Stripped Down (6 page)

We didn't speak for a few moments, then she playfully swatted my ass and said, “You a'ight?”

“Yeah,” I answered, glancing at the clock on the wall. We still had a couple of hours before the girls were supposed to come back. I felt Vicki move, and I gingerly got to my feet, pulling my boxers and pants up. “I'll be right back,” I said, heading to the bathroom to clean up.

When I finally came back to the living room, Vicki was on the sofa, eating a sandwich and watching the news. My stomach growled. I attempted to walk as steadily as I could but sensed her smirking as I passed her on my way to the kitchen. I fixed myself something to eat and grabbed another beer before joining her.

We didn't talk about it. We just ate, watched television and talked shit about everything else under the sun until Lani and Sonja came back a little after midnight. The girls were all teary as they said their good-byes; Lani and Vicki would be leaving in a couple of days. Vicki and I gave each other daps and the mandatory butch nod before Sonja and I left.

“Did you have a good time?” Sonja asked, as she laced her arm through mine.

“It was a'ight,” I replied.

“It better have been more than
a'ight
since you're walking all funny,” she said, winking at me.

TORI'S SECRET

Andrea Miller

 

 

 

 

As I was bending down to get the tray out of the cupboard, my dress rode even further up my ass and my toes squeezed yet more painfully into my pointy shoes. Standing up and opening the fridge, I noticed different discomforts. In fact, no matter which way I moved the French maid costume was unbearable. Tori'd given it to me for my birthday the week before and when I'd unwrapped it, I balked. I mean, I was femme but this costume crossed a line—and besides, I was tired of getting presents from Tori that were really for her. Somehow, though, here I was in the dinky hat and frilly apron anyway.

Tori was having friends over to watch the hockey game and I could hear them cheering and stomping even with the long hall separating
us. I wished they'd be quieter; it was my name on the lease, after all. Tori had moved in with me a year before, but so far she had weaseled out of making it official.

I cracked open four beers and placed them on the tray. Then I reached up and got Tori's favorite glass out of the top cupboard. She wanted a rum and Coke—a nice tough butch drink to complement the way she could swig it back, the way she could swagger, the way she could pinch my little maid's ass. Boy, did Tori think she was made of metal.

I opened the freezer and grabbed the tray of ice cubes, popped four out and let them clink to the bottom of the glass. Ice: now that was something that could actually spark a good thought about Tori, a memory from the beginning of our relationship. It had been a hot, sticky day and we'd just gotten back from the beach. “Come here, Kelly,” I heard Tori call, but I was in the living room and couldn't tell where her voice was coming from. I walked down the hall and poked my head in the bedroom—no, not there. Then I stepped into the kitchen and suddenly she was behind me with her arm around my waist and her mouth on my neck. Her teeth grazing my skin.

“I'm gonna fuck you so hard and good,” she crooned. “That for the rest of your life, when someone rams their fingers into your cunt, you're gonna think of me; you're gonna wish they were my magic fingers inside you.” Then in one swift motion she yanked my bikini bottoms down and bent me over the table.

I shut my eyes as Tori wedged her thigh between mine, parting my legs. “Look at that little pucker,” she said. “So pink and exposed. Just waiting for some attention. Baby, is this what it needs?”

My asshole felt suddenly like it was on fire and I tried to wriggle free. Tori had a hand on my back, however, and she was pinning me down. “Relax,” she murmured and as my struggling settled into a slight squirm, I realized that what she was rubbing me with was actually not hot, but rather very cold. Ice cold. And as the ice made contact with my skin, it slowly melted, trickling to my pussy and down my thighs. Christ, it felt good. So good—so slick against the gritty grains of sand left over from the beach—that another kind of wetness formed between my legs.

Tori relaxed her hold on my back and bent down, kissed the undersides of my thighs and the globes of each of my buttcheeks. Then, snaking her warm tongue between my crack, she found my asshole and licked me there until I begged her to make me come.

On a certain level I wish that what followed then had been nothing special, that when push came to shove Tori couldn't follow through on her cocksure promise to be better with her hands than anyone else. But the truth is, she
was
that good and I guess that was the reason I couldn't break it off with her even though everything about her pissed me off. And I guess, too, that was why she was always so popular with the ladies—even those she hadn't (or rather hadn't yet) fucked. One look at Tori's trimmed nails and strong hands and women instinctively knew she was going to be good.

I topped off the cup with rum, then headed down the hall—my heels falling silently on the carpet all the way to the living room where Tori and her friends were talking.

“There are different kinds of trust,” Tori said, looking her friend Katie in the eye. And I thought,
Fuck, she's getting deeper with Katie than she ever does with me; maybe she
occasionally says something real when I'm not around.
Tori, after all, hadn't seemed to notice that I'd gotten back from the kitchen.

“It's like this,” Tori continued. “You can trust me with your wallet, but not with your girlfriend.”

Katie visibly bristled and Tori laughed, punching her arm. “Jesus, man, just kidding.” But Katie didn't look comforted and I definitely wasn't. The thing is, I know about jokes. I know that what makes them funny is that on some level at least, there's truth in them.

Tori's laughter slowly faded to a giggle—a little butch giggle she probably would've called a cackle—and everyone else just sat there, looking at the TV or Tori's boots or some other random point. But I don't think any of us really saw anything except a picture of Jacqueline in our minds' eyes. Jacqueline, Katie's girlfriend, with her perfect curves and long dark hair. Jacqueline with her easy smile.

 

Jacqueline wasn't like the others; Tori didn't just fuck her behind my back. Instead, two months after the hockey game, she left me for her. I knew things hadn't been working out, but finding Tori's note on the coffee table just about killed me. There was my pride thinking,
Damn why didn't I leave her first?
There was the eternal pisser that everything always worked out for her, and then there was the fact that made me really raw—that she'd never again bury her fingers in me and then let me suck them off. The force of my reaction, however, went beyond the pain of those three points and crossed into out of control. Sobbing and slamming my fists into the walls, I hurtled back to being four years old—to when my father left. I remembered my mother and me coming home
to find both his note and the plate he'd used for lunch on the kitchen table. And now, twenty-four years later, that plate seemed a terrible kick in the teeth. After years of marriage, my father couldn't even throw away the crust from his own sandwich.

In a similar way, Tori (in her PS) left me with shit to clean up, too. “I'll be by soon to get my stuff,” she wrote. “Maybe you can pack it for me.” And sure enough almost everything Tori owned was still strewn about the apartment. On the closet floor I found one of her T-shirts that still smelled like her—like men's deodorant and cigarette smoke. I put it on and crawled into bed, looking for comfort in the cotton. But the clock ticked on without comfort or sleep. Forgetting I hated Tori, I'd lodge a pillow next to my belly and remember her sexy crooked smile and the deep indent her calve muscles created in her shins. Then I'd kick off the blankets and plot fantastical schemes for revenge.

Three days later I called my friend Tracy. “Tori still hasn't come to get her stuff and I doubt she ever will,” I said, the telephone cord drooping.

“I could see her doing that,” Tracy answered. “She'd think that by not coming, she could avoid conflict.”

“But I need her to come, Tracy. I need resolution. I keep thinking I see Tori and Jacqueline everywhere—on the bus or at the grocery store. I'll never be able to go to Sister's again; that is actually somewhere they might be.”

“You know what?” Tracy said and it sounded like she was tapping her nails on a table. “We need to go to Sister's right now because you need to face this. I'll be by your place in an hour.”

 

Later, I wondered what had possessed me to phone Tracy looking for a shoulder to cry on. She was my best friend but she didn't know how to be a shoulder. Tracy wanted to fix problems—to take action—and once she had a plan, she was an unstoppable force. “It's Tuesday,” she'd assured me, “they won't be there.” But Tracy hadn't remembered there was a drag king show on and that ninety percent of the city's lesbians had bought tickets in advance. So Tori and Jacqueline
were
there—Jacqueline with her hand in Tori's back pocket, her head on Tori's shoulder. Humiliated, I went home before they saw me.

After Tracy left I wriggled out of my dress and unhooked my bra. Then, lifting up my pillow, I found Tori's T-shirt where I'd left it that morning, folded into a neat rectangle. I pulled it over my head as I had every night since finding the note but this time I couldn't catch her scent—just a whiff of my own perfume, which struck me suddenly as smelling sickly sweet. I decided that in order to sleep I'd need something more of Tori, so I opened the closet. My half was lined with dresses on hangers trimmed with lace, while in Tori's half, the few hangers she had were mostly dangling empty and the bulk of her wardrobe was on the floor with the shoes. I rummaged in her heap until I found her khaki cargo pants. Then, putting them on, I checked myself out in the mirror.

At first I looked out of the corner of my eye, imagining it was Tori I was seeing. But finally I looked head-on and what I saw took me by surprise; I actually didn't look bad out of a dress. As my build was smaller than Tori's, her clothes hung differently on me, giving me a wiry look that was wolfishly sexy and compelled me to complete the outfit.

I found one of Tori's ball caps—a black one—and tucked
my blond hair underneath it. I fished her thumb ring out of a bowl of pennies and slipped it on. Then I opened up the bottom drawer where she kept her sex toys and dug through the harnesses and dildos. She'd taken the best of them with her, yet I managed to find a nice thick black cock and a passable harness. I took off the cargo pants and got the goodies strapped on.

Tori and most of the other women I'd ever dated were stone proud, so it had been a while since I'd worn a cock. But I'd always liked the feel of it and even now, when I had no one to thrust it in, I was getting juicy. I pulled the pants over the silicone and admired the bulge between my legs. Then I lightly ran my fingers over that bulge—my gaze fixed on my reflection in the mirror.

Grinding into my hand, I imagined that the cup of my fingers was Tori's cunt, that I was fucking her and that she was loving it—moaning and squirming like a silly bitch. I undid the zipper, let the dick spring free, and then dipped a finger into my pussy to slick the head with my own wetness. Choking the rod, as if doing it hard enough would really make it shoot a load, I felt the rub of the harness working my clit and I cocked my legs wide open. In the mirror I watched my nipples poke hard against Tori's T-shirt and my hips thrust up and up. I let out one deep moan and came simultaneously with my reflection.

 

Two nights later I was decked out in more of Tori's clothes when the doorbell rang.
Shit,
I thought,
I can't answer like this.
How could I explain my queer cross-dressing to any of my friends, to my mother, or—on the off chance that it was her—to Tori? I stumbled out of the jeans, wallet chain clinking
to the ground, and threw on a floral bathrobe. “Hello,” I said, opening the door, a little breathless.

Outside was Katie, running her fingers through her short, sandy hair. “I've been wanting to talk to you,” she said. “But I wasn't sure you'd want to….”

I was surprised Katie'd come because she'd always been more Tori's friend than mine—she and Jacqueline had just been people I'd see at parties or events. But Katie had nothing to worry about. I was very glad to see her; finally I'd have someone to talk to about the breakup, someone who wouldn't get sick of hearing about it. I invited her in and we settled into the living room, her on the sofa and me in the armchair. “I don't get it,” she began. “Things were fine between Jacqueline and me, but it's like women can't resist Tori.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. “It doesn't matter what a woman thinks her type is; she'll fall for Tori anyway.”

“Yeah, Jacqueline likes butch blonds like her, but she usually goes for someone not built quite so much like a brick shit house. You know, someone kind of wiry like me.”

The two of us went quiet for a minute—a real “tear in the beer” bout of silence. “Katie,” I finally said, “I'm being a crap hostess. Do you want a drink?”

“What've you got?” she answered, following me to the kitchen.

I looked in the fridge. Tori's pop had all gone flat, but two of her beers were left. Cracking them both open, I handed one to Katie and noticed she was looking down. Following her gaze, I realized my robe was sliding open, revealing the curve of my breast. I quickly adjusted it and Katie laughed. Then still smiling she pulled me to her, kissing me. Her lips and tongue were hesitant but precise, and I had felt so lonely
with Tori gone that now for a moment I melted into Katie. It didn't feel right, though. I knew I was being pathetic—making out with Tori's leftovers.