by Sacchi Green
Sid cleared his throat and my pounding heart jumped out of my chest. When I pried my eyes open, he was standing in front of my desk with a grin plastered ear to ear. My skin prickled like it was breaking out in hives. Embarrassment didn’t even begin to describe what I was feeling in that moment. My face must have been glowing crimson. “I have to go, Monique.” I didn’t want to tell her why.
“Tastus interruptus?” Her lustful giggle spoke volumes, and I stared down at the keypad on the phone to keep Sid out of my field of vision. I wanted just this, just five more seconds alone with my woman before we had to hang up.
“I love you,” I said. It came out as a whimper.
“You too, kid.” The smile in Monique’s voice made me flush all over again. “Now get yourself some food. You need more for lunch than a single helping of long-distance pussy.”
OFF AND ON
Allison Wonderland
You’re late, sweetheart.”
Blazers.
“It’s four according to my watch.”
Shirts.
“It’s five after four according to mine.”
Bras.
“Five comes after four according to mine, too.”
Shoes.
“Really? Then explain why you’re late.”
Belts.
“My watch keeps perfect time and yours is five minutes fast.”
Slacks.
“We’ll have Brody settle the matter when he gets home from school, which should be sometime in the next five minutes, give or take five minutes.”
Panties.
“It’s better to give than to take. Well, except when I take you.”
Mouth first, shushing, rushing.
Hands then, scaling, flailing.
Bodies next, crashing, thrashing.
Moans now, unbidden, unhidden.
“You give good headway, sweetheart.”
Panties.
“To be honest, I wasn’t sure we were going to make it.”
Slacks.
“Think we have time to run through it again?”
Belts.
“Watch yourself.”
Shoes.
“That reminds me—what time did you get here?”
Bras.
“I arrived at five after four.”
Shirts.
“Thank you.”
Blazers.
“But I came at four fifteen.”
CLOTHES MAKE THE WOMAN
D. L. King
You can’t just rifle through my closet.” I sat on the bed while my sweetie pulled hanger after hanger out of the closet, flinging dresses, skirts and blouses everywhere.
“No, but it’s perfect, we’re the same size. What’re you going as?” she asked.
My Chloe, who probably hadn’t worn a dress since her sixth-grade class picture, had gotten the notion to go in drag to Sid and Meg’s Halloween party and she was using my closet as her costume store. “You know I wear that stuff to work. You could give it a little more respect. Maybe I’ll go through your closet.”
She looked at me. “No, really, what are you going to wear?”
Why not? If she was going to wear my clothes, why couldn’t I go butch? I wear pants. Not often, because Chloe likes me in dresses, but I have some.
“I know: you could go as a harem girl. You’d look great in harem pants and a skimpy, ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ top.”
“Maybe I could go as Cat Woman,” I said.
“Yeah, in a skintight…well, maybe not. What do you think about this?” She held up a light-blue baby doll dress. I’d bought it a few years ago when they were in style and didn’t like it even then.
“Not a good look for you,” I said. “Here, get out of the way.” If she was determined to wear my clothes, the least I could do was try to make her look good. And save my wardrobe in the process. I handed her my bridesmaid dress from my sister’s wedding to try on while I picked up some of the mess she’d made.
“Tada,” she said. It was so not her, but she looked beautiful in it. “This is too funny,” she said, pushing up a strap and looking at herself in the mirror.
“First rule: don’t make fun of my clothes,” I said, “not if you ever want to see me in them again.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She gave me a peck on the lips.
I studied her. “You need a wig and you’re going to have to practice walking in heels. Here, put these on.” I handed her my bronze sandals. “We should practice makeup, too. I want to try a couple different looks on you.” She was starting to get that look; the maybe this isn’t such a good idea, after all, look.
“Want me to take you to the costume shop to look for something sexy for you?” she asked.
I told her I’d take care of it; it was going to be a surprise. I figured what was good for the gander was good for the goose, and what the gander didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.
The day of the party came and her wig looked great. I finished her makeup and she was getting dressed when the phone rang. “What? Really? But I have a… Yeah, I know. When?” Chloe came back into the bedroom, dressed but still barefoot, and gave me a questioning look. I covered the phone and mouthed, My boss. “Okay. Okay,” I said and hung up.
“What was that?”
“He needs me to participate in a conference call with our Japanese client. He’s going to call me here when they’re on the line. He said it would be in about an hour.”
“Did you tell him you had plans?”
“I tried, honey, but it’s a million-dollar deal. He said it probably wouldn’t take that long.”
“All right, I’ll wait for you.”
“No, you go ahead,” I said. “I promise I’ll be there just as soon as I can. I don’t want you missing the party because of my work. I’ll grab a cab and meet you there.” I gave her my I won’t take no for an answer look and she grudgingly agreed.
Once she was out the door, I went back into the bedroom and took the suit I’d chosen from her closet. Our friend, Gwen, who’d called earlier, impersonating my boss, rang the bell just in time to help me get into my new black silk corset. My take on drag was slightly different. I slicked my long black hair into a low bun, put on some dark liner and smoky shadow and Chloe’s gray, wool pin-striped suit, slipped my black stocking-clad feet into a pair of black alligator pumps and checked out the look. Kind of a cross between Madonna and Dietrich.
“Damn, woman, you look hot,” Gwen said. She put the finishing touches on her Wonder Woman costume and we were off to the party.
The clothes made me feel powerful. In fact, I breezed through the door with just a kiss and a “Dahling” for Meg, the hostess, grabbed a martini and breezed out the back into the yard to scan for Chloe. I spotted her, in the far corner, talking to a couple of butch friends. She was slouching and her legs were spread. The dress looked great but she had no idea how to carry off the look.
I vamped my way over to where she and her buddies were standing and saw Sid elbow Chloe. “Dude, your girlfriend’s here.”
I took a leisurely drink of my martini. “Is that any way to behave in a dress like that?”
Sid, who was dressed as a gangster, plastic machine gun and all, started to chuckle. “Yeah, she’s got you there, man.” Chloe shot her a look.
The two other butches stared at my breasts, threatening to spill from the top of the corset. It was obvious they’d already had plenty to drink, otherwise they would have been able to maintain in front of Chloe.
I knocked back the rest of my drink and grabbed her arm. “Come with me, Missy,” I said and dragged her toward the opposite corner of the garden.
Still feeling empowered by the clothes, and slightly drunk from gulping that much vodka, I backed her against the fence and grabbed her crotch with my free hand. She started to say something but I smashed my mouth against hers, kissing the words into oblivion. Moving my hand up to her breast, I ground my own crotch against hers and gave her nipple a hard pinch.
Chloe melted into th
e pinch and then straightened up. “What are you doing? You’re not a t—”
“Squirmy. I’m going to have to take you home and tie you down before I fuck you,” I countered.
She kissed me, this time, and smiled her big butch know-it-all smile. “It’s not that I mind, or anything, but what’s gotten into you?”
“Noisy, too. Yeah, tie you to the bed and stuff my panties in your mouth,” I muttered, kissing her again. “Clothes really do make the woman,” I said, rubbing my body against hers, knowing the boning in the corset was attacking her still-hard nipples. “At least this woman. Time to go home and strip ’em off.”
She followed closely behind me as I headed toward the house and home.
YAB-YUM
Sacchi Green
Sometimes, when it hadn’t been too long, we would focus with yoga-like intensity. She scissored her legs across mine and we sat erect, mound not quite to mound, breast so close to breast that the whisper of space between shimmered with the tension of our nipples. We swayed slowly, movements exquisitely precise, our breathing just barely in control.
A fine and poignant torture, worth prolonging; the moment came too soon when flesh demanded the press of beloved flesh, and the fire mounted so high it threatened to consume us. But not quite yet.
“Yab-yum,” she would say, or I said, or we chanted as one; and all around us shadows took shape and voice from our shared memory.
Poetry, doggerel, curses, laughs; flashes of brilliance, wine-slurred philosophy; a place and time and voices that live on in millions more minds than ours, yet in memory are still ours alone.
We were wannabe Dharma Bums, not-quite-jailbait chicks high on the Road and the Beat, hanging with Kerouac and Cassady and Ginsberg on the fringes of their world. Brought to their parties by others, we were swallowed up, instead, in the urgent mysteries of each other. In dim corners we echoed their game of Yab-yum, silent, still, close, closer, fighting not to touch while breast swayed nearer to breast, cunt edged toward cunt, tight nipples sought nipples. Hunger pulsed hot and slick between damp thighs.
We seared each other with blue-hot sparks of longing, need rising in a tide that swept away the will at last, the game well-lost, while our bodies clutched at joy with hands and mouths and limbs as fierce in their hunger as any savage tooth and claw.
She thought she heard cheers across the smoky room. My ears were still ringing with glory.
Fifty years later that glory still swept us, memory only a brief distraction. The same lightning crackled through the vanishing space between until bodies had their way—hands, tongues, thighs, my lean hands, her divinely heavy breasts—knowing each other’s flesh and hearts so well that every joy, every cry, transmuted into poetry known to us alone.
We will remember. Always.
LOVE LAS MUERTAS
Kirsty Logan
I haven’t been scared of ghost trains since I was ten years old, but this one looks different in the fading sun. Even the Día de los Muertos–themed illustrations, highlighted with green neon paint, look creepy when the wind is tugging at my hair and the ground is pebbled with candy floss. The odd tape-recorded cackle or groan of machinery still echoes from behind the doors. But my heart is thumping in my throat, and the heat between my legs shows no sign of fading.
Like most stupid decisions, my choice to dawdle past closing time at the carnival is because of a girl. I’ve been thinking about her ever since I first saw her, the sun warming my shoulders and my mouth full of candied peanuts. Her skin was powdered bone-white, roses nestled in the curls of her hair, and the parts of her body that weren’t covered by her ruffled red dress were painted with intricate spirals and swirls. According to the lurid illustrations of her face on the ghost train’s walls, her name is Encarnación. I wouldn’t have stopped, but she ran over and presented me with one of the flowers from her hair; even under the paint, I could see the gorgeous dimples on each cheek when she smiled.
I live close by, so I told my friends I’d walk home by myself—but really, I’m just here to get Encarnación’s number. Now that the sun has faded it’s too cold for my strapless summer dress, and I move in closer to the ghost train to get out of the breeze. My nipples feel hard as thumbtacks—though I couldn’t say whether that’s from the chill or the thought of how Encarnación could warm me up.
This is ridiculous. The girl is long gone and I am making a fool of myself. I turn to leave.
Boo, grunts the devil in my ear as he wraps his arms around me. All my muscles stiffen and my throat closes around my scream. But already the devil is laughing, releasing me from his grip. It’s Encarnación in her ruffled dress, her face wiped free of makeup. Her skin is the color of acorns and she smells of sugar and sunlight.
“We’re closed, señorita. Perhaps tomorrow?” Her accent is heavy on her tongue; already she has turned toward the ghost train doors. “Unless”—she turns back to me—“you’d like una aventura?” She holds out her hand to me, grinning wide, and I try very hard not to stare at the way her cleavage peeps over the top of her low-cut dress. “I think you’ll enjoy,” she says.
I grab her hand, plant a kiss on her palm and let her lead me through the door.
The ghost train car is just wide enough for two and Encarnación’s thigh is pressed against mine. In front of us a ragged black curtain ripples in the breeze, blocking my view ahead. The air smells musty, like clothes in vintage shops. Encarnación pulls down the barrier over our knees, then twists to check something in the back of the car; her breasts press against my arm and it’s everything I can do not to dip my head and kiss them.
“It’s Encarnación, right?” I say, just to say something.
She twists back round and leans in close to me. “Emma, actually,” she whispers. “I don’t even speak Spanish; I’m from Laaahn-daaahn.” Her accent has gone; she sounds just like me.
“I’m from London too,” I say. “Camden. Whereabouts are…”
The car shudders forward, cutting off the rest of my small talk. It shakes and burrs along the track, juddering the bones of my hips and thighs, making my teeth chatter.
The ragged curtain wipes over our faces and we’re through to the other side. Chipped neon skeletons jerk from every joint, their Ping-Pong ball eyes rolling in their sockets. Beautiful girls with painted faces smolder from the walls. A trio of bone-men strum guitars, candy-colored skulls flash in strobes, yellow petals scatter to the floor, cobwebs brush against my hair. Under the soundtrack of ghostly shrieks and cracks of thunder I hear the judder of machinery as we turn a corner. Emma is expecting the hairpin bend, but I’m not; I fall into her lap, my face practically down her dress.
“Fuck!” I say, righting myself. “Sorry, the car…”
Emma’s laughing, her face close enough that I could press my tongue into her dimples. Lit by the strobe, each movement a photograph, she tugs down the hem of her dress so that her breasts press out at me. “Better?” she asks. It is better, obviously, because there’s nothing I want to do more than pull off her dress and drop to my knees between her legs. But I can’t say that.
“Um…” I say. I’m sure the quivering of the car is making my voice come out funny. Emma doesn’t seem to be listening; she’s wiggling on the narrow seat, lifting a hip and putting one foot up on the cutout side of the car. Then her head tips back and her eyes roll shut, a smile slipping across her face.
“Move two inches to your right,” she says, nudging my leg. “Riiiight…there.”
And I understand. Oh fuck, do I understand. The thick vibrations of the car are perfectly centered on my clit, making my heart beat in double time. A groan slips out of my mouth and I shift in my seat so the angle is just right. Emma’s murmuring deep in her throat, her hand sliding up my thigh and then slowly, teasingly, her fingertips nudge at the two layers of thin cotton over my clit.
I shift closer to her so that my leg drapes over hers, sharing vibrations. Emma’s breathing hard, her breasts straining at her dress, her thighs tensing wi
th each throb from the car. I feel a pulse in my neck and lights are flashing in my eyes and my hand is guiding Emma’s farther down, pressing her fingers against me, and oh god, oh god…
The car emerges from the ride, just as we shout out our orgasms to the scratchy soundtrack of tape-recorded ghouls.
We’re outside in the dark and Emma’s busy flipping off switches. I stand on the litter-strewn ground, unsure. What’s the polite thing to do after you’ve just reached simultaneous orgasm on a fairground ride with a hot-as-fuck stranger? I turn to leave, then stop. Usually I’d be running scared, but it’s like I left all my fear back in the ghost train.
“Do you want to come round?” I call over. “I could cook…”
Emma tucks the keys into the pocket of her dress, swaying over to me. Without thinking, I press a kiss to the dimple on her cheek.
“I’m hungry,” she says, with a laugh.
I blow a kiss to Encarnación on the side of the ghost train, then take hold of Emma’s hand and lead her back to my place.
SYSTEM
Jeremy Edwards
The first thing Gail did was show me the crotch seam of the peach shorts she wore under her employee apron—making me juice my panties right there in aisle 14B.
It wasn’t intentional, though I later learned it’s the kind of thing Gail would do intentionally. It was simply that she was squatting down and bending forward to crack open a case of soup when I came up behind her.
Soup happened to be the next item on my shopping list, so hovering in her vicinity to await access—to the soup, I mean—was perfectly legit.