Purple Panties

by Zane

  The Purple Panty Revue

  Claudia Moss

  J ay stood in a pool of Atlanta sunshine in the back bedroom on the third floor of her downtown, Chamberlain Street loft.

  She gazed out across the courtyard below. In silence, she took in what was left of a tranquil Saturday in March and stared at everything and nothing in particular. Her scrutiny skimmed the courtyard’s centerpiece of bricked shrubbery. Then it winged the wrought-iron separating her complex from the community’s sauntering residents, who promenaded the city in a drug-induced splendor. Whenever they took a notion to dream, they stopped and gazed through iron at high-end vehicles and Jay’s ’07 Mercedes sports car. Beyond this protected enclave, in the distance, a field, in which some of the sauntering found peace, submitted its peppered face of bottles and debris to the heavens.

  She knew there was potential in the scene, despite the poor condition of the existing buildings. In part, she already saw the ones not yet built. A dreamer, she speculated what they might be next month or next year since she’d bowed to her intention to invest in this community. For now, though, what she studied on the right made up Edgewood Avenue, with its string of abandoned shops, small clothing stores, and beauty parlors; on the left, it was Chamberlain Street, home of Chamberlain Apartments, a project some city developers in high-rise offices still hadn’t quite figured how to erase.

  Jay Morrison was a mover and big-money shaker in her own right, in privy circles. Around the way, she was known simply as “the sistah who had her shit together.”

  But the sistah was in a blue mood right now. Little had gone as she’d anticipated in a developer’s meeting that afternoon: it yet amazed her how nobody of color with any real money desired to invest a tad of it in the community. The revelation accounted for her presence in her loft’s back windows.

  In truth, in these windows, the longer she stood, the more Jay felt blessed. By her calculations—something she was damn good at, had faith in, particularly when it came to growing dollars and scents from nothing—her mind expanded when she looked out on her block. A magical space, answers to every question she posed floated into her corporate locs when she stood where she was now, pondering…

  Hmmmmm. But wait.

  Jay cocked her head to one side and raised a rakish brow. That was a first. Did the floral curtains in the third-floor window in the loft directly across from hers really inhale the sweet start of spring and exhale a glimpse of an exquisite ass? She could have sworn the loft had been empty a week ago. As far as she knew, nobody had walked through the place in five months.

  A green mini bus on its way up Chamberlain sliced noisily into Jay’s thoughts. The sound directed her attention to a man “pottying” his rat terrier on a fenced-in lawn. Funny. The image clashed with the sight of two other men, dirty and singing, using one another as crutches, as they stumbled to the corner.

  Jay sighed and returned an inquisitive eye to the peek-a-boo window, and it was a good thing she did. This time the curtains pooh-poohed with certainty, causing Jay to press her nose against startled glass. There it was for sure. A wide, voluptuous, shapely one. A walnut-hued delight in purple panties, thank you. An ass that didn’t appear to favor bouncing or climbing poles or gyrating like island beauties.

  No, ma’am. Jay was well acquainted with those other kinds of behinds. “Naw, this one,” she calculated, grinning, like the magic room had already spread the delectable woman across her platform bed, those purple panties tossed high on one of its four posts, “no, this one did something else. This one simply strolled.” The strange part was, she hadn’t seen the woman’s face, and a pretty face with pussy lips always lit Jay’s auto pilot. Yet, this woman could look like whatever. Jay didn’t care. In that instance, she realized why she’d been standing there, dreaming, thinking. Her neighbor’s pretty ass had to do what it did, capture her, but the lady’s mysterious persona would do what it must, keep her.

  Evening fell as supple as silk while Jay stared. When fireflies twinkled and crickets sang, the lady’s loft dimmed to candlelight. There was no call for desperation. Jay knew her potential. The last time she’d checked, wherever she appeared, looking as tantalizing as the last treat in a box of Lady Godiva chocolates, women—some gay, some straight, (it didn’t matter) declared, word had it, that Jay Morrison was The “She-Can-Get-It” Woman. Thus, armed with such confidence, Jay descended the stairs to her kitchen and leftover Chinese take-out. Her mind savored a new intention: to have her mysterious neighbor in every way she could have a woman.

  Two weeks later, Jay posted up against the window in her back room, again, but this time, music drew her there. Big band music. Josephine Baker in a banana skirt and no-bra music. Hypnotic, it was the sort of music that conjured images of glossy stages and rows of leggy, dancing angels in flamboyant feathers and skimpy costumes, kicking up their heels and flashing yards of endless thighs. For once, Jay scanned her usual surroundings and never registered a thing outside of her new neighbor’s, her next woman’s, third-floor window. All investments were put on the back burner, for Jay hadn’t seen a flicker of life in the loft for days.

  “A traveler,” Jay speculated. “Cool.”

  Distracted by that beautiful butt, on Monday evening, she lay on the room’s bed and snaked one hand into her pants. Damn. She felt good masturbating, releasing. No lady and work dominating her days, she ached for some good loving, every fiber in her hollering for punany: its spice, its flavor, its juice. She closed her eyes and imagined those purple panties strapped to her nose. Breathing in their fragrance, she prayed their owner boasted a face with a pair of the prettiest pussy lips she’d ever seen. Pussy lips that left her on her knees, begging to lick and kiss, suck and nibble, same as she got stuck between a woman’s thighs, mesmerized by her other pair of pretty lips.

  She dreamed herself straight into Wednesday, the day those curtains waved to her on a gusty evening breeze. In a rush, she lifted the back closet window and filled her lungs with the beginning of April and snapshots of the strolling beauty just beyond the floral curtains. Shoot! Jay had a mind to—fuck it—show up at the woman’s door with a housewarming gift, perfume, and a dinner proposition the sistah couldn’t refuse. As Jay stood there, strategizing, she heard it again. That music. She listened spellbound, an addict hooked on the next glimpse of mind-altering ass. The compelling melodies transported her back, decades back. By the time the CD changer reached its final cut, Jay had made up her mind. She ripped herself from the glass and headed for the shower. A half-hour and her sports car was dodging Boulevard’s craters and traffic-defying teenagers to pull into a parking spot steps away from Best Buy’s electronic double doors.

  In the CD section, a cute, turbaned woman leaned on the ordered counter. Rajima was stenciled in black on her name tag, a sensuous smile stenciled in pink on her lips.

  “May I help you?”

  “Hey, baby.” Jay mirrored her enthusiasm. “I’m in a hurry. Do you have Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s 1957 rendition of Porgy and Bess? If not, bring everything you have by them, separate or together. Please.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Rajima purred, rounding the counter to gracefully take Jay in fully, before walking away, her hips swaying under a long summer skirt.

  Jay grinned. Sexy-ass women. They kept her nerve endings racing. She shifted her attention to a basket of discount CDs, but none whet her curiosity. Leaning against the counter, she panned the store’s wares and wondered how long her mystery woman would be in town, wondered if she should leave her a love note, candy, an airline ticket.

  “This is everything we’ve got.” Rajima spread a handful of CD cases across the counter and rang her total. “Is there anything else you’d like?”

  Jay slowly considered her offerings. “Huh, not now. Thank you.”

  “Whenever,” Rajima promised, accepting Jay’s three C-notes, her stare fierce, tongue glossing her bottom lip. Jay nodded, advised her to keep the change and departed the store in long, determined
strides.

  No music. No lights.

  Only stillness, when she returned.

  Jay felt powerless for a moment, standing in her open garage, a thing she rarely did, gazing up at an obviously empty loft and emptier sky. “Hell, maybe that’s her crash pad,” she rationalized. “Won’t sweat it,” she encouraged herself, utilizing her investment savvy. “I am patience personified. She belongs to me.”

  Miss Purple Panties failed to sashay those jaw-dropping hips past the still fabric of her curtains for what must have been an eternity and one more weekend. In her absence, Jay’s faith wavered and cut the absolute fool, filling her mind with doubt. Under it, she almost passed out; her longing and the ache in her pussy heavy, intense. So, until muted lights burned an amber haze in her loft once more, Jay ended up licking the view from across the courtyard’s bricked blooms with eyes meant for, at the least, fucking…or prayerfully…if she could hold a joyous image long enough…for making love to a woman who rattled her without one hello.

  Jay’s dog, Valentino Starr, lay in on her doorbell one Friday night, like a drunk without a bottle. Behind her, Jackson Street joined in with its late-April night music.

  In Valentino’s pockets were tickets for a different type of Saturday-night entertainment. It was no secret her gyrl had been working serious overtime hours in an effort to bring new horizons and renewed dreams to the strolling disenfranchised under her loft windows. And that alone, Valentino knew, deserved appreciation, being she rarely thought of streetfolk, unless it was to remember to lock her car doors or keep loose bills handy—what with her demanding wife and life.

  “Just don’t keep a sistah waiting,” she’d forewarned Jay just last night. Despite that, here she was, waiting for those second-floor curtains to part so she could cuss.

  “Glad I didn’t invite Justina,” Valentino muttered to herself and doubled-checked her watch. Knowing her wife, she’d have waited five minutes then politely stuck Jay’s ticket under the welcome mat.

  Just as she decided to execute the thought, Jay drove up to the curb, the Mercedes spotless, and flung open the car’s passenger door. “Get in, my niggah!”

  She smelled expensive, like she looked.

  “Don’t play, dude. You still late,” Valentino growled, but she had to give it to her—her friend was the cat’s meow. “In New York, the N-word is illegal, kinda like the L-word everywhere else.” The analogy broke her up.

  Jay smirked and gave Valentino the finger, frowning. “Shut up and close that door. Look, man, where we off to anyway?”

  Valentino cracked up again, relieved she didn’t have to drive herself, or worse, attempt to unload last-minute tickets on a street where most intoxicated night strollers couldn’t spell burlesque, had no money, or thought only dresses and ribbons were velvet.

  The Velvet Room was upscale, noisy and filled with some of the finest women Jay had ever prayed would be in one location. Alluring, they were everywhere. Even outside the club’s Peachtree front, in black tuxedos, valet parking a queue of fabulous cars.

  “For whatever this is,” Jay whispered to Valentino inside the establishment’s lavish, darkened interior, “I’m damn sure down.”

  Valentino winked. “Something told me you would be.” Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Lately, you’ve been wrapped tight enough to hurt yourself, fucking with that crew you do business with. Learn to relax and let live.”

  “Ooh, believe me, I’m life’s number one fan, my man.” She steepled her fingers and sank low in her seat.

  “I’m bringing my baby back next time.”

  “Better ask first. You know Justina.”

  The floodlights on, the butch on Valentino’s right coughed, cut them a reprimanding stare, and draped one arm around her lady’s freckled shoulders.

  Valentino nodded, then looked at Jay and rolled her eyes. “Did you consider the program’s name?”

  “Naw.” Jay squinted at the ticket stub and nearly laughed out loud. “A burlesque show? As long as cute women are center stage, I’m good.”

  After velvet curtains swept the stage at the end of Miss Va Va Voom’s first number sans all but brilliant purple pasties covering each of her succulent nipples and a few inches of glittery something or other atop a well-shaved coochie, The Purple Panty Revue commenced with Las Vegas-style pomp and pageantry. Indeed, Jay was more than good; she was mesmerized. She hadn’t been surrounded by that many half-naked women since she and some of her dogs had made it rain on the beautiful, wiggling, locking, dropping dancers in Strokers and Magic City.

  Of all the attractive women strolling the stage in one exciting burlesque act after another, in skimpy, shimmering costumes and shiny dancing shoes and huge feathery headdresses, none made her grit her teeth and sit ramrod straight like the one with the wide, walnut, wonderful ass that strolled sensually, with a downright provocative sway, similar to the one behind the curtains of the loft across her courtyard. Jay’s next breath suddenly lodged somewhere between her chest and throat.

  She elbowed Valentino sharply.

  “Miss Va Va is my neighbor!”

  Valentino smirked. “Stop trippin’, man. You might want her to be yo’ neighbor, but she isn’t. Besides, why you think that’s her? You can’t see the sistah’s face. Damn!” She laughed teasingly, cutting a glance in the direction of the butch on noise patrol. “You hallucinating?”

  “Not this time.” Undaunted, Jay planted her elbows on her knees and fixed her entire being on the thick sistah in shimmering purple panties, obviously the star, although every woman in the revue wore panties of a similar hue and style each time she graced the stage.

  At intermission, Jay had seen enough. She had to move, get up, and do something. Excusing herself, she found the restrooms and stood in line a good ten minutes before entering the crowded, artful space with its colorful sitting area décor and classy, comfortable furnishings. Handling her business, she washed her hands and pulled open the door to confront a pair of lips so kissable, so succulent, and so juicy, it had to be magic. The seat of her boxers moistened. Instantly. Dampened as abruptly as, “O shit!” escaped her lips. They weren’t simply pussy lips; no, they were the prettiest perfect pussy lips she’d ever beheld.

  What could she do but bow? Holding the door for the manifestation of her wet dreams, she watched the magnificent hips she knew by heart glide into the restroom. Other women gawked, though not long.

  Jay emptied the room effortlessly. Her entire body communicated clearly what was on her mind.

  Attraction in the star’s brown eyes assured Jay that whatever she wanted, surely, she could have. And Jay, consenting, quietly locked the door behind them. The verdict was unanimous: she and life were one.

  Jay reached out for the dancer’s hand and guided her to a commodious blue sofa, where she placed them on silent mode, mere words useless now. A gentlewoman, she maneuvered the elaborate costume so as not to damage it before sitting down.

  Leaning into the beautiful face, Jay discovered she couldn’t not start with those lips. They magnetized her. And she kissed them so delicately it took her breath. The stunning woman’s eyelashes fanned her cheekbones while her hands slipped into Jay’s locs, her fingertips inching deep, deeper, the heat they generated causing a jackhammer throb in Jay’s clit.

  Instinctively, Jay anchored her body by gripping the walnut-colored waist, her touch sending currents of desire through them both. The burlesque star’s smoldering stare met Jay’s half-lidded gaze and saw it all: the butch’s mouth twitch, her passion, her drought, her soul.

  Pretty pussy lips pouted. Murmured what could have been Jay’s name. The utterance released Jay enough to taste her. The neck. The bejeweled earlobes. Jay’s lips sucked lightly, not to leave hickies across the fragrant shoulders. Out of need, her hands followed her lips. Under such masterful kisses, the dancer’s tantalizing thighs shook, and then parted. Red Sea wide. Jay’s hands floated to them. They were toned. And sculpted. Undulating, the beauty draped one exquisite
thigh across Jay’s dark slacks, as her tongue sought Jay’s right ear and danced a fiery tango there, deadlocking Jay’s fingers. Momentarily suspended, they wagered whether to head north or south, every moment essential.

  Jay’s mouth, though, was more decisive. It slowly kissed around the dancer’s purple, pasty-covered nipples. Jay pinched them to see her wince, shudder. The beauty’s lids fluttered when Jay’s palms cradled her breasts before returning to her silky, naked legs. The woman tasted so deliriously divine. Juicy. Jay had to see, to sample her cunt now, contrary to her usual custom.

  She eased the dancer backward on the sofa, pillows at her back, and kissed a string of desire down her body. The burlesque beauty’s lips parted. A moan escaped the soft mouth. Her ass hunched forward, thighs agape. Again, her hands entered Jay’s locs, directing tender kisses to her inner thighs. Her satiny flesh smelled good, fruity. The dancer melted when Jay mined the fabric between her legs to devour the tangiest, the juiciest cunt she’d relished in a long, dry season. Her lover trembled. Shuddered. Clinched. And sighed.