No Church in the Wild
Page 11
“Why?” I asked her, “Your body’s tight, and you still have huge boobs.” She laughed a nervous laugh. The apprehension made me back off, physically and conversationally. Under the cover of horns in a passing brass band, I stepped to Jackson’s side, sandwiching him between Amber and me.
“She’s very nervous,” I said.
“It’s because she likes you,” he explained. “It has to be. She’s not a nervous person. She’s more the life of the party type. And she’s watching you like a kid watching an ice cream truck.”
I glanced toward her, and she was in fact looking back at me, hungry.
“Did you tell her I like girls?” I asked.
“I told her you were like a queen of lesbians, known for your sexual prowess the City over.” Fierce ornamental heads bobbled past, one of green and yellow and feathery trim looking straight at me.
“Shit, Jackson.” In front of us, a float carried a massive fan, splayed open with Chinese characters on each panel, and the panels opened and closed as diminutive costumed women reached out in twisted poses and then crept back inside beneath the closing panels, a fan of closets. How ironic.
“No, not really. I just told her you were a queen of lesbians. Plus, we’ve been drinking since 4:30. I doubt she’ll have the capacity to entertain any high expectations.”
“Can I have that flask again?” Bacchus makes debauchery for other people, right? I took the flask and turned from the procession, catching sight of the police lights marking the parade’s end as I did. Groups of performers had begun to gather on the broad sidewalks of Market Street, some dancing, some drumming, some spinning streaks of color in the darkening night. The end of the parade was hardly the end of the party.
As I swallowed, a Chinese woman with her face painted white, colored with pigments on her features, flowing in silk, unceremoniously danced into my backside and I stumbled into Amber. My chest slammed against her back, and I “had” to reach the flask-free hand around her waist to steady us both. Against her body I could find my toes again, pulling her ribs into my breasts as I regained balance, my face perched against her hair. I stood her upright, laying the hand that carried the flask against her hip.
I whispered in her ear: “Sorry about that. The geisha caught me out of nowhere, and I’m a klutz. You okay?”
“I’m good – I’m fine,” she responded, quietly, “but geishas are Japanese.”
I released her and smiled. “Touché. Jackson,” I said, “I’ve outstood my feet’s capacity for these shoes. Do you guys wanna come by for a drink at my place? We can go elsewhere if you like, but I’d like to change them.”
They both surprised me by agreeing immediately, and we passed through the drumming, the dragons, the tigers, the sparklers, and the costumes of centuries past to descend into the Muni station.
Standing on the platform, stuffy with the sweat of subterranean crowds, Jackson suggested we continue to the Castro after my wardrobe change.
“Fine by me,” I feigned, “as long as Amber is okay with going out gay.”
“Oh… yeah,” she began, “I mean… I’m bi.”
“It’s a fairly recent development,” Jackson offered.
“That you’re bi?” I asked. Our train screeched to a stop in front of us, and she glanced nervously at the crowds pushing inward. “Don’t worry,” I said, reading her reservations, “no one here cares.” We paused to board, and I took a seat next to her, waiting through a few minutes of silence before looking to her with expectation for the answer.
“Well,” she began, still fidgeting, “I guess I did always know, but I didn’t know I knew either. I remember being really little and having what felt like simultaneous crushes on a boy and a girl, but for a while I sort of forgot about the girl part. I always enjoyed sleeping with men. Then I had a long relationship with one of our guy friends,” she gestured toward Jackson, “and when we broke up somehow started drinking myself to comfort. One night, I don’t remember how exactly, my friend Kate and I ended up lying around in a bed at our friend’s house during a party. We were just laying there, and then we were kissing. We made out for a long time, and I enjoyed it a lot. Like, a whole lot – more than making out with the ex I was so torn up about… but I guess in hindsight more torn up about the breaking up with a staple in my life than about losing him in particular. But after I made out with Kate I started thinking about it more and more, kissed another female friend, and eventually I started hanging out with this tattooed chick, a regular at my favorite bar with really short hair and sort of thinking about what it’d be like to make out with her. I guess we’ll see…”
“This was a recent revelation, I take it?”
“I guess so,” she said, “I mean, my family… well, my mom is very Christian.” To me, that was a pretty sufficient explanation, but it felt like bait.
“Define very Christian,” I asked, holding her gaze.
“Oh, geez.” She paused for a while, then said, “Going to Church three or four days a week, citing preachers to me all the time, maintaining that it was a sin to masturbate or have sex before marriage. Being gay wasn’t even an option. I think if I told her I was into chicks I’d kill her. It wasn’t a Chinese thing, I don’t think. She just embraces Jesus like nobody’s business.” She reached back and tucked her hair behind her ears.
“So I take it she doesn’t know?” I asked. Jackson laughed out loud at my question.
“He knows her,” she explained. “No, I haven’t told her. Jackson is really the only person I’ve told. And Kate, I suppose, suspects.”
“I suspect she does,” I said. We reached our stop and deboarded, conversing on other matters as we walked. I explained to her that I was intimately familiar with the silence associated with very Christian surroundings, and Jackson concurred.
I sat both of them down in my living room and went back to pour drinks. When I returned to hand them off, Jackson winked at me. I pretended not to notice. I sat on the other side of Amber and clinked her glass as Jackson’s phone rang.
“Hello?” he started, but then the call was nothing but a series of “ah”’s and “yeah”’s and “okay”’s.
When he hung up, he said, “That was Clint, my co-resident. He has to fly home to deal with some family crap tomorrow, and he wants me to take his shift in the morning. I should probably go home and get some sleep, but you guys should go out. I don’t wanna make everyone turn in early.” He took a key off his keyring and handed it to Amber. “You remember where we passed by my place?”
“Um… yeah I think so,” she said.
“Okay, good. I’ll see you tomorrow. Bye, guys.” And he stood up and walked out my front door.
She looked bewildered, and she took a sip of her drink, slowly. “You don’t have to entertain me—”
“I’m happy to.”
“I mean, I don’t want to impose.”
“You’re not imposing. It’s been a fun night. I’d like it to continue, if that’s okay with you?”
“Okay,” she said, sipping again.
“So… not to be over-personal, you don’t have to answer, but… you’ve only ever kissed girls?”
“I suppose so. Not that I don’t want to. Do more, I mean. Not that I know what to do. I mean I guess I know, theoretically, what to do, but I don’t really know how to go about it. Or rather... I don’t know how to start it… and I guess if I did I don’t really know how to… er… finish it… I… Christ, I’m so fucking awkward.”
As she rambled on she’d slowly dropped her eyes away from me and to the floor, and her hair had fallen from behind her ear. I couldn’t help but smile at her. It was adorable. I reached across the space between us and caught the errant strand of hair behind my fingers, tucking it back behind her ear as she looked up suddenly, eyes wide, deer-in-headlights.
“Do you masturbate?”
I didn’t think her eyes could get wider. “What?”
“Do you masturbate?”
“I… yeah… um….”
She looked as though she didn’t know what to say.
“You’ll see. You need a refill. Let me show you to the bar. And by bar I mean kitchen cabinet.” I stood up, and she followed me to the kitchen, where I unearthed a handle of Bourbon. She stepped to the counter next to me and started to pick it up. As she wrapped her fingers around the handle I slid my left palm onto her stomach and began to curl my fingers around her ribs. She froze, but jerked her head around to face me while her body tensed into paralysis. I pulled my fingertips into her back and towards me, just a little, and looked back at her, poker faced.
I waited. She should be able to pull away if she wanted to, so I waited, looking into her. She still did not move. I took a step forward and dropped my head toward the floor, leaned into her, dropped my mouth to hers and took her top lip in mine, slowly, moved my right palm to her cheek, led her bottom lip back between mine, slowly. I slackened to a stop with my bottom lip pressed against hers, and she opened her mouth into me and turned her face on my palm, sliding farther between my lips and waning open. I let my tongue tug against the back of her teeth, pulling her in, dropping her top lip into my kiss again, then pulled my lips shut against hers and leaned away. Her eyes were still closed.
I stepped backward onto my right foot, releasing her face and reaching to resettle the bottle on the countertop.
I took her hand, leading her in the general direction of the bedroom. Inside the threshold, I pulled her against me, slowly enough that I could meet her lips with some precision.
She sunk into me this time, and where I had pulled her in with my mouth before, I now found my mouth embattled against hers when I moved my lips. Now she sought speed, kissed urgently, and I moved her with my hands and hips and lips to slow us down, my fingers making their way to the small of her back and wrapping around her waist, and I pulled her hips against me, hot mouthed, feeling the bones in them peak against mine despite the garments standing between us.
When I felt her hips lift into me I pulled my mouth from hers and pushed her back, looking up to find her pouting. I smiled a little. A pout could only mean she thought I meant to stop, and of course invited me to continue. I lifted my hand to the zipper of her jacket and dropped it open, tucking my hands below and sliding the coat off her shoulders. I looked up at her and stepped out of my shoes, and she did the same. You’d stop me if you didn’t want this.
I walked back into her as she slid off the second shoe, kissing her backwards until she encountered the foot of the bed and stumbled to a sit. I let my hands fall, grazing her breasts with my thumbs, down around her back, sliding into the waistband of her pants, falling over her and reaching into her with my tongue, collecting her closer, withdrawing my face as I hooked my thumbs below her shirt and lifted it up her back.
Her eyes were trembling, a tremble resumed each time I took away the comfort of kissing, the excuse to close her eyes. Once her shirt was off she took no time to reach down and tug at mine, halfheartedly, unable to reach far enough to pull it off herself with her sitting and me standing above her. I stepped back again, bringing a wave of tremble, and lifted it over my head, then I unbuttoned my pants and slid my thumbs into my own waistband, watching her, bending forward with my tits in her face and sliding them off my hips.
For the first time since I’d kissed her, she smiled at me, and said, “So no Castro?”
“Up to you.” I leaned back toward her and put my hand on the bed to her right, and leaned in to kiss her again. This time she leaned back, meaning undoubtedly to coerce me on top of her. But her balance on the edge of the small bed was precarious, and she slid off the edge and under my legs with a jolt.
We broke into mirroring giggles, mine ending with a drop down to my knees, straddling her thighs, and I took her mouth up again. We were there together for a long time, breasts pressed against one another, stomachs growing warm from combined circulation, lips holding almost still between one another, faces falling into one another, hands rolling and pulling and sliding and grasping, growing hot, beginning to sweat.
I knew I was leading, would have to lead. I couldn’t have expected her to escalate, having already expressed a lack of confidence about the whole ordeal. And it was clear now that she liked what we were doing – little moans escaped her now and then – but I wondered how far I’d go before she became uncomfortable. Still, there was little I could show her with her pants on, and eventually I decided it was time to lobby for their removal. I leaned into the kiss urgently and then slowed, drawing my face away from hers so that I could only reach out for her, slowly, with my lips, and dropped my hands from her face and her back to the button on her jeans, slipped it undone with my left hand and the zipper undone with my right. I lifted up on my knees and, to my delight, she reached down to pull them off, moving forward, plunging her face flat against my stomach.
Once the first leg was free she pulled it out from beneath me, coming up to her knees to face me, and I flattened her against me again, feeling the heat of it, and then unconsciously wrapped my right hand around her back and slipped her bra unclasped, urged by hormones and not by planning.
She pulled back. “Holy crap.”
“What? Are you okay? I – if you’re not comfortable I can st—“
“No! No, just… Jesus did you like practice that shit?”
“What shit?”
“You just unhooked my bra with one hand in one motion. You have to have practiced that.” She was grinning again.
“What can I say? I may have done it once or twice…” I slipped the straps off her shoulders and freed her breasts. “It has very tangible rewards…” I hugged her to me with one hand and braced on the ground with the other, laid her on her back. “These are lovely.”
“Thank you.”
I could have toyed with her a bit, kissing her neck or making my way slowly down her chest, but they were glorious, and I wanted them in my mouth. I cupped delicious soft flesh from the side, dropped my head between them, and slid my lips over to her nipple, sucking with abandon, relaxing my face into a cushy mound of flesh, rolling a little into it, expanding my lips to suck in more of the magnificence, hearing her moan.
Her hands moved to the back of my head, dragging across my scalp, happy to let me jump back and forth between her tits and squeeze and graze the nipple with my teeth and nuzzle and rub and lick and suck and feel them growing harder and harder under my tongue. “Lovely,” I muttered. I’d worked unconsciously into straddling her leg, and started to feel an unbearable urge to grind against her, so I put my hands on the floor and lifted myself off of her, but couldn’t bear to let the nipple I was involved with leave my mouth.
She started to speak but could form no words, until eventually she stuttered, “I wanna… I…” and then gave up on talking and flipped me over, reaching behind me to take my bra off. She tried with one hand, fumbled, and I arched my back so she could seek the help of another. She’s clearly not done that before. I suppressed a grin. When she finally tore the thing away she exhaled heavily and made a new restraint with her palms, kneading me, and I think my nipple may have cut her flesh a little. “Jesus,” she said again, leaning over me, and she started to work them over, ravenous.
Back and forth we went, breasts, mouths, stomachs, necks, grabbing ass, until I was so wet that my clit started making my decisions and I reached down between her legs to find a very soaked pair of panties.
I slipped two fingers under the material, looping around it, the backs of my fingers wiggling against her sex, and pulled my arm away to separate her from the panties, tossing them against the wall when I got them past her feet. With the obstacle eliminated I returned the pads of my fingers to her slit, smearing her juic
es up over her clit, rubbing them in, letting my fingers slide between every fold I could find, as slowly as I could stand. By some miracle it was shaved clean, and looking at it, soaking, I had to clench my teeth to refrain from ripping off my underwear and taking to fucking her.
Her eyes were closed, her head tilted back against the floor, and her chin lifted as I slid a finger into her, pulling upward, and grabbed her nipple with my lips again. Now she didn’t suppress a moan.
I moved up to her face and kissed her, just once, to open her eyes. “Stop me if it’s not okay.”
“Don’t stop.”
“Can I go down on you?”
“Ah… yes…”
I smiled.
I kissed her lips, her cheek, her jaw, her earlobe, her neck, her clavicle, her sternum, her breasts, her breasts, her ribs, her stomach, her belly button, her hip, the crease of her thigh. I squeezed her legs between my palms and slid my hands up, thumbs pressing into the inside of the taut little muscles in her ass. I let my mouth slide, open, along the joint of her leg, passing by her pussy, and licking up the other crease, then suckled her labia, one by one. I made a point to pay attention to each and every centimeter of her sex within reach of my tongue, and when I thought I’d covered everything else sufficiently I let my mouth fall onto the bulb of her clit, flattening my tongue against its swell and sucking, wrapping it with my tongue, milking it. It was not long before she began to buck against my face.
If the gyrations and the panting and the moaning and the writhing and the tensing of the legs and the rapid, clumsy grabs at my hair and the swift inhale and the arching of her back and the grinding of my face are any indication, she didn’t take long at all to come. When her body started to sink back onto the floor, drained and motionless, I slowed the pace of licking her and just lapped slowly, keeping my mouth full against her, for a while longer.
“Perhaps you’d be more comfortable lying in the bed?”
She seemed to have been elsewhere. “Oh… um… I… right, moving.” She braced herself up against her elbows and started to sit. “Are you coming with me?”