BUSH GARDEN

J. Belle Lamb

With thanks to Ginuwine’s “Pony”

Susie’s not tending bar tonight. It’s got you on edge as you order drinks from the cocktail server, whose smile is pleasant enough. Still, she’s not Susie, and the sense of something different, the nagging edge of something out of place, a pulled thread or an eyeliner smudge, is distracting. You’ve been coming to Bush Garden for years precisely because it doesn’t change. The pistachio-green sinks in the restrooms: still the same as when they were installed in the ’70s. The drinks: still awful if you don’t order call liquor. The curved vinyl banquettes and brass-edged rolling chairs: still too dirty if you look closely, and still as full of laughing patrons as every other time you’ve been here. The songs: still karaoke classics crooned by regulars who have been coming here for thirty years, and still a handful of adventurers from the city’s hipper districts dropping a little Lady Gaga and the occasional Usher track into the mix.

Susie is usually part of the Bush Garden magic: crow’s feet at the edges of heavily mascaraed eyes that crinkle as she smiles while she shakes drinks in both hands at once. She remembers the name on every tab, and she’s good enough to start mixing another round of drinks after catching your eye across the crowded bar. You sip your drink, a perfectly adequate vodka martini, and don’t let yourself sigh.

After all, it’s a good night. You’re out with your girls: Tracy’s sitting next to you, arm almost possessive as it lazes across the back of the banquette. She’s been laughing and playing along as you’ve flirted with Jean-Marie. You stretch in your seat, feeling eyes slip over you from around the room. It’s a pretty threesome you make, all piled together in the curved booth, wiggling against each other and trading seats as you tease back and forth, your icy-blonde curls and gray eyes a contrast to Jean-Marie’s smooth, dark skin and Tracy’s buttoned plaid and not-quite-buzz cut. You don’t mind the eyes on you as you flick your own around the room, watching drinks slosh as other tables flip through the karaoke song list binders.

“Yo, Tray. You think this crowd would appreciate some T.I.?” Jean-Marie leans across you to talk to Tracy, breasts in scoop-neck T-shirt grazing yours as she stretches so that she can hear Tracy’s response. You let your hand drift to rest on her thigh, tight denim warm under your hand. She and Tracy have been debating song choices for the past half hour, covering the table with a snowdrift of filled-out song slips. You filled yours out and handed it to the K-jay not long after you arrived. It’s your usual song, a Dusty Springfield classic. The cold vodka briefly numbs your lips. You intend to keep drinking until you have to sing, and then keep the bright booze going until you can mostly forget that you sang. Susie understands. If she were here, she’d have a fresh martini waiting for you after the song.

But Susie isn’t working tonight. Before you can scowl again at the cocktail server’s back, Tracy’s voice cuts through your clouded thoughts: “Hey, Trix, don’t you know her?”

You follow Tracy’s gaze to the woman laughing as she rises from a table across the room. You didn’t hear the name the K-jay called, but it’s true: you remember meeting the woman at a house party not long ago. “Yeah. I think that’s Stella. We met her at Jay’s house.”

Jean-Marie settles back into her seat, rearranging the slips of paper on the table again. “She’s kinda cute,” she says, nodding at Stella as she steps up onto the little stage at the front of the room.

You smile, agreeing with Jean-Marie: Stella is attractive, chin-length dark curls framing high cheekbones and big, dark eyes. She’s dressed to show off her lush curves tonight in a low-cut silk blouse over leggings with a red and orange scarf that lends warmth to her sandy-dark cheeks. But it’s not her outfit, or the sparkle in Stella’s eyes as she takes the mike from the K-jay that sends a wave of cheers through the bar. It’s the quick half grind she does against the mike-stand as the song’s opening bass beat drops, a low thrum overlain with a synthed-up deep voice that starts repeating: “Yeah…yeah…yeah…”

And then Stella rips into the song, lyrics about looking for a partner who knows how to ride. Recognition ripples through the bar as more and more people note the hip-hop tune, turned on its head as Stella digs into its classic grind. Her voice is incredible as she half growls, half coos in a honeyed alto that takes the already sexy hip-hop lyrics and makes them into a come-on that settles immediately into your cunt. You’re wet so fast that the shock of it sends a tremor across the surface of the icy vodka as you hold the glass, drink forgotten when Stella began to sing.

“Holy shit,” Jean-Marie says as she dances in her seat next to you, shoulders and hips picking up the beat. “That girl can sing!” You all three watch as Stella teases the tables closest to the stage with a glimpse of her cleavage.

Tracy’s “Yay-ah” on your other side is hungry, and when you glance at her, she’s nodding her head in time to the beat, a wide grin rounding her cheeks.

You put your drink down, not trusting yourself with the stemmed glass, as Stella flips her curls back and brings the mike closer to red lips, beckoning to the crowd with two curled fingers as she sings about finding someone horny enough to ride her pony. A piece of paper flies through the air to land on the edge of the stage. You’re positive it contains a phone number.

It’s a brash song, every note woven through with sex, with the glitter and sweat of the thousand strip clubs where it’s played since it hit the radio a decade ago. Stella, though, as she throws the lyrics over the crowded bar, has made it into a command: you will listen to her. And you will want her—not because she’s shimmying as she sings, and not because your mouth has gone dry as you follow her eyes as they slide down to her swaying cleavage for a second before she turns them, glowing, back on the crowd, but because she’s telling you that yeah, tonight she wants you to want her. And you do. You want Stella right now, want that voice in your cunt, want its slickness in yours, rich sound fucking you, filling you.

Sweat breaks out on the back of your neck as the song continues. The bar has gone crazy for Stella. Everyone is dancing or singing along, from the table of thirty-year regulars in scruffy sport coats and crumpled fedoras to the gaggle of stilettoed girls who just ordered a round of shots. Jean-Marie’s breasts bounce as she’s moving next to you, hands up as her hips swivel against the vinyl seat, dark eyes picking up Stella’s heat. Even Tracy breaks her reserve, arm dropping from the back of the booth to rest against the upper curve of your ass, fingers tapping against you in time with the song’s beat. You feel another bead of sweat spring up between your breasts and drip slowly down.

Gravity shifts with Stella as she draws the song up through her pelvis, voice making it every bit as clear as her hips’ purl that she’d make good on the song’s promises if given the chance. She uses her palm to trace her own curves, the inch of air between her hand and her body suddenly the place everyone in the bar wants to be as she sings about sending chills down your spine.

You close your eyes, trying to ignore the insistent buzz the song has stirred up in your cunt, but when you open them, you’re suddenly trembling up there on the little stage with Stella, cheap spotlight filling your eyes with white fuzz as she pushes you down on a bar table. The song continues, synth bass and lyrics about riding my pony looping over and over. Stella’s pushing your thighs open, your little black dress gone just as magically as the table appeared under you. She’s naked, too, down to her red patent-leather pumps, bronze skin shimmering under the spotlight. Stella bends over, generous breasts skimming the insides of your thighs as she puts her red lips on your cunt. She’s still singing, the lyrics dissolving into rich sound as her tongue slicks over your folds. Her voice wraps around your clit, honey and strip-club grind making your hips thrust to meet her song.

You blink in the fizzy white light and suddenly, Jean-Marie’s there, too, dark brown breasts skimming bare over your ribs as she leans to lick the thin line of sweat from your cleavage. She lifts a hand to wrap around your throat as you tip your head back against the table, her mouth on your nipple and Stella’s voice in your cunt creating twin whirlpools. The song rides on, saddle waiting, as Jean-Marie lets you lift your head just enough to glimpse Stella’s bare ass swaying under the stage lights. It’s only waiting for a second, though, and then the light crackles again and Tracy’s there, her strap-on buckles glinting silver under the harsh light as she steps up behind Stella. Tracy’s cock—it’s the big cock, the one that leaves you bruised if she rams it into you as hard as you like—is ready as Stella thrusts herself back against it, rich sounds of her pleasure mixing with the song as her tongue reaches deep into your cunt. Your head falls back against the bar table’s edge, vision blurring as you lose yourself in tongues, hands and bared flesh under the bright lights.

It seems to last forever, this perfect moment on the bar stage: Tracy’s pink cheeks as she fucks Stella while Stella is bent over, voice buried in your cunt, and Jean-Marie sucking your nipple as she holds you down on the table, fucking herself with her free hand. You know you’re moaning wildly as Stella’s big breasts push into your thighs, her tongue digging deeper into your cunt, curling impossibly tight against your G-spot as the lyric drives into your clit, over and over again. Jean-Marie has her hand clapped tight over your mouth, keeping your screams from interrupting the song’s backbeat. You can feel Stella’s orgasm building as she cries into your cunt, Tracy’s cock thrusting relentlessly into her, and Jean-Marie shaking against you as her own pleasure starts to peak.

It’s a chain reaction, more like nuclear fusion than dominos falling: you can’t tell if your gushing orgasm tips Stella over the edge, or if her long, low cry, as her cunt clutches Tracy’s cock, kicks off a tidal wave. Or if Tracy’s growl happens before or after Jean-Marie bites your breast, hard, as she comes. But come you all do, in sloppy, sweaty, shared orgasms that make the little bar table creak dangerously as it struggles to hold you up under cascading groans and sighs. You close your eyes against the white fuzz and slip under the backbeat, pony’s hooves pounding, for what seems like forever.

You’re dimly aware of wild applause around you, and even more dimly aware that your fingers hurt from gripping the edge of the table.

“You okay, babe?” Tracy’s voice at your ear draws you the rest of the way back into your seat.

“Uh-huh.” You can’t make words, and you certainly can’t begin to explain the lightning-hard orgasm that just ripped through you. Stella kicks a heel up in a playful “Who, me?” half curtsy as the bar continues to applaud. Condensation trickles down the sides of your martini glass as you feel sweat dripping down your back, under your black dress. Jean-Marie laughs and cheers as Stella moves through the crowd, collecting high fives.

“Beatrice! Come on up!” The K-jay’s voice cuts through the crowd. You wave her off weakly, shaking your head so that she knows to call someone else up. You know you should force yourself to sing as you always do, but until you can slip off to the bathroom to mop up your sopping cunt, there’s no way you’re going up on that stage.