COLUMBIA
1980-1983
GROUP HOME
(Sarah)
In Columbia, in Sidney Park, in its northwest corner, I sprawled on a flat rock, looking out over the spiral fountain and the big waterfall. It was summer and extremely hot. Up by the fountain and waterfall, though, it was cooler. A beautiful woman with long, cornrowed hair crouched on a bench some distance away. She had a slight gap between her front teeth. I waited for her to speak.
At last, she said something. I joked back. Smiling, she murmured that her name was Sarah. She had a very faint Southern accent.
Later, when we ran into each other near the small sky-blue pond, we chatted for a while. She looked elegant in her green blouse and tight jeans.
The next day, Sarah met me under the white oaks on a slope above the pond in the park. She produced a red blanket and spread it out, smiling. In the distance, to the east, soared the skyscrapers of downtown Columbia. We talked for a time, lounging on the blanket. Finally, I leant over and kissed her. After I told her I had been wanting to do that, she smiled again.
In my house in Mill Hill, a neighborhood in West Columbia, later that day, I called Sarah. When she answered, I asked her for a date. But she kept asking me what I had said. In the end, she sighed and mumbled that maybe later we could, since she was always busy with her children. Then she muttered that she guessed it was okay.
I asked Sarah if she would put in a good word for me at Michonne Home, the group home for people with developmental disabilities in Columbia, at which she worked. She shrugged, then nodded and mumbled that she would.
As Sarah sauntered down a hall at Michonne Home, a couple of large bounces occurred beneath her pink sweater, moving independently of her body, recoiling off in a different direction.
Sarah kissed me. Her red lips parted from mine. She drifted to the window, wrapped in a white silk robe. When she ran her fingers over the window’s foggy glass, a grey swath appeared against the whiteness of the window. Her breath made it white again. She brought her fingers to my cheek, beads of water clinging to her fingers. Her eyes stared blankly at me. Outside her second-floor apartment, near Five Points, it was dark and cool. I grasped her robe and pulled her toward me, kissing her one, two, three times.
In my house, I pulled Sarah over to me and held her hand. Suddenly, she muttered that she was not sure she wanted to be in a relationship with anyone. She said that she was trying to figure out her life and yanked her hand away. Ducking her head, she murmured that all she had ever cared about before was being pretty. It was all she worked at.
Sarah called me late at night. She said that we could fuck if I wanted. She mumbled that she liked to fuck. That was all, she added. Then she hung up abruptly.
As she reclined in the chair in my backroom, my paints, lemon and rose and azure, spilled in slow motion over her brown torso: upright breasts, arched stomach, slitted navel, rounded belly.
The phone woke me about 3 AM. We were in my bedroom. I rolled over Veronica to get to it, and she stirred in her sleep. It was Anne. Before I was able to hang up, she began laughing drunkenly and asking me questions.
Smiling, she told me that I used my smiles well.
When I rose to leave the office at Michonne Home, Sarah glowered and nodded. She looked down, then to the side. She was shaking. A client at Michonne Home had just punched her. Sarah huddled in her chair, holding an icepack to her left cheek.
Under the faded blue of her jeans ran the faint lines of her panties.
Sarah insisted that she still would not let me paint her portrait.
Sighing, she muttered that nothing was worse than waiting for her ADC check.
I found Sarah in the living room of Michonne home. She had come to pick me up. It was her day off. Abruptly, she reached down and grabbed my cock. Automatically, I reached up and seized her up-tilted breasts.
At the Moosehead Saloon in Five Points, laughing, Sarah snatched one of my cigars, lit it and puffed on it, her almond eyes narrowed, her full lower lip slack. Up on the stand, a cover band played “Purple Rain”.
Murphy, one of her sons, hid behind her skirt when I arrived to pick her up in her small apartment. I smiled at him.
We strolled along the Riverwalk on the Congaree River on a windy fall day. Red maple leaves had caught in the boulders. Near the Gervais Street bridge, a young man studied Sarah’s fine legs. She was wearing white shorts. After he passed, I remarked on his stare. Startled, she glanced around, searching for him.
When I completed administering medications to my clients, I joined Sarah in the office at Michonne Home. I picked up her Wayfarer sunglasses and ran my fingers over them slowly. She had just removed them, and they were still warm.
I showed her a folder of erotic sketches and writings that I had been working on. She asked me what I was going to call it.
Sarah always kissed me like she was making an offering.
Sarah and I walked through the Riverbanks Zoo, holding hands. She said that sometimes her life had been hard. Frowning, she added that years ago she wrote her mother a letter. In the letter, Sarah told her mother exactly how she felt her mother had treated her when she was a child. After she finished reading the letter, her mother cried.
I kept thrusting, popping past a ring of muscles in Sarah’s vagina. Her skin, particularly around her breasts, began flushing. I dropped down and nibbled her neck. Slowly, I pumped. As my penis rocked from side to side, she grabbed my head and stuck her tongue in my mouth. She groped for my ass. I rose on locked arms and started thrusting quicker, her ring of muscles still massaging my cock. Her long right leg half-tossed over mine. Sarah bucked her belly against my belly, grunting like an animal. We moved faster. My balls strained and strained. We slowed. When I tried to pull my sheathed cock out, she would not let me, at least not right away.
Marthe smiled when I unbuttoned the thin sweater she wore. As I pulled it off, she bowed her head. I shivered. When I cupped her breast, its thick, brown nipple stirred. Downy hair rose on her skin.
Marthe had met me outside Platinum West in West Columbia. She was a dancer there. From the club, through the heat, we walked over to my house in Mill Hill. Sweat ran down our bodies in streams.
But here it was cooler. Only grey light disturbed the darkness, wafting across the floor. As Marthe took my shirt, it sent her face into shadow. Her bell-shaped breast was warm now under my fingers. When I looked at her, her green eyes seemed mesmerized. She touched her long auburn hair vacantly, then lifted her arms to me.
After a while, Marthe stopped nuzzling my jawline. She stood in the window’s shaft of dust motes and light, then apart from me in the early evening shade. Bending, she slid off her jeans. When I held out my hand to her, she slipped her hand into mine. In bed, we took hold of one another.
Later, by the floor cushions, Marthe stood, her weight on her right hip, her left leg bowed. She smiled a little too brightly, gazing into my eyes. Her eyes looked glassy. She whispered that she had taken Ecstasy after we had arrived at my house. Giggling softly, she hugged herself.
I lounged in a chair by my bedroom door. Bit by bit, Marthe pushed her fingers under her worn jeans’ waistband, slid them down to her crotch and bunched them up. Gently, she massaged her bead and lips. She bit her thick lower lip, her eyes narrowing. Her mouth dropped open, and her tongue licked at her lips over and over.
After a few minutes, the lump under Marthe’s jeans began to writhe. Her head arched back and rocked one way and another. Her dark red hair shook. While she thrust her legs apart and her rear back, her slim hips began to squirm and pound forward and backward. She hopped about. Her body quivering, her chin weaving, she moaned. Then she hunched over, panting, heaving, her legs bowed gingerly.
Marthe flopped into my bed, her eyes half-closed. Under her jeans, she traced her hand along her vulva. Rain began to beat against my bedroom window suddenly. Her fingers tapped at her vagina, then rubbed slowly. She parted her legs, glanced up at me and smiled. She licked her lips repeatedly again. In the distance, on Santee Avenue, traffic rattled by.
After Marthe wet her finger, she shoved it back into her jeans, massaged her cunt again and then turned to stare out the window. Her green eyes returned to me, the pupils hugely dilated. She leaped up, ran over and stood bowed over me. And abruptly she danced across the dark, curtained room, her hands in her pants, like a marionette.
Sarah and I sat on the front stoop of the Michonne Home in the evening. Suddenly, she turned to me and stammered that she had once worked for an escort service. She told me that she had gotten tired of men fucking her for nothing. She said that all men liked her for were her looks. Glaring, she muttered that she was tired of it. I said that I liked her for being Sarah and took her hand. But she snatched her hand away, swore softly and shook her head.
Sarah, clad only in a floppy pair of my pants, zoomed into my living room on roller-skates, spun and whizzed back out, all on one leg, cackling merrily. I smiled but then turned back to reading Pale Fire.
I felt the peculiar, breath-taking sensation of a swollen cock in a tight cunt.
Sarah’s cunt. Tight little coils of hair surrounding it. A small clitoris but big vulva. Her carnation labia. Over the arch of her anus. Wet. Swollen. Her tight passage.
A pretty girl approached me near the waterfall in Sidney Park as I was painting a portrait. It was fall, and the smell of burning autumn leaves filled the air. She explained that she had seen me at work on the painting. She said that her name was Harper. Smiling, she said that she liked my painting and wanted to buy it when it was done.
In the dark, Sarah settled herself onto the sill of one of her apartment’s big loft windows. Outside, in Five Points, fog coasted by. Sheets of it got tangled up in the branches by the window. Pinned above us was a full harvest moon. With an intent face, she picked up a mirror to look at herself and was struck by its light. As it was set down, the mirror clicked on the soft wood. She blinked her slanted brown eyes and waved her hand elegantly.
Sarah said that she was smart, and she was creative. She was a good writer. She began crying. She was more than nice tits and ass. We were sitting in the dayroom of Michonne Home. I nodded and slid my arm over her shoulder, but she moved away. She muttered that she did not feel that way about me.
Carol, one of our clients, was passing by the dayroom. She saw Sarah crying, came in and put her arms around her. Sarah reached up and patted Carol on her back.
My penis was long and thick, a deep pink, lined with blue veins. Thick, black hair curled at the root, spreading across and downward. The skin was soft, the core firm. Underneath it ran a wide, bulging vein. A ring of tender skin erupted suddenly into the glans. The tip was shaped like a condottiere’s helmet, peaked, arched. A small slit crowned it.
Beneath my penis nestled my two thick, narrow testicles. They were draped in a loose pouch of skin, which was covered with light hair. Veins crisscrossed them.
I slumped on my side in my darkened bedroom in Mill Hill. Sarah sprawled beside me on the bed, her face level with my groin. She spoke moodily, pouting again. Moonlight glinted off her nose ring. She rustled about, her thick lips smacking. Slowly, tightly, she sipped in my soft cock. After a pause, with a snap, she sucked it in to the end.
Afterward, Sarah talked about another guy she was seeing. I listened but did not say anything.
Sarah’s daughter and I bent over, playing with a kitten. She skipped out of the room, then returned, sneaking up behind me and cupping her hands over my eyes, giggling. She asked what my name was. I told her that it was Sam.
On Monday afternoon, I walked into the If Art Gallery, carrying a small portfolio with prints of my paintings. Smiling, a slim blonde woman sitting at a desk rose. I opened the portfolio to show her a print. She studied it and then touched my hand.
Red Cloud’s eyes. Michelle’s breasts. Thai’s legs. Valentine’s hair. Thai’s soft voice. The Yellow Kid’s skin. Thai’s ass. Skinny’s lips. Jones’ grace. The Yellow Kid’s breasts and rear. That girl’s smell. Sarah’s belly. Christie’s tongue. Anne’s almond eyes. Valentine’s cunt-lips. Nicki’s dance. Emily’s teeth. Nicki’s nipples and giggles. Legs’ laugh. Talia’s big nose. Michelle’s bald genitals. Red Cloud’s intelligence. Emily’s fury. Michelle’s inexperience. Sarah’s voice and walk. Janie’s nose-cone breasts.
After I finished helping a client shower, I found Sarah smoking a cigarette outside the Michonne Home. Smiling, I remarked that she had nice fat. She narrowed her eyes, then glared at me. I smiled and pointed to her big breasts. She stuck out her lower lip.
A dewy, red poppy and its frail, green stem rested along the cut of her juicy, pink labia.
She wore handcuffs, her arms were stretched over head from a hook in our bedroom. After her thigh touched the radiator behind her, she hopped away quickly. Her breasts and ribs pointed up. She looked lovely.
As my lips sank stickily into Sarah’s, our teeth clicked, and her squishy tongue bounced off mine.
While Sarah and I wrestled, she hugged me playfully as if to lift me but instead, to my surprise, threw me over my folding chair and onto the grass at Lake Murray. She rushed over to me with concerned cries. But then she began poking me, giggling.
Parvati rolled her hips purposefully when I sucked on her thick, rosy lips, my tongue rimming along them. The red star tattoo on her hip danced.
Parvati darted her long tongue out and curled it inside my ear. Her gold tongue ring nudged me.
I lay with my head in her lap, my eyes closed, on the bench in the Interactive Art Park, near the Rocket Queen statue, her fingers a little over my face, so that I felt their warmth. It was still summer.
She reminded me of the time that she helped me come.
At last, tearful, Sarah clambered up and cradled my head carefully, her brown eyes barely open, her mouth slack, cooing.
Sarah grabbed me when I was walking down the hall at the Michonne Home. She yanked me into the tubroom and threw me up against the wall. Panting, she shoved her tongue in my mouth. It was late at night.
She stepped her bare foot in a puddle of paint and squealed angrily. She had not noticed the paint running and dripping from the canvas I was working on. Light leaked through the windows. For days, with little sleep, I had been painting a portrait.
I mailed Sarah a letter saying that I did not like her just because she was beautiful. She did not write back.
In the studio, the potter laid her clay-stained hands on mine.
Lucy, our friend, met us at the door of her parents’ loft in Spring Valley. We stood on her porch for a time, chatting. Neighbors were burning autumn leaves, and their smell was heavy in the air.
Lucy beckoned to us. Inside, a party was winding down. I made my way up the stairs in my stocking feet, lost my balance and fell forward. With a straight face, Sarah helped me up. Her hands were very warm. Sarah smiled suddenly and led me over to a man standing by the bar. She introduced me. She said that his name was Carl. It was a guy she went out with occasionally.
Sarah skipped in my door, grabbed my shoulders and pushed me to my bedroom. Hooting, she stripped my clothes off and shoved me onto my bed. She pushed a pillow under my ass. Her big breasts bouncing, she stripped and hopped on top of me. After she grabbed a condom from my bedside table, she rolled it onto my hard cock. Snickering, she rubbed her cunt on its tip. Sarah stuck my cock inside herself and started humping up and down hard. Roughly, she ground against me. I touched her long, coarse dreadlocks. She sang out for me to make her come. Then she snorted and snorted.
Late at night in bed, for me first, for me only, she displayed her pert, satiny breasts.
Sarah slashed the air with her fists, darted over to the radio and turned it up loud. “I Love Rock and Roll” exploded. Drunkenly, she danced around, her large breasts revolving. She grabbed my hat. Before I realized what she was doing, she had sailed it out a window. Dull thuds exploded overhead suddenly, from the tenant above. Giggling, she skipped away.
During the Friends Meeting, near the University of South Carolina campus, Sarah sat across from me. Afterward, she rushed over and hugged me. But then, at lunch, she reiterated that she did not want a boyfriend.
I finished one of the several portraits I had painted of the women who worked at the Michonne Home. The women were old and handsome. Using turpentine, I began cleaning my brushes.
She huddled on the narrow windowseat in my backroom, reading “The Bridge”, absorbed, while I made space for myself beside her. I put my hand up under her dress and past her panties and inserted my index finger in her slit. As I wiggled my finger, her smile dwindled and, flushing, she pushed my arm away.
I trotted up the stairs to Sarah’s apartment and knocked on her door. It was a brisk winter day, grey and rainy. After a minute, she answered the door. She gazed at me, then stood aside, without a word.
We perched on her couch. She looked at me expectantly. Because her children were at school, her home was quiet.
Abruptly, I told Sarah that I really liked her. I said that I knew she was reluctant to be in a relationship. I muttered that I wanted to be with her. I added that I loved her kids.
Sarah made a face and tapped her foot. She growled that men never listened to her. She wanted to know how she could get me to hear her. She asked if fucking her was not enough.
When she rose suddenly, I stood up, too. Then I left.
Sarah tightened her cunt against my cock, then circled her legs around my legs. We were in the back seat of her Chevy. She swallowed my tongue, her tongue stroking mine. As she groaned, she bucked her hips. Her vagina retreated until it retained only the tip of my penis. Smoothly, she inserted it again, her hips struggling. She pulled her tongue from my mouth and washed my ear with it.
Sarah rocked her hips up and down, stuck her tongue back in my mouth and dug it around. Spunk washed from my glans and up her vagina. Murmuring nasally, she milked the last bit of my semen into her vagina. Then my penis tumbled from her cunt. Straightening, I banged my head on the window. After she placed her hands on my shoulders, she kissed me.
Sarah disentangled her legs. She fell away, hunched up, then crawled into the corner of the seat. She peeked out toward the light in her apartment’s living room. Smiling, she put her hand on my soft, wet penis in its condom.
When she passed the windows in my living room, she stirred the big, clay windchimes strung along them, turned, startled, then closed her slanted, dark eyes, listening to them.
Sarah let me take her kids out to a movie and McDonald’s. She went out with Carl.
I left to use the washroom after she finished sucking my cock. When I returned, Sarah had folded my clothes neatly and piled them on the couch, one on top of the other.
Sarah and I walked along the Columbia Canal with some of our Michonne Home clients. A spring breeze twirled over us. I said to her that the first thing I liked about her was that she had had a hard life, but was trying to heal, and that she was a great mother. Not that she was pretty. She smiled, but her eyes narrowed. She hurried down the path to catch up with the clients, leaving me behind.
My Mom and my aunts huddled around her kitchen table in Charlevoix, telling dirty jokes. It was at a family get-together. I was back visiting. Blushing, I fled the room.
“Shit,” she said.
And flipped her hair aside and bent over to the lighter I held. Then Sarah leant back, puffing on the cigarette, and snuggled closer to me under the covers of my bed. Two thin streams of smoke issued from her nostrils. She gazed across the room. For a while, silently, we lay together.
I glanced at the streetlights outside the windows. I looked at Sarah. She still stared across the room. She put out her cigarette and cast her cold eyes at me. Her hand came stroking the hairs of my chest, and then she slipped her hot, wet tongue in my mouth.
Later, Sarah slipped out of the bed and curled up in the big, stuffed armchair by the walled-off chimney. Her strong, brown legs kicked up over the chair’s arm. Still in bed, I watched, chin in hand, as she twisted her bottom around, her large, upright breasts shuddering beneath her long t-shirt. Her mahogany brown eyes were impassive. The light of the tall bronze lamp behind her streamed past her. It caught the loose strands of her black hair, changing them into dark threads.
When I turned away from her, Sarah drew near, blocking the light from the lamp. She kicked the bed, making it shiver, laughed raspily and slapped me on the thigh. Roughly, she flopped down against me. After a moment, I pulled the thick, woolen blankets from between us. As she lifted her hips, I pushed a pillow under her ass. And silky, hot breath flowered against my bearded cheek.
Later, Sarah huddled against me in my bed, clothed only in her old-fashioned panties, bathed by the early evening light. I had turned off the lamp and lit some candles. Her right hand moved slowly beneath her panties. Her head bent forward. She stayed silent.
After a moment, Sarah sat up, her eyes half-closed. Her hand fumbled with her vagina. As she arched her back, she muttered to herself. She pulled her hand from her panties. She blew me a kiss, then looked away from me. Sarah lay back, her shoulder wedged against mine. She murmured that she was sad. Carefully, she pushed her fingers into her underwear again. Sighing, she turned her face away from me.
Then Sarah curved her hips up and revolved them in a complete circle twice. She whispered a coarse remark and whipped her hips up and down slowly. After she twisted toward me, muttering, she rubbed her cunt again, then pulled her hand out. Puffing, Sarah collapsed against me. She ground herself against my thigh several times. Her forehead smacked against my shoulder over and over. She kept quivering.
Sarah whispered that I should put a condom on, then wriggled out of her wet panties. After I had rolled a condom on, she rose on her knees, grasped my penis and sank it inside herself. When our hair meshed, her cool buttocks curled down over my thighs. A candle flickered behind her. She wriggled her wide hips, my cock moving deep within her. Briefly, I closed my eyes.
As she laughed, her breath hissing in and out of her mouth, Sarah bounced up and down a bit. For a moment, she swayed, her full breasts shifting. Squishing, she arched up and fell down my hard penis. She began going backward and forward from my hips. Softly, she moaned. Her belly rippled. I tightened my leg muscles.
While Sarah rocked on me, her breasts shuddering, I started groaning. The candles wavered. After more thrusts, I grabbed her hips and jerked up to meet her. Our mingled grunts filled my bedroom. Wind sighed. Sweat pooled on my chest.
As my breathing deepened, Sarah’s hips accelerated. She squealed, saliva flying from her mouth. I slammed her down on me. Her head dropped, her lips sagged, and her black cornrows swung forward. She jammed her thighs against me and moaned. I inhaled, then emptied up into the condom inside her.
In the middle of the cold spring night, Sarah put her foot against my ass and shoved me out of her bed to go turn up the heat. I shuffled across the room, then flew back under the covers, where she wrapped her body around mine, murmuring.
John, my roommate from college, called and reported to me that Nicki had gotten married and had a daughter now.
Sarah inspected one of my portraits of her, then shrugged and laughed. She muttered that it did not look like her. Laughing again, she said that it was after she let me paint her, and she called me honey.
I loved the things she did in the ear to me.
In the car to the Michonne Home, Sarah sat next to me, her arm pressed into mine. She said that she did not think about me when I was not around.
Early afternoon sun lit my apartment. As I lay on Sarah’s belly, my hips fluttered. She murmured painfully. My penis began to poke her with increasing speed. She studied me, her eyes slit. I ducked my head, and her hands fumbled for my hips. Over and over, my penis snapped past her vulva. A lot of my semen spat out and washed up and down her vagina.
When we were alone, we lay, our arms wrapped around each other, our heads together, barely moving, in the darkness.
Sarah’s womanhood was richly molded, like a fine black and coral flower. Her dark rounded outer lips were surrounded by curly hair. Her slender lips arched at the top and split into two petals at the bottom. A hard, little bump, a girl’s cock, nestled above her lips. Hidden deep within was her urethra, while beneath winked the star of her anus. Her vulnerable, oval thighs thrust out around her vagina, creases where her thighs and groin joined. The cheeks of her rear flattened round against the bed. Her vagina radiated an odor of almost smoky musk. Light sparkled off her hair. Her womanhood was pretty and well-formed.
Sarah clapped her hands together delightedly when she saw that my penis was hard at last. Giggling, big breasts bouncing, she scrambled for a condom, but then she tripped.
I told Sarah that it was too bad that some women depended on symmetrical features for their self-worth. She looked away, then nodded. Sarah said that she had started to attend a 12-step program and that it was helping her not to care if she looked pretty.
Sarah stabbed her fork into the spaghetti and lifted it to her mouth. After she set down the fork and wiped her lips, she sipped her wine. She smiled, displaying the gap between her two front teeth. We were at the Backstreets Grill near the University of South Carolina. It was raining lightly, and outside streetlights shone on the wet street. It was late spring. Avoiding my eyes, she continued drinking the wine. Suddenly, she said that she had quit her job at the Michonne Home. She said that she was thinking about moving to Colorado.
I wrote a bill of sale for a painting to Harper, the woman I had met in Sidney Park. It was the portrait she had seen me making. She said that she loved its garish colors. She told me that it looked like a Hans Holbein crossed with a Peter Max or Heinz Edelman. It turned out that she was rich. Laughing, she handed me a check with a large fee.
After lunch at Michonne Home, Bill, a client, and I sat on the porch. I asked him why he had such a good relationship with Annie, his girlfriend. I talk to her, he replied. Anything else? I wondered. I am nice to her, he said. Anything else? I inquired. I talk to her some more, he responded.
Sarah put on her pale-yellow brassiere. It bunched up her large coffee-colored breasts in its cups.
As soon as I slapped her rump, she made an ‘oh’ with her lips. Hooting, she spun toward me, knocked me down, threw herself on top of me and began tickling me.
After I came, Sarah sucked my cock for an hour. Her mouth brought me from softness to hardness repeatedly. She made my cock sore, her eyes crazy.
I lit incense and blew it at Sarah’s breasts, where it caught beneath them for a second before it wafted away.
When Judith caught sight of me, she hurried across wide Assembly Street, near the South Carolina state capitol building, and flung herself into my arms.
I complained to Sarah that I was working too hard on my portraits. I felt like I did little else. She pursed her lips and nodded but did not say anything.
I drove my Honda Civic into the gas station. Sarah jumped out of her Chevy and sauntered over to me. Smiling, I asked her if she wanted some candy. She laughed, murmured that maybe she did, stuck her tongue in my mouth and tumbled it around vigorously.
As I emerged from my car to go into the downtown Columbia Post Office, I spotted Judith. I had not seen her in some time. I said hello to her. My throat was gravelly, however, and my voice broke. She looked at me, startled, and passed by. When I returned to my car, she was still standing by her car. She mumbled that I was an asshole and smirked.
Sarah and I crowded together on the small bench in the new Richland County Library. Before us hung a copy of Bordighera. While I drew a small pen portrait of The Yellow Kid, Sarah read from The World of Light.
I could only fall asleep when I held her tightly in my arms.
When I kissed Sarah, I smelled the scent of her face.
She darted the pink tip of her tongue out, her maroon lips closing in two thin curves over it. She patted her short, neon green hair.
As we lay together in the bathtub, her voluptuous body sprawled before me, she slapped my hand, telling me it tickled.
Sarah muttered that she was not used to a guy like me. She said that all she knew were men who just wanted to fuck her. I said that I would like to be more than a guy that she fucked. Sarah replied that she had already told me that she did not want to be with anyone. Frowning, she asked me if I did not understand that.
Her strong, once broken mouth had held many things -tongue, cock, word, wine.
I straightened a painting on the wall. At the City Art Gallery, a small exhibition of my portraits was on display. I had begun to paint in primary colors again. Sarah stood alone, sipping white wine. She had on a little make-up. She wore a lemon-yellow, low-cut dress.
After Sarah asked for a wet washcloth, I retrieved one from the bathroom. She instructed me to lie on my side in the bed. Then she wiped my anus thoroughly. She tossed the washcloth on the nightstand. Sarah leant down and washed her tongue against my anus. When she tickled it, I stiffened. She inserted her tongue and flicked it over and over. I jerked slightly.
As she whimpered, I fingered the short, sharp bruise on her right thigh. I smoothed the small bruises curling over her shoulder and the marks mottling her swollen lip. They had resulted from a game of touch football in Trenholm Park that summer afternoon.
At the Michonne Home, I was finishing paperwork. I glanced out the window to see Sarah walking up the sidewalk. She glowered at me. In the office, Sarah closed the door and flopped in a chair. She muttered that she was not just pretty.
I curled up in a blue-cushioned booth in Ray’s Diner on Two Notch Road and ordered breakfast. It was a sunny Monday morning in October. Sarah slid in opposite me. Abruptly, I asked her about her Colorado move. Her eyes narrowed, and her cheeks flushed. She snapped that it was no fucking business of mine. She brushed her lips against mine briskly and then jumped up. With a long-legged stride, her full ass jerking from side to side, she marched off.
I placed the phone back in its cradle. It was right before Christmas. I had left a voicemail for Sarah. For a few weeks, she had not returned my calls.
But then, late that night, I spotted a car stopped in the dark street outside my house in West Columbia. I scurried over to the window. Beneath a streetlight, Sarah looked over at me, then drove away quickly.
A few days later, the phone rang. It was Sarah. She asked me brightly how I was doing.
One Saturday morning in May, I woke up. I looked out my living room window. It was a cloudy spring day outside.
I called Sarah since I had not heard from her in a while. She said hello to me, abruptly. In the background, people talked, and someone banged. She told me that she and her kids were moving to Denver. She said that they were going that day.
I muttered in surprise. She said that she was busy packing and hung up.
A few weeks later, as it rained late one afternoon, I called Sarah in Denver. I had found her phone number through a friend. I asked her if I could visit her there. She muttered that she guessed not. I hung up.
Two months afterward, late one summer night in June, my phone rang. Someone was on the other end of the line, but they would not speak. Finally, they replaced the phone, and the dialtone buzzed. I sat on my bed and glanced out the window. It was raining again.
One evening, a few months later, in late August, the phone rang again. No one spoke, but I could hear breathing. The calls had continued to happen every so often. As I had learned from a friend, it was always when Sarah was visiting the area.
On a bright spring morning in September, I entered the Columbia Art Museum on Main Street and slid onto a bench. Suddenly, Sarah appeared at the entrance. Apparently, she had returned for another visit. I did not know how she knew I was at the museum.
Afterward, I went downstairs to the restaurant for a snack. I ate it outside in the courtyard. Leaves had begun to fall, and they littered the pavement. Someone walked out behind me. When I heard Sarah say hello to me, I ignored her.
Later that night, my phone rang. Someone hummed a familiar tune briefly. I laughed and asked who it was. They hung up.
On Friday night, Lotte and I sprawled on my couch, sipping screwdrivers. Earlier, we had traveled on a Midlands bus to the Tin Roof to hear Buddy Guy. I kissed her, then yanked off her blouse. When I sucked on her huge breasts, she moaned. She dove her head down, tore my jeans open and began sucking my cock. I dragged her to my bedroom, knelt, pulled her skirt up and stuck my tongue in her cunt. It was drenched with her juice. She dropped to her knees and seized my hips, knocking me back into a wall. Eagerly, she started sucking my cock. Then she popped up. I scurried to my living room to get a condom. After I returned, she mumbled that she did not want to fuck.
On Saturday night, Penn and I perched on my couch, talking. She cried, so I held her hand. I kissed her twice. Before she left, I backed her up in a corner and kissed her again. Her large right breast pushed against me. I reached up and squeezed it. She sighed and muttered that I always backed her into a corner to kiss her.
On Wednesday night, Jojo rested on top of me in my bed and rubbed her body up and down against me. I sucked her bell-shaped breasts. “Eminence Front” played on my stereo. Outside, down the street, I heard some of my neighbors in Mill Hill revving their motorcycles. Jojo dropped down to my cock and began to suck it quietly. Finally, she climbed up and planted my hard penis in her slit. She rode me silently, her hips twitching back and forth.