when indulgence refuses to cool but lifts the tongue like luggage, that gift, discharged energy, quantitative flesh cathexes, a thumb’s vibrato in unreluctant places, history invents myth as a kind of speech in which we are held, sweet compendium of irreconcilable limits and touch, each gathering areola its own day—affirm—
each arching hip a new instrument—affirm— you haven’t the boy in you to kill me but this tongue better than death, equaled only by touch, call it transformative or even mortal, this flesh tent where fist is kiss and we are praxis, syllables held, sound endowed with biography, body, and history,
given tenor and tremble, the substance of history mentioned but in passing though the floor dips to affirm each kiss, though the ceiling splits to show we are unheld by promise or men’s logic or anything but tongue which is more than enough to sanctify this joined flesh (isn’t transubstantiation in reverse reason enough to touch?)
bend your touch into an ecstatic history where the grace of flesh is the only way to affirm one true god, your tongue, right there, held.
Italicized lines/phrases from Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, by Julia Kristeva, Columbia University Press, 1941.
WHAT DAPHNE THINKS ABOUT IN BED
T. R. Moss
Two in the morning. It’s hot and humid as hell. A thick breeze wafts through my open bedroom window: dank overturned earth, the subtle and cloying perfume of pot, saltwater, voices of late-night partiers. I’m wired, still keyed up from dancing for hours. At the ironic goth club, kids wearing torn white clothing sprayed fake blood on each other. Grinding and go-go dancing, they made streaked red messes on their clothes and the floor. I was the only one in black. I danced the longest, and now I am still restless and sweating in this heat. Fake blood is dried in crusts here and there where it’s smeared on my cheek, collarbone, hip. No one threw blood on me, but dance hard enough, and it rubs off.
The others left with each other, in twos and threes, in red and white, wearing matching gleaming, bloodied white shreds, and I walked home alone in my encrusted black. Now I am sprawled on a dirty black sheet on my bed, alone, horniness flashing through my toes, cunt, tits, and all I can do is stare at my tattoos and touch them over and over. I should be asleep, but instead I’m wide awake and touching them, up and down from arm to arm, collarbone, hips, tracing the ink, remembering the deep rolling pain of the tattoo needle: blue waves, stark goddesses radiating flames, crossed sailors’ daggers, and the newest, on my chest: an eighteenth-century medical textbook’s cross-sectioned heart, aorta, and ventricles etched in black and filled in living, bleary red.
As my fingertips graze the scabbed tattoo edge, I remember the pain of the needle lancing my skin and I press hard, until the tattoo twinges. It’s still healing. I wince as the ache ricochets through my frame, straight to my cunt. I stretch my toes to the end of my bed, lie back on my hair so it’s pulled from the roots; the deep pain arches into my brain and my mouth waters, wanting to be full. My clit is a hot coal under my black cargo shorts. My fingers are on the seam to press sweetness from my clit, remembering the pain, skin aching in the spots that remain bare, my hips, my inner thighs, the most sensitive places, aching for the bone-deep pull of pain and desire.
I imagine tattoos on my inner thighs that say EAT ME on one side and DRINK ME on the other. They’re raw and scabbing, and the gaunt, dirty goth boy who tattooed me freehand takes me home with him afterward to fuck. I hold a stained knife to his throat and he fucks me with his perfectly obedient cock until those tattoos are a bloody mess and illegible; until I’m walking saddle-sore the next day, with a shit-eating grin on my face, my cunt stuffed with red roses and thorns, sweet and full, raw, torn up, delicious. The tattoos heal perfectly.
I rub against the seam of my shorts with my right knuckles; it’s dull and rough. At home in my room, I’m still tense and restless. Voices filter in from outside, exaggerated laughter. I feel self-conscious, as if they are watching me and laughing. But the laughter is for the people outside, not for me, not in here. Rubbing against the space my cunt presses against, feeling full, frustrated, it’s not nearly enough.
I fill the inside of my head with the tattoos of everyone I’ve ever kissed or fucked, all their names in a row of ragged type with faded serifs down the curve of my waist. Every time I touch one, there’s a full sensory memory: a tattoo fuck factory—my own dirty-dream machine.
But then, nostalgia doesn’t leave much room for new experiences. And there’s so much I’m still hungry to do. Right now I need to be a long distance from this humid room with its thin walls and outside laughter. I need to be away from the harsh thud of boots now pacing back and forth one floor up. I need to be far away from my single-occupancy bed, from my own fingers pressing what I can out of my cunt.
I kneel on cold, unforgiving concrete, my knees aching. I’m in a dark place, surrounded by smoke, leather, a rough sweating masculinity. The sharp strap edges of my engineer boots cut into the backs of my calves. I stink already.
The room is crowded with bodies, though, kneeling, what I see are boots: polished jump boots with their shining zippers, scuffed loggers’ boots, knee-high Wescos. The scents of dirt and the tang of boot polish, leather, and hairy asses in tight chaps—a gift not meant for me.
No one knows who I am here. I am anonymous, a girl folded in a corner with my mouth open. I am the only trace of femininity here, with my deep burgundy lipstick, Tura Satana curves, and matching wings of eyeliner, my black hair a riot over my shoulders. I am rare. I shine in this dark place. They know me as a bad girl and like me for it.
Every few moments, one of the men sinks down in front of another man. I can only see tight leather chaps, men’s knee-high boots, and shadows, but once in a while the crowd parts and I see it. I know cocks are being sucked all around me. Their language is either open mouth or hard cock.
I’m here to be pissed on. I’ve waited my turn. My knees hurt. The damp bay air seeps into me. I don’t care. My skin prickles, anticipating. Cigar smoke curls into my nose: thick, plummy, like my favorite uncle’s.
I open my mouth. My eyes are closed. I sit a little taller.
Warm liquid sprays into my mouth, pungent, slightly beery.
I swallow and am grateful, made holy. I know this is risky and I don’t care. I open my mouth for more, and a thick spray showers my face and stings my eyes. I feel it drip down my lips, stretched thin and open, over my chin. Some leather daddy is blessing me.
Finally I swallow, throat burning.
Thank you, Sir, I think. Thank you—
Harsh laughter from outside banishes the leathermen. It’s me and my right hand again. It’s inside my cargo shorts and it’s rubbing my clit. Faster. Desired, defiled.
I press harder against my fingers. I am almost there, but my desires are more complicated than only abasement. I kick off my cargo shorts and reach to my bedside table to the black and red- swirled acrylic cock, holding its cool tip so it barely grazes my hole.
I press my cock inside slowly, imagining myself wrapped in rubber and leather as I push the tip of it against me, my curves compressed and ready fora quivering boy who is beneath me, on the floor of my dream library, wood paneled and with floor-to-ceiling books surrounding us. He’s scared of how much he desires me. He knows he can’t resist obeying, and he’s mine to use as I please.
My rubber corset, femme armor, holds me straight-backed and gracious, curving my breasts and hips into instruments of torture. My pre-muddied engineer boots are inches from his face. He is only a pink tongue to reverently lap the mud off their thick, ridged soles. His lips are dirty from my boot and that’s funny. Dirty mouth.
I smile and put my boot to one side, offer him my hand to kiss. He leaves a smudge of dirt.
A breeze rushes through my bedroom window, hot like his breath. I grip my acrylic phallus harder and nudge it inside, just a little more.
A breeze rushes through the library as I press my boot against his neck, against
his cheek and his mouth, squishing those sweet lips against the ridges, hearing his breath catch and slow. Forced kisses can be the sweetest. I make him kiss my boot again and again, smashing the toe down against his lips, pressing ridges into their delicate pinkness. His lips part and he opens to suck on the edge. He moans and I take my boot and press it to his cock, rubbing, as his face transforms into a seraphic smile. They’re so easy to please, I think, and my cunt throbs. It’s what I want; that’s what we’ll get.
I remove my boot from his cock, and his eyes open in why. I turn him over, stand him up, and press him against the bookcase. I take a book from in front of him and place it in his teeth. I tell him his teeth must not leave a single mark. He doesn’t see the title: Fucking Daphne. He holds it gingerly as a puppy, spine in his mouth, so no drool will soil the pages.
“Good boy,” I tell him, and he moans and relaxes against the wall, muscles shifting.
Alone in my bed, I slide the acrylic cock inside me just a little more, tangle my bedsheet in my left hand. It’s torturously slow. Delicious. The tattoo on my chest burns.
I sink my teeth into his shoulder and feel him shake and shudder, moaning in gasps, “Pleasepleaseplease.”
That is what I think: A mouthful of boy. Mine. I have this little world of boy. I’ll do what I want to him.
His trust flies into me like a punch.
I turn him over, scoop his cock out from his boxers, and
I am thrusting my hips, gripping my acrylic cock inside, andlower myself onto him. His eyes are a sear of lust, tears at the edges. He grunts with the effort of fucking me; the little grunts are so fucking hot. “Thank you, Miss D,” he says, and I fuck him harder, grab his waist and pull him to me, force him to fuck me hard. The cock reaches to my core—rubbing the precise spot that I want. As his cock is mine, and he is mine, he will fuck me my way.
I am thrusting my hips, gripping it inside, drawing it within me. I’m fucked how I want. When I want. By my cock.
I am thrusting my hips, gripping it inside, drawing it within me. I’m fucked how I want. When I want. By my cock, even if it’s attached to someone else. It’s mine because the boy is, too. Good boy, I think, such a good boy.
I reach down to touch my clit and feel it stretched over the cock, rubbing it hard ashe stares in lust and torment, fucking me with all his strength, his offering, mine to take, to
thrust the acrylic cock into deep as it’ll go, fucking it inside of myself harder, imagining his cock, and now I’m holy from both ends, taking it all inside of me, fucking the cum from him, taking his cum and blood. Blackness surges and I come wildly, fucking myself with the slick cock. Thrashing, pressing my clit hard into the acrylic, I sanctify myself and my bedroom.
The partiers outside have quieted. The leathermen come and kiss me on the forehead, smooth my damp hair. My phantom boy curls up at the end of my bed to warm my feet. I toss the cock on a towel on the floor to wash in the morning, nestle my head into my pillow, and turn out the light.
KISS AND TELL
Lori Selke
MY FIRST DATEWITH DAPHNE
The first time, Daphne seduced me. She came to my door with a grocery store rose and a bag of Hershey’s Kisses. “Sweets for the sweet,” she said. I was young enough to be charmed. I was twenty years old. I had never had sex with a woman before.
The Violent Femmes were on the stereo. For years afterward, on car trips, we would shout out the lyrics to the entire album, song by song, laughing and smoking and driving to late-night diners with bad coffee, dead ends where we’d make out. I was the passenger. Daphne drove.
That first time, I was living in a large wood-paneled room in a converted boardinghouse with a shared kitchen and bathroom. I had a refrigerator, a bookcase, a desk, a single bed. No bed frame. Daphne sat at the head of the bed, and I sat at the foot. She was so thin, I could see her ribs when she pulled off her tank top. She had almost no breasts to speak of. She looked like a boy. We were such a contrast—her, slight and blond; me, chunky and black-haired—except for our skin. We were both so pale, our skin almost glowed in the low light of my room.
This is the part I remember best: I didn’t know what I was doing, so I let her lead, let her touch me and explore my body with her hands and her mouth. I leaned back, let her undress me. This is the part I remember second best: I did not reciprocate. If she had indicated she wanted me to, I would have. Instead, she offered me chocolate.
For months, she would slip love notes under my door, poems—silly parodies of Byron and more serious verse—calligraphed with the pen set I bought her for Valentine’s Day. I walked her the three miles home from my place at least once a week and stayed over, sleeping next to her on the futon mattress on the floor, trying not to burn my bare toes on the baseboard heater. Daphne’s bed held two, while mine was only wide enough for one; that was the excuse for the arrangement. She cooked me egg salad and microwaved whole potatoes with butter and sour cream before I went to work.
Later she would say to someone else, right in front of me, that she liked boys for sex and girls for love. I should have been flattered, I guess.
ANOTHER DATE WITH DAPHNE
The next time I saw Daphne, I drove out to meet him, hundreds of miles. Well, I didn’t do the driving; a friend did.
We camped out on the living room floor of his best friend’s house. I spent a lot of time sleeping in nests on the living room floors of people I barely knew in those days. Also hotel room floors, dormitory floors. Bare basement mattresses and more couches than I could count. I’d listen to people having sex beside me, whispering to each other that “it’s okay, she sleeps like a rock.” Sometimes those people were my lovers.
That time with Daphne, though, it was my turn to keep someone else up all night, as our friends stayed in the kitchen, talking, trying not to hear the sounds of our tryst. Daphne was in his fifties, gone gray in the temples and through the beard, but still vital, tanned, strong. He was more than twenty years older than I, still the oldest lover I’ve ever had.
We’d been corresponding for months. He’d sent me love notes, usually quotes from old songs, nearly every day. I was still young enough, green enough, to soak up the attention without question. To assume I was special, the only one he was flattering—that we had a special connection.
I know that he looked surprised and vulnerable beneath me when I rode him, snapping my hips, coming so easily around his cock. A combination of eagerness and release and comfort. His body was comfortable, his big hands steady on my breasts. The look on his face—it had to mean something.
I called his number one night, late, without warning, and a woman’s voice answered. It took me days to understand. Days, and sympathetic friends to break the news to me with compassion. That was why we had to meet at a friend’s house. That was why Daphne never took me home with him.
DAPHNE TAKES ME TO A PARTY
The next time I saw Daphne, I was staying with a guy I had met who refused to fuck me because he said he fell in love with anyone he touched with his dick. We had long, passionate arguments on outdoor benches after dark. He burst into tears when I gave him a flower I bought from a streetside vendor on impulse. Nobody had ever given him a flower, he said, hugging me. But he still didn’t kiss me or let me into his bed.
Instead of fucking him, I went on a date with Daphne. If you can call it a date. It was really a sex party at a big house in the middle of the California woods. When I arrived, she was sitting on the porch, leafing through a stack of bondage magazines and sniffing. Not her thing.
I’d put on a dress for her, as we’d discussed. It was a fancy party dress, a Christmas dress, a prom dress. I’d put on stockings, although I had not shaved my legs—fishnets are perfect for this purpose. I’d put on lipstick and heels.
Then I stood in the living room, facing the window, while she whipped me.
She used a single-tail, which left welts all across my ass. I yelped and squealed and writhed under the sharp crack of leather. I loved
it. I was high on pleasure and pain. But the rest of the party saw only pain. They saw my face through the window, and they flinched. They heard me gasp and shriek, and they ducked their chins.
Eventually, Daphne drew blood, which was technically against the rules. With a second stroke, she broke open a welt laid just moments before. Immediately, she hustled me into an adjacent bathroom and pressed a wad of paper towels to the wound. I giggled and tottered on my heels as we tried to cover up the evidence.
Later that night, she took me into the woods and pressed up against me from behind, held a knife to my neck and fucked me. Once again, Daphne drew blood—I pushed back against the sharp, sharp blade, and didn’t even notice when I nicked myself.
She drove away maybe an hour later. I stumbled down the gravel drive in my shoes to kiss her goodbye. I slept, like so many times before, on the couch.
I WALK DAPHNE TO HER CAR
Once I walked Daphne to her car after a meeting. She had organized the presentation, on sex workers and dykes. At the time, she worked at that San Francisco bastion of politically conscious sex-worker dykedom, the Lusty Lady. She had done a “private pleasures” demo for the class that involved two dildos, a mirror, and a lot of hair-tossing. Her real hair, not a wig. After the class, she was still scantily dressed and wearing five-inch heels. She was parked six blocks away. She had no date and no escort, and a very heavy bag full of props and costumes. All her friends had headed to the bar without her.
Fucking Daphne Page 16