Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 01

Shane stared at Carmen's chest, her shoulders, her arms, hardly noticing the tribal lesbo tattoo on Carmen's left arm high up at the shoulder, some kind of torch thing. But it wasn't the tat that drew Shane to Carmen, it was her skin, so tan, so smooth, so flawless ... so kissable. Shane's hands danced to the front of Carmen's skirt and unsnapped the three snaps there, folding back the flaps of the skirt and revealing the swell of Carmen's hips. Shane looked down and there they were. The tattoos.

Shane was no stranger to ink; she had seven herself, including a swallow on her own left triceps, and audere est facere, "to dare is to do" in Latin, on her right triceps, the "submissive" side, according to lesbo tat lore. Shane had fucked plenty of girls with tats and tramp stamps, usually modest tats in girly places, a lot of roses left, right or centered just over the pubic hair and one or two right there on the shaved mound. Gang tats, jail tats, on fingers, arms, butt cheeks, tits, sides, backs, thighs, cunts. Shane had seen so many tribal tats up there high on the left shoulder, the lesbian's so-called "dominant" side, and she had kissed a hundred of them, and kissed a hundred nautical stars on the inside of wrists. She wished she had a nickel for every Labrys she'd licked. But Shane had to admit she'd never seen anything quite like the tats on Carmen's hips. They fascinated her.

The tats were black and symmetrical, and seemed to start down inside Carmen's panties, at the edges of her mons, rose up to the girl's hipbones, and then ran parallel to her waist around her sides, like vines drawn and stylized as curved, wide bands, one each side, some kind of tribal belt thing.

"Wow. Where does this lead?" Shane asked, but before Carmen could answer Shane spun her around to see where the vines went, pulling Carmen's skirt down a few inches. There, at the top of Carmen's buttocks on each side, the vines lead into two harshly stylized dragon heads facing each other across her coccyx, their chins just above the top of Carmen's low-rider coral-colored panties.

Shane stared.

"Oh, it was from my father. I never met him, but--"

Shane bent Carmen over the sound board and began to nuzzle her back, kissed her shoulder blade.

"-- supposedly he was some kind of Mayan medicine man."

Shane moved her lips over the back of Carmen's shoulder, mesmerized by the softness of the skin overlaying smooth muscle underneath. She could feel Carmen's skin fluttering, quivering in anticipation. Shane could tell this was a girl who liked a lot of foreplay, a lot of touch, a lot of kissing, a whole lot of slow.

"How come you never met him?"

"He died in a motorcycle crash before I was born."

That stopped Shane: Another one, like herself, who had never known her father. How could anyone as different as Carmen was from Shane be the same as Shane?

Carmen turned and faced Shane again, looked into her eyes, saw something there. Pain? A memory? What? But it didn't matter, because they were kissing again. Shane put her hands on Carmen's hips and slide her skirt to the floor. She dropped to her knees and pulled Carmen's skirt away from her booted feet and tossed it aside. She had to have another look, close up this time, and slowly turned Carmen around again, her fingers tracing the vines of Carmen's tattoo and then staring at the dragon heads. Slowly Shane lowered Carmen's panties, and drew in a sharp breath. This girl had the most incredible ass Shane had ever seen. Smooth and lovely tan like all her other skin, firm, no shake, no jiggle, no cellulite. Shane ran her fingertips over the swell of Carmen's bottom cheeks, and knew she could spend days right here, doing this girl's tight rear end, never mind the treasure cave that undoubtedly waited on the other side.

Shane's nostrils flared. She could smell Carmen's desire, could smell the wetness she knew Carmen was leaking, and knew she had to taste it. She stood and turned the girl around yet again, facing her, then lifted Carmen back up onto the soundboard console again, Carmen's knees spread, Shane closing in between them, kissing Carmen's mouth, and her neck, smelling her perfume, maybe some sort of sandalwood, nuzzling her collarbones then down her sternum, thinking about removing the black bra and kissing her breasts but no, being in a hurry now, no time for tits, because Shane could smell another of this girl's scents, a perfume very familiar that Shane had smelled a thousand times before, always the same but each time always a little different, faint, fragrant Channel #5. Shane dropped her hand down between Carmen's legs, feeling the wetness there and hearing Carmen groan as Shane rubbed her hand over the liquid channel in question.

Carmen felt Shane's lips on her stomach, kissing, nibbling, licking downward ever downward, and then she felt Shane drop to her knees. She felt Shane lower her head, felt Shane's tongue lapping hungrily over her cleft, wet, yes, very wet, the voice in Carmen's head whispering, Quiero, quiero, quiero, Shane turning her face to the side, kissing and nuzzling Carmen's left thigh, and then her right, felt Shane pause with her cheek on Carmen's thigh, and Shane drawing a deep, deep breath, inhaling the scent of Carmen's drenched, wanting pussy. Carmen raised her hips to draw Shane in, thinking my God, I can't believe I'm doing this at work. She looked down and saw Shane's face sinking slowly like a sunset behind Mount Venus, Shane's eyes closed in evensong prayer, worshiping. Carmen nearly came right then.

Shane inhaled, then opened her eyes and looked up into Carmen's eyes, looking down at her, her face full of silent pleading. Still keeping her eyes locked on Carmen's, Shane moved her head forward, her tongue starting at the bottom of Carmen's wet slit at the perineum, licking slowly upward as Carmen gasped, then Shane moved forward, her tongue probing between the slick lips, Carmen looking down as Shane began to slowly tongue-fuck her delicious cunt.

***

"You ain't twenty-one," the woman in the storefront tattoo parlor said, speaking in Spanish. Carmen guessed she was in her mid thirties, this chicana. Not bad looking. Dark hair pulled back in a bun, dark eyes. A small nick in her chin, a scar, some bar fight maybe, or maybe where her old man had hit her once, Carmen thought. Pierced eyebrow, nostril stud. Tats on the bare forearms and above the top of her T-shirt, vivid reds, blues, greens and blacks, colorful twining, a lot of leaves and vines and things.

"Sure I am," Carmen lied, also speaking in Spanish. "I just look young for my age." She was nineteen. She added, thinking it might help, "A lot of people in the barrio recommended you. They told me you were very good, an artist. De aquellas," the best there was. "You are the one who calls herself Picassa, right?"

Carmen and Picassa both spoke flawless English when they wanted, just as they both spoke perfect Spanish, but like most people in the barrio talking amongst themselves their speech folded in a lot of Chicano Caló, the accumulated street slang of Mexican-Americans. Caló contained bits of the older Pachuco slang of the 1930s and 1940s, the days of the Zoot Suit Riots, plus pieces of Nahuatl Aztec, plus slang from the drug culture, from the music culture, from the barrio, from the surrounding alien Americano culture. People dipped in and out, back and forth, navigating between the two major languages and the street slang almost at random. No one thought about it; they just did it.

Picassa picked up her cigarette from the ashtray in front of her on the counter, took a deep drag on it, and looked around the storefront tattoo parlor. A couple of kids looking through a book of designs and snickering. Not serious customers.

"I've been saving up the baro," the money, Carmen said in a low voice so the kids looking through the albums didn't hear. "I've been working two jobs. I've got the money, in cash."

Picassa looked at Carmen, sizing her up. Cute. Great eyes. Great smile. Kind of bubbly. Fuckable. Wonderful skin, too, a really nice canvas to work on. Wonder who's doing her, which gang? Somebody's getting a piece of that chamaca, that teenager, Picassa thought, lucky bastard.

She made up her mind. "Okay, but I'm gonna ask you to sign all the waivers and shit, and this better not come back on me, got it?"

Carmen grinned. "Great! Thanks," she said. "I've been doing a lot of research, and I know this is going to be a long and tough process. Do you want to see my sketches?"

Picassa wanted to laugh, but didn't, wondering what kind of research this pretty little bonita might have done for her tramp stamp.

"Sure," she said, "Let's see what you've got."

Carmen reached into her bag and brought out a notebook and laid it on the counter facing Picassa. "It's all in here."

Picassa started flipping through the pages, looking at Carmen's sketches, her notes, her research, her refinements, and then her final design plan.

"Holy shit," Picassa said, "what is this?"

"This is to honor my father, who was a Mayan medicine man. A medicine man is called a ha xiu, it's spelled ex eye you, but in the Yucatan you pronounce the ex as an ess aytch, so it's pronounced 'hah she-you.' That's the man who knows how to use the medicine of the plants."

"Yeah, I know how to speak Spanish, chiquita," Picassa said dryly. "What's these dragon head things you want on your ass?"

"They aren't dragons, they are jaguar heads, one of the various ways the Mayans drew them. They drew jaguar heads lots of ways, but this is the way I like, and my mother says my father had one like this on his hip. This particular female jaguar is called Ixchel, the goddess of medicine in the Maya culture. Ixchel is the goddess of some other things, too, but medicine men use Ixchel because of the medicine thing. You probably never heard of the Dresden Codex, that's a book about the Maya alphabet drawings, but in the Dresden Codex, Ixchel is shown as a wise woman with jaguar ears. Ixchel is also related to two Aztec earth goddesses, Toci Yoalticitl, which means 'Our Grandmother the Nocturnal Physician,' and another Aztec goddess of birth, called Cihuacoatl. Ixchel's two greatest talents are healing and midwifery."

Picassa found herself not really caring about the fucking Dresden Kotex, but she was charmed anyway by Carmen's infectious enthusiasm, and the evident hard work she had done putting all this stuff together. Picassa had inked some strange shit in her time, and she had long ago ceased to make judgments about the stuff her clients asked her to draw. But damn, this little chica bonita was cute. And anyway, this job looked like a challenge, and Picassa didn't get to be the best by turning down challenges.

" ... Now the other really neat thing is the word chel, that part of Ixchel? By itself one of the things chel means in Maya is 'rainbow,' isn't that cool? Oh, I forgot to tell you, I'm gay, see, so that's why I like the double meaning of chel. The Mayans had a bunch of jaguar gods and goddesses, and they all had two or three things they each did--"

"Real multitaskers," Picassa said.

"Right! Very good. So anyway, Ixchel may also have been the goddess of war, which I'm not real happy about, and there's some indication she may have had something to do with cannibalism, it isn't really clear, but I don't much care about that--"

"Wait a minute," Picassa said. "Ixchel being the war goddess bothers you, but her being a cannibal doesn't?"

"I like to think of it as what I learned in English class, that it's a metaphor," Carmen said. "After all, I like to eat women, too."

Picassa threw her head back and laughed heartily. "Okay, you got me there. And Ixchel is a big jungle cat, and you both like pussies too."

It was Carmen's turn to laugh. "Exactly! Okay, now here's where the part about the vines comes in. Know where the main Mayan shrine to Ixchel was? On the island of Cozumel, you know, that island where a lot of tourists go now. And their second most import place was on a small island off Cancun, called Isla Mujeres, Island of Women. Have you ever been to Cancun or Cozumel?"

Picassa shook her head no.

"They're both cool, you should go some time. Now, Isla Mujeres was named by the conquistador Francisco Hernandez Cordova, because when he landed there he found lots of idols and statues of women, and here, this is a direct quote" -- here Carmen pointed to some notes on one of the pages of her notebook, and Picassa read them as Carmen spoke them -- "'because of the idols he found there, of the goddesses of the country, Ixchel, Ixchebeliax, Ixhunie, Ixhunieta, only vestured from the girdle down, and having the breast covered after the manner of the Indians.' See, that's where the part about my tat girdling the hips comes in, wrapping all around just below my waistline. So it starts with the twin faces of Ixchel on my lower back, representing healing and midwifery, and the vines wind around my hips and when they get around front the vines dip down into my groin, over my womb, signifying and symbolizing childbirth as well as midwifery. See how it all ties together? What do you think?" Carmen looked to Picassa for approval.

"What's your name, baby doll?"

"Carmen. Carmen de la Pica Morales."

"Well, Carmen, honey, here's what I think. I think you put a lot of work into this. And I can see how it ties you in with your daddy and his Mayan heritage and all that, and that's cool. I'm down with all that, that's your thing and I respect that. But there's some things I feel obligated to tell you about doing a job this extensive and this complicated, because you're talking about quite a lot of skin, some of it really delicate skin, too. So I gotta give you the safety precautions talk, and the care and maintenance talk, even if you had it before, and all that, 'kay? This is gonna take multiple sessions, and we're gonna have to let parts of it heal up a bit before we start on new work, you understand? And it's gonna hurt, you probably already know that. So, if you're still game, we'll have the talk, and then I'll send your sweet little ass home tonight to think it all over, and if you still want to do it, you come back tomorrow. How's that sound? And I got some ideas, too, about the design, if you want to hear them."

"Sure, great, oh, thank you, thank you," Carmen said, reaching across the counter and giving Picassa a hug.

They talked for forty minutes, Picassa giving Carmen all the due diligence stuff, and then the two of them going over the drawings, making small changes and adjustments. When they were done, Picassa said, "One last thing, baby. Tomorrow before you come back, if you still want to do this, get yourself a trimmer and trim your bush down pretty good. I don't know how much bush you got down there, but we're gonna need a clear landscape to do our work, right? You don't have to shave your chocha; I'll do that right before we start, and I'll only shave what needs it. Probably leave you with a cute little landing strip, or maybe a vee or triangle. Understand?"

"Loud and clear, Picassa," Carmen said, knowing that she already kept her bush trimmed down just about to zero, because it made for better carpet munching if there was little or no carpet to begin with. And Carmen loved getting her chocha eaten, almost as much as she loved to eat one.

***

Carmen got to the shop right after 5:30, and Picassa looked up from a tattoo magazine when she heard the girl come in. There were no other people in the store, and Picassa could read the girl's determination all over her face. She smiled and went to the front door, locked it, flipped the sign from "Open" to "Closed," and turned to the girl.

"We're gonna do this, aren't we? I'm not gonna be able to talk you out of it."

"No," Carmen said, handing Picassa the baro, ten $20 bills, a first installment. Picassa took the money, opened the cash box she kept under the counter, and put the money in.

"Need a receipt?"

"I trust you," Carmen said.

"Yes, I suppose you do, chica. Here, come look at this, I made stencils for the first part, like it said in your notebook. If you approve of them, we can proceed."

Carmen didn't just like the stencils, she loved them. They were exactly how she had envisioned. Picassa had somehow managed to tap into Carmen's mind, into her subconscious or unconscious, or wherever these visions lived. She couldn't contain her excitement, she was like a schoolgirl, a giggly 12-year-old. Picassa felt herself falling a little bit in love.

"Well, then, let's get started," she said. She came from behind the counter, took Carmen by the hand, and led her to the back of the parlor. As they passed through a door to the back room, Picassa turned out the lights in the store, and closed a door behind them. Carmen stood and looked around the workroom where Picassa earned her legend. It was clean and bright, almost surgical in its cleanliness and order. There was a big table like a massage table, a couple of chairs, some rolling stools, a rolling cart for equipment, tall floor lamps, and in the center of the room a special chair, the kind obstetricians use for women to put their feet up in stirrups and give birth. It was the set-up Picassa used for working on the upper thighs, lower stomachs and bellies, and most of all the cocks and pussies of her customers. The stirrups allowed Picassa to sit on her rolling stool and move close in to her work area.

Carmen was a little intimidated by it.

Picassa saw her face. "Surely you've visited the gynecologist at least a few times," she said.

"Y-yes. I know what it is. I just had ... expected something else. It's very professional-looking."

"Well, don't be nervous," Picassa said. "Give me a minute to get everything ready. There's a bathroom over there if you need to take a piss before we get started. I strongly recommend it." Picassa started setting up her equipment, getting her tattooing gun and ink out, bringing a big floor lamp over. She went over to a big wall unit full of CDs and audio equipment, selected one of her favorites, the Gipsy Kings' Cantos de Amor CD, and put it in a player. In a moment, she heard the rough voice of Nicholas Reyes begin to sing Un amor. How appropriate for this lovely little chicana, she thought.

When Carmen came out of the bathroom Picassa said, "Okay, take off your skirt and panties. You can leave your top on, and your tennies. Then hop up onto the throne while I get the basin."

Picassa had a large metal basin in her hands and went into the bathroom while Carmen unfastened her skirt, folded it carefully, and laid it on a countertop. She shimmied out of her panties, and put them on top of the skirt. Naked from the waist down, she climbed up into the chair, spread her legs, put her feet into the stirrups, and laid back, looking up at the ceiling. "Holy shit!" she said out loud. She heard Picassa laugh in the bathroom while she ran water into the basin.

Mounted on the ceiling directly over the gyno chair was a huge photograph five feet square. It showed the pelvic area of a naked woman from the middle of the thighs up to bottom of the sternum. Whoever had posed for the photo was beautiful, possibly a chicana or Latina with beautiful light tan skin that glowed, even though the photograph was only a black-and-white. The woman's bellybutton was a small knot, and looked like it wanted kissing and licking, made you want to dip your tongue into it. The abs next to it had just a hint of definition, looked firm and warm. The public hair was short but curly and looked completely natural like it had not been shaved or trimmed back; it was just ... wonderful. The hipbones were there, not too prominent, and then the junction of the legs, slightly spread so there was a gap between them. And below the cunt hair the modest hood of the clitoris, hiding inside it the moist, pea-sized glans of love. The pussy lips where equally modest, tucked away, not yet engorged and open. Nevertheless, they held so much promise. It was a pussy waiting for whatever was about to happen to it. Carmen licked her lips. "Wow," she said.