Riley, their man inside the house of domination, had done his job. The two men crept along the outside wall, nearing the back entrance to the house. Disposing of three separate female guards with chloroform on a rag, they violated the boundaries of the house of pain and made their way down the hall, through Madame Krusher’s parlor. Men hung from the walls in cages, bound and gagged, human gargoyles with delirious ecstasy in their eyes. The Madame’s compliant victims.

Rocko shuddered, eyeing the tightly-trussed cock and balls of one of the men.

“Makes a guy think,” he muttered disgustedly under his breath.

“Shut the fuck up,” hissed Vinnie, waving Rocko toward the spiral staircase.

Both men had studied the floor plan of the house — bought from the architect for a half a case of bootleg — until they knew it by heart. The two men made their way to the third floor, eyes ever-watchful for the Madame’s dreaded personal bodyguards, known on the street and in Madame Krusher’s house as the KrushGirls. Their name was muttered in criminal circles from Mulberry Street to Cicero, the docks to the projects. Guys named “Killer” with rap sheets a mile long felt their balls shrivel up into their bodies when the legends of the KrushGirls were traded in hoarse, drunken whispers across card tables and whiskey-slick bars everywhere.

The men crept in the narrow blind spot of the third-floor camera, made their way to the Madame’s chambers, stood outside the door with their .45 Thompsons at the ready.

“On three,” said Vinnie. “One… two…”

“Three,” he said, and Rocko kicked the door at the lock, forcing the door in one easy motion. The Thompsons belched violently and bullets riddled the bed.

Broken glass, shattered wood, liberated feathers filled the room.

Vinnie backed off, waving Rocko inside.

Rocko crept cautiously to the Madame’s bed, reached out, reached out and pulled off what remained of the down comforter.

Pillows.

“Fuck,” spat Vinnie, maybe half a second before the trap door opened under Rocko’s feet.

Rocko’s Thompson chattered blindly, riddling the ceiling, as he dropped through the opening. He clawed at the edges of the trap door but couldn’t get a grip; his Thompson gave a hollow click just as he lost his hold and went plunging down into blackness. His scream faded as he fell.

In that same moment, Vinnie’s legs were whipped out from under him by a complicated spring device resembling a lasso — he was dragged upside down by his feet, whipped into the center of the ravaged bedroom and left hanging there, wildly firing the Thompson until, as if from nowhere, a bullwhip struck from the darkness and whipped the machine gun out of his hand.

“Nice boys share their toys,” the harsh voice echoed around him as six women, all clad in head-to-toe leather and high-heeled boots, appeared around Vinnie’s hanging form. They leapt for Vinnie without a moment’s preliminaries.

Vinnie screamed as they grabbed his wrists and lashed them behind his back, leaving him swinging back and forth by his feet, helpless to stop his nauseating motion.

“Help! Let me go, you pervert bitches!”

The evil cackling filled the room. The six bodyguards stood in a circle around the unfortunate Vinnie, whips and knives at the ready. The circle of women began to push Vinnie back and forth between them as if he were a child playing on a tire swing; every once in a while one particularly nasty bitch would give him a little twirl so that he swung around uncontrollably. This would bring a shriek from his lips; Vinnie was easily nauseated.

Then the circle of evil women parted, and Vinnie looked up to see a terrifying image.

There was Madame Krusher, her bullwhip neatly coiled at her belt. She casually held Vinnie’s Thompson submachine gun in her hands.

Madame Krusher was stunning — she was nearly six foot two in her bare fishnets, but she was almost never seen without her famous six-inch heels. But the heels didn’t lessen the grace of Madame’s posture, the beauty with which she walked or moved. She wore an ankle-length black latex dress with a fetching silver racing stripe up each side; the thigh-high slit in back exposed Madame Krusher’s shapely legs with their lace-top fishnet stockings that hitched to black latex garters. On top, the dress molded to the enticing shape of Madame Krusher’s breasts, displaying her erect and dangerously-sharp-looking nipples. The latex dress buckled up to her shapely throat, presenting a conservative appearance in front — but the dress was backless, displaying the two matching nutcracker tattoos, one on each shoulder blade. Her long, black hair offset her amazingly pale face, with its blood-red lips. From those eminently kissable but undeniably hazardous lips jutted a long ebony cigarette holder. A slender European cigarette smoldered at the end.

Any normal woman wearing that much latex would have been sweating like a pig. But not Madame Krusher — she was as cool as a cucumber, or close to it.

But she was getting hot as she contemplated the cruel fate that awaited her unfortunate captives. Already, in the basement many floors below, Rocko was learning what a foolhardy thing it is to court the ire of Madame Krusher.

“The Duke sent me some boys to play with,” sneered Madame Krusher, her face flushing red with delight. “What a kind tribute for him to send! I shall see that we make excellent use of his gifts — though they may not be returned to him in entirely working order!”

“The Duke says FUCK YOU!” snarled the upside-down Vinnie, still swinging helplessly, having a little trouble formulating the words.

Madame Krusher closed in on him, her blood-red mouth twisting into an expression of pure, unadulterated cruelty.

Then, gradually, the edges of her lips curved upward.

She nuzzled the hot, smoking barrel of the Thompson between Vinnie’s legs, prodding his balls. He fought to keep from moaning in pain, but Madame Krusher could see the fear in his bloodshot eyes.

“Fuck me? The Duke of Whiskeytown wants to fuck me? How charming of him,” laughed Madame Krusher. “I think I’ll take him up on the offer some time. But for now, I’ll have to satisfy myself by fucking you. And your unfortunate collaborator –”

Madame Krusher stepped aside, and three more KrushGirls French-walked a stark-naked male figure into the room. It was Riley, the security guard, The Duke’s man on the inside. He had been handcuffed and gagged; his balls had also been placed in a complicated device which was sort of halfway between a set of vise-grips and a hand drill. Madame Krusher reached out and affectionately gave the handle a few cranks, bringing a pathetic moan from Riley’s lips.

Vinnie, viewing Riley in half-glimpses as he spun around helplessly, felt cold fear creeping through his body.

Madame Krusher cackled. “Girls, it’s time to have some fun with the tribute the Duke of Whiskeytown has sent our way! Let’s send them back to the Duke with a whole new set of cultural values and a few at least partially improved personality characteristics!”

“And walking funny,” Madame Krusher added under her breath, stalking away from Vinnie’s wildly swinging body, as her six KrushGirls closed in on Vinnie, whose pleas for mercy vanished into nothingness amid the ravenous sounds of the girls’ unholy delight.

From the trap door, the plaintive wails of Rocko drifted up, mingled with the delighted, evil laughter of another cadre of Madame Krusher’s KrushGirls.

Madame Krusher eyed Riley.

“And you,” sneered Madame Krusher. “You played right into my hands. By the time I’m through with you, The Duke will think twice about sending a spy into the House of Krush! Take ‘im away, Girls!”

The squirming Riley was dragged down the hall by the his own cackling KrushGirls.

Madame Krusher flicked her cigarette out of her holder and crushed it meticulously under the pointed toe of her boot.

“And maybe that sonofabitch’ll call and make an appointment himself,” she muttered for her own amusement before following her KrushGirls down the hall. She gave a little shudder as she contemplated that.

#

The Duke gave Frankie “The Axe” Vicelli a grave look as Frankie shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“See, we’re not really sure what happened to the boys,” Frankie was saying. “I mean, that place is locked up tighter than a nun’s asshole. And our guy on the inside seems to have, uh, well, he ain’t there no more. I figure he either took it on the lam, split with the money we gave ‘im without doing the job… or maybe something else went down.”

“Something else?” growled the Duke impatiently. His voice sounded like he’d just eaten a mouthful of gravel.

“Yeah,” said Frankie, crossing his legs. “Uh… like, got caught.”

“Like maybe that bitch got hold of him? Found him out?”

“Uh, yeah,” said Frankie, tightening his posture so he kind of faced one side. “Like, she got hold of him and… well, you know.”

The Duke shuddered.

“Yeah, I know.”

He inched closer to his desk, as if to protect his privates.

“See, without our man Riley in there, it’s like Rocko and Vinnie totally dropped off the face of the Earth. I mean, there’s no way to tell what’s being done to them.” Frankie reddened. “I don’t mean that. I mean, we don’t know if, like, Riley chickenshitted out on us without killing the alarm system, or if maybe they got iced coming down the wall, or something.”

“Those boys were the most skilled, most cold-hearted killers in the whole fucking country. Plus they were on loan from the Prince. If I don’t get those fuckers back to Minneapolis –”

“Hey, Duke, I mean, they knew it was a risky job. It’s not like that Krusher bitch don’t have a reputation. And those fucking KrushGirls –”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what they’re like, yeah,” said The Duke, his face reddening. He squirmed uncomfortably in his leather chair. He made a great show of lighting his cigar, paying maybe a little more attention to the clipping of it than was prudent.

“So Rocko and Vinnie might be dead,” said the Duke. “Or worse.” The Duke and Frankie shuddered simultaneously. “I can smooth things over with the Prince. He owes me a couple guys, anyway. What’s our next move?”

Junior stopped his pacing, turned and pointed accusingly at the Duke. “We don’t fucking give in! I say we get our boys, all our boys, every fucking hired gun this side of fucking Attica, and we take that bitch out! We go in there with Sherman tanks if we have to, you understand me, Pop? Donny the Undertaker up in Kansas City — he’s got Sherman tanks, right? We can get ‘im to loan us a couple. We’re gonna fuck that bitch up!”

The Duke looked at his youngest son and shrugged. “Hey, relax. All right, Junior, you said your piece. Now go smoke one of your Pall Malls or something.”

Junior collapsed into an easy chair to sulk.

“OK. Frankieboy, what do you think?”

Frankie shrugged. “It’s time. You gotta have a sitdown.”

“With that Krusher bitch? Come on. She’ll never give in.”

“Make her an offer. I think she’s ready to crack. These dominatrix bitches, you know, they’re all ego. She’s made her show of strength. Now you propose a business partnership that will be to your mutual benefit.”

“Yeah,” said the Duke, staring off into space. “Benefit.”

“I say we ice the bitch!” shouted Junior, half-rising out of his chair before losing steam in the face of his father’s stern, unforgiving glare.

“I said lighten the fuck up, Junior. All right, Frankie. You think we can crack this bitch?”

“I think we already did. She’s scared. She knows we can get at her, maybe she took down Rocko and Vinnie and maybe she knows we might get lucky next time. We’ll be offering her protection, plus a guarantee that she won’t get clipped by any of our interests. Even a power-hungry bitch like that — well, you know. She’s gotta see the logic in the arrangement.”

“So what do we offer her?”

“Fifty-fifty,” said Frankie. “It’s the only way she’ll take the bait.”

“Jesus,” spat the Duke disgustedly. “I haven’t given nobody a fifty-fifty since Al Capone personally came down to Whiskeytown and asked for a favor. And this bitch ain’t no Scarface Al.”

“More like J. Edgar Hoover,” snickered Junior, then let out a very pleased-with-himself sort of belly-laugh.

“What the fuck do you know from J. Edgar Hoover,” snarled the Duke. “Some day I’m going to send you off to prep school, you little fuck. All right, Frankieboy. I’m gonna trust your gut on this one. We’re bringing this Krusher lady to the table. She’s fuckin’ lucky I’m in a good mood.”

Frankie cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. “She sure is lucky.”

#

Madame Krusher surveyed the naked rumps of her three newest acquisitions. After extensive training and sexual reprogramming under the merciless tutelage of the KrushGirls, Rocko, Vinnie and Riley (renamed Limpdick, Pansy and Weakling, and with fresh identifying tattoos just above their shaved pubic regions) had been returned to the Madame, who would test the thoroughness of the KrushGirls work. The KrushGirls never failed in a training — knowing that, if the victim failed to perform to Madame Krusher’s expectation, any involved KrushGirls could next find themselves in one of the Madame’s rather complicated bondage devices, looking forward to a long future of extensive discipline.

Now, she had Limpdick, Pansy and Weakling on their knees, bent low with their manacled arms stretched out in front of them. They had been allowed to turn their heads to one side, so that they could place their cheeks against the cement floor of the Madame’s personal dungeon. Their knees were apart the regulation twenty-four inches; each cock and balls was restrained in unsavory ways. Their pink, vulnerable assholes winked between their parted, smooth-shaved ass-cheeks, the openness and availability of the tiny openings speaking volumes about their ordeals over the last few days.

Madame Krusher was dressed in her casual training attire: a tight latex mini-dress with her trademark racing stripe down the side; the lace tops of her fishnet stockings were visible just under the hem of the dress. There was the faint shadow of something else under the dress.

Her hair was pulled up into a bun and she was smoking a Virginia Slim.

In one hand she casually held a rather nasty-looking riding crop.
“Who rules the universe, boys?”

“Madame Krusher rules the universe,” the three men said at once, without hesitation.

“And who rules the Earth, my succulent, obedient little minions?”

“Madame Krusher rules the Earth,” the three men said, but Limpdick’s voice caught a little, and Madame Krusher’s riding crop came hurtling down to draw a red swath of pain across his bare, shaved ass, bringing a yelp of fear and pain.

“Yes, yes,” Madame Krusher said with delight. “You’ve learned your lessons so well! But then, my KrushGirls can be such good teachers! And Whiskeytown? Who rules Whiskeytown, my worthless little fuckslaves?”

“Madame Krusher rules Whiskeytown,” came the flawless chorus from the three men on their knees.

“And your worthless, filthy little assholes!?!” Madame Krusher spat, tapping ash from the Virginia Slims over Pansy’s ass so that he twitched when the hot cherry landed on his flesh.

“Madame Krusher owns our assholes.”

“Good!” shrieked Madame Krusher with bliss, hiking up her latex skirt and whipping out the strap-on that had been concealed underneath. She let out a mad cackle of glee as she wanked the enormous rubber schlong around in big circles, aiming it like a gun. “Then which of you pathetic slaves is first!?!”

The sound of Madame Krusher’s laughter echoed throughout the House of Krush, and everywhere, slaves shivered in their stocks and cages.

#

The sit-down was conducted in the open field behind the canning plant out on Highway 30; each side was allowed to bring six heavily-armed guards. Madame Krusher’s guards held submachine guns; The Duke’s carried shotguns loaded with slugs (except for Frankie, who carried only his trademark axe).

The guards stood scowling and sneering at each other while Madame Krusher and The Duke met in the middle of the field, out of earshot of any of their men but well within range of the weapons.

The Duke wore his usual double-breasted business suit with a white carnation and a dark grey fedora. Madame Krusher looked shockingly potent in a shimmery plastic dress, black with red racing stripe, that came to her throat and plunged to her feet, but had a bound, impossibly-narrow waist and a somewhat stunning slit up the front, right between her long and quite amazing legs. The Duke was caught a little off-guard.

Madame Krusher started the talk with a rather demure expression of sorrow. “Phil, I’ve been a fool. A complete and utter fool not to see how perfectly charming you can be, how mutually beneficial an arrangement could exist between us. I’m so sorry it had to come to this. It’s really not to our advantage — not for either of our businesses. This is senseless, this kind of war — I never should have been so headstrong.

The Duke was still choking on his cigar from hearing himself called “Phil.” Nobody called him Phil except his mother and his ex-wife. Even his new wife, 22-year old porno starlet Mandi “Miss Mounds” Binkowski, called him The Duke. Normally he’d start having people killed for calling him Phil, but for some reason he just stood and stared, dumbfounded, at Madame Krusher.

“Phil, did you hear a word I said? Oh, I’m sorry, is it all right if I call you Phil?”

The Duke was still staring at the front of that dress, which molded to Madame Krusher’s breasts. He finally managed to tear his eyes away, though — he knew she was a crafty bitch.

“I’m so sorry, Phil,” Madame Krusher repeated. “It is all right if I call you Phil, isn’t it?” She nuzzled a little bit closer to The Duke, jiggling her tits just the faintest amount. “I definitely think we should be on a first name basis. You may call me Madeline.” She fluttered her eyelashes flirtatiously.

“Look here,” growled The Duke. “None of your smart-ass tricks, you ball-breaking bitch. We’re going — uh — 60-40 or it’s nothing.”

“Sounds delightful,” said Madame Krusher, flashing her white teeth and winning smile. “But please, do call Madeline.”

The Duke sneered. “60-40, you psycho cunt!”

“Lovely. Who gets the 40?” Madame Krusher absently stroked the neckline of her dress, drawing attention to her already quite noticeable bust. “And please, call me Madeline.”

The Duke seemed to be groping for an answer.

“You do, you power-hungry slut! 60% for my people!”

“Lovely,” said Madame Krusher. “That’s so generous of you. I recognize that an establishment such as mine needs the protection of your kind of organization. All the other houses of domination in Whiskeytown have come under your — protection, so I feel quite comfortable doing the same. I don’t doubt that this is the start of a beautiful friendship. And do, please do call me Madeline.”

The duke stared at her for a long time.

“You better believe it, you fruitcake nutcracker whore!” The Duke finally snarled, pointing his cigar at Madame Krusher accusingly. “And I want my Minneapolis loaners back today!”

“Oh, yes, Phil, I’m so sorry about them — I think you’ll find that I haven’t harmed them at all. I’ll send them back to you this afternoon.”

“Good,” said The Duke, his guard dropping a little. “They’re just on loan, you see. From the Prince.”

“Of course — and I wouldn’t dream of hurting your men. Phil, what’s more — to show my gratitude for the excellent deal you’ve offered me… ” Madame Krusher casually put her arm around The Duke’s shoulders. As she spoke, she nuzzled a little closer to him. “I should like to invite you to sample the wares at my house of domination. After all, if we’re now business partners — it only seems fair that you should be allowed to enjoy the pleasures under your protection — doesn’t it?”

The Duke looked suspicious, and Madame Krusher turned just slightly, brushing her breast with its erect nipple, latex-clad, against The Duke’s arm.

“I should like to personally see to your enjoyment while in my house. Bring as many men as you want. Bring all your men, if need be — I want you to feel safe.” Her hand came up to The Duke’s face and she gently began to massage his temples. She had to bend down to bring her face so close to his. “Totally safe, Phil. Totally, completely safe.”

Phil shifted uncomfortably, and would have crossed his legs — except that Madame Krusher’s eyes had already dropped, and a smile curved across her face as she licked her lips.

“It is all right if I call you Phil, isn’t it?”

The Duke uttered a barely-audible growl.

Madame Krusher fluttered her eyelids flirtatiously.

“Isn’t it?”

#

Madame Krusher ran her hand slowly up the curve of the shaved, flabby ass beside her on the bed. She sighed with pleasure as she reached down between the spread thighs to cup the absurdly-distended set of testicles, wrapped with a variety of ropes and cords, that had turned a bright, tortured color of red.

A murmur of pleasure escaped the man’s lips as Madame Krusher stroked the hard prick.

Then, without warning, she swatted the organ with her long fingernails and giggled in pleasure when the man’s whole body spasmed.

“Who rules the universe, Phil?”

The gravely voice was faint.

“You do, Madame Krusher.”

“Louder, Phil.” The Madame’s tone was uncharacteristically soothing.

“You rule the universe, Madame Krusher.”

“Very good. And Whiskeytown? Who rules Whiskeytown? Sometimes I forget, I’m so forgetful in my old age. Who rules Whiskeytown again?”

“You rule Whiskeytown, Madame Krusher,” said Phil, as Madame Krusher nuzzled her body up against his ass, tugging the strap-on dildo out of its hiding place under her latex dress.

“And who rules your sorry little asshole, Phil? Who is it?”

“You rule my asshole, Madame Krusher.”

Madame Krusher sighed a satisfied sigh as she mounted her slave.

Phil began to murmur contentedly as Madame Krusher did her business.

“And — my worthless, dickless little fuckboy — who gets the one-percent split of our little business here?”

“Unh — oh — I do, Madame Krusher.” Phil’s voice was hoarse with the exertion of accepting Madame Krusher’s shaft into his asshole. “But — uh — please — oh — allow me to offer my small percentage — as — unh — a tribute to your greatness — uh!”

“Why would you want to do that, Phil?” asked Madame Krusher in her most coy voice.

“Be– because — uh — you are the Queen, Madame Krusher — uh — the Queen of — uh –” He gave up, unable to form the words between the unforgiving, rapid thrusts of Madame Krusher’s cock.

“Oh, thank you so much, Phil,” sighed Madame Krusher as she fucked him, a little breathless from her own exertion. “You’re just too fucking good to me. And listen, I’m going to say this for the last time. Call me Madeline. You useless pathetic little pencildick fuckboy.”

Phil only grunted in response.

Thomas Roche is a writer and editor whose website, Skid Roche, showcases both his writing and his recent forays into erotic photography.

Charles Gatewood has written a truly wonderful book called Photography for Perverts — a book that covers a topic heretofore ignored in photography books. Photography for Perverts is a fun exploration of Gatewood’s life work and what he’s learned with it, including many sexy photos from the author’s portfolio. A renowned photographer, Charles has now proved that he is also an effective and engaging writer. Photography for Perverts is a quick, fun read and an invaluable guide to getting started taking erotic photographs.

Gatewood’s book is so much fun, in fact, that it finally gave me the impetus to buy a digital camera — or perhaps it was simply the right time in my life to take up a new hobby. Regardless, Photography for Perverts served as a useful guide to the process.

I’ve wanted a decent digital camera for some time, one that would allow me to make photo-quality enlargements. Gatewood’s book focuses almost entirely on film photography, since that’s mostly what he does. There is a brief section on digital photography, but as Gatewood correctly observes, the field of digital photography develops so quickly that any concrete suggestions he offered would quickly be out of date. I chatted with other photographers I know who work in the digital arena, and finally decided on the new Fujifilm Finepix s7000, which seems — after years of using a disposable camera to take mediocre shots — the Cadillac of consumer-grade digital cameras.

I selected the s7000 first and foremost because it offers 6.3 megapixels. A megapixel is a measurement of digital photo resolution. Consumer digital cameras nowadays range from about one to five megapixels, with a few, like the s7000, offering a bit more. For twice the price (about $1,000), you can get a semi-professional or “prosumer” camera like the Canon Digital Rebel, but the s7000 offers the same number of megapixels as that esteemed device. Being a complete beginner when it comes to cameras, I decided a semi-pro camera wasn’t what I needed, and picked up the s7000, a tripod, a remote shutter release and an external flash.

In Photography for Perverts, Gatewood covers such topics as creating a photo studio, shooting on location, and shooting candid photos at public events. He also talks about backgrounds, props, context and “telling a story” with photographs. It’s all fascinating reading, especially for someone like me who’s spent his life working in a different erotic arena. I absorbed as much as I could of Gatewood’s book and prepared to take my first nude photos.

After taking a few candid (non-nude) snapshots of friends to get the feel of the camera, I gave my out-of-town girlfriend Brie, who was due for a visit, fair warning that I wanted to photograph her. This was not news to her, since I’d been looking for a camera for three months — and she agreed graciously, though she doesn’t consider herself an exhibitionist and was more than a little nervous about undressing for my camera.

Given that Brie is my lover, I got started by simply incorporating the camera into our erotic play. While we were fooling around, I seized the camera and snapped some shots of Brie and I in flagrante delicto. This initially put a bit of a damper on our play, since Brie tends to be shy. But soon she’d gotten used to the camera and was enjoying herself while I snapped photographs of her doing exactly that.

However, I discovered upon looking at the photos after the fact that they were what you might expect from snapshots taken while I was doing something else. They might have nostalgic value in 10 years, but they weren’t anything with much artistry.

That fact noted, I convinced Brie to let me spend a little more time photographing her. Arranging her on a white sheet spread across on my bed, I instructed her to pose for the camera as I first shot bed-level photos, then stood on a chair to photograph her from above, Marilyn Monroe style.

Brie has wonderfully creamy, olive-toned skin, but the flash still made her look somewhat washed out. I had purchased an external flash, so I was able to swivel it to bounce the light off the walls and the ceiling, but it definitely took some doing. Though Brie doesn’t really consider herself an exhibitionist, she found herself relaxing into the role of erotic model, and went from lying on the bed staring at me with a blank, bored expression (which can be sexy in its own way) to touching herself with some ease as I snapped photographs of her. Willingly performing for the camera, Brie accessed her inner exhibitionist, and before long I forgot all about the camera. The two of us enjoyed a heated encounter fueled by the thrill of doing something truly naughty.

Which was lovely, but still didn’t teach me much about erotic photography. I had learned that a digital camera can be a great sex toy, and shooting dirty pictures a wonderful form of foreplay. And though Gatewood certainly acknowledges that there is erotic energy between photographer and model, Photography for Perverts isn’t just for perverts — it’s for perverts who want to take good photographs. I found my digital photos of my encounter with Brie to be a wonderful kind of memento, but they weren’t yet the artful nudes I was interested in. In fact, they had a bit of a garish quality, like I would expect to see them on alt.kinky.snapshots or something.

My first photo shoot, coupled with Gatewood’s book, taught me a few important things about how to take erotic photographs.

* Tell the model s/he is gorgeous, breathtaking, sexy, seductive. Who doesn’t love to hear that? The positive strokes they receive (pun intended) will show through in the photos.
* Take your time. Especially with people who are not professional models, it takes quite a bit of time to get relaxed in front of the camera. A relaxed model = better photos.
* Lighting is key. Gatewood touches on these issues throughout his book, and you should pay attention. It is amazing how awful most people look in the glaring light of a flash. Especially with light-skinned people (and especially with naked light-skinned people), a carelessly used flash can make every blemish on the skin look painfully obvious. Invest in an external flash — one that can be tipped toward the ceiling to take the glare off your subject. Better yet, if you can afford it, invest in some professional-grade photofloods so you don’t have to use a flash.

With Brie, to my sadness, on the plane back home, I resolved to put some more energy into taking artful erotic photos. In Part Two, I’ll describe my first shoot with a professional model and let you know what I learned.

That is, until Jimmy.

Goldie was 18 and Jimmy not much older when he came to work at the building. From the moment Goldie set eyes on him, she was captured. He was gorgeous, with his thick black hair cut in a rakish manner, his full pink lips looking astonishingly kissable. Goldie had never been kissed, having attended an exclusive Manhattan girls’ school and being forbidden by her parents to date. They had agreed to lift that restriction when she started Columbia in the fall, provided she lived at home.

But she wanted to kiss Jimmy very much. There was something about the pearly-pale cast of his skin, the well-muscled cut of his body, the faint scar across his jawline, the suspicious narrowing of the eyes, the faint sarcastic smile that always seemed to be twisting his lips in a way that, Goldie suspected, was so subtle that no one but her noticed. All she had to do was think about getting on an elevator and she started to get excited. Jimmy’s Brooklyn accent echoed in her ears whenever she dreamed of him — streetwise and confident.

But she played it cool, not wanting to seem a perfect slut. After all, she had to wait another two months before she’d even be allowed to date. And certainly her parents wouldn’t sit still if she decided to date an elevator operator, would they?

Nonetheless, Goldie found her midnight visions filled with Jimmy, imagining him kissing her, touching her, making love to her. She wondered what other scars he bore on that muscled body underneath that conservative red uniform. She had her first orgasm thinking of Jimmy, sprawled in the covers under her bed biting her finger very hard so as not to issue the passionate moans that were surging up inside her body. Her finger had teeth marks for three days.

Each time she entered the elevator Goldie could smell him, his rough scent of blended male musk, machine oil and Brylcreem. Her pussy would clench firmly, thinking, remembering the frequent fantasies of Jimmy atop her, moaning as he lost that cool exterior, trading it for a torrent of lust for her.

But Jimmy remained distant, aloof, despite the way his eyes roved over Goldie whenever she stepped into the elevator. He was always coolly polite. He never offered her more than a “Good morning, Miss Gosling” or a “Good evening, Miss Gosling.” He never even asked her how she was doing.

The night it happened, she had been at the library very late, studying for her final exam in her summer school class on The Philosophy of Quantum Physics at the NYU Extension Program. She was quite sure to get an A, but there’s nothing wrong with getting an A+, is there? The chauffeur dropped her off in front of the building and watched to make sure the doorman was on duty before parking the car.

Sleepy and somewhat giddy with exhaustion, Goldie found herself the only person on the elevator. Against her better judgement, she entered.

“Good morning, Miss Gosling,” said Jimmy, his eyes flickering up and down Goldie’s body. She felt somewhat ashamed that she’d worn a brief summer dress that left her quite exposed, but it got so hot in that library.

Goldie said “Oh, is it after midnight?”

“Just barely, Miss Gosling,” said Jimmy, his eyes never leaving her body, lingering over the way her full breasts filled out the dress.

“Then good morning, Jimmy. Busy night?”

“It is now,” he said.

Puzzling at that last comment, Goldie turned around and faced the door. The elevator hummed silently to life, and without warning, Goldie felt a sudden pinch on her pussy. She gasped, leaping forward. She looked at Jimmy with horror. He looked like the cat that ate the canary.

“Something wrong, Miss Gosling?”

Goldie felt a tiny shiver go through her lower regions, her pussy swelling and moistening with the touch of Jimmy’s hand. He had touched her, hadn’t he? Or perhaps she had just imagined it.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said, turning back around. “Nothing at all.”

Another pinch, and this time Goldie didn’t turn around. Then Jimmy’s hand was on her more firmly, and she was pushing back onto him as he stroked her pussy, finding it wet. Goldie shut her eyes very tight as the elevator whirred on in its long journey up to the 57th floor. . “Don’t turn around,” Jimmy said, just to make sure, and Goldie seized the grab rails as her orgasm exploded through her.

Jimmy’s hand withdrew, and Goldie stood on unsteady legs as the doors slid open.

“57th floor,” said Jimmy. “Good night, Miss Gosling.”

“Good… good night, Jimmy,” she said, her voice hoarse.

#

Goldie didn’t get a wink of sleep that night. She thrashed in her bed, moaning as she remembered Jimmy touching her — and pictured him doing more. Kissing her. Undressing her. Fucking her for the first time up against that elevator wall on the long journey to the 57th floor.

For the rest of the summer, Goldie started making a habit of studying late — very late. Jimmy was an expert; he could always make her come before the 57th floor, provided she followed his instructions and didn’t turn around. Within a few weeks she was climaxing on 34, then 24. Jimmy had her getting off three times on some nights before they reached 57 — all without touching her anywhere except her pussy.

Goldie’s pussy remained in a perpetual ache, as she was rubbing herself violently to orgasm every night after her trip with Jimmy. She dreamed of him always. She believed she was in love.

The day before classes began at Columbia, the ever-fastidious Goldie was at the library well past midnight studying her schoolbooks to make sure she would be ahead of the game on the very first day. She returned from the library with Jimmy on her mind. She had been thinking of him all evening as she studied, and the mere sight of him made her melt.

“Good morning, Miss Gosling. Particularly late tonight, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Jimmy,” she said. “Good morning.”

Goldie trembled as she turned around.

The elevator whirred to life and Goldie took the grab rails, supporting herself as Jimmy’s fingers slipped under her skirt, under her panties, and began stroking her. Suddenly, she couldn’t take it any more.

She hit the emergency stop button and launched herself at Jimmy, wrapping her arms and legs around him as she pressed her lips to his.

“The surveillance camera –” he said weakly, but then his protests were lost in moans as Goldie dropped to her knees and clawed his red uniform pants open. His cock in her mouth tasted even sweeter than she’d dreamed of, all the nights she pictured herself doing exactly this. She sucked him hungrily as Jimmy ran his magic fingers through her hair.

But she wanted more. Goldie took her mouth off Jimmy’s cock, looked up into his beautiful eyes and whispered “Fuck me.”

Jimmy lifted Goldie onto her feet and pushed her against the wall of the elevator, propping her ass on the guardrails as he tugged her underwear to one side and entered her. Goldie felt only the slightest twinge of discomfort as Jimmy’s hard cock opened her pussy for the very first time — and then it was nothing but ecstasy, as she came on Jimmy’s cock, his hands roving all over her body and tearing her dress until it was nothing but shreds. She came slumped against him, moaning as he emptied himself inside her.

Goldie was very lucky that her parents were already asleep. She slipped inside and tucked her dress down the garbage chute — there wasn’t much left of it, anyway. She slept fitfully for the rest of the night, awakening periodically to touch herself and thunder eagerly and repeatedly into the throes of orgasm as she dreamed of her next elevator encounter with Jimmy.

But when Goldie entered the elevator, wearing a smart businesslike outfit of navy blue for her first day at Columbia, some elderly man she’d never seen was operating the elevator.

“Wh — what happened to Jimmy?” she asked.

“Oh, I’m afraid he’s been fired,” said the new elevator operator. He chuckled and nudged her in the ribs. “I heard he had a bit of a toss with one of the tenants right here in this very elevator. Shocking, eh? He was fired on the spot.”

“Oh,” she said primly. “Good riddance.”

Goldie wept all the way uptown on the subway. She hid her face behind a copy of Nausea and bawled. Her skin tingled all over remembering the touches Jimmy had given her, and her pussy clenched remembering how he’d entered her for the first time, making her come as he crushed her against the elevator wall.

Never again. She had made a slut of herself and she would never see Jimmy again.

Her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were pink as she walked, 15 minutes early, into Existential Despair and the 21st Century Mind. She sat miserably in the back row — she had never sat in the back row in her whole life, always choosing the front so she could ask pertinent questions and impress her teachers. Now, though, poor Goldie just wanted to disappear.

Her face was buried in a copy of Being and Nothingness that was rapidly edging toward the Nothingness side as Goldie’s tears soaked its pages.

“Yo, you’re gonna ruin that book, lady.”

Goldie looked up, staring wide-eyed at the familiar sound of Jimmy’s Brooklyn accent. Jimmy wore a tight white T-shirt and blue jeans folded up over his engineer boots. He had a pack of Luckies wrapped up in the sleeve, their colorful logo just visible through the white cotton. He had a motorcycle helmet crooked under one arm and a backpack over the other shoulder. There was a copy of Plato tucked alongside the helmet.

Tears streamed down Goldie’s face.

“I… I got you fired,” she said.

Jimmy shrugged. “Ah, I didn’t need that job anyway. I just had to keep it for the summer in order to hang on to my scholarship. Now that the term’s started, I’ll do okay. I mean, hey, you wanna get out of Brooklyn and be a philosophy professor, you gotta play by the rules. I wouldn’t have kept that job anyway. Listen, you wanna get a cappuccino after class?”

The professor took the podium and said pretentiously: “Desire. What is the place for desire, desire that ascends to the stars from the lowest depths of human misery?”

Goldie threw her arms around Jimmy and kissed him.

Thomas Roche is a widely-published writer and editor of erotica, horror, and crime fiction. You can visit him online at his new website, www.skidroche.com.

You find yourself pushed aside by the crowd as a pair of twin sisters howl “Mardi Gras! Mardi fucking Gras!” and lift their matching skintight Georgia Tech shirts, displaying four nipple rings flashing in neon and sodium light. Jostled away from the scene of the crime, you spot the entrance to an alley half-frozen in darkness, shafts of red light flashing rhythmically in the thick smoke. You duck down the alley, so narrow it’s escaped the attention of the party goers. At the far end of the alley, you see a winking neon sign: THE HOUSE OF POISON. In the shadows of the doorway, a lithe and cadaverous biker type, six and a half feet tall if he’s an inch, sits on a very tall stool, feet tucked into the rungs underneath. He wears a tuxedo shirt, black bow tie and tuxedo pants, with a long leather coat over it all despite the subtropical Gulf heat. His long hair hangs shoulder-length and scraggly from a pate bald and glimmering rhythmically in neon pink. His carefully trimmed beard is braided into twin forks. He does not have a mustache.

You walk down the alley, dodging discarded chicken bones and piles of human shit. The doorman never takes his eyes off of you, and you can’t be sure, but you’d swear he never blinks.

Beneath the neon sign is a black-lighted chaser box, showing what appears to be a woman in a black bikini covered in tarantulas. The black lights circle rhythmically around the headline. “GIRLS. GIRLS. GIRLS. FREAKS OF NATURE. CARNIVAL ACTS. SEE THE ASTOUNDING MADAME TARANTULA MAKE LOVE TO A THOUSAND DEADLY SPIDERS!”

The doorman gives you a bored look, takes a drag on his cigarette, gets down from the stool, crushes his cig underfoot. You can smell a waft of his smoke and you recognize it as a clove. He produces a top hat and a skull-topped cane from the shadows and clears his throat.

Suddenly, his languid movements become animated, as he begins his script as abruptly as if it were audiotaped.

“Good sir, or madame,” he begins with a wink. “Within the walls of The House of Poison, you will discover horrors that will titillate and disturb you! Tonight’s act features the terrifyingly beautiful Madame Arachne engaged in a live sex act with one thousand deadly man-eating spiders from the jungles of Cambodia! Madame Arachne will shock and amaze you — but mostly, her deviant and unfettered love for her arachnid charges will titillate ever fiber of your being! For months, my friend, you will think back on Madame Arachne’s shocking and abnormal love for her pets, and you will be haunted, my friend — haunted by the scandalous and appalling depths of depravity to which human behavior can sink! And all this for only 10 dollars, with a two-drink minimum.”

You fish for the wad of crumpled bills in your backpack. You smooth out a 10 and hand it to him. The barker leans his cane against the bare brick wall and takes a stamp out of his coat pocket. “Right hand, please,” he says, and you offer it to him. He stamps you with a line drawing of a black spider.

“Welcome to my nightmare,” the barker says, his face reacquiring the bored expression it held before as he sweeps aside the black leather curtain hanging in the doorway.

You pass into the darkness, hearing the sizzling of the neon lights close to your face. Your eyes take a moment to adjust as you feel your way down the long corridor. As the black fades to gray, you see the walls are lined with framed photographs of naked or half-naked women tangled on red satin in the embrace of animals. One blonde wrapped around an enormous snake features the legend “MADAME SERPENTINA AND HER VENOMOUS PYTHON LOVER.” Another, showing a redhead beset with geckos, promises “LADY SAURA ENJOYS HER PETS, THE MOST VENOMOUS LIZARDS KNOWN TO MAN!” A third shows a bald-headed woman spread lithe and lovely on a bed covered with writhing black snakes: “SPANISH BARONESS ALAURA DE LA CROIX SEDUCES HUNDREDS OF POISONOUS ASPS!” Yet another print features a woman nude except for a heavy carpet of insects. “SULTANA ABDULLA ENGAGED WITH A SWARM OF MALARIAL GNATS!”

You push through a tattered red satin curtain just in time to see the lights go down. You discover yourself in a decaying club that is empty except for a few haunted faces lining the back walls. A stage at the front of the club is not raised as you would expect in a strip club — rather, it is lower than the surrounding tables, its white tiled floor glowing pale in the spotlights. In the center of the lowered stage is a woman swathed in a shimmering black cloak, perched on impossibly high heels. From a hidden speaker, a voice booms: “Well, don’t stand there gawking, take a seat and gawk.” You fumble toward a table. “No, not there,” booms the announcer. “Sit near the stage, my friend. You will thank me later.”

Madame Arachne fixes you with her gaze, and you hurry to the front of the club, tuck your backpack under a table, and sit down.

Madame Arachne lifts her arms and her satin cloak shimmers to the ground behind her, revealing that she is nude except for a pair of knee-topping, high-heeled boots. Lustrous hair the color of coal swirls around her shoulders in an unfelt draft. Her skin is pale but her features exotic — American Indian, perhaps, or South American, belying the whiteness of her flesh. Her face is expressionless, frozen, impassive. Cold as ice; cold as spiders.

The static-laced strains of rhythmic Middle-Eastern music begin to pulse through the club, cheap speakers distorting every bass note, the beat of hand drums mingling with reedy snake-charmer sounds. Madame Arachne lifts her arms higher, tips her head back, and begins to undulate with the music.

The announcer’s voice returns, the volume of the music dipping as he speaks. “Tonight, my friends, you will be treated to one of the most shocking displays of sexual decadence ever to be shown on a stage. As Madame Arachne dances, you will see her lovers slowly make their way on stage: Thousands of venomous spiders! Now, ladies and gentlemen, I must warn you that these tarantula spiders are the most venomous arachnids known to man, and are allowed into the country only through special agreement with the Smithsonian Institution.”

As the announcer continues, the woman begins to twirl across the stage, her naked body writhing and swaying in time with the music as she spins. “Now, how does a woman become the decadent Madame Arachne, you may ask? Madame Arachne began her lifelong love affair with the darkness when as an adolescent girl living in the villages of Brazil, she was bitten by a tarantula while playing in the jungle one day!” You realize all of a sudden that a dark pattern has begun to emerge from the curtains behind the stage. Contrary to your first impression, this darkness is not a shadow, nor is it the incursion of a dark liquid onto the stage. Rather, it is a thick carpet of spiders advancing deliberately toward the nude and twirling woman. As she lowers herself to her knees, legs spread and pointed toward you, the spiders advance more quickly, and the first creatures reach her outstretched hands, mounting them. Your heart begins to pound.

“Taken by a fever after being bitten by this deadly spider, the young Madame Arachne was declared dead by the village doctor — but to her family’s surprise, she returned from the dead, finding herself not only immune to spider venom but inexplicably drawn to the dark beasts! At this time she was but a young girl just discovering her sexuality, and this proclivity resulted in her exile from her home village. She made her way to the United States, where her need for spidery lust was revealed to one of our curators!”

The spiders — big, furry tarantulas the size of a human fist, you now see — have gained Madame Arachne’s shoulders, tangling in her hair, crawling slowly over her face. You watch as the beasts creep down over her full breasts, darkening them as more spiders appear from backstage.

“Now, my friends, I must ask that however bewitching and erotic you may find Madame Arachne’s deviant congress with her many dark lovers, you do not make a sound — and, most importantly, you do not become sexually aroused. Spiders, as you know, are drawn to vibrations, and even the smallest peep out of any of you may summon the spiders from the stage and tempt them from Arachne’s power!”

Madame Arachne, still undulating in time with the music, now rests on her knees with her body stretched down low — covered in spiders from head to belly. Her face is all but obscured by it, and the movements of her body only tempt them further down her pale form.

The announcer continues: “But these spiders, with their years of training by Madame Arachne, are not like any others! They are drawn, as well, to the scent of human arousal, and an aroused guest will draw these spiders’ attentions as surely as Madame Arachne draws them now! You are assured that we have an ample supply of antivenin on hand — but please, I do not wish to administer it to my guests! Please refrain from succumbing to the arousing nature of Madame Arachne’s performance — remain calm, ladies and gentlemen!”

The nude Madame Arachne is now covered in spiders, even her thighs obscured by the dark carpet of beasts. Her naked body begins to shudder and undulate — partly in time with the music, but seemingly, as well, in a rhythmic expression of sexual ecstasy. You hear your heart pounding through the ringing in your ears, over the music. Then, at once, the music stops.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” the announcer’s voice comes. “I’m afraid we have a situation. One of Madame Arachne’s lovers has escaped the stage. I can only surmise that one of our guests has become sexually aroused. Please, I am referring to the guest in the front row. Your eyes go wide and you look around frantically for the source of the voice. “Please! I beg you, do not move. Yes, you, Sir, or Madame. Do not move, please. Please, for the love of God, remain absolutely still.”

You’re tucked back in your chair, your legs crossed in front of you. Your hands hang at your side. You feel a tickle at the end of your fingers. Your heart pounding, you glance down.

The announcer shrieks, and you jump in your chair. “Please! Sir, madame, do not move, please! For the love of God! Remain absolutely still. Ab-so-lute-ly still, Sir. Or madame.”

Your hand shakes; there is a big black spider crawling slowly but inexorably over your wrist. You look down and realize that several more spiders are crawling up your pant legs. Your throat closes and your breath stops in an instant as you realize that another spider — the biggest of them all — rests on your lap, stretched languidly across your sexual organs.

“Now, folks, I must insist that everyone in the club remain in their seats; I tell you again, these are the most venomous spiders known to man. Arachnia Venomouso. They can kill a grown human with one bite. We must only hope that Madame Arachne can help us in this situation.”

You turn your eyes toward the stage. Madame Arachne has risen, still covered with her carpet of spiders. Only her feet remain mostly free of the beasts. She moves toward you, slowly, deliberately. She mounts the few stairs leading from the stage to the front row. She approaches you.

“No,” you manage to utter, a strangled sound low in your throat.

“Please, my friend, remain still. Madame Arachne is your only hope now.”

Madame Arachne’s eyes flash in the red and white spots from overhead. They are locked in yours. Spiders darken her foreheads like oversized eyebrows. Spiders tangle lumpy in her long dark hair. You look up at her, a silent plea in your eyes.

You smell Madame Arachne’s body as she leans toward you, putting one arm around your shoulder. Her naked breasts, covered with furry arachnids, sway close to your face as she bends low against you. You are hunkered down in your chair and the tall Arachne perches on high heels far above you, so that when she bends over you your face is close to her crotch. Two spiders cling to the trimmed dark thatch of her pubic hair. You breathe the sharp scent your own fear mingled with that of her sex. Her fingers find your cheek and gently caress you, as they might a lover.

Madame Arachne plucks a spider from the side of your face. You feel its spiny legs scraping your flesh as it leaves you. Madame Arachne places the animal on her shoulder. She bends lower, lets her hand travel up your thigh. She plucks the spider off your crotch and tucks it against her own. It clings, half-dangling, to her pubic hair. Madame Arachne bends lower and you smell her, stronger, pungent female musk mixed with spices. She takes three spiders in rapid succession from your arm, placing them on her own.

Finally, she crouches low between your legs and lovingly gathers the spiders that have crawled up your leg.

She stands slowly, balanced on high heels between your splayed legs. She takes the spiders from her forehead and cheeks, placing them on the pile gracing her shoulders like a cloak. Madame Arachne bends forward and brings her face close to yours. She kisses you, her lips parting your own and her tongue snaking languidly into your mouth. You taste cigarettes and whiskey on her mouth. As she kisses you, you feel an unexpected scurry of legs from the top of your head, another from your ear, the brush of spiny legs across your cheek. When she draws back, her face is again blotched with spiders — six of them, perhaps, or eight.

Madame Arachne backs slowly away from you, the club’s silence suddenly inescapable, like a press of heat all around you. Madame Arachne returns to the stage, and the announcer emits a long, low sigh into the microphone, the cheap electronics crackling and softly whining.

“Thank whatever gods or goddesses you wish, ladies and gentlemen. Our guest is all right. Madame Arachne has saved the day.” Scattered applause erupts from the haunted souls in the back of the club. Shaking, you get up, kick your chair back, hear it fall over and hit the carpeted floor with a thunk. You run your hands over your arms, down your legs; you kick your feet to make sure no creatures go flying. As the music rises and Madame Arachne returns to her dance, you grab your backpack and head for the door, your legs like rubber, your heart still pounding.

Trick. It was all a cheap trick. Some carnival huckster French-quarter trick to tempt future tourists with promises of a sick thrill. I tell the story and my friends all come here, laughing, expecting a pulse-pounding ride of terror. Fuck them, you think. I’m not telling a soul. Never. I’ll never speak of it. They can get their free advertising elsewhere, motherfuckers.

You push through the red velvet curtain, its brush on your skin making you shudder. The doorman draws aside the leather curtain in front, like he knows you’re coming.

“Have fun?” he asks.

You shoot him a wicked look, stumbling into the narrow alley and half running on shaking legs toward the voices and stink of Bourbon Street. You’ve made it halfway down when your knees suddenly give out and you fall against the bare brick wall. Your fear has paralyzed you. You sink to a sitting position, back propped against the wall. Your backpack lays forgotten between your legs. You take a deep breath and go to get up.

Your joints are stiff, hard, immobile. You look back at the doorman, who is puffing his cigarette, looking at you. He perches on his stool, lifts his top hat to you, and grins.

Then you see it. The swelling mound at the webbed crux of your thumb and forefinger. You open your mouth to shout for help. Your neck muscles are paralyzed.

You slump over to the side. “It was a trick,” you manage to say, your lungs closing, your tongue thick in your mouth. You feel the heat start to hit you, the pulse start to undulate through your body.

You can smell the scents coming from the street: sex, liquor, smoke. But even above all that you can smell what wafts out of the entrance to the club: spiders.

Your joints stiff, you haul yourself to your hands and knees. You try to rise to your feet, but you can’t. Instead, you start crawling back toward the club entrance.

The fever is in you now, fiery liquid pulsing through your veins. The scent of Madame Arachne’s spiders fills your nostrils, and you feel yourself crawling toward the club. Through piles of garbage, damp pools of piss. You smell it, stronger, now, as the doorman draws back the leather curtain with a grin.

Madame Arachne has come to the door of the club, her body covered in the furry bodies of spiders. You crawl toward her as her frozen, expressionless face twists and for the first time you see her smile. At the doorway, the doorman helps you to your feet and you stumble against the doorjamb. Mistress Arachne holds out one hand; in her palm is a spider.

You take the spider from her, place it on the back of your hand. This time you feel it when the mandibles penetrate your flesh. With its bite, you the fire courses through you drop to your knees again, and Mistress Arachne, nude except for her cloak of lovers, turns and beckons you into the club.

You crawl into the darkness, moaning.

Thomas Roche is a widely-published writer and editor of erotica, horror, and crime fiction. You can visit him online at his new Web site, www.skidroche.com.

One of the main advantages of cybersex is that it gives you a chance to meet someone new, or role play as someone else. Whether or not you’re used to putting your fantasies in print, interacting online gives you a chance to engage in a shared scenario with a different texture than in-person role play. With developments in Internet technologies, cybersex has become even more appealing, practical and erotic.

With online sex, you can spin a fantasy where you and your lover switch genders, take on the roles of famous people or fictional characters (Napoleon and Josephine? Angel and Buffy?) and engage in far-flung adventures that are either impossible or unsafe in the real world. Believe me, if anyone in the world has ever fantasized about an activity, someone else has gotten turned on chatting about it online.

What tools are available to you for Internet sex? I’ve listed a few below.

E-mail

Receiving or sending flirty, sexy e-mail can be truly exciting. Push your descriptions of imagery and detail into the explicit, and you can really drive your lover over the edge. Whether your e-mail is a quick, sublime note that says “I’ve been thinking about you all day and getting turned on” or a whole lengthy scenario, story or erotic suggestion, the thrill of seeing those sexual words in print can be something special. Through the workday, this can be a great way of stoking the sexual tension in preparation for a sizzling night, but keep in mind that companies can legally monitor employees’ e-mail messages — including web-based or “anonymous” e-mail — and some companies have terminated employees who send sexually suggestive communications from work computers. If you or your lover has personal wireless access through a handheld computer or text-messaging capability on a cell phone, you’re probably in the clear as long as it’s not paid for by either of your employers.

How do you compose a sexy e-mail? It can range from a gentle note that the kids will be at the babysitter’s tonight to a full-blown erotic fantasy. I even know people who have composed erotic novels and e-mailed them chapter by chapter to a lover. If you’ve never written down a sexy scenario, reading some of the erotica on this web site is a great way to get some ideas. If you don’t feel like you’re ready to write your own fantasy, no problem! Cruise a story site like this one, find an article (like this one) about something new you want to try — and e-mail your lover the link. People (like me) who write erotica do so to turn you on — and one of my favorite compliments is when a fan tells me “I shared your story with my lover.” You can also cut-and-paste the text from most web pages and e-mail it in the body of an e-mail — technically a copyright violation, but as long as you’re just using it to spice up your own sex life, I promise I won’t narc on you.

Lastly, with all the capabilities of e-mail nowadays, there’s no reason you have to limit your naughty communiqués to text. Most e-mail systems will let you send attachments. This gives you the chance to e-mail pictures and voice recordings — both of which I’ll talk about below.

Instant Messages and Text Messaging.

Services like Yahoo! Messenger, AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), Windows Messenger and ICQ allow you to send short real-time messages to anyone who downloads a small application to their computer. This service is usually free.

Again, keep in mind that playing at work could be hazardous to your job — installing new software on a work computer is a dead giveaway to snooping coworkers and bosses or computer techs who don’t share your appreciation of sexual experimentation, and you have no First Amendment protection if you’re using an employer’s computer. Wireless communications have developed to the point where it’s possible to receive instant messages (IMs) on a handheld computer like a Palm, Handspring, Sony Cliè, Pocket PC or Blackberry. Also, many mobile phone providers and pagers now allow you to receive text messages from e-mail or from another wireless user. Many of these systems also allow you to send pictures or other attachments, and most instant messaging systems like Yahoo! allow you to talk through your computer’s microphone and speaker — as if you were on the phone, but without long-distance charges.

Computer-based instant messaging is the meat and potatoes of cybersex. In fact, the term “cybersex” or “cyber” usually refers to explicit sexual scene-building involving two (or more!) people in an online chat room or instant-messaging system.

If you’re sending a saucy IM to your lover, you might want to make sure they’re not somewhere other people can see their computer screen. Depending on your computer’s settings, IM software may make a sound when messages arrive — and a loud chime followed by an all-caps message I’M NAKED AND COVERED IN CANOLA OIL THINKING OF YOU may not be the sort of thing your world-traveling lover wants to share with the other patrons at an Internet café in Barcelona.

Otherwise, once you know the coast is clear, launch right into the dirty talk. One of the things that often sour lovers on cybersex is the slow going — it isn’t always easy to learn to talk dirty, and typing dirty isn’t necessarily any different. Don’t be shy — let your lover know what turns you on, what you’re wearing, what sexy things you’re thinking about him or her when you see each other again. Remember, it’s just text — perhaps you can afford to be a little more daring than you’d have the guts to be in person!

Chat Rooms

The other staple of online sex is the chat room. For the most part, IMs have outstripped private chat rooms for interactions between two people who know each other. Yahoo! and other online services offer unfettered access to chat rooms to anyone who sets up a free account. Most services divide chat rooms into “Staff Created” and “User Created” sections. The Staff Created section usually has rooms with names like “Basketweaving” and “Stamp Collecting” with two or three users per room. The User Created section almost always teems with rooms like “HornyCheerleadrs,” “NoPantiez” and “M4MSMELLMYJOCKSTRAP” that are often packed so full you can’t get in. Online providers have a hard time admitting just what they’re providing, but that’s a whole other story. User-created rooms are often divided into general access and adult rooms, which offer at least some safeguard that people under 18 won’t access the naughty places. The themes people pick for online chat rooms are often enough to make me blush, so be prepared to see some pretty extreme behaviors represented.

If you’re chatting with a lover online, many services allow you to create a private chat room that no one else can enter. This allows you to have a little more room to type and sometimes makes it easier to “enable voice,” which allows you to use your computer’s microphone and speakers or headphones.

Another way you can interact with a lover is for the two of you to go into a public chatroom and chat there — with other people watching. If one or both of you has an exhibitionist streak, this can be very exciting, and the other chatroom denizens will often appreciate it. Remember that if another user (hopefully not your partner) is annoying you, making abusive statements, etc., you are usually offered a menu option to ignore that user, which means you won’t see their annoying messages any more!

Photos

While I’m a big fan of text, it can be lots of fun to add some sizzle to your e-mail, chat session or IM with a naughty picture. Digital cameras are easy to come by and relatively inexpensive nowadays (there are now cheap disposable digital cameras available), and many offer timers so you can take pictures of yourself — a helpful tool when both your hands are busy with, er, tools. Another great toy is the webcam, which is a small, usually low-quality digital camera that plugs directly into your computer and allows you to take snapshots or video clips, or send live-action video over the Internet. Most IM and chat room systems offer the capability to enable webcams. Some digital cameras will also double as webcams.

As anyone who has taken pleasure in vibrators can tell you, one of the best things about technology-based sex is that each new technological development gives you a chance to try a new sexual adventure — and wireless communication technologies are developing at a speed that can make your head spin. One of the most promising erotic techno-toys to come along in years is the miniaturized digital camera, which has allowed manufacturers to integrate both still and video imaging into cell phones and handheld computers. These camera-endowed communications devices are marketed as the perfect way to send a snapshot of your adorable puppy to your Mom, but the devices can also be turned to kinky purposes. Imagine being able to snap a saucy photo or brief-but-salacious video clip of yourself in your bedroom, hotel room, behind a hedge at a city park or in the restroom on a cross-country train — and sending that image to them from your cell phone! With camera phones, you can. As the technology develops, even more erotic wireless communications possibilities will be offered — and you can rest assured that like all technologies, they’ll promptly be used to enhance sexual adventure.

If you’re not the show-off type, you can still snag a salacious picture from the web — most websites will allow you to download any image by right-clicking your mouse in Windows or clicking and holding your mouse button down in Macintosh. Once you’ve found a picture that gets your motor going, you can then e-mail that pic to your partner. It’s very naughty (technically a copyright violation if the photo is copyrighted, which it probably is), but it has become common practice. Just be sure you don’t leave the photo somewhere it can be found by someone you don’t want to find it.

Audio

I mentioned microphones above, and they can definitely spice up a chat session. Coupled with a webcam, a microphone can offer real-time videoconferencing. For about $10-$20 at any large office supply or electronics store, you can get a hands-free computer headset, often designed for use with voice-recognition software. This will allow you to have your hands free for more interesting pursuits than holding a microphone in front of your face like a game show host. (Though, if that’s your fantasy…)

I hope this article has given you some ideas for putting the Internet revolution to good use — after all, it’s not all about venture capital and dot-com investing. Cybersex offers a great chance to connect with your lover in new ways — and whether or not you decide it’s for you, it’s worth exploring the options!

Spider had a pocket full of dimes, and Daddy’s All-Night on Castro has the best espresso drinks of anywhere in town.

He’d already stripped off his sweat-soaked muscle shirt when he hit the lights. For a second, he thought Sierra had jumped the gun on him; in fact, he wondered if maybe she’d waived the cash fee and ordered room service. He’d never actually seen Sierra, and of course hair colors changed as quickly as sexual orientations in the land of rock and roll, so the possibility that Sierra had picked his lock — so to speak — was not dispelled by the fact that it was not a curvy thirty-something brunette but a slim twenty-something blond stretched out on the hotel bed wearing only leopard-print underwear and a pair of handcuffs.

But the gag — that definitely wasn’t Sierra’s style.

Spider walked over and sat on the edge of the hotel bed. The chick was young, mid-twenties or younger, and had a longish mane of platinum-blond hair scattered across the stiff hotel pillows. Her teacup breasts were clutched in a tight push-up bra in pink and silver leopard print with black lace at the top, and her cute little ass was cupped in a matching pair of panties. She lay on her side, twisted slightly so that he could see both ass and tits. Obviously she knew her ass was her best feature, but it received stern competition from the tits, which spilled lushly over the tops of her bra cups.

She was pretty. Her features were delicate, those of a perky rock and roll starlet affecting the pierced-and-primped look. She definitely wasn’t aping the sexy honorary femme-dyke aging punk style that Sierra sported. Truth be told, the latter was Spider’s preference, but the girl on his bed certainly wasn’t in danger of getting kicked out.

The girl’s big blue eyes blinked up at him cheerfully, only the oversized gag preventing her from showing a broad smile.

Spider rooted under the bed and found the girl’s clothes: skimpy black jean shorts, high boots, and a crop top. Tucked into the shorts was a small key-ring, a packet of lube and a tiny leather clutch purse embossed with the words PILL POPPIN’ COKE SNORTIN’ FUDGE PACKIN’ BABY KILLIN’ ROCK AND ROLL WHORE, which would have struck Spider as not making a lot of sense if he’d had the time to think about it. He didn’t, though; instead, he tossed the lube on the bed, unsnapped the girl’s wallet and took out the girl’s I.D.

The I.D. looked reasonably convincing — she was 22. Well within the legal range. Still, maybe the pills and coke had worn off by now, so he put his hand on the girl’s hip, turned her to her side, and unlocked the handcuffs. She wriggled slightly, resisting his attempts to free her and keeping her wrists pressed together behind her back. She whimpered in protest as he unbuckled the gag. It was one of those ring gags like Spider had occasionally seen on bondage websites — allowing full access while preventing effective protest. Though she whined a little, the girl didn’t say a word.

She was so petite that it wasn’t hard to wrestle her into a sitting position against the hotel headboard, even though she kept trying to rub her ass up against Spider’s crotch. She uttered little protests as he did, though, plainly preferring her prone position. But Spider wasn’t taking any shit. He turned her around and sat on the bed, opposite her, cross-legged, not even caring that his boots were on the bed.

“Hi,” the girl said with a smile. She had a pierced lower lip and a ring through her septum. He could see the faint glint of nipple rings, too, through the pink leopard-print fabric and black lace.

Spider looked at her I.D. “Kimberly,” he said. “Welcome to my nightmare.”

“Ugh,” said the girl. “Nobody calls me that. My name’s China.”

“All right. Listen, I’m going to take a shower.”

“I like you dirty.”

Spider slapped the girl’s thigh, making her jump a little.

“My dear China,” he said. “You’ll have me clean, if you have me at all. Of course, if you’ve got second thoughts or the E has started to wear off…”

“I had one rum and coke,” she protested petulantly.

Spider slapped her thigh again.

“Be quiet. If you’ve got second thoughts, there’s the door.”

China sat there watching as Spider unbuckled his belt and pulled off his motorcycle boots. He stripped off his stretch jeans as he walked into the bathroom, well aware that China’s eyes were burning an invitation into his ass.

The hot water felt good. He heard the doorknob jiggling and was glad he’d locked it. Showers were one of the few things in the world, to Spider, that were not sexy. He lathered himself up and washed the sweat from his body, brushed his teeth but didn’t shave. When he walked out of the bathroom, China was handcuffed and gagged again, spread out on her belly having discarded the bra and panties. Her legs were spread wide. Her head was turned to the side; she looked up at him with love in her eyes.

He could see that her pussy was both shaved and pierced — four rings through each of her lips. A similar ring glinted from her clit. Her ass was lifted slightly, invitingly revealing her pink asshole between her smooth, well-toned cheeks.

Spider glanced at the bedside clock. It was already 2:30, and he didn’t want to keep Sierra waiting after the months of e-mail flirtation they’d enjoyed. A 10 minute cab ride left… just enough time for a quick tryst with a groupie. It’s not like he and Sierra had any kind of agreement — on the contrary, it was an expected value of the rock ‘n’ roll world that double-dipping was customary.

He let the white hotel towel drop to the floor, and his China’s eyes zeroed in on his cock, standing hard and ready from his body.

“You realize you’re about to be used and discarded,” said Spider.

“Yes, please,” came China’s muffled reply from behind the ring gag. She lifted her ass higher into the air, displaying both her pussy and her ass for Spider’s hungry eyes.

He climbed onto the bed and took hold of China’s hair. She wriggled slightly to get into the right position as he guided her face to his cock and slid his cockhead through the ring gag. Her tongue immediately began working along the underside. He would have liked to see what those lips could do, but the sparkle in China’s eyes as he fed her his cock was more than enough. He eased his cock deeper into her mouth and with a smooth, expert gesture she opened her throat wide and pushed herself onto him, swallowing Spider’s cock all the way down to his balls.

Her muscles contracted against him as he began to ease his hips back and forth, fucking her throat. He heard a whimper of pleasure deep in China’s throat — without a hint of a gag. This was a well-trained groupie, he decided. He ran his hand down to her handcuffed wrists and savored the feeling of having her in bondage, then slowly drew his fingertips up her back, making China’s naked body shiver. He grasped her hair tightly and began to fuck China’s pretty face.

He could see the moist hint of water in her eyes as his big cock savaged even her well-subdued gag reflex. Leaning heavily over her, Spider reached down and pressed his hand between her legs, feeling that she was even wetter than he’d anticipated. When he touched her clit, her whole naked body shivered, and she lifted her ass high as if to invite him in.

As he fucked China’s face, Spider lifted his hand and gave her a hard, merciless spank on her pretty butt. That made her wriggle and whimper as he plumbed her throat. Spider spanked her again and a low moan shivered through his cockhead, trapped in China’s breast by the cock filling her throat. He spanked her harder, harder, making her lift her ass to beg for more as her round cheeks pinkened.

God, she looked glorious spread out on the bed like that. Her throat felt so good around his cock, bobbing up and down as she gasped for air between thrusts. But he knew time was short, and he wanted all there was to have of her.

Spider grasped China’s hair firmly and pulled her face off his cock. Her eyes flashed hungrily as she held her lips, forced open by the ring gag, just an inch from his glistening head. Then he grabbed her handcuffed wrists and pulled her up on the bed, forcing her face into a pillow.

Her ass lifted to reach him, her hips pivoting to accept his cockhead between her pierced pussy lips. She groaned as he entered her, and from the first inch of her cunt Spider realized that he was still underestimating how wet this little groupie slut was. He drove deep into her, his cockhead entering with a firm thrust, and a tiny squeal erupted from China’s forced-open mouth. She was drooling, a dark pool of spit already spreading on the pillow. He grasped her hair and pushed her more firmly into her own spittle as he started to fuck her.

Her pussy was tighter than tight. He ground deep into her, feeling the press of her swelling G-spot as his cockhead reached the perfect depth within her. Still holding her hair with one hand, he slipped the thumb of his other hand into her pussy, moistening it as he pulled his cock out for an instant. Then he was back inside her, thrusting deep into her cunt, and another squeal escaped her drooling mouth as he forced his pussy-slick thumb into China’s asshole. He seized the little packet of lube he’d taken out of her shorts and ripped it open with his teeth. He drizzled lube between her round cheeks, sliding his thumb in and out to slick up China’s asshole. Tight at first, it opened and relaxed as he matched the thrusts of his thumb to the pounding of his cock. China barely seemed to know what was happening as he pulled his thumb and cock out at the same time, positioning his cockhead between her cheeks.

Grabbing China’s hair, he forced her drool-shiny face to the side so he could look into her eyes. As he entered her ass, he saw them go wide at first, the heard her low moan, unmistakably a sound of ecstasy, as he forced his cock slowly into the young groupie’s ass.

China pushed her ass up against him, meeting his thrust and begging him to enter her all the way.

Spider felt China’s asshole enveloping his cock. He leaned hard against her body and reached under to feel her clit. It was rock hard, its metal ring standing fully at attention. Spider toyed with it as he took China’s ass, each thrust bringing him closer to completion. Spider leaned down heavily and forcefully grasped her hair, turning her face to the side. He pressed his mouth against China’s, loving the feel of its softness against her, the fact that her mouth was forced wide open and there was no more way she could resist the hard thrust of his tongue than she could resist the thrust of his cock up her ass. China began to moan wildly, her mouth forced open so wide that drool ran in a steady stream down her chin and onto her tits when Spider pulled his mouth off of hers. Her moans rose in volume. Spider pulled the buckle of the gag and tugged it out of her mouth, forcing her face to the side so he could kiss her, hard, not even caring that her lips and face were slippery with drool. As his tongue left her mouth again, Spider heard her moaning “Fuck me… fuck my ass… please… harder… fuck my ass harder… come in my ass…”

Spider obliged, pounding China mercilessly as he shoved her ass up into the air to present it for his use. Abandoning her clit, he reached under her and felt the firm, small mounds of her naked breasts, pinching her pierced nipples as he fucked her harder. Then he felt her body go rigid, heard her moans turn to wails, heard her struggle to get out the sobbing words “I’m coming” as he drove faster and faster into her tight asshole — and he felt the clutch, the rhythmic muscle spasms through China’s ass that spelled the intense orgasm of a groupie who’d trained for her moment in the spotlight. The grip of China’s no doubt Kegel-enhanced climax drove Spider right over the edge, and he came hard in China’s ass as she pushed her body up against him, begging for his come.

When he’d finished, he rested there atop her and listened to the whimpering sounds of China’s post-orgasmic bliss. He looked at the clock.

He slid out of her, off of her. He found the key chain again and unlocked China’s handcuffs, then slapped her once more on the ass, playfully, lightly this time.

“I’ve got a date,” he said.

“I know,” said China enigmatically, shooting him the most mischievous smile a drool-shiny mouth could allow.

Spider went into the bathroom and locked the door again, but this time China didn’t try to make her way in. When he came out, the scent of China’s body scrubbed from his, he discovered her curled up in bed, the covers pulled over her naked body. She hadn’t bothered to wipe her mouth.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” said Spider. “I’ll probably have company, so please don’t be here. I’m calling housekeeping to change the sheets.”

“I’ll do it,” said China, picking up the phone.

China listened to her sweet-talking the housekeeping staff as he got dressed. He wondered if the girl was a hotel groupie, too. “Call me a cab, will you?” he asked, and she did, obediently, without hesitation. Spider felt a strange sense of satisfaction about that.

When he was dressed the way he figured Sierra would expect him — stretch jeans, tight T-shirt, high boots and a leather jacket — Spider looked at China, the outline of her body still fetching despite the bulky covers.

“Gone,” he said warily. “In an hour. All right?”

She nodded.

“Steal anything, and my goons will track you down and break your legs.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” she said with a drooly smile.

The cab was waiting downstairs.

#

Sierra was already there, sipping an Evian as he slipped into the diner booth. The place was practically empty. She looked even cuter than her pictures — dark hair, full features and thick, kissable lips. She was wearing a tight black dress that revealed the top of her bra with her legendary breasts spilling out. The bra showed black lace, and underneath it pink and silver leopard print. Spider puzzled over that.

“Sierra? It’s nice to meet you,” he said, shaking her hand. “Sorry I’m late.”

“No problem,” she said with a knowing smile. “Did you get my gift basket?”

Spider felt a momentary stab of guilt — he hadn’t even bothered to check for gift baskets. He hoped Sierra wasn’t the easily offended type; she didn’t seem like it. Still, she seemed even less like the type to send him a bunch of fruit and a bottle of cheap champagne.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“You didn’t? I was sure it’d be there when you finished the show. About five-two, blond, pink-and-silver leopard-print underwear?”

“Excuse me?”

“Nice tight pussy, teacup tits, gag and handcuffs?”

After 10 years as a rock ‘n’ roll star, corrupting the morals of America’s youth and driving the world inexorably toward Sodom, Spider just then discovered he could still blush.

“Looks like I got it after all,” he said. “It was a lot better than a basket of pomegranates.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” smiled Sierra. “She was just warming you up for me. And, for the record, I can live without the cappuccino.”

“They’ve got decaf,” said Spider.

“If I’m not mistaken, China’ll have room service waiting.”

Spider looked into Sierra’s dark eyes for a moment, chuckled and took out a roll of dimes.

“Oh, please,” said Sierra Verdi, breaking the roll open and fishing out a single dime. “No need to overpay.”

The two of them left four dollars and 90 cents on the table — nice tip for an Evian. Luckily, Spider’s cab was still parked outside.

Thomas Roche is a widely-published writer and editor of erotica, horror, and crime fiction. You can visit him online at his new website, www.skidroche.com.

Nonetheless, cosmetic surgery continues to be a huge industry, and of special importance to many sexual performers like dancers and erotic actors and actresses — not to mention transgender people. Any cosmetic surgery can have a sexual component, since a procedure designed to increase the client’s attractiveness certainly affects his or her sexual self-perception. But in this article, I’ll focus specifically on breast augmentation.

Breast augmentation surgery, as most people know, enlarges the breasts by using implants. Many products, from nutritional supplements to hormone creams, are hawked on the Internet and in women’s magazines, promising surgery-free breast enlargement. For the most part, these are entirely ineffective. Male-to-female transsexuals who take female hormones almost always find dramatic increase in the size of their breasts, but for genetic women, this is not a feasible or ethical medical option; breast augmentation surgery is the only real method for increasing the size of the breasts.

Breast augmentation surgery is fairly common among sex workers, many of whom find that their ability to make a living is greatly enhanced with every cup size they gain. Exotic dancers, in particular, report a direct connection between breast enhancement and additional interest from male clients. However, the vast majority of women who have breast enlargement surgery are not performers or sex workers — they’re just women who want to have larger or differently shaped breasts.

The Basics

Breast augmentation consists of making an incision in the breast, creating a space for an implant, which is then placed either under the muscular tissue of the chest or over it, depending on the surgeon, the procedure and the implant. The incision is made in the armpit, in the crease under the breasts, or at the bottom of the areola. Depending on the procedure, there may be a small but telltale scar. The placement of the implant is partially determined by the expected recovery time needed and the patient’s planned physical activity.

Currently, almost all implants are silicone sacs filled with a saline solution. Some implants (currently used only in reconstructive surgery and some other instances) have a silicone gel filling, but some studies have correlated this silicone gel to autoimmune diseases, so saline implants tend to be considered safer.

Recently, adjustable saline implants have been introduced. These are similar to typical saline implants, but allow the surgeon to adjust the size of the implant after implantation. Typically, depending on a number of factors, breast implants are anywhere from A-cups to triple-D.

After breast implant surgery, nipple sensitivity can either increase or decrease. Variations women have reported after breast implant surgery includes intensely (and sometimes uncomfortably) sensitive nipples, or conversely, a complete loss of feeling. Generally, these changes are temporary, but sexual response and nursing are sometimes permanently affected.

The surgery usually requires general anesthesia, but depending on the individual, some patients can have it performed with “twilight anesthesia” or sedation, which makes the patient sleepy but does not put her to sleep. The operation takes about one to three hours per breast, depending on the size and position of the implants. The surgery is generally performed as an outpatient procedure, meaning the patient goes home the same day, but in some cases the patient must stay in the hospital overnight. Bandages come off after a few days, and a surgical bra must be worn for at least two to three weeks because of the swelling and bruising associated with the procedure. The patient can usually return to calm, quiet work within 3-5 days, but arm extension should be kept to a minimum. The stitches are removed a week to 10 days after the surgery.

Breast augmentation usually costs about $3,000 to $4,000 including hospital care.

What do they Feel Like?

Anyone who has touched augmented breasts will acknowledge that they don’t quite feel like the non-augmented or “all-natural” variety. Breast implants are usually firmer and less mobile than natural breasts. This varies greatly based on the size of the implants — smaller implants tend to be less conspicuously different from real breasts than larger ones do. Implants also don’t soften with age, the way natural breasts do.

Risks and Concerns

The most significant risks associated with breast enlargement surgery are the same risks associated with any surgery under general anesthesia — which will be greatly varied depending on the patient’s age, general health and any allergies to medications.

Furthermore, there are a few specific complications that can arise from breast enlargement:

* A “capsular contracture” is when the scar or the area around the implant begins to tighten, causing the breast to feel hard.
* Nipple sensitivity, as mentioned above, can either increase or decrease, usually on a temporary basis.
* “Rippling,” or an indentation in the breast, can occur when the implant moves under the skin.
* The breast implants can rupture or leak in an accident or, occasionally, without an accident.

One of the most common reasons women seek breast augmentation surgery is because of changes in the shape and texture of the breasts after weight loss, pregnancy or as a natural part of aging. Other women seek surgery after having been unhappy with their bust for their entire adult life. Whatever the reasons for seeking breast augmentation surgery, it should be noted that this year a Dutch study released results indicating that women who get breast implants are three times as likely to attempt suicide as the general population. However positively one may feel toward cosmetic surgery, it’s important to note that neither breast augmentation nor any other plastic surgery should be used to address long-term self-esteem issues, and in fact such surgeries may exacerbate them when the results do not change a patient’s underlying concerns — perhaps concerns she didn’t even know she had.

If you or a partner is considering breast enlargement surgery, I encourage you to consider all these possible complications — especially the psychological ones. Though $4,000 may not seem like a lot to spend for a “new body,” it’s very important to remember that larger breasts do not equal sex appeal. The media (especially the adult industry) tends to present surgically enhanced breasts as a “standard” for attractive women. However, every sexually active adult has her or his own opinions about what’s sexy.

Before entering into a costly, risky and — perhaps most importantly — potentially disappointing procedure, I encourage any potential patient to keep in mind that just because her (or her partner’s) favorite porn star has 38DDDs, that doesn’t mean she needs them to be sexy. Porn, in particular, is an entertainment of extremes, and breast implants alone won’t make anyone look like a porn star. Besides the surgeons who work on them, porn stars have an army of makeup people, hairdressers, cosmetologists, lighting technicians and set designers who make them look as “perfect” as possible.

Breast implants are an increasingly (pardon the pun) large part of the cultural landscape, a conspicuous mark of sexual libertinism and a signifier of perceived sexiness. They can be a way for a woman to feel more comfortable and happier with her body and her appearance — and many clients report success and satisfaction.

But large breasts aren’t the only way to be sexy — there are a million ways, and I encourage you to experience all the ones that work for you.

According to Irwin Goldstein, MD, who chaired three later meetings in 1999 and 2000 to further define and establish appropriate treatment for FSD, putting it more or less in the same camp as the granddaddy of all male sexual problems — erectile dysfunction. As Goldstein, a Professor of Urology and Gynecology at Boston University School of Medicine, told womensenews.com, “Erectile dysfunction is a medical condition. You need to have women’s sex problems in some context.” Goldstein believes that a number of factors have led to the explosion in female sexual dysfunction, including childbirth and hysterectomy procedures that damage sexual nerves.

Since the announcement that FSD is a psychiatric disorder, many feminist writers have criticized Goldstein and the pharmaceutical industry — which had financial ties with the majority of physicians at the conference — for trying to profit by creating a new disorder which can potentially be treated by expensive drugs — á la Viagra.

The problem is that pharmaceutical and medical device companies are not able to begin clinical trials and seek approval from the FDA for treatment of disorders that don’t exist. Until FSD was established as a psychiatric or medical condition, no treatment could be sought by these industries. I’m sure that comes as a huge relief to the nation’s public health officials; given that most estimates of the number of women who suffer from FSD ranges from 30 percent to almost 50 percent, the prevalence of FSD puts it well beyond epidemic status and into public health catastrophe. A cure is needed, and fast. However, trials of Viagra to treat FSD in women have produced disappointing results, and only one device has been approved by the FDA for use in female sexual dysfunction. On the non-medical side, mainstream sex retailers sell a huge variety of arousal creams, sensation gels and lubricants guaranteed to maximize her pleasure, not to mention the vast number of herbal supplements sold on the internet that assure “she will experience pleasure like she has never dreamed of!” as one of my inbox’s many uninvited visitors once promised me.

As Nancy A. Phillips, MD, of the Wellington School of Medicine in New Zealand, writing on the American Academy of Family Physicians web site, states in an article on FSD: “Sexual dysfunction includes desire, arousal, orgasmic and sex pain disorders… Long-term medical diseases, minor ailments, medications and psychosocial difficulties, including prior physical or sexual abuse, are etiologic factors.”

Assuming that enlightened physicians diagnose FSD based on the patient’s appetite for a satisfying sex life, rather than some arbitrary 1970s-era list of how many orgasms Helen Gurley Brown thinks a girl ought to have, what FSD boils down to is a patient’s self-reported lack of sexual satisfaction, caused by anything. But those symptoms and causes are familiar to anyone who has ever heard women talking honestly about sexuality. What woman hasn’t occasionally experienced less desire, arousal or orgasm than she wanted? And how is that different than a male patient’s self-reported dissatisfaction with the ease with which he achieves an erection? Answer: It isn’t. Men and women develop out of the same fetal tissues, with physical morphology (genital “innie” vs. “outie”) being determined by hormones in utero, not chromosonal makeup. Make no mistake, when a woman gets aroused, her clit and the rest of her genital tissues become engorged with blood every bit as much as a man’s penis does. However, physical presentation differs kind of a lot between the sexes, and a man’s hard-on (or lack thereof) is easier to spot than a woman’s. If you define sex as intercourse — and the medical community almost invariably does exactly that — then, with enough lube, women can have all the sex they want without getting the least bit turned on. Why else do you think there’s been so much ink given to the phenomenon of women “faking it”?

Does that mean, at the end of that presumably dissatisfying tryst, the woman in question could reasonably be diagnosed with FSD?

Stereotypes abound about how much loving, touching and squeezing women “need” in order to get turned on, or “ready” for sex. Most of us call this foreplay, but often “romance” is the preferred term. Whether or not these stereotypes are true — and I can testify firsthand that some women are a lot less interested in romance or foreplay than the randiest stud down at Blow Buddies — anyone looking at the approved or potential treatments for FSD should know that all of them have already been put through a huge number of — admittedly non-clinical — trials. Actually, I’m fairly sure some of them are as clinical as it gets, and I’m sure quite a few female medical fetishists could be found to testify before the FDA, but that’s another story.

First, there’s the one approved treatment for FSD: Eros. Eros retails for more than $350, and essentially provides a disposable tip (at $6 a pop) attached to a suction pump. Eros’ function is to draw blood into the clitoris in the same way a penis pump draws blood into the penis. This increases engorgement and, as a result, arousal. But Eros is suspiciously similar to one of the garden-variety clit pumps like the Power Woman 6000 or the One-Hand Pump with a Nipple/Clit Cylinder attached. I doubt the FDA talked to the many thousands of women who, for years, have used such toys — and similar, if slightly less safe adaptations of existing products like the Panasonic Pore Cleanser, which produces much the same effect — to enhance their sex lives. Because we sell these things, I am required to tell you that the Power Woman 6000 and the One Handed Pump are under no circumstances intended to diagnose, prevent or treat any disease. UroMetrics, who manufactures Eros, can tell you that their device is intended to treat a disease, but they sure as hell don’t have to tell you that a similar product is available for $30 or that women in the S/M community have been using clit pumps for years because they feel good.

Nor are clinical trials of Viagra needed to tell us that some women have enjoyed it. One erotic adventurer I know — and she does not have FSD, by her own or anyone else’s standards — took Viagra recreationally with a lover and found it an exciting and exotic sexual experience. “All of my erectile tissue felt really sensitive, tingly and receptive,” she told me. “My lips and tongue were lots more sensitive than usual, and I got incredibly wet incredibly fast. My clit was hard as a rock, and I came much harder than usual, and much easier.” My friend is a very naughty person for taking a prescription drug without being diagnosed with something first, but she’s hardly the first person to abuse prescription drugs.

Similarly, the creams, ointments, lubes, balms and lotions sold by various online and “mom and pop” porn stores — unregulated by the FDA — are far from the exotic compounds derived from rainforest beetles and rare Arctic ferns that their marketing copy would have us believe. That marketing copy is exceedingly vague, promising “pulsating pleasure” and “tingling sensations,” mostly because the products’ benefits are exactly that — vague. If there were chemical balms that would bring a woman to uncontrolled heights of orgasm, trust me, more than just Irwin Goldstein would be talking about them. On the contrary, these balms usually offer a watered-down version of the same sort of “tingling sensations” provided by products like Ben Gay and Tiger Balm — both of which, you guessed it, have long been in use in the S/M community to provide unusual genital sensations, as have, incidentally, various kinds of toothpastes. Products like Ben Gay bring a rush of blood to the skin’s surface, producing a feeling of engorgement and the very acute sensation of heat. (Whatever you do, don’t get it in your eyes, nose or mouth.) Other products offered by many porn retailers are actually dangerous — like the numbing creams sold for anal sex or the balms which can supposedly give your vagina that “snug” feeling when, in fact, what they do is dry out the mucus membranes — dangerously so.

In much the same way that depression can illuminate an underlying unhappiness or dissatisfaction, FSD might crop up for a woman because, well, a woman’s sex life just isn’t all that great. But is the first step toward making it great an expensive medical device that insurance, in most cases, won’t pay for?

We live in a world profoundly changed by generations of female sexual explorers, who have made it safe for a woman to walk into her doctor’s office and say “Damn it, Doc, I’m not having enough orgasms. Do something!” But those women aren’t getting much of the credit. The good news is that women who want sexual pleasure are perceived as a strong enough market that the medical community would want to market products and services to them. That has to be a good thing, since not too long ago it was a widely held belief that women didn’t want or enjoy sex. Clearly doctors, male and female, now understand that women do want sex, and in fact will go to great lengths to get it.

But it disturbs me — though I know I should expect it — that the medical community seems to think the lengths women go to in their quest for pleasure should start with the prescribing of a device or a clinical trial for Viagra. The medical world seems completely ignorant of the many women over the last 30 or more years who have explored sexuality and discovered all sorts of new sensations and experiences — from casual sex to orgasm, porn to talking dirty, erotica to — gasp — vibrators. All these are options that women have to help them enjoy sexuality. When a woman walks into a doctor’s office and describes the symptoms of FSD, she has as much right to receive appropriate treatment as she would if she had the measles. But it makes me sad that that woman might be prescribed a device in hopes of making her “responsive” again — rather than being tipped off to everything that might turn her on, and where she can go to find it. I hope you won’t think it disingenuous of me if I wish that some day, every woman diagnosed with FSD would get a copy of the Good Vibrations catalog and a weekend or two alone.

SOMETHING CAME UP AT WORK
UNAVOIDABLE
GAVE ERIC THE TICKETS
HE’LL PICK YOU UP AT EIGHT
WEAR THE BLACK DRESS

Robin fumed. It wasn’t like Shawn to flake on her unless it was something really important; she was reliable to a fault. But the note was missing one word, “sorry,” which is what told Robin what this was all about. Whether something important really had come up, Robin didn’t know. But she knew why Shawn had given Eric the tickets.

After months of negotiating and processing their fucking feelings, she and Shawn had agreed to open up the relationship. One of the sticking points had been that Robin wanted to fuck boys as well as girls. That was challenging for Shawn, who tended to disapprove of men — by her own admission. Robin had countered with the observation that Shawn had been straight in high school, and leather dyke or no leather dyke, she had gotten to experience sex with men and decided she didn’t like it. Robin had come out young and had had no such experience. Shawn disapproved; sex with men was boring. Why bother?

But there was one guy Shawn loved, maybe even more than she loved Robin. He was a high-school lover, a confidante, and more recently a best friend. It was a curious grouping, the Kinsey-seven dyke and the Kinsey-negative-one straight guy, but the two had bonded over German motorcycles and Ford 302s since long before Robin and Shawn had met. And while Shawn swore up and down that she only liked girls, she had admitted that the one guy she thought was unbelievably hot — besides George Clooney and, inexplicably, Matt Damon — was this one.

Why, then, Robin asked, had Shawn not fucked this God-of-fucking Eros since those early, uncomfortable high-school fumblings?

“We’re best friends,” Shawn had said, shrugging. “It would be… inappropriate.”

Robin felt her stomach churning — why had she ever agreed to Shawn’s central condition? That she could fuck any women she wanted, no further negotiation required, but that before she could have sex with men Shawn would get to pick the first?

At the time, Robin was so glad to get to that point that she’d accepted unequivocally. And, more to the point, the idea of her first male lover being picked out by Shawn sent an unexpected warmth through her. “I want to make sure you get fucked right the first time,” Shawn had said. “I won’t have some sleazebag drooling on my virgin bride.”

“Fuck you,” Robin had said, but she’d signed the deal with a kiss, and now it was time for her to make good.

She stripped out of her work clothes and got into the shower. As she stood there naked under the scalding spray, she considered Eric. Good looking to the point of being annoying, he had a cocky self-assured attitude that echoed Shawn’s own. While Robin found it irresistible in Shawn, it had always irritated her in Eric. And at times it bothered her in Shawn, too. Take this situation, for instance: Why the hell did she think she could just pimp Robin out to her best friend, expect her to fuck him as if it was Shawn’s job to decide what she did with her pussy? Why the hell did Shawn think she would just spread her legs for Eric like a good little whore?

Because I told her I would was the answer, and Robin knew it.

She found her mind wandering. Shawn knew what Eric was like in bed, or at least what he’d been like in high school. She’d even admitted that she’d enjoyed sex with him — even, a few times, after she’d come out. Not for years, of course, but still. But Shawn had never spoken about the details; the mere thought of describing the erotic details of her heterosexual days would have been nothing short of bizarre. The very thought of Shawn doing all those things straight girls did — things that Robin had never done — would have been like watching a favorite movie dubbed on a foreign channel.

But Robin had fantasized about doing all those things “straight girls” did with men — fantasized about them to distraction. And she realized now that she had for some time wanted to ask Shawn about them. But she never had, and Shawn had never volunteered. She had never described the taste of Eric’s cock or the feel of it in her pussy. She hadn’t discussed whether she’d spit or swallowed, liked it missionary or doggy style or standing up, did anal, whether she had liked Eric to pull her hair when he fucked her hard, so hard she screamed, the way Shawn liked Robin to do. Robin had no idea what Shawn had felt when Eric’s cock had slid into her pussy and fucked her until she came.

When Robin’s hand dropped to her pussy, she realized it was wet — much, much wetter than the cascading water alone would have allowed. Her pierced clit was very, very hard, and her pierced nipples ached.

She was going to do this.

She looked down at her body with a weird kind of anticipation. She had shaved her legs this morning in eagerness of wearing the tiny dress to the concert, and it annoyed her somewhat that her first time with a man she’d be shaved like some yuppie breeder. She felt like she was in drag, putting on a straight-girl costume, and that thought sent a little quiver into her pussy that made her gasp. Christ, she was really going to do this.

Breathing hard, Robin turned off the water, toweled dry, and walked into the bedroom. It had been a long time since she’d selected underwear knowing someone new would see it. She resolved to put some effort into it. She finally settled on a black lace thong that nestled her still-hard clit uncomfortably, jostling the ring when she bent over. She didn’t wear a bra; she never did.

The PVC dress was tiny and tight, zippered down the front and entirely unlined. She knew she’d be bathed in sweat before the second song, if not before that. The rings in her nipples showed through the skintight synthetic material, and it was obvious to anyone who looked that her nipples were very hard.

She tousled her short black hair and gelled it a little, then put on her biggest pair of boots, knee-high loggers with bright red laces and black stitching. She narrowed her eyes and decided if she was going to do this, she may as well do it. She broke open her makeup case, finding dust on the handle. She painted her face with the discomfort that reminded her of the last time she went to a family wedding — with one major exception. This time, every stroke of the brush made her shift nervously, made the thong rub her hardened clit uncomfortably. She remembered dressing up for Shawn early in the relationship — tomboy femme with a whore’s painted face. By the time she’d finished herself off with a long, slow stroke of the brightest shade of red lipstick she had, she was wet to the knees.

“Fuck,” she said out loud, surprised at the sound of her own voice, sounding helpless and small but still rough from arousal. “I can’t believe I’m really going to do this.” But she knew she was.

Eric rang the bell and she put on her long leather coat before answering it. She gave him a dirty glare as he looked her up and down.

“You look great,” he said, as if in awe.

“You sound surprised.”

“I’m not,” he said, and smiled at her.

That fucking smile — how dare he. Eric had deviated from his usual uniform of jeans and a MOPAR or LIVE TO RIDE T-shirt, dressing up for the concert. He wore skintight PVC pants that just about matched Robin’s dress. His shirt was a skintight muscle number, and his leather coat was a good foot shorter than Robin’s, coming to mid-knee.

“I hope you didn’t bring your bike,” Robin said distastefully.

Eric shook his head. “I borrowed a car from the shop,” he told her. “Convertible GTO, 68. Three-fifty with a Holly Haystack.”

“You say that like it’s supposed to make me fuck you,” Robin said, her eyes narrowed.

“Would it?”

Robin didn’t know if she wasn’t giving him the dignity of a reply, or if she was answering “yes.” She closed the door and pushed past Eric, down the stairs.

He opened the passenger-side door for her, and Robin gave him a dirty look that made the last dirty look seem like bedroom eyes. He was treating her like a girl, for Christ’s sake.

Eric looked uncomfortable, holding the door like he was holding his dick, trying to smile and getting only ice in return.

He reached into the pocket of his coat and held up jangling keys on a Jack Daniel’s key chain.

“Want to drive?” he said.

Robin blinked like she’d just been slapped in the face. “What?”

“Really,” he said. “You’re covered under the shop’s policy.” He held out the keys and jangled them.

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on,” said Eric, flashing that fucking annoying smile again. “It’ll be fun.”

“Shawn’s the gearhead, not me,” said Robin.

“Right,” said Eric. “But I know Shawn, and she wouldn’t be with you unless you were the kind of girl who could appreciate a great big powerful organ throbbing under your foot.”

“Watch it,” growled Robin, “Or somebody’s organ is going to be throbbing under my foot.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” said Eric, tossing her the keys. She caught them neatly and Eric climbed in the passenger side and slammed the door. “Drive the fucking car.”

Sighing, Robin came around and settled into the driver’s seat. There was a silver skull for a gearshift knob and fuzzy dice hanging from the window. She turned the key and the engine roared to life, making her jump.

“Take it slow,” he said. “Don’t blow the doors off. Oh, I almost forgot. Shawn wanted me to give you this.”

He took a small ticket envelope out of his jacket and removed a small note on a shred of binder paper, taped shut.

Robin ripped it open and read the two words on it, written in Shawn’s hand.

SAY YES

“What’s it say?” asked Eric.

Robin rolled down the window, crumpled up the note, tossed it away.

“None of your business,” she growled, and slammed the car into gear.

She peeled out leaving the curb.

#

She had to hand it to Eric — he didn’t utter a peep as she tore through the streets, not even when she blew a red light. Lucky for him, because Robin was just waiting for him to make a snide comment; she was planning to bite his head off. But he didn’t say a word, not until she ground it downshifting from fourth to third to slow down for a little old lady in a crosswalk.

“If you can’t find it, grind it,” said Eric.

Robin opened her mouth to chew him out and realized that she found that kind of funny. She started to laugh, hysterically, like a maniac. She slammed on the breaks without clutching and the car stopped, lurched, groaned and shuddered all over as it died. The little old lady stood in the crosswalk like a deer in the GTO’s headlights, terrified.

Robin was still laughing. It was halfway between a cackle and a giggle, with elements of titter and chortle thrown in. Eric regarded Robin as if she’d gone totally and completely insane.

“Christ,” he said. “And I thought you were a tough audience.”

Robin opened the door and got out as drivers stuck behind her honked and shouted. “Drive the fucking car,” she said, walking coolly around the car and opening the passenger’s side. Eric climbed over into the driver’s seat and started the car again while cars hurtled past them, hurling curses. Robin sank into the seats and didn’t bother with her seat belt.

Eric drove the speed limit down city streets while Robin sat curled up passenger-side, giggling from time to time.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m giggling like a nut case,” she said.

“All right.”

She did it some more. By the time she’d finally stopped, they’d found parking right in front of the club. There was a crowd of latex-and-leather clad twenty-somethings milling around outside, looking disgruntled.

Eric didn’t open the door for Robin this time. He let her get out and told her to be sure she locked the door. She couldn’t manage to hold up the creaky handle while she slammed the heavy slab of American plate steel.

“Fucking Pontiacs,” said Eric, brushing Robin’s hand to the side and slamming the door himself.

Robin followed Eric to the front of the club. A big red “CANCELLED” sign was pasted over the ticket booth.

“What happened?” asked Eric of a blue-mohawked girl in a schoolgirl jumper. She was shirtless, her black push-up bra visible on the sides.

“The bassist OD’ed,” she said, taking a drag from her clove.

“Coke or heroin?”

“How should I know?” shrugged the naughty schoolgirl.

Eric turned and started walking back to the car. As he passed Robin, he said, “I’m sorry. I’ll take you home.”

Robin grabbed his shoulder and stopped him. He turned, looking peeved.

“No,” she said. “Take me to your place.”

When Eric looked puzzled, Robin said, “Please?”

Eric opened the door for her again this time, slamming it behind her. She put on her seat belt and sat meekly as Eric got in the car.

“Look,” he said. “I know this is uncomfortable for you. There’s no reason you have to come over to my place.”

“Sure there is,” she said. “That is, if you still want to.”

“I don’t know,” he sighed. “This isn’t what I expected.”

Robin was about to say something like Puh-leeze, you’re a guy, you’ll be pawing my clothes off before you’ve finished your first beer, but stopped herself.

“It isn’t what I expected, either,” she said, and reached out for his hand, feeling stupid and awkward. “Do you still want to take me home?”

Eric looked at Robin, a savage kind of judgment in his eyes telling her that she really was acting as crazy as she felt. But then, it was a crazy situation — bad polyamory, all around.

“Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

“All right,” said Robin as Eric put the car in gear. “We’ll see how it goes.”

#

Eric lived alone, his one-bedroom apartment a testament to what happens if a guy stays single long enough. Posters for car parts and framed prints of NASCAR drivers competed for space with framed prints of tacky female nudes.

Eric got Robin a beer from the refrigerator and indicated the mess. “I wasn’t expecting company,” he said.

“You weren’t?”

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

Robin sat down on the couch. Eric sat at the other end. She looked at him; she had completely misread the situation. What a fucking freak he must think she was. He looked cute and sheepish, and she realized that she was still turned on. She’d been avoiding the feeling, hiding it deep inside her, because she resented Eric’s cocky self-assuredness, given that his best friend had told him to fuck her girlfriend.

But that wasn’t it at all — the son of a bitch was just fetchingly cocky. Robin realized that Shawn hadn’t said a word to him.

Eric snapped his fingers. He took a small note out of his pocket. “I forgot. Shawn said I should give you this after the concert. Since the concert got cancelled, I don’t know if I should.”

Robin snatched the note out of his hand and tore the tape sealing it.

FUCK HER

Robin’s heart pounded. She moved closer to Eric on the sofa and tucked her booted feet under her. Somehow she didn’t think he’d mind boots on the threadbare sofa.

“What are you doing?” he asked nervously.

Robin leaned against him and pressed her lips to his. She felt the tightening of his body, the urge to pull away. Something about that excited her.

“Hey,” he said. “What are you — ”

Robin stayed leaning against him and gave him the note.

“This one’s for you,” she said.

When Eric read it, his eyes widened. He knew Shawn’s handwriting as well as Robin did. He looked at Robin, puzzled.

“If you want,” she said.

“Shawn is pimping me out to you,” he said.

“Actually,” said Robin, “I thought she was pimping me out to you.”

“To fuck?”

“That’s what pimping usually means,” said Robin. She untangled herself from Eric and sat on the far side of the sofa again. She took a long drink of her beer. “Look, let me tell you what’s going on.” And she spilled the whole sordid story, including the fact that she was still, despite it, incredibly turned on.

“So you want me to fuck you,” Eric said at the end of it all. “You want me to be your first.”

“Well,” said Robin. “Shawn does.”

“Wow, great,” said Eric. “And you don’t.”

Rather than trying to explain, Robin crawled back over the couch and sat very close to Eric. Her arms went around him, awkwardly at first, then more comfortably as he shifted to put his arms around her. She kissed him and teased his mouth open with her tongue. She felt her nipples pressing hard against the tight PVC dress. When she shifted against Eric, she felt that he was hard.

“I do,” she said.

Eric shrugged. “All right,” he told her. “I’m game.”

“Wow,” sighed Robin. “That was easy.”

Eric pushed Robin back on the couch and slid smoothly over her. The feeling of his hard body atop hers felt unexpected and sent a thrill into her. She spread her legs slightly and felt his hard cock straining through his pants against her belly. The feel of his cock turned her on more than Shawn’s strap-on, because of what it represented — he was hard, he wanted her, and he was going to fuck her.

Eric unzipped the front of Robin’s dress and his mouth molded to one pierced nipple, tonguing it. She spread her legs around him and felt his cock pressing hard against her clit. She ground up against him as pleasure shot from her clit to her nipples and back again. She cradled his head in her arms and whispered, “Take me to bed.”

“It’s not made,” he said, his lips close to her nipple. “The sheets are dirty.”

“I don’t care,” said Robin. “I want you to fuck me.”

Eric climbed off of Robin and led her by the hand into his messy bedroom. He came up behind her and curved his arms around her, drawing the full-length zipper of the dress down to the hem, and letting the strapless garment fall in a black puddle on the floor between them. He kissed the back of her neck and let his hands cover her breasts, his thumbs and forefingers pinching her nipples. She leaned back against him and moaned.

When his hand traveled down her belly and found its way between her legs, he found her wet. When his fingers stroked from her pussy to her firm clit, she gasped and almost fell.

Robin pulled away from him and crawled onto his bed. She could smell him on his sheets, the sharp odor she’d never experienced up close like this. It turned her on even more, unexpectedly, but what really turned her on was the sight of Eric’s body as he quickly took off his shirt and then unzipped his pants and wriggled out of them. He was long and lean, muscled, and his cock stood out like he couldn’t wait to fuck her. That thrilled her.

She reached out for it as he joined her on the bed. She guided him onto his back and lowered herself between his splayed thighs, running her hand up and down his shaft. She had sucked Shawn’s strap-on so many times — it was one of their favorite games — but this was so different. There was the smell, so strong and male and overwhelming. And when Robin parted her lips and took Eric’s cock into her mouth, there was the taste — salty, sweaty, and exciting. She began to suck his cock, her lips working up and down on the shaft while her fingers caressed his balls.

“You’re sure you’ve never done this before?” asked Eric breathlessly.

“I’ve done it a lot,” said Robin. “Just not on a flesh and blood cock.”

“You seem like an expert.”

Robin wasn’t sure whether to be annoyed or complimented, so she said, “I am. I’m an expert virgin cocksucker.”

“Nice,” said Eric, and then he wasn’t saying anything — just moaning incoherently as Robin returned her mouth to his cock.

She felt her pussy responding with each thrust of her lips and tongue down onto Eric’s shaft. She hadn’t expected to love this so much; there was something so new and different about it. The tastes and the smells were new, but more importantly, when she sucked Shawn’s cock she had to work it up and down. Eric was going crazy, clawing at the bed, gasping and lifting his hips to meet her, and she was barely even working at it. Every movement he made with her mouth on his cock turned her on so intensely she couldn’t resist reaching down to rub her pierced clit. She lost herself in the pleasure of sucking Eric’s cock, not even realizing how close she was getting. Robin knew she could come with just a little more pressure on her clit. And she knew, to her overriding pleasure, that if she wanted Eric to come in her mouth she could do it in a matter of seconds.

That thought sent a shiver through her and made her cunt pulse. But the excitement of knowing she was going to fuck him was more than she could stand, and she slid his cock out of her mouth and crawled, naked except for her thong, up Eric’s body until she was straddling him.

“You shaved your legs,” he said as her calves caressed his thighs. “You don’t usually.”

“You noticed,” Robin said, rolling off him just long enough to take off her thong. It was soaked. Robin climbed back on top of Eric, spreading her legs wide so she could straddle him again. She nuzzled her pussy onto Eric’s cockhead. The sense of anticipation was killing her. She put her hand between them to hold his cock in place, and felt the fringe benefit of pressure on her clit. She pressed her fingers firmly around his shaft so she could rub her palm against her clit. God, she was close. With a slow series of tiny thrusts, she pushed herself down on his cock, taking an inch at a time, savoring it.

Fuck, it felt incredible. The same as a dildo, but different — softer and harder at once, radiating heat from within. And the twist and shudder of Eric’s naked body was so real, so intense — this was totally different, for him, than strapping one on was for Shawn.

Robin snugged her pussy onto him; by the time she got it all the way in and took her hand away, she could feel the curve of his cock pressing against her G-spot, and the hard bone of his pelvis pressing her clit. She shifted just slightly, and that’s when she came. She clutched Eric violently and shook, her breath strangled in her throat as she climaxed uncontrollably, unexpectedly.

“Fuck,” she managed to gasp. “I’m coming.”

By the time she did, though, she was done, and she was already starting to work her body up and down on Eric’s cock. She held him closely; her pussy was so sensitive after coming that every thrust was an exquisite kind of agony, but she couldn’t have stopped if she wanted to. She heard Eric moaning, knew she ought to stop, but she didn’t want to. She kept fucking him as he said “I’m going to come,” and she said “Please,” before he’d even finished the words. She felt his cock pulsing inside her, pushed against the sharp nails digging into her back. “Come,” she said as he let himself go inside her.

Robin lay on top of Eric with his cock still inside her, softening. She kissed his chest and suddenly her head spun with the strangeness of it all. Every place where their bodies touched seemed new, alive and terrifying. She took a deep breath of his scent and felt it suffuse her body, transformative and invigorating.

“Shawn deserves a good spanking for what she did,” said Eric, clutching Robin tightly.

“I think,” said Robin, “she’d secretly enjoy that.”

“I’d prefer it if she didn’t,” said Eric.

“But didn’t it all turn out good in the end?”

“I don’t know,” Eric answered her, leaning up to kiss her. “I don’t know how it ends.”

GV Staffer Thomas Roche’s books include His, Hers, and Noirotica 3. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in more than 400 magazines, web sites and anthologies, including Horny? San Francisco, Mind and Body, Mammoth Book of Erotica, Embraces: Dark Erotica, Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica and Set in Stone, and he is the cowriter of Whipsmart.

“That definitely wasn’t decaf,” I said.

“You don’t say,” Sherry yawned. She had stripped down to her sleeping clothes: a white tank top and soft cotton shorts. She was curled up with a woolen blanket covering her legs and Che Guevara delicately washing his paws in her lap.

“I told them three times,” I growled. “Decaf! Decaf! Decaf!”

“Maybe they couldn’t hear you. You should have said it a fourth time.”

Che regarded me with even less interest than my girlfriend. Sherry flicked the remote control from channel to channel as I walked a six-foot ellipse around the living room.

“I’m just about ready for bed,” she told me.

“Not me,” I snapped, and continued my pacing while she channel surfed.

“I think I’d better go to the gym,” I finally said.

“They close at ten on Sundays,” she told me.

“Shit! God damn it!”

Sherry looked at me with a faint smile on her lips. “You’re sure that wasn’t decaf?”

“Very funny.”

She turned off the TV. “Come over here,” she said, patting the sofa next to her. Che Guevara issued a fervent hiss and meowed discontentedly, then ran for the hills, darting across the living room toward the cat tree.

I looked at her with mixed suspicion and paranoia. “Why?” I asked.

“I’m going to hit you over the head with a flower vase and knock you out cold,” she said.

“Please,” I said, sitting next to Sherry on the sofa.

She was on me in an instant, bearing me back onto the sofa, crawling on top of me. She kissed me, recoiling just a bit when she tasted my tongue. Sherry hates coffee. She threw caution to the wind and kissed me harder, her tongue sliding against mine as she reached her hands down my sweatpants.

“I know what’ll calm you down,” she said.

“I doubt it,” I told her bitterly.

“But it certainly can’t hurt,” she said, pulling my sweats down. “Besides, your lips say no, no but your caffeinated cock says make it a double.”

She took my cock in her hand as it hardened, then bent forward and wrapped her lips around it. I sighed softly as her mouth began to slide up and down on my shaft. I was painfully hard in an instant, and as Sherry’s tongue swirled around my balls she stroked the tip of my cock with her thumb, caressing me in exactly the way she knows will make me come faster than fast. Her mouth worked around my head, her lips closed tight around it, and when she pulled back she moaned, her breath warm on my glistening prick.

“Come on,” she cooed. “Let it all out. All that naughty caffeine into your cock. I want you to come French Roast, baby. Come on, I can take it.”

Then her mouth was on my cock again, and my fingers were tangled in her hair as her head bobbed up and down. Long, low moans escaped my lips and I heard Sherry whimpering softly in the base of her throat. Her lips worked the head while her tongue lapped at the underside. Her hand began to pump the base.

Che was sitting at the top of the cat tree blinking in bemusement. He made eye contact with me and pawed the air.

Sherry’s mouth rose off of me for just an instant. “Come on,” she said. “Let it all out.” Her mouth came down over my cock again and she hungrily pumped it, sucking me harder than before.

I moaned, my hips lifting, and let go. Pleasure washed over me as I came in Sherry’s mouth, listening to her tiny whimpers as she swallowed and hungrily sucked for more. A big sigh came out of me as I finished coming.

Sherry snuggled up on top of me, cuddling close. She whispered softly in my ear.

“You’re right,” she said, licking her lips. “It definitely wasn’t decaf.”

I smiled ruefully.

“So now you’ll be up all night?” I said.

She giggled and kissed me on the neck.

“Yeah,” she told me, her fingers spidering up my stomach underneath my sweatshirt to tease my nipple. “But it’s not a problem, baby. Not a problem at all.”

Che jumped on top of us and began to knead Sherry’s hip.

Thomas S. Roche is a worker-owner at Good Vibrations and the author, editor or coeditor of 11 books, including three volumes of the Noirotica series, His and Hers.