IN A HANDBASKET
Alison Tyler
I think Prince said it best in “When Doves Cry.” You know? Except in our case, people weren’t digging the picture of Cal and me engaged in a kiss. They were digging, if you will, the vision of what we looked like in bed. That’s what brought those evil smiles to their lips, the heady scarlet glow to their eyes. Strangers saw us, slight little me and big built Caleb, and instantly imagined us fucking. Caleb turning me topsy-turvy in his huge baseball-mitt hands. Me, on my knees, or on a step stool, sucking him off. Because I’m small, five four in my highest heels. And Caleb’s huge, six eight when he slouches. I’ve got angel written all over my innocent features. He does double-duty for the devil with his shaved head and a barrel chest, muscles on his muscles.
Of course, there’s more.
More to make people’s heads turn when we stride by.
You see, we’re an interracial couple, the two of us. I’m not only white, but that whiter-shade-of-pale type of white. I can get a third-degree burn by looking at travel websites. Cal’s darkness seems to emphasize how fair I am, or my translucent complexion gives more polished depth to his.
We were friends, though, just friends; not “friends with benefits,” not friends who fuck. We were friends who could drink together, sure, talk about anything, smoke a little pot when one of us was lucky enough to score a joint. Why weren’t we making the beast with two backs, as Iago says, late at night, when nobody else was around? Because at least one of us always had someone steady, to sweep those dirty thoughts under the sofa of his or her mind.
Friends we were, and I was sure that’s all we ever would be, until I moved to L.A., and he decided to come visit one weekend. For the first time ever, we found ourselves single at the same time. Did Cal realize that when he hugged me at the airport, when he lifted me clear off the ground in his warm embrace so that my cork-soled espadrilles kicked up behind me? Or did those thoughts come later, put in our heads by other dirty-minded people?
From the moment we walked out of the airport together into the heat-crimped Southern-California-in-the-summertime air, I began noticing the looks. I’d never really been aware before of people giving us the evil eye; we’d usually hung out with a group. Now, everywhere we went, people looked at us.
“Is it you?” I asked him, because he is so intensely tall.
“It’s us,” he said quietly, patiently. Always patient, that’s Cal.
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think, chicklet. What do you think they’re thinking?”
I didn’t answer that. But when I let my gaze fall on him, I started to, well, dig the picture. I started to imagine his hands on me—those big, palm-a-basketball hands. Fuck the step stool, I saw me on the edge of the bed, ruby-glossed lips parted, mouth open and hungry, waiting for the very first taste.
Clearly, I wasn’t alone.
After dropping off his suitcase, I took Caleb out for a walk in my favorite neighborhood in Hollywood, an area where anything is possible. Strolling down the street, you’ll pass happy-go-lucky transvestites, and young male prostitutes, and women who are so goddamn gorgeous you have no idea they have a dick between their legs until you get them home. And by that point, you just won’t care.
Still, when Caleb reached for my hand, we drew our own share of immediate gawkers. Heads turned. Jaws dropped.
I suppose that’s why the street preacher chose us to holler at from his pulpit on Sunset Boulevard. “Sinners!” he shouted. “You’re going to hell!”
Now, I wouldn’t shout anything at Caleb. I mean, the man could bench-press four of me. But this Bible-thumper had his book in hand, and he began to target us specifically. Caleb started laughing. He made me wait with him, while the geeky religious zealot quoted inane Biblical passages at us, until finally, I tugged at Cal’s wrist, demanding we move on. Yet my mind stayed back in that makeshift pulpit. I couldn’t understand.
“You’re going to hell!” the man shrieked in our wake.
Were we going there because we were friends? Or because Caleb was black and I was white? Or because the preacher, like everyone else, imagined what we might look like in bed, Caleb bending me over the mattress and fucking the living shit out of me. How could I take all of him? If he were hung to match his size, his cock would be as long as my forearm.
“Why do you think we’re going to hell?” I asked innocently as we walked away.
“It might have something to do with your shirt,” Caleb said, kindly.
I looked down. I was wearing one of my favorite tees. I’d forgotten completely. The tight-fitting baby-doll white one with SINNER in bold red across my small breasts.
“But you’re not wearing a SINNER shirt,” I pointed out.
Caleb grinned at me. “Wouldn’t fit.”
“What fellowship hath light with darkness?” the preacher’s voice sailed after us.
“I was wondering when he’d get there,” Caleb sighed. I looked up at him, as I always was doing. Up and up and up. “You know, 2 Corinthians has got fuck all to do with interracial relationships. It’s about believers and nonbelievers.”
My eyes widened. “Which are you?” Religion had never come up with us before. We’d talked politics. We’d talked favorite TV shows from the ’80s. And which band was better, Parliament or Three Dog Night. But religion? Not on our agenda, until he said the words:
“A believer.”
I swallowed hard, but then Caleb turned me around so that I could see our reflection in the window of Vagrants.
“You can’t be a lapsed Catholic without first being a practicing Catholic. I know my Scripture.”
“But you said—”
“Now, I’m a believer in what you and I could do together.”
“Do?” my heart hammered in my chest.
“You know…” he said, his big hands tracing my shoulders, then down to my arms, so that his flesh touched mine. “What fellowship hath light with darkness?” he murmured in my ear. We looked good together. No doubt about it. And I was wet, at his touch and at his words.
Once again, I thought I understood. Not why we were going to hell, but why we were getting those looks. Because it was difficult to look at us and not imagine how we might fuck, how Caleb might toss me up in the air, or pin me against the wall, like a butterfly for his collection. From the expression on Caleb’s face, he seemed to be thinking the exact same thing.
“We could make it work,” he said, and his huge hands wandered over my chest, thumb tracing the letters. Slow on the S-I-N, making my nipples harden instantly.
“I’ve always been with tall guys,” I told him, with as much cold seriousness as if that were a confession I should make on my knees, perhaps as a way to let him know I agreed. We could make it work. Still I’d never been with anyone as big as Caleb.
“When you’re lying down, height doesn’t matter,” he teased.
But we weren’t going to be lying down, were we? That wouldn’t be any fun at all. Caleb was going to hold me up and fuck me. He was going to turn me upside down and drive his cock into my mouth. I weighed nothing compared to what he was accustomed to hefting.
We barely made it home, back to my apartment by the beach, where he stripped off my SINENR shirt to have at my naked breasts; his mouth, warm on my nipples, first the left then the right; his huge hands on my red-and-white floral skirt, yanking the fabric down my thighs, waiting for me to kick the bit of summery fluff aside. Not quite so patient now, was Cal. Not quite so easygoing. He was on a mission—different from the one of the street preacher. He was on a mission to get into me, deep, his tongue on my pussy, hands parting my ass while he sucked my clit.
The heat surrounded us: Santa Monica in the summertime, melting popsicles and no lights on; that electric smell of hot asphalt and salt breezes. And Cal’s mouth working me, tongue ringing my clit, those warm strong hands opening me up now, drumming, strumming in a heady rhythm along the crack of my ass.
“You said you were a believer,” I remembered suddenly, gazing down into his coffee-brown eyes, seeing the humor that I always saw when he looked at me—realizing in a flash it was because this was the first time I’d ever looked down at him, first time I was ever above.
But then he hoisted me up, lifting me in his arms so I had to put my hands on his shoulders to steady myself, feeling his muscles through his sweat-dampened T-shirt. I could have put my palms up flat on the ceiling if I’d wanted to. Instead, I gripped into his arms, knowing he was going to rip my panties aside any moment. Knowing that we were going to—what was it?
“Fellowship of light with darkness,” Cal murmured, letting me feel the head of his cock at the split of my lips. Letting me steel myself now for the first taste of him.
“Does fellowship mean fuck?” I asked innocently.
“Only someone who wears the word sinner on her chest would ask a question like that,” Cal teased. And then he got quiet, because he’d felt me squeeze him. Tight. Once and then release. He responded by plunging forward, driving firmly inside of me. And sweet Jesus, right then I started to think I might become a believer for real.
A believer in me and Caleb.
Forget Cain. We were able. Able to fuck like a dream. His hands moving, holding, lifting me so that I felt weightless, as if we were fucking in water, fucking in heat that’s both breathable and surrounding. Flames licking our skin. The sound of fire crackling.
Caleb’s strong, hard body pinned me to the wall, held me firmly then brought me down over and over on the length of his shaft. The pleasure floored me. Or lifted me up. I couldn’t comprehend the sweetness, sparked with pain from his size, from the way that he stretched me. I’d heard of being fucked hard, fucked until you could feel that cock hammering against the back of your throat. But I never had that feeling until Caleb brought me to the bed, set me down and got behind me.
Here we were, bringing that picture to life, becoming the image that all of those dirty-minded people pictured when they saw us walking, when they saw two friends together. This was the culmination of all of those stares. And they were right, those filthy-thinking people. Being fucked by Caleb was transcendent, shattering in that way that makes you flutter inside, every nerve ending alive—every fiber on fire.
Caleb gripped my hair in one fist and pulled as he fucked me, as he sealed himself into me, whispering sweet words the whole time. Not Scripture, but promises, or rather confessions: How he’d wanted to do this from the start. How he was one of those dirty-minded people who imagined what I’d look like naked whenever he saw me.
“Like a sinner?” I whispered.
“We’re all sinners,” he sighed, as he came.
I slid one hand on top of his, pumping against my clit, showing him the way to take me there, letting his finger do the trick, so that I climaxed right after him, melting with him into the heat.
But he recovered quicker than I did, gripping me into his arms, holding me against him as the breeze barely stirred my lacy curtains.
“You know,” I told him, turning to look into his eyes, “we’re going to hell.”
He laughed, that rumbling baritone laugh that I’ve always loved. “At least, chicklet, we’ll be there together.”