“And which did you take?” Jake asked. He was still trying to figure out how he felt about all this, but he was also still sporting an impressive erection from hearing the tale.
“I tried both as the experiment went along,” she said with a little giggle. “I started with the bull-dyke types since it seemed like having a masculine looking woman eating my pussy wouldn’t seem so ... oh ... you know ... gay. But after the first couple of times, I switched to the lipstick lesbians. It turns out that, for me anyway, if you’re going to go down that road, you might as well have someone soft and cuddly licking you. It gave me more of a thrill having a feminine woman going downtown—even it was gayer.”
“How many times did you do this?” Jake asked, picturing it as a nightly thing, as it had been back in his road days.
“Not terribly often,” she said. “Once every week and a half or so on average, though sometimes twice a week and sometimes I would go three weeks without it. In all, there were ten of them, including the bartender that first time.”
“Exactly ten?”
“Exactly ten,” she said. “I remember each and every one of them very well.”
“I see,” Jake said softly.
“Well ... now you know my secret. Do you hate me?”
“What? No, of course I don’t hate you, Laura. I’m just trying to wrap my mind around all of this. It’s quite a story.”
“I want you to know that I never stopped loving you during this, Jake. I did what I did, and maybe it was wrong, but I did it so that I wouldn’t be tempted to do something worse. Can you understand that?”
“Yeah,” Jake said, thinking of that night in Portland again. “I understand it very well.”
“Anyway, when you asked me to marry you just now ... well ... I couldn’t answer you without having you know what had happened ... about the women on the road. And if you want to take back your question ... I’ll understand.”
“I think ... I think I need to think about this for a bit,” Jake told her.
She nodded slowly. “Okay,” she said softly.
“It’s a lot to process.”
“I understand,” she said.
“While I’m thinking about it though ... is it okay if we still fuck?”
“Uh ... yeah, sure,” she said. “As a matter of fact, I could use a good fuck right about now.”
“All right then,” Jake said. “Here or in the house?”
She smiled. “Both.”
They fucked in the hot tub for a bit, long enough to pull an orgasm out of Laura and to put Jake on the brink. They then went in the house and got into bed.
“So ... your recent aversion to having me go down on you,” Jake said. “Does it have to do with your experiences with these women?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know how much you like to do that to me—and I’ve always loved having you do it—it’s just that after having those women do it ... I guess I became obsessed with having an actual dick. Whenever you would lick me it reminded me of what I’d done. And when I was reminded of what I’d done, I’d start to feel guilty.”
“Makes sense,” Jake said. “But now that you’ve told me...” He was looking down at her swollen and wet lips like a man contemplating a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving.
She smiled. “Why don’t we make the experiment?” she offered.
He feasted on her that night, drawing three orgasms out of her, back-to-back. She did not try to push him away this time. And when he climbed atop her and put himself inside of her body, she was as enthusiastic as she’d ever been.
After, as they lay side by side, both naked, the covers askew, the sweat on their skin still drying, Jake turned to her.
“You said you remember all ten of them?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I will remember them for the rest of my life.”
“Do you know their names?” he asked.
“Names?” she asked, confused.
“Right,” Jake said. “What were their names?”
“Uh ... I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure I was told every one of their names at some point, but ... well ... I don’t remember them now. They were just groupies ... oh, and one bartender.”
Jake smiled. He had heard what he needed to hear. “I see,” he said. “In any case, that question I asked you earlier ... it’s still valid.”
“The question?” she asked, with no idea what he was talking about. He’d asked a lot of questions since they’d climbed into that hot tub earlier.
“The big question,” he said. “The one about ... about you marrying me. I’d still like you to do that if you’re up for it.”
“Really, Jake?” she asked. “Even after knowing what I’ve done?”
“I understand, hon,” he told her. “Really, I do. And I don’t consider what you’ve done to be cheating. In truth, it’s actually kind of sexy to think about it.”
“I don’t plan to do it again, Jake!” she told him forcefully.
He shrugged. “A topic for another day. In any case, what do you say? Wanna get married?”
She smiled. “Sure,” she said. “I’d love to.”
Minneapolis, Minnesota
June 30, 1994
The sold-out show finished up at 10:03 PM, Central Daylight Time, three minutes behind schedule. Celia Valdez and her band—Coop on drums, Charlie Meyer on bass, Steven O’Hara (known as Little Stevie) on lead guitar, Liz Watertown on piano and secondary vocals, Natalie Popanova on violin, and, of course, Dexter Price on saxophone—linked arms at the front of the stage and took their bows. The seven of them then walked off the stage to the left, waving one last time at the still-cheering, standing ovation giving crowd, as the house lights came up.
They were escorted through the backstage area, where the roadies were already getting to work on tearing down the entire set so it could be packed into three big-rigs for the trip to Chicago, where they would then reassemble everything for tomorrow night’s show. Head of tour security, Dan Baldovino, a soft-spoken but efficient man of forty-three who had once been a Los Angeles police officer, handed each of them their all-access backstage passes to hang around their necks and then led them down a flight of stairs and through an underground tunnel to the clubhouse/locker room area of the auditorium.
“Good show, guys,” he told them. “The caterers have the usual spread set up for you in the main room. We went with the rotisserie chicken and the macaroni salad for the mains tonight, and, for Charlie, we have some vegan lasagna that actually looks pretty good.”
“Someone checked to make sure it’s thoroughly cooked?” asked Charlie, who, aside from being a vegetarian—not because he was morally opposed to eating animal products, but because he was afraid of contracting tapeworms or some other type of nematode—was also a germaphobe.
“Absolutely,” Dan said with a nod. “Larry knows to give specific directions to the caterers we deal with. You should know that by now.” After all, they had this same conversation pretty much every night.
“When it comes to microbes,” Charlie told him, “you always have to make sure.”
“A good philosophy,” Dan said, deadpan and straight faced. He opened the door to the room for them. “Enjoy the spread, everyone. And for those of you who put in requests, I’ve got the boys working on it right now.”
Celia rolled her eyes a bit at his words. She did not particularly approve of the whole request and delivery process that Dan, as head of security, was responsible for, but she knew it was a time-honored part of being a traveling musician. Trying to put a stop to it would be futile and would quite possibly destroy the band dynamic and cohesion they were enjoying, so her stance was to just look the other way and ignore as long as nothing overt actually occurred here in the venue before her eyes. Besides, she was not a hypocrite. Back in her La Diferencia days she had been known to put in a request or two herself.