First Time for Everything Read online

  “Make a date?” she supplies, adjusting the cuff of her coat.

  I nod—I think.

  Simone hands me a tissue and indicates I should use it to blot my lipstick.

  “Good luck with what had better be your last interview,” she says. “I’ll give you a call tonight.”

  I hoist my handbag onto my shoulder and climb down from the stool. “I’m looking forward to it,” I manage to reply.

  “Ditto,” she says, making sure to touch my fingers as the card changes hands.

  SIMONE SHIFTS on the couch, folding her feet beneath her. I am close enough to inhale the fragrance she is wearing but not savvy enough to identify it. “Favorite TV show?” she asks.

  “I Love Lucy,” I answer, twirling my bendy straw, watching as the grape juice sloshes against the glass. “Favorite candy?”

  “Corn. Favorite superhero?”

  “Pippi Longstocking, if that counts. Um… favorite horror movie?”

  “Jesus Camp.”

  “That’s a docu—”

  “Favorite movie actress?”

  “Oh, um, Joan Crawford.”

  “I need sex for a clear complexion, but I’d rather do it for love,” Simone shares, gliding her thumb along the silver chain of her necklace. “Hey, can I see your room?”

  The change in subjects is sharp and sudden, like an orgasm. I groan inwardly and push my thighs together as discreetly as possible, regretting my choice of thoughts. Dropping my eyes, I direct my attention to the denim-colored cushion of the sofa. Sex? My room?

  My parents are out (well, not like that) and even though I’m out to them, they trust me to be respectful. Somehow, I don’t think having sex in their house with an older-than-me-by-two-years woman on our very first date qualifies as respectful. Or even wise. Oh boy. Any minute now, my pores will instigate a mutiny and my face will be dappled with puffy pink pimples.

  “Hey, I didn’t say it, Joan did,” Simone clarifies, doing little to relieve my confusion. She chuckles, squeezing my knee. “That was a quote,” she elaborates. “I need sex for a clear complexion? Joan Crawford said that. It’s true too. It has to do with endorphins and circulation and the release of toxins and all that.” She removes the bottle from my hand and returns it to the coaster on the coffee table, next to hers. “Let’s see that room,” she requests, unfolding her body from the sofa.

  With an unsteady hand on her arm and an even less steady grip on myself, I escort Simone down the hallway, my pulse outpacing my footsteps.

  As we near our destination, my anxiety kicks into high gear, and I seek refuge in the bathroom.

  “Gina, you all right?” Simone calls from the other side of the door.

  My heart punches my ribcage, whap whap whap, like a fist connecting with a boxing mitt. “Yes,” I croak, clutching the counter. I watch as the color disappears from my knuckles. “I just need a little bathroom break, that’s all.”

  “You know,” Simone remarks, and I can’t tell if she’s amused or annoyed, “when I asked if I could see your room, I meant see as in take a look at, get a load of. You know, the usual.”

  “Oh. Those definitions are doable.” So saying, I resume breathing, curl my fingers around the doorknob, and tug. I wonder how I’m going to save face, considering my face value has just depreciated considerably.

  Simone’s, on the other hand, has skyrocketed—there’s a million-dollar smile on her face when I emerge. “What is it about bathrooms that makes them everybody’s favorite sanctuary?” she ponders, following me into the bedroom. “You’ve got to teach me your stall tactics.”

  She laughs and I laugh back, but as soon as we enter my room, I’m back in panic mode. The décor in my bedroom is a tad… juvenile. The Tinker Bell pillowcase turns her off, I’m sure of it, as does the trove of toys congesting my shelves. I can’t decide which is more humiliating: the stable of My Little Ponies or the village of trolls.

  Simone scans the shelves, her eyes twinkling. She looks impressed—and perhaps a little envious. I start to smile, but then I remember something, and it shrivels before it blooms. “I have a confession to make,” I state and slump onto the bed. Simone joins me, close but at a distance. “You know all those interviews I had?”

  Simone’s lips work their way into a smirk. “What interviews?” she challenges. “You only had one, they loved you, they said yes, you said yes, the end. You just made up all those other ones because you thought you needed an excuse to see me again.” She toys with the pendant dangling from her necklace. “You need a serious attitude adjustment,” Simone continues, moving her hand from her neck to my face. “We’ve got to build up your confidence, girl.” She pinches my chin between her fingers and tilts my head back so I am forced to make eye contact. “You didn’t need an excuse to see me again. If you wanted to see me, you should have come see me. Just walk up and say Hey, what’s up, cutie? How you doing? That’s all you had to do.”

  “I know.” I simper, doing an unimpressive impression of a teddy bear. “Are you mad?”

  “You say that like you’re hoping I am,” she ribs.

  “I’m not,” I insist. “I mean I’m not hoping you are. I… I’m hoping you aren’t.”

  Simone moves her hand from my chin to my cheek, her breath kissing my face. Intuitively, my eyelids droop, and my lips scrunch into a pucker.

  My mouth merges with hers.

  Each painted oval caresses the other, fusing pink with plum. The kiss sears my lips, smears her lipstick.

  The pace quickens gradually, almost inconspicuously.

  Tongues wriggle between slits, entreating entry.

  I taste teeth and tongue, the fruity flavor of her breath, like Pixy Stix and pink lemonade.

  And I wonder if I can get a sugar high just from kissing her.

  SPEEEEED IT up a little!

  My thoughts exactly, I muse, as the conveyor belt whips across the television screen, sending nude nuggets of chocolate zipping past a panicky redhead and her hapless sidekick.

  As much as I love Lucy, I love Simone a whole lot more. At my request, we’ve been taking things slow. Stupendously slow. About ten times slower than the time it takes for a mud mask facial mistreatment to dry. And I’m not quite sure how to… accelerate things.

  I’ve considered my options, among them such erotic euphemisms as: This relationship tastes like apple juice.

  To which Simone replies: I know what you mean. It’s too mild and wholesome. Personally, I prefer apple cider.

  Which progresses to me purring: Spicy and piping hot. Now you’re talking.

  Not that I would ever attempt something so advanced as feline impersonation. The results would, no doubt, be catastrophic. I wish there were a textbook or, better yet, a course for this sort of situation—Introduction to Sapphic Seduction or something equally informative. I also wish I were the type of person who prefers to learn by doing and therefore wouldn’t need instructions or an instructor.

  “Are you meditating or something?” Simone asks, interrupting my inner dialogue. “You look so deep in concentration, I feel like if I offered you a penny for your thoughts, I’d be shortchanging you. What’s up?” She sounds concerned, if not a little impish.

  I’ve wanted to bring up the subject of intimacy ever since I came home from college, which, since I live at home, is every night since September 3. And I can, I know I can talk about sex with Simone. With Simone. I can do it. Because if I can’t do it, that means I’m not ready to… Do It. Now how to go about doing it…?

  I shift my leg so my knee is touching hers, enjoying the rough rub of her stockings against my own. Earlier, we watched the episode where Ricky, Fred, and Ethel are waiting for Lucy, who is nine months enceinte, to deliver the news that she’s ready to deliver. They decide to rehearse their plan of action, which opens with Ricky emerging from the bedroom and proclaiming, “The time has come.”

  Simone regards me as though I’m a few color palettes short of an eye shadow kit.

  “My time
of… need,” I elaborate. “You told me I could always turn to you in my time of need, so I am, because I… need you. I said I wanted to take things slow, which we have been and I appreciate that, but… now I’d like the conveyor belt to move a little faster.”

  Simone rolls her eyes in time with the credits. Any minute now, I will either cry or die from embarrassment, and I wonder if, when my mascara starts to run, it wouldn’t mind some company. “I just, um, I just thought we could, I don’t know, take the next step and—”

  Simone lifts her lips to my cheek and presses gently. “I just want to be with you,” she says, and her touch and her tone cause my heart to turn to liquid foundation. “If you keep climbing steps, eventually you get to the top. And when you’re on top, there’s nowhere else to go but down. I know that sounds really pessimistic, but I’d rather think of it as one more way for us to be together. And I want us to be together, in every way imaginable.”

  She seals the space between us. My body cheers in response, a hot shot of confetti blasting through my entire being.

  “Want to see my room?” I suggest, and somehow, I’m confident that my inner sex kitten has at last clawed her way past the big fat scaredy-cat.

  Simone shuts off the television, stands, and guides my hands into hers, the beads of her bracelet indenting my wrist as she helps me to my feet.

  We follow the familiar route to my room. It’s a short haul, but I’m in it for the long haul, as evidenced by my moving at the speed of fright. This time, I’m not worried about disrespecting my parents—I talked, they listened, we switched, no one bitched. So this time, I’m nervous because I’m new at this.

  “I’m new at this too,” Simone shares, peering at me through her peek-a-boo bangs. “I know I told you not to, but I’ve popped a zit or two in my day. Not so a cherry or two.” She smiles, wry but shy, and holds my gaze just as lovingly as she holds my hands. “Let’s just do what we’ve been doing: let’s take things slow.”

  “We have had plenty of practice,” I concede, and we proceed into my room, where the trolls and ponies greet me with grins—understated but everlasting, not to mention encouraging. Magically, the Tinker Bell pillowcase is in the hamper, where it won’t hamper the mood. The teal one has much more sex appeal.

  So does she, I acknowledge, as I work up the nerve to make the first move, offering Simone my arm as though I’m about to lead her out onto the dance floor. I thought I was terrified, but the more I think about it, the less terrifying everything seems. I can’t stop smiling, and it’s not that forced smile petrified people make for fake’s sake. This is promising, although when Simone leans in for a lip-lock, I’m relieved to learn my lips aren’t locked in that one position.

  We kiss and kiss, my tongue sweeping deep into her mouth to trace her teeth and tickle her palate, and I wonder how and why we’re ever going to stop kissing. At least one of us would have to take a breather, and it isn’t going to be me.

  “Is it okay if I take something off?”

  It’s going to be Simone, who, at present, is half covering me and half hovering over me. I whisk her bangs away from her eyes, streaking a sleek leak of perspiration across her forehead.

  “It’s gay-okay,” I tease, and feel the vibrant vibrations of her laugh. I guide my hand from the side of her blouse to the front and tuck three fingers between two buttons.

  This gives Simone reason to stay on top, but no reason for her top to stay on. Or her brassiere, it becomes clear. Thinking ahead, I put my future degree to good use and study her breasts, which are the color of chocolate mousse and profoundly round, with leisure.

  “If you’re going to look, Gina, you have to touch,” Simone stipulates. She collects my hands and directs them to her breasts, neglecting to mention that I may get more pleasure out of this than she does. Oddly, this does not make me feel inadequate.

  Meanwhile, Simone’s own hands vanish beneath her skirt, and she works the waistbands of her tights and panties down and out of hiding. I look on as she liberates her legs and then lets her skirt off the hook as well.

  I gape at her, my mouth frozen open like a CPR dummy.

  “I’ve seen your naked face,” Simone reminds me, and I return, reluctantly, to reality. “Can I say the same for the rest of you?”

  “Sure,” I squeak, feeling silly for feeling self-conscious.

  I remove my clothes carefully, hoping my shade of blush matches the one I’m wearing, especially when it becomes the only thing I’m wearing. “Um, how do I look?”

  Simone’s eyes stretch wide, an admirable yet accidental impersonation of Lucy Ricardo. “I’d put you somewhere between splendid and superb,” she says, looking thoughtful—and lustful.

  “Why don’t you just put me between your legs?”

  “You said it,” Simone says, and it’s no sooner said than done, her lower limbs opening into a butterfly position and enveloping my pretzel pose.

  It’s a good feeling—not just this, but that thing I just did, that thing where I was impetuous and uninhibited and, literally, thoughtless. It’s so… emancipating. I should make a conscious effort to do it more often.

  And that’s when, as I loll onto my back and Simone falls onto my front, I make up my mind to kiss my insecurities good-bye. Kissing Simone leaves a much better taste in my mouth.

  I gaze at the tasty girl on top of me. Normally, our eye contact is make-or-break: she makes it, I break it. Not this time.

  Simone gasps. “You’re not looking away!”

  “An eye for an eye,” I state simply. “Except without the, you know, the revenge ritual.”

  “You are so cute, I could just eat you out.”

  My eyebrows plow into my forehead. “Out?”

  Simone squirms a bit, her cheeks princess-pink and her bottom lip lodged between her teeth. I can’t tell whether it’s with anticipation or lamentation. “In?” she tries again.

  “Up,” I supply, feeling a tad… disillusioned.

  “Out,” she insists. “I said out. It’s my word, and I’m a woman of my word, so I will do as I say. Besides, when you’re on top, there’s nowhere else to go but down.”

  She winks.

  I blink and blush, which shades into a flush, and then my head tilts back like a Pez dispenser and my legs open like a parachute.

  Simone presses her mouth against my chest, then the rest of my abdomen, imprinting me with her lesbian lipstick.

  When her kisses have outlasted her long-lasting pucker paint, Simone parts her lips, and then she parts mine.

  Her… technique, if you will, though glacial, is also graceful, not unlike the way she applies mascara, stroking each and every lash efficiently and sufficiently.

  The instant Simone’s lips hug my clit and tug at it, my heart hurls itself at my chest, and I experience pleasure beyond my wildest screams.

  Er, uh, dreams. I’m not scream-queen screaming, although my body is. It sizzles with so much sensation, I can taste it sputtering on my tongue: the tang of tangerine with the bang of Pop Rocks.

  I release and catch my breath, regarding Simone as though she’s my gay pride and joy.

  Simone smirks, queerly in all her glory. “Looks like this gold-star lesbian earned her first gold star.”

  SIMONE’S NAME graces the margins of my textbooks, the S written in curly cursive script, the i dotted with the all-important heart. When my adoration evolves into yearning, as it is fond of doing, Simone becomes Simoan.

  There’s no chance of my becoming a LUG, I can promise you that. Sorry, bestie, but no self-respecting woman would want to be or be with an interim dyke.

  Another upside to our relationship: I’ve pretty much stopped putting myself down. Except when I’m, you know… intimate with her.

  By the way, Joan and Simone were right: making love does make for a clear complexion.

  And being in love makes the lovemaking so much more worthwhile.

  ALLISON WONDERLAND is one L of a girl. Her lesbian literature appears in Best Lesbian R
omance 2013 and 2014, Iris: A Magazine of New Writing for Young Adults, Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry, and Visible: A Femmethology. Besides being a Sapphic storyteller, Allison is a reader of stories Sapphics tell, and enjoys everything from pulp fiction to teen fiction to historical fiction.

  JUST RIGHT

  JOHN GOODE

  MY FRIENDS call me Goldilocks.

  I know it sounds insulting, and normally I’d be all insulted, but there are two things that stop me from being butthurt about it. One, I hang with a pretty witty band of people, and if you don’t bring your A game, they will tear you apart. It isn’t a mean thing, it’s a smart thing. We are warriors and our weapon—sarcasm. So when we say horrible things to each other, and we do, they’re all meant in jest and in no way serious, so me taking offense would just be lame.

  And two, the name fits me so well I could scream.

  My real name is Jordan Miller, and I am a picky bitch. I say that now so later in the story, when I explain to you the things going through my head, you don’t silently hate me because I am shallow or conceited, because it is more than that. My problem with guys may start with the way they look, but it ends with something much, much deeper. I’ve known I was gay since forever. My mom has stories of me in preschool holding hands with other boys and telling people proudly they were my boyfriend. I envy that little kid, because I suppose he didn’t care whose grimy hand he was holding. He just saw five fingers and went with it. That was how I used to roll.

  As I grew up and realized not everyone was gay, I found myself worried about flirting with a straight guy by accident. Growing up in Long Beach, which is, like, listed as one of the friendliest gay towns in America—seriously, it is, look it up—I was less concerned with getting beaten up and more worried that it would just come across as tacky or desperate. I mean, who hasn’t heard of the poor, pathetic gay kid with a crush on his straight friend who one night confesses his love? I mean, ugh, who does that?