Three fingers in the honeycomb

Spurred on by a wicked amount of gin, I'm posting a story from Bondage on a Budget. This piece was inspired by my best friend, who basically confessed the tale to me, word for word, at the counter of the Daily Grill on LA Cienega.

Antonia’s Beast

My best friend, Antonia, is a wisp of a girl, with pale blonde hair as soft as eiderdown and a translucent complexion reminiscent of a pre-Raphaelite model. Sometimes she wears layered antique slips snagged from second-hand stores on Melrose. Clad in faded rose satin with lace at the collar, she might have just stepped out of a 19th century print, a low flush to her cheeks, a secret half-smile on her lips. Other times, she wears those gauzy, ethereal dresses that are so in right now. Always, she looks like a half-frightened wood nymph, her cherry red hair loose and alluring around her cameo face.

I know that her fashion sense makes it sound as if she’s not shy, but bold and forthcoming about both her sexuality and sensuality. This is not the case. She has a beautiful body which she dresses in a seductive manner. But her composure is one that Miss Manners would approve of entirely. She is discreet and charming. She doesn’t have a bad word to say about anybody. She blushes whenever anyone stares at her for one beat too long.

I am often guilty of this mild infraction.

Antonia works at a café across the street from my office. She makes dreamy confections behind the counter, piling on whipped cream, chocolate shavings, dashes of cinnamon, and just a touch of amaretto. On my breaks, I come over at sit on one of the high-backed stools, waiting for her to take a moment and serve me, to come out from behind the chrome counter to sit at my side.

My best friend is a demure spirit, and yet within her heart lingers an impish creature who peeks out from time to time. When this fiend takes over, Antonia changes. She becomes bolder. She speaks in a louder voice. She drapes a diaphanous shawl across bare shoulders and teases me with the fringe.

She tells me stories.

“Did you ever hear about Marc?” she asks, innocent-sounding, but I know the undercurrent of her tone.

“The musician?” I ask, thinking to myself that the fiend is loose, the imp is out, the beast within Antonia’s breast is free for the afternoon.

She nods and sips from my mocha, leaving a sparkly lipstick kiss imprinted on the rim of my cup. The whipped cream makes a moustache on her upper lip and she flicks her tongue out to lick it clean. I find myself teetering on the bring of fainting when she does that, thinking of so many other dirty places she could place that darting, kittenish tongue.

Antonia brings me back. “Yes, the musician. Did I ever tell you about the time with the baby oil?”

The business man seated at Antonia’s right perks up. I can tell that he’s stopped reading his newspaper and is paying close attention to our conversation. At times like this, when Antonia’s beast roams free and she is ready to share, all eavesdroppers are in for a treat. The change may occur in a bookstore, at a theater before the film starts, in line at the grocery store. I watch the man lean slightly closer to Antonia, and I wait for her to notice, but she doesn’t.

“The baby oil?” I ask, widening my eyes, urging her to continue, to thrill me. “No, I don’t believe you ever told me about the baby oil.”

She takes another sip of my drink. Then she says, “Marcus used to play his guitar all the time. Whenever he wasn’t on stage, he pretended he was. It wasn’t about practicing, for him. It was about performing.”

I have clients in the music industry. I nod to show that I understand.

Antonia’s story goes like this: Marcus was sitting on their waterbed strumming his guitar. In his mind, he was performing for an audience of a thousand beautiful women. In reality, his one beautiful woman, Antonia, was taking a shower. The door was open, and she could hear the faint melody of his songs above the spray of the water. When she emerged, wrapped in a towel, she stood in the doorway and watched him play. Marcus was a particularly appealing performer. He had long black hair that hung straight and glossy down his back. He was thin and looked good in tight, leather pants. Colorful tattoos decorated his biceps and his chest. In short, he was perfect Hollywood masturbatory fodder.

When Antonia caught his attention, he looked up at her with a glazed, Rock God expression. She stood there, with the steam from the shower still dispersing behind her, red hair curling from the moisture, face flushed from the heat. She approached with a bottle of baby oil in one hand, and he put down the guitar, as if anticipating that something magic was going to happen. She gave him the bottle, and he took her over his lap and spread the clear oil all over her legs, from her ankles to her thighs. He worked her thoroughly, as if still on stage in his head, as if still in the part of the performer. He played music on her body, using his fingertips, using the full palms of his hands, rubbing, rubbing. Then he moved higher, massaging the cheeks of her ass, and in between them.

Stop the story: The man at the counter is having heart palpitations imagining lovely Antonia on her stomach, ass up, legs spread, her honeyed-nectar mingling with that pure, undiluted scent of baby oil. I swallow hard. The man swallows hard. Antonia continues, oblivious.

She tells it like she’s telling a bedtime story, in a low lilting voice that has a rhythmic pulse to it: They’ve never fucked like that.

She hesitates, makes herself continue. They’ve never had anal sex. He’s never tried, and she certainly wouldn’t have suggest it. But his fingers slowly start to probe her back door. His pointer and his middle finger push their way inside this tightest of openings. She sighs. She clings to his leg. She lets him continue. He makes circles with his fingertips as he delves further. Antonia’s breathing speeds up. She feels as if she’s going to pass out. She begs him to stop, but she doesn’t mean it.

Marcus is gentle, but persistent. He lubes her up and massages her until she is relaxed and ready. More than ready, dying for it. She is inexperienced and she wants suddenly to be experienced. She moves off his lap and waits while he undoes his faded jeans and pulls them down. He mounts her on their rolling, bucking waterbed, moving with the motions, gliding inside her. She buries her head in her arms, her face crimson with a combination of shame and lust. They don’t speak, but as he builds up to climax, he strokes her hair and murmurs something under his breath that sounds like one of the lyrics in his songs.

Freeze-frame. The man at Antonia’s side wants to know the lyric. I want to know the lyric. He’s leaned over so far that he’s practically in her lap. She still is unaware of his intrusion. I don’t point it out for fear that she’ll stop talking, for fear that Antonia’s beast will shift-change back into the wood nymph I am accustomed to.

She squirms on the chair as if the retelling of this memory has excited her in the same way that it’s excited her audience. I can’t help myself. I ask, “What did he sing?”

She looks at me, her eyes registering me for the first time during her story. She says, “I don’t remember,” but I can tell that she’s lying. She says, “The best part was the way he moved. He always moved as if he were in front of an audience. I don’t mean posing, but confident, strong. In control. He made love the same way, he fucked— Antonia never says “fuck”—“the same way.”

And when he took her like that, like an animal, like a Rock God should, the imaginary audience of thousands broke into thunderous applause.

XXX,
Alison

Tell me baby what's your story
Where you come from
And where you wanna go this time
—Red Hot Chili Peppers

P.S. Belated, this is, but I'll give a copy of Bondage on a Budget to one lucky commenter. Will announce the winner on Monday.