Daisuki

by Hildred Billings

A stillness in the air as the flashbacks dissipated. “Forget what? Your mother? Your work?” She paused. “Aiko?”

  Nausea. “That I’m a woman.”

  Michiko stopped touching her. Reina turned to see her friend’s face fall into a sad frown marring her natural makeup. “It’s that deep?” Even her words were filled with pity.

  “I don’t know.” Sometimes, Reina thought about what it would be like…to go that way. To visit a doctor and find out more about it. She had heard of it before, this “gender identity disorder.” It had become popular to show in the media, and more and more new halves popped up on TV every few months. If Reina became a man…she could marry Aiko, and all that entailed. She could be the husband to Aiko’s wifehood. They could be almost normal.

  She would have done that for Aiko.

  But she didn’t know if that’s what she wanted. She had never considered that option until it was apparent she intended to stay with Aiko as “husband and wife.” And since she was the bread-winner, the pants-wearer, the seducer, and the proverbial top in the bedroom it made sense she would take this approach. And there was a power in it Reina had envied ever since she lost her first girlfriend to a boy on his way to inheriting a formidable company. She learned there was no middle-ground in the affairs of sex and gender. She was either a woman…or a man.

  She had to choose.

  Not even Michiko could understand that, though, for all her experience in Japan and its society. She was all American at heart and mind – Reina could see it in her big, brown eyes, trying to think of how to explain to Reina it was perfectly natural for one woman to love another. But she didn’t understand. She didn’t have that pressure. She had left for America before that pressure could become a reality in her world. Reina couldn’t leave. She was Japanese, and it was all she knew.

  Reina leaned into Michiko’s hold and wished for everything to go away. But Michiko’s strong arms couldn’t contain Reina’s outpouring emotions. She needed her own healing.

  As if she understood, Michiko lowered her lips and kissed Reina. Her presence towered over Reina and made her feel small, feminine. That awful sensation of submission. Perhaps if they never had that discussion then Reina could have enjoyed it to some degree, but feeling Michiko pin her down unnerved the core of her identity.

  Reina righted herself and attempted to dominate Michiko, crushing her body on the bed and searching for comfort in her lips. Thankfully, blissfully, she responded, speaking to Reina in the figurative and literal tongues of their adolescence.

  Maybe nobody else could understand the way Reina functioned. Only through bringing other women joy and comfort could she herself heal….but there were a select few, like Michiko, who could give that joy and comfort back as readily as they received it. Reina didn’t want to imagine a life in which Michiko was never around to curb and encourage Reina’s growth, both emotionally and sexually, as an adolescent. She may not have lived to see this moment. This beautifully mundane moment.

  “Mi-chan…” Reina’s breath was harried as she kissed her friend all over and lifted the bottom of her black pullover. “Kimi ga hitsuyou.”

  I’ve always needed you.

  Michiko said nothing, verbally. Physically she told Reina everything she needed to hear, starting with her own kisses, caresses, and stripping off Reina’s own pullover and various other clothing. The more clothes Reina removed from her friend the more she felt like she unwrapped the greatest gift, and for the first time in years it was all hers to enjoy without interruption or voyeuristic eyes in the corner.

  “Reina!” Michiko melted beneath Reina’s bare arms, her breath a hush with every mutual push she gave. She mumbled something in English, lost to her own thoughts. Reina wished she could understand.

  “Mi-chan!”

  They weren’t even naked, but Reina felt that first wave of energy course through her like a drug infusing her veins with the strength she needed to drive through. Reina looked down and marveled at Michiko’s gaping face and undulating body, as if she too felt this quick and fascinating reverie pulsing between them.

  They could slow, afterwards. Undressing was no longer frantic or a burden to get where they wanted. Even with two hours remaining it felt like they had all the wonderful time in the world to hold and taste each other.

  “Reina…” Michiko slammed her eyes shut and rubbed her hands against all of Reina, from her bony shoulders to her lean calves. “Reina!”

  Every time Reina heard her name called out or moaned, she would snap out of her trance, look down into Michiko’s writhing face, and wonder…Is that who I am? “Reina?” She could see her name written on the back of her own eyelids, its meaning dancing through her head like some sick joke from her mother. “Beautiful.” Everything about the way her name was written, sounded, was feminine. Growing up she was the only “Reina” she knew in elementary school, before it was a fashionable name for daughters. All her classmates told her it was “so pretty” and how jealous they were she had such a unique name at the time. Reina always hated it – even more when an exchange student told Reina it meant “queen” in Spanish. What use did Reina have for such feminine names? She didn’t want to be beautiful. She didn’t want to be a queen. She wanted…

  “Mi-chan…” Reina stopped and gazed down at her, with her soft brown hair, her curves, her make-up, her surety in herself and her identity. The first character in Michiko’s name also meant “beautiful,” but it somehow suited her much more than it ever did Reina. Michiko was beautiful, in every acceptable way, even down to her features marking her as a foreigner “Before we go on,” Reina found the voice to say, “there’s something else.”

  This “something else” should not have been so hard to say, especially to Michiko of all trusted people, but Reina’s vulnerability made her saliva clog her throat and leave her mouth dry. Once she managed to convey her desire to Michiko, she waited for it to backfire on her, to get laughed at, to get told she was stupid and insecure.

  Instead, Michiko said, “Sure.”

  If Reina were pompous enough to expect she would convince Michiko to accompany her to a love hotel on their afternoon together, then she would’ve brought her own damn items. But seeing as how even she wasn’t that full of herself, she had left her usual stash at home. This meant sending Michiko on an awkward run – although she swore she didn’t mind – in a room-supplied bathrobe down the hallway to get what Reina wanted. Had they chosen a more upscale room at this establishment, they wouldn’t have had to leave the room. Next time I come to one of these places I’m staying in the country western themed room, just because I can.

  Reina finished undressing and sorted out both her and Michiko’s clothes on top of the dresser. A mirror on the other side of the room reflected Reina’s thin and curveless form, mocking her.

  The door opened and Michiko walked in, carrying with her the item Reina requested. “Here’s your dick, sweetie,” she said with a grin, and tossed the cheap harness and vibrator set onto the bed. “I’ll never cease to be amazed what you can buy in vending machines here.”

  Reina looked at her watch on the dresser. A little over two hours left. “Thanks,” she muttered, and retreated to the bed to pull herself together.

  Michiko remained near the door, playing with the ties on her thin cotton robe. Reina wondered why she didn’t come over and resume their new routine, but then came to appreciate the extra breathing room while she fastened herself up. What a cheap piece of shit. But it would do.

  At least the stand-in appendage was about the same size as the one she liked to use at home. Reina didn’t know if she could handle the inferiority of a smaller one or the strange heaviness of a larger one. She felt it in her hand and decided it would work well enough. Now she wished Michiko would stop staring at her.

  “Aw,” her friend said. “It was kinda hot watching you play with yourself, so to speak.”

  Reina threw a grin back at her. “Much rather have you come play instead.”

  Oblig
ing, Michiko sauntered over to the bed, untying the front of her robe and exposing her body to Reina’s famished eyes. She wrapped an arm around Michiko and drew her down, directing a pale hand to the occupied space between her legs.

  Although Reina couldn’t really feel Michiko’s touch, she could sense the pressure of the harness pushing against her – and she had an imagination used to pretending such things truly belonged to her and were a genuine extension of herself inside other women. Reina had learned from an early age how to please women with a fake phallus between her legs, and few complained. Even Michiko, who wasn’t the biggest fan of penetrative sex, claimed Reina was the “Master of Fake Dick.”

  Michiko disrobed before lowering her head to Reina’s waist; Reina leaned back against the headboard to convince herself she could feel all of it. Yes, all of it: she could feel Michiko’s warm lips part over the head, and she could feel her nimble fingers wrap around the shaft. If Reina held mastery in strap-on sex, then Michiko was the queen of everything to do with tongues and fingers. Too bad that golden tongue didn’t extend to singing – we could’ve been big. Reina had the strongest alto between them, as much as it embarrassed her to go up front on stage as a lead singer. I haven’t sung in years.

  But she was on the verge of it. If Michiko kept up her sucking then Reina might have sung to the neighbors. She relaxed her tense muscles and concentrated on the sights and sounds of her best friend licking the very thing Reina claimed a part of herself.

  “Suge,” she sighed, and slid a hand into Michiko’s hair, soft hair, hair so soft it surprised Reina since she was used to Aiko’s coarser strands.

  Oh, Aiko. Reina wondered if she could ever get her to do this. She often rebuffed Aiko when she wanted to go down on her, and after twenty years Aiko was still nowhere near as talented as Michiko, anyway.

  She’s probably having mediocre sex with the neighbor right now. Thinking that comforted Reina.

  Michiko had Reina’s pseudo-phallus by the base now, and through her fingers Reina could feel all the pressure moving in and out of Michiko’s throat. Reina concentrated on conjuring the sensation of how it would feel – how it would feel to have a real phallus, and how it would feel to have a woman as wonderful as her best friend devouring it.

  Reina’s voice rose into a feminine whine against her will. “Yamenaide.” She clung to the building intensity inside the pit of her stomach, traveling up her skin and telling her brain “this is it.”

  Michiko reached her spare fingers toward the real sensors beneath the harness – Reina batted them away. She didn’t want reminders of her femaleness, even if her voice betrayed her.

  “I…” Here it came, like a heat rising from the pit of her pelvis. “Iku…”

  Nothing. Nothing but a hot, white light flashing before her as she sank into the bed and felt everything come crashing through her body like a typhoon. She could feel her genitals, wherever they resided, throbbing and releasing every negative emotion built up inside her heart, like a piston sifting everything downwards and into Michiko’s healing body. Reina cried out, her hands clasping the sheets as she ejaculated.

  And then nothing again. Michiko sat up, her one hand covered in “Reina.”

  “Shit,” Reina heaved when she had the air again. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?” Michiko stuck a finger in her mouth and then plunged it into Reina’s navel. “I’m used to women doing that to me.”

  But men do it too. Who was she?

  Michiko draped herself over Reina’s body, head resting on chest. “Well, that was different, anyway. Can’t say we’ve ever done that before, and we did some kinky shit in high school.”

  “Hmph.” Reina tangled her hand into Michiko’s hair and continued to stare at the bare, gray ceiling. Their first year together in high school was nothing but a blur of risky sex and lots of classmates blushing and giggling when they were around. Between the liaisons on the school roof, the sneaking around each other’s houses to play with toys and try new positions they saw in the pornography displayed in convenience stores, and the one time they were summoned to the headmistress’s office where a Catholic nun showed them an English film about the horrors of sex and disease…well, Reina was rather glad she got that all out of her system before meeting Aiko. She didn’t want to think about how she would have scared young Aiko off had she not been so damned experienced and confident that first time they went to a cheap love hotel like the one she and Michiko were in now. For all she knew, it was the same one.

  “Daijyoubu?”

  “Un.” Reina shoved Michiko off her and rolled on top of her. “I’m fine.”

  “Good. Because it’s my turn now, ne?”

  The easiest thing to do was kiss her instead of answering, and that’s what Reina did while Michiko’s muscular legs wrapped around her. At first she didn’t feel anything besides the harness pinching her hips and a cramp in her left leg, but the moment Michiko gasped when Reina slipped into her was like falling head first into another daydream. Reina had felt the insides of many women in her life, so how was it difficult to imagine the sensation of her own genitals inside another woman’s? The same achievement she gained every time she had sex with a woman who made her feel so comfortable with every facet of herself and her confusing identity. Mi-chan and Ai-chan.

  Sometimes Reina snapped out of her fantasy, such as when Michiko dug nails into skin and began shouting things in English. But for the most part, she was “Reina,” not a woman with a strap-on, but a person with the ability to conjoin with women and feel it for herself as well. Every thrust of her hips was another plunge into the most intimate part of another woman’s body, everything warm and wet and malleable to accommodate “Reina.”

  In their own language, Michiko told Reina she wanted release, and Reina responded with her mouth all over her best friend’s throat while she added an extra upward thrust with her hips. Michiko stiffened as a shout caught in her throat, her nails digging like manicured picks into Reina’s shoulder blades. Then she wailed, and as it plummeted into a satisfied grunt her legs ceased their shaking and she collapsed into a limp beneath Reina’s weight. “Oh, fuck!” she said, in English. Reina’s English was shit, but she understood that.

  Reina attempted to untangle herself from Michiko’s limbs, but she pulled Reina back down with a laugh and said, “Don’t move.”

  “Un.” All Reina could think to say at first. She settled herself back into an embrace, her breath bouncing back into her face as she nestled her friend’s shoulder. Michiko’s fingers kneaded the back of Reina’s neck. “Did you enjoy yourself?”

  Michiko’s body shook as she laughed. “Yes. I’ve always loved feeling you inside me.”

  “Really. You do know it’s just a toy, right?” A pang from the admittance chimed in her heart. “And a totally different one from the one I’ve ever used on you before.” She had to talk herself down from her “non-woman Reina” high.

  “I know it’s not real, stupid.” Michiko adjusted herself, moaning as “Reina” moved inside her. She caught her breath again, her thoughts lost to physical pleasure. “But it’s still you, nonetheless. Very few men are as skilled as you are with those damn things. When we have sex, I swear it’s your cock inside me.”

  “Well, it’s not. It’s just a hunk of plastic awkwardly attached to my body.”

  “It is, in your head.”

  Reina frowned down at Michiko’s pinking cheeks. “You think so, huh?”

  Michiko withdrew her arms and clasped her hands on either side of Reina’s face. “I know so.” She wiped the underside of Reina’s eye. “You said so yourself – you want to forget that you’re a woman.”

  Damn woman, foiling another perfect moment again. What did she think a love hotel was for? Emotional therapy? Reina grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about it, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

  “You don’t have to verbalize anything. Twenty years knowing you and you think I can’t read you? Feel you? You think you bottle e
verything up inside, but you’ve been broadcasting all your thoughts for years.”

  Reina wanted to move, to get away from Michiko and put her own back to the issue. But their position was too comfortable to abandon, and she stayed – albeit with a frown. “And what have I been broadcasting?” She shook Michiko’s hands off her face.

  Said hands went to her shoulders instead, and one finger reached up to touch a stray hair. Before Michiko spoke, Reina thought she looked like a tousled, naked angel who didn’t exist outside of her head. Maybe she had been fucking her own imagination all these years.

  But Michiko opened her mouth again, and what came out was what Reina denied. “You wish you were born a man.”

  “It’s not as plain as that.”

  “No. Nothing is.”

  “I don’t really want to change my…you know…” Funny, she could think about genitals all day, but she could never say their words out loud. Some things were that deeply conditioned.

  “No. You just want the world to see you differently.”

  “Is that so weird?”

  Michiko shook her head. “The world isn’t kind to people like us.”

  You don’t understand. You never really did. Michiko was smart, intuitive, and all-around wonderful in Reina’s saturated eyes, but she still got to live an open life back in America. And in Japan she was still acceptably feminine in her appearance and mannerisms. Michiko would never find herself in Reina’s position, a woman forced into a man’s role. Reina didn’t know if what she wanted was another body she pretended to have during sex, or if she was angry she was made to feel broken doing so. Either way, reality won.

  “Reina,” Michiko said. “Mou ikkai, ne?”

  Reina hesitated before making love to her again. This time it took her longer to escape into her fantasy, in part because she kept her eyes open and stared into Michiko’s, a will of their own minds engaged as their hips clamped together. Michiko’s next orgasm was nothing more than a sigh as she ceded defeat and closed her eyes.

  Eventually Reina rolled off and unhooked the harness still digging into her skin. She wrapped the whole thing into a towel and tossed it onto the floor. When she leaned back on the unbothered side of the bed, Michiko wrapped herself around her as if the wind pushed her that way.