by Cecilia Tan
The warm velvet became warm oil, sliding over and around my pulsating clit, trickling over my internal folds and flowing slowly toward my cervix. Without warning or logic, she appeared in front of me, hands on her hips, an intense look of concentration on her face. She, or her image, seemed to be about three feet away from me. My mind convulsed around the impossible. Helplessly, I came and came, almost falling onto the floor. As if from a distance, I heard my own wail of fear and relief. The tension that had built up in me was exploding into the air, rearranging my cells, ricocheting off the walls. As the hard, almost painful clenching of my cunt and my rectum eased into a slower rhythm, the greasy object was withdrawing from me as it dematerialized.
I was covered with quickly-cooling sweat. My pungent smell filled the room. I was seized by the chilling awareness that no other human being shared my space with me. I knew that if anyone else (who? a burglar?) entered my apartment, he or she would see a naked, trembling woman crouched on her floor alone.
Carefully, I stretched like a cat and found that I could still move. My body felt as though it were becoming solid again after dispersing into a thousand points of light. I rose, I stood up and moved to the sofa as though walking through water. She appeared in the space I had vacated, following me. When she sat down, the sofa bounced slightly. She pulled me closer to her.
“Lean back,” she breathed into my hair, pulling my clammy back against her breasts. She felt superhumanly hot, almost too hot to touch, but I welcomed the chance to feel her without having to look at her. Her mouth was close to one of my ears.
For a few heartbeats, I leaned into her without thinking, feeling her strength, her heat, her energy. When she spoke, her words seemed to come from inside my head. “Are you sorry?” She sounded as gentle as a wisewoman offering counsel to an awe-struck peasant. “Are you sorry you called me, little woman?”
I tried to apply cool reason to her question. “No,” I sighed, or thought. I wondered whether she had changed me in some permanent way. I could feel her laughter coming from her lungs.
Her heat seemed to be melting my brain. I still didn’t really understand the events of the evening, but somehow I knew that I had written the script for her possession of me. What she had given me was what I needed; nothing less would have worked. I wondered if her gentleness, the swan’s-down side of every woman with a hard outer shell, would appear if I really wanted it.
“Woman,” she said directly into one of my ears. “Your body is my temple. You claim to know that. Do you believe it?” I did and I didn’t. It occurred to me that she had passed through even more changes than an average mortal woman does in my own time. She had been called our Mother the Earth, source of all life, and the Great Whore, God’s enemy. She had even been changed into a man by those who wanted to erase powerful women, even she-devils, from the universe. Any of the psychologists I know would probably say that early trauma had caused her to have multiple personalities.
She slid down until she was lying on her back, holding me on top of her. I felt myself turning red from the heat of her body underneath me and her arms across me. She seemed to be the mother or source of the hot flashes I had been getting in the past year. The weight of her arms reminded me of the pressure in my womb during my irregular periods. I didn’t want to think about the changes that had been happening in my body since I entered my mid-forties. I’ve never welcomed drastic change, and I didn’t feel ready to become a crone, a woman who never bleeds. My image of myself was still young and ripe as a fruit.
She was stroking my head, and her strokes made me feel more feverish. I felt I was melting into her. With her encouragement, I slid down until my head was level with her breasts. I knew they were being offered to me, and I sucked. Her nipple in my mouth tasted salty, then it gave up a hot liquid. Her milk was nectar, comfort and nourishment. I wanted her supernatural but human body. I knew she wanted me again, and I asked her silently to give me the strength to keep up with her. I knew she would have me over and over, filling my veins with her fierce love. I hoped she would open herself to me too, letting me enter and satisfy her without burning me up. I was taking a risk, but this was nothing new. I have never chosen the safest road. In the present moment I felt proud and eager, and I knew that the present moment is all we mortals have.
Opening the Veins of Jade by Renee M. Charles
For a brief, magical time just after it’s been applied, and all the colors have been pushed deeply under the epidermis with a bee-hum of sound and furious motion, a tattoo seems to hover just above the skin. The submerged tones all but cleave from the newly pierced flesh like moist cloisonnŽ resting on a bed of fine-napped satin. Oh, I know it really isn’t magical, just a reaction of injured, dye-infused skin to the surrounding air. Yet, as I finished each new permanent embellishment on a customer’s bared flesh, just before slathering the area with antibiotic cream and applying a patch of gauze with pre-ripped bits of tape, I can’t help but feel like a shaman-woman who’s just created a sacred sand painting in vivid, blood-strong colors, or one who’s finished the application of ritual body art before a coming-of-age ceremony.
Customers who can crane their necks to see the results of my labors often comment on how real raised tattoos look. Some wistfully ask if there isn’t a way to keep tattoos puffy, so they might stand out better, be more eye-catching.... That’s when I smile, shake my head and remind them that if they keep out of the sun, or use sunblock as religiously as their diaphragms, a tattoo will remain incredibly vibrant, thanks to today’s improved dye spectrums. If they want puffy decorations on their bodies, they’d best visit those shops specializing in invasive body modification.
It’s funny, although my clientele is roughly an even male/female split, women usually ask if they can keep a tattoo raised. Maybe it’s the being-used-to-jewelery thing, or an extension of the ages-old emphasis on jutting breasts and a swollen belly and bottom (not to forget the Bushman’s—Bushwoman’s?—abundant mons pubis). Anyhow, if a client sees that glistening, jewel-domed tattoo jutting out of her flesh, she’ll invariably ask if there isn’t something I can do to make it stay that way. One even suggested I try a collagen injection under it, although she already had enough of that in her lips to shoot some down to her upper arm!
But since there’s nothing I can do to keep tattoos raised, I usually remind the client that her new piece of bodily adornment is hers and hers alone. Like most tattoo artists, I stamp each design SOLD once it’s been chosen. Which is no more than fair. After enduring hours of stinging, vibrating-to-the-bone pain, plus the loss of some blood, every customer deserves the exclusivity of his or her bodily illustration. After all, there’s no easy way to shuck it off if everyone else is ‘wearing’ the same thing.
When the client comes in with a design he or she has drawn or commissioned themselves, the whole ‘sold’ issue is a moot one. I’m not going to tack their design outline up on the studio wall once the person walks out of the salon. For one thing, I wouldn’t want some of the designs they bring in on my walls (why they’d want them on their bodies is beyond me) and, for another, such designs usually have a meaning unique to that person alone, so for another client, they’d have no appeal.
So, on that late afternoon when the trio of ageless, ebony-haired women walked into my salon, moving with a close, silky smoothness, like pearls straddling a silken thread, past my postered-to-the-ceilings walls, straight to the padded table where I do most of my work, each of them holding a folded sheet of creamy pale parchment with the unmistakable seep-through of black lines on the inner folds of the paper, I knew instinctively that these ladies would be wanting me to ink designs of a most idiosyncratic sort upon their smooth-fleshed bodies. As it was, each of them wore clothing that showed off previous examples of the tattooist’s art: delicate, fragile-hued designs that reminded me of ancient Chinese and Japanese bamboo scrolls, with what looked like single-needle outlining, and interior wash of color so delicately faint it looked more like daubs of watercolor app
lied to the top of the flesh rather than tinted ink inserted under the skin. Finely etched bracelets of interlocking blossoms and angular faux jade adorned each woman’s bare arm. On the barely cloth-shadowed folds and valleys of their jutting small breasts, I saw gauzy cloud-obscured animal shapes of a most fantastic nature. The trio stood silently, watching politely as I finished cleaning off my electric tattoo gun, their eyes demure under the Asian single-fold of their eyelids, their exquisitely formed small mouths pursed slightly, as if in anticipation of answering my inevitable question.
“How may I help you, ladies?”
The tallest one, with the glistening chin-length hair whose straight fringe hovered a precise inch above her delicately winged brows, said softly, in a voice free of accent or inflection, “We wish to be tattooed, please. We have brought our own designs.”
With that, each of them extended her paper-holding hand towards me, so that I could see what designs had been painstakingly inked on the translucent paper. The one who’d spoken to me held a design that resembled a blooming peony, albeit one with a most unusual horseshoe-like configuration, one with a high and wide top and trailing buds and leaves fanning out to each side. The woman to her left, with the longest hair and the fullest hips, showed me a similarly altered lotus outline. The third woman, whose shining hair hugged her rounded skull in finely tapered layers of soft jet, held the stylized delineation of some sort of stone gateway, also in that oddly familiar configuration of a wide-arched top and tapering sides.
The designs had been expertly drawn, clearly with an understanding of my needs as a tattoo artist. Yet there was something about them, something so specific, yet unexpected to my eye, despite my having done countless similar inked designs on hundreds of other patches of bared flesh. A small inner voice told me, these designs aren’t meant to be readily seen. When I took my eyes from the sheets of pale parchment, I saw the tallest one motioning with a slim, taper-nailed hand towards her abdomen, then gently outline the contours of her mons through the tight-fitting sheath dress she wore, before saying, “These designs, you can do them, here?”
Now, in the ten years I’ve been a working artist (plus the two other years I’d experimented with the craft on my boyfriend’s back and other bodily contours) I’ve had some strange requests for tattoos in intimate spots. But the seriousness of these women took me aback. Usually, when someone has genitals done, it’s at the urging of a lover or spouse, who comes along to witness the embellishing (until the blood comes, that is, and then many find the process quite unerotic!) But, judging from the way these ladies related to each other, they didn’t seem to be members of a DC mŽnages ˆ trois. There was no overt touching, no nuzzling or sly winks and blushes. And they weren’t tarts . Too classy, too refined, even for high-rent girls.
And they were clearly of age; while their flawlessly smooth skin and uniformly sable hair spoke of youth, their bearing and presence spoke of an accumulation of years impossible to feign.
Three pairs of depthless dark eyes regarded me with polite coolness as I looked at each of them in turn and replied, “Yes, I can do a tattoo anywhere. But you realize that this will be extremely painful. There will be a lot of bleeding, more than when you had your arms and... everywhere else done. I’m not allowed to give painkillers, so I have to warn you before I—”
“Pain is not a problem for any of us,” the long-haired one cut in, then smiled enough to reveal a top row of small, tightly spaced white teeth. Her crop-haired companion added, “Pain, if anticipated, can function as a form of pleasure.” Their taller consort nodded briefly in agreement, her eyes lit from within with what might have been pleasure—or at least anticipation.
The obstacle removed, I found another reason to delay their request, this one far more practical, at least from my point of view.
“Well, if you say so on that. But I’ll have to do this after hours, on account of the privacy matter and all. People come in unannounced, and it can be embarrassing when I’m working on someone’s bum, or their breasts.”
Three lustrous black heads bobbed in agreement, before the short-haired one said, “We understand your concern for us. To us it is not a problem, but your own discomfort should be considered.”
I’d never thought of it in that way before, yet once she stopped speaking, I understood. After all, if someone wanted a design on their bum, or on a breast, apparently they did want at least one person to see it—or more than one person. And if it didn’t bother them for me to see their exposed privates....
Nodding, I said, “Then would it be all right with you to return at, say, nine o’clock? I close at seven-thirty, so that would give me time to ink these drawings, get everything ready. Oh, did you have specific colors picked out, or....”
“We do have colors in mind,” Short-Hair said, pointing to the gate-like design on her square of paper. This is the Vermilion Gate, so a suitable red will be necessary, as well as darker shading. The Golden Lotus should be a natural aureate tone befitting the original blossom, while the Open Peony Blossom shall be pink, with veins of darker blush and, of course, dusky green leaves. For now, we will leave the Jewel Terrace and Jade Vein unadorned,” she concluded, after glancing at each of her companions in turn. They nodded assent to her instructions.
Apparently they understood all this talk of Jade Veins and jeweled Whatnots (the capitalization of the words was implicit in her pronunciation), so there seemed no need to translate for my benefit. After resting their drawings on my workbench, they bowed their heads in my direction, then walked en masse towards the door, with a silken swish of fabric rubbing against bare flesh. That reminded me to call after them, “Ladies, you’ll need a shave or wax before I can do the tattoos, OK?”
Without turning to face me, Long-Hair replied, “That has already been arranged.” Then the trio exited my shop with a light tinkling of the bell attached to my door, which was softly echoed by the flesh-obscured muffled jingle of the ben-wah balls one or all of them had concealed within their bodies.
It was only after they’d left that I noticed the faint, gingery smell of their perfume lingering in the air, a scent that made my own pussy twitch, before I felt an inner trickle of moist warmth against the tight fabric of my jeans. With a groan, I glanced at the clock, whose hands stubbornly rested in the five-o’clock position. Never before had four hours seemed so unbearably long to wait for what promised to be a most unusual job.
‡
Perhaps if my boyfriend hadn’t been out of the city that week, acting as a judge at some tattooing convention, I wouldn’t have found myself bubbling from within in anticipation of that night. But, as it was, I was already aching for him when those three exotics sauntered into the shop, inked parchment in hand, ben-wah balls secreted within. So, since I did know better than to actively seek out companionship of a temporary sort during his absence, I was looking forward to being able to caress (albeit with latex-filmed hands) those smooth folds and mounds of musky flesh while inking on those intricate, bizarre designs, then again caressing the slightly raised skin while slathering on the creamy white ointment. That there were three of them only made the waiting all the more anxious and sweet, even as it removed the temptation to go too far with any of them (sure, I had a boyfriend, but a beautiful body is still a beautiful body).
My heart lurched in my chest as I flipped over the OPEN/CLOSED sign on the door and drew the ring-topped curtains across the shop windows, shutting out the sight of the evening crowds spilling out of the bars and theaters. Behind me, I’d readied the drawings for application—judging by the size of each illustration, the trio had exquisitely small, tight-lipped pussies—and the fresh sets of needles (single and multi-tipped) rested next to unopened bottles of vermilion, golden yellow, sage green, light and dark pink, and black inks. Three pairs of latex gloves rested next to the inks and needles. I’d placed extra folded sheets near the tattooing table, as well as a box of gauze pads and a roll of white tape. And next to those, a tube of antibiotic ointment, fre
sh out of the box.
Just looking at the array of equipment and materials made me shivery inside. I ran to the bathroom at the back of the shop for a quick session with my vibrator, the one with the gentle curve to it and the nubby, bump-studded tip. Resting the back of my head and my shoulders against the wall, I arched my pelvis forward to brush my upper lips and clit against the vibrating numbs, allowing the rubbery tip to tease the lightly stubbled flesh (my boyfriend’s doing—he’d been after me to allow him to tattoo some flowers and vines down there. I’d always demurred for one reason or another, despite having many decorations on my limbs and breasts), until my clit twitched on its own and a shuddering rush of rippling, over-lapping waves of pleasure moved through me from the deep center outward. Clicking off the vibrator, I spritzed some body shampoo on to a flannel, then rubbed it over and around my mons.
As I went to rinse off the flannel, I noticed a thin sliver of red. I hadn’t realized my time of the month was due so soon.
With a sigh, I unwrapped and inserted a tampon (it did feel a bit like a non-musical ben-wah ball), then scrubbed up and went back into the shop. I saw the silhouettes of three slim, yet subtly curving bodies standing behind one of the shaded windows, their forms outlined intermittently by a flashing bank of lights across the side-street. Hoping they hadn’t been waiting too long (even though they were a good half-hour early), I hurried to the door and opened it with a soft “Come in, come in,” before backing into the shop.
This time, the muted jingle of their ben-wah balls was unmistakable. Instead of the tight sheath dresses they’d worn earlier, they now sported shorter wrap-style coat dresses, belted loosely at the waist with fabric belts. They wore high heels whose soles and thin points clicked in sharp descant to the interior tinkle of their hidden pleasure-balls as they approached my work station. Pressing my thighs so tightly together the tampon felt like a hard stone shoved high into my pussy, I licked my lips briefly before asking, “Which one of you would like to go first?”
