The drunk kids had pushed him far over to my right. His Einstein wig was awry, and I saw my panic mirrored in his face. When I caught his eye, he jerked his head back the way we came. I nodded and began to push my way toward him. After all, we could carry on with the evening’s real entertainment back in our bedroom.
We didn’t have the chance to talk until we were back on Jersey Street.
“That wasn’t a night to remember,” Julian grumbled, “that was a fucking zoo.”
He was right, but his sudden grumpiness surprised me.
“Come on, sweetie, you were enjoying yourself.”
“Not really.”
“No? You didn’t like feeling me up back there?”
Julian stopped in his tracks.
I should have caught on then, but I was still giddy from the lingering effects of that tap-dancing finger. I leaned toward him and whispered, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone you were fondling my ass in public.”
He frowned at me, eyes narrowed. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Suddenly I did get it. My jaw – and my stomach – immediately crashed to the sidewalk.
“OK, what happened back there?”
“Nothing.” I started walking. Fast.
Julian kept pace with me. “It wasn’t nothing. Someone was touching your ass.”
“Let’s talk about this later.” My face was on fire, but the whole lower half of my body was cold and numb. Someone – I’d never know who – was indeed touching my ass.
“No, not later. I have a right to know exactly what happened right now.”
Did he? I gritted my teeth. Did the real Einstein ever act like such a possessive jerk? And wasn’t I the victim here?
Julian wouldn’t be put off. “What did he do to you?”
“It could have been a ‘she’,” I shot back, although I knew, of course, that it wasn’t.
“Sandra, I think you need to tell me.”
His voice was gentler, and I slowed my steps.
“I thought it was you, OK? And nothing really happened. He just patted me a couple of times. It was . . . friendly.”
Julian made a humph sound as if he knew I was lying.
Which I was.
We walked the rest of the way in silence.
When we got back to the house, we found Chuck and Michelle in the living room, sharing a bottle of wine and watching Halloween. They invited us to join them, but Julian muttered something about having a headache and retreated to our bedroom.
Stalling for time, I sat down and polished off a glass of cabernet in three swallows.
“How was it?” Chuck asked, his smile so mellow, I knew the two of them had indeed gone at it the minute we left.
“The crowd scene was pretty intense.” I wasn’t really in the mood to go into detail.
“Every year the party gets crazier, although I hear nothing too out of hand happens until after midnight. There’s even talk about canceling it completely one of these years,” Michelle said.
“Good thing you got your chance tonight. I’ll bet you never forget this experience,” Chuck insisted.
“You’re right about that.” I stood up wearily. “Well, I’d better get to bed.”
“By the way, Sandra?” Chuck called after me.
I turned.
He wiggled his eyebrows. “That dress really shows off your assets.”
Michelle jabbed him in the ribs.
I gave them a crooked smile and crept back to the guest room, which now felt more like some haunted house for wayward wives – the Lair of the Demon Husband.
The room was completely dark. I eased the door closed, just in case Julian was actually asleep.
A voice floated up from the bed, low but determined. “Sandra, we have to talk.”
My pulse jumped. It was time for my punishment. “I know.” I peeled off my costume, vowing to toss the cursed thing in the garbage the next morning. Then I crawled under the blankets, keeping a careful distance from Julian’s body.
“I’m not mad at you,” he said gruffly.
“You could have fooled me.” Marriage manuals always warned you not to go to bed angry with your spouse, but I’d definitely be doing that if we didn’t clear the air. “Look, I’m sure we both have lots of confused feelings, but for the record, I thought it was you and there was no, uh, penetration at all. I hope if we talk about this honestly, we can put it behind us.”
Without a word, Julian rolled toward me and took me in his arms.
He was hard. Rock hard. And huge, as if he’d downed one of those cock-enhancing potions they sell on the Internet.
“What’s this?” I blurted out – as if the answer wasn’t obvious.
“Are you sure you want an honest answer?” Suddenly Julian sounded like the guilty one.
I swallowed. “Of course, I do.”
“Well, I’m totally pissed off at that creep for taking advantage of you. If he was here right now, I’d break off every one of his fingers and then do the same to his dick.”
I laughed uncomfortably, although his rough chivalry touched me.
“But . . .” he faltered.
“But what?”
“The thought of a stranger touching you like that is kind of . . . exciting.”
Now it was my turn to give the little humph.
“What are you thinking, babe?” His voice was almost a whisper.
Was he ready for honesty? Because, in fact, his confession had conjured a spirit I’d been trying very hard to put out of my mind – that faceless man who’d so gently caressed, even savored, my ass. Would he remember the night he met an unknown female so horny she let him rub and squeeze her cheeks, even hiked up her own skirt and practically forced him to finger her cleft? Was he thinking about it now, his fist wrapped around his cock as he sniffed his musky finger, his own special Halloween treat?
Julian’s arm tightened around me. “Sandra, you can tell me the truth.”
“OK, but I really don’t know what else there is to say. It happened. It’s over.”
He took a deep breath. “Did you like it?”
I froze, unsure how to respond. There was no doubt I’d enjoyed it at the time. But later, on the way home, I felt tricked and violated, not just by the wily stranger but by the accusation in Julian’s voice: slut, whore.
And now?
My belly clenched, a sharp spasm that lingered on as a throbbing ache. I couldn’t help picturing that anonymous hand kneading my cheeks while Julian watched, his monster cock straining against his zipper. Perverse as it was, it excited me, too. I felt like a sorceress, reveling in my dark power to seduce men, bewitch them, bring them to their knees.
“Yes,” I admitted, “I liked it.”
We lay together for a few moments without speaking. Julian cleared his throat.
“What did he do to you?”
It was the same question he’d asked me before, but this time his voice was soft with need. He wanted a different answer.
And I realized, at that moment, that I wanted to give it to him.
I wasn’t sure I could actually say the words, the truth, out loud. But to my surprise, when I started to speak, my voice came out low and silky like an incantation.
“It all seems so strange now. I was just standing there, and the person in front of me stumbled back and I lost my balance. I didn’t think anything of it when you – he – put his hand on my butt to steady me. He acted like he had a right to do it.”
“Then what?” Julian whispered.
“Then he started stroking me, drawing circles on the cheeks with his fingertips. It wasn’t at all like some pervert grabbing what he could get. He was slow and careful. I thought it was you teasing me, daring me to want it in front of all those people. Soon my whole butt was tingling. I could feel it in other parts of my body, too.”
Julian’s hand reached around to cup my ass. His fingers began to trace circles on the bare flesh.
“After a while, I got so horny I h
iked my skirt up to my waist and pressed myself against him.”
At this Julian let out a whimper, but his fingers kept stroking and circling.
“I wanted him to put his hand between my legs to feel how wet I was, but he just kept rubbing my cheeks, like he was mesmerized by them. I was going absolutely crazy, so I wiggled around until he . . .” My voice caught in my throat.
“What did he do?”
“His finger slipped into my crack and he . . . touched . . .”
Julian inhaled sharply. “Yeah?”
“He touched my asshole. Very lightly – tap, tap, tap.”
My husband made a strange sound in his throat as if he were in pain.
I clearly had him under my spell, but the words had hypnotized me, too. I was right back on Castro Street, my pussy throbbing and drooling in my underpants, desperate for release.
“Can I fuck you now, Jules? I’ve been thinking about it all night.”
Beyond speech, he simply grunted and rolled on his back.
I swung my leg over his hips and sank right onto him.
“Your cock’s so big and hard,” I breathed. “Just like his.”
He made that funny new sound again, a twisted cry of yearning.
I wanted to make him do it again.
I started to ride him slowly, grinding my clit against his belly. “Did you like hearing about the things he did to me? Be honest now.”
He choked out a quavering “Yes.”
“Then you tell me. Tell me what it’s like to be married to a slut who wants it so bad, she lets total strangers rub her ass in the street.”
“Oh, God . . .” He arched back on the bed and gave me another sweet, strangled moan.
“Now stick your finger in my crack like he did.”
Julian was panting, his mouth opening and closing like a fish, but he dutifully licked his finger and slid it down my crack. Then, just like the stranger, he touched me – tap, tap, tap – right on my puckered hole.
My orgasm shot through me, up from my ass and straight to my skull, where it exploded in a blizzard of sequins glittering and dancing before my eyes.
I don’t know what Julian saw when he shot his load a few seconds later. But I could tell it was pure magic.
Of course, I didn’t throw the dress away the next day. I took it home with me and brought it back again when we moved to San Francisco a year later. Somewhere along the way they did cancel the famous street party. There were too many unruly incidents, too many arrests.
Still it is an unforgettable part of the city’s history – and of ours. Every now and then we like to keep Halloween in the Castro alive. I put on the dress and ask my husband, “What should I be tonight? A witch or a slut?”
Spar
Kij Johnson
In the tiny lifeboat, she and the alien fuck endlessly, relentlessly.
They each have Ins and Outs. Her Ins are the usual, eyes ears nostrils mouth cunt ass. Her Outs are also the common ones: fingers and hands and feet and tongue. Arms. Legs. Things that can be thrust into other things.
The alien is not humanoid. It is not bipedal. It has cilia. It has no bones, or perhaps it does and she cannot feel them. Its muscles, or what might be muscles, are rings and not strands. Its skin is the color of dusk and covered with a clear thin slime that tastes of snot. It makes no sounds. She thinks it smells like wet leaves in winter, but after a time she cannot remember that smell, or leaves, or winter.
Its Ins and Outs change. There are dark slashes and permanent knobs that sometimes distend, but it is always growing new Outs, hollowing new Ins. It cleaves easily in both senses.
It penetrates her a thousand ways. She penetrates it, as well.
The lifeboat is not for humans. The air is too warm, the light too dim. It is too small. There are no screens, no books, no warning labels, no voices, no bed or chair or table or control board or toilet or telltale lights or clocks. The ship’s hum is steady. Nothing changes.
There is no room. They cannot help but touch. They breathe each other’s breath – if it breathes; she cannot tell. There is always an Out in an In, something wrapped around another thing, flesh coiling and uncoiling inside, outside. Making spaces. Making space.
She is always wet. She cannot tell whether this is the slime from its skin, the oil and sweat from hers, her exhaled breath, the lifeboat’s air. Or come.
Her body seeps. When she can, she pulls her mind away. But there is nothing else, and when her mind is disengaged she thinks too much. Which is: at all. Fucking the alien is less horrible.
She does not remember the first time. It is safest to think it forced her.
The wreck was random: a mid-space collision between their ship and the alien’s, simultaneously a statistical impossibility and a fact. She and Gary just had time to start the emergency beacon and claw into their suits before their ship was cut in half. Their lifeboat spun out of reach. Her magnetic boots clung to part of the wreck. His did not. The two of them fell apart.
A piece of debris slashed through the leg of Gary’s suit to the bone, through the bone. She screamed. He did not. Blood and fat and muscle swelled from his suit into vacuum. Out.
The alien’s vessel also broke into pieces, its lifeboat kicking free and the waldos reaching out, pulling her through the airlock. In.
Why did it save her? The mariner’s code? She does not think it knows she is alive. If it did it would try to establish communication. It is quite possible that she is not a rescued castaway. She is salvage, or flotsam.
She sucks her nourishment from one of the two hard intrusions in the featureless lifeboat, a rigid tube. She uses the other, a second tube, for whatever comes from her, her shit and piss and vomit. Not her come, which slicks her thighs to her knees.
She gags a lot. It has no sense of the depth of her throat. Ins and Outs.
There is a time when she screams so hard that her throat bleeds.
She tries to teach it words. “Breast,” she says. “Finger. Cunt.” Her vocabulary options are limited here.
“Listen to me,” she says. “Listen. To. Me.” Does it even have ears?
The fucking never gets better or worse. It learns no lessons about pleasing her. She does not learn anything about pleasing it either: would not if she could. And why? How do you please grass and why should you? She suddenly remembers grass, the bright smell of it and its perfect green, its cool clean soft feel beneath her bare hands.
She finds herself aroused by the thought of grass against her hands, because it is the only thing that she has thought of for a long time that is not the alien or Gary or the Ins and Outs. But perhaps its soft blades against her fingers would feel like the alien’s cilia. Her ability to compare anything with anything else is slipping from her, because there is nothing to compare.
She feels it inside everywhere, tendrils moving in her nostrils, thrusting against her eardrums, coiled beside the corners of her eyes. And she sheathes herself in it.
When an Out crawls inside her and touches her in certain places, she tips her head back and moans and pretends it is more than accident. It is Gary, he loves me, it loves me, it is a He. It is not.
Communication is key, she thinks.
She cannot communicate, but she tries to make sense of its actions.
What is she to it? Is she a sex toy, a houseplant? A shipwrecked Norwegian sharing a spar with a monolingual Portuguese? A companion? A habit, like nail biting or compulsive masturbation? Perhaps the sex is communication and she just doesn’t understand the language yet.
Or perhaps there is no It. It is not that they cannot communicate, that she is incapable; it is that the alien has no consciousness to communicate with. It is a sex toy, a houseplant, a habit.
On the starship with the name she cannot recall, Gary would read aloud to her. Science fiction, Melville, poetry. Her mind cannot access the plots, the words. All she can remember is a few lines from a sonnet, “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments” – something
something something – “an ever-fixèd mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wand’ring bark . . .”
She recites the words, an anodyne that numbs her for a time until they lose their meaning. She has worn them treadless, and they no longer gain any traction in her mind. Eventually she cannot even remember the sounds of them.
If she ever remembers another line, she promises herself she will not wear it out. She will hoard it. She may have promised this before, and forgotten.
She cannot remember Gary’s voice. Fuck Gary, anyway. He is dead and she is here with an alien pressed against her cervix.
It is covered with slime. She thinks that, as with toads, the slime may be a mild psychotropic drug. How would she know if she were hallucinating? In this world, what would that look like? Like sunflowers on a desk, like Gary leaning across a picnic basket to place fresh bread in her mouth. The bread is the first thing she has tasted that feels clean in her mouth, and it’s not even real.
Gary feeding her bread and laughing. After a time, the taste of bread becomes “the taste of bread” and then the words become mere sounds and stop meaning anything.
On the off chance that this will change things, she drives her tongue through its cilia, pulls them into her mouth and sucks them clean. She has no idea whether it makes a difference. She has lived forever in the endless reeking fucking now.
Was there someone else on the alien’s ship? Was there a Gary, lost now to space? Is it grieving? Does it fuck her to forget, or because it has forgotten? Or to punish itself for surviving? Or the other, for not?
Or is this her?
When she does not have enough Ins for its Outs, it makes new ones. She bleeds for a time and then heals. She pretends that this is a rape. Rape at least she could understand. Rape is an interaction. It requires intention. It would imply that it hates or fears or wants. Rape would mean she is more than a wine glass it fills.
This goes both ways. She forces it. Her hands are blades that tear new Ins. Her anger pounds at it until she feels its depths grow soft under her fist, as though bones or muscle or cartilage have disassembled and turned to something else.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 12: Over 40 outstanding pieces of short erotic fiction (Mammoth Books) Page 27