Fucking Daphne

by Daphne Gottlieb

  I knew I was being invited over for more than just dinner. Daphne cooked me quiche. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I was an almost-vegan, that I hated eggs. I choked her quiche down and pretended to like it, because that’s what you do. It was so gross, yet there I was, trying to smile while eating her quiche. I was hoping it would lead to the next stage, where I’d be fucking this girl. I was giving it the best I could under the circumstances.

  Later, when my cock slid inside her, I was significantly unprepared. I didn’t think of myself as all that inexperienced, until she shattered that illusion and I learned an ego-smashing lesson: that I didn’t have any idea what I was doing when it came to women.

  I was used to being the one who gets seduced. Twenty-two years in the world—I had no idea at all what that meant to the men I went home with. In my leather and latex, I had just shrugged off teenagehood. Back then, I couldn’t imagine what it would look like to turn thirty. Sophisticated enough to seduce a thousand drunk, horny men, I was all clumsy puppy, easy prey, in Daphne’s trap.

  Wasn’t fucking men so different from fucking women that it was like learning a whole new language? I wasn’t bilingual, wasn’t cunnilingual at all. I hadn’t yet grown out of a shockingly limiting ability to think about sex as though it were a college degree. You took your foundation classes, and without the basics you’d never understand the advanced stuff. But linear thinking gets you nowhere in bed.

  I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to satisfy her, that I couldn’t get her off, or that I would fail as a lover. I was worried that I’d get tired and fall asleep before she came, that my unpracticed tongue would disappoint. I knew how to get myself off, how to get other guys off, but women? They just seemed so different.

  The morning of the quiche dinner, I got out of bed early and took a long shower. I sat distracted through a full day of college classes, nervously anticipating my date with Daphne. She wasn’t just any girl, and yet she was every girl in that way in which all women smell uniquely good and all have these curves bouncing underneath your fingers. Alien to me. She could have been anyone, but this girl was more than just anyone. Daphne—a name that slides nicely off the tongue, the way her clit rolled as she writhed. Though that happened later, when I got my sea legs.

  I was born a girl, but I am not a girl. And never was I more utterly aware of this fact than when experiencing this rare event: Daphne naked in my bed. Or rather, I in her bed. Utterly reduced to angles and skin and elbows. It happened quickly, from the kitchen to the couch, from the meal and one glass of wine after the other. Between the end of one bottle and the uncorking of another, she leaned in far enough that I finally had the courage to kiss her. She laughed sweetly at the blush creeping across my cheeks, teasing me about how long it took me to kiss her. The kiss was sweet and soft, her lips parting gently and the taste of her flooding into my mouth. I felt like one of my straight boys, touched for the very first time.

  I closed my eyes and gave a prayer of thanks for Daphne’s patience as my clumsy fingers explored her. I don’t know why, but I was afraid I’d hurt her; she felt so much softer than anyone I’d ever been with. It must have been all those delicious curves. I drank in her body to wash the taste of dinner out of my mouth, and found dessert was much more to my liking.

  “Nervous?” she asked.

  “Of course not.”

  It was bullshit. I tried to sound tough, but my voice wavered. I prayed she’d mistake it for passion. The cloying sweetness of her rose candles filled the air around us and covered up the sweat, creating a soft, concealing glow that hid the uncertainty in my eyes.

  I’d figured that my first time with a woman wouldn’t be worshipful or transcendental or pink flowers slowly unfolding under rainbows. And it wasn’t. Sex with Daphne was intense, sweaty, tangy, and insanely physical, accompanied by an overwhelming sensation of suddenly being utterly trapped in my own skin with no idea what to do with hers.

  She took the role I was more accustomed to—being on the receiving end, giving the glances, getting fucked. She etched her scent across me, rolled on top of me, and let her grind take over for my inexperience. She snared me with her lovely eyes and opened those voluptuous thighs to take in my cock.

  Taking her cue, I made my move and began to fuck her as gently as I could. Her plump cheeks flushed and she closed her eyes as we went. It wasn’t smooth. Her awful quiche was a lump in my stomach; my fears were a lump in my throat. I couldn’t breathe and thought I might pass out just from watching her move underneath me. Her cheeks flushed red and she ground violently against my cock before collapsing over me, a tent of her hair surrounding our sweating and smiling faces.

  After that, she poured another glass of wine, tonic for all fear and elixir of confidence. And we started fucking again.

  Judging by all the noise she made, our practice had paid off. Perhaps I was still not as mind-blowingly skillful as the women she’d slept with before me, or other boys who were better at fucking her senseless. We never got into that realm of dripping-with-sweat-and-cum exhaustion found in naughty books and DVDs, replete with slapping sounds, throbbing labia, and teary ball gags. Most of my energy went into maintaining a steady rhythm.

  I wondered the whole time, Does she want it harder? Slower? Everything felt okay, but was it too much like the first time? I looked down at her face, scanning for a sign of boredom or an inclination of what I ought to do. She just closed her eyes and sighed.

  I tried a few experimental slaps on her behind. The sound of my hand on her ample, juicy ass rebounded off the walls of her Tenderloin studio apartment. The spank was not too high, not too low, and, as it turned out, not enough, because the next word out of her mouth was “harder.” Finally, something concrete to work with.

  I obliged. Fucking her harder, slapping her harder, and bringing us satisfactorily closer to that controlled and frantic grind into each other. Her cries were louder, wilder, and we matched each other perfectly. Or nearly perfectly. And the small fumbles ceased to matter. Reaching for more lube, she pushed back against me. I slammed back into her. Instinct took over, instincts previously unexpressed. Feeling my cock deep inside of her, my clit huge underneath it, feeling each thrust as though that silicone implement were a part of my body, I let her relax away from me after the telling last shrieks, and we lay back on her purple sheets. Our breathing slowly softened. We were covered in lube and our mutual wetness.

  Daphne rose and went into the bathroom. I heard water raining down in the shower and was thankful for a few minutes to gather my thoughts. It turned out that sleeping with women wasn’t so different from being with men.

  You’d think a boy like me would have already known that gender/sex differences exist only in our minds. I’ve changed my body, yet my ideas of difference still trapped me in that moment. I scrambled over that edge, through the gap between my expectation and my experience.

  Lying there in her bed, I heard the shower tap squeak off. Soon there were just two bodies lying in bliss, Daphne sleeping, quiet. I didn’t have to ask her if she was satisfied. I knew she’d wake me when she was ready for more. Her pillows were soft against my cheek as I finally let myself relax into sleep next to her.

  It was still dark when she gently shook me, smiling. “Want more quiche?” she asked.

  COLIN ON COLIN

  Colin Frangos

  Q : So.

  A: So.

  Q:The book’s called Fucking Daphne.Any thoughts on the on the subject? Stories you’d like to share?

  A: Not particularly. We lived together and had sex. A lot at first, less later on. It was exactly the same as when everyone else has sex. It was good and bad and occasionally great; sometimes awkward, sometimes too familiar.

  Q: No saucy stories you’d like to share? The kids love the saucy stories.

  A: Nope. It was a formative relationship for me and, I would guess, for her as well. We shared those incredible times when you’re young and on your own and are constantly being amazed by
life’s unfolding in front of you. Think about that: The riches of life are suddenly there, suddenly available to you, suddenly right in front of you, spread out as far as the eye can see. Who the hell cares about sex?

  Q: I’m guessing people have already started flipping past this essay, so speak your mind.

  A: The sex, it’s a fun thing—don’t get me wrong. I’m not against sex, or even sexy stories. But it pales in comparison with the excitement of discovering what it means to be alive and under your own power. And the act itself is so empty without all of the human bits around the edges—the seduction, the loneliness, the excitement. So much more interesting than sex.

  Anyway, I find people who have sex only to define themselves cripplingly depressing. It’s very Sunset Boulevard. Or Paris Hilton.

  Q: How very pop cultural of you.

  A: It’s good to have a lot of sex, and every one should. Get to it. But unless you’re there and getting sticky, it’s just not an interesting subject. Getting other people to brag about it for you is a different sort of animal—conceptually much more amusing, but still not for me.

  Q : So are you saying Daphne needs to make herself feel better by bragging about her sex life? Are you saying that’s her real motive here?

  A: Nope. I don’t think this whole project is about bragging about her ability to get some action. Writing about it is less interesting than doing it, and on that she has her priorities straight.

  I’d like to believe that she saw other people making money off stories about having sex with her and she wanted to cash in. Really I would. But I don’t believe it. Honestly—there’s no money in the dirty-stories-about-San Francisco-poets subgenre.

  Q: Can’t you at least play along a little bit? It only seems fair.

  A: Right. There was one time when we were . . . we were having sex, and getting all excited, and . . . I stuck my penis in her ear. The Daphne Character said, “Oh! My! Nobody has ever done that to me before! It’s very exciting! And I can hear the ocean!”

  Q: Why are you even bothering?

  A: It’s a fair question.

  Q: Something about this subject must have inspired you to take it on, though. You’re going to a lot of effort here. So why? Your love of the pomo dialectic?

  A: I’m disappointed by the way people frame everything in a postmodern construct.

  Fronting any subject with the knowing wink of postmodern metadiscussion is an easy way to avoid any real connection. Writers don’t have to worry about failing to get the work across, and readers don’t have to worry about being moved by an experience that touches them somewhere other than the brain. It’s an intellectual condom.

  I want to like stories that exist as intellectual exercises—where whatever emotions they may evoke are there to be studiously analyzed and broken down. But I’m detached enough in reality, and I’m trying to be less so. And I like getting sucked into stories. I don’t need to protect myself from the experience, and I don’t want other people taking it upon themselves to let me know that it’s just a story that they’re telling. Art that tries to derive its relevance solely from the viewer’s act of viewing it misses the point for me.

  So talking about the Daphne Character isn’t going to do it for me.

  Q: Aren’t you taking this a bit too seriously? This is supposed to be a fun, light, naughty read, not a condemnation of Where Art Went Wrong.

  A: This is abook, and a book is a work of art. Art’s about the only thing I have in my life, and I’m incapable of not taking it seriously, regardless of the context. It’s why I’m such a bummer at parties.

  Q: Speaking of sex, why don’t we get back to that subject?

  A: A family friend sent me an old photo of my dad, sittinginthe mountains by his camping site, studiously reading a volume from the Teen Throat Pleasure Books series.

  Q: Now we’re getting somewhere.

  A: There was a comely lass on the cover, leaning her head back and posing ever so receptively. In the picture, Dad was young and wild looking and attractive by the standards of the day. He was known as a ladies’ man. Eventually, he aged and died of cancer.

  Q: Right. Back to the throat book, though...

  A: The novelty’s worn off and I don’t want to talk about that anymore.

  Q: You’ve gone well out of your way to establish that you’re better than the lowlife matters in the rest of this book, and I can’t see this going any further. Final thoughts?

  A: Writing things down takes away their magic, and no amount of ironic pomo distance from that will make that okay. Memories are different every day we reflect on them, like people are—every day they mean something else to us. Writing things down forces a definition on memories in our minds, on an electrochemical level, in a way that ruminating doesn’t. For all of my other excuses about not doing what was asked here, it really boils down to the fact that I’d rather leave my past as a rich mulch out of which things can still be drawn, not confine it. I’ve spent too much of my life understanding and defining things in a structural, Kantian way, and I’m running out of the valuably vague relationships I have with my past. So I can’t write about my relationship with Daphne.

  And I can’t write about the Daphne Character. I don’t want to trivialize the actual relationship by locking it up in words, no matter how much they may be shielded by the cloak of fiction. There just aren’t avenues I want to explore in there that are worth tainting the reality.

  THE SUBJECT WAS SEX

  Delphine Gothleab

  Daphne walked up to the door and rang the bell. She tried a window, but couldn’t see anything. She rang the bell again, and finally, after she was about to give up, Daphne flung open the door.

  Narrative is, simply put, the compulsive need to make meaning. This overpowering desire is at the base of most books.

  Daphne was smart and analytical. She was totally unprepared for a rush of hormonal feelings—sexual feelings—but she could not put Daphne out of her mind. She was well read and articulate and certainly not on the prowl.

  Daphne kissed her softly and they wrapped their arms around each other, enjoying the closeness. Daphne lowered her down and positioned herself half on her, half on the bed.

  The need to interrogate subjectivity and perspective is usually a precursor to enjoying self-reflective works of art.

  As Daphne slowly lowered herself to the bed, she dragged her long nails up Daphne’s back, causing Daphne to shiver and get goose bumps. Daphne continued her descent down Daphne’s body, until she came to Daphne’s damp panties. She pressed her tongue against Daphne’s hidden clit, causing Daphne to moan and raise her hips.

  Ultimately, meaning emerges through a “process,” an aggregate vision, as opposed to a single, monolithic story .

  Daphne had one hand on her pants and was undoing them as she kissed her again. She dropped Daphne’s pants and boxers and wasn’t surprised to see Daphne standing upright and ready to burst. She kissed her hard and cupped her ass with both hands as her member pressed into her front. She bent her over the counter and with great restraint thrust in. She saw stars as Daphne began pumping away slowly at first, but then her self-control slowly broke. She braced her hands on the counter as she fucked her from behind, thrusting into her.

  As the mind becomes accustomed to the formation of the self in the brain from the concatenation of conflicting or divergent readings, it searches out for continued sources of incorporation.

  Daphne felt herself begin to climax as Daphne squeezed around Daphne’s shuddering cock and kissed Daphne deeper, pushing them both over the edge. Both women moaned as they came, their hips grinding against Daphne’s body, their juices flowing into Daphne’s mouth and covering her cock.

  There is more to troubling the lines between truth and fiction regarding the construction of the subject than meets the eye.

  Daphne no longer knew anything else but Daphne. It was pure ecstasy. Daphne felt a warm tear quickly run down the side of her face. It landed in her hair.

&nbs
p; Daphne was still tied to the posts. Daphne lay down and whispered, “I love you.”

  Texts on the left all found at www.clitical.com, under erotic stories; stories include “Friends Stick Together,” “Dinner Date,” “The More Experience [sic] Lover,” and “Becky and Sara’s Romp,” all by Anonymous; “Mike’s Special Surprise,” by Stephanie; “Sweet Encounter,” by Madison Brant; and “Josh,” by Collette. Original text on the right adapted from “Masturbation Addiction—Find Lasting Freedom” at www.allaboutlifechallenges.org/masturbation-addiction.htm.

  HERETICAL SESTINA FOR D

  Marty McConnell

  Impetus of the waiting body, inducement to touch the intersection of subject and history— do you like to be held down? known flesh under gauze, writhing with the wax, affirm this subversion of the cold universe; your tongue, saturated with the old discourse, refuses to be held.

  do you know where your boundaries are? held, permeable, opening at unsainted touch in every sense of the word, this resurrected tongue a dignified but amorphous domain, history of turning your head as a model might, or a child, to affirm away but not breaking, to memorize the safe word: flesh

  has reached its apex in the Christian-capitalist era, the flesh wins, to the point of being its secret motor, some withheld heretofore undiscovered uses for metal and silk, affirm the patience of leather, transcendence of contradictory touch, your back an antilanguage, marble palmed smooth, may history marionette my bones as you do, into wings, span of tongue