Calendar Girl (6 page)

Chapter Nine

‘W
ELCOME TO THE
D
RUNKEN
F
LAMINGO
, y’all,’ said the woman at the door. The woman at the door was also about six-three, 200 pounds and heart stoppingly beautiful. She made me feel plain Jane and ho-hum and she wasn’t even a she. ‘You’re Cloville’s crew, right?’

‘Yep,’ I said.

The queen leaned in, his milk-white skin flawless, his lips sinful. ‘You’re the table with the purple flamingo on it, doll. Love the wrap top,’ he said and touched my cleavage.

‘Love your lips,’ I said and then, ‘Will they come to the table or do we need to hit the bar?’

‘Wave your arms in the air like you just don’t care and Bubbles will come and find out what you want.’ He took a special stamp from a holder and stamped my left hand, then Shane’s. CREW it said with a lip print for the E.

‘Cloville?’ Shane laughed, leading me to the purple flamingo bedecked table near the stage.

‘Cloville Yum-Yum,’ I laughed.

‘Wow.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And did he employ the old–’

‘First street, first pet rule? Yep. Cloville Avenue and Yum-Yum the dog.’

Shane grinned and waved his hands at a humongous, heavy set, completely made up man in pink organza sporting a flamingo pink beehive. ‘Like you just don’t care,’ Shane said to me and I snorted.

‘Dolls,’ Bubbles said. ‘What can I get you?’

‘An Italian Surfer,’ I said. ‘And for you, Jesus?’

‘Wine,’ Shane said and Bubbles laughed like he was the world’s funniest man. Because he was just
that
hot.

‘Right back in the bat of two giant, false, crystal-studded eyelashes,’ Bubbles said and tittered like a tiny girl instead of a stocky middle-aged man in drag.

‘Oh!’ I yelled and she turned to me. ‘Where is Jack? Jack Norton? He’s new?’

‘Ah, Simka? She’s in the cage to your left.’ Shane and I turned in unison to see my brother, decked out in black leather and what appeared to be silver latex shaking his moneymaker in a cage.

Directly in front of him was my mother, slugging down what appeared to be Long Island Ice Teas. The Flamingo’s specialty. They advertise them thusly:
They’ll put hair on your chest. Even if you wear falsies.
‘Oh shit,’ I said to Shane and he patted my leg.

‘It’ll be fine.’

‘Because of all the booze,’ I said.

‘Pretty much.’ He grinned and I leaned in and kissed him, letting my tongue touch his lips and then sneak into his mouth for a beat. Fuck it. My mother was too busy slogging drinks and trying to stare down my ‘freshly gay’ brother to see me. So I ran my hand under the table and stroked his cock through his jeans for just a moment. Just enough to get that power rush of feeling his body respond to me. Of knowing he wanted me as much as he did. I could still taste myself on his lips and tongue.

‘Sorry about all the drama,’ I said.

‘Hey, I’ll never get bored, will I?’

‘Not if I’m in a five-mile radius.’ I rubbed with the tips of my fingers and Shane let out a low needy moan. Just then Bubbles reappeared and grinned a candy-coloured grin.

‘Don’t let me stop you, kiddies. Go for it.’ Here are your drinks, the first round are on Cloville, she left word. And she said to tell you, “To watch out for mamma she’s three sheets to the wind and ready to climb in the cage”.’

‘Yeah, we see that,’ I sighed.

‘Got it. Don’t worry,’ Bubbles said, leaning in and giving me a shot of colossal cleavage. ‘I used to be a bouncer. I’ve got your back.’

‘Thanks, Bubbles,’ I said and slid a ten spot in her chesticles. That is Jeffrey’s pet name for his ‘bosoms’ as his grandmother was prone to calling them.

She sauntered off, swinging her hips lavishly while perched atop four inch stacked heels. Something I could never do. The houselights went down, the cages glowed with neon outlines and the stage lights went up. I heard the tell-tale traffic whistle and grinned. And the background singers
Toot-toot, Beep-beep ... 
and then there he was. My Jeffrey, my Cloville. ‘Bad girls ...’ and he launched into the most kick ass Donna Summers impression ever.

I was singing along, touching Shane with one hand, watching my mother with one eye. Talk about being distracted. Jack gyrated in his blue neon cage and my mother started doing hand gestures as she sang.
Bad Girls
had played in our house back in the day. My parents had been pretty good with a variety of music. I was a bit too young to remember Donna in her heyday but I certainly knew her music. And I remembered my brother Jack doing a stellar lip sync to this song.

Jack shook his tush, my mother did traffic cop gestures, I swigged my Surfer and Jeffrey broke out in a damn good disco queen dance move, his purple and sliver jumpsuit throwing off sparks of light from the glitter ball that turned just for him.

‘Awesome,’ I whispered and Shane leaned in close, his face dappled by the funky techno light, and he kissed me, running his big hands up the front of my jean legs. We faced each other at an odd angle, but I scootched in closer, hugged him close and he put his hands on my waist, his lips in my hair. God, the man smelled better than any human had a right to.

His lips crushed down on mine and I was just losing myself in the kiss when he said: ‘Uh-oh.’

‘No, no, uh-oh,’ I said.

Jeffrey and his backup girls had hit the talking part of the song where Donna, aka bad girl, is carted off. I would not look. I would. Not. Look.

I looked. ‘Oh shit.’

My mother was climbing – yes, climbing – onto her table and into Jack’s cage. My brother was torn and even in the strange, glittery sci-fi light, I could see his panic. His painted eyes flew wide and his shimmy jittered and his shake stalled and then he stared at me. At me!

I shook my head.

Jack kept dancing but now my mother was doing a stuttering bump and grind, disco-queen-gone-bad kind of dance. Cloville waved a hand at me. It looked like part of his act, but it wasn’t. It was the
handle it
hand and I mouthed, ‘No.’

I turned to Shane. If I kept kissing him, then I would not see the obvious destruction and scarring for life that was about to rain down on us like the apocalypse. At least that’s how it felt.

But Shane was no good. Shane had that same look you get when you pass a really bad accident. Mouth open, eyes fixed, thousand-yard stare, pulse barely visible at his throat. The song was winding down and I had to do something. ‘Fine! Fine, fine, fine, it’s me. Again! Always me. Me, me, me,’ I muttered and grumbled. I stood, smoothed my red tunic over my jeans and stalked over to the cage. It was about three feet off the floor and swinging madly as it was made for one man in a dress not a man in spandex and his mother. I grabbed the lip of the door-shaped hole in the thing and yanked. The cage – only meant to hold one gyrating person – dipped and swayed wildly and my mother and brother both let out horrible shrieks like exotic jungle birds.

My foot found a chair and then a table and I sort of stumble-fell-sank into the cage that actually groaned.

Jeffrey was wrapping up his song but even over the din I heard a collective gasp from the audience. And then, ‘Put your helmets on, people.’ I was pretty sure that was Bubbles.

‘Mother, get out of the cage,’ I hissed. But it was really more of a yell because it was so fucking loud in the joint.

‘I want to be with my baby,’ she said. OK, so I could totally hear the slur in her voice. And I could also see the tears in her eyes and I half wanted to hug her and tell her it would be all right and half wanted to cold-cock her so I could haul her bony ass out of the alarmingly pitching cage.

‘I know, Ma. I know. Come on, I’m your baby too, come be with me.’

My mother fixed her glazed, inebriated gaze on me and God love him Jack never missed a pelvic thrust or shoulder shimmy. He was going to dance come Hell or high water. With his mother and sister in the cage or not. Only I could see that up close his eyes shone with pent up tears and his jaw was so tight he could have cracked walnuts in his teeth.

‘But you are too busy giving that nice young man a hand-job under the table.’

My mouth popped open but Jack’s laughter came out. Now he was crying but it was because he was laughing so damn hard. Jeffrey bowed and left the stage and someone queued the techno dance music. Jack started to dance faster.

‘It ... I ... Mother! It was not a hand-job. I was rubbing his ... thigh.’

‘Hmm. He has three thighs?’ my mother giggled.

My brother was now clutching the woven edges of the bobbing cage but still shaking his ass. That twit. ‘Mother! Come with me. Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.’

Jack shook his head and I shushed him. For Pete’s sake. I wasn’t really going to buy her a drink. And then all hell broke loose and we were surrounded by security, three burly drag queens, a pissed off Jeffrey, a giggling Bubbles and Lord have mercy on him, Shane.

My mother finally took stock of all the hoopla and snorted. ‘Fine. You people are so dramatic,’ she said and did her best at a classy and dainty almost-exit from the cage. I say almost-exit because we both had one foot out of the structure when the chain that held it groaned and then the whole fucking support snapped and we were a cage full of screaming Mimi’s falling to earth.

Shane’s apartment was nice and quiet. ‘My roommate’s probably asleep,’ he said and put his finger to my lips. I licked the tip and tasted salt and soap on his skin. We had dropped my mother off at home and bid Jeffrey, who was buying Jack a drink to cry in, goodnight.

‘I’ll do my best to be quiet, then,’ I said. We’d come back here to avoid the lunacy. There was no telling what would happen if we stumbled into my territory. Foreign turf seemed best. Shane leaned in and kissed me.

‘If I do stuff right, you won’t be able to be quiet.’

We passed a closed door and he tugged me into a dark room lit only with a small lamp shaped like a turtle. Its topaz shell glowed just enough so that we didn’t trip and fall. ‘I’d like you out of this very, very much, Merritt,’ he said. He tugged the tie of my wrap tunic and the sides parted for him as easy as you please. He traced the black lace outline of my bra and tugged the cups down to free my breasts. ‘You’re really beautiful, you know that?’

Mr April a few days early. No worries. I was too far gone to get hung up on a few days of the wrong month. ‘I don’t ...’ I let the argument die on my lips. My mother always told me I needed to learn how to take a compliment. ‘Thank you,’ I said instead.

‘You’re very welcome.’ His lips touched my nipple and I shivered. His thumb swept across the other, drawing it tight to match its mate. He licked me with that perfect tongue until I thought I might simply come undone. ‘Now let’s get you out of all this.’ The wrap, the bra, the jeans, the boots all gave up the ghost easily for Shane. I let myself be arranged on his big, wide bed and he tugged my panties off.

‘Do you need a co–’

‘Right here. No worries,’ he said. The bedside drawer squeaked and then fell out. A loud rasping boom that made me yelp and then laugh.

‘So much for being quiet,’ I snorted.

Shane got undressed and rolled the condom on, his eyes, dark in the gloom studied me. I spread my legs as he climbed up to me, pressing his warmth to me, flattening me with his bulk, kissing me softly until I moved under him, anxious and ready. Then the kiss grew harder and so did he. His cock pressed to the wet slit of my pussy and finally, stretching me wide to thrust into me in one long stroke. ‘God. You are a bit–’

‘Handsome?’ he teased, moving slowly to let my body adjust and accept him.

‘Largish,’ I sighed, because that feeling of too big had become a feeling of just right. I wrapped my legs around his trim waist, feeling his muscles flex and dance as he fucked me. He bit my shoulder just hard enough to give me an aggressive zing of endorphins and then he fucked me a bit harder, my hair swishing around my head on his dark, tousled sheets.

Shane was moving in earnest now, thrusting so that I lost the words I wanted to say and lost myself in little sighs and moans and tiny sounds meant to be gentle so no one heard. The headboard started to bang the wall. The wall that adjoined the sleeping roommate’s room and ours. He put my arms above my head so I felt the sway-bang-bang of the wood as it slapped the wall. But that really wasn’t important, what was important was that he had me right there and when he dipped his head to suck my nipple so hard it felt like a bite, I was nudged just past my line and I came. My cunt gripping up around him in slippery spasms as I bit my tongue hard to keep all the sounds inside of me.

‘Good?’ he whispered though the headboard sounded like a war drum now.

‘Jesus, yes,’ I said, not thinking and then laughed. I turned my head and really laughed as he slowed his pace, more of a steady rocking swing of his hips that had me back on the borderline from a whole new sensation. The wet, intimate slide of hard flesh over soft. Hard-on driving into willing pussy. I sighed, tried to move my hands, failed.

I turned my head and froze. In the doorway was a figure. A darker man-shaped outline of black in the yawning dark tunnel of the hallway. ‘Shane,’ I said.

‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘It’s just Rob. Sometimes I let him watch. It’s OK. I like it. Do you mind?’

Did I mind? Um ... I had no idea. Because the way Shane was rotating his hips from side to side, the way he had me pinned, the way his chest rubbed my breasts and his breath heated my face, the way all of it was coming down around me like some sex cocoon, Rob was not an issue. ‘No,’ I said, rising up to meet him.

I mean, what did it matter, anyway? Really? It didn’t. This was 12 months, this was an experiment, this was just letting life take me under for a year. No struggle, no hang-ups, no worries. I saw the figure start to move. There was no mistaking the clear outline of a masturbating man. But I moved up to meet Shane. Shane who I liked, Shane who I trusted, Shane who still talked to me after all the hoopdie doo and drama. Shane who had a tiny glitch in his otherwise perfect system. He liked to be watched.

He released my hands and pinned my upper arms to either side of me with his palms. He reared back to watch his cock driving in and out of me and the smell and feel of him became overwhelming again. The figure in the doorway made a soft gasping sound and my insides tightened to the point of no return. The sound drove me crazy, turned me on, made me wetter and tighter and ...’ Shane leaned down and said in my ear, ‘He’s going to come, Merritt. From watching you. Hear his breath? Hear his hand on his cock? He’s going to come. And so are you. I can feel it. Do you want him to come, Merritt? Do you?’