Sanda wore gold ankle bracelets that jangled gently as she wandered through the farmer’s market. You’d hear a soft music, and look up at a black silk of hair as she sauntered past, look down at her bare foot kicking out from beneath the tightly wrapped long skirt, the circles of gold around her brown butter baby skin.
Sanda told me the story of climbing quickly out a window late one night, never to return home again. She remembered the shadow of the teak chairs on the porch, the banyan tree, voices hushed, her brothers. And then she imagined the rest of her childhood through the stories her father told her.
We sat on her living room rug and drank wine. She complained about her boyfriend’s refusal to fuck her during her period.
Our boyfriends denied us many things, we decided.
“I want him to eat me,” she slurred, lying now on her belly and hugging a pillow. She rolled to her back, and ran her hands down her arms, and across her thighs. “I want him to bury his face between my legs and lick me until I pass out.” She laughed, “That’s not asking too much, is it?”
My boyfriend was completely willing to venture into the world of cunnilingus, regularly, if lethargically. His sweet surrender to my every whim was enviable, Sanda told me. And for a little while, I was aroused by that thought–that he would do anything, anything, I asked him to do.
“Will he lick your ass?”
I knew he would, if I asked him. He asked me how, and dutifully spread my buttocks while I bent over his bed. I felt his tongue wet and cool around my asshole, my pussy all the wetter as I envisioned describing the experience to Sanda. I pushed back against his mouth, urging his tongue in deeper–a sensation so strange, the way ice cream feels in your mouth, sweet and smooth, only it was not ice cream, and it was not my mouth. I slid my hand beneath my pussy as he spread me open, wider, his tongue fucking me now, my fingers slick, circling my clit wildly as I cried out. He stopped, then stood behind me. His cock rubbed gently at my ass, teasing against the tight rim. He hesitated, then sank gently instead into the heat of my pussy. “Oh, you are so wet!” he gasped, and he pushed in once more, much longer. His come dripped from me as his soft dick popped out. He fell onto the bed, nearly asleep already, and I climbed up beside him, pulled the towel between my legs, and hugged him. The towel rubbed against my ass, my clit still wanting.
After awhile, my period began to arrive with Sanda’s, and we spent the evenings of her menstrual banishment lying on the floor, sandalwood smoke trailing from the incense burner on the mantel, record after record spinning, my head light and giddy as the night grew darker, longer. Her skin smelled like butter.
Sanda stood and stretched, her moonlit silhouette framed by the window like a poster. Sanda cupped her breasts. “They are so swollen and sore!” She held them. “Whenever I touch them right now, it makes me want to fuck!” she said.
“Such a jerk.”
Sanda’s boyfriend never acknowledged me, but walked into her apartment occasionally, unexpectedly, and went directly to the fridge. Sanda rolled her eyes as he tossed her an empty beer bottle on the way back out the door. “Think fast!” he’d say.
“Hey, are you coming back later?” she’d ask. And he grunted back to her his yes or no, without embellishment of detail.
My own breasts were swollen now, too, my nipples hard from rubbing against my lace t-shirt. Sanda had promised to show me how to wrap a skirt, and she remembered suddenly, asked me if I wanted to do it now. I stood and reached for the batik cotton length that I had brought, and handed it to Sanda.
“Come, we need some pins.” Sanda stomped carelessly through her third-floor apartment, the neighbor’s inevitable knock on the ceiling bringing her back to herself. “I am very cranky, tonight, Leyla,” she said, as she walked into the bedroom. I followed her.
“Stand here, by the mirror.”
Sanda reached into the drawer, and pulled out a handful of safety pins and threw them on the dresser. She reached across, and pulled at the waist of my shorts, and unbuttoned them. I pulled the zipper.
“The skirt needs to be tight on your hips,” she said, sliding my shorts off.
I stepped out of my shorts, and saw the curls of pubic hair beneath my panties. My cunt grabbed onto the tampon I was wearing. Even so, my panties felt damp as she unfolded the fabric and reached around me to wrap it. “This is beautiful,” she said as she pulled the cloth tight. I moved in closer to her, let my breast brush lightly against hers, as if it were an accident.
Sanda folded, and pinned. I could smell the sandalwood in her hair as she bent down, her breath on my breasts as she worked.
“There!” she straightened, and turned me toward the mirror. The skirt was dark blue, and she had hung it low, below the top of my panties.
“I see your underwear,” she giggled, and pulled at the elastic.
I froze, felt her warmth behind me. I shut my eyes briefly, then opened them and looked at her in the mirror. She gazed into my eyes there, and gave a soft nod.
I turned back to face her. Her nipples showed through the peach camisole, and my hand drifted up to touch her breast. She sighed, then smiled, then grasped my hand and kissed my wrist my arm, as she backed into the bed.
For weeks, my boyfriend had teased me about Sanda.
“Oh, is this a girl date?” he had snickered, as he looked up from his work order.
“Her boyfriend ignores her this time of the month,” I explained. My boyfriend did not ignore me. But he was glad, he said, to have some time to catch up on things at home.
In truth, I knew I overwhelmed him. He said so, sometimes. He said so the month that I stayed in the huge house I sat while my professors were abroad. “Sleep with me here,” I begged him. And for three nights, he watched me brush my teeth before bed, the me in purple pajamas that he wrote about years later. I began to kiss him, all three nights, talking talking all the while, and came three times each night after he was fast asleep. When the birds sang in the mornings, I climbed on top of him. He told me he needed more rest, and rolled away.
Sanda lay down on the bed, and I crawled beside her, dizzily turning to kiss her cheek. I pushed the strap of her camisole from her shoulder, and kissed her there. She sat up and pulled off her top, and I did the same.
She pinched my nipple, and leaned in to suck on it, relentlessly, as I moaned. She held my shoulders down, climbed across me, her pelvis now pressing against my knee.
The batik worked its way higher as I spread my legs open.
“May I?” Sanda unpinned the fabric as I whispered yes, yes. She lay next to me, and I reached down, dreamily expecting a hard cock. My hands ran down her legs, then pushed them apart
Sanda wore no panties. My finger followed her heat. Her eyes opened wide, as she spread a little wider. Her labia opened, and I touched her. She was drenching, and I felt the string from her cunt.
“You, too?” she laughed. We paused.
“Have you done this?” I asked.
“Never. You?”
“Never.”
I began to kiss her breasts, her belly. I wanted to lick her cunt, but she stopped me.
“I shouldn’t,” she explained. Her boyfriend was supposed to come over, after all, even if he was a jerk.
I told my boyfriend about the evening. He always encouraged my little crushes, and this time it made me wonder why. Love, yes–but passion, desire! That’s not asking too much, is it?
One day, I jumped into the passenger seat of a westbound convertible, and drove away forever. Sanda and I wrote long letters back and forth after that. But Sanda is the type of woman whose comfort lies in the tangible, in time spent, in the voice, in the body.
Come to think of it, I am that type of woman, too.
