Shane and Carmen: The Novelization Ch. 01

"Okay, don't try. But I can tell you liked it, you came, like, three times. How's the pain?"

"Pain? What pain? I don't feel anything from the neck down. I'm as limp as a washrag. Can I just stay here in this chair forever?"

Picassa laughed. "No, you can't. Sooner or later I'll have another customer and I'm gonna need the chair. So pretty soon I'm gonna have to kick your pretty little ass out of it."

"Want me to get up now?"

"No, you can rest up a few more minutes."

"Okay, that's good. 'Cause I'm not sure I can walk. I didn't know cunnilingus could make you paraplegic."

Picassa laughed and started to put all her tattoo equipment away. The Gipsy Kings were into their fifth or sixth circuit.

"Listen," Picassa said. "I have an idea. Theoretically you can get up and go home now. And then you have to bathe yourself in about two hours, and then a few hours after that, and again a few hours after that. In a few minutes I need to put a bandage on each side, and it's going to be a bit awkward for you for a little while. So why don't you stay here for the night? You don't have to get dressed at all, just stay naked below the waist after I put the bandage pads on, which will be good for the tattoo, and I've got a robe you can wear. And then in a couple hours I'll wash it again for you. And then we can go to bed, and I'll get up a few hours later and wash it again. And I don't know about you, but I'm starved. We can order delivery take-out, get some Tex-Mex or Chinese, whatever you want."

"What about your roommates? And I don't even know where you live. Do you live here?"

"My roommates are down in Mexico visiting relatives. And yes, we live upstairs, so you don't even have to go outside."

"Can I call my mother? I'd have to tell her I'm not coming home tonight."

"Sure, help yourself. There's a phone over there on the counter if you don't have a cell phone."

Carmen got up from the chair with a moan. After she made sure she could walk, she padded bottomless over to Picassa and put her arms around her, kissed her on the lips, and then buried her head in Picassa's neck.

"Thank you. Thank you for everything. Thank you for making my dream come true."

And once again Picassa lost another small little piece of her heart to this girl.

"It was my pleasure," she said.

"You're such a liar," Carmen said. "You didn't get one tenth the pleasure that I did."

"Well, I guess that's true," Picassa laughed. "But we're a full-service outfit. And I truly did enjoy it."

"I want to pay you back, I want to do you," Carmen whispered. "I want to make you come."

"I think that can be arranged," Picassa said, kissing her and then going back for a second kiss, a long one. "Tonight, after dinner."

Then she took Carmen by the hand and led her down a hallway to a stairwell and up into her apartment. She made Carmen go up the stairs first so she could watch the bare cheeks of that naked bottom in front of her. Oh, mercy.

***

They sat at the kitchen table eating shrimp foo young, chicken chow mein, and spring rolls slathered with orange sauce, all from the Chinese joint three doors down the block, and drinking a couple of Dos Equis. Carmen had draped a terrycloth robe over her shoulders, but sat spread-legged with the robe open and away, so she was still effectively naked below the waist.

The apartment itself was amazing, disguised as it was in the second floor of a mildly run-down barrio block of stores and shops. Viewed from the street, no one would ever know what Picassa and her roommates had done to the second floor. Walls had been removed as necessary, creating a large, open-plan living room space that resembled more than anything a large photography art gallery. There was a good-sized kitchen to the side, and a dining area with a large table and eight chairs, for bigger gatherings. There was a large bedroom off to the side, and when Carmen stood at the doorway and looked in she saw what seemed to her the world's widest bed, easily big enough to sleep three people, and maybe one or two more besides.

The walls of the bedroom and the living room area were whitewashed and beautifully framed photographs and paintings lined the walls. Many of the photos were black-and-white, like the photo above the gyno chair down in the tattoo parlor, and some were in color. There really was no common theme; some of the photos were of the crisply sharp Ansel Adams type, some were gritty, urban barrioscapes showing fiestas or back alleys. There were some nude studies, several stark photos of a beautiful Latina woman whom Carmen guessed was Maria. There were a few water colors, very bold, with lots of Latin flavor: monasteries, churches, graveyards, seascapes of a rocky shoreline that might have been Big Sur.

"Are these all Carlos's work?" Carmen asked, biting into a spring roll.

"Some," Picassa said. "Some are Maria's, some are mine. Most of the watercolors are mine. All three of us are photographers."

"Wow," Carmen said, "you really are an artist, not just with the tattoos."

Picassa shrugged.

"Can I ask you something else?" Carmen asked.

"Sure."

"Um ... do you ... give pain medicine to all your customers?"

Picassa threw her head back and laughed. "Oh, honey, hell no! Gee, what do you think I am? No, sweetie, only a very select few ever get Picassa's special pain medicine."

Carmen blushed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it that way. I just ... I was wondering about your relationship with Maria and Carlos. I was worried that I--"

"You were worried I was cheatin' on 'em with you? No, chica, I wasn't cheating. We have a very open relationship, that's all. But yes, I love Maria and Carlos both, and they love me, and we all love each other. And that'll never stop and never change. But we fuck other people from time to time. Fucking is very different from loving, you know, although people get them all confused and fucked up all the time."

"So how do you tell the difference," Carmen asked.

"Ah, that's an easy one. Fucking is easy. Any fool, any idiot, can fuck somebody. Loving is what's hard. You got to work at it. It can be painful. You can want to give up. You can want to walk away. You can get discouraged. You can even wonder if what you're feeling or what the other person is even feeling is true or not, or good for you or not, or even good for them, or not. None of that's got anything to do with fucking, though."

Picassa took a forkful of chow mein and looked at Carmen while she chewed and swallowed.

"Since we're doing the truth-telling theme, Carmen, tell me true: how old are you, really?"

"Nineteen," Carmen said, chagrined. "I'm sorry I lied."

"No problem," Picassa said. "I knew you weren't twenty-one. You're exactly half my age. So tell me, you ever been in love?"

Carmen furrowed her brow. "I don't know, really. I've had two relationships, a few months long. I guess I thought I was in love at the time, but I'm not sure. I think the second time ... maybe I was. I never thought it would be hard to tell, you know? I want to be in love with someone, someday. I assume it'll happen, one day I'll see somebody and know that I want to spend the rest of my life with her." She paused. "The funny thing is, ever since I can remember, I've always wanted a wedding, to be married in a real wedding ceremony, and to wear a beautiful white dress with a beautiful white lace mantilla. I'd want someone to walk me down the aisle. My father's dead, he died before I was born, so I don't know who'd walk me down the aisle. But somebody would, maybe my mom. And waiting for me up at the altar would be the person who loved me and wanted to marry me. When I was little, I assumed it would be a man, you know? But I never really pictured him, I didn't have anybody in mind. And later, when I realized I was a lesbiana, the image never changed much. There would still be the person I loved, who loved me, and we would be married and love each other forever and ever, and of course she would be a woman and not a man, but so what, you know? I'd still be married and would be true and faithful and devoted to her. I would make her a good home, safe and warm, and always love and cherish her. Perhaps it sounds silly, but ... being gay hasn't changed that."

"And you haven't met that person yet," Picassa said.

"No. But one day I will. They say there is someone out there for everyone, right? Well, somewhere out there in the world is my future partner, and all I have to do is find her, or wait until she finds me. Only thing is, my spouse will have a pussy, not a cock, so that will make the search easier. And naturally she'll like pussy, too, so that will narrow the search even further. And she will love me with all her heart and all her mind and all her soul, and the vision of me will take her breath away, just like the sight of her will take my breath away." Carmen laughed. "I know, it sounds so crazy, so ... juvenile. But I really do believe it."

"I hope you find her, then," Picassa said. "And I hope she's worthy, because I think she's going to be getting a very special person."

Carmen blushed.

"How long have you known you were gay?" Picassa asked.

"The first time I really knew I was gay was when I was 12. When I was 16 I fell in love with my best friend, the girl who lived across the street, Lucia Torres. We both went to parochial school together. And she was going out with this slightly older guy, Pablo Fuentes, who was in a gang."

"He was in the Los Asperos gang," Picassa said. "I remember him. I did all their tats. Pablo was a good-looking kid, but he was dumb as shit. He became one of the leaders and got his ass in some scrap, and somebody shanked him when he was up in Vacaville on a drug thing."

"Yes, that's him," Carmen said.

"So how come you managed to stay out of all the gangs? Cute little thing like you, all the boys must have wanted a piece of you."

Carmen shrugged. "I was always a 'good girl,' stayed close to home, and I was in a lot of clubs and activities at our church," Carmen said. "So I stayed kind of sheltered from that whole scene."

"But you were friends with Lucia, and she was dating Pablo, you said?"

"Yes. I would see them come home from a date, and they'd be in Pablo's car parked in front of her house. I had the upstairs front bedroom, and some nights I'd be looking out the window, and I'd see them. At first it was just coincidence but after a while I started staying awake to wait for him to bring her home. I'd have all my lights out and it would be midnight, or something, and they'd pull up and park, and I could see their silhouettes inside the car, you know? And sometimes I'd see the car rocking a little bit and I knew they were fucking, and sometimes Pablo had the window rolled down and his arm hanging out as he smoked a cigarette, and I couldn't see Lucia, but I could tell from his reactions she had her head in his lap giving him a blowjob. And the next day walking to school she'd tell me all about it. And she'd tease me. And then one night when she didn't have a date I was looking out the front window, and I could see her in her room across the street. They had the same kind of house as us, and she had the same front bedroom. And this one night she had her light on, and I had my light on. And she started getting undressed for bed. Only she was looking across at my bedroom window, and she slowly started taking her clothes off. And there she was, doing a strip thing, and I was the only one who could see her, and she knew it. She was putting on this show just for me, kind of taunting me but also ... not. She started rubbing her tits and playing with her nipples, and soon she was playing with her pussy, too. And she'd be standing there, across the way, turning both of us on, and then finally she'd blow me a kiss and turn out the light."

"A twat-teaser, huh?" Picassa said.

"A ... what?" Carmen laughed

"Twat-teaser. Not a cockteaser but a twat teaser. A girl who teases your twat. What's so funny?"

"The word 'twat.' I just don't ever hear it that often," Carmen said, "but I knew someone who used to say it. It was one of her favorite words."

"It's one of my favorite words, too," Picassa said. "It's not quite as raw as 'cunt' is, and a little more blunt than 'pussy,' which is nice and soft and wet and inviting. If you say it right, 'twat' can sound French and sophisticated. 'Dahling, what have you done to your twat? I just love the new look!' But never mind. Tell me the rest. Lucia's up in her room giving you sneak previews of the promised land."

"Right. Well, nothing happened for the longest time, everything stayed pretty much the same, although I started developing this mad crush on her, which she never reciprocated for months and months. But some nights she'd just undress and let me watch, and I started masturbating while I watched her, and so we're both getting off. One night she sticks her fingers in her chocha and rubs them around and then puts them in her mouth, and I thought I was going to faint dead away, madre mia, I came from just watching her. And during the day we have to pretend like there's nothing special going on especially since she's Pablo Fuentes' girlfriend, and nobody fucks with Pablo's girl, and Lucia knows it. What she liked was the danger, the idea of being on the edge.

"And this one night I'm watching her, and she knows it, and she takes off her clothes and then she points over at me and give me the 'come here' sign, beckoning me to come over to her house. I suddenly realize her parents aren't home. So I don't know what to do, but I put on a robe over my underwear and I sneak downstairs and out of our house and run across the street, and her front door isn't locked, and I go in and up to her room, and there she is with the lights off but with a couple candles burning, she's lying on her bed naked and all sultry and seductive, you know? and I'm standing there in shock. She gets up and comes to me by the door, and she pushes the door closed and pushes me back against it. She kisses me and takes off my robe and pulls my T-shirt up over my head and she bends down and starts licking and sucking my tits, and my nipples are hard as rocks and they almost hurt, they are so hard. Then she kneels down and takes down my panties and buries her head in my chocha and I have my first ever girly-girly orgasm right there up against her bedroom door. Then she leads me over to her bed and she sits down on the edge and makes me kneel down in front of her. She spreads her legs and pulls my head down and says, 'Your turn, baby,' and I eat her, doing everything she just did to me. And it's like, I don't know ... like I have found my calling in life. I have found everything there is to want. I discover how much I love eating pussy, licking and sucking a woman's cunt, making her come in my mouth, her smell, her taste, all the sounds she makes, how her thighs tremble and twitch and grip my head, how she pulls me in, how her ass rises up, how her clit swells, how she's quivering, how she cums. Of all the things two girls can do, I love giving head the best, even better than cuming myself."

Carmen picked at her shrimp foo young. "So anyway, for most of my senior year of high school I was having this super-secret affair with my best friend, who everybody knew was dating this gangster type guy. And everybody said nobody fucks with Pablo's girl, but the truth was, I fucked with her pretty often. Of course, she wanted to keep it a secret even more than I did, because Pablo wouldn't just kill me, he'd have killed her, too. But that was the excitement she got out of it, the thrill. For my part, I thought I was in love with her, but I wasn't. I was just in love with pussy, and she was in love with danger. That's why she fucked Pablo, too -- the danger thing. She didn't really love him at all. It took me quite a while to realize Lucia was more than a little bit crazy, in her way. She wasn't someone you fall in love with and do all those silly lovey-dovey romantic things, writing love notes and taking walks in the rain and on the beach in the moonlight and all that stuff. Having a favorite song together, and a favorite restaurant, a favorite place. That was all the romantic kind of stuff I wanted."

"You wanted someone to buy you a corsage and take you to the senior prom," Picassa said.

"Right, right," Carmen laughed. "Exactly. And speaking of the prom, you know what? When the prom came along, we both had a problem. There was no way she was gonna get Pablo to take her to a fucking prom, him a gang guy and all, and she sure as hell couldn't go with anyone else. And I wasn't going to go with some guy and spend all night keeping his hands off me, and I couldn't go with Lucia, of course. So neither of us went. And Lucia says to me, 'Hey, there's a porn film festival going on, want to go?' Can you imagine, two eighteen-year-old Catholic high school girls going to a porn film festival? So we went. We saw Behind the Green Door and these two really terrific, artsy Andrew Blake flicks, Night Trips and House of Dreams. And it was the first time I'd seen two women going sixty-nine, and I said wow, and Lucia said, 'C'mon, let's go home, and I'll teach you how.' So on prom night Lucia and I saw three porn flicks and then she taught me how to sixty-nine."

Picassa laughed. They ate quietly for a while and then Carmen said, "This is so ... like, weird."

"How so?"

"Well, a while ago you gave me the cum of my life, and now I'm sitting here naked from the bellybutton down and we're eating Chinese and I'm telling you about my sex life and my coming out story, and stuff, and I feel like I've known you all my life and we're BFFs, like you're my big sister, only in a while you're gonna wash my pussy again and I'm going to make love to you and go down on you, and then spend the night in your bed ... well, it has just been one hell of a day, that's all, a day to remember."

Picassa couldn't help laughing as she got up and collected the dinner dishes. She leaned down and kissed Carmen on the cheek, kissed her ear and whispered, "Mi carinita, usted puede venir en mi boca mil veces." My little love, you can come in my mouth a thousand times.

***

Carmen was lying naked on the big bed when Picassa came in with the basin. She washed Carmen's thighs, pussy and tummy carefully.

"This looks good, very good, no seepage. It's healing up nicely already, and it's only been a few hours."

"It feels so good, being washed and pampered like this," Carmen said. "The warm washcloth feels so good."

Picassa leaned over and kissed Carmen on the lips. "Be right back," she whispered.

"Come back naked," Carmen said, watching her walk to the bathroom smiling.

Picassa emptied the wash basin, took a piss, undressed, brushed her teeth, put a drop of good Mexican vanilla extract on her mons, and walked back into the bedroom. When she got there she found Carmen asleep, snoring softly. Picassa had to laugh. Yes, the poor thing certainly had an exciting day, she must be exhausted. She set an alarm clock for 3 a.m., the time of the next washing, covered Carmen with a sheet, and crawled into bed next to her. She lay on her stomach with her arm over Carmen's chest, snuggled in, leaned in and kissed the girl's shoulder, whispered, "Buenos noches, mi carinita," and went to sleep.

***

The bedroom was dark when the alarm went off very quietly, so quietly it almost couldn't be heard. Picassa was lying on her back and was about to turn on her side to turn the alarm off and get up. But she felt movement and a hand pushed her shoulder gently back down on the bed.

"I've got it," the voice said. In the darkness Picassa felt the warm body kneel over top of her, her breasts hanging down and dragging across Picassa's shoulders as Carmen reached for the alarm and turned it off. In the dark Carmen straddled Picassa and leaned down and kissed her on the mouth.