TWO WOMEN HAVING SEX

Etna Holst

I’d like to tell you the story of two women having sex. It has to be short; I don’t have much time. Let’s keep it simple.

One could be Anna, princess of the palindromes. She could be anyone, from anywhere. Let’s just say she’s from around here.

The other is Ellen, the love interest. She’s not terribly impressed by the title. Tough.

Now, we need a location for the pair to strike their chord. We’ll be up-to-date and egalitarian and say: midpoint from here to there. Though the trains don’t stop midpoint. Cars, bikes, cross-country skiing? Anna is more pragmatic: the town of M—. An invitation drops into Ellen’s disordered mailbox. A letter of assignation. Oh, come.

(Ellen goes off on a tangent. She liked the idea of snow.) A date is set, tickets are booked. Not too far into the future. People have their needs.

Fortunately, Ellen’s job is flexible. She is basically her own boss. And oh can she be bossy. But not today. Anna’s a mature student, which means, for the present, she has to live Here. Fine, though inconvenient, when all her wet dreams are centered around There. No, not there, you dirty. Well all right. There too.

Bright and early one morning, when the sun is just a hint of pink beyond the high-rises in the fairly large (though globally inconsequential) city of There, Ellen’s alarm goes off, telling her: Bag by the door. Go to train station. Ticket in your inside pocket—put jacket on! Ellen is not a morning person. She needs her instructions, spelled out.

She does remember, however, to don a clean pair of slacks. Go through the toothbrush and toothpaste thing. Touch some wax to the tips of her ’do.

Already, through the haze, anticipation is building up within her. As she hoists the overnight bag onto her shoulder, fumbling with the keys to lock the front door, she imagines Anna, waking up leisurely, all golden fuzz and honeyed limbs. The sun is pushing through a convenient gap in the curtains, fingering an erect nipple here, the hopelessly soft spot behind an ear there. Ellen touches her own spot. The one behind the ear.

At the train station, she picks up breakfast: pancakes, box of raisins, coffee—double black. She never skips breakfast. There have to be rules.

In Here, Anna sheaths those nipples in a cotton bra. She wears black, usually, but has chosen off-white for the occasion. She knows Ellen appreciates the see-through effect. Gathering her things, she rakes up some notes, at random, for something to read on the ride. She opens the fridge, wrinkles her nose in distaste, and closes it again. No breakfast for Anna, the bender of rules.

Well, maybe a cup of Earl Grey on board. Extra sugar. She could stomach that.

Ellen’s train has the farthest to go, by half an hour or so. She’s not what you would call of a numerical mind. All she knows is she will be there on time, if it pleaseth, and so forth. It’s on her ticket: 09:42. A quarter to ten, she called it, in her reply. See u. xx.

The train pulses along the tracks, slowly, grindingly, bringing her up to the main event. She is throbbing in her seat, her palms tickling with imagined touch. But let’s not overindulge in wanton fantasies. We are heading, after all, for the Real Deal.

At her station, Anna is passing the time by synchronizing her wristwatch with the clock on her phone. She does those kinds of things. A keeper of times. Her ticket says 09:46. Close enough.

Although she’s a sucker for the simultaneous, once in a blue moon—such a thrill.

Her train pulls in with half a minute’s delay. She tries (fails) not to frown at the annoyingly complacent ticket inspector. They’ll catch up.

At this point in our narrative, you might be wondering where, specifically, the tryst is to take place? Bathroom stall, unlikely nook or cranny, shielded by shrubbery in a public park? The town of M-is surely too diminutive for a sizeable municipal plantation? Besides, it’s March, north of most of you, though south of the Arctic, to be sure. We’re too old for that, types Ellen—come summer, though, Anna will have proved her wrong. Oh come summer… Where were we? Ellen: I’ve booked a room.

Pricey, says Anna (student, remember).

My treat.

Ellen’s got her mind on some gourmet nosh in the restaurant, afterward. If there’s time.

The train shudders to a halt between stations. Anna feels a pinch of panic, recalling a five-hour delay, not too long ago. Ruined dinner, but.

“We are waiting to be passed by an oncoming train,” the tannoy bleats. “This will not affect our schedule.”

She sits back in her seat, texts: False alarm.

You didn’t imagine there was no form of communication, did you? Romantic as the notion may be, they are not two sailboats, meeting in the night. Just two ordinary women (about to have sex).

Ellen sends a short vid of her fingers, drumming against the table, on her northbound journey.

Anna titters, and then glances sideways at her fellow passengers. Returns a: Hush.

Ellen brings out a book. One hour to go.

But we can’t very well wait an hour, can we? Cut to: firs flitting by; cut to: village of this and that; cut to: Anna gets off the train. Ellen is already there, reaching for her rucksack to hang over her other shoulder—ever the gentlewoman. Also, it gives Anna some leeway with her cane (yes, there’s a cane at this point, mild cerebral palsy, no mental deficiency, don’t look so surprised). See what we did there? The beauty of cuts.

“Where to, good woman?”

“Das Stadthotel.”

No, they’re not German, or turn-of-a-bygone-century. They just talk like that.

As they link hands, there’s a moment thick with electricity. They laugh, almost shyly, and Ellen pulls along, leading the way.

Neither of them has ever had a reason to visit M—, but it’s puny (did I mention that?), and as it happens, the hotel in question is right on the other side of the tracks.

On the way, Ellen slips the check-in instructions into the pocket of Anna’s coat. “I booked it in your name, but don’t worry, it’s all been paid. Free minibar.”

Ellen is not a fan of check-in situations. Anna kisses the tip of her nose.

“One of these days…”

They arrive at the lobby of the out-of-place, moderately large building at 10:01. Check-in opens at ten. Lucky them.

“One night only?” the woman behind the counter inquires, looking over the rim of her hot-pink, leopard-print reading glasses.

“One night,” Anna smiles. “Passing through.”

Ellen nods her head vigorously half a step behind her, wobbling with the sudden swing of their scanty luggage, putting on her most businesslike, innocent-looking mien. The leopard-prints waver doubtfully between them, then turn back to the not-so-flat computer screen.

“All right then,” the woman sighs, handing over the requisite brightly colored folders, key cards, receipt. “I hope you’ll find the room nice and comfortable. Just give me a ring if you need anything.”

Anna thanks her. Says something commonplace. Maybe even compliments M-a little. She’s suave that way.

In the elevator, Ellen pins her to the wall. This is cliché, but she’s well on desperate. She sticks her nose down the open neck of Anna’s shirt, breathing in the smell of her, like coke. She doesn’t say I’ve missed you. No need.

“Now there’s a way to treat a person with a cane,” Anna chides, cheeks red, eyes glittering.

“Mm,” Ellen agrees, digging in deeper, “you can treat me to your cane.”

She tugs at the shirt, pulling the lapels down and to the side so that she can press her lips to the very tops of Anna’s breasts. Anna shivers. The doors of the lift ping open. Ellen spins around, covering her rumpled partner-in-crime with her back. Of course, there’s no one there.

“Partner-in-crime? Really?” says Anna, scanning the numbers along the corridor for their room.

Fine. Just partner, then.

“I like partner-in-life,” Anna suggests, pushing the key card into the lock of the door to the right. Ellen flushes with delight. The door clicks open. Here we go.

Bags are dropped to the floor. The cane is summarily discarded in the easy chair by the window. Ellen sits on the queen-size bed and Anna sits on her lap, on cue, wrapping her slim, trim legs around her, letting her chosen partner-in-life finish what was so rudely interrupted by the opening of elevator doors. Ellen unbuttons her shirt. Pushes the cute but in-the-way off-white bra out of the way. Fills her hands with soft, rosy treasure. Or better yet—tits.

Anna holds onto Ellen’s shoulders, close to purring, as her lover licks and sucks, fondles and squeezes, forgetting all about plot, structure, grammar rules and anagrams. Who needs anagrams, for that matter, when you have kilograms of Anna at your disposal?

“Kilograms?”

Ellen comes up for a breather, her hair pointing directions to all over the place. Her face is brimming with bliss.

“Pounds and pounds,” she nods, and weighs the palindrome in her arms.

Anna is already unbearably wet. Ellen should know this. But she is taking her sweet time.

“Could we…?” Anna indicates the length and width of the bed. Ellen helps her out of the constraints of her crumpled shirt.

“Why not? While we’re at it.”

And into bed they tumble, naked, skipping out on the preliminaries (you know the drill). Ellen pulls Anna close. Anna pulls Ellen closer, her legs parting to accommodate Ellen’s thigh. A tremor runs through them both as Anna’s wetness slips along Ellen’s skin. Their pubic bones press together, heat prickling and flashing wherever body parts meet in joint, frustrating desire. Anna nibbles at Ellen’s ear, finding the spot, there, here, scratching it with her teeth, muttering: “I’m going to die if you don’t fuck me soon.”

Ellen is only too happy to comply. Lifting Anna’s bottom up from off the mattress, she plunges two fingers into her, heading right for the nubbly spot of her vaginal wall. Anna’s head falls back with a guttural “Yes,” her body arching like the old round-stone bridge across the river of the town of M-(or is it Here?) to meet her thrust, to take her even deeper. Arousal drips from Ellen onto the crisp Egyptian cotton of the hotel’s bedsheets, as she finds her rhythm, that rhythm that has her lean-limbed love writhing and gurgling with joie de vivre. Comme il faut. She bends her head to French kiss Anna’s puffy parts, keeping her fingers pushing and slipping, stressing and dipping, punctuating her message with the silky, insistent sweeps of her tongue.

“Oh fuck!” Anna eloquently enjoinders, and Ellen revs it up a notch, increasing her pressure, tripping up the speed, her free hand finding Anna’s to stroke the tingling, sensitive point of her racing pulse with her thumb, and Anna is coming, coming as surely as the train from Here to There, roaring down the rails like a tour de force, like a stutter of hand-holding exclamation marks, again, again, again, the bridge tensing and crumbling, the river flowing with the spring flood, Ellen’s fingers refusing derailment, sucked, as it were, into an airtight lock.

Anna hits the mattress orgasming, tangling with the source of her enjoyment. The source buffets her with her head. They disentangle, for an instant, to make heads and tails of the bed again.

Ellen props herself up on a pillow, her cunt swelling with self-conceited pride at the sight of Anna’s (temporarily) sated glow. She looks like…

“Stop! No more poetry, for the moment, please—though you certainly have a way with French.” Anna closes in, her fingers trailing down Ellen’s abdomen. Ellen’s breath catches.

“So…” Anna lifts an eyebrow, fingertips dawdling along the edge of Ellen’s pubic hair. “What was it you were saying earlier? Something about my cane?”

In the wee hours of the night, they empty the contents of the minibar onto the bed. We’ll call it a feast.

“I’m sorry about the restaurant closing and all,” Anna offers, crunching on ridiculously salty mini-pretzels, not, to be frank, looking all that sorry. She does on the other hand look good enough to eat. Hours of lovemaking will do that to you.

Ellen takes another swig of her half-emptied Carlsberg. “Don’t.” Anna breaks open a chocolate bar, scrambling to find the remote for the ceiling-mounted TV in the corner.

“What?”

“There is not a jot of energy left in me. Not a gram, you hear? I’m emptied out, dried up, a complete desert in between rain periods. It’s too late for this. Also, I need my news fix. You’ll just have to wait.”

Ellen puts the bottle down on the nightstand. Takes a bite of the chocolate Anna holds out to her as a distraction. The TV flickers to life.

With a contented sigh, Anna leans back against the headboard. She smooths the duvet out over them both. Ellen hands the candy bar back to her.

“All comfy?” she queries, a distinct glint in her eyes, and sure enough, seconds later she is under the covers, burrowing into a little nest just, as it happens, between the thighs of her news-watching nubile. The would-be nubile protests.

“I feel more like a geriatric wing dropout, you know, and you better stop that, what will the readers.”

Ellen’s head comes up to meet Anna’s gaze, haloed by tousled sheets.

“You can see the screen from there, can’t you?”

Anna’s eyes flit over to the flurry of images and text. She has put it on mute, because it’s three o’clock in the morning, and people need their rest.

Some people.

Ellen looks at her earnestly.

“You really want me to stop?”

Anna makes a face. Shakes her head. Ellen dips down to lick some stray grains of salt from Anna’s strained, sweat-streaked midriff. A quiver ripples over the hypersensitized flesh. Anna groans. Opens her legs a touch wider. Her sex is luscious, warm and inviting. Ellen puts her face up close, her exhalations enough to make a little moisture ooze out from between those kiss-stung nether lips.

“I could stop,” she says, enunciating her words carefully, struggling for a moment’s sobriety. “Just tell me to stop.”

Anna reaches over to the pile of loot from the minibar. She tears open another bar of chocolate, splitting off a healthy chunk. Her eyes locked on to Ellen’s, she parts herself with the fingers of her left hand and nudges the piece of sticky sweetness in between her folds.

“You could stop,” Anna allows, melting down the headboard as quickly as the chocolate. “But it would stain.”

Ellen would never let good foodstuff go to waste. She is much too much of an environmentalist. Chocoholic. Sex addict. Take your pick. (Also, she hates to leave a mess for the cleaners. Which Anna knows fine well.)