Archive-name: SpecMome/only-mem.txt
Archive-author: Leigh
Archive-title: Only A Memory

leigh@waffle.whiffer.atl.ga.us


                               *1: Us*

I couldn't believe it when my kids threw me a surprise party this year.
Well, the party was really no surprise, because Scarlett, the oldest at
sixteen, kept asking me questions like "Is it really hard to bake a
cake?" and Jason, my fourteen year-old, has never been interested in
making sure that I had "a fun day out shopping" before. It was pretty
easy to tell they were up to something, especially since they started
being awfully polite and charming the day before my birthday. It just
isn't in character for them, you know what I mean? I love my kids, but
they're hellions just the same.

I suppose what I couldn't believe is that there were actually forty
candles on the cake.  Scarlett and Jason had a good giggle at that:
"wow, looks like the whole table is on fire, Mom!" and "gee, if you get
any older we'll have to make a bigger cake" and all those great things
that kids think are so funny at sixteen... and twenty years later don't
find all that humorous anymore, somehow.  Well, that's the breaks.  I
had done just about the same thing to my parents.

It was a nice birthday, all in all.  My husband Ben, who had reached the
dreaded four-oh two years ago, gave me a bra and panty set which was
made mostly out of hope, with a little lace tacked on.  The kids went
wild when they saw it.  I knew why Ben had given it to me in front of
them.  He wanted to get a good chuckle out of my red cheeks as much as
he wanted to see my other cheeks hanging out of that little panty later
on.  I resolved to be especially cruel to him on *his* next birthday.

"Wooooo!"  Jason said, laughing like the very idea of me in sexy
underwear was ridiculous.  "I bet you've never had anything like that
before!  Heh heh heh."

"Yeah, what do you know."  I stuck my tongue out at him.  "You think I'm
some old maid?  I was a kid once too, not-" I gave a sharp glance at
Scarlett, who seemed about to open her mouth, "-not that I was wearing
stuff like this when I was exactly a *kid*."  I held the brassiere up to
the light and admired the way my wedding ring flashed through the
material.  "Besides, your dad used to be well-known for trying to see up
girls' skirts in college, so I made sure I always had on nice
underwear."  I laughed.

We all went out to dinner, and even the kids had some champagne.  Ben
seemed to try to make this a jolly occasion indeed.  Probably worried
that I was going to have a nervous breakdown because I could no longer
claim to be "thirty-something".

There was more champagne that evening, much later, after the kids had
finally decided to go to bed.  One thing about the summertime, any
loving you try to get in just about has to be after midnight because the
kids go to bed so late.  It's not that I didn't want them to know that
Ben and I were doing the dirty deed, after all, they would have been
pretty stupid not to figure it out;  it's just that when I am in the
throes of passion I don't need to hear a little strand of giggles come
floating into the bedroom as some light sleeper walks down the hall to
the bathroom.  Sort of dampens the mood.

"We are tearing up the Blockbuster card."  Ben said firmly as he shut
the bedroom door.  "I am really getting tired of them watching movies
until one a.m., even on a Friday."  He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed
it in the direction of my reading chair by the window.

"Oh, come on."  I picked up his shirt and put it in the laundry hamper.
"It's summer.  They're supposed to be completely worthless and lazy,
it's their vacation."  I kissed him and walked into the bathroom to
brush my teeth.

Ben followed me in and stood behind me, his arms encircling my waist.
"Yeah," he said softly, "but we both know how you are about...
spectators."  He nuzzled my neck.

I laughed and toothpaste dribbled down my lip.  "Well, I'm an old woman
now, and you have to make allowances for me.  I just don't perform well
with an audience, seen or unseen."  I rinsed out my mouth and turned
around in his arms.  "Besides, who is it that always says "shhhh!" in my
ear?  Huh?  Huh?"

"Well."  Ben coughed a bit, a wry look settling on his face as he turned
me around to face the mirror again.  "Be that as it may... but if you're
an old woman, you sure don't look it, now do you?"  He smiled at my
reflection.

I smiled back, but my eyes stayed on the woman in the mirror.  I looked
pretty much like I always had, ever since I was a kid.  Round face, dark
brown hair, the big brown eyes which I had always said were my best
feature;  now those eyes looked even bigger because of the dark circles
under them at times, but all in all the same face I had looked at for
the last forty years.  I didn't feel as if some momentous change had
overcome me the morning of my fortieth year, and I doubted one ever
would.  I would just go on being me, more or less.

"At least my hair is going silver instead of grey."   I plucked one from
my hairline and handed it to Ben. "Here, you can have this back."

"Huh?"  He said, holding the strand in his fingers.

"Well, you gave it to me in the first place."  I laughed, and he pinched
my bottom.

I pulled away from him and walked into the bedroom, turning out lights
as I went.  I thought about how I had looked the same for so long now,
and for seventeen of those years had followed pretty much the same
routine as tonight.  Brush your teeth, turn out the lights, take off
your clothes, get into bed.  If he rolls up against you *this* way, and
you roll against him *that* way, you have sex.  If you roll the other
way, or he grabs his pillow in another way, then you don't.  I smiled to
myself.  Sometimes I missed being young and single, but most of the time
I liked it this way.  Besides, even if I was single again, I wouldn't be
young, so why even think about it.

"Um."  Ben said.  I turned to look at him, standing naked in the faint
glow from the nightlight in the bathroom.  "I think I forgot to put the
clock out.  Or I didn't wind the cat.  Or something.  Be right back."
He started for the bedroom door.

"Sweetie, don't you think you should put something on?"  I sat down on
the side of the bed.

He made a rude noise at me and grabbed a bed pillow and stuck it in
front of his crotch.  "Okay, I'm decent.  Be back in a minute."  I
watched his round little buns recede from me and go out the door.

I sat for a moment on the side of the bed, feeling the cool cotton of
the sheets against my thighs.  Maybe all forty year old women don't
sleep in the nude, but I do.  I feel strangled by clothes when I'm in
bed.  Besides, I like to snuggle up against my husband's furry body.
When I was seventeen I would have gagged at the idea of liking a man
with hair all over his body, but I certainly learned to appreciate it on
a lot of cold winter nights.

Ben had a beautiful body, small and compact.  His mom was a
second-generation Italian, his dad an American Indian.  He had the huge
liquid eyes and brown skin of his mom, and the glittering black hair of
his dad.  That hair might be thinning a bit on top, but it was still
luxuriously thick and soft everywhere else, and I loved to run my hands
through its waves.  His chest and arms were muscular, large in
proportion to the rest of his body.  I had spent quite a number of years
wondering if his big chest and my big tits would doom our daughter to a
life of porn movies or nude dancing but, to her immense irritation, it
looked like Scarlett was going to be almost flat-chested.  Jason saw
that as immensely hilarious as of late.

I felt a slight flush as I thought of, for some reason, my wedding
night.  I hadn't been a virgin, not by a long shot;  I guess I had been
about as far from it as possible, considering that I was pregnant with
Scarlett already.  Ben and I had been living together for over a year
anyway, so when I got knocked up we decided to do the conventional
thing, but somehow the whole shenanigan about getting married in a white
dress (my sister laughed a good bit over that) and driving away in a
limo to the bridal suite in a hotel made everything different that
night. I had been joking with Ben about it since we decided to get
married ("Well, at least I won't have to worry about having my period on
our wedding night, ha ha") but it had all seemed a little bit strange,
standing beside a big bed covered with pink satin sheets, a transparent
wisp of negligee falling from my shoulders to trail on the floor, with
my new husband naked and erect, reaching for me.

I shook my head to clear it, like they do in the movies.  I heard Ben
coming up the stairs, talking to something, probably Biggles the cat,
who liked to lurk on the stairs and try to kill us.  He was the exact
same beige shade as the carpet, and would flatten himself out on a dark
stair, then suddenly leap up before you almost stepped on him, trying
his damnedest to make you fall backward and break your neck.  I think
someone told him he was the beneficiary of our life insurance, or
something.  I heard a slight clink of glass on glass.

I jumped up from the bed and grabbed the little box my present from Ben
had come in, and tiptoed quietly into the bathroom and latched the door.
I heard the bedroom door open, and then close, Ben muttering under his
breath about sending Biggles to the taxidermist before his time, just
like he always did.  I stifled a giggle and opened the linen closet,
pushing things around until I found what I wanted.

"Honey?"  Ben called.  "Where are ya?"

"I'm in the bathroom, where do you think?"  I called out.  "Don't get
your panties in a twist, I'll be through in a minute."

"I'm not wearing any panties."  Ben's voice came from near the door.
"All the better to put you in awe of my manhood."  There was a pause as
he waited for a retort, but I was too busy.  "What are you doing in
there, anyway?"

"What do *you* normally do in a bathroom?"  I said, getting things into
place.  "Go away for a minute and let me finish in peace.  Geez."

"We should put a refrigerator in there and you can just move in."  I
heard Ben saying, his voice getting muffled as he moved away from the
door.  "Women and bathrooms."

I smiled to myself and struck a match, lighting the scented candle on
the sink cabinet.  I put a good dollop of bath oil in the tub and turned
on the water.  Taking a last quick look in the mirror, I adjusted the
right strap of the lacy brassiere Ben had given me, making sure that my
nipple fell just right into the cut-out in the center.  I wiggled my
hips a bit, letting the tiny straps of the g-string settle.  I opened
the door and leaned against it, one arm high over my head, grasping the
doorframe.

"Come here, big boy.  Let's get clean before we get dirty, eh?"  I
smirked.

"Whoa."  Ben reared up from where he had been lying on the bed and
whistled.  "Hey lady, you better get out of here before my wife finds
you.  I'm not allowed to look at beautiful girls in sexy clothes, you
know."

I crooked a finger in his direction.  "Come here you.  I told the old
lady to get lost for a while."  As if my finger pulled a string attached
to his body, Ben leaped from the bed and grabbed a bottle of champagne
and two glasses and hurried into the bathroom.

The one thing I have always loved about Ben is that he is never
self-conscious about getting a hard-on.  He's one of those guys whose
penis almost vanishes when it's soft, so it's a nice long enjoyable
process to watch it get hard.  He knew I liked to watch it, and it
always seemed to turn him on even more to know I liked it;  a sort of
happy circle of events.  I could tell now by the way the wrinkles in his
cock were smoothing out that just the sight of me in his sexy underwear
was still enough to get him going.  I laughed gaily to myself and
brushed the back of my hand against his cock.  He pushed it against me
and lay his palms against my breasts.

"Nice nice nice."  He kissed my neck and rubbed his hands against my
exposed nipples, his flesh warm as it rasped against my cool skin.

"Get in the tub, lover.  This is your lucky night.  I'm going to give
you a bath."  I held up a big sponge.

"I'll get wet for you now if you get wet for me later."  He said against
my neck.  I shivered a little and giggled, then pushed him away.

"Come on, get in."  I noticed as he pulled away that his cock had
lengthened even more, almost its full size, although it was not yet
hard.

Ben did as I asked, wincing slightly as his balls touched the hot water,
but finally settling in with a sigh.  It wasn't often that either one of
us took the time for the luxury of a real tub bath, and it had been
years since we had had a bath together.  I let the water reach high
against the side of the tub and then turned it off to a tiny trickle.  I
got down on my knees beside the tub and swirled the sponge in the water.

"You look so nice by candlelight."  Ben said, reaching over to touch my
hair.  "Your hair is so shiny."  He looked abashed for a moment, as if
he wanted to say something else, but didn't.

"You look good enough to eat, and I just might later on."  I said,
kissing him.  "Right now I reserve the right to inspect every part of
you at my leisure."  I leaned over to get the bottle of Vitabath in the
rack beside the tub and my tits swayed with my movement.  I felt two wet
fingers rub one nipple lightly.

"Lean forward."  I said, and applied the sponge to his back.  The
pungent smell of pine filled the warm air of the bath as I rubbed the
gel into the skin of his back.  I heard him sigh again with pleasure.

"You look great in those.  I knew you would.  Then again, you'd look
good in anything."  He made a sound low in his throat as I kneaded the
muscles in his shoulders.  "Black looks good on you.  Shows up your pink
parts nicely."

"The kids thought it was pretty funny."  I chuckled quietly.  "I guess
they find it hard to imagine that decrepit old people like us still get
it on."

"Oh, what vulgarity.  'Get it on' indeed.  Don't you know it's 'doin'
the wild thang' now?  Sheesh, where have you been?"

"Not sitting in front of MTV with Jason."  I replied tartly.  "Ogling
girls who are probably too young for *him*, let alone you."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah."  He laughed and looked back at me.  "You 'fraid I'm
going to start dating Scarlett's girlfriends?"  He made a kissing noise.

"Nah.  You don't have an earring.  They wouldn't want you.  Besides,
you're a pervert and only I know how to deal with you."

"Yes, well.  There is that, isn't there."  He shifted slightly in the
water.  "You gonna deal with me soon, I hope?"

"I would say hold on to your britches, but you aren't wearing any. But
anyhow... do you remember when we were teenagers, and thought the very
idea of our parents having sex was enough to make you vomit?"

Ben gave that kind of a cackle that passes for a laugh for him
sometimes.  "I figured that mom and dad did it, but like with him on top
in the dark and for about two minutes."  He seemed to think for a
moment.  "Then again, it's sort of hard to look at the person who packed
you tuna-fish in your lunch for fifteen years and wonder if she gave
your dad a blow-job the night before."

"Oh, gross.  You know that's not what I meant."  I popped him over the
head with the sponge, making suds fly everywhere.  "It's just that I
guess sex seems so exciting when you're that age that you find it
impossible to believe that your parents are... well, you know... *hip*
enough to do something that fun."

"Hip enough?  Have you been listening to disco again?  No, no, don't
slap me.  Okay, yes.  I know what you mean.  Then again, maybe our
parents weren't hip enough.  Well, mine anyway.  You gotta remember that
as long as I lived under their roof mom and dad slept with their bedroom
door open."

"Yeah, but they were weird.  After my dad died my mom told me he had a
mistress.  That was so weird to hear out of my mom's mouth!"

"Yeah, I remember you came home from your mom's that day with your mouth
hanging open.  You shouldn't let your mouth hang open like that. Makes
me wanna fill it up."

"You're a lech.  Which is why I love you.  But anyway.  Yeah, she told
me that Dad had a mistress for all those years and a couple of
girlfriends too."

"Hey, wonder if he ever got up to some fun with all of 'em at once.  Hey
hey!"

I was silent for a moment, scrubbing Ben's back.  I cupped my hands and
filled them with water, letting it slide down his back, washing the
lather away.  I put my hand to his shoulder and pushed him back, and he
reclined in the tub as far as he could so that I could get to his front.

"Ben..."  I rubbed some Vitabath between my hands to warm it up a bit.

"Yes?"

"Um."  I took a mental deep breath.  "Okay.  Let me tell this bang, like
we used to say.  Have you ever been in a three way?"

"Huh?"  Ben asked.  "You know, Diane, you have the weirdest mind in the
world.  What on earth made you ask that?"  He laughed and squirted some
bathwater up into the air with his fist.  "I mean, not that I mind you
asking or anything, but I mean this is a bit out of the blue, you know?"
He gave a little laugh again.  "Are you getting kinky on me, lady?"

"You mean 'kinkier' I assume."  I went about the business of putting a
dollop of bath gel on my sponge and applying it carefully to his chest,
only a slight smile on my face.  "Okay, so you win, I'm a perv, I admit
it, but..."  I glanced at his face and he seemed intensely interested;
a little inspection further south showed that he was intensely
interested indeed.  I ran a finger over his most interested part and
watched it react, reaching higher above the surface of the water. "Well.
What I mean is..."  I could feel my cheeks getting hot; dipping my hand
in the water, I put it to my face to cool my skin. "The thought of it,
you know..."  I squirmed a little on the cold porcelain.  "I don't mean
necessarily *now*, you know, but back then." I ignored his smirk and
continued.  "You know, before we were married. The thought of seeing you
in action like that, well.  The thought of it kind of turns me on, a
little bit.  I mean, in theory..."  I giggled a little.

There was a pause as Ben grappled with my question and how to answer it.
He was amused, that much was obvious, but it was a few heartbeats before
he spoke.

"I tell you what."  Ben sat up suddenly, making a great splashing wave.
"Let's make this true confessions time.  I'll tell you about something
that happened to me before we were married, and you tell me something.
I kind of get the feeling that I might learn a little something here."
He scooped water over his chest and shoulders and then stood up.  "Now
take that candle and that bottle of champagne and get into bed.  I'm
going to rinse off and I'll join you in a minute."

Ben looked at me sternly, his hand on his hip, and he looked so cute I
couldn't help but bite my lip to keep from grinning.

"Yes, sir."  I said, and did as asked.

****

                               *2: Him*

Okay.  You asked.  So here's how I remember it.

I'm not going to divulge how long ago this was, but I had only recently
become ashamed of the big gold chain I wore for years.  I mean, I never
looked like John Travolta with his big pants, big collar and big nose or
anything, but I guess it would be fair to say that I hung out at my
share of discos.

I was still at Tech at the time, but I hadn't moved into the dorm yet.
I was still living with my Uncle Roy in his nineteen-fifties crackerbox
house with all of the motorcycle parts in the basement. That was Roy's
hobby in those days:  collecting motorcycle parts and pretending he was
going to custom build a bike one day.  He'd been buying bushel baskets
of assorted useless junk since about 1962 and hadn't mated one part to
another in all that time, and I doubt if he has yet.

Anyway, living in the spare room in my Uncle Roy's house was not, as you
can imagine, the greatest thing in the world for my social life. Roy was
an insomniac, among other irritating things, so he was awake when I went
to school and was awake when I got back and was awake pretty much all of
the time.  There is no way I would have even invited a girl to the
house, anyway, as when Roy wasn't watching t.v. wrestling he was
listening to these records which would make Roger Miller puke.  I think
the last time he had bought stereo equipment was when Pet Clark was big,
and he still thought of the Beatles as snotty foreigners.  I should
write a book about Uncle Roy.  Oy.

So what does a guy do when he's young, relatively good looking,
relatively well dressed and incredibly horny?  Check out the girls
wiggling their butts in dance bars, of course, and hope that someone
will finally notice that he is just irresistible.  Hope being the
operative word there.

I had a lot of what I used to call 'bar friends'.  These were guys which
I saw at the same bars weekend after weekend.  After a while if you keep
going to the same place you get to know a lot of the other regulars, and
that was okay because then you'd have someone to sit with and not look
quite so out on the prowl.  I know it's sort of hard to imagine a guy in
a thin leather tie and topsiders to be on the prowl, but that's the way
it felt.

Friday night was good, but Saturday night was better.  Maybe it's
because everybody got up late that day and they could party all night
and know that they could sleep late tomorrow too, but Friday was date
night and Saturday was no-date night at the bars where I hung out.  I
had a regular little round going, first this place and then that one and
then the next, pretty much in the same order.  Habit, I guess.

So this one night, right after I got my Subaru, I was making my regular
Saturday night rounds.  Okay, so it wasn't a Corvette, but the Subaru
was the first car I ever had with a real stereo in it, and that wasn't
missing any hubcaps or anything.  Funny how it increased my self-esteem
to be in a car that had all of its original quarter panels.

Back then these bars I went to charged admission because there was
dancing and pool tables and that sort of stuff.  Each one had a little
stamp they used to put on your arm, with some stupid saying or a happy
face or like that.  Sometimes I'd wake up on Sunday morning with these
dumb stamps up to my elbow.  This Saturday night was like that, and I
figured I would wake up with them up to my elbow again the next morning
- alone, per usual.

A buddy had told me when I was in Harrison's or Houston's or Howie's or
whatever the name of the place was, that there was a new place in town
where the really wild girls went to pick up guys.  I sort of doubted
that, as I found the concept of girls actually *looking* to get laid
improbable, but it was 2 a.m. and I didn't even have a phone number to
show for my evening's efforts, so I said what the hey, let's ride over
there and take a look.  I had had a couple and he was just starting out
(who starts out an evening at 2 a.m.? I used to wonder) so he said he'd
drive.  Sounded good to me, so off we went.

This place was called Sensations, or some other trendy name like that, I
really don't remember.  It was in a shopping center, though, and I
thought that was pretty tacky.  But, like I said, what the hey.

Man, this place was LOUD.  There were a zillion people in there and I
started to sweat the minute I walked in the door.  But, since I had paid
six bucks for the privilege of walking in that door in the first place,
I was determined to look around.  I got a gin and tonic from the bar and
plowed into the crowd.

This bar was one of the more mixed sorts, I guess, because there were
the secretaries with the big hair I was used to, but there were also
women who looked suspiciously like they had five o'clock shadow, if you
know what I mean.  There were the arty types too, they all had on stuff
that looked like rejects from a Bauhaus fashion show in 1931, coupled
with, of course, motorcycle boots.  That was the girls.  The guys were
all thin and pale and looked like when they ordered a drink they just
asked for O positive.  I was about to tell my buddy that I was not
exactly impressed with the opportunities which this place presented,
when I happened to look a little to his left.

There was a girl there, standing with another woman and a guy.  She was
sort of wincing every once in a while when a particularly loud boom
would come over the sound system, and while she held a drink in her hand
it was almost full.  The two she was with were having a sort of
conversation, or as close to it as they could come over the music and
the noise, and this girl was sort of looking around, a kind of bored
smile on her face.

She had on some *very* nice tight blue jeans and a Hawaiian shirt -
women seemed to go for the John Nathan-Turner look that summer - and
these red snakeskin high heels.  Even in those heels she was a little on
the short side, but that was okay.  She had one of those slicked back
hair-do's that always make me think of Liza Minelli, but on her it was
cute.  Sort of punkish.  I've always been a sucker for a pretty face,
too, and hers was:  sort of round, big brown eyes, a little nose - I
seem to always run to type, you know?  Big tits.  It was impossible not
to notice, because her shirt was open pretty far down.  I guess she was
proud of them. Hell, I would have been, if she were my girlfriend.

There was a rail around the dance floor, to give people somewhere to
stand, I guess, and not look too out of it.  I saw the girl and her two
companions move toward the dance floor and she slid into a space at the
rail while the others went onto the floor.  Why not give it a whirl, I
thought, so I walked up to her and said hey.

She looked at me a little suspiciously for a moment, but at least she
said "hi" back.  I had no idea what kind of voice she had, it was
impossible to hear anything so near to the speakers which were making my
internal organs do an involuntary polka.  When you go to a lot of dance
bars you learn how to lip read pretty well.

I stood next to her for a moment and watched her drink her drink.  It
was even hotter near the dance floor, I guess because of the lights; a
thin line of perspiration was on her upper lip, and the nape of her neck
was damp.  Her shirt, which was just thin cotton, was beginning to mold
to her body in a really interesting way.  Every once in a while she
would fan her face with her hand.  She had pretty hands, sort of petite,
with short fingernails and rings on every finger.

"Would you like to dance?"  I roared at her when a song started which I
liked.  She looked at me with upraised eyebrows and I repeated the
question, but she smiled and shook her head, showing me her drink.  I
smiled back and nodded, but tried once again.

"How about another drink and some talk?"  I shrieked.  She must have
been paying more attention to me this time, because she looked at me for
a moment and then nodded, gesturing for me to lead the way.

I took her free hand and squeezed it lightly, and led her away from the
rail and back to the bar by the door.  She tugged at my hand then, and
led me down a short corridor into another part of the club, which seemed
to be filled with thousands of church bells ringing all at once.
Actually, it was relatively quiet in there;  it was my ears that were
still thumping and bumping along.

"Wow."  I said, rubbing the side of my head.  "It seems so quiet in here
after being out there."  I have never been the king of opening lines,
but at least this one had a little truth in it.

She gave a short laugh.  "I like to dance to it, but sometimes it is a
bit much."  She sat down on a bar stool and patted the one next to her.
"My name is Maggie."

I hoisted up onto the stool and held out my hand.  "I'm Ben."  I said.
She held out her ringed fingers and I folded them in my hand for a
moment.  It was kind of awkward somehow, shaking hands with a girl at
two in the morning.  It's hard to explain.

She ordered another drink - a Tom Collins or one of those kinds, which
is sort of like grown-up lemonade - and I had another gin and tonic. I
figured if my breath was going to reek, it could at least reek of pine
needles, which is what gin always smells like to me.

I paid for our drinks, not tipping the bartender too much because he was
looking like he was starving and Maggie was a chicken sandwich. I've
always mistrusted bartenders.  I mean, they're already at a bar at work,
so when they get off they're right there.  Bet they never sleep alone.

"Wanna go outside?  It's kind of stuffy in here."  Maggie said suddenly,
surprising me.  I felt a little guilty, like she had read my unkind
thoughts about the bartender.

"Good idea."  I slid from my stool.  "You lead the way.  I'm lost."

She smiled at me and walked toward a different door than we had entered.
In my best Sherlock Holmes style, I surmised she had been here before.
Every once in a while she would look back and smile at me, making sure I
wasn't getting lost in the crush of bodies, and every time she did I got
this feeling.  I know this sounds egotistical and all, but I just got
the feeling that this was a girl who knew what she wanted, and right now
what she wanted was me.

The air outside was surprisingly fresh and cool after the smoke and
sweat of the bar.  There were a lot of people milling about, some
looking for other people, some looking to make purchases of various
chemical or fleshly kinds.  Maggie caught my hand and led me out into
the parking lot.

"Here's my car."  She said, sitting on the hood of a dark brown Dodge
Daytona.  She put those red snakeskin high heels on the front bumper,
her knees high and slightly parted, one palm flat for balance on the
curved metal beside her.  What a show.  I was impressed.

"Nice car."  I leaned against the hood, very close to her, my side
touching her bent leg.  She didn't move away.

"Thanks.  I like to drive really fast sometimes."  She shrugged.  "I
guess I get sort of impulsive every once in a while.  Do you?"  She
looked at me with those big brown eyes for a moment and then took a sip
of her drink.

"I think I'm getting more impulsive all the time."  I took a big gulp of
gin and almost choked on a stray ice cube.  "You, um, live around here?"

"No, not really."  She laughed and pointed at the tag on the front of
her car.  The state we were in sure wasn't the Land of Lincoln.

"Oh.  Heh."

"You know those two I was with in there?  That's my sister and her
husband.  I'm visiting."  She shifted slightly and leaned back on her
elbows so that the opening in her shirt gaped wide.  She was wearing a
black lace bra, and it made her tits look really white under the glaring
lamps of the parking lot.  They looked round, like they would be just a
little soft to the touch.  There was a lot of cleft there, and as I
stood there thinking about some interesting uses for it, I realized that
the old gallant reflex was starting to poke its head up, so to speak.

"I live with my uncle."  I said after a moment, remembering that it was
my turn to say something.  She seemed to look annoyed for just a moment,
and then sat up.

"Wanna go for a drive?  Cool off a little bit?"  She tugged at the
lapels of her shirt like she was trying to get some air down it.  I
watched, fascinated.  You gotta remember, this was a long time ago and I
was very young.

"That sounds great."  She slid off the car hood and turned to walk to
the driver's door of the car.  "Hey Maggie?" I called after her.

"Yeah?"  She turned around and looked at me questioningly.

I put my drink on the hood, walked over to her and put my arms around
her.  "You know, you have the most amazing face."  I leaned forward and
gave her a slight peck on the lips.

That 'slight peck' didn't stay that way for very long, and I sure didn't
have to push either.  Her mouth opened up and moved over mine, her
tongue between my lips before I had even registered that it was
happening.  The feel of her cool lips against mine, and her hot tongue
in my mouth sent a sort of shock through my body, right down to my dick
which felt like it got hard instantly.  I had never had a girl make the
first real move, you might say, and this time it was totally unexpected.
I had had my feelings, like I mentioned before, but this was not just a
feeling, it was a complete promise, all wrapped up in shiny paper and a
big ribbon.  Happy birthday to me.

"Come on.  Let's drive."  She said, pulling away from me.  She was
smiling.

I didn't know about her, but that was exactly what was on *my* mind,
only I didn't need a car for the kind that I was thinking about.

I slipped into the shotgun seat and looked at Maggie as she fiddled with
the stereo.  I had never been in the situation before where I was with a
girl I knew wanted to have sex with me but we didn't do something about
it right away.  This was weird, knowing that this girl was sitting
there, knowing I had a hard-on and wanting to get her to do something
about it, knowing that she would be showing me that black lace bra and
all it contained, and meanwhile she sat there and fiddled with the knobs
on her stereo.  I hadn't had sex that much before, but a few times;  it
had always been a sort of seamless episode from start to finish, from
the final "yes" to getting undressed and then actually getting down to
the dirty deed.  I wasn't really sure how to react in this sort of
situation.

She was right when she said that she liked to drive really fast
sometimes, and this time seemed to be of them.  She had the sunroof open
and all the windows down, and the air rushed into the car, whipping her
hair around.  A strand curved across her face and lay ensnared between
her lips, which were slightly parted.  The radio was up pretty loud and
I kept time to the music with the heel of my palm against the dash as I
watched the little turbo light pop on over and over as she really booked
it down the street away from the club.  It was unbelievable, I thought,
to be riding in a car with a sexy girl at eighty miles an hour with a
drink in my hand and a hard-on in my pants.  It just wasn't something I
had ever done before.  I was pretty sure I could get used to it real
fast.

I must admit I was a little puzzled when she slowed and put on her
blinker.  We were still in a wholly commercial part of town.  She turned
the car into a restaurant parking lot and pulled into a garage,
completely dark except from the light which came from a streetlight on
the corner.  She squealed into a spot and stopped, turning the key in
the ignition and letting the car die.

"Would you mind very much if I got naked?"  She asked, the weirdest look
on her face.  My eyes must have gotten really wide, because they sort of
felt like they had popped out part way.

"Here?"

"Yep.  Here."  And she meant it.  She proved she meant it.  Right there.

She sort of scooted up on one knee and faced sideways in her seat,
resting one arm on the steering wheel.  She leaned over and kissed me,
another one of those really hot kisses.  She took my tongue in her mouth
and sucked on it, which was totally new to me;  it was like she wanted
me to fuck her mouth with it.  She really got into kissing, and she was
good at it.

She sought out my hands, which were sort of lying in my lap, sort of
trying to hide the bulge which was all too obvious in my pants, sort of
trying to knead said bulge a little to keep my cock from exploding. Her
fingers traced the outline of my cock under my pants, and just the touch
of her hands left little burning trails behind.  She pressed my hands to
her breasts through her shirt, and waited a moment before helping me
with the first button her blouse.

With her blouse open, she leaned back away from me.  She held her chest
out proudly, nice creamy tits in that black push-up bra looking like the
tastiest thing in the world.  "It opens in the front."  She said.  That
drove me wild, you know?  I had never thought of a bra which might open
in the front.  I bet a man designed that.

I reached forward, leaning over the stick shift.  I was a little worried
about that sticking up between us, but when I sneaked a glance at the
backseat it didn't look much better back there.  A Daytona may be
advertised as seating four adults, but two of those adults had better be
midgets.

The little clasp between the cups of her brassiere had a little golden
bumble bee on it.  She had shrugged the shirt from her shoulders, it was
down around her elbows, making her seem uncovered as if by accident or
force.  Her shoulders were back, as if presenting that little bumble bee
for me to catch.  I did so.  Her brassiere opened with a slight pop and
the cups moved apart, her breasts holding it in place.  Her cleavage,
which had gone halfway up to her neck, shortened a little as her breasts
moved apart slightly, revealing the silky skin sprinkled with the
softest down in the world.  I ran the side of my hand between her
breasts along the bone there, just feeling it.  She seemed to like that.
I could see her nipples harden under the thin black lace still covering
them.

I took both of the cups of her bra and pulled them away from her
breasts, then slid the straps down from her shoulders.  It fell down her
smooth arms to her elbows, joining her shirt;  she straightened out her
arm and gave a kind of a little shake, and both fell down onto the seat
behind her.  When she shook her tits quivered just a little. They were
not as big as I had thought, the bra had pushed them up and together,
but hanging free on her chest they were beautiful, full u-shaped ones,
showing white triangles of creamy white where her bikini had covered up
her large nipples, which were a pinkish tan.

She ran her hands under her breasts, lifting them up, almost pointing
them at me.  The pounding in my pants was incredible.  I shifted
uncomfortably.

"You like?"  She whispered, still holding her tits for my inspection.  I
didn't say anything, but leaned forward and planted a kiss on her right
nipple, taking it briefly in my mouth, sucking it between my teeth.  I
heard her rings click together as she ran her hands through my hair.

"Let's get in the back."  Her voice was already getting a little deeper,
a nice rasp coming into it.

I looked around, not sure just how we were supposed to get back there,
but I saw her open her door and leap out, push forward her seat and hop
back in, pulling the door closed behind her.  I did the same.

I pulled her toward me and bit her neck lightly, tasting the slightly
salty skin.  Her hands were tugging at my belt and her breathing in my
ear was sending a shiver down my spine.  I helped her open the button on
my fly and she unfastened the zipper quickly, tugging at my pants. I
leaned back a bit and pulled both them and my underwear down to my
knees, but before I could go any further her head was in my lap and I
felt her lips slide over my cock.  I think I must have gasped pretty
loud, because I heard her sort of giggle.  I think she was pleased at my
reaction.

Her lips were tight around the shaft of my cock and her mouth was
incredibly hot and soft.  Her tongue was squirming around the head, the
intensity of the feeling was almost unbearable.  She had a hand around
the base, holding it tight like a sort of cockring, and it felt like my
dick was bigger than it had ever been.  The combination of a woman
giving me head without being asked, and the tight grip on my shaft made
me rock hard.

I slipped my hand over the soft skin of her back, feeling the little
ridges where her brassiere had cut into her flesh a little.  I had my
head thrown back, my eyes tightly closed, when I had first felt the head
of my cock slip between her lips, but now I forced myself to look at
her, the smooth expanse of her back, her slowly bobbing head, her ass
which was switching back and forth in time to her strokes.  I quickly
closed my eyes again, afraid that I would go too far and come in her
mouth instantly.  I figured she didn't want that, and I knew I didn't.
This was just too good.  It had to last as long as I could stand it.

I've never been good at thinking about baseball or icebergs, especially
when I am having my cock devoured by an incredibly wanton female.  Just
one of those things, I guess.  God, it felt good.  It wasn't my first
blow job or anything, but the first one where the girl had showed any
enthusiasm.  She sucked my cock like she really wanted to make me come.
I was getting a little too close to actually doing that, so I put my
hands to her head and tugged gently upward.

She looked up and me and smiled, her lips glittering in the darkness.  I
pulled her face to mine and kissed her.  She broke away from me after a
moment and slipped her zipper down, and then her jeans.  She was wearing
tiny black panties and those came off too.

I made a movement to pull myself over her, but she stopped me without a
word.  She moved over me, a knee on each side of my legs, leaning over
so that her tits pressed against my chest, her head bent down to my
shoulder to avoid bumping into the roof of her sports car.  I felt her
hand grip my cock and then the hot moistness of her cunt as it settled
down over me, all the way to the bottom of the shaft.

She was so hot, so smooth and soft;  her muscles gripped my cock as she
lifted up slightly, pulling on it, and was then deliciously relaxed as
she settled back over it.  Her back was arched and her tits were in
perfect reach for me to suck as she stroked up and down over my cock.  I
had never done it this way before, me slumped in the seat just enjoying
the feeling of the lips of her pussy slide up and down, her nipples
erect in my mouth, her breathing getting heavier as her cunt got tighter
around me.  I put my hand between her legs and looked down to see her
pretty pinkness flow over my hard cock. I pressed upward right inside
the opening of her outer lips, feeling for her clit with my finger.  I
heard her moan and cut off a gasp, and I massaged the little fold I felt
there.  Her cunt got tighter in waves and her thrusting was more
insistent, my hand following her as she rode on my cock.  The inside of
her pussy was slick with her juices, and they flowed out around my cock
and onto my hand, making my finger slip easily over her clit.  She held
her breath suddenly, my cock buried deep inside of her, and for a few
seconds she quivered, like she was concentrating.  I flicked my finger
over her clit light and fast, and sucked hard on her nipple.  Her cunt
was pulsing tighter and tighter.  She drew in just a tiny sip of air
with a kind of groan and then I felt her contractions ripple along the
length of my cock as she came, the force so strong it pulled her clit
back and forth across my still hand.

She put her hands to my shoulders and started thrusting as hard as she
could.  Sweat was standing out on her forehead;  the muscles in her
thighs were hard as polished wood.  I raised my hips on each stroke to
meet hers, my cock felt like it was twice as thick as her wet, tight
pussy grabbed on to it.

"Oh god, I'm gonna come."  I growled out between breaths.  I couldn't
take it any longer, my balls felt heavy, like they were steel.  I
crushed her body to me and grabbed the cheeks of her ass as I felt it
start, rushing through me, my entire body aching for it.  This seemed to
enflame her, she ground her hips down on me as hard as she could, and my
body jerked as my come flooded up into her.  I came in spurts, her
movements drawing every drop out of me.  I gritted my teeth with its
intensity, making that face that is impossible to mistake.

My feet felt cramped inside of my shoes, my entire body felt like it was
tied in knots.  I relaxed slowly, shifting under her weight which had
felt so slight just a moment before.

"Hey, wow."  Maggie pushed her short hair back behind her ears with both
hands.  "Not bad."  She laughed, a little breathy.

"Yeah."  I grinned up at her, and she pulled upward, letting my cock
fall from her confines.  "Not bad at all."

Maggie seemed completely unself-conscious, and I watched her with
interest as she wiped between her legs with her panties and then stuffed
them under the driver's seat.  She twisted around and sat down beside of
me, reaching for her bra and shirt.  She seemed to consider the bra for
a moment, and then shoved it into the shadows with her foot.

"I gotta get out to pull on my jeans."  She said, and reached for the
door handle, giving me a great view of her ass.  It had matching tan
lines to those on her breasts.

I took her hint and pulled up my pants, my knees digging into the back
of the seat in front of me as I tried to stretch out to zip them up. I
felt sort of sticky, but that was okay.  It had been worth it.  More
than worth it.  Incredibly worth it.

She fired up the engine again after she was situated, the radio blasting
on when she turned the key.  She sang along for a moment, turning once
or twice to smile at me as she pulled out of the parking lot.

She drove me back to where my car was.  I pointed it out to her in the
deserted bar's parking lot;    Harrison's or Houston's or Howie's had
closed long ago.  She pulled up beside my little blue Subaru and put her
car in neutral.

"I, um, had a nice time."  I said, wondering just how you go about
initiating a friendship after you've had sex.

"Great!  Me too."  She smiled another one of those smiles, very pretty
but not meaning much.

"Yeah, well.  Maybe we can get together again?"  I sort of doubted it,
but I figured it would be rude not to ask.

"I'm going back to Chicago next week..."  She shrugged.  "Maybe next
time I come for a visit, okay?"

"Sounds good."  I reached over and pecked her lightly on the lips, but
unlike last time it remained just that.  "See you later."

I got out of the car and walked over to my Subaru, putting the key in
the lock and watching her squeal tires out of the parking lot.

I sat behind the wheel of my car and tuned into the radio station she
had been listening to.  For some reason I just wanted to hear it a
little bit longer, even if it wasn't what I usually listened to.

****


                               *3: Her*

It gets a bit mixed up at times, even in my own mind.  There was David
and there was Dennis and there was me.  We had been friends since we
were kids, and I mean *kids*, since the fall of our second grade year.
We were the kinds of friends who make bloody compacts and swear to meet
each other in the afterlife;  the kind of kids who all read too much and
seemed to speak a different language, one that was only known to us
three.  Later in life I would hear someone say that friends are the
family that you choose.  Dennis and David were my brothers, my parents,
my friends, my loves.

It seems sort of funny, looking back on all those sessions of playing
house thirty and more years ago.  I was always the Mommy, of course, and
that was fine with me, because sometimes there were two Daddies, or
perhaps a Daddy and The Oldest Son.  Dennis and David seemed to change
those roles from day to day just like they changed their clothes.  As
long as the three of us were together, it really didn't matter who was
who.

The thing I remember most about David was his incredible ice-blue eyes,
huge eyes, really beautiful and expressive.  When David was young adults
would stop and stare at the tall, lanky child with the perennially
tousled hair and the eyes of a suffering Christ from an old paper fan.
As we got older and my body got rounder, Dennis' seemed expand in all
directions;  but David, he seemed to be all angles in juxtaposition, all
elbows and knees and collarbones, and those icewater-on-a-summer's day
eyes.

A triangle is a thing of angles too, of corners jutting outward, of
sharp edges;  nature has a way of blunting those corners and wearing
away edges, and so it was with our triumvirate.  It came to pass, as
they say in the old fairy tales, that one day it was no longer Dennis
and David and Diane, but Dennis and Diane, plus David.  Who knows how
that happened.  Maybe we all just dreamed it together and carried it
over into waking life.  That could be true for all I know;  it just
simply happened, and things were different, and sometimes awkward.

We were still in high school when David married Shirley.  It wasn't an
unheard of thing, back in those days, especially in that part of the
world.  I remembered seeing Shirley, a lonesome looking blonde girl, in
some of my classes in school.  She was very rural in a way, an earth
mother type, strong and practical, as if she could brew coffee over a
fire and plant a garden and bear babies in a cabin in the woods.  I
didn't like to think about her bearing babies.  I didn't like to think
about her at all, if I could help it.  I suppose that I was a little in
love with David myself, and even as I would lie in Dennis' arms in the
darkness of the back of his car, I would weep invisible bitter tears at
the thought of blonde hair, not brown, being reflected in David's
beautiful gaze.

Perhaps it was impossible for me to ever completely mask the way I felt
about my safe, secure triangle suddenly being increased in order by one,
but after David married Shirley it seemed as if a limb had withered, and
relations between the four of us became strained.  I could still feel
that limb, though it had grown shaky and unreliable; eventually, the
pain grew less and less as the ties, like nerves, died.  Dennis felt the
same way as I did, I think, or what approximated it in his own way.  We
didn't talk about David very much. He became something now behind me,
like prom dresses and protractors.

High school was over and Dennis and I went off to college.  We rented an
apartment together, a cavernous set of rooms of faded Jazz Age elegance,
and took up life in the only way we could imagine that it could be.  It
was if before we had been inseparable, but now we must be constantly in
one another's presence or the unthinkable, unspeakable could happen to
us again.  I remember candle-lit nights, shivering in blankets against
the drafty rooms of our almost empty apartment, Dennis reading his Tarot
cards, always seeming to search for the answer to a question that he
never spoke aloud.  Sometimes now when I think of that apartment I see
the turning of those cards, and the silences between the tiny click of
their slick, stiff paper hitting the hardwood floors;  I think of the
man falling from that Tower, his landscape lit fleetingly by lightning,
a golden crown falling forever just out of his reach.

Those months were terrible.  I could find no relevance in anything.
Dennis and I were drifting through college, more swept by the current
like dead autumn leaves than swimming in strong spring waters, like we
had always been told it would be.  We both left school, I to a desk job,
Dennis to various odd jobs, selling furniture, framing pictures, once,
during that first sweltering summer, laying flooring with his uncle.  He
would return to our apartment in the evening, his hands calloused and
discolored, his back creaking, his face glum.  We would sit in the thick
summer air and breathe in aromatic smoke and drink dark amber rum and
make love until the sweat running from our bodies would soak the sheets
of our bed.

When our second winter came in the apartment Dennis found a job working
in the liquor store just four blocks away.  He liked it well enough,
sitting behind the counter during the dead hours of the day, reading a
book;  when he worked at night he seemed the most happy, though, talking
to the old men who came in for bottles of cheap wine, the women in gaudy
dresses on the arms of businessmen with their neckties askew who bought
bottles and magnums and jereboams of cheap champagne.  He once told me
that he had arranged all the little bottles of jewel-toned liqueurs into
the colors of the spectrum, and had had a long conversation with an old
woman about the psychology of color, the only one to notice his work.  I
pushed papers and wrestled with decollators and swore at dial tones, and
I told myself that both of us were happy.  Which, in a sense, we were,
if being happy is not being unhappy.

The liquor store is where Dennis saw David again.

"It was like a dream almost, where you are invisible, and watch people
walk past you and never know that you are there."  Dennis told me that
night, his words short and clipped as he inhaled strong smoke from a
bong.  "I saw David walk into the store with another man, an older man,
and I thought to myself - could this really be him?  I didn't want to
just scream out like an idiot, in case it wasn't him." Dennis' eyes were
sparkling, and I felt a sort of strangulation in my chest.  I hoped my
eyes were not betraying me as his were.

"I watched the two of them and I heard that voice, sort of high for a
guy his size, and I am still thinking to myself no, you never know, they
say everybody has his identical twin, and then I heard the 'Christ on a
pony!' when he tilted back a bottle to see the price tag, and-"

I laughed.  "Who else could it be?"  The feeling of strangulation
increased, but then settled down to some accustomed place;  it wasn't a
new thing then, but an old chain, its lock rusted and fallen, which had
been newly polished and wound around my heart.  I knew the color of that
chain, blue like icebergs, like icewater on a summer's day, the color of
the eyes of a suffering Christ on an old paper fan.

There was a pause, and Dennis sat down beside me on the pillows on the
floor which served us as a couch.  He took my hand and kissed it.  He
had always done things like that.  I wonder why.

"Shirley is gone."  He said, quietly.  "Been gone for a while."  There
was a comfortable silence as we both thought about that for a while.

"Well, I assume you asked him over, didn't you?  Is he living around
here?"   I asked after a time.  I reclined against Dennis and he
encircled me in his arms.  I could hear his heart beat, quickly it
seemed, but perhaps it was only my imagination.

"Nope, he was riding with that guy, the older one.  Buddy of his.  He's
temporarily without benefit of personal transportation, as he put it."
Dennis laughed again, a rich tenor.  "I told him we'd come over to his
place next Saturday."  He squeezed me with his arms.  "Okay?"

"Great."  I smiled up at Dennis' familiar face.  "You know I'd love to
see David."  It was true.  I would love to see him.  It occurred to me
that I would love to see him indeed.  I wondered about his eyes.  I felt
a flush as I especially wondered what was being reflected in that gaze
now.

It makes me laugh now to think of the picture Dennis and I must have
made as we walked up the sidewalk of the apartment complex, searching
for David's front door.    Dennis had lost some of the weight he had in
high school, and the clothes he wore always had an air of a second-hand
store about them, fitting here but not there, slightly worn in places,
shoes held together mainly by the laces.  My clothes were second hand
finery;  an old prom dress I had found for a dollar, some of my mother's
shoes from twenty years ago, a string of celluloid pearls from a War
long gone.  The last time David had seen me I was wearing Earth shoes.
I wondered if he would even recognize me.

Dennis looked around at the scores of identical porches, each with twin
front doors.  He consulted the directions David had given him again, and
pointed at a porch where a cheap glass windchime, painted with plum
blossoms and fake Chinese characters, swayed in the breeze.

We walked up to the door, and Dennis rang the bell.  I rocked my weight
onto the little spike heels of my mother's shoes, nervous.  A moment
later a tall, lanky man with tousled hair opened the door.

"David."  I said, looking straight into those little chips of glittering
blue sky.

"Diane!"  David lunged forward and threw his arms around me, hugging me
so tight I struggled for breath.

"Wow, now that's a welcome!"  I laughed and pulled away, my ribs
tingling from his touch, my neck scorched from his lips.  He shooed me
and Dennis into his apartment and closed the door.

It looked inside pretty much like I had expected David's apartment to
look.  There wasn't much furniture, and what he did have looked like it
came from a garage sale in a poor neighborhood, all yellow plaid and
pressboard.  There were a lot of books scattered around, and records
inside of old fruit packing crates along one wall.  A few posters were
placed here and there, probably hiding the plaster instead of enhancing
it, and a little curio cabinet hung over the cheap stereo.  I sat down
on the sofa and almost fell through the cushion.  After I curled my legs
underneath me it was comfortable enough.

"What can I get for you, beautiful?"  David asked me.  He grinned at me,
his teeth with the little gap in the middle shining.  "No, wait.  I know
just what you need.  Hang on."  He rushed from the room.

"Same old David."  Dennis sat gingerly on the edge of his cushion and
slowly crept backward.  He must have seen my rapid descent into the
depths of the couch and didn't want to repeat my performance.

"Yep, same old David."  I looked around, my gaze finally settling on the
curio cabinet on the wall, and I thought I saw a tiny, familiar flash of
green there, but the sun was setting, and the harsh poverty of the room
was being softened by shadow, so it was hard to tell.

Dennis snickered.  "Looks like our place if we lived in Tuscaloosa,
Alabama or Piqua, Ohio."

"Yeah, sort of.  But don't tell him that.  Comparing his home to ours is
no big compliment."

David burst back into the room with three bottles and an opener in his
hand.  "Look!  The little Cokes that you used to like.  And I kept them
in the freezer just until they started to get all slushy on the top."
He wrenched the cap from a bottle and handed it to me.

"You remembered."  I marveled.  "I used to get these out of that vending
machine over by school."  I took a long swallow of the achingly cold
drink, shivering a little as it slid down my throat.  "I can't believe
you remembered such a stupid little thing."  I smiled up into his face.

"Of course I remember."  He said softly, then turned quickly to Dennis.
"You, my man, need a glass I suspect.  There's a bottle of Old Forester
here with your name on it somewhere."  He grinned and loped out of the
room again.

Dennis looked at me speculatively, I thought.  However all he said was,
"I think I shall roll a joint."

Looking back on it, I suppose I should measure that night by the level
in the bottle of Old Forester instead of hours.  At first we were like
three adults, sitting in a living room, sipping drinks;  but as the
amber fire in that bottle was spilled, or evaporated, or stolen by
thieves - we refused to believe we could have drunk almost an entire
bottle in two hours - we seemed to peel away years like layers of
onionskin. We became just three friends again, like as not to make a
bloody compact, to swear to find one another in the afterlife;  like
natives returning to a distant land we found the language which we had
spoken together, a language long dead but now, somehow, returned to
life.

"I have a question."  David said at one point, holding up a long,
slender finger as if he wanted to test the wind.  "No answer required,
of course, but I would like to know the answer nonetheless."

I sat, complacently waiting for the question, ready to answer whatever
David asked of me.

"I suppose what I want to know is just basically why you ended up with
Dennis and not with me."  He looked at me in the intense way that
inebriated people have.

"Lordy, David, you are drunk off your ass."  I gave a small laugh.

"No, really."  David rose to his knees and lumbered over to where I sat;
we had all slithered into the floor by degrees as the night progressed.
"Was it because he's hung like a horse?  That's what Shirley told me,
you know."  He seemed to consider the look on my face for a moment.  "I
bet I could make you scream louder than he ever has."

I heard Dennis sort of cough, and I turned to look at him, my face
blazing.  His cough had turned into laughter, seemingly uncontrollable.
He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.  I started laughing with
him, until I noticed that David was not.

For some reason I knew why David wasn't laughing.  He wasn't laughing
because he was serious.  I was laughing because I wanted to be serious,
but I was a coward.  Like the coward I was, I just said "Promises,
promises."  I flicked a glance into those crystal eyes and quickly
looked away.

"'Christ on a pony', to quote you.  Sorry, David."  Dennis wiped his
eyes with is shirttail and put his glasses back on, still giggling. "I
didn't mean to laugh.  I've just never heard anyone chat up my
girlfriend like that before, especially not in front of me."  He rocked
forward out of lotus position and onto his knees, reaching into his
pocket.  "I guess this is as good a time as any to bring out my surprise
for the evening."  He pulled a crumpled baggie out of his jeans pocket
and put it on the coffee table in front of David.  "For old times' sake,
huh?  I knew this was your favorite back in school."

My eyes widened and I took the baggie in my hands.  "Are you trying to
tell me, you little sneaks, that you two were smoking hash in high
school?"  I turned it over and gazed at the little brown lump.  "And you
never asked ME?"  I laughed.  "What else did you two get up to that I
don't know anything about, I want to know."  I threw the lump back on
the table toward David.

"I'll never tell."  Dennis said, and grinned.  I made a little checkmark
against his name in my mental list of 'things to do' when I got home.  I
reached over and squeezed his hand.

"You got a pipe?"  David asked, and Dennis shook his head.  "Okay, then
we do it the classy way."  He crawled over to a bookshelf and considered
its contents for a moment, then pulled a paperback from a shelf and
crawled back to our circle.  "This is how they do it at Buckingham
palace, I've heard.  Oh shit, wait a sec."  He got up and left the room
for a moment, and I heard a drawer squeaking open and things being
stirred around.  Another squeak, and David came back into the room with
a little cloth tomato in his hand, pins and needles stuck into its
stuffing.  He sat down and held it up for my inspection.

"Just what the hell are you doing?"  I asked, intrigued.

"Watch and learn, wench.  This is a basic life skill."  Dennis drained
his glass and reached for the dwindling bottle of bourbon.

David took the lump of hash and sliced off a tiny bit of it with a
straight pin, neatly rolling the rest back up in the plastic of the bag.
I watched him stick the pin through the front cover of the paperback -
which, if I remember correctly, was _The Dharma Bums_ by Jack Kerouac -
so that it stuck straight up.  He put the little bit of hash on the pin
and lit it.

"Now that's stupid."  I said.  "This is a substitute for a pipe?"  I
laughed.

"Scoff not at what ye do not know."  David said, sniffing.  "Are you
through with your glass?"  When I nodded he took it and shook the last
few drops of liquid out of it, and placed it over the burning hash. The
glass quickly filled with smoke.

He lifted the book to his face and tipped the glass to one side
slightly, and sucked at the heavy smoke roiling about under the glass.

"I don't believe it."  I said, and reached for the book.  I ignored the
two men as they traded comments about impressionable young girls and
took a deep smoke-laden breath down into my lungs.  It tasted sour and
spicy, and the smoke was thick and almost oily.  I giggled, smoke
squirting out between my teeth like liquid, at the image of us sitting
around smoking a book, and a Kerouac book at that.  I passed it to
Dennis.  After a few rounds, we were all just a little dizzy and
laughing in gasps.

"You thought more about what I said?"  David asked me, after a few
moments of silence.  My head was leaning against the arm of the sofa; I
was listening to the music on the radio as if in a dream.

I looked at David and smiled.  "Hmm?  What do you mean?"

"About what I said."  He was looking at me with those incredible eyes,
slightly tainted now by a tinge of red.

"Diane..."

I looked over at Dennis, who was sitting with a Coke in one hand and the
bottle opener in the other;  he had been sitting like that for a few
moments, I realized, unmoving.

"I think he's asking you to go to bed with him, sweetheart."  Dennis
said very softly, applying the bottle opener to the cap.  He didn't look
up at me, but kept his eyes on the his hands.

I turned to David, as if for confirmation.  He wasn't looking at me, but
at Dennis.  I shivered a little as I looked at his face, which seemed so
strong.  His hair was shining in the slightly yellow light of the table
lamp above him, and my hand seemed to travel up to it under its own
will.  I took a long strand in my fingers and moved down its smooth
length.

"David, I..."  My voice trailed off, because I could think of nothing to
say.  No, it wasn't that.  It was if there were too many things to say,
and they all needed to be said at once, there was no logical sequence
for them, everything must be said simultaneously or not at all.  I
looked to Dennis for help, but his eyes were still on the bottle in his
hand, and the cap which he held in his fingers.

"Well, actually," David paused for a moment, and his voice fell to just
a slight whisper above the music on the radio.  "I was going to invite
you both."

I closed my eyes.

I loved Dennis.  At that moment in time I loved him fiercely,
protectively, above anything or anyone else in the entire world;  but at
that same time I also loved David, the sheer vulnerability about him,
the changelessness of him.  Over all of that was an overwhelming lust in
me, and the image came to my mind unbidden of the three of us in
embrace, arms entwined, legs crossing and recrossing, front to back to
front;  and the sounds, oh god, the sounds - the sounds of flesh meeting
flesh and all of the meaning of its meeting.

The blood was rushing through me, beating strong in my cheeks and my
secrets.  I put my hands over my eyes to push out the image which came
from within, not without.  I sat for a moment and listened to my own
breathing, feeling its heat flame the palms of my hands.

I made a sound, muffled in the confines of my hands.  I let them drop
from my face, and I could feel the cool air rush over my burning red
blush.  "I want to."  I said.

Dennis moved closer to me, his thigh alongside mine.  He took one of my
hands, and David the other.  Dennis' hand was cool against my heated
skin, but David's hand was hot, so hot it made my palm sweat. I looked
at his hand grasping mine, as if there would be a haze of heat rising
from it.

I moved my gaze to Dennis' lap, and then up to his face.  His hard-on
was reflected there as well.  "Good."  He said, putting his lips to
mine.  I felt David's grip on my hand tighten as my lips opened against
Dennis', and he darted his tongue into my mouth.

Thousands of times I had opened my lips to his, cool like snow at times,
warm as spiced cider at others, but never like this.  His mouth seemed
to join to mine, to meld, his tongue seeming to invade my body and then
to become one with it, in it.  A never-ending kiss, a first kiss carried
to its logical extension of the last, like a hand held tightly like
silence around a secret.  My eyes were tightly closed, to open them was
more than I could bear;  I leaned back for a moment to take a deep, slow
breath, my lips still parted.  I felt my head turned a few degrees, and
another mouth was lain on mine;  hands found my breasts and freed them
from their covering.  Long strong fingers caressed me, and calloused
hands, full lips kissing me turned to sweet thin ones, sharp darting
tongue to languid caress.

My shoes were slipped from my feet, and I opened my eyes to see David
putting them neatly together under the table.  I looked at Dennis and
reached a tentative hand out to him.

"Is this really-"

"Yes, it is."  He nodded and then looked at David.  "We used to joke
about this."  Dennis gave one of his quick smiles.  "We've always wanted
to do this with you, but it never seemed right-"

"Until now."  David ran a finger into the cleft of my breasts.  "Are you
sure you want to?"  He asked, very quiet, his words little more than a
buzzing in my ear.

Have you ever had a dream, a dream where you are underwater, thrashing
about for your life, your lungs burning from lack of air;  but then
something in you whispers that all is well, you can breathe;  there is
nothing to do but to believe that whisper true, and you take a deep
draught of the water and you wonder if you are going to die... but you
do not die, your lungs welcome the water, in fact they revel in it, the
delightful sensation of being free overwhelms you, being free under the
water, in the cool darkness and the silence...

"Take me to bed."  I rasped.  I turned to Dennis and repeated it. "Take
me to bed."

David's bedroom was even more empty than his living room;  there was a
mattress on the floor, covered in a homemade quilt, an orange crate
standing on its side with a clock and a tiny lamp on it, a few books
carelessly left in its interior.  The three of us stood there, just
inside the closed bedroom door, silently contemplating David's bed.

I clutched the almost empty bottle of bourbon I held in my hand like a
security blanket, swaying slightly, but more from the strength of my
heartbeat than the booze.  Dennis came up behind me and nuzzled my ear,
and his arm went around me protectively.  I watched David close the
venetian blinds on the bedroom window, the room darkening from a hazy
twilight to a chirascuro sketch.  Someone took the bottle from my hand,
and I let out a long breath as the zipper at the back of my dress slowly
opened.  I felt a set of hands slide the bodice down my arms, and
another unclasp my brassiere.  My clothes fell away and I stood, only my
stockings remaining, and the one garter I wore, emerald green, with the
little plastic silver pistol tucked into its lace.

I heard a rustling noise and I turned to my right, where Dennis was
standing, naked, folding his jeans on top of his shoes.   He took the
little baggie of hash out of the pocket and held it up for us to see.
His cock was not completely erect, but lenghtening, and as he saw me
standing there with only my garter on show it gave a slight kick as it
started to rise.

"Shall we indulge?"  He smiled, and walked over to the bed, seating
himself and leaning against the wall, his legs out in front of him,
spread slightly.  He busied himself with the straight pin and the book.

"Bell, book and candle."  I croaked.  Dennis looked up at me quizically,
and I shook my head.  "Never mind."

I felt David slip his hand in mine, and he led me to the bed.  I sat
down next to Dennis, my left leg alongside his, David sitting with his
legs crossed facing me.  I felt secure in the cool semi-darkness of the
room, and looked at David's naked body, his slightly stooped shoulders,
his almost hairless chest, his slender legs showing bony knees at their
bend.  Behind his legs' shadow I could make out the outline of his
penis, and a hot shock ran through me, from my womb to my heart.

A nudge on my arm from Dennis;  he passed me the glass full of smoke,
and I sipped at it, a thin stream diving down my throat.  My body felt
lighter, as if I was a wreath of heavy smoke myself.  I leaned back
against Dennis, one shoulder touching the wall, and laid my hand on his
thigh, stroking it lightly.  He exhaled a great cloud of grey.

David ran his hands up the inside of my leg, following the curve of my
calf up to the indentation of my knee;  his fingers were as light as
spiders, trailing over the flesh of my thigh, his fingertips only
brushing the hair on my mons.  I felt a shift and my weight settled
against the wall as Dennis moved a leg behind me, so that I sat cradled
between his thighs;  he pulled me backward slightly and I reclined
against his chest.  His arms encircled me and each cupped a breast.  He
held them from beneath, my nipples captured each between a thumb and
forefinger;  as they swelled under his touch he pinched them lightly,
and I lifted my pelvis to meet David's gently exploring hand.

David rolled my stockings down my legs, my skin prickling at the
sensation of their smoothness slinking downward.  I held each foot up in
turn for him to slip their sheerness from my legs, and he kissed my
ankle.

David opened my lips gently with his fingers;  when he touched my
clitoris I drew in my breath, my back arching.  I felt Dennis' cock
press into my back, and he moved against my skin, his flesh feeling
heavy and hot.  David moved my legs apart and lay himself between them
full length, his tongue playing over the outer lips of my sex, feeling
soft and deliciously warm.  My lips seemed to swell under his teasing
touches, and he ran his tongue down the opening, making my heart pound.
Dennis' muscles tightened under me, and he pushed his erection into the
hot skin of the small of my back.

The lips on my sex were warm and soft, and the fingers on my nipples
hard and unyielding;  I felt a flutter, like the ghost of a contraction,
as David's tongue slid across my clit.  I looked down at his head buried
between my thighs, little sounds of satisfaction escaping his lips as he
licked at me, his tongue making broad strokes through my inner lips.
Each time I thought I was close to the edge of orgasm it seemed to
recede, and I went farther and farther as his warmth teased my clit.  My
nipples were burning, my breasts almost aching with a need to be sucked.
I cried out and twisted in Dennis' arms, my entire body trembling, my
knees raised and wide, my own hands clutching at the hands on my
breasts.

I heard a rasp from behind me, and Dennis spoke, his voice gravelly.
"Make her come, David.  I want to watch as you make her come."  His
voice sank to a whisper against me.  "I want you good and ready for me
when I fuck you.  I want you to be all tight and wet because I'm going
to fuck you all night and make you beg for more."

Dennis' breathing was hot in my ear as he rubbed his cock against the
skin of my back incessantly, as hot as the lips and tongue sucking,
licking, nipping at my clit made me thrash as I begged David for
release.  He slipped two fingers into me and I bore down on them, loving
the feel of something inside of me.  I thrust my hips forward, sliding
down over his hand, grinding my sex into David's face.  His tongue found
my clitoris and made circles around it, making my muscles tense, my
stomach as hard as stone, the calves of my legs bunched and aching, my
feet pointed, the toes curled;  I felt suspended for a moment, holding
my breath, and then the orgasm burst through me, wave after wave washing
over me, letting me drown in its feel.  I gasped for air and clawed at
David's hair, pulling him away from me, to stop the unbearable ecstacy
which felt as if it would stop my heart.

The blood rushing through me, the smoke of the hash, the heat of the
David's empty bedroom made everything a blur.  I felt my body being
stroked, fondled, a finger slipped into the heart of my sex, lips
pressed against mine.  I was rolled gently onto my stomach, and my hips
pulled backward with my ass in the air;  I felt the smooth slide of
flesh into mine, and the warm press of a cock against my lips.  I took
it into my mouth and matched the strokes of my ravisher, pressing it
deep into my throat.  It seemed to go on for hours, the clutch of hands
in my hair, the hoarse cries, the whispered directions and moans of
triumph;  the hardness I took into my mouth was first surrounded by hair
that was as black as midnight, and then a reddish gold;  the hands
gripping the globes of my rear now caressing, then adamant.  It was as
if I was awash in that warm sea of which I had been so afraid, floated
in it, first on my knees, then on my back, now on my side, surrounded by
warm lips and gentle hands;  fine, shining hair under my hands and
coarse, rasping hair against my body. The fires flared up brightly for a
time, silken hot, burning themselves out in a burst of heat and light,
and then quickly died down to a smoulder, leaving us sweating and
breathless, entwined in one another's arms.

I awoke once in the night, curled against Dennis' back in the way that I
always slept, my arm thrown over his waist.  For a moment I did not
recognize the pattern of moonlight on the wall, and then I remembered
that I was not asleep in my own bed.  I could feel my face blaze crimson
at the thought of what I had just done;  and with that thought came its
twin - the desire for it to never end, to wake up each morning with my
arm around Dennis' waist, and David's hand resting heavily on my hip.  I
wanted to hear Dennis' loud laughter, and see it mirrored in ice-blue
eyes.  I wanted ... I wanted many things.

I wanted those things for a long time, I suppose.  But, like most
feelings, even wanting grows dimmer over time.


                              *3: Them*

There was a heavy quiet in the room, only the sound of the air
conditioner whirring outside.  They lay side by side, each thinking of
the chances which had been taken, the secrets revealed.

A car went by outside, its tires drumming on the pavement.

"I suppose I have a question."  Ben said.  "And like David, I suppose
the best way to ask is just to ask, right?"

Diane felt him stir restlessly on his pillow.

"The question is: why are you here?  I could never make you feel
anything compared to that.  I knew you were friends with them, and I
knew that you had loved Dennis once, but you never told me that it was
like that, like a big fire burning itself up.  I could never make anyone
feel that way, how could I?  I just don't understand why you would give
up some kind of grand passion to get married to a guy who works in a
bank.  Scarlett notwithstanding."  She could hear the sheets rustle as
he turned on his side to face her, and she could almost feel his eyes
searching for hers in the dark.

"You don't understand."  Diane said softly.  "You said it yourself and I
suppose you don't even realize it.  It *was* like a big fire burning
itself up.  That's *all* it was.  It was this idea, this obsession.  A
dramatic part to play to make up for an empty life.  That sort of thing
may be fine for somebody else, but it was all just pretending for me,
for Dennis and David too, I think.  It was like we had started along
this path, and it could only lead to this big scene, and we played the
big scene and that was the end.  If it had been such a big thing, why
would I have been living alone when I met you?  Why would I have fallen
head over heels in love with just some guy who works in a bank, as you
put it?"    She shifted under the covers to run her leg up against his.
"I like guys who work in banks."

"I still don't understand."  Ben's hand found hers, and clutched it.
"Don't expect me to."

"Okay."  She sighed.  "Understand this, though..."

"Yes?"

She pulled him to her, and was glad of the sudden moonlight streaming
through the window, as it revealed the crimson blaze in her face which
burned brightly like a fire, a steady flame;  revealed her face and his,
coming ever closer, to warm himself at that blaze.

****