brooklyn408

This is a short story i recently wrote called "everyone gets what she wants." enjoy.


I fell in love with a lesbian. It proved, in the end, a masterful strategy for subverting the death-pull of the long-term relationship, the inevitable gloom and loathing that prevails when two people earnestly commit to one another. And it didnt spare me the heartbreak that follows abandonment by the belovedthe lost-paradise state that haunts and oddly entices us jaded-romantic types. We dime-store Baudelaires dont mind indulging in a bit of abject longing; we actually dig getting kicked to the curb by some impossible beauty, provided that first she has seen fit to regale us with her favors, enveloped us in a bit of her heaven here on fallen earth.

So I had nothing to complain about, really, when my Sapphic princess announced she was moving out after four tumultuous years, kept painfully interesting by those urges of hers that I couldnt satisfy. As an added bonus, she made clear that her favors were still on offer, so long as I could accept that I was no longer her primary romantic partner.

I plunged into despair. I happened to get an extended, temporary gig in Central Europe at the same time, and I dove into the delicious gloom, as the hack travel writers call it, of Prague and Vienna. Drunk on strong beer and the magic liquor of lost splendor, I retraced the steps of Kafka and Freud, those two cartographers of the vast territory that lies between what we need and what we get. I re-read their books, seeking not wisdom (despite what I told myself) but affirmation. From Civilization and Its Discontents I nodded in easy agreement at Freuds claim that we use love as a method of reconciling ourselves with the endlessly disappointing world, and that we do so foolishly, since we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never so helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our love object or its love. And I grinned bitterly when I came across Kafkas remark in the Diaries that, Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fatehe has little success in thisbut with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different (and more) things than do others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime, he is the real survivor. Yes, that was I, the holy sufferer, privileged by ruined love to see what others couldnt.

One bitter-cold moonlit February night in Prague, wandering through the deserted streets amid the shadows and the spires, surrounded by aged stone glistening icily, I came upon a scheme for reconciling everything at once: my love and lust for my wayward girl, her complicated love for me, her deep-rooted love for the female body. In an instant, all would be reconciled, united, made whole, just before splintering again into ruin. A moment of supreme and unsustainable pleasure would be financed by hours and years of loss and forlorn longing. Sounded like a winning strategy to me.

My girl had, in the weeks after my departure, taken up with an old lovea femme fatale type she had dated years before in college. It had been one of those explosive college romances that ignite instantly and end in a hail of betrayals and accusations. Except that it had never ended, not really. The femme fatale had crept around at the shadows of our relationship since its start; the two had sustained an impassioned e-mail correspondence, and occasionally romantic giftsroses, say, or a CD burned with mutually significant loves songswould appear at our Brooklyn apartment. Whenever The Other (as I had taken to calling her, a crack at the trendy critical-theory education the two had lapped up together) blew into New York for a week or two, my girl would run off to meet her every night, staying out until the wee hours and returning drained and distracted, her eyes puffy with tears. They staged these dramas twice a year, spring and fall. They were my seasons in hell; I suffered bitterly and voluptuously through them. In all that time, my girlfriends special friend and I never so much as laid eyes on each other. I had gleaned, from a chance glance at an e-mail, that my very name was off-limits in their correspondence.

Wouldnt it ease some of the tension if we met, if we had her over for dinner or something? I would occasionally ask.

Thats not going to happen, the answer would come. My girl would insist that she and her ex were merely trying to figure out how to be non-destructive parts of each others lives. By my accounting, the effort was a categorical failure.

Later, with me safely on the margins, the romance had sprung back in force. The Other, sporting a fresh law degree, barged her way into a New York job just as I exited for Central Europe. Fiendishly, I resolved to play just as destructive a role in their relationship as The Other had in mine. Several times a week I sent my love impassioned e-mails from Central Europe, affirming my undying passion and regaling her with tales of my exotic travels. I would also scribble out the occasional pornographic love letter, laying out in detail exactly what I wanted to do with her, echoes of old embraces that I would not let die. I would drop these graphic missives in a box that contained, say, a naughty little thong that would flatter my lovers creamy skin, and send them on their way. I felt fully justified in performing these questionable acts by my lovers own insistence that she belonged to no one; and also by her own expressed delight in receiving these verbal and material gifts.

Now, my girl had recently succumbed to a condition that runs rampant in her mad familythe state of always seeming to be jacked up on truth serum. Not long before she moved out, my baby lost the knack for tact. If it entered her mind, it exited her mouth. So I happened to know, from her own loquacious e-mails, that The Other was being driven distraction by the sexually charged nature of our correspondence. She found the airmail panties an unforgivable escalation to the war of roses she herself had started. As in the college days, their relationship had tumbled into a pit of jealousy and rage. But the sex had never been better, my beloved did not hesitate to add. She seemed to be enjoying all the attention.

I realized that my lover was sexually insatiable. Plied with all the dick she could possibly want, she accepted it readilybut dreamed of pussy. Handed a paradise of pussyand not just any pussy, but the pussy she longed formy dear faithful girl fantasized of dick. I decided, that cold night in Prague, that what our sexual dynamo neededwhat we all neededwas one big, ultimate fucking. We would both pounce on her at onceboy and girl, cock and cunt, chest and tits, me and The Other, grind her between us, tease out of her a single thunderous orgasm, terrible and final, that would cleanse and heal us all in its apocalyptic fury.

Healthat was the key word. My girl had employed it often to describe her reconciliation with The Other, as if resorting to the debased language of the pop-therapeutic culture could soothe an old cynic like me. Yet I used it often and skillfully in my missives promoting the idea to my beloved. I argued that she was trapped between two lovers who wanted to possess her completely, and that shethat none of us--would never rest easy, would never heal, until she chose one of us definitively or sent us both packing. A good, old-fashioned threesome would help lay everything bare. Naturally, my girl warmed to the idea. The Other, however, reacted with shock and scorn. Bemused, my girl let The Other and I hash it out over e-mail. The exchange was bilious, scabrous. The Other promised police action against me in one letter; in another, she threatened my life. In the end, exhausted, she succumbed, agreeing that such an encounter might clarify matters; it certainly couldnt cloud them any further. We cobbled together a set of guidelines, and agreed upon a date: a late-spring Saturday afternoon a few weeks after my return to New York.

What was my real motive in conjuring up this strange event? Was I, as The Other insisted, simply indulging the trite male fantasy of a mnage a trois, of seeing two pretty girls get it on and then joining in? There may have been some truth to that. But the typical male-centered threesome narrative involves two women indulging the whims of a man. I knew our encounter wouldnt play out that way, I knew that The Other found me repulsive; in fact, I had agreed not to lay hands on her. In her other malicious interpretation, I only wanted to humiliate her by forcing her to watch her girlfriend being fucked by a man, to exact revenge for her victory over me. Once again, perhaps there was some shred of truth in that charge. But what I really wanted was to fuck my girl right and proper, give her the fucking of a lifetime, and to do so, I needed The Others help. And that, really, was it. Or at least most of it.

The great day arrived. By early morning I was bouncing about my apartment, skittish as a kitten, nervous as a poodle. I worked manically to avoid the trap of anticipating the afternoons events in too much, and thus setting myself up for disaster. What if I couldnt get it up--or if I just came in 10 seconds? I could imagine The Others shrill laughter, I could hear her comparing men, unfavorably, to dildos All this I banished from my thoughts through a whirl of activity. First I executed a carefully planned lunch. I had chosen a menu that would satisfy without weighing us down. I decided to minimize the emotional temperature of the afternoon by avoiding any overt culinary allusions to our time together. Chicks dig salads, I noted to myself, so I made two. The first consisted of fresh fava beans dressed in a shallot vinaigrette. The second was wild greens tossed with ramps in a spicy mustard dressing, topped with caramelized walnuts and goat cheese. For in between, I would dish up poached halibut napped in thyme-infused white-wine broth. For wine, I picked a few bottles of an inexpensive but very good Loire Valley white that was nothing like anything my girl and I had ever consumed together. The meal would end with tiny berry tartlets topped with a spoonful of honeyed crme fraiche. Light, nutritious, assertively flavored--what more could a couple of epicurean, body-conscious lesbos ask for in a Saturday lunch? I remembered the gravity of the afternoons plans, so I made a huge pitcher of honey-sweetened lemonade, just in case we needed to spike it with vodka for a stronger libation than wine.

I then turned my attention to the bedroom. I adorned the huge bed that my girl and I had bought together with a new set of plush white linen sheets, and fluffed the four new down pillows that had cost me a small fortune. I vacuumed, mopped, and dusted the room with the zeal of an obsessive-compulsive. I placed a small, unassuming jar of shea butterthe greatest personal lubricant known to manon one of the bedside tables. I then arranged the piece de resistance: on each bedside table I placed a single red rose; and on the bed I laid out a hers-and-hers couplet of simple and very expensive silk thongs. This was a bold and potentially disastrous reference to the battle of roses and thongs that The Other and I had waged.

By noon everything was fully prepped and the apartment spotless. They were due to arrive at three. I paced. I mused that only days before I had lured my girl to the apartment for a rare surreptitious fling. I had realized, then, licking her delicious pussy, holding her round hips in my grateful hands, that I would never be through with her, that her pussy contained some addictive drug--that I, The Other, and at least one other ex I knew of, and other Others to come as well, that all of us would pursue her always, always. What a life

I hastily dressed and took a furious run through the park. I stretched elaborately. I bought a Sunday Times, took it home, and leafed through it. It confirmed again my sense of mans folly, his triviality, his banal will to destruction, his mid-brow mental meanderings. I showered, shaved, dressed. I laid out wine glasses, a bowl of green Sicilian olives, another bowl for pits, and a butcher block topped with thinly sliced French bread and a round of fresh goats cheese topped with chile-pepper flakes. Three oclock came and went. The clock seemed to stall. Finally, at about 3:30, the door resounded with a knock. Awkward, tense, I opened it. There she was, my darling--lovely, tragic, her straw-colored hair flanking her full lips, her tear-stained eyes. She was literally awesome; I was speechless, seized with fear. The Other stood behind her, broadcasting hostility and anger. She seemed to bristle, to vibrate with contempt. Even now her features remain hazy, remote; it was as if her fury deflected my gaze, blunted her features, made her impossible to see. My girl brushed past me, plucked an olive from the bowl, grabbed a wine glass, called out wheres the wine? and proceeded briskly to the bedroom. The Other silenced my greetingit remains stunted in my mouth to this daywith an evil glare, and sped off after her. Stunned, breathless, I fished the wine from the fridge and opened it. I noted that only one wine glass remained on the table. I shuffled toward the bedroom. The door was closed. With supreme sheepishness and delicacy I knocked. Come back in five minutes, my lover said, her voice raw, clipped. Then, in another voice altogether, came a shrill Ten!

I drained a glass of wine, not tasting it. I put on a Tom Waits record. Miserys the river of the world, everybody row, the singer chanted. I sat. I breathed, I drank more wine. At a certain point, I opened the bedroom door, carrying the bottle of wine and my glass. They were laid out on he bed, facing away from the bedboard, making out strenuously, naked, my girl on top. Her round ass bobbed in the air, her hands stroked The Others thighs, which were spread open to let their pussies collide. They kissed and kissed and kissed. Oh, her long slender back, curving in to meet her wide undulating hips, her hair streaming down to obscure her lovers face, her nipples straining to meet those of her loverIt was too much. The wine barely made it to the bedside table intact. My clothes clung to me as I strained to rip them off. There is no dignity. I stood in front of them for time, watching them kiss. At least two emotions ripped through me. The first was desolation. Here was my girl, the person I had loved and adored for four years, completely lost and abandoned with someone else, someone who she had thrown me aside for. It was devastating, humiliatingThe second emotion was the purest, most complete wave of desire I have ever experienced. I needed her, right then and there, I needed to slide my prick deep inside her and devour her with kisses.

I joined them in bed and my girl fell to her side, facing away from me. The Other rolled away, looking indecisive, as if she were deciding whether to stay or bolt. I teased my girls tits and bit her softly on the back of the neck. Her body was delicious, fragrant, I wanted to inhale her. She was her usual aroused self, only more so; her skin seemed to tingle. Rubbing her ass provocatively against my prick, my baby purred, come back, and The Other obeyed. The latter stretched out on her side, forming with me a pair of bookends with my baby in the middle, and the two ladies began kissing again. The Other carefully avoided any contact with my hands, which were gently petting the tits they knew and loved so well. We stayed like that awhile, my girl pressing and wiggling her backside into me and lavishing kisses on her girl, while I kissed and sucked the back of her neck, her ears, her hair. The girls began to explore each others bodies with their hands, and in the heat of play, one of The Others breasts brushed against the back of my hand. We both flinched, and action froze for a moment.

Still facing away, my girl took my cock in her hand and guided it into her pussy. It was warm, lush, full. I fucked her slowly, gently, parting her smooth, round ass with my hands, pushing in, out, in out. I started to speed up and she ordered me to slow down. She answered my thrusts with her own little ones; her pussy seemed to grip my cock, almost suck it. The Other, looking at first a little stiff and then softening, began running her hands around my girls body, stroking her face, hair, fondling her breasts. My girl responded in kind. Soon, The Other began rubbing her tits in my girls face. Then, using the bed post as a brace, she cocked one leg in the air and put her pussy in my girls face. My girl licked slowly, I could see her tongue rolling up, down and around her beloveds clit. I kept a slow, steady rhythm, digging in deep, pulling back, squeezing and parting her ass all the while. This went on for a while. My hands, thirsty for more, groped for my lovers precious little tits. This disruption to the prevailing order seemed to rankle The Other. She abandoned her perch and laid herself out on the bed, turning to her side and facing my girl. They began kissing. I slowly pulled out, ceding my girls pussy to my rival, her lover. The Others hand disappeared between my girls legs. I rubbed a generous dab of shea butter on my hand and slid it between her ass cheeks. Her asshole was alive; in it I could feel the rhythm with which The Other was manipulating my girls clit. I slipped my dick into her ass and slowly fucked. My thrusts fell into a sort of call-and-response rhythm with The Others expert clit work. The Others free hand now joined the action. With one hand, she plumbed my girls pussy; with the other, she played with her clit. They kissed lasciviously, furiously. My lover managed to gasp harder. I gripped her tits, massaged them hard, and thrust in deeply, over and over. We were all breathing hard, moaning; her lover began to cry. Their mouths locked, silencing the sobs. I noted that my lover, too, had dug into her girls pussy with her hands, they were getting each other off. We were a knot of hands, pricks, pussies, asses. One of my own hands, acting on its own, moved from my girls tits and recklessly began teasing The Others nipples and groping her tits. I wanted her, too; I can admit it, now. It was a tremendous gamble, a brazen transgression of our agreement, and it could have sent the whole pile of bodies into a violent, brutal tangle, a viper pit of vicious bites and scratches. Instead, it just seemed to make everyone hotter. I fucked, I licked and bit and kissed my girls back, the back of her neck, sucked her hair, my hands squeezed and teased and gripped tits and nipples indiscriminately Here is where I prefer to freeze the frame, when memory fixates on that afternoon. My lovers three delicious holespussy, ass, mouthare being filled, furiously, desperately, lovingly. Her tits and clit are being worked by experts. Shes pushing her hips back to meet my relentless forward advances, grinding her ass into my cock, kissing biting, sucking her girls tongue, digging deep into her pussy, teasing her clit. We became fused, bound, joined, an electric circuit of fucking linked up through my girls fiery nether regions; power and pleasure flowed and surged with treacherous ardor. How long did this go on? I have no idea. But it happened, it happened.

Slowly, powerfully, a storm gained force somewhere from deep inside my baby, my beauty, my life. It started with a small dull rumble, then it thundered forth, careening about amid the thrusts and tender, hard caresses. Her orgasm was massive, powerful, epochal. It slammed against my prick like a heavy object lashed into motion by a gale-force wind. I exploded, pulling out rapidly, following an ancient demand to keep that shit away from me. She let loose a deluxe version of that rending sigh--a kind of long, lilting, oh-like groan--that she reserves to signal complete satisfaction.

We all fell away, three exhausted, spent bodies floating on the same magic, tragic carpet. The air was sweet, pungent, heavy with cum, shea buuter, pussy. I retain an image of the two ladies laying side by side, their lovely breasts deflated, nipples still erect, arms behind their heads, mouths agape as if in shock. This is as close as I get to a clear memory of what The Other looks like, but her face remains a haze. My girls eyes had their post-coital, blank, dilated look. I fell back myself, stunned, exhausted. I dont know how long we lay there like that. I think we slept.
After an indiscernible, infinite pause, I kissed my sleeping lovers cheek. She stirred, and we kissed slowly, lovingly, mouth to mouth. The taste of her lovers pussy on her tongue was strange, alien, uncanny I needed to mount her then and there, and to keep sucking that lovely, pussy-soaked tongue, the Other be damned.

Before I got very far, The Other ripped herself out of bed, snatched a glass of wine from the bedside table, and watched with what I interpreted as a cold fury. Her presence, her gaze, only fortified my own zeal. Take this, bitch, I couldnt help but think to myself, enjoying The Others agony. My girl, seemingly oblivious to everything, had begun working her own clit as I had my way with her. Then something unexpected happened.

I could feel the other standing in front of us and I looked up with a start, worried that she might be on the point of attacking me physically. Instead, she had donned one of the thongs I had laid out and was preparing to pour a bit of wine into my girls mouth. Seeing her, naked but for the minimalist black triangle that barely concealed her well-groomed snatch, almost made me come right then and there. I slowed things down and pushed up on my hands, to give The Other a little space. Standing over the bed and facing me, she poured a little wine through my girl's waiting lips, then kissed her, their heads meeting from opposite directions. She then poured wine all over my babys face, chest, shoulders, and belly, and licked it off. Suddenly she mounted the bed and stood on her knees, straddling the prone girls groping, desire-mad head. The Other then lowered her hips and allowed her silk-adorned pussy to be licked. My girls hands then rose to rub her own girls exposed hips and ass. It was all a little much. I fought to control my cock. The Others tits, smallish but slightly plumper than my own girls, bobbed just inches from my mouth. I wanted to taste her nipples, I wanted to suck my girlfriends pussy scent from her tongue, I wanted to teach her the pleasure of being fucked by a real live cock, I wanted the vengeance of presenting my girlfriend with the spectacle of being betrayed by her two chosen love objects at oncebecause, despite her free spirit, my girl does not deny herself the right to be extremely jealous and possessive of her love objects. I wanted all of this, and the sudden burst of cold desire on top of the intense desire I had already been feeling steeled my cock.

My girl desperately groped at her girlfriends panties. The Other refused to remove them. My resourceful girl simply slide her tongue under the tiny swath of fabric and got what she wanted. Before long the panties had been hurled across the room and my girl was freely exploring The Others cunt with her tongue, while simultaneously massaging her ass. They were a lovely pair, there was no denying it. I wanted The Other desperately, and my desire was like a wind that blew me forward, over and over and over gliding through my girls pussy as I watched the two go at it. At some point I supported myself with one hand, and used the other to tease my girls hard, trembling clit. The Other bent forward, lost in pleasure, and her nipples brushed against my face. I sucked. Her nipples tasted steely, metallic. The Other didnt object and even thrust the opposite nipple in my face when I became lost in sucking just one. This little love triangle went on for a while. Suddenly The Other abruptly sat upright, grabbed a pillow, and used it to muffle a scream, and fell away; seconds later, my babys pussy convulsed, gave my cock a series of short, loving squeezes, and she went limp.

We were now faced with the problem of my still-hard cock.

The gentlemanly thing would have been to grab the lube jar and bring myself off decorously while the two princesses languished in a post-coital daze. But I wasnt feeling very gentlemanly. Instead I made my rather conspicuous way into the bathroom and washed myself with a soapy cloth, and toweled myself dry. I returned, stood at the bedside and confronted the ladies with a spanking-clean and impossible-to-ignore erection. They were curled up together on the bed like a pair of cats, eying me warily as cats do when they have been woken up.

The Other spoke up, breaking a verbal silence between the three of us that had lasted hours. If I let you eat my pussy while she sucks off your cock, will you leave us alone forever? Wow. This girl drove a hard bargain. Can I tease your clit with my cock a little?

No.

Okay. She had me. I lay on my back, and my girl slowly, gently, licked and sucked my cock. This was a wonderful, sweet gift from her; she knew she was in complete control, that she could bring me off as fast as she wanted, that she could close the deal quickly and get them out of there. Instead, she gave me time to luxuriate in The Others pussy as she straddled my face with her knees. My heart broke. Her pussy was lush, complex, full. I dug deep inside with my tongue, I ran my tongue around her clit, I sucked it. I held her slender hips in my hands and caressed the smooth skin of her ass. Just as I knew I would never be through with my girl, I knew that The Others gorgeous pussy would always wield power over my girl. I had met my better. I stood not the ghost of a chance. I didnt want this to end, I wanted the two to move in, I wanted my girl back, I wanted

Eventually my baby sped up and put paid to the deal. My orgasm was sudden and melancholic. I wanted to die.

We dressed and calmly had lunch, polishing off another bottle of wine and not saying much. I didnt want them to go, I wanted them to stay foreverMy girl and I were sad, but The Other remained resolute, professional. She hustled my girl to the door. I kissed my girl on the lips, and the Other presented me a cheek. I mean that about leaving us alone. This is over, you agreed.

I was spent. I nodded. They left. And that was that. Soon after, the two moved to San Francisco, a city The Other knew I found odious. And now two beautiful demons haunted my days, not just one. But my girl remained the one elusive God whose willful absence gave my life both meaning and desolation.