Chapter 110

“The only really good performance is the one where you make yourself vulnerable, while pushing beyond your familiar comfort zone.”
—Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band

WE DIDN’T SPEND all day every day in bed. We went running. We went out for breakfast. We went for walks on this beautiful campus. It was immaculately maintained. The grass was cut short enough to be a putting green. There wasn’t a speck of litter. The garbage cans were all emptied daily. The sidewalks were edged. The bushes were trimmed. All this because there were National Service conscripts taking care of the lawns and grounds. They were preparing for careers doing the same jobs they did when they were twelve to earn enough money to buy rollerblades or a skateboard. They weren’t even going to be offered the opportunity to volunteer for six more years so they could one day be considered for entrance into a management program. Because there were another 2.5 million just like them who would get inducted next year waiting to take those precious lawncare jobs.

V1 still liked the idea that everyone served his or her country for two years. But the implementation grated on V3’s nerves. And I kept thinking, ‘How am I ever going to save Cindy from that kind of life?’ Or save any of us. What were my hands going to look like after two years of service picking artichokes in California? Would I even be able to play the guitar again? Would I have any interest in using the government’s funds to go to a junior college somewhere and learn remedial English? Em was already questioning whether she would go back to school. She feared she was already forgetting anything she’d learned in high school and she was being moved someplace where she wouldn’t even have the educational resources she was using in California.

We went back to her room and made love more desperately than we had the first time we got together.

I joined Desi, Riko, and Riley Thursday as Em went back to driving a grocery truck from farm to table. For the first time, I really didn’t feel like playing my guitar. Riley suggested we needed a break from that routine until the next Renaissance Festival and we went back to playing our anime characters.

And that was perfect for the San Diego Comicon. It was far more comic oriented than the fairs. And a lot of the cosplayers were playing characters from popular movies.

Desi and I had a rocky start Thursday but Friday we were into our roles. ‘Red Dragon boost!’ my costume echoed as I poked Desi in the tits to the cheers of other cosplayers.

“Come to me, lover,” Desi said as she lay naked in our bed Friday night. “I can see you are frustrated and I want you to be sated in my body. Come here and make love to me ... No. Just fuck me. Come here and fuck my pussy and my ass and my tits and my mouth. Take me and pound out all your frustrations.” She spread her legs and used her fingers to open her vagina to me.

I slapped myself mentally. I could see from the foot of the bed she wasn’t ready for me to do any of that. Sweet Desi was just trying to lift my spirits.

I lay down between her legs and began kissing and licking her. I didn’t try to rush things or drive her over an edge. I just wanted her to know that no matter what else I was feeling, she deserved more from me than a desperate fucking. She deserved my attention. She was my lover, not my fuck doll.

Desi had a deep earthy scent as her juices started to gather. When I finally reached her nub, she was ready for anything. When she came, I shifted my focus to the trickle of fluid running from her pussy down her butt cheek and redeposited it with my tongue on her asshole. I played with it and licked it and drove my tongue into her until she pinched it as she came again.

“You’re driving me crazy, Jacob. Please, give me your cock.”

That was a different kind of request than that I fuck all her holes. I moved up her body, kissing my way to her nipples and squeezing her breasts. I kissed up her neck and chin until I reached her lips and then kissed her with all the depth and passion I had in my heart. And while we kissed, I felt her wet heat with the tip of my cock and pushed into her.

“I love you, Desiree,” I said as I moved in her. “I might get down when it seems like nothing is working out the way I thought it would but I love you to the depths of my soul. I want to always think of you first when we are making love. I know how much you love me and how willing you are to give yourself to me. I want you to know how much I love you, too. I want you to have more pleasure from our lovemaking than you think you can stand and then give you more. My sweet darling, I want to fill you—not just your vagina but your heart.”

Someone once said a woman’s G-spot is located in her ears. Desi writhed beneath me as I whispered in her ears and when she came this time, she dragged me with her and I emptied my heart into her.

“I know you’ve been stressing about it, but I have an idea for our performance. For you and Cindy,” she whispered to me as we cuddled and kissed in bed. “It’s something we already know you can do and we can all be a part of.”

“It’s been on my mind a lot. We didn’t get much planning and rehearsal done while we were on the road with her. We don’t even have a piece of music we’ve agreed on. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed.”

“Think back to last fall ... the first time you and Cindy worked together,” Desi said.

“The Masque of Beauty and the Beast?” I asked.

“Yes. We have all the costumes. You have lots of things that started out as improvisations and some that included established pieces that you played together.”

“Yes, but that had a whole cast and I think we’d have to pay some kind of royalty to do a performance,” I said. It was fun, though.

“Set the stage like this. You and Cindy enter playing different things but when you meet, you are suddenly in harmony. You play off each other, even dance a little while you play your instruments. Then a scary beast comes down from the mountain. It’s me in the beast costume with Brittany and Sophie operating the wings as I harry the two of you, finally capturing one of you and attempting to flee. But the other won’t let me go. You keep pursuing me with music until I finally release my prey and fly away. Then you have a sweet love ballad you perform with each other.”

“Wow! You need to write all that down!”

“No. You need to. All I really thought of was a plot. Now you need to come up with the action and the music. And the costumes are really fine for performance at the Ren Faire. It’s an act we could do once or twice a day for the live audience, but we could do a video of it in the morning. Maybe each morning so we’d have several angles and renditions to choose from and edit together. Think about it, Jacob. Maybe it’s not the right one for this time but think about all the costumes we have available. Sometimes we just need to use what we have and make it our own.”

I thought about it. Cuddled with my head pillowed on Desi’s generous bosom, I slept and dreamed a dream that was no nightmare at all.

Monday morning, after we’d packed the truck, Desi and I met Em for breakfast. Her little Prius had everything in it she owned, which wasn’t much more than what she moved to San Diego with.

“I have to report for work orientation in Salina at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday,” Emily said. “Three days to make the drive.”

“Drive carefully,” I said as I hugged her by the car.

“You, too,” she said. “You have farther to go to get to Kentucky than I have to get to Kansas.”

“Yes, but we have two drivers,” Desi said. “We’re going to switch out more frequently than you guys did driving to Denver. One will always keep the other alert. If we need to sleep, we’ll pull over and use the bed in back for a while. And we have five days. Mom and Dad left as soon as the truck was packed last night and will make it by Wednesday night to set up, but the show doesn’t open until Saturday morning on the first weekend.”

“Still, you are my boyfriend and girlfriend,” Em said. “Please be safe.”

And our 2,000-mile trip began.

It was a different experience to spend a week alone with Desi. Sure we were supposed to have two weeks of me being her sex slave when we first got together, but the truth was even on the night of her deflowering, three of our girlfriends were with us. Here, it was just us.

We made regular stops as we drove—about every hundred miles. I remember the days when V1 said he was good for thirty minutes or thirty miles, whichever came first. Still, we didn’t miss much in the way of rest areas as we drove across California and Arizona. In Phoenix, we turned north and hit I-40, which would be where we stayed until Oklahoma City. Our rotations and frequent stops left us a long way behind Emily. We waved toward Kansas when we crossed I-35 in Oklahoma City. We continued on I-44.

It was amazingly comfortable to drive the 70- and 75-mile-per-hour speed limits across the plains. For one thing, there wasn’t a line of cars going 85 and passing us. Once we locked our speed with cruise control, we pretty much maintained our position in traffic unless there was someone towing something heavy who couldn’t move that fast. I wonder what enforcement of the speed limit meant in terms of traffic fatalities. I could just imagine how that would have gone over in V1’s reality. Probably the same people who seemed to chant an unending chorus of ‘It’s my right,’ would be defying authorities on speed limits as well.