by Solace Ames
Half of the bathroom was a glassed-in shower stall with metallic blue octagonal tiles, tiny and jewel-like, and there were some interesting shower attachments. I recognized several from porn sets. “What is this place? I’m curious.”
He turned on the shower and gave me the place of honor right underneath the stream, drawing my hair back so I could let the warm, soothing water massage over my forehead. I closed my eyes and sighed in pleasure.
“A studio. No one lives here anymore. Several pro doms use it for sessions. I made an arrangement to rent it for the day.”
“So it’s a cross between a love hotel and a dungeon. I love it!”
He slid hands slick with soap over my sides, back, stomach, and massaged the soap into a honey-scented foam that the water washed away, leaving me fresh and so very grateful. “I wanted privacy. I’m used to a kind of communal living and the road, but there are always limits. And I reached those with you.”
“Mmm. Well, you had a great solution. Marathon sex. Jesus. I’m surprised I can stand up.”
He laughed, and I laughed with him, leaning in to his soapy skin. He washed my hair, a ritual so intimate that it always confused me at salons, my nerves firing intensely sexual signals as deft fingers tipped me back and massaged sensations into my tingling scalp until I had to remind myself where I was, to keep my hands at my side, knees pressed together, face stonily composed. Except I was in a private guarded place with Emanuel, not a salon, no need to hide, and oh God I was getting turned on. Again. I couldn’t believe it.
He cupped my breasts, and I knew he knew.
I moaned and leaned back against him, letting him be my wall. He mapped my slick and restless body with those amazing hands, the guitar calluses tracing spiral trails, rubbing and exciting me without scraping. When he cupped my mound I felt a more powerful, internal heat entirely separate from the warm water pounding down on us. He held me there, rinsing me clean with the water that ran from his hand, tickling against the tenderness of my lips.
“You’re clean now.”
“Thanks. You don’t have to keep me that way, you know,” I reminded him playfully, wriggling against his hand.
“I know.” He bit gently at the top of my ear, nothing painful, as if reminding me in return. I was swept along by the sense that we’d known each other forever, and although everything between us was brand new, it had happened before and would happen again in a cycle of endless delight. “I’d like to taste you next.”
I imagined him kneeling between my legs, but something stuttered in my mind, like a video glitch, interrupting the flowing feeling.
He must have sensed me stiffening. “Cariño?” Not tentative—questioning.
I gathered my courage to answer, and tipped my head down so that my hair fell around my face like a shining black curtain. A private space within a private space. “I—I don’t think I want that. Not never, just not now. I wouldn’t hate it, I just wouldn’t get turned on and come. It’s hard to explain.”
“You don’t have to explain.”
“I want to. But it’s complicated.” Talking to a man about my labiaplasty would be sheer torture. And despite everything mystical that Emanuel meant to me, he was very much a man. “I do it in films, no problem, but I don’t want to do anything with you that I don’t really feel.”
“An intimacy we’ll save for the future, then.”
“You always know what to say. I like sucking cock, though. Especially yours.” I was all right saying that, because I knew he’d been with men. It wasn’t so strange that some men liked to give more than receive, was it? He wouldn’t think less of me.
“That day you offered yourself...” His breath trailed off into a low noise of pure hunger, bass vibrating below the higher music of water drops.
“Anytime.” I ground a circle against the hand that still cupped me, centered me. “I’m serious. Just take me aside, put me on—”
He moved before I finished, swung me around and down onto the tiled ledge below the showerhead. I twisted my toes in the swirling streamlets of water, let him tip my head back—that motion again, God I loved the eroticism of it—so that he could rub his half-hard cock against my wet cheek.
He tasted of fresh, sweet water. A hint of the honey-scented soap. And after the first few licks, the wonderful-terrible bitter, salty taste that made my stomach churn in twisted longing.
I took my time and worshipped him with my tongue like some pagan priestess, my devotions tracing every curve and vein. He stiffened slowly, inexorably, until the plump, flushed head of his cock pried my lips apart. Angel, he called me, and cariño again, and good girl and sweet girl and darling and enough names my heart felt full to bursting. I was so full of him, in every way.
His hands fell onto my head again. I had no idea how much I’d needed this ritual. He cleansed me, claimed me, took everything I had to give. The sense of belonging was mind-blowing. I didn’t care if I was his whore or his angel as long as I was here, at his feet.
Does he want both at the same time?
I can be both for you.
Panic hit. I couldn’t breathe. I was proud I’d swallowed him to the hilt, so fucking proud, but the water ran down my face, across my nostrils—
—the borders of my conscious mind went blurry. My senses sharpened. The whole world was water and sex and pounding rhythms and only just enough oxygen to remember how much I was cared for.
He tipped my head to shield me from the flowing water. I sucked in a ragged, delicious, silky breath of air and impaled my throat on his cock again.
When he came inside me—the third time, the fucking magic number—he was buried so deep I could barely taste him. But I knew what he’d done. I cupped my aching, throbbing cunt in my hands and gloried in it.
“Amy. Amy.”
“Sir?”
“I had to—to say your name. You. Are...” His hand tightened in my hair, then released, as if he was grasping for the word. “Your name is the word I was looking for. Do you understand? I had it all along.”
You had me all along.
I rested my head against his thigh and let the water wash my last doubts away.
I belonged.
Chapter Twelve
I drove Emanuel to his afternoon business appointment. He rocked the passenger seat to make room for his legs and stretched back, unfolding himself in the small space with a kind of hulking delicacy.
“You should take a nap on the way to Hollywood,” I suggested. “Make sure you’re rested.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’ll be fine.” He smiled at me, but I only looked out of the corner of my eye, because if I started looking I wouldn’t be able to stop, and traffic was picking up and I didn’t want to die, not after having just had the best sex in my life.
“I was thinking of getting my hair cut. Do you think I’ll have time before I need to pick you up?”
“Yes. We’ll be revising contracts until their office closes.”
“That’s usually the stuff a manager takes care of. Did you ever have one?”
“Never. Are you familiar with David Bowie?”
I nodded. Miles reminded me of him, a little bit. Maybe more Iggy Pop than Bowie.
“He was bankrupt by the end of the seventies. Managers stole all his money. When he resurrected his career, he made sure to never have a manager again. After a certain level, it makes more sense to hire lawyers and accountants and contractors to handle the business that needs to be handled. I noticed his example and the negative example of others.”
“So you do more boring paperwork, but you know where the money’s going. No creepy dudes siphoning it off.”
“Exactly.” He touched my hair, separating a lock and drawing it between his fingers.
I wondered how strong his need for control was.
“Less of your shining hair, more of your beautiful face? As long as you’re happy, then so will I be.”
“Thanks.” The heat rose in my cheeks. I kept my eyes on the road. “I was hoping you wouldn’t tell me not to cut it. Which is kind of funny, because I like when you tell me what to do.”
“Your body is your own. You give it to me new each time.”
“I’ve had a lot of guys spout BDSM philosophy at me. Did I just say spout? Or maybe spurt. Whatever. But I like your version of it.”
The seat shook from his laughter. He slapped the glove box, filled the car with roaring good humor, and I laughed along with him, all trace of my nervousness gone.
He laughs at my terrible jokes.
I make him happy.
God, I want this to last.
We talked about music the rest of the way. There was so much I wanted to share with him, but I wasn’t desperate anymore, and I adored hearing his half-buried secrets and tricks of the trade. The way he told stories reminded me of Xiomara and Fausto, on the rare occasions when Fausto talked. They all left artistic hints and gaps and touched on the most serious parts with a dramatic nonchalance, a verbal shrug. It must be a family or cultural thing.
I dropped him off in front of a tall office building downtown. We kissed goodbye, slow and light, our lips only resting against each other. He looked at me for a long while afterward, and I realized he must be memorizing the way my long, straight hair framed my face. I drew it back for him, tipped my head up, and we kissed again, deeper this time, my heartbeat speeding—
A car honked behind us.
One last shared smile and he was gone, a blur of white vanishing into a gray building.
I double-parked, called around for an appointment and managed to squeeze myself in at a mid-tier salon. I texted Chiho to see if she could meet me there, on the off chance she wasn’t in rehab or sleeping off a bender.
When I got to the place in West Hollywood, she was right there in the waiting room, perched on a sofa with her legs crossed, atomic-red five-inch platform heel bobbing sideways in the air, reading Import Tuner magazine.
“Amy, I missed you!” She wobbled toward me and we shoulder-patted fondly. “You’re smiling, smiling so much.”
“I’ve had a good day. It’s getting even better, seeing you. You’re looking good, chica.”
“I’m doing master cleanse.”
We sat down together, and I glanced at her midsection apprehensively. “Is that where you drink a bunch of lemon juice and have weird poop? It sounds kind of extreme.”
“It’s for removing the cocaine toxicity.”
“How about timing for shoots then? Or are you taking a break?”
We launched into the kind of technical conversation about anal hygiene that might have made the elderly receptionist faint if she’d eavesdropped. With her mother gone back to Japan, Chiho was working again and trying to kick cocaine without rehab, on a shoestring budget. And she was seeing someone. She flashed me a phone picture of a cute butch Asian with blue hair and a chin spike.
“Is she sober?” I asked. That was really the only thing I cared about.
Chiho nodded. “Yes. I don’t think she will want to stay with me for long, though.” She put it in that stoic way that reminded me of my grandparents. Nothing to be done, no need to pity, her voice said underneath the words.
“I wish you wouldn’t put yourself down like that, Chiho.”
“I’m being real. She thinks what I do is cool. I tell her, I don’t do nice fun queer porn, I do the stuff that makes money. She thinks she understands. She doesn’t.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Nobody from the outside understands. The best we can hope for is that they know they don’t understand.
She sighed and stared down at her nails. They were bitten to the quick. “Tell me more about the music house with the crazy cat and the white man who isn’t white and the high guy. I don’t want to talk all about my selfishness. I want to be a good friend and to be happy because you’re happy.”
“Sure thing.” I opened my mouth. Took a deep breath. Closed it again because I couldn’t decide where to begin.
“Tell,” Chiho ordered, her tone a little exasperated. “Tell!”
I started at what I thought was the middle, with Xiomara’s arrival. Then halfway through, I realized it wasn’t the middle at all, and fast-forwarded, confusing poor Chiho. I wasn’t that good at telling. I got some of it across, at least.
“He wanted you to marry his ex-boyfriend who is in love with his goddaughter—is that a Catholic word, I don’t understand—but now you and him are together?”
“I think so. You know I’m not much of a Catholic. And yes, we’re definitely together. He’s so good to me. He says such nice things to me.”
Chiho made an excited squeaking noise and covered her mouth. “You’re in love!”
“Maybe I am. I don’t think I ever was before. It’s fun.” My spanked ass might as well have been floating half an inch above the couch, I felt so weightless and carefree. “Should I be scared? Maybe I should be scared.”
“If he breaks your heart, I’ll kill him. He’d better be a good man. But yes, yes, yes. Have fun. He has money?”
“Sort of. Whether he can support me or not, I’m not going back to the business. I’m tired of smiling when I don’t feel like smiling.” I was about to launch into a rant about how ignorant and limited and racist and just plain boring industry people could be, but I remembered that Chiho didn’t really have an exit strategy, and quickly changed direction. “If I get hard up for cash, I’ll do camming and some kink stuff, but I’m giving up on the porn-star pot of gold at the end of the blowjob rainbow. Fuck that growing-your-personal-brand shit, because I’m not a fucking farmer. I have a feeling that Emanuel will support me, and I don’t care if it’s financially as long as it’s emotionally. You know, he’s cool with me cutting my hair?”
“There you go again.” Chiho tightened her face into a parody of googly-eyed love, pressing her fists to her cheeks. A second later, she melted into concern and touched me lightly on the knee. “You can get a wig or extensions, anyway. No problem. Should be more than have a feeling. Make sure, okay?”
“Yeah.” I nodded and swallowed down an unexpected acid surge of resentment at Chiho’s second-guessing.
I wouldn’t need long hair anymore. I just wouldn’t.
They called us in at the same time. Chiho got a trim and acrylic fingernails, I got a buzz cut and donated the thick mass that fell to the floor. My hair was black gold in certain markets, and although I doubted donations really made it into wigs for child cancer patients, I didn’t want to profit from it. I made sure that the hair I had left was too short for extensions, even though the stylist almost cried. He had more mercy for my hair than I did.
Wet, foamy fingers kneaded my scalp for the second time that day. The thrum of the electric razor crawled over my skull’s ticklish curves. I crossed my legs and thought, unavoidably, of Emanuel.
Did he love me?
I could ask. The direct approach worked well with him, last time.
Then I remembered how deep he’d cut me, the night we met, with just three little words: Before your time.
Nothing about our age difference bothered me. I didn’t even like younger men that much. They were too unpredictable.
The difference would mean much more to Emanuel.
Maybe he thought of us as a fling. A confidence-building relationship. He’d twirl me around a few times and put me down easy, leaving me better off than how I’d come to him.
The very thought
made me want to gnaw at myself like a trapped animal.
Fuck, no. Even if he thought of me that way, well, I could twirl him around. Drive him crazy, make him need me.
Not that I had the slightest idea how. I wasn’t exactly Mata Hari.
When I picked him up downtown, after we kissed and he’d run his hands appreciatively over the spiky stubble of my hair, setting every nerve on fire, I opened my mouth to ask, Do you love me? Because I love you.
I came so close.
But I stayed quiet.
“You’re beautiful,” he told me. “There is nothing about you that isn’t beautiful.”
I told myself it was enough.
* * *
Waist-high waves rolled smoothly toward us. Perfect beginner surfing. Today was my first time swimming since the big chop, and I loved the experience so far: no hairbands clawing my hair painfully tight, no buns or caps dashed off my head by a violent wave.
“I’m so glad I got the haircut,” I shouted to Xiomara, who was bobbing beside me on a borrowed longboard. “It’s like I’m in deeper communication with the ocean now. God, that sounds so California.”
She sang a few bars from a cheesy West Coast anthem. I laughed and paddled into the oncoming wave on my own girl-sized funboard. The wave crashed behind me as a flock of seagulls wheeled above, nature swirling in furious motion, whipping my spirits high as sea foam.
Soon Xiomara caught up with me, and we bobbed peacefully on the smooth swells, waiting for a break.
“I’ve never had long hair,” she said. “I think I’ll wait until I’m an old lady and I have more patience.”
“My hair grows hella fast. Keeping it short, now that’s going to be the commitment. Are you coming to the opening party tonight?”
A Hollywood Boulevard nightclub had changed its name to Eispalast and was relaunching with a new theme. The owner wanted Avert to show up, even if they weren’t going to play.
“I don’t know.” She rested her head against her folded arms like a mermaid on the rocks, the indigo of her hair clashing strangely with the ocean’s greener blue. “I don’t need to. It might confuse people. Juan Carlos is coming back next week, anyway.”