Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica (24 page)

 

(My breasts untouched until...I live in this city now.)

 

Her hands yank, my skirt lifts, my thighs push wide. Both hands. Breathing. Breathing. Sandalwood. Sex. She is searching. Her mouth is on my nipple. Her eyes never leave mine. My hips are gyrating and I can tell she likes it, although she is not watching. My legs are wide but she does not enter me. She rubs me, pressing, rubbing, parting. She pours liquid fire into my body.

 

“Please,” I moan, my hands pulling wrapping pushing her arm against me. Begging, please.

She cups my cunt, moving the flat of her wrist against my clit. I am open and wet and empty. She steps back, lifts my skirt to look.

 

“Hey,” her hand moves to the virgin tattoo on my hip. “Blue hummingbird,” she smiles at her discovery.

 

The counter is cold against my ass. Her tongue insistent, again. I feel her pelvis, black jeans rubbing between my legs. I lift her T-shirt over her head, freeing her nipples beneath. Silver hoops. My hands open palms against her flesh. Fingers splayed. Tug and oh.
Press, Roll, Separate.
Gasp and gasp. Her hand to my cunt, again.

 

“Please,” I beg.

 

“Please what?” she whispers back. Ohhh and fuck.

 

“Please fuck me,
now.
” (I live in this city now.)

 

Her mouth into mine. Her tongue. Her fingers into my cunt, to her knuckles.

“I'm married,” she says, turning inside of me, her fingers gyrating, untwisting me. “I'm married.”

 

(We were married too.)

 

Her hand is hard. Hard and then nothing. Empty ache. She slips her fingers to her lips, sucking, tasting me on herself. Slips one to my mouth.

 

“Should I stop?”

 

NO and NO and NO. She rewards me with her hand. “Shhhssshh,” she cautions, “The sextons will hear us.”

 

“Oh God,” I gasp, her Yang to my Yin. “Oh God, how many?” I want to know.
Lift and open. Wrist and reach.
Three she tells me. “And your wife?” She rewards me with another finger. “Please.” My mouth so dry, my tongue barely moves across my lips, my body empty, aching, searching. Still not enough.

 

 

And in that moment, she gives me all of herself.

 

Push, Drop...Single whip, Adjust. Push, Drop...Single whip, Adjust.
Beginning level.

All of herself in that moment. Enough.

 

 

 

 

 

There used to be several distinct kinds of gym. When I was growing up, school gyms—in whatever country—were sunlit and silent, the air dead and dusty with the scents of climbing ropes, ancient pommel horses sweat-soaked and bare on the handles, and a thin, greasy overlay of plimsoll rubber scraped off on the wooden floor during countless skiddings and bumpy landings. All very genteel and closed off. Working gyms in the city were meatier, more burly, with dim overhead lights, chalk dust, laboring fans, and metal everywhere: clanking nautilus, ringing free weights, clinking dog tags. Male sweat and Ben-Gay. Hoarse huff-huff of pumping, the occasional burst of loud boy conversation: the game, the fight, the conquest. Dojos, on the other hand, were defined more by body sounds: the slap of open hands on arms, thud of bare feet on kick bags, the heavy, almost soundless impact of a rolling fall...and the voices, karate kiais like the cry of a stooping hawk, the very particular half-swallowed
hut-hut
, like a gun with a sound suppresser, of a whole school of
people going through their katas, the endless, rhythmic susurrus of breath as half a dozen students meditate in zazen.

The precinct gym in City Hall East was less than a year old: beautiful sprung wood floor, whispering air conditioning, full spectrum lighting. I took off my shoes, stood in the middle of the floor, and closed my eyes: soft hiss of air conditioning, faraway rumble of East Ponce traffic, slow turning thump of my heart. I breathed deeply, in and in until my belly swelled with air, out again through my nose, in, out, letting my hands rise a little with each inhalation. Then I stretched up, and up further, held it, came down, palms to the floor. Held it, held it, and on the outbreath bent my elbows further.

I moved through my routine automatically, stretching tendons and ligaments and muscles, and after twenty minutes I was as flexible as a whip.

There are only four schools of Shuto Kai karate outside Japan. I had learned it in England, on Tuesday evenings and Sunday mornings in an old community center whose concrete floors were always still sticky with spilled beer and cigarette ash from the event the night before. I had studied with five men under the instruction of a truck driver with a sturdy Yorkshire accent and a real love of the art. He taught me the way of the empty hand. I would kneel in zazen on that unheated concrete floor in the middle of winter and extend my arms. He would lay a heavy pole across my wrists, and the battle would begin, the battle of breath and pain and will. The first five minutes were easy, the next ten just about bearable, the next thirty a nightmare. Sweat would roll down my neck, and Ian's voice would boom from the walls and rattle the children's drawings pinned there. “Breathe through the pain! Breathe! With me, in and
out
. In and
out
.” And my shoulder muscles, which had already taken me through two hundred push ups and an hour of sparring, would burn dully, then sharply, then with pain bigger than the world. And the
only way through it was the breath. In and out. Falter and you are lost.

And after forty or fifty minutes, the endorphins kick in and the childish drawings on the wall assume a crystalline edge, the colors deepen and bloom, and my face relaxes utterly. All there is is a tide of breath, sweeping up and down the beach of my body, until each cell is as distinct as a grain of mica and I feel washed clean. I sometimes wondered what would happen if I just…stayed there; whether the endorphin high would burn itself into my cells permanently and for the rest of my life I would smile gently around the edges, even when I was breaking someone's legs. But then Ian would take the pole away, shout, and we would be running around and around the hall. Twenty minutes. Two or three miles, usually. Then we would do a kata.

Katas are choreographed series of fight moves against one or more imaginary opponents. Done well, they are a meditation and a dance. They range from the most simple, railway-straight line moves against only one opponent where you use nothing but punches, to the flying, whirling battle-an-army dance of the Basai Dai. You don't learn the Basai Dai until you get your black belt.

The first few months I studied, the katas were my reward, the fluid dance, the grace, the hot whistling power of punching tight air, of using my whole body. It was only after my blue belt, the second kyu, that I learned that the real reward of learning Shuto Kai was understanding my will. I learned that pain is only pain: a message. You can choose to ignore the message. Your body can do a great deal more than it wants you to know.

And so, although for all practical purposes Shuto Kai is not a particularly good martial art, I still dance its katas.

I did the fourth, which has all those difficult kicks, and the Basai Dai. My breathing was as smooth as cream, my blood oxygenated and rich. I was probably smiling.

I moved on from karate to kung fu, a Wing Chun form, the Siu Nim Tao, or Simple Idea. I was on the second round of pak sao, the slapping hand, when the door opened. Even with my eyes closed I would have known who it was. Her scent was a little more pronounced today, even though her hair was dry. I nodded very briefly but did not stop. Ding jem. Huen sao. She started stretching. Bill jee. Moot sao, the whipping hand. She was wearing black spandex pants and an emerald body sheath. I concentrated on the form.

When I took the last slow breath and released it, she straightened. “First form?”

“Yes.”

“Want to chi sao?” It was a challenge.

“Take off your shoes.”

“My shoes?”

“I value my feet.”

That angered her. It was meant to. Always take the advantage. I extended my right leg, and my right arm, elbow down and in, wrist level with my sternum, fingers parallel to the floor. She did the same. The backs of our wrists touched. Well-shaped nails, no wedding ring. Her skin was dense and fine grained, taut over smooth muscle, and her bones slender. She looked the sort of woman who has studied ballet for twelve years. Her eyes were blue, the deep blue of still-wet-from-the-dye denim, with lighter flecks near pupils tight with concentration. Her hair was in a French twist. A French twist for the gym.

Chi sao means sticky hand. The wrists stay touching. All moves are in slow motion. It's a game of chess using balance.

I moved my hand forward, the first inch of what could have become huen sao, the circling hand, but she stepped smoothly
to the side and, without even moving her arm, countered. But the counter of course became her own move, which was to keep stepping, trying to lead my arm away from the center of my body and leave me unbalanced. So far, all beginner's moves. Her baked-biscuit skin slid back and forth over her collarbone. As the pace intensified, I wondered how women got those tans. The color was delicate, never too heavy, never too light, and they had it in February and November yet they never seemed to use tanning salons. Their eyebrows always arched perfectly and their hair was never out of place.

Who are you?
Blank concentration for a reply.

She was good: well balanced, smooth, knowledgeable about the connections between feet and belly, wrist and elbow and shoulder. She centered well and breathed unhurriedly.

I wanted information and stepped back, signaling a pause. “Sern chi sao?”

She merely nodded and extended both arms. Double sticky hands.

We moved faster this time, our legs bent lower, circling around the gym in jong tao, a deadly waltz. A woman's center of gravity is generally about two inches below her navel, just where the belly rounds. No matter how fast you travel across the floor, that point should move in parallel. I was taller than her, but having one's center of gravity higher is a disadvantage, so I moved in a lower stance. We were both sweating lightly now, and our breath came faster. Her skin felt marvelously alive beneath mine. We moved back and forth, and my belly warmed, and I knew hers warmed, too, as we revolved around the gym and each other, a planet and its satellite turning about the sun.

Time to let her know which was which, to show her I didn't much appreciate having my wallet stolen at the scene of an arson and murder. I moved more strongly, breathed in great long gushes, as though my breath alone would move her
aside. Her body sheath was dark under the arms. My belly burned hotter. She began to move just a little out of balance. I made a slow biu tze, the shooting fingers, up toward her eyes, with my left hand, and a going under hand with my right. Being out of balance, even so slightly, meant she had to either let me through or speed up to regain the advantage. To speed up meant it would become almost a sparring session.

She sped up.

Differences in skill become more apparent with speed. I harried her round and round the gym, in no hurry, enjoying testing her. She began to spar in earnest. She snapped a punch at my head, which I palmed away easily enough, then launched into a series of battle punches, hoping to drive me off balance. I centered then stepped right through her with a double circling hand—and in my head, for a split second, moved over both her wrists and dumped her on the floor—but in actuality let the moment pass.

She felt it, felt the moment when I could have thrust the heat of my belly against hers and taken it all, and now the whole character of our sparring changed. I led, she followed. It became a dance, teacher and pupil. I would ask, she would answer.

When we came to a halt, wrists still touching, in the center of that beautiful gym, her face was as smooth as butter. We bowed to each other. I waited.

“Can I buy you coffee?”

 

 

 

 

 

They're the best part, auditions: the last chance to hold in my mind the play as it should be. The uncast actors are easiest to direct; empty stages offer no barriers. Everything is clear, uncomplicated by living people and their inability to be what is needed.

“What I need,” I say to my stage manager, “is a woman who can work on her feet.”

“Hmmm,” says Lucky helpfully. She won't waste words on anything so obvious. Our play is
Salome
, subtitled
Identity and Desire
. Salome has to dance worth killing for.

The sense I have, in those best, sweet moments, is that I do not so much envision the play as experience it in some sort of multidimensional gestalt. I feel Salome's pride and the terrible control of her body's rhythms; Herod's twitchy groin and his guilt and his unspoken love for John; John's relentless patience, and his fear. The words of the script sometimes seize me as if bypassing vision, burrowing from page into skin, pushing blood and nerve to the bursting limit on the journey to my brain. The best theatre lives inside. I'll spend weeks
trying to feed the sensation and the bloodsurge into the actors, but…but I can't do their job. But they can't read my mind. And people wonder why we drink.