Annie’s so magically distracting that I almost cut the wrong species of knuckle. But not a moment too soon, I finish my chopping and return the meat to the broth. Impishly, I wonder if Grandpa Nonnie ever felt distracted by Grandma Nonnie when they made meat here in the shop in their younger days. Did he ever drop his work to cop a feel? It’s a little hard to imagine, what with their conservative Lutheran mores, but then they were married for over sixty years and Grandpa never lost that twinkle in his eyes for his wife.
We’re generations apart, Grandpa Nonnie and me, and that distance made it hard for me to become a butcher. I had to convince him that a woman could do the job. Especially a woman like me—stout and butch, and pigheaded as any man.
Well, stout and pigheaded, anyway. See, with Grandpa’s generation, it does no good to mention the butch part.
But butchering: Why, butchering was men’s work. Grandma was only a helpmate until enough male offspring could pull their weight in the business. And my working for Grandpa Nonnie only happened because I nagged him into it after my last brother left for college. Eventually, I got the store, but only by default: no man in the family ever stepped forward to take over; Grandpa finally became too frail to keep going; time ran its course.
Annie turns the burners down a notch, ready to add the dry mixture to the broth. I lift the bowl over the pot while she pushes the contents in. It’s close work and I can smell her hair from here. Its florals mingle with the dry scent of peppered cornmeal and the rising steam of meat, merging into an enticing aroma of promise. It’s as if her body promises one thing while the meat mixture promises another. I become hungry for both.
But I must curb my appetites for a few minutes more. We must watch over this newly-mixed brew like shepherds tending their flock.
This is the delicate stage of making meat.
We stir, turning the heat lower and lower still, striving for the right temperature. We’ll know it when we reach it: the mixture will slow cook on its own without scorching.
When it reaches the correct low heat, we cover the pots. I reach for Annie and take her in my arms. We have twenty minutes.
I kiss Annie roughly, hurriedly. I want to get to the good stuff quickly, but I move slowly enough to appreciate how her slender tongue flickers against the flat of my broad beast of a tongue. I pull her shirt up as I kiss her, stuffing it under her armpits to free her breasts. Her breath catches in her mouth as the air hits them, she moans when my hands cup them and caress them. All the while, we kiss.
God, her tits are wonderful. They fit perfectly in my hands, their flesh just soft enough to give under my fingers, each nipple so hard that I’m tormented with deciding whether to keep kissing Annie’s mouth or move to those rosy tips.
The nipples win out and I’m greedy when I latch on. I suck one hard, hungrily, while teasing the other with mischievous pinching. Annie moans and her hands go to my hair. She tries to run her fingers through it, wants to wrap it around her grip, but it’s too short. I’m too butch.
Annie presses in as close as she can get to my hunched-over body. She wants to grind against me, she’s so horny, but I’m sucking and pinching and I want to feel her writhe a little while longer before I go lower. I torment the other nipple with nibbles that progress toward biting.
“Oh, please!” she pleads, barely able to speak, she’s so ripe!
I pull away from her nipple. “Is that Oh please you want more? Or Oh please make me come?”
Annie whimpers. It’s too hard a choice.
I make it for her. I slide down her torso, lifting her skirt as I travel. As I kneel before her, her sweet cleft greets me. Full and inviting, it’s swollen with fleshy desire.
My own cunt pulses at the sight of Annie’s arousal and as I put my tongue to her clit, her wet aroma overtakes my senses, mixing with the wafting smell of meat that simmers to perfection.
I slip two fingers into Annie as I tongue her and find that she’s simmering to perfection as well. Her slit is slippery, welcoming, and her clit rises hard against my tongue. I work my fingers steadily and she opens wide for me. I slip a third finger in, filling her, all the while savoring the smell of her, of scrapple, of all things cooking.
Annie pants heavily, and I know I’ll being able to bring her off quickly. My fingers are a steady pressure inside her. My tongue on her clit is like a hummingbird at a flower.
Then it happens—Annie comes. And when Annie comes, my whole world stops.
I hold my breath as she pitches over the edge, her cunt grabbing at my fingers, her legs shaking and weakening, her voice shrill with surrender. I keep my tongue busy to prolong her orgasm. Sometimes, if I do it right, I can make her throb inside and quiver outside for what seems like forever—times like now.
When she’s done, when I’ve pulled the last contraction from her, I rise up and take my dear Annie in my arms. I kiss her again, bringing a taste of her success to her lips.
While she savors it, I reach for the stove and turn off the burners. It’s time to let everything cool. But only slightly.
Now the busiest part of the meat making happens. We have to spoon the thickened slop into the pans. Because our pots are large, we can’t simply pour it out the way you might with a small, home-cooked batch. Because we don’t use preservatives—and this is why we can’t do scrapple year-round—we have to ladle quickly and cool the scrapple before it can spoil.
For all the heat we cooked up between us in the kitchen, now we set about this task as if we hadn’t had a libidinous thought in our heads all day. Silently, we work as a team, efficiently ladling spoonful after spoonful from our pots until each pan holds the requisite amount of meat mixture. It’s like pouring concrete in microcosm.
When we’ve filled a dozen pans, we “bounce” them. We slam each pan a couple of times against the countertop to get the air out, to help the scrapple settle into the thick brick it’s meant to become. Bouncing is a noisy process—more of a pounding really—but when you see the scrapple close ranks around a busted air pocket, you know a good pan is in the making.
We pour and bounce three times before we’re done and, just before we start cleaning up, I stick the last pan of scrapple into the fridge.
“Why are you doing that?” Annie asks.
“You’ll see.”
I say no more and Annie knows me well enough to guess I have something up my sleeve. Well, something up somewhere, that is.
We do the dishes. Annie scrubs, I dry and set away. That way, I can ogle her while she concentrates on the spic-and-span of cleanup. I admire how her lean arms flex as she scours, how her breasts jiggle while she works. I love how that dress of hers sculpts the curves of her body, accentuating her finest features. I love how hot she looks in the kitchen, even when she wipes the sweat from her brow.
Especially when she wipes the sweat from her brow.
God, I’m right back where I was when I was stripping meat off the bone and, again, I want to interrupt her. I want to take her eyes off her work and put them on me. I want to see them flutter shut when I play with her nipple, when I press my thigh between her legs. I want to kiss and caress her into an arousal so obvious that she’ll beg for relief.
But I can’t. Not yet. I have something else in mind. Patience, I tell myself, is a virtue.
But one that, soon enough, I can turn to vice. Annie finishes washing and empties the sink of soapy water. I check the cooling pans. They’re almost ready for the refrigerator, which means the solitary pan I stashed there should be far enough along. Good thing, too, because I’m ready. I can’t wait another minute. I take the pan from the fridge and, bringing it to the countertop, inspect it. It’s cool, it can’t burn, and its contents haven’t fully set either.
Perfect.
“Come here, baby.”
The words are telling. Annie furrows her eyebrows as she complies. She knows I’m about to initiate something.
“Whatever are you—?”
She doesn’t finish her question bec
ause I grab her by the hair and drag her over to the pan.
“Put your hands in it,” I tell her.
“Huh?”
“Like the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”
“Oh.”
Perplexed, surprised, Annie complies. She puts her hands into the pan, then giggles, “It’s squishy!”
“Just like you’re going to be, baby,” I predict from behind her.
Annie sighs when she hears me unzip my pants. As she awaits what I’m packing, I raise her dress up and push her panties to one side. Deftly, I slip it to her. Eagerly, she takes it and within a few strokes, she fulfills my prediction.
God, I love fucking Annie. The wet sounds of her cunt as it slobbers all over my big dick, the way she squirms and squeals when I grind my meat—damn, if it doesn’t make me feel beastly.
But good lover that I am, I reach around and find her clit. I match my strokes, hand and dick, so they work in tandem. I want to bring her off big-time and, when I’m done, I’ll make her kneel and suck my cock. I’ll enjoy watching her mouth at work. I’ll let her burrow her scrapple-covered fingers under the harness, find my clit, and do me one better.
Such thoughts make me lose it and I ram Annie, hard and fast. She squirms as if it’s too much for her.
“Come on, baby. Take it,” I urge.
Banging her this hard, it’s difficult to do her clit just the way she likes it, but the rhythm has its own reward: it’s so wild, it can make Annie come. Guttural sounds escape her now, and I know that with a touch more intensity, she’ll come.
I reach for her hair. I get just enough in my hand to pull her head back, to bend her back toward me. She’s pinned now, between my hands and my dick. It’s rough. It strains her, I can tell.
That’s when the most wonderful thing happens: Annie’s entire body shudders. Orgasm rakes her—not her clit or her hole, but her entire body. The strain is so intense, so overwhelming that she has nowhere to go with it except into orgasm. As much as she can, Annie bucks beneath me.
All the while, her hands are still in the pan.
As her orgasm subsides, I slow my pace. I let my grip go and allow Annie to relax. I watch my dick work back and forth. Juice covered, it glistens magnificently. It’s all so leisurely now.
My mind drifts, and next thing I know I’m thinking about stomach casings. Yes, stomach casings. Now that scrapple season’s ending, folks will want their natural casings. They’ll want to cook their meat and mashed potatoes in them to make what we call Pig’s Stomach. If we’re being honest, that is. When we’re serving it up to squeamish guests, we fake it and call it French Turkey.
Stomach casings. I can’t believe I’m thinking about stomach casing. I shake the thought away. After all, it’s still scrapple season and I have Annie quivering before me. I want to enjoy the last pan of the season—and all who come with it.
A Bushy Tale
Jean Roberta
Louanne and Thomasina (who could stand being called Tommy but not Tommy-girl) were getting acquainted over leisurely cups of coffee on the patio of Café Mocha. They had been introduced by their mutual friend Mick, a dyke DJ who enjoyed watching women on a crowded dance floor, and occasionally tried to match them up. The spring weather was bright and breezy, coaxing all the trees and plants in the neighborhood into showing their first trusting leaves.
“Do you like your job?” Louanne asked Tommy, whose arm muscles impressed her. Louanne imagined being wrestled to the floor, and it made her blush. She had been told about Tommy’s sexual tastes, but decided to stick to safe topics.
“Oh, yes,” Tommy smiled. She was noticing the way sunlight brought out the reddish-gold highlights in the wood-brown hair that brushed Louanne’s shoulders. Tommy wanted to stroke it, gather it up in one hand, and pull it to bring Louanne’s mouth closer to hers. She decided to focus on the conversation.
“I work for the Humane Society, you know. When we get complaints about animal abuse, I go check them out. If I find that, uh, the animals show signs of abuse, I bring them back to the shelter and we take care of them. I like watching them recover.”
Louanne beamed, and Tommy gave her an answering smile. “I know what you mean,” Louanne assured her, even though she seriously doubted whether anyone really knew what anyone else meant. “I’ve been a volunteer counselor on the sexual assault and abuse line for a few years. Dealing with women who’ve been abused is hard, but it’s good to see them getting their lives back, little by little.”
“You sound like a good counselor,” remarked Tommy, thinking that some delicate flirting would not be taken amiss. She noticed that Louanne’s face was classically beautiful, and almost innocent of makeup.
Louanne looked charmingly abashed. “I just listen,” she explained modestly. “That’s all we can do. I just wish there wasn’t such a need.”
“I bet your clients are glad they have you to talk to. Do you have any other job?” Tommy persisted.
This implication that Louanne had no income and was looking for a Sugar Mama made uncomfortable prickles rise up her neck. “I’ve worked in the library for eight years,” she snapped, sounding colder than she intended. “Books are my life,” she added. “I love helping people do research. You never know what you’ll find when you start digging for information.”
“I’m sure,” laughed Tommy, stretching. She had an easy, contagious laugh which she sometimes used to hide her quick, contagious temper. She had heard the chill in Louanne’s voice, and wondered if the book-lover thought the animal-lover was stupid. Tommy hated being patronized.
She reached for the front page of the local newspaper, which lay neglected on an adjoining table. “What do you think of this?” Tommy asked Louanne, referring to the headline about government cutbacks to libraries and educational institutions.
Louanne took the paper from Tommy’s hand, letting her fingers linger. Tommy was slightly surprised, and looked thoughtfully at the other woman’s dark, troubled eyes.
Louanne was looking at the front page. “Arggh,” she sputtered. “The case of the South End Rapist. He’s only being tried for the latest one, but we’ve heard about him for years. The cops are idiots.”
“Have you met the victims?” asked Tommy. This was getting so interesting that she was only vaguely aware that her words might be politically incorrect.
“Not the one he’s being tried for,” sighed Louanne. She couldn’t take her eyes off the article. “Who writes this stuff? Everything he did is described. He tied her up and forced her to—there was vaginal and anal.”
“Male bastard,” Tommy remarked calmly. “Why they like to do it without consent is beyond me.” Louanne noticed that she had the bright blue eyes and freckled face of a healthy farm girl, but her energy was edgy and urban. Louanne decided not to think about consent.
“She’s a teenage girl who met him in a chat room on the Internet,” Louanne pointed out. “When will women and kids learn how dangerous that is?”
Tommy decided to play devil’s advocate. “Do you really think that’s more dangerous than finding a pen pal through a club that’s been set up to bring people together, or even meeting someone at work or through a friend? Reaching out to a stranger always involves a risk because ya never know. And no one can promise you that someone else is perfectly safe.” She paused. “Everyone wants something,” she mused.
“Everyone,” agreed Louanne. Tommy noticed a trace of bitterness in the set of her mouth. “But not everyone is an asshole.”
“Doing it to someone who doesn’t want it seems stupid to me,” Tommy assured her companion. “I can’t see what guys get out of that. But desire isn’t a simple thing. Sometimes people don’t know what they want until they see it, feel it, taste it.”
The two women looked at each other for a heartbeat. Tommy reached for Louanne’s hand, and it was not pulled away. Tommy heard a soft, answering sigh. “But don’t some things, uh, hurt no matter what?” asked the librarian. She wanted to know.
“Some thi
ngs,” agreed Tommy. “But some kinds of pain are good, you know? And some—activities just need lots of good will and lube.” She licked her lips. “And natural wetness. Encouragement. You gotta be willing and eager.”
Louanne’s eyes flashed, showing a mixture of feelings. “Eagerness isn’t always appreciated,” she countered. “Willing women get called some ugly names.”
Tommy turned and squeezed Louanne’s hand. “I have the greatest respect,” she assured her, “for sluts.”
The shared laughter of the two women resembled an impromptu duet. “Me too,” agreed Louanne. “Would you like to show me your collection?”
“Of what?” prompted Tommy.
“Whatever you’ve got,” responded Louanne. “Everyone has a collection of something.”
Tommy snickered. “Sure, come to my place to see the sights.” They stood up together, and Louanne was revealed to be half-a-head taller than Tommy. The shorter woman looked compact and fit in contrast with Louanne’s willowy form and loose-jointed gait.
Tommy drove Louanne to an old brick apartment building that had a certain period charm, and pulled into the parking lot. She helped her date out of the car and herded her, with a warm hand on Louanne’s lower back, up a short flight of concrete steps to a heavy wooden door with the name “Fairfield” on it.
In the tile-floored entranceway, Louanne faced a flight of wooden stairs which were graced with a curved black banister. Grasping it for support, she found it slick with layers of old shellac. Louanne was reminded of the 1940s detective novels that she had read as a teenager.
On the first landing, Louanne paused to catch her breath. Tommy circled her waist and pressed her crotch into Louanne’s jeans-covered butt. “Need a rest?” Tommy chuckled.
“Just—for a minute,” gasped her guest. Embarrassed by her weakness, Louanne moved forward as soon as she felt she could tackle the next flight.
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