Best Lesbian Erotica 2013

DAFFODILS Sally Bellerose

I am vainly, passionately in love with my garden. I consider each crocus bud to be swelling by the grace of the sweat that dripped off my neck while I planted last fall. The curves of the tulip leaves are the curve of my back, straining with the pitchfork over the compost heap. I have an ex-lover, Annie. My old girlfriend appreciates my vanities. She’s a fecund woman of fifty-five. Fecundity. God, I love that word. A word that celebrates the muck and mire we all spring from, the richness of life. A word you can use without feeling corny about the filling, swelling, bursting going on inside and outside of you.

Like everything else in nature that’s alive and kicking, my ex-girlfriend and I know a sexy season when we feel it. Spring is fucking time. Since we broke up, there have been some years when I don’t see Annie all winter long. But you can bet your last tube of Vagilube, she’s going to show up at my front door, sometime before the season begins and as sure as taxes are due, smiling like she never ever did one wrong thing. She’s the first sign of spring: soft, moist and furrowed.

This year Annie came on April first, All Fools’ Day. I know because my present, love-her-madly-till-death-do-we-part, girlfriend left for a conference in Erie, PA that morning. My girlfriend’s tracks where still fresh on the driveway when knock, knock, knock, Annie’s at my door.

We sit quietly in the living room. I pour coffee. Her body, full on my couch, extravagant, is what my grandmother would have called pleasingly plump. In fact, Annie looks a lot like my grandmother, except her hair is not gray. Annie dyes her hair red; not auburn, red. She looks incredible. It’s one of those days when the light is so bright and the air is so clean that everything seems possible. I look out the window. I see my neighbor’s rusty trash cans on their sides near the border of my garden. The damned kids have thrown them over the fence again. When I smile at the sun bouncing off the dirty metal barrels, I know Annie and I are going to end up naked.

It’s always the same. We start out polite, acting like we aren’t affected by the bulge in the daffodils anymore, pretending we don’t have some unspoken pact to celebrate the rituals of spring together, year after year. We’re dying to find out what changes and what remains the same, but we start out slow, just in case one of us has decided that we should quit while we’re ahead.

Annie and I were born the same year in the month of April. We met in the spring, twenty-two years after our separate births. We were young together. We were young together until we were forty-six. Then we weren’t together and we weren’t young. Middle age: I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around that season of life. It’s not what I expected. I thought middle-life would take over and make me respectable, settled, comfortably bored. Now Annie and I are both fifty-five, on the cusp of old age, approaching old-ladyhood as unsettled and wanton as we were thirty-three years ago. Annie says you’re only as old as you feel. Well I feel fifty-five springs horny.

I look at Annie, wrinkles deepening around her eyes as she smiles at me. I see old familiar lust forming in the lines at the corners of her mouth. She brings her coffee to her lips. There’s a fold inside her elbow that I don’t remember from last year. Annie, we’re turning into old women with desire tucked in the bends and kinks of our skin.

Old women, I like the sound of that. I touch my neck, my skin warm and loose. Old women, sitting on the couch unfolding. I like the feel of it. Especially in spring. Spring has a way of honoring the layers of life that came before. The thicker the blanket of dead leaves, kitchen scraps, manure and snow, the more succulent the hyacinth’s new shoots. I like having all those winters, all those springs backing me up. It’s good that I’m still alive. I’m just starting to get the hang of life. It’s mostly the dying at the end part I’m having a hard time adjusting to.

I lean back on the couch and close my eyes. Annie sits quietly beside me. She touches my hand. Softly her fingertips turn over my memory. I think of Annie’s hot breath on the back of my neck, her fingers reaching around my waist to unzip my jeans from behind. I don’t think of us as any age. I remember how the sweat forms in the small of her back as she moves on top of me and calls my name. I try to remember where we found the guts to take these liberties so long ago. Even youth doesn’t give two women license to do these things together. Maybe age stops asking for permission.

I open my eyes and smile at Annie. The older I get, the better my long-term memory gets and I can’t remember Annie ever asking for permission to do anything. Maybe she was old before her time. She never asked me if she could sleep with other women when we were together. We had a deal. We were doing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” thing long before the military.

But sleeping with other women wasn’t why we broke up. Our deal worked out fine for the most part. It was good we broke up. It was getting so we weren’t being nice to each other on a day-to-day, everyday schedule. It was time to go our separate ways. So we did.

“Let’s see the garden,” Annie says.

We walk out to the yard. We gossip among the crocuses. They’re in bloom, tiny things, only six inches from the ground, but they’re full of themselves, screaming yellow and purple. The first to flower, brave little darlings. There’s a chill in the morning air. Still, you can feel it’s going to be a warm day. The ground is damp. It feels nice to sink into each step just a little as we walk. Annie compliments my tulips, marvels at how many there are, more than last year, more than the year before. They’re all up, awake, out of the ground, seven or eight inches high. The leaves are striated green and rusty red, profuse and pushing. They’re not ready to bloom. They have maybe a foot more to grow and gallons of sun to drink.

It’s the daffodils that grab us, stop us in our tracks. We stare for a full minute before we walk toward them, our mugs of coffee steaming in our hands. The daffodils are swollen, not one bloom actually open among one hundred. They’re straining. They want to get on with it, bad. They’re tired of waiting. You can feel their impatience, just a little more time, just a little more light, a little more sun. Something inside them is pushing. Open. This is the time. Open. This is the place. No shame. They stand in clumps, leaves turning toward the sun. If it were rain, they’d be just as ready. They know who they are, what they want.

Annie and I stare at each other and sip. Annie presses the warm mug to her cheek. The coffee steam rises. I brush my own cheek against my own cup and stare at Annie. It’s the morning sun, it’s the season, it’s me that makes Annie’s face glow, but it’s something else, too. Annie’s happy. She’s happier than I’ve seen her in a long time. She’s in love, not with me. She has a new lover. I’m not guessing. I’ve met the woman. Nice woman. She makes Annie happy. I wonder what kind of deal Annie has with her new lover. I don’t ask. Annie doesn’t tell.

I push Annie’s new lover out of my mind. I push my own lover as far out of my mind as she will go: Erie, PA. The light is at that certain slant that Emily Dickinson doesn’t describe. It’s the ‘Fuck it. This is the only moment that ever was or ever will be’ slant. It hits Annie full in the face. She really is illuminated. She doesn’t blink. She looks me straight in the eye.

“I want you bad,” she says.

We walk back to the house. We sit on the couch. It’s still warm where our bodies had been a few minutes earlier. This time there’s no space between us. Annie pulls my face to hers. She kisses me, full on the lips. I snuggle my face between her breasts. I love her skin, especially the V between her breasts. The skin there is more furrowed and wrinkled then the rest of her. Beyond the V on Annie’s breast are the places where the sun doesn’t shine, pale, tender. I like those places, too.

I trace my finger down the leathery skin of one breast and up the leathery skin of the other breast. I like the feel of her skin on my fingers. I can see through her blouse the dark mound of her nipple swelling up, a hard little seed that I want to swallow. Her bra pushes her breasts together. I put my hand between them. Warm. Soft.

“Ah,” Annie says, and kisses the back of my neck. She slides her hands down my back into my jeans and kneads the muscle of my ass. She always does this. I always want her to do this.

Annie gets on top of me. I feel her full weight. Mouth to mouth, breast to breast, belly to belly. Her hips plant me farther into the couch. My hips reach up to her. She slides both hands under my ass, takes a firm hold of each cheek and pulls me even closer as she pushes down. We get a rhythm going, a dance. We move, her belly, my belly, her thighs, my thighs. I can feel the soft fleshy mound between her thighs and the hard bone beneath pushing into me, my own flesh and bone pushing back. We’re touching everywhere, pressing every place we’re able to press. The pressure and the movement gets more intense. Our tongues are in and out of each other’s mouths. Our hands are grabbing, pressing, kneading any piece of flesh we can work except the one spot that wants pressing most. Our pants are down around our knees. I have one leg completely free. My legs are slightly parted beneath her. She could lift up and slide her hand between my legs. I could reach up and find her hot and wet, too.

She’s working me. Everything in its time. I’m so wet. I’m so ready to get wetter. For god’s sake girl, hit the spot. It’s time. Come on, honey. I want it both ways, to be full, completely filled up, and at the same time completely empty, all the way open so it all spills out. Touch me, girl. I want to explode. I’m squirming under her.

The phone rings. Ignore it. Keep moving, keep moaning, keep your flesh heaving against mine, Annie. The phone rings again, unnatural intrusion, blasphemy of the rites of spring. Annie’s mouth is on my breast now. She’s biting my nipple. A little harder, baby. Oh. Annie. That’s exactly right.

The answering machine clicks on. My voice, “Sorry we can’t come to the phone right now…” The machine is on the end table, six inches from our heads. It’s turned up full volume because my hearing’s not what it used to be. I try to shut it off, but it falls to the floor. My girlfriend’s voice comes blaring over the damned thing, “Hey, baby. You out in the garden? Plane’s delayed. What a gorgeous day to be stuck in the airport. Hope you’re enjoying it. Love you. Call you when I get to Pennsylvania.” Click.

Annie makes a valiant effort to ignore the sound of the busy signal coming from the fallen receiver. She keeps on playing with my breast. But for me, there’s a line where pleasurable erotic pressure becomes “stop right now” pain. It’s the point where you hear your girlfriend’s voice, talking sweet on the answering machine, while your ex-girlfriend has her teeth sunk into your right nipple.

I feel a stabbing ache from my nipple to my crotch. My body stiffens up like frozen roadkill. Annie tries to soothe me. She tongues my nipple softly, strokes the side of my face. I try to melt back into her, but I’m chilled to the bone. A shiver runs up my spine.

Annie sits up. She doesn’t try to hide her annoyance. “Sandy sounds well,” she says.

“Jesus,” I say, “Jesus Christ Almighty.”

“What’s he got to do with it?” Annie asks.

“Sweet Mary,” I say.

“Well, that’s a little better.”

I sit up next to Annie. “Sorry,” I say weakly.

“I thought you and Sandy had an arrangement,” Annie says, in exasperation, rearranging her magnificent breasts in her bra. She glares at the answering machine. “Progress,” she says. She picks her blouse off the floor. I watch as her fleshy breasts slowly disappear under checked cotton, button by button. I stand on one leg trying to pull the other leg of my jeans and my panties up at the same time. I fall back onto the couch.

Annie stares at me. “Look at you. You’re shaking. Poor baby.” She puts her arm around me. She’s more concerned than annoyed now. I put my head on her shoulder.

“Sandy hates the arrangement,” I whine.

“Wasn’t it Sandy who used to carry on about compulsory monogamy?”

“That was five years ago when she had the hots for her sister’s neighbor. She’s decided that open relationships work better in theory than in practice.”

“All theory. No action,” Annie sighs. “Never mind. I still love you, you sexy thing.” Annie knows me well enough to know it’s going to take me quite a bit of time to unthaw again.

I say, “Shit.”

Annie stands up, pulls on her pants, tucks in her blouse. “I’m going home,” she says, “to finish this business we started together all by myself.”

She holds my face between her hands and gives me a suction-cup kiss on the forehead. That’s what I like about Annie, she takes life as it comes. She’s not angry, still a tad irritated, but what the hell, she’s got the right.

“Thanks, Annie,” I say. “I love you, too.”

I watch her as she moves toward the door. I’m a lump of deflated libido. I see her through the window as she walks toward the daffodils. I watch her bend at the knees and lean forward. Her sturdy thighs support her. Her butt sticks out. This posture suits her. Her curves perfectly complement the landscape of the garden. Does she know that I’m watching her?

She sure does. Beautiful, mellow old girl. She’s trying to direct my attention to the flowers, but I’m looking at her. Her smile is upside down. The garden is only a backdrop. Annie’s the focal point. My spirit rises with her as she stands, waves at me and points to the flower she holds in her hand. Her grin gets closer and closer as she walks back toward the house. I turn the knob. It’s warmer outside than it is inside. The warm air spills in my door. Annie offers me a daffodil, fully bloomed, from my own garden.