January 2023

by Liz Doherty

 

“That’s the best head I’ve had in a long time.” I had listened to his surfer drawl, blushing at the compliment, even though I was alone.

            “Glad you… glad to hear that,” I stammered. He couldn’t see my grin through the phone.

His name was Mike, and he had answered my craigslist casual encounters post a week ago. We had fucked on Tuesday and shortly after leaving that first time, he had called with this rave review. Now here he was calling back on Thursday. He must have had fun. I know I did.

We made plans for a second meet that evening, and I muttered something about going out somewhere first for a drink. It just felt unseemly that we would get together again purely for sex. Shouldn’t we begin the getting-to-know-you process that usually precedes the first sexual encounter? The what-do-you-do, where-did-you-grow-up, are-your-parents-still-around discussions that usually come first? I was new to craigslist and to casual sex. Was this how it worked?

I stepped out to the corner store for orange juice just before 7:00 and he found me there.

“Look who it is. Got a light?” he kidded, handing me the black lighter he had taken from me on Tuesday. He looked familiar, and sunburned, and better than I remembered.

“Don’t clip it from me again,” I reprimanded and smiled.

He took the orange juice package from me, and I lit his cigarette as we crossed the street. I unlocked the gate that was the barrier between my tiny studio sublet and the streets of the Mission below. He took another long drag, then tossed his butt to the curb and followed me to the second floor of the old San Francisco building.

Uninvited, he immediately took off his shoes and emptied his pockets onto my table, neatly laying out cigarettes, his own lighter, change, wallet, phone, keys, and two pagers. He explained again that all his work was on-call; he never knew when his services would be needed, and that he was sorry to leave the pagers on but there was no way around it. I had been surprised when he’d first told me this, expecting that an emergency response guy would be more tightly wound than this easy, chill one.

Pockets now empty, but clothes still on, he sprawled on the bed, declining any refreshment. I sat on the floor near his knees, with a glass of juice, not ready to just strip down and have at it again. Putting on Rickie Lee Jones, I leaned back against the bed, asking if he knew who it was. He didn’t.

He sat up and began stroking me. His hands were gentle, and I tried to relax into the sensations, summoning memories of great massages of the past and trying to recreate the submission to another’s touch. He began a light tickling first on my arms, then on the back of my neck. I love this; “tick-ticks,” I call it.

Then I surrendered to him, not because the massage had completely relaxed me, but because something in me knew that he could soothe me now.

“Time for me to lie next to you,” I said, voice husky, as I climbed onto the bed.

He moved over and resumed the tick-ticks, now across my face and my chest. He lifted my shirt and tickled my stomach. As I surrendered to his hands, he joined me, the intakes and exhalations of his breath matching my own growing excitement. Our kisses were first tentative, then firmer, a gentle insistence growing in both of us. His wandering hands found my nipples. I searched for his, first over then under his t-shirt; if I could find them, I could show him with my fingers, with my teeth and lips, what I needed from him, to start.

His sounds continued, inspiring me, egging me on. It wasn’t long before we were both naked.

“God, that feels good,” he said several times as I cradled his cock with my lips and throat, following Rickie Lee’s rhythms and his, taking it deeper when the music demanded that, sometimes teasing the head with my tongue, sometimes just gripping, sucking, and holding the whole thing, frozen as he got the sensation. He took my head in his hands, guiding me deeper and deeper, faster and faster, showing me how he liked it. 

“Oh my god oh my god oh my god.”

His words and his breathing and his smell and the taste of him pleased me more than I could remember in that moment ever being pleased. How had it taken 46 years for me to learn how much I liked to suck a man’s cock? Maybe I hadn’t before. I remembered sucking some here and there before my marriage, but never sucking one until the guy came, and never enjoying it this way. Craigslist was my vehicle into a world of figuring out what and how each man wanted it – me above or him, me on my knees and him seated on the edge of a bed, him above pounding, fast and rhythmic, slow and gentle, and all the combinations of these. And I knew there were more choices, more preferences, more shapes and curves and sizes out there, for me to savor. But for now, there was just this one man and this one cock.

“Do you want to sit on it now?” he eventually gasped.

“Yes. Yes. Yes, I do,” I confirmed.

He found a condom, put it on. “Sit on me.”

I straddled him, not on my knees but on my feet, squatting above him, not touching even his hips. I paused there for a moment, anticipating. Then I found his cock and slowly, slowly ran the tip from my clit downward, once, twice, and then slowly, slowly, music slow and sexy, lowered myself onto it, feeling it fill me. It wasn’t the biggest one I’d encountered but it was big enough and it sure fit well. He started to move up against me.

“Don’t move. Don’t fucking move,” I instructed.

He lay still as I lowered my hips farther and farther, allowing his cock to slip in deeper and deeper and finally touch bottom. Legs now tired from the slow descent to fullness, I shifted to my knees and began a slow rotation of my hips, feeling his head massage my cervix.

“Wow,” I groaned. “Now I think I know why you’re here a second time.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” 

I was astride him. Then I lay on him full length, his cock still deep inside, and I squeezed him and held him with my thighs.

“Oh my god that’s good,” he mumbled.

Then he was behind me. Then he was on top of me, my legs straddling his hips, his shoulders, then over one shoulder. Finally exhausted, I rolled to the side. He fucked me slow and deep, then with increasing speed. When I could feel him close to cumming, I rolled away. I didn’t want to waste his cum in a condom.

“Need a break?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I whispered.

We lay in silence for a while. “Can I suck you off now?” I asked.

“If that’s what you want.”

“Is that what you want?” I probed.

“I want what you want.”

Condom off, I drew him in again. After some minutes—how many? I lost track—he pushed me gently but firmly off and came on his own belly, gasping, muttering, moaning.

“That would have been a lot for you to take,” he said when he had recovered.

I wanted to say I could have taken all he had to give, that I wanted this part of him to enter me.

“I haven’t cum since I was last with you,” he elaborated.

“Is there more the longer you wait?” I had never asked this question of any man, woman, book, or internet site.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied. Was that just him or true for all men? I’d have to find out.

We lay together a few minutes, my head somewhere near his hip, my hand on his slender leg, my legs bent to curl around his. After a few minutes he needed nicotine.

“I’ll walk you downstairs,” I said groping for my clothes. I had to take a new pair of underwear from the drawer, unable to locate the ones we’d removed together an hour ago.

At the street, we hugged briefly. He lit a cigarette and was off, up 24th Street, out of sight, as relaxed as he’d looked on arrival, his loping easy gait and slightly slumped shoulders reminding me of my brother.

THE END