Out of the Burlap Ch. 00-01

Maya nodded. "So what have you been doing since graduating high school?"

Joe chuckled. "When do I get to grill you?"

"You're an enigma. I'm just a boring old rock star."

"VH-1 makes quite a lot of money on advertizing during hour long biographies of rock stars."

"Clichés," Maya argued. "Clichés sell."

"You're not."

"Maybe not. But I'm not a bonafide rock star anyway. Where's the entourage? Does this look like a mansion? Where's the pool surrounded by beautiful sluts and decadent and corrupted playas playing the Dorian Gray angle with face lifts and tummy tucks or expensive physical trainers? I'm just a girl ruled by a not very lucrative passion and ego demanding me to create music and lead bands."

"Which I admire about you," Joe said, adding the admission, "You have the balls to put it out there unlike me."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind."

"But I do mind. What aren't you putting out? Are you a latent rock star afraid to come out of the closet?"

"I can't sing nor play an instrument. I have a tin ear and the best I could get out of the family upright piano was a horrible version of Chopsticks."

"That doesn't seem to matter to a lot of punk rock bands."

"True," Joe winced, "unfortunately. I'd rather keep silent than subject audiences to cacophony and ugliness. I prefer music that has a beautiful form whether in its melodies or surprising progressions. In fact I prefer that in all my art."

"You like my form?" asked Maya with a flirty smirk.

"Yes," Joe breathed.

"I like yours too."

They paused to eat their cooled meal while gazing admiringly at each other.

"You never answered my question," she finally said.

Joe chewed another mouthful of vegetarian stir fry before responding with eyes downward towards the plate, "I write lyrics."

"Oh."

"I won't subject you to them."

"Are they that bad?"

"I don't know. Maybe. But I don't think they're bad when I write them. They're...They're my passion."

"Oh."

Lifting his eyes from his plate, he brought a quixotic smile to his face when he looked at her and said, "They're my only passion."

"Oh."

Moments later having finished the last of her meal, Maya looked at Joe and smiled. "Almost done?"

"Unh-hunh. Need me to head out?"

"We'll head out together once I put away the leftovers and clean up, okay?"

"Okay," Joe smiled. The tightness in his pants returned. It increased when they playfully butted hips at the kitchen sink and became uncomfortably tight when they shared their second deep kiss even more enjoyable than the first at the record store.

"Mmm," she murmured afterwards. "Give me a few minutes to shower and change?"

"No hurry," said Joe.

He perused her record collection finding a pleasing diversity of punk, power pop, soul, r & b, jazz—mostly black female singers he also admired, but also favorite big bands like Basie and Ellington and players like Coltrane and Miles Davis—and both classical and more contemporary compositional music. He discovered the "Blow-Up Dolls" vinyl and put it on the turntable enjoying Maya's sensuous voice and the clarity of her lyrics, both unique to her. Melodies were simple yet pleasing. Only a couple had bridges, the rest only moving from verses to choruses with some speeding or shifting to a more aggressive loudness ala Nirvana. Guitar solos were brief and rudimentary and appropriate to the tight structure of the songs.

"Actually sounds pretty good," said Maya, dressed sans provocation in a light gray sweatshirt and loose fitting jeans, her hair fluffy and shining and with a dark copper henna aura he hadn't noticed before. Without make-up her pale features looked cuter and somehow more vulnerable and approachable.

"Unh-hunh," Joe agreed.

She set down the black acoustic guitar case and lifted onto her toes and kissed him warmly if briefly. While putting away the album in its sleeve, she asked him, "Could you grab the guitar?"

"Going to some gig?"

"Nope," she smiled. Rearranging the small black stuffed backpack on her shoulder, she headed towards the door. "Let's go."

He noticed she kept the album in her hand.

Joe didn't live far from her. She drove her old, softly curved dark green Volvo ("My father loved this car and kept it running and willed it to me when he died," she explained. "Sorry," said Joe. "Thanks," she sniffled.) less than ten minutes to get there. But she still managed to get more information out of him. "So what did you do after high school?" she asked.

"She's persistent," Joe thought with a half grin, wondering if that was good or bad. Would she tear away the skin and reveal the burlap that impinged on him or protected him or held him back from exposing tender nerves? Could he stand it? Did he need it?

"Construction," he replied.

"Kept you in shape."

"Yep. The dancing kept me loose."

"I'm glad of that," she giggled, eyeing him with predatory eyes and licking her lips. She got more serious. "Not enough work? It's pretty seasonal."

"Not so much that as I got...it got old and no chance of advancement, though I guess I didn't really care about that so much. Mostly it got old. I've always loved music and perusing used record stores and asked the guy at the counter one day—he turned out to be the owner—if he needed employees. Turns out he did."

"How long ago was that?"

"Four years. And I keep myself in construction worker shape at the downtown Y."

"How come I never saw you?"

"Been to the St Paul store much?"

"No. Never. The uptown store usually provides my needs."

"Tony keeps a great store."

"The big, older guy?"

"Yep."

"He told me to talk to you."

"I wondered why you were in St Paul with a store nearly across the street."

"That's why."

"We're here," said Joe. She parked in front of the nondescript brick apartment building.

"Sorry about the mess," he apologized upon opening his apartment door, and it was messy.

Maya shrugged, "Bachelor pad," and removed a couple books from an old overstuffed chair, a colorful floral bed sheet serving as reupholstery and sat, resting the black guitar case against the side of the chair.

Joe got busy locating his Gong albums, specifically the Flying Teapot trilogy, from rows of records leaning on their sides against other records filed alphabetically on shelves. He put on the first album of the trilogy and handed her the record sleeve.

"Never heard of them," she said.

"Not many have. A part of the early Virgin Records groups that followed Mike Oldfield's success with Tubular Bells that began Richard Branson's rise to billionaire. Not until the Sex Pistols did he score any real success with the label's artists after Oldfield."

"It's kind of jazzy and trippy."

"Yeah."

"Pot head pixies," she chuckled.

"Yeah its very drug oriented. It's the Flying Teapot trilogy, and the tea referred to isn't your mother's English Tea, but..."

"Shrooms?"

"Exactly. It's the general state of mind of the trilogy. Speaking of which, want to smoke a doobie?"

"Sure," she replied.

Grabbing a favorite gatefold sleeved album, Soft Machine's "Third," ("I think I've heard of them," Maya said. "One of my top five bands," Joe replied) he lifted the roof off of a square copper green patina incense holder that resembled a Chinese shack that sat beside the long oval shaped ivory colored phone on a small table and removed a rolled up baggy of hash buds and a pack of Zig Zags. He sank into an old couch upholstered in white sheet and worked on breaking up the buds.

"I like it," she smiled. "I like the cute tunes but especially the dreamy, spacey music between them."

"Yeah, me too," he responded. "Really good musicians, but not showoffy, you know?"

"They all have aliases," she noticed, reading the notes on the back of the album.

"Yeah, sort of Eastern Indian and Gaelic witchery or something mixed together. Daevid Allen is the mad man behind it. He's a pretty interesting fellow. He's originally Australian, ended up in Paris during the big revolt in sixty-eight and got kicked out of France for fomenting revolution."

"No shit."

"Yeah. And he's like one of the first hippies. But the band's an amalgam of French and British musicians. I think their real names are on there somewhere." Joe pulled the joint together and lit it, handing the joint to Maya as soon as he filled his lungs.

"Good shit," she said after sucking in a couple lungs full.

"Let me roll you one for the road," he offered and she nodded. Once completed, Joe put away the pot and returned the album to an unfiled stack, picking the joint from her fingers and having another toke. When he sat back on the couch, she sat beside him. They smoked and listened. Joe enjoyed contact with her body, noticeable in its subtlety. When the side ended, he flipped it to the other side and returned to his close proximity to her on the couch.

"I'm getting pretty stoned," she giggled. "Where'd you get it?"

"Tom Saxon."

"I know Tom. Keyboards. He's pretty crazy. Into Nazi shit if I remember right."

"Not in the Holocaust sense," Joe explained, "but in the weird mysticism they embraced. I suppose as an American Indian, I'm sure Hitler would never have welcomed him. He's big on esoteric mysticism or tripped out conspiracies that border on the paranoid like lizard people and such."

"Lizard people?"

"Yeah. There's a group of people that believe we're being ruled by lizard people from another planet; that the Bush family and the British royal family are really lizards."

"That's pretty nuts."

"Yeah, but he's a good guy. In fact he turned me on to Gong and Soft Machine," Joe pointed to the cover that he used to roll the joint, "and other stuff. I'm too young to have grown up on it."

"How'd you get to know him?"

"Fellow record store geek," Joe shrugged. "He worked at a friend's store on the other side of the highway from Cheapo until they had a falling out. He used to come visit my store a lot and we talked and he invited me to his apartment and turned me on to a bunch of Art Rock that he actually grew up with. He's like in his forties believe it or not. He favors Yes by the way, but when I commented they worked too hard at it, took themselves too seriously even with their goofy lyrics, he brought out Gong and I got hooked ever after. He even snagged me my collection from his ex-friend's store."

"That's cool. And you like this Soft Machine?"

"Yeah. I don't know if you'd be into them. Their music is a bit more convoluted and complicated and not really spacey. But I love the lead singer of their earlier albums, Robert Wyatt. He has a sweet, sad, high voice and a dark sense of humor that got sadder and darker when he became a paraplegic. In fact the album he created after his accident—he went solo after it—is my favorite but it's pretty depressing I guess. You want to hear more Gong?"

"Maybe later. Is that Robert Wyatt on that Soft Machine album?"

"One of my favorites. The songs are all long, filling a whole side." Joe stood and grabbed the Soft Machine album and found the side he wanted and put it on. "It's called Moon in June."

When he sat back beside her, she turned and pulled his mouth to hers. During the intense kiss, her fingers found his nipples. He got the message and began playing with her firm breasts, discovering her nipples lengthening obviously beneath her sweatshirt. Her fingers went south and found his cock creating a lengthy hillock along his thigh. He followed her lead again and found heat and the suggestion of dampness at her center. She caressed and he rubbed. They groaned into each other's mouths.

Lips separated. She stared heatedly into his eyes. "I have to go to work soon," she sighed.

"Practice?"

"Nope. Nothing musical, at least in terms of my own music, and the dancing I do isn't about rehearsal."

Realization hit Joe like a softly slung pillow. He laughed.

"What's funny?' she asked.

"A record nerd recognized you, and now I know why he got embarrassed and blushed."

"Yeah, I've danced on his lap a time or two. Not much for tipping." They shared a laugh which ended in a soft, sensuous kiss. She stood and pulled him to his feet. "Bedroom? Wooh!" she exclaimed when he lifted her into his arms, his hand holding her buttocks, the thumb pressing at her slit.

"I couldn't resist your petiteness," he explained with a grin.

"My big man," she crooned.

"Twist the knob," he requested.

"Which one," she giggled.

"The doorknob first," he chuckled.

They entered a small, tidy room filled by a queen sized bed and lined with bookshelves crammed with books.

"Hey, it's neat in here."

"Old habit from the farmhouse," he shrugged before carefully lowering her onto the dark gray quilt on the made bed. "I guess the same habit keeps the door closed when I'm not in the bedroom. Nosy sisters."

Maya knelt on the bed and reached up to unbutton his shirt. "Get lower please," she requested. He knelt on the floor. His hands grabbed the bottom of her sweatshirt and pulled up.

Lifting her arms, she giggled. He found out why. She wore nothing underneath.

"I guess you don't believe in layering," he commented appreciatively, finishing up his unbuttoning and quickly removing his shirt and his undershirt.

"I like the feel of the fleece on my titties," she told him before humming contentedly and stroking his tight torso, her fingers sharing the mouth teasing of his nipples.

His fingers kept busy discovering the textures of her quarter inch length nipples and quarter sized areolas that crinkled delightfully. She hummed again, with a bit of a moan to it, at his caresses. He loved women who loved their nipples played with. Her breast flesh might not have been as elastic as other women's, but he discovered the softness and especially the smoothness of her skin on those ample orbs. In fact her entire torso had tautness to it but with a layer of soft smooth flesh. Its paleness seemed to glow in the darkened room.

Her hands lowered to squeeze his buttocks and lift. He got the hint and stood, still managing to keep caressing her incredible tits. After a kiss and some tongue play on his navel she grinned up at him while her hands unlatched his belt, unbuttoned the button of his jeans and unzipped them, pulling the denim out of the way of her goal.

His cock, nearing eight inches in length, tented his newest boxers striped green and gold and black. He'd changed into them for this very possibility. "Nice," she murmured, stroking the tent pole. He figured it wasn't the underpants until she said, "My sharp dressed man." She took the knob into her mouth and sucked it through the cotton. It felt weird but intense. "Oooh," he moaned.

Releasing the knob, she grinned lasciviously up at him before pealing away the final barrier and letting his cock bounce free. It soon stopped swaying, being captured in her mouth. More moaning ensued.

Reaching low, he unfastened her loose jeans and pulled them off, her lifting her butt to allow their removal. Again nakedness greeted him and the sweetest little pussy he had ever seen as bare naked as the rest of her, sans fringe. Only her argyle socks remained on her. His were plain white.

With great care he crawled over her, his head near the foot of the bed, and rolled her onto him. Her split opened for him when she straddled his head beckoning to be tasted and invaded. Moistening his fingers with his mouth, the tips slid along the edges of perfection, opening her further. They caressed her labia bringing moans vibrating on his cock where her lips had been gently stroking. The moans got louder when his tongue tip grazed her clit. She smelled clean and sweet and musky. Her odor excited him even more. His tongue circled her clit, dabbing at the head while his fingers continued their circles of her labia with occasional dips inside her, feeling the narrowness of her channel.

Things soon got more intense. He intensified his oral and digital caresses with a gradual ramping that within a few minutes became vigorous vibrations of tongue tip against clit tip, playing it like a speed bag, while his fingers delved deeper inside her and began thrusting and gradually filling the narrow space, from one finger to two to three. The middle one found the roughened texture that identified her g-spot and moved gradually towards a vigorous rubbing. With one hand fucking her, the other explored the soft smoothness of her taut round little butt and fingers played the edge of her anus, rimming it and penetrating to the first knuckle occasionally. Additional moans suggested she liked ass play.

Her lips had also quickened on shaft and knob. He felt the slippery pleasure of her tongue within the lips become almost frantic as she polished that knob. But her building orgasm ended felatio for the moment. She hummed and moaned and breathed heavier until everything became a squeal as she shivered on his lips and poured forth a light thin stream of delicious liquid.

"Good," she murmured throatily, her shivers subsiding. He continued caressing her cunt and butt with quieter attention as she returned to her task of producing an equivalent reaction with mouth on cock.

Unfortunately he rarely came via a woman's mouth which he told her.

Her lips noisily released his glans. "We'll see about that," she said challengingly. "Sit on the edge of the bed."

Her eyes never strayed from his as she knelt between his legs and sucked him and stroked him aggressively. That visual connection along with her pleasuring of him taking all attention soon brought forth his semen to fill her small mouth. After the first ejaculation, she pulled the throbbing cock out and placed the head at her neck to coat it with the rest of his pearlescent semen. Once the last of it eked out, he pulled her onto his lap and kissed her.

"I have to go soon," she said reluctantly, a soft, sensual smile on her face. "I wanted to leave time to read some of your lyrics. Let me clean up and dress while you choose some of your writing for me to see." After another kiss, she darted into the bathroom.

****************

The bride sighed in the double-wide

She tried to hide her wounded pride

But the guide derided her tender hide

Denied the groom lied to his bride

Why'd she defied a smooth rich ride

To side with an implied patricide

And not abide; a decided class slide

But she thought: I'd died too a little inside

As she cried high tide tears in the double-wide

"What's that about?" Maya chuckled, sitting beside Joe on the old living room couch reading the verse aloud, her body warm and refreshed from a quick shower and her face adorned by obvious make-up that made her face more exotic looking and, let's face it, slutty ("It's a dark room I dance in," she explained).

Joe shrugged. "Just fucking around. A bunch of 'ide' rhymes came to me one morning featuring bride and guide."

"I kind of like it."

"No you don't."

"I do. A sort of implied class suicide, isn't it? Some spoiled little rich girl running into the arms of some trailer park trash so to speak not for love but to piss off her rich daddy, only to discover she hates the situation as much as daddy probably does. But who's the guide?" After a pause, Maya continued the speculation, "The groom's sister maybe? Protective of her brother and not trusting his choice in wife? She probably smirked inside when she brought the spoiled heiress to her new home."

"And where's the husband?"

"Probably passed out at the reception," Maya chuckled.

"Probably held in the local dive," added Joe, adding his own laugh.

Maya became suddenly serious. "Maybe it was a literal patricide," she said. "Maybe her father just died and she blames herself, being a wild girl who loves getting as high as a kite as often as she can, the groom perhaps a supplier of, let's say, speed, and when her father died unexpectedly after the latest harangue with his daughter, hate the last communication between them rather than love, and leaving unexpected debt instead of the expected inheritance, she completely loses it. She becomes that much more wild having lost the moral compass that had been her father." Maya sniffled. "I know I became rather debauched when my father died. I think it was the last straw for my boyfriend."