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.
Thanks to HaltWhoGoesThere for copy editing.
Impact of Consumer Therapy
Even on the far side of Church Street, there was a crowd of history enthusiasts. I walked through groups discussing T-shirt prices, C4 charges, and how best to get to Times Square. All of them had their backs to St Paul's Chapel, the oldest church in New York.
'Never forget,' I thought sarcastically.
I immediately felt a pang of guilt for being so uncharitable, then some woman hit me in the side of the head as she pointed out something of, no doubt,
vital
importance to her friends. No apology, no 'pardon me' - nothing.
I kept walking.
Looking downtown, I was surprised to see that, even after all this time, there were still jagged tears in the otherwise bland facade of the Burger King on the corner of Church and Liberty just south of the World Trade Center site. It looked like the building's beige siding had been attacked by a huge cat. I couldn't help but wonder if the franchise planned to preserve the damage for posterity, like the decades-old bullet holes riddling the Brandenburg Gate. Knowing New York landlords, they were probably just too cheap to bother fixing it.
But my curiosity was idle and I had finally reached my destination. I was greeted by a blast of cold air as I put all out-of-towners behind me.
'THANK GOD!'
I think at least half my irritation with the tourists was the heat.
But all that was vexing me would be forgotten - or I hoped it would. I was entering New York's most gloriously idiosyncratic of secret destinations, known only to the chosen few and large swaths of New Jersey and Connecticut.
Century Twenty-One,
was a New Yorker shibboleth. Knowing what it meant marked you as one with deep local knowledge. The hundreds of Americans standing just outside were as oblivious to the sanctity of this place as they were to St. Paul's.
Jesus Christ, I was in a sour mood.
'Shopping will help!' I told myself, my mind filling with ideas for things I could buy for Claire's visit. I had been beating myself up all morning. The image of buying her things made me brighten up.
'A little consumer therapy is just what the doctor ordered,' I thought hopefully, as I pushed through the inner doors and prepared to beat my way through seven floors of extremely local bargain hunters.
New York City is a physically intense place to live. I had never been to Paris or Hong Kong or Mexico City, so I didn't know how people in other big cities deal with crowding. In New York there is an unwritten rule, we don't touch each other. Judging by the way tourists comport themselves, this isn't true in most places. Creepers aside, it is exceedingly rare, and even alarming, to be touched by a stranger in New York - no matter how packed the sidewalk or stairwell, no matter how benign or well-meaning the motivation, touching a stranger is a real transgression.
There are exceptions to this rule. Crowded rock shows and subway cars are two obvious ones,
Century Twenty-One
is another.
A longtime downtown institution, the department store was as close as New York got to an outlet mall, but the customer service and shopping experience had more in common with a sample sale or maybe a roller derby.
I had never bought shoes there before, but Kip had once told me this was where drag queens bought their shoes; that they carried outrageous styles in sizes men could wear.
I don't have big feet, just the opposite actually, but I did have an interest in a particular
variety
of shoes that I thought I might share with drag queens... and strippers. I wanted shoes for Claire... I
needed
outrageous.
I dreaded the idea of going to one of those fetish shops in the West Village; hoped I might find what I wanted here - and maybe a blouse and some nice towels as well!
As it turns out, the shoe department was the same chaotic jumble as every other department the store had - maybe even more so. But sure enough, after some hunting, I found a pair of black peep-toe platform stilettos in my size.
'Stripper shoes!' I thought happily. They were as outrageously sexy as anything I'd imagined.
But right next to them were a pair of
Sarah Flint
patent leather Mary Janes....
I had come thinking I would find something slutty and cheap, that I would vamp it up for Claire, turning my old school uniform into a clownish stripper costume. But the Mary Janes were so pretty and almost innocent... almost. Their four-inch high inset block heels, and platformed toes, tipped them into the realm of naughty - but just barely.
I spent WAY too much time agonizing over the choice. Even at bargain basement prices, neither pair was cheap. The Mary Janes were more than twice as much as the stripper shoes, however - so not cheap at all.
I decided that even at three hundred dollars, the Mary Janes were the better value. Even though they were naughty, their naughtiness had a covert girlish quality. They were work-safe... if only just barely. The stripper shoes I could never wear out of the house, much less to work.
When the woman at the checkout counter saw the Mary Janes she gave me a once over. I felt like she knew
exactly
what I was up to.
"He's gonna love these, sugar," she said with a conspiratorial smirk.
So maybe she didn't know
exactly
what I was up to, but close enough to make me laugh.
Clearly, the Mary Janes weren't as work-safe as I hoped.
I didn't correct the cashier or change my mind about the shoes. I just gave her a guilty smile and told her I very much hoped she was right.
Guilt has been my lifelong sexual companion. The first time I masturbated in Rebekah's room I was stricken by guilt and self-loathing. The second time, however, was very different. There was guilt, but there were no crying jags, no visions of madness or brain tumors.
The difference was Rebekah, the way she behaved afterwards. I was all but positive she had known what I was doing, had wanted me to do it, and had almost certainly watched me while I did.
Still, I wasn't
positive-
positive, so I was still a little guilty.
I'm not sure if the guilt was because I thought I was right, and I was wronging Danny, or because I thought I was wrong and I was wronging Rebekah...
I remember feeling like I was held in a state of superposition - Schrödinger's cat - suffering two contradictory things at once.
'Schrödinger's pussy,' I thought wryly, wondering at my ability to feel guilty about two, mutually exclusive transgressions.
'You are the Albert Einstein of self-doubt and shame,' I told myself mockingly.
In the meantime, I kept very much to myself. I avoided spending time with friends, dodged calls from my mother and Danny; buried myself in my classwork. I spent a lot of time reading the things Rebekah had loaned me, and writing, and masturbating.
I masturbated a lot.
All my time was given over to thinking about Rebekah. It felt obsessive, but less...
destructively
obsessive than the week before? Maybe because my thoughts were more honest. I was thinking about the smell of her hair, how sweet her breath was, the warmth of her arm against mine, her fingers touching mine, but also the way college girls
experimented.
I was wondering if she and I were experimenting.
When I masturbated, rather than frantically fingering myself, I luxuriated, wondering at how wet and ready it made me feel to picture myself on her bed. I indulged myself with slow gentle stroking. In my mind, Rebekah was watching me, admiring my pussy and way I touched it. But in my fantasies she wasn't hidden. She was sitting on the bed with me, I could see her watching me, looking at me naked, admiring the way my hand was moving.
And fantasizing that way about her felt good in a way it never had before, because I was all but positive she
had been
watching me, that she
did
like looking at me.
I was sure there must be a peephole or a camera, somewhere she was able to hide. I didn't name what happened between us, but the further I got away from "what happened", the more sure I was that she knew what I'd done, and had wanted me to do it.
I fantasized about Rebekah more openly with myself than I had ever fantasized about a woman before. All the same, the fantasies were relatively tame.
I thought about how close she held her face to mine, our lips just inches apart... but not of kissing. I thought of her wonderfully narrow fingertips, but not grabbing, her beautifully long round nails... but not of scratching. I thought of the soft pads of her fingers touching the tops of my fingers, stroking the skin, my cuticles, and nail beds, all still tacky with my cum... but not of fingering. I couldn't bring myself to imagine those things, but in the dark wordless parts of my mind, I wanted them.
I also imagined Rebekah loving me, being
in
love with me. Again these fantasies weren't sexually explicit, even though they were explicitly sexual. I imagined holding her hand, her pulling me close, so our bodies touched. I pictured her telling me she loved me, her mouth so close to mine so I was breathing her sweet breath.
And while I never came doing it alone, I fell into deep sensuous dreams, and woke up to enticing images of our naked bodies touching, of her mouth and mine; just fragments, but enough. I wasn't able to recreate for myself the orgasm that happened in Rebekah's bed, but I was able to stretch that burst of pleasure into a week of delicious longing and desire.
When I saw her next I was crossing campus with a group of friends, heading to class. She was coming in the other direction with a group of upperclassmen and faculty, maybe heading to an editorial meeting for
The Round,
