Archive-name: Samesex/bedtime2.txt Archive-author: Stephanie Donovan Archive-title: Special Friends A Writer's Choice Bedtime Story The note tucked into Jenni's Christmas card was only long enough to spring two surprises: that she was divorced, and that she was gay. The former she treated as news, the latter as a confession. It was a toss-up which was the bigger eye-opener. She and Tim had given every outward sign of being happy with their two-car two-child two-job life. But on the topic of divorce I was well enlightened, having gone through it myself. When it came to "gay sisters," though, my consciousness was far from raised. I only knew two kinds: hard-looking women explaining to Phil Donahue how men had screwed up their lives, and jaded porno queens playing out a parody of real sex at the whim of a male director. Jenni didn't fit either category. I'd shared her grass and bedroom during high school sleepovers, cruised the bars with her after graduation, enjoyed endless lunchtimes of gossip and griping until she married Tim and moved. Had she been gay even then? I didn't want to think so. But even if her preference was something new, it added an unwelcome dimension to our relationship. What did she expect from me? To be open to a pass? Or, God forbid, make one myself? It took me a few days to persuade myself that maybe all Jenni meant to say was that she could use an understanding ear. And I had to admit that I was curious -- not about the sex itself, but about how long she'd felt that way and how it changed things for her. Assuming girlhood best-friend crushes didn't count, I had no glimmer of how she felt or how it would affect the way she looked at the world -- or for that matter, looked at me. So I steeled myself against my anxieties and called her, inviting myself up for the next weekend. She sounded just the same, brash and cheery, and neither of us mentioned her note except to say that we'd have lots to talk about. And that hardly needed saying. # The night before I was to visit Jenni, I settled into bed with one of my favorite diddle books: a well-thumbed bestseller of women's fantasies and sexual experiences. I usually skipped the long chapter on lesbians, but that night I was looking for insight more than inspiration. I passed over stories from women who said their fathers had abused them or that they'd never liked men. Jenni's father was an angel, the one everyone else wanted to trade theirs in for. And too many times we'd sat together on my bed or in a little booth at the drugstore and entertained each other with the steamy details of our explorations with our dates -- and later our husbands -- the night before. But I did read about Greta, who had her first woman-woman experience at age 16 while staying the night at her friend's house, and her first orgasm from nothing more than having her breasts gently sucked. ...and about Karen, who liked to sit in a chair across the room from her lady lover, hike her skirt and put on a masturbation show with fingers and candle before they moved to the carpet together. ...and about Marti and Marni, the twins who discovered at a group-sex party that making love to their own mirror-image was more fulfilling than anything they had done separately. ...and about Cynthia, who as a forty-year old executive could afford to hire a twenty-year old to live in as a housekeeper and love mate. Her favorite game was to have her `pussy slave' cook her a sumptuous meal and then crawl under the table to eat her while she enjoyed it. Closing the book, I played with the idea of going down on another woman. I liked it when my lovers kissed their way down to my pussy and then stayed there. The scent of my overheated loveslit always excited me more. I had licked my own juices off a cock fresh from inside me. Thinking about it, I slipped my hand between my legs. I stroked my wet slit for a few moments, then licked my fingers experimentally. The taste did nothing for me, but the familiar touch of my fingers did. Burrowing deeper into my blankets, I closed my eyes and worked on my own fantasy. I was sleeping not in my bed but in the big four-poster I had seen in Tim and Jenni's house the last time I visited. As always, I slept naked, the soft coolness of the sheets a balm to my hot skin. I was oblivious to the arrival of a second person, who slipped under the blankets and cuddled up against me spoon-fashion. The warmth of the visitor's skin matched my own, and smooth hands and a soft touch on my hips and belly and breasts stimulated me without stirring me. My chest rose and fell with the rhythm of the warm breath on my neck, and I pressed myself back against the rounded fullness of my visitor's body. In time I squirmed onto my back, my thighs parting, and the wandering fingers of my visitor eagerly probed the dew-slicked opening to my pussy. I drank in my own scent and opened my legs wider to the probings. My seducer found my swelling clitoris with feather-light circular strokes. My breath came in short panting gasps as I raised my hips up to the teasing touch. The sheets now thrown back, I spread my legs wide, and my silent visitor moved to lay between them. Long hair brushed my face, soft rounded breasts pressed against my own, and I opened my eyes to see Jenni poised above me. "No, you can't," I moaned, but she smiled and grasped my wrists and held me there. A swelling hardness pierced me, and I raised my head to see a smooth, curved penis slide deep into my pussy. I closed my eyes again and squirmed underneath her assault, a sinuous motion that soon had her gasping as well. Our bellies became slick with perspiration and slid against each other with sucking sounds, and my nipples were needle-hard points grazing her flesh. As our fever rose, Jenni lowered herself on me and pressed her lips to mine. Our tongues locked in love-combat and we drove our bodies against each other. In the last moments before my body convulsed in an explosive orgasm, her hungry mouth was replaced by her fragrant slit, and she rode my tongue to her own peak of pleasure. Of course it was my own fingers between my legs, my silver vibrator that pierced me, but in the darkness imagination is a powerful magic. I always slept better after a good orgasm, and that night I slept wonderfully. If sex with another woman could come closer to that feeling then most sex with men had, maybe, just maybe it would be worth taking a chance -- In the morning I realized how I had shaped my fantasy -- making it necessary for her to deceive me, then to force me, taking the decision out of my hands, and to take me not as a woman but as a man. With the blinds up and the sunlight streaming through the windows, that seemed pretty fantastic indeed. # Jenni greeted me at her apartment door with her traditional exuberant hug, and I hadn't thought ahead enough to be ready for it. I went stiff in her embrace, and she laughed and released me. "Let's get something straight now," she said, grasping my hands in hers. "I told you because I thought you'd be the least likely of the girls to freak out. I'm not looking for partners. And the last thing I want to do is scare a good friend away. I'm not going to start anything, Steph. If you ever want to, you're going to have to say so in no uncertain terms. I won't take hints. Okay?" I told her, nicely, that there wasn't much chance of that. "But then, you didn't think you had any lesbian friends, either, did you," she said with a quick smile. "Just teasing," she added quickly. "I can still tease you, can't I?" Suddenly all my nervousness seemed silly. Jenni was still Jenni; an old gem with a new facet. I hugged her. "That's better," she said. # That night we found ourselves in a comfortably familiar position, her cross-legged at the foot of the bed, me on my elbows, heels in the air, at the head. "Now ask," she said. "You were biting back questions all through dinner." I threw a pillow at her. "I didn't realize I was so obvious." We talked our way through two magnums of white wine and most of a box of chocolates. She gave me a complicated explanation, part girlhood crushes that didn't go away, part undefined feelings brought into focus by fantasy -- a fantasy that she shared with her husband. "Once he heard that he couldn't wait to make it come true -- with him watching. So one night when a girlfriend from work was over and there'd been a lot of drinking she and I ended up in bed together with him telling us what to do." "So that was the first time?" She nodded. "I hated it. But later I figured out what I'd hated -- that we were drunk, that we were putting on a show. So we tried it again without Tom or the tequila. That was a lot better." "Better how?" "Having too many of these organs or not enough of these doesn't make sex something completely foreign. It was still hugging and touching and sharing, still meant to give pleasure -- only more so, because the pleasure didn't have to be over so quick." She leaned forward, a childishly self-satisfied smile on her face. "Steph, I had three Eights in the first hour." It was the old code we'd used to talk about how excited we'd gotten and, later, for how good the orgasm had been. I threw another pillow. "Bragger." She caught the pillow and flung it back. "Then I relaxed and started to enjoy myself." With a mock-growl, I launched myself at her, and we thrashed about on the bed in a rediscovery of the gleeful, playful wrestling matches we once enjoyed. This one carried us off the bed and onto the floor, bringing most of the bedding with us. Jenni had been the unchallenged champion of the pajama party. This time, though, I gained the advantage and she ended up on her back with me straddling her waist. I grabbed her wrists and pinned her arms against the floor, and she stopped struggling. The laughter forgotten, our eyes met in a frank exchange that brought back my fantasy of the night before, except this time I was on top. My nightgown was up around my hips and I felt the warmth of her body against my bare thighs. The rapid rate of my breathing was only partly due to our exertions. We stayed like that for a long frozen moment. Then I bent down and kissed her, on the lips, tenderly. "Are you sure?" she asked softly when the kiss ended. "I'm sure," I said, and the next kiss was wet and hungry. In the middle of it, I released her wrists and her arms went around me. She stroked my hips, the curve of my buttocks, with a touch that seemed to bring my skin alive. I sat up and together we pulled my nightgown over my head. I cradled my own breasts in my crossed arms for a moment, amazed at their sensitivity. Her fingertips glided over my skin and teased the fine hair at the apex of my thighs. Jenni began to undo the top buttons of her nightshirt and I took over, pulling it open to reveal her erect nipples, round and crinkled. I wet my fingers between my thighs and used the moisture to draw slick circles around her aureolae. She grasped my hand and brought it to her mouth, licking the flavor from my fingers. Still straddling her waist, I reached behind me and pulled up her nightshirt to explore between her legs. She parted her knees to allow me access to the slick folds and fragrant damps of her special place. It was excitingly different from my own. Closing her eyes, she began to rock gently in rhythm with my attentions. "I'm so selfish," she murmered, and slid her hands up my thighs to my pussy. It was an electric circle of erotic feeling, from the tips of my fingers to the tip of her clitoris to the tip of her thumb to the tip of my clitoris, and we moved together in unhurried but ever-building passion. Whether less inhibited or more experienced, Jenni got ahead of me and relinquished my body for her own. She took each of her nipples between a thumb and forefinger, alternately rolling and squeezing them, teasing herself. I watched her, captivated by her pleasure and my part in it. So that's what I look like, I thought, watching her face contort with the rising curve of her emotion. I plunged a finger into her dark canal and felt its shivery contractions, and a moment later she rose up under me, twisted from side to side, and let out her breath with a little cry. We kissed lovingly, then disengaged long enough for her to strip off her nightshirt. "Your turn," she said, leading me to the bed. I stretched out on my back and pulled my knees up to my chest, and she knelt between my thighs. She kissed and nibbled her way to my pussy and parted the lips with her tongue, slowly, deliberately, tantalizingly. "Hold yourself open for me," she whispered, and I complied. I felt her hair brush my fingers as her tongue danced over the aroused flesh of my inner lips. She knew when to go slow and when to hasten me along, when to use her tongue as a stroking feather and when to assault me with her hungry mouth. She drew my clitoris between her lips and sucked it gently, and the whole room seemed centered on that spot between my legs. "You taste so sweet," she said, pausing to look up at me and smile. I knew I didn't need much help to finish, and touched her cheek. "I want to hold you. Please. Now." Jenni climbed up onto the bed and pressed her smooth rounded body full length against mine, our breasts rubbing, lips and tongues eager. I went over the top sliding my mound against her leg, and hugged her tight as the sensations ebbed. "I'm feeling guilty," she said at my ear, tracing a circle on my breast with a fingertip. "Are you all right?" I snuggled closer. "You promised me an Eight. That was only a Five. But we can practice some more, can't we?" For her answer, she shifted position and brought her mouth to my nipple. "Not right away," I protested half-heartedly. "I need a little time to come down--" "Whoever told you that?" she asked with a knowing smile, and returned to her ministrations. Her tongue coaxed my nipples back into erection, and the fire that had been dying began to rage anew. Pleased but surprised, I lay back, stretched my arms over my head, closed my eyes, and invited it to consume me. Jenni nibbled her way down my belly and I parted my thighs for her. Her knowing tongue traced the outlines of my lips, darted deep between them, but only brushed tantalizingly the engorged focus of the sensations she brought me. I drove my hips up at her but she would not be rushed, touching and teasing and pushing me higher and higher. Then she swung her leg across to straddle my body and offer herself to me. I threw my arms around her and buried my mouth in her fragrant love-sweetened wetness. At that moment, she took my clit between her lips and her tongue swirled over it, and release came, sudden, magical, explosive, delicious. "You were right," I told her as we cuddled sleepily afterward. "It's different, but a good different." "One of the nicest things friends can do for each other," she replied, and I had to agree. ================================================================== A version of this story was published by VARIATIONS in May, 1985 as WHAT ARE GOOD FRIENDS FOR? by Niki Carter. This is the original unedited text, as the author meant it to be read. ==================================================================