Naughty or Nice?

by Alison Tyler

  I wondered if she would let me return the pleasure she had given me. I began to unbutton her shirt, and she pushed my hands away. To my delight, however, she peeled away her own clothing and threw it on the floor.

  I cupped one of her generous breasts, and she laughed. When I daringly planted my mouth on her nipple and sucked, she stroked my hair. “Good girl,” she told me quietly.

  I wanted to turn her on like nobody else. I scratched her lightly with my fingernails so I could feel her move and hear the rhythm of her breathing speed up. She smelled like warm bread and men’s cologne mixed with hairspray and cigarette smoke. I hoped I would never forget her smell.

  She pushed my head downward, wanting my mouth on her. I held her hips and kissed her sweaty skin until she moaned in my ear, and then I slid down to part her thick black pubic hair and burrow into her folds to find her swelling clit. I gave it a few licks before stroking it with two fingers.

  “No,” she told me, trying to soften her refusal by pushing my damp hair off my face. “I don’t want it like that, baby.” I withdrew my exploring finger, feeling stupid. I focused on her responsive clit until she thrashed violently and gripped me in a series of spasms.

  We held each other after and traded little kisses, delaying our return to the real world, when my guilt and my hangover came rushing back.

  “I’m a divorcée,” I said, pressing myself against her rolling breasts.“I have a five-year-old daughter named Lisa who stays with my parents when I go out. I have to phone them.”

  I waited for Tanya to give me the usual sermon about the selfishness of gay mothers who refused to give their children up for adoption, even though they couldn’t give them a normal upbringing. That speech never came. “If she looks like you,” said Tanya, “she must be really pretty.” I thought I could fall in love with this woman.

  I put on my bar clothes while Tanya made toast and coffee. Over breakfast, she told me that she had been adopted as a baby and was raised as an only child. “I always wanted a family of my own,” she said, as if trusting me with her deepest secret.“I’d like to settle down with the right woman and raise children. I just don’t want to have babies myself.”

  I hoped that Lisa would like her, and vice versa.

  When we were about to leave Tanya’s apartment, she grabbed me from behind without warning.

  I jerked. “Do you know how to fight back if someone jumps you?” she asked. Her arm was around my neck in a way that felt affectionate until she tightened her hold, putting pressure on my throat. I tried to pull her arm away, which clearly amused her.

  My legs buckled, and I realized a second too late that she had kicked the backs of them with a bare foot. She helped me to land gently as I fell to my knees.

  Her hands held onto my breasts as I reached around her, trying to pull myself up or pull her down with me.We ended up rolling like puppies on the carpet of her front room. “You don’t know how to fight, do you, girl?” she taunted. The answer was painfully obvious. She held me down on my back, then gave me a slow, teasing kiss. I sank into an irresponsible pool of lust.

  On our next date, I invited her into my attic apartment. I wanted her to meet Lisa because I really hoped, against my better judgment, that the three of us could become a family. My desire to live happily ever after with Tanya was as intense as it was hopeless. Even if the rest of the world could have accepted us, I knew that I couldn’t give up all outside interests to become the wife and mother of her dreams. I couldn’t do that for anyone.

  I wanted to write the Great Canadian Novel, but in the meantime, I was studying to be a high school English teacher. Tanya wanted me to face reality.“You don’t need a job, baby,” she insisted. “If you stay home, you can write as much as you want and you won’t have to worry about what anyone else thinks.”

  Tanya had a rare job as the only female salesperson of camping and sports gear in Eaton’s department store. I thought she probably knew her inventory, but since she was paid only on commission, she could never predict how big her paycheck would be.

  I couldn’t trust Tanya to take care of me and Lisa. I thought I had no right to be such a burden, and I had my pride, too. In the name of common sense, I probably hurt her more than any of her tricks or bar buddies.

  On a snowy winter day, Tanya tried to show Lisa how to handle a hockey stick in the parking lot behind the house where we lived. When I looked away for a moment, Tanya pretended to throw a punch at me. “It’s okay, honey,” I told Lisa, not wanting her to think I was being attacked.

  I wanted to distract Tanya from taking me down in front of my child. “Where did you learn to fight?” I asked her.

  “From a guy I knew in grade school.” She smiled at her memories. “His dad was in the army. He showed me some moves after he noticed that a bunch of white kids were beating me up on the way to school. Every day. They called me a dirty Indian.”

  “That’s bad,” said Lisa. “Kids shouldn’t say bad words to other kids.”

  I hugged her. “That’s right, honey,” said Tanya.

  “And you’re not even native,” I remarked. “Are you?”

  “Yeah. My birth parents were Metis. So, yeah, you could say I’m a—dirty Indian. You still wanna be my friend?” She looked angry.

  “No,” I sneered back. “’Cause you’re not the only squaw around here.What do you think?”

  I felt unreasonably hurt by her failure to sense the native blood under my own white skin. After all, she had been inside me. A lot.

  “You, too?” She sounded skeptical. “Right on.” She was denying her shame over what she was: not a righteous Mountie but one of the savages that the Mounties had been sent here to control, back in the time of Queen Victoria.

  Tanya didn’t seem to know that there was more than one way to look at history. I didn’t know how to explain that to her.

  Christmas that year promised to be more fun than Tanya or I had ever had before.We planned it carefully: on December 23, we would have our own Christmas at Tanya’s place, complete with turkey dinner and presents for Lisa and each other.

  We would cherish our memories on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, when Lisa and I would have to stay with my parents. I wouldn’t ask them if I could invite Tanya. They wouldn’t understand. She would spend those days with her bar buddies, as usual.

  Our day dawned cold, clear, and snow-dazzling. “Is Tanya my auntie?” asked Lisa after I pressed the buzzer to her building.

  “Sort of,” I told her. “I think she’d like it if you call her auntie. But don’t tell anyone else.You wouldn’t want to hurt your Auntie Marg’s feelings.” I couldn’t afford to give my snarky sister any more ammunition to use against me.

  Tanya hugged us both and brought us into her basement apartment where a Christmas tree stood on a table, its colored lights brightening a dim corner like hope made visible. The smell of roasting turkey filled the space. Lisa ran to shake the wrapped presents under the tree.

  “You don’t get to open them until after dinner,” Tanya warned her. “Be good, or Santa Claus will take them away again.”

  Tanya had provided a feast, including mashed potatoes, green salad, cranberry sauce, and eggnog with rum for the grownups. In the interval between the main course and mincemeat pie, Lisa sang us the carols she had learned in kindergarten, and Tanya and I joined in.

  Then came the crash. The front-room window shattered in a burst of flying glass. I was so shaken that I didn’t recognize the voice at first. “Fuckin’ dykes! Two days before Christmas, you sick bitches! You belong in the loony bin!”

  A man was staring down into the apartment from ground level, and his face was horribly familiar: Everett McLennan, my ex-husband.

  Lisa was clinging to me, whimpering. She hadn’t seen her father for so long that I doubted whether she would recognize him, especially in his current mood.

  “You have to pay for that, McLennan!” yelled Tanya. How could she know his name?

  I felt nauseous when I heard
the outer door opening and heavy footsteps approaching the door of the apartment.There would be no place to hide if he broke the door down. A cold wind from the broken window was already chilling our food and our skin, blowing my hair around my face.With ears made sensitive by fear, I heard more footsteps in the hallway, followed by a loud, incoherent argument. I could hear thick bodies slamming into each other and thudding against the wall.

  Tanya was standing tensely in front of the door when a set of knuckles rapped sharply on the other side. “Police!” called a tenor voice. She peered through the peephole, then opened the door.

  There stood a uniformed member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a young man with a hard chest encased in red. His brown eyes were sympathetic, and his face looked surprisingly delicate. He had Everett by the arm, and Everett’s wrists were in handcuffs.

  “Santa Claus!” shrieked Lisa. “Don’t take away my presents! I’ve been good! I only touched them a little bit!”

  “I caught this man swinging a bat at your window,” said the Mountie at the same time. “Has he done anything else to you or your property?”

  Tanya stared, apparently oblivious to everyone other than our protector in red. “Officer,” she said, sounding awed. “Aren’t you Darryl Sangwais’s friend?” Darryl was her bar buddy who had always wanted to join the police.

  “I’m not the criminal here,” snarled Everett. “That’s my daughter and she’s been exposed to immorality!”

  At the time, I was so intent on convincing Lisa that the man in red wasn’t Santa and that he wasn’t there to retrieve presents, that I couldn’t follow the conversations swirling around us. By the time I became aware of what was going on, everything seemed to be resolved.

  Everett shut up and glared when he realized that Lisa was not simply going to be handed to him and that no men in white coats were going to take me or Tanya away. Once Tanya got over her first shock at meeting a gay Mountie, she told him that Everett was her co-worker and that he had been “bothering” her for weeks.

  Later, Tanya explained to me that she had never told me this before because she didn’t want to scare me. Our hero had been watching Everett ever since Darryl had told him that he was sabotaging Tanya at work and threatening her with worse treatment if she continued trying to brush him off. I could have told them all a few things about the devil I knew.

  “This man needs to spend some time in a cell because he’s been naughty,” the Mountie told us, ignoring Everett’s protests.“And this little girl deserves a treat because she’s been good.” He handed Lisa a red felt Christmas stocking that said A PRESENT FROM SAINT NICK in gold glitter. Inside, it was stuffed with chocolate bars, wrapped mints, candy canes, nuts, and a mandarin orange. “You need to get that window fixed right away,” the Mountie said to us. “Keep the receipt, and he’ll be ordered to pay for it.” By this time, he had introduced himself to Tanya as Officer Brent Blake. We knew he was wearing his dress uniform for dramatic effect, as any gay brother would do under the circumstances.

  If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought Tanya was falling in love with him.

  “Merry Christmas, ladies,” said our gallant officer by way of adieu. He herded Everett into a squad car, leaving the three of us, bundled up in our coats, to wait for the glazier to bring a replacement window. In the meantime, we opened presents, trying to pretend that the fresh air was raising our spirits as it reddened our cheeks.

  Lisa loved the big plush panda bear that Santa had left for her earlier at Auntie Tanya’s place. When I opened a little velvet-lined box from Eaton’s and saw Tanya’s gift of a silver ring, I hoped I could give her a discreet kiss in front of Lisa without alarming either of them.

  Tanya jerked violently away from my mouth, holding me by the waist to soften the rejection.“Love you,” she whispered as an explanation.We hugged for so long that Lisa wanted to join in, so we pulled her into the circle of our arms.

  When Tanya opened my present, a volume of Sappho’s poetry, her eyes widened.“Have you heard of Sappho, the first lesbian writer?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “No, but I’m sure she’s good if you like her poems.” Tanya tried to look interested. I knew that she wouldn’t get past the first page.

  Darkness fell early, and I needed to take Lisa to my parents’ house. My flesh ached for Tanya, but we had had our day together, and we had been rescued from harm by a good man. We didn’t think we could realistically ask for more.

  On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I thought of Tanya drinking the time away with Darryl and Officer Brent.Tanya and I had agreed not to contact each other, to be on the safe side.

  Lisa showed the rest of the family the stocking she had been given by Santa, who was really a policeman when it wasn’t Christmas. I explained that this person was Brent Blake of the RCMP, friend of my friend Tanya. Lisa was about to tell them about her daddy and the broken window, but I asked her to sing “Silent Night” for us, instead. My parents, my brother, and my sister beamed at her, and I could almost see visions of new stepdaddies dancing in their heads.

  On Boxing Day, I slipped away from my family, leaving them with a cheerful hint that I wanted to visit someone who was important to me.

  Tanya grabbed me as soon as I walked into her apartment. Something had been on her mind since she had last seen me. “If you were a suspect,” she growled in my ear,“you wouldn’t get away from me.” Both she and I could picture her swaggering in the red jacket.

  Her goal was to take me down. My goal was to challenge her. As delicious as it was to be at her mercy, I wanted to prepare myself for a worst-case attack with no savior in sight. I needed to learn how to fight.

  Despite being heavier, Tanya could move faster than I could. As hard as I tried to outwit her, she had me on the floor within minutes. “You better cooperate, little girl,” she warned me with satisfaction.

  I grabbed Tanya’s breasts, since nothing else was within my reach, but this just provoked her. She pressed my shoulders and legs, holding me on the floor. She reached one hand down to unzip my pants.

  “No,” I laughed, trying to pretend this was all a joke. “I have rights.You can’t do that.”

  “Can’t I? Wait and see.” I tried to push her off me without hurting her, and then I just tried to push her off by doing whatever seemed likely to work. Nothing did.

  We struggled until we were gasping, and the outcome looked like a stalemate: I couldn’t get up, but she couldn’t reach my cunt without my cooperation. She managed to pinch my nipples, making them spring to attention.

  She casually wrapped a hand around my vulnerable throat. “Pull your pants down, honey,” she ordered sweetly. “Come on.” She gradually applied more pressure until I could hardly breathe. I did what she wanted, wiggling slightly. She backed off to give me room to pull my pants all the way off.

  She didn’t need to tell me to spread my legs.“You’re wet,” she told me, calmly sinking two fingers into me.“You’re gonna get it. For resisting arrest.” She grinned in my face, showing teeth.

  I told myself that this scenario had no connection with reality. Her tongue on my clit, however, felt very real. She sucked and nibbled it before switching to hard fingers that tormented it to an explosion. I knew from experience that this was just the introduction, with the main course to come harder. “Give in?”

  “Yes.” I was breathing hard. Tanya entered me with two, then three, then four fingers.

  “I want to fuck your brains out,” she told me in a voice that was soft but dangerously quiet. “Poor girl,” she laughed. “You can’t stop me, because I’m bigger than you.” I could hardly hear her words when she was filling me so well.

  Like a military strategist, she proceeded with cunning and persistence. She spread her fingers inside me, pressing deeper. She took my moans as a cue, responding to my most interesting reactions. Eventually, she was slamming her fingers into me, and my cunt served as an echo chamber to amplify the sweet ache of each thrust.


  Afterward, we lay on her floor in each other’s arms, catching our breath, thinking our own thoughts. I was surprised to feel her tears wetting my face.“I’m sorry, honey,” she groaned. “I’m a bastard to you. I don’t really mean it.”

  I wondered whether her birth parents had ever been married. “I know,” I told her, trying to hold her tightly enough to show how I felt. “Honey, it’s okay. I wanted you. And we’re innocent under the law. Think about that.”

  We both remembered the sight of our own gay Santa Claus defending us in a way that no real man ever had before. And he was twisted and queer like us, defying his superiors every day just by being himself. Tanya snickered, and we ended up rolling all over the floor, laughing in each other’s faces until we both had tears in our eyes.

  At length we lay quietly. She was on her back, and she held me on top of her, my head between her breasts. Not having to look me in the eyes seemed to give her courage.“We’re not going to spend our lives together, are we?” she asked.

  “No, woman,” I answered. “But we can be friends. We’ll be okay.”

  Even though we had lost something, we still felt saved and blessed by our Christmas miracle.We knew that some dreams could come true and that the future of people like us was worth fighting for.

  Everything You Need on Christmas

  Brooke Stern

  Waking up in the morning, it took Laura a few groggy minutes to remember today was Christmas. Simon was breathing softly next to her, and she curled up with him and closed her eyes. Try as she might, though, she couldn’t fall back to sleep. She found Christmas upsetting. She was happy not to wake up alone—that in itself made it better than most of her Christmases—and she was far from family, which dramatically cut down on the number of things that could go wrong. Nonetheless, she couldn’t feel as carefree as she might have on other mornings. On Christmas, the voices were louder and more persistent: What was wrong with her? What was she doing here? Thirty and no husband or kids. An ocean separating her from family, and something even more insurmountable separating herself from home. New York with Simon was okay. Better than okay, but at that moment nothing felt very good at all.