Black Silk (11 page)

“Fuck me,” I declared, mouthing the words around our dueling tongues. Cassis responded by kissing me harder, tossing the sopping
rose aside, and beginning afresh as he rubbed a new flower against my pussy.

The tingling intensified, a distant fire aflame deep within the dermis of my cooch.

I worked my hips now, not just out of lust, but in response to an itch, a hunger, born of rose petals, that desperately needed
scratching. I reached for him, rock hard amid a bed of thorny stems. I held him in my hand, trying to guide him home. Above
me, Cassis still worked his magic upon my mouth. I wanted to come so bad, I could barely breathe. I wanted him in me, deep,
hard, I wanted those hands crushing my thighs, I needed my pussy scratched, my labia scratched, the double itch was too much
for me to take.

Before I could get him close enough to my pussy to matter, to my own surprise I erupted. Something deep, deep, deep inside
of me let go, and then a jarring sensation that rushed in a wave to the outer edges of my walls, filling them with heat, quakes,
an ultrastrong spasm, and, finally, release. Cassis still inside of my mouth, I moaned heavily around him. Thrashed against
him, collapsed like a bitch.

He released my tongue and pulled away, the victor, smiling above me.

No words, just smiles.

Beneath him, me, frail, quivering, stunned by such immediate release with what wasn’t my typically necessary closure: tongue-on-clit
or dick-in-pussy.

“Nice,” he finally muttered.

My thighs were trembling much too hard for me to try to form words.

The rose-capade had been so exhausting for me that I had fallen immediately asleep. Slept deep, too, for three solid hours,
Cassis over at the desk, naked, hard at work on his book.

The pecking sound of fingers on keyboard finally broke my stream of unconsciousness and I rose, groggy, hungry, my bladder
full. I stumbled from the bed, toward the bathroom, blindly flipping on the light, finding the toilet, sitting down. As I
relaxed to release my bladder, absently rubbing my eyes, I felt a fullness below that seemed unnatural. Tight skin. Puffiness.
I stopped rubbing my eyes to take a peek.

My labia were swollen five times their natural size. As the flow of pee made contact with the skin, I let out a squeal so
steep that it didn’t even seem to come from me.

Soprano. Only this time the singing emanated from my mouth.

From the room, I could hear the deep distant hum of Cassis’s familiar chuckle.

I stood outside the room now, legs barely able to close, the card key in my hand, poised to open the door. Through the barrier,
the sound of changing channels. Still flickering by with lightning speed. Cassis’s hand on his joint must be doing the same.

I stood there, staring at the number on the door.

416.

The number of times I’d come in the past month.

416.

The number of times I’d think about him in the course of a day.

416.

The number I would count to, there, outside the door, until Cassis had jerked himself to completion. Then I’d walk away. My
lips couldn’t take it.

Fuhgettaboudit.

Sometimes, even a pussy needs a chance to heal.

_________________

by Reginald Harris

Fetish: A rite, or cult of fetish worshipers.

I hate to admit to being weird, but shopping makes me horny.

And not just any kind of shopping, either. Going to the mall does nothing for me. But take me to a grocery store, give me
one of those silly carts with the mandatory one wobbly wheel to push around, and suddenly I get very hot.

Maybe it’s because we shop together, Ricky and me. We usually have to go late at night. Invariably he gets called on to pull
an extra shift at the hospital and doesn’t get home until after midnight. I could go by myself, and I did at the beginning
of our relationship, but that was never any fun. I did
not
enjoy lugging bags to the car, then out of the car, then up the steps to our apartment all by myself. That’s what
his
muscles are for. So now I’m content to wait until he gets home, checking the shelves for what we need, drawing up my list,
changing clothes a few times until I find just the right ensemble for our late-night foray into comestibles.

Thank God for twenty-four-hour grocery stores! No swerving to avoid some family and their screaming kids. No guys desperately
trying not to look like they’re a couple shopping together, fresh pasta and imported olive oil in their carts giving them
away, or women with cans of dog food and big bags of litter, buying for two, not caring who notices. No single guys cruising,
frozen dinners and canned vegetables rattling like pinballs in their baskets. No long lines at the checkout, either; usually
just one or two checkers mostly standing around filing their nails. The store is almost empty but for the overnight shelvers,
ripping into boxes like it was Christmas, and the two of us.

When Ricky and I first walk into the store I’m fine, focused, I can control myself. But once we hit the fresh produce, walking
past the rows of onions and celery, the bulging bags of oranges or grapefruit, it hits me. I’m overcome with emotion. Something
about the ordinariness of it all, how dull and everyday it is to buy groceries together, drives me wild. Ricky’s receding
back, pushing our cart toward the deli section, becomes suddenly the most beautiful sight in all the world.

My list is filled with innuendo: Meat. Juice. Eggs. Milk. Even the wheat creams here. One night someone had dropped a container
of yogurt in Dairy, thick globs of lumpy white suspension still quivering on the floor when we turned down the aisle. I nearly
fainted dead away.

“Excuse me, but what aisle are the blow jobs in?” I whisper in Ricky’s ear. “Stop it,” he says, shaking his head.

I want to drag him into the stockroom, lean against a box of thousand-gross muffin mix, and have him fuck me there. In my
wildest fantasies we do it in the middle of the store, rutting on the floor in Aisle 11 between oversize bottles of store-brand
soda and cheap pretzels, ejaculating into a pool of waxy buildup.

As we wander through the store, checking off items from our list, beads of sweat begin to form on my forehead. I show Ricky
the store’s weekly sales flyer. “Look, dear—this is a good price for a nice piece of tail, don’t ya think?” He stifles a laugh
and keeps on walking.

At the display of oils, the sight of so much lubrication makes my knees grow weak: corn, olive, vegetable. In liquid form,
in tubs—sticks! Fortunately the rest of the baking equipment calms me down. Besides, to mention nuts and stuffing mix to Ricky
would be too obvious. Then we’re at the spices and my excitement returns. Parsley and poppy seed, rosemary, cilantro, leaves
of bay, all mix in my head like a sexual
herbes de Provence.

The dreaded snack aisle looms next, cookies and chips reminding me of our couch potato nights glued to the TV. We pass the
cereals and baby food. “Syrup?” I say to him, waving a bottle and licking my lips lasciviously. “And they double our coupons.”
Ricky stares as if I were insane and tosses the bottle into our cart. We head to the arctic wastes of the freezer section.

He prefers looking at the chicken, steaks, and chops alone, ever since the night I went up to him, saying, “Special on hot
cock in the meat section,” and squeezed his crotch. I still don’t know why he got so angry and slapped my hand from him. “Go
find the toilet paper,” he told me, as I slunk away. Who cares what those stockboys think they saw anyway?

Finally we press on to bread, butter, orange juice, and milk, as if the store itself knows it’s almost morning, and wheel
our cart to the lone cashier to check out.

By the time we leave the store I can barely breathe. Ricky glances at me, saying nothing. We travel the short distance to
our apartment in silence and divide the bags between us for the long trip up three flights of stairs.

Once inside, the bags are strewn across the kitchen floor, and I sigh, girding myself for the next chore of putting everything
away. I lean over to take a head of lettuce out of the first bag, and Ricky tips me off balance with his foot. Sprawling to
the floor, I turn over quickly to look up at him.

He’s grinning broadly now, has stripped off his jacket and shirt, and looms over me in his blazing white T-shirt. He unbuckles
his belt and slowly unzips his pants, pulling out a sausage longer and thicker than the kielbasa resting against my elbow
in the bag beside me.

“Here, baby,” he says, straddling me, placing his hand behind my head. “I know how shopping makes you… hungry. I got a special
purchase for you. Eat.”

And I do.

_________________

by Carolyn Ferrell

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field till there be no place that they may be placed alone in the
midst of the earth,

thought Rhonda Robinson as she sewed the zipper back into her favorite winter dress, the pink-and-black gingham fashioned
coyly like an oversize maid’s apron. She did not ask herself why those words were on her lips, the Bible drifting gently from
cobwebs of melancholy. Tonight was the night for love, a year’s worth of passion; and with her eyes closed and her back to
the bedroom window, she enjoyed the surface of nettles that moved beneath her skin, traveling her arms and legs and across
her womanly triangle in anticipation of the man from Auntsville. His name was Billy Merry, and he came up to Long Island every
December twenty-fourth to make love to Rhonda in various positions of joy and exertion. Otherwise there was little mystery:
She knew he had once belonged to her grandmother as a pet or fancy piece of furniture, but now that he had become a man, he
was all hers.

She moved the heavy-duty needle back and forth through the ancient fabric—this was a dress she’d been sewing up and down since
she arrived on Long Island seven years ago, a dress fashioned into either matronly or sexy, but it was the prettiest one she
had. In reality, it never mattered what she was wearing. All he ever wanted was her, the softened spread of woman wrapped
snugly around him, licking his salt-block body as if she were dying of thirst.

He usually pulled up at her house around six in the evening. He would get out of the car and stand there like a statue, his
sharp country eyes taking in the suburban land, thigh meat bulging from too-tight trousers, chin shaven smooth as a spring
limb. From the screen door she’d call his name in varying shades: Bill, William, My Heart, My Lover.

She felt proud of him, of his good looks and musk—a man just as pleasing as those Greek heroes she occasionally glanced in
Harriet-Ann Hutchinson’s social studies textbook,
The Dawn of Our World.
She held the pages at arm’s length and pronounced the names with care, all the while measuring her loneliness in the number
of times her breasts knocked against her brassiere. She wished to pronounce something beautifully, but to whom? Who in all
of Featherstone really cared? The only person who spoke to her was the janitor, and he was nothing more than an annoyance.
Mr. Blank: He had that oldtimishness about him she so despised in the elderly, the desire to talk about nonsubjects with gusto
and then the expectation of appreciation, one extraordinarily shameless. She hated that.

But with Billy. This visit was number seven, the lucky visit. She closed her eyes and held the dress still over her lap.
He would appeareth.
He would cross mountains and nations for her, lift her up like a new bride and carry her toward the couch (the one without
slipcovers), breathe in the seams of her dress, tap his hands along her body like a blind man until they reached the zipper
and discovered the speckled velvet of her skin. Her arms and belly would be sheathed, as usual, by a last-minute layer of
baby powder and Jean Nate. Then the indulgence, the fire of gluttony. Lights flickering on and off, faces creased and then
shuttered into nothingness. Afterward, in the remaining ash that was her body, Rhonda would hold his face in her hands and,
like a schoolgirl, gaze woefully into his eyes.