The Oy of Sex

by Marcie Scheiner

  And sexually? I made sure I was the hottest fuck on the block. Spent my puberty poring over everything from Dr. David Reuben to Xaviera (yes, she was Jewish). I scrutinized Penthouse letters the way Yentl studied Talmud: devoutly and behind closed doors. I practiced kissing on pillows and fellating on bananas. My goal was not promiscuity but perfection. When a man was with me, I was going to fuck him out of any desire for those fantasy girls. My pleasure came from driving him wild. My need was to be needed, to be the mirror reflecting his insatiable orgasm.

  I came home to the simplest and most impersonal form of end-of-the-millennium interaction: e-mail. I recognized David’s online nickname, “BigMacher,” and his unsubtle usage of Yiddishkite set the tone for his communique:

  “Listen, I can’t do this any more. You are way too real and I can’t handle that right now. Thanks for the great fucking.”

  “Thanks for the great fucking?” Sheesh! Rejection never surprises me, but I’m always fascinated by its many shadings.

  You can’t cry when you’ve been dumped by someone you should’ve dumped first. Too embarrassing. You have to do something concrete. Positive.

  I finished my comic novel, read the collective works of Phillip Roth and Cynthia Ozick, watched The Way We Were three times in a row (with a box of Kleenex and a pint of low-fat Ben & Jerry’s for each viewing), gave up men, obsessed about men, did five hours a week at the gym, masturbated my brains out, lost nine pounds, and organized a lunch to which I invited every Nice Jewish Girl in my rolodex.

  Together we tried to make sense of the Men of Our Tribe and why they either avoided us completely or played Advance/Retreat. Deborah blamed it on Nice Jewish Boy Freud, who helped make mothers the scapegoat for all things horrific. Rebecca cited the almost century-old image of women in popular culture, created by the Jewish founding fathers of the studio system: the Zanucks, Goldwyns, and Mayers, who left Russia so eager to assimilate that they created an on-screen America populated by blonde vixens and kindly Protestant mothers. Hannah cited recent studies that claimed Jewish men were rejecting the values of their fathers, foregoing the familial spiritual through-line personified by the Matriarch. Yael summed it up thusly: “Guys like bimbos. That ain’t us.”

  The discussion was as stimulating as my personal life wasn’t.

  And then I met Paul, a meeting inadvertently precipitated by David. One Friday afternoon I was taking a long, solitary walk on the Third Street Promenade. Weaving my way through the trendy shops, slacker boutiques, and street mimes, I saw a pushcart vendor selling the most glorious tulips, each colossal bulb as big as my hand. As I approached to buy myself a bunch, I heard a voice squeal, “Oooh, Davy, get me the pink ones, puh-leeze!”

  I looked around and there was David, accompanied by a Pamela Lee clone with legs up to her breasts. He spotted me and turned as pale as her neo-Yardley lip gloss. He stammered out that they’d just come from the nearby Santa Monica courthouse, where he was handling “Julie’s” divorce. I was wracking my brain for a brilliant bon mot when a smooth, deep Kentucky drawl cut the awkward silence.

  “There you are, darlin’,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “Ah thought ah’d lost you.” He handed the florist a jumble of bills, plucked a lavish bouquet, and placed it in my arms. Both David and I checked out this stranger. He was tall, well over six feet, with eyes the color of morning sky and shaggy blonde hair as thick as honey. He was gorgeous, he’d appeared from nowhere and together we walked off, as David watched in rapt fascination.

  We ducked around the corner into a tiny bistro, and before I could speak, he apologized.

  “Ah’m sorry. Ah had no business doin’ that. You must think Ah’m crazy. Ah just have this instinct, sometimes. My mama says it’s psychic. It looked like you weren’t too happy to run into him, so Ah just thought…Apologies for buttin’ in.”

  “No. It was very sweet of you. And these flowers are gorgeous.” I giggled, thinking of David’s face. This fascinating stranger read my mind once more and revealed a dangerously intoxicating smile.

  “He did look a right fool. He doesn’t deserve you.”

  I found myself blushing. In a millisecond my mind’s eye saw myself thanking him, excusing myself gracefully, and running to my car like a frightened wildebeest. But two hours later we were still in the cafe, laughing and lingering over glasses of Merlot. Over lunch I’d learned that Paul owned a ranch one hundred miles outside of Louisville, where he bred Arabian thoroughbreds and Tennessee Walkers. This was his first time in L.A., where he knew no one. Without asking, he got me to divulge the plot of my novel, my guilty pleasure of belting Beatles songs in the shower, my impersonation of Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen in The Godfather Part II, and my secret recipe for cranberry bread.

  Shortly thereafter we were in his hotel suite, listening to the pounding Pacific surf, while he ran a blood-red tulip along my naked body. The soft petals tickled the lips of my wet, slippery cunt. Paul placed my hands above my head, then moved down to split my lips with his hungry tongue, having used the sinewy muscle to snake a determined path along my body, from mouth to neck to breasts, belly, and cunt. The room was spinning, as much from the sensation of his lips on my clit as from the surrealism of the situation. This was not a typical Nice Jewish Girl experience—at least for this NJG.

  His body was smooth and hard, his pubic hair the color of burnished copper. His thick cock glistened, the head awash in precum. I longed to lap it clean, but he had other ideas. In fact, nothing followed my usual game plan. While I was used to orchestrating sex, he seemed more determined to touch than be touched. Any attempts I made to hold or suck him resulted in a sensual stroke or caress that made me collapse in a writhing heap. Wouldn’t he vanish if I didn’t give my all just to please him? Apparently not. He was too busy driving me into a hedonistic frenzy.

  My ass rose off the bed, lifted involuntarily by the sensations from his fingers and tongue. It wasn’t as simple as physical domination. He willed me to submit, thereby conducting my absolute pleasure.

  A technicolor petal from the enormous tulip had dropped onto my mons. He pulled the remaining petals off one by one and scattered them over my burning flesh. All that remained was the blossom’s sturdy stem. Playing to his sly rhythm, I bucked my throbbing pussy toward the hand that held the naked flower. My mouth was open, my breathing wet and heavy. He smiled and ran the stalk along my slit. I reached for it with my cunt, but he pulled it away. Before I could move, or ask, or beg, or plead, he swooped down and sucked hard on my breast. As this glorious sensation of pleasure tinged with pain washed over me, he thrust the thick stem into my cunt. He sucked harder on my breast and pinched my other nipple between his calloused thumb and forefinger. My jagged moans grew louder, although the pounding of my heart probably drowned out my verbal noises.

  Fucked by a flower, flowering to this fantastic fuck—my thoughts and emotions swirled together like a design from one of those silly, splendid spinning paint machines at the school carnival. Once more Paul’s mouth pressed against my inflamed cunt, kissing it, fucking it. I fingered my throbbing breast, knowing the globe would sport a purplish bruise within minutes. I delighted in the vision I would later explore in my bedroom mirror. What other marks would he paint on my body’s canvas? As I rocked on the soft hotel bed, I relived each touch, even as he raised the seismic stakes by slowly inserting his middle finger up my ass.

  My clit was liquid heat, a throbbing buoy in a sea of exploding cunt. God, I loved how he made me feel. His eyes never left mine, and in them I could see a gleam of satisfaction. I clutched the wooden post of the bed and began to come. The explosion traveled across my flesh. I closed my eyes as waves rocked my body, again and again. I moaned, I climbed, I crawled. I steamed, shook, and then exploded into his mouth, onto his hands and across his hot, steamy flesh.

  He held me tightly, and as I continued to come he surprised me yet again by thrusting his torrid cock into me. I wrapped my arms around him and came and fucked and fucked and
came. This wild electricity continued until we both screamed and fluttered and fell, into and around each other.

  Bathed in perspiration, I softly kissed his lips, licked his rough, tender fingers. He ran the back of his hand lightly across my cheek.

  “What a beautiful woman you are.”

  I said nothing. Where had he come from? He was so different from any man I had ever known. Truth be told, he was unlike any man I would have allowed myself to know. I would justify my prejudice by telling myself he would have rejected me as being too different. In my mind he would fall victim to those same cultural stereotypes, leaving him unable to see me. How wrong I was! And even so, I had no idea just how wrong I was.

  My thoughts were interrupted by Paul’s soothing drawl.

  “Will you spend the weekend with me? Ah don’t want to lose you. Ah want to know you better. And Ah sure as hell want to make you come about a million more times.”

  I erased my mental day planner and said I would gladly stay—but he would have to let me give as well as take. I was dying to show him a few of my tricks. He smiled.

  “So we’ll stay here. Ah’ll order food and anything else you need and…oh, shit!”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, suddenly envisioning a wife and three kids flying in from the South.

  “There is one thing Ah have to do tonight. Maybe you’ll join me?”

  “What is it?” I asked. He looked embarrassed.

  “Ah have to go to shul.”

  If I hadn’t been lying down, I would have fallen down. “Excuse me?”

  “Synagogue. Ah’m sorry. I thought you might be Jewish, too. Have you ever been to Friday-night services?”

  You want to talk about misguided cultural assumptions? I threw my arms around Paul and laughed and laughed.

  “What’s so funny, darlin’?”

  “Everything! Everything is gloriously, fabulously funny!”

  So our weekend began.

  The Gift of Taking

  JOAN NESTLE

  I walk into the room. She stands with her back to me, a large woman dressed for business. She turns to me: “I have been waiting.” I need to know my arrival is important to her. She approaches me. “I will do what you want. I will do it better than you have ever had it done, and you will give me everything there is in you to give. You will pour it out on my hands, and I will hold you open.” I love her for those words, for her knowledge of what I need and her caring enough to do it. We are alone in this room, having left outside all our accomplishments, all our other powers.

  Here we will face each other, naked and yet dressed in ritual recognition. We will have the courage to bring to the surface the messages the body carries from older days. Here the daily camouflage of acceptable activity will be dropped. My submission in this room with this woman is my source of strength, of wisdom. It informs all my abilities in the other world, but here I can give it time to breathe its own air, to break the surface and show its own face.

  There is a table in the room with sharp square edges. It looks uncomfortable, but I long for the feel of its edges against my back.

  I am wearing a long dress that hides my body my body that I have hated so long for not being lean, hard: hated for its flesh, thighs without tight muscles, large buttocks mocked for many years but with a hunger all their own; and now yearning for penetration by this woman’s hand, her erotic acceptance that will free me from the crime of being a big-assed woman. I know this woman, my friend, will bring my body to light, will make me use it and hear it, will strain it to its fullest, and she will help me through her demands and her pleasure to forget self-hatred. Through her gift of taking, I will be given back to myself, a self that must live in this body and thus desperately needs reconciliation.

  “Come here, Joan.”

  I do, my eyes caught on hers, a blush spreading fire on my face. “You must be ready for me before I touch you. I want to feel your wetness waiting for me. You know that.” I do. She kisses me hard, her hands gripping my arms. The force of her tongue pushes my head back. She stands back and just looks at me. Her hands stay on me, and they will throughout our time together.

  My breasts have grown hard and she knows it. She caresses my nipples, her eyes never leaving mine. “I want them harder.” My body hears, and I feel flesh change its own form. Her fingers squeeze my nipples, but I do not drop my eyes. The pain is sweet; it destroys the years of numbness. I want her to squeeze harder. The message is exchanged in silence, and her hands take fuller command of my breasts. After a few minutes, I put my hand over hers to stop her giving. I can no longer hold my position.

  “Now we will see.”

  She holds my head back as she slips her hand under my dress. I tremble, trying to hold my thighs together, knowing she will not allow me. She feels the wetness before she touches my underpants. My thighs have seeped then-own waters. Her hand forces my legs further apart and her fingers push aside the fabric. “That is good, Joan,” she says, as my wetness bathes her fingers. She curves the material into a ribbon and pushes it between my cunt lips, gliding her thumbnail over the wet curve. “You are a powerful woman, aren’t you? Women listen to your words, and you do important work, but here you are in my hands.” Her hand spreads my lips apart.

  “Yes, yes.”

  She moves me closer to the table. She is ready to assume her full power, and I am ready to give to her. She holds me, undoes my dress. It falls open, and I feel the first shame of revelation, the fear she will turn away from me, from this body. “Good,” she says. I hold on to her and close my eyes. I will not open them again until we are finished, but my hands will see her. I grip her shoulders, pulling her to me. She kisses me, deep, hard, forcing my mouth open. I take her tongue in, sucking on it, trying to hold it. She drops her head and sucks on my nipples, biting them. My nipples swell with fullness. She works harder. I know I will have marks to carry with me and I want them. I want to be reminded in the daily world of this breakthrough. The sweet soreness will burn through my heavy layers of work clothes and remind me of this need and this caring. I will blush with pleasure in the subway, or at a meeting, as a change in my body’s position forces me to remember the time of openness.

  Her hands are hard on me, and I want them to be. I hear her breath coming quicker and my own moaning breaking in and out. My hips move. I want her all inside of me. She pulls me back. For a brief moment I open my eyes. I can smell my sex in the room. “Your body is bursting with want.”

  “I know.” I can see it, hear it, smell it. My body is covered with a dark flush, and I am moving with want. I want to scream out to her, “Now, please take me now,” but I can’t, even in this dream. Perhaps next time I will be able to scream. I want to. For so many years I have not screamed, for so many years the world was not safe enough, or there was no one there to hear it.

  I close my eyes again as she moves toward me. She speaks to me, always calling to me, challenging me, forcing me to be there, and the force of her tells me she is there, caring and fighting for me. Her lips move against my cheeks as she puts her hand on me. Her fingers tear away the fabric. She takes me into her hand, pushing, squeezing, opening. She slips one finger into me. I gasp at how she fills me with that one thrust when I have taken so much and will again, but still the first entry has all the joy, the surprise of her power. “Open Joan, open, take me in. Maybe you can’t. Maybe I’m too much for you.” I hold on to her tighter, open more open to splitting to show her I can give a home to all she can give me. I can match her demanding with my giving, her hand with my insides. I speak to her through my muscles and my wetness. She moves in and out and I follow her. The table edge is cutting into my back as her weight pushes me over. She forces more fingers into me, and I feel as if I could take her whole hand, her arm. My hunger grows as she pushes against me, always talking to me, telling me she is there and wanting me.

  I take her all in, throwing my whole body against her, repeating in a small deep voice, “Yes, I can do it. I can do it.” Ove
r and over again. She is a total force over me, and yet all her power is giving me myself. I know I am coming: all the need, the fear, the loneliness has slipped down around her fingers, and she pulls at them as she moves me. I am all in that place where her hand has found entrance.

  I come on her fingers, contract and hold her inside of me. She feels me and whispers, “There is more. I am not letting you go yet.” She moves around inside of me, making my body flinch with more comings. All my strength is in my hands, my arms embracing her strength, feeling her shoulder move with the power of her entries. I fall back on the table; my head drops back and she begins to leave me. I know it will not be easy; I have locked around her fingers, and she must carefully break the grip of my body’s gratefulness.

  When my strength returns, I will thank her by kneeling in front of her and taking her wetness in my mouth. I will hold her legs strong against me, my breasts holding her up, and I will slowly, carefully, wisely—using my tongue’s tip and its wide surface and my teeth and the power of my mouth—give to her my love and her pleasure.

  The Babka Sisters

  Lesléa Newman

  Sit down, shah, you ready, you got your tin can going there, you want to make a test, make sure my voice is good, everything is working all right? Okay, so now I’m gonna tell you a story, a story I never told nobody, why I’m telling you, a stranger, I don’t even know, but all right, nu, it’s time.

  Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, around the Stone Age it was, takeh, I was a young maidl, and quite a looker I was, too. I know what you’re thinking, you look at me now and what do you see, a fat old lady wrinkled like a prune danish with hair like cotton candy, but nu, I had quite a shape in those days, my hair I wore in a braid down my back thick as a man’s arm, my skin was smooth as a baby’s tuchus, you don’t believe me but you wait, mamela, gravity ain’t got no favorites, it catches up to everyone, someday even you.