Sometimes She Lets Me

by Tristan Taormino

“Nothing,” she says. She kicks imaginary sand with the toe of her clean white shoe.

  I’m tempted to look down too, but I keep my eyes right on her, make sure she can feel them.

  “How come?”

  It hurts almost to keep my voice this even.

  More kicking at nothing. I’ve turned her into a twelve-year-old boy.

  “I don’t know. I don’t go in for that sort of stuff. Romance and stuff. Phony.”

  Yeah, I think so too. If you do it their way. But I can’t say that. Instead, I say, “Me neither. Maybe we ought to hang out and do nothing together.”

  She stops kicking. Goes still. I wait. There’s a buzz rising in my ears. Bubbles flip upside my stomach, more tickle inside. I feel a coffee burp rising, wish it away.

  She lifts her head, swings it up slow as if she’s trying to get unstuck from something.

  I don’t think she knows. She doesn’t see it. Too long stuck here in town. If she never saw my kind before, how would she know what I looked like?

  Sweet thing, I think. You ain’t seen nothing like me yet.

  She finally speaks. “Sure. Why don’t you come tomorrow night? I’ll be here after we close.”

  She moves her eyes around the room as if to remind me, or maybe her, where she means.

  I say I will. Like it’s nothing at all. Like I’m not already thinking about what to wear, what looks best when it’s taken off. Like I’m not planning what I’ll scent myself with to draw her close, how I want her to remember me when she first sees me naked and vulnerable and writhing beneath her. I smile and turn and take my steps just so, knees bent just so to roll my hips slow, knowing she’s watching me walk out the door….

  “I’ll try to save us one of the cheesecakes—” I hear her call to me.

  But I’m already out the door.

  I manage to stay away from the bakery all day Saturday until the streets and the lights outside the bakery are dark and the moon is large, ringed with silver bracelets of cold. I can feel the air dry inside my lungs; it almost hurts to breathe. Inside it will be moist as always.

  Petey’s alone in the bakery when I walk in. She’s got an apartment in the back, but it’s tiny and it’s obvious she prefers being in the shop. The radio is playing low and I keep wondering if she knows why I’m really there. She’s a little different now that no one’s around. A little more animated. A little more herself, I think. The self she can’t be when she’s on display. We sit and I talk about nothing at all until there’s a Johnny Rivers song on the radio and I start swaying to it without thinking about it. Petey grins at me.

  “I bet you like to dance.”

  “I do.” I smile. “Want to dance with me?”

  There. I’ve said it. Turning point. No turning back. Either I’m in her arms or I’m out the door in the next couple of minutes.

  “With me?” She acts surprised, but I’ve been around the block enough to know it’s an act. “I’m not much of a dancer.”

  Wonder how many times it’s started out this way.

  “Come learn,” I say. Stand up. Motion for her to come my way.

  While Johnny is crooning on about the poor side of town, I take her hand, which feels as smooth and warm and clean as I knew it would, and put it at my waist. I put my arm around her shoulder, resisting the urge to slide my fingers through the curls that have gathered there. She’s sweating. Just a little. I grin and slide my other hand into the one that’s dangling by her side.

  “You want to dance slow, like this?” she asks. Goes limp. I feel a little like I’m being baited. I nod and try to get us synced up with the music.

  All the time she’s staring at me like I’ve grown a second head. And then she starts to laugh.

  “You really want to dance that bad?”

  I stop moving. That about does it. I’m sick to death of drowning myself in caffeine and eating twice my own weight in pastry to get this sad-ass closet case to realize she’s got a willing victim here. And now this. I feel my dignity slipping away like pearls on a broken thread and figure, what the hell. So I reach up and kiss Petey Ginoa square on the lips. I slide my fingers into those dark curls that have been as tempting as chocolate shavings for weeks; they feel like wet silk between my fingers. And I press my breasts into hers and slip my leg around hers, press close so she can’t miss the kind of heat I’m giving off. I may not get what I want, but I’m definitely going to give her a taste of what she’s missing. And after what feels like about three years, I let go of her and push her back onto her feet and stare at her as if to ask what she plans on doing next.

  Petey looks at me sideways, almost glaring, and if I hadn’t seen that look in the eyes of plenty of women who remind me of Petey, I’d think she was mad at me. But that look’s not about mad. It’s about fear.

  “You aren’t exactly the shy type, are you?” she snarls low.

  “You like shy?”

  I’m looking at her straight in the eyes.

  “No. Not necessarily. Just most people. Most women that I’ve been with. They aren’t full-time like you. Mostly just sad women who want to forget for a little while that they’re married to someone they can’t stand being touched by. Others that just want a little vacation from their lives, a little adventure, and when it starts to get over their heads or there’s a chance of getting caught, they run back to where they started. You’re not like that. You’re a different kind altogether, aren’t you?”

  Something about that makes me feel really proud, like I’ve just won a contest. So I’m her first real lesbian, her first real pure femme.

  “And you like it?” I smile all coy. I know she does.

  “I could get used to it,” she says, noncommittal. But then, before I have time to think about what that means, she is beside me, her arms around me, kissing me, her lips beating a tattoo down my neck, her pelvis pressed into mine, making me strain backward.

  “I don’t think you should look a gift horse in the mouth,” I say.

  And she smiles. It’s a new one, a little too knowing, but it’s a beautiful smile. I’m so heady and fluttering from being so close to the one I adore that I hardly even notice when she pushes me upward onto the breadboard and hoists herself up beside me. I don’t know if I am gift or being gifted, treat or being treated, but it doesn’t matter. The flour on my back feels dry and the air in the bakery is still warm enough from so many Valentine’s cakes that I don’t feel a chill at all as she slides off my sweater and pants, runs her fingers over the pearl heart trim of my red lace bra, and kneads the knuckle of her thumb in the crotch of my red lace panties before she slides them over my hips and down to the floor, grinning all proud at the heat and wet inside my cunt, grinning at the way I press against her hand. She whispers, “How long have you wanted this…?” and my head falls back as if it’s very heavy all of a sudden and I whisper back, “Forever, since I first saw you, maybe even before that.”

  And she shudders, that butch shudder of realization at being wanted by a woman. She unbuttons her jeans and slides them off, kicks off her shoes, wraps her arms around me as if I’m something that might slip away, and pushes me gently down on my back.

  Petey Ginoa makes love even better than she makes bread and cookies and pies and cakes. She touches me all over slow, achingly slow, and kisses my face and breasts and belly with creamy wet kisses that make me ache and open my legs wide, press hard against any touch of hers I catch just to get some relief. And when she finally slides her fingers between my legs, when my cunt overflows with want of her and opens easy and hot to draw her inside, she cries out my name high and surprised. And Petey Ginoa fucks as sweet as her eight-minute frosting. Her want is hot enough to make me feel the steam rising from her body, her fingers kneading me inside, her mouth hungry on me, her tongue tracing sweet glazed circles, her head rising at times so I see her mouth wet and shiny with me, while I cry out, “Petey!” and tug at those mythical curls at her collar and wrap my legs around as much of her clean, sweet, white-cotton sel
f as I can, try to take all of her inside. I can tell by her eyes and her moans and the way she keeps her lips on me; the way her fingers gather inside me, thrust higher and deeper without asking, simply taking, knowing it’s freely mine to give; that Petey Ginoa has never had a woman want her wholly like this, has never had a real love to call her own. I arch my back, strain up against those strong knuckles slipping, twisting, filling me; those dear arm muscles straining to take me as I come screaming, shivering, crying out, grinding my ass hard against the smooth wood.

  It’s warm here lying beside the oven. Petey lies silently beside me while I come back inside myself, her fingers resting on my hip bone, her cheek against my hair. I snuggle closer; the board is wider than you’d think to see it in the daylight, but I’m not afraid of falling. I’m facing her now, her shirt is open, her T-shirt and plain white underpants still on. I cuddle against her, kiss her neck, then place my hands at the bottom edge of her shirt, slide up slowly, graze her breasts. She catches her breath. Stops my hand. Holds it tight against her heart.

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  It sounds like she’s afraid I’m not satisfied.

  “Not tired, relaxed,” I whisper, “and I want to touch you.”

  She stiffens slightly beneath my hand. Her heart is beating hard enough for me to hear it; I expect to see it thumping up like a cartoon character’s does when he falls in love. Or gets chased by something wild.

  “I…usually…don’t…”

  It hits me. Petey’s used to nice straight girls who like to get finger-fucked all night but don’t offer to give anything back. No touch back, no tongue back. That might make them gay. And I sigh.

  “Do you want this?” I whisper. “Do you want me to love you?”

  She turns her face away from me. Mumbles into her arm, into the makeshift pillow the dish towel has become. I lean in to listen and there’s only one word I hear.

  Never?

  Petey the butch goddess is a virgin?

  Chaste despite sexually servicing what seems like a third of the married women in town, if you can trust the stories. Fortysomething and never been touched. Jackpot, I think, but then I panic; I want to get up and—presto change-o—my clothes would be on and I would be gone.

  But that doesn’t happen.

  What happens is…

  First I roll my eyes upward and curse and thank the Goddess for making me brave enough to bring Petey out. All the way out.

  And I remember everything I know about butches and sex and surrender and what that means, and prepare myself for anything.

  Then I slowly slip my hand inside the rib-knit tee she’s wearing beneath her open shirt and caress her belly with my open palm. She gurgles something low and deep inside her throat. Her stomach contracts under my touch, new nerve endings coming to life for the first time. I feel terribly powerful and daring. She settles her shoulder closer into me, stretches out her legs; I try not to think of her feet in her white sports socks hanging over the breadboard, but I do and I giggle. She smiles at me as she strokes my hair with her hand. Slowly, oh so slowly, as if her stomach stretched for miles, I take my time and slide my hand further up her shirt, grazing her breasts with my knuckles. She sucks in air, twitches. I can hear my own breathing and hers, imagine it rising up into the moist steamy air that sits inside the bakery. Joined at the breath, I think. I kiss her neck, kiss her shoulders, raise her T-shirt further and bend to trace with my tongue the places my hands have been. Her skin is clean and sweet-tasting, and moist with heat. Glazed. All that sugar, all that goodness. She’s moving down, rising up to meet my hand, still palm flat; my mouth, tiny sighs breaking from her mouth. My fingers find her breast; it’s small and easy to cup within my hand and her nipple is firm as the dried currants I’ve watched her stir into dough and almost as dark. She gasps; I find my courage and rise up further on my side so I can move more easily. Gently, I gather her breasts under my hand. She likes a little more pressure than I would have expected, croons out soft little cries of want as I grasp her breasts and release them slowly, knead her gently as I have watched her do so many times. And eventually, when I’m not sure how much more she can take, I smile and kiss her lips and bend my face to her chest, sucking each hard curranty nipple; one, then the other, until her hips start to rise off the board. She’s starting to get loud. With my mouth still on her, licking a trail over her breast, I retrace my path down her belly, further, further still, slipping my fingers beneath the waistband of her cotton underwear, moving slowly over a mound of damp curling hair, slowly, so slowly…. She widens her legs to greet me and she is wet and slippery and smooth as pearls underwater, she is open and gasping. In the dark, I imagine shiny deep pink like the filling of the cheesecake she fed me before. And I need the sweetness. She’s rising and crashing into my fingers, so hard and so new that I rise up and turn, stretching out, never moving my hand, and use the other to push off what bit of her underwear still clings to her. Spread her open, slip a finger inside, gentle, so gentle, and she yells something I can’t hear, as if part of her is far away now. And I move inside her slowly as she wriggles all over the cutting board, and all of a sudden, I need to taste her. I throw my head down between her moving legs, trade my finger for my tongue. She is sweet there too, sweet and fresh and slippery wet as cream. I lap her up, suck her sweetness into my mouth, my tongue fluttering hard and fast, then soft and slow inside her lips. I grasp her thighs on either side so I can hang on, stay with her, buckle in as if she’s a wild ride in a small-town midway and she cries out loud, almost a scream, and comes shaking and gushing wetness into my mouth, the insides of her thighs stretching, ass grinding and bucking under my tongue.

  And she is done.

  For a few moments, she lies in my arms and we ride out her aftershocks with the heel of my hand nestled inside her lips and she sighs over and over, stretches arms out long and languid and pulls me close, and for a split second, I feel all Prince Charming come to curl up and sleep with the princess. Until she kisses me, tongue searching out all taste of her, until she rolls me onto my back, and I feel the wetness spreading out beneath me; I must have come too, when she did. She gathers up the wetness on my thighs and hair and slips her fingers inside me. Oh. One. Two. Yes. Three. More. Petey pushes my knees apart, spreads me wide open, lowers her still trembling body onto mine, grinds her wetness into mine with a fury I never expected, and I wrap my legs around her hips, shelter her as she rides me hard, her hands grasping my shoulders, my body rising up to meet every stroke. She is gasping now, breathing loud and calling out, sweet bits and pieces of words whispered, fuck sweet wet baby, come, mine, mine, oh fuck, beautiful you, oh. And I feel the climb and rise of us both as she comes hard and loud into me while I lock my legs around her, grasping, grinding, shivering, up, up and over, screaming and trembling against her as she falls into me, done, head full of dark sweet curls, fine strands of burnt sugar candy, warm and swirled over my breasts.

  LESSONS

  S. Bear Bergman

  She slid her cock out of me slowly, so slowly, then pumped it back in once, hard, to watch me gasp and laugh and grab for it; she knows I can’t take that after I’ve just come but she likes to do it anyhow. It’s how she tests to make sure I’m really, thoroughly fucked out, I think. I reached back, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her up and onto my back like so many covers, like I do, snuggling down under her warmth, the weight of her keeping me safe and grounded. She murmured fond and ridiculous things in my ear, calling me sweet and delicious, handsome and beautiful, licking away the sweat on my neck and sliding a hand under my sweaty chest to hug me a bit. We snuggled and rolled with the afterglow, being silly. I sucked gently on the tips of her fingers, lazing along by my cheeks, kissed the palm of her hand, nuzzled and burrowed into it, lapping like a pup. She giggled. I made a noise, a warm one, low in my throat, something between a growl and a groan, and curled myself against her.

  Every time we do this, I like it a little better, and I liked it a whole fuck of a
lot to begin with. We don’t get a lot of chances, living so far apart and not being Rockefellers, either one of us, but between conferences, relatives, and the occasional frequent flyer ticket, we get just enough to never feel too horribly deprived. Still—this particular meeting had been after an especially long hiatus, and I was glad for the three days, glad for the king-sized bed in the anonymous hotel room on the eighth floor, glad for the weight of her on my back and the way that it never seemed like it had been months since we’d seen each other, even though we don’t really talk on the phone much.

  We email, though. It’s the best part about messing around with writers. The email is so, so good.

  Recovering slowly, I disengaged myself long enough to dislodge the head of her dick from a tender spot just above my knee, and tugged on it, experimentally, looking to see if she were ready to take it off, to let me touch her, but also ready to let my touch modulate into a jack-off motion at any minute if she wasn’t. She has a harder time with it than I do; I was brought up as a butch by sex–positive, radical perverts who thought that any bullshit about butches not liking to get fucked was so much retrograde nonsense, but she grew up someplace outside of Philly and ten years earlier, where the local lesbo culture was strictly a butch top/femme bottom arrangement, where all the butches were presumed stone until proven guilty, and butch-on-butch pairings were as taboo a thing as could be imagined. Good thing that times change.

  I cruised her hard when we first met a couple of years ago at a writers’ conference. She made several very smart comments during a panel we were on together, and she had a steel-gray brush cut. Sold. I invited her to have dinner with my friends and me, my dear friends who set me up with ample conversational opportunity to both mention my wife at home and discuss being poly, so this hot thing would know the score. That, plus my outrageous flirting, did the trick, and after dessert I was in her room on my knees, being called a delicious assortment of very dirty things while I struggled to get her buttonfly jeans off and a condom on using only my mouth.