Goddesses

The Plough and the Stars

© 2018 1r1shman101

Note to Readers: This is one where you're really better off reading

Part 1: The Studio

first. Much of what happens here doesn't make real sense without it. Plus, you'll be missing a really good hand job.

*****

"See, the, thing is," Tess says, "Irish girls are Goddesses of the hand job."

We're sitting, me, Tess and Lizzie, in the Plough and the Stars, a bar on Mass Ave in Cambridge that's been a student dive since the 1960's. It's the first time the three of us have been together since my night modelling at their studio. Sitting at a booth with a pitcher of beer, Tess beside me on one side, Lizzie sitting across. And naturally, given what had happened three nights ago, the subject was hand jobs.

"It's the Catholic thing," she went on. "We're brought up, any kind of sexual anything is a sin, except two married people doing it for the express purpose of tryin' to procreate. And I don't know how much even they're supposed to enjoy it. I'm pretty sure if they like it too much, the whole thing slides over into sin. And birth control, Jesus, don't even think about it. I don't suppose a feller can even pull out and come on a girl's stomach without putting both their immortal souls in danger."

"Jesus," Lizzie half-whistles. "So, where's a hand job come in?"

"Well, sure, there's a hierarchy of sin, in't there? Your hand job's just a venial sin, I'm thinking. Hell, all us Irish bints think that. It's all outside the business, y'know. You get to stickin' it inside a girl, you cross over to mortal right away. Then god forbid you get hit by a truck before you get to Confession, you go straight to hell, you don't pass go, and you burn in flames for all eternity."

"But, even then, there's a hierarchy of penetrations, ain't there? You put it in her mouth, that's a mortal sin, but maybe not so bad a one. You get flames a few degrees cooler maybe. But there's a debate among us women about the other two possibilities: I mean, is it worse, theologically, you stick it in a girl's fanny, coz that's the procreative act outside of marriage, or if you try to stuff it up her bum, just because that's where poop comes from and it's just generally disgusting?"

"I vote for the vagina," I say. "Theologically."

"Yeah, well it's a iffy thing. Mostly the girls who don't fancy the rear entry'll tell you that's the worse sin. But I think that's just coz they don't like it. Not every girl does, y'know."

"So, the most of us grow up givin' hand jobs by the dozens to the fellers. Every Irish girl's got a clean soul and strong wrists."

"Well," I said. "You do give a good one."

"Well, give your cousin some credit. It was when she was pressin' down yer bottom there, that yeh came like a fookin' faucet, boyo."

I nod, lift my glass to Lizzy. My balls all but aching from the memory the two of them touching me.

Liz smiles back, drinks.

I feel the strain between us.

Come inside me, little cousin. It's alright, I want you to.

Beneath he table, Tess has reached over to give a little squeeze between my legs. Under the fabric, I'm already reacting. But her hand is already gone.

"Hey, Lizzie, luv, come over this side, willya?"

Liz drinks more, then gets up, comes around and slides in beside me, sandwiching me between her and Tess.

"Here," Tess says, half-audibly over the voices of students and Van Morrison on the juke box. "Watch this." Then slides her hand across my leg and pulls down my zipper with her thumb and forefinger. And then, with her forefinger only, fishes inside, finds the flap of my underwear, and then finds me. Hooks me like a fish and pulls me out into the atmosphere. Elapsed time: about four seconds.

"Jesus," I say and pull back involuntarily within the narrow confines of two girls, a table and a booth. I push Tess's hand away and stuff my half hard member back inside. "C'mon, people will ..."

"Ah, only if you're loud and make a row about like. Like you're doing now."

I look around. The bar is full of Wednesday night students. Nobody looking at us. My dick has done its appearance and panicked retreat unnoticed.

Even so.

"Jesus, Tess," I say.

"Ah, don't be such a bollix, Tommy. I told you, we're Goddesses. Been doin' since I was just a lass (though of age, o'course, she laughs), and I can get a feller off unnoticed under any table."

I look at her, at Lizzie beside me. I do not feel like daring a Murphy right now. Or a Riordan.

While Tess, in an expansive mood, leans back along the booth against the wall. Grins. Says, "Sean McFain, for example, one of me favorites. In CCD class. That's the Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine - for you Protestants, that's night classes on the catechism for us heathens who didn't go to Catholic Secondary. That's high school, inn't, for you?"

Liz murmurs yes. I am aware of her shoulder against mine. Her leather jacket against my shirt. The light, incessant pressure of another human body against mine.

"So, basement of the Church, I'm sitting at this long card table with Sean and two other kids. And I'm bored to tears, been goin' to this crap for years and, like any good Irish girl, don't believe a word of it, so I reach over, unzip him, and pull out his dick for him.

Now, he was a good Catholic boy, Seannie. One of them been an altar boy all the way through school and, for all I know, still readin' the Epistles in Mass to this day. I doubt anybody'd ever touched his dick for him but his ma to wash it. And, Christ, he damn near screamed. I says, "Shut the fuck up, Sean, if yeh know what's good for yeh." And by now, I got me hand on him, he's hard as a rock, and he's a kid y'know, the two of us just weeks away from getting' out of Secondary and never havin' to go to this stupid class again. I mean, virgin birth, can you believe it? But isn't he so shocked to have me grabbin' his little Johnson, I didn't give him five strokes and he shoots off like fuckin' fireworks and half stands up, near knocks over the table.

"The priest up front is talkin' about the Beatitudes or some fooking thing. He looks at us. The other kids look at us. And I'm sitting there, lookin' all virtuous but with me hand still on Sean's pecker down under and Sean's just jizzed the whole bottom of the table. And I'm thinkin', Oh Jesus, we're fucked to hell now and what'll me ma say? And doesn't little Catholic Seannie just look at the priest like a fookin' trooper and, "Cramp," he says and sits back down. And the old priest and everybody else in the room none - including the two kids sittin' right next to us - any the wiser. So I give him a little squeeze and just tuck the wee feller back in where it belongs. And we go on learnin' about the virtues of chastity.

"He was a champ, that kid. I was as proud of him as if I was his own mother."

And, goddess-like, forms a small ring with two fingers and moves them up and down through air.

"So, tell us, Tommy. When'd you get your first hander?"

Beside me, Liz lifts an eyebrow.

"In college. I think."

"You think. You don't know?" Liz asks. Three beers in, her voice has become more languorous. She leans into me. I feel her breast through her coat against my arm, her warm breath on my cheek.

"Well I dunno if it counts. It started as a hand job. But then it turned into a blow job. At the end."

"So some girl wanked you, but ended up suckin' you off?" Tess asks. I have never met a woman who talked so casually filthy. Even with my "wee feller" back safely inside my pants, she was making me hard without touching me. Shave-headed, small tit, freckle sprayed girl. And on the other side of me: Lizzie - her somewhat more capacious breasts assaulting me through leather and my thin, cotton shirt.

It's alright, Tommy, I want you to.

"Yeah, basically," I tell Tess.

"It counts," Tess opines. "Tell."

I shift in my seat. Liz pulls slightly away, as if suddenly aware and embarrassed of the way our bodies are touching, and

"College," I tell them. "But senior year of high school. I was on a college trip out to UMass in Amherst, where I knew some guys lived in one of the high rises. So there's a hall party on Saturday night and I'm getting drunk on crappy beer with all the big kids and there's this one girl, we get to talking and after a while, she, like, asks me if I wanna go up to the roof with her."

"What was her name?" Lizzie asks me.

"Uh, Naomi. Something. I mean, do not remember her last name. This is, like, eight years ago."

"What'd she look like?" Tess asks.

"I don't know. A little heavy. Not fat.

Zaftig.

I mean, when she took her sweater off, she had these really, really generous breasts with big, brown, whaddaya call 'em? Areolas. She had long dark, really curly hair. I think she was Jewish."

"Ah," Tess judges happily from her corner. "First tits y'ever seen and you never seen their like again."

"No, not first, I say. But close.

"So I go off with her. And, see, the door to the roof's supposed to be closed and locked, but it isn't. And there are people up there. The building is like 40 stories high and you can see all the way to the Connecticut River and Northampton from up there. And there are people there but she takes me around this huge structure, one of those things from where the forced air gets pumped into the building. And then we're alone, looking out toward the river. And we kiss for a while. And eventually she takes her sweater off, and then starts in on my belt and zipper and pull my pants down my thighs."

"Well, I guess we know who was in charge of this encounter," Tess laughs. "And you at eighteen. Fifty shades of I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."

"Yeah, well, she did. I remember her telling me after she'd pulled my pants down that she wouldn't go all the way. That's exactly how she said it, 'all the way'. And I didn't know then - still don't, I guess - whether she meant it or whether she was doing some ironic thing about me being a high school kid. But anyways, when she gets my pants down, she's doing this, like, half hand job, half boob job. And right at the end, she switches and goes down on me and I end up coming in her mouth which I had seriously never done before..."

"Was she a swallower?" Tess asks.

"I guess. I don't remember her spitting anything out."

"Romantic," Tess murmurs. Then looks, sloe-eyed past me to Lizzie.

"And how about you, Lizzie? When's the first time you used your hand on a guy?

Lizzie leans further into me, plants a chaste kiss on my cheek, then slides out of the booth, stands up, says, "Not yet, kids. I wanna go home."

*

"So ask me," Lizzie says. "Ask me anything."

She is lying, curled and feline, on the bed in her apartment. Top floor studio of a beat-up Victorian on Inman Street. Shoes off. Her bare feet a delicacy of blue veins and toes.

Tess and I on the floor. The three of us passing a joint and a bottle of wine. The room, the women taking on the sharp color of things when you're stoned.

Neither of us ask anything right away. Maybe because we're stoned. Maybe because the room feels charged in a way the bar booth didn't. Then I say, "How'd it feel the other night, your hand on my balls?"

Liz smiles. "Yeah," she says. "Good. We should, y'know. Coz it was, it felt. I mean, fucked up hot, y'know? Pretty fucked up. But very, very hot. No, listen. The other night was ... I didn't expect that. I, like, so totally didn't expect that to happen. Or to happen the way it happened. I mean, jeez, Tommy, you had your hand on my cooch."

"You had your hand under my balls if I remember right. I think there was a finger down around my asshole."

"What?" Tess says. She takes a long draw on the joint, hands it off to me "I get no credit at all? I did all the work, you two wankers."

"No," Liz says. "It was ... weird. I mean, it coulda just been a one off, we coulda done that, treated it like that. Quick hard on, quick hand job, fun." She glances at Tess, who breathes out a cloud of sweet weed smoke. "But it didn't. When I touched you, Tommy, it was freakin' hot. I mean, it coulda been a one-off. We coulda treated it that way. But when I touched you, it felt ... different. It felt ..."

"Like not a one-off," I say helpfully.

Liz smiles, take the joint from Tess's fingers, takes a long draw and says, choke-voiced, holding in smoke. "Yeah. Right. Exactly. Like not."

"Oh Jesus, you two, I was right, you do need a chaperone. Do yez want me to leave?"

Liz rolls herself to the edge of the bed, hands the joint off to me and takes Tess's face in her hands.

"No," she says. And my crazy cousin seems suddenly as serious as I've ever seen her. "You gotta be here, Tess. I mean, look, you're braver than I'll ever be. That whole thing wouldna happened the other night without you. I mean, if it was just Tommy and me, we probably woulda just joked about and waited till it went down. But you ..."

"Well, I am a right hoor, you now."

"No," Lizzie says. "you're just ... you don't have any ... boundaries, you know?"

"Ah, you don't know the half of it, girl. I'm Irish. Our whole life is boundaries."

"No, I do too know. I think I do. I'm mean, we're Irish too, sort of..."

"Nah, girl, you're both as American as apple pie."

"No, listen, I need this, Tess. Don't deflect, okay? That's what you do. But I need you here. I'm scared. I want to do this, but I'm, y'know... it's fucked up..."

"Hey, any chance I can ask what you two are talking about here? I mean, this involves me, right?" (Though I know. I think I know.)

"Ah shut up and don't be a prat, yeh prat," Tess hushes me.

And for a moment, I'm invisible. And there are only the two of them in the room. Liz. Tess. My cousin and the woman who gave me the best, most ridiculous hand job of my life.

"Alright then, love," Tess says. "our Lady of the Perpetual Menses at your service." And leans in to kiss Lizzie on the lips. Lizzie's hands moving, caressing the other woman's pale and freckled cheeks. I watch small flecks of pink tongue move between them.

Then they move apart. And it is Tess who reaches across to hook a forefinger inside the neck of my t-shirt and pull me into the circle of the two of them.

Saying, ordering me, maybe even loving me a little:

"Sure then, you. Git over here."