The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 6

by Jakubowski Maxim

  Her father had died in the eighties of a massive infarction. It was precipitated by an obsession with late-night cold macaroni and cheese. That was exacerbated by a complete lack of physical activity from the age of eighteen. When her mother succumbed shortly thereafter, Ghidra inherited a fortune in real estate. She married two Orange County graduates of the Harvard Business School. They had both died working for the networks as experts on programming diversity. She did not remember what programs her first husband produced, but the second one had died of a stroke on the set of a half-hour sitcom called, “Wuzzup?” The pilot died at the executive screening as suddenly and finally as her husband. She felt ready to move on to cable. She found television dull, read a great deal and was a fair water-colorist. She had two secret passions, the Benoit and getting eaten. She quietly satisfied both often.

  Slugging allowed her to knock off a small belt of gin in whatever ladies room, quiet office, or doorway she found convenient. She and Vera had shared all of their adult lives which included everything they could think of to discuss. They never once mentioned their boozing, even though they did a great deal of it together. For the most part, they stuck to their appearance, their financial interests, and the maintenance problems of male husbandry.

  So when Ghidra appeared at Vera’s door, Vera told her the story of the bartender-butt-toy who had smarted off to her. They were both equally shocked and, finding a small jar of stuffed green olives from Dean and Delucca in Ghidra’s bag, they had a martini.

  Feeling a little saucy, Ghidra asked, “Do you think we could get him back?”

  “Why?”

  “I think,” she said, “if we paid him enough, we could probably tie him over the sofa, give him a whipping. He deserves it.”

  “Yes, he does, the little smart ass.”

  And Ghidra replied, “We can make his little ass smart.” She had had a very tiring week sorting out her portfolio.

  They giggled a little and fell silent. It created a hole in the conversation. They looked around the room, but nothing satisfied their eyes.

  Ghidra, who had been doing a lot of slugging that day, said, “That’s all they think about . . .” and then dozed off looking soft, and even pretty, curled up on the couch. It annoyed Vera. It did not, however, surprise her that Ghidra looked pretty for she estimated that her friend, who was a very able dresser, was wearing at least twelve thousand dollars’ worth of clothes, not counting her jewelry. Vera felt abandoned.

  She went back to thinking about her ass. She had not looked at it for some time with any really serious scrutiny. She thought the barman had reacted positively to its pleasant contours, but perhaps she had not registered his precise reaction. She sipped.

  Then she headed for the three-way mirror that was between the walk-in closet and the bath suite. Once there, she turned her back to the mirror and hauled up her skirt. There was her ass – which had always been a source of pride – encased, draped and shaped by lingerie and stockings from Bergdorf Goodman. If adornment was the key, her ass was going first class. She retrieved her drink and sipped a little more deeply.

  Then she set the glass on the carpet and slowly hauled up her sheer slip. This left her with the stockings and her panties, which she began to lower with reluctance. What happens when you meet your ass at an unexpected moment? What if it’s not the ass you trusted to be there when needed? She felt woozy. She paused to dip down and sip. Then she tugged at her panties some more.

  There at last was her bare bottom. It was pale as could only be expected in late spring, but the shape was nice and the central division showed only a slight slackness in the cheeks where they turned inward. She could see no cellulite as yet and certainly no hint of “cottage cheese” on the outer extremities of the cheeks. The cheeks were a bit larger than they had been, but perhaps that had its own charm. Still it could be that Bergdorf Goodman had more to do with its shape than muscle tone. She would really have to strip completely to check properly.

  But that would not work either. Her judgment seemed clouded by something as though no matter what she did she could not find the true identity of her own ass. She needed an outside eye.

  Ghidra was sound asleep and, besides, likely to be too soft in her evaluation. She was a friend, her dearest darling friend. She could not call on the staff of the hotel at random for an ass inspector. The Benoit was assphobic, she was sure. It wasn’t a Benoit sort of thing to do. Perhaps . . . perhaps she had misjudged the young man whose sensitivities she had not credited. Perhaps in feeling up his crotch, she had somehow denied him something of himself? She could make that up to him and break down the unfair social barrier between them in the same stroke. After all, she was a clever girl with a social conscience. She had been to Yale.

  She called down to the desk and asked for another round of martinis. Then she finished her own and downed the remainder of the sleeping Ghidra’s. That way the order would seem realistic, logical, timely. She had asked the concierge to send the same waiter, claiming that she had forgot to tip him the first time, and he of course obliged. That were not that many waiters for a twelve-room hotel anyway.

  She stripped entirely and threw herself on the bed, but that felt too aggressive. She did not want to alarm him. She rose and put on an ecru satin robe that would reveal her shape nicely. Would she have to open the door? Or would he have a pass key? She landed again on the bed in a pile of pillows. Her spare liter of gin helped her organize her thoughts. She sipped from it and slipped it into the night stand. Should she be lying there with her ass carelessly exposed for his scrutiny? Dare she look up with a naughty smile and say, “Whaddaya think?” Would he regard that as bizarre? Abusive? Harassment?

  Or would he, as she hoped, settle on the bed to admire and perhaps stroke her girlishly proffered bottom? Ghidra shifted and muttered in a troubled tone. One of her legs fell from the couch, which exposed her entire crotch to the door of the room. Vera got to her feet and going round the coffee table, she picked up the errant foot to return it to the couch.

  At that moment the door opened. As Vera was bent over Ghidra, her own ass was thrust prominently toward the door. Her face was apparently starting a downward arc between the sleeping Ghidra’s knees.

  Vera popped up and wavered from the dizzying shift of position.

  “Shall I come back later?” he asked.

  “No no. I was just taking care of her. She’s dead to the world.”

  He was clearly withholding some clever schoolboy response about this method of raising the dead, but he had gotten in trouble with her before for opening his mouth. She wished he would. It would give her the upper hand. She was starting to feel things were again out of control. She looked him square in the eye.

  “Shall I mix your martini?” he asked.

  “Two, please.” She smiled at him calmly.

  “Is she joining you?” he asked doubtfully.

  “No. For me, and . . . and for you. I was rude to you before. Would you have a drink with me?” She paused tucking her chin downward. She looked up at him through her lashes and added, “Please?”

  Despite her earlier ass-fondling, he knew he was not allowed to drink with the guests on pain of termination, so he declined quietly but with a warm tone in his voice. She stammered a bit and then, in a strange fit of desperation, she went to the bed.

  “Put the drink there,” she said pointing to the nightstand.

  As he came over to do so, she flopped down on her stomach and flipped up the back of her robe.

  “What do you think?” she asked, looking at him with the glitter of gin in her eyes. It was a moment of total nightmarish terror as she realized how appalling this decision had been. The hint of a snigger would have destroyed her, even if it were propelled from him by sheer nervousness. But he did not snigger.

  He looked. He studied her bottom. He leaned over the rounded, pale hillocks of Vera’s ass. Then he contemplated closely. He even, finally, slowly, and very carefully, leaned down and kissed now one cheek an
d then the other.

  “Charming,” he said, “absolutely charming.” Then he prudently handed her the fresh martini.

  She took the cool stem glass in hand and quaffed off the top half of the drink. Then she handed it back to him to put on the table and let herself float down into the soft, yielding layers of duvet, starched sheets, cushions, quilt and fluffy pillows in which she nested. Her bottom was perhaps the highest point of her anatomy now. In the soft, incandescent light in the room, it offered a welcoming peachy glow. It was not as pert and perky as it had been at one time, but none of us are. It was not as toned as the woman who had undulated out of the bar earlier that evening, but it was no slouch of a rump. He smiled a little.

  He reached down and let his hand glide gently over the surface of one cheek and then the other, smoothing the tension from her with his hand. She purred and he trailed his fingertips along the crack, just firmly enough to avoid tickling, but hard enough to stimulate the tender skin. In short, he blessed the imperfect perfection of her bottom with his unstinting appreciation. It was his benediction. She sighed and settled deeper. He packed his bar tools and left.

  When she woke up, it was four in the morning. Ghidra was standing over her, still feeling the effects of the gin.

  “Do you mind if I sleep here?” she asked in a small voice, as though she were clutching a teddy bear in the dark.

  “No. Come on,” said Vera, grateful to have her friend near.

  “You are going to freeze your ass like that, Vera, but I have to tell you. It’s still a great ass.”

  “But will it last?” asked Vera. There was no answer to that.

  Ghidra turned off the lights, stripped to her slip. She belched gently and then farted softly. Silence followed. Then she climbed into her side of the huge bed. The unfamiliar warmth was comforting to both of them.

  “Where did he go?” asked Vera.

  “I don’t know. He left,” said Ghidra.

  “What do you suppose . . . he . . .?” asked Vera, unable to form the question.

  “I have no idea,” said Ghidra, clearly not wanting to discuss it.

  They were together in the dark and silence. They did not fall asleep for almost an hour. Then the grey light began to strengthen over the East Side of Manhattan as it always does when it steps over Queens on its way from Europe. The echoing rattle of trucks began to rise from the streets below. From somewhere a faint odor of coffee drifted into the room. After a while, they slept.

  Going Postal

  Sacchi Green

  “Hey, are you all right?” She rang the bell again and knocked, hard. I couldn’t seem to move. What was the point? What was the point in anything? The world was going to hell, and my own country was toting the handbasket.

  “Lynn! Ms Rackliffe!” She pounded until I could almost feel the vibrations. I pictured her big, strong hand, knuckles reddening at the impact with my door. I’d pictured that hand so many times, impacting other places . . . Some part of me stirred, though not, as yet, the parts that could move me out of my huddle on the couch.

  “Look, I know you’re in there. The lights and TV go on and off, but you haven’t picked up your mail or UPS deliveries in three days. If you don’t tell me you’re okay, I’ll have to either notify the police or break down the door.”

  Three fucking days – no, fuckless days – of despair. The bastards had won. In spite of the exit polls, known voting irregularities, and statistical impossibilities, no recounts in Ohio or Florida were going to make any difference. The voters had cast away all reason, and, in the states where gay marriage rights had been trampled into the dust, all sense of human decency as well.

  Not that decency in the conservative sense had ever concerned me much. What the hell possessed people, anyway, to be so obsessed with the sex other people were having that they ignored their own government’s campaign of war, destruction, arrogance, and downright stupidity?

  She knocked again. “One last chance,” she said sternly. Her tone of voice had begun to play tricks on me. If I’d been standing up, my knees would have wobbled – which suddenly made standing up a more appealing prospect than it had been in a while. “Looks like some galley proofs in the mail,” she added. “Are you such a hotshot your editors will let you blow off deadlines?”

  I tossed off the quilt and shuffled around for my slippers. She must have heard me, because she waited silently on the other side of the door, all imposing, silver-brush-cut, six feet of her. I realized suddenly how bad I must look. Well, why not, when the future looked even worse? Time was, my mother used to say, when your postman knew everything about you short of your underwear size. This one had been delivering my mail for only about three months, but she certainly knew my politics, my taste in porn, and the publishers who were buying (or rejecting) my work. She’d asked me to autograph an old copy of On Our Backs a couple of weeks ago, and since then I’d been doing my best to make sure that even my underwear size was no mystery to her.

  It had been a game, inching toward something major league. She’d been playing along by knocking and hand-delivering all my mail, even if it was only pizza coupons, trying to suppress her amusement and maintain the official role belied by the gleam in her eye. I’d been planning, if all went well, to dispense with the underwear altogether and appear at the door on the day after the election attired in nothing but a map of the country drawn across my torso, with the blue states colored in. Maybe the whole thing could have been tilted to make a bright blue Florida jut downward in its most interesting possible alignment.

  But all hadn’t gone well. For the past two days she’d rung my doorbell, and I hadn’t responded, unable to face the world except through the furious online filters of Atrios’ Eschaton, Daily Kos, Buzzflash, Agonist, Fuckthesouth, until even the bloggers’ convincing but unprovable conspiracy theories became more than I could bear.

  Now, on the third day, under threat, I opened the door. “You look like hell,” she said brusquely, a frown denting her wide brow. For a moment I was tempted to throw open my bathrobe and flash my unmapped nakedness at her anyway, until I remembered that I hadn’t showered in three days. Or possibly longer.

  “When was the last time you had a meal?” she asked, moving inexorably into the kitchen and kicking the door shut behind her. I looked vaguely into the sink. Traces of macaroni and cheese had been drying on the unwashed dishes there for at least two days, but I was pretty sure there were more recent cracker crumbs sprinkled across my computer desk.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said, with some attempt at dignity.

  “Well, I am. And you will be.” She thumped the stack of mail down onto the table and backed me against my refrigerator, trapping me there with one muscular arm braced on either side, her large body blocking out the rest of the room. And the rest of the world. For a brief moment I felt the warmth of protection and the tingle of challenge, all merged together. A smile threatened to take charge of my lips.

  Then I saw the postal service insignia on her sleeve. Stylized, streamlined, invoking speed and reliability; but still an eagle. Still the symbol of war. I began to shake.

  “What . . .?” Then she saw where I was looking, and backed off, leaving me shivering even harder without the warm shelter of her body. I stifled a whimper. “The uniform? Damnit, you’re even farther gone than I thought! Have you been getting any sleep? You haven’t been home more than three or four days a week in the last two months. No wonder you’re crumbling.”

  Her voice was rough, with an underlying note of concern. She’d noticed, I thought. Kept track of me. Well, I’d had to tell her to hold my mail whenever I was away working on voter registration and getting out the vote in states where it might matter.

  Except that nothing I had done had mattered. I slumped back against the refrigerator and began to slide down it. “All that work . . . we tried so hard . . .” Tears burned in my eyes and stung my throat. “I did my best . . .”

  She dragged me upright with her big hands under my armpit
s. Her thumbs pressed into the sides of my breasts hard enough to leave marks. The pain was a welcome distraction, I realized. Amazingly welcome. My nipples began to harden, and the tears retreated just a little.

  “Yes,” she said soothingly, “you . . .” She broke off abruptly and looked intently into my eyes. Her tone changed, seething with scorn. “Sure, you tried, but you didn’t try hard enough, did you? You call that doing your fucking best?”

  I couldn’t flinch away from her bruising grip. Her words seemed brutal, biting – but oddly familiar. I discovered that I didn’t want to flinch. What had I written next in that story she must have read? Never mind, I’d just wing it. “I’m sorry,” I muttered, ducking my head so that my brow rested between her breasts. If I leaned one way or the other, if I turned my head so that my mouth could touch . . . No, I hadn’t earned such bliss. “It’s all my fault. I know it is.”

  “You bet it is,” she growled. “And you’re going to get what’s coming to you.” She yanked me over to a high chair at the kitchen counter and dumped me there. I watched in awed anticipation as she pulled off jacket and shirt and stood flexing her hands, her white wife-beater clinging to the tantalizing contours of the flesh beneath.

  I started to untie my ratty old bathrobe, but she slapped my hands away, then lifted me from the chair, swung around, and suddenly I was sprawled across her lap. My bathrobe was bunched up around my waist, leaving my ass hanging out in all its chilly vulnerability, so much more humiliating than full nudity. No amount of wriggling and kicking could make my feet reach the floor. I whimpered.

  “You want something to cry about?” Whack! Her hand came down full force, no warm-up. I yelled, and braced for another hit, but she pinched and squeezed hard for a few seconds, probing for sensitive spots, not that there was an inch of flesh that wasn’t either aching or aching for more.

  Whack whack WHACK! A relentless rhythm, repeated with variations, making me realize, as much as I could think at all between gasps, that I’d had no conception at first of what full force could mean.