“Gertrude,” she mumbled and took the joint from him.
“What?”
“That’s my name. Gertrude.”
He looked at her. “Baby, you’re not a Gertrude.”
She got up on her elbows with a smile. “Then what am I?”
He took a long, good look at the beautiful, crazy chick. “Trudy. You’re a Trudy.”
“With an ie or a y?”
“Trudy with a y, like The Charlie Daniels Band song,” he said and took the joint back.
“I’ve never heard it. Sing it to me.”
He laughed. “Okay… uh…”
He tried to recall the lyrics and was surprised when he actually remembered most of it, but it had been one of his grandma’s favorite songs, so he’d heard it quite a few times. By skipping the lines he couldn’t remember, he got through most of it. She laughed about the peroxide blonde at a bar followed by the line I was flying high and feeling mean, and applauded him when he was done.
“You can call me Trudy,” she giggled and leaned down to give him a kiss. “I like it.”
“Is this where you wait for me to fall asleep and then take off with all my possessions?”
“No.” She looked around. “Besides, you hardly own anything, but if you don’t mind I’ll fall asleep next to you.”
“I’m fine with that.” He turned to the side and put his arm over her. She smiled and they kissed. A long kiss. “Gotta say, Trudy, you’re the craziest and sexiest chick I’ve ever met.”
“I think that’s a good start.”
“To what?”
“To you thinking I’m the most amazing chick, ever.”
“Are you gonna go crazy stalker on me, baby?”
“No,” she said and threw her leg over him. “I’m going to lure you in with sex and sweet words.”
“Lure me into what?”
“Staying with me forever,” she giggled.
“That’s a little scary considering I’ve known you for, like, three hours.”
“I know.” She nuzzled closer. “You’ll get used to me. I’m an acquired taste.”
“Just so I know, how often do you do this? Drag guys home and tell them shit like this.”
“Want the truth?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“I drag guys home on a regular basis, but I don’t tell them shit like this.”
“Okay.” He kissed the top of her head
Definitely crazy. It was very possible she’d stab him in his sleep, but he still liked her.
When he woke up the morning after, she was gone. He wasn’t surprised but still a little disappointed. She’d been great.
With a groan, he sat up. Resting his elbows on his knees, he rubbed his eyes. He wondered if he’d be able to find her, but the only thing he knew was her first name. It didn’t seem likely it would be enough.
He headed to the bathroom and was stunned when he opened the door. Trudy was in the bathtub, and she gave him a big smile when she saw him.
“Hey! Hope you don’t mind. I love baths, and I don’t have a tub in my apartment.”
“No,” he said, and then had to clear is throat to be able to continue. “I don’t mind.”
“Since you’re already naked, you should join me.”
“I…” He pointed towards the toilet. “I need to pee.”
“I won’t look. Pee and get into the bath with me.”
The water splashed over the edges as he got in. Trudy turned around, got between his legs, and leaned her back against his chest. Once again he was trying to decide between two extremes when it came to her: if he was just lucky as fuck, or if he’d just caught his very first crazy stalker.
“What’s your opinion on monogamy?” she asked.
“Jesus fucking christ, you keep shocking the shit outta me, girl!”
“Just… I’m not very partial to it.”
“Honey, I don’t even know your last name. I’m not gonna try to control who you’re fucking or not.”
“Stein. My last name is Stein.”
“You’re shitting me?”
“No. My name is Gertrude Stein. My parents are sadists.”
“Obviously.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Lance Evans.” His eyes landed on her nipples just barely breaking the surface of the water. “I’m still not gonna try to control who you’re fucking.”
“That wasn’t why I asked. More…” She shook her head. “Never mind, forget it.”
He couldn’t resist and ran his hands over her breasts to tweak her nipples. “I wouldn’t mind if you fucked me again.”
“Mmmm… I’m up for that.” She turned around, dripping wet and caught his mouth in a breathtaking kiss.
CHAPTER TWO:
Your Sparkling Personality
-o0o—
Present day, Greenville, Arizona
SISCO WAS LYING IN front of Violet. She was the daughter of the club’s VP, Bear, and a brilliant tattoo artist. He had quite a few tattoos done by her, some of them really early and not so brilliant, but he’d done it for her sake. She’d needed the practice, and he didn’t care much what his tattoos looked like. It had been a way to support her, too. She’d always been the shy girl, and when Bear told them his sixteen-year-old girl was becoming a tattoo artist, most of the members had helped out by letting her practice on them. Now, she was twenty-one and not only pregnant, but the old lady of one of Sisco’s club brothers. Her old man was Mac, the club president Brick’s son, so they were two club kids who’d hooked up.
Vi was still shy, and she didn’t talk much, but secretly she was Sisco’s favorite among the club kids. It was secret because he didn’t want to explain to anyone why she was.
He also had a soft spot for anyone as creative as Vi was.
“So,” she said and held up the sketch. “We’re good on this?”
“Yeah.”
It was Mary’s face from the Michelangelo sculpture Pietà. Vi’d added tears to make it look more like a real face, and the mouth was slightly larger than on the original. She’d already prepared the area on the right side of his chest and placed the stencil when he approved the design. She glanced towards his tattoo of Trudy’s name on the other side of his chest and probably thought it looked like shit. Instead of commenting on the quality, she said something he hadn’t been prepared for at all.
“Did you know there was a famous artist called Trudy Evans? She was popular among musicians and feminists during the nineties.”
Sisco was close to swallowing his tongue in shock, but cleared his throat. “Really?”
“Yeah. Trixie has one of her paintings. Looks really weird.”
“A lot of art does,” Sisco said and hoped she’d start as fast as possible, since he knew she never talked while working.
“It has nice coloring, though. Mostly shades of red.” She picked up her tattoo machine. “Ready?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled.
He was glad they’d dropped the subject, because he knew very well who Trudy Evans was. He also knew she looked like Michelangelo’s Mary—but with a slightly larger mouth.
-o0o—
Seattle, Washington
MOST THINGS WITH TRUDY happened fast, so not a full month after they’d met, they collected her things from the apartment she shared with four other girls that she hated. By then, he still wasn’t sure if he was lucky or if she’d kill him in his sleep, but he loved having her around. She was fun, crazy, and the sex was blowing his mind. And smart! The brain on the girl was stunning.
Since she was living with him, he couldn’t very well hide that his main source of income wasn’t the hours he worked at a garage, but selling pot. She didn’t mind, though, and even started helping him. A few nights a week she worked at a coffee shop—and she painted. Sisco didn’t understand her art at all. To him, it looked like all she did was throw shit on canvas. Sometimes it was paint, but it was other things as well.
Sisco walked into the house he and his
two buddies, Pete and Frank, now shared with Trudy, too. He was holding his breath. A few days earlier, he’d found Pete and Frank in the kitchen with big eyes and stupid smiles on their lips. When he asked them what the fuck was wrong, they’d pointed towards the living room.
He’d walked inside and found Trudy covered in paint, rolling around on the big canvas she’d laid on the floor. It had taken him a few seconds, but then he’d seen it—she was naked. His gut reaction had been to be pissed about her parading around naked in the house, but he’d settled on laughing.
But this day, he found her in a short sundress and bare legs, throwing glitter on the ‘naked Trudy rolling around’ painting.
“Hey, babe,” he said and put his hands on her hips.
“Hey!” She turned around and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Missed you.”
“Yeah?” He gave her a kiss. “Why?”
“I’m horny, and we’re alone. Pete and Frank left when I started on the painting.”
“Wonder why,” he laughed. She ran her fingers through his beard. “If you just rubbed glitter into my beard we’re gonna have a problem.”
“But it matches your sparkling personality so well,” she smiled.
“I’m gonna get you for sparkling personality,” he muttered and ran his hands up her thighs to her panties. She started on his clothes at the same time, and soon she grabbed his already hard dick.
“Fuck me on the painting,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“I want you to fuck me on the painting,” she said as she pulled off her sundress and got down on the floor.
He was already covered in glitter, so he figured it didn’t really matter. Besides, she was already on her back with spread legs, so without much hesitation he buried himself balls deep inside her with a groan. Her legs were wrapped around him, and he leaned down to suck one of her cocky nipples into his mouth. He felt her hands in his hair but had already forgotten about the glitter and continued fucking her, holding on to the back of her knee with one hand and the other one rested on the canvas just above her head.
In an attempt to gain control, he looked away from her, and his eyes fell on his hand resting on a blue print of Trudy’s perfect ass. He’d definitely noticed how nice her ass was before that, but seeing his hand on a print of it was somehow different. With a, “Oh fuck, babe,” he shoved his dick harder inside of her.
“Oh, shit! Fuck, Sisco, I love you.” He halted for a second, because she’d never said that before, but she bucked her hips against him with another scream, “Fuck me harder than you’ve ever fucked anyone.”
He almost laughed, but the natural response seemed to be, “Fucking hell, baby, I love you, too. Turn over.”
And she did. He noticed the glitter all over her back and ran his hand up along her spine and grabbed ahold of her hair, pulling it. She stood up on her knees and turned her head towards him.
“You’ve got glitter all over your back,” he mumbled before kissing her.
“I want it everywhere,” she smiled. “Rub glitter on my clit.”
He chuckled and did as she asked.
Not long after, they were lying on the painting, her resting on his shoulder, and him stroking her hair. It was full of glitter. In fact, it was all over both of them, and he already knew they’d spread it all over the house once they got up from the floor, but at that moment he didn’t give a shit.
“I really do love you,” she said and looked at him with her blue eyes. “A lot.”
“I really do love you, too.”
She finished the painting a few weeks later. It was split up into three pieces, and he got to keep the part with the blue print of her ass when he told her it was the sight of his hand on it that made him shove his dick into her harder, which had then led to her yelling that she loved him. She sold one of the pieces for three hundred dollars to some up-and-coming musician.
“Does this mean I’ve been paid to fuck?” Sisco asked when she held the bills in front of his face.
“Yeah! You’re my gigolo.”
It felt a bit odd to know some guy had a painting Sisco’d fucked on hanging on his wall. It got even weirder when Trudy revealed she’d told the guy that she’d rolled naked on the painting and later fucked on it, but Sisco figured he’d never meet the guy anyway.
That’s how the first six months went by. She worked at the coffee shop, did her weird art, and he sold pot and worked at a garage when he wasn’t helping out at venues and pubs. In their spare time they spent hours in bed, talking, smoking, and fucking.
She came from a broken home, much as he did. Sisco and his younger brothers had spent a lot of time at their grandma’s to avoid their parents, and Trudy’d lived with her aunt at times, but probably not as often she should’ve.
The connection between them was unlike anything he’d ever imagined existed. She always understood everything. If he was off, she knew why and how to deal with it. It was the same with her, he could walk into the room and immediately know how she was doing and if something was wrong.
He wasn’t delusional and neither was she; they both knew it worked because they were both equally fucked up and broken. Sometimes that was a recipe for disaster, but other times it meant two people who understood each other tried to start something new—something better.
She’d grown up in Seattle as well, and her dream had always been to go to the Northwest School of the Arts, but given the family she came from, she’d known it probably wouldn’t happen. She’d made friends from there, some of them people he knew pretty well, too, and he had no idea how he’d missed her before that feminist party.
Both of them were born at the tail end of the baby boom and had grown up in lower class neighborhoods full of kids. And poor neighborhoods full of kids meant loads of drugs, drinking, and other things kids probably shouldn’t do, but these were kids no one really looked after. They were on their own. When they got slightly older, they brought their drinking and drugging to gigs. It was kids like them who eventually led to the Seattle City Council passing the Teen Dance Ordinance in 1985. They’d had enough of the kids going wild, and the reports on child prostitution and runaways basically living at some of the places had been too much for them.
Since people moving to the music at a concert was enough for the cops to consider it a dance, the all-ages concerts soon disappeared. It meant a lot of concerts were held in the surrounding cities instead, but it also meant a lot of underground places appeared in Seattle—and house parties.
As much as he’d disliked the ordinance, Sisco could sort of understand why it had eventually happened. Free passes to gigs and dances had been handed out to young kids in the street. There were some hardcore homeless kids frequenting those places in search of quick cash. And there was definitely child prostitution and drugs going on, but they hardly got rid of that shit with the Teen Dance Ordinance. It just made it less visible.
Trudy had nightmares, and he soon understood someone had sexually abused her. She denied it for months, and he didn’t push. Pushing never worked with her, it just pissed her off. After waking up one night, screaming and soaking in sweat, she told him. Her parents had sold her to men to get money for drugs.
“I’m fine with pot,” she mumbled, “but if you start on heavier things, I’m out.”
“Okay,” he said and held her closer. “I love you.”
“Still?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. I just wasn’t sure you would if you found out.”
“I love what and who you are.” He’d never seen her more fragile, sore, like an open wound. He kissed her again. “It wasn’t your fault, and I still love you.”
She smiled and hugged him closer. “Stay with me?”
“Always. You’re my girl—my Trudy.”
“I am.” She climbed up on him. “Make love to me.”
He did. He often did when she woke up from nightmares. That’s when he found her the most beautiful. In the middle of the n
ight, still sweaty from the dream, and with eyes begging him to love her and take care of her. He promised her over and over he always would, and she promised him it would always be the two of them.
Getting together with Trudy meant getting together with all of her friends as well, and he assumed it was the same for her. Pete and Frank had quickly accepted her. It even turned out that Frank kind of knew her—they’d at least met a few times.
One of Trudy’s closest friends was a smoking hot, tall blonde with big boobs called Jane. She’d been a bit skeptical towards Sisco initially but soon seemed to accept him. When she stopped snarling in his direction, she was nice. The fact that she seemed as protective of Trudy as he was made him like her even more.
Not many of their friends were in relationships, and Sisco hadn’t really had a girlfriend before Trudy, either. Before her, he would meet some girl at a gig and would end up with her in bed after the show. Some were girls he ended up in bed with more often than others, but that was about as serious as it got. A lot of them were hyper feminists and went on about how a relationship was just a way for a man to shackle a woman and how they’d never accept it. Sounded good to Sisco; he didn’t want to shackle a woman any more than he wanted to be shackled by one
. At least not until he’d met Trudy.
No matter if it was his friends or Trudy’s, they were all the same. They dropped by when they felt like it, they ate wherever they happened to be when they were hungry, and fell asleep on the closest couch when it was time to sleep. If someone got kicked out of their house or apartment, anyone with a spare bed or couch took them in. They were all in the same shitty financial situation and helped out as much as they could. As soon as Trudy’s friends realized that Sisco’s friends were the same, they all merged into the same crowd. The biggest difference was that his crowd was into music, and Trudy’s was into art, but those two blended pretty well. The quality of the flyers they kept handing out got a lot better after that, too.
Not many of them had a phone, because they couldn’t afford the deposit. Sisco actually did have a phone, since he made some money and also because people needed to be able to get hold of him for him to be able to keep making money, but few of the others did.
S-Duality: A Marauders Novella Page 2