Sometimes She Lets Me

by Tristan Taormino

  At 6:00 a.m. I telephoned, woke you. I knew he’d be gone already. Come to me now, I demanded. I’m not through with you. Of course you couldn’t comply, couldn’t leave your boys. What can I do for you, you asked. I said I need you to touch yourself. As if you were me. Now. And you did. Are you touching yourself? Yes, yes I am. Are you thinking of me? Yes, yes I am. Does it feel good. Oh yes. Do you want me to fuck you? Yes. Say it. Yes. Please fuck me. Now say this: I’m a dyke. I’m a dyke. I’ve always been a dyke. I’ve always been a dyke. I love women. I love women. I want to be fucked by women. I want to be fucked by women. I want to be fucked by you. I want to be fucked by you.

  That afternoon you told me you’d decided. No more lies. You wouldn’t come to me again until you told him. It was not what I expected. I didn’t believe you. That you would risk everything. Even a custody suit, even your sanity, even your life. To come to me. To come to yourself. But you had already made the plan to speak with him that night. I was in awe.

  Walking the long stretch of beach miles beyond home I thought only of you and your courage. How I could hold you while you did this warrior thing you could only do alone. For three days and three nights I hadn’t taken in food or been able to sleep. Running on some other source, my body feeding on a part of itself I no longer needed. The detritus of my own passing. A fire burned. What becoming was happening to me? Then I remembered the poem, the invocation between us. How for three days and three nights Inanna hung on the peg of the underworld stripped to nothing. And when they stole into Hell to find the Queen of Beauty, they found Ereshkegal writhing on the ground beside her, out of her mind. Giving birth to Inanna.

  Yes, I am the Butch of the Realm, the Lady of the great Below. It is hard for me to let you go. When next you say “you bitch”—“wild cherry”—and “it just happens”—you will think of me as she who bore you to your new and lawful place of rising, took the time and effort just to get you there so you could moan Inanna you could cry and everyone you ever were could die.

  You told him you were a lover of women. He said that’s okay, just tell me the truth. I slept then. We had one more night before A returned from Africa. You were waiting for me when I got home. I had on trousers. You wore a red dress. Tight so I could know you had nothing underneath. You had made me dinner. Up against the kitchen counter, I wrapped my hands strong around your rib cage. You said, You make me feel so female. You said, You’re my man. I think I died then. In that moment. Everything I’d ever pretended to be. Gone. With you in my hands.

  I must have taken you on my lap then, on the blue couch, the sweet of you all over me, and I think I called you baby, baby. You must have moaned or I did and then my hand went looking for you. I remember my hand and the weight of you and my face in your hair. Jesus how you opened to me. Let me reach up into the wound, curl inside and fill your empty places. Did I do it? Did I ease the rawness for a moment? Is it sacrilege to try to speak of this? To describe the unnameable? Something eased in me, a coming home, a landing. Into a hot pink hyperactive stillness.

  Who is screaming? My hand has not forgiven me for leaving. If I’d believed I could not return I would never have left. But I thought it was only the beginning, and that night I wanted you to have it all. So I strapped on the chocolate dick, lay you down on the carpet among the pillows, and knelt over your belly.

  I traced the folds and pocks of that tender place with my fingers, a sureness in my hands that meant something about arriving into a knowing that was mine and more than mine—a birthright, an ancient lineage. I guess I was praying for a healing when I saw them. Judy Grahn and Pat Parker and other butch elders there in the room. I didn’t say anything at the time because I didn’t know if I was going crazy. You had taken me so far from all I’d been, I could easily have been out of my mind. They gathered around us to watch. And then I knew they were there to welcome me into a secret circle. Into the same sacred holy office they’d held for me two decades before in Berkeley, when I was trying to find a way into my life and their poetry was all I had to go by. I’ve never had a vision before, actually seen people not in the flesh. Even now talking about it I know it sounds like fiction. But those poet butches were there with us, and they were telling me what I needed to know. That I had descended to the underworld and now had to learn to live there. That it was not at all clear between you and me who had taken whom down. That this was not only your initiation, baby, but mine. That they would watch over me on the long rock road ahead.

  That was the moment, really. You know the rest. How I left A to wait for you, how school ended, how you said you needed to not see me while you went through the process of divorce. I didn’t tell you how stupid I felt that last time you came by. Me in my new trousers I’d bought with you in mind. You asked me about them, as if you knew I was trying to look sexy for you. As if you knew how I needed you to find my way home. I knew better than to let you kiss me on your way out the door, but I couldn’t stop myself. If only I’d really done it, gotten on my knees and pleaded, in the attitude of the beggar you’d revealed in me. Chipped away, bit by bit, with your wild beauty.

  Stone is a living thing. Only more slow moving than most. There are processes. Once in a great while eruptions come, fire, ice. It is in these moments that the stone comes to know itself as stone. Its limitations. Its capacity. Its longing.

  THE DINER ON THE CORNER

  Sinclair Sexsmith

  As soon as we walk into the diner on the corner, I visualize fucking Shanna on the counter. Or behind the counter, or against the counter, hell, I don’t care—but I am certain the curve of the metal edge, the bar stools and that old-fashioned silver milkshake machine would go perfectly with her rockabilly-femme style.

  This is our first date. She picked me up at the dyke bar last weekend while letting me think I was picking her up, and me being enamored with her immaculate femininity—the tattoos on her shoulders, the shade of pink her nails were painted, the faint flowery scent I wanted to lean into her neck to inhale, the low-cut dress and perfectly curved cleavage, the vibrant hair with streaks of dark purple and red—I didn’t notice until halfway through the evening that, though I thought I was warming her up to ask for her number, she was secretly rolling her eyes, thinking, Get on with it already. She had control of every detail, but let me think I did.

  Tonight, I’ve picked everything out precisely: black button-down shirt, my favorite sleek red tie, black slacks; solid black freshly polished shiny wingtips; plain, simple black fedora on top, because it may rain tonight.

  And because she likes them.

  We meet at the movie theater. She looks incredible: four-inch heels with small straps over the arch of her foot, a little buckle on the side; dark hair down over her shoulders and touching her neck; stockings and a fifties dress that comes just above her knees, with a slightly flared and layered skirt, and low-cut, again, showing off the lovely curves of her breasts. I don’t stare. Don’t stare, I tell myself. You’re being an asshole. I try not to stare. Talk to her face, not her tits.

  “I like your…hat,” she giggles, dark eyes lowered, looking up at me through those lashes, slyly, shyly, from the side, that glance of submission.

  I don’t blush, but my cheeks get a little warm. “Thanks.” I rarely wear hats. I love the way they look, love the tough butchness they play into, but I get self-conscious about what it’s doing to my perfectly messy hair—my singular vanity. As soon as we get to our seats, I balance the fedora on my knee and run my fingers through my hair to see how it’s holding up. (A little smashed. I try not to care.)

  I don’t remember the film. Something about music, Dublin, and falling in love. I remember thinking that there should be more sex in it. And that I forget how crowded and bright movie theaters are here in New York City—I miss being able to mess around in the darkest back row.

  I do remember the way she laughed, the way she got teary once or twice, the way she kept stealing glances at me. Her hand on my thigh and the—oops—accidental brush agains
t the bulge in my pants. The way her lips circled and sucked the straw in her soda, slow.

  After the film, we walk to the corner twenty-four-hour diner. I slide into the booth and she slides in next to me, stockings on vinyl. Her left thigh touches my right, and I feel the brush of her leg against my slacks.

  There are a few other diners scattered at tables, but it’s late. There’s one old man gumming through chicken fingers and reading the newspaper, and one table of teenagers blowing straw wrappers and eating fries off each other’s plates. The waitress comes over, and I order a vanilla milkshake and a slice of apple pie, heated. “We’ll share,” I tell them both.

  We chitchat. I toy with the sugar packets and crunch ice cubes from my water glass. She eases her leg over my thigh, which catches my breath, stirs my cock. I gently put my hand on her knee and let myself finger the thin, silky fabric of her stockings. She’s still chatting as if nothing is happening. She liked the film, she’s saying. The male lead was cute and sweet in a butch sort of way. “Do you think men can be butch?” she asks me.

  My fingers are crushed against her thigh, seeking her creamy skin. I try to pull my consciousness from between her legs to say something intelligent.

  “Well, I think that’s complicated,” I start, “because…while I think the gender identities of butch—and femme, too—are inherently queer by definition, I also notice some men with a particularly female flavor of masculinity that is closer to butch than any other word or description….”

  “Yeah!” She has an eager and excited edge to her voice and presses her leg farther into my lap, twisting her torso a little to look more directly at me, opening her thighs. “I know what you mean—but if men begin to have a butch identity, does that invalidate it for the women who have to fight so hard to claim it?”

  The layers of her dress are pushing up her thighs and I can feel the edge of her stocking under my fingers, lace and elastic, the line of ribbon up her thigh to her hip: a garter belt. I brush my fingers against the rough edge and press them into her inner thigh, just a little. I wonder how far she’ll let me go.

  I want to find out how far she’ll let me go.

  The teenagers clear out and the diner quiets. She leaves her hands on the table but parts her lips. She’s looking at me, gazing at my mouth; I bite my tongue and feel it swollen.

  Shanna leans in slightly, slowly, ever so subtly, tilting her head without realizing it as my grip on her thigh strengthens. Neither of us notices as we do this, we only notice the space between our bodies crackling electrically.

  I find the crease of her hip with my fingers, that line where her thighs meet her pelvis.

  Her mouth gets closer to mine, inches away. I can feel her breath. She doesn’t move any closer but is begging me with her whole body to make a move. To kiss her. To keep moving my fingers up her skirt. She lets me think it’s all my idea. She is shifting, something is happening in her body and mind, an intentional submission, an offering up of her mouth and cunt and hungry body. We can both feel it, but it is nearly imperceptible.

  “You want…this, okay?” I whisper, fingers getting bolder, brushing against her cunt, the swollen outer labia. I can feel the air between our mouths stirring. The movement of my lips makes them touch hers, briefly, softly. I can nearly see the swirls of her breath, hot and heavy.

  She bites her lip at the touch, nods, without moving her head; submits a little deeper with explicit permission.

  “One vanilla milkshake—” The waitress clears her throat and sets it down in front of Shanna, who jumps, but I stay exactly where I am, smiling, amused, then turn my head slowly without moving my hand.

  “One apple pie.” The waitress sets the small white plate in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking a fork with my left hand, my right still between Shanna’s thighs.

  The waitress raises her eyebrows. “You two okay here?”

  “Yep.” I say. Shanna’s cheeks are hot and flushed. She examines the milkshake, stealing a glance at me. My fingers are quiet but persistent, still on the softness of her cunt.

  The waitress raises her eyebrows at me again and I can’t quite tell, but I think she winks. She’s cute, the waitress. Dyed black hair, thick tattoo of a faery on her left bicep, those chunky black glasses. She’s the only one working, but it’s dead in here, so after a round she goes back to reading her book at the counter. She’s not paying us any attention.

  I twist and shift in the booth and adjust so I can flatten the palm of my hand against her cunt, slowly, cupping it. She’s not wearing panties. She knew she could have me. She’s controlling every detail.

  She inhales and can’t look at me, tongues her lip gently. “Are you…will you…?” she begins, but can’t finish. She wants me to kiss her. I want to ravage her, thrust her up against the vinyl. Want her hands gripping at the sides of the booth as she comes against my hand.

  I grin, that sly cocky grin that says I know what she’s asking, I know what she wants, and I’m taking my own damn time giving it to her. She knows she’ll get it from me, so my only power here is how and when she’ll get it. She offers me her neck and I take it, leaning in, kissing her shoulder, her collarbone, exposed in her low-cut dress. “You have to be quiet,” I say. “We’re not alone.”

  “We almost are,” she breathes, closing her eyes and tilting her head so I can get to her neck. My fingers run lazy circles around her clit and inner lips, slick already. I dip two fingers inside and feel her muscles pulsing, slide them in and out while she begins to pant. I circle her clit again, flick it gently and feel her body contract and respond.

  “Anybody could walk in at any second,” I say. “Anybody could see my hand under your skirt, if they looked for just a second.” She shivers and presses her thighs open, presses her cunt against my hand, grips my forearm in one hand. I’m working her clit a little harder, a little faster, and her breathing is coming heavier, her body is tense. She’s trying to keep her face still.

  “You haven’t even touched that shake,” I say, nodding toward it. She shoots me a look like she wants to tear me apart with her eyes and attempts to move the tall milkshake glass toward her with one hand. She still wants me to kiss her and I am not letting up with my fingers on her cunt, on her clit, swirling, flicking against the hood, finding that sweet spot where her pelvis tenses and her limbs go limp.

  Shanna’s eyes don’t leave my face as she opens her mouth for the straw and sucks the milkshake into her mouth. Cold. I can see it hit her tongue and explode in creamy sweetness; her eyes roll a little and her pussy responds, presses harder into my hand. She takes another sip, and I work two fingers against her clit.

  She bends her head back—just a little, just the slightest bit, she wants to be able to throw it back and scream but she can’t, she’s in a diner, my hand against her, fingers circling, working, flicking, pressing, and her whole body shudders, and she grips my forearm in her fist, gasps a little, just a little, and her thighs contract to grip my wrist and she comes, with no sound at all, her body absorbing the noise she wants to make, and I don’t let up, don’t let up at all, until—she gasps, inhales deeply, and pulls on my hand to back off.

  I grin and watch her face. She’s trying to keep her features together and make it not look like she’s just come. Trying to regain her composure. She looks at me a little shyly and embarrassed, unsure how loud she was, how obvious, and she glances around quickly but there’s no one in the diner anymore, the few patrons have all left. It’s just us, and the waitress at the counter.

  “Holy. Shit,” Shanna says softly, still breathing hard. I still have that stupid grin on my face, that power-top grin.

  I lean in and kiss her, gently, soft, on the lips. Her mouth is cold and creamy, tastes of vanilla. Sweet. She’s a fantastic kisser, all supple and slow. We kiss for a moment and I pull away, still smiling, and she tilts her chin down and looks up at me through her lashes.

  “Want some pie?” I ask. I gather a bite on my fork, she nods,
and I slip it between her lips.

  “Oh,” she says, chewing, warm apples and cinnamon on her tongue. “It’s good. Want some shake?” I take a few sips. It’s partly melted now.

  The waitress comes over as we are giggling. “Would you two mind—?” she starts. “I’m out of smokes. I’m just gonna run to the corner, be right back.”

  “Sure,” I say. The waitress nods, gives us another quick once-over glance, and spins on her heel. The diner is deserted. It’s just me and Shanna. I watch the waitress walk out, the bell on the glass door ringing softly, and turn to look at this gorgeous femme. She’s smoothing her hair, already watching me, watching my face, and she slides out of the booth and holds out her hand. I take it and slide out behind her.

  “Your turn,” she says. Crossing the diner floor, her heels click against the hard linoleum, and I watch her ankles as she walks, her calves, her knees. She keeps her legs tight together, crisscrossing like a model. My mouth waters.

  She stops at the counter and raises her arm, guiding me back behind the bar as if we’re on the dance floor. I grin and nearly flush, a little embarrassed, flustered to be somewhere I’m not supposed to be, seeing the clutter of dishes, rags, coffee mugs, silverware, napkins, salt and pepper shakers, ketchup and Tabasco bottles. And, of course, the gleaming, polished silver milkshake machine.

  I slide behind the counter and she spins on a stool, crossing her legs at the ankle. She leans over, spilling out of her dress. I lick my lips, run my thumb over them, position myself behind the bar. I grip the handle of the milkshake machine and run my hand over it, stroking.

  “So,” I say. “Can I get you something?” I’m having trouble keeping my face straight. It feels a little silly, but it’s also hot. What will she do? Let me fuck her, here, really?