by Kris Ripper
It wasn’t tight. But it was there. It was perfect.
“More now, love.” The words formed on my skin.
Please. I didn’t say it aloud.
And oh, the tipped flogger, yeah. Every bit as lovely and vicious as I’d hoped, and I was suddenly glad she’d warmed me up so long. The tips looked like leather leaves with steel studs in the middle of them, and it took me a minute to find a balance between heavy thud and bite. Because that’s what it felt like, even more than sting. Those little bits of steel were like fucking teeth, and I shifted on my feet, trying to get used to them.
Jamie ran a hand lightly down my back. “Try a wider stance, maybe? Might keep you grounded better?”
I rolled my shoulders a little, just to feel it, and tried a wider stance. Jamie toyed with my hair as I resettled, brushing over my ears, my neck. If I didn’t control myself, I’d be purring and pushing into her hands.
Make that, I was already pushing into her hands. But I managed not to purr.
“Sweet Justin,” she murmured, and stepped back.
I’d coasted on the warmup, an eagle riding air currents. This was a hard drive into sensation, heart pounding, sweating, occasionally growling at those goddamn tips as they bit me. Growling at Cork when she paused to let them slide across my back. I knew it wasn’t breaking the skin, but I imagined it anyway: the tails coming down, splitting me open, freeing trapped humors. Primitive bloodletting accomplished by a goddess wielding a flogger.
I demanded more, certain I could take it, certain I wasn’t done yet.
She tossed the flogger on a chair and pressed against me, sucking at my neck, hands on my chest, keeping me in place. Her breasts, soft against bruised, burning skin. Her lips hot and wet.
I leaned my head back into her. “I think I can take more.”
“My goal isn’t to give you everything you can take.”
“Then…what?”
A huffed laugh. She bit down at the juncture of shoulder and neck, not gently. “Orgasms. Sleep. Waking up with the people I love in the morning.” Another bite. “Can you think of anything better than that?”
I shifted my weight to my right arm so I could reach back with my left. I’d aimed to pull her hair, but found myself sort of caressing her instead. “I’m game to try something new.”
“That’s what I like to hear. Hey, Jus?”
“Hm?”
“I don’t want to reinforce heteronormative sex practices or anything—”
I snorted. Alex, still on the bed, laughed out loud.
“—but if you were into it, I’d love to fuck you like we did the first time.”
Me on my back, Cork on her knees. Me inside her. “With one exception.” I turned and snagged a kiss before she stepped back. “Last time you did all the clit action. I want you to show me. Is that okay? I’m not…I want to touch you. If you want me to.”
Alex mumbled, “Hot, hot, hot, hot, hot.”
Jamie wasted no time, hooking my arm and dragging me toward the bed. “Down. Now.”
I shoved Alex over and lay back. Ow. I hissed and straightened up again. “Goddammit, Cork.”
“Thank me later.”
Alex touched my arm. Carefully. “Can I see?”
“She’s a fucking menace.” I bent over my legs, stretching my hands down to my toes.
“Aww, Jus. ’S beautiful.” He did something—pressed his cheek to me, maybe?—and made a small animal noise of pleasure. “Also, it’s hot when you’re all growly.”
Jamie jumped onto the bed beside us and kissed the back of my neck. “Amen to that. Now, down. I want to come.”
“So forward,” I muttered, gingerly lying back again. “You know my back’s in shreds, right?”
“Yeah, that’s hot. I like it when you’re hard and hurting at the same time. Ah, gods, Jus.” She slid her hand up my dick.
My toes curled with the sensation of it, arousal flooding my system. I was transfixed, watching her fingers. Feeling her fingers. As with everything, Jamie touched me confidently, but I didn’t miss the way she looked up from time to time.
“Ahhhh, for fuck’s sake, Cork, quit being a tease!” Which seemed better than telling her that felt awesome.
She giggled. “Yeah. That’s good. Condom and lube, minion!”
I elbowed Alex. “That’s you.”
“I think I like being the condom and lube minion.” He rolled over and rooted through a side table, taking half of fucking forever while Jamie held me at the brink, and I tried not to thrust into her hand.
It wasn’t enough to get me off. It was just enough to seriously think about pushing her over the edge of the bed and finishing the job myself. I groaned, feeling helpless, for like twenty seconds. Then I reached for her and slid my hand between her legs.
Cork sucked in a breath and went at me with intent, so I slid my middle finger lower, picking up a frankly amazing amount of slickness and heat.
“Jesus, you’re wet. Fuck, that’s so goddamn hot.” I leaned up to get more access, but Alex pushed me back down again. “Aw, c’mon!”
“You too,” he said to Jamie. “Here.”
I flipped him off. “I could be seriously happy with handjobs right now, just FYI.”
“Let’s do that tomorrow, too.” She brushed hair out of his face before turning back to me again, looking almost hesitant. “I have sort of a…I’ve waited almost four years to fuck you like this again.”
“Jesus Christ, get on with it.”
She straddled me and rolled the condom on while I took slow breaths and held out. I could only sort of remember, through a haze of booze and repression, what this had been like last time. Except that it had been good, and she had been gorgeous and sexy, and she’d made me feel…not cheap. Not second best.
Even with Alex beside us, even when we’d both thought it was about him, Jamie and I never looked away from each other. And in her gaze I’d been special.
I covered my eyes and groaned while she slid down on me. “Oh Jesus. Cork.”
“Don’t close your eyes.” Alex—naked and turned on again—pressed against us, his dick brushing my arm. “Jus, watch.”
And I wanted to. I did. But I wasn’t sure I could be that open, that I could take this in, between them.
He sucked the tips of my fingers into his mouth. Both Cork and I groaned. “Here.” Then he was pressing me against her and I needed my sight. I needed to know what I was doing, what she needed from me.
“This is gonna be a quickie, boys,” she said breathlessly. “Dear Jesus, I’m dying.” She rose up and sank back down slowly, all the way down, grinding herself against me. I grabbed her hip with one hand while the fingers of the other explored. Totally different angle than going down on her. I wasn’t sure how low I could go, not inside her like this. Was it uncouth to touch myself and her at the same time? Or would she find the idea as enticing as I did?
Alex’s hand guided mine upward. “Jame. This okay?”
“Oh, sure, yeah, you two can go right ahead, Jesus, that’s lovely, yeah.” She threw her head back and moved faster, more shallowly. “Oh fuck me. I’m close.”
“I sorta have a fantasy,” I murmured, watching his hand on mine, letting my fingertips circle her clit while Alex controlled the speed.
“Don’t hold back now.” She moaned, throwing in one long, deep stroke, then returning to the quicker ones.
“Oh fuck me, are you edging yourself right now, Cork?”
“Just trying not to embarrass myself by spurting like a teenage boy. What’s your fantasy?”
This time when she ground against me I thrust up, holding her in place at the hip, igniting some kind of fire between us. “Just that we should do this sometime and uh…and Alex could get behind you. Or I could and he could be here. And…if you wanted…uh…” I dipped lower, adding some slick to my fingers, and returned to her clit with intent. “If you wanted, you know, for both of us…”
“To be inside me at the same time, oh, you bastard,
you fucking bastard—ahhh, Jesus, that’s perfect, don’t fucking stop—”
Cork unraveled above us, a frenzy of motion, hips snapping, fingernails digging into my forearm to keep me in place, her weight coming down on me when she could no longer hold herself up, bracing on my chest, shaking, frantically fucking me until she finally stilled completely, and the only sound in the room was her panting.
I had no idea if I should withdraw my hand, so I did nothing. Just held it, not moving, exactly where it was. Since Alex wasn’t breathing either, I figured that was safest.
“Ohhhh, that was so fucking good. Christ almighty, that was brilliant. And yes, by the way. Yes to that fantasy. I can think of two ways to do it, and yes to both.”
“Tomorrow?” I teased, kissing her forehead, which was the only part of her I could reach.
“Maybe the next day.” She rose up again. “I want to finish you off in my mouth while the two of you kiss. Is that all right?”
“Jesus, Cork, ya think?”
She pulled up, stripped the condom, and bent down, hooking one of my legs over her shoulders. “I’ve seriously thought about this a lot. Every time I described you for Alex, I thought about this.” She licked all the way up my dick and I gasped.
Then Alex was there, kissing me, and I was somewhat desperately hanging onto him with one hand while threading the other in Jamie’s hair. I didn’t pull or force or pressure, but I wanted to feel her everywhere, and I liked that when I was blowing a guy, that presence. That reciprocity of touch.
Alex deepened the kiss and I couldn’t help tiny thrusts up into both of them, like being fucked simultaneously, in concert, my body stretched like a live wire between them.
I couldn’t hold on and I didn’t want to. My mouth slid away from Alex’s when I could no longer focus on anything but Jamie. I pressed my cheek to his, feeling her hand and his breath and her lush, warm mouth, and his butterfly lashes, fluttering against my skin. I came, almost delirious with it, my entire body going taut, vibrating at some peak of sensation until I came down again.
“Now that’s pure class,” Jamie whispered.
Shifting, blankets being pulled over us, pillows being rearranged. All while I floated and caught my breath.
They’d trapped me in between them. Given my propensity for midnight escapes, I didn’t blame them.
Plus, maybe that was just a good excuse. I lay on my back and reached for Alex’s hand. When I glanced aside, Cork was looking at me.
She smiled, tired and satisfied. I smiled back. She snuggled in closer and I put my arm around her until she put her head on my chest.
“That was passably hot,” I said finally.
“Eh, low B,” she agreed. “I think we can do better.”
Alex sighed and rested his chin on my shoulder. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
“Like I said: low B. We haven’t even scratched the surface yet.”
Maybe I was feeling sentimental. Or emotional. Or just…in love. I kissed Alex and coaxed Jamie up so I could kiss her too. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound a little eye-rolling coming from me, but I settled on, “Anyway, to answer your question, Cork, no.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What question’s that?”
“I can’t think of anything better than this. Than waking up in the morning with the two of you.”
“Awww, Justin loves us. Did you hear, babe?”
“I heard.”
Then they were kissing, like, right in front of my face, which was so arresting I didn’t bother with sarcasm. I just watched, and enjoyed the view.
Chapter Thirty-Two
LET ME TELL you a few things that should happen to yours truly as often as possible.
1) Being naked. With a woman. Specifically, this woman.
2) Being kissed. By my best friends.
3) Being the partner of two beautiful, loving, gracious people. (And learning to trust that I deserve them.)
4) And the best part of all? How fucking right this feels.
Me, them, this.
* * *
If you liked Fail Seven Times and want to read the story of how Ally and Paul got together (in which Justin has a “supporting” role…ish), please check out Practice Makes Perfect.
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Bits and Bobs
The “radio show for queer youth” is Hibernia Beach Live, which aired out of San Francisco on Live 105 in the nineties and was a lifeline to queer kids like me.
Enrique Hazeltine, as you have probably realized, is not a real person. He is a composite of folks whose words I worshipped as a young queer person, and whose words I worship now as an older queer person, notably David Feinberg (from whom I stole the Jesse Helms bit), Randy Shilts, and David Wojnarowicz.
We sometimes do this thing where we worship tragically dead young white men without fully contextualizing either their lives or their work. Hazeltine is in many ways my answer to that. He is not simple, or straightforward. Tragically dead, perhaps, but he didn’t die quietly any more than he lived quietly, and I wanted Justin’s relationship with him to contain edges, moments of discomfort, of revelation, of impossibility.
I have fallen in love with people long dead through their words, Shilts and Wojnarowicz among them, and I wanted the gravity of that. But I also wanted the complexity of understanding a writer/activist/artist/leader more deeply as an adult than one did as a child, realizing that people are always more than the sum of their photographs and journals and the stories told about them, that real life is shaded in many colors, and contains many shadows.
Alongside that bit (the role a queer historical figure has in the life of a queer young person…and then an older one), I also wanted to talk a little bit about art. And the power of art to reach across years, politics, and life experiences, touching new people. Surprising people in new ways. I wanted Chad to open doors to Hazeltine that Justin hadn’t walked through, and I wanted Justin to do the same for him.
Whether I succeeded in all of that is up to you, of course.
Art is necessary. Queer art is necessary. Not just for queers, but for everyone. Chad would be violently offended at the notion of categorizing art by identity, but Chad would be wrong. When I was a queer child, I needed to see myself, and my people, reflected in books, on screens, in museums.
And everyone else needed to see my people in all of those places, too.
Acknowledgments
Lennan Adams inadvertently named this book when she sent me a graphic of…something. I think it had an inspirational quote on it? Since I am not good at reading comprehension (in my defense, I’m really just not good at graphics), I misread the inspirational quote and got “Fail seven times” instead of whatever it actually said.
And I thought: Fail Seven Times! That’s the perfect name for the Justin book!
Lennan is also responsible for the amazing cover, which makes me so happy I will require paperbacks so I can pet it in person, and not just on the screen. (You would do that too, were this your cover.)
Massive thanks to Roger Ellicott, who, in my hour of having-no-damn-clue-about-art-shows, told me about exhibiting art (I do not know how y’all visual artists do it; if I had to stand in a room while people read my books I think I’d turn to stone). He is also the inspiration behind the info booklet, which I rather stole, beca
use I thought it seemed like exactly the sort of thing Justin would want to do for the Hazeltine show. You can find Roger’s work here: www.darkhorseart.com
I’m deeply appreciative to my agent, Courtney Miller-Callihan, who supports all of my business decisions (even the ones that make her no money, which, let’s be honest, are most of them). She’s really the best, and I’m lucky to have her.
Alexis Hall read this book once…or thrice…and was a voice of encouragement when I had literally no idea if any of it worked or came together or, in fact, made sense at all, for which I’m incredibly grateful.
And always, always, General Wendy did her thing, pointed out the bumps, assured me I’d described the art all right, and then refused to give me back the book because she wanted to keep it for herself. High praise, y’all. (Don’t worry. I convinced her to release the book. Eventually.)
About the Author
Kris Ripper lives in the great state of California and zir pronouns are ze/zir. Kris shares a converted garage with a kid, can do two pull-ups in a row, and can write backwards. (No, really.) Ze has been writing fiction since ze learned how to write, and boring zir stuffed animals with stories long before that.
Fail Seven Times
Copyright © 2018 Kris Ripper
Cover: Lennan Adams at lexiconicdesign.com
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the publisher.
