Lawrence Block - Getting Off

Brian taught her what to do, and watched what she did, and commented on her technique. She was horribly self-conscious at first, but she got over it, and it began to seem natural enough, sucking on a rubber cock while her coach critiqued her performance. Then he left her to practice, and she sat up for hours fellating the dildo. “Then I took it and stuck it in. In my cunt, Kimmie, and after I got off I took it out and sucked it some more. Before, the one thing wrong with it was it didn’t taste like anything, and now it tasted like me.”

She had a hand under the borrowed nightie, stroking herself gently while Rita went on talking. This was no fabrication, no improvement on the truth, like her transformation of Steve into George. She could tell that Rita was recounting her education exactly as she remembered it, but at the same time it was very much a performance, designed to excite her good friend Kimmie.

And it was working. She’d been horribly frustrated, unable to seduce that moralistic moron Graham Weider, and thus unable to cross him off her list of unfinished business. And she’d have masturbated this evening, she’d have had to if she was going to get any sleep, but this was worlds different from fingering herself in the privacy of her bedroom.

This was kind of gay, actually.

She was listening to Rita, hearing how they’d had a second lesson, which concluded with Brian telling his pupil that she’d be able to make some lucky straight guy very happy. And she was watching Rita, watching her lick her lips, watching her put her own hand between her own legs and finger herself idly as she talked. And she was checking out the swell of Rita’s breasts, and the shape of Rita’s legs, and she could feel Rita’s eyes on her own body, and without really thinking about it she whipped the nightie over her head and tossed it aside.

Rita’s story stopped in mid-sentence.

“No, don’t stop,” she told Rita. “I was just feeling warm, you know? And if I’m going to sit here jilling off in front of you, it seems silly to hide my tits.” She cupped a breast, and could feel Rita’s gaze on it. “Or my cunt,” she said, and opened her legs, holding the pose for a long moment before putting her hand back where it had been before. “Now tell me the rest,” she said. “Once you got your diploma from the Academy of Brian, who was the lucky guy?”

The lucky guy, as it happened, turned out to be Brian.

It wasn’t his idea. She had to suggest it, and then she had to talk him into it. “I’m gay,” he kept insisting. “It’s not as though I’ve never been with women. I have, on several occasions, but let’s just say I’ve been there and done that, and it’s just not me. ”

“I don’t want to get married,” she told him. “I don’t even want you to kiss me goodnight later. I just want to blow you. What’s so bad about that?”

Nothing, as it turned out.

He agreed, finally, and it turned out to be a lesson, because he offered suggestions and feedback as she went along. And somewhere along the way she graduated, because there was a shift in the energy and she was in command, she was in control, and what a delicious feeling that was.

Afterward, he suggested that maybe he should open a school, an academy of fellatio.

“Won’t you offer any other courses?”

“Like what? Brian Van Horn’s Academy of Fellatio and Hairdressing? I don’t think—”

“There must be something else you could teach me,” she said. “And I’m not talking about hairdressing.”

Rita looked at her, took a deep breath, and took off her own nightgown. “And now you can see my tits, Kimmie, and watch me play with my cunt, while I tell you how he taught me all about rimming. Among other things.”

So hot.

She had never been with a woman. It was not as though it had never occurred to her. But whatever thoughts she’d ever entertained had stopped somewhere between speculation and fantasy. She’d certainly never thought about acting on them.

Or acting them out, as Graham Weider would put it.

It would be so easy now. They were both naked, they were both touching themselves, the whole evening was about nothing but sex, and all she had to do was cross the room. Let me give you a hand, Rita. Let me play with that for you. What a beautiful cunt, Rita. Can I touch it? Can I kiss it for you?

And then what?

Would she have to kill her?

She considered the question later, lying alone in her own bed. She had stayed in her chair, and had confined her caresses to her own body. There had been that moment when they might have made love, and they hadn’t done so, and the moment had passed. Now they were in their separate bedrooms, and all that was left to do was sleep.

But what if she’d made love to Rita? That was lovely, Rita. My very first time with a woman, and I have to say I liked it. Excuse me a moment, will you? I have to go to the kitchen to pick up something sharp.

Or not. How could she be sure?

When she stepped outside herself, when she allowed herself a little perspective, it wasn’t hard to see why she acted as she did. The signal event of her childhood and adolescence was the long affair she’d had with her father, who’d very artfully seduced her and then, ultimately, rejected her. And she’d erased that blot from her life by erasing the man himself, and once he was dead it was as if he had never been.

Except, of course, that it wasn’t. But he wasn’t alive, couldn’t sit smirking, remembering what he’d done to her, what he’d taught her to do to him. He remained on the list, but there was a line through his name, and whenever another man had earned a place on that list, she’d seen to it that his name had a line through it.

All but four names.

If she had sex with a woman, would hers be the fifth name? And would she feel a compelling urge, an actual need, to draw a line through that name?

No way to know. Not for sure.

She didn’t want to kill Rita. She wanted to kill Graham, Christ how she wanted to kill him, and she thought of all the other men, most of their names metaphorically crossed out almost as soon as they’d been inked in. She’d wanted sex with them, and afterward she’d wanted them dead. For a while it was a matter of taking care of business, but when she thought of Steve in Phoenix, she realized that it had become something more than that. She’d reached a point where the sex act itself wasn’t complete as long as her partner had a pulse. That was the true orgasm: when she struck like a cobra, and the man died.

Withheld, she was left with an itch she couldn’t scratch. Even now, after God knows how many orgasms, after she’d finished herself off with the vibrator, its surface still dewy with Rita’s juices, even now she found it maddening, infuriating, that she’d found a Graham Weider who’d become immune to her powers. Was he going to be on her list forever?

Oh, for Christ’s sake.

The answer came to her in a flash. With it she felt an emotional release none of the evening’s orgasms had managed to provide, and she drifted off and slept like a baby.

“Graham? It’s Kim. Please don’t hang up.”

A silence. Then, “All right.”

“First of all, I want to apologize. I don’t know what got into me yesterday.”

“That’s all right.”

“No,” she said, “it’s not all right. It was completely inappropriate and wholly unwarranted. I was disrespectful to you and made a fool of myself in the process.”

“I’ve had plenty of apologies to make,” he said. “So it’s not hard for me to accept yours, Kim.”

“Thank you.” She drew a breath. “Those apologies,” she said. “Would they be in connection with those meetings you’ve been going to?”