F6: Slick's Swamp Shack

I heard a collective intake of breath as I released my voice into the space. I love the effect my voice has when folk hear it the first time. The warm wood acoustic of the room was perfect as I launched into my lightly revised version of Robert Johnson’s Traveling Riverside Blues. I repeated the line, infusing it with more cheeky sexiness, giving microtonal inflections to ‘personal’ and ‘your fun’.

I punched the verse with, “Well, come on back to Slick’s Swamp Shack, baby / barrelhouse all night long.” My local namecheck was met with whoops of appreciation around the room, and seersucker and his big beauty clasped hands over the table. I rounded out the last bar with some slick fingerwork and wailing slides.

“I got me boyfriends in Vicksburg / clean on into Tennessee / I got boyfriends in Vicksburg / clean on into Tennessee / but my Slick’s Swamp Shack rider, now / he hops all over me.” They didn’t have to know how a big a gulf existed between the woman of my lyrics and my lovelorn reality; while the gig was on I played the sexy seductress. My Geeshie accompanied me, gasping in feigned shock at my lewdness, then moaning sexually as I sang of my rider hoping all over me.

The crowd was warming. A young white couple at the bar were locked in a passionate French kiss, and they weren’t alone in being moved to appreciate their companion: lip met lip, tongue to tongue, all over the joint, as if it were a Valentine’s special.

I changed my stance, knowing this was going to get bawdier. “Gonna squeeze your lemon till / juice run down your leg / gonna squeeze your lemon till / juice run down my tongue / that’s what I’m talkin’ about / now gonna take you back to Slick’s Swamp Shack, baby / rock you to your head.” I felt my crotch wetten with arousal. I didn’t usually get so turned on by my lyrics: this was intense.

It was about to get more intense. I took a wide stance, legs spread, and took the volume way down to a sultry stage whisper for my last verse. “Gonna feed you my jelly roll / get my cream right roun’ your face / gonna feed you my jelly roll, baby / get my cream right roun’ your face / ‘caus once you lick clean my dish, baby / you gonna want dessert ever’ night.” Geeshie added a few howling glissandi, and we closed out the number with a louche diminuendo.

This time the applause was rapturous, and for only my second number. I spotted Ole Bill behind the bar raising a shot of whiskey in appreciation. To one side stood Scissors, his great hands above his head beating out thunderous praise while he whooped appreciation.

A young woman in a leather skirt hung round his neck, pecking kisses on his thick-cut steak of a cheek. The only other person not applauding was the voluptuous woman at the front. She beamed at me with wide eyes, her mouth a perfect O. It took me a moment to spot the fine leather soles of a pair of spectators, toes down, peeking from under her lace tablecloth. Colonel Seersucker had a taste for some chocolate jelly roll!

I giggled to myself at the effect I was having, while I returned Geeshie to standard tuning and slipped my slide into its pocket. “Thank you,” I gushed, “This is a Memphis Minnie number, When the Levee Breaks.” A smattering of applause welcomed the fast finger picking that was a tribute to Minnie’s style. The playover done, I inhaled and switched to my deep, husky contralto register, “If it keep on rainin’ / levee gonna break.” As I sang the words, I became aware of a flood precipitating in my panties.

I knew from my blues research that it was a song about the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, but suddenly every word was pregnant with innuendo. “I’s a mean old levee / cause me to weep and moan / I’s a mean old levee / cause me to weep and moan / gonna leave my baby, and my happy home.” The audience was with me in this interpretation. Couples were kissing and engaging in some heavy petting. Mama Jelly Roll began to coo gently with pleasure from her dapper gentleman’s submensal offertory.

I moved on through a series of three more blues classics – some Geeshie Wiley, Ma Rainey, and more Memphis Minnie – all fine blues ladies. I enjoyed the tease of introducing Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with “Now I want to show you my black bottom,” in the same way she did. This and the other songs felt sleazier than ever, as the floor seethed into a friendly swamp orgy. The colonel came up from under tablecloth, red faced and with a contented smile of work well done.

“Thank you. I’m gonna take ten. Don’t be goin’ nowhere.” More appreciative applause washed over me. I propped Geeshie safely at the back of the narrow stage, and moved down towards the bar.

“Mighty fine, that’s mighty fine. You’re one Queen of Hearts!” exclaimed Colonel Seersucker, beaming at me, his chin glistening with moisture, his or hers.

“Indeed, girl, you can sing them blues!” added Mama Jelly Roll, pursing her fingers together in praise.

“Thank you. You’re too kind,” I said as I placed a hand on the soft seersucker of the gentleman’s shoulder. I felt that I knew them after observing their little bit of fun, as if they were my kinky godmother and godfather.

I moved slowly through the crowd like a conquering hero, as they pressed to gladhand me, and pat me with their praise.

As I approached the bar the young woman in the leather skirt bounced in front of me. “You sure can sing an’ play that guitar!” I took her hand, if only to regulate her bouncing.

Scissors squeezed up behind her, wrapping her in his thick arms. “I see you met my Saving Grace. I call her that ‘cause she done pull me up out the swamp when I gone drunk too much liquor when I finish with wrestlin’.”

I looked at Grace, short and slim. “You were strong enough to pull him out of the swamp?”

“No way I could let him die! That’d be horrible! I done strain with all my might to be savin’ him, holdin’ his darlin’ head up outta water, an’ hollerin’ at the top of my lung’ for he’p.”

“That the power of love, right there!” proclaimed Scissors as he planted a sloppy kiss on her cheek.

“Miss Smuts, you sure well done earn this!” Ole Bill called out from the bar, holding up a shot of whiskey.

The crowd parted so I could get the bar. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face: this was my best gig ever, and I was high on it.

“Thanks, Bill,” I said as I saluted him with the glass. This time the whiskey gave me no heartburn, but prickled its warmth across my cheeks. I put down the empty glass on the bar, as Ole Bill filled a tumbler with water.

“You mus’ keep that voice of yours hydrated now.”

“That’s so thoughtful of you.” I greedily gulped down the cool water.

“It an ole school frien’ of yours here, done drive up outta Jackson specially to see you.”

I looked at Bill quizzically. Apart from a second cousin I’d never seen, I didn’t know anyone from Jackson.

“Now where can that fine young gen’leman be?” Bill scanned the crowd, and raised his hand to beckon a man to the bar.

He was the image of a gypsy fortune teller’s promise of tall, dark and handsome. He wore a fitted navy polo shirt and khakis, with neat hair, horn-rimmed glasses and a boyish grin. I couldn’t place him. “Hi Gabby! Don’t suppose you remember me. I’m James Singer. We were at high school together.”

Suddenly, I recognized the beanpole nerdy guy who had now become a man. His shirt showed enough of his biceps and pecs to tell me he worked out. I remember feeling sympathy for him when other kids picked on this geeky weakling. He was weak no more. “Of course I remember you, James,” I replied, shaking his hand. “And you drove out from Jackson specially to see me?”

“I sure did. There was this little poster in a bar a couple of blocks down from UMMC – the Ole Miss medical center – I saw your name, and recognized you in the photo as the girl with big hair from high school who would sing a song at the drop of a hat. I must say you sound … and look fantastic.”

“Why, thank you! I hope I’ve improved a little on high school.”

“I’ll say! I went to every show you sang there, but this gig knocks them all out of the park!”

I smiled with embarrassment. I could just about take Ole Bill’s adulation, but when it was a cute guy like this … I wished I could remember as much about him as he did of me. “So you live in Jackson now?”

“Oh no, I’m just there for a conference, and a darn lame one at that. I’m still in Atlanta. I’m a cardiologist at Emory University Hospital.”

A cardiologist: my mind said ‘heart’, and my heart went ‘throb’. The crazy headiness of the gig made want to grab this guy and kiss him hard. I wondered if there was a subtle way to ask whether he was married, but I couldn’t think of one.

Ole Bill interrupted with two shots of whiskey, “For the reunion of ole frien’s!”

“Why, thank you, Bill!” answered James as he picked up the two shots, offering one to me. He wasn’t wearing a ring. He raised his glass, “To the most beautiful blues singer I know.”

“To the … well … only cardiologist I know.”

We laughed and downed our shots.

“Bes’ be gettin’ back up there, Miss Smuts,” Bill interjected. “You don’t wanna be keepin’ your audience waitin’ now.”

James leaned in, “So is that your … er … stage name, or did you never marry?”

A gong sounded in my head – perhaps from the whiskey – ‘we have a winner!’ I turned in to him, inhaling his cologne – sandalwood. “No one’s been brave enough to take me yet!” I teased, and sauntered back through the tables and chairs, wiggling my ass all the way to the stage.

I jumped right into the Robert Johnson classic Cross Road Blues, pulling my bottleneck hard up Geeshie’s strings to make her wail. Suddenly the chatter of the interval ceased and the room was mine once more.

I didn’t care much for the legend of Robert Johnson’s pact with the devil at the crossroads. When I became a year older than he was when he died, so tragically young, I felt I could now exorcise the song of all that hoodoo. The way I sang it, the song was about bad choices: my bad choices, mostly when it came to picking men. Now I found myself right back at that crossroads, praying down on my knees to get reaquainted with a cute young doctor.

The applause was powerful, but I felt the need to push it further. I changed my set, “Here’s another Robert Johnson number.” I broke into Terraplane Blues. In my version, it was I who was the car, the sleek, powerful Terraplane in need of a good tune-up and taking for a ride. “And I feel so lonesome / you hear me when I moan.” I repeated it, laying bare my need. “Who gonna drive my Terraplane? / it been too long since you been gone.” The shack was like a resonator, amplifying my emotion. I felt like weeping out my lovelorn heart. I was in need of that heart doctor.

Even before I hit the second verse, my hidden sex pulsed in anticipation. “I said I flashed my lights, baby / but the horn won’t even blow / I goddamn flashed my lights at you, honey / but the horn don’t even blow / mus’ be a short in the connection / hoo well, babe, it’s way down below.” I was hot and horny, and I wasn’t alone. The young white couple were back to French kissing, only now she must have unfastened her jeans so her beau could reach inside to grab her ass cheeks. As I sang “way down below,” one of his forearms disappeared, drilling deep down into a rich seam.

“I want you to hoist my hood, baby / better check the oil / I need you to hoist my hood, baby / come on check the oil / you can take me round the block, chauffeur / or all the way down to Arkansas.”

“I’m gonna need you get deep down in this connection / keep tanglin’ with my wires / you needa get deep down in this connection / get tanglin’ with my wires / and when you mash down my li’l starter / that spark plug sure gonna fire.”

I let Geeshie take center stage, playing through the melody with quivering blues notes. I repeated the first verse – “And I feel so lonesome / you hear me when I moan” – and it felt like I was making a desperate plea, like I was singing out to the crowd, “Just fuck me now!”

Finishing out the set with a few other pieces, I was the horniest I’d ever been in my life. The atmosphere in the room was saturated with sex. As I leaned my Geeshie against the back of the stage, all I wanted was to fly into the arms of Dr. James Singer. It was as if the crowd knew, and they parted like the Red Sea before me, opening onto a vista of the man who suddenly seemed my everything. He stood square on to me, feet planted, hands open just wide of his thighs.

“Phenomenal!” he beamed.

I threw myself against him, trying, failing to mask my need with a friendly hug. I wrapped my arms round his neck and mashed my breasts into his warm, hard chest. His hands held me in the small of my back and between my shoulder blades. It was too much, too obvious. I leaned back in the embrace. His dark eyes mesmerized. He craned his neck forward, and I parted my lips to receive him. His kiss was silk, luxuriously light. He pulled back, his face creased in earnest emotion.

“I’m so sorry, Gabby. I didn’t …”

With a hand on the back of his head, I pulled his lips back hard against mine. I kissed him hungrily, and he returned the kiss with desperation. His hand moved from my upper back, and his fingers wove into the curls over my right ear. I loved his hand in my hair, his palm against the burning coal of my cheek.

I slipped the tip of my tongue between his lips, tasting him. His tongue pushed back into my mouth, and we abandoned ourselves to the kiss. His trimmed nails pressed into the temporal ridge above my ear, and my scalp tingled in arcs from ear to ear. Our lips revolved around each other as our tongues twisted between. This kiss had no thought, no purpose, no technique; it was.

There was no telling how long it was before we parted to gulp down the humid air in the shack. I glanced around. Everyone was minding their own business, or, more correctly, minding the business of the person they were with.

“Do you wanna get some air?” I asked, searching his big browns.

“Sure!” He took my hand and led me to the front door of the shack.

It was just humid out as in, but a slight breeze made the night air pleasant, refreshing. Goose flesh rose on my arms. Two steps down from the veranda and my heels sunk slightly into the dirt of the lot.

“James, I can’t walk out here in my heels!” I called to him.

He turned, taking in the sight of the diva out of her natural habitat. “Wanna piggyback, Gabby?” He waited for no answer, but hunkered down before me.

I slid my arms around his neck and parted my legs to mount him. He took hold of me behind my knees, and rose up through me, hoisting me up in the night as if I were weightless. I hadn’t ridden on someone’s back since junior high.

My faultless mount strode off across the lot. I pressed my cheek against the woolly hairline on the nape of his neck. My dress was bunched up over my thighs, and the wet crotch of my panties rode the firmness of his spine. “Where are we going?”

“Don’t rightly know. Was thinking of my car. Can’t carry you round all night now.”

A few strides more and we rounded a beat-up Bimmer convertible; a raw gash along its side exposed ripped metal. A step further and we saw the young white couple. She was sprawled on her back on the hood of the car – her t-shirt pulled up, her bra pulled down to expose hard pink nipples – while her beau was fucking her hard. Both were oblivious to their new audience.

James backed away and moved us off as Bimmer Girl’s cries rose.

“Don’t you mind them fucking on the hood of your car?”

“Another dent’s not gonna hurt it any.”

“You got a nice car, nicer than mine. What happened to it?”

James halted. “Hah!” His laughter vibrated through me, a vertebra rubbing my clit through my panties. “The nurses joke I’m the worst driver in ATL. They call me Captain Crash. My insurance is through the roof!”

“Perhaps you should have disclosed this before I hopped on your back!”

We reached one side of the lot. The ground rose over tree roots before dropping down steeply to the swamp below. James turned and lowered my feet onto a knot of roots, solid ground of a sort. I struggled to find my footing, leaning back against the gnarled trunk of a cypress.

I relinquished hold of James’s neck just long enough for him to turn back to me. I wrapped my arms around him, pulling him against me. He stumbled on the roots, and fell into me. Our lips found each other. I existed between rough bark and soft lips.

James pulled back, gulped and looked down. Without looking up he struggled over his words, “Gabby, I know this is forward, but … when ever since hearing you sing about your … er … jelly roll … I’ve been desperate … to taste you … you know, down there.” His eyes rose to meet mine, ashamed of his forwardness, but hungry for me.

I took in a sharp breath. James, I’m yours to devour!”

We kissed with greater passion.

He sank to his knees in front of me, planting a kiss on my belly through the fabric of my dress. His hands ranged up my outer thighs under my skirt, and pulled my blue lacy panties down to my ankles. His hands rose once more, and his lips tickled over my knee cap. His hands rounded my ass inside my dress. I threw my head back against my sturdy swamp tree.

I gasped as he squeezed my butt. Looking down, I saw his head slipping under the hem of my dress, and felt his lips connect wetly with my quivering inner thigh. I took hold of the mound of blue material, and eased his head up into my crotch, desperate for the feel of his lips on my pussy.

Ten yards away, Bimmer Girl cried out in orgasm. James’s lips made contact with my lower set, and I responded to the girl’s call with a bottleneck slide of a moan. I turned my ankles, bent my knees, and pushed James’s lips between mine. I moaned again. It wasn’t quite as long as since my last piggyback, but it had been a good while since I last had a man’s face between my legs.

His tongue slipped up into me, and I knew I was wet and open to him. I held his head, and ground myself into his mouth, anxious to connect him with every inch of my sex. He drew his tongue up through my cleft, and I had to throw myself back against my tree to keep from falling over him. My movement pushed my pelvis out, and harder against him. My moan this time was more of a wail.

His tongue met my apex and looped languorously around the hood of my clit. He worked around me again, and again. The cool evening breeze lifted my curls, soothed by burning cheeks, and carried my moans out into the swamp. He plowed through my sweet spot. I shuddered, releasing his head, pushing the fingers of one hand into my hair, and cupping my breast with the other. I abandoned myself to him. He circled me a few more times before pushing his tongue through me again.

I leaned my head back against my cypress and let him take me up beyond my sexual plateau. His hands firmly squeezed my ass, and I mounted upon him like a bird at the dawning of the day. The gulf between me and the stage diva narrowed and twisted together into a new delta of emotions. When I came, I came hard with my screams of joy floating out over the backwaters.

I dug my fingers into his shoulders. “That’s what I mean, baby!” I pulled my dress from over James’s head, releasing him, revealing my new lover’s glistening, smiling features.

“You taste delicious. I could eat dessert every night!”

“I think I could live with that.” I hooked my hands under his arms, motioning him to stand. The knees of his khakis were darkened with mud. I tasted myself on his lips, kissing him with gratitude. I wriggled one shoe and then other free of my underwear, and stepped down from the root knot, clutching them up behind me.

As I stepped back into the dank lot, I spotted my little Toyota right there, and had an idea. I slipped my hand into the waistband pocket hidden in my dress, and pulled out my car keys. I opened its door and stood in the white light of its interior.