A Gift Horse

Angela leaned forward. I leaned forward. We kissed, squeezing hands tight enough to not let anyone or anything break us apart.

"You want to work here?" I asked.

"I do," she said, and it did not bother me the reverberations of that phrase. Married at the bar to the barmaid. "I want one thing from you. Promise me you'll keep listening to me, and even if what I say seems a little harsh you'll listen to it and give it thought and maybe do something about it."

"About what?"

"About the bar you've got here. About what's going on. I don't want to get too far into it now. I don't have the answers now. Mostly suspicions. But if I do become a bit of a gadfly, will you listen?"

"I guess so."

"Promise?"

"Promise." We kissed again. "Promise."

"Good. I love your naiveté, Jack," she said with a sad gleam in her eyes. She would be saddened further by naiveté's loss, her crusading and thus unavoidable duty to totally fuck it up. I do not think I changed her. I know I made her happy. But I do know she changed me. She had planted a chrysalis in my brain which she would keep healthy until the butterfly of awareness, of a previously absent cognitive ability, broke through and transformed me. I should have noticed when she talked of her day job and revealed bits and pieces of it which illuminated the place of work as being suspicious in its intentions. She had an agenda, a cause. Amelioration was her battle cry.

After an hour or so she broke the conversation, "I should go change."

"You don't need to work here tonight," I said, although I was thinking I did want to see her. I wanted to see her all the time.

"I'll go change into something comfortable and come back and we can talk."

"I'd like that," I said immediately. "Just a second." I reached behind me and grabbed a fifty out of the cash register. "Go buy us a nice meal if that's okay."

She waved away the bill. "Let me take care of it," she said, and I nodded. "Don't get too impatient. It'll be two three hours. Okay?"

"I won't," I lied. I was impatient the second she was out the door.

She returned, a softly electric moment like the static crackle of flannel. She was in fact wearing a cotton outfit. She dressed purely for comfort and it made me want to nestle inside those clothes like they were cotton sheets covering our nakedness and get comfortable.

She returned each night of the first week of our blossoming relationship. Two nights she brought delicious food she cooked herself, a stew and some lasagna. Two nights she brought restaurant food, also good. She capped off these lovely visits on Thursday with a picnic array, sandwiches and potato salad and some crisp white wine all taken from a basket and placed on a checkered cloth she hung over a table. A quiet intimacy prevailed, like we were picnicking in a land all our own and not the bar noisy with wood, tin, glass and music. She sat in my lap. We shared the heat and the proof of my excitement for her for the first time. Our soft and gentle kisses were given over to hard passionate ones with tongue battles resulting in growth and tweaks and twinges where she sat. I could have ravaged her right on the table if it had not been too public there in my bar.

I had to wait until Friday. That night she came dressed for her new role as waitress. I had wondered what she would do to match the allure of Rachel's revealing skirts and plunging or unbuttoned neckline. Her version was tight. Leather pants and a leather vest were tight enough to reveal the skin beneath. I discovered her fetish and my own. I could not take my eyes off her. I could not help touching her shoulder, her side or her chest. And despite the appealing choices before me, Hazel, Don's entourage, only she thrilled me. I was in love. Her aura had blinded me to all others. Luckily my intense obsession was thrilling to her as well. If I had sustained that level of attention to my angel for more than a few days, she would have probably melted away under the heat of it. I would have burned up our love. But I soon learned to know her presence was there without my watching her. Her aura filled the bar.

By closing time that Friday night I pushed everybody out and locked up. At last there was actually no one else but her and me. For the first time I left the cash in the drawer uncounted. There was no drawer. There was no bar. Only her and me.

I brought her through the door to my apartment and began to peal away the sweaty leather to reveal her nakedness. I knelt before her body in devout reverence. I took her lick by lick as she offered herself to me. She was my wafer of flesh and I was hers. We devoured each other. My tongue was playing with her soft dark pubic hair, moving slowly down to the puffy hot lips when she pushed me away.

"Oh God, Jack, fuck me," she said suddenly and fell back on the bed. She wrapped her long lean legs around my ass. I sunk my hardness into her narrow viscous passage, my hands finding a perfect purchase on her flared hips. Despite my filling her up completely over and over again, my cock easily slid in and out. She was as ready for me as I was for her. A week build up could do that to anyone. As I pummeled her for several minutes, I was ecstatic. I thought I would have exploded from the heat and desire immediately, but instead kept ravishing her. She screamed out her orgasm, returned to her sighs and pants which climbed to another scream.

Finally my balls were at maximum pressure, and the extreme need to explode in pure delight was taking over all thoughts and feelings. Somehow I asked, "Is it okay if I..."

"Yes, oh yes, please."

So I pulled her onto me as deep as possible and jittered and shook with passion. My seed sprayed inside. Mixing with her love juice, we created a flood of sticky liquid where we were conjoined.

Later I would learn she could not have babies, the result of a particularly abusive "parent". When she told me, she didn't cry. Her muscles held back the emotions with a steel tightness.

The slow calming down from our peak of pleasure stopped abruptly when she slid out from underneath me. "God I must stink. I'm a sweaty mess. How could you stand my smell."

"I love your smell," I said to her lovely naked backside as she headed to the bathroom. It was a delicious sight. I could watch that sight forever. I felt myself already beginning to harden.

Her head turned back to me. "That's a good sign. I love your sweaty body smell too. Come on."

My naked body followed hers into the bathroom where we shared a shower. I explored her from tip to toe, enjoying the journey. Her exploration of me was less thorough. Holding my face and staring into my eyes was what she favored most. As I sat down in the tub and she straddled me and fucked me she held my face in her hands and stared, only closing her eyes when another orgasm transformed her body into a rippling electric beautiful lean mass of flesh.

A few weeks later I acquired the cabaret license. I had Angela at the door collecting, letting the regulars slip by and being a provocative first impression to the increasing flow of newcomers.

The receiving of the cabaret license coincided with the final installment of my pay. Mr. Ratface was as pleased as I was with the increase in profits.

"You got a lot of chutzpah kid. Very creative," said Fast Freddy. "Not too busy in the afternoon still, though?"

"Between two and eight it's pretty slow," I said.

"That's fine. Don't make plans. You got enough on your plate," he said, placing the sidearm again on the bar.

"I was thinking about pu-pus to attract..."

"No. Never mind. Okay?"

"You're the boss," I said, carefully and slowly grabbing the envelope and glancing inside.

"A little something extra. A reward for a job well done." He had tripled the amount. "Spread it around, kid. Make your employees happy."

"Will do," I said. And I did. Hazel and Connie were very pleased. Angela was suspicious.

7.

Ignorance is bliss. At least it was for me during the months that followed. So few of us really understand, or want to understand all the intricate mechanical workings bringing about our reality. All the creature comforts, the general ease of day to day existence is based on the intellectual and physical work occurring somewhere else, somewhere invisible to us. Any vision of these sources would make us uncomfortable. Do we want to see the suffering which occurred to create the threads of commerce, the clothes, the air heated or cooled, the meat we eat? We want to be comfortable.

So in my velvet cell, I was comfortable. Comfortable in a New York sort of way. I was energized by my business. I was a success and felt success for the first time, and it was good. The distance from the regular scene, most of the hipster action was crosstown or uptown or downtown, gave room so my scene could expand. We carried on beyond legal hours and were not harassed about it by police.

As time went on the performances on the weekend became more and more provocative. From the lascivious stories and their teller's, i.e. Rachel's sexy movement, the evenings became more naked. Rachel would be naked by the end of her story, masturbating to orgasm Others would illustrate stories or sing nasty songs as couples, fondling each other, undressing each other. Licking, sucking, fucking each other. Boys and girls, girls and girls, girls and boys, boy/girls and boy/girls, girl/boys and girl/boys and every combination possible. No animals though. There was some girl's dog once, but I had to put my foot down before that went too far. The performances weren't provocative. They were wonderfully obscene.

We always kept these events as the last of the evening. If one wandered in on a normal Friday night, one would be a witness to some cool new band, maybe noticing the odd clientele of pretty leather boys with naked chests or girls barely concealed under their strips of spandex or the beautiful women who seemed too tall, their wrists too thick, their presence too feminine. More than likely noticing them. But the non-regulars would be given the semblance of an evening having ended before the real show began. Not that they didn't get their money's worth. We booked some fine shows. We could pick and choose. Those in the know wanted to be a part of a weekend at Bradley's. Of course the night lasted into morning for all the action to happen.

But it meant little sleep, especially sharing a bed with Angela who kept me up most of those short nights. If we weren't fondling or fucking, which perhaps because of my youth or because of the energy pulsing in my veins from the club and from my love for Angela, were energetic bouts of love making despite my lack of sleep, our talks would cut through the night. She was a whet stone sharpening my thinking. And nothing made me tired. I was thriving on my environment, on the ever expanding club which seemed to be a creature in itself, expanding and contracting and expanding a little more. Bradley's innards held my interest. And Angela and love did wonders for me, too.

Within that very comfort was the cause of great discomfort. Angela seeking the truth in the city of careful lies was probing into the depths from which all comfort derives. And those depths reeked of the putrid flesh left in the wake of corruption. It was a strange investigation. Proof of dangerous goings on were on display in the afternoon, with Anders and friends performing disposal work, the most cynical disposal, human beings. Angela seemed to ignore this, and even avoided it by being away often during that time of day. I had never been too thrilled by these mob brutalities, and she only made me more sensitive to their possible purpose. Maybe because they were so obvious, and she was an investigator by profession, always looking carefully and cleverly under the lid to examine the refuse sliding by, the goons weren't interesting. Too easy. Also these were friends, family to her and Rachel, and were thus perhaps immune to her prosecuting glare.

One night it came to a head. That day she had come in at the tail end of a disposal, and I noticed her reaction, a sort of slap in the face that made her turn her other cheek and head swiftly into our apartment. Later, I escaped the floor for awhile to give her a kiss to her neck, the only place available since she was preoccupied with the computer monitor. She turned her head and our lips touched. I loved those lips, their softness which would harden with passion endeavoring to send me over the wall of erotic bliss. This time we just touched lips, a greeting, an acknowledgment of our relationship. She returned to the screen.

"What do you know about your uncle?" she asked as she stared into the electronic screen filled with words.

"What I told you," I said. There was a lengthy pause I felt needed to be filled. "Except personal stuff."

"Personal stuff?"

"Yeah, like visits. When I was a kid we'd visit the New York relatives. It was always a big event, seeing some show or eating at the Carnegie Deli with my Uncle Charlie. We'd stay at his house upstate. A beautiful house in Croton, upstate, near the reservoir. A house built into the landscape like Frank Lloyd Wright might do. A disciple actually created it. All sharp weird angles and switches on the ceiling. Great house. But as far as knowing what was up outside of his family life, I don't know a thing except it has to do with trading. High powered trading. And I don't know what my uncle has to do with this place."

"You told me," she said.

"It's a gift horse, Angela."

"Yeah." Her answer was a mystery. She gave me no clue as to how she felt about my gift horse. "Family."

"I guess. But we're not all that close, my uncle and me." The silence again was pervasive and again needed to be filled. "I don't know why he set me up in a bar where people disappear out the back alley."

"You shouldn't talk about it."

"Do you think they kill people?"

"I don't know, Jack."

"You don't want to know."

"Do you?"

We were on the edge of a fight that had been brewing since the afternoon incident, though its particulate was of an aged tea, all those moments looking away. Talking about it made us nervous, and my tingles were below the belt. As proof my flesh was rising. I began sliding the tented fabric of my jeans against the back of her chair, enhancing the stimulation. I leaned forward, wrapping my hands around her small firm breasts barely hiding behind her soft cotton blouse, and kissed her. Her lips were hot, in full agreement with mine. As our tongues tangled I reached under the blouse to cup her breasts and rub the nipples on my palms. She slid to the side enough for her to feel my rising firmness against the base of her spine. As I rubbed her, I was pinching and twisting her nipples. Released from the kiss, I licked her neck and nestled my lips beside her ear.

Suddenly she broke away from my embrace with a force that sent me toppling onto my ass. She swiveled the chair to face me, spreading her legs, bringing her skirt up to her hips, letting me see the sexy frilly panties she wore hiding the damp fragrant fissure of bliss. I sat up so I could take hold of the edges of the panties and slid them down her perfect leg, sliding slowly as a caress lingering on the firmness and length of her thighs, over her bony knee and down her sensitive and curvaceous calves and over her lovely feet.

Once off I made my full frontal attack. Over the sweat of her inner thighs, my tongue tasted the change of flavors as it neared the blissful hill and the narrow entrance to the cave wherein all life derives and where all my pleasure derived. Inhaling the scent of her excitement was an aphrodisiac appetizer. I whipped my tongue around and around those lips then down to her puckered hole, getting it to join the hot wet and sticky act, my nose pushing into the top of her fragrant viscous pussy. I returned to the main event, sliding my tongue in and out of the labia, firm vigorous thrusts making it known my intentions, as she let me know with her sighs and her rocking into my face that she enjoyed knowing it.

Her sighs were broken with frozen moments, precursors to orgasm. I knew it was time to play at the cap to the entrance. My tongue squeezed and rattled the nib of hard flesh at her sexual center bouncing it around like a clapper against the bell that was the rest of her angelic body, and she rung. Then my lips surrounded it and I sucked.

"Ooooh, unnh, oooh, darling take off your pants," she sighed, pausing throughout her demand to respond to her nearing orgasm. I continued the exquisite loving molestation while pealing away the layers of clothes in one bunch to let my proud manhood bounce out at last released into the air. I didn't care how silly I looked bouncing my ass off the floor to make room for the jeans and underpants. I was at last free, open, ready to have her impale herself. And she did.

"Oh God!" I sighed as I felt her firm wet writhing hole envelope my cock, and she sighed a sigh to match mine. It was a slow descent. The tulip head played a moment at the apex of her entrance before her hand guided it and the rest of my rigid length of flesh slowly, sliding it along the tight walls up inside her. Once fully and perfectly together as one, we pressed ourselves bone to bone and gently rubbed. Then she began a rise and fall with her strong thighs which continued the slow pace, and I felt the nudge of the walls narrowing, each rise squeezing me. After about ten strokes she quickened the pace, hooking onto an engine of will which was her inevitable climax. I coaxed it closer by slipping a pointing finger above my cock and inside her, rubbing at the textured flesh behind her pubic bone. She coaxed me by reaching behind her to carefully hold and sift through her finger my sack of balls. Our libidos went into overdrive. She was pounding against me from above. I was pounding into her from below. Then she came, a crescendo of sighs and then silent and still, her head leaning back as I kept pounding away. When she returned from her complete bliss, her face and her chest flushed red, my continuum of thrusts took her up there again, and she was gone. I mashed our pubic bones together again, feeling her twitching flesh as my flesh twitched back. Finally, with my long lean hard-on still well embedded in her, she draped herself from head to toe over me. We kissed. Our tongues danced together.

I carefully turned her so she was under me, took her firm fleshy sexy ass cheeks in my hand, holding her slightly above the ground, and drove deep and hard and pumped fast, my rigid flesh filling up then emptying her cave. We kissed and licked each other's mouths, and I studied her beautiful blissed out face and I was in complete love and I had to let go and give her my essence and the hot liquid filled what was left of the space in her cave, which wasn't much. My toes curled. My body vibrated. Pure, unadulterated, loving pleasure. The peak of feeling.

I had discovered knowledge could be bliss, too. Knowledge created out of investigation provided a carnal knowledge which was enhanced to an extreme, intoxicating, addictive pleasure.

After laughing at the abrasions from fucking on the floor, I pulled myself together and reentered my club while she returned to her work on the computer. I couldn't wait to close. To be inside her and to be beside her on her journey of exploration and investigation seemed the perfect thing. Courage, I discovered, is an aphrodisiac.

8.

So Angela and I wired the alley and wired the bathrooms. And it was kinky.

Going through the many shit and piss scenes to find the gems was worth it. Along with the business transactions Don had with remarkable regularity, which was the first time I actually knew he was dealing, though I strongly suspected, he would have occasional personal transactions. Angela copied all the good parts, making up a couple tapes for future copulation.