Best of Best Lesbian Erotica 2

by Tristan Taormino

  I felt it should have inspired me but instead it made me numb with anxiety, wanting to curl up and hide.

  “Kim, are you okay?” Aracelli was staring at me. Her face was gritty with dust. “You’re all pale.”

  “It’s just….” I rested my palm on my forehead. The crowd surged around us, bristling with energy as the sky darkened. “It’s just so hot. The air’s so heavy.”

  “It’s cooler upstairs. Come on, we’re here.” It was an old art-deco building, gleaming in the last rays of the sun as if it were gold-plated.

  Aracelli’s dress puffed and floated around her legs as she bounded up the stairwell. “She’s away. We get it all to ourselves. Hurry up!”

  I reached the top floor in time to see her poppy-red figure disappear down the murky corridor. Muffled shouting came from the other rooms.

  I sucked in my breath when I followed her through the doorway. The loft’s whitewashed walls were draped with pastel silk prints and grainy, obscure photos. Half-formed statues, made of found objects and spray-painted silver, perched along the moldings like deranged household gods. A patched satin sofa was the only furniture; the rest of the front room was covered in faded, multicolored carpets and velour cushions.

  I was speechless as I walked over to the window. The old-fashioned shutters opened over Washington Park. The sky was deepening to teal, with a haze of rusty brown and scarlet still glowing at the horizon. The park was a nest of tangled green shadows and flaring lights, filled with music and screams.

  “I know, I know. I love it.” Aracelli grabbed me from behind, clasping her arms tight around my waist and rubbing her breasts into my back. Her thin dress was already gossamer with sweat.

  She raked her fingers through my hair. I shook it from my eyes. Her tender fingers found the back of my neck and I moaned.

  “Kim, you look like one of those old paintings of angels.” She kissed my throat. “In your little blue dress, your hair all over the place.”

  I sighed, leaning my head back on her thin shoulder. She ran her index fingers along my arms, from my shoulders to my wrists and back again, light as moth wings. My sex throbbed as if she were already cuddling it in her palm.

  When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse. “Oh, Kim, I want to tie you somewhere and just fuck you and fuck you and fuck you until you’re screaming for me to stop.”

  The wide darkness outside seemed to suck at me. My head spun. I tried to back away from the window but Aracelli gripped my neck and bit my ear. Her hips pressed mine into the window’s ledge. I pressed my palms into the rough frame, bracing.

  “Screaming and screaming until I gag you.” Her nails in my throat made me whimper. “I’d gag you and make you come the way you’ve always needed to, come so hard you’d forget everything.”

  She knelt. I was already wet, panting when she pulled my panties to my knees. She tilted my hips back and just rested her languorous tongue on my still-folded cunt, soft and maddening. The darkening streets swam before my eyes.

  When she finally fed me her strong fingers, one after another, my broken cries were sucked into the heavy, humid wind.

  We woke late the next morning, strewn flat across her aunt’s futon. We hadn’t eaten anything the day before and we were weak with hunger. We clanged down the staircase and burst out to the sparkling clear day.

  We started with our usual coffee and one biscotto each, just to check out a dark, stylish café. We added more pastries, growing even more famished as we ate. The second breakfast turned into lunch. We finished with an armful of chocolate bars, giggling madly on a sun-warmed stone bench in the Chinese garden, sucking the last melted bits from the foil. I couldn’t remember when I’d eaten so much. My blood was so full of sugar that the world seemed painfully bright.

  With my shoulder leaning on Aracelli’s I looked out over the slow-moving crowd and realized suddenly it was all laughably easy. Absolutely anything was possible. I let myself tumble down and rested my head on her lap. I didn’t care who saw us. Above me, she closed her eyes and lifted her sharp chin into the sunlight. Tendrils of wisteria and honeysuckle hung low, shaking vivid petals into the breeze.

  We sat that way until the sun sank behind the trees.

  “Come on, we shouldn’t wait too long.” Aracelli’s voice had a leaden ring as we descended into the deserted subway station. She tugged me into the women’s bathroom. Filthy shadows pooled in the corners.

  “Wait for what?” I felt like I was drunk.

  She knelt in an open stall, leaning over the toilet, her left arm working frantically at her mouth until her back spasmed. The smell made me retch and I stepped back.

  She coughed only once and stood up, pressing a tissue into her lips. Her skin seemed to be dusted with ashes. I gulped, sucking in air around my tongue, willing my stomach to stop clenching on itself.

  “What,” she barked. But I still couldn’t speak. She glared, her eyes dull as charcoal.

  “I’m sorry.” I turned away. “I don’t do that. I—I don’t think it’s healthy.”

  “You don’t….”

  “I just, you know, diet.”

  “You diet!” I didn’t need to see her face. Her laughter was strangely loud. “Well, Kim, no wonder….”

  I faced her now. My ears rang and the miserable room went dim.

  She yelled in earnest. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Kim. What, you’re just going to let all that sit on your stomach?” Her voice ricocheted over the tiles. “With auditions in six days? Jesus Christ, you’re going to gain, like, five pounds.”

  I flinched, blinking. Panic flooded my mind. I felt my skirt already growing tighter around my thighs.

  I knelt where she had been and looked at my hands. “I don’t know how,” I murmured.

  Her voice was gentle, almost sweet. “Here.” She crouched close beside me, holding out her long, bronze palm. “Use two fingers, hard, on the back of your throat.”

  I tried. It just tickled. I hadn’t thrown up since I was five. My eyes became wet.

  “Press really hard, on the part where your throat becomes soft.” Her voice was brittle with impatience now. “Christ, either do it or not.”

  I reached further back, gingerly, breathing in little gasps, until I found the spot that made me gag. Before I could pull my hand away, Aracelli grabbed my wrist and shoved it toward the back of my head.

  She stood up as I finished.

  I couldn’t stop sobbing afterward. My temples throbbed and my insides felt as though they’d been soldered into a black, smoking mess. I felt her standing over me and thought she would leave in disgust. Instead she knelt and wound her cool, slim arms around my neck, pulling until I fell back into her, holding my damp head under her chin. Her skin smelled like baby powder and vanilla lipgloss. She trailed her slender fingers through my hair.

  “Kim, what did you expect?” Her voice was very quiet.

  I was usually the first one at the studios in the morning, so I was surprised to hear voices in the cool, clean hallways that Wednesday as I arrived. A group of girls already huddled near the office doors. I made my way through them, slowly. I tried to listen for gossip, but there were only quick whispers, full of hissing rage.

  A sheet was hung at the top of the bulletin board. Summer Workshop Performance Cast List.

  Before I could read further, my shoulders tingled. I turned around. Aracelli gave me her mildest doe-eyed smile.

  “What the hell, did you see this?” I pointed toward the board. “Auditions are this coming Saturday, aren’t they? This must be a mistake.”

  “Well, they asked a few of us to audition for the principal roles last week. Everyone else will be the corps.”

  “They asked—” I pressed my hands to my temples. My stomach squirmed, turning ice cold. I realized my mouth was open and I shut it quickly.

  “Don’t get mad at me, Kim.” Aracelli’s tone was perfect; affectionate and reasonable. “Am I supposed to insist that they audition everybody?”

 
I laid my palms on my burning cheeks. A few girls were staring at us.

  “Kim, a good solid corps dancer is so immensely valuable to a company.”

  I closed my eyes and felt her arm slip around my shoulders, hugging tight before she disappeared into the murmuring crowd.

  Roulette

  Shannon Cummings

  Women got there earlier than the crowds at the nearby South of Market bars. Straight from work, proudly displaying the sweat of a day’s work on their clothes. Tidying up would have been a sign of vanity, of femininity. A glob of pomade to grease the hair back was all the eveningwear they needed.

  There was an unspoken rule that you couldn’t park your bike in front of the club if it was smaller than someone’s who had already arrived. Think your ride is better than someone else’s, you better be prepared to defend it. The only exception was of course if you had a high femme riding bitch.

  If you arrived late, you had to park your bike a few blocks away and hope you could get to the club without being roughed up by the neighborhood crew. A few trucks lined the alley out front. No one messed with you if you had a truck. It was assumed it was for work and was therefore off limits. Jobs were scarce, so if you could earn a living without losing your edge you were never ridiculed.

  Lou had gone there on many occasions, sometimes returning home via the emergency room after bottles had been broken or blades pulled. Fights often started over motorcycles or the call of a pool shot. Or someone talking about how some stone had cracked.

  The worst fight had happened after one girl had underestimated the locker room talk and bravado of both her lovers. While trading tales over whiskey, they realized just how much they had in common and ended up in a brawl. The next day they both called her to say they had defended her honor. But it was their own they were fighting for. One got a cut just above her eye; nearly blinded her, the doctor had said. The other’s hand was sliced along the life-line, or was is it the love-line?, when she grabbed the blade swinging at her. She lost the use of her thumb and earned three months’ disability leave from her machinists union. Women practiced their swaggers and rubbed their imaginary beards during pauses in conversation. It was a club for women with a rule of “no girls allowed.” I was dying to go.

  For six months, I had been crashing at Lou’s place. I had run out on my last lover and showed up on her doorstep. I had taken over closet space and control of the tape deck, had started four kitchen fires, and had run up a long distance phone bill to my sister out east. Lou regularly threatened to kick me out but I would always coo to her until she got into bed so she could get to work on forgiving me. She was a good fuck and I was determined to stay. Sometimes when she was at work I would hustle some money at the pool hall to get by, pay a phone bill, or buy something sexy to wear so she wouldn’t notice I had trashed her apartment. And her life. She was the first lover I ever had who knew a compliment should be taken as a request for more. I steadily stroked her ego and she let me stay.

  “Dress sexy,” Lou tells me. “We are going out.”

  I dress hurriedly and return for her approval. She looks me over, undoes another button on my blouse, and leans in to trace her tongue over the now exposed lace of my bra. “Tonight I’m taking you to the bar.” She grabs her cigarettes, sighs into her nearly empty wallet, and slides both of them into her pockets.

  “Who’s going to be there?” I ask her, trying not to sound overtly curious.

  “It will be crowded. Nanc will be there too. Just be on your best behavior.”

  Nanc, Lou’s best friend and sometimes enemy. We had spoken on the phone a few times.

  “Lou there?”

  “No.”

  “She leave you all alone?”

  “Yeah, she’s out. I’ll tell her you’re looking for her.”

  “No, I mean, if you’re alone, why don’t I just come on over. We can wait for her together.”

  “I don’t think that’s the best idea. She’ll be home soon.”

  “She says you’re real pretty. Why don’t I come over so I can tell her what I think of you.”

  “Maybe…some other time. I’ll tell her you called.”

  “Ah, come on, she’s been talking about how you’re a wild one, that you can’t ever get enough. You’re probably rubbing your clit raw right now. I’ll just come over and help you out. Why don’t I just come over there and introduce myself to your….”

  “Ummm…. I should really go. Bye.”

  We hadn’t met but I had replayed her words in my head enough to recognize her voice anywhere. The best sex is always in your head, and Nanc had a knack for climbing into mine.

  Lou parks the truck near the bar’s entrance and comes around to open my door and look me over. “Who do you love?” she asks, brushing my hair back.

  This well-rehearsed mantra to sooth her fragile ego spills forth: “I love you, Lou, you know that. Only you. You know you are the only one who can keep me happy.”

  “Is that right?” She smiles a bit and pushes me against the side of the truck to kiss me and then she pulls back, seems to be waiting for more. It is not the cock but the compliment that is the way to a butch’s heart.

  So I continue. “You know you are my love. You turn me on more than anyone else ever could. How many times have I told you so? I’m not going anywhere. Don’t you worry, baby.”

  Lou looks me square in the eyes and says, “No matter what happens tonight, you just remember that.”

  With her arm around my waist, we head down the damp back street. I can see the bikes in silhouette and the shape of a crowd of burly women hanging in the doorway of the bar. There is a whistle or two as we approach, then smiles and nods to Lou as she ushers me inside. The room is dim but everywhere I can see the dark huskiness of the most handsome women. There are squeaks of leather as people turn and a hand brushes my leg now and then in an almost accidental way. Now I fully understand why femmes need a chaperone here.

  I like my women tough. The rougher edged and bigger, the better. I like to watch them get restless, their tough exteriors trembling under thick denim when they talk to me. I regularly call them sir to make them think they are passing. I admire those who don’t correct me—it is a compliment. All a good butch really needs is a femme to appreciate her.

  I have taken to making myself the most appreciative femme in the city. I can appreciate the fuck out of just about any butch I come across. And it is the fucking that I am really after. The trick is to find the soft spot in the hard women and tickle it until they hike my skirt up to see if my pussy is as sweet as my words. Their little way of thanking me.

  Shy butches on their barstools want to be told that I can tell they are thinking deep thoughts. One drink later we are in their cars and they are thanking me as deeply as their broad-fingered hands can in such close confines.

  A cropped-haired mechanic who has been tinkering on a bike that has been parked, unusable, for months on the lawn wants me to tell her what a fine ride it’s going to be. Wants to hear me ask if I can sit on it for a minute, have me hitch my skirt up and place my oops-I-forgot-to-wear-panties-cunt down on the seat, lean forward so my clit slides along the leather to reach the handle bars. “I bet you can make her purr,” I say, feigning revving the engine. A minute later, the shop table has been cleared off and she paws me with grease-stained fingernails while her buddies go out for lunch.

  Lou had been hard and secretive and didn’t fall for any of my usual ploys. Her soft spot was hard to find. Two weeks after moving in with her, I discovered a hidden stash of books. A few worn-out trashy straight novels, an instructional manual called The Erotic Woman, and a thoroughly uninteresting not-very-well-illustrated version of the Kama Sutra. To stay with Lou I would need to find a spot I could tease her with that could last months. Ordaining her as the best lover I have ever had was a way to keep my side of the bed vacant and to prevent her from changing the locks. She was good, so it wasn’t a matter of faking it with her, as much as playing down every other enco
unter I had ever had. She knew I played around, but all seemed to be forgiven when I whined about how frustrated I was and how I couldn’t wait to come home to be with her. She let the indiscretions go and grew increasingly interested in the fumbling details of lovers I auditioned. Lately we’d been arguing almost every day, and my stories had gone up a notch to counter her complaints. Now, not only was no one even close to her in bed, but no one else could even make me wet. Lou, who had been jamming my things into a duffle bag, stopped what she was doing when I revealed this to her. With almost a sense of pity she seemed to feel obliged to let me stay. I always carried clean panties in my pocket, which I could slip on before I came home to convince her of the lie she so wanted to believe.

  We stop to get drinks before heading to the table that Lou’s friends have staked out. Nanc speaks to Lou but keeps her eyes on mine, watching me scan the crowd. “Ah, so you finally let her out of the house.” They laugh, giving each other a one-shoulder butch hug/pat.

  The floor is already sticky with spilled beer. Lou’s friends make room for us at the table and I listen to the group discuss work. How the assholes at the plant are reducing overtime, how so-and-so at the cycle shop has some thingy and such part doodad. I can’t follow the conversation and don’t care. I sip my beer, bouncing my ankle, trying to catch eye contact in a crowd used to avoiding it. Conversations in the room grow louder and women set their beers down so hard in anger or humor that the tables are slick from the sloshing over.

  Lou gets up to go fetch more drinks and Nanc slides into her chair. “So, what d’ya think of our little bar?” She moves my hair off my shoulder, giving it a little tug. She leans in to me, one hand on my knee. In her familiar voice, she whispers the gossip of those sitting around the table. “Jess—been single for over a year, a pity she can’t find a nice femme like Lou obviously has.” I lean into her slightly so her mouth grazes my ear as she speaks. “And see Ron there? She passes at work. Takes shots too, when she can get her hands on a dose. Did you know testosterone raises sex drive?” She laughs alcohol-moist breath into my neck, saying she’d bet I already knew that.