Escape to Pleasure

by Sandy Lowe

  She responds with a growl. She shoves her hands beneath my head, then fucks my face until she comes hard. But she’s still not done. Before I can catch my breath, her mouth is on my pussy, sucking, licking, biting. Driving me toward another orgasm.

  I’m delirious with fantasies fulfilled.

  We spend the rest of the night in the same rhythm—Veronica taunting and teasing, ruthlessly bringing me to orgasm over and over, then using me for her pleasure. Finally, we fall into an exhausted sleep, nestled against each other, completely sated.

  I wake alone. I languish in the sheets still redolent with the scent of sex. I think back over every detail of last night. She’s set free a part of me that I’ve always known existed but have never been able to reach into my soul deeply enough to release. I know I will never be the same.

  I take a hot bath and soak my deliciously sore body. As I gather my things, I realize my panties from last night are missing and flush with perverse pleasure at the thought of Veronica waking with them.

  When I walk through my front door, the sounds of home greet me—the blare of the television, the bark of the dog, the thunder of Jason chasing Emily across the hardwood floor. The back door slams, and only the dialog from Star Wars remains. I stroll to the kitchen to find Melanie.

  She stands at the counter, her hands in a bowl of ground beef and tomato sauce. Low-cut jeans hug her hips, and the ties of her bathing suit top dangle from beneath her ponytail.

  My breath catches at the sight of so much bare skin after not being allowed to touch any last night. I’m impossibly aroused again. I move behind her and slip my arms around her waist. “Hi,” I say softly, kissing her nape.

  She leans back, pressing into me. “Hi.”

  We never talk about these weekends. I know, though, this time we have to. Something too important has taken place—something that will change things between us. “I met a woman.”

  She stills. “You did?”

  I loosen my embrace and run my fingers along the waistband of her jeans. “Yes,” I whisper. How can I say the rest? It’s all so new, so unfamiliar.

  Melanie waits. She’s always patient with me.

  My fingertips brush a piece of lace poking out of her pocket, and it gives me courage. “Her name’s Veronica,” I say, feeling the word caress my tongue. “And I’m going to need to see her again. A lot.”

  She relaxes in my arms. “I think that can be arranged.” There’s a hint of amusement in her voice.

  I smile and squeeze her tightly, then trace the thin black outline of her lotus tattoo with the tip of my tongue.

  Battle of the Bands Over Desperation Pie

  Ina Brix

  Ina Brix has work published and forthcoming in various literary journals in the United States. She has recently written her first novel. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and highly recommends Hot Cookie in the Castro.

  Cora wasn’t coming back to me and I had to move on, starting with this trip.

  Me on the rebound, a human slice of the local specialty dessert, Desperation Pie, in the tiny town of Betsey, Indiana, just a lick south of Franklin.

  Two days before our trip, the one we’d planned for months, and she dumped me—while I was still naked in bed, I might add.

  “You have to admit, Sands, we’re not compatible. It’s just not working out.”

  “It’s Lita, isn’t it? You’re moving back to California to be with her, aren’t you?”

  Cora just stood there for a while and said nothing. I pulled the blankets higher over my chest. Even with the blankets, I felt horribly naked, and crushed by the heaviness of the room and by what Cora had said and wouldn’t say.

  Then Cora muttered, “I’m sorry, Sands,” and walked out of the room. I heard her grab her keys and open the front door. Then I heard the front door slam shut.

  I’ll admit it, I cried. I thought, Fine. Her loss. All those clichés you think when someone’s dumped your ass cold.

  We’d been together for nine months. She had moved in by the end of the second month. I had thought that with this trip, we would solidify our relationship even more—but, yeah, we’d been fighting lately. More precise to say, she’d been picking the fights. Probably to justify talking to Lita again.

  After a few more minutes of clichéd pep talk thoughts to myself, I realized that I had to do something solid. I had bought the event tickets, so I would go on this trip anyway. Without her. A solo road trip from Chicago to small-town Indiana.

  We had timed the trip for when the second annual Battle of the Bands played out in full swing, and now I’d be going it alone. A week-long extravaganza in October, the Battle of the Bands took place in the town’s theater dive bar, a converted opera house named Fuzzy Muffdivier in tribute to Fuzzy Vandivier, a famed Franklin basketball player of the 1920s and also in tribute to the town’s own fame as an epicenter of lesbian culture in Indiana.

  Just over ten thousand lesbians had moved to Betsey about seven years before, renovating its classic Main Street and forming a tight-knit community of neighbors with charming homes on tree-lined streets.

  The Main Street boasted two coffeehouses, one more down-to-earth and the other one decidedly hipster. A couple had turned Betsey’s Main Street bank into a brewery, complete with a feminist bookstore in the vault downstairs, with books lining shelves on walls that once held safe deposit boxes. On a side street, a lace-curtained tea shop, called Desperation Pie, served that famed dessert by the same name. Sugar cream pie, also known as Hoosier pie, was a simple but delicious mixture of sugar and cream, spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla.

  In my tank top and little floral skirt, with knee high socks and combat boots, I had hoped to attract someone tall, dark, and good looking who would eat me up like that pie. A masculine-of-center type who would take me over completely, but first, maybe take me over the knee for a little ass slap that would sting before the kisses began.

  By the second day, that still hadn’t happened. Nothing had, in fact. No one had even looked at me, except smiling vaguely within the bliss of their coupledom as they held hands, strolling down the street. I even saw one group of three people holding hands.

  Not fair, I thought. Some people can find two or more people to love on them, and I can’t even find one.

  During the week of the Battle of the Bands, most everyone spent the daytime hours meandering along and near Main Street, enjoying the show of fall foliage and purchasing T-shirts emblazoned with “Heavens to Betsey,” “Fuzzy Muffdivier,” “Banked Beer and Books”—and, of course, “Betsey: Just a Lick South.”

  I walked along Main Street and then joined the line winding out the door of Betsey’s perfectly quaint ice cream parlor, with its hand-painted sign lettered in lavender: “Ice Cream Goddess.” The sign also had a beautiful Venus of a woman painted on the right side, holding ample twin cones over her muchachas.

  Inside, I ordered a scoop of Dominant Cherry with a cherry on top, and some whipped cream—but no nuts. I have to say, it was the best damned ice cream I had ever tasted. Juicy tang of cherry, with just the right amount of cream, refreshing and cool on my tongue. Sadly, though, the only lick south I experienced that day was outside with my ice cream in the pale autumn sunshine as it melted down the cone.

  When the sky darkened each night the crowd moved on to Fuzzy’s to hear the bands duking it out for first place in each category and for the overall grand prize. The second night of Betsey’s Battle of the Bands featured tribute bands and bands fronted by celebrity musician impersonators.

  I wandered in with the crowd. Packed in tight and full of energy, Fuzzy’s smelled of sweet bodies and stale beer. The first band, a Dead Kennedys tribute band made up of cute girls dressed in Japanese anime cosplay costumes, began its set with “California Über Alles.” The music’s vibrations rose up through the narrow wooden planks on the floor, and punk guitar and drums punctuated the air, along with the wailing vocals of the band’s frontwoman.

  As the band’s fro
ntwoman continued to wail, shaking around her short, black pigtails, I felt something hard brushing up against my backside. At first, I thought it was someone’s beer bottle, but it seemed positioned too low for that. I turned around, hopeful to see shrugging shoulders and a devilish smile. I imagined that we would engage in some flirtatious, sexy banter.

  I turned around, but the person behind me—my type (other than girly, athletic women like Cora), with short, dark hair and faded jeans—just stood there obliviously, head moving in time with the music, with a bottle of beer. The one that must have been poking my backside.

  I decided to say hi anyway. Be bold.

  “Hey! Great band, huh?” I yelled over the din of the screeching guitar and snaky beat of drums.

  “What?” Looking confused. Not good.

  “Great band!”

  “Oh, yeah. Look, you keep bumping into my beer.”

  How embarrassing. “Sorry.”

  I ducked out and moved forward, headed for the bathrooms, down a hallway on the side of the stage.

  At least I had thought they were the bathrooms. When I made it to the end of the hallway, I realized that the door actually led to rooms backstage.

  The music blasted louder back there, so close to the amps and microphones onstage.

  No one noticed me, so I decided to peek into the rooms backstage. I opened one door, revealing a small closet with cleaning supplies. A few opened doors led to dressing rooms, in which various people stood and sat around chatting, drinking, and smoking out. No one paid any attention to me, except a few people who looked up briefly and then went back to their conversations, drinks, and pot. A continuation of being ignored, like during the day on Main Street.

  “Chickenshit Conformist” started to play.

  Chickenshit Conformist—that wouldn’t be me, I thought. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes. Not again. Cora could go back to Lita, and I would rock on.

  Damn, I missed her already.

  The more things change, the more they stay the same. History repeating itself.

  No. Not even if she begs for me back, I thought resolutely, but only half believing it.

  A new band came on, a drag king version of the Cure. At that point, still backstage, I decided to open one more door. Maybe it wouldn’t be a closet with cleaning supplies or a room with people who ignored me.

  I stumbled into the room, realizing immediately that I had walked in on a full dressing room. Half a dozen Elvis impersonator drag kings in white studded jumpsuits, complete with sideburns and sideways grins, stood around, readying themselves for their set. One still with the jumpsuit halfway off was adjusting a chest binding.

  “Sorry!” I called out, about to close the door.

  One of the Elvises held the door open, and said, quite Elvis-like, “No, you come on in here, darlin’.”

  So I did.

  I must have been looking down and blushing hard, all the way into my shirt, because the same Elvis said, “Nothin’ to be shy about, darlin’.”

  The light glowed yellow-orange, and a mirror covered an entire wall on the left. The other five Elvises stood in front of the mirrored wall, combing through dark hair and adjusting costumes.

  “Our group is called Elvis Diversity,” the Elvis who had kept the door open told me.

  Unlike the real Elvis, only two of these Elvises were Caucasian. Like the real Elvis, though, all six of these Elvises dripped with charismatic sexiness. I had wandered into my own version of heaven.

  Then Prince walked in—a drag king version of Prince. My backstage heaven had just gained another hot angel.

  “Don’t pay any attention to Prince, darlin’,” an Asian Elvis told me, turning around and freely looking me up and down. “We’re the Kings.”

  “I’m the Artist,” Prince retorted, and started crooning at me, “When She Comes,” a song I didn’t know.

  Wow, I thought, Sexy. Is that a Prince song?

  The Elvis who had held open the door for me said, “We’re on next. You just wait right back here for us, if you’d like. What’s your name, honey?”

  “Cassandra, but everyone calls me Sands.”

  “Can we role-play, and I can call you Priscilla? Just kidding, darlin’. I like that name, Sands.”

  “What’s your name? Other than Elvis, I mean?”

  “Andre. People do call me Elvis, though.”

  “That’s hot.”

  “You can call us all Elvis, darlin’. We like that.”

  “Okay, Elvis!”

  Andre-Elvis laughed.

  “Hurry up, Andre,” another Elvis interrupted. “We have to go onstage!”

  “All right, all right. Hold your horses!” Andre-Elvis said, then whispered to me, “You just wait right here, darlin’.”

  I have to admit, it made me have butterflies all the way into my panties.

  When the Elvises left, I realized that I was all alone. With Prince.

  Prince closed the door and moved closer to me.

  “So, Sands, isn’t it? Do you like to dance?”

  “I do, actually.”

  Prince reached out with one arm and pulled me in by the waist.

  “Do you like to dance, real close?”

  “Yeah, I do.”

  The Elvises must have started their set onstage. That’s how I ended up dancing with Prince to many Elvises singing “Love Me Tender.”

  “I hope it’s not a weird question, but how do you do your eyeliner like that?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you later. First, may I kiss you?” Prince asked, brushing my neck lightly with their lips. “You’re luscious divine.”

  Prince moved one hand to my cheek and I closed my eyes as we started to kiss. Our feet moved in time to the music, and then we stood still, wrapped in each other.

  We started to dance again as the Elvises began to play “Jailhouse Rock.” We shimmied and moved into jive and swing. Prince had some smooth rhythm and spun me dizzy.

  The Elvises then changed it up again, playing “Fever.” Prince moved in close to me, mouthing the words at the intro to the song, and then kissing me again, lips moving from my lips to my throat and on down, pushing aside my shirt to kiss along my collarbone. Fingers moved over my bra from the top of my shirt, and then Prince shifted so they moved up my shirt from the bottom.

  By the time the Elvises sang the last songs in their set, “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me” and “It’s Now or Never,” Prince had me against the wall opposite the door, shirt off and skirt up, my legs wrapped around their waist.

  It must have been an intermission because no music played for a while and the crowd could be heard, even backstage, milling around and loudly talking. I didn’t really pay much attention, with Prince’s body pressed against mine and their hand moving inside me.

  Then the Elvises burst in.

  “Don’t let us stop you,” a Latina Elvis called out, laughing.

  “Step out, you all. She likes Purple Rain.”

  Andre-Elvis said as I brushed my skirt over my thighs, “Would you mind if we stayed, darlin’? We could make it more interesting.”

  I bit my lip and thought for a second. “Yeah, that would be all right.”

  Andre-Elvis moved across the room and stood next to Prince, then reached out to caress my cheek.

  “We’ll see if you like Prince or the Kings after all.” Andre-Elvis laughed.

  Then Andre-Elvis kissed me, Prince kissed me, and the other Elvises walked across the room toward us. Soon the other Elvises kissed me too, and two of the Elvises started to kiss each other, which made me stop and gape in awe for a moment. Only a moment, though, since soon Prince and several of the Elvises started to move their hands and mouths over my body.

  This Battle of the Bands felt like a warm ocean washing over me, enveloping me, and rhythmically riding me into its shore. I started to cry out and bite my lip as Andre-Elvis squeezed one of my nipples between their fingers, and the Latina Elvis played with my other nipple between their teeth, their
tongue flicking it in a perfect beat.

  “How do you feel, Sands?” Andre-Elvis asked me.

  Naked, except for my knee high socks and combat boots, I answered, “Powerful. Like a powerful badass.”

  “You are a powerful badass, Sands,” Prince said, and pulled out a purple dildo. They all moved me onto the floor. Things became even more wild.

  I liked the feeling of Prince’s purple dildo inside me and the studs on the Elvis jumpsuits pushing against my skin. I liked the smell of all the pomade and the feel of the Elvis sideburns.

  The smooth white fabric on the Elvis jumpsuits glided like cool silk against my skin and made me moan when one of the Elvises drew a thigh with that fabric between my legs, over and over. Then, once again, the scratchy wool of Prince’s purple jacket, along with the buttery soft leather of their pants, moved over my skin too. The smell and feel of wool and leather drove me almost as crazy as Prince’s purple dildo.

  Did I forget to mention that Prince’s purple dildo had glittery sparkles? It looked like a magical unicorn horn, and imagining Prince riding a unicorn with a purple dildo horn festooned with glittery sparkles made me giggle.

  “I like it when you giggle, baby. It makes me hot,” Andre-Elvis whispered into my ear, and then nibbled on it. Prince kept the magical purple dildo inside me. Just a lick south…

  “Say I’m the Artist, Sands,” Prince urged, and then nibbled again.

  “You’re the Artist!” I cried out.

  “Say we’re the Kings,” Andre-Elvis whispered into my ear, and then kissed along my neck.

  “You’re the Kings! Andre, Elvis! Elvises!”

  My body shook, and I screamed into the kiss of the Asian Elvis while the others continued to move over my body.

  Luckily, no one opened the door.

  By the end of the next set, a Siouxsie and the Banshees tribute band by the sound of it, we lay in a jumbled heap of limbs on the floor.

  In the afterglow of the Battle of the Bands over Desperation Pie, it’s difficult to say who won, Prince or the Elvises.