Risky Business
It’s the last night of October, Mira’s favorite holiday, and we’re in our room– with its matching twin red beds, Moroccan carpet full of hair, dream catchers, and taped-on-the-wall polaroids. Mira’s dressed in a short, pleated houndstooth skirt and a white button down barely covering her navy blue bra and her breasts’ heavenly droop. I notice this because I’m staring at her chest as she gets ready. She sees me looking, so she asks me to zip up her skirt and offer my honest opinion about how she looks. Her hair is pigtailed, she’s wearing glasses, long socks, and her honorary pair of Doc Martens. She knows the look in my eyes well enough that I don’t need to utter a word: “sexy.” I’m dressed in a bodycon pink dress with feathers, and she zips me up, her nose hovering over the nape of my neck for one beat too long. I erupt in goosebumps and she meets my eyes. Again, the knowing glance, this time, a heated “fuck.”
We met years ago at a mutual friend’s birthday party. We bonded over our mutual bisexuality and nudist tendencies. We liked skinny dipping, showering with strangers (each other), and kissing girls at parties. We bonded so much that our mutual friend often felt like the odd one out. While Mira and I talked for hours about books we had read and what we thought about while touching ourselves (girls), our mutual friend had a hard time joining in on the banter. Two years later, when I found out Mira also committed to The University of Pittsburgh, I shamelessly DMed her on Instagram and asked if she wanted to be roommates. I expected a hard no because we hadn’t talked in years, and because I doubted her memories of that weekend were as formative as my own. But Mira responded in a heartbeat. We met for coffee two weeks later and talked for hours, like we had never left off.
Three years later and we’re grabbing at each others’ asses as we fly down the carpeted stairs for tequila shots and limes. When we get to the kitchen, no one else is there, so we stare hard, undressing each other with our eyes. We pull each others’ thighs into our hands and squeeze, leaving nail marks. Moments later, at the sound of footsteps bounding downstairs, we pull apart, our faces hot. Mira darts to grab the shot glasses and I saunter off to retrieve the tequila, limes, and cutting board. Our roommates look at us with hints of knowing in their eyes.
They’ve seen the lusty glances we’ve been casting back and forth over these past six months, they’ve heard the tipsy conversations about “that first time we met” and the mutual “crushes” that developed thereafter, and they’ve caught us making out on the couch, having our “we have feelings for each other” chat. They’ve heard us settling into our rhythm of making love which follows a predictable trajectory of: downstairs kisses, waiting for all the roommates to go to bed, fooling around on the couch, and then migrating to our shared bedroom for scissoring and unabashed makeouts. And they’ve seen us sneaking out of parties, trapezing home like alley cats, in order to have the place to ourselves. We drown out all thoughts of “what does this mean” and “what now” by grabbing our shots, hitting record on Snapchat, and flinging the tequila down our throats. Lime wedges in mouth, we hit the road.
At our first party of the night, there are stolen construction signs on the perimeter, string lights hanging from above, and a vintage collection of wooden tables and chairs. We are on the roof deck, so we have a clear view of every neighboring drinking game. This is a blonde skate bro stoner named Joe’s house, and its general ambiance feels just like a skate park. Gray concrete slabs cover the floor, there’s a collection of vinyls hanging next to the back door, and there are red solo cups and beer kegs everywhere. We settle into the outskirts of the party with our roommates. We drink Twisted Teas, and don’t try very hard to mingle. Instead, we talk about the girl Halle’s hooking up with (Kelsey’s) poor relationship with alcohol. Last night, Kelsey blacked out at Tequila Cowboy (the downtown country bar) and Kelsey’s soccer friends had to carry her toned, ROTC body home. Kelsey kept sending Halle illegible drunk texts and Snapchats, her facial expressions contorted in drunken stupor. Halle is visibly upset, and Mira and I do our best to comfort her and lead her to her own conclusions, asking guiding questions like: “How did those texts make you feel?” “Are you worried about her drinking problem getting worse?” And yet, in between phrases, in selfish fashion, without any real discretion, we touch hands and thighs, sneak glances at each other when we think nobody’s looking.
We all head home for an alcohol fill-up, navigating the familiar garbage-lined Oakland streets, running across sidewalks and forcing angry cars to stop for us. We walk past the corner Italian Market with its neon signs duct taped to the door, the defunct children’s learning center on the corner, the spooky CVS, and the bus stop, parading down our street, glancing at all of the familiar, mismatched, grime-painted Victorian houses, collapsing wood fences, and chipping garden gnomes. We kick at the deciduous leaves beneath our feet, as we march on.
Mira and I bound up our front porch steps and race inside, climbing the stairs to our bedroom, and promptly locking the door. Mira begs me to change, unzipping my pink dress, shimmying it off my shoulders, and picking out a risky business outfit for me. “So we can match,” she tells me, though I know her real intention because her eyes tell me: “I want something that I can take off of you easily tonight.” She picks a bra that lifts my breasts even higher, a short skirt with a high-V on the upper right thigh, and my red-rimmed Vera Bradley glasses. She pulls my hair into a high bun, gels back my bangs, and kisses me on the mouth. I pull her to me, grab her ass, and start moving my body with hers, to the Paramore song that’s playing downstairs. We are tipsy, the sexual tension between us is physically heavy. My panties are drenched. We move downstairs and start taking selfies. In the first picture, our cheeks are squished together; in the second we’re looking at each other, our eyes loaded with lust; in the third we’re making out and laughing. Our roommates are in the next room, twiddling on their phones, filling up their Gatorade bottles with vodka. They look at us and raise their eyebrows, unsurprised, their suspicions confirmed. All those moans coming from our room, the creaking beds, the giggles, the stolen glances, and fevered touches could only have meant this: Alexa and Mira are fucking. The booze makes us brave. We dance and kiss in the living room as our roommates look at us and then look abashedly away. This is the first time we haven’t tried to hide what’s been going on between us, and it feels good.
We head out for our second party of the night, hosted by Pitt’s sailing club. We peruse the same streets we just stumbled home on, noticing small details we hadn’t the first time around, like the group of kids huddled around a front yard bonfire, and the graffiti evil eye sprayed onto the sidewalk a block away from our house. This is the party we’ve been waiting for, hosted by our roommate Kira’s best friend, Emi. Emi’s house is as narrow and ill-lit as a European alleyway. There are record albums hanging from the walls, industrial light bulbs, and an assortment of different colored couches. There is a line out the bathroom stretching into the kitchen, and everybody's coming out from the bathroom post-drunken piss, murmuring about how “there isn’t any soap left.” I like how strange and nautical these kids are, so I march off on my own in pure Sagittarius fashion, sauntering into the middle of the room, making jokes, talking about buffalo tattoos, doing crunches on an ab abduction machine on the schluppy porch while chugging a beer, as onlookers cheer me on and count down from 10.
I’m asking Joe how to tie a Sheepshank knot, when Bea, our most straight-laced roommate, comes to find me. She tells me that this kid’s flirting Mira up and I should go tear her away from him before they end up fucking (implication: Mira is too tipsy to fuck a stranger). They’re cuddled up together on a green couch, so I sit down on the couch arm and touch her shoulder. She looks up at me, we start talking, giggling, she puts her head in my lap and looks up into my eyes, and the boy next to her is forgotten about. She doesn’t even bother with a clipped goodbye as he walks away, glaring at me. He’s gone, everyone’s gone; she and I are the only ones in the room. We head outside, we kiss, and she tells me that she wishes she could post about me on Instagram, she wishes I could meet her grandma, she wishes I could be hers and only hers. I believe her and I don’t. We still care too much about what other people think. Even though I know it’s the Barefoot talking, I let her words woo me. We head home, arms encased, eyes lusty, the sexual tension of today reaching an all time high, as we grab for each others’ cunts and asses on the open street.
We bound up our porch steps again, and once we get to our bedroom, enact the scene that was foreshadowed all day. She’s on all fours, crawling towards me, and I strip her slowly, kissing her shoulder blades, her toned back, the space in between her breasts. And then I take each breast in my mouth, pulling on her nipples until I feel them harden. Her moans make my insides melt. “Is this okay?” I ask her; she nods aggressively, and pulls my mouth up to hers, as she bites my lower lip. She traces her finger down my chest, onto each hip, and down into my black lace thong, pooling my wetness onto my clit, rubbing me good. I flit my tongue into her soft mouth. Her lips feel like pillowy bliss. She sticks her tongue into my mouth, and our tongues dance and move with tactful lightness. Like watercolor brushes, we blend into the softest French kiss.
Her eyelashes dance on my cheek, and her breathy gasps fill my throat. I pull her skirt over her hips, part her navy blue lacy thong with my teeth and suck her clit like I know she likes it, rhythmically, alternating my pulls between soft and hard sucks. Her taste sends me even deeper into lust. She tastes like mulberries, under brewed coffee, and sharp salt. My stomach is doing backflips and my vision’s blurred by want. This is the femme sex I’ve been having wet dreams about since I was thirteen years old. This is the apex of all of Mira and I’s past fooling around, there is something special in this moment that we both recognize. Our eye contact indicates as much.
I am surprised by how expertly my body seems to know what to do: where to trace, how and where to place my tongue and how hard to pull Mira’s labia into my mouth with my lips. Sex with Mira has a way of bringing me out of my body and into the knowing that femme sex is something I could never part with. In other words, I know that I need this soft, all-encompassing pounding of my cunt and heart, forever.
I pull her onto the bed, strip my skirt off and suck her neck. My left leg braids itself in between her legs, while my right leg cozies up beside her left. I’m straddling her and riding her hard, pressing my left knee into her clit rhythmically, gathering the wetness and using it to my advantage. I’m a femme dominatrix, and I pull her into orgasm. Her sounds rock me. She moans, I moan. Her ecstasy, my ecstasy. We kiss and stare into each others’ eyes, burying our noses into each others’ necks to inhale every trace of pheromone. And then she’s on top, straddling me and rocking me into a deep moan. Our tinny bed’s rattling the wall, our pleasure screams are ricocheting around the house.
We go at it for hours. Oh, the blessed power of the female orgasm. She’s on top, then I’m on top, and after each O, we kiss lovingly, softly, staring into each others’ eyes with deep emotion, tracing our fingers across shoulder blades, breasts, underfoot, stomach, hip, and thighs, until the shivers pull us back into desire and we return to the fucking. Hard gyrating tumbles into soft kisses and back again, perpetua. We rotate between sub and dom, dom and sub, until we lose track of our bodies, falling instead into one jumbled heat of sweat, cum, and pleasure. Our roommates leave us alone, as they’re rocked to sleep by our bisexual lovemaking. The next morning, over pancakes and eggs, they say: “It sounded like you really enjoyed yourselves last night.” Mira and I blush; I place my hand delicately on her thigh. Though we’re not yet ready to tell our roommates, we’ve decided to give this whole romance thing a go, even though we’re young and dumb and have more passion than we know what to do with, last night illuminated some great truth about our shared devotion that we just can’t push away. Our Halloween dreams told us so.