe against the stiff black lace of my bra, and a fullness like a fist clenched and rolling in my pussy. I was blind to anything but the end of my journey, and the release I needed to live another day. The last block to Tony's shop was an agony of terror and anticipation. What would she do to me? Through what pains would she seek her pleasure this time? In frightened anticipation I must have closed my eyes for several steps, but somehow I was forcefully knocked over by a man walking swiftly toward me. He stumbled, then fell directly on top of me. He caught most of his weight on his hands, so all I felt was the crush of his groin and legs that pinned me down. I screamed, arching my back. Not in shock or surprise, but with an incredible, joyful release: the weight at my crotch violently pressed the fullness of the avocado inside, and the jarring impact of the fall spilled the sounds from my mouth. Eyes clenched shut, I came, humiliatingly, shuddering through every muscle of my body, right there in the middle of the pavement. I looked up, into the sea-green of Tony's eyes. A wicked chuckle rumbled deep in her throat, and she murmured, “Pardon me, Ma'am, I must not have been looking where I was going,” and thrust the hardness again into my flesh as she made the pretense of getting up awkwardly. “Are you hurt?” she asked innocently, as I moaned and came again.

In the back room of the shop, pretense faded entirely, and my stern Master replaced the innocent stranger. I was still whirling
at the skill with which she had built my passion, and with the precision of a craftsman, sliced the edge from my both fear and my passion. How easily she played with me. No cat with a mouse between its paws could have looked more content. This had been planned to stabilize my neediness, the fire banked to be built again, this time at her exquisite discretion.

Each perfected layer of clothing had been mussed in the fall, and I could tell by the arch of one eyebrow that the indiscretion was noted. After obeying her command to strip down to my garters, I fell to my knees, urgently kissing her boots, caressing, holding, touching the only part of her she would allow me to touch. When she pulled me up with a leather-gloved hand at the back of my neck, I knew not to dwell near her crotch. I smelled her, though. Mixed with leather, the salt and sweat and juice of her made my mouth a hungry, dripping slit, my tongue a twitching cock. I moaned, swaying on jellied knees toward and away from the scent. Her hips swayed an inch closer, an inch farther away. Then, like opposing poles of a magnet, my mouth locked to her jeans, open and chewing, drugged by her pungent musk.