They clung to each other like that in a daze, floating and absently splashing each other producing a menagerie of aquatic noises. Lisa started into a back crawl without releasing her grip on Toni. They moved into the shallow end of the pool and bobbed against the underwater steps, their faces turned towards the sun, feeling very good.
"Remember that photo session we did at the Tropicana that time?" Toni asked.
"Yeah that was kind of fun, that poor photographer. We drove him up the pole."
The photographer referred to as "poor" was only so because under the most merciless sun he had ever been exposed to his assignment called for him to shoot twelve of the most beautiful showgirls in Vegas who had nothing more to do than model a collection of the most obscene bikinis of that season. It was obvious that this was his first session of this kind and he was markedly more inclined towards fornicating than photography.
The girls could tell what an effort the whole thing was for him and sadistically taunted the fellow with all kinds of outlandish poses and verbal come ons that completely shattered his professional veneer of composure before he had even taken his first light reading. His make-up lady was having a rough time of it too as the sun kept causing her cosmetic efforts to disappear into rivers of perspiration. "Hey is this all right?" Lisa asked pulling her arms behind her head and going into a leg split that threw her breasts into the wind and her thighs rippling with her dancers' muscles. Hans was his name and they all had fun with that one for starters and as he sweated through the lens of his camera at Lisa going through this erotic routine he gagged audibly.
Titters of outright ridicule flowed from the rest of the girls as they watched Lisa leading him on into temptation. Three of them on the diving board at once flanked by two more beauties was more than his eyes could absorb. "Where you staying Hansy boy?" they asked in mock seduction. "Whatcha doin' after the session? Are you married?:" They seemed to take such delight in this land of abuse because the thing about Hans was that he was that species of man they scorned — a real live John and Las Vegas, as even the dumbest of them knew, was a city of Johns. Guys whose only offering in this exhausted spiritual wilderness was a hundred dollar bill. Money became the slave that eased everyones woes though you always felt the burn under the surface of the green lubricant.
In Toni and Lisa's world men were everything and nothing. This schizoid roller coaster of conflicting needs peppered everyone's existence in some way to the extent that they developed an external brittleness that was as ugly as they were beautiful. Whenever the opportunity arose to strike back at what was as much a real as an imagined oppressor the girls took it.
Poor Hans indeed, his shirt sticking to his back from the combined effects of this lavish display of female flesh and the exertion of bouncing between three cameras and their attendant intricacies had him pinned in a web of ridicule and verbal abuse that he really didn't deserve. What had started out as a straight forward business assignment had suddenly turned into a battle of the sexes. Hans was outnumbered.
As the session dragged itself out the barrage of slurs became harder to take. What made it so really unbearable was that for every jibe that was hurled at the panting photographer a sexual come on followed. This ambivalent, rapid fire cascade of dialogue left him limp and exhausted. As he was packing up his equipment at the close of the session, as he was hunched over his camera cases sorting out the Tri-X from the Ektachrome he suddenly felt surrounded. Looking up he saw through the blare of the afternoon sun a wall of gleaming, copper colored legs that moved into a sea of belly buttons watched over by an awning of gigantic, heaving breasts. "Hey Hansy baby did you get any nice pictures? Will you send us a copy? Did you like what you saw?" He arose slowly, almost fearfully not knowing what question to answer, unsure if he dare answer at all.
"Hey what did I do?!?" he blurted back, suddenly getting very pissed off with the whole situation. "I only came to take some pictures you know. I'm just doing my job that's all. This is as much for your benefit as anyone's. What's all this bullshit. Why are you picking on me!?!" his scratchy voice whined high, riddled with annoyance and self pity.
With Lisa as their ringleader they moved in on him. Lisa snaked her hand around the back of his head and toyed with a strand of his hair while one of the other girls ran her fingers down his arm in a slow tease. Another girl rubbed her breasts against his back and her crotch along his backside. "Ahh, ohh poor baby," they cooed in unison wrapping themselves around him like some enormous Venus fly trap. His legs were growing a bit shaky and he tried moving away from them at the same time he didn't want to do that at all. He just wanted to stay there and have them paw him to death.
He took two steps backward, the sun beating like a war drum against his skull. "I bet you got a nice body under that cheap piece of shit you call a shirt," a redhead with melon breasts and a wasp waist said with the sweetest and sickest smile he had ever seen. A finger of fear pushed at the back of his consciousness, tapping him as if to warn him, remind him of all the assorted sirens screaming out there in the big, bad world. He tried to turn and break out of the shrinking circle of flesh that was wrapping him in a tightening crush of hot breaths and shining, sweat tinged bosoms.
He took another three steps backwards and on his fourth his foot touched empty space where concrete should have been. In that one sinking moment, that split second that dissolved into a slow motion fade out he realized he was going for a swim. His face crumpled into a sheet of humiliation and anger as a shattering, ear splitting chorus of high, girlish, giggles and screams moved like a thousand fingers against his chest, thrusting him into an infinitesimal and very wet void. The last thing he saw before the water closed over his unbelieving eyes was a lot of very long, well varnished legs and mounds of jiggling breasts that seem to wink at him in a most mischievous fashion.
"What's for lunch?" Toni asked toweling her hair day. "Avocado, tomato and bacon sandwiches on Italian bread." "With fresh orange juice on the side?"
"You got it kid," Lisa said pinching her ass with her left hand moving in the direction of the house.
Toni left home at seventeen and none too soon she reckoned. She knew she had to leave the house before she was thrown out and that was only a matter of time. Her reputation as Queen of the Blow Job was spreading in Baltimore and she just couldn't stand the thought of her parents with their narrow vision of the world finding out what she was up to and the image of her dad walking in as she was going down on her brother Alex only lent fuel to her sparing flights of paranoia. It was a tearful farewell that was only one sided as she had left just a letter behind saying that the bright lights of New York were beckoning too loudly for her to resist. It wasn't shame though that drove her from home it was simply lust and wanderlust combined with the feeling that Baltimore contained nothing for her worth hanging around for.
Toni always wrote after that to keep the folks informed. Always embellishing the content of her prosperity and playing down the hard times which were rare for a girl of her looks and energy and oral prowess, but nothing is easy all the time. When she climbed onto the Greyhound Bus for New York she had no idea what she was going to do once she got there but that seemed unimportant-what mattered was getting there. She had toyed with the idea of going to California as an alternative but at the last moment decided against it because it was just too far away. She would leave that to last.