“That’s how Sallie Gardiner kisses,” she told Paisley.
They went back to Sallie’s place, which she had to herself, since one of her roommates was out of town, and the other spent weekends with her boyfriend.
They held hands on the subway, and kept bursting into giggles as they looked at each other. Sallie felt like a sophomore again, and not the good one she used to be, but one of the ones who broke the rules. They caught a few surprised and rude stares on the train, but also some looks that Sallie was beginning to realize were of quiet recognition.
“I can’t believe it,” Paisley said to her in a low voice as they headed for her house. “When did you finally realize? Is that why you moved to New York?”
“Um…well, it wasn’t consciously why,” Sallie said, wondering if her unconscious had been smarter than the rest of her. “It was…uh, very recently. Um. Last weekend.”
“No!” said Paisley, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Yes,” muttered Sallie, pulling her along.
“And the first thing you did was get in touch with me,” Paisley grinned. “You knew, you just didn’t know.”
“I guess…,” Sallie said. She’d never liked to be teased.
“Hey…hey,” Paisley said, catching her arm. “I’m thrilled… and flattered….”
“I just got started…I don’t know anything yet! And I kept remembering you.”
They were at her building, and she fumbled with her keys, concentrating on getting the door open. They didn’t speak in the elevator, as they rode up with an older woman and her grocery cart, and a young mother and her little boy.
Paisley rested her hand on Sallie’s back as she opened the door.
“It’s not much, but…” Paisley stopped her with a kiss.
It was a great, wonderful kiss, filled with all the things they hadn’t known or wanted to know as teenagers. Still kissing, they began to take off each other’s and their own clothes. Coats, gloves, shoes, socks, blouses, panties, bras littered the floor around them in far less time than Sallie would have thought possible. Still, they were standing there, clutching each other, touching, rubbing, exploring, biting, sucking, grasping.
“Do you want to sit down?” Sallie whispered.
“NO!” Paisley hissed back, sliding her finger into Sallie’s very wet pussy. She fixed her lips on Sallie’s left nipple and sucked hard, while she pushed first one, then two, then three fingers in and out of Sallie’s cunt. Sallie thrust herself on Paisley’s hand. Her old friend’s fingers were strong and sure.
“Give me…everything…everything you wanted…,” Sallie gasped.
“Really? Really?” Paisley asked.
Sallie bit her hard on the neck and jammed herself onto Paisley’s hand, as she squeezed Paisley’s nipples. She felt as though Paisley could crawl up inside her, and Sallie wanted her deep inside her womb; she wished Paisley could come inside her.
Paisley rode her hard and expertly, and moans of satisfaction escaped her when she took her lips off Sallie’s breasts. Paisley knew right where Sallie’s G-spot was, and her middle finger rubbed at it hard and exquisitely. The now-familiar sensation, like water pulling back from the beach before the wave hits, began, and Sallie knew she was about to come. She felt the cry build and Paisley increased the intensity of her stroking. From a low moan, her orgasm grew in volume and intensity, and she let out a shout that she knew the people in the next apartment could probably hear, but she didn’t care. She almost collapsed on Paisley, who was small, but strong.
Sweating and shivering, Sallie realized she was cold, and still standing, when the thing she wanted most was to be snug under the covers with Paisley. They didn’t bother to pick up their clothes, but went right into her room.
The sheets were smooth and gentle on their skin; and Sallie pulled one of her mother’s quilts over them. The radiator let out a quiet hiss as they twined themselves together, looking at each other and laughing with surprise. Sallie looked at Paisley’s naked body, gently stroking her taut breasts, feeling her fine, pale skin grow warm. She was small, hard and muscular. Paisley shaved her pussy, and Sallie liked the feel of its nakedness, its wetness leaking onto Paisley’s thighs.
She felt soft and undefined next to Paisley, but the other woman seemed to like her form. She squeezed Sallie’s breasts, and ran her hands down to Sallie’s buttocks and cupped them.
“Do you know how much I wanted to do this when we were younger?” Paisley asked her, gently kissing Sallie’s shoulder. “Do you know what it felt like to lie next to you at night when we had sleepovers?”
“Was it all you thought it would be?” Sallie hoped she hadn’t disappointed.
“Do you have to ask?” Paisley said, with a delighted laugh. Her eyes sparkled, and the tight, passive mask she’d made of her face was gone. She was alive and sparkling, her breath deep and even, her voice full. “Sallie, I’d forgotten what it’s like to be desperately in love and sixteen years old, and you just brought back the good parts.”
“I’m glad…for both of us,” Sallie told her. She was ready to make love to Paisley, who suddenly sat up and listened.
“Oh…I think I hear my phone in the other room…,” she began. She scampered into the living room for her bag. When Paisley didn’t come back right away, Sallie pulled on a T-shirt and grabbed the quilt off the bed. She found Paisley sitting on the sofa, naked, curled up into herself as she spoke.
“No…I said I’m sorry, Magda! I said I’d call in the afternoon…it’s still the afternoon….” Sallie sat on the sofa next to Paisley, and drew the quilt around both of them. Paisley didn’t seem to notice. “Yes, I did think about what we talked about…but isn’t it reasonable for me to…Magda? Stop talking over me….” Paisley sounded so miserable that Sallie wrapped her arms around the smaller girl. She quietly kissed Paisley’s shoulders and her forehead, began to rock her slightly. “I just don’t know…yes, I want you to be happy, too. I want there to be an us, but we both have to want the same things….” She started to cry again. “I’m sorry…I can’t…no, I’m not trying to manipulate you…don’t call me that… hello? Hello?” She turned to Sallie. “She hung up….”
“Come back to bed, Paisley,” Sallie told her.
“I love her so much…,” Paisley said miserably. “I need her. Not just for the fellowships and teaching jobs…. She’s taught me so much, taken me so many places, but sometimes I just wish she’d stop taking it out on me…somehow it’s always my fault: whether she sleeps with someone else, or doesn’t get her grades in on time, or gets drunk and misses a class.”
“I’m glad I’ve never been in love like that,” Sallie said.
“That was mean,” Paisley told Sallie.
“I guess it was,” Sallie replied. “But you shouldn’t be with someone who just cuts you off. That’s wrong. And she’s your teacher? That’s only wrong in about a dozen ways.”
“She’s very talented. And famous. You don’t know her!” Paisley started.
“I don’t want to,” Sallie replied. “I don’t care how many good things she does for you. Fuck her if she treats you wrong.” Paisley gasped. Sallie never swore. “What happened to the Paisley who cut them loose when they got to be too much trouble?”
“I just can’t let go…,” Paisley began. “I’d lose so much. Her, and all the things…. I have a career to think about, you know. And I’d be all alone.”
“Maybe alone isn’t all bad,” Sallie thought aloud. “Can’t you get what you want without someone giving it all to you?”
“I don’t know…,” Paisley said quietly. “I don’t know what I’d be by myself. Suppose I don’t have what it takes to make it by myself?”
“Wouldn’t you rather know?” Sallie asked. Paisley was silent a long time. She snuggled close to Sallie, still shivering, still breathing hard.
“Yes,” she whispered.
“You always did whatever it took to find out what you needed to know,” Sallie reminded her. “Eve
n when it didn’t turn out well. When you ended up in the principal’s office, or got grounded for teaching yourself how to drive.”
“But you were always there to pick me up after,” Paisley said.
“Did she ever sit in your rec room and read the dirty parts of novels?” Sallie said softly, taking Paisley’s phone from her. She put it back in her bag, and pulled them both up off the sofa. They walked with the quilt around them. “Did she practice kissing with you? Did she listen to you pour your heart out? Because back then, neither of us knew what we were doing, but we did know how to take care of each other.”
“We did,” Paisley admitted.
“You could at least expect her to treat you as well as your junior high girlfriend,” Sallie said as they crawled back into her bed. “She was a good kid.”
“Still is,” Paisley said. “I mean, a good woman.”
“So let’s just be as good to each other now as we were then, Paisley,” Sallie said.
“I don’t know how it’s going to…I mean, I can’t promise or expect…”
“Shhhh,” Sallie told her. “We’re not the girls we were in Schuyler. We’re here right now, and this time, you’re not going to have to lie next to me wishing.”
“You’re right,” Paisley said, wiping away the last of her tears.
“If you want, we can go to MoMA tomorrow,” Sallie told her.
“Maybe next time…,” Paisley said. “We have a lot of catching up to do.”
The Devil’s Dew
Abbe Ireland
Orange flame spread swiftly through sheet after sheet of crinkling letterhead, wickedly dissolving logos from the best publishing houses and biggest agencies into wispy black ash and curling smoke. I lit another side of the large paper mound filling a round metal barbecue in my dime-size backyard, causing more fire shafts to burst paper membranes in a fiery fuck you to every gnome assistant who’d gleefully stuffed 878 rejection slips into 14 years of my virgin SASEs. Sniggering the whole time, I assumed, and without ever reading a single word, I was certain.
I stepped back and watched the conflagration turn the conical paper stack into Lady Liberty’s torch—I first thought, before realizing it reminded me more of a giant fire tit with a blue nipple flickering on top, dancing like a hot lascivious tongue. Perfect. I liked that better. I grinned, watching the Flaming Tit of Rejection collapse into a smoldering ash heap, feeling lighter but not entirely good.
For years, I’d tried everything to sell my writing—large and small publishers, agents, contests in weekly newspapers. I’d written novels and short stories experimenting with every genre. I’d tried different names, different genders, even a different sexual orientation. Nothing worked. About the only thing I hadn’t tried was selling my soul to the Devil, a fad that had peaked with Faust in the nineteenth century but had seriously declined in favor with intellectuals ever since, despite being the current rage with CEOs and accountants. Now it was astrology’s turn. My horoscope that morning urged me to unburden past failure in order to open myself to future possibilities. It wasn’t the first time I’d received such enlightened advice from the stars. It was, however, the first time I experienced an epiphany about my distinctive letterhead collection. What was I doing hoarding 878 rejection slips anyway? I’d been dutifully packing and moving them time and time again as if they were precious treasures or some pet albatross I shouldn’t leave behind. Ritually burning them seemed a better idea the more I thought about it. As a final gesture of release, I also decided to sprinkle the ashes with holy water. Holy water I’d transport inside my gold Cross pen, I concluded. The symbolism would be perfect.
I passed the Church of the Blessed Sacrament every day on my way home, four blocks before my preferred neighborhood watering hole—The Devil’s Detour. I spent enough time there to order “the usual” whenever I walked in, day or night. I liked the bar’s casual seedy atmosphere, mixed clientele, and walking proximity to my slum studio behind O’Henry’s Cashbox Pawn and Jewelry. I especially loved the divine irony and devilish wit of the bar’s name apropos of the Blessed Sacrament. Once the bonfire tit completely self-immolated and I’d doused it with the holy water, I planned to walk back three city blocks for some elbow genuflection to toast my newfound freedom.
Earlier that day, after pulling in front of the cathedral, I’d sat in my car deciding if I really wanted to do it. Although my lapsed Catholic parents believed Catholic theology was a Big Crock in an Einsteinian universe, they’d also taught me to respect other people’s beliefs. I really didn’t want to offend anyone, but I also really wanted the water. Fortunately, when I did finally duck through a massive wooden door set between two Gothic stone spires, no one was around. I quickly dunked my gutted pen into the holy water grotto, covered both ends with fingers, and hurried back to my car, driving the rest of the way home one-handed.
It was perfect—the perfect instrument for anointing ash. I wielded my mighty gold pen as a magic wand flicking holy water against a huge nemesis, making the smoldering ash pop and sizzle in a satisfying way. Ritual complete, I reassembled my magic pen and headed to the bar.
I’d just started my third drink when she slid onto the stool next to me, barely dressed in a light-blue halter top tied by a string behind her back. Blown-out, faded jeans with shredded holes front and back revealed natural cotton tights that hugged her butt with soft, sensual suggestion. In front, the jeans cut below a navel pierced with a silver stud. Dressed so provocatively, she sat straddling the metal barstool, legs wide, feet tucked under the rungs, bare back arched, right hand holding a cold sweaty margarita, two slender fingers on her left playing with a red plastic straw. Her hair was raven black, long and wavy; her eyes, dark and beguiling.
Seeing what I was drinking—a Bombay martini with three olives—she offered to make me the best martini I’d ever tasted. At first I wasn’t sure I was up to the obvious sizzle. On the other hand, I informed myself, gulping another fiery blast of cold gin, how often do you run into so much fire aimed straight at you like a heat-seeking missile? Besides, the whole point of my earlier ritual was opening myself to something new. What else could I do but accept?
We left the downtown bar and drove through the city to an imposing stone castle high on a hill. Cloistered among towering trees, the amazing stone anachronism sat barely visible above an encroaching swell of urban sprawl, its turrets, stone archways, gardens, and glass-domed atriums sequestered from the tide of modern development by a massive, twelve-foot stone wall along the bottom edge of its sloping property.
We drove up a long winding driveway to the castle’s entrance and parked. A pair of heavy wooden doors similar to the Blessed Sacrament’s opened as we approached them, climbing a broad stone staircase guarded by two carved griffins. The doors closed silently behind us and I instantly felt a delicious sense of removal from the noisy ugliness of modern life outside. My peace, however, was immediately challenged by a black panther prowling the marble foyer, its cold, gold eyes burning straight at me. The large sleek cat growled once before gliding away down a shadowy hall lit by oil lamps flickering in black metal sconces.
“Nice pet,” I commented.
“There’s more,” she said calmly. “They add something, don’t you think?”
Oh, certainly a free-roaming black panther added something: the distinctive aura of animal strength and speed, raw chthonic power tinged with the possibility, even certainty, of danger. I began wondering who my hostess was beyond her sleek, attractive appearance.
Undaunted, however, I floated after the creamy insinuation of her ass working through torn jeans to a room that duplicated the bar we’d just left. Totally familiar reflections of liquor bottles, bar glasses and neon beer signs glittered in a long mirror behind the bar. It was a perfect copy of Home Sweet Home—The Detour.
She moved behind the bar to fix my martini.
“So why the heavy medicine?” she asked, dark eyes staring as she placed a chilled glass of clear, cold heat in front of me. “T
he forlorn look? Sagging shoulders? What’s wrong?”
I took a fortifying sip of the best martini I’d ever tasted and launched into my entire Pitiful Writer Story, the complete No-Luck Saga, the whole unabridged tale of Hovel-Dwelling and Suffering for Art’s Sake.
“So it’s success you want? Success as a writer?”
“Sure. I’ve been slamming against that wall for years now.”
“Maybe I can help.”
Considering the size of her hovel, she no doubt had resources.
“Want to read something?”
“No, thank you. You need something fresh. A unique point of view. For instance…how would you like to make love with the Devil?”
Sucking an olive, I inhaled sharply and almost choked. Fortunately, it dislodged on my first cough.
“What? The ugly dude with horns? No! No, I don’t think so, thank you. Not my type. Sorry. No way. You, on the other hand…” I paused to lift my glass, toasting her. “You, I’d consider…. Hell! I’d more than consider, I’d be thrilled!”
“What if I told you I am the Devil?”
“But I thought he was a guy.”
“Common misconception.”
“And really ugly.”
“I leave that to your opinion.”
“With eyes flashing fire.”
“Oh, I can manage eye flashing just fine. Most people consider it sexy. How about you?”
I checked her eyes. Dark. Intense. Flashing a hot smoldering heat. It was definitely sexy.
“Cloven hooves?”
She held up both hands and stretched her long, slender fingers, several with silver rings on them.
“Just these.”
Best Lesbian Erotica 2004 Page 17
