Chapter 11
When we pulled into the driveway Zeke said, "Now what?"
I asked Owl, "What's the matter?" There was a man sitting in a new Volvo ahead of us in the driveway.
He said, "It's the landlord."
Zeke said, "Rent is due-was due yesterday."
He twisted around to Robin. "How much did we take in?"
She opened a small zip bag hanging from a shoulder strap and handed a handful of bills. "Seventy-four dollars."
I felt good about that total, because I had drawn customers with my singing, and had personally sold sixteen dollars worth of our merchandise.
We all got out of the bus. Owl took over the task of carrying Robin. I dragged out her wheelchair.
Paul and Cheryl had parked by the curb out front.
The landlord was a fat, middle-aged man who wheezed when he struggled out of the Volvo. "Mr. Belkin, Mr. Bel-kin. ... "
Zeke added to the jewelry sale money with some from his wallet. "Mr. Greelen, here's the rent. Sorry I wasn't able to come by your office yesterday."
"Mr. Belkin, I've been waiting two hours, and I took a look inside this property. It doesn't give you any right in the lease to run a boarding house. You've diminished the value of the property with all that painting, that weird decoration inside and out."
"Making it livable. Art is a good thing, Mr. Greelen."
"For museums, Mr. Belkin! Not for rented houses!" He watched us as we piled out of the Volksbus and started for the porch with our things. "Are all these children living with you?"
"They're not children, Mr. Greelen." Zeke was mocking him, but not so obviously that the man realized it.
"I don't know now..." He watched us. "Be very difficult to rent the house if you leave it in this condition. Have to have painters in. ... "
"If we leave we'll leave it as we found it, Mr. Greelen."
"Well, that's what you say ... Got some complaints from your neighbors, too, saying you play your radio all night ... hippies coming and going at all hours. ... "
"We'll be more quiet."
"I'm very close to asking you to leave, Mr. Belkin." The fat landlord examined with distaste Zeke's button-festooned vest and old, gray, baggy, rope-belted pants.
"Let me ask you this, Mr. Greelen: How much is the selling price of this house?"
I didn't hear any more. Owl and Robin and I went inside. Zeke had given Owl the front door key.
A few minutes later Zeke backed out of the driveway to let Mr. Greelen out. When he came in he said, "Safe for another month."
I asked, "Are you really thinking of buying this house?"
"No. It's falling apart. Eventually we'll have to make the move to the mountains, or far out into the country."
Rill nodded. "Where we can be free."
Zeke said, "We'd have to set up a subsistence farming economy. Completely different from our life here."
Sparrow said, "Okay with me. Pioneers did it."
Rill and I went into the kitchen and started supper. Sparrow helped Paul and Cheryl unload part of the stuff from their car. They stored most of it in Sparrow's room. There was an implicit understanding that they would take over Blackbird's room.
Owl helped Zeke carry in the trays of jewelry and things.
After supper wash-up-and Cheryl helped us without being asked, a very good sign, I thought-I went upstairs and found Owl lying on the bed with a sketch pad.
He didn't want to talk. He mumbled, "Leave me alone, will you, Lark? I've got a design I want to work out?"
"Okay." I didn't feel put-down or rejected. He needed to be alone a lot when he was drawing and painting. I went downstairs and played the stereo, talked with the others, and wondered with the others if Blackbird had been caught. I got to know Paul and Cheryl better. Cheryl's white blonde hair fascinated me. It was beautiful. I could see it wasn't dyed. I was very conscious of my own fake honey blonde. The roots were just starting to show brown.
I confessed I wasn't natural to Rill and Robin in Robin's room. And I said, "I don't think it would be honest to dye it back to my natural color, either. That would be too artificial and fake in a different way. I'm just going to let it grow out and people can think what they want for a year."
Robin said, "You could cut it short. There wouldn't be that much to grow out, then."
Rill said, "But Lark Wants to show people she is free. She wants the growing out to be a badge. She wants people to know she is rejecting the artificial life."
I looked at Rill with new respect. She had cut right through to my true motives. That had been a long speech for her. I hugged her and felt the warm softness of her breasts and the hard thrusts of her nipples through the sweatshirt, and through my own blouse. I'd had to take off my sweater in the bus because of the red paint on it.
I said, "It'll be a constant reminder, too, of what I was, and of the plastic life I left, every time I look in a mirror."
Around eleven I made sandwiches for everybody. Then I went upstairs with some for Owl and Zeke. Owl was at his easel, painting, using the brush technique. He looked up. He smiled. "Thanks. Could you bring some coffee up? I'm going to go all night."
I looked at what he was doing-a picture of myriad, intertwining vines with blue leaves and chartreuse flowers, and a naked boy and girl in the vines, partially revealed. It was going to be a marvelous picture. I got a creepy feeling in my spine just from seeing it one tenth completed.
I kissed him. "You're a genius! Coffee will be right up!" Then I went down the hall to Zeke's room. It was open so I went in. He was lying on the low Hollywood bed, reading a book titled "The Naked Ape.". I held out two wrapped sandwiches. "Cheese."
"Thank you." He accepted them.
"I'm going to bring up a pot of coffee for Owl. He says he's going to paint all night. Do you want some, too?"
"Yes, please." Then he grinned, because Rill came in just then with a pot of coffee and two cups. He said to her, "Lark said Owl is going to paint all night." Then he asked me, "Would you like to sleep with us?"
"Oh, yes!" It would be crowded on the double for three, but I didn't care. It was a further acceptance into the tribe.
Zeke asked, "Will you make love with us?"
"Of course." There was no hesitation. I admired both of them tremendously, and was curious, too. Whatever happened I knew it would be gentle and good.
Zeke said, "Come back when you are ready, then."
I nodded and left their room. I went downstairs, got some coffee for Owl and brought it up to him.
He was deeply immersed in the painting when I entered. I put the pot and mug on a table next to his easel. I watched him paint for a moment, then said, "I'm going to sleep with Zeke and Rill tonight. They asked me."
"Umm. Good. You'll dig what Rill does for you."
"What's that?"
He smiled and kissed me. "Go have a ball" He turned back to his painting and I no longer existed for him in the room.
I went down to the bathroom and took a bath. Then I came up, stripped, put on one of Owl's shirts, and walked naked in it down the hall to Zeke's room. The door was ajar. I went in.
Zeke was still reading. Rill was naked to the waist, her hands on her breasts, caressing, listening to a transistor radio through an earpiece.
Zeke said to me, "Close the door, Lark."
The privacy signal. A tiny trickle of scaredness dripped into the pit of my stomach. I shut the door and walked to the low double bed. I sat beside Rill and didn't know what to do or say. I watched her stroke her nipples. She seemed to enjoy it so much! I wanted to suck on her nipples again and give her pleasure.
She looked at me and took the radio listening plug from her ear. She turned off the transistor radio and put it on the floor. She looked at Zeke. She tentatively caressed his bare chest, for he no longer wore his vest.
Zeke said, "Two pages. I'll join you two then.
Rill smiled and opened her jeans. She did not wear panties. I watched her thick triangle of mahogany-red pubic hair come into view ... and her long thighs....She is a beautiful woman, physically as well as spiritually.
Rill kicked her jeans off with a happy, childish, exuberant movement. She laughed as they flipped through the air and landed on a shelf of books behind the bed.
Then she opened her arms to me. I quickly unbuttoned Owl's shirt I was wearing and slipped it off. I tossed it away, too, and found myself giggling as it settled onto a shaded, unlit lamp on the floor nearby.
I was naked, too. I crawled into Rill's arms and we kissed. Her mouth was marvelously warm and soft and sweet. It was a loving mouth, an accepting mouth, a giving mouth. Her lips yielded and opened and seemed to enclose mine in sweet, erotic movement and sensitivity. We both closed our eyes. Out bodies melted together, soft flesh against softness, heat against heat ... .
I was too conscious for a few seconds, of Zeke, barely inches away, reading his last page. And a trigger up-tight word-lesbians-popped into my mind, then was dismissed, because Rill and I didn't fit that mold. We were giving love, accepting love, and we were not exclusive. It simply didn't matter that she and I were both women. We were tribe. Square world categories and judgments weren't accepted.
I was like an infant in its mother's arms, yet I was becoming aroused by the kiss and the soft body and the soft hands on my back that moved slowly to my hips, and buttocks and thighs.
The kiss continued, and became tongue flicking against tongue in the hot cavity of my mouth. The exciting contact generated a subtle body electricity that sparkled its way to my breasts and made them achy with want, and to my womb where a sweet tension was born, and erotic need for completion.
Rill's mouth was a seething, tonguing, moist pit of pleasure that I couldn't abandon. I heard myself moan and heard her answering moans.
I was enjoying her hands on my body and wanted to caress her, too, but could only stroke her left hip and long flank. I heard Zeke turn a page, then close his book. I opened my eyes and saw him put the book aside and begin to untie the rope that belted his old gray pants. I wondered what he would do ... what he would want, then didn't care. He was good and he wouldn't hurt me.
I closed my eyes and gave myself to Rill's wonderful mouth. I tried to imitate her lip activity, her tongue movements. What she did wasn't deliberate skill or obvious, obtrusive technique. It was completely natural, open, uninhibited loving.
I was aware of Zeke's movements, then felt another hand on my body, moving on the inner surfaces of my thighs, and I knew it was his hand, and I shivered and opened my legs to let him reach my center. My vaginal lips were wet and willing.
Zeke kissed my back, my shoulder, pushed my hair aside and kissed my neck as I was submerged in Rill's mouth. His fingers touched my crotch, tantalizingly traced the sensitive outer contours of my pussy. Pussy is a better word than the medical terms, and better than the crude ones. It was a happy, smiling, joyous sound and emotional color for me.
I was trembling. Rill knew I was aroused and knew Zeke was touching me. She moved her tongue deep into my mouth in a slow imitation of intercourse. Zeke dipped a finger into me and sent it deep. I was slippery; ready. I involuntarily pushed against his hand to send the finger deeper. Then he slid in a second finger, and a third. I was filled, at least halfway, and more excited than ever. He seemed to twist his fingers in me, to work his hand in a corkscrew motion, and then his thumb came to my hard clitoris in a slippery, circular caress that caused me to inhale sharply and open my thighs wide.
The combination of his moving fingers and thumb, and Rill's mouth and tongue, was more than enough to make me come. I couldn't get enough air through my flaring nostrils. I had to tear my mouth free of her mouth. I whimpered, "Ohh ... Ohh..." as the pleasure mounted in a blazing, honeyed fire in my body, and then I gasped as the climax hit and seemed to ripple my insides with waves of intense pleasure.
A moment later I reflexively tightened my thighs on Zeke's hand and he knew I wanted him to stop the plunging, twisting movement. His hand withdrew and I relaxed on the softness and warmth of Rill's body, with her arms still around me.
I whispered, "Thank you ... It was wonderful." I kissed Rill in gratitude and I was smiling, only a little with embarrassment. I turned to Zeke and kissed him, too. I saw he was naked, too, and had a white, thin, bone-like penis in erection, about five inches long, and was circumcised. His body from the waist down was stark white, in sharp contrast to the deep tan of his chest, arms, neck and face. His legs were skinny and there was a subtle oldness about the skin-and the hair on his testicles was gray. But I didn't care.
His kiss was strange, until I realized he had taken out his teeth. But it didn't repel me. I found it fascinating. He said, "You enjoy pleasure well, and you respond quickly. That's good."
I said, "I'm kind of a nympho, I think."
"No, you know better than to talk that way. You're young and healthy and sexually awakened. That's good. The square world thinks an awakened girl is oversexed and evil. Don't let that sick, anti-sexual bias control your self-image."
"I won't."
He fondled my breasts.
I wanted to give him pleasure, and Rill, too. I saw she was caressing herself again. Her big, teat-like nipples were fully extended as she twisted and rolled them between her fingers. Her breasts seemed more full and round, beautifully large and contoured.
I put my hand on her mound. Her eyes opened and she shook her head.
Zeke said, "She doesn't like to be touched there. Only on her breasts, and her nipples most of all."
I asked, "Don't you have intercourse?"
Rill shook her head. She smiled. She said, "I want to be sucked." She cupped her breasts with her hands and offered them to Zeke and me. "This is all I want. I do the rest."
Zeke smiled and said to me, "Let's make her happy." He moved to the other side of Rill and took her right breast in his hands. He sucked the long nipple into his toothless mouth.
I started, licking her left breast, especially the puffed areola, and the hard, finger-like nipple.
Zeke was sucking hard at her. Rill began to tremble. I took "my" nipple into my mouth and sucked as hard as I could, even scraping the sensitive flesh with my teeth a little.
Rill's trembling increased. Her breathing deepened. Then I half saw, half felt her hands move to her pussy. I was able to turn my head a little and watch. The middle finger of her right hand worked between her lips down there to the first knuckle and obviously moved in fast little circles on her clitoris. Her hips began to move sensuously. She began to pant. She began to pluck at her clitoris and I saw it swell outward like a miniature penis, a pink swelling with a small, darker pink knob the size of her fingertip.
Then she actually took her clitoris between thumb and forefinger and began to masturbate like a boy.
I was astonished. I hadn't dreamed a woman's clitoris could get that big, or could be handled that way without hurting. But she was very wet and slippery there and her fingers moved on her clitoris with blurring speed.
Rill gasped, "Suck ... SUCK!"
Zeke and I sucked her nipples as hard as we could. A few seconds later she gave an agonized "AHHHH..." and thrashed and flopped around while we tried to keep on sucking. Her fingers kept on rubbing her clitoris at a fantastic speed.
She cried out, "ZEKE!" and her voice keened high as the orgasmic pleasure sharpened to the pain threshold. Then her hand stopped and she went limp.
Zeke and I stopped mouthing her nipples. Rill lay gasping, mouth open, eyes closed, her breasts rising and falling in high surges. Muscles in her inner thighs were twitching. Her belly spasmed every few seconds.
Zeke kissed her and smiled and stroked her hair.
I put a kiss on her belly. She smelled musky and sweaty. I asked, "Can you make it like this very often?"
She nodded. "With two sucking ... it's wonderful."
Zeke said, "I envy you girls. I'm down to once a night. And not every night at that."
I had guessed that since Rill wouldn't allow intercourse, that meant she went down on him. I felt I owed him something, and I wanted to show my love for him. So I said, "Let me." I leaned over Rill and kissed his belly, near the fringe of his gray pubic hair and trailed my tongue through the curly fuzz, and up the still-hard white bone of his penis. He smelled and looked clean I had no hesitation in licking around the narrow, circumcised glans.
Rill said, "She is one of us. She is tribe."
I said, "I love you. Both of you."
"We love you." Rill caressed my breasts as I knelt over her and licked Zeke. Then she said, "Let me move ... " She crawled from between us.
Zeke moved to the center of the bed. He said, "I take a long time."
"I don't care." I knelt between his open legs and licked his testicles. I was doing all kinds of things I'd never done before, little things that occurred to me, that I promised myself I'd try on Owl, too, the next time we made love.
Rill watched me as I took his testicles into my mouth and sucked them. I wondered if she resented me doing it. I closed my eyes and licked his penis again, and finally took it into my mouth. It wasn't salty at all, as Owl's frequently is, but was simply rubbery and hot in my mouth, and much smaller than Owl's.
I sucked Zeke with all the skill and enthusiasm I possessed. But he said, after a minute, "Slow down, Lark. You'll get tired too soon."
I did as he wished. He knew best what he needed and liked. I knelt comfortably between his spread legs and rested my arms on his hips and belly and settled into a slow up and down motion with my head. My lips were tightly compressed on his thin penis, and I was able to take all of it down to the base.
Minutes passed. I heard Rill moving on the bed. Then I felt her hands urging me to raise my buttocks. And Zeke said, "She wants to give you her mouth, Lark. Lift your rear."
I obeyed. I felt Rill sliding her head under me, resting the back of her head on my lower calves, and I opened my thighs as far as I could within the limits of Zeke's opened legs.
Rill's hands were still on my buttocks. I felt her urge me down. I lowered and felt her face fit itself against me. She wriggled a bit further and her breath was hot and ticklish and breezy on my pussy. I was sitting on her upper chest.
It was a weird situation. Sort of ultra-sophisticated and wild. I was a little bit shocked. Sucking Rill's nipple with Zeke while she masturbated was one thing, but this was ... too elaborate and technical, I guess, and too new. But I didn't stop her, and I didn't stop sucking Zeke.
Zeke must have sensed what I was thinking. He stroked my hair and said, "She wants to give you pleasure, Lark. This isn't degrading or degenerate. It's only different from what you've known. Accept it. Enjoy it."
I made an "umhmm" sound and nodded my head. The truth was that sucking him had made me want another orgasm, and as Rill started licking me, I was eager for it to continue.
Rill was fantastic. Her mouth took my inner surfaces and her tongue flickered like impossible velvet lightning in my vagina, and over my quickly distended little clitoris.
I began moving greedily against her mouth, and simultaneously sucked faster and faster on Zeke's penis. He didn't stop me. I became involved in the interplay of eroticism of my mouth and the incredibly delightful sensations I received from her mouth.
I could feel, too, that Zeke was near. His stomach was tense under my arm and hands. His breathing was faster, matching mine. I was glowing, just about there, hanging in mid-heaven, working my pussy for more tongue, more of the pleasure, wanting blindly to achieve release, yet wanting to enjoy this ecstatic limbo a while longer....
But Zeke was going. I heard him panting and felt his hips thrust his penis hard into my mouth. He was more stiff, a little longer, and there was a tiny sensation of vibration in the rigid flesh. I bobbed my head faster for him and pressed my lips to the base of him and worked my tongue and forgot for a few seconds the glorious sensation in my own body as he jerked in my mouth and spurted a few drops of thin fluid.
I was vaguely aware of a faintly soapy taste as I sucked feverishly. But then my own orgasm swept into my brain like a giant fist closing and squeezing out all other knowledge, all other perceptions.
I knew Rill had both hands on my buttocks and was forcing her mouth tighter and tighter to my spasming center. Her tongue was driving me crazy. I was gasping raw pleasure sounds around Zeke's penis in my mouth. Then I had to let it slip out because I was afraid I'd bite it. I was going out of my skull. Rill's mouth and tongue didn't stop! I reared back on my haunches-on her chest-and with shaking hands pulled her head tighter to me. My fingers dug into her scalp. I was sobbing with the continuing ecstasy ... it was pure rapture, and it was draining me, using up all my nervous energy, I couldn't stand it and yet I wanted it to keep blazing on and on. ... "
Finally my clitoris was too sensitive and I had to fall away.
We kissed each other, all three of us, and talked, and I opened up to Zeke and Rill and told them things I hadn't even told Owl. Secret hopes and fears and opinions ... .
Later Rill wanted us to suckle on her nipples again and we did and she rubbed herself to another intense orgasm. And Zeke went down on me and I went off again with Rill sucking one of my breasts ... .
It was all good. It was all right and loving and honest and healthy. I felt wiser and more whole and a better person when we finally drifted off to sleep, side by side, under the patchwork blanket. I loved them more, and they moved me more. We had shared pleasure and thoughts and were closer because of it.