Chapter 3

It so happened that we didn't fuck for about three days after that. On the average, we fucked about every eight hours, so this was quite a long time. And it was just as well, in a way:

"My asshole is sore."

"I - I'm not surprised," I said. "I wish it wasn't - but I liked the way it got sore." I thought about my next words. "And so did you."

Her eyes blazed at me. I saw the anger beginning in her face - and then it collapsed. "I know - but that's what the gay boys do, isn't it? Do you wish I was a boy?"

I started to laugh - and then realized she was only half-joking.

"June, I like licking your cunt," I said quietly. "And so do you. Does that mean you wish I was a woman - since cuntlicking is what lesbians do?"

Her eyes half-closed, and she shivered. "I know!" She seemed amazed. "It makes me itchy when you say that - but you know I don't like lesbians."

I licked my lips and stepped toward her. She put her small hand against my chest, keeping me away.

I didn't press it. Even if I'd been the kind of moronic asshole who tries to force himself on someone else, there was something else to consider: June had been an auxiliary cop in Singapore, with the attendant martial arts training. We'd sparred playfully a few times. She was just as fast as I and a helluvalot more deceptive in her movements. I knew I could absorb enormous damage, and use my superior strength to prevail, but I had no desire to do so - and I didn't know if there were subconscious resentments in this hard-bodied young woman that could make a playful blow slip and do serious damage. This was just another equality that made her attractive to me: June could not be forced to do anything. Whatever she did, it was by choice.

"But!" She laughed and dropped her hand. She knew my respect for her prowess - and, more importantly, simply for her. "But!"

I nodded ruefully. "I know."

Indeed I did. She was working with the Jaycees (yes, they exist and even flourish in the Big Apple) on the Special Olympics, a sports competition for "special" children. "Special" meant what we unenlightened but no-less-loving folk used to call "retarded," for the most part, and frequently, physically disabled. In addition to her routine 60-hour-plus-4 a.m.-Telex weeks, June donated her enormous energies and ingenuity to things like the Special Olympics. The timing of the sore asshole, in a way, couldn't have been better. The program was going to greatly limit the time we had together for the next week - and it was one of the many reasons I was becoming more and more taken with her.

Which was also one of the things that really bothered Annie.

Who?

Yes, ahem, well...

At the time I met June, I had already known - in every sense - Annie for more than two years. I, like she, in those pre-AIDS days, had other lovers. Annie knew about June, and June knew about Annie. Annie was a lot more at ease with the idea of June than vice-versa. When I said June and I fucked about every eight hours on the average, I meant "average." Annie and I spent two nights a week together, usually. Annie, like June, was a couple of years younger than me. We'd met when I was working a part-time job selling cheeses, during a publishing drought. What first got my attention was, oddly enough, her mind. I had a game I sometimes played with customers. Since the various cheeses we sold had different per-pound prices, a customer's total order called for some arithmetic. After all, a couple of ounces of old-fashioned cheddar at $9 per pound and a quarter pound of brie at $9.65 a pound and two ounces of Jarlsberg at $11.10 a pound, etc., gets one into the realm of juggling numbers. I made a game of it.

My game was to run it up in my head. (Not that tough - dividing by 16 and keeping a running total - once you practice it; try it and see.) That scared customers who weren't accustomed to using those mental muscles. They only trusted calculators and adding-machine tapes. So I had this deal: If they wanted, I would run it up on the adding machine. If I was wrong, they got the order free - I would pay for it out of my own pocket. If I was right, they'd pay a 50 percent premium... to me.

Few took me up on it. Those that did, lost - always.

Annie came in on a crowded Sunday and ordered two ounces of this and three ounces of that and so forth. Ended up with six different cheeses in the pound. When I turned to tell her the price, she said, "Wait a minute - eight seventy... three? Yes. Yes. Eight seventy-three, if you round up for a half-cent."

That's what got my attention. Then her face. I asked her if she was half-Chinese and half-Irish. She had reddish-brown hair and a fine-boned face. Her cheekbones were high, and her eyes were slanted. She explained that she was part Magyar - the result of Mongolians overrunning eastern Europe Way Back When. Her face was fascinating, and her mind was terrific.

Her body was outrageous.

Imagine a woman who's just over five-foot-one and weighs about 90 pounds. Sounds scrawny, right? No way. She was very small-boned. Annie had absolutely beautiful, perfectly formed, firm and sumptuous breasts. Her waist was slender and her hips were narrow. She had a delectable little ass and the tastiest cunt...

She was also completely uninhibited. Annie would do anything that felt good, and anything she didn't like, she wouldn't do. She could suck cock expertly, loved to be licked, enjoyed cock in her cunt from any angle and enjoyed ass-fucking. She was multiorgasmic in the extreme and very vocal about it. She liked men, she liked women, she liked threesomes, she had even enjoyed orgies.

When I was 15 and jerking off, I would construct the perfect sexual partner in my imagination. That image was Annie. I had to wait till I was in my late twenties to meet her and discover that reality could exceed imagination. Not only was she lovely, incredibly sexy and sweet, she was smart and perceptive.

Of course, if this was fiction, Annie and June would have drooled over each other at first sight, and we all would have fucked off together into the sunset. The fact was, though, that June hated the idea of doing anything with another woman, and Annie didn't find June attractive. (Annie liked - and likes - women with larger breasts and voluptuous hips and has a special weakness for long nipples.) In a way, that was no problem for me, since - oddly enough - being in bed with more than one woman at once has never been one of my major fantasies.

In another way, it was a good thing. Considering how passionate and sexual both women were, a man caught between them in bed would have gone up in a puff of smoke. No cremation necessary; by dawn, there'd have been nothing left of the poor bastard but ashes.

I should have been in pig heaven. Here were two women whom I found tremendously attractive, and they felt the same way about me. For one reason or another, neither was willing to assert a claim of exclusivity on me. One was willing to get weird at the drop of a dildo, while the other simply Liked Doing Things. And one of them was going to be busy - and had a sore ass! - for a few days while the other was more than eager to make up a little lost time.