Jean Roberta's sexy short story about being a lesbian Almost Enough

Markie murmured “Jean,” and it had never sounded so musical. She gathered me into her arms. She whispered something into my hair that sounded like “little one.” I felt the energy that rose from her warm, smooth skin, and it felt like a needed transfusion of life and hope. Slowly and thoughtfully, she brought her impish face close to mine, then pressed her full lips against my hungry ones. Her tongue persuaded my lips and teeth to part, and she slipped into my mouth. I felt as if I would melt.

I touched one of her full breasts because my hand was there, and it was drawn to her flesh. She moaned just enough to let me know that this contact was welcome. Behind her moan, I could hear the song “Almost Paradise” playing on the car radio at a low volume. It sounded like the perfect soundtrack for the real lesbian romance I seemed to be co-starring in.

One of her hands slipped teasingly near the front zipper of my pants. The hand hovered over the swamp between my legs, which was separated from her fingers by a frustratingly thick center seam. Do it! whispered my awakened clit, while my common sense was screaming Danger! Do Not Enter! as though my lower lips carried a high voltage of electricity.

I began pushing my crotch against her hand like a dog (to use a gender-neutral term) wanting to be petted. Mark groaned at me in warning. “Nuh,” she murmured. “We can’t.” Even as she warned me, her strong and sensitive hand, a guitarist’s hand, was picking up my rhythm and taking control of it. We were rocking together in a duet, and it was almost, almost, almost enough to get me off. But not quite.

She pulled away, slowly but firmly. I pressed my legs together, still moving. “We can’t,” she repeated. “You know I’m with Elaine. It’s not fair to you,” she told me unconvincingly. I remembered Emma’s complaint about being excluded from womyn’s space just because of her age. No fair! yelled my starving pussy. Life isn’t fair, I reminded it sternly.

Mark and I were both still breathing heavily, and we breathed in unison. Our themesong was coming to an end in the background. “I don’t care,” I told her recklessly. “I know you’re with Elaine and I respect that. I’d never tell anyone or do anything --.” I knew even as I said it that my shameless begging wouldn’t work, that it would only remind her of the gulf between us.

Mark sadly repeated my name, appealing to my better judgment. “You should have someone of your own,” she assured me, offering me an imaginary girlfriend as a consolation prize. “You’re an attractive woman, and you’ll find someone.” Her prediction sounded patronizing. She patted my nearest hand, and it was no comfort.

“It’s late,” she sighed. “We’ve both had too much to drink.” Apparently she needed to explain away what we had almost done, what she had almost done after tempting me. I wondered if she thought I was too thin or too hungry. CHEAP was the word my mother always used for the kind of girl she didn’t want me to become, but here I was. Of course I’m cheap, I thought. Beggars can’t be choosers.

The silence grew as she drove us back to the heart of town, past lights and other cars. Soon she would be at my door, where she would drop me off. I didn’t want it to end that way.

I needed to say something that would hold her attention for a few more minutes. “I’m working on a collection of lesbian stories,” I told her as though she had asked. “You know the ones you read? I’ve added to them. Once I have twelve, I’ll send them to a publisher.”

“The ones you showed me are so negative,” she remarked, casually brutal. “Don’t send those.” I felt so stunned that I could hardly find words for an answer. “What do you mean,‘negative’?” I finally asked.

“They’re depressing. Why don’t you write feminist stories? The women in your stories always get hurt or used. Or they have a male atitude toward other women. You don’t show the love in our community.”

I felt as if she had slapped me with all the force of her solid, compact body. I knew in that moment that she had done me a harsh favor by freeing me from false hope. “I try to show love,” I muttered, “but writers are always advised to write about what they know. That’s what I do. I guess my reality isn’t the same as yours.”

For a moment, her face lit up in a way I had come to recognize; she was looking forward to a debate. “It’s not a question of --” she started before she glanced at my face. “Oh well,” she concluded, dismissing the whole discussion with a Belgian shrug. C’est la vie; c’est la guerre. What else was there to say?

Just before I got out of her car, Mark smiled sweetly and purred “See you soon,” but I knew she was smiling with relief that I was leaving her space. I hurried to pick up Emma, brushing at the tears that kept welling up in my eyes.

When Darrel opened the door, he was as surly as ever, and I saw his closed face as a sign of teenage male attitude. Emma was touseled and cranky, as though she had just been awakened. I carried her down the hall to the home of my Baby Buny and her Mama. Things usually look better, I told myself, after a good sleep.