Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica (22 page)

“Sure. I said to you—” My voice was husky. I stopped and cleared my throat. “ ‘You don't know that boy. Why?' I expected you to fake vulnerability, get all coy on me. But you just looked me in the eye and said, ‘I traded it for his piece of cherry pie.' ”

“Is that why you told me the part about the peanut butter and turkey and dill pickles, all that, 'cause you understood?”

“I guess so,” I conceded. She was ahead of me again.

“That time by the river.” Sherry's voice was soft. “I wasn't lookin' to trade nothing.”

“Sure,” I said, grasping for the upper hand. “You haven't made a move in your life that wasn't calculated to get you something.”

My sarcasm backfired. I could almost hear her smile. I as much as asked her to prove to me she'd been sincere.

“That's cold,” she said gently. “Listen to me. That day I found you on our lunch break. You'd left everyone and gone to lie on that big flat rock by the river. I stood in the brush and watched you for a while. The sun was pouring down on you and I remember thinking that it was a spotlight just for you. You looked hot in those Levi's, your work boots, the big flannel shirt. And you had your hard hat off. Your short hair was wet with sweat and you were staring up at the sky. The river was really loud and I could feel it like a roaring in my chest. I knew you were thinking about some girl or other.” Sherry paused. “And I wanted to be that girl.”

“You were fourteen years old.”

“Listen to me. So I went out and I lay down on the rock next to you. Remember? The rock was hot from the sun. You had your hands folded on your chest and your eyes closed. I reached over and touched your lips with my fingers. I remember
thinking that I hoped you didn't notice that I bit my nails. You jumped as if my fingers were branding irons and yelled, ‘Hey, cut that out.'

“‘I love you,' I said. And you knew I wasn't lying then, didn't you?”

I couldn't answer for a long time. I felt as if I were on that rock again, on my back, with that little girl lying beside me, the sun flooding my pores. The power of being fourteen, of believing with your entire heart and soul that there was a world waiting for you somewhere. Sherry believed I was that world. “Yeah,” I said. “I knew you weren't lying.”

“You got to your feet and said, ‘Listen, Sherry. I'm old enough to be your mother.' And I yelled out, ‘
Mother!
You said mother!”

Now I laughed. “Yeah, you were pretty excited. But I knew I'd said
mother
. I wasn't going to lie to you then.”

“Well, I already knew anyhow.”

“No, you didn't.”

“Honey. I did. Then I jumped on you and threw my arms and legs around you like an octopus. And I planted a big kiss on your mouth. Oh, you don't know, Esther. I wanted everything from you.

“But you pried me off and said, ‘Come on, we're pals.' I said, ‘How good of pals?' You said, ‘Real good.'

“That's when I saw Arthur a few yards away, standing near a tree, leaning on a hoe, watching.”

A shiver ran down my spine when she said that. I saw him, too, in that same moment, and I can still picture him perfectly. His eyes were like brass plates, flat and bright at the same time. And even from that distance, I could see him trembling. He was a spooky kid.

Sherry continued. “He still thought you were a guy, the ignorant fuck. I got so angry at him standing there watching us. I just lost my head.”

“You sure did.” I laughed but Sherry didn't.

“I would have killed him if you hadn't stopped me. I really would have. I hated that kiss-ass way he had, that stand-at-a-distance, read-books-to-impress you bullshit. I knocked him flat in a second. I wrenched that hoe out of his fag hands and stood with my legs spread right over him lying there on his back. I was gonna split his dumpy head open. But you came up behind me and grabbed the blade of the hoe. I freaked because I didn't know you were there and I could have hit you.

“Then, when he thought he was safe because you had hold of the hoe, he started saying, ‘Just because you want to fuck the boss. Just because you want to fuck anyone with a dick. You probably fuck your brother. I know you fuck your father.' I was screaming, ‘You fag! You fag!' Esther, he thought you were a guy. And you said in a big, bad deep voice, ‘Sherry! Let go of the hoe.' Which I did. If you'd said, drive that thing through your own head, I would have. I remember saying to you, ‘He harbors unnatural feelings for you! He's a fag.' You looked confused for a moment. Then I pulled out my ace. I told Arthur, ‘She ain't a man. She's a woman.' Oh, the look on his face was rich. It was fuckin' priceless. But Arthur, he was smart all right. He waited one beat, then he said, ‘Well, then I guess that makes you the dyke.'

“I jumped on him all over again. This time I was strangling him with my bare hands. His eyes started bulging. But you jumped on my back and put your arms around me to hold me back.” Sherry was quiet for a long time. Then she said, “That was the only time you held me. Ever.”

Even over the phone I could feel that scrappy strength in her arms and legs and back. Her muscles buzzed with it. I knew as I held her that that buzzing was the same thing as her faith in a world waiting for her somewhere, a world that understood Sherry. And the way she responded to my touch, I knew she thought I could show her the door to it.

Sherry went on with her story. “I almost liked Arthur in that moment after our fight because he asked you the question we both wanted to know. He said, ‘Which one of us would you want, if we weren't too young?' You just stood there gaping at us. Like we blew your mind.

“Esther, you still there?”

“Yeah, I'm here.”

“Tell me now. Which one of us did you want the most?”

I wound the telephone cord around my finger. I was thinking of Arthur, the way he was on the cusp of something more than childhood but less than manhood. He hadn't yet become desperate about grabbing masculinity to his chest. It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Arthur were in prison. He, of all the kids, knew how beautiful he was. And because he knew, he would be the first to destroy his beauty, before anyone else could. Sherry, she was more of a fighter, a fast-talking liar. Yet there was a brutal honesty in her acceptance of ugliness that attracted me powerfully.

“I ain't jailbait anymore, Esther. I just want to know. For fun. Which one of us would you have had if you weren't our boss and if we weren't fucked up kids? Come on, just say ‘Arthur' or ‘Sherry.' ”

“I gotta go,” I said, feeling something vital wither inside me. “But thanks for calling.”

“Sure, baby.” She sounded tough again. I knew I had disappointed her. Slipping back into hustler mode, she said, “But, hey, listen. Maybe we can get together some time, you know, just you and me. What'd ya say?”

An old bulldagger like me, I guess she figured, wouldn't mind a little action twenty years younger than myself. “You know,” I said, “I don't think so.”

“Cool, that's cool,” she said. “I understand. You got an old lady. I respect that. But listen, I'm in a little bit of a tight spot here. See, they give me a handful of change and dump me on the street. I'm gonna be up front with you. A money order,
twenty, fifty, hey, hundred if you can spare it. I know you're doing good, Esther. You're always doing good. And you know my choices. I mean, I could—”

“Sherry, okay,” I interrupted. “I'll send you a little money.” I wrote down the address she supplied. I felt like that boy who got fucked for his cherry pie. But I wasn't willing to let it stand as just a business deal. “Sherry,” I said. “Hold on before you hang up. I got these lilacs in my yard. I'm gonna fax you some.”

She was silent a long time. “I'd like that.” Her voice was clogged with tears, real ones.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm gonna.”

“Esther. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do now?”

I knew I should say something about staying off the street, staying clean, finding a job, that kind of thing. But all I could think to say was, and it came out in a whisper, “I don't know, Sherry. I don't know what either of us is gonna do now.”

 

 

 

 

 

This is because she likes to be protected, I think to myself, stretching the belt taut between my hands and pressing it flat over her mouth, to hold her lips shut and her head to the pillow. This is because she likes to be protected, I think to myself, as I buy her bondage bracelets, a dog collar, as I ease my hands into leather gloves. This is because she likes to be protected, I think to myself, as I hold her down on the bed.

This is because she needs me as much as I need her, I think to myself, as I pull into the parking lot of the hotel. I hate arriving first, worrying she won't show up. All I can do is think of ways I would like to remind her of what I can give her that nobody else can. When she finally pulls up, late, I want to punish her for making me wait. All I can say when she taunts me in the room, though, is “Fuck you,” like some monosyllabic child whose parents cuss around the house. I repeat it again and again, “Fuck
you,
” with different emphasis, until she finally taunts, “So, why don't you fuck me, then?”

I circle her a few times. I know she dressed for me, even though she's tried to look like she pulled something off the
floor just to cover herself. She gives me her cutest hangdog expression because she knows she has pushed me just as far as she needs to. I pull her to me, kiss her roughly, unbutton the fly of her Levi's with my thumb and forefinger, let her stand there for a minute while I examine her. We know neither of us will be satisfied sitting around talking. We've been waiting. My hands shook in anticipation when I took the keys from the desk clerk.

I push her onto the bed, yank her down over my knee, and pull down her Levi's. I stroke the softness of her underwear, the cottony, well-washed softness of it. She wants the reprieve of exposure. She wants me to know her quickly, forget formalities and bring the secrets of her blood tingling to the surface. But first I stroke the cotton, as if I were getting myself off in a fabric store imagining a wealth I never had, fondling the finest velvet, the tightest weave of silk, the frivolity of gingham. I bend down and kiss her where her spine starts to curve inward, then lick the top of the elastic. She moans quietly. I move my hand in slow circles on the cotton, over the curvature of her ass, down the quiet ravine into the warmth of her cunt. I hold my hand millimeters away, just thawing myself there, and then press slowly against her cunt to see how wet she is. I bend down so my lips are right over her ear. “I know what you need,” I say to her. “I can make you wet just by telling you.” She groans slightly, and I say to her, “You need to be exposed.” I position the knee of my bent leg so it is pressing into her clit and lifting her ass slightly. “Don't you?” I ask, grinding into her there.

She doesn't want to say anything. I press my knee in a little harder. I want her to feel a dull ache but not too much, not enough. She doesn't want to ask for more but I know she wants it, she wants it quickly, her cunt is salivating for my hand.

“Don't you?” I ask a little more firmly, pressing my forearm down on her head to hold her there. “Don't you want to be exposed?”

“Yes,” she answers. Before she can even breathe through her quivering lips, I yank her underwear down so I can look at her ass. It's the color of sand, perfectly windblown and smooth from a distance and slightly rough closer up. Her asshole is a purplish-brown around the edges, puckered. Her cunt is open like a hungry animal and visibly moist. I stroke my hand down the crevice of her ass, then run one finger along the darkened edge of her asshole, just inside the line where the skin tone changes, up and down, so slowly she is lifting her ass into the air unconsciously, wanting more. When her back is arched and her ass is lifted high enough for my taste, I give her a very quick slap on the highest, palest point of the arc so that her spine quivers and she moans. The echo stays in the room with a kind of tension. Her body is tight as a spring. Our ears are perked up, both of us waiting for that sound again. I knead her ass cheeks and then squeeze them together, between my other palm and my body, so that the flesh is gathered close for my hand, and I spank her hard, several times, so fast she doesn't have time to gasp. I release her and her reddened ass relaxes over my legs.

“Did I say you could stop lifting it?” I snap. She curls her ass upward, obediently. I examine it with my gaze for a minute, though I know she wants my hand. I look at the blotches made by her blood rising to the surface. I look at the way her asshole seems to be widening like the pupil of an excited child. I look at the downy hairs that grow deep in her crack. I look at her cunt, staring up at me, the nectarine of a thirsty summer. I slap her cunt lightly, making the wet
thwap
sound of a snapped towel. Then I slap her inner thighs, the edges of her labia, the spaces close to her asshole. These are gentle slaps, growing slightly harder and louder as I progress, falling into a simple
rhythm so that she knows what to expect. And then I surprise her, slap her hard on the fleshiest part of her ass, so hard she falls forward from where she was lifting herself, and her open mouth moans into the pillow where it lands. Then I resume the gentle slaps, this time spreading the cheeks of her ass with my left hand and spanking her right on her asshole, trying to make it open up for me, making her tremble involuntarily, her ass pulsing towards my hand in expectation.