One Blade of Grass

Author's note: This snide standalone story stole elements from the RON'S JOURNAL series. Reading that series is optional -- but go ahead, knock yourself out! This tale, an entry in the EARTH DAY 2014 story contest, includes cheating, group sex, dust devils, cheap sangria, a little non-con, and The Green Man. The story is probably fairly fictional. All sexual acts involve live humans of age 18+. If I screwed up details of USMC service, well, sorry about that. Your thoughtful feedback is appreciated.

*****

ONE BLADE OF GRASS

*****

She was no desert rose

(Earth Day 2014 contest)

"All the highways between here and Wickenburg are beautiful this time of year. All the kleenex bushes are in bloom, right along the roadside."

"The wildflowers at Fort Oliver were so thick this spring that you could hardly see the discarded beer cans."

--Harry Oliver, desert rat

***** Autumn 1979 *****

"Oh fuck me, Ron! Fuck me!" I screamed at the star-struck sky.

The spicy scent of the high Mohave Desert swept over us on the still-warm midnight breeze. Coyotes howled and engines moaned in the distance. Ron seemed bent to do his hyperactive best to fulfill my demand.

I writhed on my back on a blanket-covered foam pad. Ron's long, lanky body roiled between my spread thighs, feverishly pounding his long, thick crank deep into me. Were my thoughts not addled by lust, I might worry that we would roll off the edge of the flat roof of Ron's little cinder block shack, off into the crowded cactus garden below.

"Oh fuck, Ron! Fuck fuck fuck fuck, oooohhh..." I howled again. My pussy was on fire. I felt auroral discharges from the edges of my body -- I must have glowed in the dark. I felt my core melting, felt myself dissolving into a shining puddle of pleasure. Oh fuck, I live for this!

Ron continued his persistent probes and strong strokes, long and deep, then fast and furious, relentlessly jack-hammering my soul as well as my vulva. Oh damn, I love that feeling! I howled again.

Ron's tiny home was in a group of three small concrete cinderblock shacks about 100 feet apart. They loosely faced a lonely narrow road, surrounded by open desert scattered with spiny cacti, eerie Joshua trees, and dark pungent creosote bushes. Jagged raw mountains blocked the southern horizon.

The doors of the next-door blockhouse swung open just as a loud music track faded away. Voices called out.

"Yeah Ron, fuck her! Fuck her good!"

"Hey, the bitch is just begging for it! Don't let her down!"

"Hey Ron boy, you tired yet? I'll spell ya!"

The crowd of US Marine Corps cooks spilled from their off-post abode. Some of their girlfriends emerged also, more or less clothed, but all drunk and stoned enough to add their yips and yaps to the howling of the pack.

"Oooh oooh baby, was that good for you?"

"Hey Ron, promise her love but give her twelve inches!"

"Sounds like two cats fucking up on the roof!"

I ignored all that. I just concentrated on my pulsing pussy and Ron's ceaseless attack. I was his fiancé, his intended, his lover, and I wanted every smoking erg of his erotic energy pouring into me, overflowing me.

I know I screamed again. I know I saw more stars and galaxies than just those in the black sky. I know I passed out. I know we didn't roll off the roof. I know I loved Ron with every centigram of my being. I didn't need to know anything else just then.

Music next door amped-up again but the partiers returned inside and the door closed, muting the psychedelic guitar rock music down to an aching roar. Bass and drums thumped, a distant giant's footsteps crushing the landscape.

Ron's softening cock slipped from my pussy. He rolled off me, lay beside me, held me, kissed me, mixed his sweat with mine. I felt like my spirit had exploded in a starburst that was now collapsing back onto me. I slept.

I woke as night slowly faded into day. I saw the nearby mountains shift from black to indigo to purple to blue. I felt Ron sleeping beside me, breathing slow and regular, under the cotton bed sheet we had thrown over us after our noisy lovemaking session. I heard the rattle of little bird-feet as our neighborhood roadrunner made his usual sunrise run across the roof. (No, roadrunners don't go "beep beep"!) I knew I was in a magical dream.

*****

I sent my parents in Cleveland a postcard telling them I was going to get married next spring. Mom called; she was lucky to catch me at my room. I had just poured myself a glass of red port when the phone rang.

"Baby, what is this? Married! Do we know the boy?"

"No Mom, you don't know him. And he's never been to Cleveland."

"Well, how did you meet? Tell me all about him!"

"His name is Ron. We met when the fall semester began here at college. He's taking environmental classes and stuff, a heavy load. I'm in his Spanish and Psych classes but you know I'm mostly sticking to business courses."

I wanted to get rich. Ron wanted to be an environmental activist. Whatever.

"Our Spanish instructor is this chubby little Cubana, a well-to-do doctor's wife -- they scrammed after Castro's revolution. Mexicans laugh at the accent Senora Mendoza teaches. Oh well, this meager college hasn't got the budget for anyone better.

"Ron and I were paired-up for Spanish vocabulary practice, and we just clicked. We started our language sessions sprawled on the shady lawn in the town park, with cold sodas and flash cards, memorizing words and phrases. Then we did a little more tongue practice, if you know what I mean. We've been together ever since."

I've been with other guys too, of course, but Ron was my main squeeze.

"So what does this Ron look like? How old is he?"

"He didn't tell me just how old he was, somewhere between twenty-five and thirty I guess. I'll know when I see the marriage license. He's a big tall lean guy, six foot five, with black hair, hazel eyes, a nice strong face, and he must weigh all of 165 pounds soaking wet."

And he has a nine inch cock and a six inch tongue. Those are deadly!

"Okay, so he's not too old for you, that's good. So where is he from? And what has he done?"

"He's from somewhere around Los Angeles, born and raised there, right next to his grandpa's little chicken farm. He just got out of the Army a few months ago and he's a medic in the Reserves. I know he did all sorts of stuff before the Army but he doesn't talk about that."

"So does he have money? Does his family have money? Does he buy you nice things?"

"Well, he lives pretty cheap, but most everybody around here does that, except the Marines who blow their paychecks every weekend."

They blow it on ME often enough, but Mom doesn't need to know that.

"I haven't seen much of his family, just a sister who drove out here once. I don't think they're rich. But Ron and I, we have some ideas for business when we get out of school, maybe even before then."

Yeah, Ron can have his ecology consultancy, and I can find corporate sponsors, no problem. It's just marketing.

"You sure you want to settle down with this Ron guy? You've always been pretty wild. You like fun too much, way too much. And you remember what happened with Steve," Mom chided.

I shuddered. Just after high school, Steve asked me to marry him. I thought to have some fun. I said, "Hmmm, I'll think about it." Steve looked so dejected as he walked away. When he was almost at his car, I called, "Okay, I've thought about it, I'll marry you, yes yes yes!!" He kept walking. "What's the matter?" I yelled. He stopped and turned. "You're playing games on me. If you do that now, you'll keep at it. That's not for me; I'm gone." He drove off.

"Just because I'll marry him, doesn't mean I won't still have fun. He's been kind of a wild guy himself. Don't worry, I've got him nailed down."

"So he proposed to you, huh? With a ring and everything? So when is this wedding scheduled? And why didn't you tell me before?"

"Oh Mom, it was just a couple days ago. He begged me, and I said yes." (Well, he was kinda stoned at the time, and about fucked to death.) "And he got me this nice big ring, it's silver with coral and turquoise." (He bought it at some Navaho roadside stand over in Arizona for maybe ten bucks.) "And we've picked a day next April for the wedding, a day that's important to Ron. Hmmm, wait a minute..."

I poured myself another glass of wine. Damn, I *needed* wine to talk to Mom. I took a good slug, then refilled my glass. I guess Mom could afford to run up the long-distance bill. Whatever.

"Just had a sip of water there, my throat was dry," I lied. "Okay, so we've set the date for April 22. That's the ten-year anniversary of Earth Day. Ron and his ecologist friends are trying to get that to be a regular annual holiday. If that works out, I should be able to make good money selling Earth Day crap, er I mean products. That's in my business plan now."

Another slug of red port. Damn, I love the shudder it gives me! "So when I'm rich and famous, I'll be able to brag that I was married on Earth Day 1980, a real pioneer of the movement, yada yada."

Mom was quiet for a minute. She finally asked, "You sure you know what you're doing here, honey? I mean, this all sounds sort of, I dunno, reckless or something, like some of the crazy tricks you've played before."

I was getting bored with the conversation now. "Yeah Mom, I'm sure. Look, I gotta go, I have some stuff to do." (Some more wine to drink, yeah.) "I'll let you know how things go, for sure. Love you Mom. Bye."

"Okay honey, I love you too. Bye-bye. But be careful!" And she hung up.

I drank some more wine and took off my clothes and danced around my room. Crawled into bed, went to sleep, dreamed about running through impenetrable mazes with something hot and dangerous chasing me. Maybe that was my own past?

*****

Mesquite College offered both daytime and evening classes, a necessity out here on the desert. Their summer sessions were all evening-only -- days were just too hot. Lots of the evening instructors had day jobs teaching at Mesquite High School or on the base. Most of the students here were Marine or Navy guys and their girls, with the usual smattering of retirees and community kids, and people who just didn't fit into urban or suburban settings. Ron and his ecology buddies were like that.

I only had half of Ron's class load. Most of his non-class time was spent studying or in labs and on field trips. I went on some of his geology and botany 'tours', but they got boring pretty quick. I mean, how much time can I spend pretending to be interested looking at rocks and weeds, really?

So I spent some time in town, hanging out, partying, that sort of stuff. Good clean fun.

I lived in what used to be a "travel court" on what used to be a main road on the other side of this grubby off-post town from Ron's shack. Each unit was a kitchenette-equipped motel room paired with a carport. These rented out weekly or monthly now as studio apartments. The tenuous wire fence around the old kidney-shaped swimming pool lined with turquoise tiles was mostly held up by overgrown shrubs: thick oleander, lanky desert tobacco, creosote bush, dwarf palo verde.

Peacocks wandered the grounds and sang their eerie cries. Residents lounged around the pool and a cottonwood-shaded little lawn, drinking and smoking. Sometimes it was me they drank and smoked, in private. I was always ready for fun.

I crouched in doggie position as big Demon Dave the ex-demolitions expert slammed into me from behind.

"Damn! Damn! Damn!" he yelled as he pounded me. "Arf arf!" I barked back. I screamed later, along with the peacocks. None of us was particularly quiet.

It was a dark night and the cheap landlord rarely bothered to replace burnt-out outdoor light bulbs, so hopefully nobody saw me slide naked into the murky pool to wash off.

Would I miss this after I married? I sure hope not.

The town plaza, just off the main road to the Marine Corps base, was lined with a few basics like a tiny grocery, beauty shop, bookstore, lithographer's gallery, realtors (what the Brits call estate agents), weekly newspaper office, that sort of stuff. Across the main drag were an odd-lot of scattered businesses, mostly an auto-parts shop, water district office, CPA and dentist torture chambers, bail bondsman -- and Roger's solar store.

Roger and Melissa rented a sun-beaten cinderblock building with a showroom downstairs from their apartment, with miles of open desert for a backyard. They sold passive and active solar systems, windmills, generators, pumps, food dehydrators, hydroponics gardening stuff, seeds, workshops, all that ecological crap, er I mean merchandise.

I knew a few things. I knew Rog and Mel didn't much like me. I knew that Ron was their great friend, talking about everything with them. I knew he visited regularly.

And I knew of a spot in the back of their building where all conversations in the apartment could be easily heard, an acoustic oddity I exploited to keep track of their talks.

I stealthily followed Ron over one morning and assumed my position.

"You did WHAT?!? You fucking PROPOSED to that slut!?! Are you fucking NUTZ?!?"

I didn't need to hide in that freak acoustic spot to clearly hear Melissa shouting.

"Änd you scheduled your wedding the fucking anniversary of Earth Day?!? That's just SACRILEGE! You're gonna DEFILE that holy day with this sperm receptacle! Shit!"

"Hey, she's no slut, she's a nice gal. Yeah, she parties some, but that's just fun. Y'know I like to party too. And I love her!"

Ron's defense warmed my heart. Roger's counter-attack chilled me back down.

"Ron, buddy, listen up. I know you're bone-hard for that freckled Scandinavian girl-next-door-look bimbo. But you gotta ask yourself, WHY is she here in this armpit? This isn't a place where suburban kids come for school, where normal families set up housekeeping, none of that. This town exists solely to suck money from marines and tourists, period. You know that perfectly well.

"Some of us come here because we can't stand metro sprawl, because we love this frontier. You think Jenny is a Green? HA! She's just here to take. She takes men, she takes their money, she takes their jiz, everything. I have an idea of what she'll take from you -- your reputation, your integrity, finally whatever you're worth.

"C'mon, think this through. Why would an unattached woman who's not a desert rat move out here? For quality education? A steady job? HAH! Who ARE the unattached town women? You know the answer -- they're whores. I listen to the grapevine here. The word is, Jenny's just a girlfriend for rent."

I didn't hear anyone speak for a few minutes. Then Ron responded.

"Guys, you know I respect you both, all that we've done together, all that you've done for me, all that stuff. I know you only want the best for me. But I'm not going to base my life on rumor mills. I've got to go with my heart. And my heart belongs to Jenny, for better or worse. I know she'll straighten out, I just know it. She rocks my world."

"A pussy-whipped moron," I heard Melissa snort derisively. "She's got you by the dick and she's just leading you on. Your little dream world will REALLY be rocked, like an eleven on the Richter scale, when she drains you and dumps you. She's gonna rock you into a world of pain. You poor sucker." She snorted again.

I heard Ron's voice again. "Look guys, we're friends. Let's stay friends. I think I should go now."

I heard movement upstairs. I took that as my cue to disappear. Being caught here eavesdropping would not be good, not at all. I split as a dust-devil blew by. Fucking dust...

*****

I pushed my beat-up Pinto to the limit, and that was just fast enough. By the time Ron parked his even more beat-up VW bus next to his shack, I was sunbathing nude out back. The thick line of oleanders and creosote bushes around the south side blocked the view from the road, so we often went naked back there.

"Hey baby, how's it going?" I called as I sat up and waved my rather nice tits at Ron. He grinned appreciatively and walked over to me while shedding his cutoffs, tee, and sneakers.

"Everything's okay," Ron said, "Hey, it looks like you could use some lotion. Want a dose?" He gave me his lascivious-but-innocent horny-puppy-dog-eyes look unnecessarily -- no WAY was I going to resist. "And maybe you could lay some protection on me too, hmmm?"

He slathered me up with sun block, with careful attention to the juicy bits, y'know? I returned the favor, with interest. Meaning, I lotioned him thoroughly, then jacked him off pretty damn good. His thick eruptive semen spurts hit a nearby

cholla

(CHOY- yah) cactus. A couple loose cactus pads jiggled under the onslaught and threatened to fall.

"Hey, those jumping cholla really can jump," he joked, as I cleaned off his cock with my mouth, "and I guess I probably did too." He rubbed my ass. Mmm mmm good...

We laid around, soaking up rays, till the sunshine got too intense -- must have been around 10:30 AM. I moved my cute naked butt onto a chaise shaded under the tarp Ron had strung as an awning over the 4-yard-square concrete-paver 'patio' by the narrow back door.

Ron went inside and came out dressed in standard daytime desert garb: loose light khaki shirt and trousers covering his arms and legs, engineer boots, a wide-brim straw sombrero, red bandana, and big wraparound shades. He carried a cooler, a snack bag, a shotgun, and binoculars to his VW van.

"Sorry I can't stay babe, it's my turn at the desert tortoise survey area, gotta make sure no poachers or vandals come around. Just last week, I had to stop a guy from running his big-ass dune buggy right through the barbwire enclosure. Fucking barbarians!"

Ron was so protective! I was so proud of him! He would be so easy!

Ron kissed me good-bye. "See ya tomorrow, babe!" he called.

*****

I went into the little kitchen after Ron drove off and fixed myself an instant sangria spritzer: a bottle each of red port and diet Orange Sprite (hey, a girl's gotta watch her figure!) poured into a pitcher of ice cubes. Nice and simple and strong.

I took a quick shower, then went back outside to lie naked in the shade again. A desiccated desert wind blow-dried me externally while the iced sangria wetly frosted me inside. I got nice and relaxed. I nodded off to sleepy-bye land, zzzzz...

I crawled back into consciousness with a sexy feeling oozing through me. What was that? Something stroking my calf, and thigh, and along my hip. Fingers? Rough fingers? Rougher than Ron's, I could tell. Sliding on my waist, then across my belly, then circling my tits. What?

My eyes blearily opened to see a guy squatting next to me, a pale intense guy whose firm musculature was revealed when he stood. I saw he wore only tight Speedos that left nothing to the imagination. Wow, what a nice circumcised cock! I looked up to his face eventually and recognized Jack, one of the USMC cooks who lived next door.

"Hiya there Jenny, how ya doing?" he asked, almost innocently.

"Er, ahh, yeah, I'm fine, just fine..." I mumbled, shaking my head.

"Looking good, yes you are, girl! Mind if I grab a seat?" He waved at the cheap lawn chair.

"Er, ahh, sure, yeah, go ahead. Oh, where are my manners? D'ya want some sangria?"

"Thanks, yeah." He poked into the kitchen for a big cup, poured it full, and sat.

"Hey Jack, looks like you've been swimming or something," I observed smartly. Duh.

"Yeah, I was in the plunge at the base. Too bad I had to wear these," gesturing at his oh-so-tight swimwear, what there was of it. My eyes followed his hand.

"Umm, well, you can take them off now if you want," I murmured, a bit hypnotized.