by Fiona Zedde
After her shower, she felt clean and her headache was gone, but she was more twisted up inside than ever. Distracted. Roughly drying her hair with a towel, she left the bathroom and headed to the master bedroom where she still kept her clothes. The tiles felt cool and grounding under her bare feet.
Her thoughts a million miles away, she nearly bumped into Phil coming out of the bedroom. “Shit!”
Phil spared her a quick up and down glance, eyes lingering on the robe clinging to Sage’s damp skin. “Excuse me,” she said before continuing past and toward the front door.
In tight black jeans, purple heels, and a black shirt sheer enough for Sage to see her bra and the cleavage practically spilling out of it, she was dressed to fuck.
She didn’t make the mistake of asking Phil where she was going. “You’re not going to Shadow and Vine with us tonight?” she asked instead.
Phil didn’t even turn around. “No. I have something else to do. Enjoy yourself, though.” The keys to the Corvette jingled as she picked them up, then she was gone.
Seriously? This was what they were reduced to, living like roommates who could barely stand each other?
They couldn’t keep going like this, sharing the house out of spite and hurting each other more every day. The sadness bubbled up inside her again, but she shoved it away.
If Phil wasn’t going to the club, she’d made other plans her damn self.
Sage called up Hope and Candler.
“What are you up to tonight?” she asked with the phone balanced between her cheek and shoulder, the boy shorts snapping around her hips after she dragged them on.
Candler sounded like she was on the road, the sound of wind rushing past an open window coming through the phone. “Me and Hope are heading to Shadow and Vine.”
These jokers were for real heading there too? Sage shoved aside the curtain and peered out into the back yard illuminated by the night time light, the pool a sparkling blue. On one of the chairs, a scrap of yellow drew her eye. The bottom to Phil’s bathing suit they’d lost while messing around out there. Her fingers clenched in the curtains and she looked away from that small reminder of things she’d never have again.
“I was heading that way myself,” Sage said. Shadow and Vine was a self-styled “sensuality cabaret” that catered mostly to women. It was the spot she and her friends usually went to on the monthly date they all showed up for unless there was some sort of an emergency.
But with everything happening in their lives, Sage doubted any of them would show.
“Cool! Come sit with us. Richelle and Marty will be there too. It’s gonna be a nice group, like the old days.”
The old days. Right.
Hope and Candler were die hard studs she’d known when she was first coming out. She’d hung with them a couple of times, but their relationship didn’t stick like it had with Rémi, Dez, Nuria, and even Phil. Even though she made time to hang with them at least a couple of times a month, there was something about them and their habits that didn’t sit well with Sage. They didn’t fuck as much as her Rémi and company, tended to be more vanilla despite their tough exteriors, and they talked a good game about monogamy and traditional values and shit. Which nearly everyone in her group was mostly into now.
She shook herself out of her uncomfortable mood and shrugged off her robe, reached for the bottle of lotion to start getting ready. “I’ll meet you all there.”
After a quick meal in her silent kitchen and a call to make sure her parents and Miss Opal were doing all right, she left the house. It was after eleven when she got to Shadows and Vine, just before the main features of the night started up. After paying the entrance fee, she waded into the bright front rooms of the club cum dungeon that Sage and her friends usually just treated like a strip club. The music was loud and thick with sex. Donna Summer’s voice panting under the driving beat. Love to love you, baby.
Sometimes Nuria played, but more often than not, she would sit at their table and the bar with the rest of them, talking shit, drinking, and taking in at least one of the sex shows. A feeling of loss throbbed just under her breast. Sage breathed into it, acknowledged what it was, then ignored it. Nothing would come of her wallowing in that feeling tonight.
After texting to check on where they were, she easily found Candler and the gang. They must have come early and staked out one of the front tables in the massive room that was almost like dinner theater. But there was no dinner, just as much booze as your body could handle, private rooms to indulge and for others to watch you indulge, and a semi-circle of VIP balconies on the second level for people who liked to watch from afar and not get anything splashed on them from the stage.
“Sage!” Candler shouted out her name in the throb between a hard, bass driving song. Someone at the table held up the illuminated face of a cell phone, waving it in Sage’s direction. The bass, slow and sensuous, gave the patrons ideas, and the beat loud enough to drown out the sounds of sex or whatever else was happening in dark corners of the club. A few people danced on the raised, circular dance floor under the DJ booth, but people were probably too sober for their hips to loosen up enough to dance. That would come much later.
Donna’s endless song still played, her sensual moans tracking Sage’s footsteps to the table that seated four people she hadn’t seen in a few weeks.
“Good to see you, man.” The table was small but had more than enough room for them all, and Sage reached over the grip the hand of the two she didn’t know.
“Same,” she said. “It’s been a minute.”
“True.” Candler made a round of introductions then raised a flashing square card, signaling a waitress in the semi-dark room. “What do you want to drink?”
When the waiter came, muscle-bound and wearing pants tight enough to make him squeak, Sage ordered her usual rum and coke.
The stage was still dark, only vague shadows on its raised surface to give any hints about what the first show was supposed to be. While the place wasn’t a strip club, the most popular part of the entertainment on offer at Shadows and Vine was its sex shows, sometimes amateur and fun, but most times a mixture of a strip show and Cirque du Soleil. Nuria liked to perform sometimes, just for fun, or to lure that night’s fuck into her bed.
“So what you been up to?” Candler asked, pale skin flashing in the dim lights, her smile thin and knowing.
Although they weren’t close, Candler knew her from way back. Or they knew of each other. She knew that Candler was a serial monogamist, liked her sex with a femme and a strap, while she thought she knew all about Sage. The smile on her face, a smirk really, was all about the assumption that Sage had been up to some kinky and crazy shit since they last saw each other. Which may or may not have been true.
The last few months, it had mostly been kinky shit with Phil—she felt that throb of loss again and she wrestled it back down—everything else she’d indulged in with other women had been pretty vanilla. Even the scenes she’d took part in, a little leather play here a there, some light spanking, demanding the girl call her daddy, were pretty tame.
“Just the usual,” Sage settled for saying.
“I heard your friend Rémi hooked up for good with a bi chick. They’re even getting married, right?”
“I heard it’s Dez’s mama!” Richelle crowed, throwing her head back. “That must have been a trip, right?”
“Shit…” One of the new girls looked both impressed and horrified. “If one of my friends came after my mama I’d beat that bitch with a bat.”
Sage rolled her eyes. “That’s their business and they’re all fine with it now.” She would never tell these people how Dez had struggled with it, had come to close to abandoning her friendship with Rémi and even turning her back on her own mother. “Grown folks’ business,” she said, injecting a note of finality in her voice. But the simple-minded people at the table apparently didn’t hear it.
“Isn’t Rémi scared this new piece will run back to her husband? I’m assum
ing she didn’t turn lesbian all of a sudden. Not after having two kids and a whole life with man. You can’t trust those bi bitches, man.”
“They’re not really bi anyway. Most of them just want to keep one foot in the closet and keep their options open.”
“Yeah, they don’t want to come out and deal with the real shit we put up with every day.”
The drink sat in front of Sage, the thin line of water on its surface spreading down into the rest of the rum and coke. Under the table, her fingers clawed into her thigh, the denim blunting the press of her nails. This shit wasn’t really happening, was it?
“I don’t see anything wrong with them,” Marty said. And Sage felt herself starting to relax. Maybe they could have an actual discussion about this instead of blaming bi people for everything from AIDS to global warming. What they were saying wasn’t far off from what she thought, but she didn’t want these assholes talking shit about Claudia and Rémi. About Nuria. About Phil.
“Yeah,” Marty went on. “I’d fuck a bi chick in a minute. I hear they’re a bunch of freaks anyway, would do any damn thing you want, they’d probably even fuck a she-goat if you put a strap on it.”
“Exactly,” Richelle said like Marty had just admitted to partaking in satanic rituals. “That’s just one reason not to fuck with them. They’d give you goat AIDS or some shit.”
Marty scornfully sucked her teeth. “Whatever, man. I always use dental dams and shit. I ever wear a raincoat on my strap.” She laughed long and hard like she’d made the biggest joke. “But I’d never do what Rémi did. I’d never marry a bi bitch. That’s just fucking nasty.” She gave a theatrical shudder.
The food Sage had eaten earlier turned over in her stomach. She knew a lot of lesbians didn’t do the bi thing, but the way they talked about people in their own community… Nuria. Phil. She fisted her hand on top of her thigh to stop its tremor while at the same time, deep inside, she squirmed. Was this how she sounded when she’d talked to Nuria, and to Phil? No. No way. “You don’t know how stupid you sound saying that shit.”
“Yeah.” Hope narrowed her eyes at Marty. “What’s the difference? A night eating diseased pussy or a lifetime with it? Why would you risk your life like that? Condoms break all the time. Before you know it, you’ll be pissing blood and have a fucking crab colony crawling around all in your shit.”
Sage clenched her teeth so hard she swore her jaw creaked. “This is some old school shit you all are spouting right now. If anything, it’s fucking all these lesbian broads back to back like you all do that will give you some shit to make your pussy fall out. Or even me. I love to fuck and I don’t always use protection. Sure, I only fuck lesbians, but a lot of these chicks get around a lot just like I do.”
“So, what? Are you defending that disgusting lifestyle now?”
Disgusting lifestyle? “Do you even hear yourself? You sound like those fucking straight bigots.”
“Well, shit, you sound like you want to marry some bi-chick.”
“Yeah. Is that what you want to do?”
It felt like the entire table turned to look at her and Sage just barely stopped herself from opening her mouth and popping out with some defensive, apologizing shit. “If I did, there’s nothing wrong with it. We can’t talk about wanting equality and respect when the next second we’re talking shit about part of our own community and saying they don’t deserve to get married and be happy like you just because they get off different from you. That’s really fucked up.”
A fist thudded on the table. “Chill, y’all. Damn!” Candler swung her head around to look at Sage. “I’m sure Richelle was just joking.”
“I wasn’t, and you know it. You’ve known me long enough to know what I think about that bisexual mess.”
“Yeah. But you don’t have to shout that shit from the rooftops. Especially not here.”
The club prided itself on being inclusive. Not necessarily to straights but everybody who claimed to be part of the rainbow and wanted to watch some live sex. It was a policy they stamped on the door and on flyer invites to their parties. No biphobia, transphobia, or homophobia allowed. Sage didn’t realize she’d memorized the policy until it popped into her brain.
“Y’all are a mess. You know those people carry more diseases than the rest of us and you still playing games.” Richelle sucked her teeth, a true Jamaican in that moment. “Go ahead, fuck around and get gonorrhea of the throat.” Cutting her eyes at everyone else at the table, she grabbed her drink and gulped down the entire glass.
This entire conversation was crazy. It didn’t even seem real. Sage leaned toward Richelle, intent on asking her when she’d gotten her facts from. But the room suddenly plunged into a deeper darkness. A rainbow of strobe lights flashed then they were left in the dark again.
Sage blinked away the spots of light, after-image of the sudden brightness, and realized that while they’d been in the midst of their “discussion,” movement happening on the stage. The lights in the main room dropped even more, covering them in complete darkness.
The waitresses and waiters were mostly gone, only the faint glow from their bowties gave away where they were, most lining the edges of the room. A spotlight dropped in the middle of the stage, surrounding a dark-clad figure who posed in silence for a few seconds, allowing time for anyone watching—and most of the club was watching—time to appreciate their outfit. The dick-hugging onesie, tight enough to show off the hard but supple body they were obviously proud of, was as tight as a figure-skater’s costume and just as dramatic with a V-neck low enough to show off curling chest hair and the lower part of their six pack. It sparkled like it was made entirely of tiny crystals, winked outrageously in the spotlight and threw arcs of brightly colored light all over the stage. They did a slow turn and the audience obligingly let loose with a series of piercing wolf whistles.
“Ladies, gentlemen, darlings of all sorts and inclinations! Welcome to Friday Flight of Fancy.” They preened again, moving around the stage with feline grace, the fire flash of the crystals accentuating every step. “We have a special treat—” A wink fluttered one wide fan of eyelashes and Sage realized then that the lashes were dotted in crystals, or at least glitter, too.
A song began to play.
Limit to Your Love by James Blake.
One of Phillida’s favorites.
“I won’t say too much more,” the vision on the stage giggled. “I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. Just welcome to the stage tonight’s star, Silvia, Mistress of the Night.” They flung up an arm, fingers pointed toward the ceiling and everyone looked up automatically.
A gasp of appreciation.
A woman hung, suspended in purple silks from the high ceiling, one leg twisted in the fabric, her body bare.
No, not bare. Sage blinked to get rid of the illusion of nakedness.
The woman actually wore a flesh-colored leotard with sparkling black sequins swirled over the shape of her breasts and her pussy. Her hair, thick and big and natural, was caught in a bun at the top of her head. She flashed bright teeth at the audience a moment before she made a motion and the fabric released her. She rolled, over and over, faster and faster, toward the floor.
She was going to fall!
But no. She stopped her lightning-fast descent barely a foot from the floor, lifted her bowed head and smiled at the audience again. Now that she was lower, Sage saw that she had very sharp teeth, actual fangs that looked deadly in the frame of her deep burgundy lips.
IS IT TRUTH OR DARE…
SLOWLY, gracefully, she released herself from the shimmering purple silks.
“Welcome, darlings,” she purred to the audience, her voice clear and lush, despite the presence of the over-long teeth. “I am Silvia.” Sage had expected to hear a lisp at the very least. “Thank you for coming.” She turned, leaving her back to the audience, showing off the truly bare and slender length of her back, the flesh smooth with muscles moving beneath the pretty skin. “Tonight, I’d very much love
to make one of you come.” A rumble of excited interest rolled through the now crowded main room. “Any volunteers?”
Although she had other things on her mind, Sage couldn’t make her way through the club in this darkness and she didn’t want to be that asshole with her phone flashlight distracting everyone from what they came to see. But she also wanted to leave.
Lights flashed out onto the audience then, showing the dozens of hands flashing up to accept the challenge of volunteering for whatever Silvia, Mistress of the Night, had in mind. A hand near the front was way up, the woman standing and waving her gloved hand back and forth. The gloves looked like black leather, very soft and very expensive.
Silvia looked over the audience with a satisfied gleam and her eyes must have caught the same woman who had drawn Sage’s eye. “You there, with the black glove on. Come, if you dare, be my tasty treat for the night.”
A whimper of disappointment and frustrated longing came from a nearby table. Sage almost smiled. There were too many people at the show and interested in being played with for anyone to stand a real chance of being chosen. And she half suspected they had a plant in the audience ready to jump up when the call for volunteers came. Sometimes the games they played were far, far beyond what an amateur would be comfortable with.
Even before Silvia had finished announcing her choice, the gloved hand disappeared, a chair screeched loudly back and a slender woman was walking toward the stage. The spotlight followed her youthful, hip-swinging movements toward the toothy dominatrix. The little volunteer looked young. Almost too young. And there was something about her. Something…
Fuck no…
Crystal, and there was no doubt in Sage’s mind that this was young-as-fuck Crystal, glided up to the stage, her movements stiff, her smile wide and full of false bravado.
