Archive-name: Working/envelope.txt

Archive-author: Jordan Shelbourne

Archive-title: Pushing the Envelope





Here's something for rec.arts.erotica.  It is, alas, part of a

projected longer work, but I think it stands reasonably well on its

own.  I'm not certain that it can be called "erotica" at this point

but it does contain sex. 



Copyright 1993 Jordan Shelbourne

All permissions reserved except for the right to distribute in

electronic text form across computer networks. 





                          PUSHING THE ENVELOPE



                   Chapter One:  A Question of Etiquette



     Murdock was drunk, and I was listening patiently as he berated

himself for going to a strip club.  "Kim wouldn' understand, y'know?

She was pure when I married her.  I mean, we were *both* virgins,

but....  She's a hell of a woman, Kim is, a hell of a woman.  Takin'

care of the kids, y'know, and the home." He looked around at the bored

factory workers and the equally bored stripper, then leaned forward

conspiratorially.  The effect was ruined when he nearly fell over.

"Only woman I've ever, y'know." He got his elbow on the table to

support himself.  "I mean, you've probably been around, but me, I'm,

well, I'm a small town guy.  Y'know."



     I nodded.



     "I've never cheated on her, but...well, all I'm saying is,

sometimes a guy gets the urge to look.  Kim wouldn' look.  I'm the

only man she's ever...y'know?" He sat there, blinking.  He looked like

he was about to weep from the beauty of his wife's purity. 



     "Why don't we go?" I suggested.



     "One more drink," he insisted.  "It's a big deal.  This'

firs' time Murdock signed with an outta-state comp'ny."



     "Why don't we have that drink at home?" I suggested.



     "Good idea!  Y'meet Kim.  Meet the little woman.  She's salt of

the earth.  Y'r salt of the earth."  I flagged down our waitress before

everyone in the bar became salt of the earth.  Murdock tried to pay,

but I waved him off.  He was the client, and I didn't mind.  It wasn't

my money. 



     We'd come to the bar in his car, and I drove, handling the big

Cutlass clumsily at first.  Murdock fell asleep giving me directions,

but I found his home without much trouble. 



     When I woke him, he made me promise not to tell his wife where

we'd been.  He actually refused to get out of the car until I

promised; I wanted to spit twice and cross my heart.  I helped him

stumble across the lawn with only a minor mishap--he whacked his toe

on a sprinkler head--and I rang the doorbell.  He kept repeating, "Sh!

Shhh!" while he sorted through his keys, leaning against the door. 



     He pitched forward when his wife opened the door, and I wasn't

quick enough to grab him.  He looked up glassily from the floor and

said, "Kim, this's Gil Freeman.  Gil, it's my wife, Kim."



     She sighed and then she looked up at me and the sigh caught in

her throat.  "Hello," she said carefully. 



     I felt the weight of twenty years, but all I said was, "Hello."

Miss Manners, what should I do when I meet a former lover this way? 



                              * * *



     Back in the seventies, during that time after the gas crisis and

before AIDS, there had been a group of us--Meyer, Apple Brown Betty,

the Swordfish, and me--sprinting around the edges of society in

Meyer's beat-up microbus.  It was our own portable commune, our

shelter against the Me Decade.  Meyer was the philosophizer and the

glue, Betty was the perception, the Swordfish was the driving

ambition, and I was the teddy bear.  We travelled place to place,

setting up for a few months while Meyer and Betty created sexual

performance art in their own ways, and the Swordfish and I hung around

for reasons of our own. 



     I remember we were in a park the first time I saw Kim.  The

Swordfish's appetite for carnal matters was legendary, and his taste

ran to women built on the Playboy model, like Kim: large-breasted,

cute, corn-fed.  The only reason I noticed Kim before the Swordfish

was because he had a woman on his lap who had just discovered that his

fly was not closed.  (The Swordfish liked to do it in public places.)



     I thought of Kim as a girl when I saw her, since I pegged her age

at eighteen or nineteen (I was all of twenty-one, legal wherever they

could sell you booze)--and she was walking an Irish setter.  I like

Irish setters.  I left the Swordfish to his tumblebunny and made the

dog's acquaintance.  The girl told me his name was Zeke and hers was

Kim.  I told her mine and we chatted. 



     Kim was eighteen then, fresh from a small city in Iowa, I don't

remember the name, but she was just starting whatever the local

college was.  She was seething with hormones, a sexual cornucopia

waiting to happen.  I brought her back to meet everyone else, and we

waited to see how she'd get along with Betty.  Betty approved, and Kim

stayed with us (or we stayed near Kim) for five or six months, until

we were forced onward by the February blahs and the Swordfish's quest

to fuck a woman whose middle name started with Q (he'd already run the

alphabet through first and last names). 



                               * * *



     It took both of us to get Murdock upstairs and stripped for bed.

He was charmingly shy when it came time to remove his trousers, and

refused to let either of us watch.  Finally he was asleep and we were

downstairs in the kitchen drinking instant coffee. 



     "Well," Kim said.



     "Well," I replied.



     "It's been a long time," she said.



     "Almost twenty years."



     We sat silently, and I compared her with the lithe teenager I'd

known twenty years earlier.  A little thicker and graying, yes.  Still

pretty damned attractive.  She'd changed her hair to a walnut brown; I

rememembered it as chestnut.  She wore it short; that looked nicer on

her than the standard-issue Farrah-Fawcett-do of the mid-seventies. 



     "Do you still talk to them?  I mean, how are Meyer and the

Swordfish and Betty, and all of them?"



     I shrugged and smiled.  "Older.  Meyer's still Meyer.  Betty got

everything lifted and went to Cancun to live the professional Club Med

life. The Swordfish finally got married, six--no, seven years ago."



     She laughed.  "The Swordfish?  My God, I thought he'd never get

married."



     "Neither did he.  I was his best man, and he kept turning back to

me while she walked up the aisle.  He looked like he'd been gaffed."

Kim laughed again.  She still had that nice laugh, from deep in the

throat.



     "What do you do, now?"



     "Sales, of all the damned things.  Envelopes."



     "Oh, God."



     I spread my hands.  "Everybody needs them.  Everybody uses them.

You can't kill people with an envelope."  I shrugged.  "It's a living."



     She nodded.  "And the bills have to be paid."



     "It's shameful," I said, "but I like three squares a day.  Not

like it used to be."



     "God, those were the days."



     "Weren't they, though?"



                                * * *



     I don't always remember the last time with someone, but I

remembered the last time with Kim: She'd participated in one of

Meyer's orchestrated orgies, and she was wrecked, exhausted.  I think

she'd just finished four essays or something; it was February.  I

rescued her when I discovered she'd fainted under two other girls and

the man they were blowing.  I carried her up to the loft where the

bath and the sleeping bed were and I laid her in the tub.  I tried to

undo the nipple clamps, but they were too slippery with come.  Finally

I took the plastic showerhead for washing hair and hosed her down. 



     I unfastened all the clamps--nipples, labia, elbows, ears--and

stripped off her rubber gloves and boots.  I checked her for dildoes

and other insertions, anal and vaginal, and filled the tub with warm

water and bath oil.  Threads of semen floated off her as the water

rose. 



     After a half hour, she was just asleep.  I woke her enough to dry

her and put her in the big sleeping bed.  The sleeping bed was my

rule; I insisted that everyone had to have a place to go where there

was no pressure to perform. 



     I tucked her in and she took hold of my arm.  "Don't go," she

murmured.  I stripped to my underwear and lay beside her, and she

moulded herself to me.  We both fell asleep.  I woke in the night to

find that my shorts were gone and she was astride me, flopped forward

against my chest, her head nuzzled against mine.  Her hips moved up

and down, riding me gently.  I don't know how long we performed like

that, but she slowed and shuddered several times.  Downstairs, I could

hear the susurrus of orgy. 



     At last Kim pushed herself upright and tossed back her head.  She

pumped up and down the full length of my cock, keeping me in only by

my foreskin.  Unlike every other time we'd had sex, she was silent; we

made no sound except for the whispering of moist skin against skin.  I

was almost detached from what was going on, just the instrument of her

pleasure; I watched her breasts move as she rode me.  She gave a long

sigh, and I thought we were finished when she lay down on me.  Her

nipples were cool and soft against my chest. 



     Instead, she tugged gently, and we both rolled over, keeping my

cock inside her, and settled into the old-fashioned missionary

position.  "Hold me," she whispered.  "Come inside me."



     I didn't last very long; after only a couple of dozen strokes I

came with surprising force. 



     We lay there for some time, listening to our heartbeats.  Finally

she kissed me and asked me to be a dear and fetch her clothes.  She

was still wobbly when she tried to dress, so I drove her back to her

residence in her car. 



     Once there, I had no way home but to walk.  Kim invited me to

spend the night, but I sensed that her time with us had ended, and I'm

no good with good-byes.  I scratched Zeke behind the ears and walked

back to the loft. 



     Betty noticed Kim was gone, but she said nothing.  Betty knew

when to be quiet. 



                               * * *



     "Thank you," Kim said.  "For helping with George."  She played

with her coffee spoon.  "He doesn't drink that much, normally.  Only

when he goes off to the strip clubs."



     I smiled.  "He doesn't think you know about that."



     She shrugged.  "You learn things about your husband, and one of

the things you learn is which lies are important."



     "Like your virginity," I said.



     "What?"



     "He said you were a virgin when you got married."



     "Oh.  I hoped--" She started again, explaining: "I didn't mean to

lie.  It just seemed so important to him, and it didn't matter to

me--"



     I held up my hands.  "I wasn't criticising." I stood up.  I had

barely touched my coffee.  "I should go.  It's late, and I've got

clients to see in the morning.



     She seemed grateful, and nervous, and she walked me to the door.

I stopped after I put on my jacket and asked her, "Whatever happened

to Zeke, anyway?"



     She laughed.  "Zeke!  Oh my God, I'd forgotten about Zeke!"  Her

hand went to her cheek.  "He died in his sleep.  He lived a long, good

life.  I miss him still sometimes."



     "He was one of the good ones."



     She said quietly, "So were you."  I was embarrassed, I don't know

why.



     We looked at each other for a long time.  A lot of things flashed

into my mind: the solid rhythmic weight of Kim on my hips; Meyer's

fussy voice as he directed someone; the sound of Kim's laugh; the

musty smell of the tarps in the back of the microbus; all the time on

the road and all the strangers, all the time; how Kim had said

good-bye and I hadn't, and how cold it had been walking home; and her

husband, sleeping upstairs.  Part of me said, What the hell, so I

leaned forward and kissed her good-bye. 



    She returned the kiss, staying with me when I pulled back,

pressing her body against mine.  We didn't break the kiss but stayed

like that.  Her tongue was urgent, forceful.  I could taste coffee and

Amaretto in her mouth.  There was that stirring of my cock, that

awareness, that hadn't been present for the strippers or (it seemed)

for a long time.  I wrapped my arms around her, the warm solid

sweetness of her, and hugged her tightly.  She bit gently on my

tongue, and I withdrew it, her tongue following mine.  I heard, or

thought I heard, a sound from upstairs.  I pulled my head back; she

leaned hers forward to follow but I broke free. 



     I tried a smile.  "Whew."



     She moved away from me and sat on the edge of an end table by the

coat rack.  "How long are you in town?"



     "All month," I told her.  "I'm using this as my base for the

month."



     "Maybe we could have coffee.  A breakfast or lunch or something."



     "Maybe." I could see the clean line of her neck and shoulders,

the weight of her breasts under her blouse, the curve of her calves.

I wondered what she looked like naked, now.  "Kim," I said. 



     "Yes?" she asked.



     I paused.  To be honest, I was listening for noises from

upstairs.  She uncrossed her legs, and I wanted to tear her clothes

off.  Instead, I said, "Kim, I don't play with clients' wives.  It's a

fairness thing."



     "I don't cheat on my husband.  We'll have coffee."  She grinned.

"It's an old times thing."



     I nodded and I left.  I didn't even shake her hand.



                            * * *



     I didn't expect her to call me for coffee, and if she did, I

wasn't going to accept.  Playing around with a client or a client's

wife is trouble.  But in my hotel room the next night, I found myself

thinking about her.  I flipped through channels on the television,

discovered I was seriously thinking about the porn movies, and grabbed

the Yellow Pages phone book off the nightstand.  I opened it to the

Escorts section, then shut it again. 



     Damn it, I didn't want a pro.  And I didn't want to go to the bar

and sift through the teases and the tarts.



     Finally, I picked up the phone and called Betty in Cancun; I

didn't know what time it was there.  She picked up the phone on the

fourth ring.



     "Hey, Betty," I said.



     "Gil?"  Nice to know she still recognized my voice.  "Where are

you?"



     I told her.  "Betts, I hate to do this, but I need a favor."



     I heard her murmuring to someone at her end, and there was a

rustling sound.  I heard a door shut.  "I sent Marco to get some K-Y.

He's been desperate to get into my ass."



     "Hope I'm not causing any problems."



     "No, it was time I said yes anyway.  What's your problem,

sweetie?"



     I told her about Kim, and said, "Betts, I'm lonely.  Who do we

know in town?"



     "For a good therapeutic fuck?"  Long silence.  "You can't glue a

broken heart with jism, Gil.  You just can't."



     "My heart's not broken, Betts.  I just don't have the patience

for the bar scene tonight, and I can't put a hooker on the company

card." She sighed.  "Please," I said. 



     She sighed again.  "Renee Parks.  You be nice to her," Betty

told me.  "Remember there's two of you in bed."



     "You're starting to talk in platitudes, Betts." She grumbled and

gave me Renee's phone number. "Thanks," I told her.  "And hey--don't

be a tight-ass."



     "That'd spoil Marco's fun."



                            * * *



     Renee was blonde and slim and handsome in blue stretch pullover

and black denims.  After we ate at a nice Thai place, we went back to her

place and chatted.  She worked as a property assessor and taught

fitness classes three times a week.  She'd met Betty at Club Med a few

years earlier.  "I still write Betty sometimes," she said.  "Well, I

haven't written for a year I guess, but it still counts if I mean to,

doesn't it?"



     "I think so," I told her.  "I don't see Betty very often, but I

think of us as friends."  



     "Uh-huh.  Some people, you know them for years but you never know

them.  Others, you meet them and you've known them all your life." I

agreed.  Renee made a toast--"To friends"--and we drained our glasses.

She got up to pour more drinks: another daquiri for her and another

club soda for me. 



     "How come you don't drink?" she asked.



     I shrugged and brushed my fingers against hers as I took the

glass from her.  Her fingers were startlingly warm; the glass was cold

and slick with condensation.  "Used to have a problem with it.  So I

gave it up."



     Renee sat next to me.  "I know how that goes.  I had a boyfriend

for a while, claimed I was a sex addict.  So I gave it up."



     "Really?"



     "Yes," Renee said.  "I gave him up right then." She had a big

wide smile, lots of teeth.  "My problem with booze," she said, "is the

calories.  You know how many calories there are in three daquiris?"

She paused meaningfully.



     "No," I told her.  "How many?" Her leg was firm and muscular,

solid against mine.  I could still leave; I didn't have to sleep with

this woman.  On the other hand, that was why I was here. 



     "A lot," she said, still smiling.  "Thousands." And that was the

cue. 



     "Thousands?" I gave her a grin and a wink.  "You'll have to work that

off."



     Renee's smile got bigger and she leaned forward.  "I thought

you'd never ask." Her eyes were mismatched, I noticed: one blue and

one hazel.  She closed her eyes to kiss me.  I leaned into the kiss,

ran my fingers along her spine to the nape of her neck, stroked her

behind the ears.  She moaned softly into my mouth as her tongue

explored.  I liked the way she smelled. 



     Renee shifted her weight and pressed against me.  I fell

backwards onto the couch.  "That's okay," she said.  She scraped a

fingernail along my fly before opening my pants.  My cock was starting

to swell, and with one warm finger she pulled it free.



     Her mouth was warm and liquid over the head.  She sucked my cock

into her mouth, playing with the foreskin until my cock was too large

and too stiff for that.  She bobbed up and down, not deep-throating me

but tasting me and exploring my cock with her tongue.  I fumbled with

her top, pulling it up but not pulling it off, unwilling to break the

marvellous connection between her mouth and my cock. 



     "My God...." I murmured.



     She lifted up her head and smiled at me.  "You like?"



     I brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen across her eyes.

"I like very much."



     "Never had a guy who wasn't circumcised, before.  I like it." She

wrapped her small hard hand around my cock and pumped slowly a couple

of times.  She bent down again and licked the tip.  "I hope you don't

come too soon."



     "I'll do what I can," I told her, and pulled off her top.  Her

breasts were small and conical with dark and compact nipples.  I

cupped one breast in my hand; the nipple slipped between two fingers

and I squeezed it gently.  She sighed and closed her eyes for a

moment, then tugged on my pants.  We spent a moment sorting out

clothing, and suddenly I was naked and Renee was wearing only her

jeans. 



     I stood with her and we embraced, touching each other along the

lengths of our bodies, the head of my cock pressed against the base of

her sternum, and we kissed some more.  I traced her jawline with my

tongue, sucked her earlobe, and blew in her ear.  She shivered and

reached for my nipples.  She pinched and fondled them until they were

as hard as her own.



     Still holding her tightly against me, I slid down her body,

kissing and nipping warm tender flesh.  I took one hard nipple into my

mouth and swirled my tongue around it, then licked the pebbled tip of

the other, then blew gently on the first one again.  I nipped at the

underside of one breast and circled her navel with my tongue.



     I undid the button of her jeans and pulled; there was a loud

tearing noise.  "Sorry," Renee said.  "Velcro.  My zipper broke, and I

thought I'd try--"



     "I like it," I told her.  "It lets me get"--I pulled down her

jeans--"*here* that much faster." Her underpants had a floral pattern,

and her pubic hair had been trimmed short and shaved to a narrow

strip.  I mouthed her mound, tasting her through the cotton. 



     "Don't," she said, and skinned off her panties.  "Don't eat me

yet, Gil.  I come so hard I'm no good for anything else.  I want you

to fuck me first, then you can make me come." She took hold of my cock

and began to walk backwards, pulling me towards her bedroom.  "I want

this cock in my cunt.  I want you to fuck me hard with this lovely

stiff cock." She giggled as she fell backwards onto the bed, her legs

spread.  "Or you could fuck me stiff with this lovely hard cock."



     I shuffled forward on my knees.  "I'm going to fuck you, lovely,

with this stiff hard cock."  I placed the head of my cock between her

swollen lips and thrust forward, sliding my cock along the length of

her lips, wetting it.  She was very wet.  I thrust again, and again;

she moaned each time my cock rubbed her clit.



     "Fuck me," she said.



     I pushed the head down so it was at her entrance and I thrust

again.  She was so wet the head popped in easily.  She gasped.  I

pulled back slightly, feeling my foreskin slide, and thrust again,

pushing myself halfway into her.



     "Oh god," she said.  "Oh god oh god." She was panting, and her

eyebrows were knit together.  "Fuck me--" She squeezed her eyes shut. 



     I pushed a third time and sank my cock almost all the way in.

With the last thrust, I was buried in her, my pubic bone pressed

heavily against her clit, my cock engulfed in her warmth and wetness. 



     And a funny thing happened: Renee came.  She gasped and then

forgot to breathe; her arms and legs spasmed and her hips thrashed

once, twice, sliding down and up my cock.  I froze.  I'd never had a

woman come with so little cause before. 



     Renee tried to speak but all that came out was a little mewling

sound.  I adjusted my weight and stroked my cock in and out.  She gave

a few gasping breaths and then opened her eyes.  After another moment,

she focussed on me.  "Oh Jesus.  Oh, Gil...I've never...your cock is

just....  Oh God."



     I withdrew almost all the way; she grabbed my ass and tried to

keep me in.  I began to tease her with just the head,

in-out-in-out-in-out and she gave a little grunt each time the head

popped in, a little catch each time it pulled out.  Her fingers

clamped tightly on my ass and I suddenly drove my full length into

her, then all the way out, long hard fast strokes.  She rotated her

hips, thrusting back at me, and suddenly she came again. 



     We tried a half-dozen positions before she was too exhausted to

move, and finally she just lay there and moaned, "Please...I

can't...." She looked so weak and spent that I didn't have the

heart to just keep pumping until I came. 



     I lay beside her while she dozed.  I felt tired.  Unsatisfied.

Frustrated and used.  Distantly amused that she had used me instead of

the other way around.  After an hour she woke up and traced a finger

along the side of my face.  "Hi there," she said. 



     "Hi."



     "That was...incredible.  I mean, it was never like that before.

Not even on drugs or anything."



     "I'm glad."



     She reached down for my cock and began to play with it.  "It's

not even that *big*.  Sorry, I don't mean that the way it sounds, it's

not small, it's even bigger than average, but it's not huge. I've had

really big cocks and I didn't come like *that*." She cupped my

balls in her hand and gently probed my asshole with one finger.  "I

don't suppose you could leave it when you go?"



     My cock was starting to get hard again; after all, I hadn't come

yet.  "I don't think so.  You'll just have to take advantage of it

while it's here."

     

     Renee was all lean body and eager flexibility.  I went back to

the hotel at dawn, exhausted and still frustrated. 



     When Kim phoned two nights later, I said yes.



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