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This week’s S L I C K is curated and edited by Rachel Kincaid

Content notes: public/outdoor sex, consensual wrestling, biting, choking, mention of conversion therapy

We had a sticker of the Eiffel Tower adorning the headstock of our guitar. She’d gotten it while we were making our way out of Philly after a show.

“What are you doing?” I had asked. “C’mon, we have to get back on the road if we want to make the next stop tonight.”

Scarlett was crouched down, peering into the dusty, rusted toy machines lining the exit of the ancient supermarket. It was an off day for us—just a whole day of driving through the countryside between shows. We were picking up two drawstring bags of snacks and preserved foods for the rest of the drive towards our next house to crash. The orange sun shimmered down between the scuffed handprints of the unwashed windows.

She didn’t reply, as if she hadn’t heard me.

“Babe, c’mon,”

A housewife rattled a shopping cart past me, letting her shoulder bump into me in a passive aggressive gesture. I lost my footing slightly. When I looked up, she was looking back behind her shoulder at me, with a face that said, watch where you stand, faggot. The joke was on her; we were sometimes faggots and sometimes dykes. Talk about uncultured. I guess having pink pigtails made me quite the target. Either that, or it was my hairy legs poking out of my miniskirt. Couldn’t be helped. I liked to stay shaven when I could, but on tour, I tended to let it grow.

“Just a minute Trixie, I need something,” Scar said, breaking me out of my fiery stare at the back of the bitch’s salmon-pink blouse.

“Okay, okay,” I said, “but make it quick. We have a gig in Ohio tomorrow and I don’t wanna push our luck getting to our next sleeping spot past 2am. The kids may be in college, but they’ll still be pissed.”

Scarlett ignored my nagging as she popped four quarters into the slots, each resting upright in their place. One of them was a bit warped, so that the coin didn’t fit right. When it got stuck, she jammed it until it popped, and the wheel finally turned. The gears of the crank crunched between her hands. I half thought the thing was going to fall apart. It must’ve been the first time it had been used in ages. Seemed like even kids out here couldn’t be bothered with dusty old stickers, their designs faded by the constant pulverizing of the sunlight.

But she wanted one. My Scarlett, my one and only Scar.

The girl I could never, ever read, even though I’d opted to spend my days with her as long as I could. Her brownish auburn hair hung equal parts limp and shaggy, sketched like a leaf decaying towards autumn. A single streak of red dye cut across her bangs like a clawmark covering her left eye. It was a sloppy rushed job that gave her hair some character.

That disheveled hair, ruffled like the hair of the gamer boys I used to date before I knew any better. I guess this was my divine retribution for dating people who didn’t know the difference between shampoo and conditioner.

She would cut pieces of her hair off when I wasn’t looking, just to fuck with me. She knew how much I hated it. We’d be cuddling until I’d catch a small strip of hair that should’ve been longer than it was. It would drive me absolutely insane.

Out in the parking lot, I threw our food haul in the front seat in prep for the rest of our drive that evening. I was putting our drinks in the iced cooler, when I saw Scarlett with our guitar, her legs hanging out the back door. I traveled around the car to greet her in the back. I looked at her in silence as she paid me no mind, oblivious or indifferent while I blocked out the setting sun. She affixed the Eiffel Tower sticker to the headstock of our guitar, seated on the reclined backdoor of our VW Microbus.

We had gotten into the tradition of ending our sets with the closer from Bob Dylan’s album, Bringing it All Back Home – “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue.” The original was sung with a country croon, but for us, we let the song crescendo and build, my voice the raspy cigarette one, hers the soft high falsetto. It was the equivalent of a party trick, a way to awe at the end of our sets with a bout of theatrics. Kids would join in to sing along, many of them having heard the song too many times growing up. It was fun to watch them try to keep up with our lightning pace.

So we named her Baby Blue. Our pride and joy, our guitar, the beautiful woman who’d brought us closer together and the reason the drunk kids kept coming out on weeknights to see us throughout the Midwest. The finish on the front was a blue sunburst pattern, the blues and blacks rippling and vibrating like the weight of a teardrop under gravity. The cerulean sheen of her body resonated almost as much as her strings did. She was a somber little thing, made so beautifully we couldn’t resist.

“Think of it as a promise,” she said as she brought the crystalline guitar below her armpit and began strumming chords for the parking lot. “We’ll go play across the sea one day. You and me and Baby Blue, making our way throughout Europe, traveling as far as our songs can take us.” She popped up from the bumper, and pecked me on the cheek.

“Okay, I promise,” I said, caressing the side of her freckled face.

She had been like that even on the day we met, and in all the years since, she hadn’t changed a bit.

---

It was after what I thought was the worst day of my life.

I had been booked to play at an abandoned church taken over by a group of hippie anarchists in Virginia. You know the ones, the Food Not Bombs type. I was touring through on my own, just me, my guitar, my cassettes, and my manga collection on a cross-country getaway.

There was also a bigger touring band coming through that night, a twinkly emo heartthrob groupie magnet called Somberseen Run. Complemented with seven members including one banjo and one synth player, they got the coveted third spot out of four, the perfect medium. The second spot went to The Stevie Collins Bachelorette Party, a lighthearted local Fat Wreck Chords style SoCal punk band, the kind nobody ever took much seriously. An older, more seasoned hardcore dive band called Undone were taking the fourth and final spot, since they were the best to drink to, and all the townies would stay for them.

The last was me, taking the first spot that nobody ever wanted. The graveyard spot, we called it. People were always late, especially college students, and if they were there, they were more interested in pregaming or hooking up than watching some ditzy femme cry her way through a few songs on her guitar.

I was so out of it that night, by the second verse of my first song, I’d forgotten all the words. Couldn’t tell one chorus from another. I hadn’t even had a sip of alcohol; it was all nerves, pure and deathly simple. The thing no performer should ever get, and I got them on a night when I needed to shine most of all.

Catching myself as the lyrics stumbled into silence, my hand still strumming on instinct, I started humming the rest of what I could remember of the melody. Slowly, people began to show half-hearted claps, and one dude in a cap who was double fisting two tall boys shouted “It’s okay if it’s your first time, you’ve got this!!”

That hurt even worse than fucking up.

I finished out the rest of my set in shame, playing stripped down versions of every song in my repertoire. It was the worst performance I’d ever given. It was a far cry from the festival stages and opening sets I’d crushed all by myself for huge touring bands like Eagle Fang or The Last Siren, where I had dozens of new fans eating out of the palm of my hand.

I felt a few pats on my back when I concluded the set and was too defeated to even scream at the dudes for touching me. I had never felt more pathetic.

I was on the back steps, letting my silent tears drip like the condensation of the beer in my hand. Everyone had left, so it was just me alone with my sorrows. My other hand was clenched above my eyes like a visor, my thumb massaging the knots in my temple. I didn’t even care that I had to drive later that night.

That was when I felt a pair of fingers brush my shoulder.

I went to jump up and yell, “what the fuck?! Get off me asshole!”, my rage finally boiling over from sadness to anger. When I looked up, I was staring into the baby blue eyes of a freckled tomboy.

“Hey,” she said. “Nice set.”

Her auburn hair had a reddish tint to it that bloomed in the darting spotted streetlights of the night. It cascaded across one eye, partially obscuring half of her face as her pupil peeked between the strands. A slim, inorganic blood red streak of hair cut through the boyish bedhead style she wore. It looked like she’d just woken up from a nap. It looked nice.
It was then I realized, dumbstruck, that I hadn’t responded to her gracious lie of a compliment.

“Oh god, thank you, but no, it was absolutely embarrassing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I forgot all my words. It was horrible, I don’t think I’ve ever faceplanted that hard in a live set before. Not even when I was first starting out.”

“Yeah, you kinda did forget a lot of words there,” she said, my heart dropping with them, “but you were perfectly in tune. You played like a pro.” She sat down next to me on the steps of the church.

“You can’t mean that,” I said, blushing that she’d been listening hard enough to know.

“You sang every note on point. And then the timing with your guitar parts, that’s the kind of rhythmic finger picking you can only get after practicing a lot.”

“Yeah… it definitely took a while to master.” I brushed a lock of hair that was hanging in my face behind my ear.

“So of course it makes sense that you forgot the words. You’re so focused on those changes, you lost sight of some easily memorized words. It’s no big deal. You obviously have talent.”

“Thanks, I guess. I’m not sure if that’s a compliment, but I’ll take it.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“I mean, you just did, but sure. Go ahead. Crucify me.”

“So morbid,” she laughed. “But really, what’s with the pigtails?”

“Do you have a problem with my hair?”

“No no, not at all, I just— they’re an interesting fashion choice. Pink hair, tied up into two pigtails. It’s like, a cheerleader or a schoolgirl or something. Most girls wouldn’t be caught dead wearing something like that on stage.”

“Listen, whoever you are, I don’t know what your fucking game is but I can’t believe you’d make fun of me after the terrible night I had! The fucking nerve of some people!” I shouted, pushing myself up to my feet.

“Wait, wait!”

“What?!”

“No, listen, I just—I’m not good at this whole flirting thing, okay? I was trying to be suave and talk about how your hair is different and I fucked it up, so let me start over. I’m Scarlett. I like your hair a lot. It’s cute.”

“…huh?” I turned back around to face her.

“Most femmes I know wouldn’t wear a hairstyle that eye-catching on stage, they try to avoid guys being creeps as hard as they can. But you, you seem like you don’t give a fuck, like you’re daring them to be a creep to you, just so you can call them on their bullshit. I think that’s pretty fucking cool. I’m sorry if I came off like a creep. I’m new to this whole lesbian thing.”

“You’re new?” That surprised me. I’d been out for five years, and her demeanor had even intimidated me. “You don’t look it.”

“I grew up fast.”

“Well, don’t come off as some fedora-tipping pickup artist next time. You’re too handsome for that.” I was flirting back with her. I couldn’t believe it.

“Thanks for the pointers,” she turned away, looking embarrassed that I’d called her bluff hard enough to turn the tables.

“Trixie. My name is Trixie, by the way. Make a joke about how trix are for kids or call me a silly rabbit, and I’ll cut your tits off and eat ‘em like steaks. I mean it. Second piece of advice, ask a girl’s name before you try to pull your cool guy butch shtick. Might land a little better next time.” I laughed as I placed my hand on her leg—my right hand, the one with the long fingernails that didn’t have to form chords.

“My name’s Scarlett. Some people call me Scar. Take your pick.”

Before I knew it, her lips were on mine. It was a dangerous move, less consent and more of a gamble if it felt anything but mutual. I kissed her back though. If she had asked me, I would’ve said yes yes yes oh please god yes just get me out of this terrible day and let me forget everything. Let me forget who I am let me forget my lines let me forget the town I’m in let me forget it all for just one night. After all, how many times do you come face to face with the lips of a hot butch after the worst set you’ve ever played?

Her fingers walked up my waist, my body shivering under the static heat of her contact. They worked beneath my sweaty crop top. They were calloused, a guitar player’s hands—I could tell from the way they lightly scratched my skin. I tried not to giggle at her inexperience, but I was taken by her passion.

“Hey hey, fastest girl alive, I love your enthusiasm but can we savor the moment here?”

“Sorry, I was just getting excited,” she said, her eyes turned down. She pulled away.

“You weren’t kidding me about your inexperience. That’s okay though. Just be honest.”

I liked the girl, I really did. There was something in the way she blushed, the way she’d approached me, that set her apart even despite her babydyke status. Her words felt real, and my intuition was rarely off. I didn’t sense any malintent. It was a shy passion. Somehow, this handsome girl had gotten my heart beating faster. I wanted to kiss her again.

“Here,” I said, placing my hands on the back of her head, “come back here.”

I kissed against her. She kissed me back, shifting in place at the embarrassment of being called out.

“Hah,” she moaned.

I drew back. A thread of spit stretched out between us, connecting our lips until it was severed as my words. “Use more kisses, draw it out. Build it up, lead me along. Go softly until it all feels like it will boil over. You don’t want to be a premature ejaculator, do you? Here, try again.”

She got back to kissing me, this time with a bit more reserved energy. She took my advice and moved along the side of my face, trailing down my neck. She even licked me once or twice, a feeling that made me want to laugh but I didn’t want to bruise her ego. Besides, her saliva felt nice in the summer air.

Scarlett drew straight lines of neutral tinted lip gloss along the veins of my neck, up and down in a pattern until she grew bold enough to kiss further down to the exposed space above my chest.

“Okay, haha. Now you can go for my tits. You learn quickly.”

“Maybe you’re just a good teacher,” she said, tugging my shirt between her teeth. The sweaty Nine Inch Nails crop top I hadn’t washed in days. She correctly guessed where my nipples were underneath the garment as they pushed upwards to greet her. Her eyes asked me if she could take it off.

I pulled my shirt over my head. The moonlight gleamed against my sweat. “Now you. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Scarlett brought her shirt above her and threw it on the steps beside us. She also wasn’t wearing a bra. I couldn’t wait to feel them. She leaned down into me, pressing me down into the steps of the church as her bodyweight shifted on top of me.

Her hands gripped themselves around my waist as she pushed her face against my chest. I tilted my head back to give her the go ahead. Her hair brushed against the sides of my tits as she kissed my cleavage. I felt a little spark along my spine. She was coming into her own.

She sucked on my nipples like a baby. It felt nice, but I wanted to direct her a bit more. “Try nibbling,” I said, choreographing the scene. I wasn’t disappointed by the prospect; any girl who could take orders as well as she could execute them was well worth her time. Scarlett listened to my request and gently pushed my tits between her teeth and lips—just the right amount of pressure to make me squirm. I liked the subtle pain of it. It wasn’t clear if she was the type who’d be more into that kind of thing, so I shelved that conversation for another time.

Scarlett was kneeling on the ground in front of the steps, my ass hanging off the edge and knees turned up to the sky. Her head hung below my skirt, right between my thighs, her stupid gamer boy hair tickling the silky sides of my skinny legs, almost enough to make me want to scratch—but her hair was surprisingly soft, so it felt less like bristles and more like the fur of a stuffed animal.

“Would that be too far?” she asked.

“No, it’s exactly how it should be.” I leaned down to kiss her forehead, and she blushed. I brought my fingers down and slipped off my panties, my pussy exposed. For all I knew, it might’ve been the first one she’d ever seen up close besides her own. The thought was kinda hot.

I didn’t have to direct her; she went right in for it. When her tongue connected my limbs stretched out, the muscles flexing at the surge. She wasn’t the best I’d ever had, but that was understandable. No one’s first song is the best they’ll ever write. It felt good, the sensation of coming home after a long day. It was a reminder that after all the humiliation I’d been through that night, I was still somehow desirable. Was I just using this girl, or was there something more brewing beneath the casual sex?

Scarlett ate away at my pussy, her tongue digging deeper inside me until it stretched as far as it could go, so she pulled her tongue out and started licking my clit with a muscled motion, her fingers hovering over my vulva to take the place of where her tongue had been. She might not have been experienced, but she certainly had the drive, and I appreciated the dedication. I could tell she was the kind of girl who wanted to make others feel good, and right then, she was succeeding.

“Are you… are you really writing the alphabet on my clit right now…?” I asked.

“Hey, it’s my first time, okay, I heard this works. If you don’t like it, I can leave.” She grinned up at me.

“Are you sure you’ve never done this before? Because that sass was hot.” I placed my hand on the back of her head, grabbing a fistful of that hair I loved so much, and pushed her face further into my pussy until I felt her nose rubbing my clit, her tongue back inside me. I brought a hand down and began fondling her tits as I realized it was the first time since we’d started that I’d really placed my hands on her exposed skin. Her tits were small, petite, but not at all a disappointment. I could tell without seeing that they were perky. Beneath them and around her torso there was some unrefined muscle. So she was a girl who worked out. My kind of muscle butch.

She continued further and further, going faster and faster when I told her. Soon enough, my legs were locking behind her head from the pleasure, trying to pressure her face further against me. She moaned as I did it, and I could feel myself twitch in response. She was so cute and boyish, but yet there was something so womanly about the way she moved. My ankles pressing against each other so hard I swore they would bruise, and I began rubbing them together as she brought me closer and closer to climax. I thought about how she was lapping at me like a dog, and that was the single thought that brought me over the edge, hyperfocused on the beautiful feeling of her tongue as my eyes blurred over.

“Hah, hahh, AHh!” I placed my hands on her shoulders to steady myself as my knees shook from the shock. She stopped licking me, and looked up into my glazed-over eyes. She had this nervous, self-satisfied look on her face. She knew she’d done a good job.

The full moon was low that night. I didn’t know what to say, my breathing becoming a measured pant in the darkness, her heart synced with my own. That was how I took Scarlett’s virginity.

After that, I had invited her to spend the night in the back of my VW Microbus. For optimized touring, I had outfitted it with the smallest twin bed I could find. It wasn’t ideal, as the sun burned down onto the windows and baked the car in the morning, and of course there was no plumbing, but it worked in a pinch. If you took out most of the seats and brought in your own small furniture, it could become a little home of its own.

We were cuddling in the bed, cramped up against each other, when she posed the question to me.

“Have you ever considered having another player play those bass notes alongside you? Y’know, something to prop you up, that way you could focus on more specific melodies and sharper singing instead of dumping all the work on one person.”

“So like, are you asking to join my band?”

“I can play guitar and sing. Think about it, I pluck the chords while you show off. I harmonize with you. See how it goes. What do you think?”

“I’m just passing by tonight, I’m on tour right now.”

“Hun, do you really think I have anything I’d be leaving behind here?”

We stared across each other, and I could tell she was telling me the brutal, painful truth, and that formed the answer in my throat before I could even think about it, let alone weigh the complexities of the repercussions.

---

The worst day of our lives together happened in Templar, Illinois, after a fairly standard show. Not enough turnout, songplaying on autopilot, a little burnt out from making it about halfway through the Midwest on a series of late night drives. It was just some converted coffee house beatnik relic hybrid named Keys overrun by college students, but the gig was fun enough.

After the show, Scarlett and I had ran our bags and guitar out to the van a few blocks away. We doubled back and hung out with the students until the cafe closed, then a bit longer on the stoop. They had wanted to shoot the shit with us and pick our brains a bit. We, having once been in their shoes, obliged them.

When you’re on tour, you get treated like royalty; the kids don’t know just how much you suck. You’re the shining light of their weekend, their excuse to get drunk. Many of them worship your songs, assured that being the biggest fan of an obscure band makes them the most interesting of the bunch.

There was little in the way of parking, so we had parked on a cul-de-sac a few blocks away. On main roads, vans could get vandalized or broken into, especially overnight, but on backwood residential streets, it was normally fine.

We turned the corner to an empty street.

A streetlight shone where our van should’ve been. It flickered, as if it sensed the dissonance in the air. The van was gone.
I screamed out into the sinister suburbia, but no one paid any mind. Templar was a place where people minded their own business. We were left on our own.

Scarlett had a bit more of a level head on her. She rubbed my back, muttering “fucking bastards” under her breath. My first thought was that the college kids who’d stopped us were in on it, somehow keeping us distracted while their accomplices worked on our van, but it was unlikely. Stealing a van requires a lot of resources, either a flatbed or a tow truck.

“You’re freaking out; you need to calm down,” Scarlett said. She was massaging the scruff of my neck as if I were a kitten. I was hunched over in the middle of the street, knees to my chest, hands over my face, sobbing.

“Our life was in there! Our whole fucking life! I moved out of my apartment for this, and so did you! I can’t even think about what we lost.” We were supposed to sleep in there that night. The small twin in the back of our VW Microbus wasn’t desirable, but it was something when no kids wanted to let us crash. I had always been told it was playing with fire to tour in a van with lots of windows. Now, I was reaping what I’d sown.

“We might get it back. You never know. I’ll call the fucking cops now. Ugh. I can’t believe I have to talk to them, but giving the description and license plate won’t hurt. The sooner the better.” She got out her cell phone and dialed the number.

My girl. She was shaking from nerves too, but she was trying to keep it together for me. Always putting on a strong demeanor, as if it would help the helplessness of the situation.

“They’re putting out an all points bulletin. They didn’t seem too confident. But they said we’re lucky we caught them on a slow night.”

“Okay. How considerate of the people who stole our van, to swipe it on a slow night! But where do we sleep? It’s two in the morning. All the kids are gone and our contacts are probably knocked out.”

“Let’s take a walk through town. Maybe we’ll catch a sign of the van. At the very least, we might find someplace to crash.”

---

We walked hand in hand down the three blocks of main street, and there was no inn and no sign of our van. At the end of the stretch, we came upon a huge building, the tallest structure we’d seen in quite some time.

It was a church. Or at least, at some point, people might’ve called it one. It looked abandoned. Stained glass windows were chipped and shattered, with holes from rocks chucked by delinquent kids. The windows that were still in place had a layer of grime covering the images. The dirty dark grey bricks that made up the structure felt more at home in a high fantasy novel than in this speak-nothing town.

The cathedral towered above, at least four or five stories high. It was built in the style of self-important neo-Gothic architecture. As a stone edifice, it gave the appearance of having stood for a thousand years, but it was an obvious lie, a posture of authority through fearful faith. It reminded me of the way Providence’s buildings loomed over the city, as if curling to shield the residents from the sun.

There was a broken fire escape along the side of the building. The crescent moon loomed over us, obscured only by the shallow tide of the clouds.

“You know, we first met at a church,” she said. “Funny how these places keep coming back to us.”

“Yeah, I know. It was the worst performance I ever gave, but I ended up meeting you.”

“Wanna climb it?” she asked me.

“What?! No! Are you crazy?”

“Looks like the nightmare kind of place they’d bring you for conversion therapy. A little fear, a little electroshock!” Scarlett brought both her hands up, extending her index and middle fingers outright, then lunged forward, jabbing me on both sides of my waist. “BZZT!” she shouted as I convulsed under the vibrating, ticklish sensation.

She stepped back and brought her right hand up to her mouth, blew audibly as if her fingers were a smoking gun, then raised an eyebrow at me in a playful smirk.

“Not funny,” I scolded her, trying not to laugh myself.

“Aw, c’mon babe. I was just trying to cheer you up on the worst day of our lives.”

“For all you knew, I could’ve actually been through that.”

“You mean like I was?” she replied.

“…what?”

“Yeah. My parents sent me to Jesus camp over summer. Except this Jesus camp they locked you inside your rooms after dinner, and there were barbed wire fences. I never got electroshocked, but it was threatened as punishment to quite a few girls and a few more rebellious ones who couldn’t play the system wouldn’t come back to their rooms sometimes. The next day in prayer class, they’d be spaced out, staring at nothing, barely able to respond to simple questions. They didn’t know who they were.”

“I didn’t know that about you. Why didn’t you tell me?” I couldn’t believe there were still things I didn’t know, especially things this deep. We had been together for years, but apparently had barely even scratched the surface.

“You never asked. I like to let those memories lie if I can. Makes it easier to lie to myself.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.
“Okay, you’re on,” I said after a long pause. “Let’s climb the fucker.”

“I thought you’d never ask!” She looked genuinely excited.

We hopped over the shallow fence and across the dead grass dotting the field leading up to the structure. The ladder was down, so climbing it was easy—in theory. The fire escape was painted black, though blotches of rust and grime were desecrating it so that when we stepped on it, it breathed a squeak out into the night sky.

We carefully climbed one step at a time, our hands linked for safety. We each held one end of the rail for balance, testing the steps gingerly before moving on to the next.

At one point, a step below me broke, and my foot went down into the air. If my hand hadn’t been in hers, I would’ve been dead.

“You wanna go back?” she asked.

“Are you kidding? We’re more than halfway there. I’m not pussying out now.”

“That’s my girl.”

We finally reached the roof. It was flat except for a broken glass dome towards the rear, where the flying buttresses were. A statue of what I presumed was the Virgin Mary towered above the dome, her head chopped clean off. A dark shit-gold gilded her seductive holy body.

From atop the building we could see all of Templar before us, the rustling black trees swirling below like moss in the ocean. The few lights that were still on in town did nothing to illuminate us on top of the structure. Nobody could’ve known we were up there. We stood atop our own little world.

“You know we have to fuck up here.”

I couldn’t believe I was the one who said it. I had been in such a horribly panicked mood just an hour ago. For me, sex had always been a way of coping.

“Okay, you’re on.” Scarlett stepped forward, her lips on mine as quickly as I’d propositioned her.

She slipped my hand down her denim shorts, inside the front of her boxers. Hairy as it had ever been. Showers were few and far between on tour, and rather than worry about body hair, it was best to just relax in the rare moments you were afforded an hour alone in a bathroom. I didn’t mind at all. I hated hair on myself, but on other women—especially butches—it was so hot.

The sweat smell, the way it sponges up the cum and juices until they rub against the sides of your face, the way the curtains matched the drapes… I drool just thinking about it.

Her fingers crept up my skirt, only to find out I hadn’t been wearing underwear that day.

“You’re a pervert to your core, aren’t you?” She laughed. She brought her hand out from under my skirt and up to her mouth. She reached her tongue out, taking a lick of my wetness. In response, I took my hand out of hers, and did the same. Static crossed between our eyes. I could tell where the heat was headed.

“I mean, it’s really hot out, so I figured why not. Although, now that I guess I don’t own any underwear anymore, I’m starting to regret it.”

“We’ll find a way to busk for some new pairs if we have to. I’m sure we can steal a guitar easy enough.”

“Why not just steal the underwear?”

“I’d rather steal something that will make us money for a while rather than something that covers your ass for a night,” she spat through a playful grin.

“I bet you don’t want my ass covered, huh? Typical.”

With one hand on my pussy, she brought her other hand to pinch the sides of my mouth between her fingers, my lips puckering like a fish. “Bratty tonight, aren’t we?” I used my other hand to swat away hers.

“Bratty, or just dominant?” I shot back with my eyes narrowed.

“You’re not topping tonight,” she said, stern.

“Want to bet? First one to cum’s the bottom? Like always.”

“Ready set go!” she shouted, and the two of us got to work.

When we were doing heavily kinky stuff, I tended to gravitate more towards bottom and Scarlett more towards the top, but when we were having something closer to vanilla sex, all bets were off. Sometimes I’d top, sometimes she. Sometimes we’d fight it out. That was one of those times.

We both wasted no time. We kissed each other aggressively, in a way that was more of an attack than anything else. Those were the rules of the game. First one to cum lost, no holds barred. It was a silly concept, of course, but we always had fun with it and would just lean into whatever the outcome happened to be. It was an excuse for us to both be as forward as possible, to break up the monotony of measured sex.

The both of our hands skipped going for the other’s breasts, knowing the crotch was how the game was won. I had almost went on the outside of her shorts, but decided against it, going full inside her underwear again. She had worked her way up the sides of my sweaty thigh, sticking and smacking together in the hot summer night.

My hands on her pussy, hers on mine. Her fingers felt so good against me as I tried to keep my concentration. My knees began to buckle from the warmth of her fingering me—I could tell I was losing. My butch knew her stuff, she knew my body better than anyone else. To fight back, I ducked harder into her mouth, my tongue full force against hers. She was taken by my energy, and I knew as I felt her hesitation that I’d made the right choice. She liked to be teased with sensual chaos, and I knew it was the kind of play that had the power to bring her to her knees. It had been forever since we’d had a switch fight, and so victory favored whoever was more unwavering.

She bit me back, chomping down as hard as she could on my lips; I was the masochist of the two of us, especially during a makeout. She was gunning for my love of pain, and my knees briefly shook beneath her bite. It felt so good, I wanted her to bite me again, but that would mean giving in, not winning. Sometimes winning the switch fight meant kind of losing. When you were both switches, though, everybody won no matter the outcome. It all came down to pride and play.

Despite the blood rushing to my head at her every touch, I didn’t lose focus. As she finger me, she began slapping my exposed thighs, the smack echoing through the night air. With each slap I let out a yelp, instinctively pushing my cunt into her fingers. She had come a long way in the years we’d been together, a force to be reckoned with.

However, I was the one who’d taught her everything she knew.

In return, I dug my sharp nails into her own thigh. I squeezed as hard as I could, the wince in her voice betraying her tough guy persona. She liked pain too, and I knew how she liked it. Of course, hurting her only turned me on more, my breath growing more lustful as I crushed her skin between my fingers like squeezing out the juice of an orange.

In return, she moved her other hand to grip my ass, her fingers still working my clit. She knew that going for my ass was a surefire way to get me off. I felt a finger circling my asshole under my skirt, a place that if she went, I would definitely buckle and cum. I wanted her to go there so badly, just one touch, just one finger, or maybe two or three or hell the whole fist… but my pride set me straight. I was her teacher; I couldn’t lose. So, I took a desperate maneuver.

I brought both of my hands up behind her shoulders, gripping them as hard and steady as I could. She had a look of surprise across her face as her eyes narrowed, then quickly grew bug eyed as she realized what I was about to do.

“TRIXIE!” she shouted, but I didn’t listen. Jumping up into the air, my fingers latched behind her, and I fell to the ground like a backyard wrestler, taking her along with me. She screamed as she came down on top of me, stunned that I went there. The roof thumped and creaked as it adjusted to our weight. I felt it buckle a bit under us, shifting in a slight concave, but it held.

“Trixie!” she shouted. “This ceiling could’ve come down with us!” I could tell the danger had got her going a bit more.

“All’s fair in love and war, bitch!”

Laughing as I jerked her shoulders to the side, I rolled her next to me and perched on top of her, her back resting on the roof beneath us. She squirmed to try to get away, but she was too slow, and I pinned her wrists down with both my hands as hard I could. I brought my lips down on her mouth, the most dominant I’d gotten in the fight so far. She loved it, I knew she did, and I loved this moment the best, when I could turn the tables on her.

It didn’t last long, though. She was more fit than I was, so she knew how to break out of it. She rocked back and forth, building momentum as her shoulders rolled against the roof. With enough of a jump she rolled me back towards the ground, her on top of me once more. It went like that for a while, the two of us fighting for control, not even trying to fuck each other anymore. We made our way across the dirty roof. her on top, then me, then her on top again. I could feel myself getting bruised a bit from the soft blows, but I didn’t care in the slightest. We’d grown accustomed to the mildewed basement floors of the countless houses we’d crashed in, and were now technically homeless; if anything, it somehow felt like the familiar gutter-grime of home.

Finally, I had her underneath me. She’d tired herself out, but I still had something to prove.

With one hand pinning her arms up above her, I slipped myself back inside her boxers. They were drenched with her juices, and I could feel my heart race with excitement. It was all just what I needed.

When I pressed against her clit, she started to buck up against me.

“Are you trying to hump me right now? Am I winning for once?!” I teased her.

“Try again,” she laughed, and spat up into my face.

It threw me off, and I let up off her wrists for a second. That was all she needed for her hands to wrap around my throat, the killshot that was the second dirty move she’d pulled in less than a minute.

Following her technique, I brought my hand out of her crotch and to her own throat. I squeezed with the same intensity as she, both of our thumbs criss crossing over the other’s neck to apply pressure on the arteries. We mirrored one another like a Queen of Hearts, twin outstretched images of perverse desire. We both looked at our hands around the opposite person’s neck, then up into each other’s eyes.

There was nowhere I would have rather been.

We both let out a laugh into the unforgiving night sky, only for it to be stolen by the whims of the darkness—along with our van, our gear, and our precious guitar.

“I guess it’s a tie,” she said with strained breath. “We’re too good at controlling our orgasms now to have a switch fight this fun. We both know how to hold out.”

“I’m pretty sure you came at one point, you liar.”

“Okay, maybe a little, but you were close too when I grabbed your ass.”

“Prove it in a court of law and then we’ll talk.”

“I wish we had a place to sleep tonight that wasn’t this fucking roof.” She sighed.

“I wish sex could’ve gotten us our van back,” I said.

“Me too.”

“But at least we have each other.”

“Corny, but true. I’ll take it.”

“I love you, cunt.”

“Right back at ya.” She winked at me. This handsome bitch winked at me. I loved her for it.

---

We never did get our van back. It was only one more mystery under our belt out of many that were yet to come. Most of all, I wonder to myself, what happened to our guitar? What happened to Baby Blue?

Who plays her now? Was she scrapped for parts? Does the sticker of the Eiffel Tower still adorn her like a headdress? I wanted to know more than anything. The orphaned teardrop, the casualty of our reckless love.