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Subject: {ASSM} {ASSD} Write Club 23 Stories and Results
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Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I...um...can't think of anything you
could possibly want to hear from me before reading these two excellent
stories. The challenge words and my verdict are at the end. The stories
appear in the order in which they were received.
 
***

Anything You Want
By Selena Jardine


Maybe it's me.

It's always been part of me, ever since I was old enough to
notice girls. My wife pointed it out before she married me,
and my friends used to tease me about it mercilessly. I
seemed to be helpless not to do it.

See, I'm drawn to women with identity issues. It was
practically the caption under my photo in the high school
yearbook:  Most Likely To Have a Personality-Free Prom
Date. I didn't do it consciously, or at least I don't think
I did, but it seemed like every girl I ever dated was this
milquetoast little thing, a limp blonde or mouse-brunette
(God forbid, never a redhead.) I never got my hands on the
brains or the jocks or the funky stripy-haired smokers,
never anyone who knew by herself who she was. Every time, I
picked someone who would like all the same things I liked,
who would smile and smile and tell me that my interests in
music (pop) and literature (Choose Your Own Adventure) were
cool, really cool, and who would spend her money
demonstrating that she really, really meant it.

Another way those girls demonstrated that they liked me,
that they were ready to follow the leader, was against the
lockers or in the back of my car. First base, second base,
hands under the bra, sliding up under the elastic of their
panties, wet hot skin, their hands on my cock. I even got a
semi-blow-job once. Knowing how to pick the girl was the
entire secret to getting some in high school. You just had
to choose one who needed to be liked.

Invariably, however, we broke up in the end, the girls
looking oddly disappointed, and me feeling weird and
standoffish. Back then, neither those girls nor I knew what
they really needed, so obviously I couldn't supply it. I
always thought I'd do better the next time, with the next
girl, and I never did.

In college it was worse, because these women had been this
way for longer, and had had more practice following the
leader. The relationships were stranger, emptier, the sex
was hotter and weirder, and the breakups were rockier. I
had girlfriends who threatened to commit suicide for
reasons I knew had little to do with me:  they had simply
imprinted on me, like a baby duck on its mother, and
removing me  -- which they always did, eventually -- left
them temporarily lost.

I always got replaced soon enough. One ex-girlfriend joined
a Christian group on campus, and I saw her around
sometimes, looking as vague and peaceful as she had with
me. She was a peach. I sort of missed her, but there were
plenty more like her. College is full of women like her,
women looking for something -- anything -- to hook onto. 

My friend Chris started dating another of my
ex-girlfriends, one of the less stable ones. He called once
in the middle of the night, a thin thread of panic in his
voice.

"This girl's fuckin weird, man," he said down the
telephone. "Was she this weird when she was with you?"

"Calm down," I said.

"Calm down? Calm fuckin down? I go out of town for a week
to visit my parents, man, and when I come back Karen's been
hanging out with this Goth crowd, and they're all into
fuckin vampires and shit." He drew in a shivery breath.
"And I don't mean like nice vampires, either. I reached
into the nightstand drawer for a rubber, and I cut my
fuckin hand. She had a wooden stake - and that thing was
fuckin sharp, too - and a head of garlic in there, man."

I laughed.

"It's not funny," he insisted, but he was starting to
relax.

"Karen'll follow anyone," I said. "Either you break up with
her or..."

"Or what?" he asked, but he knew what I was going to say.

"Or you don't go out of town, buddy."

"I don't need this shit," he said, suddenly sounding tired.
"I can't date a fuckin borderline personality, it takes too
much energy. Whyn't you tell me why you broke up with her,
man?"

"Chris, you know..." I was about to finish, *the kind of
girl I date*, but suddenly my mouth dried up and I couldn't
say it. And besides, I hadn't broken up with her. She'd
broken up with me. 

"Yeah, yeah," he was saying. "You always date the
Screw-Lucys, don't you? Okay, I'll take care of it. Sorry
to wake you up. Go back to bed. See you later."

But I didn't go back to bed. I couldn't have slept. What
was wrong with me? Why did I need to date the empties? I
didn't like the idea of looking in the mirror, like one of
Karen's vampires, and having nothing at all look back. 

For the rest of junior year and half of senior year, I
avoided dating. I saw lots of girls I'd have liked to ask
out, but it was like having a vaccination:  that whole side
of my body was sore and tender. Why did I want to ask her
out? Was it because she had that soft, vulnerable look I'd
learned to pick out of a crowd? Was it because I was a
predator at heart? Was it so I could turn her into a
version of me with tits? I stayed in the library and
studied most of the time, feeling safer there.

That's where I met my wife. Judith was nothing like any
girl I'd ever thought of asking out. She was a psychology
major, a librarian's assistant on work-study, tall and
green-eyed with a swimmer's broad shoulders. She would
laugh and chat with me as she checked out my books or
helped me with an Interlibrary Loan request, and I learned
that she was acutely observant, informed, and intelligent,
and had a wit that could slice through ordinary bullshit
like the well-honed librarian's scissors she held.

I was terrified of her. I tried to avoid her whenever I
could.

She asked me for a date near Christmas vacation. She was
blushing when she asked it, or the red Christmas lights
made it look as if she was, and I suppose that's why I said
yes. I was still scared shitless of her, but I took her to
dinner, and then we walked through campus in a light,
unexpected snowfall. 

Judith shivered. "Colder than I thought," she said.  

"'Tis the season," I said.

"I notice," she said thoughtfully, without looking at me,
"that you usually seem to go out with girls who don't have
a whole lot going on upstairs. You dated a girl on my hall
last year. Kelly Chernowest? And I think she's the biggest
idiot I've ever personally met and not just seen on TV.
There's just no *there* there, if you know what I mean. No
fruit on the bottom. So I'm aware I'm not really your
type." She brushed at a fluffy fall of snow with her
glove-tip.

"Ah," I said.

She continued to examine the snow on her glove for a
moment, and then she looked up at me. I was only about two
inches taller than she was, and her dark eyes were lovely.
"But if you'd like to try a new type, just for a change,
you know, diesel instead of unleaded, we could give it a
shot."

"Um," I said.

"What?" she asked, sharply, blushing again.

"Why? I mean, why give me the chance?"

"God knows," she said. 

It was either kiss her or run. So, of course, I kissed her,
feeling her cold face against mine.

We married six months after graduation. Judith had already
started her graduate program in psychology, and we fell
into an easy routine: she went to school, I went to work,
we both came home tired, we took turns cooking, we chatted
while we ate, she studied while I read or watched TV, we
went to bed. Sometimes we made love, sometimes we didn't.
It was friendly and kind. We had friends over fairly often,
and I was proud of Judith's looks and brains. We had a cat,
Sam, who slept with us. For three years it was a good life.

And then I met Laura.

I was due to meet Chris in the Happy Slap, our favorite
club, and I was running late. I squeezed into a parking
space, cursing the idiot who thought his Camaro was
important enough to warrant two spaces (God, I sound
middle-aged, I thought, and I'm only twenty-five), and
hurried over to the booth where I could see Chris talking
with some girl.

She turned as I arrived, big blue eyes meeting mine, one
hand going to one leather-clad hip, a spill of soft blonde
hair moving over her shoulder, and every instinct I'd spent
the last four years beating down raised its shaggy head and
howled. This was a follower, this was a baby duck, oh yes.
You could bet on it. You could take those luscious tits,
those long legs, and most of all those
please-let-me-please-you lakes of blue right to the bank.
Didn't matter whether you liked yourself in the morning, or
even whether you had a self in the morning. This girl was
yours. It had been so long since I'd met one of these.

Chris was saying something. "Didn't catch your name, honey.
This is my friend Matt. Matt, this is, um..."

"Laura Springer," said the girl, and her voice sent a
tingle from my scalp directly to my cock. "Hi." The music
was loud, pumping a beat into my ears. 

"Hi," I said. "Let's dance."

"Anything you want," she said, or did she? Maybe not then,
maybe not so soon. But it was what she meant as she came
out onto the dance floor with me. She wore a halter-top and
those leather pants and a silver amulet around her neck,
and she molded her body to mine as we moved. I could feel
the warmth of her skin through the fabric of her top. She
wasn't wearing a bra. I was hard as an iron bar, wanting to
fuck this pliant girl, see what there was to see.

The song ended, and we went back to the booth. Chris looked
at me sardonically.

"Mate much?" he asked. 

I went home that night and jacked off furiously, coming all
over my hand and making an embarrassing mess on the
bathroom wall. But before I did, I called Laura, keeping my
voice down so Judith wouldn't hear, and asked if she wanted
to meet me somewhere to get to know each other, get to be
friends.

"Anything you want," she said. That time she said it. I
remember for sure.

If you've ever been on the Tilt-a-Whirl at the fair, and
can imagine adding crushing guilt and the best sex of your
life, you'll know exactly what the next six months were
like for me. Laura was like a dream. Of course there was
nothing I enjoyed that she didn't like, too, from old
horror movies to bad puns to Cheezits. She shared my taste
in books, and had read almost everything I had. Anything
she hadn't read yet, she promised to read immediately so we
could discuss it -- and she followed through, unlike most
people. We liked the same movies, too, and we had the same
opinions about actors and actresses, even obscure ones. I
loved who I was with Laura -- smart, a wiseass, a guiding
light. 

But the best part was that whenever I saw her, she was in
the right mood for me. I don't mean to say that she was
always cheerful, either, because sometimes that's grating.
It was as if she'd take a moment, just a blink of an eye,
as soon as we met at her apartment or out somewhere, and
she'd slide subtly into Pensive Laura or Playful Laura or
Sassy Laura, whatever would tickle my fancy best. In
someone else, it would have seemed whimsical or fey,
unstable even. Laura was the perfect chameleon. She simply
became whatever I needed.

And oh Jesus was she sensational in bed. It didn't take
long to get her there -- "Anything you want," she murmured
-- and she made me feel like a powerhouse. With her lithe
sweet body in my hands, I could (and did) do anything I
wanted. If I felt like making her come for half an hour,
sliding my tongue over that ripe-persimmon cunt of hers
till her hands ached from gripping the sheets and her
throat was sore from crying out, that's what I did. If I
felt like wrapping her hands around the headboard and
sliding into her from behind, holding her glorious round
tits and pulling that blonde hair with my teeth, that's
what I did. If I wanted my cock in her mouth while I put
one finger in her ass, three in her pussy, and a thumb on
her clit, by God that is what we did until we came and came
and came. I tied her up. I used ice, I used blindfolds, I
used vibrators and nipple clamps. She never said no.

Once, exhausted, in the dark, I asked her what she wanted
to try next. The room was as silent as if it had been
empty. I fell asleep before she answered.

Ever night, I came home late, reeking of cigarette smoke
from bars, reeking of Laura's pussy. I headed straight for
the shower. Judith looked at me with those green eyes and
never said a word about all the time I was spending
elsewhere. I tried not to think about it in her presence,
as if she could read my mind. When I couldn't help thinking
about it, I felt sick.

One evening, I was supposed to meet Laura at the Happy Slap
and I was early. I walked into the club and blinked, my
eyes adjusting to the darkness. I saw Laura right away; she
was hard to miss with that blonde hair gleaming. She was
with a group of people I'd never seen before, and she was
laughing, derisive laughter, her eyes narrowed and her
teeth bared. She had a cigarette in her hand. As far as I
knew, she didn't smoke. 

As I watched, she leaned over to the woman seated next to
her, tilted her head to one side, and kissed her. It was a
long kiss, and when Laura was finished I could see her
smeared lip-gloss on the other woman's mouth. I turned to
go, and my movement caught Laura's eye. 

Her face changed. I don't mean literally, like in a science
fiction movie, but it might have been that basic, might
have been bone structure or flesh or the muscles beneath
the skin. As I watched her come toward me, she had already
regained that soft, vulnerable look I had seen six months
ago, the look that even now could turn my knees to water,
make me feel like a predator and a power-player. Laura was
more than a chameleon, more than someone with protective
coloration. She was a palimpsest, a completely new person
in every fresh situation. Game Over. Try Again?

Where's her cigarette? I thought stupidly.

"Matt?" she said, but I was already turning to go.

"Matt!" she said, an edge in her voice. "Why are you
leaving?" I swung around.

"Can't date a smoker, sweetie," I said. And I left.

++++++

It's been four months since I've seen Laura. I stay at home
in the evenings again now, and I help Judith study. She
hasn't said a word about any of it, and I think we're both
a little relieved.

But at night, I sometimes see Laura's lip-gloss again,
smeared all over Judith's mouth, Judith's hand twined in
Laura's hair in the dim light of the bar that night, and I
wonder.

***

Pre-cum And Pussy Juice Are A Stronger Bond Than Super Glue
By Desdmona
Write Club July 2002


It happened because Mina was clumsy: always falling, always bumping into
things, always dropping things. Sometimes she told people she had a rare
genetic abnormality. She thought it made her sound exotic, or at least a
little funky, and Sam knew she got a kick out of watching people whisper
behind their hands.

"Poor girl," they'd say.
"She can't help herself."
"Born that way."
"It must be awful."
"Is it terminal?"

But the truth was, Mina was just a klutz. She never quite grew out of
her gangly adolescent years. At twenty-four, she was still all arms and
legs. If she stood perfectly still, she might be mistaken for a model,
with her gorgeous green eyes and slim nose. But as soon as she took one
step, her lack of grace would shatter the image.

As a child, she'd been a frequent visitor to the emergency room.
Children's Services had even been called twice to investigate. After
that they attached a caveat to her permanent chart, all capital letters:
MINA IS ACCIDENT PRONE, like a warning on gas tanks for UNLEADED GAS
ONLY, or the red flags on medical records alerting allergies.

But Sam had fallen in love with Mina in spite of her clumsiness, or
maybe even a little because of it. His first date had ended with Mina
needing six stitches in her thumb from a carving knife mishap at the
restaurant. His friends had called him crazy when he asked her for a
second date. And when Sam announced he was marrying Mina, his friends
were certain he was borderline psychotic.

Only this time it wasn't Mina that had been injured or cut or broken--it
was one of Sam's golf clubs. Well, one of Sam's father's golf clubs.

"Oh, Sam. I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have touched it."

Sam Friedman wasn't all that sentimental. He didn't think about special
occasions, couldn't remember the last birthday card he sent, and never
took the time to organize photographs in an album. But he'd held on to
those golf clubs because of childhood memories: golfing with his dad.

Those days were hot; the sticky humid days of southern summers, and
Sam's short legs tired quickly. But what Sam most remembered was
watching his dad in his golf ritual. His dad would rub the golf ball
between his hands, push the tee into the ground with his middle finger,
kiss the ball, put it on the tee, and then exhale grandly as he stood
up. Then he would wiggle his hips and jiggle the club, like he was
scratching an itch, and finally he would whack the ball. The hard clack
of wood hitting the golf ball would echo in the air. Sam would watch his
dad watch the ball, his dad momentarily frozen in time.

"Did you hear that, Dad? It must be a woodpecker club." Sam had said
when he was eight.

Sam's father smiled. "No, Sammy, it's persimmon wood. Hard and smooth,"
he'd said as he followed the flight of the ball sailing down the
fairway. "You'll never hear another sound like it."

Sam never had. The only sound that came close was the crack he'd heard
that left a splintered club dangling from Mina's hand.

"What the hell happened, Mina?"

"I'm not sure. I dropped it, and when I picked it up, the ball of wood
on the end got caught under the couch." Mina's eyes filled with big,
watery tears. "I'm sorry, Sam."

Sam wanted to be angry, could even feel anger knotting in his stomach,
but one look at Mina's crumbling face and the knot unraveled.

"It's not a disaster," he said. "It's just a golf club." Though as he
said the words, Sam lifted the separate pieces of the club, like a
parent lifting a broken child, and laid them carefully on the table.

"Want me to get some glue? Maybe we can put it back together."

Sam looked at the shattered wood and knew it was impossibly destroyed,
but nodded to Mina anyway. She needed to believe it could be fixed. He
watched her hurry from the room, barely missing a lampshade with her
elbow. At least Mina wouldn't need stitches this time. That was
something.

She rushed back into the room, stubbing her toe on the leg of the coffee
table. When she was in a hurry or flustered, her clumsiness only grew
worse. If they were having company, Mina might burn her hand while
cooking. If she was late, she might rush through the house, leaving a
trail of fallen pictures from the walls.

But there were special times when Mina was never clumsy. And only Sam
had seen that side of her. It was when they were making love.

"Here, I could only find Elmer's. I don't think we have any Super Glue."

"Put the glue down, Mina, and come here!" Sam watched as Mina's eyes
widened in fright. He hadn't meant to sound gruff, but his
disappointment in losing the club must have bubbled to the surface. He
took a step towards Mina.

"I-I..." Mina backed away. She had quit pausing from the little bumps a
long time ago--they were second nature to her. But when she bumped the
edge of the recliner, she fell into its seat. Sam grabbed her arms and
hauled her up, dragging her body close to his.

Mina squealed. Her pulse fluttered at the base of her neck. Her breasts
heaved with her heavy breathing. Sam nosed a familiar freckle on the
curve of her breast that always peeked out from the vee of her blouse,
and then licked up her neck, whispering in her ear.

"I think you deserve a spanking."

Mina squealed again, only this time she had a smile on her face.
"Please, Sam. No!"

Sam plopped down in the recliner and forced her over his lap. He yanked
down her slacks and exposed Mina's, soft, heart-shaped cheeks. Her skin
was flawless except for a tiny scar where Mina, at age fifteen, had sat
on a pair of scissors when hurrying to take her seat on the school bus.
Eleven stitches that time.

Using the palm of his hand, Sam whacked Mina's ass. And then quickly
again. The echo sounded much sweeter than persimmon wood against Balata.
Sam had never spanked Mina before. It was a surprising pleasure.

"Ouch!" she cried. "It really hurts!"

But Sam didn't stop. He felt driven, like an ancient writer erasing
writings on a palimpsest, he covered her scar with his own marks.
Handprints welted up in dark, red blotches.

Mina didn't struggle. She just moaned. Again and again.

"Oh, god, Sam."

Sam only grunted before landing another slap. He was breathing hard.
Saliva built up in his mouth. His hand stung. He looked closely at
Mina's ass and could see pale lines between the glowing pink. He thought
maybe he'd spanked too hard, and he stopped. Mina still squirmed in his
lap. His cock was hard. He caressed her ass, smoothing over his
handprints and dipping his fingers between her crack. Dipping, then
digging, deeper into the crevice. She was wet. Saturated. Sam slipped
his fingers further in her pussy, making little sloshing sounds in her
juice.

"Damn, Mina, you're so wet."

"I never knew how exciting being spanked could be."

Sam brought his fingers to his mouth and slurped Mina's essence from
them. Like thick honey, Mina slid to the floor. Turning to her back, she
shimmied the rest of the way out of her slacks and lay back. Her long
legs spread with elegant ease. Her pussy hair was wet and clung to her
folds, separating to show off her pink.

Like a ballet dancer, Mina lifted her blouse over her head and removed
her bra. Slow, refined movements, until she lay completely naked, arms
above her head.

"Punish me more, Sam," she whispered.

Sam stood and removed his clothes, slowly, little by little, so he could
watch his wife. She undulated on the floor, like a wave begging to be
surfed. She was the sexiest thing he'd ever seen.

When he was naked he knelt between her legs. Pre-cum dripped on her
belly. He ran his fingers through her sex, slithering through the moist
bed, carrying her sap to the sticky drop on her belly, and then mixing
them.

"We're so good together, Mina."

"Yes, together," she moaned.

Sam guided his penis to her opening and slid in easily. Mina wrapped her
legs around his waist, locking her ankles, pulling Sam tighter.
Hand-in-glove tight. When he started to shift, Mina shifted with him.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, half-sitting. He put his arms
around her the same. They rocked together. Man to woman. Husband to
wife. Lover to love.

Their bodies began to sweat. Slipping. Sliding. His penis thrusting, her
hips grinding. Mina gasped first, sucking in air, sucking in pleasure.
Her muscles contracted. It was all Sam needed. He exploded inside of
her. And still they rocked. Slow, limpid rocks. Back and forth.

* * * * *

It happened because they were lucky. Two months after Mina had destroyed
the golf club, she hadn't fallen or broken anything. She'd been the
perfection of poise.

"I think it was the spanking that did it," Sam said.

"Maybe, but I think it's something else." Mina radiated with happiness.

Until they stopped happening, Sam had never realized just how upsetting
all the mishaps were to Mina. A beautiful change came over her. Her
cheeks were rosy. Her eyes gleamed, and now they came up with other
reasons for him to spank her, like punishing her for her using too much
garlic in the spaghetti sauce. For some reason she'd started adding
garlic to everything she cooked.

"Oh, yeah? What do you think it is, if it's not the spankings?"

"Maybe the baby?"

"The baby?"

"Uh-huh. I'm pregnant." Mina walked over to Sam, bypassing the China
cabinet without even grazing it.

Sam reached out and rubbed his hand along her belly.

"A baby," he said.

"A lucky charm baby," added Mina.

"Ahh, so our baby is like an indwelling amulet, protecting you from all
the things on the outside, while you protect it on the inside."

"I think so, yes!"

Sam didn't think of his words as clairvoyant, or even imagine there was
real truth to them. But something had changed, of that he was certain.
It was like a fey curse had been lifted, and the only thing that was
broken during Mina's pregnancy was her water on November first at 6:32
in the morning, two hours before the birth of a beautiful baby boy.

***

The challenge words were:

Selena:

fey
scissors
garlic

Desdmona:

Persimmon
Borderline
Amulet

Vinnie:

palimpsest
funky
unleaded

Desdmona's tale is a humorous and romantic WL story; well structured and
sexy. The only sign of haste I could see was a few awkward sentences.
The integration of the challenge words was good; though, surprisingly,
"fey" and "amulet" rather leapt out at me. Points deducted for inclusion
of the heretical and meaningless phrase "too much garlic," and then
restored again for playing to the judge with a spanking scene. Good
strategy, that.

Selena's story is as tart as Desdmona's is sweet, a first-person
character study--a portrait of a man with the self-knowledge to realize
what a jerk he is. Her Matt is an interesting contrast to Poison Ivan's
Robert in "The Womanizer." (There's a term paper in that, if anyone's
looking for a topic.) As we've come to expect from Selena, it bristles
with brilliant turns of phrase, and carries a potent sting in its tail.
Matt's voice is distinctive and consistent. The integration of keywords
was so smooth that I couldn't remember seeing most of them on finishing
the story (though her use of "unleaded" made me laugh out loud). 

Desdmona turned in a strong and diverting story--a worthy addition to
her canon and a delightful read for all of us. But Selena's story (in my
humble but infallible judgely opinion) is an exceptionally effective
short story, a powerful showcase for her literary style and human
insight. 

I award the laurels to Selena Jardine.

Thank you to both of you for letting me participate in the
competition--it's been an honor, and a whole lot of fun.
--
-Vinnie
vinnie_tesla@yahoo.com
http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/vinnie_tesla/www/
He polishes birds of the Vista

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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