A Woman Like Maxine

“Gonna get married again?” I ask.

She frowns and shakes her head with her lungs full. “Uh-uh. I got married once more after I divorced Ken. Lasted two years that time. He was a philandering asshole, and I was faithful. Just haven’t been lucky with husbands, sweetie,” she says, looking at me very seriously.

“Don’t want kids?” I press.

“Nope. My sister has three, and I babysit them every now and then – when I get the maternal urge,” she says. “Hey, I want you to know I’m not an easy woman, just ‘cuz you got lucky with me,” she continues, wryly. “My job’s very demanding…and being a parent is out of the question. I’m even off the pill, ‘cuz they make me sick.”

I freeze and shock shows on my face. Did I? Did we…earlier? I wonder. Fuck! That’s just what we need! Visions of visiting a Tijuana abortionist flash through my head.

“Other people’s kids are the best, anyway,” I mumble.

“Wanna tell me about your nightmare, sweetheart?” she asks gently, changing the subject without breaking stride. God, that’s one thing I love about her…her impulsive nature…as well as her eagerness to get to the bottom of things.

“Nah, I’m just screwed up,” I say, admitting the truth about my current mental state. “Listen, did we come here to talk or to fuck?” I ask, trying to cut short the conversation.

“Don’t lie to me, Philip,” she warns, her eyes ablaze. “I know what’s inside you. I read your beautiful, lyrical stories, remember? I’m amazed at the way I still feel about you, after your ignoring me all these years, but…if you’re in trouble emotionally, I’m gonna do all that I can to help.” She slips into my arms, straddling me as I feel her moistness against my belly. We kiss long and hard as I taste toothpaste on her, and she pulls back an inch to scan my eyes, “Okay?”

“Okay,” I whisper, thinking that I don’t want her to be burdened with my hang-ups. I’d wanted to kill people – individuals who’d offended me – when I was a child and a teenager…before I knew what death meant. This was before I’d held an American door gunner in my Huey who was gasping his last breath through punctured lungs, with fear and remorse in his young eyes. This was before I’d taken his place on the gun and sprayed short bursts at fleeing – then falling – black-clad Asians, any of whom was someone’s son, maybe father, maybe lover, certainly someone’s friend.

And I’ve studied history enough to know that we option-rich, essentially optimistic – if naïve – Americans are the most fortunate people on earth because we can be individuals who might matter.

Could Maxine…or would she, understand this?

We slide as one down to the center of the bed. Our familiarity – after a few short hours – makes my heart sing.

Between kisses, she says, “I’ve got you for over a week, with five days off. Can you manage that?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I mumble, anxious once again to be inside her, as my cock has risen again.

“Now, I want you to know I don’t do this with everybody; in fact, not with anybody,” she says, opening the jar of Vaseline. A quick dollop on her finger goes onto my pulsating dick. She smooths it on with her long, soft fingers. “I want you up my back door, baby,” she whispers, unashamedly. “I just cleaned myself for you. And if you don’t cum inside me, I’ll kick your ass!” Then she rethinks her threat and beams, “No…I’ll just love you some other way,” once again melting into my arms. She’s either stoned or crazy, I think. Breaking again from a kiss, she whispers into my face, “Please be gentle, sweet,” and moves to her hands and knees, grasping two spooled posts on the headboard and looking back at me over her shoulder.

I’m behind her and her legs are apart. The weed has done me a lot of good. But the head of my cock – purple in the moonlight – looks huge next to its target…her impossibly small pink star. I slip closer to her and tease it a bit, causing her to inhale audibly and wiggle her butt back and forth at me, still with her head turned slightly toward me so that I can see part of her face. Her incomparable blue eyes, appearing very dark, close, and long black lashes kiss the creamy skin above her cheekbones. Her full, pink lips part slightly, relaxed, and I hear her breath passing rapidly between her teeth. Black hair from the side of her head droops alluringly down her cheek and her face is all expectance. She waits…and waits…prepared for me to enter her. Below her anus her dark pussy is wet and inviting…also waiting.

For one transcendent moment I hesitate, but fight it and slip my glans into her pucker – which apparently she’s lubricated with the Vaseline while in the bathroom – causing an “Nnngh” to escape from her. Responding to the initiative, she tightens her grip on the wooden posts of the headboard and pushes further back onto me a couple of inches, groaning, “Unnnh, unnnnh, unnnh.” We’re one again, as I push more deeply, then more yet. Her butt cheeks quiver uncertainly at first, but then we settle into a steady rhythm, with my cock slipping completely into her dark passage. Our undulating bodies are bathed light blue in the moonlight, and our gentleness is gradually contrasted with feral grunts issuing from both of us. I see us now merely as mindless animals, fucking our way to oblivion, and for the first time since seeing her in the bar, something deep within me relaxes. Some part of my consciousness departs. Some long-forgotten ease permeates my being. A diminution of fear – a feeling of trust – wells in me in response to Maxine’s openness.

She must sense it. She’s clairvoyant, and must feel my tension first become truant, then vanish. “That’s it…sweetie,” she murmurs, a half-smile curling her mouth as her eyes remain closed. “Give me yourself…baby. Uh-huh. I want…all of you. Mm-hmm. I always have. Oh, yeah. Phil-lip…you feel so…good…way up inside. Mm-hmm.” These soft words are seducing me. They’re undermining the staunch defenses I’ve set up. They’re unshackling my incubus. The tautness in my neck is…it’s gone! And now she’s making little questioning sounds in her throat as she backs onto me more forcefully: “Unh?…Unh?…Unh?…Unh?…Unh?” It’s as if she’s asking me repeatedly how I feel while urging me to cum. And I want to now. I want to release myself into her. If she must, I want her to take all my poisons up this nether hole, even though she’s absorbed my first deposit into her heavenly cunt. Maybe then I can feel proud and confident again. I don’t want her womb to be further burdened by my toxins…my deadly essence. This way she can then expel them and we’ll both be free of my pestilential dread.

There’s that switch flipping. She must hear it too, since she works faster. “Give it to me, unh, baby. I want it, unh. All of it, unh. I want, unh, you. All, unh, of you.”

Ooh, shit, my balls are afire…those tingles up my legs. Oh, God, I’m gonna cum in her ass!

“Phil…honey…get it!…get it!…get it!” she urges, pounding back at me. “Fuck me…Phil-lip! Fuck me!”

“Aaaaghh…shiiit!” I shout, as the first blast of cum fires into Maxine’s ivory backside.

“Yeah, baby!” she screams. “More, sweetie! More! More!” she shrieks, clamping down on my cock repeatedly with her strong rectal muscles. “Giveittome! Giveittome!” she demands, and flops face down on the bed as I fall atop her, pumping her full of my seed. I thrust, and she clenches, I thrust, she clenches, seemingly endlessly as I groan through the remainder of my selfish orgasm. She moans sympathetically with each of my soundings until I lie on her heavily so she’s unable to move. I reach under her to cup her breasts and squeeze her until she can hardly breathe. She then turns her face as far as she can to lick up into my mouth, looking positively radiant, and asks, “Feel a little better now, my love?”

“Mmm, Jeezus-Gawwd…yeah!” I gasp, rolling to one side of her.

“Good! Then let’s get up, have a snack, and take a shower,” she says, briskly. “I’ve got a gallon of you in me and I smell like one of your Vietnamese bar girls!”

She doesn’t smell that way at all, and I believe that she couldn’t approximate those women who simultaneously suffered and benefited from their symbiotic relations with frightened, angry young American men with available cash. But we do as she suggests anyway, then return to bed, this time to cuddle and sleep.

I awaken at dawn on my back, after fitful dozing, with Maxine lying on top of me. My nose is buried in her hair, above an ear. I inhale its rich, natural scent mixed with a hint of shampoo, and my mind reels at the combined earthy fragrance. She has both hands on my shoulders and is spreadeagled across my hips, as if determined to hold me down should I try to escape. I need to pee, and must wake her to do so. I shift slightly and her eyes open to slits as she groans “Morning, Philip,” kissing me gently on the lips. I marvel at the sweetness of her breath. Mine is most foul. In the bathroom I use her toothbrush.

She’s on her back under the covers, on one side of the bed, when I return. I lift the covers to slide in next to her…yet can’t bring myself to do it. She’s so stunning in her sleeping position that I have to continue looking. I’ve never seen her more alluring. I pull the covers down further to reveal the totality of her relaxed body. Her pillowed head and face are turned toward me at an angle, showing the prominent, sculpted ridge of a neck muscle. Wisps of bangs tease her eyebrows, and her long lashes quiver slightly as her eyes move rapidly back and forth under closed lids. Her left arm lies easily over another pillow, with its wrist encircled by a gold chain of miniature links. Her right arm is bent sharply and her hand is flat against her ribcage, its thumb and forefinger outlining part of her right breast, a luscious white mound of soft flesh capped with its soft pink nipple. My mouth waters as I look at it and its twin. Her navel peeks at me from within a slight rise of suntanned flesh which flattens out to hint at her hip bones, then down her pelvic creases to end at her prominent, furry mound. My breath catches as I see her legs, spread widely, yet innocently, to show her black bush, parted so I can see not just her outer labia, but the deep pink of her inner lips and hooded clitoris. Her left leg is out at an angle and lies flat on the sheet. Her right is propped up on her foot, bent at the knee, and opened away from me.

I look at her inviting pussy, welcoming me to do what I wish. Then I look up at her sublime mouth, so full-lipped, so pink, opened slightly so that I can see her white teeth and hear the whisper of a barely audible feminine snore. I am torn between the two tempting orifices. Disregarding the fact that she’s the tender Maxine – source of a lifelong sexual love fantasy – I ponder which of her two visible holes is for the moment most appealing. The visceral beast returns and I muse, clinically – no, lewdly – on the relative merits of blowing a load into one or the other. Then, I’m visited by an emotional pang and – for a brief moment – my vision blurs as my eyes become moist at her succulent beauty. I squelch the previous lascivious impulses and gently glide next to her and draw the covers over us. Stirring, she mumbles something and turns toward me to ease an arm over my chest and place her mouth against my stubbled cheek. A silky leg bends itself to cross both of mine and her pubic hair teases my hip. “Whassamatter, darlin’?” she murmurs, “…dontcha’ like ta’ make love in the morning?”

“Wanted to let you sleep,” I whisper, only partially true since I’m stiff and ready to go.

“With you, I can do it in my sleep, baby,” she mumbles seductively.

“Okay,” I say, “…keep sleeping,” and ease her onto her back, in almost the same position as before. Her legs are splayed again, and I lift one knee as she lets it loll outward in an arc. I kneel between her legs and lean forward to prop myself up on one arm, guiding my cock to her pinkness. With no warning, I brush her clit with the crown of my member and she groans deeply, still with her eyes closed. I brush it again…same reaction. Then I rub continuously, up, down, around, and the pink nub begins to swell, growing out of its yielding foreskin. Maxine’s moans are now continuous, and her outer lips are swollen with arousal. Fresh early morning dew appears from within her and my stirring motions – a bit deeper now – are accompanied by the slick, smacking kisses of her inner labia. Though her eyes are still closed, she’s quite awake, and her hips hunch up at me as her excitement mounts.

I continue torturing her in this devilish way until she is whining, with her lips peeled back lasciviously from her teeth – emulating a snarl – and her hips begin to shudder. “Aaaaghhh, Philip…baby…please come…inside me…I’m gonna cuuuuuuummmm!” she cries, and thrashes upward at me, attempting to impale herself on my probe. “Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!” she screams, long and loudly, and I sink into her to my balls, taking one deep swirl to open her inside. Then I pull out quickly and hammer at her, showing little tenderness or finesse. I drill her ceaselessly and her climax lasts for what seems like minutes. She shrieks and claws at me, alternately pushing me away and clutching me down to herself. Finally she’s spent and puts one hand against my belly, tacitly telling me that perhaps she’s finished for the moment. I lay down to press my body against hers, and she shifts, indicating that she wants to be on top. We flip over and she keeps me inside, trapping my face with her hands, and she speaks breathily to me – very seriously – from an inch away. “Okay, you bastard,” she utters, “…you didn’t cum. How can that happen when all you have to do is touch me and I get off?”

I shrug, giving her my best little boy grin, and she mutters something in mock disgust, pulling off of me and dropping down to run her tongue around the coronal ridge of my dick. Her blue eyes pierce me as her lashes blink a couple of times, and – again seriously – she says, “You’d better give me this or I won’t make you breakfast!”

Needless to say, I eat a hearty breakfast. Maxine has only coffee and a roll, apparently sufficient, since earlier she’s sucked a copious amount of cum from me, making sure in a theatrical way that I see the stream she lets dribble off her chin to her breasts as she swallows most of my load.

Later that day I move my duffel bag into her place and call the OD at the Army separation center at Travis Air Force Base. I leave her number so my buddies can call me as they return to the States. Over the next nine days – two weekends plus the five days of her vacation – I know that I’m in love with her, but don’t speak of it, though she unhesitatingly assures me of hers…at all hours of the day and night. We scour San Francisco, hitting the high spots, and meet with my returned buddies, sometimes as many as three at a time. They’re captivated by her and tease us about our intentions, since she makes no secret of her feelings while hanging all over me. If sitting, her arm is threaded through mine, over my shoulder, or in my lap. One leg is always entwined with mine. If standing, we’re seemingly joined at some part of our legs – often the pelvis – and her hands consider any part of me fair game. We eat, drink, dance, see movies, go to concerts, and she devours me emotionally…drawing from me much of the fear and sourness I’ve accumulated. We’re physically inseparable.

In retrospect, she was a magnificent therapist, and we made love as if we’d invented it.

Part 5

I could have been a hard-drinking, dope-smoking writer of tragic, egocentric poems; or maybe the author of one of the hundreds of “what the war did to me” novels. Instead, I got a job immediately, supervising a staff of analysts on a nuclear physics research project at the university. My military “people management” experience was the main reason; the other was that I’d taken a physics minor as an undergraduate. I also entered a Ph.D. program in Management…a cynical alternative choice as opposed to going to law school.

Maxine had wanted me to move in with her, but I was very hesitant for several reasons: first, I’d have to commute across the Bay to the university for graduate seminars as well as work; second, as a supervisor on the physics project, I’d be on call 24 hours a day, thus providing a potential source of repeated disappointment for us both; and finally – regardless of my feelings for her – the act of committing totally to her was something I feared doing. As screwed up as I was emotionally, I figured that I’d end up hurting her, so I got an apartment near the campus. We compromised, agreeing to spend weekends together, even though a good part of that time I spent studying while she just hung out with me.

Regardless of all this, Maxine did become pregnant, and didn’t tell me. She miscarried in the first trimester, however, and I raced to the hospital, believing it was a ruptured cyst or something. I was shattered by the news when she told me the truth. I’d knocked up more than one woman in the past, but never a woman like Maxine. I spent that night with her in the hospital room and she decided then and there to have a hysterectomy, having had “female problems” all her life. The difficulty with birth control pills had been just one of many. I think a little something died in me then, too, since we traced – with the doctor’s help – the time of conception to the first weekend we’d been together. I lapsed once again into the sort of depression I’d experienced when I’d returned from Nam. Old nightmares returned, along with some new ones. Some of the dead babies weren’t Asian: they looked like Maxine…and then like me.

Our weekend lovemaking became frantic, grasping, desperate attempts at reaching nirvana through marathon sessions. And we couldn’t get there. She would stumble into work on Monday mornings and not truly awaken until noon. I quit my job – disgruntled with the demanding schedule – got a teaching assistant position requiring far fewer hours, and leapt feverishly into antiwar activities to vent anger and compensate for some deep internal void. In the antiwar movement there were many attractive women…women who were as liberated as Maxine, yet more politically savvy. I kept them at bay, and had every intention of continuing to do so.

Maxine’s antiwar sentiments were those of a typical TV newsperson’s; anything that made a good show that she could produce was appealing to her. I considered my views to be based on moral grounds, including opposition to the pointless killing on both sides in an exhausting foreign civil war far from home. As a veteran, a new leader in the movement, and an articulate, well-groomed, non-hippie, my views were solicited by anyone interested in American politics, from professors to TV newscasters. When I told her that a local news reporter from a TV station rival to hers – a very attractive Asian woman named Felicia who was an alumna of the university – was going to interview me, she became instantly jealous. “That whore!” she hissed. “She’s laid half the people in the business! I wanna be there for your interview!” she insisted. Of course I agreed.

The interview was on campus and went well – part of a series on student unrest – though both Felicia and Maxine showed little respect for one another. Their paths had crossed before and their attitudes were icy. I wasn’t the typical war vet and grad student. I was older than most grad students, a T.A., and though gave a nod to contemporary style in the form of a goatee, my hair was just over the ear and I didn’t appear as the stereotyped hippie. The questions were solid – Felicia was well prepared and politically knowledgeable – and the cameraman was a hip young guy who put me at ease. When finished, Felicia asked if she could contact me with further questions should they arise. Flattered, I granted her permission, which flustered Maxine. However, her mood improved after a couple of hours at my place, making love in the afternoon, before she departed for her apartment in the city.