Trapper and Emmeline (17 page)

“Why not go without? Just leave the panties at home?” Bil y asked.

“A lot of the time I do that,” I said. He had been trying to tease me. “But my boyfriend Trapper lives in Manhattan, and that’s a train ride, and escalator rides, and city wind. And if it’s a good date, dancing, and drinking. I probably want panties for at least some of that. And I can get free drinks if I have something to show the bartenders.”

I grinned at their shocked expressions. They didn’t know I was going on the no-panties diet. In fact, I never got those panties back. I think Thor grabbed them al at some point in the night.

“So hold the dresses up against yourself,” said Petro. His voice sounded tight.

They were al staring at me, lost in imagination land.

All this time, all that acting, all those eyes on me.
My snatch was as wet as a miniature slip-n-slide. I was rocking my hips back and forth as I talked, rubbing my thighs and squeezing my vagina. I was building heat in my pussy with friction, like a Boy Scout builds a fire. They saw my hips moving, but probably didn’t know the reason.

“Hold it up?” I said. I tried to sound scornful, but to myself I just sounded shaky. “You can’t model clothes that way.

Stupid men. Does construction teach you nothing about women’s fashion?”

I unhooked the spaghetti straps of the first dress, and tossed the hanger at Bil y. It bounced off him without him noticing. He was staring too hard.

I pul ed the wife-beater shirt up my body. It climbed up my legs, past my wet panties, up my stomach to my ribs. Then I stopped and looked at them. “Oh, my gosh! Sorry! I usual y do this with my girlfriends, and I wasn’t thinking.”

“Ah. Ahm. Erm,” said Bil y.

“You real y don’t mind?” I prompted, as if he’d said something.

“No,” the four of them said in unison.

“Okay, phew! I’m such a ditz sometimes!”

I turned my back on them and threw the t-shirt off. I threw it behind a row of plants in the corner of the room, where I wouldn’t be able to get it again easily. Now I was committed. Since my back was turned, I didn’t have to cover up. I fiddled with the dress and watched them watch me in the TV’s reflection. They tracked my ass, for sure, but then they noticed that the TV made a great mirror, especial y when the screen shifted into a dark commercial. We could see each other in precise detail (only I pretended not to notice) and I saw the fourth guy, Stace, freeze the TV on the dark screen.

Stace almost never talks, but he’s my favorite of Dad’s friends. He’s clever, and quick with ideas.

I lifted the dress above my head and wiggled in. It was a production that they liked a lot, my ass shaking back and forth, my tits rocking. I went longer than I needed because the shaking reached my pussy too—my clenched thigh muscles gave me a muffled sort of pressure to fuck myself with. Nothing that would get me off by itself, but it reminded me why I liked going out dancing. If a girl can massage her own pussy just by moving her ass and flexing, it opens up worlds of opportunity. She starts meeting Latino men and becomes a salsa dancer.

I turned around and said, “Ta-da!”

They were frozen like mannequins, staring with open mouths. The dress was a light linen thing, short on the thighs. I’ve worn it into the city lots of times for you, Trapper. The style cal s for a bra to faintly show through, but due to the brand-new rules you just told me, I wasn’t wearing a bra, and I might never again. I’d have to get used to the type of looks these men pinned on my breasts. My nipples looked back at them, sticking out. It was a mutual adoration society.

“I see what you mean about the panties,” Bil y final y said.

I bent over to look, knowing I wouldn’t be able to see what he saw. I never could, women either have a mental blind spot about that, or they just can’t pick up the same detail when standing at the mirror. If you cared about such things (and I didn’t anymore), you had to assume that you were showing more than the mirror revealed. Lighting is everything.

“How do my panties look?”

He shrugged. “Wel you can see everything about them. Like, the left side is lower than the right.”

That
was
good detail. I was a little vexed with the dress, because it was apparently even more transparent then I thought. It had fooled me and I thought I was unfoolable.

“I wear this dress al the time. I didn’t know I was showing so much.”

“Where do you hang out?” Bil y asked. “And do you have friends like you?”

That made me laugh.

I reached under my dress and pul ed the panties off. They reached my knees and then fel to my feet. I kicked them onto the coffee table, where they, too, disappeared by the end of the footbal game.

“How about now?”

They were trying to play it cool, as if I wasn’t turning into a batshit-insane stripper before their very eyes. I guess they didn’t want to awaken me to the fact that I was showing much too much of myself, and behaving with complete impropriety in front of them.

“Now you’re just a brown shape inside the dress,” Bil y said. “Nothing stands out. You could be wearing colored panties. Skin tone.”

“You’re shaved down there?” Thor asked. The other men cringed.

“Yup! As you can tel , shaving is useful. So is the nude sunbathing, because of the al -over tan I get.” I spun around, feeling the skirt dance up my thighs. “The problem with short dresses is that they fly up whenever they want.”

“This is total y interesting,” Stace said suddenly. The new voice made us al stop. “So Emmeline, you actual y have more modesty in that dress when you go
without
underwear than when you wear it, because people can’t see with the same level of detail. I never actual y understood why women would go without underwear, unless it was to flash people. But it’s a style thing.”

“Oh, yes!” I said. “Women have problems with visible panties, panty
lines
, you name it. I have a dozen reasons to never wear panties.”

“You can add four more,” Petro said, final y cracking a joke.

“Okay, now for the other dress.”

I hoped it was clear by then that I was relaxed with them. We were trying on clothes together, talking about women’s fashion, and discussing my personal level of commitment to genital grooming.

I threw off the first dress without seeming to think about it. I didn’t cover up.

I prattled to them like they were my gay best friends. I told them my boyfriend loved my tiny dresses but hated when people stared at me. I told them I didn’t even notice people staring anymore. After years of having breasts, then having a grown-up body, then tightening it down in the gym, and then learning from friends how to apply make-up—the attention I receive as a woman has become part of the cost of moving through life. In the same way, spiders and bugs are the cost of tanning outside.

My dumb boyfriend couldn’t have it both ways. Show off and not get looked at?
Guys can be so stupid I just want to
stab them all in the eye!
—I threw that in to see if they would react. I could have been reading winning lottery numbers off an Ouija board, they weren’t hearing a thing I said.

Al this time, I was completely naked in front of them, my pussy blatantly wet because I could feel it sliding around when I moved. Wet and hot. My clit peeked out, like it does, tel ing al my secrets. My nipples were hard enough to be a safety hazard.

I was in the zone, riding the low-level pulses of warmth as they thrummed through my body. As long as I could keep chatting, fiddling with the next dress, and intermittently recharging my pussy by glancing directly into their hungry eyes, I could keep building my excitement.

I final y got myself dressed. This one was tight at the waist, short and flouncy at my ass, and incredibly loose on the chest. I haven’t had the nerve to wear this one into Manhattan yet. When I bend over it flies right to the top of my ass, and the front fal s completely away from my tits. (Now that I’ve told you about it, Trapper, I know you’l ask me to wear it. Give me time for this one.)

“This is my dancing dress,” I chirped into the shocked silence. I lifted my hands over my head and pretended to rock out. The dress hid nothing as my breasts heaved back and forth. “I know it’s a little short, but I don’t care. It’s supposed to be scandalous.”

I danced a little more, a big dumb smile on my face. They didn’t know where to look.

“It doesn’t come down al the way over your ass,” Bil y said.

I showed it to him. “Nope! It’s the style. It’s a Lolita thing from Japan. You guys are total y clueless about what girls are wearing nowadays.”

“But you wear underwear with it?”

“Sometimes. The underwear can contribute to the style. But if you’re being total y authentic, you leave them off.

Otherwise the tentacles won’t be able to rape you. Google it.”

I danced a little more. Any excuse to grind myself between my thighs. It was extra delicious because al the men were watching me do it, and had no clue.

“Anyway, guys, those are the choices. I’m going out to dinner and then dancing.”

Petro, Bil y, Thor, and Stace just looked at me owlishly. They didn’t even glance at each other to exchange looks. I was being studied more than a cure for male pattern baldness.

Stace was the one with inspiration. “Neither of those seems like a dinner dress.”

“Real y?” I asked, concerned.

“No. Maybe you should try a third dress. Do you have a little red dress?”

“Like if I wanted to be sexy?”

His mouth quirked. “Yes. Let’s say you wanted to turn someone on.”

“I have two or three of those.”

I yanked off my dancing dress and threw it behind me. I was naked in front of them again, and it felt just goddamn amazing. Why did it take me twenty years to discover my personal turn-on?

“Wil you guys wait for me?”

“S-sure,” said Petro. The others made wordless grunts.

I model-walked to the door.

I heard Stace say, “I’m getting another beer. Who else?”

He fol owed me out of the room, while the remaining three guys turned toward each other and whispered in hoarse voices about—wel , I could only guess. Al the hopeless things I had shown them, that they would never be able to fol ow up on.

Stace didn’t go into the kitchen. He fol owed me down the hal to my room. I wasn’t scared, of course. I’d known him since I was a kid, almost as long as I’d known Petro, but he didn’t have Petro’s problem with me growing into a mature woman.

You see, Stace was the one who drove me to Prom when my date bailed on me. Stace helped me up the steps to the hotel bal room. Stace held my IV drip out of view when I posed, alone, for my Prom photo. He made sure the rol ers on the drip moved smoothly on the carpet.

And then he stood in the back of the hal with the other chaperones and watched me enjoy my special night.

I always had good friends, but at that time of my life I also had a friend-repel ent force field. They had to fight themselves to get close to me. I could understand.

I was sick beyond belief. Dying. At that time, I was pretty much gone, and hopeless about it. I needed my painkil ers, but they made me stupid and much too serious for my untroubled classmates. The rol ing IV tower fol owed me everywhere, beeping when it felt lonely. On that happy night I was a reminder to al the other young, beautiful kids that people were suffering and dying in grotesque ways.

I was a corpse in the middle of a party.

Stace held back until he saw me crying alone on the dance floor. And then he took me in his arms. He slipped the IV

bag into his pocket, and lifted me off the floor—he had to, because I would not have been able to keep up with him otherwise. He made sure I was comfortable with our hips braced together, and then he whirled me around the room.

I felt weightless. I felt like a princess.

He couldn’t make conversation to save his life, but he was impossibly strong from his construction job, and a faultless dancer as long as the song fit with Latino rhythms. Which he made them al fit. He had a broad, debonair smile. He smiled like he couldn’t believe his luck that he was dancing with me.

After a short period where I could only cry, I enjoyed him right back.

For me it was one of my first sustained adult female feelings: I was drawing pleasure out of his attention and contact. I was surprised to find myself drawing it out of a wel that had no bottom—it was as if the battery that stored arousal, thril s, and pleasure was one that could never run out. I felt it even then—that these emotions were powered by the universe.

Limitless.
Fucking romance!
Who knew?

I thought of that Cinderel a song, “So this is love?” But of course I knew it wasn’t real y love. I tried to remain mature about it. He whirled me around while I got drunk on emotion, and fel a little in love with him.

It was on the third song that he paid me the greatest compliment he could have made. His smile dropped and his face flushed.

“Aw, Emmy, I’m sorry!”

While dancing me around like a giant, useless dol , I had accidental y slid up against his cock. It was against my hip, and since he couldn’t drop me, it
stayed
against my hip until I noticed it. Most amazing of al , he was hard.

I knew it was wrong even then—I was slightly under age, and he was my Dad’s long-time friend. But sometimes a girl can’t help when she brushes up against things, and then sticks against them! Especial y if she’s lucky enough to be terminal y il , and needs to be carried around. That’s a get out of jail free card.

I was so weak that I knew nothing would happen between us. It was just a natural physical reaction. Something to write off.

I tried to make a joke.

“So now I know you’re a necrophiliac.”

He frowned. “Not funny. You’re a beautiful girl.”

“I don’t see how.”

“You make me feel young,” he shrugged. I knew Stace, and I knew he was too inept at conversation to lie to me. As I’d grown from eight, to thirteen, to seventeen, I’d watched him steadily become more tongue-tied when I talked to him. He was incredibly nervous around al women, so of course he was a chick-magnet. “You make me feel
too
young, I guess.”