Everyone knew that Cecily BonEnfant had the most gorgeous legs in the state of New York. Everyone, including Cecily. She was a self-aware, carefree girl with a shining laugh and a taste for the unusual and gay. She had several friends in the circus and adored Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein and countless others who were considered unfashionable in her set. This was 1923 and, like most girls her age, Cecily loved to have fun, drink and party until the sun rose, and even after.
Her parents were happy, equally carefree people. Her father was always traveling abroad, especially in I where he could be with those like himself, other Black intellectuals who liked to drink and discuss politics and art into the late night hours. He left his white wife, whom he still loved very much, and his pale skinned daughter to the trials and treasures of America.
Cecily loved the arrangement and her mother, Madelyn, must have too, because she partied as much as Cecily did, staying out late with her friends, having as much fun, if not more, than girls half her age. Cecily loved her mother, but it was a distant kind of love, the sort that most reserved for their god on Sundays or for sorbet on a hot summer afternoon.
One day, Cecily went to yet another party. She thought it would be a party much like the others. The music was good and fast, just like she liked it. Unlike most Flapper girls, she still wore her dresses long. Sometimes they even brushed the floor, hiding the toes of her dancing shoes. It was always more of a surprise when the boys realized what good legs she had under all that lace or silk. When the music started, she would shake her shoulders and her hips like the rest of the girls, but keep her muscled brown legs covered. As the night wore on and her skin glowed with sweat, Cecily would throw up her skirts, flash their glory, and then cover them up again before the night was through. She never drank so much that she forgot to put her skirts back down.
On this particular night, the boys watched and waited for her to flash those darling legs of hers. Those who were new to Cecily were crowded out—they didn’t know about the splendor about to be revealed. The usual round of girls and boys had already staked out their place next to her earlier in the evening on the dance floor.
One boy was new to the New York scene and so was also new to the phenomenon that was Cecily; but he had already seen her sleek cap of wavy dark hair with its diamond clips. Something about her drew him. It might have been that full mouth of hers or those brown eyes, all sparkling and wicked. Whatever it was, the boy was already enchanted, though for reasons of his own, he kept a good distance from the cocoa and cream beauty.
The evening grew later and the music got wilder and faster. Buttons and ribbons loosened, but the boy noticed that more suitors crowded around the scintillating Cecily even though hers—buttons and ribbons, that is—stayed right where they had been at the beginning of the night. He decided that even with his secrets he had to be near her. Then Cecily began to passionately dance the Charleston and those luscious legs of hers were revealed again and again. That decided it.
Eight or nine dances later, Cecily left the dance floor to find some refreshment. Some determined boys, despite being given firm “no’s” many times before, tried to get the fair Cecily a drink and whisk her off to some quiet corner. She talked with them, took their drinks, and even laughed at their jokes, throwing her head back to reveal a delectable throat. Cecily invited some to come to her house for a party one day soon, but she didn’t go off to anybody’s quiet corner. Her girl friends were more interesting or at least were more interested in what Cecily had to say about the current state of Prohibition and the gangsters in Harlem.
The very interested boy drank while Cecily drank, watching her from the corners of the ballroom. When she was finally alone, he took his chance.
“You have a beautiful laugh.”
Cecily looked up, surprised. Boys never complemented her on her laugh. Her legs, certainly. Her eyes, once in a while. One boy had even had the audacity to comment on the curve of her bosom. But her laugh? She smiled.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Not ‘sir’, please. My name is Maria.”
Cecily blinked and looked again. The boy was a splendid vision. Masculine and slim in top hat and tails, a blinding white tuxedo shirt and black pants that flowed over long legs like water. His soft mouth seemed to be made for laughter.
“Well….” Cecily said.
They drank together until the party was over, sharing laughs and the unusual details of each other’s lives. Then Cecily invited Maria to her house for a swim. The boys at the party gaped in amazement. The girls stared with jealousy too, some at Maria, others at the boy.
The house was dark when they arrived in Cecily’s car, a brand new Model T. They drove past the main building, past the immediate back yard and grounds to a patch of forest land. Back there was a hot spring that her mama’s family had discovered long ago. When the weather was chilly the waters were more popular, but now that they were in the sweltering heat of summer, nobody wanted any part of it. That’s why Cecily liked it. She could be alone here and imagine herself on some far off island as she floated naked under the stars. She always swam naked here.
Tonight Cecily had drunk much more than usual. The charming boy had taken her off guard. They laughed so much that no one bothered to count the drinks. Those drinks were many. Now, Cecily, at the ripe old age of nineteen, was a girl who knew how to hold her liquor. She could be ten sheets to the wind and would still carry herself like a queen, crown and all. The boy had similar skills. However, the unusual amount of drink loosened their tongues and inhibitions.
“I have never met a woman quite like you, Cecily,” the boy said. His gaze said how very much he would like to see Cecily naked, but he was too well mannered to mention it. Even with two gallons of gin in him.
“I could say the same to you.” Cecily took off his hat to reveal shining blond hair. She put the hat on the grass. The boy watched her bend down, watched the water’s reflection shimmer on her skin. There were kerosene lamps surrounding the pool. They lit two of them with Cecily’s matches and watched each other with eyes that burned just as brightly as the flames. She loosened his bow tie.
“Come swimming with me.” Her gaze was a tease. Laughter hovered on the edge of her voice.
They became naked together, buttons loosened on her dress, then on his pants. The silk shirt floated to the grass, then it was shoes, socks, small bits of underwear, and gloves. Up close, Cecily’s legs were indeed beautiful, strong and graceful like those of a peak-career racehorse; but it was all of her, this perfect, glowing girl, that captivated Maria.
Cecily wasn’t a girl to show her body lightly. She was a tease, she’d be the first to admit, but to shed her clothes, all of them, as if she wanted the eyes of someone else on her, well that was an entirely different matter. The boy had issues of his own, like the thatch of pale pubic hair with the pair of lips and clitoris that immediately made themselves known. And there were those two breasts that rose from his chest like miniature half moons, small and shapely. Cecily immediately wanted to know their taste, to feel them against her own, but that wasn’t something she would say out loud.
“May I touch you?” she asked anyway.
“Yes.”
But shyness overtook Cecily and she plunged into the warm water instead. The boy followed, wanting to feel those brown limbs wrapped around him, to feel the wetness that he knew she would have for him. They played like dolphins, diving into the deep water and circling each other, brushing against legs, backs, breasts until they were both a little hotter than before. Eventually, they had to get out of the water. The boy rose, dripping, first. His body was betraying him in the old ways, tightening and moistening. Cecily followed, breathless and slick with water.
“Use my underwear to dry off,” she commanded. “I have plenty back at the house.”
The boy did, consciously searching for the scent that was Cecily, musky and womanly. He found it and buried his face in it. Cecily led him to the dress that she had spread out in the grass.
“Let’s lay here.”
Tonight’s dress was simple, a long cotton number that was white with vertical forest-green stripes. Not many women would have been able to make that look good, but Cecily did. The dress was big enough to protect both their bodies from the prickling of the grass.
“Touch me,” the boy said.
Cecily did, learning the geography of that pale skin that was different from her own, the slender shoulders with their sprinkling of tiny brown freckles, the throat that was slim yet strong, pale breasts that shone in the light and their strawberry hard nipples. Cecily’s tongue tested their flavor and found them sweet, gasping low in her throat with pleasure even as the boy trembled under her, grasping Cecily’s head to him, whispering things that neither of them had thought to speak before. When the girl parted the boy’s legs it was out of curiosity. There was that beguiling moisture, the woman’s body that unfurled under her fingertips like rose petals.
“Please,” the boy begged.
Nervousness overcame Cecily despite the many glasses of gin and she withdrew, although her fingers did keep sneaking up to her nose. The boy could only look at Cecily, awed by the simple beauty of her body, the supple waist and legs, that powerful back and buttocks that he longed to bite and tease apart. His fingers wanted to touch her thighs and the breasts that were like the exotic pomegranates he’d eaten in Mexico years before. His nose captured her scent and held it.
They stared at each other, beauty beholding beauty, before Cecily finally reached out. She surprised him. They boy thought that she would like the others, would play with him but only to a certain point, withholding her woman’s treasure from him even after he begged prettily with his skilled tongue. Cecily touched the boy’s skin, tracing the softness between his legs, diving in where she had hesitated before. He smelled like summers on the Vineyard, warm and salt and wet. Her boy fell back on the improvised blanket with a sigh of wonder. Cecily pleasured herself by pleasuring him, curiosity compelling her to suck and lick at the weeping pink flesh, to drink the cream seeping from inside. She remembered how she liked to touch herself and took the sensitive button of flesh between her tongue and teeth, agitating it until the boy’s hand clenched in her hair. Above her, he breathed her name and gasped. His thighs trembled like butterfly wings under her palms.
Through slitted eyes, the boy watched the graceful rise of her back and buttocks toward the night sky, their restless snakelike movements as she licked him wet, pulling pleasure from him in a long golden string of gasps and breaths and sighs. He longed to come up behind her, to plunge his tongue into her wetness to fuck her pretty pussy until she felt what he was feeling now, ecstasy blown on top of ecstasy with her clever finger buried to the hilt inside his woman’s body. He came apart under her.
Cecily lifted her head, smiling. Dark waves of her hair fell in mink waves around her face and shoulders. Her mouth was wet with Maria. The boy pulled himself from his lassitude to tug Cecily down to the grass scented dress and borrow into her throat.
“I think,” he said, licking the taste of himself from her face, “that you’re going to make me fall in love with you.”
The girl spread her legs for him when he sought entrance. Still kissing her, he stroked her eager young pussy, sliding his fingers over the thick tumescent pearl of her clit, over the dewy lips, then teased the shy opening. She wriggled under him, breathless and anticipating. He was her music. Cecily could feel it building inside her like the opening notes of the Charleston, faint yet compelling. His mouth tasted soft and fresh against hers, like a peach she wanted to devour, but her quickening body needed it elsewhere. She tugged at his hair until he settled that hot mouth on her nipples and sent the music tearing through her.
The boy was inside. Her eyes fluttered at the sky, stared hard at the remnants of blue in the darkness, the brilliance of stars that felt like they had fallen inside her and were shooting back into the sky with each agitated moan, each push of the boy’s fingers inside her. It was like dancing, really, sweat washing between her breasts, breath coming fast and uncontrolled, legs trembling as he pushed her past the point of exhaustion.
She was perfection. Breasts shuddering and heaving under him as her orgasm neared, legs splayed wide past the boundaries of the dress, her toes digging into the grass. Her hungry pussy swallowed his fingers, eager, creamy, and hot. He tugged her nipple hard with his teeth and she mewled his name and came, jerking against his hand. Her hair clung to her face in damp strands, dark against the wide, gasping mouth. After all her stars had floated away, she stared at her boy in amazement. He had done this thing to her. Cecily filled her arms with him, kissed his soft hair and flushed skin. She fit her legs neatly around him.
“Again, please.”
He laughed.
Hours later, they fell asleep on Cecily’s dress, wrapped together face to face until the morning sun found them.
* * *
The boy woke first and dressed himself. Experience had taught him that it was best to do so. When Cecily awoke she felt like it was Christmas, that there was something wonderful waiting for her when she opened her eyes. The boy sat inches from her, watching her. He was beautiful in the sunlight with his top hat on, his pale eyes and face shaded, the mouth vulnerable and soft.
“Good morning.”
“I still want you,” the boy said. “If you don’t want me anymore, you’ll never see me again.”
Cecily slid up into the boy’s arms. “Don’t be silly.” Then she put on her clothes, set her hair to rights, and drove Maria home.
* * *
At the house, Cecily tried to sneak past her mother’s room, but Madelyn heard her. “Are you just now getting in, Cec?”
Yes,” she paused at her mother’s door as if expecting something, but there was no speech.
“OK, my darling,” her mother said. “Wash up and come to breakfast.”
Cecily giggled and dashed away to her room. In from of her long, gilt-edged mirror, she undressed her body, remembering her night with the boy. Next time, Cecily thought, touching herself, she would know even better how to please him. Her fingers stroked her belly, the rough curls beneath, then the responsive pearl between her thighs. It was like the boy was with her now, breathing deeply in her room, filling her with softness and tight anticipation. Cecily had to see him again.
* * *
The young, gay girl approached partying with a new abandon. What if the boy was at the next party? Would things continue as before? She hoped so. She needed it to be so.
At the next party there was nothing. Only the usual boys who tried to drink her under the table and touch her legs like they were trophies. When the music was fast enough for the Charleston or the Shimmy, Cecily danced like a girl inspired, flashing her legs and shaking her shoulders like she was in one of her father’s churches and taken over by a spirit. The boy never materialized from the crowd. At the end of the night, Cecily went home with a group of girl friends and lay awake with them, talking about politics and the allure of girls who wore pants and top hats.
Weeks passed in an agony of slowness.
Soon, it was Cecily’s turn to have an extravagant party. Her large house was draped in silks and velvets. Gin flowed from clever fountains set atop tables in every room and the house sparkled like it was lit with a million diamonds. Her mother had already abandoned the quiet upstairs of the house, where none of the revelers were allowed, for the shining gaiety of the party in full swing. Madelyn BonEnfant laughed as she danced by her daughter on the arm of a long-haired Spaniard. Cecily wasn’t laughing. She hadn’t seen the boy in weeks and she was beginning to get even more offers than usual from the other boys. It was all wearing on her nerves. She was even considering writing to her father so he could send a steamer to whisk her to Paris with him. Perhaps the boy was there. Cecily pouted and swept back upstairs to change her clothes. Everything disappointed her tonight.
In the empty hallway just outside her bedroom, Cecily stood before a long mirror with a cigarette in hand, its smoke bleeding from the gold ciggie holder that had been a gift from her mother last year.
“Is there no one in this blasted place to help me with my dress?” The dress in question gaped at the side from an open set of pearl buttons that ran from the curve of her breasts to her hip. Cecily didn’t really need help, she just felt like whining. She hadn’t seen her boy in forever and her mood was turning foul.
“I’ll help.” The soft soprano said from the end of the hall. Cecily looked up in pleasure. She didn’t even bother to ask how he got into the house. It didn’t matter. He was back.
“OK.” She turned her side to the charming young man, hiding her smile.
The dress was made of a deep chocolate lace stitched over an under-dress of the same luscious shade as her skin. The long, draping skirt caressed her hips and legs as it made its way to the floor. Her back was completely bare, except for six tiny silver chains that formed swaying bridges from one edge of the dress to the other.
The boy’s hands slowly fastened the buttons while his greedy eyes devoured the sight of Cecily’s soft shadowed skin that held the light like an amber-shaded Tiffany lamp.
“Would you like anything else?” the boy asked, wealthy and slim looking in a tuxedo shirt and tails, black pants and again that top hat. Both their eyes burned.
“Of course.” Cecily put out her cigarette and embraced the boy. “Tell me where you’ve been. Tell me that you’ll stay the night with me again.”
She wasn’t shy about expressing her need for the boy now. In all her nineteen years she’d never felt such freedom to do what she wanted with another person.
“I’ll do whatever you want, whenever you want,” the boy breathed against her.
Cecily laughed. “Come downstairs and dance with me at my party. I’ve been waiting to do that with you since July. After that…”
* * *
The boy danced with her, graceful and somber in his grey. “I was running away from you.”
“Really? Why?”
“I was actually away on family business but I knew that I could’ve written. Please don’t hate me.”
“Never.” Cecily grasped the boy closer. “I think I love you.”
The boy laughed, giddy. “Really? Because I think I feel something similar for you too, but I didn’t know if it was right or acceptable. Won’t your family mind?”
“Perhaps.” Cecily pressed herself against the boy. “But you’re my boy, not theirs.”
The boy blushed to the roots of his blond hair, charmed and charming all at once. “I’m very rich. I could take you to places where no one would mind or care how you lived your life, our life.”
“We live in such a place now.”
The boy laughed and held his girl closer.
* * *
As the two danced, people stared. Who was this boy who insisted on keeping up with her during the dances, especially the Charleston that was supposed to be for the audience of fawning suitors alone? The boy was lovely and graceful, true, but he wasn’t one of them. He had come out of nowhere while they had been trying for months or years to grab her attention. Envy boiled in the room, but the young couple was immune to it, trapped in their own world of sweat and attraction, of possibilities and pleasure. After the dances, they parted. Cecily was loathed to leave her friends and the boy wanted to distance himself from her a bit, to see her fire from afar and see what he was being burned by. Like the first night, he stood in corners of the ballroom and watched her, catching Cecily’s flame from every conceivable angle. When he had gotten enough of staring, he could tell that Cecily had too, she glanced over her shoulder often just to be sure that the boy was watching. Now, she looked to see if he was ready, because she was.
The boy gave her a signal, appearing at her side to snatch up a champagne glass before she could. “I’m sorry,” he said, not smiling. “Did you want this?”
Cecily nodded, suddenly very thirsty and said parting words to her friends who stared at her with envy in their eyes.
* * *
Cecily led the boy to her room and locked the door. Before she could breathe, his flavor was on her tongue, bubbling along her taste buds like fine champagne, making her feel lightheaded and good.
“Kiss me like you mean it,” the boy demanded.
Cecily devoured her boy, making him a part of her own skin, easily slipping off the shirt and jacket like she’d been practicing this moment for weeks.
This was why the boy had come back, to feel this rightness again. No one else had made him feel so good in his own skin, like they enjoyed the feel of him inside and out.
“Cecily….” The boy’s fingers slid over her moist flesh, playing her like a sweet, responsive instrument and finding all the right notes that made her sigh and squirm against the bed. Cecily laughed, covering her mouth with her lace-gloved hands, at the honest pleasure of their game. The boy was earnest, determined, first touching her, sliding inside her (a gasp reared up high in her throat) and she widened her legs to feel a fuller contact, then he slid his fingers free and pushed her more firmly on the bed, nose searching between her legs. Cecily uttered one high scream. “We can’t. Not here.”
The boy found his destination, licking at the triangle of flesh. “We can,” he insisted. She relented with a soft little moan and clutched his head to her. There was a noise at the door.
“Cecily?”
“Um,” she breathed with difficulty because the boy had found the place that was making it hard to concentrate on anything but him. She pushed his head away. “Yes?” Cecily answered the voice outside the door.
“Are you ready?”
“Yes, oh yes, I am.” Then, quieter, “Darn, I have to get back.” She raised her voice again. “Give me a minute, I’ll be right there.”
The boy rolled away, pouting, but pleased by the taste he’d been granted.
“When can I see you again?” They both asked at the same time, and then laughed.
“Send a note, or come over. You know where I live,” Cecily said.
“OK.”
They both fixed her dress, and then she slipped out the door. “I’ll wait for you,” she whispered before closing it behind her.
“What the devil were you doing in there so long, Cec? Do you have a man in there?”
The boy ducked under the bed at the sound of the inquisitive voice. Good thing too, because the body belonging to that voice popped around the door to look around the room. The boy held his breath. The sweet smell of Cecily’s cunt was still in the air. Surely he wasn’t the only one who could smell it? But the nosy girl wandered away at the sound of Cecily’s laughing voice, “Come on, Viola. You have better things to do that find any imaginary lover man of mine.”
The house was still overflowing with people, all who by now knew and disapproved of him, so the young man decided to fall asleep under the bed. It was rather comfortable. Maria made a pallet of the dresses and underwear he found nearby. He’d fallen asleep on more dresses this past month than he had ever when he was a baby. He snuggled into the silks and cottons to spend an uneventful night. Tomorrow when he awoke, his new life would begin.