Sexy Literary Erotica
"An Open Letter," an Oysters short story by Aimee Herman
I saw you at the corner of fifth avenue and sixth street. You were wearing a white t-shirt with wine stains, from that time we ducked into the shop to hide from the rain. Twenty minutes left of the wine tasting. I wouldn’t allow time for embarrassment when you missed your lips with the California Pinot Noir. I took in a giant sip and allowed it to swirl inside my mouth before releasing it to the front of my shirt. Do you remember? I told you that if our shirts became drunk before us, it would be a safe night. It wasn’t. I left with you.
I saw you on the bus. I stared at the back of your head for six stops, until you reached out your hand to pull the thick wire, alerting the driver it was your time to get off. I was reading Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, though I remained on the same paragraph that entire time. We were on the 10 going downtown. Or, I was. You were—you weren’t—you. You got up and your tattoo had switched to your left forearm and your skin tone had lightened. Your preference for denim was replaced with corduroy. You had forgotten to put on your glasses. You didn’t smell of saffron or whiskey. I miss you.
I am getting my hair cut at Selah’s salon. I do this twice a year because it is more than I can afford for some chopping and head massaging, but I roll up all my coins for this appointment. She is tall, with freckled, tan skin and magenta hair that sticks up in the places she orders it to. Her voice resembles the sound a cigarette makes after it has been sucked from top to bottom—crispy, thick, and affected.
The studio is small, one room with shiny, wood floors. It smells of hibiscus and cloves. She has a red couch shaped like pushed together lips with a glass coffee table nearby holding several fashion and yoga magazines. There is only one chair in her studio. I am in it. She is behind me. This is why I come here.
“What are you looking for?” she asks, strong fingers fondling my roots.
“What a question,” I answer. “I’m looking for so many things. Hair related? I guess just a trim. Something different or…the same. Make me look like someone else or just… slice away my split ends.”
Selah stares at me in the mirror while I watch her move my hair as though it is water and she is altering the shape of an ocean or small reservoir. She likes to cut my hair while it is dry, but she still spends time before cutting, massaging my scalp and loosening my hair follicles.
“Been a rough six months? The last time I saw you, you seemed to be having some relationship issues. Break-up?”
She grabs a long, black piece of fabric and wraps it over me, to catch the fallen hairs. She lifts my hair to fasten it closed. I feel my neck gasp, reacting to her sharp fingernails.
“Maybe that would make it easier. No, we’re together,” I said. “Same apartment. Same schedule. Take-out on Saturdays and Sundays and dinners against the glare of the television screen. Our relationship feels like a story with seventy pages gutted out. The heart still remains, but confusion has begun to set in, and a slight agitation that something is definitely missing.”
Selah continues to knead my head.
“And I keep seeing…her.”
“Who?”
“Her. Hers. All the hers of my past. At the grocery store. Library. In the back of the elevator. In the car behind me. I feel like I am having random affairs on the street, except that nothing is really happening, but I go home and—”
“And…” Selah pushes.
“Masturbate. All these women that I crushed on before I met Leo. Some whose thighs I can still taste in my mouth. Some who I never even got the chance to kiss, that I just continue to wonder about. There is always a sense of urgency about it. I see someone who prompts one of my memories to reemerge and I cannot wait for a bed, for the privacy of my home. I turn left into an alley and shove my hand down my pants. My fingers hide inside me, squirming and shaking. My thumb and pointer press the thickness of my clit and rub it toward a harder shape. I bleed cum all over my underwear and then just slip out and walk away. Go back to work or catch the bus or walk to grab lunch with a friend. Of course, I always suck away the evidence.”
Selah reaches over to where her clips are and begins grabbing small chunks of my hair, lifting it up. Then, she picks up a pair of scissors and slowly begins to chop away.
“I—umm—wow. All of a sudden I feel like I should be paying you.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “Let me know when to stop, okay? You know me. I lose myself in hair and forget about the original request. But, you’re always happy, right?”
“Of course,” I answer.
“Go on. Tell me more. Please.”
“Alex. Alexandra, but I never called her that. She was a dishwasher at a café I used to work at in Jersey. Dark hair with blond dotting the ends. You would have gotten lost in that hair. It was short, but there was a lot of it. I’m pretty sure she was queer, but I never really saw her with anyone. It was closing shift. A Wednesday or Tuesday. It was always so slow in that place; they wound up going out of business about a year after I left. I started to help her out—putting the dishes away—so we could get out quicker. The owner, our boss, was in the front, counting money, talking on the phone. She came up behind me and started rubbing my cunt. Pants still on, of course, but, I got so fucking excited. She never actually touched me—skin against heated skin. I wanted her to. I never wanted anything more. At that time. So, I turned around and she brought her lips to my breast and she sucked. Shirt still on, but she soaked the threads right off. Metaphorically. She breathed warm air, like the dishwasher itself, and brought my nipple to stand at attention. It was…well, it was incredible. Anyway, I saw her the other day. Alex. At the Laundromat a few blocks from my apartment.”
("You," by the Mofo.)
“Really? Did she look the same?”
“Yes. No. It wasn’t her. I thought for a moment it was. I wanted it to be her. I took my clothes out of the dryer, stuffed them in my bag, and practically ran home. I needed to dig into myself. To feel her hands on me again. This is crazy, Selah. I’m crazy.”
“No. You’re a dreamer. A romanticist. Something’s missing for you, so whether real or not, you are finding it in others.”
“But, it’s not like anything is happening for me. Okay, so yesterday I am at the bookstore getting my fix of my weekly magazines. I had like, five already in my stack to read and I was going for a sixth, when I saw her. Kathleen. I knew her about four years ago when I was living in Brooklyn. We met at a dyke bar. Nothing…ever happened. Well, nothing that I can attach verbs to exactly.”
“I’m not following.”
“This is so weird just thinking back to it. I never experienced anything quite like it. She was—how can I—”
“She was what?”
“She wrote me letters. We met and drank and drank and drank. Slipped quarters into the jukebox and flirted through song selections. Mazzy Star, Portishead, Liz Phair, Violent Femmes. We talked about nothing, articulating into much more than that. We didn’t kiss, but we talked about it. We spoke it, rather than feeling it.”
“Interesting.”
“I know. I know.”
“So, the letters?”
“We hung out a few times and then she began writing me letters. We’d talk on the phone, make plans to meet somewhere and then when I’d get there, she’d never show up. But, there would always be a letter from her at the bar or café or wherever it was we were supposed to meet. I began having an affair with paper, but it was fucking wonderful. You are going to think I’m so strange, but Selah, it was the best sex I had in my life.”
“You’re right. That’s strange. What do you mean the best sex?”
“Just like when we kissed—when we talked about kissing—she wrote about fucking. She wrote this open letter of what she would do, what I would do. How it would be. Like, turning left on sixteenth street where we once found this little alley behind a bar with a stash of old furniture and strung up lights. Pushing my back against the brick wall of the building and hearing the sound of my breaths falling out of me as she dug her neck between my legs, threw my pants down against the cement, and ran her eyelashes against my clit. Blinking over and over, a vibration of hair against the most sensitive spot on my body. Taking the tip of her tongue, spelling dirty words across my thighs with her spit. Sucking on my earlobes. Tracing the grooves of my neck and shoulders and belly. Pages and pages of detail. So, there I was standing in front of the magazines and I saw her. I swear I saw her. I swore I saw her. For just a few seconds I could read all those letters again. All her words. Her illustrations. When I stared hard enough, I realized it wasn’t her. I never saw Kathleen after the letters began.”
“How long did you get them?”
“Well, just a few weeks. Her last letter was the one against the wall. In the alley. When she fucked me so hard that her fingers grew numb from sliding into me over and over. When I had bite marks behind my knees and below my waist, on my breasts. That was the last one. And she never signed it. So, it felt incomplete, you know? Like, something else would be coming. I guess I never stopped waiting.”
“All these haunts and reminders. Girl, you need to act on these fantasies. Forget Leo. Forget monotony and monogamy and schedules. Maybe you need to write your own letters. Or start acting them out,” Selah smiles, her thick red lips spreading into smooth skin. She swirls my chair around so that I am no longer facing my reflection. I take in her smile and match it.
“Are you done already?” I ask.
“Maybe. Maybe I don’t want to wait another six months for you to come in here. Maybe I’ve spent the last twenty minutes feeling penetrated by your stories, wanting to be another her to add to your memories. Maybe I want to haunt you. Maybe I’m the crazy one.”
I pull off the black robe and watch my detached hairs fall to the floor. I lift my body from the chair and stand in front of Selah. She is a few inches taller than me, so I stretch my eyes to meet hers.
“I didn’t mean to spend this entire appointment trying to turn you on. I don’t know what got into me. You’re easy to talk to. I’ve been holding all this in—”
“Hold me in. Act out that letter,” she says. “Finish it.”
I grab Selah’s waist and push my fingertips beneath her shirt, slowly learning the texture of her skin. I grab her chin with my lips and suck. Then, I move up to her bottom lip, like a rolled up blanket, smooth and thick. I clasp onto her tongue with mine and taste her morning coffee still sitting on the top layer. She captures my breaths, trading hers for mine.
I unbutton the bottom few buttons of her crisp, white shirt and curve my head beneath the fabric. All I see is white from the cotton pressed close to me. Her breasts are small, slipping easily into my mouth. I suck hardest on her right tit because it has always been my favorite direction. As I continue to suck, she bends her waist and starts unbuttoning my pants. She twirls my pubic hairs between her cracked, nail polish covered fingers. She pulls on them to elicit a slight wince from my mouth. Her palm pushes against my cunt, forcing pressure and heat to form. I bite hard on her nipple, and she tosses several fingers inside me, as though offering them up to me. I squeeze my vaginal muscles to hold onto her. She pushes further.
I lied. The letter wasn’t exactly open or unsigned. Kathleen didn’t write her name, instead, a time, address, and date. A chance to complete the stories. The words. To act.
4:30pm, 938 16th street, tomorrow.
I didn’t go because then it would have been no different than any other time. A random fuck in a bar bathroom, a quick hand-job on the subway when no one is looking and she is sitting close enough beside you that a newspaper hides the fingers. I loved the letters. The mystery of how fast she would have been, how hard, how deep.
When I first told this story, I didn’t expect the outcome. The need created by the letter’s description. How sexy sex can be when written, rather than done. I wasn’t sure it would work on Selah. She always appeared straight or uninterested or well, unaffected. I certainly didn’t expect to get a free haircut out of it, but at least it afforded me the opportunity to return a few days later.
Originally published September 2009