by Rachel Heath
“Wait, “ I said suddenly. “Your parents will hear it.”
“No, they won’t.” Karen turned her radio on, flipped to a hard rock station, and turned the volume up loud. Then she went to the bedroom door and locked it.
Again I thought I don’t have to let him do this. I don’t have to.
“Give it to me,” she said.
I handed the brush to her.
Karen put her arm around me and led me to the bed. Then in one swift, surprisingly powerful motion--I hadn’t realized how strong she was--she turned me across her knee.
“Lift your skirt up,” she commanded.
I realized that Karen wanted me to again acknowledge my cooperation. I brought my long yellow skirt up over my waist. Then she pulled my panties down and a surprisingly delightful shock sped through me when I felt my bottom bared.
Karen brought the hairbrush down, hard, making a loud sharp crack that I could hear clearly despite the blaring music. “Ow!” I cried out automatically and then shut up, waiting for the next blow.
A few seconds went by. I guess she wanted me to savor the pain for awhile. The next swats were swift as well as hard, one after another. Crack! Crack! Crack! The wood seemed to sing as it hit my poor, naked skin. I flinched and wriggled helplessly. But I did not try to pull away. I did not try to make it stop. I merely squeezed at the pillow and felt my clitoris get harder the more my bottom stung.
Finally my angry, disappointed tutor was finished. She let the brush drop. Then she surprised me again in a wonderful and mellow way by kissing my burning buttocks. Her kisses were gentle and slow and wet.
“You liked it?” she insisted
“Yes,” I admitted softly. Then I started masturbating with my hands. Karen pulled me on top of her so I masturbated against her leg just like on my hand. As I was about to climax she slapped my already sore buttocks as hard as she had before, so when I came the stinging pain blended into pure hot pleasure. I don’t know how long my orgasm lasted but it seemed to go on and on just like the spanking.
Then Karen told me to thank her for the spanking and I did. I thanked her and she kissed me on the mouth and we played with each other’s breasts until Karen guided my head down between her legs.
“Lick me,” she said, playing fondly with the dull brown hair I always hated. “Eat me like I’m your dessert. You’re a good little girl. You’re my special girl.”
I licked and sucked and thrust my tongue in and out and all around the fleshy petals of her twat, tasting the salty, fishy sugar of her juices until she came, a violent shaking cum.
“Boys are nice,” she said. “But every smart girl knows she can have a lot of fun with her girlfriend. You want to be my girlfriend?”
“Instead of your student?”
“As well as my student,” she said with a sly smile. “I’m not going to let you get away with being lazy on future tests, you know.”
“Yeah,” I replied. To my beautiful girlfriend. To my strict tutor.
Chapter Nine
What They Do
“Say you’re Italian.”
I don’t know how old I was when Mom first told me that but it must have been early. She would say it as a reminder whenever I started a new school or went to a new church though she didn’t really need to. I knew you have to fib sometimes if you want other people to like you and I never used to be one of the kids who got picked on.
Although I wasn’t good at school, at least the book part of school, I loved hopscotch and tether ball and dodge ball, later softball (I made several home runs in high school). I never had a real problem getting along -- I always knew when someone was starting to get weird.
By high school it was important to make myself look pretty and that led to a lot of fights with Mom who didn’t like me to wear the type of make-up that was popular in those days.
“You want to make yourself look like a ghost?” she would ask. “Do women have white lips? What’s pretty about that?”
“Oh, Mom,” I said. I’d wave a hand at her. I didn’t expect to make her understand.
The thing we really fought about was skirts. “It’s dirty to expose your knees,” she would say. “Dirty. Do you want to be marime?”*
“It’s not dirty,” I’d answer. “Everybody does it.”
“The gaje do it. We don’t.”
“I don’t want to be weird,” I said.
“Do you want to be dirty instead?” She would shake her head and her eyebrows would pinch together in an ugly way.
I didn’t want to be dirty but I didn’t want to be weird either so a lot of things were a struggle for me. I could never eat at a gaje’s house either so I became good at making excuses. Then there was the time I was visiting a friend -- most of my friends were gaje -- and her cat came over to me. I froze and my stomach knotted up. The look of distaste must have been evident in my face because Eve asked, “What’s wrong?” and I replied “nothing” but I said I had to go to the bathroom so I could get away from the cat because cats are such polluting animals with the way they lick themselves, bringing dirt from their outsides into their inside.
In my senior year at Lincoln High -- it was the only year I went to that school -- I was only friends with one other Rom girl (besides my cousins whom I lived with). There were other Rom kids at the school but I stayed away from them (except at Rom gatherings) because all the gaje knew what they were and made fun of them, calling them “dirty gypsies,” and pretending they were afraid the Rom kids were going to steal their stuff. Worst of all, guys would come up singing “She Was A Gypsy Woman,” to the girls they knew were Rom and ask “Is it true all Gypsy girls are whores?” when we’re not even allowed to date like the rest of them and we’re supposed to keep our knees covered. I can’t believe how the gaje reverse things, seeing Rom as the immoral ones when they live their whole lives in pollution.
Mary/Yvonne was my best friend. Mary was her name around gaje and Yvonne was her Rom one, just like Dana is my name for gaje and Sofie is for just Rom. At school, even in the girls’ restroom with no one else present, we always called each other by our American names. We weren’t real good about going to class because we weren’t planning to go on to college and our parents thought even high school could be corrupting. But when we cut class, we didn’t go home because our Moms and Grandmothers would put us to work around the house (although they wouldn’t get mad that were weren’t in school).
Yvonne and I would drive around, usually in Yvonne’s Grandmother’s old yellow Cutlass, to nowhere in particular, just talking. It was on one of these times when we were cutting our last class of the day and riding around that Yvonne told me that she knew what gaje do on dates. “Lori told me about it,” she said in Romany.
Lori and her were like best friends but not completely because Lori was gaje. “Lori told me everything a boy did with her,” Yvonne claimed. I looked over at her: even though it was her car, I was driving. She let me sometimes and I always wanted to.
My heart tripped. I felt my mouth go dry, then water just as suddenly. I was excited but also scared because it might make me marime even to know. But I wanted to know.
“She... told... you... “ Words ran out but from the look in my eyes Yvonne must have known I wanted her to continue. My hands on the steering wheel got clammy.
Her voice went down. “Find a place to park and I’ll show you, Sofie,” she promised. In our cars and homes, when were certain no gaje would hear, we called each other by our Rom names.
My heart was beating excitedly as I drove. “Where?” I asked.
“That lot that’s down the block from your cousin’s auto repair shop.” But I’d already thought of it before Yvonne said it and that’s where we were headed.
I stopped the car and parked. I was afraid to look at Yvonne but I had to.
“First, the boy just takes your hand, like this, Sofie,” she said, taking my hand like that. I felt a warm glow begin. “And for awhile, that’s all they do, just hold hands.”
“Then he starts just... moving a little bit, up and down, like this... “ Her palm went lightly up and down the inside of my arm.
“Oh,” I said, scared, but with a fear that wasn’t all bad but like watching a scary movie.
“Then he’ll kiss you,” Yvonne said. Yvonne put her hand on the back of my neck -- my heart tripped again -- and she waited to see if I would stop her.
I did not.
Yvonne kissed me on the mouth, close-mouthed and not for too long.
I giggled nervously when she pulled away. My face must have been red.
Yvonne giggled too. Then she said, “Now what usually happens is the girl tells the boy to stop.”
“Stop,” I whispered automatically.
We both giggled again.
“And he does, for awhile, they just sit there and he goes back to this” -- Yvonne held my hand -- “and this” -- she slid her fingers up and down the inside of my arm, half-tickling.
A pause followed. We were still holding hands. Yvonne was intermittently caressing my arm.
I looked at the windshield, blinking and swallowing hard.
She kissed me, very lightly, just on the side of the face. “Then he starts again,” Yvonne said. Her tongue licked lightly against my ear. Hot chills raced up and down my spine. She paused again. She put her hand on the back of my neck. My face turned toward hers and we kissed on the mouth again -- open-mouthed this time, her tongue thrust inside my mouth. A warm pulse beat between my thighs, in my woman’s parts. I squeezed against her arm and my right leg lifted up automatically.
Yvonne pulled away from me. I saw I had smeared her pink lipstick and knew she had pinked my white. “Then they usually say something like ‘I love you, Sofie,’“ she went on.
“I love you,” I said, very softly, hardly audible, not quite knowing the words were coming out of my mouth.
Her hand brushed lightly against my breast.
“Oh,” I gasped.
She waited. Then her hand cupped my breast, through the blouse and bra, not directly, and, looking through the car windows at the sky just beginning to get dusky -- it was November and getting dark early -- I felt sweat burst hotly from my armpits. My nipples burned and stung with a furious arousal. I started to grind my hips around.
“‘I love you,’ he would say, and ‘baby, baby,’ and ‘oh, Sofie, I love you,’“ Yvonne murmured. “And then he’d put his hand under here like this.” Her hand went to my leg, up my skirt.
“That’s polluted,” I said, suddenly and genuinely terrified, “Stop!”
“Yeah, but that’s what the gaje guy does on a date, he puts his hand up there to your... parts,” Yvonne explained. Her hand rested on my skirt. “People can find out when a boy does that,” she said, musing slowly, “The girl can get pregnant. But if I... no one has to know except us.”
No one has to know except us. I would clean the parts extra special. Yvonne would clean her hands. No one else would know and make us marime.
I didn’t say anything. Yvonne’s hand went tentatively to my knee. I looked out the window -- our parents might be mad if we came in late, they might even think we’d been with boys! -- and I closed my eyes. “Yes,” I breathed softly.
She heard. Her hand went slowly up between my legs. I felt a curious pinched even painful tension in my woman’s parts and my hips started to move as her fingers touched the most forbidden place and I let out a little cry of frightened joy as my breathing sped up and a wondrous shiver of purest pleasure shook my from the scalp of my head down to the bottoms of my feet.
A single tear ran down my cheek afterward. I brushed it away. I drove myself home.
When Yvonne took the wheel, I thought: oh no it is marime.
It wasn’t long after that, at a big Rom get-together, that I found out what lesbians do. Maria Yonko knew. She was a real smart girl, especially in the ways of the gaje. None of the gaje knew her true ethnicity: since her name was Maria, she always told them she was Mexican.
All us girls were together in the den, away from the adults and the boys, when Tina told us “they -- the lesbians -- do it with their fingers. Put their hands into the woman’s polluted place.”
A collective gasp went around the room. I gasped with everyone else but looked down at the floor. My face went dreadfully hot. Yvonne was sitting on the floor right next to me.
“Terrible,” Yvonne murmured.
My heart skipped a beat. No one needs to know. I would never be marime, I told myself.
“Lesbians,” Yvonne said slowly, in a voice filled with horror. “Those awful women,” she added as she squeezed my hand.
I squeezed back.
Chapter Ten
Overwhelmed
When I first saw Shelly’s boobs, I actually gasped -- then I got hot-faced from shame. I turn heads myself (I was called Dolly Parton in high school) but I’d never seen tits like hers outside of magazines.
Shelly stood behind the counter of the WhereMI?, the campus sandwich shop. She must have been used to reactions like mine because she appeared nonchalant, just smiled (I noticed a discreet beige retainer across her teeth) and asked me again for my order. Trying desperately to erase the shock and humiliation from my face, which must have been red as a brick, I gave her my order. As she took my cash and made change, I noted the name, “Shelly Garcia” on the little tag above her massive chest. Poor Shelly had to put her arms out to one side instead of to her front in order to take money and reach the cash register because of those watermelons.
Me and Delores went to a table. We look like girlfriends but we’re not. Though both of us are gay, the chemistry of sex never quite took so we went back to being friends after we flubbed a romance in our sophomore year. I often wish we roomed together but Delores isn’t in a dorm; she commutes from an apartment she shares with her girlfriend Ginger.
Delores and I smiled at each other without saying anything but then you can hardly hear yourself think in WhereMI? when it’s crowded. Delores’s little hazel eyes glittered with mirth; she was smirking and, like me, actually blushing. The latter looks especially funny on a butch like Delores: cherry-cola colored flat-top, shaved up one side, no make-up (though her dark brown eyebrows are tweezed to microscopic little arcs), a bright yellow t-shirt and baggy jeans over high-heeled sneakers. Delores likes fake tattoos and, at that time, she had a fearsome looking snake riding up one cheek and a heart with an arrow through it on a forearm.
Delores lightly rapped my hand and teased: “Didn’t Mommy tell you it’s impolite to stare, Dolly Parton?”
I smiled sadly. But I couldn’t stop staring. I felt sorry for Shelly; I hate the sexist remarks and I knew she had to get zillions of them. Plus I noticed other people were staring at her. Guys had to hit on her constantly, especially jock/frat types.
Then I had a crazy thought: maybe she ought to have one of the trays permanently attached under her boobs to make her comfortable.
Shelly was short, about five feet tall, and quite pretty in other respects: long, silky black hair, butterscotch complexion, and a pug nose. Her lips were too thin. She wore pink eye shadow and mascara over thick-lidded brown eyes. Her fingernails were moderately long and painted a dirty dark blue. She carried herself remarkably well, especially considering (my mother used to nag me all the time not to slouch; I now remind myself often).
But for all those thoughts, I was getting turned on too. What would it be like to be overwhelmed by another woman’s breasts, I wondered?
***
Luckily, I soon found myself sitting with Shelly when she came in the lobby of Oates Dorm to watch All My Children. I introduced myself and we both asked each other the standard get-to-know-you-at-college questions. She had a very sweet, high-pitched voice that made her sound kind of baby like. She told me her major (Computer Science), minor (Accounting), that she roomed at Oates dorm (with a roomie), and that she
had just transferred from a JC. I thought we’d probably have a few classes in common sometime or other (though we didn’t that semester) since I myself am majoring in Accounting (my minor is just for fun: Psych.).
Knowing how irritated I get when guys stare at my tits, I made a conscious effort to look at her face even while I was fantasizing about what it would be like to free her from her brassiere. She was wearing dead white eye shadow this time, blush and powder, but again no lipstick. I wondered if the reason she didn’t wear lipstick was because she was self-conscious her lips were thin or because she didn’t want to draw attention to the beige retainer on her teeth that I noticed for the first time. But then, I thought, Shelly must be pretty used to attention!
Despite myself, I had to at least glance downward at her yellow T-shirt: every time Shelly took a breath: it seemed like her breasts were battling to get out of the bra and take over the room. Her jeans were very tight, powder blue, and faded to cotton white at the knees. She wore thongs on her feet and sat with a leg crossed against the other at the knee; every now and then she bounced her foot’s heel away from the thong.
“My Dad’s a computer programmer. He was really happy with my major,” Shelly said.
“Yeah. It’s practical like Accounting,” I said, aware of my pussy getting moist.
“First thing with me he’s been happy about with me, Rhiannon,” she added, making a sour face and turning her tiny lips down.
“You don’t get along with him?”
“Not at all,” she said, shaking her head.
“I get along with my Mom and Dad OK,” I told her. “But I have a lot of fights with my step-dad. My parents broke up a long time ago and me and my brother went with my Mom and... it’s just little things--my step-dad is always so mad if I smoke at home, even though he’s a smoker and... he’s just always pissed about some little something.”
“My parents were never married,” Shelly said.
“Oh. Did your Dad ever live with you? While you were growing up?”
“Mom and Dad never lived together--as far back as I can remember--but a lot of summers I spent with my Dad and he took me for weekends and shit so it’s not I’m not like a real... ‘fatherless’.... whatever.” Shelly sighed and shrugged, causing the watermelons to wave. “I know it’s weird, Rhiannon, but my Dad was almost upset with me because I didn’t go out with boys. Isn’t that a switch?” She was facing the TV while giving me a sidelong look with those sleepy brown eyes.