by AnonYMous
She exuded such grace I felt the need to apologize.
“I’m sorry …” I said, referring to my very existence. “I just got back here myself.”
She performed a faultless chassé into my apartment.
“Why? Where were you?”
Unsure if I was being scolded for not having made more of an effort, my answer emerged untrue.
“I was at an AA mee—”
“Good for you,” she interrupted.
There hadn’t been enough time to extract meaning from what I was about to say but she was already congratulating me.
She fist-bumped me with white knuckles.
“Oh,” she said, noticing my laptop on the coffee table, “are we going to look at your reel?”
Again I was caught off guard.
She would have gleaned from my book that I had worked in advertising but only an insider would refer to a copywriter’s compilation of commercials as his reel. I logged onto my advertising website and as she oohed and ahhed at how I’d spent my twenties and thirties, I fought heroically against an urge to ogle her blindingly white thighs while somehow managing to list the awards I’d won and the agencies I’d worked for.
She nodded vigorously, shaking herself for my benefit. Aware of my eyes on her she placed a theatrical open palm over her left breast as if to still her beating heart. Clasping her imaginary pearls. Satisfied with my qualifications as an adman she was ready now to hear about my literary achievements. But first, as if to incentivize me, I was given my first live look at what was on offer should my application be successful. Using the three strides it took to get to the bathroom, she made her ass wobble, shudder, and bounce.
A dancer indeed.
I feverishly googled my books and by the time she returned, a menu of results lay open for her inspection.
“Ooooh, you have a Wikipedia page.”
“That’s a good thing right?” I said, as if I had no idea how all this modern media stuff worked.
She turned to look at me. I could almost hear her count the ways I might be useful to her. Not wanting to give me a big head or perhaps amazed I didn’t already have one she shrugged like she didn’t know either. My silence encouraged her to project on me, project all over me. I heard my mouth go dry as I feigned interest in her job as an assistant to a high-end insurance company that investigated the veracity of claims.
“That sounds like an HBO series waiting to happen,” I lied. The words crackled in my mouth, the saliva having evaporated in the heat of erotic anticipation. Or disappointment.
Her body language invited an approach.
How to close the gap between us. I was telling her that the stage adaptation I’d written, based on my book, was being read by the guy who won a Tony for his choreography of Blackwatch at St. Ann’s Warehouse. She held my eyes, unblinking, inviting. Blackwatch being the name of a Scottish battalion deployed in Iraq. She smiled as if this was charm itself. Somehow I had started to blabber on about France’s refusal to get involved in the Iraq War. She was a little perplexed by this but tolerant. I dry-mouthedly explained that supporters of the war campaigned to have the word French removed from the US vocabulary by popularizing terms like freedom fries and freedom kiss. Hearing the word kiss, those alabaster cheeks were invaded with color.
“Freedom kiss,” she repeated as if remembering the name of an old friend. But her pronunciation was as dry and fear-filled as mine.
“What would happen if I moved a little closer?”
“Dunno,” she said, watching me do exactly that.
She offered no encouragement but she didn’t look unhappy about it either. Before I knew what was happening we were kissing very softly. Respectfully even. I began pecking on her lovely white neck and she cocked her head to allow me better access. Would she just tolerate me for a few more moments before announcing she had to leave? She had alluded to a dentist’s appointment the next morning.
“You have a lovely neck,” I whispered, trembling now with lust.
“Thank you,” she said politely. “It’s nice to have it kissed.”
It was an invitation to continue.
Pushing her hair aside I nuzzled against her neck and continued to peck and nibble and even introduced the tip of my tongue. This was welcomed with a barely audible moan.
No more encouragement was needed.
I pulled her head back and planted my mouth on hers. This time it was much more open and soon we were tonguing away at each other as she began to undulate inside her clothing.
It was time to try for a tit.
Placing my palm over the breast pocket of her denim jacket I squeezed hard and she moaned with approval as her tongue stiffened against mine.
Opening a button of her jacket I slipped a hand inside her blouse, and nestling in a padded bra I found one and then two pert breasts peaked with expectant nipples. I squeezed one and to my delight she began bucking against me as if she was already coming. I allowed myself a secret moment of congratulation. I couldn’t believe this was happening. If a nipple hadn’t already erupted between my forefinger and thumb I might have pinched myself instead.
“Oohhhhhh.”
We had unhurried gentle sex for the next two hours and it was fucking bliss. Her body was amazing; pale clean skin with no freckles anywhere. And believe me, I looked everywhere.
A snowscape with shrines.
“I can tell by the way you touch me that you appreciate my body.”
It was true. I was hardly able to believe she was in the same bed as me but I hadn’t realized she could tell. I caressed her like porcelain. Her ass especially.
She touched a clear droplet of precum emerging from the tip of my cock and blushed.
“See how wet you make me?” I said.
“What is it?” she asked shyly.
“Precum,” I said, and her face fell open. Apparently it was a new concept to her. Was she playing innocent? She’d never heard of precum?
“It only happens when a guy is seriously … oooohhhh fuck.”
She spread it over the head with her fingertip. Pleased with my reaction she placed her palm over the tip of my cock and began to agitate her closed hand over it until I stopped her. I wasn’t ready to come yet. She smiled as if she understood and began again until I stopped her again. I liked the sensation of being brought to the edge and as she gripped my cock like a stick shift about to go into fourth, I stopped her again. Mock-exasperated she sighed and placed both palms flat on my chest, and straddling my left thigh began to grind her clean-shaven pussy against it.
She did this until she came.
It was my turn to learn a new concept.
She said it made her feel like the guy and the girl at the same time.
It made me feel like an onlooker.
As she lay beside me absentmindedly stroking my still-hard cock a thought occurred to her.
“That’s definitely one way to make sure you get a second date. You know for sure I’ll be coming back here tomorrow night.”
I hadn’t said I didn’t want to come at all. And who said anything about tomorrow night? She was sure I was saving myself so that she’d return for more. So be it. I could wait till the next night. She was probably worth the wait. But now, perhaps because she had convinced herself we had embarked on something more than just a one-night stand, she felt the need to fill me in about her previous relationship.
As if I needed to be properly briefed.
She had been reluctant to move in with her wealthy, older boyfriend but his insistence seemed to make up for it. Five years later she was desperate to get out. Her preferred method for ending a relationship was to be unfaithful with a mutual friend. This technique had proved to be surgical in its efficiency since it removed two relationships at the same time. No one wanted to see any of the others ever again.
She probably felt comfortable telling me this since I had been such a self-confessed cunt in my books, she was always going to seem angelic in comparison. I thought she mig
ht have at least offered to feel guilty but it didn’t even occur to her. Anyway all the men she met through the wealthy, older boyfriend were either too loyal or too afraid to betray him.
Her solution?
“I suggested we go to a sex party.”
* * *
Trundling my cart into position I noticed a mustachioed man occupying the spot usually occupied by Arrest-Me-Dante. He stepped back from his easel the better to regard his creation: an impressively accurate line drawing of Cafe Drill no more than a few strokes from completion. All manner of sophisticated cross-hatching and line-work conspired to produce this effortless impression of the pub’s facade.
I had only just arrived but could see this guy had talent.
As I set up my table and positioned my signs I was interested to see if anyone else appreciated his level of artistry. He was an eccentric-looking man with a walrus mustache, not given to banter. He made no attempt to be social even as I made repeated attempts to catch his eye. He appeared foreign. A young couple approached and after shuffling around viewing both the artist and his drawing, nodded at each other before introducing themselves. After some gesticulating the artist removed the drawing from the easel, rolled it up, and handed it to the girl. She placed her hand over her mouth as if overwhelmed by the enormity of the gift but her other hand was already closed around it.
The artist held his palms together in a namaste gesture and the boyfriend took out his wallet. A just-drawn image like that, fresh from an artist’s easel would probably fetch hundreds rather than tens of dollars and though it was impossible to see how much he received it didn’t look like enough. The couple walked away very pleased with themselves and the boyfriend looked over his shoulder to confirm he really was going to get away with robbing the poor sad bastard.
The artist, satisfied that they were gone, reached into a folder and took out another drawing identical to the one he had just sold. The only difference was that the bottom right-hand corner was still white. Placing the photocopy on the easel he began scratching away at the unfinished corner just as he had done before. Tilting his head from side to side and squinting professionally he stepped back the better to regard his creation.
“Ha ha your knees, right?”
I looked around and there was Arrest-Me-Dante. He thought Tourette’s was something to do with your joints. He pretended to get the joke and laughed knowingly at the good of it. I didn’t have the courage to explain it to him since it would have exposed his lack of education to such a degree my attitude would be again called into question and I didn’t want to contaminate the atmosphere around my table any more than I already had. The real reason he’d stopped by was to offer me a business opportunity. His idea was to lock bikes to lamp poles around the city with FOR SALE signs on them. When people called the number I would come and meet them with the key to the lock. He himself was too busy to do it because he had other tables to attend to but he thought this might be a cool thing for me. It was presented like he was doing me a favor. Like I needed something proper to do.
It was left unsaid that the bikes were stolen and that my phone number would be posted above them. Arrest-Me-Anonymous. Before he walked away I saw him take some money from the artist. Rent presumably for the location that matched the angle of the drawing.
* * *
Ping
“Hope you like lingerie.”
Lucretia had promised to return that night and perform for me but I was to be repeatedly cock-blocked by circumstance. First there was an email to say she was running late and it would be more like eight PM and then another at 8:35 PM: I don’t know if you’ve been getting my texts but I sent you this.
Attached was a JPEG, not, as I had hoped, of her milky-white self reclining in thigh-highs and garter belt, but a glossy looking promotional photo of a toilet disinfectant. The clear plastic pack displayed two navy spheres under italicized letters announcing the brand’s name.
BLUE BALLS.
Ever since my French ex-girlfriend Yvette had made it clear that coming before her was a crime punishable by castration, death, exhumation, and recastration, I had trained myself not to ejaculate prematurely. I became convinced that lasting longer meant more pleasure for all concerned, but the moment Lucretia thought I was doing it deliberately she seemed insulted. After all, if she was the cum-summoner she believed herself to be, how could I possibly refrain from erupting all over the vicinity?
Drinnnnng.
In the end she turned up at ten thirty in a lime-green dress that looked like something out of a Doris Day movie. She was probably wearing the mind-melting lingerie underneath.
“You probably think I’m wearing my outfit under this but there was no way I could do that.”
She had promised she’d come and perform for me and now I was starting to see what she meant. This would be a sort of audition. So much so, I might have been a theater employee admitting her through the stage door. It felt like I was there to facilitate her performance, not to benefit from it. It didn’t help that the bags she carried, brimming with fabric and cosmetics, gave her the impression of a girl moving in. I watched stupefied as the bathroom door closed behind her. Something until that moment, I wasn’t even aware it could do. Within seconds she was out again and handing me something.
“This goes under the mattress in an X shape. You’ll see what I mean.”
She disappeared again. I was holding an interwoven mass of black canvas straps, each culminating in one of four Velcro cuffs. It was a harness for tying a person to a bed. She was going to tie me down so that my wrists and ankles were akimbo like a confused, stumpier, bald version of the famous Leonardo da Vinci drawing. She popped her head out of the bathroom and I must have looked completely confused, still standing there in the same spot staring at the harness in my hands. Her slow, deep, patient inhalation would have resulted in a disappointed sigh if she hadn’t used the captured air to speak.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
Snatching the mass of straps from me, she led the way into my bedroom. I could have been a sulky uncooperative child as she lifted my mattress into the air and suddenly we were both staring at neat formations of cardboard boxes where six thousand yet-to-be-sold copies of my books were stored.
This was unexpected.
Maybe the harness was a ruse to investigate the horrors lurking under men’s mattresses. A quick way of airing subjects that might otherwise remain dormant for years.
“Why are there boxes under your bed?”
The question was asked without judgment.
“They’re books.”
“Your book?”
“Books plural,” I corrected her. I had written two books, I was not about to have one of my children snubbed. It obviously hadn’t occurred to her that I was self-published. She had just assumed that if I had been reviewed online and had a Wikipedia page, then I must be a proper writer worthy of her best game.
“Oh,” she said, visibly disappointed but still not ready to be distracted from the matter in hand.
She remembered herself.
“Okay, this goes here and this goes down here, it should make an X under the mattress.”
I think she hoped I was bright enough to handle this while she got on with the most important part of the show, her appearance in it. But I was still confused. Was I going to tie her up, or was she going to tie me up?
“Oh, and I’ll need that robe you were wearing the other night.”
This too was unnerving since it meant she’d been taking inventory. She had imagined herself in the comfortable embrace of my robe? In my apartment? My fur-lined lair was already part of her entitlement? I felt invaded. Lifting the mattress was like looking up my skirt. I didn’t want her touching anything in my place apart from my cock.
Meanwhile I was the stagehand, dresser, background artist, and audience-to-be.
“And I need you naked,” she added matter-of-factly before closing the bathroom door again.
I was happy at last
to hear the word naked.
Up to that point she might have been a neighbor requesting the loan of a shovel. It was the first indication that something sexual was imminent. She popped out again, this time wearing my bathrobe, and seeing me naked on the bed carefully closed the Velcro cuffs around my wrists and ankles and as easily as that I was rendered limbless. It was already eleven thirty and I was so exhausted I was afraid to close my eyes in case I fell asleep. Lifting my head to look for her I was just in time to see my favorite black towel land over my face and everything go black.
In the darkness I felt the ice-cold water of paranoia trickle down my back. Was she quietly letting her accomplices in to torture me for my PIN? I’d heard that they withdrew the maximum daily amount moments before midnight and then the following day’s maximum amount again just after midnight. It would explain why she arrived so late … What was taking her so long? It wasn’t so much the darkness that gnawed at me as the uncaring way the towel was thrown.
No caresses or coos as she did it.
I began to worry in earnest. I mean there I was naked and tied up in my own apartment by a complete stranger. People were murdered in situations more pleasant than this. From somewhere inside the blackened pit in which I found myself I heard the wail of a lone clarinet. It was joined by the nasal voice of a thirties-era singer crooning ever so politely about flowers. Presumably it was coming from her iPhone. I felt the mattress shudder beneath me as the towel fluttered away to reveal, stretching upward into perspective, a living breathing alabaster-bodied monument to Lucretia standing astride me in black nylon thigh-highs, garter belt, and corset. The long green stem of a red rose clenched between her teeth. Her paper-white thighs all but glowed between the dark stretches of black lace. Her panties were just see-through enough to show the vertical line of her hairless pussy. Suddenly being tied down was the perfect excuse to savor the mirage that hovered above me.
She turned sideways more professionally than I would have liked and tilted her head with a half wink as if this was taking place on a bed in Nebraska. A place where female sexuality was funded and informed by the Patriarchy. Where the man was not supposed to know that the girl probably had some serious daddy issues or that she was a terrible actress. Even in normal conversation her eyes opened far too wide with mock interest, her concern ridiculously disproportionate for someone she’d just met. And now here she was giving her man everything she had. Her dance skills, her acting skills, her body, her very self. It might have been an act of domination or an act of submission, but it was still an act.