Wild Nights Page 3

  “I got distracted.” She still had her hand in my pants and slid half off me so that her head was on my shoulder and her body curled along mine. Her fingers skittered over the stiff length of me and I groaned. Now I felt how close she’d gotten me with all the clit play.

  “Who’s not done, huh?” she teased.

  “Ten seconds,” I said through gritted teeth. I was lying. It took three seconds and two long strokes down my cleft and back up again to send me shooting off like a cannon. I must have done something to her clit while I was bucking and shooting because I heard her cry out in surprise and then she was pushing my fingers inside her and coming all over them.

  “What a great movie,” she murmured some time later.

  “Uh-huh.” My hand was still inside her and my arm was cramped from the angle but I didn’t care if it fell off from lack of blood flow. Not as long as I could feel her pulsing and quivering all around me the way she was still doing.

  “You know when I first saw you outside the motel,” Sheila said lazily, “I thought you looked just like Gina Gershon.”

  “I thought you’d never seen this movie before,” I said with a laugh.

  “Mmm, well, not at the drive-in.” She kissed me and ran her finger lightly back and forth over my clit, making me shiver. “And you may not have noticed, but Gina’s got nothing on you.”

  I pressed my palm down on my shorts over her hand. “You’ll get me wired up again.”

  “Well, I like reruns.” She tightened inside around my fingers. “And there’s still plenty of popcorn.”

  A Night at the Opera

  for LBK: RIP

  Victoria A. Brownworth

  The new millennium may have more bling and more elegance, but the Eighties were flashier and sexier. Ripped fishnets were de rigeur and leather, leatherette and pleather were simply everywhere. Hair was big, bigger, biggest and so were heels. Lips were the bruised, lush red-purple of aroused pussy and eyes were outlined in liner so thick and black it looked like it was applied with a Sharpie.

  I was an s/m queen in the Eighties, a dominatrix femme top with a retinue of suitors and another of toys. My hair was high, my stilettos higher. My lips were full and painted very dark to emphasize the whiteness of my skin. My stockings were held up by a lacy black garter belt, my breasts pushed up by black lace bras. Sometimes I wore panties and sometimes I didn’t, but if I did they were the sort that could be torn off easily. Torn, not slipped off demurely, because the Eighties were so not demure. And in the Eighties, although I occasionally wore pearls to offset my punk outfits, I was not into demure. I was into ACT-UP and Sex Pistols and dancing till dawn and hanging on the arm of girls that looked and acted and sometimes almost were boys. I liked everything hard and fast and rough and strong and in the Eighties it was easy to find all of that and I did, as often as I wanted it. The sex wars might have moved into high gear with vanilla political correctness at war with anything goes s/m, but I didn’t care about PC. I liked to play and play I did, having fun and sex whenever and wherever and with whomever I wanted. Eighties girls took “slut” to heart and I was a full-out slut and proud of it.

  I wasn’t actually looking when I found L—I was already with someone. Several someones, actually. But L was one of those boy/girls and I was one of those girl/boys and it was a sexual match made in s/m heaven. You could hear the sizzle when we met. We were steam from the get-go and just got hotter.

  We first met at the Lesbian Feminist Weekend. I’d seen her around before in Philadelphia, but hadn’t really noticed her. I noticed her in the Poconos, though, and so did everyone else. L walked into a lecture I was giving on sex on a humid September afternoon: tall and broad-shouldered with slicked-back sandy hair and black raybans and a man’s white shirt with the collar up. A lesbian James Dean; as she scanned the room, the sighs were palpable. We danced together later that night: She still in the white shirt with black jeans and I dressed in purple ankle-strap stilettos and a white lace corset with a long flouncy skirt. (Ankle-strap stilettos in the woods—I was living my Eighties dream large as I could.)

  I danced with a lot of girls that night (I’d swum naked with Dorothy Allison that afternoon, but that’s another story), but the room was hottest when I danced with L.

  We didn’t hook up then or when we returned to the city. We didn’t even kiss. Just a steamy dance and then I moved on to other partners and she went back to the woman she’d come with. It was almost two months later when I saw her again at a dance club in town. She was shoving a girl up against the mirrored wall. I knew the girl, had been lovers with her for a few months a year earlier. The two of them looked a little drunk and a little sexed up, splayed against the mirror and I decided to mess it up just a little by dancing too close to them and pulling L to me in a sweaty dance. I wasn’t looking for anything but trouble and that’s what I got. In my high hair and swirly skirt, I flounced and twirled my way around L till she abandoned poor A at the sidelines. Soon her hands were on my hips and then on my waist and then I was the girl up against the mirror, L’s mouth hard against mine. I kept my eyes open through the long, hot kiss: I saw A leave and other dancers stare appreciatively. The DJ played “Tainted Love.”

  Our song.

  Each time L and I met we were both with other people and ended up together. And then we were just together. Totally, utterly together. We could not get enough of each other. I would go to her apartment early in the morning for a hot ride before work. I would drop by the chi-chi restaurant where she tended bar and tease her from across the room. Everywhere we went, heat followed us. We were deeply in love and just as deeply in lust. Every day began and ended with intense, mind-blowing sex, my legs over her shoulders, her cock plunged into me nailing me to the bed—or table or floor. We fucked as much of the day as we could get away with and still hold down jobs and catch a few hours of sleep. There was no lesbian bed death for us. There were no boundaries we weren’t ready to cross, no games we weren’t ready to play. We were living our own sex adventure and there always seemed to be new territory to conquer. We were on the front lines of the sex wars of the Eighties, unapologetically out-there sexual outlaws and we weren’t afraid of being desperadoes.

  We liked to play games. Long, drawn out scenes with props and word play and steamy sex. I had been the dominatrix, but L liked being on top and for the first time I was ready to play bottom. To her, at least.

  It seemed such a small step from top to bottom, from boy to girl. Soon our games moved outside the bedroom. We liked to pass. Her voice was deep and taxi drivers would ask her what she thought about this or that sports team while I sat with my hand in her lap. Just a cute couple out on the town. Pretty soon she was The Boy and I was the highest high femme in town.

  Then we went took our show to the opera.

  It may seem discordant with Eighties punk rock and in-yourface politico-sex, but opera was the perfect s/m backdrop for us. It’s all high drama—love at first sight, love and sex, sex and love, dying for love—all over the top, just like we were. L had never heard opera before she met me and then she couldn’t get enough. The first time I played “Un Bel Di” from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly for her, she became as hot for opera as she was for me. That afternoon I saw the frisson pass through her as Maria Callas sang of what would happen when her lover returned. But it was La Boheme that became L’s favorite. L was an artist and I a writer—just like Mimi and Rudolfo.

  My long-time mentor, M, watched our affair. A bit of a sexual outlaw himself, like most straight men he liked the image of two women together. I’m not sure what he had in mind when he gave me tickets to the Met for my birthday, but I knew it would be a night to remember.

  L was a bartender at a chi-chi restaurant and I was a newspaper reporter. We didn’t have a lot of money, but we pooled our cash for the trip. I borrowed a friend’s studio apartment in Chelsea for a couple of days and we hopped the train to New York.

  But no trip like this—our first time at the Met—would be compl
ete without a little sexual tension, so I worked it: I borrowed an evening gown and a fur coat from another friend and L rented a tux.

  Then we headed to New York.

  Our night at the opera was going to be another chapter in our ongoing sexual adventure, a game to end all games. How would we top this? It was the Met. We’d played dress-up all over our own town, but we knew the territory. We’d never been to the Met. Would we pass or be called out—and tossed out—exposed as sexual outlaws? The risk made it all the sexier.

  We got to New York, changed clothes and took a cab to the Met. There I was, my blonde hair softly elegant instead of high, my gown a decollete silk, the requisite pearls at my neck and earlobes and the ubiquitous garter-belt hidden transgressively underneath it all, with the fur over everything, grazing my bare white shoulders. L was supremely handsome in her tux, cummerbund and tie, her hair slicked back like the day I first saw her at the LFW. Before we left my friend’s apartment I pressed my hand against the zipper of her trousers, feeling her dick hard and ready for later, after the opera. We kissed quickly and went off to La Boheme, eager to be on time.

  It’s hard to explain the rush of two poor kids in their twenties who loved opera going to the Met on a Friday night in full (if borrowed) evening dress, one of them passing for a boy, the other passing for a rich girl.

  It was romantic and sexy and risky all at once. We were turned on all evening.

  We were the opera: Mimi and Rudolfo at the Met. We passed alright; the only rough moment came when L brazenly headed for the men’s room at intermission. She entered and exited and I breathed a sigh of relief. We were who we appeared to be. I leaned forward against the balustrade and pulled her to me by the lapels and kissed her in the middle of the second tier of the Met. People glanced, smiled, and looked away. We were two lovers at an opera about two lovers.

  The opera was stunning and so were we. After it ended we headed out to a restaurant—an attractive young couple in New York for a late dinner after the show. We were so into the game, we were so who we had made ourselves up to be, that we were holding hands across the table in our high-toned, straighter-than-straight restaurant. I had slipped my foot out of my stiletto and slid it into her lap, massaging her stiff dick and watching her want me. The sexual tension was mounting between us. Our waiter smiled— either because he was queer and was onto us or because we were what we appeared to be, just another straight couple in love out on the town.

  Back at the flat L undressed me slowly, unzipping my dress and slipping it from my shoulders so it fell in a soft pool of silk at my feet, kissing and biting my shoulders as she did. L’s jacket was tossed onto a chair, the tie loosened, the studs of her shirt removed one by one. I unbuckled her belt and unzipped her trousers, slipping my hand inside and rubbing it against the stiff cock tight in her briefs.

  My panties were torn off that night after the evening clothes were discarded and the sex was hot and hard in the cold apartment as we lay on the fur coat draped over my friend’s pull-out sofa.

  The next day dawned grey and chill and we lay nestled in the fur coat and each other’s arms. We dressed for a new game and headed out to the Village, ready for a new adventure on the anonymous streets of New York.

  The game evolved as we walked arm-in-arm through the Village. I was a wealthy woman from the Upper East Side; L was my boy toy. We headed into a sex shop—something with pussycat in the name—and looked at a range of products we didn’t yet have in our arsenal. We played with the clerk, we played with each other, we drew the clerk into our game. We bought a few items and then we headed back onto the street, heated up from the exchange of sexual banter, improvisation and cash for sex toys. L pushed me up against a wall in a small alley and kissed me hard, her fingers pinching my nipples through my blouse, her hand slipping up underneath my skirt, underneath my panties. We had swift, covert sex right there—her fingers deep in my cunt, pumping me against the wall, my hand pressed hard between her legs as she moved against me, kissing me ever more insistently. It was midday in Manhattan, the big fur pulled around us and no one seeming to notice a woman and her blond boy toy kissing in a picturesque alleyway off the strand.

  The afternoon faded and we wandered through the streets armin-arm, back to the apartment. We packed and headed for the train to Philadelphia and home, our night at the opera over, but its melody lingering on.

  Postscript: L and I spent several years together, before we parted as dramatically as any grand opera leads. But despite our problems, bed death never overtook us in our years together; we were always operatic lovers, our bedroom larger than life.

  In the years after we parted, our adventure at the Met remained a story we would both tell, a bel canto moment of seduction, excitement and risk. Two years ago L died, far too young, of cancer. I told the story at her memorial service. Her passing as a boy, and of course, the romance—not the sex. The tale exemplified who she was—-big and bold, a risk-taker, an opera-lover—and everybody smiled.

  Tuesday Night

  Joy Parks

  “If I write about this, can I tell them the truth?”

  “Sure,” she said. “But which one?”

  What I remember. We all looked pretty much the same back then. Angry. And tired. If you came here to meet a woman, tough luck. Might as well go home now. Alone. All talk, no action. The personal is political. Being a lesbian isn’t about sex. Sometimes it made my head hurt. Maybe it was just squinting into the light, the artificial heat beating a tattoo against my brain, headache building in cheek muscles held too firm, don’t smile, not now, probably not ever again, this is serious business, this changing the world. It is 1984 and stranger than Orwell could have imaged, the movement is winding down, getting strained. We must, no, we will, destroy the patriarchy, gut it like a fish, chop off its head. And we relish the work. At least in front of each other, at meetings like this, we’re all sisters here, the holy appointed turtleneck-and-flannel-shirted chorus of she who will not be silenced.

  I am younger than most of the women here, the youngest I assume, in fact most of them are probably old enough to be my mother, but I don’t think about that, too large a leap to make. My mother would never be here, she’d hate the way we’re dressed and that no one bothered to fix her hair or, for god’s sake, put on a little lipstick. Just ’cause you’re a lesbian doesn’t mean you have to look like hell. I can see her standing under the greasy yellow light; hand on her chic pant-suited hip, hair “done” and freshly dyed, giving makeup tips to the attendants of the Tuesday night lesbian feminists separatist discussion group. She doesn’t care that her firstborn daughter is a dyke, she just wishes I’d dress better, lose the fatigues, the dumpy sweatshirts and about ten pounds. Jesus, you were brought up better than that. Weren’t you?

  Actually, yes.

  It’s the first time she’s been here. But she’s not new. There’s nothing new about how she walks, how she leans forward with her shoulders, nothing fresh practiced newly out about how she takes up space, the way she sits with her legs open wide, the way she moves her arms when she talks. She knows all the tricks, could teach the rest of us a thing or two about how to make our presence known, how dare you assume I’m straight, no one would with her. Not an issue. That’s just it. That’s what this is all about.

  We’re the ones making an issue out of it.

  Most meetings I have something to say. Usually, I join in on the litany of slights against our existence; all of it exaggerated so I can feel I belong. Truth is, I don’t really notice if the bag boy at the grocery store looks at my breasts. I usually don’t even notice if there is a bag boy; I don’t pay that much attention to men. I work part-time for a gay newspaper, and read manuscripts freelance at home for a publishing company, which is pretty much staffed by women, so I don’t have a boss who calls me “honey” or “babe” or tries to feel me up when I work late. I got the university to let me do an independent study on lesbian writing. So there goes that. In fact, I feel pretty lucky, like things
are actually going my way. But I don’t let on. You can either be oppressed, which seems to be what everyone else here is, or privileged, which gets you put in your place. Apparently I can’t avoid it, with my white skin and fresh-minted university degree. Even though there are plenty of wimmin here with graduate degrees. Doesn’t matter that my grandmother was Cherokee or that there were times I had to work three waitressing jobs at once and eat plain spaghetti with melted margarine and salt for days just to pay rent and tuition and books. I’m still privileged. I’m not on welfare, I’m not losing custody of my kids. I’m not selling myself on the street, but then again nobody in this group is either, even though we talk about how just about everything is prostitution. A lot. But still I’m privileged and I get told about it. So to take the sting out, I make up oppressions.

  But tonight, I don’t want to say anything at all. I don’t want to risk looking stupid or weak or privileged in front of her.

  I don’t want to stare either, but I can’t help it. No fatigues, no buttons with lesbian messages, no wimmin’s symbols dancing on a chain. Just soft-looking tight white jeans that meet a pair of tan suede desert boots. It’s the boots that gave her away. She’s wearing a white oxford shirt neatly tucked inside her pants, with a nice wide belt and a smooth caramel-colored suede vest that brings it all together, hides her breasts from those who might try to figure out what she is. My first girlfriend (and I use that term loosely) in high school did the very same thing. No backpack or bag. Certainly not a purse. Bet she carries a wallet in her back pocket.

  It’s the first night that I haven’t said a word and still I’m more comfortable here than I’ve ever been. I sit cross-legged on my chair and pretend to stare into space, listening to the meeting buzz around me. There’s a wimmin’s dance on Saturday to benefit the Lesbian Mother’s Defense Fund. A Take Back the Night March next month. The abortion clinic still needs more volunteers. Her fingers are long, the nails short and neat and trimmed. Her hands are small, smaller than mine maybe, but there’s something about them, the way they rest one to a leg, not folded, not put away, but out and on display. The way her knuckles rise, tiny veins knotted tight, she does some form of work with these hands, something to make them look a little rough and used. But gentle. And the rings. I’ve never seen rings like that. They’re art, abstract shapes with dark onyx and tiger eye and then the tiny one, silver and a purple stone, delicate but not at all feminine, sitting on her pinky finger. I’m staring again, my eyes stroking her hands like a caress. I remember reading about that, probably in one of the books my great aunt had hidden in the bathroom laundry bin—her secret stash of sleazy lesbian paperbacks. I know they were there because I read them all. How the women in those books checked out each other’s hands, as if they were sizing them up. Thinking about what they’d feel like inside them.