A note from the author:
"I don't like macho, put it away;
doesn't appeal to me, straight or gay.
But I know a boy who catches my eye;
he don't act tough, why should he try?"
-- Fem in a Black Leather Jacket, Pansy Division (1993)
What erotica has to offer, be it a single impulse or a life-long fetish, is the desire to go "beyond" what the limits of our culture allows us. In this manner erotica is no different from many other visionary genres (think: science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc) in that all narrative is an attempt to go beyond our immediate boundaries. Be it space operas, fairy tales, ghost stories, magic or cyberpunk, we create metaphors and allegories for the things we hope for, the things we dream about. What I like about erotica is that the things we dream about almost always end in pleasure and pain, cum and kisses, a laugh and a scream. Today I am thinking about the bodies of two people I passed on my way to work. Random strangers, but in that passing, in that eye contact, in that second -- whole worlds were born.
In the same way that butch bikers with tattoos who teach community college Women Studies classes have remained a long time fantasy; effeminate and androgynous boys have also been and always will be a big turn on. In Akira Kurosawa's 1985 samurai-epic Ran, the hottest character out of the whole movie was Kyoami, played by androgynous pop star Shinnosuke Ikehata. It was Ikehata, if memory serves, whom I was thinking about when I passed someone, let's call him the cutest boy in West Michigan, and so I came up with Memeshi.
The character of Ankoku is an Onna bugeisha, a female samurai, who used a weapon called a naginata; a long pike with a curved blade at the top. It resembles a halberd (think of what the Swiss Guard use while protecting the Pope in Rome). The naginata plays no part in this story other than a passing nod. Still, it's always good to broaden our vocabulary. There is also mention of Nakano Takeko, who was a historical character, an actual Onna bugeisha and died in battle while leading a charge against troops of the Ogaki Rebellion. About two blocks beyond where I saw the cute fey thing I was almost was run over by a lycra-clad amazon. I am 6 feet tall and she was a good three inches taller, with shoulders that could carry the world and a waterfall of black hair that simply amazed.
Of course, both these individuals came and went in moments, they only existed on an erotic continuum in that when I got home I put them into this story. Still, isn't this what pushing boundaries is all about? Creating worlds where it isn't just eye contact for a moment but something else; other genres might have names for it but for me what that impulse to go beyond is called is desire.
* * *
It was dark when Ankoku drew close to the Nioi Swamp; already the white vapors were riding across the sunken wetland like October wraiths in a graveyard. Though her lover's message had set her out in a mood of sensual delight, she had sobered considerably during the lonely ride across the hills. She was now uneasily alert; and, as her horse jerked down the grassy slope that fell away into the jaws of the fetid bog, she could see thin streams of fog rising slowly above the long rushes. As she watched they turned, gradually become more solid, blowing heavily away across the swamp.
The swamp itself was depressed, like a bowl. The appearance of the place, at this desolate hour, so remote from all proper society, struck her with a certain wonder that he should have chosen this spot for their meeting. Memeshi had been a familiar sight wandering the hills. It was there that she had invariably encountered him, the queer spirit boy with a girl's name; but it was just like his arrogant nature to, on a whim, test her devotion by deciding upon some dreary meeting place. It's hard to fuck when quicksand is sucking you down, she glumly reflected. The wide, horrid prospect having to sleep somewhere out there, in all that stench, depressed her beyond reason. Finally, tethering her horse upon the verge of the bog, she soon discovered a path that would allow her to cross it. For a moment she stood quiet on the brink of entering the forbidden world, thinking.
"The things I do for a good orgasm," she sighed. Then, upon passing over the sacred boundary, she struck out boldly into the dark. The track was little used, obviously, for the reeds, which stood high above the level of her eyes upon either side, straggled everywhere overhead in curious arches, causing her to bow her head at times as she walked. She had left her armor and her naginata back at the inn, entrusting their care to the blind nun Momoku no Tojiru. A full half hour she was wandered alone in that wilderness when, at last, a sound other than her own footsteps broke the silence behind her.
Ankoku was moving very slowly at the time, with a mind half disposed to turn from the melancholy expedition altogether, damn all orgasms. It was then that she paused, for it seemed to her now that Memeshi must surely be playing a cruel joke on her. While some such reluctance held her silent, she was suddenly startled by a horrid, croaking noise, as if from some demonic bull toad, which broke out upon her right, somewhere from within the reeds in the foul mire. Walking a little further on it came again, now much closer at hand. When she had passed on a few more steps in confusion she heard it for the third time; just as horrid as before. She stopped to listen, but the swamp was silent. Taking the noise for, perhaps, a rare breed of spring peepers she resumed on her way. But in a little the croaking was repeated, coming quickly to a point only a hand's width away. Ankoku pushed the reeds aside, peered into the darkness. She could see nothing, but now she thought she detected the sound of another body behind her, trailing through the rushes. Her distaste for the mystery grew, had it not been for her delirious infatuation with Memeshi she would have turned back, found her horse, and made her way back to the nun; a follower of some sort of distant, peculiar Western religion who only took women as her lovers. Ankoku couldn't understand a person who clung exclusively to men or women, as if the world was black and white. The world was full of interesting choices and Ankoku wanted to taste them all.
The ghastly sound pursued her, though, at intervals along the path, until at last, irritated by such a rude, persistent, invisible companion, she broke into a run. This, it seemed, the creature could not achieve, for she heard a great splash in the mire and then no more. Finally, chuckling to herself, she continued her way slowly in peace. Her path ran out among the reeds into the smooth bowl that Memeshi had spoken of how to find him. Here her heart quickened, her gloom lifted. At the further end she fancied she could see some kind of hut looming up; but the fog, which had been gathering ever since her entrance into this forbidden world, wafted down upon her at that very moment, hiding all shapes from her eyes. As she stood, waiting for the mist to pass, a voice called to her. A voice she knew as intimately as her own heart. One that made her weak in the knees. She: the Manslayer! She saw him approach with circles of mist swirling about his body, slowly walking to her from out of the darkness.
Memeshi was unlike any male she had ever known; none among the Shogun's concubine were as willow-like, as soft-spoken, as well-hung, as her lover. He put his long arms about her, drawing her muscular body close. They were polar opposites, physically. Ankoku's body was scarred and tattooed; a lifetime of war had burned away everything that might once have been called feminine from her. Her short hair, towering physic, her boy-like hips, her muscled arms that, in wrestling, could crush the strongest of men in her grasp. Memeshi did not even come up to her shoulder, though she liked the way he would curl his lithe body around hers, enter her from the side, one of her massive legs thrown around his shoulder. Despite Memeshi's fey appearance, not only could he easily carry her weight but he was possessed of a libido even the Shinto gods didn't have a name for.
She looked down into his deep, up turned eyes. Far within them, it seemed to her, she could discern an orphic laughter, an alien god dancing in those wells of light. It was more than just an ecstatic hint -- a spirit of fire -- it was an otherworldly passion she noticed even at their first contact.
"At last," he said in his musical voice. "At last, my beloved!"
He wore a furisode, a long sleeved kimono. Ankoku reached inside and caressed him, slipping her hand down into his fundoshi, a thong-like length of cotton passing as underwear, and finding that already his veins were pumping blood into what was his semi-erect nine, soon to be ten inches. He wasn't surprised by her boldness, let a silvery moan from deep within his throat. She continued working with his monster cock, now fully erect and pulsating, thick as her arm. His breathing became more and more aroused, even for a spirit of the dark he enjoyed both tender and anal destructive fucking. She slowly raised his testicles in the palm of her hand, letting them shiver under her breath, making his cock look enraged and eager for release.
"Don't hold it back, lover," Ankoku whispered to him in his ear. "I know you want to cum; go ahead and enjoy this. Shoot everything you had been holding on to while I was away."
Ankoku increased her pace, using both hands to fondle and stroke and caress; making him moan in his morning glory voice. She could see his chest and legs contracting; he was close.
"I've been waiting for th--"
Without warning, he mewed loudly, his hips buckling. The first spray of cum flew fast and furious, hitting her old uwagi jacket. His cock, though, was not done; it continued to explode away, spray after spray of ectoplasmic cum, making a trail that began at the tip of his cock and ended down at in the bog mud. She stroked him over and over until nothing more came out and finally, a beast in submission, his massive cock fell limp.
The world swam in front of her eyes. Even though it had been his orgasm, his cum that was dripping from her page-boy hair cut, when she looked down at him she found that he was crouching in front of her, her kimono suddenly parted at the hips. She wore nothing underneath. The mound of her pubic hair was massive, the pride of the Tsumibukaki nunnery when she last was there. He leaned forward, flicked his tongue quickly over her protruding clit, making a jolt of bliss run through her body.
"Look what you do to me, you gorgeous boy," she moaned.
She took her fingers, wet them in her own cum and rubbed each all over his soft lips and up turned chin, turning them over and over, trailing her wetness all over his strange face. She could crush his head with her thighs if she wanted, she thought. Thighs that had ridden horses into battle; men and women to the point of orgasm; blocks of granite when she had been enslaved by the Tokugawa shogunate. They called her a freak; taller than most men, unstoppable when the blood-lust took her.
