Wait here, she says.
I sit down on the only chair. After forty-five minutes a Chinese medical student comes in.
I need to examine you, he says.
No, you don’t. I’m not sick, I just need a prescription.
I’m supposed to examine you.
I think of him looking at me, my legs spread apart, my heels in the cold stirrups; I don’t want him to look at me. I start crying and saying I just want the pills, there’s nothing wrong with me I don’t want a baby you don’t need to examine me, please just give me the pills so I can go home.
He writes something down on his chart, then walks out, muttering something I can’t hear. A minute later the nurse says I can go back to the waiting room.
A man with long blond hair is passed out in one of the chairs. Three well-dressed black people are sitting together. The man is doubled over, holding his side, and the two women are on either side of him talking to him and rubbing his shoulders. There’s a Toyota commercial on the TV, then an episode of Miami Vice. The nurse comes out after twenty minutes and tells me that Kaiser’s pharmacy doesn’t have any more of the pills; there might be some at Mount Zion, she has to call and then send someone there to pick them up.
I lean my head on his shoulder; he strokes my hair. The blond man wakes up and looks around the room. Fuck this shit, he says. He gets up and walks out.
At three A.M. the nurse calls me in behind the curtain and hands me a paper cup of water and another paper cup with three tiny white pills in it. She gives me three more to take in twelve hours.
When we leave, the black people are still sitting there.
I have an almost pathological need for other people’s approval. If someone criticizes me I fall apart, I feel useless, stupid, insignificant. When I confess this to him he says I need to learn not to internalize other people’s negativity. I experience this as subtle criticism and move to the edge of the bed, away from him.
I used to sleep with men so that they would like me. I always had a lot of lovers. Now I only fuck him; he excites me more than anyone. When I masturbate I don’t think about strangers fucking me, the way I used to; I think about him looping a rope through a ring screwed into the top of the doorframe, slapping my breasts and cunt. I think about the way he growls low in his throat, the violence of his orgasms. I masturbate imagining he is watching me, and come saying his name over and over. My life before I knew him seems impoverished, a desert. I’m afraid of losing him; he has to keep reassuring me that he loves me and wants me. At parties I’m jealous if he talks with other women. I’m convinced they’re more attractive, more desirable than I am.
We’re in someone’s loft studio, it’s too crowded. I feel like I’m suffocating. Everyone is talking to everyone else, huge paintings hang on the walls, the paint laid on layer after layer—thick dark colors, blues and blacks. I can’t find him. No one is talking to me. Someone gave me some mushrooms earlier and now I’m starting to come on to them, I feel jumpy and want to find something to drink to calm me down. I bump into a woman, she stares at me in dislike, turns away. I get through the crowd and pour myself some wine, drink it quickly, and pour another one, asking people if they’ve seen him. No one has. I’m panicked, sure he’s met another woman and left with her.
I go into the bathroom and lock the door. I feel sick so I crouch at the toilet but I can’t throw up. Sitting down on the floor, my back against the wall, I stare at the postcards tacked above the toilet. I know I’m seeing images but I can’t tell my brain what they are, specifically; they’re like abstract paintings, they have no meaning. I feel violated by images, I can’t help seeing them on billboards, on TV, in ads and movies, they get into me through osmosis and change my thought patterns: what I’m supposed to look like, feel like, be. I close my eyes and see blue snowflakes.
He’s pounding on the door, his voice sounds far away. I get up and open it. He takes me in his arms.
Please fuck me, I say. Fuck me here, on the floor.
He locks the door and undresses me. I lie down on the floor; it’s cold, I’m shivering. He takes off his shirt and tucks it under me. He’s standing over me, unzipping his black leather pants. I start hallucinating that he’s a demon, his eyes are frightening—dark brown, he’s wearing his contacts so there’s a yellowish ring around his irises. I realize I don’t trust him, I’m afraid he’ll hurt me. I want him to hurt me.
Slap me.
He slaps me across the face. I feel myself clench, get wet. My head lolls to the side; he looks in my eyes, I’m naked, I’m begging him to do it again. He takes a condom from his pants pocket and puts it on, then slaps me again and enters me. I start to come almost immediately.
Not yet, he says, and stops moving inside me.
Please, I say, thrusting up at him; I’ll go crazy if I don’t finish coming. He stays still while I writhe underneath him; the orgasm goes on and on, I can’t seem to stop. After a while he starts fucking me again, faster and faster, he comes with a loud moan and falls all the way on top of me.
I feel secure again feeling his weight, listening to his heart slowing down.
I talk to my friend Simone on the phone; we haven’t spoken for weeks. She tells me about her lover, whom she’s just broken up with.
At first it was great, she says. We did things sexually we’d never done with anyone else. But then he confessed that he likes to cross-dress. I mean, I just couldn’t handle it. He wanted me to pretend he had a cunt; it was too weird.
I don’t talk about my sex life to Simone; at least, not the really intimate details. My girlfriends and I discuss the size of our lovers’ cocks, tell each other if they’re any good in bed; I told Simone about the time I met two guys in North Beach and went to the Holiday Inn with them. Simone likes being tied up, but I don’t want to talk about it with her. He and I have our own private world, we spend hours together absorbed in each other, seeing how far we can go. We close the curtains, nothing gets in. I tell Simone I want to marry him.
You’re kidding, Simone says. How long have you known this guy?
Ten weeks.
Forget it, Simone says.
No, I mean it. I’ve been with enough men. I don’t want to do that anymore.
The Virtuous Woman, Simone says.
Something like that.
You can’t do it. You know how you are—if you like somebody and he wants you, you let him fuck you.
But I never felt like this about anybody else. And he’s the best lover I ever had, I know I couldn’t find anybody else who does what he does for me.
It’s not about better, Simone says. Sooner or later you’ll want something different, something he can’t give you, and you’ll go out looking for it. And anyway, you’re confusing sex with love. You’re hot for this man so you think you love him.
I wonder why Simone does this to me; she can’t be happy for me, she always finds flaws. She says she’s just being my friend, trying to protect me. I don’t call Simone for weeks because I’m afraid she’ll convince me that she’s right.
The more I fuck him, the more I want him; I’ve never had this much sex with anyone before. It’s all we do—sex, work, eat, sleep. Sometimes we don’t get around to cooking dinner until midnight, and sometimes we end up at two A.M. eating cheese and olives and pita bread in bed. Simone tells my other friends I’m obsessed. He’s late for work all the time, his boss blames it on me. No one understands us. There’s a conspiracy against us, to separate us. Romantic love is always tragic; the lovers can’t stay together, death or lies or fate separates them. It’s dangerous to be erotic, then you aren’t so trapped; if you do it in public they look at you and their minds are filthy so they see filth, then they try to put you in jail.
After a few more weeks we quit our jobs and move to a hotel in the Tenderloin where we can be together all the time; between us we have enough money for about four months. I don’t know what’s going to happen after that and I don’t care. I set up my tubes of paints, my chalks and charcoals and brushes,
on a table in the corner of the room, and he models for me. We have a small refrigerator with a freezer that keeps tiny ice cubes frozen in plastic trays, a hot plate, an indoor barbecue, a stack of books we’ve bought over the years meaning to read but that we never got around to; we have a portable cassette player, tapes, potted violets, and an aloe plant. We never go farther than the corner grocery half a block away. We cook or eat takeout Vietnamese food from next door. Whatever we need from the outside world, the son of the woman two doors down picks up for us. We fight sometimes. We fall more deeply in love. Underneath everything we’re blissfully happy. We know how to live. All we want is for you to go away and leave us the fuck alone.
BAD GIRL
Alison Tyler
MY EX-BOYFRIEND AND I USED TO PLAY A GAME that seemed so naughty to me, I still blush at the thought. I’m sure other people have done worse, and I’m sure some folks will think it was nothing to feel guilty about. But to me, it was as if we’d crossed a line, some line of decency. After we played this game I would look at Paul with an expression of stunned satisfaction, pleased that we’d escaped a thunderbolt once again.
It’s not that we were normally tame. From the beginning, Paul and I had a fairly wild sex life. He was a teacher at a high school in town, and we made love on his desk after the kids had left for the day. He spanked me. He tied me up. We fucked in public. I sucked him off while he drove. I fucked him at his mother’s house. At a Christmas party, he took my cup of coffee into the bathroom, came into it, and brought it back to me. While I drank, he stood across the room, staring, excited to the point where he could no longer make idle conversation with those around him.
These activities paled in comparison to our brand-new game. It started while we were on vacation in the northern part of California. He’d rented a stone cabin in one of those old-fashioned vacation parks. There were twelve other cabins in the resort, all carefully spread out beneath a scattering of redwoods so that you felt as if you had the whole forest to yourself. Our little bungalow contained two beds, a small living area, and a kitchen. For some reason, and I still don’t know why, I climbed into one bed and Paul climbed into the other. Maybe it’s because it had been such a long day of driving. Maybe we were just playing around, as if we weren’t going to fuck that night—unlikely for us. I rolled over, facing the wall, and stared at the pattern of the stones. Several minutes went by before Paul stood up and lifted the covers on my bed. As he climbed in next to me, he said, “Shhh, angel, we don’t want Mommy to hear.”
I froze. This wasn’t our normal type of game. When we did S/M, he would talk dirty to me. He might say, “Lisa, you’ve been a bad girl, haven’t you? Bad girls get spanked. Hold on to your ankles, and don’t you stand up. Don’t you flinch.” He was the dominant, but he was always just Paul, my handsome boyfriend. If I played the role of a younger me, I was still me.
Now he said, “You be a good girl. You be nice for Daddy.” I stayed totally still. His hands wandered between my legs, touching me through my panties, tracing the outer lips of my vagina. It felt good and bad and confusing, and I drenched my underwear.
“Uh oh,” he said, “my little girl’s all wet for me. Did you get yourself all wet for Daddy? Is that what you did?”
I couldn’t answer. I just let him keep touching and stroking and playing. When he pressed up against my leg and I felt his hard cock, I thought that alone was going to make me come, that insistence of his cock brushing against my thigh.
“We have to be really quiet, Lisa,” he said softly. “Mommy’s asleep in the other bed, and we don’t want to wake her. Then she’d know what I know. She’d know just what a bad girl you are. What a sinful little girl you are. I’d have to punish you severely if she ever found that out. Do you understand me?”
I nodded.
“Good girl,” he said, “That’s my good girl.”
He spooned against me, lifting my nightgown, lowering my panties, and entering me from behind. His hands wandered over the front of my nightgown, cupping my breasts. He pressed his lips to my ear, whispering, “My girl is getting so big now, isn’t she? Look at the way your breasts fill my hands.” He rubbed my nipples against the flat of his palms and they stood at attention, poking against the flannel fabric of my nightgown. “Yes, she is. Nice and big for me. And look at how hard your little nips get. I only have to brush them lightly.”
His voice was a husky whisper, as if he were honestly trying to keep quiet. His cock throbbed inside me, and he brought one hand to the front of my body, raising my nightgown and placing his fingers against my pussy. He pressed against me, finding the wetness, then locating my clit and sliding his fingers over and around it. I moaned at the sensation, and instantly he hissed, “Didn’t I say to be quiet? We’re going to have to go outside behind the house for a little punishment session if you can’t control yourself. Look over on that chair, Lisa.” I turned my head slightly. “See Daddy’s belt?” I murmured an assent. “I’m going to have to tan your bottom with that belt if you can’t keep yourself under control. You know what that feels like, don’t you, girl? Don’t you know what it feels like to have your bottom thrashed by my belt?”
His fingers played me. They stroked up and down, and I tried so hard to do what he said, to be quiet and behave. I’d never been that turned on before. Not when he used masking tape to bind me over one of the little desks in his classroom, slapping the wooden ruler on my naked haunches. Not when we snuck off at his sister’s wedding and fucked during the reception. This was it. My pinnacle. The dirtiest thing I could think of, and it made me weak. I didn’t moan again, but my breathing came hard and fast.
“You need to be quiet,” he said in that hushed, menacing tone. “Daddy gets so tired of having to punish you. Why can’t you be a good girl, Lisa? Why can’t you be good for me, like your sister?”
That did it. That made me come. Sick and twisted and over the top, I leaned back against him and let the riptide of orgasm slam through me. He gripped his arms around me, bucking faster and faster until he reached it, too, pulling out to come all over my backside, holding me tight so I couldn’t turn around to face him, to see whatever expression of horror would reflect my own. What had we done? What had we just done? What line did we cross? Where would we go from here?
“Bad girl,” was all he said, lips against my ear. “I always knew you were a really bad girl, Lisa. And bad girls get punished. Why don’t you go over there and get my belt so we can deal with this? Go on and get it for me. You know you deserve it, Lisa.” He shook his head. “Such a bad little girl.”
Bad girl, I thought as I stood and walked to the chair. That’s what I am. That’s what I was the whole time, I just hadn’t known it for sure.
TWISTED BEAUTY
Elspeth Potter
ONE TUESDAY, ALEX TOOK SYLVIA TO HONG’S Special Famous in San Francisco, his favorite restaurant because of its commodious and solid wheelchair ramp. He liked being able to enter a place beside his date, briskly propelling himself, instead of bumping clumsily over doorsills and fending off metal handles that tried to smack him in the face. He had always hated appearing a buffoon; and since the accident that had crushed his legs, he needed all the confidence he could get.
Having a beautiful woman beside him, if no longer on his arm, helped considerably. Constanza, his first girlfriend after he’d returned to his life, was a busty blonde paralegal from the contracts department of his firm. She always wore snug power suits that showed most of her shiny nylons; not his type, ordinarily, but entering a room with her sent a clear message to other men, a message in which Alex took savage delight: Yes, cripples have sex, and they’re having hotter sex than you. Except he hadn’t been. With Constanza, he’d been too nervous in private to get it up, much less suggest any more exotic activities.
Good-hearted Mary had been next; she’d done extensive research on spinal injuries on the Web, and arrived at his apartment prepared to help him with all sorts of private bodily functions that he could manag
e perfectly well on his own. His spine wasn’t damaged: only his legs had been splintered like sugarcane, scarred and bent out of all recognition. He and Mary had managed a little fucking, because by then he’d been in dire straits and not about to turn down sex if it was offered. But being Mary’s charity case, however much she denied it, quickly palled, and he’d been relieved when she’d left him for Topher the waterskiing instructor.
Sylvia was different.
Sylvia was comfortable enough with him that she made fun, as he had learned to, of his struggle with everyday tasks like reaching the top buttons in an elevator. Her teasing put him at ease, as if his twisted legs were merely a delightful, kinky sex toy. She kept him so involved in sensation that he had no opportunity to obsess about his appearance, his awkwardness in certain positions, or the uncontrollable spasms of pain and cramping that sometimes interrupted them in the heat of the moment. He could hardly comprehend the sheer relief of regular sex without pity.
Even considered objectively, their sex had been fantastic, as good as any he remembered from before, perhaps better. Sylvia demanded, and he rose to her challenge.
Tonight’s trip to Hong’s was part of a pattern they were establishing together. They ordered, and Alex deftly stripped the paper from his chopsticks, snapped them apart, and used them to place deep-fried noodles dipped in duck sauce between Sylvia’s full lips. Then, between one breath and the next, he found himself fixated on her neatly manicured fingers enfolding the round, handle-less teacup, his gut fluttering as she expounded on new albums they’d received at the radio station that week, and related anecdotes of her promotional trip to a music festival, minutiae that suddenly loomed larger to him than global warming. They’d been lovers for two months, but only now did he know he was in love with her. And Sylvia with him? How would he know?
What if she wasn’t? If she didn’t love him, would she leave him, like the others had? If she didn’t love him, would he want her to stay?
Best of Best Women's Erotica Page 9
