Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica

by Tristan Taormino

  She had me standing like that the very first night. Strapped it on me herself. You know how those guys must feel when the Queen taps that sword on their shoulder and makes them royalty, just an ordinary guy does something right, all of a sudden everyone’s gotta call him Sir. That’s how it was with her. Yeah, she was on her knees in front of me but it didn’t matter, she was still the Queen. It didn’t seem right to have my head up higher than hers but there she was with my saber down her throat nursing like it was mother’s milk. Just when I thought I could reconcile myself to it she rises up to her full majesty and shoves me back down where I belong.

  I remembered the time Harry took one of these butter knives to my waist-length hair, blood red in those days courtesy of Lady Clairol, sawing away like a logger I’d seen one time on a trip up Highway 5 past Mt. Shasta into Oregon. Nothing came of it of course, Harry too loaded to make good on his threat. I cut it off myself a couple days later while Harry was cleaning one of his guns, tied it up in a pink ribbon and left it for him on his red plaid pillow with a note that said “To Harry, Love always, Mother.”

  When she lifts up that skirt, I get hit with a smell that could drive my truck. Then she pushes her holiness into my face and tells me to lick, pointing her knife at my butt just for emphasis. Well, I didn’t need no orders but I was happy to get them just the same. It was the ordering that made me know I’d come home. When she told me loud and clear what she wanted, it was like hearing the word of God for the first time. Down there on all fours in the hot sand is where I had my epiphanal moment, when it came all over me like summer hives exactly what it meant to be a man. No one had ever treated me so good.

  I lit up a Parliament and took a good hard drag. I was getting hot. I took off my orange flower print apron, removed my cotton nightgown and put the apron back on. I lit the oven.

  I put the ball of dough, just enough for a single crust, onto a big piece of wax paper and whacked it hard with the old wooden rolling pin. I took another drag of my cigarette and began to push the rolling pin back and forth across the white pulp until it flattened into a near perfect circle. I unloaded the dough onto the metal pie tin I had located miraculously in the far corner of the cupboard under the sink and used my thumb and forefinger to make a pretty-as-a-picture Betty Crocker crust. I even remembered to poke holes in the bottom with a fork so it wouldn’t puff up like it did that Thanksgiving when Harry jerked off into the turkey before I stuffed it.

  Sometimes when I’m laying in my bed all cozy with the smell of straw and dirt I think real fondly of my quivering meat. It’s the meat that’s the ticket to ride, that makes her love me like I was Richard Burton. She’s crazy but it’s okay with me. Sometimes crazy is a relief when you’re working on the line day after day. You just want someone to come home to who will put your slippers in the oven and maybe threaten you with scissors. You don’t get much of that kind of passion out on the line unless Old Man Martin’s having one of his constipation days.

  I dumped the cans of Libby’s brand pureed pumpkin and Borden’s sweetened condensed milk into the bowl where I’d mixed the dough. Out the screen door I lit another Parliament and stood on the back porch while the hot desert wind blew electric on my naked flesh, making my skin vibrate all over to its touch. I rubbed my bush lightly up against the wiry euphorbia plant next to the steps, pocketing the hand-like branch that snapped off before it hit the ground. I let the heat carry me to the metal storage shed Harry had won from old man Martin in a crap game. The steamy air continued licking me as I bent to search for an egg from the prize chicken that had come with the shed.

  I get by dreaming of Pismo and the Queen. I’d hunk up on my Harley and pop wheelies in the sand when she said it was okay. Once I missed and it really pissed her off. She whipped out her knife and cut the tires to shreds. We had to throw the chassis into the back of the pickup and never come back. A woman like that can teach you things about being a man that you never could’ve conjured in your wildest mind.

  Back in the house, I cracked the shell sharp against the porcelain and dropped the still warm insides into the bowl. Legs spread, I inserted the handle of the rolling pin up my cunt and worked it as far up as it would go. Then I fucked myself, letting my cum drip from between my legs into the bowl of filling. I stirred the mixture with my fingers, dumped it into the crust and shoved the pie in the oven.

  The heat was nearly unbearable. But I like it that way. I lit another Parliament and turned the oven up.

  It’s about how they do it to you with their smell, how something sweet like lilac mixes in with the dead fish odor and makes all your parts go to water like you’re saying hello to the sea. It’s that big.

  I went back outside where there was nothing. I scanned the sky for turkey vultures but those old buzzards had gone to find death elsewhere. I could imagine the sequoias across the barren space past the trailer at the edge of the world. Pumpkins wouldn’t grow here, they need too much love. Harry had bought the seed packet for the color of orange on the backside, said he could picture that color painted in targets around my nipples. I read somewhere orange was the color of insanity. My mother wore orange every day of her life.

  After the sacrifice, everyone seemed to be wearing orange. Harry came around the day it happened, just in time to clean the knife. I had seen him all the way down the beach, Pismo it was, a scrawny figure vomiting on the sand, and I said to my father, “Daddy, see that guy. That’s the man I’m going to marry.” I had an instinct for these things.

  The ocean smelled especially fishy that day in a beautiful way that hurts to remember. It was red tide, or the grunion were running silver, or the seaweed floated black on the waves. Everything combined in a way I didn’t understand so that the perfect thing to do was take that blade to Daddy’s long pink body as he lay naked there, eyes closed kissing the wind. I needed to see the blood, the color of life, on the sand, and to feel that life run out in pretty little red rivers down to the sea. The ocean was Daddy’s favorite place so it was fitting that he should die there.

  It was that smell that made me bring home those pumpkins. It came wafting off those big orange squashes and the coincidence killed me. I never knew squash could smell in a way that’d make you hard. The farmer at the roadside stand treated me right too, talking about “Yes sir” and “Can I help you sir?” and “You sure got a fine looking truck there sir.” I could see his little wi fe eyeing the bulge between my legs just under the silver buttons of my Levi’s and sweat on her upper lip like she had an itch only a real man could scratch. I drove that truck around the dirt road into the pumpkin patch and I waited for the little woman to come tippy-toeing out the back of that shed and sure enough I had judged the situation right. She come running to me low down and creepy like the mouse she was, scurrying her little body up into my flatbed in amongst the pumpkins I purchased from her old man a dollar a bushel pick your own and I did.

  I forgot all about Harry until he showed up beside me painted blue wielding a knife. Except I realized it was my knife. I recognized it as the one I’d used to carve Daddy’s flank like I’d carved the roast pig each year at Lent. Daddy lay face down in the fire pit I’d clawed in the sand with my nails, a MacIntosh apple in his mouth. I had looked for a Red Delicious but all I could find was the MacIntosh. It barely fit in his mouth especially since rigor mortis had already set in and his jaw was clamped shut. That’s where Harry found me, trying to jam that apple in where it didn’t want to go. I asked him for lighter fluid and banana fronds.

  Harry always did have great timing and with Daddy dead now, I needed a man. Of course Harry wasn’t a man but he did such a damn good imitation of one, he was a better man than most of the men I knew. Harry knew when to keep his mouth shut and that’s something I respect in a man. He knew better than to ask questions about women’s business.

  I whipped out my manhood and the mouse didn’t bat an eye-lash, just went to sucking and gnawing like she hadn’t eaten in weeks. She was on there like a rabid dog on a bo
ne and no amount of shaking could get her off. Well, I knew how my Queen would react if I was to come home with half her tool disappeared and the thought gave me the willies. But it was too late. The mouse had done it, bitten off damn near the whole thing and was laying on those pumpkins with the stub in her mouth twitching and grinding in the noonday sun for all the world to see.

  Daddy tasted good that night, after I cooked up the marinade according to his favorite recipe—ketchup, honey, dry mustard and a shot of tabasco. I ate the dick and balls just like Daddy would’ve wanted me to. Harry kept the fire burning and ate only the toes. I didn’t tell Harry Daddy had athlete’s foot. By the time I found Harry sucking on those knuckles, it was too late for warnings and besides Harry looked so happy blue in the moonlight with his tits on end.

  Harry slept on a wicker bed by the back door of the trailer. I picked that bed up at Polly’s Poodle Parlor on Halcyon Street that first night after we finished eating Daddy. I liked the one with the red plaid cushion. Harry promised not to pee on it so I bought it with the tenspot I’d found in Daddy’s old chinos before I burned them. It was an extravagance, I know, but I had an expansive feeling that night about Harry and about destiny so I sprung for it. Even spent the change on a pint of Old Overholt that I used to wash Harry down by the side of the road behind the Coulterville 7-Eleven.

  I applied Daddy’s old razor blade to make my mark on Harry’s left tit then poured that whiskey on until Harry screamed at the moon. That’s when I knew I’d been right about Harry and about destiny. We hunted through the dumpster for Three Musketeers and Parliaments and Harry licked my pussy clean better even than the Caldwell’s old Rotweiller that used to visit me in the night with his tongue hanging out and spit on his chops. Fuck, the world looked great that night under that green and red light of the 7-Eleven.

  In the morning, Harry called me “pumpkin” and I kicked him in the face. I’d already started seeing orange and I didn’t like him rubbing it in. He couldn’t help it though. I was so good to him he kept on calling “pumpkin, pumpkin” until I broke his nose and the taste of blood made him happy and quiet at last.

  I couldn’t explain the pumpkin lady to my Queen. How Her Majesty was the one who made it all possible. My manhood I mean. It’s what I learned from her that makes the pumpkin ladies of the world come on a fter me, scent me out from a distance like dogs in heat. Before my Queen taught me about strapping it on and being at the ready, I couldn’t get the time of day from a sweet little mouse but now, well it’s kind of like she’s created a monster. I can’t tell ’em no when I can see they need it so bad, and they can tell ain’t nothing makes me happier than making them happy. They just call on Sir Harry and there I be.

  Fortunately dicks are a dime a dozen, except where we live in the boonies you can only get ’em by a catalog. We’re on the mailing list of everyone who ever gave two minutes of thought to what new fangled contraption can put a woman over the top this week.

  On trash day we headed east into the desert. I needed the sand but the ocean made me weep. I kept my back to it and let the dry places, the Mojave and the San Joaquin, be my sea. Harry turned out to be a good provider. He managed to eke food and shelter out of the driest, dustiest places in the state. Harry played it for what it was worth, just like he used to play the slots every weekend up at the gas station on Lone Pine Road. He’d set himself up first thing in the AM with his Milwaukee brew and Camels at his favorite machine, and I could find him there working most every Saturday and Sunday.

  It’s just sneaking back home and the time lag between now and when special delivery brings the meat that’s damn near impossible to navigate. You think the Queen won’t notice I’ve only got a little stump and a couple of sorry little balls left where her honeysteak used to be? I’ll be a dead man for sure.

  Lately though things have changed. He’s gone for long periods of time saying he has to take care of his mother.

  I had in mind to distract her with those pumpkins, with their orange color it’d be like waving a red flag in front of a bull. She gets real hot and bothered when she sees those golden squashes all round and sweet cut fresh from the earth.

  Last week I caught sight of his old Dodge pickup filled with the prettiest pumpkins I’d ever seen and it not the season. I waited at home for him to bring them to me but they never showed. Not the pumpkins, not Harry. I found him the next morning curled up in his wicker bed out in old man Martin’s shed, the truck’s flatbed empty as the place in my chest where my heart had been.

  But I couldn’ttake the chance my Queen would smell the juices Miss Mouse drizzled over every one of those prize pumpkins when she climbed up on them, her lips spread and what was left of my dick in her mouth. Boy, was she a sight to behold, bouncing around in the back of my truck as I went whipping through her old man’s fields at top speed after he showed up at the back door of the shed with a shotgun in his hands and a genuinely scary look in his eye.

  See I knew something that guy didn’t. Until I met my Queen, I’d been trying to figure women out for years. I knew from my mother that they were the opposite sex, but opposite of what? Mother wasn’t telling. You want to know what the Queen did for me? I’ll tell you easy as pie. She made me feel like a man. You think that’s simple? You think feeling like a man’s a thing most men feel? No sir. Most men spend their whole lives trying to feel like a man without ever once finding a toehold on that slippery mountain of masculinity. She taught me this secret and I’ll be forever grateful: It’s more important to feel like a man than to actually be one. As soon as you feel like one, be fore you know it everyone acts like you are one, like you got that certain heft between your legs that means you got a ticket to ride.

  There’s that euphorbia, in bloom by the back door, with its milky insides that could kill a person if ingested improperly. The plant looks like a million green fingers giving the bird to the dead seething air. I feel a kinship with the euphorbia that I’ve never known with pumpkins. Pumpkins always leave me feeling insulted by their plump orange heartiness that lies about life in the desert. The euphorbia. There’s a plant I could love, all wild and deadly like the rattlers that greet me in the dusk of summers too long to measure in human time.

  With all her wisdom and what she done for me, it killed me to lie to my Queen. All those pumpkins gone to rot with her name on them, all those seeds that would never grow to the vine. In a way, though, it wasn’t really a lie. In a way each of those pumpkin ladies is my mother. I see her in their hunger, the years I watched that woman who said she birthed me as she ate herself alive, pulled out her insides and devoured them, the entrails of pumpkins wrapped in old newsprint and destined for garbage like so much bad luck. I watched, I was helpless to stop her until every sign of life had been scooped out, hollowed to bone, and then I carried her in a squash leaf down that empty road that runs the long way from there to here and I cast her into the sea. Her seeds, her seeds I spread across the sand where they baked to flint in that impossible Pismo sun.

  Harry never liked the euphorbia. Not that he ever said anything, that’s not his style. One time I heard him taking a whiz outside the back door on his way in from one of his drunks, and in the morning, I smelled that acid piss scent on the lower branches. I know what Harry’s piss tastes like and I sucked gently on a green finger just to confirm what I already knew. Later I vomited blood and remembered about the other properties of euphorbia. Harry’s piss had never affected me that way even in large quantities straight up.

  It happened as I gathered them into mysel f at the early blue time of day: that’s when my Queen appeared before me—suddenly—like Cinderella with her rodent horsemen at the ball. I fed her my mother’s seeds, just the way I feed them to all the would-be queens, into the cunt where I pray for something orange to grow big enough inside to burst the bindings that hold the dreams.

  Maybe that was when it started, some kind of wet declaration of war, a back-door emancipation proclamation, sneaky like Harry can be.

 
I think I’m going home to my Queen now. I’ll go down to her in the kitchen where she lives and I’ll plant those seeds in that hallowed place of her own sharp majesty. I’ll remind her about the magic carriage you can make from squash. Maybe she’ll even bake me her specialty, the famous pumpkin pie. I’ll take her in my arms right there at the table where she rolls the dough, and when she punches me in the face, we’ll remember the sweet taste, the orange taste, the forgiving taste of pumpkin when it’s fed to you, hand to mouth, by someone you love.

  Julio

  Mickey Laskin

  And now here he is gone again, doing that mealy-mouthed mama’s boy routine with some woman he says is his mother. As if I care. I’m glad I baked that pumpkin euphorbia pie. No regrets. I just hope Harry comes home soon or I’ll eat that goddamn pie myself.