My Funeral

This one was in my head when I woke up this morning. Don't know how that happens.

My Funeral

I always wanted to find out what people would say at my funeral. Now I have my chance.

They're all assembled this fine spring day, with the cherry blossoms falling like a gentle rain.

My casket is poised for the final six-foot journey, the piled dirt covered by a cheap green indoor-outdoor carpet, the digger some distance off behind a temporary screen.

My sister is doing the honors as she's a part-time internet preacher, has a certificate and everything.

I'm off to one side, black hat and veil I got from a costume store. Sexy Widow the package said!

And I do look sexy, black mesh stockings and tiny black skirt, some kind of crocheted triangle shawl that just covers my nipples.

And the hat. And nothing else. Already I got a few glares and some smiles, but I've always had eccentric friends and I play the part well.

Anyway, my sister is starting.

"Hey! You lot! Pipe down! This is my sister here! Have some respect!"

Always the picture of tact, my big sister. I feel a little surge of pride, she cares enough to harangue my friends.

She's always cared, but it's the little things that get you in the feels. A little tear starts down one cheek.

The crowd chatter quiets and folks turn expectantly.

"So, this is gonna be different. Like my sister. Always a little strange, but that's why we loved her."

That got nods from the crowd.

Bob opens a cardboard box, pulls out some plastic champagne glasses. Cherise pops a cork, begins to pour while Bob hands them out.

Cherise looks extra cool today. She's always cool somehow, even naked and cumming on my chin.

But today in her skin-tight tailored black Brooks Brothers she's a million bucks.

Wool skirt, blazer, those priceless legs going an improbable distance to her perfect feet in matching pumps. How may pumps does she own?

When everybody has a glass ready, Sis begins again.

"My dearly beloved. Well, some of you anyway." A titter from the crowd. Sis can be prickly, but she really does love everybody here.

In fact, she's bedded most of them, Bob included even though she's a 100-percent dyed-in-the-wool motorcycle-riding crewcut dyke.

Bob is gay enough, so it worked for both of them. I dunno, I've licked a few cunts in my day, so whatever floats their boat.

"You all knew my sister. Hell, most of you 'knew' her more than once.

I figure she doesn't want us crying over her. So instead, we're gonna laugh."

Hey! I do wanna see some tears today. That's kind of the point, coming to your own funeral.

"I'll start it off. After each tale of sex and debauchery and selfishness and glorious generosity..."

Here her voice caught, and she took a shaky breath.

"After each tale we're gonna take a drink. Hell, drain the glass, Bob has a whole case here."

Everybody looked at Bob, who was holding up a bottle in each hand, grinning.

"As we drink, we'll loosen up and the stories will get better.

When we can't think of anything else to say, or when we're all shitfaced, whatever comes first, well that'll be it."

Some folks were already taking a drink. Some of them needed it.

Sis took a drink too, nerving herself.

"My sister is, my sister was, an idiot. Not a school-dunce idiot. Not a can't-balance-her-checkbook idiot.

She was a love idiot. She'd fall in love after one date, meet somebody at the corner market, take home some sad lost puppy after a party, tell them she loved them, and would love them forever.

One guy, and yes, she fucked guys too, she met at one of my motorcycle rallies. Hill climbing, dirt and dust and mud and exhaust fumes so you can't hardly breath.

She hated that shit, but she came for me because I had a chance to place. And she just wanted to be there, see me win or die trying anyway.

So early trials, some young punk new at it, on a bike that isn't even made for climbing, a street bike for shit's sake!

Anyway, over-throttles on the break, spills. Hardly got anywhere, didn't even get to the climb proper.

So, he goes over backward, the bike misses him by some miracle, tumbling down the slope like Eval Knievel on a bad day.

Rolls and rolls, the wheels still spinning and the bike bucking down the slope and him hanging on to the handlebar like a rodeo clown.

Comes to a stop about where Sis is standing. There in her flouncy skirt and heels, push-up bra and pink lipstick, looking like fucking Suzy-q the high school slut."

Some faces flushed at that, remembering. It was one of my best looks!

"So he's in the dirt looking up at her. She reaches down, to give him a hand, I guess. He takes it, tries to heave himself to his feet.

Anyway she's 100 pounds maybe dripping wet, or covered in cum, whatever. And he's 210 and mostly muscle. So it doesn't go well.

Over she goes, like a bowling pin. Does a sort of lurching flip but ends up on top of him. Straddling him, crotch to face."

A laugh. Good. Breaks the ice, lights the mood.

"And Suzy-q the slut doesn't wear panties, I'm not sure she owned any.

He has this look of panic on his face, well in his eyes, can't see his face.

A nice boy, not used to sucking off girls before he's been properly introduced, doesn't know what to do.

She's not flustered. Never seen her flustered come to think of it.

So she's kneeling over this guy, he's smelling her cooch.

She pulls up the front of her skirt, looks him in the eye, says to him, "Hey, as long as you're down there, I lost a condom the other day. Could you maybe look for it?"

The crowd breaks up. Not the funniest story or my best line but this crowd needed to laugh, and it's good enough.

"So end of the story, the medic lifts her off, checks him out. Bruised, not bleeding, but maybe a fractured ulna.

Sis volunteers to take him to the ER. Off they go.

They never made it to the ER. Went back to his place, she fucked him all weekend, Memorial Day weekend so yeah.

After the holiday she did take him to the ER, bone broken in two places. Loving my sister could make you forget about trivial shit like that.

They weren't a couple for long, he moved back to Denver or some shit, no hard feelings but a job came up. A nice guy. Greg? Something like that."

A voice in the crowd hollers "Craig!"

Everybody looks, it's him, of course he's here, all the way from Denver. Folks raise their glass to him, he nods gravely.

Everybody takes a drink; some drain the glass. Bob and Cherise refill.

Cherise is next.

"You all know she was my lady, my main squeeze for years. Not exclusive, she wasn't like that, and I sure didn't mind.

The prime dicks and cunts she'd bring back to the flat, well it was all good.

Talk about generosity! That girl was happiest when you were fucking her latest crush.

She'd sit and watch or help or whatnot, suck the cock wet or hold the dildo so you could climb on board,

lick what she could reach, spit in your hole to slicken you up, guide the cock in.

When you came, she acted like it was a gift from her, straight from her heart!

Kissed me so hard after I'd just sucked off the latest love of her life, I would nearly pass out.

She was something else. A special woman. One of a kind. I'll never find another like her. There isn't another.

I loved her. I loved her. I loved..."

Cherise got choked up, had to stop. Screwed up her face, started sobbing. Bob put down his bottles, took her in his arms, let her sob on his shoulder.

"That's my sis! Drink up!"

Most folks drained it this time. My sister did the honors refilling, as Bob and Cherise were still comforting each other.

"Well hard act to follow."

This from a little girl, 30-something but tiny as a teacup, dressed like a librarian.

"I met her at work. She was doing some art show thing at the library, summer of the arts program."

She was a librarian. I remember her! Smart as fuck, but a little repressed. Until you figured out what made her tick.

"She tripped over me coming out of the conference room."

That got a laugh, I wasn't tall, but this girl was improbably tiny.

"Didn't end with me sucking her cooch, didn't even end up on the floor. Not right away anyway.

I was there to close the exhibit for lunch, give the staff a break.

I hadn't seen the exhibits, I was staff, busy with crowd control and keeping snotty kids from handling the art and so on.

But she offered to show me her stuff, proud as a new mom.

She's a sculptor among other things. This exhibit was stuff she'd taken from life casts, worked into a theme of exaltation.

The casts though, they were the main deal. Plaster, body casts, various pieces put together worked into figures with arms raised, heads back.

Nothing was the right part though. An arm made out of a leg. Feet where hands should be. Even a head made of a butt!"

That was funny. I'd taken Cherise's butt-cast and wow what a butt she has. A blast to make; a blast to put together, I remember.

"Anyway, the torsos were a mélange of casts, no particular design but a cage made of many parts. Probably her leftovers.

She was talking about inspiration and whatnot, but I couldn't take my eyes off of one piece.

Ovals and rods and half-spheres, squidgy shapes all it a wild jumble. Painted psychedelic colors, a sort of a Laura Borealisis palette but with... never mind.

The colors made it hard to parse the shapes but as she talked, I figure it out.

It was all sex! Dicks and cunts and boobs, many many boobs, big and small, firm and floppy, every kind.

And something I can only imagine was a vagina cast, bent and lumpy."

Oh yeah, that had been a bitch to make. I'd filled my cooch with plaster, waited for it to seize up, but then it didn't want to come out. Like giving birth!

Or so I imagine; I'll never know.

"She sees me get it, the moment of understanding, and she lights up like a Christmas tree. She's so excited I 'get her' as she said.

We stayed the whole hour, never went to lunch but just talked art and color and sense-image.

Stuff I couldn't talk to many folks about, at least not back then. Stuff I normally don't admit I'm interested in. Being smart is a big turnoff to so many.

But not her! No! She was like a kid in a candy shop, jumping from artist to palette to technique, surprised by my ideas and, well, proud when I said something she hadn't thought of.

Not a competitive bone in her body; not a hint of a shred of jealousy when I would expand on her thoughts or have an insight.

I was in heaven! She was a woman like I'd never known."

She cleared her throat, got ready to say the next part.

"She turned the topic to sex, which was the whole point of the exhibit if you knew what you were looking at.

She asked me point-blank about my sexuality. I said 'oh, hetero-normative I'm afraid'

Looked me in the eye and said 'Bullshit'. Just like that, straight at me, with those piercing grey eyes that can see right into your soul."

Heads nodded, remembering those eyes.

"I was flustered, stammered something, tried to deny it. But then she kissed me.

Not just a peck; not a gentle sisterly smooch. She gave it to me with all guns blazing, tongue in mouth and spit and sucking and face-mashing.

And when she was done, finished ravaging my face, finished violating me in ways I never knew could matter, I was a Lesbian."

A big laugh, from everybody.

"Well, you all get it. I was a Lesbian all along but now I knew it. Somehow, she'd known it from the start.

I want to say, to tell you all, to admit to the world, she saved my life.

From a mousy repressed hetero-poser that hated myself for reasons I couldn't understand, wanting to want men but terrified of penetration, terrified of intimacy, hiding in a library.

To a woman who could love, wanted to love, and knew just how I was going to love from now on. Not afraid to say it to anybody: I am a Lesbian.

We didn't become lovers, but we talked art several more times before she graduated from libraries to bigger shows, then her own shows.

This isn't about me so I'll finish with my tribute to your friend, your sister and my emancipator: I love you more than you could ever know.

Because you were something special, a glowing shining star in a world that often doesn't seem very special."

Tears were sprouting out all over, but folks didn't hide it. They raised their glass, smiling and crying.

I was crying too. I'm a big softy, everybody knows that. Still, it hit me right in the feels to know I'd had such an impact on this girl.

There were more stories, stupid stories as folks got plastered. Folks would start one and forget the ending and somebody else would finish it.

A nurse at the hospital told a good one, about my sister coming to my flat, Cherise living with another girl at this point, so I was alone.

Finding me on the floor of my bedroom unconscious, naked, angry red lines running down my arm from my thumb where I'd cut it open slicing a bagel.

Sis had carried me to her motorcycle, held me on while she raced to the ER, drove right in the doors through the waiting room to an exam room, put me on an exam table.

Crying the whole time, how the hell she could even see to drive?

Anyway, she was too late, flesh-eating bacteria had about finished with my guts by then. Nothing to save. I died a few minutes later.

I love my sister; did I say that? Let me say that again, I love my sister.

The booze ran out, my sister hit the switch and the box containing that shell that had been me dropped slowly out of sight.

Folks wandered off, nobody alone, not today.

I wasn't myself anymore, I saw the rest of this from a branch in a tree somehow.

The future was laid bare to me, some of it.

My sister raising a glass on my birthday for the rest of her life, somehow remembering it when I'm dead though she never remembered even once when I was alive, not ever.

Crying in her drink, telling her stories to folks who had heard them for years but still listen and smile.

Otherwise, she would live a fine depraved dyke life, loving and living.

Good for you, Sis.

God love you.

And whadda you know, somehow, I do know, he does love her. Every butch inch of her.

I fly off, only my sister remaining. She saw me then, a dove fluttering overhead and then winging off into the sky.

She knew, and she smiled, and raised her empty glass.