This is the story about two girls who are in like with each other. They are neither in love with each other nor do they hardly know each other, but rather they strike such a perfect chord with each other just as they are. So many stories of sex and senses and emotions are about grandiose, epic love that over-stretches everything in an overbearing umbrella. And many are about one night stands in seedy bars and dark parks with a tone of impersonality to them. Those are good stories, almost every last one of them. This is just not one of those stories.

She has an unusual name. Caileen. She is from North Carolina, where that name is said with honey and twang, the mixture of which sounds like Sweet Tea and the sun. I love hearing her introduce herself–there are so many vowel sounds strung together and strung out, long and lush.

I will call myself Harmony. It’s not my name, but I’ll change it for two reasons. The first is that my name is boring. In my high school advanced placement english class, there were six of us by the same name. All spelled the same way.

There were 20 people in that English class.

The second reason is that you will know my body very well by the end of this story. Suppose you meet me in the street or I’m the person that serves you coffee or I’m your teaching assistant in your 2 o’clock feminist theory class. Imagine how awkward that moment would be, when you’re about to know exactly how I come and what that feels like.

I challenge you to pay attention in your 2 o’clock feminist theory class then.

Anyway, onto the reason you’re reading. I met Caileen in high school, when she moved here. We were both awkward and pimply and straight. Or at least, pretending to be one of those three things. The other two were very much our reality. I was the same height I am now and had been since seventh grade, so what better way to make my six foot, zitty self stick out more than to move through grades nine through twelve with a focus on drama. Caileen became the student director I worked with the most and we went to the same university–this university–because we couldn’t be without each other.

And now, now the air is thick with summer sweetness coupled with cricket song and Caileen is sitting on a bench with me, looking at a fountain. It is night and there are fireflies. It is like a movie about fairies.

“When are you going to come to your senses and perform for me again?” She asks. She took a long drag on her cigarette. I hate that she smokes. Her voice is so light and pretty and she is ruining it.

I shrug. “When I don’t puke up everything I eat from the stress.”

“You never used to.”

“There’s a difference between high school and doing it professionally.” I reply.

She shakes her head. “No there isn’t.” And then she touches me, on the thigh. “I miss you.”

I smile. She sees me every day but I know what she means. “Sunday night porno fight?” I ask.

She gets up from the bench. “Let’s do this.”

You may be wondering what I am talking about now. Sunday Night Porno Fight is a tradition in which Caileen and I find porn of any sort and watch it while eating some manner of greasy food. This week it is Chinese food, because that’s what I want. Our local Chinese restaurant is called Yeung Ho, which is very unfortunate. But their lo mein is awesome.

We cannot decide on porn. This is unusual, as Caileen and I pretty much like the same things. I think it’s the heat. Or rather the humidity that has settled like a thick sweater on every 100 year old creaking house in the community. After a few minutes I have the dark half-moons under my armpits. We strip our shirts off and continue to search–search my shelves, search the internet, search everywhere for porn.

“What about a good standard. Pirates?” I ask.

She wrinkles her nose. “No. Too many breeders. Let’s just search internet stuff?”

“I want a full length.”

“I’ll give you a full length.” She mutters.

“And how will you give that to me?” I ask and I flutter my eyelashes.

“Careful. Don’t tempt me.”

I snort. “Please. Like you would–”

And she leans in and kisses me and I feel my stomach drop to my toes and rise up in a wave. I grab her waist. She has such a small waist that you wouldn’t think there’s anything to grab, but there is. There’s muscle and I can feel how strong she is, for all of her sweetness and smallness. And I feel those muscles flex as she takes me down, sweeping my legs out from under me and pinning me to the couch by my wrists.

She snorts now. “Please. Don’t ever tell me what I would and wouldn’t do.”

Frankly I should have seen it coming. Caileen hates to be predictable. She equates it to boring.

“Lesson learned,” I say. “Now kiss me again?”

She puts on her stubborn face. “No.” Caileen likes to contrary because it’s the opposite of being predictable, and by the transitive property, also the opposite of boring.

“Then let me kiss you?”

She looks and the ceiling and bites her lip. She relishes in a few extra seconds and I smile. Her eyes flick back down to me and she returns it. I know she knows I know her and that I love her for it. “Okay.”

She lets me go and I crane my neck up as slowly as I can, afraid if I move too suddenly she’ll come to her senses and decide that this isn’t a good idea. Then I stop that thought. Why isn’t this a good idea? With Caileen and I, the drama is always on the stage. Or played out on purpose for our own entertainment. In the quarter of a gasp that it takes me to reach her lips, I think all this. And then I think nothing else because her lips are hugging me and pulling me closer, closer.

It is at this point that I experience what all the girls melt over. It is Caileen’s signature move. And I know it’s coming and it still catches my breath and holds it in my chest, filling me with the silly helium of being thoroughly handled. She takes both her hands and runs them through my hair. But not on the top of my head, on the back of it where my hair meets my neck and tickles it when it gets too long. There’s a pressure and I can feel the points at which all five of her individual fingers connect with me, pushing energy into me. Her thumbs are on the side of my face. Like every other girl I’ve ever heard her talk about, my head just falls right into her power and I feel like I am being steered, controlled. But I also feel like I am being cradled. There’s no one else in my life right now that I would trust more with my head than her.

We are still kissing and part of me says to itself, how dare I? How dare I fall for the signature move when I’ve heard about it countless times over Chinese food? I decide to give her my signature move right back. It is easy, because we are both shirtless and sweating and I don’t even have fabric to contend with.

I take a finger and imagine it into a feather. I draw spirals around each vertebra, each shoulder blade, each shape curving into the next and following the flow of her curves and her skin, which is pulling and stretching as she squirms at my touch.

Then she stiffens. Smiles. “No fair,” she says.

“You did it to me,” I reply.

“And you liked it,” she retorts.

“So did you,” I say, and it is the honest truth.

She just shrugs. And I feel her hands fall, stopping at my collar bone and then continuing until she hovers, right above the big brass button on my cutoffs. She waits, looking at me and raising one elegant eyebrow in a question mark. Perhaps she is waiting for me to beg.

I don’t, but I do hide a smile. Caileen is a lot of fun. Instead of begging, I curve in and kiss the flat, smooth bit just above her belly button. I move in fast and she doesn’t expect it and she gasps and giggles and pulls my hips up from my waistband with a powerful jerk, making me a puppet with my cutoffs being the strings. Something inside me roars. She does not let go.

Caileen reels me in so I rub against her thigh. My body goes limp and my head goes slack and I let her put me wherever she wants.

And then she pops the button open, as if her mind whispers a thought into existence and the real world listens with no effort. My insides change from roaring to melting, melting into the couch, into the heat in the air around me. I evaporate.

She peels the denim off bit by bit and I grab her shoulders. They are solid and I love feeling someone under me that I will not break. I love feeling a person really there, sweating with me, resistance as I dig my nails and the pads of my fingers into her instead of a waif.

She does not waste time. She takes what she wants when she wants it. Apparently that impulse wins over the desire to give me the opposite of what I want all the time, because she grabs me with her entire hand and brushes my clit with her palm. There is no feather light touch, no “stroking.” There are no delicate words or actions and I will not flower them up for you. She rubs and pushes and penetrates deep and wide. Perhaps that would have split me open, but I am so wet, slick, and spread for her.

I know Caileen and she will not be satisfied with doing everything herself. I don’t even rip her clothes from her body, but rather I contort my hand between the fabric and her skin and I climb in her clothes with her. She is swollen big and it isn’t difficult to find her and to make her sing a nice low C in my ear. It comes from that area just above her belly button that I’d gotten to kiss before.

There are no pornographic lady cum shots. But we do shudder together, muscles opening and closing like mouths screaming in ecstasy. And we do sigh into each other. And we do harmonize into the thick summer air until our bodies go the way of the sound waves and disappear into the heat.

She sits, perched on my lap, facing me. Her giant eyes wide and her blonde hair mussed up, but not tangled.

“Come back and act for me?”

I grin just a little bit.

“Okay.”

She balls her fists up and punches the outsides of my arms in excitement, pert nose wrinkled up.

“Don’t get carried away,” I say. “I’m only gonna do the little stuff.”

“All I want,” she says, hand in the air in a solemnly-swear. “Totally cool, it’s all I want.” She pauses, cocks her head to the side, looks at me. “You look so much happier when you’re acting. When you’re making something.”

I nod. “You are probably correct. You know me best.”

“Could you pass me the dumplings?” She says, and flops down next to me.

Like I said. No sweeping romances, no epic tales. I gave you exactly what I promised.

So.  By all accounts my first reading went well, you know, the one at Drunken!  Careening!  Writers!  In December.  And by well, I mean I didn’t vomit.  At all.  In fact, it was really super fun.  So I was incredibly excited when I found out I would have the opportunity to do it again.

Best Lesbian Erotica is coupling up with Best Gay Erotica and holding a reading on Thursday, February 9th at Bluestockings beginning at 7 pm.  I’m reading again, as well as D.L King, Julia Noel Goldman, Deborah Castellano, Anne Grip, James Earl Hardy, and Greg Norris.  So please, come on out!  (Get it?  Come?!)

Check out the Facebook event over here!  I’ll be sure to see you there.

“I have my sources.”

It’s a big pit now, and I would have thought it would be dirtier, but it’s not.  It’s smooth, white porcelain tile with a gentle slope.  I walk down into the deep end, dragging my hand across the growing walls.  Someone must be cleaning it because I’ve seen an abandoned pool once before, in the basement of the theatre at my college.  Leave it to an undergrad program to turn a gym space into a performance space instead of spring for a new one.  Up-cycling, I suppose.  That pool was dirty and full of leaves and had the smell of standing water permeating the air and the floors and the ceiling.  This one, though–it looks like we could fill it and use it tomorrow.  Hell, a few hours from now, if we wanted.

“Why are we down here?” I ask you.

You shrug again.  “You like weird stuff.  I thought you might think it was cool.”

I raise my eyebrows.  “Really now?” I’m eyeing the ladders that once took occupants of your building into clear, cold water.  I round on you.  “Let me see inside your backpack.”

A wide grin splits open your face and you laugh.  “Suspicious of me?”

“Yes.  Now let me see inside your backpack.”  And I don’t wait for an answer.  I grab the bag you’d dropped in the dip of the drained pool and I pull it open without using the zipper pull.  Two things immediately reveal themselves to me:  a length of rope and a set of police handcuffs.  I display one in each fist and the corners of my mouth twitched up.  “Thought I’d like the pool, hm?”

You smile even wider, though I didn’t think that was possible.  “Well.  At least I know you know me very, very well.”

You stride toward me and I think I’m going to get pinned to the sloping floor.  But instead you look at my collar bone and run just one short nail along it.  You flip your finger to feel my goosebumps with the ridges on your finger print.  I shiver.

“I like collar bones,” you say.

“I know.”

You curl around me and bury your nose in my neck, taking a deep breath.  You don’t kiss.  You run your lips behind my ear and you breathe again.  All five finger tips rove and you trace little circles on my skin.  My squeak echoes off all the reflective surfaces and I love the noise and knowing that no one will hear it this far below.  You’d never done that to me before, the thing with the circles.  I do it to you all the time, when you’re falling asleep.  I thought you hadn’t really noticed that, but now I guess you have.  I swallow.  That’s an affirmation for me, somehow.

And then you swallow my mouth, cocooning my lips while you take my hands in yours.  You pull away very quickly and I lunge forward to keep kissing you because I don’t want to break the link, I don’t want to feel the cold air that comes with the white walls.  You are warm and electric.  But as soon as I reach your mouth, you pull back again.  And again.  And I feel the incline under my feet and I know you’re leading me back up to the shallow end.  I close my eyes and play your game, letting myself be tricked because I know where you are taking me.  And I am proven right when I feel my arm brush the cold, round metal.  I pull away from you this time and I look at your bright eyes and your wet mouth.  Your face is flushed pink and your hands are still touching me, tracing circles on my palms now.

“So,” I say.  “You want to tie me to the ladder.”

You cock your head and indulge yourself in your only feminine habit:  you reach back and you twirl your hair.  “Or handcuffs.  I brought options.  You know.  So you could have…options.  Um…”

It is not your suavest moment and I am not helping because you think I am going to refuse.  You think I’m going to give you a hard time of it.  We haven’t had the customary “what are you into” conversation just yet, mostly because we can’t keep our mouths off each other long enough to have it.I won’t refuse you, no, but I love watching you squirm and I certainly won’t let you have it easy.

“Options.” I state.  You look at me, waiting for some kind of explanation of how I feel about the options.  I do not offer one up.  Instead I kiss you again.  I take hold of your twirling finger and place your hand squarely on my ass, cradling the part where I am the roundest.  You stiffen at first and I expect you to stop and ask me to give a definitive opinion of the options, but you melt into me instead.  You surrender and I feel you push back into me, your mouth becoming more aggressive.  Your teeth pinch my lips, but not too hard.  Just enough to grab me and hold me.

I push your back against the ladder, the soft “uff” spoke into the echoing air signaling that I’ve met my target.  “Stay,” I say.  “Be a good girl.”

I retreat to the backpack where I’d dropped your options.  I consider them.  I was a girl scout when I was little, but my troop was the kind that picked tea parties over camping every time, so I can’t tie any knots.  The hand cuffs seem to be the way to go. As I approach you, I see you grinning and shaking your head.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” you say.

I grab your wrist and click the ring around your right wrist.  I love the ratcheting sound it makes as I squeeze it tighter. I am about to imprison you when I have a thought.

“You have the keys for these, right?”

“I triple-checked,” you reply.

There is an icy clink of metal on metal and I get to hear the ratcheting sound again.  It bounces around the pristine walls and the space between my ears and it makes my entire body reverberate with the sound.  I am on you, biting at your collar bone because you aren’t the only one  who likes them.  You reach with your free hand to grab my hair and I pull back.  I overlooked a hand.  I guess I’m learning  to tie a knot today.

As I back away from you I keep my eyes on your face.  You’re smiling.  I reach down into the bag and grab the rope.  I tie your wrist to the ladder and it is the shittiest knot ever.  But you play along.  Even though I know (and you know) that you can pull that rope apart in half a second without very much effort at all, you keep your hand glued to the ladder as if I’d nailed it there.  I like that you play my game.

Now I can play without interference.  I can feel the muscles under your skin flex as I drag my tongue over your stomach.  It is flat and I am jealous.  But not so much, really, because right now this stomach is mine.  I posses it.  I feel it ripple, feel the tension build from being unable to touch me and I smile, my mouth against you so you can feel it.  You arch your back as I unbutton your shirt, each whisper of the fabric telling secrets to each goose-bump sending electricity to your clit. I can smell that you’re wet for me.

I torture you for a little while, letting my fingers slide along the threshold of your jeans and letting them skip back.  Letting them decide for themselves that unbuttoning your pants just now would be too much hard work when my mouth can play with your nipples instead and get just as much of a reaction.

“Please,” you ask.  I kiss you to shut you up, my knee laying to rest between your spread and twitching legs.  You moan in my mouth and I’m reverberating again.  I feel I am strung, tight, and vibrating and I can’t take it anymore.  I need to be touched but I do not want to set you free.  I break from you, sitting hard and fast on the tile.  I undo each button on my jeans and rip them, tossing them to the deep end.  I am not wearing anything under the jeans and I am so happy to see your mouth wet and shining, betraying your want and your anticipation.

I start slowly, running my finger up and down my thigh.  “Please,” you beg.  I like that you’re begging and it’s not even you.  So I pause, just a breath above my clit, and then start up on my other thigh.  You sag against the ladder.  “Aww, come on.”

But I can’t take it anymore.  Seeing your eyes wide and gluttonous is fun, but I am buzzing.  I lay one hot finger on my clit and moan.  I hadn’t realized how wet I’d become, just teasing you, but I slide easy.  Up and down.  You moan again and I moan with you, the echo deep and pleasing like expensive dark chocolate.  I start to pull, one finger on each side and my body ignites.  “Fuck,” I scream.  I like it hard, pinching, and I throw my head back with every pulse of heat that hits me.  In the windows when my eyes are open I see you frown at the rope and frown at me, making a decision.  You wriggle from my terrible knot and lunge forward, but I inch back.  I am just enough out of reach but I can feel the waves of sound a vibration as your fingers pass close to my opening.  The heat from your body and the desperation in your face makes me plunge my fingers in, rolling in the feel of myself.  I am soft.  I am strong.

I am rolling now, my body touching the floor one vertebrae at a time and then lifting up, snake-like.  You are touching yourself as I scream.  But I can’t have that for too long.  I stand on shaky legs and fall into you, my hand replacing yours.  The angle is odd and I rip the buttons wide open.  I hear a ripping sound and I don’t care, I’ll buy you new jeans.  I peel them from you and replace my fingers with my tongue.  You push away from the ladder and grab my hair.  This time I let you because I like the feel of being controlled on you, by you.  I am attached to strings that you are working, putting my sucking, licking, biting right over your center, over your clit.  You taste like fruit that is too good to be allowed.  Perhaps I am eating from the tree of knowledge.  You are soft.  You are strong.  And I am on my knees for you because you are wonderful.

You push into me and I feel my mouth stretch, my tongue find a swollen place that makes you gasp.  I push, unrelenting, the pressure from the tip of my tongue enough to tip the scales and you come on my face.  I want to watch you but my head is being thrown in every direction and all I can see is a small crease where your stomach meets your hips but I don’t care, even that’s sexy.

Your legs relax and your grip relaxes and I roll onto my back, looking up at the too-harsh fluorescents.  I hear the rope drop on the ground and the squeak of metal.

“Undo me,” you say, “so I can do you.”  It is cheesy and you know it.  You smile big and silly.  I laugh and go to the bag.

“Where are they?” I ask as I sift through it.  I see your books, your journal, your phone.

“Inside pocket,” you say.  I unzip and feel there and feel nothing.

“Nope,” I say.

“You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

And as you contemplate the thought of calling Officer Cahill, the man with whom you spend every day in a squad car with and who will never let you live it down, to bring that extra key, I laugh and hold up the key.  I had stashed it in my bra.

“I’m going to slap you,” you say.

I grin.  “That’s okay.  I’m into that.”

All I Want for Christmas is You blared from my television like the stereotypical event this would become.  I wore an ugly sweater that I found at a Holiday market–a hand appliquéd reindeer with jingle bells on the antlers and a squeak-able nose that had all but turned me into this season’s Pillsbury Dough Boy.  I had not thought that part through.  I wore it all over leggings because I was too lazy for real pants.    I’d just gotten over what we’d been calling “Christmas Plague” at the office.  Christmas Plague was a weird mix between strep throat and a stomach virus, both ends.  In short, I was not appetizing.

Which is why I was surprised.  Surprised, as I was on my knees over a rubbermaid tupperware bin of ornaments that I was fishing through to find the right one, to have my ass cheek bitten.

“Ow!” I shrieked.  I looked back and you were staring at the ceiling.  I snorted.  “What?” You asked, looking at me with a grin that stretched from cheek to cheek.  “It was there!  It was there, in my face!  It looked good!  I imagined it would be crisp, like an apple!”

I rolled my eyes in an over-exaggerated head fling and went back to the ornaments.  But this time I popped my ass in the air, welcoming another sneak attack if you were willing to give it.

It wasn’t a bite this time, but more of a firm caress.  There was nothing hesitant about it, that’s what I like about you.  There’s always spring-loaded power behind every touch, like maybe you’re going to lift your hand and slap.  But maybe not.  I leaned into it, loving the tingling that followed your fingers around.  I know what dogs must feel like when you scratch their ears–it was all I could do not to motor my back leg or just flop over.  My shoulders came down from their thrones by my ears and set down my back.  And then you did slap me, like you got the memo I sent with my hopes and thoughts.  It smarted like elastic through the tight black fabric.

“I like your sweater,” you said, and I could hear the smile like icicles adorning each word.

“Shut up.”

“No, really.  If Aunt Mildred pokes you in the stomach one more time, I might piss myself laughing.”

“Because the murder of your Aunt Mildred will be funny?” I asked, falsely wide-eyed.

“Hysterical,” you said as you grabbed me by the ankles and pulled me toward you on my stomach.  The squeaker in my sweater rubbed against the carpet and my skin and gave me a rub that I knew would result in little red bumps.  Before I could protest, I felt your lips against my right hip.  That’s another thing I like about you.  You don’t kiss wet.  You kiss open, with your lips in a moving oh so that you draw rings of fire on me.  But they’re never sloppy.  If they were, my leggings would be cold against me.

You trace your lips in circles.  Circles are sexy.  Probably because they include curves.  You pulled my hips from the floor, propping my ass up over my knees again and sitting back to admire your work. I sensed you nodding but before I could make fun of you, your fingers were between my legs.  I gasped.

I could feel everything through the fabric and I contemplated how thin my sorry excuse for pants was.  But only for a second as you traced circles with your fingers instead of your lips.  You pinched and pulled a little.  That’s another thing I like. Not about you specifically, just in general.

“Honey, what if Aunt Mildred sees?  What if she comes down the stairs?” I gasp again.

You snorted.  “Did you see how hard she was hitting that eggnog?  She’s going to sleep like it’s the day after Saint Patrick’s day.” And you worked your hand under my Christmas sweater, thankfully ignoring the squeaker lump.  You pulled me up against you and I was surprised.

“You’re packing,” I accused and smiled.

“Yep.”

I could feel the smooth bump in your jeans, something not abnormal but certainly special.  I rubbed my ass on your shaft through the denim and you groaned.  Made kind of an mfph sound.  It was cute and I smiled.  Your hand found my nipple and I gasped, jerking up against you.

“Get me wet first, beautiful.”

Your body pulled back from mine and I felt the area just under my ribs droop in a frown–I was sad to not feel you up against me.  But as soon as your other hand found its way under my leggings, I wasn’t so sad about it anymore.  Sometimes you tease, but not tonight.  The sensitive skin on your fingers met my clit right away and that’s how I knew you were impatient.  Hungry for me.  You started hard, thumbing me fast and it was all I could do to keep from screaming.  I bit my lip.

You bit my shoulder.  Hard enough that I knew I’d have a mark and I liked it.  You hummed into my skin and I felt the vibrations begin there, by your lips, just above my shoulder blade.  The sound made my body wave and liquify; like good, loud music.  For just twenty-six seconds your fingers left and I mourned their loss.  But you lifted your head from my back and I heard your lips part and I knew you were licking them, humming still with the satisfaction of tasting me.

“Better than any Christmas cookie.”  You chuckled, and then plunged your fingers into me, slick.  My leggings were down around my ankles–when had they gotten there?  I never remember feeling them pulled down.

I pushed back against you.  “More,” I said.

“Greedy,” you replied.

“Come on, it’s Christmas,” I whined.

“Not for another nine minutes.”

“You are not making me wait nine minutes,” I said as I pushed myself back against her fingers, then pulled myself forward only to ram myself backward again.

“You’re right, I’m not.”

“Come on, beautiful.  Fuck me.”

You switched your fingers to my clit and took your other hand from my chest.  I heard the very distinct sound of an unzippering zipper and the heavy weight of your cock against the seam.

“Please?” You reminded me.

“Please,” I obliged.

And without the normal torture of feeling you circle me without entering, you pulled my ass toward you by my hips and filled me to your thickest.  It was wonderful.

I couldn’t bite back the scream without something in my mouth, so I grabbed fist-fulls of the red felt tree skirt and let my teeth sink into it, ignoring the generous helping of pine-needles I also wound up with.

“Fuck,” you said.  “Fuck, I can feel every inch of you.  Don’t you dare stop.”

What you didn’t want me to stop was switching my hips up and down.  I imagined you watching me, your cock sliding and how red and pink I was.  I imagined you seeing the dimples in my sides made by your fingers.  And I imagined the look on your face that goes with being unable to tease, to wait.  The intense stare coupled with the flick of your tongue licking your lips.  The almost decadent feeling of that motion, the feeling of tongue on lips.  I was fine imagining your vantage up until you started with that satisfied humming again.

I started to squirt and I felt the moment shift into a temporary panic.  I screamed, thankfully muffled by the tree skirt, and I felt you reach up and pluck a savior fruit from the nearest couch–the ugliest Christmas blanket I have ever laid eyes on.  You whisked it underneath me and just like that Aunt Mildred would never know that I ejaculated all over her living room.  I love that you never stop me from coming all over the surrounding environment or important possessions.  You always find ways to make it work.

You kept me coming, slapping my clit soft with your palm.  I twitched and jerked and screamed and screamed and screamed into the tree skirt, twisting up until it no longer looked fit to belong under the tree.  I loved feeling the muscles in your legs twang and imagining what that would look like.

By the time I had pulled my leggings back up, you were looking at your watch.  “It’s officially Christmas,” you said.  And you looked down.  “Also, you came on Santa’s face.” And we laughed until we couldn’t breathe to laugh anymore, trying to cover our mouths so we wouldn’t snort into the dark house and wake Aunt Mildred or anyone else. I wanted this moment to be only ours without any scrambling or sheepish blushing.

“Thank the good baby Jesus for washers and dryers,” I said.

“Yeah.” You paused.  “Why did you bring the tub of ornaments, anyway?  Aunt Mildred certainly has enough up.”

“Well,” I said, and I put knees on the ground and bent over the box, sticking my ass in the air again.  “Are you complaining?  Merry Christmas.”

I almost don’t need to write anything else.

Ass-ets says it all.  This Crash Pad Series episode featuring Iona Grace and Nic Switch may be the sexiest collection of the nicest, roundest, spunkiest asses I ever did see.  I can’t even think of anything to say about them.  Oh, that’s rubbish, of course I can.

1. Hot damn
2. I would like to bite it
3. When did my hand get down there?
4. I would still like to bite it
5. I should write a post about fine, fine tuchuses
6. These butts are too sexy for the word “tuchus,” let alone its plural
7. How did they get two asses that are this hot in the same room?  I would think this would rip a hole in the universe.  It can’t be allowed
8. And yet they still manage to represent an entire community, and also terrific tail-ends.  How do they do it?

It’s December, and that means I’m officially done with my hiatus. I wrote 50,000 words in a month that had nothing to do with sex, so I feel much better now. I feel like I can tackle the sensory exploration of fucking in erotica without damaging my psyche.

Which is very fortunate for me, because on December 15th I’ll be joining the fabulous contributors to Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 for a reading at the KGB Bar in the East Village! RSVP via facebook here! And check out the list of awesomeness below, here’s who’s participating, straight from Kathleen Warnock who makes this all possible.

Featuring: Amy Butcher, Deborah Castellano, Julia Noel Goldman, Anne Grip, D.L. King, Ali Oh, Xan West, Introduced by Sinclair Sexsmith, With your hostess (and series editor) Kathleen Warnock. Join us for our annual holiday tradition at Drunken! Careening! Writers! Each December, we celebrate the publication of Best Lesbian Erotica, because we’re religious that way. Copies of the book will be on sale. Buy one for grandma! Contributors from near and far are congregating on our little corner of the East Village to read from their work, including this year’s Guest Editor, the lovely & talented Sinclair Sexmith. Drunken! Careening! Writers! is a reading series based on the proposition that all readings should be by: 1) Good Writers; 2) Who read their work well; 3) Something in it makes people laugh (nervous laughter counts). And 15 minutes tops. For more information, please email careeningwriters@aol.com, visit www.kathleenwarnock.com, or follow Kathleen on Twitter @kwarnockny.

See everyone there? It’s my first published Clit Lit, other than what I’ve put up here myself, and certainly my first ever experience reading the Clit Lit I’ve written. It’s gonna be a good month.

National Novel Writing Month!  Broke up with Jae!  Gah!  Wanted to check in with all of you to tell you I’m having a great, healing time writing a novel this month that has zero to do with sex.  I will be back in December with a lovely review of some anal lube Babeland sent me.  And of course shamelessly plugging for Best Lesbian Erotica 2012.  I haven’t left you all, I promise!

Mary did eventually leave Traci.  Or was it the other way around?

Most would suppose it depended on who you asked.  And on what day.

Either way, Mary moved into an extremely small apartment in Brooklyn with a roommate she didn’t find attractive so she wouldn’t get herself into trouble.  She vowed never to live with a girlfriend again, but rather to only have them visit.  For movie nights and other things.

And Mary couldn’t get Jane’s kiss out of her head.  It had crept back in through her ear when Jane helped Mary get all her stuff out of Traci’s place in the span of five hours, from packing in boxes to truck.  Whenever Jane spoke, Mary just watched her lips.

Jane gave no sign at all of remembering that evening.  Perhaps it was the new girlfriend-esque thing that had been going on.  Stupid name, Mary thought.  Couldn’t be her real name.  Bunny?  What mother would name their child Bunny?

Still, Mary looked in the mirror.  She had met Bunny once–when she’d slept on Jane’s couch for the week between flight and settling into her new place.  Bunny pouted her full, red-lips in sympathy and had taken the girls out for drinks.  Bunny wore old fashioned stockings with seams up the back.  And they were in a perfect line, bending with the back of her knees all the way up to what Mary imagined would be garters.  Her tight waist and her perky but heavy bust made her look straight out of old Hollywood.  Mary looked in the mirror.  She was wearing a sad, beat up grey crocheted hat.  Yoga pants from doing that evil thing called exercise.  A worn, three-year-old green sweater.  Not exactly the hot, high-femme Bunny type.  Even at her best, her best wasn’t Bunny Anderson.  Her best was…paisley dresses with colorful scarves and dangly earrings.  More 1960’s than 1940’s.  Loose, shirts and relaxed bras that didn’t hoist her tits up by her chin.

She looked in the mirror long and hard.  Her clothes were a wreck and she hadn’t left the apartment to do anything but yoga in three weeks.  She pulled off the hat and let her wavy, almost-black hair tumble down.  It was decided–she showered and pulled out the thin, white shirt she had worn to that bar with Jane.  She put on jeans that had absolutely no stretch in them and peacock feather earrings in her ears.  When she at last re-donned the grey crochet hat, it had new life with her hair cascading down in languid waves underneath it.  She thought about going out tonight, going out with Jane.  Would she take those slow steps toward her again?  Kiss her abruptly but with that slow, soft way, like she is afraid of damaging something?  The thin shirt shows the thin white bra underneath it.  Mary reached up and touched her breast, savoring how the fabric was so soft it almost felt cool on her fingers.  She traced the outline made by the bra, her olive skin contrasting sharply with the bright white.  She reached both hands behind her, unclasped it, let it fall.  She kicked it out of the way with one toe.  It landed on a chair, clinging for life across the back as if it were afraid to touch the floor.

She rolled her nipple between her fingers, loving that cool liquid feeling the fabric provided.  Traci hadn’t really ever focused on her breasts.  They hadn’t received any attention in a long while.

She played a little, grabbing them hard and pulling, flicking her nipple so it made dimples in her shirt.  It took her five minutes of this just to remember that her roommate wasn’t home, wouldn’t be home until Thursday.  That she was by herself in her own apartment.  Why hadn’t she been making any noise?

I have been trying to find a way to address this on the Internet without being a nine year old or a bully. I have decided the best way to do that is to declare my good intentions, though we all know the road to hell is paved with them, broken and no longer shiny.

You may have noticed that I don’t really write about Jae anymore. I haven’t for a while. You may have guessed that we did exactly what the title said. We left each other. As voluntary as this action was, there seems to be this feeling just under my breastbone. This strange, empty feeling that feels like being alone in bed when even your cat won’t snuggle with you. Except it isn’t just with me at night. It’s with me right now.

At the same time, this jasmine tea tastes great. And I am alive and I have a support system. And the cat does snuggle with me on his own terms. So even as I was fleeing my apartment two days ago, running away from hateful words, I knew that today would come and I would eventually be fine. And even though I have forbidden my friends to ask the question “how are you” for at least the next three months, this too shall pass.

I am sorry I have been remiss on writing. I am not exactly inspired to write about sex as I am carting out the collection of sex toys that Jae had thrown into a grocery bag and tossed at me. But I will try.

And that’s really all I have to say about that.