Operetta by Jean Roberta
First published in Twice the Pleasure: Bisexual Women’s Erotica, edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel (Berkeley, California: Cleis Press, 2013). Author retains all rights.
Why did I do it? Because he asked for it, that’s why.
Luke was an unpublished poet (waiter by night) with a strong nose and glossy dark-brown hair that fell adorably into his eyes. When he asked me to write one of my sex fantasies, how could I resist? We had been talking about forbidden teenage lust, and told each other about the books we used to read by flashlight under the covers when our parents thought we were asleep.
I gave him a reading-list of classic scandalous novels and sex manuals, and we agreed to discuss each one after he finished reading it.
The next time he came over, I was prepared. He patted his lap and I sat there, my bare ass cheeks pressed against his rising cock, a clear indicator of his mood. The musk from his armpits rose to my nose like incense. I had one arm around his hard, smooth shoulders to keep my balance while I reached for a sheaf of typed pages with the other.
I knew that Luke enjoyed the touch of my hardening nipples against his hairy chest. My breasts are a modest size but they are perky, and he seemed to admire them, judging from the amount of attention he always gave them. It was part of his charm.
I read him the stage directions of my fantasy:
“Enter the Author in raven ringlets, a scarlet petticoat and white satin corset with a few laces undone. She carries a basket of red berries that she occasionally holds to her chest while she pulls a rosy nipple out of her décolletage. She is Modest Maggie of the Market.”
I gathered my breath, and tried to sing quietly. After all, my voice didn’t have to fill an auditorium.
“I am the very model of a willing pleasure-giver-er
I’ll do things to your ticklish parts to make them swell and quiver-er.
You’ve never seen my like before.
I’ll always leave you wanting more.
I am the very model of a practised pleasure giver-er.”
Luke shifted under me, and I let out a sound that could have been a quiet chuckle or just a loud exhale. “That’s different.”
“It’s based on Gilbert and Sullivan,” I explained. “You know, the two guys who wrote a whole series of comic operettas in the late nineteenth century. The time of Queen Victoria. My parents had a set of records, and my mom used to play them while she did the housework. The Light Opera Society puts on one every year.”
Luke seemed bewildered. “Classical music, eh? It’s good you learned all about that stuff when you were growing up, but now you’re your own woman, honey. I know you can write some hot sex stories.”
I felt as if he had slapped me, and not in a good way. “This is a sex story, Luke. It’s the kind of raunchy musical I wish Gilbert and Sullivan had written. It’s what I imagined when I listened to their patter songs on the stereo. The situation has to be presented, then there has to be a buildup of tension, then everyone gets together in an orgy on a pirate ship. I’d like to stage it for the right audience.”
I could feel that Luke’s cock was not convinced. Luke himself liked to say he was open-minded. “Okay. Go on.”
I read more stage directions:
“A crowd of other peddlers, gentlemen-customers and other urban street-types, including disapproving Salvation Army ladies in black bonnets, surround Maggie.”
I sang with more exuberance than before, trying to impersonate a general chorus:
“She is the very model of a practised pleasure-giver-er!”
Luke looked thoughtful, and stroked one of my thighs. I hoped this was a good sign, so I soldiered on with more stage directions:
“A constable strides past, looking round suspiciously and fondling his truncheon – but he doesn’t arrest Maggie because her true profession is a secret. A crew of colourfully dressed pirates rushes onstage. One plays a whistle while the others dance a hornpipe.”
“What’s a hornpipe?” Luke sounded like a polite high school student.
“A dance that British sailors always do in nineteenth-century novels and plays,” I explained.
“You know.” I hummed a melody into Luke’s nearest ear so he could feel the vibrations. He laughed.
I went on. “Then the Pirate Captain says,’ You’re coming with us, wench. We need a pleasure-giver on our ship full of booty.’” I said this line in the deepest growl I could pull up from my depths. I tried to speak in the voice of my cunt.
Luke tightened his grip on me, and his own truncheon made itself felt. “So the pirates all screw her?”
“Something like that. But it’s complicated because there’s a woman pirate who wants her too, and the forces of law and order want to stop all this from happening.”
“Yeah, I guess they would,” said Luke philosophically. “Back in those days.”
Before he could ask me to stop reading, I read more stage directions:
“The shortest pirate, with prominent breasts beneath her tight velvet jacket and lace jabot, elbows the others aside. She is Pirate Patty.”
Then I tried to channel the husky voice of a hearty butch: “Step aside, lads. I’ll take care of her.”
“So is this a lesbian play? Do you just ditch all the men and do it with a chick in this piece?”
Why didn’t I foresee that Luke would react this way? “No, Luke. You know I’m bi. I think I was bi even when I was in high school, but I didn’t have a word for it then. I used to fantasize about female outlaws all the time, but it doesn’t mean I wanted to give up guys for the rest of my life.”
“I hope not.” He still sounded uncomfortable.
“Pirate Patty explains herself in a song,” I explained. I tried to sing in her voice:
“The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra la,
Have nothing to do with my life.
To men’s arms I never would cling, tra la,
And I never will be a man’s wife.”
hen I took a deep breath and tried to channel the whole Pirate Chorus: “Arrgh! She never will be a man’s wife!”
Luke turned me to face him. His eyes sparkled, and he looked amused. “A real male-basher even in the old days. I bet all the pirates tune her up.”
Against my will, my mind’s-eye flashed on a real-life scene of wartime chaos from the TV news: armed men hauling villagers, mostly women, out of their huts. The scene I refused to imagine was about women as the spoils of war, and not in a good way. I was getting turned off.
“Why, do you think all women should be married to men?” Please, Luke, I thought, please don’t say something stupid.
Luke gently took the sheaf of paper from my hand and set it on the coffee-table. “I never said that, honey. You know how I feel about marriage. I just don’t think it’s good for you to write men off altogether, you know? Just because I don’t know all the things that are important to you and I’m not Politically Correct all the time, it doesn’t mean I’m a total jerk. What kind of sex scene can you have if all the men are left holding their own meat while the girls, women, whatever, sail off to their own island?”
“You didn’t let me finish,” I sighed.
“I can write the climax,” he grinned. Both his arms and his cock seemed to have hardened in seconds. “I think the Pirate Captain should carry Maggie the Slut to his cabin and show her a real good time.”
I knew I couldn’t get anywhere by talking to him about plot arcs and the kind of dramatic conventions that might even work in an X-rated operetta. My clit felt like a sulky child who resents being pulled away from a favorite game to eat ice cream. Ice cream is always welcome, but being interrupted is not.
Luke lowered his head to capture one of my nipples between his lips as though it were a ripe raspberry. He sucked it like a connoisseur, gradually increasing the pressure. His hot scalp gave off a scent of male sweat that appealed to me in spite of myself. Just when I thought Luke’s sucking had stretched my nipple to its longest possible size, he flicked the tip with his tongue. I moaned.
Luke pulled away and licked his lips. “Arrgh,” he said.
I laughed. Before I could catch my breath, Luke had fastened his hot, wet mouth on my other nipple to give it the same treatment.
He stroked my hair and wrapped some around one fist. For a man who didn’t do much physical work, he had surprisingly large hands with hard skin and prominent knuckles. I couldn’t help remembering the last time he had three fingers deep inside me.
I had balked at dying my brown hair blonde to please him, but I was willing to grow it, and it was now past shoulder-length. “Mm, wench.” He used my hair to pull my head backward so I was looking up at him. “You get me going. You can’t get out of it now.”
I felt greedy, knowing that this relationship was speeding toward a dead end. I wanted him, for better or worse. I wanted something I could keep when his innocent male skin and muscles and smells and energy and simple beliefs were just a memory. “Oh Captain,” I cooed, “are you going to ravish me?”
“I’ll fuck you till you’re sore, girl. You have it coming.” I wiggled against his rock-hard cock and felt it twitch. I almost regretted my unwillingness to take something that large in the small, puckered hole in my squeamish ass. I knew I had disappointed him when I turned down his suggestion. I had accepted anal plugs wielded by savvy women, but Luke’s manly cock seemed less trustworthy. Of course, I reminded myself, its nature was part of its charm.
“Let’s do it on the floor, Beth,” he grunted.
I liked this idea because I wanted him in me as soon as possible. I couldn’t be sure whether I was eager to come or eager to finish. “Oh yes,” I sighed.
He helped me to my feet, and managed to lift me in his arms, grunting under his breath. He laid me on my back on the musty carpet that I hadn’t vacuumed for a week. I gave him credit for not dropping me like a sack of potatoes. I wasn’t heavy compared to other women, but I knew he wasn’t used to carrying loads of my size.
He lowered himself over me, his hands on both sides of me like a cage. “Rrowr,” he growled. I spread my legs, showing him my slit. I was sure the wetness had soaked my curly brown hair.
He kissed and licked his way down my ticklish midriff and sensitive tummy. When he reached my belly-button, his tongue dipped in and made me giggle uncontrollably. As I squirmed beneath him, he reached down and held my hips in place. The heat and strength of his hands spread through my flesh until I felt as if my bones could melt.
Two of his fingers found my clit. He petted it lovingly, but he had another goal. He slipped one finger, then two fingers into me, and they slid past my slippery folds until I felt them press against my cervix. His knuckles stroked all the right places as he explored my channel as though he wanted to learn every inch of it by heart. I felt little spasms like electric sparks in my core, and I knew I would come this time. I felt wet enough to leave a pool of my juice on the carpet.
Caveman, I thought, seeing the word in neon red against the soft darkness of my mind. I tried to erase it, and the letters faded gradually.
He rose up to reach the small, clear packet he had left on an end-table, then used his teeth to open it. In a flash, his cock was sheathed and ready for action. He carefully held my lower lips apart while he guided his cock inside. It plunged in like a bolt sliding into the groove that was meant for it. “Beth,” he groaned. No other words were necessary.
He filled me deliciously as he pumped in and out, galloping like a racehorse. I squeezed him with my cunt-muscles as I held him with my arms, wanting the moment to last as long as possible. I could hear myself making sounds I could hardly recognize.
“Oh!” I sang out when the first real spasm hit me like lightning. I didn’t need to fake it, and I was proud. So was Luke, and I felt his satisfaction as my clit erupted and my cunt clutched him over and over.
“Ahhh, here it comes,” he bragged as he fucked without mercy, completely focused on his own pleasure now that I had crossed the finish line. His sweaty skin pressed against mine, and I cupped his hard butt-cheeks in my small hands so I could feel his muscles working there.
He stroked my hair and face as his cock shrank and slipped out of me. “Beth.” I could hear him breathe. “That was awesome.”
I felt moved by his masculine grace, his appetite and his willingness to please. I could imagine him as a boy, and I wished I had known him then. He was not a bad sort, as one of my exes would have said.
I think we both knew that what he had to give me wasn’t enough.
He moved first, and gave me enough room to get up off the floor and look for my clothes. His jeans and T-shirt were neatly folded on an arm of my sofa, and he shrugged them on without taking his eyes off me. My clothes were more scattered, and I dressed myself in stages: first the bra and panties, then the cotton pants, the sleeveless top, the cardigan, the socks. My hair kept falling in my eyes, so I looked for a scrunchy to hold it back. I felt as if I were changing roles.
He gave me a close, lingering hug and a generous goodbye kiss. “I have to go.” He was stating the obvious to avoid stating the more obvious. “I’ll call you, honey.”
“I’ll see you, Luke.” I felt as fake as a 90-pound woman with a pair of Size 42DDs, but I didn’t see how I could ask him not to call me, not to see me. I didn’t want to end our relationship with an argument that neither of us could win.
He closed my door for the last time.
My sex fantasy seemed stupid to me, but I wanted to finish reading it from the viewpoint of someone like Luke. Not Luke himself, of course, because I already knew what he thought of it. I wanted to decide whether it had the genuine cheesiness of my youth.
I picked up where I had left off, reading to myself:
“Pirate Captain: But Maggie must be married to the shy First Mate ! After she has pleasured all of us, of course.
Pirate Pete (a lanky red-faced man with a loud voice, clutching a bottle of rum): Arrgh! Share and share alike! That’ s the Pirate Code!
(A stout and resolute Salvation Army lady pushes her way past the pirates to the front of the stage. She is Captain Killjoy.)
CK: Maggie must be reformed and married to a respectable man with a good salary! This is a musical for families, and I am the voice of the Author’s upbringing!
PP (with great sarcasm): Right-o, sister. Take a stroll with me in the park, and we’ll see who gets converted.
(First Mate Bashful Bert Bentley rushes nervously between LK and PP. His knees knock as he faces the audience.)
BBB: B-b-but I don’t want to marry a woman! No disrespect intended, Maggie. Why d’youse think I signed on board a ship full of men! Excepting one, if you’ll pardon me for saying so, Patty.
PP: No offense taken, Bert.
Pirate Captain: Insubordination! Bert, you must be flogged. (To audience) He’s such fun to flog.
LK: Flogging and prayer!
PP: Flogging and gamahouching! (To audience) That’s oral sex to you. (Shocked, delighted gasp from the assembled company.) And dildoes! Nothing like them for enforcing pirate discipline! (A hushed moan passes through the company.)
MM: And for rewarding good service!
(Captain Killjoy faints and is dragged offstage. The constable pushes his way through the crowd. He is Officer Lance.)
OL: Here, you degenerates! The moral standards of our good Queen must triumph at last. Do the lot of you need a taste of my truncheon?
Pirate Chorus: Arrgh! Aye! Hip hip hooray!”
I hadn’t written the orgy scene yet, and I suspected that I never would. I no longer had an audience.
Several days later, when I was grading student essays, I got an unexpected phone call. I really hadn’t expected Andrew to phone me.
“Do you remember me?” he asked coyly. Duh. He had married my friend Jessie right out of high school, and they had driven each other crazy for five years. Officially, their divorce had been caused by her affair with her boss at work, but as soon as she and Andrew were living separately, he began frequenting a certain gay bar. He seemed to know all the waiters in town, including Luke. Andrew hadn’t introduced us, but our shared connection with him had been the conversation-starter when Luke served me a cup of coffee while I was waiting for a woman who never showed up.
Andrew and I were connected by a dozen tangled threads.
“I’ve missed you, Beth. I liked having you around when I was with Jessie, but you know how that went.” Andrew’s voice was low and resonant, and it had a distinct rhythm. It sounded as if it should be coming from a man twice his size, and it attracted attention wherever he went.
I laughed. “I find you strangely appealing too, Andrew. In our spare time, we could compare notes and produce a kind of Michelin Guide to local restaurant staff.”
“You’re a fountain of brilliant ideas, dear, but I’m calling about something else. I have a proposal for you.”
I suddenly imagined a comic wedding: Andrew and me, two short people in formal dress, marrying for some bizarre reason that would be revealed in another scene.
I waited.
“You know I’m directing Little Theater this season, don’t you? I have a big role to fill, and I’m afraid I need someone yesterday. Would you like to try out for the lead in Hedda Gabler?”
“Me?” I didn’t understand it. “Don’t you know someone with more experience?” I stopped myself from reminding him that he probably knew some drag queens who could do a passable job in the role of that unhappy Nordic woman, a Valkyrie in the closet.
“You underestimate yourself, girl. But there is another role you could apply for. Have you ever sung in a slightly naughty musical?”
I sang:
“I am the very model of a willing pleasure-giver-er.
I’ll do things to your ticklish parts to make them swell and quiver-er.
You’ve never seen my like before.
I’ll always leave you wanting more.
I am the very model of a practised pleasure giver-er.”
In my own defense, I must admit that I had had a glass of wine or two to help me get over my breakup with Luke.
I don’t know what Andrew had been doing before he dialed my number, but by my last line, he was humming along. “I love it, Beth! I would promote you to Major-General any day.”
“Oh sure.” I felt foolishly flattered.
“The show I have in mind is a revival of burlesque. We need writers as well as performers.” Why hadn’t I heard of this project? Probably because it was brainstormed by a group of gay men who hadn’t told anyone outside their circle yet.
In short, Andrew offered to take me out for dinner the following day to discuss his plans and my availability. He appeared promptly at my door in a suit, his sandy-blond hair mussed and gelled to perfection.
Over Coquilles St-Jacques at Chez Pierre, he openly held my hand on the white linen tablecloth. I assumed that the candlelight was too dim to allow our waiter to see our fingers entwined, and thus we were spared a jealous hissy fit.
“I have another proposal, Beth.” He gave me his most charming smile. “You know I’m bi, don’t you?”
I nodded. “There’s a lot of that going around.”
“You know that Oscar Wilde and young Lord Alfred were called ‘friends,’ don’t you? And that Radclyffe Hall had a ‘friend’ in society named Mabel before Una became her ‘friend’ to the end?”
“Would you like us to be ‘friends,’ Andrew?”
“I would be honored, Beth. I would have liked to stay friends with Jessie, but she couldn’t deal with it. I think you could.”
I smiled. “I think you’re right.”
Later, on Andrew’s ridiculously high four-poster bed, surrounded by fat cushions, I let him pose me on all fours, sitting, lying on my side, face-down and face-up while he commented on my best angles. He lifted my hair, and twisted it into various shapes. He was shamelessly visual. He showed me an impressive hardon, and its redness contrasted with his pale thighs. “It’s blushing,” I told him.
“You could hide him,” grinned Andrew, my friend-with-benefits. “Are you a sword-swallower, Beth?”
I had expected this question, and I had brought my own supplies. As an answer, I dressed his hard cock in a clear protective covering, opened my mouth, relaxed my throat and sucked in the whole thing. I assumed he was a connoisseur of this act. He seemed overwhelmed by my performance, judging from his reaction.
As a reward or possibly from curiosity, Andrew spread my legs and studied my wet opening as though it were the entrance to an undiscovered continent. “I truly love this,” he told me. “Every woman has her own bouquet.”
He wanted to taste my naked flesh, and I didn’t want to stop him. He sucked, licked and nibbled all the wetness he could reach, and I felt as if my clit and my cunt had been starved for attention before that night. He savored my taste until I thought I would explode, but I imploded instead, losing control and shattering inside while bright colors formed a kaleidoscope in my mind. While I lay in his comforting arms, I felt as if I could float.
“I hope you have the energy for a few more rounds before we sleep, dear.” Andrew looked at me as if he had just told me a juicy secret and trusted me to keep it. “You’re very versatile, aren’t you?”
“I try.” I loved his hardy compactness and his own ability to play different roles on different occasions.
“There’s so much I’d love to do with you.” He sounded lecherous.
“Please be patient, Andrew.” I tried to look demure. “I’m willing to expand my repertoire.”
He hummed a pretty melody under his breath, and I knew even before I recognized it that it must be a love-duet from a musical comedy.
About Jean Roberta
Jean Roberta immigrated to the Canadian prairie from the United States as a teenager with her family. In her last year of high school, after two years of life in Canada, she won a major award in a national student writing contest . Since then, her “literary career” has progressed in stages.
In the 1970s, Jean was briefly married and had a daughter. She came to regret the marriage, but not the result. She “came out” as a lesbian in the early 1980s, and expected to remain single until death.
In 1988, a one-woman publisher in Montreal published a book of Jean’s lesbian stories, Secrets of the Invisible World, between slick, hot-pink covers. Jean’s parents were horrified by the possibility that their unusual family name might appear on the cover of this book, and thus was born Jean’s pen name (her real first and middle names).
The Montreal publisher went out of business many years ago, and Jean’s parents both passed away in 2009, but the pen name is firmly established.
With encouragement from lesbian friends who wanted to see more explicit sex in her fiction, she began sending out her erotica in 1998. Since then, her diverse erotic stories have appeared in over 100 print anthologies, three single-author collections, and a “bawdy novella” which is also available as an audiobook.
She has taught English in the local university for over 25 years, and now teaches creative writing there as well. In 2005, same-sex marriage became legal in Canada, and Jean’s sweetie began dropping hints. In 2010, after twenty years of cohabiting, Jean decided to take the plunge, once again. The wedding was on Halloween weekend in the local queer club, and a good time was had by all.
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Books by Jean Roberta
The Flight of the Black Swan (Lethe Press)
Imagine an upper class English girl kidnapped by pirates when she was eleven, and eventually returned to her family. If this sounds familiar, you’ve probably either read the classic book A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes, or seen the movie. Whatever you may imagine, Jean Roberta has taken the grown-up Emily far beyond your–or the younger Emily’s–wildest speculations. This is, indeed, a ”Bawdy Novella,” but there is more to it than that. Emily is a smart, spirited heroine, adventurous enough to see the bright side of the unspoken (and unfounded) assumption that she must be ”damaged goods.” When her romantic affair at a girls’ school is abruptly ended because of her lover’s cowardice, Emily tosses off the constraints of 19th century English society and returns to the sea on a more-or-less pirate ship, the Black Swan, manned by gay fugitives from the British Navy.
The Princess and the Outlaw (Lethe Press)
The women awaiting you in these pages might be fierce Amazons in ancient Greece, maidens and princesses of the medieval era, ingenues like Alice awaiting new and more sensual adventures beyond the rabbit hole, or outlaws and pirates. But each and every one is open to the delights and passions of flesh and fantasy. Most of the couplings are with other women—friends, confidantes, instructors, lovers—but the wealth of erotic encounters is not solely confined to the Sapphic. These are, after all, a selection of erotist Jean Roberta’s finer historical short tales. So do not fear a bit of prick for the open petals which may be parted by another woman’s hand. Embrace what we all have down below, what we choose to expose and explore.
Heiresses of Russ (Lethe Press)
Stories about lesbians, women who choose women as primary partners, lovers, playmates, and co-conspirators, tend to go where few men have gone before. Most of the real-life issues that lesbians must deal with, as women and as members of non-mainstream communities, appear in these stories in metaphorical form or as plausible scenarios in a future or alternate world. Lesbianism itself was routinely described by the conservatives of the past as ”impossible.” The formula of ”woman + woman” is thus logically connected with other phenomena formerly considered impossible: magic, witchcraft, folk cures, scientific discoveries, alternate methods of producing offspring, space travel, communication with beings who are not human or not living in human bodies, historical accounts that have been suppressed or denied. The Heiresses of Russ series seeks to offer readers the best lesbian-themed speculative fictions stories published the prior year (from introduction by editor Jean Roberta).
Sex Is All Metaphors
Sex Is All Metaphors is a compilation of nonfiction essays about sex by Jean Roberta. These insightful missives first appeared online in the Smutter’s Lounge of the Erotica Readers & Writers Association website. All proceeds from the sale of this collection benefit the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.
Jean Roberta writes about the politics, practicalities, and ethics of sex with cogent passion. She seems to engage all of herself to make her points — body, mind, and heart – and this gives powerful integrity to the positions she takes (from review by Annabeth Leong, Goodreads).