‘Lie to me if you want, but don’t lie to yourself. The attraction between us, the reason I was willing to break all my rules and bring you with me, is based on the fact that we’re two people who are entirely centred on sexual pleasure. People talk all sort of artistic guff about my work, but the real reason they like it is because it lets them glimpse how I see the world, which is the same way that you see it; sex. And it’s opposite, death.’ As he speaks his hands grope my breasts as if they have a will of their own.
I stare into his old eyes that have seen so much. My own hands pull at his fly.
It’s true. Whether I am typing four letter profanities to strangers in the safety of my home, or sweating under a foreign sun, it is all about sex to me.
I find his thick cock and wank it, all the time staring into his eyes. With my other hand I pull my own shorts down. I take his hand and place it on my sex. He rubs his thumb over my clit and pushes a finger inside me. I gasp and step closer to him.
‘Do you wish I was your new African friend?’ He gives me a half smile.
‘No.’ I lick my lips. ‘While you’re fingering me, I’m imagining that he is out there fucking the French girl.’
‘Me too.’ He kisses my neck and then pulls me into him.
His cock grinds into my pussy. I think of the lovers I’ve had who’ve fumbled around not knowing what to do, not caring what I want. I grind back into Dave, closing my eyes and seeing Doulla on top of the French woman, whispering to her all the secrets of the desert.
Neither Dave nor I come. Or we come multiple times. Through the night we cling to each other, our limbs entwined. And for the first time I think I understand what I’m doing here so far from home.
I watch the Gerewol standing by Dave’s side. The men have spent hours getting ready. Covering their faces in red make-up, their teeth are so white and their eyes are wide as they dance, rocking on their feet, and sing in voices that reach into my soul, before the women that will judge them. Dave says they take lots of stimulants so they can dance like this all day, he tells me that some tribes have to travel hundreds of miles to get the pigment for their make-up.
There are a small handful of tourists, leaning against a jeep, snapping photos. There are more people just wandering around, sometimes looking over at the dance, but mostly talking and busy with the concerns of their own life.
I wish the whole world would stop and look at how beautiful these men are. How paradoxically masculine they appear when by western standards they have feminised themselves.
I press into Dave’s and feel the sweat of his body through his clothes. I breathe in the desert air and I breathe in the scent of the man who has taken me to this old world where everything began, this land of sex and death.
It is December. I shove the scribble list of things I need to buy for Christmas into my pocket. I wrap a scarf around my neck and cover half my face ready to hit Oxford Street. Before I leave, on a whim, I check my e-mail for a final time.
I smile when I see something from Silver5. I open it and a photo of my naked body lying in the desert sand flashes up. I stare at my parted legs, my hands resting across my chest and stomach, and my face. I am looking away from the camera, staring into the distance as if I can see something no one else can.
He has written three words.
Peru in February?
I shut the computer down, wrap the scarf round my face a little bit tighter and venture outside. A north wind hits me with all its cold wet power, but I don’t stop smiling.
Burning Woman by L A Fields
Owen will remember his time at Burning Man as a week of merrily twirling color. Taking ‘shrooms and watching people ribbon dance and spin umbrellas in his face, put on light shows, finger-paint their naked bodies like children, unsexually, unselfconsciously. Owen appreciates their pure souls for the first few days, but in the three years since he graduated from college, he’s missed more about school than the casual bald intimacy of people on drugs. He misses sex. He misses sex with creative people, girls who make clothes out of rags, girls who make art of their hair, girls who look really happy in their bodies, and who like him enough to share that joy with Owen.
This trip was something he and his friends had always talked about doing. Everybody knew about Burning Man, and half the parties on campus seemed to imitate all they knew about it – trippy decorations, people running around in horns and fake fur, music made out of the noise from didgeridoos and Theremins and rain-makers. It was all amusing then, but after graduation it became much more important to keep that youthful whimsy in their lives. Phone calls back and forth between his buddies were sad laundry lists: my job sucks; my apartment sucks; no I don’t have any friends like you guys; and no I haven’t met any girls.
They all met at the airport and rented a car out to the festival. They all agreed:
‘This is going to be awesome.’
‘Yeah it’s been rough, but this trip is going to put it all in perspective.’
‘Man, it is so great to see you guys again, we haven’t betrayed who we wanted to be at all.’
But it isn’t three days before Owen discovers just how much his friends have changed, and in their mirror he realises sadly: he must have changed too.
Ron is engaged, and though Owen doesn’t really want to hold that against him, it’s just that twenty-five still seems so young, and Ron talks about it exactly the same way that his other buddy, Harrison, talks about grad school. Like it’s an investment, a business decision. If you want to get married, live in a house and have some kids, you’ve got to get started before you’re thirty, and right now it’s a buyer’s market because most people their age are only just pairing off.
‘We’re not that young any more,’ Ron tells him. ‘This is pretty much my last hurrah.’
‘Cool,’ Owen replies non-committally. He feels like he hardly started having hurrahs in school before it was supposedly time to leave them behind. But not everyone takes life seriously, Owen knows. That’s what he’s here to learn about.
These people … what could they possibly do for a living? The guy with tattoos on his face and ironic breast implants? The woman who is sixty years old if she’s a day with crazy neon troll hair, a bejeweled bellybutton to match, and an X over each sagging breast’s nipple made out of black electrical tape? When did they grow up? What’s their retirement portfolio going to be worth in forty years? Who lied to Owen and told him there was a “right” way to live when clearly these people do nothing more illegal than the occasional hallucinogen, and are still out roaming in the world on their own free terms?
Owen admires every flamingo and scarlet ibis and peacock he spots while wandering through the festival. He participates whenever someone needs a partner for volleyball (or chicken volley ball, or a game of Questions played over a net like in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead). And yet … well, it turns out beggars really can be choosers.
He looks at every girl twice, once as a stranger in a strange land, trying to categorize them, see who they really are, who they want to be perceived as, etc. Next he measures them like a discerning grocery buyer: too green, too ripe, too bruised, too pricey, too good to be true, and even a few he deems rotten. For days the only girls he even speaks to are the ones he meets through their boyfriends, and although several of them seem open and eager to welcome Owen to a threesome, it just isn’t the sort of thing he’s shopping for.
But after a while he spots someone. You’d think in the riot of colour you might not notice one girl’s hair, but in a sea of artificial dyes, this girl has naturally remarkable hair. It’s ginger-bronze. It’s a copper-berry. It’s amber waves of champagne.
This girl, she isn’t perfect either. She’s at least thirty pounds overweight, but Owen likes a girl with some heft in her breasts anyway. She’s as pale as fear and burnt red or peeling everywhere the sun touches her skin. When she dances she drips like someone who’s trying to sweat out a fever, but no matter what Owen sees, he finds a way to l
ike it. She’s drinking vodka straight from a plastic jug? She knows how to party. She’s making out with two guys at once? She’s friendly. She decides to sing along loud to someone’s radio? Well, she’s got a great voice, and that’s not even wishful thinking on Owen’s part, not some lustful illusion, she really is good. In fact when Owen finally works up the nerve to speak to her, the first thing he learns is that she’s a singer in band.
‘We were staying with some guy in Reno who was planning to come out here, so of course we tagged along. Haven’t you always wanted to go to Burning Man?’
‘Yeah,’ says Owen. ‘So you’re another virgin then? I keep meeting all these old-timers.’
‘Virgin, yeah!’ She laughs in a voice much deeper than the one she sings with. ‘It’s nice to be a virgin again at something. Lord knows it’s been a while otherwise.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three,’ she tells him. She’s resting on something that might be a mangled desert rock or might be somebody’s art, there’s no way to tell for sure. She was leaning there for a while before Owen came up, her head moving as if to music, though there were no headphones in her ears.
‘Did you just graduate?’ Owen asks, thinking he’s finally found someone he can relate to.
‘Naw, I never even finished high school.’
She smiles blearily at him, looks him up and down slowly, sizes him up. Owen hopes his tan is even, that his clothes seem cleaner than they are, that he comes across as earnest, but aloof.
‘You wanna hang out?’ she asks him, and with that Owen knows: he’s made muster. He’s in.
She shares a tent with a beautiful guy, tall and Nordic this guy, teeth like he’s sucking on a string of pearls. Owen is relieved to discover that this guy is gay, and that he’s got somewhere else to be.
Missy invites Owen into the cocooned heat of the tent, and in response to that heat, she pulls out the simple bow that’s been holding on her entire light halter dress. It falls to her waist, pooling around her like shallow water.
Her breasts are heavy, and her skin has the cold sear of a way-too-hot bath, the kind of hot your brain almost interprets as freezing. Or maybe her skin is clammy-cool compared to the covered air in the tent. Owen doesn’t spare more than a moment trying to figure it out.
She lifts a knee, her dress still covering the crux of her body, the hottest place on any girl. She combs out her hair with her fingers, settling that around her too, just like the puddles of her dress. She watches Owen patiently, and why she tolerates him is unknown to Owen, because he can feel his jaw slacking open, his eyes glazing stupidly, his fingers fumbling as he reaches towards one of her nipples, as if to pluck a strawberry.
Owen has forgotten his feet outside the tent. He’s leaning on one hand and cupping an ample, hangdog breast in the other. He doesn’t envelop totally into this bud of a space until his date hikes her skirt back, and Owen desperately needs his other hand to explore her molten core. Yesterday Owen met a glassblower at the festival who told him every detail of the process, and yes, reaching into her is like dipping a piece of himself into a furnace. If she is a crucible, Owen is a blowpipe. Even her patch of hair is a dark orange flame. Even the condom she hands him has the viscous transparency of liquid glass.
There are patches of sand in the bottom of the tent, in and out of the snake pit of sleeping bags twisted around each other. It starts to sparkle and dot her hair as she writhes beneath him, using her head and neck as leverage to arch further towards Owen. He clutches at her in thick handfuls, he smothers himself in one of her breasts as if into a pillow. In the moment of his climax, Owen knows with certainty that he would happily suffocate himself if she’d allow it.
In the moments after however, he discovers that she wouldn’t.
‘Wow,’ Owen says as he lies back on the ground. ‘And I don’t even know your name.’
‘What good would it do you?’ she asks him with a tired sort of amusement. ‘I bet you never see me again after this week.’
‘Well, yeah,’ Owen says, realising of course how improbable it would be to carry on any sort of relationship with someone who might live anywhere in the country, but almost assuredly nowhere near him. He accepts that disappointing reality with an adult’s practised ease. ‘Still, there’s no reason for us not to be friendly, right?’
‘We’ve been friendly enough already,’ she says with a more genuine smile. She pats him on the shoulder as she gets up and starts to retie her dress. ‘You can count yourself as one of my friends.’
Owen comes to find out by the end of festival that this girl has a lot of friends. She’s got a name too; she’s actually not that stingy with it, since all the other guys call her by it. Missy. He keeps spotting her by that magnificent hair, and whenever he sees it he approaches it, a moth to the flame.
But soon enough (too soon enough) it’s time to return home again. His friends want to leave early to beat the traffic and get back to the comforts of a hotel room, and truth be told, Owen gets tired of Missy’s statuesque friend looking at him pityingly, like he’s just another one of many. Owen decides to bow out gracefully, packs up his good time, and gets into the car for the trip back to the real world.
The windows are lowered as they’re pulling away, so they can see the last of the sights. Owen spots Missy one final time by the turn of her head, and he smiles quietly, keeping it with him as they start home, feeling a little bit better even if he doesn’t feel quite like his old college self, the kid he used to be … the one he came out here to find.
Owen is looking at Ron and Harrison, thinking that this vague disappointment isn’t the worst thing in the world; nobody stays young forever, right?
But before they’re totally quit of the festival, there’s one last big cluster of people. They look like they’re in their late twenties, maybe early thirties some of them, but Owen can’t see their faces too clearly while moving past them, and their clothes are wild and ageless. They’re standing in a circle, all hands in, and a huge bearded man in a tie-dyed halter dress and combat boots is yelling at the top of his voice like a coach about to send his team onto the court. He’s saying something Owen thinks he’s heard in an English class or two. The people around this bearded leader stamp their feet and shout with his every line, getting more and more frenzied:
‘You have NOT slumbered here! These visions DID appear! TAKE this weak and idle theme! NO MORE YIELDING, LIFE’S A DREAM!’
And what Owen was about to let go of? The magic he was about to put down to vacation syndrome? The warm hope that comes from idolizing a girl he’ll never really get to know? Well, Owen decides to keep all that with him, to hold onto it as hard as he can … because why can’t real life be like this too?
French Kissing by Josie Jordan
There I was on my back, with my legs in the air, sliding down an icy slope.
‘Help!’ I cried, but all I got was a mouthful of ice-chips.
The legs of skiers and fellow snowboarders flashed past as I accelerated downwards. Just as I was about to slam into a fir tree, a strong pair of arms gripped hold of me, bringing me to a stop.
‘Ca va?’
Through the snow-covered lenses of my goggles I saw the lift attendant peering down at me. ‘Ca va,’ I said weakly.
When I removed my goggles, I saw him properly for the first time. What was it about some people that made them irresistible? Their smell? Their body language? Or just that mysterious element known as chemistry? Whatever it was, he had it.
He helped me to my feet.
‘Merci,’ I said, blushing furiously.
He must have sensed how unstable I was, for he kept hold of my gloved hand. ‘Engleesh?’
‘Yes,’ I said, annoyed my accent had given me away already.
I’d come to this small French ski resort with my boyfriend, Jake. It was our first day snowboarding, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that we’d fallen off the tow lift barely fifty metres up. But I thought snow was supposed t
o be soft! My bottom throbbed from where I’d landed on it. In fact I felt like I’d had a good spanking.
Jake limped towards us. ‘You OK, Rach?’ he shouted.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I called. ‘You?’
‘Yeah.’
The lift attendant shifted his Oakleys to his forehead. Was it my imagination, or was there more interest than there ought to be in his huge dark eyes? Flustered, I busied myself brushing the snow off my jacket.
‘My name is Mathieu,’ he said.
‘I’m Rachael,’ I replied.
I had a split second to prepare myself before his warm lips pressed against my frozen flesh. They were soft with a hint of stubble. Four kisses: two on either cheek. And by now Jake was right in front of us. Being French though, Mathieu got away with it, especially since he then turned to Jake as if to kiss him too.
I saw my boyfriend tense, clearly fearing the same. But Mathieu just slapped his back in a friendly manner and Jake let out his breath in relief.
Anyway, that turned out to be the limit of Mathieu’s Engleesh. Luckily I spoke reasonable French. Ignoring the muttering of people waiting on the lift, Mathieu showed us how to hold the T-bar.
‘Open your legs,’ he told me, and I felt myself flushing again. I clung to his shoulders for support while he eased the T-bar between my thighs. He was a big guy, broad as well as tall, yet he had a surprisingly gentle manner.
He helped Jake into place beside me. ‘Now hold on tight,’ he called and started the lift running again.
This time Jake and I managed to stay upright.
‘I wonder if all the lift attendants here are that friendly,’ Jake said, as we slid on up the mountain.
* * *
The following day when we were queuing for the lift, Mathieu came bounding from his hut to greet us. ‘Jake! Rachel!’
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