Playing with Fire

by Alison Tyler

  It is six A.M. The sun is starting to come up.

  “I should go now,” he says. He gets up and hands her a five dollar bill—“For the window screen,” he says.

  “Thank you,” she says. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

  “My name is Life,” he says.

  3

  Jordin worked three or four shifts a week at the Happy Room, a topless dance club in West Hollywood. A shift was four to six hours; on a good night, she could make three- to four-hundred-dollars in tips and lap dances—on a slow night, one-fifty to two-hundred. It was an easy job—better than working in an office or retail.

  She thought about her character, Dominique, and how Dominique was slowly losing her emotional core after the incident with Life. In the second chapter, Dominique tells Brandon about it. Brandon’s response is: “I don’t believe you.”

  Dominique is not Jordin, if that’s what you are guessing; that part of the novel is not autobiographical. It is based on a real incident that happened to one of the dancers at the Happy Room, whose stage name is Mecca.

  Jordin’s stage name is Lira, by the way.

  4

  Mecca (real name Shannon O’Hannon) was twenty-nine and had been working as a dancer since she was nineteen, from Phoenix to Seattle to Portland to San Diego and now L.A. She was writing a screenplay about her experiences.

  One day, a writer named Michael was in the Happy Room and paid for a few lap dances from Mecca. She asked him what line of work he was in. He told her he was a staff writer for a hit TV show, and had written and directed a couple of independent features that were ignored.

  “Really,” said Mecca, “I’m writing a screenplay!”

  Mecca wanted to pick his brain for information about the business; she managed to talk him into inviting her to dinner. After steak and a baked potato and a few drinks, she gave him a sloppy blow job. Three months later, they were seeing each other twice a week, so it was some kind of relationship.

  5

  There is a Michael in Jordin’s novel, but everyone calls him Mike. Mike shows up in chapter three. He’s a longtime friend of Brandon’s, and he is also a writer—a novelist and journalist, not a TV scribe. Dominique calls him one night, asking if he knows where Brandon is.

  She asks: “Is he with another woman? Does he have someone else?”

  Because she has no one to talk to and needs to talk about the man called Life, she tells Mike. He listens to her ethnography. She sounds sincere on the phone. Mike realizes she is a human being with deep fears and emotions. He likes this.

  The next two weeks, they talk a lot on the phone, then meet for drinks. He asks if he can kiss her and she says okay. He tells her he wants to sleep with her, but she is afraid, because there is still Brandon….

  6

  Mecca wasn’t working the night Jordin stepped away from her novel and went to do a shift at the Happy Room—but she was there at the club, with Michael, and they had a bottle of very expensive tequila that Michael claimed he stole from some high-powered TV exec’s party.

  “I deserve this bottle,” Michael said, “for all the changes he’s made in my scripts, turning gold into shit, which in the end makes good television….”

  7

  At this point you may be wondering if either Michael or Mike are really me, your humble narrator, or perhaps both are based, in part or whole, on yours truly. Consider this: Michael is a fictional character in an unpublished novel and Mike is a real person in Los Angeles. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.

  8

  In chapter four, Brandon starts to realize something is going on between his old friend and his estranged girlfriend. One night, Brandon tells Mike to feel free to fuck his girlfriend. “She needs it,” he says.

  “You’re serious,” Mike says.

  “She seems to be happier lately, because she has you to talk to.”

  “You don’t love her anymore?” Mike asks.

  “I still love her, just don’t want to be intimate with her,” Brandon says. “I’ll tell you something,” Brandon says, “for the past two years, whenever we have sex, I don’t come. I can’t come. I come when I jack off. I just can’t with her. Why?”

  “You know what would be good?” Mike says. “We should have a threesome….”

  9

  Mecca and Michael shared the tequila with Jordin. It was the best tequila she’d ever had—it was so smooth; it went down like water and didn’t burn. Jordin wasn’t a drinker, and she quickly found herself inebriated, snookered, smashed, shit-faced, three sheets to the wind. She was so drunk she couldn’t dance on the stage. She started to cry in front of the customers. The other dancers and management were not happy in the Happy Room. The doorman/bouncer grabbed Michael by the collar and said: “I should break your fingers for doing that to her!”

  “Hey!” Mecca said, slapping the bouncer on the head. “He didn’t do anything, it’s not his fault, she’s an adult, she knows what she’s doing!”

  Jordin was sitting on the floor, bawling her eyes out, mumbling how hard things were, how she felt nothing, how she was going nowhere, how she was afraid of failing if she didn’t publish her first novel before age thirty.

  “She’s your responsibility then,” said the bouncer. “Get her out of here. And don’t let her drive.”

  “Let’s take her back to your place,” Mecca told Michael; he lived two blocks away from the stripper club.

  10

  In chapter six, Dominique is agreeable to a threesome. The idea turns her on more than she wants to admit—the idea, in theory, that is, because she isn’t sure if she can actually go through with it when the time comes.

  She wants this to happen in neutral territory and suggests a motel room. She thinks going out of town would be good.

  So in chapter seven, the three of them drive out to Palm Springs to do the deed. It is an hour and a half journey from L.A. to the desert getaway. It is awkward. There is tension. There is uncertainty. Brandon is uncomfortable. They talk about trivial things, not about sex or what is going to happen.

  Chapter eight: they have arrived in Palm Springs and check into a motel. More and more, it seems that Brandon is not keen on the whole thing.

  “I’ll go get some booze,” Brandon says.

  Brandon leaves. He’s gone for a while. Mike and Dominique sit on the bed and start kissing. He reaches under her skirt and touches her; she has thick pubic hair, which is different because women usually shave most, if not all, of it off these days; he inserts two fingers inside her pussy, which is very, very wet. “You make me so juicy,” she says. “I’ve never been this way before.”

  She comes twice. The second time she squirts.

  “That’s the best hand job I’ve ever had,” she says.

  Brandon returns, catches them kissing. He stops and stares and looks hurt. He can smell her pussy in the air and knows something happened while he was out.

  Brandon has bought a fifth of vodka, a half-gallon of milk, and a bottle of Kahlua. There are no cups, though.

  “I’ll get cups,” Brandon says, and leaves quickly.

  “He’s backing out,” Dominique says.

  “He’ll be okay,” Mike says, “he wanted to do this.”

  “I want to do this,” she says, and they start to kiss again….

  11

  At Michael’s apartment, Jordin stopped crying and wanted more tequila. Jordin grabbed Mecca and kissed her. This wasn’t the first time these two had been close. Lesbian encounters among the dancers at the Happy Room, or any stripper club, were commonplace. “Kick back and watch the show,” Jordin told Michael. He did. He witnessed the two girls undressing, getting on his bed, making out, and going down on each other. Then he joined them….

  12

  For chapter nine, Jordin decides to turn up the heat, the romance, the depravity. It’s time to pork, she thinks as she types away on her laptop. The three are on the bed. Mike starts to undress Dominique. She’s shy at first, but gives in. S
he keeps looking at Brandon, urging him to be aggressive. “Come here and rip my bra off,” she says. Mike agrees. “Tear her panties off,” Mike says. Brandon is rubbing one of Dominique’s legs, but he can’t move. He can only stare. He doesn’t believe he is here, that he agreed to this, that he is going to allow his longtime buddy to hump his long-term girlfriend.

  “I’ve read Paul Bowles and Henry Miller,” he says softly; “I’m hip.”

  “What’s wrong?” Dominique inquires, her voice soft with the pain of six thousand years of hurt women.

  “This is what we came here for,” Mike says, annoyed.

  Brandon stands up. He says: “You two go for it. I’ll watch.”

  “What?” Dominique says.

  Mike says: “Why don’t you draw us?”

  “Good idea,” Brandon says. He gets his sketchpad and sits on the floor and says: “Go ahead and do what you want, I’ll draw.”

  “Fuck it,” says Dominique, “fuck him,” she says and looking at Brandon she adds: “Fuck you, you coward, you Nancy boy, you impotent fuck, I’m going to suck cock and take it in my asshole like you’ve never seen porn before.”

  “Hey hey,” Mike says.

  “Just fuck me,” she says, “and make it good….”

  13

  Mecca woke up first, in bed with Michael and Jordin—who were both cuddling and spooning and lightly snoring. Mecca didn’t care for that sight. She got out of bed, put her clothes on, and left. Before departing, she stopped and turned to the two sleeping bodies and muttered, “I hate you people….”

  14

  Chapter ten has Brandon trying to draw. He can’t do it. All he can do is look at the floor. He peeks up now and then, but it’s too much—to see them kiss; to see Mike stick fingers in Dominique’s ass; to observe them do the sixty-nine position while she faces Brandon, stares at him the whole time. He begins to weep; he didn’t realize he had so many powerful emotions inside him, wanting out….

  15

  Jordin woke up and freaked. She had no idea where she was or how she got there. She was in bed with a man she didn’t know and could only assume the worst. Michael woke up and said:

  “Hey.”

  She punched him in the face and jumped out of the bed, naked. She looked around for her purse, found it, grabbed it, and took out the switchblade she always kept for protection.

  16

  In chapter eleven, the drive back to L.A. is very uncomfortable. Brandon refuses to talk to either Mike or Dominique. They drop him off where he works and he walks away, not saying good-bye. He is disgusted, but not with them—with himself. Mike and Dominique go back to her place and cuddle in her bed. Chapter twelve: lots of sex scenes, with some romance.

  Chapter thirteen: Dominique tells Mike she loves him. He says it is too soon.

  Chapter fourteen: Brandon tells Mike he is okay with everything, even though he is not. He keeps his jealousy buried deep.

  Chapter fifteen: Mike has a one-night stand with an eighteen-year-old hottie. He tells Dominique about it and she gets very upset. He goes: “We’re not in a committed relationship, you can go out and screw any guy you want and it wouldn’t bug me.”

  Chapter sixteen: Dominique shows up at Mike’s home, drunk. She is holding a bottle of cheap, foul tequila. She demands to know why Mike does not love her. Mike says he could love her, but it’s too soon. Dominique strips all her clothes off and says: “Is this body good enough for you?” Mike reaches out to her and says: “I will make love to you.” She throws the tequila bottle down, smashes it on the floor, falls down, and starts to roll over the glass, cutting herself. She crawls to him, bleeding. “This is my passion,” she says.

  17

  Jordin tried to stab Michael with her blade. She chased him around his apartment, screaming that she would get even for his taking advantage of her.

  Michael pleaded for her to stop, not hurt him, not cut him, not stab him. He said, “Don’t you remember last night, when Mecca and I came into the Happy Room?”

  Jordin stopped, holding the knife in the air like a magic wand, like she was a character in a J. K. Rowling book.

  She started to remember….

  “Oh, no,” she said, “I’m sorry….”

  She sat on the bed and sobbed, hands covering her face. He sat next to her and held her. She leaned into his chest and wept even more…she grabbed him hard and asked him to forgive her.

  “I finally feel something,” Jordin said: “It burns.”

  That’s it! She had the title to her novel!

  ONE HOT SLUT

  N. T. Morley

  Just getting it shaved is like an epic feat. If you’ve never tried to shave one, I don’t think you can even conceive of just how many nooks and crannies they have. If you have tried to shave a pussy, and you’re not with me on the idea that this is a less-than-easy task, then you’re way more coordinated than me, which probably wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me.

  Once I get it shaved, though, it’s pretty fucking awesome: smooth and slick and sensitive. After I finish I lean up against the wall of the shower and spread my legs and get the shower massage down there and rinse…and the warm water feels so fucking good on my pussy that I alternate between that and my fingers for about ten minutes, just kind of touching myself. Not wanking—well, not exactly, though it definitely starts to feel good. My clit feels moderately more sensitive, definitely, but FUCK!! It’s really the rest of me that feels totally new and intense and incredible. When I touch my outer lips it’s like they’ve never been touched before. I want your fucking tongue down there. I want you to fucking lick me till I go crazy. I want you to lick me till I come.

  Which I might do any second, I realize, if I keep rubbing myself like this.

  But that’s just the beginning, really, because my shaved puss is not the first thing you’re going to see when you get here. In fact, it might be quite a long while before you do see it, up close and personal at least, because I’ve already decided that as soon as you’re in the door I’m going to get your pants open and suck your cock, which is why the bright red lipstick sits on the sink half opened and glistening; I was experimenting earlier. It’s a deep ruby red color, the kind a girl wears when she has absolutely no reason to wear it except to make her lips look good gliding up and down a cock, which is why I got kind of wet earlier and decided to shave my puss.

  And it’s shaved, and I like it. It’s shaved smooth along with the rest of my body: my slim legs, my dainty pits, everything except the hair on my head—but that, too, is altered. I spent three hours in the salon earlier today. Gone is the straight dark librarian hair I’ve sported since high school; I’d already decided to cut it short, so I figured why not one last fling with it, and if peroxide fries it, c’est la vie. It didn’t get fried; it actually turned out pretty good, the color of pale straw and with about three times the volume it had before. I stand nude in the bathroom and curl and spray and fluff and tease my new platinum blonde mane until it’s the revenge of the ’80s super-starlet. Oh, my fucking god, I think, as I look at myself in the mirror. Naked, without makeup, I already look like one hot slut, baby, a seriously hot fucking slut for you. I look like a whore, my hair cascading everywhere and just begging to be grabbed, grabbed hard, and pulled, and my face—Okay, no more thinking about that, I tell myself, taking a deep breath; if I get too worked up I’m never going to bother getting dressed, and when you get here you’ll find me naked on the bed—which I’m sure would be fine, but not at all what I have planned.

  What I have planned involves a mesh black garter belt and fishnet stockings. What I have planned involves me wearing a tight, tiny little see-through thong that I wriggle my snatch into and settle onto my hips with the string tugging deep in my ass…but not wearing it, understand, for very long. What I have planned involves six-inch fuck-me heels that I can barely walk on, a push-up bra that turns A-cups into B-cups—look! cleavage!—and a cheap little black choker I got at Beadland that if I play my cards right y
ou’ll get the message is supposed to look like a dog collar. What I want tonight is for you to rip off this tiny black dress, fucking destroy it with your hands if you want, baby, or just yank it up and use me.

  What I have planned involves a great big mop of blonde hair in a teased-out fuck-me ’do that’s about as classy as a truck stop blow job. What I want, tonight, is me black-eyed with eyeliner and thick-lashed with mascara, my lips pouty and bright red gliding up and down on your cock, my ass tucked high up into the air and just begging you to fuck it. You heard me. Listen to me very carefully, honey: you can put it anywhere. Because what I want doesn’t just feature me with cocksucking lips, with a shaved pussy, with tits finally big enough, or kinda looking that way, for you to slide your cock between. I did intimate things with that shower massager, baby, things so intimate….

  Tonight I’m your whore, bought and paid for, and you don’t even need to leave a tip. Tonight I’m your tarted-up fucking bimbo, and I want you to use me.

  I should say before you get here that none of this was my idea. It started…well, I don’t want to go into too much detail, because I’m honestly not mad or anything. Just kind of hurt.

  It started one of those nights you worked extra-late. You know, one of the ones—it’s hard to keep them separate, isn’t it?—when you called me at nine to tell me you’d be home late. You’ve been doing that a lot, baby, and I think I’ve been a good sport about it. But this was a Thursday, baby, our four-year anniversary. I hope the mailman liked his new watch.