Inspiration

Inspiration.

Mandy sat at the kitchen table staring at the computer monitor.  She was certain that at any moment her story would just suddenly complete itself.  Her publisher’s voice was still fresh in her mind and she was fairly certain that the receiver end of her phone was somewhat distorted from the heat that had come through it last night.

“You have had a 3 month extension to finish this story.  I can’t put the heads off anymore.  They’re gonna start calling for your advance if you don’t give me something to show them.”

Mandy held the phone from her ear and downed the room temperature watered down bourbon from the mason jar.  “Sam, chill.  Give me until Sunday and I swear I’ll have it.”

“I heard that 3 weeks ago and last week and yesterday.  I need something.  I don’t give a shit how blocked you are just write something!  A commercial for dental dams…….SOMETHING!!  Cat food.  ANYTHING!!” 

Mandy had been blocked before but never like this.  Six months ago she had reconciled with her ex and one would think the flood gates would open.  But no, nothing.  Maybe life had become too good, too easy, too comfortable.  Maybe there wasn’t enough chaos to fuel the fire she needed to write the stories that had fed her comfortably for the last 8 years.  Maybe there wasn’t the “angst”, as her publisher called it.  “Mandy, you write from the curb,” her publisher always said.   Whatever that meant.  She wrote about the things everybody thought about and wondered about but never had to courage to admit.  Now that her life was calm again the words just weren’t coming.

Karen walked into the kitchen and poured some orange juice.  “Have you been sitting there all night?”

Mandy sighed and rubbed her face.  “No, just feels like it.  It’s good to have you back but we may end up starving.”

Karen walked over and began to knead the knots from her lover’s shoulders.  She smiled.  “I’m not worried.  I can always pick up more hours at the office or heck, I can work a corner somewhere.”

Mandy smiled and relaxed into her touch.  It was familiar and comforting and comfortable.  Everything a lover’s touch should be except inspiring.  “We’d for sure starve then.”

Karen smacked the back of Mandy’s head and walked over to pour a bowl of cereal.  “Carolyn called last night.  She wants us to come to dinner tonight.  I told her I’d talk to you but thought it would probably be OK.”

Mandy blinked and stretched her legs out under the table then crossed her arms over her chest.  “Who all is going to be there?”

Karen shrugged.  “Just us I think, why?”

“Because she has a few friends that just irritate the bejeezus outta me.”

“Those would be hubby’s friends from the theatre and yeah, they even irritate me.  I don’t think they’ll be there.  In fact, I’m not even sure Terry will be.  I’m pretty sure he’s got auditions tonight.”

Mandy smiled.  Karen smiled back.  “She’s a hottie.”

“Yes dear, I know.”

“And she likes you.”

“She does.”

“And you two…well three….last Christmas.”

Karen smiled.  “Yes dear, we did.”

“Dinner’s good.”

“I thought it would be ok with you.”

After spending much of the rest of the day exploring the sheets on the full sized bed they shared, they finally pulled themselves together for the evening.  Mandy stood looking at herself in the mirror while pulling some of her hair back into a ponytail.  Not bad, she thought.  The jeans and button down did her justice.  Not pretty but certainly not ugly; she was relatively pleased with what she saw.  She was even more pleased with what she saw reflected further behind her.  Karen was such a woman.  Such a girl, some would say.  Her make-up was just so, her hair tidy and the dress hugged in all the appropriate places.  Heels gave her legs even more definition than usual.  It was a nice picture and one which Mandy never tired of seeing.  Even all those years apart she remembered how pretty Karen was.  Is.  Will always be.

Karen turned and caught Mandy staring.  “Like?”

“Mucho”

Karen laughed.  “You’re just hot because we’re having dinner with Carolyn.”

“I’m hot because I’m having my very own personal summer at the moment which is way beside the point.  I’m excited because you and I are having dinner with Carolyn and that just conjures all sorts of images and possibilities in my head.  As a writer, I’m bound to explore them all too, you know.”

“Unh huh”

“It’s my job.”  Mandy smiled.

“Shut up and pick out a bottle of wine while I finish my makeup.”

They rode halfway there listening to radio without speaking.  Karen fiddled with her dress and sipped her drink.  “What is it about Carolyn that intrigues you so?”

Mandy was caught a bit off guard.  She’d never really given it much thought before.  OK, that was a lie.  She’d thought about Carolyn a lot but never tried to figure out the attraction.  “I’m not sure it’s Carolyn, you know?  I think it’s more the possibility of you and her together that really gets me.  I’ve discovered that I’m a bit of a voyeur at heart.”

“Interesting.  And that makes perfect sense to me.  Perhaps it’s the artist in you.  And you have no problems with me being with Carolyn?”

“No, should I?” Mandy asked.

“Well, the average woman would have issues with it.  Fidelity and all.”

Mandy was about to answer than when she slammed on the brakes to avoid a squirrel running across the street.  For some reason a tire commercial popped into her head. 

“God……now look.”  Karen was busy dabbing at the wine stain quickly spreading across her chest.  “You could warn a girl you know.”

They arrived at Carolyn’s house, a completely renovated Victorian that she’d inherited from her grandparents.  Every detail had been seen to down to the tiniest piece of decorative woodwork on the shutters.  Carolyn met them on the front porch and took Karen into the bedroom to pull off the dress to soak.  Red wine needed tending to immediately so it wouldn’t become a permanent stain.  She gave Karen some old jeans and a shirt to put on. 

Mandy went to the kitchen and poured 3 glasses of the deep red wine then busied herself by putting the dinner on the table.  Carolyn and Karen walked into the room laughing and all Mandy could do was look.  Being surrounded by her lover and their friend in a comfortable place was calming to her.  Not much got better than this. 

They talked of ordinary things between bites of salad, spaghetti and bread.  Work, working, writing, children, dogs, stuff. 

“You like to watch.”  Carolyn stated totally out of the blue.  Not really a question but something that begged for a response.

Mandy sat there, her mouth stuffed full with a wad of bread pushing her cheek out.  She nearly choked.  Where on earth did that statement come from?  She looked at Karen, who only shrugged, then she washed down her bread with a fortifying gulp of wine.  She could tell her face was red just from the heat radiating back up from the glass.  “I suppose.”

Carolyn leaned back in her chair and smiled.  “You write about sex for a living and that simple question embarrasses you?” 

“Writing about it and talking about it are two totally different things.  My writing isn’t personal.  That question was and yeah, I like to watch.”

“But don’t you take from experience and tell a story?”  Karen asked.

“Well yeah but I’m not normally asked something like that at dinner.”

“Why do you like to watch?”  Carolyn seemed genuinely curious.

Mandy looked from one woman to the other.  It was one thing to talk about watching with her lover but it was something different to talk about why and certainly different to talk about it with Karen sitting there.  She’d never really thought about why.  “I don’t know…I guess it’s like watching a movie.”

“And that it’s Karen doesn’t bother you?”  Carolyn continued.

“No.  I can’t explain this.  I just know it’s something that I get off on.  It’s like that thrill you get when you have something that everybody wants but can’t have.  It’s powerful.  Then to pick and choose who you want to share it with?  That’s even more powerful.”

“You don’t get jealous?”

Karen just sat back and enjoyed the exchange.

“No.  Well, not so far.  Why get jealous?  I see it as a compliment that people would want to be with my girlfriend.  That’s a statement about me and my taste in women.  And that I can keep her says something about me as a partner.  Means I must be doing something right,” she stated.

Carolyn took her dishes to the sink then went into the den.  Karen and Mandy followed.  All three sat down on the couch, Karen in the middle, Carolyn on the end with a leg curled up beneath her and her elbow resting on the back of the couch.  “So, how is this not an affair?”

Mandy caught the present tense use of is but didn’t let it show on her face.  It registered elsewhere though—quite strongly.  “Because I know about it.  Because it’s consensual.  Because permission, if that’s the right word, is given.  Because I see it as an extension of our relationship.  Jeez, it’s about the same thing as using a vibrator….just a different means to an end.”

Karen had her hands on each woman’s leg and was relaxing back into the couch.  Her head rested on the soft cushions, her eyes were closed with a peaceful and slightly amused look on her face.  “Besides which I find the attention quite flattering.”

Both Mandy and Carolyn laughed.  “Figures,” they said almost in unison.  “I just can’t think of anything more beautiful and arousing that watching two women kiss,” Mandy continued, “it’s the most beautiful thing in the world to me.  I used to go out to the bar just to watch women dance together.  That’s just hot.”

They talked more and finished several more glasses of wine, each glass loosening them up that much more.  “Well ladies, if y’all will excuse me, the wine is making its presence known.  I need to go pee like a steroid hyped stallion.” 

“Such a delicate way with words,”  Karen mumbled.  Carolyn laughed.

Mandy got up and went to the bathroom.  She dawdled.  She looked through the medicine cabinet and the linen closet.  She thumbed through several of the magazines laying on the counter then, having no more excuse to stay in there, she walked very quietly back to the den.

Carolyn had moved to straddle Karen’s lap.  Her dark, thick brown hair hung past her shoulders and hid their soft, moist lips.  Thin flesh that slowly and tenderly slid over one another searching, asking and answering a thousand questions in one breath.  They glistened from the exchange.  They opened slightly to pull in the swirl of time around them stopping the rhythmic movement of the big and small hand in their sphere of existence only to replace it with the moments of their own. 

Carolyn shifted.  Her fingers disappeared in Karen’s hair and held her close.  Mandy watched the kisses become more intense, harder, more demanding.  She heard them.  She closed her eyes and could almost feel them.  She saw shirts and bras quickly discarded and the two women shift on the couch.  One on top of the other and back again. 

Carolyn’s legs fell open inviting, coaxing, demanding, singing a siren’s call.  She took Karen’s hand and guided it down in a silent demand to be touched.  To be fucked.  To be taken up and brought back down again.  She needed a woman’s touch.  She needed to be filled by someone fresh and familiar and safe.  She pushed her head back into the pillows and arched when she felt fingers curl inside her in that sweet handshake of lust.

She caught her breath then flipped Karen over and covered very inch of her body with kisses and gentle bites, her teeth a tool .  Her tongue teased and pulled every sensation possible from the woman moving beneath her.  Their mounds melded.  Her teeth grazed the puckered flesh of Karen’s nipples making them come to attention.  Mandy watched Carolyn’s hand disappear between her lover’s legs and knew instinctively what was happening.  She knew what Karen was feeling having been in that same place thousands of times before.  She knew that Karen was building, was barely breathing, was moving her hips to present the sweet spot she so needed to have touched.

Mandy watched Carolyn’s arm moving, her fingers sliding deep then back out to torment.  She wrote the images into her memory carefully choosing just the right words.  She made mental notes and diagrams.  She watched the two bodies move against each other—dolphins gracefully courting in the open sea.  She could hear the whispers of desire, the crackling blaze fed by need growing stronger.  She could feel the warmth and pressure as each drank deeply of the other.  She could taste it.

She knew these things.  She’d seen them. She’d written them, dreamed them, felt and screamed them in her sleep, in the shower, over the stove, behind the wheel of her car.  All of these actions and words were hers to pour out on a page in a driven need to help others see and feel that same things. She became them—exhausted in the climax they shared.