Danielle swirls her finger furiously over her clit as Christopher thrusts himself inside her. The tension builds to a crescendo. Like the accumulation of pressure between tectonic plates before an earthquake, she's almost ready to burst. Almost...just 30 more seconds...she can feel it...she's almost there...
Christopher convulses in orgasm and collapses on top of her. Damnit. She almost had it.
"Wow, that was good," he says, breathing heavily. He kisses her shoulder, her lips, then rolls off her, still kissing and caressing her. That's one thing she appreciates -- his continued affection after sex. Most guys would just roll over and fall asleep.
He explained it once after they'd made love: "I don't get tired for some reason. Could have to do with the amount of prolactin my body generates." He went on to describe how prolactin acts as a neuroendocrine response to depressed mood and irritation. Not the most passionate conversation to have after making love, but interesting, Danielle supposed, in its own way. He is, after all, in his last year of medical school and completely immersed in that kind of talk.
Christopher might not be the most exciting person, but he's intelligent, motivated, well-grounded; he makes her feel pleasantly satisfied and secure. He's the type she always assumed she'd marry, which is why she said Yes without hesitation when he proposed. "A doctor and a lawyer, just like the Huxtables," he joked. She figures the analogy isn't too far off. And not necessarily undesirous. She anticipates a long and stable marriage, even if it is a bit conventional.
She wraps an arm around him as he leaves a trail of gentle kisses down her neck. She didn't orgasm this time, but the intimacy makes up for it. Sort of. His lips brush her nipple, then he kisses up her breast, stops at the tattoo of a half-naked pixie, a single snare drum secured around its neck and a drumstick in each hand, that borders the side of her breast. He kisses the tattoo and says, "My little drummer girl."
She tries to maintain the mood, but she can't. "You know I don't like it when you call me that," she says.
"I don't get it. What's the big deal?"
She knows it has nothing to do with him. It's her. Or, more accurately, it's Anton. "Nothing. Forget it. Come on, we should probably head to the library. I still have five cases to read for tomorrow."
She tries to think about the criminal law she'll soon be studying as she showers, but it's no use. She's still horny from making love and, try as she might, she can't suppress the thought of Anton. When she thinks about him, it usually has to do with sex, and it's always triggered by her tattoo. She closes her eyes and slips a finger between her legs as criminal law fades from her mind and Anton takes its place.
She remembers a time when, not unlike just now with Christopher, Anton had orgasmed before she did. It was a rarity for him. There was his size, for one thing. But it was more than that. It was his uninhibited nature. It was the energy he expelled, the indomitable force he became, when they had sex. With Christopher it's missionary position ninety percent of the time, but with Anton it was never the same twice. Like a sauna makes you sweat, something about him made her ooze arousal.
"Sorry babe," Anton said after that one time he'd come prematurely. "That's what happens when I go three days without drinking. Hornier than a brass band." He lay beside her and looked at her expectantly.
"What?" she said.
"Whatta ya mean, what? You know how to rev the motor. Let's see you get yourself going."
Danielle had only known Anton a few weeks at that point. The limited number of guys she'd been with before him weren't as aggressive, and she was still getting acclimated. He helped her along. He held her hand, his rugged, tattooed arm a startling contrast next to her pale, thin arm, and guided it between her legs. Their interlocking fingers drew circles over her clit. Both their fingers dipped down inside her pussy. "Yeah, baby, that's it," he said. "How does it feel to be inside yourself?"
Her voice quivered. "It feels good."
He tugged on her nipples with his mouth and kissed her, his tongue slithering like a demon's tongue against hers. Then he stood and casually walked across the room. He took out a video recorder and started to record the action. "You can use it as a video Christmas greeting to send to all your aunts and uncles," he said. She hesitated at first, but the eroticism of being recorded propelled her forward like she was under a spell. She soon brought herself to orgasm, then had two more, one with Anton stabbing a dildo into her, the other as he mounted her from behind.
Christopher opens the bathroom door, causing Danielle to snap out of her daydream and knock several shampoo bottles to the floor.
"Are you okay, honey?" he says, and peeks inside the shower curtain.
"I'm fine," she says, her heart still pounding from the memory, and gives him a polite kiss on the lips. He talks about the pros and cons of the different libraries they could study at as he begins to brush his teeth.
She does love Christopher, but there are times she wishes he was a little more...Anton. Sometimes she wishes she'd never met Anton. Never succumbed to the Dionysian spirit that Anton embodied. If she'd never met him, she wouldn't know what she's missing. She's even considered having the tattoo removed, to expunge the last physical vestige of him, the symbol that will stay with her forever.
* * *
Danielle comes from a privileged upper-class family. Her father is a lawyer. She worked for his firm summers during college, and he always assumed she'd follow in his footsteps. With her Ivy League education and his connections, she was a shoo-in for a top law school and one of the finest firms in Boston.
It caused a bit of a stir when she announced she was going to get her master's degree in English. It was her way of rebelling -- liberal arts instead of law.
"I can understand the intellectual satisfaction of studying English," her father argued, "but what can you do with it in the real world?" She hadn't planned it out completely. She thought about the publishing industry, a high-powered editor perhaps, on top of the latest literary trends, fine-tuning the next masterpiece.
She found a job as an editorial assistant after grad school, but it wasn't what she imagined. Almost a year after graduation she still wasn't much more than a glorified secretary. Her frustration finally reached the breaking point, and she called several admissions offices to request law school applications.
She tried to keep herself intellectually engaged by reading and writing in her spare time, but work left her so mentally eviscerated, she could hardly concentrate. She spent more and more time going to clubs and bars with her roommate and people from work. It was an existence she never imagined for herself -- drinking and partying to counter the debilitating effects of a menial job. But it wouldn't be long before she was back on track with her more ambitious aspirations. In the mean time, she might as well enjoy herself. Which she was doing a little too well, she thought, after one night at the Lizard's Lounge.
Danielle woke up naked next to a man whose name she couldn't recall. He lay on his side facing away from her, and she could see the striations of muscle through the expansive sun tattoo that covered his back. The tattoo startled her at first -- she never would have imagined she'd be with a person who had something of that sort -- but her hangover dulled the sensation. She held her forehead and groaned as a sharp pang pierced her brain. The man turned over and looked at her.
"That last shot mighta been one too many," he said. "Solid effort though."
"I'm sorry, but who are you?" she asked, though it was starting to come back to her: The Lizard's Lounge with her roommate. Way too many drinks. The band -- he's definitely the drummer. Hanging out backstage. More drinks. Someone's apartment after that. Matching shots of Jameson's with men twice her size. Was she really flashing her breasts? She's afraid so. And sex with a man she can't recall the name of.
"Name's Anton." He held out his hand, but instead of waiting for her to extend hers, he held her breast and shook it like he was giving a handshake. "Pleased to meetcha."
He helped her piece the night back together, then said that nature's calling, and crawled over her and out from under the covers. She watched him walk naked across the room. Multi-colored tattoos covered his back, arms and shoulders. A few climbed up his legs. The flaming red-and-orange sun, dragons, Chinese symbols, barbed wire. The color accentuated his thick, chiseled body. The sight of him sent a chill down her spine. She knew they were only tattoos, but there were so many of them. It almost scared her. Made her feel dangerous.
He strode back into the room, still naked, and stood next to the bed. A conspicuously large erection pointed at her. She looked at it, then up at him.
"Morning wood," he said. "Strange phenomenon. Must be a biological explanation for it." He paused, then added, "Feel like a lumberjack this morning?"
She definitely did not. Neither was she interested in his offer of beer and eggs for breakfast, though she was thankful for a glass of water. As soon as she could move without feeling too queasy, she got dressed and said she should be going. On her way out she noticed a quote pinned to his door: "One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses. - Henry Miller."
She took a hiatus from the club scene that week. There was nothing wrong with letting loose, but blacking out and having sex with strange men was something else entirely. She got home from work on Friday, wound up from another mindless 9-hour day, and intended to go for a run to release her pent-up energy. As she walked up the stairs she saw a person slouched in a chair at the far end of the porch.
"Ello," Anton said in a phony British accent.
"What are you doing here?"
He stood and walked methodically towards her. "I wasn't expecting the red carpet, but I didn't think I'd get the Inquisition either."
"Sorry. Long day at work."
"I've got the cure for that."
"Yeah, what's that?"
"Quit."
"Hah-hah."
She considered what to do for a moment, then unlocked the door and went inside. She could feel his presence behind her. Could feel his confidence as he checked out her apartment, helped himself to a beer. They chatted a while, though his cheeky manner threw her off. She wasn't used to such a brazen attitude.
Then she asked, "Why did you really come here?"
"From my experience, most relationships start with drunken sex, proceed to learning each others' names, then maybe even getting to know one another." He contemplated this with a hand on his chin. "Or does more sex come third?"
She had felt less guilty about her drunken hookup as the week went on. It wasn't something she was proud of, but it wasn't as crass as she once would have considered it. After all, there were a long line of literary debauchers: Rimbaud. Bukowski. Henry Miller, of course. And Anton wasn't a thug, as she once would have stereotyped him. He was rather articulate underneath all that cheek. She wondered what made him tick.
She was still wound up from work. There were a few tried and true ways she knew to unwind -- she could exercise, she could drink, or she could fuck. She didn't get the latter on a regular basis, and the strong, masculine vibes Anton emitted pulled at something deep inside her.
"What the hell," she said out loud to herself, and moved towards him.
She hadn't anticipated his sexual dynamism, but she tried to keep up. They did it with her perched on her desk. Bent over the couch. On her bed and on the living room floor. The way he touched her, manhandled her, made her feel part animal. And wholly satisfied.
* * *
"I shouldn't have another glass of wine," Christopher says to Danielle and their friends, Justin and Andrea, at a swank downtown restaurant, "but what the hell. I'll go wild tonight." They chuckle lightly and continue their conversation about school and work, politics -- polite observations, nothing too fervid -- and the John Singer Sargent exhibit they just saw at the Museum of Fine Arts.
"You're not going to believe this," Justin says as the waiter clears their entrées, "but Andrea's thinking about getting a tattoo."
"I really am," Andrea confirms with a smug smile.
"The next thing you know, she'll run off with a biker gang," Justin jokes.
"Well," Christopher counters, "Danielle already has one."
"Do you really?" Andrea says. "What of?"
Christopher prods her to show them, and she pulls down the neckline of her dress to reveal the mischievous pixie. They quiz her about its origins, and she tells a vague story about her and a group of friends with extremely limited musical ability and delusions of starting a band. It lasted all of three months, but they'd been excited about it and had gotten tattoos, each with the instrument they played. Danielle changes the subject as quickly as she can. She doesn't like to lie.
It's not that a closer approximation of the truth would be so bad. It's the mixed feelings those thoughts engender that she wants to avoid.
She continued to see Anton after that first week, though it was hardly what she'd call dating. They occasionally went to cultural festivals or free exhibits at city libraries, but she can't recall ever going on a formal date. She didn't even know he had a phone until three weeks after she'd met him. He was different than anyone who inhabited her pristine and polite world, and she was curious. She hung out with his band and raucous friends, usually at dive bars, or sometimes when they practiced. He even taught her the basics of drumming and how to keep a beat. One time she even got to play with them.
It was an afternoon gig at a dingy bar. The bass player, claiming hangover, hadn't shown up. Anton said he'd play bass and Danny, as he called her, could play drums. All she had to do was keep a simple beat. It was a sloppy show, though the drunken moshers didn't seem to mind.
They were driving to Anton's afterwards when he stopped at a tattoo parlor. She thought he was going to add one to his collection, but when they went inside, he suggested she get one. Something to commemorate her first show. She thought it was a neat idea, though she went for something small and otherwise covered by her clothes.
She was nervous to reveal her bare breast to the tattoo artist, but she knew Anton probably didn't mind. He'd sometimes encourage her to flash her tits to his friends, and had even tried to get her to let one join them in the bedroom.
When it was done, she proudly strutted bare-breasted to a mirror to examine her ink. Then Anton asked how much money she had. It turned out they were fifty bucks short.
"Let's barter then," Anton said, the proprietor having no part of their promise to return with the money, and he listed a number of things in his car.
"This isn't a god-damned trading post. And I don't need any of those things," the guy said.
Anton contemplated what to do, then looked thoughtfully at bare-breasted Danielle. "We do have one thing every guy needs."
"What's that?"
"Tits."
Danielle raised her eyebrows in disbelief. The guy looked dubious, but with a glint of temptation in his eye. Anton told him to take a good look at her, to ask himself if he could really pass up those tits.
"Ahhh, fine," the guy said, unsuccessfully trying to sound reluctant, "but I get to play with them for at least 15 minutes."
Danielle's jaw dropped to the floor. Anton just shrugged his shoulders as if to say "What else can we do?" Though she could tell he enjoyed it. She stood frozen for several moments, then, as an unfamiliar sensation of forbidden arousal welled up inside her, she approached the man.
"I so can't believe I just did that," she said when they left the tattoo parlor, still feeling a mild burning sensation from the man's prickly goatee scraping her soft breast.
It wasn't the last time she'd say those words. The year before she entered law school became an excursion into a world characterized by exhibition, bawdiness and revelry. A world at odds with her prim and proper upbringing. And Anton was her guide.
But ultimately she knew it wasn't who she was. It was like an extended vacation. She'd eventually go to law school and return to her world of socially-ordered achievement and status.
When, in June, Anton told her his band had gotten an offer to be the opening act on a European tour, she wasn't that disappointed. It was almost time for her to start school. She would meet Christopher a month after Anton left, and nine months later he would propose.
She quickly settled back into a studious lifestyle. But a new problem gradually arose. In that time of revelry and relaxed inhibitions, she'd opened doors to deeper impulses she'd never been aware of. Impulses that, in the perfectly ordered world she now inhabits, are not fully satisfied.
* * *
Danielle is studying at the kitchen table when she hears a knock at the front door. It's partially opened, and she sees a heavily tattooed arm through the vertical space of the open door. Her heartbeat jumps from first to fourth gear.
"Anton!" She's more shocked than anything. Christopher isn't due back for two hours, but explaining her acquaintance with such a colorful specimen would be an awkward conversation she'd rather avoid.
"Don't look so surprised, Danny. An animal always returns to its favorite breeding ground."
She hesitantly lets him in, but as they talk, her hesitation subsides. His untamed magnetism ignites her deeper impulses as memories and feelings she's tried to repress boil to the surface.
At one point he asks, "How's my little pixie?" She wears a cotton camisole, and he pulls it down to look at the tattoo, exposing most of her breast.
"Anton...please. I'm engaged."
He eyes her exposed breast for several moments, then takes her hand. "Your engagement ring?"
She nods.
"World's smallest handcuffs," he says.
She considers it: Marriage is for such a long time. She has the rest of her life to devote to Christopher. Would one final indulgence be that bad?
"You're a son of a bitch," she says
They tear each other's clothes off and devour one another with ravenous intensity. She hasn't experienced such unbridled lust since the last time she was with Anton. He holds her up with her legs wrapped around him, his cock deep inside her. They slam into the refrigerator, knocking pans off of it; she lies back on the table, knocking her books to the floor. The intensity diminishes after they both orgasm, only to pick up again shortly thereafter. Her sense of time is lost in a dizzying euphoria, until she glances at a clock and realizes Christopher is due home in 10 minutes.
"Oh Christ," she says, "You have to get out of here." She quickly gathers their clothes and walks him to the door. "That was it, Anton. I can't see you again."
"Okay. But if you change your mind, I'll be around. You know where to find me." She takes several long, deep breaths as she watches him walk down the steps and out of sight.
Christopher comes home 20 minutes later. She sits nonchalantly at the kitchen table, though her blood still churns from the encounter. Christopher recounts his day, but she doesn't listen closely; it's a story she's heard before, and knows she'll hear again. She feels like she's just gone from driving a race car to a sensible, economy car. She looks at Christopher with the hope that that's all it was -- a final indulgence.
Originally published September 2007 - "Saucy September"