Best of the Best Lesbian Erotica (6 page)

 

There's that euphorbia, in bloom by the back door, with its milky insides that could kill a person if ingested improperly. The plant looks like a million green fingers giving the bird to the dead seething air. I feel a kinship with the euphorbia that I've never known with pumpkins. Pumpkins always leave me feeling insulted by their plump orange heartiness that lies about life in the desert. The euphorbia. There's a plant I could love, all wild and deadly like the rattlers that greet me in the dusk of summers too long to measure in human time.

 

 

Harry never liked the euphorbia. Not that he ever said anything, that's not his style. One time I heard him taking a whiz outside the back door on his way in from one of his drunks, and in the morning, I smelled that acid piss scent on the lower branches. I know what Harry's piss tastes like and I sucked gently on a green finger just to confirm what I already knew. Later I vomited blood and remembered about the other properties of euphorbia. Harry's piss had never affected me that way even in large quantities straight up.

 

 

Maybe that was when it started, some kind of wet declaration of war, a back-door emancipation proclamation, sneaky like Harry can be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And now here he is gone again, doing that mealy-mouthed mama's boy routine with some woman he says is his mother. As if I care. I'm glad I baked that pumpkin euphorbia pie. No regrets. I just hope Harry comes home soon or I'll eat that goddamn pie myself.

For the first few months of our relationship, my sexual identity and my body's desires hardly came up, except in the arena of learning how to be charming with the women, friendly with the men. I knew that Julio had lovers, but she never talked about them. For her part, she must have been aware that I was sexually frustrated and longing for release. Longing for release, but innocent, or only mildly soiled. Julio knew, and finally took pity on me; though when she began to address my sexual desires, it didn't feel like pity. It felt like a rite of passage, exhilarating and terrifying.

Julio started slow, with kisses and caresses on my lips and face. She had begun to bring up courting women, and sex, as topics of conversation. It was difficult, especially at first, to reveal my ignorance. But at appropriate points, my teacher would lean over and touch her lips to mine, sending a delicious chill down to my legs, or she would reach out and touch my cheekbone with the backs of her fingers, causing my head first to tilt a little away, then toward her hand, trying mindlessly to make contact again. As you may imagine, I began to be more aware than ever of my sexual energy, and sometimes walked around for whole days conscious of the moisture between my legs, and a slight ache of emptiness.

My tutorials progressed. The kisses and soft touches gave way to other sensations. Pinches on soft parts of my body, a wet tongue suddenly licking my ear or my jaw or neck. My breasts didn't escape Julio's demonstrations either. The first time was a terrible shock: one night, without warning, she pushed my body firmly onto the back of a park bench and grabbed both my nipples, one with each hand, and squeezed very tight, while pulling them—and me—toward her.

“Dani,
mi joven,
don't ever forget these.” She twisted my nipples as she spoke and I tried not to gasp. “For men and women both, these are gifts for the beautiful but unpredictable
Oshún.
She loves to receive gifts, and she's apt to
be generous in return if you offer them properly.” Julio continued to hold my nipples, squeezing them to an internal rhythm, sometimes pulling, making my eyes tear and a cry escape my throat. Then she soothed the hurt by rubbing each nipple with her thumb, stroking, and with each stroke I could feel my legs get weaker. I took advantage of the bench at my back and leaned on it to help me keep my feet.

“If you know well the human body, Dani, you will have more access to your power.
Escúcha!
Listen to your own body, and when you touch someone else's, your fingers, your eyes, your ears, every sense you own should pay attention.” Julio talked softly in my ear as she kept up the pressure on my body with her fingers. I didn't know if I would be permitted to try to escape, to ease the pain I was feeling now, traveling in waves from their two points of origin downward, invading my cunt and licking at my asshole, washing down my legs under my jeans and causing my knees to feel as if they would buckle at any moment. Then it stopped. She had eased open her fingers and was stroking my face, wiping away some sweat. Leaning into me, she whispered in my ear.

“Try another way to react, Dani. Many times we do better to stop resisting and repelling a situation. Stop fighting and accept your position—for the moment. You may call it
surrender,
but that word does not really describe properly the state of your mind or your body.
Give in; give it up;
these phrases may be more accurate. This giving up is like a gift and also an acceptance of a challenge. And accepting challenges is where we can grab our power and use it to our advantage. You will see what I am saying if you try it. Stop struggling and listen to your body, and to me.” So saying, Julio kissed me gravely on the forehead and then lowered her mouth to my neck. I froze.

For a moment I felt the fear of death: a flutter like wings, traveling fast as light through my head, and my body shook. Her lips had come to rest on the most delicate part of my neck, down by my collarbone. Then Julio raised her head and looked me in the eye. “Remember, little one, what I just said.” I looked at her face and tried to read her eyes as she could read mine. The flutter passed through me, and then something was released. I heard myself groan as she lowered her head again and I felt her teeth take my skin between them. For some timeless age I was clinging to her like a baby, my arms around her shoulders as she used her teeth like knives.

For days after this, I noticed an elevation of energy, a bounce in my step. I felt almost weightless. We didn't talk at all about my lesson in giving up resistance. I certainly didn't mention how sexually aroused I had been, how I was clinging to Julio partly from fear, partly from ecstasy. I caught her studying me surreptitiously now and then, but she didn't say anything either. Gradually I floated back to earth.

It was some time before Julio's next lesson, one which really did allow me my first true enlightenment. The difficulty of the lesson was commensurate with its bounty.

The fact is, a week or so after the lesson in the park, I found a girlfriend! Her name was Marilise, and I met her through Julio, who brought me one day on an errand to her neighbor Xiomara's house. Marilise was Xiomara's twenty-one-year-old daughter. We were attracted almost immediately, and I began to spend time with her, especially at parties. Our relationship continued, and this was a new and hopeful sign for me. Yet I was getting worried because we had not spent time alone yet, and I was trying to find a way to approach her; to put it baldly, to have sex with her. Julio watched and listened to us with interest and maybe a bit of amusement, though she never
laughed at me. I didn't think I had much longer to figure out an approach that would be successful.

One night Julio finally took the matter into her own hands. She had told me the previous day that she wanted me to come home with her the next night. It wasn't unusual for me to be at her house, though I had only been on her patio and in the rooms on the first floor of the small, two-story house tucked into a corner of a dead-end street. But she had never asked me over late at night, preferring to walk me home when our evenings ended.

We walked into her house around midnight. Since her parents had been living for a while now with relations in the countryside, she lived alone. I was tired, and sat on the sofa while Julio did some work around the house. I didn't really notice what she was doing until she lit some scented candles on an altar, then used one of them to light other candles around the room until the room was bathed in their light. She turned on a tape deck, and ceremonial drums, punctuated by melodies and chants in
Lucumí,
filled the house.

I was almost asleep when something awakened my consciousness. I opened my eyes and saw Julio about four or five feet in front of me, looking happy. In her hand was a cigar, and the smell of its smoke, I realized, had disturbed my languor. She had taken off her shirt and her jeans, and was wearing only a pair of thin, white cotton shorts. Her feet, too, were bare.

“Welcome, Dani, to my house. Are you comfortable? We are going to go upstairs soon, and you will not be too afraid. Am I right? This is something for you,
mi querida.
You have wanted to ask me for so long, but you have not. I'm not sure whether to be pleased or angry at you for keeping silent. In one way I am pleased, since I believe you did not ask, preferring to defer to my decision on the timing of the matter. On the other hand, if your silence was due to a lack of trust or of embarrassment, I must admonish you that those feelings
can be very dangerous. If you cannot trust your teacher, you cannot trust anyone, even the
orishas.
And why not trust me? After all, with your diligence, and my help,
Oshún
smiled on you the other night, Dani, that night when we offered you to her, first your body, then your soul. And she was kind, was she not? For look! You have a girlfriend now, and she is waiting. But she cannot be kept waiting any longer.”

Julio came to me and lifted my body up, cradling me as one does an infant, holding me close to her chest. I smelled her clean smell, mixed with the harsh, acrid smoke from her cigar. She moved easily with me to stand in front of the altar. After speaking first softly and then louder in
Lucumí,
she put me down on my feet and took my hand and led me up the stairs.

Julio opened the door of her room. It was not a large one, and the window was covered by dark drapes. Like the living room, candles illuminated the space, casting quivering shadows on the walls with every breeze that wafted in from under the bottom of the drapes. I stood silently in front of her, until she pushed down on my shoulders and forced me to kneel. Now she stood in front of me, and she was humming and chanting, not continuously, but off and on. Her hand played in my hair, pulling it gently, until she finally seemed to finish some train of thought, or perhaps a part of her prayers.

“Dani, this is my ceremony. I want to make this clear, to you and to the gods, that it is my own, it has not been taught to me by
Oggún,
nor
Oshún
even. Not
Changó, Eleguá, Yemayá,
nor any of the others, this is mine. Its outcome is my responsibility alone. Close your eyes now, Dani, and give yourself to me. I will guide you in every step, and as you place yourself in my hands, know that you can only be doing this from the seat of your strength, the center of your power. When you cease resisting, you give a gift, and get one in return.”

I closed my eyes. In the silence I waited, and all I could feel was my pulse like a powerful generator, flooding my body
with energy and setting me aquiver like a taut wire. Then Julio's hand reached out and gathered the back of my neck and pulled my face into her crotch.