TRIGGER WARNING: The focus of this story is a love affair between two women. But just as I am not a gold star lesbian, Sarah has an impure past. She is remembering that checkered past in this chapter, which includes episodes of nonconsent - but as always, the erotic focus is between women.
For those who pay attention to such things: When Sarah is alone the story is in the past tense. When Claire and Sarah are together the story is in present tense.
Thanks to HaltWhoGoesThere for copy editing.
Impact of The Sunday Scaries
"Tu m'apportΓ© quoi?" Claire croaks, rubbing her eyes.
The foil wrapped bodega egg and cheese looks wonderfully silly on the gold rimmed porcelain plate. But the globe of chilled orange juice, meanwhile, looks truly beautiful in one of Claire's gigantic, magically thin wine glasses. I've poured her ice coffee in a pint glass. And while I left most of the bouquet in the kitchen, the single tulip in a bud vase really pulls the breakfast tray together.
She is struggling to sit up, blinking at the tray, her eyes comically bloodshot. Cheeks marked by lines from the mattress, from lying still for so long on the all-but-stripped bed, Claire is the portrait of a
very
hungover lady.
"Petit-dΓ©jeuner pour madame," I tease, doing a little curtsy and my best servant girl French. It's a lame joke but stifling a yawn, she gives me a small laugh. I drop the faux girlish-formality, as I set the tray on the window box. "This will help," I tell her more earnestly, turning to bend at the waist over the bed and hand her the juice and a Tylenol, showing her a little cleavage.
She is still too blurry eyed to enjoy the tease.
I watch Claire hold the bulb of the wine glass in both hands and take long greedy drinks of the sugary juice. Her eyes wander over my bosom while she does.
Wicked little curls lift the corners of her mouth as she breaks from gulping and gasps for air.
I feel like I can see a glimpse of the naughty little girl she must have been. I wonder whether Bridgitte enjoyed that naughty streak as much as I do, what she sounded like scolding petite Claire.
I take back the glass and Claire lifts herself out of bed. She looks a little sore and stiff. She should, she worked very hard last night.
While she does her morning ablutions I fetch more juice from the kitchen and remake the bed. I want to whistle while I work. I feel like Cinderella, I'm so happy making her bed.
We had managed to push the fitted sheet all the way down the mattress with most of the other bedding. Pulling the sheets and duvet back up, and retrieving the pillows from the floor, I fluff them into a backrest.
"Claire's fluffer," I think. Imagining her sitting in the middle of the bed like a queen.
Danny had told me about fluffers.
I was visiting home for Thanksgiving. We'd gone to a house party together, lots of old high school friends - his friends. One of them had made a joke and I hadn't understood, but I could tell the way everyone else reacted that it was something dirty, so I waited until I could ask him privately what it meant.
"Making pornos... they suck the guys' dicks between scenes," he whispered. "To keep them hard."
I had been shocked by the idea.
Being a porn star made a
certain
amount of sense to me - in an awful way.
Like prostitution, I could imagine desperate reasons for
having
to do it - money, addiction, threats of violence. But I wasn't a high school virgin. This was after Rebekah, after masterbating in locker rooms and my prof's office chair, and other public places, after my crazy fucking summer in New York. Which meant I was well acquainted with my own compulsive urges, and scared shitless of the consequences of giving into them. But it was still before my awful threesome with Darci. So while I'd
mostly
buckled down on those urges, I was still open to indulging them.
I
knew
I was an exhibitionist... the impulse to
risk
being caught was still a
very
guilty pleasure for me at that time; orgasmic actually. But I also knew from experience that the excitement of taking risks and fantasizing about getting caught and being punished was nothing like
actually
getting caught and
actually
being punished.
This is all to say, I could imagine how some women must like the attention, must
want
to do it, maybe even felt compelled to seek it out.
But a fluffer was different.
When Danny had told me what flufferes do, he and I had been away at Brown over two years and our long distance love affair had been particularly distancing that year.
I was almost certain he had been cheating on me. He probably thought the same about me. And really, I kind of was. I hadn't slept with another guy, but I knew what had happened with Rebekah and then in New York had crossed a line. My secret fantasy life - something I'd never told him or anyone else about - had begun to leak into my real life.
I had told myself that my fantasies were a way of staying true to Danny, but the truth was my imagination was moving me further and further from him, further from everyone. I wasn't just down on Danny at that point, I was down on myself. I felt entirely undesirable and alone.
When he told me what it meant to be a fluffer, I immediately began imagining it, fantasizing about it. I pictured what it would be like to be on a porn set as an anonymous cock sucker. I imagined men positioning lights, setting up cameras, running cables; women with walkie talkies or makeup kits moving with purpose. And in amongst them, me, doing my job, sucking dick.
I pictured the crew drinking coffee and talking casually while I was on my knees, a cock in my mouth.
The idea of that had seared me. It was
immediately
thrilling - I remember feeling faint.
I drank too much at that house party, going back to the keg with my solo cup again and again. It was as if Danny had lit a fire in my belly when he whispered what it meant in my ear and I was trying to put that fire out with beer.
When we were finally alone, I couldn't wait to go down on him, imagining I was a fluffier. It was the same kind of compulsion that drove me to masturbate in Rebekah's bed and then the locker room. I was so worked up by the idea I'd hurt him - pumping too fast with my fist, squeezing too hard, being careless with my teeth. He had finally pushed me off. Laughing, but angry, he had scolded me before letting me finish sucking him off.
The next night my family had Thanksgiving dinner with his family. Afterwards, when we were alone, I asked Danny if he wanted to watch porn with me. My question had shocked him, but he had clearly liked the idea. He told me he would borrow some tapes for us to watch that weekend.
I am entirely certain the porn we watched belonged to him.
We had watched in bed, in his little studio apartment over his parents' garage. I loved that little "bachelor pad", because it was one hundred percent furnished and outfitted by his mother, who kept it spotless.