A Is for Amour

by Alison Tyler

  When I venture between Lisa’s thighs, I feel as if I’m having dessert. Dessert with breakfast, luxury of luxuries! And when I coax her nectar down, it tastes as sweet to me as marmalade. She takes hold of my baguette, where a drop of crème has already appeared.

  Where her cunt tastes like sweets, her mouth tastes like love. I want to lick and taste every inch of her, not in the raunchy way I devour her at night, but slowly, sweetly. I cup the satisfying roundness of her derrière, a perfect bowl, in fact, of sensuality.

  And yet, no bowl bounds my conception of Lisa. She is a horizonless landscape of delicious, sustaining beauty, from the buttery freshness of her neck to the sensitive nook under each arm to the shiny daintiness of her toenails. I want to frolic atop her, squirm into her, come over her. She is a picnic in the park and the softball game afterward, a dip in the lake and a roll in the mud… the summer day that only wanes so that it may enchant you again as a summer evening. I want to be totally embraced by her love, her acceptance, her cunt, her smile. I want to pet, tickle, squeeze, lick and ride her till our nerves melt together into soup. I want to see her lips mouth I love you when she can no longer speak.

  As we make love, I imagine that we are back in Paris. That there is a bidet in our bathroom. That people are speaking French on the sidewalk below. That around the corner is the little pharmacy where I had to resort to an earthy pantomime to indicate that I required a box of condoms. Where the pharmacist, a handsome woman of about thirty-five with dark, humorous eyes, smiled knowingly at me when I paid for them.

  “Tell me about the pharmacienne,” Lisa requested on our last night in Paris, just as I was penetrating her with bedtime vigor. “Fuck me and tell me how she looked at you.” Lisa got off on the idea that the druggist had watched me as if she wanted to personally administer the dose of condoms she had provided. She still asks to hear about it some nights, three years later.

  On other nights, she wants to know all about the pretty Swiss tourist across the aisle on the bus. The one that I’d noticed, out of the corner of my eye, subtly stroking her skirt while she adored a Degas nude in a gallery at the Musée d’Orsay. Lisa likes to have me relate how this art lover delicately, but deliberately, flashed her blonde sex at me as our bus bumped along the boulevard, her smirking gaze fixed on my face. As we slide together on the midnight mattress, I talk to Lisa in broken, abrupt sentences about the tourist who winked at me with her cunt.

  But I digress.

  The French Roast has heightened all my sensitivities. My cock strives for Lisa’s body, and my cerebral synapses fire like good old American popcorn at the erotic implications of her every sensuous motion. In the faux-French Cleveland morning, the walls of Lisa’s pussy absorb each of my strokes so tenderly, yet with such solidity. I feel totally supported by her intimate embrace, just as I feel completely supported by Lisa in every aspect of our life. Her cunt understands my cock the way her mind understands my own and her emotions respond with such sensitivity to my innermost needs. Pulsating inside her, I feel her so tangibly as the source of all my small and large joys.

  We fell in love in Paris, but I had only an inkling of what I was falling in love with. I fell in love with her laughter and came to know her kindness. I fell in love with her acuteness and came to know her wisdom. I fell in love with her sexy ass and came to know the ineffable rapture of being clasped every morning in her transcendent feminine grip.

  Ask me to describe Lisa’s face, and I cannot find the words. I can no longer see her features discretely as eyes, mouth, nose, chin…all I see is the light, the personality, the embodiment of a compassionate intelligence that is my sun and my soil. I can describe Lisa no better than I can describe the sensation of water quenching my thirst, or the flavor of fresh air in my lungs. I might as well try to describe what it feels like to be a living being.

  In Paris, she was pretty as a picture. Now, I rarely see her in two dimensions. Still, there are those moments when I walk into the bedroom and observe a gorgeous creature splayed for me, waiting to be touched, waiting to have her oils made to flow, waiting to absorb me and acquire me once again…and I frame Lisa in my mind like a luscious painting. A canvas, magically enough, that I can step inside.

  Orgasm is inextricably associated with the aromas of coffee and pastry and lavender. In the morning, we always come slowly, writhing in down-tempo sensuality, savoring our shuddering moments together.

  We are lovers. We are lovers. We are lovers this morning.

  TSAURAH LITZKY

  SHARING THE LOVE

  AS ALWAYS, Jane looked cool and lovely, even in the ninety-seven-degree July heat. It was Wednesday, women’s day at the Russian Turkish Baths on Tenth Street, and she was sitting on the steps outside waiting for me. She was wearing a sleeveless, bright orange sheath dress that contrasted stunningly with her short violet hair.

  “I’m so glad you called me,” she said, “and I’m so glad you dumped Adrian.”

  “I had to dump him,” I answered. “How could I go on with him after I found out he was poking that Carmen? I can’t believe how he tried to laugh it off, saying she meant nothing to him. Does he think I’m an idiot?” My voice had got all shrill as the anger flooded over me.

  “It’s funny, this is the first time we’ve been to the baths together even though we both love the baths and we’ve been coming here for years,” Jane said, wisely changing the subject. “And,” she continued, “It’s great to go to the sauna in the middle of a heat wave, because after the sauna, you come outside and you’re cool all day long.”

  We went upstairs, through the entrance, and into the reception room, left our valuables at the desk and got the keys to a couple of lockers. In the locker room, we stripped off our clothes. Jane turned to face me, naked as a newborn. “I want to tell you,” she said, “I never liked Adrian, the way he was always shooting his mouth off about who had just published him. He was always bragging about what a big banana he was. I bet his banana isn’t big at all.”

  I started to laugh, how did she know? When I asked her, she said, grinning, “I didn’t know. I was just trying to get you smiling.”

  I glanced down and saw a jumble of colors—purples and reds and blues—right between her legs where her crotch hairs should be. It was a tattoo of a heart: a big red heart outlined in purple with a purple arrow through it. Inscribed inside the heart in Gothic script, I could make out the letter J, an ampersand, and the letter G.

  G, I immediately knew, was Jane’s longtime live-in sweetheart George.

  “How romantic,” I said. “You have a Valentine between your legs.”

  “Yes,” she answered, “Georgie has one also, on his arm, only his says G & J. We got them on our first anniversary. I was going to put mine on my arm too, but then I decided this was a much better place.” She placed her hand over the tattoo and rubbed it as if for good luck. “We love each other so much,” she said. “We have a perfect understanding. Together we can do anything…anything,” she repeated and then she winked at me. “Last month we got engaged. Now look at this.” She sat down on the locker-room bench, spread her legs and opened herself with her delicate fingers.

  “Come on,” she said. “Take a look, don’t be shy.” I stepped between her legs, bent my head down close. I could smell her, her bitter wine cunt smell mixed with patchouli. A little gold barbell was piercing her pretty, plump clit, a tiny diamond embedded in each end.

  “George and I got pierced together. He got a Prince Albert with a diamond in it,” she said.

  “I guess you won’t be able to show your engagement rings to your family,” I replied.

  “Maybe I will,” Jane grinned. “They’re very progressive.”

  We went downstairs to the sauna rooms and then into the Russian sauna room. The big concrete room has three tiers of long benches built into the walls. At regular intervals along the walls, buckets hung from spigots that were constantly running, filling the buckets with cold water. I loved upending the buckets, dumping the c
old water over my head. It was still early and we were the only ones there. We sat next to each other on the wooden planks that constituted the benches. It felt so good to just let the heat take me, to surrender my sadness and fury to the ancient fires of the sauna gods.

  I imagined that I was sitting on a rock by a stream cutting through a steamy tropical jungle. A fearless explorer wearing a pith helmet and nothing else came striding through the trees that bordered the stream and then…then… Jane interrupted my delightful reverie.

  “This is the best thing we could possibly have done today,” she said. She stood, and lifted a bucket off the spigot. She took a few steps forward so as not to splash me as she upended the bucket over her head. Her lovely white buns wiggled slightly as she moved.

  “You look so good now,” she said as she sat down again. “No more knit brows, no more frown lines. You look all fresh and sweet.”

  “I feel better. The sauna always does it for me.”

  “Me too,” Jane answered, “but the heat makes me all sexed up. Whenever I get out of the sauna, the first thing I want to do is go home and jump Georgie. You ought to come over and hang out with us. We’d really cheer you up. He’s always liked you; he thinks you’re a great person.”

  I was taken aback at this sudden invitation. I never had much luck with threesomes plus I didn’t know if I was ready to jump into bed with my adventurous friends.

  I finally said, “Do you two do this often—invite playmates over to cavort with you?”

  “Not all that often,” Jane answered. “Only when we feel like it. We have so much love, acres and acres of love, miles and miles. There’s plenty to share. Like John Lennon said, ‘the love you take is equal to the love you make.’ ”

  “Right,” I said, still nonplused, “but I just don’t think I’m cool enough for anything like that.”

  Jane jumped up, grabbed a water bucket and dumped the water over my head.

  “You will be, you will be,” she chanted.

  I pretended to be annoyed. “Very funny,” I said in a sarcastic tone, but the icy water did make my skin tingle in a delicious way. When we parted an hour later outside the sauna, Jane said, “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable in there. I was trying to show you that Georgie and I would love to share our love with you. Please think about it.”

  “Sure,” I told her.

  I walked over to St. Marks Place, to Puerto Rico Coffee and Spice, to get a pound of the Organic French Peruvian Coffee I like so much. The cute clerk who measured out my coffee had a graceful, rangy build; long thighs like pistons, just like Adrian’s. Suddenly he looked just like Adrian. He gave me a big smile when he handed me my bag of coffee, but I didn’t smile back. I couldn’t wait to get away from him; I grabbed my coffee and dashed out of there.

  That night, I couldn’t fall asleep. Although I had changed the sheets twice since we split, I thought I could smell Adrian on them, his smell of butterscotch and Parliament Lights. When I closed my eyes, I saw the smiling face of the clerk in the coffee shop, then Adrian’s face, then his whole fine body, his big mule dick. I tossed and turned and finally realized I’d never get any sleep until I soothed my aching cooch. I got my beloved old blue rabbit vibrator from the bed table drawer and lubed it up. But just at the moment of truth, just as I was about to come, I saw Adrian above me, grinning down like a Cheshire cat.

  I promised myself I’d call Jane and George first thing in the morning.

  Jane picked up the phone. When I told her about my decision, she said, “Wonderful. Can you come Thursday? Eight thirty? I’ll make dinner.”

  That’s only two nights away, I thought, and then I realized I was scared. Would I be able to please my two sexually sophisticated friends? Would they be able to please me? Was this really how they expressed their love, by sharing it, or were they just bored? I felt like hanging up the phone and running away, but I made myself say, “Okay. Eight thirty is fine.”

  Two nights later, I found myself climbing the six flights to their loft on Crosby Street, nervously clutching the bottle of champagne I had brought.

  In response to my timid knock, the door was flung open immediately and there stood George. He was wearing white linen trousers and a white T-shirt that said SLUT on it. He was barefoot and grinning, his shaved head shining. He grabbed me in a big bear hug. “Hi, tiger,” he said. Surprisingly, I didn’t mind his arms around me. “Well, look at you,” he said. “You look like the femme fatale you are. Jane made sushi. I hope you’re hungry.”

  I told him I was and handed him the bottle of champagne.

  “Perfect,” he said. “We love bubbly.”

  I followed him into their large loft. The table in front of the windows was set for three, a big bottle of plum wine at the center. Jane was moving about in the kitchen area. “Hi babe,” she called out to me. In the far corner, their big bed was covered with a colorful patchwork quilt. My eyes were drawn to it, but I quickly looked away.

  We decided to save the champagne for later. Soon we were sitting around the table, our glasses filed with plum wine, a platter of tuna rolls and a platter of sashimi in front of us. The tuna rolls looked like little pussies with frilly pink labia to me and the sashimi looked like stubby little pricks. I wondered if Jane and George were thinking the same thing because there was an awkward silence between us.

  “Are you two thinking what I’m thinking?” I asked.

  “You mean that the tuna rolls look like little cunts?” said Jane.

  “Exactly,” I answered, relieved. I wasn’t the only one with a filthy mind.

  “I wasn’t thinking that,” George said, “although now that you mention it, they do. I was thinking that these kinds of arrangements can be awkward and, you know, we don’t have to do anything. We can just eat and drink and talk. We love your company. We don’t want you to feel pressured,” he concluded.

  I thought about what he’d said. “I don’t know if I’m feeling pressured,” I said, “maybe just nervous.”

  “Well then,” said George, “why don’t we just change locale, move to where it’s more comfortable. Let’s sit on the sofa.”

  In a few minutes, I was sitting between them, our food in front of us on the glass-topped coffee table. Jane had brought over the bottle of plum wine and refilled our glasses.

  The sushi was delicious; we finished everything on the platters. There was a bit of wine left and I divided that between us.

  “How did you two meet?” I asked.

  “Actually, he picked me up in a supermarket,” Jane said.

  “Oh, no, no,” said George. “She picked me up.”

  “Uh-uh,” Jane corrected him. “It was you who came over to me in the vegetable section and wanted to know if the avocado you were holding was ripe enough.”

  George shook his head. “No, no, it was you holding the avocado,” he said. They both started laughing and then, leaning over me, their mouths met in a long kiss.

  “Let’s not forget our guest,” Jane said, when they broke the kiss. All at once they were both on me, kissing my cheeks, my neck, my shoulders. “We love you,” Jane whispered in my ear.

  “Indeed,” said George, “we do. May we seduce you?” He was leaning toward me, and I could feel his erection, warm and promising, pushing against my thigh.

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes.”

  Jane unbuttoned my blouse and slipped it off. George removed my bra. “Boobs like a goddess,” he said softly.

  “When I saw them in the sauna,” Jane added, “this is what I wanted to do.” She bent her head and fastened her Cupid’s bow lips delicately around a nipple. She nibbled that nipple like it was made of candy. George took my other tit in his big, hungry mouth, gobbling and sucking. It felt divine.

  Jane lifted her head. “This is how we share our love,” she said. George released my other tit.

  “Shall we move to the bed?” he suggested. I nodded, and in a minute, I was lying on my back on their big soft bed. My friends took off the rest of my c
lothes and began to touch me. I had four hands stroking my belly, my pussy, my ass, my tits. My body was waltzing beneath their loving fingers. I opened my legs wide to show them my little candy box.

  “You’re beautiful everywhere,” said George. He peeled off his shirt and pants. He had nothing underneath and his bulbous red cock, the head intersected by the Prince Albert I’d been told about, pointed right between my legs. He started to stroke it. “I want to get as big as I can for you, ladies,” he said. “Dear Jane, now please take off your dress.” She pulled off her dress; she wasn’t wearing any underwear either. She paraded before us. The heart tattoo on her vulva looked like an exotic flower. She did a little bump and grind, then she spread her pink pussy open to show off her diamond clit ring. George licked his lips and I thought how pretty her pussy looked with the diamond ring on top like a crown.

  “You know what I’d like,” said George. “I’d like to see you two lovelies kiss.”

  Willingly, I opened my arms and Jane fell on top of me, her body covering mine like a silk-gloved hand. I put my arm around her and we tumbled over on the bed. My hands played with her soft ass. Her fingers stroked my back, as she fucked my mouth with her plum-wine tongue. I could feel the silver ring in her clit tap, tap, tapping against my labia. I got so aroused I started to jerk my hips to and fro in the ancient dance of desire.