Best Lesbian Erotica 2010

HE - SHE ON THE TRAIN Maggie Veness

You see party girls everywhere. It’s my cousin Mel’s funeral tomorrow and I’m taking the overnight train. Mel was a party girl. Everyone expected she’d overdose. I find the expected boring. I prefer unanticipated things, disquieting and startling things. And strange people. These things excite me.

I think this journey is going to be exciting.

There is a man-woman across the aisle from me with a masculine, short, sharp haircut and cylindrical breasts. Bigger breasts than mine. He-she is wearing a loose gray singlet and baggy Levi’s cinched in at the waist with a yellow scarf. Two bunches of fine silver chain earrings hang down and brush his-her shoulders. I watch them sway their metronome beat as the train rocks us along its tracks.

I decide to give the man-woman a name: strong yet soft, yin yet yang. I settle on Adriana. I think Adriana already knows I’m fascinated. I hope he-she likes my pin-striped suit and vermillion patent leather stilettos.

Adriana disappears into the ladies’ toilet at the end of our carriage. I try to imagine how a man-woman might pee, decide they must compromise—a half squat perhaps, with feet astride the bowl, holding labia apart (if there are significant labia) so as not to impair flow from beneath an oversized clit. Could I ask? I wonder—if I did ask, would Adriana offer a demonstration? Punch my face?

Adriana chose the ladies’ toilet, which infers he-she was born female.

Captivated, I watch her snake back toward her seat. I try to relax by releasing my thighs from their pleasure squeeze. I realize Adriana can’t be expected to answer peeing questions from a perfect stranger. There should be small talk first: the weather; our destinations; our preferred peeing positions.

I break my Cadbury’s chocolate into squares, my outstretched arm making a sweet offering on silver foil across the isle. Adriana slips her hand under mine, and her fingers form a vise around my wrist. She brings her face toward my sweaty palm, and parting her lips, licks a square into her mouth with a lizard tongue. I want the world to freeze while I’m trapped in Adriana’s grasp, while her charcoal eyes are burning deep into my psyche. I know the freezing thing’s a long shot so I bargain with God, promise my prayers and devotion for the remainder of my natural life if Adriana would also find me fascinating. (Although I expect God will remember previous empty promises and decide to ignore me.)

Adriana releases my wrist and says nothing, only holds up a deck of playing cards and shrugs. I nod a yes. She slides in beside me and shuffles the deck. My lust surges at the first whiff of her fresh perspiration. She is raw. We play several hands. Adriana wins every one because I’m concentrating less on the cards and more on whether she’s going to want another square. We still haven’t spoken.

After a while Adriana packs the cards up and rests her head back. I take a chance—offer another square. She nods a yes and opens her mouth. I deliver. And for a few delicious seconds she sucks on my index finger before closing her eyes. Adriana knows she has lassoed me, that I’m sliding in my seat, but I think we both enjoyed my finger being sucked.

With her eyes closed I can gawk freely. My mind undresses her. She has skin like white quartz, so iridescent that blue trees of veins show through. I imagine grasping the tail of one metronome chain earring, using it to pull her earlobe forward so I can run my tongue along the crease behind her ear, taste her. I want to slowly exhale my warm breath over her neck until she wakes and begs to suck my index finger again.

She sleeps. I suck my finger.

Eventually daydreams fall into night-dreams. Hours later, I wake with the announcement for breakfast booming over the intercom. Adriana and her cards and bag are gone. I’m shattered. Then I feel it—the bunch of silver chains swaying like a metronome from my left earlobe. I will treasure it and wear it to the funeral. I will treasure it. I will.