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Her legs were soupy with drink. She laughed to herself. She had been laughing to herself much of the night. She had got tickled when he was singing and smirking and joking on the stage. She had thrown her head back and guffawed just like her mama told her never to do. And she was giggling to herself ever since. She giggled again now and her legs collapsed under her. He caught her under the armpits and supported her. Left to herself she would have sunk in a pool at his feet.
She braced herself on him and pulled herself upright. She walked ahead into the vestibule of the building, and her butt swung from right to left. Her dress, a garment of ambiguous design, was made of a material that draped and flowed. It clung only a little across her hips and across her breasts, lightly dancing around her moving body.
Her hair was looking silly now. Tufts that had been caught up behind her ears were standing out from the side of her head. The hair at the edges of her face and at her nape was frizzy from perspiration. She had stopped caring about how her hair looked several hours ago—when she’d gone into the ladies’ room and assessed the damage OLD GRANDAD was doing. It didn’t matter anymore. She knew they’d reached the point in the evening when they’d both decided to go after “it.”
He periodically tugged on her dress to keep it from riding up on her butt. He seemed concerned for how she appeared. She thought how silly it was that he was trying to keep her in her clothes until he could get her inside the door of his apartment. Soon as he got her inside he’d be pulling and hauling and working to get her out of this same dress. And for her part she was keeping up with the charade. Was she really as toasted as she seemed?
While he fumbled with his keys she fell back against him. She let herself fall and keep falling into the soft flesh of him. He caught her. His arms were everywhere. That’s what she liked most about him. His arms were so fleshy. There was a lot of him, period. She could fall back, lose her balance, fall into him, and never hit the ground.
Going through the door of his apartment he pinched her left ass cheek and said, “Sorry, baby, my hand slipped.” A laugh exploded out of her lips. He rolled his eyes around in his head to look like a cherub who had gotten his arm caught in a cookie jar. This kept her laughing long after the joke had passed.
With the door closed and locked behind them, he tossed his hat onto a chair. He said, “Let me take your coat, baby.” It was in-between weather—late March. The wrap she wore was not exactly a coat, but a jacket. She giggled again and tried to work her arms out of the jacket. He worked at it and was finally able to get her arms free.
“Plant yourself, baby,” he said, waving a hand airily toward the divan like he was Mrs. John Jacob Astor.
He ditched his coat in the closet and came around to the front of the couch. He wanted to remove her clothes slowly, but she hurried him along. They fumbled and their fingers became entwined with each other and with the buttons. They yanked one off. The button dropped and rolled under the couch. She laughed to see it roll away and thought immediately after that she’d be cursing herself tomorrow morning when it came time to have that button or go out in the street half naked.
She stood naked before him for a moment—looking at him from up under her eyelids. She batted her lashes seductively in a way that seemed right out of the movies. She teasingly unhooked her bra and came close to him, thrusting her tits in his face. He didn’t touch her breasts. He only looked at them like they were twin pools of water and he had crossed the Gobi Desert without a drink. But all he did was look.
He put his hands on her shoulders, turned her away from him, and found her spinal cord. He ran his fingers up and down the interlocking bones in her back like he was playing piano keys. He said he was trying to get a feel for her back. It seemed like he was funning with her—as if his hands didn’t know what to do, but were exploring her. He played arpeggios on her. His fingers were like little hammers pummeling her. Her body got to throbbing, her breath came short, and she grunted.
The majority of rounders that a girl meets in the nightspots figure the best way to get any pussy is to get a girl so juiced up she doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the wall. But his hands—his fingers were better than alcohol. Of course she was juiced, but she didn’t have to be. What his fingers were doing would have been enough.
He told her to lie down on the divan and close her eyes. Then he started to finger her sure enough. He ran his fingers up and down her back and front. He had her thrilling to his touch. She felt herself to be good and oiled and she started singing to the accompaniment he played on her backside and her stomach. He put his fingers in places she didn’t know were there. His fingers plunked and thumped on her and caused a whole lot of trembling and moaning.
“You want to get you some delirium tremblin’s running up and down your back, don’t you, baby!” He whooped and hollered just like he did on the stage. She laughed along with him even though she didn’t know what he was talking about.
Most of the men she’d known didn’t use their hands for pleasure. They mostly used their paws for wrestling some kind of living or shoving somebody’s face into a wall. These men had gotten out of the habit of touching things gently—if they’d ever learned it.
His touches were gentle and because of this they were shocking—surprising. It felt for all the world like he’d gotten under her skin—like he was fingering her from the inside. Because of that she got a little scared. But she wasn’t scared enough to want him to stop.
His lovemaking was like the stuff that Grandma an’em called “The Laying On of Hands.” It was like what the old people used to do if you had a bad croup or some other internal problem that was beyond them and they couldn’t get you to the doctor. “The Laying On of Hands.” They’d try it. They’d all put their hands on you and pray and rub on you. Sometimes it would work. His hands were like those old people’s hands: firm, authoritative, soothing, and digging down deeply below layers of skin—reaching the areas that needed comfort.
He took his clothes off oh so slowly. She was glad of that. She wanted to get used to the sight of all the flesh. She wanted him, but she was scared she might be scared by his bulk when she first would lay eyes on it. This slow performance increased the excitement, too. She was curious. Everybody was curious to see what was up under there—in there—what he was like under his clothes.
Actually it wasn’t as big as the rest of him. It was normal sized, but it seemed much smaller because of the way it was nestled in among so much other meat. It looked sort of small and pitiful and sad all up in there. He’d waggled it and talked in a silly voice. He urged her to pet it and make it feel less forlorn for being lost in among his hair and all. She giggled again while she fingered the thing and it started to growing like Topsy.
After he got completely naked he went and rooted around in the closet by the door. He came out butt first—his huge ass coming out coyly like a virgin—the ass cheeks moving to a swaying, seductive melody that he hummed. She laughed despite feeling like she shouldn’t. He was acting so silly! When he turned himself upright to face her he had on a big red-and-orange turban. There he was before her: a great huge man naked except for the turban. It oughtn’t have affected her the way it did. She oughtn’t have gotten hotter and juicier and wilder between her legs. But she did.
He was the Sheik of Araby! He sat in something like a cross-legged position on the divan, and when he reared back she could see his dick was as hard as granite. The thing was pointed toward the ceiling.
“Impale yourself, baby!” he said.
Giggling again, she did her best to. She lowered herself onto his whacker and sat on his thighs and he hoisted her, pulled her ass cheeks apart, and bounced her up and down while licking her ears, saying funny things, and tickling her.
In the movies the things that make people all hot and bothered are pretty things—pretty-looking people and pretty, fragrant flowers or a moonlit beach, girls with shining eyes. But what really gets the gut bucket and gets the mouth to twisting up in the most ugly twist that feels like died and gone to heaven is—mostly ugly. It’s not so pretty as in the movies. It’s worms of sweat cascading down the center of the chest and the myriad stinky smells on your fingers that smell better than Chanel No. 5 when you got your thing on. Like Grandma say, “It’s not the beauty, it’s the booty.” It’s the funky little, greasy little things that’re caught up in the crevices of the skin.
She sniffed her fingertips, changed hands, and smelled the fingers of her right hand. Exquisite! She was driven along by the music and knew she would come soon. The intricacies of his piano fingering were thrilling her—thrilling the insides of her ears. And she translated that thrilling ear pleasure to her fingers and the device between her legs. You don’t waste no time explaining it to nobody else if you do it for yourself. The CD got to the end of itself just at the time she got to that end place. She switched off the vibrator after she’d trembled and grunted. It slid to the floor beside the bed. She continued fingering herself gently—calming the furious pleasure. She umph, umphed like he would have done—like she knew he would have done. She’d learned herself by listening to his music. It was all there in the way he’d sung his lyrics decades ago. He showed her how to do it. It was what he taught—he was the professor. He gave her the ultimate permission. “Pleasure yourself, baby. Don’t wait for nobody else.” This was his best advice.