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I was fifteen, Sharon a year my senior, both of us "Equestrian Counselors" at a sleep-away camp in the Adirondacks, hired on for the season-trading three months of strenuous, stall-mucking labor for a token salary and the privilege of riding in our spare time. I was tall and timid, with olive complexion and a sun-streaked auburn mane; Sharon small and confident, her face all Irish contrasts, flawless skin creating a pleasing pale distinction to a frame of black hair. Though probably plain to an unbiased eye, to me she was beautiful-everything about her, but especially her shoulders: broadly set for a girl, the angles tanned and rounded like brown eggs, they beckoned to my fingers; never before had I known such a desire to caress.
Deferring to Sharon 's superior knowledge, I followed her lead as we worked in the paddock and barn and took campers on the trail. She seemed happy for my company and assistance, and clearly enjoyed as much as I did the opportunity to discuss bits and saddles, to argue schools of equitation, or simply to exchange horse platitudes about Hanoverians and Thoroughbreds, Arabians and Swedish Warmbloods. I was surprised and gladdened when, little by little, as if she were testing a decision to befriend me, she began to share with me more personal thoughts. Before very long, she confided to me a sad story of alcoholic parents and a childhood of neglect and emotional abuse.
I was deeply gratified that Sharon had made me her confidante, a role which was new in my experience. I was sensible of a need to reciprocate, and perhaps because I had no story to offer that was comparable to hers in pathetic depth (and perhaps, too, because I had an unconscious need to unburden myself), I began to detail every experience or thought that had ever caused me emotional pain or mental turmoil. With almost saintly patience, Sharon listened while I described my insecurities, fretted over my chronic asocialness, agonized over my appearance. Through it all she remained tranquil, sympathetic, uncritical-until I mentioned my obsessive escape to self-pleasuring, whereupon she suddenly raised a quizzical eyebrow.
I was mortified. Had I made an awful mistake? Had zealousness clouded my judgment, leading me to attribute a liberality to my confessor she didn't possess? I felt cold perspiration beading on my forehead as waves of humiliation and dread washed over me. My face must have gone ashen, for Sharon noticed my discomfort and asked if I was feeling sick. I hesitated, unsure if I should explain the true cause of my sudden distress. Something benevolent in Sharon's expression-the genuine concern I saw reflected in her gaze, or a sympathetic inclination I read in the curve of her neck-decided my answer, and in that instant it seemed to me that I was making a great wager, risking a friendship that, although only days old and more incipient than fulfilled, had already become profoundly important to me.
I blurted out the truth: that I feared my admission of excessive masturbation had repulsed her-then awaited her reaction with a nearly unbearable sense of impending loss. Her answer was to gather my head to her breast and start giggling. What was this? I asked myself. Was she making fun of me? But if so, why the tenderness?
Still smiling, Sharon explained that it wasn't my masturbatory habits that had given her pause, only my description of them as "obsessive." Sexual release, she said-whether by self-stimulation or otherwise-had always been as natural to her as breathing. And no one, she added, would call themselves air-obsessed.
"Oxygen, Claire. You look like the type who needs it all the time. I'm going to tell your friends!"
I laughed and hugged her to me, holding back tears of relief as the tension broke.
The next few days at camp would have been perfect but for the rapidity with which perfectly enjoyable days pass. I spent as much time as I could with Sharon: we rode and talked, raked out stalls, fed and watered the horses-the dirtier the job, the more fun we had.
I was aware that my attraction to her was more than platonic. My pulse quickened in her presence; her looks and touches made me wet between the legs, and I understood exactly what that meant. Yet at the same time I had no idea what to do with these feelings, nor was I sure whether they were at all mutual. I certainly had neither the skill nor the confidence to initiate any sort of investigative foray.
On the day before camp was to end, Sharon and I were alone in the barn, working-tidying up for the last time, making an inventory of lost and damaged tack. Outside there poured a steady thin rain, and it seemed as though the day's drear were reflecting the unspoken sadness we felt at our impending separation. Sharon lived far from the city and, somehow, despite our mutual promises to visit and write, there was a tacit understanding between us-a stoical acceptance of probabilities-that we were at the beginning of journeys that would soon take us in very different directions. We knew, in a way that usually only adults know but rarely acknowledge, that our good-byes the next morning would likely be final ones.
Our chores finished, we stood side-by-side, reclining in the manner of horsewomen, with our backs and the flats of one boot against the exposed studs of the barn wall. Sharon lit a cigarette, cadged from one of the maintenance crew, which we silently passed between us until it burned down to the filter. Then, as though punctuating a decision, she crushed out the fag end with the twist of a heel and turned to face me.
"I love you, Claire," she said suddenly, and held my eyes with her own as she draped the back of her hand on my bare shoulder.
Surprised and overwhelmed by this sudden fulfillment of a secret wish, I began to tremble with excitement. For I knew somehow that this was no declaration of chaste love: the spark that flashed when Sharon 's fingers touched my arm was more than electrical static; it conducted an emotional charge as well.
Still shaking with joyous anticipation (and perhaps a little fear), I closed my eyes and moved my head toward Sharon 's in expectation of her gentle kiss. When I leaned forward to meet her lips, however, I encountered only empty space. I looked up to find that instead of offering me her mouth, Sharon had retreated slightly, and now stood watching me with narrowed eyes. Her expression confused me: not because it was malevolent, but because it seemed sly and detached, when every scrap of hearsay relating to love had led me to expect that her face would mirror all the unguarded affection and warmth that I knew was radiating from my own.
Wordlessly, Sharon brought her hands to my waist, then unfastened my belt and tore open the fly of my jeans, popping the buttons from their holes with one sure downward tug. Without a pause she slid my pants and underwear to the floor, inclined her body against me for the first time, then brought a leg up between mine. Pressing her face to my neck, she kissed and then bit sharply into the skin below my ear, a tiny nip crimped off between the edges of incisors, like a cat's hit-and-run love bite, but painful all the same. She sucked avidly at the wounded spot, which assuaged its tenderness but did nothing to reduce my bewilderment.
Suddenly she released her lips from my bruised flesh, and I tensed in reflexive expectation of another attack. But when her mouth bent again to my neck, it was only to whisper in my ear-though what she said was perhaps more scathing and provocative than any physical torment I might reasonably have feared.
"I want to fuck you like a boy."
I was stunned and abashed; my head reeled and I felt as though a fist instead of a heart were pounding within my chest. For several terrible seconds a storm of fear and doubt raged within me-until at last I recalled a certain douceur in Sharon 's intonation, a muted playful note that seemed to mitigate the crude brutality of her harsh and unexpected words.
I calmed myself and managed to regain some perspective on my situation. What made Sharon 's behavior so disturbing, I knew, was that it bore no resemblance to what I'd supposed "sex" would be like; it lay beyond the range of even my imaginative understanding. Yet just as I was reconciling myself to the limits of my comprehension, I was suddenly forced to acknowledge that part of me knew exactly what to make of my condition, for I now realized that without consciously intending it, I had responded to the insistent pressure of Sharon 's leg by parting my thighs.
With her knee wedged firmly against my groin, Sharon raised a hand to my face, then gently swept my eyelids closed with the tips of her outstretched thumb and index finger: the same formal gesture, I recognized with a shiver, that one would use on a corpse.
There was a sudden rush of movement, and in a fraction of a second my hands were seized, slammed together, and immobilized. I opened my eyes to find Sharon spinning loops of leather rein around my wrists with the practiced motions of a rodeo cowboy hobbling an upended calf. Satisfied that my bindings were secure, she took up the free end of the rein, turned this round a nail that projected from the wall above me, and then pulled it until my hands and arms were drawn forcibly up and over my head. All at once I felt her tongue dart across my teeth and lips; desperate for physical contact, I tried to suck it into my mouth, only to be balked at each attempt by its slippery, teasing surface.
Breaking our kiss, Sharon fixed me with the same sly, objectifying squint as before, and I watched as her mouth formed itself into a slight pout, heavy with lower lip, but louche and self-consumed rather than beckoning. She extended her tongue for a moment in order to moisten a middle finger with saliva, and then lowered her hand to my sex. Before I knew what was happening-for there was neither verbal warning nor the least prefatory caress-she thrust a finger deep within me. Strangely, I felt no pain other than a negligible sting; I only knew that my hymen had been torn when a tiny trickle of blood began to cool against the inside of my thigh. With a gloating smile, Sharon raised her stained hand to my face, then put her fingers in her mouth to suck them clean. Her pride at having robbed me of my virginity was obvious, but so far out on my own erotic current had I ridden that I registered her "crime" almost dispassionately, as though it were a bit of third-party gossip, or an event in the life of a fictional character, instead of my own.
After once more kissing my lips-chastely this time- Sharon dropped to her knees before me. Her hands, palms held together like those of a supplicant, slipped between my thighs and then canted from the wrists, coaxing my legs apart. She paused for a moment, staring at my half-exposed genitals as if in contemplative devotion, a votary before the oread's shrine. Then I felt the wet heat of her breath suffuse my vulva, an advance signature of the soothing conflagration that immediately followed when her mouth, feverish to the touch, was pressed to my pussy. After a flurry of dispersed kisses, she took my clitoris between her lips, at first merely holding it with her teeth abutting its tip, like a sunflower seed about to be hulled, then mildly sucking at it, then lolling it about with soft passes of her fluttering tongue. Soon, however, I began to crave bolder attention: for no matter how they were actually intended, Sharon 's delicate pressures and gentle insinuations were becoming a tease. I wanted satisfaction, and notwithstanding my youth and inexperience, I somehow knew that under the present circumstances tenderness-even prolonged tenderness-would never suffice.
I wanted to be devoured, but I'd been ratcheted to such a debilitating pitch of arousal that even had I dared to ask-and such daring was decidedly beyond my power-I would have been unable to articulate my wishes. As if intentionally to compound my frustration, Sharon again pulled away without warning, leaving me to buck my pelvis in a vain attempt to press myself against her mouth, now held just beyond my reach. Then, while looking in my eyes to gauge my reaction, she extended her tongue tip until it barely touched my clitoris, then quickly retracted it away, her face beaming with delight at my travail. I was in an excruciating bind: unable on the one hand to satisfy a white-hot need; precluded, on the other, from releasing any of the crackling tension which gripped my body.
Sharon continued to flick at my clitoris with her tongue. Once or twice when she applied increased pressure, I felt the muscles of my abdomen tense preorgasmically, but she always relented at the very moment when the next touch would have vaulted me into the redeeming abyss. I tried to force the issue by rubbing my thighs together, but this proved ineffectual. A profound despairing shame overtook me: a feeling of humiliation, aggravated by a sense of impending failure at my inability either to satisfy myself or to make Sharon satisfy me.
Apparently sensing the advent of my emotional crisis, she abruptly changed her tack.
"Claire," she asked, "are you okay?"-her voice now filled with loving concern. "What's the matter? I thought you liked what we were doing. I'm so sorry if I made you feel bad... we can stop. Do you want me to stop?"
I couldn't answer her. Although I was dying for release, I worried she might use any reply I gave to further her cruel game of denial, which-notwithstanding her gentle words and soothing tone-I was not convinced had ended.
But then Sharon broke the impasse by posing another question, one that for all purposes was rhetorical since I could respond to it in only one way.
"Do you want me to make you come?" she asked. "Is that it?"
"Oh, yes!" I cried, desperation overcoming prudence and fear.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, Sharon, please-I'm sure. Please make me come, please..."
I knew by her smile, which was both approving and victorious, that I'd at last hit on an adequate reply.
Sharon circled my waist with her hands, then slipped them under my T-shirt. Her fingers strummed across the corrugations of my ribcage before coming to rest on my bare breasts. Finding my nipples, she forsook preliminary caresses, and instead began directly to roll the points between her thumbs and forefingers, applying vicelike pressure until the sensitive flesh was tender-raw and reddened. Both the roughness of the treatment and my tolerance for it surprised me, for I'd no idea as yet that sexual arousal could elevate the threshold of pain. Sharon increased the torsion on my nipples, triggering a pre-critical disgorgement: suddenly my pussy was so wet that for a moment I feared I might have peed myself in my excitement. Smiling with satisfaction, she lowered herself to her knees and began to lap at my vulva, painting it slowly with stripes of saliva, barely touching the tip of her tongue to my clitoris at the end of every upstroke.
This was more than I could stand: I pushed myself down upon her mouth, but this time, thankfully, instead of evading my motions she actively met my thrusts. With her hands on my buttocks, mauling their flesh as she pulled me violently onto her tongue, she at last treated me to that severity which in sexual extremis is the only true kindness. Half a minute more of blissful friction and I came-thrashing, moaning, biting my lips-my pussy shuddering against Sharon's ravenously sucking mouth, all my senses-of time and place, of sound and motion-jumbled and confused, running together like colors, until the border between self and the world dissolved, and for one numinous instant my "I" was absorbed into the purest of imaginable pleasures, and I knew, even before it was over, that I'd tasted something I would no longer be able to live without.
Alma Marceau, the author of Lofting, is a homemaker and entomologist living in Los Angeles, California. When not on the hunt for very small game in the tropical forests of Mexico and Costa Rica, she may be found tending her backyard Weber (she's partial to a hickory/applewood combination for ribs and brisket) or playing hockey (she's capable on defense, but her stickhandling could use some improvement). Lofting is her first work of fiction.
"From Lofting," by Alma Marceau, © 2000 by Alma Marceau, first appeared in Lofting, by Alma Marceau (Studio Loplop Publications, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Studio Loplop Publications.


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The one-cent piece is one of the most maligned of American coins. It weighs in the pocket, and can't-like it used to-buy you gum, parking, or sixty seconds through a Rocky Mountain viewer. It collects in little trays in convenience stores where the clerks can't be bothered to deal with the taxman. The penny still clogs up sink drains, and remains the most frequently swallowed coin of the American toddler. Not surprisingly, along with a clothespin and a poker chip, my sister found three of them in her broken VCR.
Once, minting pennies really was making something out of nothing. But now, inflation has transformed penny manufacturing into making next to nothing out of nothing. Strangely enough, however, people still flock to Denver to see Lincoln 's head handily embossed on a round of copper, as if the minting of money was like watching water being turned into wine.
"Hey, Mickey!" A paper wad hit me in the shoulder. Instantly I turned and conveyed my disapproval to Jameson. "A coupla your kind on Channel One..."
Instinctively, I lowered the volume on my radio and turned my eyes toward the sidewalk monitor. It was one of the six screens I was responsible for. In its infinite wisdom, the U.S. Department of the Treasury had commissioned me to protect America 's diminishing supply of pennies at the U.S. Mint in Denver. In general, tourists are a trustworthy lot, but around money, nefarious minds are always at work.
Levon J. loved to tease me about all the dykes on the security cameras, and over the years he'd gotten almost as good as me at spotting them. The women were just about to step out of frame, into the dead space between One and Two, but the admission line had slowed. On the control panel, I toggled the zoom lens for a closer look.
Pia Sheppard was suddenly in front of me in high relief. I recognized the layered brush of her graying blonde hair, since I've watched her a lot from the back, playing darts at Joker's on Thursday nights. Her biker jacket was open and she was laughing, and unself-consciously holding the hand of a woman I didn't recognize.
"Bingo," I muttered under my breath. I knew all of Pia's friends, I thought. "Must be an out-of-towner."
She was shorter than Pia, but not by much, and her dark hair was cut in a blunt pageboy. She was wearing dark glasses and a long trenchcoat. It was precisely the sort of disguise we'd been warned to watch out for at security school. I'd have suspected a sawed-off shotgun under the khaki had she not had both hands where I could see them. The two women were at the end of the tour line and I knew they wouldn't be joined by any other curiosity seekers for the day. They'd caught the last tour, the 2:45.
Over the stairway to the gallery in the stamping room, Channel Two picked them up again, lingering at the rail and pointing at the machines. Despite the absence of audio, I recognized from the sway of their shoulders that the rhythm of industry was having an effect on them.
They stood away from other tourists, and Maggie Holowaczyk, the docent, was preoccupied with the questions of some precocious eight-year-old triplets at the head of the small crowd. But they got my attention.
Even with their backs to the camera I could see that Pia had her arm inside the stranger's coat, perhaps jammed down the back of her coffee-colored cargo pants, fingering an elastic band of underwear, tracing along a hip, already wet herself. The girlfriend had her head turned slightly, and I caught the warning, impish gaze that asked, Just what do you thinly you're doing?
"Yo, Jameson," I said loudly.
I heard my buddy twist in his chair. "What?"
"Check this out."
Pia Sheppard is the most frustrating and exciting lover I've ever had, and I've had plenty. It's not that I'm loose, but fucking is an art, and I've got a creative side. I like the chase, the seduction, the tease, the bite.
It's not serious between us.
It started about three months ago, one night after my team was routed by hers at the dartboard; I bought her an Anchor Steam. That was the first clue that she had some class. At first I had my doubts about whether or not I was really attracted to her-she's not my usual type. She shoots darts in silk blouses and sexy heels; her skirt usually matches the jacket she's discarded. But it's just drag for work, she assures me. She's a tour guide on one of the buses that run out regularly to the foothills of the Rockies.
She didn't resist my invitation to come home with me that night, and I fucked her for hours, with my mouth and hands, on top and underneath and from behind. She came in copious, creamy shudders, biting her lip, or mine, or gasping a throaty, "Don't stop," until she passed out in the breaking dawn. I hadn't let her reciprocate. I'm a patient sort, and a little too butch to let down my guard early in the game.
In the succeeding weeks, however, she got more assertive and I let her, but I couldn't orgasm to save my life.
Channel Three caught them in the stairwell between stamping and sorting. They'd fallen a good ways behind their group, and Pia took advantage. She glanced furtively over her shoulder to make sure there was no one behind them. The lover's coat was open, and the front of her shirt unfolded over two of the most spectacular breasts I had ever seen. With a lascivious slowness designed to torture, Pia lowered her open mouth to a sallow nipple and hungrily stuffed the softness in. Pia pressed the woman's shoulders against the wall and sucked at her like an angry stoat, denied enough. A hand raked through her hair, and her head moved to the other breast.
"Damn," breathed Jameson. He was standing behind my chair. He dug his hands deep into his pants pockets and fingered his change. "Is she going to do her right there?"
What the fuck was she doing? Maybe I shouldn't have been jealous-like I said, things between us aren't serious. But somehow, as I watched her saunter in the shadow off Camera Three, leaving her sweet young thing buttoning up and panting and saying something, I wondered what her agenda was. Then she was there again, grasping the woman's arm with an assured swagger, and once again, disappearing into the darkness.
There's dead space between Three and Four, a two-minute passage through the stacked pallets of coin bags and copper rods, down from the gallery and then onto the shop floor, where the sewing machines zip up five-dollar pouches. The tour group was already three minutes into the lecture by the time Pia and company emerged from the hallway. Pia had positioned herself so that the camera caught her dead on, but if she knew it was there she ignored it. Her back was turned three-quarters of the way away from her group, and she leaned in to whisper in her friend's ear.
Then she looked up, straight at the camera, expressionless, as she dropped a hand into her crotch, and she slowly massaged the inside of her thigh, as if she was packing. I watched her mouth the words: "I'm going to fuck you hard..."
Behind me, Jameson groaned. "Damn, this works for me." I heard him unbuckle his belt and quickly slip it out of his belt loops.
I rolled my eyes, but gestured toward the door. "Don't look at me to help you out, partner," I said. "Lock up if you are going to get off."
I had to admit, I was pretty fucking horny myself.
I looked back to the monitor. Pia had stepped in close to her new lover, as if a conversation of deep importance was about to take place. From my vantage point, I could see that she had unzipped her jeans, and that she was guiding her girlfriend's hand into her panties.
That's when I lost it, to be honest, because Pia has large hands. I find that moment-when my partner's finger just brushes the crease of my dripping vulva-to be excruciatingly erotic, and I could see that Pia was getting exactly such treatment. Pia likes to be in me, with one finger or four, teasing and tugging, pushing hard and slow, especially when I am standing. I like it, too, until I can't stand anymore.
Jameson had had the decency to position himself a few feet away and behind me, and I heard his breath start to deepen and huff as he started to whack himself off. I have little interest in cocks, so I ignored him. I heard him mumble, Shit, she's in her pussy, and speed up his own action.
I moved to the edge of my own chair and unzipped my khakis and jammed my hand into my slippery slit. I wasn't going to waste any time, so I started my rhythmic thrum and felt my heart start to rev.
Pia's gal pal looked nervous. The look on Pia's face was hard, determined, and she shifted her weight on her feet, and I felt the squeeze of her pelvic muscles on my own fingers. A hand found an upper arm, a grasp I knew. Then the girfriend withdrew, holding her sex hand awkwardly until Pia lifted it and licked her own juice from her fingers.
The tour group had started to move again, the collective rumble of slow walkers turning in unison, and Pia zipped up. She was shaking a little, not with any kind of nervousness, but with the anticipatory kind of tremor that lets you know there's more to come.
At Channel Five I was hot, but Pia was nowhere to be seen. In shipping, the tourists crowded around the forklift track, as pallets of coins were stabbed and lifted, until the little trucks were nearly tipping over. Sweat ran down the nape of my neck and behind my ear. I was on the plateau, abuzz with hot engorgement, taking my strokes in practiced, long pleasure, not wanting to rush.
I scanned the screen, wishing I could see Pia, as if she might also be able to see me, and know what I look like on the veritable edge of coming.
The night before, with her tongue inside me, I had been begging, willing my cunt to swallow her, hoping that the pull and suck would never stop. But it did, and I hadn't finished. Pia had dressed in the semi-darkness, silently.
"Don't be angry," I'd said.
"I'm not," she'd answered too quickly. "I'm not sure why you're holding back."
"You can't really think that."
She shrugged. "Maybe it's me." A moment. A stare that could kill. "But I've never had this problem before."
What could I say? She slammed the front door as she went out.
I'd lost all sense of caring where she'd gone when Six picked them up in the lobby, lingering over the souvenirs and display cases of Penny Anomalies: Coins Gone Wrong. There, some penny sculptures and paper-thin coins made up a sort of Ripley's Believe It or Not of the weird and wonderful of Centiana.
I was solidly perched on my own three fingers, mixing and churning and waiting.
Pia looked pissed. She gestured at her girlfriend, sullen and threatening. The crowd had pretty much dispersed, and the lobby guard was trying not to listen in to whatever angry words were being exchanged.
I was seconds away from coming. If only Pia knew.
But suddenly, the girlfriend had hold of Pia's jacket, jerking it, and Pia reeled, turning toward the camera, and her hand went back, calculated her aim, and smacked the stranger's jaw in a hard, open slap. The girl staggered back a pace and jostled a display, knocking a jar of pennies to the ground in a shattering rain of copper.
The camera caught Pia in a sly smile, and I came all over myself.
Andi Mathis is the pseudonym of a New York academic. She is single, butch, and wears a leather jacket. Her ambitions include a successful novel, teaching in China, and raising a morally straight son. She likes women, but not cats. Her work has appeared in many lesbian publications.
"Penny Candy," by Andi Mathis, © 2000 by Andi Mathis, first appeared in Exhibitions: Tales of Sex in the City, edited by Michele Davidson (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.

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Utila's just a flyspeck on the map of the world. It lies right off the Honduran coast, one of the Bay Islands, a place settled by pirates who braved the seas for gold.
These days, the island's wealth arrives with young divers who come to explore the coral reef. These days, visitors don't arrive by frigate; they fly in from La Ceiba on small planes, planes with warning signs written in Russian, decommissioned junkers from Aeroflot or someplace. Every time the plane dips its wings toward the Caribbean 's blue, the passengers hold their breaths and pray. I know I did. Except for the praying part.
I'd been to Guatemala already, spent a full-moon night amongst the pyramids of Tikal, communing with ghosts, getting over a love affair I never should have allowed to drag me down. I'd submerged myself in Kate, her desires and her life and most of all her needs. And after two years of misery, I'd discovered it was a mistake. She was a mistake, my job was a mistake, my life was going nowhere. I decided to skip the worst of a Philadelphia winter and head to Central America to lick my wounds.
The flimsy little plane managed to touch down on Utila's grassy airstrip, just beside a crystal-blue harbor. It was only a short walk to the main street. Quaint as hell, wooden buildings, tropical paradise. Dive shops. Restaurants. Lots of small hotels. Hotels without a single room for rent.
Semi-exhausted from dragging my backpack up and down the street in a fruitless search for a place to stay, I collapsed into a tattered wicker chair in the lobby of Lucie's Hotel.
"Hey. You look exhausted."
I looked up. He was dark and slightly stocky, Greek background maybe, wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a raggedy T-shirt.
"I am. You know of anyplace to stay? I'll be damned if I can find a vacant room."
"You should have caught the earlier flight over."
"Now you tell me." I grimaced.
"Listen. There's a second bed in my room, if you don't snore. You'd be welcome to spend the night. I'll just have to check it out with the management."
"Lucie?" I asked.
"There is no Lucie. Never has been, I hear." He extended his hand. "My name's Aaron."
"Thom," I said. "Pleased to meet you. How long you been here?"
"A while. Great place to dive."
"So I hear."
"Water's so clear you can always see the bottom. All the way down."
I spent the afternoon settling in, exploring the little town. Half the families in town had the same surname, Harrison. And half the businesses were dive shops.
It was a great place for scuba, all right. Or at least a bargain; prepurchasing ten boat dives brought the price down to a third of what it would have cost Stateside. I found a likely looking dive shop, the Neptune, checked it out, and paid for ten dives, enough to keep me busy during my planned week on the island.
I was at the far end of the main street when the sky began dumping rain. Everything was getting that wet-tropics smell as I jogged back toward the hotel.
I made it back, soaked to the skin, and went to my new room and changed. I was sitting on the porch overlooking the harbor, listening to the rain hammering on the corrugated metal roof, when a blond woman came up the stairs. She wasn't bad looking-a little plump, maybe, but she had nice breasts, and her nipples showed through her rain-damp T-shirt.
"Hello," she said, her accent Scandinavian. "You just arrived?"
"Yeah, this morning." I was thinking about how one of those nipples would feel in my mouth. I hadn't had a woman since Kate had left me.
"You stay at this hotel?"
"Yes," I said, "I'm doubling up with a man named Aaron."
She made a strange face.
"Anything wrong?"
"No, it's just that I've heard..." Another mysterious look. "Never mind."
We chatted for a while about approximately nothing, the way that strangers on the road do. I kept glancing at her tits, I guess.
I finally decided to pop the question. "Are you doing anything tonight? Want to go for a drink?"
"I should tell you," she said, "that I am a lesbian."
And that was that.
That night I went for dinner at a restaurant down the road, the food tasty but served at a snail's pace. It was Saturday, so the town's two discos were cranking up their sound systems, blatting bad music into the balmy tropical night. I popped into one, and by the time I'd finished my first rum and Coke, had decided it really wasn't my scene.
I headed back to the hotel and curled up in bed. I'd had to get up early to make the trip from the mainland of Honduras, so I drifted off quick.
Something woke me up.
I looked around. In the dim blue moonlight, I could see that my roommate Aaron had returned. He was sprawled on his back in the other bed, a few feet away in the small room. The sheets were tangled around his feet. His hairy body was naked, and he was jerking off.
I hadn't watched guys jack off since Boy Scouts, and I was kind of curious. Careful not to draw his attention, I watched Aaron as he stroked and squeezed his dick. His technique, I noticed, was very different from mine; I tend to really pound away. He was more poetic, slow, like it was happening underwater.
I felt, to my surprise, my own cock getting hard. Not embarrassment, not shame, just surprise. I would have reached down to my crotch, but I was afraid he'd see me. So I lay there scarcely breathing for three, four, five minutes as he played with himself. Every once in a while he'd take his hand away to get more spit, and I could see his cock was very hard, not very big, and gleaming wet.
Eventually he started writhing and arching his back, moaning loudly enough to wake me up, if I'd been asleep. With a muffled groan, he oozed a big load of cum on his belly, then wiped it up with his hand and licked it off his palm. He pulled the covers up, rolled over with his back toward me, and seemed to go to sleep.
The next morning I woke up in a sticky little puddle. I never had jacked off the night before, but my cum had made an escape anyway.
Aaron was already gone. I was up early enough to go on a morning boat dive. I grabbed a cup of coffee and a slice of coconut bread at a nearby bakery. I thought about the night before, then tried not to. I figured it wouldn't happen again. I slurped down the last of the coffee and headed for the Neptune Diver Shop.
Even without reservations, I had no trouble getting a place on the morning boat. I pulled on the rented dive gear, the wetsuit tightly hugging my body, grabbed my two full tanks, and headed for the dock. There were four other customers on the boat: a Canadian married couple, and a dreadlocked blond surfer from Southern California with his purple-haired girlfriend. The dive-master, Berndt, briefed us as we headed southwest of the island to Stingray Point.
The Canadians had just been PADI certified, so we took it fairly easy on the first dive, only heading down to thirty feet or so. The water was glorious, the coral beautiful, the reef fish streaking colorfully around our group.
It had been months since I'd last been diving, and now I remembered why I loved it so: the astonishing peace of the liquid world, the feeling of being where people weren't meant to go, the cold isolation of breathing the air of life through a mouthpiece gripped between my teeth. The beauty of the reef system, which in Honduras is pretty damn overwhelming. Lettuce coral, brain coral, pillar coral, elkhorn, and star. And the schools of angelfish, parrot fish, chromis. The second dive, at Jack Neil Point, was just as nice, even nicer as big sea turtles swam amongst our little group. When Berndt led us back to the boat, I was sorry to leave the water. I was sorry to get back to life.
But it was time to head back to shore.
Two dives a day are usually plenty for me. I had a lunch of fried fish at a little place run by two sisters, then went back to sit on the hotel porch and read and catch up on writing postcards. People came and went, sometimes making small talk. I wondered where the Scandinavian lesbian was; I would have liked to ask her more about my roommate, but she never appeared.
It was late afternoon before I saw Aaron. He headed up the stairs and climbed into the hammock suspended from the porch.
"Having fun?" he asked.
"Yeah, went on a couple of dives this morning."
"Explored the island yet? Out by Pumpkin Hill?"
"Nah," I said. "I figure there'll be plenty of time for that. I'm feeling really lazy today."
"We should go out there sometime," Aaron said, "you and I."
"Uh, okay," I agreed.
"Thought about dinner yet?"
"It's early."
"Yeah, but the service is so slow. And sometimes if you don't get to a place early, they run out of whatever you want."
I looked out at the Caribbean, ripples glistening in sunlight. "That's the thing about coming to a place like this. You gotta remain flexible. How long you been here?"
"I'm going to go lie down in the room. Come get me when you're starting to get hungry. After dinner we can go get drunk at the Bucket of Blood."
Dinner was good, the conch soup excellent-though, as Aaron had warned me, the service was glacially slow, even worse than the night before. By the time we'd paid the check, it was well into the night. Over at the Bucket of Blood, we drank rum and Cokes till I had trouble seeing straight. The dreadlocked surfboy was there, looking glum. I wondered where his purple-haired girlfriend had gotten to. For someone who'd been on the island a while, Aaron didn't seem to know anyone there. Which was okay; he was friendly enough, friendlier as the night wore on and we grew drunker. I kind of liked him.
When I'd had enough of cheap rum, strangers, and endless replays of Bob Marley's Greatest Hits, I suggested we turn in.
We staggered down the street, along with a lot of other soused tourists and a few semi-sober locals, and stumbled up the stairs to our room. Aaron threw himself onto his bed.
"Oh man," he said. He pulled his T-shirt over his head. "I'm ready to pass out," he said. His torso was fleshy, generously covered with dark hair. He began to unzip his khaki shorts.
"Want me to turn out the light?" I asked. "So you can get some sleep?"
"No, leave it on." He was down to his briefs now. He began rubbing his crotch through the white cotton. I just lay there watching him as he peeled off his underwear and started stroking his cock. He'd thrown his near leg over the edge of the bed so I had a view of his balls and the hair between his legs.
"Oh man," he repeated. His dick was hard.
And so was mine.
I looked him in the face. He looked back with deep, dark eyes and nodded.
I reached down and unzipped my shorts. I wasn't wearing underwear; the flesh of my swelling cock was hot to the touch. I pulled my shorts down and my shirt up, grabbed my dick, and started playing with the foreskin.
We lay there side-by-side, a couple of feet apart, two almost-strangers, masturbating.
I kept glancing from his eyes to his cock, then back to his face again. As interesting as it was to see him jacking his dick, it was more intense to watch his face. I'd seen women get off, of course, but I'd never watched another man while he had sex. I submerged myself in his eyes as he slowly brought himself close to orgasm.
I wanted to touch him, to feel what another man's cock was like, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. And I was half-afraid and half-hoping he'd get up, come over to me, touch me. But he didn't. So we just lay there, hands working our own hard-ons, until he nodded and said, "Now?"
"Now," I said.
He looked so beautiful when he came. I wondered if I looked that way, too. I glanced down; the hair on his belly was strewn with ropes of cum.
"Goodnight," he said.
"I've... I'm... gonna go clean up, take a shower."
"Don't move," he said. He swiveled himself out of bed, knelt on the floor beside me. He leaned over my torso and gently lapped up my cum, his tongue moving over my belly and chest. I wanted to grab his head, part of me did, and guide him down to my dick. But I didn't.
When he was done, he wordlessly got into bed and curled up under the thin bedcover, his back toward me.
After a while he spoke. "You can turn out the light now," he said.
The first thing Aaron said to me when I woke up was, "Fuck the boat dives. Let's go snorkeling out by the airport."
"Sure," I heard myself saying. We slipped into Speedos and T-shirts and, grabbing our fins and masks, headed out.
It was a shortish way down the street to the landing field. As Aaron and I wordlessly walked side by side in the morning sun, I kept thinking back to the night before, the sight of his cock, the feeling of his mouth on my flesh. I looked over at his face, then down to his hairy legs. Despite myself, I felt myself getting hard. I shifted the fins to in front of my crotch, but Aaron caught on and chuckled.
"Don't worry about it," he said. "Happens to the best of us."
Beyond the rocky shoreline, the warm Caribbean stretched forever. Nobody else was around. We adjusted our masks and snorkels, pulled on our fins, and walked backward into the gently lapping waves.
Even in the shallows, the waters were alive with riotously colored fish. Careful not to cut ourselves on coral, we swam a little ways out, breathing through our little plastic tubes. The ocean bottom receded with every stroke. Sea anemones wavered in the currents, feeding on things too tiny to see.
I felt Aaron's hand stroking my side. For a second, I wanted to push it away. Instead I hung there, floating on the surface of another world, while his touch explored my flesh. His fingers moved down to the waistband of my Speedos, then over my ass. Kate had never touched me that way, no woman had. He slipped his fingers beneath the thin fabric, touched the flesh of my butt. His fingertips moved toward my ass crack. With a kick of my fins, I jetted myself away from him.
I wanted not to be feeling those things, I wanted my cock not to be throbbing in my bathing suit. I wanted to look at the pretty coral and the pretty fish and forget that I'd ever known Aaron. Instead, I floated in the crystal-clear embrace of the water until he caught up with me. I let him touch me again, touch my chest, my belly, run his hand across my crotch, my hard cock, peel down the front of my suit, grab me, my flesh, my dick. He tugged my suit down to around my thighs and dove down beneath me. He pulled at my feet till I was vertical in the water, then surfaced for a breath and dove down again. Looking down, I saw him spit out the mouthpiece of his snorkel. Exhaling a trail of bubbles, he wrapped his mouth around my dick, his tongue even wetter than the water. The vagaries of buoyancy dragged us upward till I was on my back, Aaron floating between my thighs, his face now above waterline, breathing through his nose, his mouth still in possession of my cock.
"Jesus, Aaron, somebody might see us," I said, and as if on cue, the drone of the morning plane came over the horizon.
He took his mouth from my hard-on, which flopped onto my belly, little waves lapping at my dickflesh.
"Let's go back to the hotel room, then. Unless you're afraid."
"Let's just go back. Go back and do nothing," I said. "Give me time. I've gotta think."
The walk back was awkward. When we got to the hotel, Aaron kept on walking down the street. I went up to our room, took a cold shower, then went out to stare at the sea.
As I sat on the porch, the Scandinavian girl came up to me.
"You've been spending time with him?"
"Aaron?" I asked.
"Ja," she said.
"Just what do you have against him, anyway?" I was sure she could see into me, my dirty secret. I was sure she knew.
"He's no good. Dangerous."
"How the hell would you know?"
"He used to be my boyfriend." Her voice was tired, resigned.
"But you're a lesbianl"
"Yes, mostly, but Aaron and I lived together in Chicago. We came here to Central America together, last month. He used to be my boyfriend."
"Until?" I asked.
"You'll see," she said.
I was lying on my bed, beneath an open window. There must have been a power failure. The electricity didn't work. The fan didn't move. Even with the window open, it was hot and stifling. I didn't care. I lay there, thinking about the shipwreck of my life.
Aaron still hadn't returned when the wind picked up, blowing dark clouds over the island. And then, with that suddenness of tropical rainstorms, it was pouring, coming down in sheets. I could have reached up and shut the window. I didn't.
The rain blew in, soaking me, my clothes, the bed. I didn't care, I didn't give a fuck about anything. I didn't have Kate, I hated my job, I hated my life. I was forced to admit it: the only thing that had given me real pleasure for a long while-well maybe not pleasure, but was interesting at least-was Aaron, being with Aaron.
"Enough time?"
Aaron was standing in the open doorway, sopping wet.
"Huh?" I said.
"You had enough time to think about things, to decide}" There was the slightest trace of a sneer.
I nodded. He walked over to my bed, stood in front of me, and pulled down his wet Speedos. His dick wasn't hard, not yet, and somehow that made it all the nicer. I could understand now how a woman could see a threat in a hard-on. I could understand how nothing matters, really. I reached for him.
Our wet bodies slid over each other. His dick was hard now, and mine was, too, and we kissed, the first time I'd ever kissed a man, our tongues like dolphins or something, our breaths inter-twined. When our faces parted, I asked a question. "Now what?"
Aaron slid down, over the rainsoaked sheets, as thunder drummed outside. I expected him to suck my cock. But he pushed my legs up and slid his face down to my ass. His tongue dove inside me. I was ashamed. But my penis was stiff.
Am I a faggot now? I wondered, as he licked my ass, kissing, tonguing, like some strange fish swimming where it didn't belong. I heard a moan, my own, above the thunder. And then lightning. And his mouth moved to my balls, licking, sucking till I began to ache.
"My cock, please. My cock," I begged him.
"Suck me," Aaron said.
"Me suck you?"
"Who else?"
"Yes," I said. "I will," I said, then was sorry I'd spoken. But he was already moving over me, twisting his body so his crotch was against my face. The head of his cock, a deep, angry pink, darker than mine, was inches from my mouth. What the hell. I opened wide.
It wasn't bad, sucking cock. A little strange, maybe, but then it got good. I was hungry for Aaron, for his small, hard cock jutting from a bush of curly black hair. I was hungry for him and I gulped him down, as far down my throat as I could without gagging. He pumped into me, rocking back and forth the smallest bit, never leaving the back of my mouth. Rain was hitting my face. I grabbed his ass, held on tight. Rain was hitting my face.
I couldn't breathe. I tried to, through my nose, but it wasn't enough. I wondered if anybody had ever choked to death sucking cock.
"Let me loose, Thom. Back off, you fuck," Aaron said.
And he pulled his dick out of my mouth and slid down till he was lying on top of me, two men's bodies, wet, face-to-face, dick to dick. He kissed me. Harder, longer than before. I felt his hands go around my neck. If lightning had crashed just then, it would have been too melodramatic. Lightning crashed.
His lips were still on mine as he squeezed down, gently on my windpipe, harder on the arteries on the sides of my neck. I should have been scared. He squeezed harder. I was all of twenty-eight years old, maybe about to die, and I didn't mind. I wanted him to keep squeezing. Harder. Harder. He did.
I was straining to breathe. Trapped blood was throbbing in my brain. I was still aware enough to feel our two hard cocks rubbing together, wet. I wanted him to fuck me. He wasn't going to; he was going to choke me. Things looked darkish red, little spots dancing before my eyes. I was out of air. I reached for his wrists, intending to pull his hands away. I grabbed them, all right, but I drew them inward instead. The thunder was close now, rattling everything. I was making little mewling noises, hoarse, tiny gasps. My mouth opened wide for his tongue. I wanted to unhinge my jaw for him, a boa constrictor swallowing poisoned prey.
Things became even darker, dark as night. It was nice. I could feel my eyes bulging out of my skull. I threw my head back, gave my throat to him.
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Oh man!"
I thought of the blond dyke with the big tits. I had been warned.
Everything went black.
When I came to, struggling to the surface of consciousness, Aaron was lying beside me on the wet bed. My belly was spattered with ropes of cum.
"I been unconscious for long?" I asked.
"No, not long."
"And whose cum is this? Yours? Mine?"
"Does it matter?" Aaron asked.
"To me it does, yeah." Though I'm not sure I could have put into words just why it was important.
"Both of ours," said Aaron. "You came while I was strangling you."
"Really?"
"Yeah, and so did I." He didn't quite smile.
/ wish he'd have fucked me, I was thinking. At least then I'd know for sure what it feels like.
"I guess we should close that window now, let the room dry off," I said.
But my bed was still damp when nighttime came around. When it came time to go to sleep, I crawled into Aaron's bed and lay there shivering beside him. He didn't say a word, just wrapped his arm around my neck and gave it a squeeze. My cock got hard.
It was still hard when I woke up.
The previous winter, Kate and I had gone cross-country skiing out West. I'd gotten hold of some cocaine, and we decided it would be fun to ski while we were buzzed. We skied five or six miles to the rim of a valley; the last few hundred yards to the overlook was an icy mess. On the way back, the coke started wearing off. We were in the middle of nowhere when a snowstorm hit. One of my gloves had started coming apart; the snow made its way through the unraveled fingertip, bringing a cold that led to numbness. The storm rose to near white-out conditions. I was exhausted and lost and all I wanted to do was give up. I started to whimper. I told Kate that all I wanted, all I could do was to sit down in the snowy field and wait to die, to freeze, to melt in the next spring's thaw. But she, unsympathetic, had skied on ahead and I had no choice but to follow. Somehow we made it back to the lodge.
I thought about that ski trip on the boat the next morning. Aaron had decided to come along and dive, and as I looked at him I remembered that snowy, helpless feeling.
The boat was heading to the north side of Utila, to the dive site near Blackish Point. The seas were a little rough, so to take my mind off the sway of the boat, I decided it was time to ask.
"I was talking to this blond girl, says she's your girlfriend. Is she?"
Aaron's handsome face battened down. "She's a bitch. A crazy cunt."
I kept quiet after that.
We reached the Point and the boat dropped anchor. The other divers on the boat weren't very experienced, so Aaron and I had talked the divemaster into letting us go off on our own. We double-checked each other's equipment, let some air into our BCD vests, held our hands over our masks, and launched ourselves backward over the side of the boat.
There's something about the shock of first hitting the water that never becomes routine. It's the feeling that your equipment, so heavy on land, has become effortlessly light. The sudden submersion, the bubbles rising from the regulator, the commitment to enter a whole other world for a while.
We made the "OK" sign to one another and let the air out of our vests, sinking down into blue space. Everything was beautiful down below. The choppiness of the surface subsided into a deep, wet calm. We swam side by side, Aaron and I. Schools of fish swam this way and that, reversing direction en masse. The reef was alive, all around us. There was nothing to break the silence but the bubbling sound of my own breath. Everything was beautiful. Everything.
I looked over at Aaron, made the "OK" sign again and got one in return. He gestured to go deeper down. With every exhalation I sank a little further, till we hovered over a patch of sandy bottom. The usual feelings of diving-being far beneath normal existence, somehow free of gravity, totally in my body yet really nowhere at all. I looked at my depth gauge: ninety feet.
He gestured me to sit on the bottom. I couldn't see a reason not to, so I knelt on the sea floor, stirring up a little sandstorm. He came over and knelt in front of me, so close that our knees were touching. He laid a hand on my shoulder and we stared at one another through our masks. I could feel my dick getting hard inside my wetsuit.
Then Aaron grabbed my air hose. I took a big gulp of air. He tugged at the mouthpiece. I let him. I let him pull it out of my mouth. I held my breath.
/ could die right now, I thought. // would take so little. Just allowing my mouth to open, letting the ocean rush in.
Why was I doing this, trusting him, letting myself believe he'd give the regulator back to me and let me suck in life again?
Letting go. Right here, right now, my last moment. The end.
My lungs began to ache for air.
Relief. The salty water, salty as my blood, bringing an end, a darkness, maybe peace.
I thought of the moment when he'd put his hands around my neck and squeezed. The girl with the big tits was right. Aaron was bad news.
His face would be the last thing I'd see. He would watch me shoot upward into blue shafts of sunlight, only to thrash, relax, and come to floating rest.
I looked upward. The surface was so far above. It might as well have been as far as the stars.
I should do it, I thought. It would be so easy.
My body was rebelling. I needed air. Fuck this shit, fuck Aaron and the places he took me and my hard dick and Kate and my life. Fuck it all. I needed air.
/ could die right now.
I grabbed for his hand. He let go of the regulator, which floated upward, out of reach. Through the glass of our faceplates, our eyes conveyed some primal, elemental message. Older than civilization: animal trust and betrayal. I made the "Out of Air" sign, fingers slashing across my windpipe. I was going to die. He would never let me breathe.
It would be so easy.
He blinked once and reached down for his spare mouthpiece, the "octopus." Gently, he held the back of my head with one hand and guided the octopus toward my mouth with the other. I opened my lips, he placed it between my teeth, I clamped down, greedy, breathing again.
He gestured to rise. I could have grabbed at my regulator hose, replaced my own mouthpiece. Instead, I remained breathing through his spare, the two of us sharing the same air as he put his arm around me and, locked in a wet embrace, we rose slowly toward the surface. When it came time for our decompression stop, he put both arms around me and hugged. Then he reached for his mouthpiece and his octopus, gently pulled the regulators from both our mouths, and kissed me, parting my lips with his tongue just enough for a trickle of salt water to rush in.
The he replaced his mouthpiece, I got my own regulator into my mouth, and we rose toward the surface, toward life.
I needed to go for a walk. I'd come to Utila to escape. To escape my life, but my life had followed me, hitched a ride with me on that Russian plane. If I'd come to Utila to simplify my existence, I'd come to the wrong place. Somewhere out in the middle of the sea, I was walking down the same small street again and again, wanting there to be somewhere to get lost.
I figured I'd finally hike out to Pumpkin Hill. I never got there. The Scandinavian girl was coming up the street, a bag of groceries in one hand, She placed herself in my path.
"The supply boat has come in, and the grocery store has now more food again. Look." She held the grocery bag toward me.
Jesus, I thought, is this woman everywhere? And then I realized it wasn't just her; since I got to Utila, I'd been seeing the same faces again and again. Only Aaron was hard to find, always disappearing.
"So what," the girl asked, "have you learned?"
What a fucking weird question. Or maybe she'd been reading my mind.
"Huh?" I asked.
"About Aaron. Have you found out?"
"Found out what?" I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to think about it, about Aaron, about me. I wanted to relax, let the currents carry me, watch my thoughts swim off like a school of bright, mindless fish.
"How do you think someone gets that way?" she asked, an odd look in her very blue eyes.
Fuck you, I wanted to say.
Instead I said, "Excuse me. I've got to go." And I turned around and headed back to the hotel, before she could catch up. Maybe Aaron would be there.
When he fucked me that afternoon, he didn't use a condom.
"I'm okay," he said.
"Trust me," he said.
I did.
It didn't feel quite like I expected. A little pain at first, which was to be expected, and then just a funny, full feeling. Once he got going, though, once I relaxed, once he was all the way in, it all changed to pleasure. Sweat was glistening on his chest, dripping off the hairs of his belly.
I wanted him to choke me again, but I didn't dare ask him. I lost my hard-on, from all the new sensations, but that didn't matter much. His pleasure was all that counted. I wanted to be nothing. When he shot off inside me, I hoped I could have been anyone. Even the girl from Scandinavia.
"Stay inside me," I gasped. "Please stay inside me." And I jacked off, getting hard fast, feeling an intense longing, a need to spew salty cum everywhere. It didn't take long for me to shoot. Jism arced all the way up to my face.
We showered. There wasn't much to say. I went off to find us a snack. In the heat of the late afternoon. Utila's main street was nearly empty. Walking felt strange; I could still feel him in my ass. It was as if my body was carrying some barely concealed secret, something about being looser, more open. I was glad there were so few people out; discovery would be less likely.
When I returned to the room, every trace of Aaron was gone. No note, nothing. I felt resigned, then curious. I ran from the hotel, heading for the airstrip. As I got there, the last plane of the day was warming up on the runway, pointed toward the mainland. As it taxied down the field, I thought I saw Aaron's face at a window, looking toward me, but I couldn't be sure. I stood there, stupidly, until the sputtering roar of the plane faded away over the deep blue sea.
When I got back to the hotel, there was a boy with a backpack at the front desk, kind of scrawny, but cute. His neck was thin.
"You look exhausted," I said to him.
"Know of anyplace to stay?" he asked. "Every hotel seems to be full up."
"There's a second bed in my room," I told him. "You'd be welcome to spend the night."
I looked down at his legs, fuzzy with brown hair, then back up at his face. It would be so easy. "You'd be welcome to spend the night," I repeated.
I caught a trace of motion from the corner of my eye; the Scandinavian girl with big tits was standing there, staring straight at me.
"Hey," the boy said, "that'd be great." So easy.
"This way," I said, and we headed up the stairs.
Simon Sheppard is the author of Hotter Than Hell and Other Stories, and is the coeditor, with M. Christian, of Rough Stuff: Tales of Gay Men, Sex, and Power, and the forthcoming Rough Stuff 2. His work has appeared in more than fifty anthologies, including two previous Best American Erotica volumes and nearly every edition of Best Gay Erotica. Currently he's hard at work on a nonfiction book, Kinkorama. He lives in San Francisco and is PADI certified.
"In Deep," by Simon Sheppard, © 2000 by Simon Sheppard, first appeared in Aqua Erotica: 18 Stories for a Steamy Bath, edited by Mary Anne Mohan-raj (Three Rivers Press/Melcher Media Inc., 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author and Melcher Media.


text:
Sally had been driving long and hard for eleven hours already. When she saw the blue glow of the deadbeat motel she decided to pull in. She'd seen the Blue Star Motor Inn's giant sign from the highway, clean comfortable rooms for $16.99. Sally turned off the exit and drove to the squat stucco building. It had about ten units connected under one slim roof. Nothing but road dirt and concrete. A loud Coke machine sat out front.
She got out and walked quickly to the office. As soon as she stepped in she was hit with the harsh scent of canned meat cooking. The office looked more like a living room. There were two TV sets, a small black-and-white and one color stacked together. There was a small stove and a giant, brown refrigerator with a big dent in it. There was an ironing board and a rotary phone hooked to the wall. A hefty man in loose-fitting overalls sat in a La-Z-Boy covered with duct tape. He looked about sixty-five. His bald head gleamed from the neon. His numb eyes were glued to the set. The man broke into a wide smile as Sally walked in.
"I'm comin'," he said, walking laboriously to the front desk. He had one of those beer guts that hung like a sack of rice. His breath was heavy. When he got close, Sally noticed a gray possum wrapped around his neck. Its wet eyes were watching her.
"What can I get you?" He grinned, revealing a gummy row of gapped teeth.
"How much for a room?" Sally had left in the middle of the night and only had twenty-eight dollars in cash on her. She needed a room before she could hit the ATM in the morning.
"We got some go for thirty-five and some that go for seventeen. Depends. You by yourself?"
"For now."
The man chuckled to himself when she said that. His double chin jiggled. "Well, I guess I can let you take the cheaper one." He sighed deeply. He seemed disappointed he wasn't getting a bigger sale.
"Can I see it first?" she asked.
"Sure, sure. Wait a hot minute. Let me get the keys." The man ducked behind a torn curtain.
Sally leaned across the front desk while she waited. She tapped her long fingernails across the wood. I hope he doesn't take too long, she thought. She wanted to hurry up and get to her room so she could lie down. She opened her purse and took out her lipstick. She smeared the deep red on. Sally looked toward the blue glow of the television. Rosemary's Baby was on. Rosemary was struggling down the street with a heavy suitcase. She looked pale and worried.
Suddenly there was a horrible racking cough, coming from the dark corner of the room. Sally leaped. It sounded like a hyena. She squinted to see. There, next to the stove, was a wide-shouldered man in an undershirt. Sally hadn't noticed the man before. He blended into the dim corner of the room. He couldn't have been more than twenty. Was probably the older man's son. Sally watched him bring a bottle of whiskey to his lips and drink a messy swig. He licked around his mouth and watched her. He was staring at Sally's large breasts. His gaze never rose above her neck.
Sally was wearing a jean jacket over a thin black slip. She'd just shoved the flap inside her pants. Her bare feet were in pink thongs. To avoid the man's gaze, Sally walked outside toward the Coke machine. She wasn't going to stay in there with some wild-looking fool drooling at her.
She slipped in three quarters and the red can came rumbling out.
"Oh-there you are, darlin'," the older man said, walking outside. "I'm fixin' to get that room ready."
Sally leaned against the hood of her car. It was a warm Arizona night. You could see every star from here. Sally heard a rattling sound behind her. She jumped. It was just a corn chip bag stuck in some weeds. Sally was dead tired and her nerves were shot. She hoped he wouldn't take too long.
The man was back in less than ten minutes. He was carrying an old bucket.
"Well, its all spic-and-span. Got it real nice for you."
Sally hoisted her large purse over her shoulder. She followed the man to the room.
"Here we are, little lady." The man stood firmly in the doorway. Sally had to brush past him to get in. He smelled like hard liquor and farm animals. As soon as she stepped in the room the fumes hit her. It had that rank smoke smell. A scent so thick it was embedded in all the walls, rugs, and drapes. Smelled like it would never go away. Like somebody smoked in there year after year and never once opened a window. The wallpaper was peeling off, the bedspread was a hideous floral orange and the corners had cigarette burns. "I'll take it," Sally said.
The man had her fill out a tiny white slip asking her name and license plate number. Sally fumbled around with her purse and finally counted out seventeen dollars. She handed it to him.
"Now, my name is Edmond. Let me know if there's anything you need, sugar." He leaned over to hand her the room key and his huge body trapped her against the door jamb. Sally fell back and dropped her purse. The man bent down slowly and handed it back to her. "Watch yourself now. Looks like you need some shut-eye."
Edmond walked outside to the lot. He looked hard at Sally's car. It had about five layers of dirt on it. "I can wash that car there for you, if you'd like. Have it looking real nice. Real sweet. I know how to suds a car down. It's all in the motion you know. Got to go in a circular rhythm, keep your hands rubbing round and round and round. Don't have to press too hard to get a shine." His bald head looked hideous in the lamplight.
"Sleep tight," he said walking off. Sally watched his lumbering stride go back through the office door. He looked back at her before going in.
Sally shut the door. Banjo-playin motherfuckers, she said to herself. She slid the extra lock across the frame. She took off her jacket and laid it on the bed. Sally was beat down. She'd been driving for half a day already. She pulled the blanket all the way back and examined the sheets. They seemed clean. She took off her shoes and pants, then peeked through the drapes.
The road was real quiet now. It was 11:45 p.m. There was only one other car in the lot. She walked to the small bathroom. Some of the tiles were missing. A shower curtain hung limp on a metal rod. The toilet paper roll was half gone. Sally took a hot shower and wrapped herself in the thin, frayed towel. She sat on the edge of the bed. She wished she had one cigarette. Something to take the edge off. She clicked on the TV. Rosemary's Baby was still on. She watched the set while sipping the rest of her Coke. She looked around the room. There was a small refrigerator in the corner. She pulled it open. There were four beers strung together on a pale vein of plastic. The last person in there must have left it and the owner hadn't noticed it.
Sally didn't drink. She didn't even want to be tempted. Not now. Not after everything that had happened. Sally hadn't tasted liquor for three years straight. Not since that rainy night long ago. She dialed the front desk.
"Hello, ma'am. Room all right?"
"Yes, it's fine, but I found a six-pack in the fridge. I really don't want it."
"That's all right, ma'am. I'll send Leon down to pick it up."
Sally put the receiver down and put her pants back on. Leon must be the fool who didn 't have the decency to look me in the face, she thought.
She was buttoning the front of her jacket when she heard a soft knock on the door.
Sally peeked out the small hole drilled over the doorknob.
It was Edmond again. "I'll just take that beer off your hands myself. Leon 's busy right now." Busy? Sally thought. That man wasn't doing nothing but jackin' off to Rosemary's Baby. Edmond crossed the room, looking around it quickly. He walked over to the refrigerator and jerked the handle. He snatched the cans away as if Sally might change her mind. They clanked against his wad of keys. He stood next to her for a moment. She could smell the sour seeping out from his pores. She had emptied a few things from her purse, and a pair of black four-inch pumps was standing erect next to the TV set. He stared at them, too. Sally put one hand on her hips.
"Well, I guess you have everything," she said, using that fake sweet tone she reserved for work. She sure didn't miss Sizzler. Only thing she got from that job was a handful of bad steak knives.
"Yes, ma'am, I reckon I do. I'll just take this on back to the front. Let me know if you need anything else, hear. You be safe now, pretty little thing like you got to watch herself. Lord knows what's out on that road."
Sally started closing the door slowly. He could see her red lips and giant cleavage through the crack. The man took two steps but didn't leave. He reeked of cheap booze. Sally saw a dirty ring around his neck where the possum had been. She inched the door further in and accidentally touched his hand. It was hairy and rough. He looked down at her. His forehead was sweaty and large. Slowly, the corner of his lips curled up into a crooked smile. "I'll take this on, now," he said stepping out. "Call again." Once his feet cleared the door, Sally closed it shut and locked it tight. Country fools, she thought to herself.
She waited a moment before taking her jacket off. She went into the bathroom and washed out her slip and hung it on the shower rod. If she left the window open it ought to be dry by morning. Sally lay on the bed naked. Damn, she wanted a cigarette. She searched the room. Nothing. She thought about the last smoke she'd had with William. It was right after they'd made love. Damn, that man was good. He sure knew how to serve it up. She remembered how he cupped her breasts and sucked both nipples at the same time. How he begged her to climb on top of him, plunging himself deeper and deeper. How he tugged her hair just enough, just until her body was one huge arch. Until she felt like pure steel. Like one hot metal rod. Like she might just snap. Sally loved the way he screamed her name when she violently came. Yeah, she'd sure miss her some William.
Sally began playing with her breasts. She slid her hand down to her things. Damn, it was hot. Buck-ass naked and she was still sweating. Sally thought if she got off she could get to sleep. All that road coffee had her fried. She tried and tried but only ended up in a frustrated knot under the sheet. Her long hair was glued to the back of her neck.
She yanked the sheet back and thought about Leon sitting in that office in the dark. There was something peculiar about him. Something backwoods mixed with wild. Too much inbreeding, I bet. But there was something else, too. Something simmering like a pot of hot greens on the stove. Sally thought about the cigarette pack rolled up in his sleeve. His thick muscular arms and that tight six-pack stomach. The way his eyes ate her breasts. The way he leaned in his chair with his legs cocked out wide. The worn look to his jeans. The hard tips of his boots. The boy looked pure country. A bona fide hick. All wild-eyed and wooly-haired, too.
But it wasn't like she was in the backwoods. Flagstaff was just five miles away. Sally remembered what the gas station attendant had told her. "Be careful on them roads honey," she'd said. "Some of these small towns are more common than the Deep South. Watch out."
Sally took a bag of pretzels from her purse. She was hungry. Besides the Coke, it was the only thing she'd had in hours. She opened her wallet. She only had eleven dollars left. Her tank was already close to the red line. She had to get some cash fast.
Edmond walked back inside the office door and opened the cash register. "Sure is a pretty gal up in thirteen." He counted the money and put it back inside. Leon didn't even look up. His eyes were fastened to the set. He watched Rosemary's naked body being shoved against the long table. She was struggling frantically. The men were holding her legs down.
Edmond slumped his large body back in the La-Z-Boy. It was stuffed with old copies of the Phoenix Gazette. The newspapers filled the deep hole in the seat. "Yes sirree. A real live citified gal. Should have seen them patent leather hoofers she had up in there. Um, um, um." Edmond wrapped the possum around his neck, but it squirmed so much he let it loose on the ground. It ran to a dark corner of the room. He pulled a handkerchief out and patted his sweaty brow.
"I don't know what a lady like that is doing out here in the middle of the night. Did you see her clothes? Look like she just shoved her nightie in her jeans and took off. Must be another one of them women had a fight with their boyfriends. You see she wasn't carryin' nothing but the clothes on her back. Man oh man. If it wasn't for boyfriend fights and city folks cheatin', we'd be out of business."
Leon didn't say anything.
Sally laid across the bed. Rosemary's Baby was still on. She watched as Rosemary's slender body moved crazily against the hard table. The men pounded her down, took turns thrashing away, while naked old ladies chanted and held both her legs. Sally clicked the TV off. "Demonic shit," she said out loud to herself. She slid under the sheet and got a whiff of the dank smoke lodged in the bedspread. "Damn," she said. "I wish I had just one cigarette. Something to take the edge off." Sally dug around in her purse even though she knew there was nothing. She wished she hadn't dumped her ashtray out at the gas station. Probably was one butt she could have gotten a good toke from.
Sally scanned the tacky room. It reminded her of all the lonely nights in that hard apartment with William. All those dinners alone. All that waiting and waiting. Looking through windows for hours. All the cars going by, her ears straining hard. Waiting for his rumbling engine. Staying up half the night, smoking pack after pack, wondering when he'd pull in. She thought about all the crazy fights they had in that room. All the broken-up dishes, her clothes ripped in half, the big plates of food that got tossed at the wall. She played back the scene of their last blowout.
It was right after she let him move back in. She'd come home early and found him in the apartment with her coworker. They'd looked like two little kids, stuck in a crosswalk, right before a bus mowed them down.
"Shit," Sally said out loud. "I could sure use a cigarette now."
Suddenly there was a sharp rap at the door.
"Excuse me miss, but I just wanted to see if you needed anything before me and Leon closed the office down for the night. I'm fixin' to go get some fish up at Rusty's. Wanted to see if you wanted some. You was looking kinda hongry when you checked in."
Sally peeked from the hole. Edmond was right there. She could see the hard hairs poking from under his dingy shirt. She could hear Leon 's thick, angry cough.
"No thanks," she said through the door. "I need to get some rest. I'm really tired. Thanks for asking." She checked the knob to make sure it was locked. She could see them both step back.
"Well a little shut-eye never hurt nobody. But you sho' don't need no beauty rest." Edmond laughed real loud at that. Leon stepped forward. Sally noticed a pack of Marlboros bulging out from his sleeve.
"Cigarettes," she said under her breath. The nicotine pull yanked her beyond the point of caution. Sally cracked the door. "Mind if I have one to puff on?"
"You can puff on two." It was the first thing Leon said. He said it really slow. It sounded so sexy. His body was young. Strong and well built, but his face looked like twenty miles of bad road. He snapped the box open and shook the pack until one slid toward her. Sally pulled it out slowly as Leon brought a flame up to her face. His whole hand was a spider web of black tattoos. He had a fresh scar across his brow.
Sally didn't want these two men inside her room, so she stood in the doorjamb and eased the door closed behind her. "I don't like the smell of smoke while I'm trying to sleep," she said, stepping further out. She leaned against the door, facing her car. Her huge breasts gleamed under the moon.
"Where you from?" Edmond asked, taking out an old pipe and pushing some tobacco in it.
" Los Angeles," she said, blowing her smoke out rapidly.
"I knew it! You can always tell city folks. Spot y'all a mile away. Y'all stay in a hurry. Where you headed?"
"The Grand Canyon," she lied. She figured they'd make her out to be a tourist passing through.
"Yeah, I reckon we get a lot of folks wantin' to see that. Been out here nineteen years and ain't laid eyes on it yet. Ain't nothin' but a big hole, I hear. Lots of red rock. Folks line up for it all day. Standing there in the hot sun. Taking pictures and whatnot. Yesterday they said a lady fell the whole two hundred feet to the bottom. Got knocked straight off the trail by one of them loose rocks. Said her scream ricocheted for miles."
Leon almost smiled at that.
"So where are you from?" she asked, bored. Her eyes were on Leon.
"Why we from right here," Edmond said. "Never been nowhere else. Never wanted to go." Edmond adjusted the straps on his overalls and looked over at Leon. "He don't talk much."
Sally tossed her butt toward her tires. Leon flipped the pack open again.
"You might want one for later," Edmond said slyly.
Sally pulled two cigarettes out. She put one in her front pocket. Both men stared at her heavy chest. She tried to close her jacket but she was so top-heavy, it flapped open again.
Leon jerked one of the beers from the six-pack. He handed it to her.
"No thanks, I don't drink," Sally said, waving the can away.
"Why not? Nothing wrong with a cool drink every now and then," Edmond told her.
Sally was trying to finish her cigarette. She wanted to get back inside. "I don't touch it now. Did though, had a little problem with it."
"Yeah," Edmond said. "If you keep messing with the stuff, nine times out often some kind a problem will come up."
Sally remembered her last episode. All the horrible crashing of glass. She watched Edmond drink huge swigs and follow it up with Wild Turkey shots.
"Never learned how to keep away from it myself," he said.
"You married?"
"Kinda."
Edmond laughed heartily at that and even Leon, who looked like he never smiled in his life, looked at least less mean.
"I guess I'm kinda married, too," Edmond said laughing, stealing a quick glance at Sally's wide ass when she bent down to pick up some matches lying in the street.
"You can have my lighter," he said. "I got a bunch of 'em at home." Sally glanced up at him. She could see he was torn up now. There was a hint of delirium to his eyes.
"Listen, it was nice meeting you both," she said, stepping back.
"Wait now... you want some of this?" Edmond took a small package of crumpled foil from his back pocket. "Best weed around. Y'all can't get this in the city." He handed the package to Leon, who carefully rolled three fat joints.
It was really getting late now. Sally didn't want to spend one more minute with these two. And she wasn't about to blaze up in a parking lot in the middle of the night with some hicks. But Leon took the large joint and lit the shit up, right there over the hood of her car.
"Well, I'm goin' on to Rusty's," Edmond said. "Whatchu want boy?"
Leon held up two fingers and said, "Kaafish."
"Catfish sandwich and fries?" Edmond looked at Leon a long time.
"Umm hum," Leon said.
"You be careful boy out here, boy. Don't want nothing like what happened last time, you hear?" Edmond walked toward a gray pickup. He hoisted his large body inside.
Sally got up from the curb, taking her last cigarette with her. She'd only planned to talk a few minutes to be nice. Her feet were getting cold now. She was ready to go back inside.
"Well, good night," Sally said to Leon, getting to her door quickly and slipping the lock shut. She watched him from the peephole. Leon was blowing the smoke out real slow.
Sally finally breathed out easily. She washed her face and hands and got into bed. She tossed and turned but couldn't sleep. She tiptoed to the door again. Leon was still out there. He was stretched across her car. One leg hung over her rims. His hand was rubbing his flat stomach. Oh hell, she thought to herself.
Sally cracked the door open. "You want to come in?"
Leon smiled and walked inside. He closed the door behind him. Sally sat back on the edge of the bed. Leon sat right beside her. He handed her the lit joint. She inhaled it deeply. It was some strong weed. Leon leaned over and picked up one of her black heels. He was rubbing his fingers over the shiny smooth leather. "You want me to put these back on?" she said sweetly, touching his wide arm.
"Um hum," Leon said. Must be the quiet type, she thought to herself. Sally got up and went into the bathroom. Her black slip was almost dry. She pulled it over her head and wiggled out from her jeans. She slid the pumps back on. When she walked out, Leon was standing just outside the door, waiting for her. His shirt was on the floor. His slick chest was nothing but muscle. He picked her up and pressed her against the wall. She wrapped her legs around his slender waist, and he kissed her crazily, carrying her to the bed. He gently laid her down, covering her neck and breasts with his mouth. He was so tender and sweet. Sally ran her hands over his huge back and through his thick black hair. She could feel his belt buckle against her navel. He was grinding more rapidly now. With more fever. Sally playfully moved away. She wanted this to last.
Leon pulled her back toward him. He straddled her and started kissing her down her legs. When he got to her shoe, he pulled it off and tossed it across the room. He smiled big and lavishly sucked each toe. Sally moaned inside his bushy hair. She grabbed a handful and bit into his earlobes. Leon was bucking like a wild bull now. He pulled her slip over her neck. He grabbed her panties with his fist and snatched them from her leg. Leon got out of his jeans fast. "Slow down, cowboy, I'm not going anywhere," Sally grinned at his naked body. He had the ass of a twelve-year-old boy. She squeezed it while he put himself inside her. He rode her a long time. Real slow. Groaning and going strong. He was breathing faster and faster. Suddenly he yanked it out and burrowed his head between her thighs. Sally thought she would die. Her whole body was hot. Her thighs were pure steel. Leon put it in again, slapping her wide hips until she couldn't hold back anymore. Her whole body jerked into a maddening spasm. Leon was making a guttural sound. The next thing she knew she was asleep.
Sally was half awake when she found him thrashing away again. He had entered her from behind. He was breathing real heavy, almost wheezing against her. He had her doggy style and she could smell the hard whiskey from his mouth. She went to grab his head and found he was totally bald.
It was Edmond. He was fucking her like a mad dog. She flipped over and all his weight fell against her chest. His heavy gut made it difficult to breathe. He pinched her breasts until she screamed. Sally tried to squirm from under him. She tried to roll over but she was pinned down. His wide thighs held her legs apart. Edmond bit hard into her flesh. Sally yelled in pain.
"Shut up!" he screamed.
He wadded a washcloth and shoved it in her mouth. She dug her nails into his huge back.
Just then, the front door flew open. Leon came across the room and grabbed Edmond off of her. "Sta... Sta... Staaaaaaap!" he yelled. But Edmond socked Leon across the face, tearing open his new scab again. "You trying to tell me what to do? After I raised your lil' ass! Your own mama don't want ya." Red blood poured down Leon 's brow. He threw a punch at Edmond but missed. Edmond smiled wickedly at Leon and smacked him across the mouth. Leon looked like he might cry. "Sta... Sta... Staaaaap... it," Leon stuttered.
"That's right, start bawlin', you big baby! Ha, ha! What's that you say boy? Huh?" Edmond laughed in his face. "Look at you. Got the body of a man and the mouth of a two-year-old. Stammering and carryin' on. Can't say one sentence to save your natural life." Leon 's lips started quivering. He was starting to drool on one side.
Sally looked at Leon. She had figured him for the quiet type. She didn't know he was simple.
Leon ran up and rammed Edmond with his head. Edmond snatched the lamp from the table and bashed Leon 's skull with it. He fell to the floor and didn't move. Edmond looked crazier than ever. He came over to Sally and slammed her back against the bed. She squirmed with all her might and they both rolled to the shag carpet. The TV was right there in her face. The news flashed a story about a man found with his throat slashed in Los Angeles. An unidentified woman was shot with him.
"... killed in his own home. Police are looking for..."
Suddenly Edmond 's foot caught the TV cord and he ripped the set right from the stand. It crashed down and went black.
Edmond was laughing crazily and licking Sally's face. It was then she turned her head and she saw it, her black purse right next to her forehead. He wasn't holding her hands, so Sally stretched out her right arm and rummaged through the contents. She finally felt the cool steel. She took the gun out and blasted him in the face. She fired four times, until he slumped over.
Suddenly it was dead quiet. Sally held her breath. She could hear her heart beating. Her whole chest heaved up and down. Suddenly there was another sound, a scratching from behind the TV. She looked down and saw the gray possum dart underneath the bed. Sally grabbed her clothes and got out. She took Leon 's Marlboros and both men's wallets. Combined, they had seventy-eight bucks. She snatched the large key ring and went to the front office, opened the cash register, and found another hundred and a half. She took all the candy bars and bags of chips. She got back in her car and roared off. Sally clicked the radio on.
"Manhunt for possible female murderer. Sally Jones has been missing for two days now. Her husband was found murdered in their Compton home."
Sally punched the lighter in and headed up toward the interstate. Damn, she thought. In two days, I killed three people already. There has got to be a better place to live.
Pam Ward is a Los Angeles native and graphic designer. She likes to write about all the stuff your mother told you "hush" when you asked her: violence, sex, and road trips on the jacked-up streets of LA. She worked the hash food line in high school, did temp work for two sex maniacs in North Hollywood, and ran amok in corporate America until she was asked very nicely to leave. Her work has been published in Men We Cherish, Catch the Fire, and Calyx, A Journal of Literature for Women. She has received a California Arts Council Writing Fellowship and a New Letters Award for Poetry. Her self-published chapbook is entitled Jacked Up.
"A Clean Comfortable Room," by Pam Ward, © 2000 by Pam Ward, first appeared in Gynomite, edited by Liz Belile (New Mouth from the Dirty South LLC, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.


text:
She rises up from the water, the drops slicking her breasts, beading tremulous at her nipples. The curve of her hips sheathed tight in something sheer and silver, glimmering beneath the narrow swoon of her waist. She tosses her head and smiles at him; her mouth is like the shadowy place nestled under the fabric that he knows he can never reach. He lumbers across the grasping sand toward the water, his cock leading him, plunging him into the wet salt swell.
When Tom Mac wakes he can still taste the waves and feel his limbs rocking; there is a silver-green light in his head and he has a massive hard-on. He knows there was more to the dream but he can't remember, and after a few minutes his erection is gone.
Maybe I'll go out today, he thinks but he knows he won't. It has been too long already. It will only remind him of how it had been before.
He gets out of bed to take a piss and sees his reflection in the mirror-sandy-blond longish hair and tan bristly skin, the lines around his blue-green eyes. His body has grown thick and slow, the once taut bulging muscles losing their tone. What would Tawny say if she saw him now? That she was right. Right for leaving. That she could have predicted this-the ex-pro living in the house now overgrown with wisteria vines, drinking too much, hanging out on the boardwalk, never touching his board.
Instead of going back to bed he tugs on the shirt that smells the least-a hooded woven one from Mexico, a pair of shorts and huaraches. His heart is thumping as if he really is going back to the water-he knows he isn't. But he also knows he has to get to the pier before the sun and the crowds. He has to get out there.
It is still early and gray and damp. A mist hangs in the air, clings to his hair and skin, tasting of the ocean. Sometimes it is like fucking, he finds himself thinking for the first time in so long, when you ride the swell, feeling it folding around you glistening and wet and briney. And he can hardly remember either of them.
The boardwalk is almost empty. Later the vendors will arrive with their crystals and T-shirts and cheap sunglasses; the fortune-tellers and clowns and acrobats will come, the bodybuilders and Rollerbladers and tourists. But now it is just Sage and Whitman and a few of the other homeless whose names no one seems to know, huddled on graffiti-scrawled wooden benches. Even the surfers haven't shown up; the sea looks flat and steely. The cans are brimming with junk food remnants, pigeons are scavenging; there is a slightly toxic smell. Tom thinks, And this is paradise, this is my paradise. Remembering Tawny dancing to the drums right here that night with her breasts straining the bikini top and the tie-dyed sarong hanging low under her flat brown stomach. Her hair still crusted with salt and the way she always smelled like summer.
Tom buys five cups of coffee and distributes four to the men on the bench, keeps one, sips it even though it is still scalding, liking the feel of the burn on his tongue. Whitman says, "You up early, Mac," and Tom nods. Had a dream, he wants to say. They would probably understand. They aren't that much different than he is. Dreams, mostly forgotten, that keep you going when otherwise you might decide not to wake up again. And he is the lucky one, isn't he? Has the house to keep away the cold.
The house he'd bought at the height of things when he and Tawny first met, when he wanted a base in Southern California to return to between exotic wave-chasings. It is a small white Craftsman bungalow with a glassed-in porch, big windows; the wisteria vine with its purple blossoms has grown so thick that not much light got in anymore. Tawny liked the wood floors bare and cool, the rooms mostly empty except for bed and pillows and boards. Now it is cluttered with shit and he keeps promising himself that he is going to do something about that.
Instead of going back he walks down the boardwalk with his cup of coffee. He draws up his hood because the mist is forming drops now, but he doesn't want to go home. The dream is still whirling in the pit of his stomach, making his muscles twitch, scratching at his balls.
The girl in the wheelchair rides toward him out of the gray-ness. When he sees her Tom MacDougal feels as if he has swallowed a mouthful of salt water and it is caught in his throat. There are beautiful babes all the time, everywhere at the beach, but rarely this. So beautiful that he hardly notices the wheelchair or that her legs and feet are wrapped in tight silvery fabric covered with half-moon shaped spangles.
As she approaches him, she smiles as if she knows him. Her teeth are white and sharp and her lips are stung, wet. He just keeps staring. Her eyes are crystal-green and wide-spaced. Her breasts show through her soaking T-shirt, every curve and swell and the tender dark nipples so he feels as if he is touching them. Then she runs her long slender fingers over her collarbone, the slope of breasts, lingering beneath them and pulls the T-shirt off. Rain spills in rivulets over her perfect brown body. Perfect, he thinks, she is perfect.
Crazy perfect, like him, alone in the rain, pulling off her shirt for a stranger.
He approaches her slowly, the way you would a startled animal, although she doesn't seem afraid. His voice is hoarse and soft. "You okay?"
She nods, still smiling at him. He tries not to stare at her breasts. They seem too big for her delicate frame, her waist so small and her ribs showing. "You'll get cold, sweetheart."
She shakes her head, swinging the matted blond dreadlocks that hang down to her waist.
"Do you need some help?" he asks her.
She gestures for him to come close. He can feel his cock stirring in his shorts. Smelling her, she is clean, salty. He wants to dive. Her nipples are erect; he wants to feel them against his lips. Everything tingling.
She reaches up and touches the side of his unshaven face with her finger, letting it slide down over his adam's apple. "Take me home with you," she says softly.
The whole impact of the night before is back, his penis throbbing. He takes off the woven shirt and gives it to her. "Put this on. You'll get sick."
She pouts slightly like a little girl but does it, getting caught so that he has to help her, trying to avoid touching her breasts. Her head emerges through the neck hole of the shirt, those eyes and that sly sweet mouth so close to him, that wild hair. "Take me home, Mac."
He figures one of the guys at the beach has told her his name. But still it startles him. And he wants to know.
Tom wheels the girl back up the boardwalk across the street to the house. He leaves the wheelchair at the foot of the porch and takes her in his arms. She is very light but also longer than she looks in the chair. Her lower body feels much more muscular than he would have thought, the tight weight of her ass against his forearms and wrists. Her long slender arms circle his neck the way a child holds on. He feels something like power returning to him, like right before he used to take a wave.
"This is a pretty house," she says, staring at the purple blossoms that have grown over everything. "It's like being underwater."
Sometimes I wish it was, he feels like saying. He puts her down gently on the torn couch, then goes to get her chair.
"Do you want to take a bath? I can give you a pair of pants." She laughs and shakes her head. "What about coffee? Or I think there's a can of soup somewhere."
She makes a little face and laughs again. "You look different," she says.
He squints at her.
"We've met? I think I'd have remembered you, sweetheart."
"It was a long time ago, Mac." She adds matter-of-factly, "You were unconscious."
Tom sits beside her on the sprung sofa. She plays with her hair, pulling the heavy knotty strands up off her face. She has very high cheekbones and a small firm chin, which makes her lips look even fuller. "What's your name?" Tom asks.
"Mer."
He shakes his head.
"Do you want to fill me in here, darling?"
Instead she smiles again and pulls his shirt off of her. She lifts her hands to her hair again so her breasts rise. The areoles are big and dark. He wants to hide his hard cock. She takes his tense hands in hers and presses them against her breasts. An electric shock goes through him at their breadth and smooth fullness. They feel soft and heavy and almost buzzing with sensation. She throws her head back and moans roughly as he fingers her nipples. Her whole body shudders, and she takes his head and gently draws him to her left breast; his tongue circles the nipple and her body is shaking more now. She leans closer to him, pressing her big succulent mouth to his neck. His breath comes in gasps and his heart pounds as if he is drowning. She moves over his rough, bare, sun-darkened chest with her lips. His cock feels huge, full of ocean.
"Who are you?"
She keeps going, looking up at him sometimes, smiling with those sharp white teeth that could tear; he gently touches the back of her head, the tender nape of her neck, stroking her. Her spine looks fluid and fragile. She undoes his shorts slowly, softly, her nimble fingers sliding the zipper down carefully to avoid his erection. Then he's out, big in her hand. Holding him she slithers back up and runs her tongue over his mouth, parting his lips with hers, sliding her tongue into him. The salt taste of his dream. He jolts up feeling her fingers move on his cock. She goes down again, this time her mouth on him, taking him in all in one slide so that he feels the back of her throat.
While she licks and sucks, her lips cupping the tender head of his penis and then swallowing him to the balls, Tom is remembering the dream. That time when he had the accident. What really happened. The waves pulling him down. No air. Just this endless shining blue that he didn't really want to leave. He could have stayed there. He could have stayed. But then something was holding him; he knew he was safe. Rocking him like a baby. And her strong slender body carrying him back to the light, to the air. Because you belong here, she told him. I can't keep you. Even though you are the most beautiful of all of them. And you know my ocean more than any of them will ever know it. Tom moves with her, his groin spasming, his cock driving farther into her wetness. Suddenly there is that feeling in his balls. He doesn't want it yet but it is too much; he feels his whole body waking from some long sleep, as if he has been underwater this whole time and only now has she rescued him. He gasps for air as he breaks through the surface, his semen spurting out in milky bursts that she swallows, his cock still hard for a long time after, still coming into her lush mouth.
Mer stays with Tom MacDougal in the little beach house with the wisteria vine and the glass porch. No one knows what goes on in there, only that Mac has started surfing again, every day, up at dawn with the kids, taking the big waves, ferocious and fearless as he had been ten years ago. And that his mysterious young girlfriend in the wheelchair sits on the sand and watches him, that when he returns from the sea he plunges to his knees before her and kisses her as if she contains the breath he had lost that time he almost drowned. Maybe she does. People speculate as to how they fuck, what is under the narrow spangled sheath she always wears over her lower body. Some think she is crazy, playing out a fantasy so he can't get inside her. Maybe she'd been molested as a child or raped as a teenager traveling along the coast and that is why she invented the wheelchair thing and the costume. Others think it is real. But Mac and Mer don't care. His mouth on her tender, swollen, glossy breasts making her come when he caresses her nipples; her mouth sliding down the shaft of his thick cock, they rescue each other from land and from the sea again and again.
Francesca Lia Block is the author of numerous books, including three Los Angeles Times bestsellers: Dangerous Angels: The Weetzie Bat Boohs, Violet and Claire, and The Rose and The Beast. "Mer" is from Nymph, her collection of erotica. Her work has been translated into many languages and published around the world. She lives in Los Angeles with her family.
"Mer," by Francesca Lia Block, © 2000 by Francesca Lia Block, first appeared in Nymph, by Francesca Lia Block (Circlet Press, 2000). Reprinted by permission of Circlet Press.