by Amber Dawn
“I don’t want you to stop. I don’t ever want you to stop,” Sal managed to muffle the words.
Brianna liked the sound of those words, her body lithe and warm next to Sal. She stopped, mid-kiss, and jolted toward the door. One quick turn of the lock, another pull of the curtain across the only window to the corridor, and a final flick of the light switch and the room was transformed. Brianna tossed her lab coat onto the empty bed beside Sal’s.
Sal watched her with intensity. Being unable to move, Sal relied entirely on Brianna. She was desperate to touch Brianna. She had wanted that for a long time now, had thought of it often when Brianna rested her head against her chest. How infuriating that her body would not allow her to act on it.
“It’s almost like bondage,” Brianna teased as she stood next to Sal’s bed and slowly undid the buttons of her shirt.
“Come back, let me kiss you,” Sal pleaded.
Brianna straddled herself atop Sal’s limp body. Sal could feel her deep inside and imagined being able to wrap her arms and legs around her. She wanted to cradle Brianna, hold her close and caress her skin. She cursed the blankets and paralysis between them even as she savoured every second of Brianna’s presence on top of her.
Brianna enjoyed Sal’s immobility. She liked playing. She liked controlling Sal’s fate. She liked being so close to Sal’s mouth that they were nearly touching and then pulling back just a little and watching Sal’s disappointed expression. There was something powerful about being the object of Sal’s affection. She enjoyed the vision of herself as unattainable. Near Sal, she felt like she could realize a part of herself that she longed for. She needed to be needed and Sal needed her in every way imaginable.
“Tell me how much you want me,” Brianna urged. “Tell me how badly you want to fuck me.”
These words made Sal nervous. She saw herself as shy, a little awkward. It wasn’t her style to speak her fantasies, even though she did want to fuck Brianna. But what did that mean? What did she know about fucking another person? She had never even kissed a girl before. She moaned, hoping that Brianna would delight in the pleasure of the sounds they made together and forget about words.
“I want to hear you tell me. Tell me I’m sexy. Tell me how badly you want to touch me,” Brianna ordered, taking her shirt off to reveal a lacy bra. “Tell me you love the way my tits look.”
Sal’s palms sweated and she did everything she could to force the words out. “You’re beautiful, Brianna. I’m lucky to be here with you.”
“Yes,” Brianna said, unhooking her bra, tossing it aside, “you are very lucky that I picked you to be my patient. You’re my favourite, you know.”
Sal soaked up the palpable currency of Brianna’s words, like desert cacti thirsty for rain. All forms of desire she had experienced in her life became abstract in contrast to this very real longing. She wanted not just to feel Brianna’s body against her own, she wanted closeness, the erasure of barriers, a sacred connection, which struck her as odd since she had not considered herself a believer. She believed in this. She wanted this.
“I’m going to help you fuck me,” Brianna whispered into Sal’s ear. She lifted herself up, positioning her breasts right in front of Sal’s face. Sal instinctively reached her tongue out as far as it would go and licked Brianna’s hard left nipple. Brianna tilted her head back and moaned with a delightfully low pitch, one that came from deep inside.
“I’ve wanted to feel your mouth on my nipples ever since I first saw you,” Brianna said, looking toward the window through which she first saw Sal, many months earlier on the six-a.m. runs.
Brianna hiked up her skirt and balanced herself, holding onto the metal frame of the hospital bed, creating the perfect angle, positioning her raspberry nipples a sugary distance from Sal’s lips. Sal’s unmoving hand lay curled, just so, beneath the salt-watery moisture. Brianna shoved her nipple into Sal’s mouth. Through sheer violet panties, Sal could smell and feel Brianna’s wetness against her skin.
Both of them were breathing heavily, practically panting as Brianna slid Sal’s limp hand into her panties, moving it back and forth against her wetness. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she sighed with pleasure. Faster and faster she pumped Sal’s hand, moving it back and forth against her clit.
Sal had not even known how to imagine sex, especially with Brianna. She watched her and listened to her moans, feeling almost envious that she would not be able to feel the same sensations. Brianna pumped Sal’s hand over her clit, her speed and expression intensifying. Sal watched in disbelief as though her hand was someone else’s, as though this was all happening in front of her, not because of her or with her. She held her breath with anticipation as Brianna arched herself backward, slippery with determination, and let out a cry that sounded painful. Brianna gasped for air, then crumbled, as though she had deflated, onto Sal’s chest.
The two of them lay there together, Brianna clutching Sal, her heartbeat slowing to its usual pattern.
After what seemed like forever, Sal spoke. “Once I learn to walk again, I’m hoping to get a discharge. I want you to come with me when I leave. I want to make you happy, Brianna.”
“You already make me happy,” she countered.
“I have to concentrate on walking, on getting better, on getting out. Then we can get out of here. Right now everyone here thinks I’m crazy, hysterical.”
“You’re not crazy.”
“You say that so effortlessly.” Sal was flattered at Brianna’s faith in her. “How do you know? How do any of us know?”
“It’s my profession.”
Against her better judgment and everything that Sal had learned to believe about love and intimacy and connection and attraction, she felt herself changing, opening. The layers of cynicism and solitude, layers she relied on, layers upon which she built her existence, were questionable. Brianna’s mere existence put Sal’s beliefs under scrutiny. Maybe she wasn’t alone after all. Together, they could get out of this labyrinth, this maze of military horror. Together, they could start a new life.
Brianna dressed slowly as though she wanted to linger in the moment, savouring their union.
“Let me give you your injection before I go,” Brianna said, pulling a vial from the pocket in her lab coat. Even in the dark, Brianna’s control of the syringe seemed effortless and natural, as though giving inoculations was an extension of her very being.
The cold steel needle slid gently into Sal’s side. It was delicate— a tiny prick followed by a tiny push, filling her muscles with the clear liquid that promised to stimulate. It was strange how medicine worked. With each injection, she found herself more relaxed, more limp, more reliant.
In the hallway, outside the closed door, the doctors gathered. It was the usual check-in, a team of superiors visiting Dr. Van de Kroop and everyone else at the ward. It was routine.
“How is this patient progressing?” The one with the clipboard gestured to the window in Sal’s door.
“I’m afraid she isn’t.”
“Hmm. I would have thought that two months in intensive care would have done the trick.”
“I thought so too, at first,” Brianna said. “Now it looks like she might never walk again.”
Here Lies the Last Lesbian Rental in East Vancouver
Amber Dawn
For Maz Sykes, and for anyone who has paid more than just rent to be at home.
Trinket wrapped her arms behind her knees and buried her face between her thighs—as if bracing for a crash landing—a limber pose she only does when she’s showing off, like the splits or the crab walk. But Trinket wasn’t flaunting. She was delirious. She was drooling, crying, hyperventilating with emotional overload.
Her girlfriend Zoya stabbed at the ignition with her keys, missing once, missing twice. The third time she jammed the key in crooked and let out a frustrated groan. She sat back in the driver’s seat to try and quiet her trembling hands with a few long, deep breaths. If she didn’t relax she was
bound to snap the key in the ignition, or be suffocated by her own corset, or both. “Breathe,” she instructed herself out loud. She laid a hand on Trinket’s back, urging her girlfriend’s gasps to slow as well.
Under the street lamp’s yellow glow, Zoya watched Trinket’s ribs move with each inhale and exhale. Her boney spine looked like a rippled sand dune, the kind Zoya had only seen in photographs of Morocco or Death Valley National Park. The notion of driving all the way to the desert—any desert—popped into Zoya’s head. They could go wherever they wanted, she thought as she successfully slid the keys into the ignition. They were alive.
And that … thing … inside the house definitely was not.
The house didn’t stand; rather, it sat in a slumped-veranda, recumbent-rooftop position, two doors from the corner of Templeton and Sixth Avenue. No one bothered to notice exactly when the house began its weary way toward the earth, but once it had sunk it stayed that way.
In 1949 Guido Gambini’s heavy black eyebrows touched as he squinted at the three-bedroom stucco bungalow salted in broken glass. Guido had never seen a broken-glass stucco before. He pondered the number of crushed wine bottles stuck to the exterior of his new home. He imagined the many people who had drunk from those bottles; picnickers cuddled under a cypress tree, large families who shouted across the dinner table. This house will bring us many happy years, Guido thought when he bought it.
Biba Gambini, a green-eyed Calabrian with a sturdier frame than her new Canadian house, was especially fond of the basement. It was her matronly citadel, her woman’s fort. If she wasn’t in the basement canning then she could be found in the garden, growing more vegetables to can. She stomped up and down the basement stairs so frequently Guido grew exhausted just listening to the booming sound of her steps. If only she’d bring that kind of vigour into the bedroom, he pined. Each night she slipped into bed smelling of damp earth, and promptly fell asleep.
Guido only descended into her domain on two occasions.
During the first autumn of their marriage, he heard an awful crash below him and rushed to find his wife at the bottom of the stairs, half-buried beneath a heavy pine table. “We just had a wedding and now you want a funeral?” he asked, after he had her sitting upright again. “Why would you carry it? Down the stairs! By yourself! Do you not have a husband?”
“I need it for canning,” is all Biba said. And indeed there were the many Mason jars along cellar shelves to prove her point. Before Biba shooed Guido back upstairs he gazed in gape-mouthed wonder at her canning cache. There were tomatoes, of course; Biba made sure there was no shortage of tomatoes. And canned beans; Biba had runner beans trained along the garden fence and cannelloni beans as early as May. Then there were the jars of food that puzzled Guido—chili peppers, marinated okra, octopus tentacles. Where was Biba getting this octopus? Guido never asked.
When Biba died of cardiac arrest before they saw their tenth anniversary, Guido visited the basement a second time to shout at the tomato sauce and cry to the oily octopus tentacles pressed against cylindrical glass.
He couldn’t bear to sell the house any more than he could live in it. And after touring several pairs of newlyweds through the empty rooms, he decided against renting to young, rosy couples. Instead, he offered the keys to two women. They weren’t old enough to be spinsters, but there was something about them— the way they folded their arms in front of their chests, jutted their chins out, and their perfume smelled more like chopped wood than florals—little clues that told Guido these women had no hope of finding husbands.
This was his landlord’s strategy: rent to women. Countless stiff, seemingly chaste women. Otherwise, he paid no attention to the rotation of ostentatious paint colours, the untiring dance of Polyfilla and nail holes on the plaster walls, or anything else that happened in the house.
Zoya’s mean mommy routine wavered slightly after Trinket said, “Thank you,” and the corners of her carnelian red lips curled into an involuntary smile. She looked out the curtainless attic window to prevent Trinket from seeing her gleeful expression.
Throughout most of their relationship Trinket had been a fount of thankfulness. If Zoya had a dollar for every time Trinket said “thank you,” they could have bought themselves a house. Regrettably, Trinket’s good manners had zero monetary value, and the house she and Zoya lived in—where they first met, where for two years they fucked and shared food with friends and threw parties and fought and fucked some more—had recently been sold. Their notice of eviction soon followed. Ever since, Trinket hadn’t felt very grateful. Rightfully put, her mood had been downright dismal. And so Zoya quietly drank in Trinket’s “thank you” like water during a dry spell.
Both Trinket’s wrists were hitched in black silk upholstery cord, bought specifically to match Zoya’s brocade corset. Trinket had a theory that Zoya’s fondness for coordinating their lingerie and personal effects had something to do with Zoya being an only child who was denied Barbie dolls and Bonne Bell makeup, and instead was made to read the works of ancient poets and philosophers such as Rumi and Horace. Trinket also suspected that this accounted for a fair share of Zoya’s sadism.
The root of Trinket’s nearly rabid devotion remained a big question. She certainly never saw it—meaning Zoya—coming.
On their first date they went from kissing on a rainy November beach to Zoya bending Trinket over a granite boulder and spanking her ass and pussy with her leather driving glove. “Is that your come on my new glove?” Zoya had thrust the sticky glove at Trinket’s nose. Trinket’s only response was giddy laughter. Not amused, Zoya had Trinket walk back to the car with the glove crammed in her mouth. Trinket suckled and gagged, though she didn’t protest. Her willingness surprised her. She had been willing ever since.
In their attic room, Trinket thanked Zoya for roughly one foot of the black silk rope. Rather than hog-tying Trinket’s wrists tightly together behind her back, Zoya left a foot or so between each knotted cuff so Trinket had partial use of her arms. She reached back to touch Zoya, who stood ominously close behind her and said it again: “Thank you.”
Zoya then bound her legs in a similar fashion: ankle cuffs with a couple of feet of rope between them. Trinket did not thank her for taking away her ability to spread her legs wide open. She entertained the idea of kicking her feet to mess up Zoya’s knots. But if ever there was a night to be a good girl, this was it.
It was their last night in the house. All their belongings— apart from the stool, the rope and whatever surprises Zoya had brought in her black briefcase—had already been moved to their new apartment.
“Remember how this attic room used to give you the creeps?” Zoya asked. “Now, after all this time, tell me the truth, that was an excuse to get into my bed, wasn’t it?” Before they were lovers they were roommates. They’re queer. It’s East Vancouver. It happens.
“This room is drafty,” Trinket complained about her old bedroom.
“The whole house is drafty,” said Zoya. Ever since the house had sold, Zoya had been quick to point out its shortcomings. Testy wiring topped her list. “Think of how many times we reset the clocks. All the surge protectors in the world won’t help this house.” And Banjo, their Boston terrier, always managed to escape through some unseen door in the middle of the night to bark hysterically in the back yard. And the taps dripped … the list went on.
“At least it’s quiet here,” moped Trinket. “There’s so much traffic and construction on Main Street.”
“Oh, it’s quiet here, hmm?” Zoya said as she grabbed a fistful of Trinket’s hair. Trinket squealed. “It doesn’t seem so quiet to me.” Trinket lowered her squeal to the baby-girl baying she knew Zoya was fond of hearing. Zoya yanked her head back to slip a blindfold over her eyes. That was what the slack foot of rope was for, Trinket suddenly realized. Zoya had bound her hands just tight enough so she wouldn’t be able to remove the blindfold.
Darkness had never become a matter of course for Trinket.
T
he blindfold still rattled her as much as it had their first time using it. Likewise, Zoya never tired of watching Trinket jerk and twist, reaching helplessly around her for something to grab onto.
“Stay on your perch, little one.” Zoya warned. Trinket squirmed on the stool as she heard the metallic snap of the briefcase opening. An assortment of clonks and jangles sounded in Trinket’s ears as she tried to guess which toys where being set out. She hoped to hear the happy clanking of the metal buckles on Zoya’s harness. Instead there were seemingly long silent gaps with only the windy whir that the house always made, now amplified throughout the empty rooms. Occasionally Zoya tapped something on Trinket’s kneecap or shoulder, but the touch was too brief for Trinket to guess what was rubber and what was leather.
“You know, I don’t mind a noisy house, as long as the noises are yours.” Zoya picked up the thread of their last conversation, which, to Trinket, felt like an eternity ago. She stuck two fingers into Trinket’s mouth, and Trinket found herself automatically moaning and suckling. “So eager tonight, and I haven’t even gotten started with you yet.” Zoya pushed her fingers further into Trinket’s mouth, hooked them around her bottom row of teeth, and pulled Trinket’s face to her breasts. Zoya let her rest there, allowing Trinket to nuzzle into her for a quick second before taking a sudden step back. Trinket lost her balance, as Zoya knew she would. The floorboards squeaked unapologetically beneath her as she floundered to right herself on the stool again. At 5'1", any barstool was a reach for Trinket, and Zoya had purposely picked the tallest one. She laughed a little at Trinket’s blinded loss of equilibrium. Then, in a flash of ruthlessness, she wound up her leather boot and swiftly kicked the stool out from under Trinket. It hit the far wall with a terrible crash. Trinket screamed and laughed like mad, nearly toppling over.
“I’ll give you ten whole minutes to hide,” said Zoya, gravely. Trinket scrambled forward a few steps before an arm wrapped around her waist. Her legs kept moving on the spot like a marionette.
