After the Puppet Comedy Show

Chapter 1

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Samir always told people he was a musical comedian/puppeteer. That wasn't really his job; during daytime hours he worked at a failing restaurant called Barney's, but when people asked him "What do you do?" musician puppeteer was always the answer.

I know that "musician puppeteer" isn't exactly the sexiest-sounding job (I guess it has the potential to be semi-sexy because puppeteers are good with their hands). But my job is even less sexy: I'm a bank teller, and when people ask me what I do, I say I'm a writer because that's what I want to be.

Samir and I had been best friends for three years. And then things happened as they usually do. I started to think about him hugging me more, the soft way that he'd place a hand on my shoulder sometimes. I noticed how he checked his plants every day to see if a leaf was browning.

Then, I started thinking that everything about him was cute: the fuzzy dice in his car were cute; the little stuffed elephant he kept in his room was cute; his obsession with Star Wars, specifically the novels, was super fucking cute. I even started to think that his puppets were cute.

And, reader, that's when I knew I was absolutely fucked. I had to tell him how I felt or things would get weird with our friendship. One day, after we had gotten McDonald's and were just sitting in his car, the words just spilled out of me. I remember being shocked when he reciprocated, remember those first feelings of pleasant weightlessness when we held hands. It felt like a rollercoaster drop, except smaller and more controlled. Pleasurable. Warm. We started to go on dates, and our dates weren't dates exactly, but long conversations about nothing, sometimes lasting the whole night. After we were done, I never remembered what we'd talked about, but I got this feeling like I had ripped off a piece of myself and had started sharing it with him.

Yesterday, we realized that we'd been dating for two months exactly. We decided to celebrate that morning by going apple-picking at an orchard. We wanted to feel like rich people, and paying to pick your own fruit is prime rich people shit.

Now, we were chilling in his house until his puppet show at the coffee house at 8. His house looked a lot different than it used to before we had started dating. He had cleaned the dirty socks off his floor, and his room smelled like apples and cinnamon instead of a dusty cabinet. Samir had all kinds of stuff on the walls: a red poster that said "Make art, not war;" a print of a slime monster with one eye slowly gobbling a city, and some abstract art that appeared to be inspired by Matisse. But I wasn't looking at his room or anything, I was looking at him.

We were both on the bed. I was sitting on Samir's lap, inches away from his face. My skirt was fanned over him, so I couldn't see what was happening underneath. His dick was kind of hard and pressed into me; I had a strong desire to rock back and forth, to feel the weight of it shift beneath my body. But I didn't want to get ahead of myself and do too much, get either of us more excited than we should be. We didn't plan to have sex today--we wanted to wait. To make our first time special.

I looked at Samir. He looked at me. Neither of us moved.

Samir gave a kind of shy smile and looked down at the ground. "I'm sorry. I don't know how any of this works."

I admitted to him that I didn't know how sexual stuff worked either, even though I had much more experience than him. I was always forgetting how to have sex. Every time I had sex with a new person, it was like I forgot everything I knew. I would forget how to kiss, how to hold someone's face with tenderness. Back to square one. I suppose that's for the best; each person likes something different, and it's nice to relearn how to have sex with a new partner. Everybody has secret intricacies. Like my ex-boyfriend Jeremy really liked it when I kissed his neck and trailed those kisses all the way down his body. My ex-girlfriend Meghan loved it when I whispered in her ear. I could whisper anything really, but mostly I whispered about how beautiful and lovely she was, how much I wanted her. Sometimes, when I was close to her ear, about to tell her how hot she was, she would twirl her fingers around my clit, so I would moan in her ear instead. Meghan loved that shit, always wanted me to be at a loss for words.

I wondered what Samir's "thing" would be. We'd never talked about it. I decided to ask him.

"Do you have a secret thing? Like a secret erotic thing that you like people to do to you?"

Samir considered me for a moment, ran hands through his wavy hair. "Like, when it's in the sexual context, I really like it when people play with my hair. When I get my hair cut, I never have the stylist shampoo it, because it makes me feel a certain type of way."

"You're so fucking cute," I told him. Samir was probably the cutest person on this goddamned planet.

"Can I do it?" I asked. "Run my fingers through your hair?"

He looked down at the floor and smiled real wide, crinkling his eyes. "Yeah. Sure. I'm really, really into it though."

I ran my hands over his arms and chest, giving him these little light touches. Then, I started running my fingers through his hair while making out with him really passionately. There was always an adjustment period to kissing a new person, but kissing Samir had always been easy, and, as much as he liked to self-deprecate about how inexperienced he was, he was good. He was good with his hands. Gave me those feathery touches that made my skin go hot-electric. But what really made him good was that he was the type of guy that tried, that adapted to your body language and movement, instead of just clumsily fumbling around and doing what he wanted.

Samir had visibly relaxed once I started playing with his hair, and he was breathing kind of heavy. He tried to touch me too, to move his hands around the small of my back, across my shoulders, my arms. I felt like there were other places he'd rather touch me, but he wasn't touching my boobs or butt or anything like that. Maybe he was the kind of guy to wait for explicit permission. His movements were a bit clumsier now--me touching him more had definitely unfocused him a little.

He was growing harder underneath me, and his dick rubbed against my underwear in a very pleasurable way. I shifted positions and kind of pressed myself against him.

He moaned, a deep and breathy sound that he was clearly trying to stifle. "Sorry," he said.

"Don't be sorry. I like it." I didn't know what Samir was apologizing for. Guys always apologize for the weirdest things sometimes. Like moaning. Or being hard. Or not being hard.

Samir looked at me in a careful kind of way. "Do you have anything that you like? Like any kind of erotic stuff?"

I took a second to think about it. A lot of my previous partners didn't ask stuff like that; they thought sex was some kind of smooth, wordless exchange like it was in the movies. Samir and I weren't like that; we had talked extensively about boundaries and when to do what. But even though we had a lot of talk about boundaries and things we were okay with, we had never talked about the things we wanted.

"I like it when people suck on my neck--like enough to leave a hickey" I said. "I know it's kind of juvenile."

"It's not juvenile." Samir said. "It's what you like. Although, you do have a job."

"I have turtlenecks. Lots of em."

Samir chuckled a little bit and then pushed my hair back all slow and careful-like. Then, he started sucking on my neck. I took in a sharp, surprised breath whenever he adjusted his movement. I knew it would feel good, but I didn't expect it to feel that good. He was really exceptional at it--and let me tell you, giving proper hickeys is a talent. I imagined him eating me out while still using the same level of careful, controlled movement. I imagined holding his hair and wrapping my legs around him as he flicked his tongue over my clit. I really wanted to touch myself. But I didn't--that would be weird to do at this point, since we hadn't done anything too sexual yet.

Still, I didn't want things to end here. "Do you want to touch my boobs?" I asked. "You definitely don't have to or anything, I mean..." I fumbled awkwardly. "But you can. If you want to."

"I do. I definitely want to. I really want to." he said. Then he started studying me really carefully. Focused, trying to determine the best way to touch me. He took both of my boobs in his hands and just kind of held them there for a while before touching me in the same light way that he always touched me. But this time, it was so much more electric. It was weird--I held my own boobs all the time: when taking a shower, when putting on my bra. Heck, sometimes I just grabbed a titty and squeezed it lightly for comfort. But it was so much different when someone else was touching your boobs. There were so many nerve endings there, and he was activating all of them with his light touches. My nipples hardened, and I took my boobs out of my bra. He started circling my nipples with his fingertips, and I moaned.

Samir smiled at the ground, looking a little surprised.

I leaned in and started kissing him more, made sure to adjust my position and press myself against his dick.

"That feels really nice." he said. "The way you were kind of rocking against me."

I started to rock against him more, and now he was fully erect, which probably hurt since he was wearing jeans. Samir didn't move to take them off though. He was moaning and not even trying to hold it in. We both were; the friction felt really good for me too. It was a good thing his roommates were gone.

"You can touch my ass too." I said. "Under my skirt."

Samir wordlessly grabbed my ass and started caressing it and squeezing it. We continued doing this for several minutes, and I once again got the strong desire to touch myself. I also wanted to unbutton his jeans, and was thinking of asking him when suddenly, Samir's phone alarm started ringing.

Samir caught his breath. "Oh shit. Lemme get that." He got up turned the alarm off.

"Fuck." Samir looked at the ground sheepishly. "God, I hate to do this. But that was the puppet show alarm. The puppet show starts in an hour. I really lost track of time--I thought we at least had a little while longer. But we have the whole night to do romantic stuff when we get back."

I nodded and looked at Samir. There was a wet spot on his jeans. I guessed that was from me.

I pointed to the wet spot. "Sorry about that."

"No. It's really hot. I like it." Samir stooped to give me a forehead kiss. "I'll change."

Samir went to the bathroom to change, and I looked at the box of puppets in the corner of his room. Mr. Cricket, Porky Pie, and The Golden Miasma were poking out of the box. I thumbed through their felt forms, looked them in the eyes. Their eyes were just black beads, but they somehow looked disappointed. I hated to think that the puppets were in the room while I was doing sexual stuff with Samir, even though I knew they weren't sentient.

Still, things were good. Sexual stuff isn't always good--especially the first time, when neither partner knows exactly what the other wants. But there's something special about having sex with someone like Samir, someone who I've known for years. Someone that I love. That's when it's good.