Sex Still Spoken Here: An Anthology

by Carol Queen

  She makes her way back to her seat like the aisle is a runway, like she’s coming in for a landing. Each step deliberately placed. Legs precisely angled and separated and her gait is sharp, strong. Her red dress swings from her hips, past her thighs, to her knees. A few bracelets jangle from one arm, simple and slim. She’s pulled her hair up high on her head, into some sort of ponytail, then twisted around itself in a beautiful knot.

  I watch her as she closes the distance to her own seat. I don’t drool. I am not drooling. I try not to drool at the sight of her ankles, her calves, the hints of the backs of her knees as her dress swings. I wipe my mouth. Her ankles cross just slightly, which makes her hips curl and switch like a figure eight. Like a come-hither finger.

  I swallow. Breathe in. And quickly open my book, flustered, and turn it to the page I was reading as she slides onto the train seat and I snap out of my spell.

  Of course—of course—I am too zealous and the book slides out of my hand, skittering out into the aisle. I take a sharp breath in and some spit goes down the wrong way, I start to choke, cough, loudly, as I jump up to retrieve the book.

  Oh good lord. I get ahold of myself. Straighten up, book in hand. Clear my throat. I don’t look at her. I can’t see her. I am sure I am five shades of crimson and I steal a glance her direction, she’s covering her mouth, that perfect smirky smile, eyes dancing, looking away from me. Obviously she saw everything.

  Fuck.

  I resettle. Book in lap, adequate breath in lungs. I sneer to myself. Re-open the erotica. Do you have to be so obvious? I yell at myself in my head. You dumbass. Real smooth, Sexsmith.

  She’s going through her open case next to her, I can see her arms moving but can’t see what she’s doing. Then suddenly she’s up, out of the seat and back in the aisle, pads down toward me as if she forgot something.

  I catch a whiff of her perfume as she walks by. Dizzying, intoxicating. The swish of her skirt. I watch her little toe-heel trot down the aisle. My body acts without my mind and I reach for her. My hand on her hip. Lightly at first, but then she doesn’t pull away and I grab her harder. Both hands and I stand, pull her toward me, her back to me, and she is still. I can’t see her face but I can feel her breath through my hands, she’s holding it. Surprised. Waiting.

  I lift her skirt in the back to reveal her perfect ass. A work of art. A combination of genetics and squats and hundreds of hours at the gym. She knows it. She’s bare under her red dress, no panties, no stockings. Perhaps that’s what she forgot. I can’t resist, I palm the apple of her ass, caress the flesh, spreading her cheeks and opening her slit.

  She lets out her breath, finally, and it comes with a breathy moan, just a little.

  And I’m gone. The slightest noise from her lips and all I can feel is what it’ll be like to be inside her, to feel her body curl around my arm and buck and thrash and grasp as she comes. I’ve got to feel it. Got to make her.

  I press against her back. Her neck is bare, hair up, and my mouth is just at the corner of her jaw, below her ear. I reach around her and pin her arms to her sides, pressing her back to lean against me, and she arches, thrusts her hips up, feels the cock behind my fly. She lets her head lean back against me, lets me take her weight.

  “Bend over.” Right next to her ear. Barely audible.

  I release her from her hold. She turns her head just a bit and her face is quizzical, open, lustful, a tad resistant. I run my hand up under her dress firmly, continue to drag it up her back, then press, hard, on her shoulder blades, bending her over the train seat in front of her.

  “I said bend over.”

  Faster now. Unbuckle and unzip. The dress pushed up to her waist, one hand on her lower back to keep her hips tipped up to me. Her asshole is dark pink, a burst between her cheeks, perfectly smooth, and her ass is perfectly round, my thighs are already quivering and hips pulsing, so ready to fuck.

  I grab one of the condoms I always keep tucked into the inner pocket of my bag. Roll it on. Spit into my palm, and again, lube up my cock. Spit again at my two fingers and shove them at her hole.

  I hear her gasp—“ah”—just once—and she glances back over her shoulder, eyes heavy-lidded and dark. I push on her upper back again.

  “Head down.”

  Her body shudders at my voice and gives in. A ripple of submission through her backbone and I feel to my toes the way it makes every hair on my body stand up, clench, awaken.

  Cockhead at her asshole, I enter her easily, so smooth. So tight. The resistance of her ass is just more friction and tension between us and I want to tear into her. Split her apart. Harder now. Faster and she’s taking it so well, “so good baby,” I whisper to myself, fuck it’s so good. She keeps her legs strong and pushes back against me. It’s not enough lube and I remember the bottle in my pocket and laugh to myself. What kind of pervert am I to carry lube on the train?

  I pull out and squirt it right on my dick, smear it, and ease back into her.

  Oh yeah, give me that ass. Give it to me.

  The girl in the red dress has her arms braced against the seats, bracelets jangling. We hit a rhythmic sliding stride and she brings her forearm down in front of her, leans forward, brings her other hand between her legs. Immediately I feel her knees weaken and press together, back arch and spine curl and oh it’s beautiful. I bring my hand up her spine to her shoulder blades, then her neck, take a handful of hair and keep her steady. She pulls against me, not to get away, but to heighten sensation. Struggling has such varying degrees. She doesn’t want out, she wants more.

  I take grips on her hip and hair. Slam against her hard, pull out slow. Slick where my cock is fat inside her, swelling and eager. Resistance and tension. She tips even further forward onto the seat until she’s held up by it, lifted at the waist, hand furious between her legs, thighs pressed so hard together, on her tiptoes straining up and tipping forward more, further, until she lets one foot come up off the fl and bend at the knee, toes curling.

  She is starting to let go, really let go, become undone at the seams, and she can’t keep the tension in her muscles so she stops resisting my hand in her hair, my palm against the flesh of her ass, holding her cheeks apart, fingers gripping her hipbone. But I don’t let go, I just hold her stronger, tighter, take her a little deeper as she opens, opens deeper, opens hard, and every hinge in her body loosens, I feel it from inside pulse and ripple and again, and again, until she is gasping, chest heaving, crying out, gasping for air. And I ease up, slide in slow, press hard and sweet against her as orgasm fades, shudders, and her body rebuilds itself anew.

  I pull out and let her rest. We are quiet a moment. I release my hand from her mess of hair and caress her neck gently, let my hand drape across her hips and thighs, even find her hand, wet and warm from her own liquid, touch her fingertips gently.

  Her breathing calms. She sighs, once. Reaches up to brush her hair from her face and I stand, tuck my cock, zip up, run my fingers through my perfectly messy hair to assess the damage.

  She stays where she is, leaning for support over the bench seat. I pull the skirt of her dress down over her hips with a shit-eating grin on my face and smack her ass once, a little harder than I meant to, but playful, and she gasps and tenses, then stands. Her makeup is smeared. Her face is still open and sweet from the release but it changes as she watches me. I gather my book and pocket bottle of lube and put them back in my bag, pick up my jacket and slide my arms into the sleeves.

  She’s still watching. Eyes wide. Breathing.

  “We’re here,” I say. The train is slowing and I can just make out the tunnels of Penn Station as we arrive in New York City. She blinks. Opens her mouth to say something.

  I grin. Lord, she’s cute. I kiss her cheek as I slip by her and remove her heavy suitcases from the overhead racks. I notice strappy black high heel shoes at her seat and my mouth waters.

  Heaving the last of the bags down, I turn to her again. She’s still by my seat, now empty, one finger in her mou
th, looking a little shy. I smile and nod, once, a goodbye-take-care-have-a-nice-night gesture, and turn to the door as the train comes to a full stop.

  “Um!” she calls after me. I look back. “Thank you?”

  I give her a long glance from her ankles up to her legs to her hips and belly and breasts, the disheveled red dress, hair tumbling from its neat design on her head. She’s stunning, really. Delicious.

  “Don’t mention it,” I say, and step off the train.

  [go to top]

  “The call to write is a call that’s received in the body first. For hundreds of years poets and writers have described the creative process as a physical urgency, a sense that things will fly apart if they don’t get the pencil to the page in time. Creativity is not tidy or polite—it’s insistent. It calls us to feel, not dimly, not safely, but wildly, passionately, in every cell and fiber. If we are to answer that call, we have to be able to feel every part of our lives.”

  - John Lee

  from Writing From the Body

  Charles Lyons

  Bio

  Charles Lyons is a filmmaker and writer who lives in San Francisco. This was the first story he wrote for the Erotic Reading Circle.

  Mini-Interview

  How did you start writing about sex? I’ve been interested in stories relating to sex for about as long as I’ve been interested in sex, but I started writing erotica in an attempt to short- circuit the perfectionist part of my brain. I guess I was thinking I might be less attached to the outcome, but I’m not sure it worked. Good stories about sex are just as hard to write as good stories about anything else, maybe harder in some cases.

  How is the Erotic Reading Circle part of your writing process? I find it helpful to have a group to read for, to push myself to get things done on a regular basis. And even when I have nothing ready to read I almost always leave more inspired than when I arrived—I’m consistently impressed not only by the quality of the writing there but the variety of subjects, styles, and approaches. A safe, receptive environment is important with any new writing, and that’s never more true than when sexuality is involved. Some of the most inspiring stories I’ve heard have been the most raw, naked, and personal.

  What’s the inside scoop on your story? I was careful not to explicitly name the location of my story, but astute readers can probably guess it pretty easily. It wasn’t based on an actual experience, just assembled from a “what-if” and lots of small fragments, like a lot of stories probably are.

  Heart-Shaped Box

  Charles Lyons

  It was the first thing he noticed after climbing out of the car. Before the dust or the heat or the Flintstone mobile trundling by had even registered, he saw her come around the back of the cargo truck, arms full of camping gear.

  She wasn’t wearing pants.

  Not just a bathing suit or panties or even a thong, nothing. Her ass beneath her t-shirt as bare as the day she was born, legs dusted with a pale sheen of talc, fluffy tuft of pink—yes, pink!—in the front.

  He forced himself not to stare as she dumped her armload on the lift gate of the truck, clapped her hands a couple times, and came over to him, one hand extended in greeting.

  “You must be Nate,” she said. “Sarah’s little brother. Sorry, not little. Younger.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “So you’re a virgin, huh?”

  His sister had been referring to him this way for weeks, so he knew she just meant this was his first time here. But he was sure that he blushed.

  She had almond eyes and a dark bob with magenta streaks in her bangs. As he fumbled through a reply, he managed to avoid checking to see if the carpet matched the accents in the drapes. But he was sure it did. She introduced herself as Treasure and he spent several minutes trying to guess which Eastern European country she was from before he realized it was an English word.

  His sister and her shaggy boyfriend came around the car to hug Treasure and started discussing the camp layout, pointing to the little red boundary flags that dotted the edge of the street, the pile of tarps marking the far corner of their territory, the distant, barren mountains beyond which the sun would rise and set.

  It was only then that he noticed the pirate flag over the neighboring camp, the immaculate blue sky, the couplet of cupcakes cruising past camp in the clear afternoon light, folds of frosting hiding the heads of their drivers.

  He had arrived. He would have stories to tell back in Ohio, oh yes. They thought he was a weirdo for coming out here, but they had no idea.

  Nate followed Treasure around all afternoon, helping to unload the truck, offering to lift heavy things whenever possible, stealing glances when he was sure no one was looking. When she pulled off some work gloves he managed to get a good look at her left hand, which was ringless—but maybe she’d taken it off for safekeeping. She had Mediterranean skin, a mild tan everywhere he could see, no bikini lines except for a pale stripe on her neck, and her round, firm ass cheeks taunted him all day long.

  He unloaded and set up his tent, then repositioned it when she suggested a better location. He put his cooler in one corner and his duffel bag in the other, then pumped up his air mattress only to realize he should have put it inside the tent first.

  Godzilla walked past and waved hello before moving on down the street.

  He and Sarah’s boyfriend Justin unloaded a couch from the truck, then Nate helped raise the shade structure, tighten the ratchets, and string blacklights, meeting his other campmates-to-be along the way.

  There was Wild Bill Yonder, a tall man in a cowboy hat who showed him how to tie a trucker’s hitch. DJ Trainwreck, who had brought a surprisingly large pile of expensive-looking audio equipment to a very dirty place. Everest, a brassy girl in a tutu who flirted with everyone and called him Sparky. Doctor Awesome, who came striding up out of the dust in a waistcoat and a pith helmet, crooked grin on his face, and knew where everything went and in what order. Princess Tumbleweed and Mayday and Dirty Vargas and Captain Trips and Lulu and Steve, and all of them very friendly and most of them somewhat odd and he had a hard time imagining them in normal clothes sitting behind a desk or talking on the phone or watching television.

  Around them their neighbors’ camps sprang up: a field of crucified Barbies, a jungle gym that became a big silver dome, a giant ketchup bottle at the intersection. At one point a topless woman with magnificent anti-gravity breasts walked by and smiled at him and he remembered to wave just in time.

  And everywhere always the distinctive dry powdery smell of alkali flats.

  Late in the afternoon he went back to his tent to get some more sunscreen and came around the corner of the truck to see Treasure standing close to Doctor Awesome, one leg rising to entwine with his as she curled up into him to kiss him, his hand on the back of her neck, and Nate felt a sick twist of envy shoot through his gut.

  The air was hard and hot, his mouth was dry, and even the steamboat churning up the 4:30 spoke no longer felt magical.

  ***

  “I was shirt-cunting today,” she said.

  Doctor Awesome hung a headlamp on a hook by the side door of their van. “I noticed. What was that about?”

  “I don’t know, I guess I wanted to be naked but I didn’t want to burn my shoulders.”

  “Or put sunscreen on.”

  “Ahhh, that takes too long.” Treasure walked on her knees across the bed that filled the back of the van. “Did you see Nate? Sarah’s little brother? His eyes were like saucers when he saw me. I thought they were going to fall out of his head.”

  Doc chuckled. “I bet he doesn’t see much shirt-cunting in Ohio.” “I don’t know if he’s ever seen pussy before. He’s such a sweet innocent kid.” She sighed, then tugged to adjust one of the wine-colored curtains that surrounded the bed on three sides.

  The Doctor glanced over from where he was organizing the contents of his utility belt. “You seem nervous. Is something on your mind?”

  “No. Maybe …”
she added in a guilty little-girl voice, eyes averted. He watched her, recognizing the beginning of the Game.

  “Are you being a naughty girl again?”

  “No,” she said, this time playing her part to the hilt.

  He gripped her by the back of the neck and stretched her length along the bed, face down. She was wearing fur-trimmed shorts now, but he yanked them down, revealing the smooth globes of her ass. She gasped and he gave one cheek a firm smack with his hand.

  “Now I know you are, you little tramp. What are you thinking about?” he asked as he squeezed and stroked the injured cheek.

  “I was just thinking … about him being here for his first time, and …”

  “Yes?”

  “Out exploring the playa, all innocent and inexperienced, and what it would be like if some woman …”

  His hand stopped circling, hovered. “What woman?”

  “Some woman who was not so innocent or inexperienced were to seduce him, and take him back to her tent and have her way with him, and give him something to really remember …”

  He smiled, though she couldn’t see his face. “Would you like to be that woman?”

  She was quiet for a moment. She could feel his cock pressing against her upper thigh.

  “Maybe,” she said in a very small voice.

  He slapped her ass hard and she jumped under him. “Yes, sir,” she said with a gasp.

  “Yes, sir, what?” Stroking again.

  “Yes, sir, I’d like to be that woman,” she admitted, and turned to look up him through her lashes.

  “And do what?”

  His tone was steady, probing. She watched his face as she went on. “If I ran into him on an art car, or out dancing, I’d come up to him and start flirting with him, maybe stroke his arm or his shoulder, tease him a little, dance really close to him …”