The Last Lightning Bug of Summer

"Aren't they wonderful?" Joan said.

"One of nature's miracles."

"I never get tired of seeing them."

The sky was rapidly fading to black and the points of light grew more vivid, like flecks of gold on velvet.

"Did you know," Joan said, "they live for a little over a year, but only one or two months of that is as an adult?"

"I didn't know that. Sounds like they got short-changed."

"Maybe so. But what a glorious time of it."

"It must take a lot of energy lighting up their rear ends like that," I said. "Maybe that's why they don't last long."

"They have one purpose as an adult, and that's to find a mate and lay eggs."

"Wouldn't that make life so much simpler."

Joan chuckled at that.

"Everyone's horny all the time," I went on. "No crossed wires or mixed messages."

"I guess so. The lightning bugs, you mean?"

"Right. And when it's over, that's it, mission accomplished. You can die a fulfilled lightning bug. No regrets."

"It's true, we do tend to complicate things as humans."

"Sometimes I think that's all our big brains are for. To find ways to make life complicated."

"Or perhaps more interesting."

"Perhaps."

"Hmm... You know," Joan said, "it's silly, but as the summer wears on and the numbers start to dwindle, I can't help feeling bad for the ones still left near the end. Why can't they find a mate? Is it something about the way they glow?"

"Nature rewards the winners. It's how the colony stays strong."

"Does it work that way for us, too?"

"Every generation has its virgin spinsters and bachelors. They contribute in other ways, I guess."

"I wonder about the very last lightning bug. Does he know he's out of luck?"

"He's a sex-machine, Joan, he only knows to be what he is until he runs out of juice. With his dying flutter he's probably thinking 'Oh yeah, baby, tonight's the night.'"

"You're funny, Freddie. Listen, I'll run and get us some snacks."

"Don't go to any trouble, Joan."

"No trouble at all."

She was already up from the sofa and swishing past me in her white linen skirt. I stretched out my hand and let the fabric brush my fingers as she went by.

I gave her a fifteen-second head start, during which I watched the light show outside and imagined the concentrated sexual energy pulsing through the night air, generated by a single-minded collective expressing the life force. It was literally their only reason to exist. Any joy they sparked in the hearts of their observers was a cosmic side-effect.

We might be more complicated, even in some profound ways, but we're inescapably connected to the same earthly cycles of survival and renewal. And perhaps the biggest complication is simply that we're aware of it.

Joan was washing grapes when I entered the kitchen. The spotlight above the sink highlighted the red hues in her flawless hair. Her reflection in the darkened window was a monochromatic chiaroscuro, light and dark in extremes, unreadable as to expression or mood.

I stepped up behind her and placed a hand on each of her ass cheeks, taking a firm grip through her skirt. Anticipating her reaction, I was ready when she straightened up in surprise, and clamped my mouth on the curve where neck transitions to collarbone.

"Freddie," she said in a gasp, her hands raised and dripping, momentarily seized.

I ran my tongue up the side of her neck and behind her ear. The scent of hairspray was strong.

"Your butt is glowing, Joan," I said softly.

I continued to take handfuls of her and knead the flesh, working around to her hips and upper thighs, and back again to the cheeks, lifting and parting then letting them fall together with a soft but springy impact. I continued to nip at her neck and shoulders, and I felt Joan adjust her stance a little, moving her feet farther apart and bracing herself against the edge of the counter. In an almost imperceptible movement, I felt her push against my crotch with her ass, signaling her encouragement. I glanced at our color-stripped reflection in the kitchen window: it was like a B-movie poster from the forties. Joan's head was tipped back, her lips parted, and--electrifying me--her heavy-lidded eyes were staring directly at me in the window.

I'd begun to grind my stiffening cock against her and she was reciprocating with a movement of her hips. Sensations escalated and I grabbed at her skirt, pulling it up in bunches and handfuls, sweeping it forward and around her until there was a tight ripple of fabric up around her waist and the rest of the skirt was in front, jammed against the doors of the cabinets beneath the sink.

Joan's bare ass was oddly cold to the touch at the extremities. Closer to the cleft there was unmistakable heat, and by touch I knew my insistent manipulation of her had sent her underwear into a useless tangle.

"I've got you all out of whack here," I said, sliding a finger under the twisted cotton rope. "Let me help you out."

"Thank you. I'm not really a G-string kinda gal."

I felt her shudder as I tugged her panties free, and she clenched briefly as my fingertips slid inward and brushed the tiny corrugations of skin around her exit.

I smoothed the soft cotton across the expanse of her rear then, in a moment of inspiration, rolled it down with my palms, starting at her hips, until it was all twisted up again, only this time down around her thighs.

Joan reached behind her with her left hand, grasping for me. I took her hand and placed it on my erection, still bound up in my shorts and boxers, strapped in across my pelvis. She squeezed it firmly and began to rub, so I unbuttoned my shorts and pushed them down past her hand so they would fall to the floor.

She continued to rub my cock, more energetically now that there was better definition, and I stood with my hands lightly on her hips at the widest part, savoring the uniqueness of the moment.

Joan wasn't the first older woman I'd experienced, and not even the oldest by age gap, but I was surprised to feel such strong sexual energy coming off her. There was a boldness in her touch that I hadn't expected, although our basement encounter of a few years earlier should have been a bright flashing neon sign. In every other context, I'd found Joan to be polite and cheerful but measured, even a little shy. Demure would be the fancy word for it. Yet here she was easing my cock up to the vertical position in my shorts so she could back on to me with the crease of her bare ass and give me a standing lap dance at her kitchen sink.

I reached around and felt for her nipples, wanting to complete the circuit and let the current flow. I raked my fingernails down her chest and encountered her hard bobbins, low and wide on her ribs, and I realized she wasn't wearing a bra. It's the kind of detail I would typically notice right away, on sight as it were, so it came as a mild surprise, which then made me wonder how much of what was happening now had been engineered by Joan. The idea was invigorating, which might be why I squeezed her nipples so hard in reaction to the thought; so much so that Joan said, "Ooh, Freddie, ooh, ooh," which I understood from her tone to signal her threshold on nipple-twisting.

"Let's go back to the porch," I said with my face buried in her hair.

I tugged her skirt back into place but left her underwear stretched across her upper thighs. I took her hand and led her away from the sink, stepping out of my shorts as I went. I felt her grip my hand tightly and then there was a sudden resistance as I realized she wasn't coming along. I turned to see her holding her free hand up to her brow.

"I'm sorry," she said in a small voice, "I feel a little unsteady."

Still holding her hand, I took a step back towards her and raised my free hand to cup her jaw in my palm.

"Joan," I said, and kissed her wide mouth. Her lips yielded to mine and I sensed her body relax for a moment as a sigh escaped her. But then,

"No. This is wrong," she said in a whisper.

"Okay," I said, and kissed her cheek. "Then let's go watch the lightning bugs."

"What about the grapes?"

I lifted the bunch of grapes from the sink and placed them in the bowl Joan had put out for them. A couple of loose ones were left behind in the strainer over the drain.

"We'll eat them on the porch."

I took her hand again and squeezed as I led her back to the porch and the humid night waiting for us there.

"I'm sorry for being silly," Joan said when we were seated again. "It came over me all of a sudden. It's silly."

Being silly, it seemed, was a preoccupation of Joan's, a recurring anxiety.

"Not silly at all," I said, and I moved up the sofa to be immediately adjacent, our thighs in contact. "Unless you mean this shouldn't have happened."

There was a very long pause before Joan said any more. We both looked out through the screens at the light show beyond, glimmers of gold and yellow and pale green at ground level, as well as high up in the tree canopies where our back yards gave way to a sparse woodland flanking a natural swale.

"I've thought about you all this time, Freddie. I shouldn't have, but I did."

"I would never," I said, then stopped. "I would never have tried to--initiate." I knew what I was trying to say, but I also knew the time to say it (if at all) was long past. The train had left the station. So I gave up.

"I know, I know. And I invited you over."

All I could think about was Joan's panties twisted up mid-thigh beneath her skirt as she sat next to me. About my shorts lying crumpled on the kitchen floor. About the erection that refused to soften inside my boxer briefs. As far as I was concerned, we were beyond the question of whether this was going to happen.

"Let's take a walk," I said, and stood up.

On impulse, I pulled my T-shirt over my head then bent to pull down my boxers. My cock sprang free and nodded hello to Joan. I reached out a hand to her.

She stood up quickly, as if relieved to have the uncertainty removed.

"Let me help you with this."

I pulled her tank-top over her head and dropped it on the wicker sofa. Joan's breasts were the oldest part of her, drained and exhausted, but her nipples retained their response to arousal.

"You'll have to help me figure out this skirt," I said.

She reached behind her back and a moment later the skirt dropped to the floor. Joan adjusted her stance so one leg was slightly forward, her feet almost crossing, causing her thighs to press together. As I said, demure. It was a crazy contradiction, the more so because her useless underwear, stretched tight across her legs, looked like a Parisian whore's garters. I half-expected her to cross her arms over her chest to complete the picture.

I squatted before her and tugged the underwear down, kissing her thighs lightly as I did so. When I reached her apex I nuzzled her bush and inhaled the faint scent of favors not yet granted.

I kissed her baby-pouch before standing.

"Let's go."

"You're not serious about going outside?"

"Of course. Lightning bugs, Joan."

"But, the neighbors."

"There's barely any light, and who'll be looking?"

"I don't know." But she gave a little laugh that suggested the idea appealed to her, against her better judgment. "I remember seeing you out on your deck with all kinds of women. So I was looking, at least."

"You used to watch me?" (The parade of women, an immediate consequence of separation and divorce, had ended a few years earlier. In any case, there wasn't a lot of nakedness to be witnessed.)

"Let's say I took an interest, knowing what you were going through."

"Damn, Joan, you're one hell of a woman. Every move is a feint."

She laughed again. "It's what we do, isn't it?"

"I guess. Not all of you are worth the trouble. But the best ones, they're worth it."

"And me?"

"I know you are. It's flying off you like sparks."

"I'm an old woman."

"If it's there, it's there. And speaking of sparks."

I took her hand again. There was no resistance this time.

Naked and barefoot on the grass in the dark sounds romantic, but twigs and small stones can be sharp reminders of reality to tender soles. We made it halfway down Joan's yard to within about fifteen feet of a maple tree, and stood holding hands. Joan glanced over both shoulders a couple of times towards the neighbors' houses. In one window a light shone but the glare didn't make it far into the yard.

"It's lighter than I thought," she said.

"It only seems so where we're standing. Look twenty feet away and it's pitch. No one can see us, except the fireflies, and they have other things on their mind."

Once we'd come to a stop the lightning bugs' intermittent flashes came closer, punctuating their lazy progress through the warm air. Up in the branches of the maple tree, two dozen or more were sewing their golden stitches, while down in the grass all around us pulses of light illuminated the adjacent blades.

"The females sit in the branches," Joan said, "or on the ground. The males fly around flashing their love signals, and if they're lucky a female will repeat the pattern to indicate she's interested."

"Lazy," I said.

Joan laughed. "They know they've got something worth competing for."

"Is that right?" I said, moving in front of her and placing my hands on her bare waist. "And I guess you know you've got it, too."

We kissed and my cock stiffened instantly, jamming against her thigh. I flexed the relevant muscles and nudged her with the head, and felt a relaxation in her posture, in her thighs and pelvis, opening up to me.

"I thought no such thing until that time in the basement." She kissed me harder and her mouth--her wide soft mouth--spread to engulf mine. "I've wondered ever since," she said.

I slid my right hand down her belly, squeezing and pinching, then plunged down through her thatch to the folds of her quim, and found her sopping.

"Oh God, I'm so wet, I'm sorry."

"It's a huge turn-on," I said. "Even a blind man would know he's home."

My fingers ran the valleys of her labia, down then up, and moved higher to pluck at her clitoris peeking out from its pod.

"I don't think I can stand up much longer."

"Then it's time to join your sisters."

I held Joan by the elbows and eased her to the ground. She squatted then rolled backwards, her legs opening wide just as they had in the basement years before.

"Ooh, the ground is colder than I expected."

"Too cold?"

"No, not too cold. Actually it feels good."

My cock was straining by now; even my generous foreskin had rolled itself back, a tribute to Joan and her stimulating effect on me.

I forced myself to pause and take in the view below me, before the moment passed: Joan's face turned up towards the night, a half smile on her lips; her nipples like two raspberries floating in pools of melted ice cream; the expanse of her pelvis and the solid polyhedron of her hips and thighs with their generous cushion beneath; and, keeping time with my raging heartbeat, the sympathetic throb of her dormant ovaries now reawakened, the primal life force coursing through her.

I barged my way inside her, eager to plunder her ancient cavern. She made noises of concern and uncertainty to begin with, which slowly gave way to acquiescence, then rising enthusiasm. The deeper I sounded her, the wider the smile spread across her lips. (Not many women I've known smile when they're being fucked; when they come, yes, and some of them cry then, too. But while the pantry is being raided? The smilers are in a minority. In fact a surprising number of women frown all the way through, as though they're confused by what's happening to them. Or maybe I'm doing it wrong.)

Joan's smile made it an unusual experience for me. You can't be cynical while witness to real joy, and I can attest it's a short hop from that rare moment of purity to the first stirrings of love. But for me--at my age, with my history--vulnerabilities like love are an indulgence no longer to be entertained. All the same, you must acknowledge the golden glow when it's in your midst, give it a nod in passing, even a little reverent bow, before putting it behind you as wisdom shoos you on your way. Watching Joan's smile while plumbing her holy-of-holies, wondering what might have been...that's as close to a living embodiment of bittersweet as I'll ever find.

For most of our time in the grass, Joan lay with her arms above her head, her hands gently clenching and unclenching, the fleshy triceps shaking with our rhythm. She didn't engage with me, she just lay there and smiled, and it seemed to me that she was somewhere else. Her eyelids fluttered and she let out soft gasps. Only once or twice she raised her head and looked directly into my eyes, as though reassuring herself I was still there, or perhaps reminding herself where she was. Each time, her smile broadened. That was nice to see.

I sensed I was nearing my peak, and the physical imperative began to override the odd dreamlike state that comes about sometimes when the physical connection and the sex rhythm is just right (when the two of you become a perpetual motion machine, fucking along the infinity loop forever). With my hands behind her knees I hoisted Joan's legs up to the vertical, left then right, her thighs now against my chest and her calves resting on my shoulders. I felt the tickle of soil particles falling from her feet onto my sweaty back.

I re-gouged her conduit and claimed the very last of her. The adjustment seemed to move Joan into the final strait, and she became more animated, more present. My continuing deep thrusts encountered an air pocket, released in three successive poots of cunniflatus from Joan's pussy: trumpet; grumble; squeak.

"Oh God, so deep. Ha-ha. Oops! Oh my. Oh. Oh. I can feel it in my throat. Oh. Ha. Freddie. Mmf, mmf, mmf."

Her arms were by her sides now, her fingers clutching the turf, her smile stretched tight almost to a grimace. And all this time Joan's hair remained perfect.

I felt her begin to shake first, then saw her belly-flesh quiver, out of sync with the regular waves I was sending through her. The quiver enlarged to a quake and now her raspberry nipples were in motion across their ice-cream pools. Then her entire frame seized while the vibrations went through her, end to end and back again, which was enough to trigger my own cascade. It took a full minute to pump my pirate's hoard of silver dollars into her treasury.

When order finally returned, for a few minutes we lay on our backs in the grass--holding hands again, silent--adjusting to life at our regular heartbeats and watching for the lightning bugs up in the maple tree. In due course they signaled their approval in the appropriate manner.

*

Last week I was standing at the door leading out to my deck, wondering if it was too soon to go out for another smoke. The weather has persisted spring-like recently, later into the year than usual, and gifts like that don't come along often. Before much more time has passed it will be too hot to be out there longer than five minutes. And tobacco tastes like garbage in high heat.

Maybe it was the reminder that my deck is of minimal use for at least half the year that caused me to glance over at Frank and Joan's place and their grand four-season porch; or perhaps my peripheral vision had already picked up movement in that direction, because here came Frank, of all people, making his way slowly across the yards.

His progress was so slow, in fact, that I decided to go out and meet the poor guy halfway. As I stepped down to ground level I could see how bent he looked, his posture so stooped that I couldn't tell he was looking at me even when he raised a hand to wave. I thought he'd been looking at the ground, perhaps unsure of his footing and wanting to avoid a fall.