It takes a good long time before Lumi reemerges. Man, she must have had a lot of sperm to rinse out. Georg and I don’t talk. Now and then we smile at each other as a sort of displacement activity. With butterflies in my stomach and heat emanating from inside me, I take off the sweater I have on over my dress. Lumi finally comes in. She’s wearing just underwear and a bra, one that consists only of a wire frame, with no cloth
hiding the breasts. Good for her. Cool. She’s also left her shoes in the other room. She stands there barefoot and laughs.
“Who are we starting with tonight?”
“With my wife.”
She sits next to me on the bed, and my husband leans back and makes himself comfortable. He’s excited. He knows he’s about to see the ultimate lesbian show. Lumi and I know what is expected of us. She holds my hands and kisses me on the mouth. First with her lips closed, then more and more open, and wetter. She has nice breath. I’m pleased. I close my eyes, breathe deeply, and try not to think of my mother, who is watching us—along with the feminist establishment in the person of Alice Schwarzer—and shaking her head disapprovingly.
Here we go. With my right hand I touch her soft brown throat. I run my hand down to her décolleté, one breast, the other breast. Then both of my hands are on her breasts. You never have to worry that you’re taking things too fast with a prostitute. There’s no such thing as too fast. I softly roll her nipples between my pointer finger and thumb. Very gently. So I don’t hurt her the way my husband accidentally hurts me sometimes. I can’t get over how soft her skin is and how good she smells. That alone makes the money and the trip here worth it. She lifts up the bottom part of my dress and feels and then sees that I have garters on.
“Oh, nice,” she says somewhat muffled into my mouth. Our lips stay touching the entire time. We’re getting wetter down below. Her hand wanders down to my crotch. She doesn’t dally very long before starting to rub my clitoris through my underwear. She does it elegantly with her outstretched middle and pointer finger. I’m throbbing harder and harder; I’m so horny
it nearly hurts. I look over at my husband through half-closed eyes. We’re doing this for him—I think that’s clear to both of us. He’s pulled out his cock and is holding it tightly in his hand, rubbing up and down in slow motion. The rush has begun. Everything is permitted. I squeeze her breasts. She’s already pushed my underpants aside with her finger. Everything is totally wet, and I feel humming and pulsing between my labia. With her other hand she gestures that I should take off my dress. I let go of her beautiful breasts, pull my dress over my head, and, like in a movie, am careful to shake out my hair afterward the way you do when someone is watching you undress. I kneel on the bed stretching upward, upper body stretched out, thighs stretched out, upright. She kneels in front of me the same way, and together we practically push my husband out of bed. I keep looking to see what he’s doing. He’s still doing the same thing, smiling and masturbating. It’s that easy to make him happy. It’s fun for him to watch me and Lumi. But what I’m pretending to do for show is also actually fun for me.
Lumi’s stomach touches mine. That’s how close together we are kneeling now. We kiss the entire time, on the lips, on the neck, on the face. And our hands are all over each other. I squeeze her ass cheeks hard, as hard as I can. Suddenly I feel Georg’s hands. He is fumbling around with my hands and her ass. He moves from the edge of the bed so he’s behind Lumi. He lies flat on his stomach and kisses her ass. I can see as he pulls her cheeks apart and he licks right between them. I can hear the smacking noise, too. We stay in each position for a few minutes, then switch around. Everyone always has to have something to do. With your hands, your tongue, your genitalia. Lumi is fastidious about uninterruptedly rubbing my clitoris.
I can hear smacking sounds down there—I’m producing so much fluid.
She lays me on my back and jumps up giggling. She asks what we think of sex games. We say yes to everything she suggests. She pulls a very expensive-looking metal sculpture out of a drawer next to the bed. She licks my vagina a little and then my asshole, preparing for the pricey toy. I can feel how she tries to move vaginal fluid from the front to the back with her tongue. Of course, vagina mucus is far better lubrication for anal than spit—the water in spit just grips everything. She twists the metal sculpture so the two acornlike knobs on it are facing in the same direction and then slides one into the front and one into the back. It’s cold at first, but feels great. She pushes the two ends in farther and I sing silently in my head:
Everything has an end, except a sausage which has two
. Lumi continues to lick my clitoris the whole time.
I relax completely, spread out my arms, look up at the ceiling, and I no longer care where my husband is inserting himself in her. I can’t help laughing inside about how cool we are, about how fearful I used to be, and about how I’ve managed to silence Mother and Alice Schwarzer. I now am nothing more than my clit and my lust. Nothing can embarrass me; I’m not trying to maintain control; go with the flow, Elizabeth. When can you really do that these days? I’m on vacation in the middle of town. We try out every position, fingers disappear into every hole. I take the stoppers out of me once in a while but quickly shove them back in. Everything is allowed—except one thing. Georg will not stick his cock into Lumi and will not come inside her. I’ve told him a thousand times: “Go ahead, stick it in, man. Why wait. You want to, so go ahead, goddamn
it.” He just won’t. He refuses. He just doesn’t want to put his cock inside a prostitute. I guess I don’t have to understand. After he and I have extensively explored her beautiful dark-red vagina and stuck things in everywhere, after two or three hours of pure lust, after I’ve come who knows how many times, I sit on him and ride him and clench the muscles of my well-trained vagina with all I have—while Lumi sticks a finger in each of our asses—and he comes. Finished. Now we just lie around and goof. We have a drink on the bed, still naked. We know each other now, inside and out. We ask her to tell us a few stories about extreme customers, then we pay—we’re allowed to pay afterward because we’re regulars—get dressed, and head home.
On the way home we constantly smell our fingers. Because they smell like Lumi, we have to laugh. She got three hundred and fifty euros for that. I still have a rush—and I think I’m the coolest person ever. All that I am able to do, as a heterosexual woman. I impress even myself. For ages afterward we still smell of her perfume and everything else.
I accompany Georg home and have to hurry so I’m not late to therapy. I go as I am, reeking of an orgy. She wouldn’t expect it any other way, as she always says. She can just air the place out well after I leave again, and everything will be fine.
I apologize to her for the way I smell, again. I certainly don’t want her to think it’s my own perfume that smells like that. And I definitely want her to know about our sexual adventure. I describe it in minute detail. Surprisingly there is still time left when I’m finished.
“In that case, I can talk to you about my best friend, Frau Drescher. Just so I’m clear about it in my head. She was in therapy for a brief time, but she doesn’t like to talk about the past, so she stopped going. As a result, she just silently carries around all the shit her mother foisted on her. She doesn’t understand what the past has to do with her current life. But I always think,
Go ahead and think that way, but without me
. I can see it all but can’t say anything. You told me that people have to figure these things out themselves. You can’t convince people. But you can leave when it gets to be too much to be around those who should go to therapy but won’t. And that’s the point it’s gotten to—it’s too much. I constantly feel as if I’m crazy, and yet she convinces herself she’s healthy in the head because she doesn’t need to go to therapy. Though she gets tips from me that I pick up from you. I think she’s a ticking time bomb, just like my mother. And ticking time bombs scare me. Probably because I am one, too.
“My best friend and her craziness account for a large part of my own therapy with you. That’s got to stop. I keep thinking that my life would be better off without her. But it all seems wrong somehow. I think the reason is that deep inside, I don’t really believe it’s all right to abandon someone even if you realize they are not good for you. I think I need to pick a fight first and then leave her. But you can just leave if you really want to—right? The problem is, she’ll surely be irate as a result, and that makes me fear aggression from the best friend I will have abandoned. And what aggression she has! I’ve told you about it before. She is definitely the most aggressive person I know, and despite that fact I constantly try to pacify her with gifts, compliments, and ass kissing. But you can’t pacify her. Nobody
can help her to become a better person except herself. And she refuses. Funny how it takes so many years to realize that. It takes so long for a sense of self-preservation to prevail.
“I imagine it would be very liberating if I were able to do it. If I were able to get up the nerve. You have taught me that it’s important to be able to fight within a friendship. Cathrin and I have never done that. We’ve always been a very harmonious unit. No criticism is allowed. We’re like two psychopaths—everyone around us is mean to us, but we are nothing but nice to each other. But of course there’s been aggression, from her side. Envy about my husband, child, relationship, success, money, orgasms, actually about fucking everything. You should run screaming from the words
best friend!
There’s only room for one god. Just as with my mother. Help! Monotheism. Again. I keep stumbling over the same thing. Always the same with me, Frau Drescher. I can’t take it anymore. I don’t want any part of a relationship like that anymore. I’ve got to end it soon. I just don’t know how. She scares me. A lot, actually. My best friend. And I’m afraid of her. How did it all go wrong?
“Since I’ve started entertaining the idea of breaking it off with her, I’ve had such terrible thoughts. Like, for instance, I’ve always acted around her as if I think I’m ugly. So she feels better. We’ve convinced ourselves we’re ugly as a result of this awful relationship.”
Suddenly a thought occurs to me.
“Cathrin has infected me with her anorexia. I almost sent her to a clinic at one stage so her daughter wouldn’t have to see her body degenerate any further. And the whole fucking thing because she thought good clothes only looked good on a thin body. And now I want to look good, for my husband, too, and for
my daughter. For everyone, but first and foremost for myself. I want to eat what I want! I’m short, I have a child, I have short legs, and I’m thirty-three. People should be able to tell how old I am. I want to be allowed to look my age. Because of my gray hair, my daughter says, ‘Whoa, you’re old!’ She actually said that recently. And she’s right.
“To Cathrin, the fact that I don’t dye my hair is something horrible. Help! Aging, death. She once told me that an old American feminist said the greatest invention for women—greater than the pill—was hair dye, because women become invisible to men when they have gray hair. I can’t accept that it’s supposedly feminist to try to look young as long as possible—for men. The only good man is one who accepts me as I am, with gray hair and wrinkles. I have no desire to act like her and try to combat aging. Fuck that. Why is it taking so long for me to end this masochistic relationship with her? But I’m afraid of her now, afraid of her vengeance. Whatever form it would take. Could I have saved this relationship at some stage? Instead of now trying to save myself from it? We never learned to talk to each other about unpleasant topics. So many years and I never managed it. You have often asked me whether I believe I can change something by talking about it. But in this case I think it would have had the same result as my breaking it off with her, as I will soon do.”
“I think so, too,” says Frau Drescher, “after all I’ve heard you say about her.”
“It’s really nice to hear you say that. I’m taking note of that, Frau Drescher. Because normally you never let me run away from something. Whenever I have a problem with Georg and want to run off and think I can’t take it anymore, when I want to run off and leave Liza with him, you forbid me. Every time. But with
Cathrin now, when after a thousand years I realize for myself that she is bad for me, you haven’t contradicted me. Uh-huh. I noticed. You’re not the only one here who observes, Frau Drescher. Ha!”
Agnetha laughs.
“Cathrin always said she wanted to get pregnant but wanted to stay thin when she was pregnant. To me that’s horrible. She’s waited all these years for a baby from her wife-beating husband, hoping the entire time it wouldn’t be a son, because then she’d get hit from both sides, become a punching-bag sandwich. She smokes, drinks, does tons of exercise, especially swimming—not for her health, but for her figure. A typical gym and yoga abuser. And then she wonders why after all these years nothing has nested in her hostile womb. And she’s always loading me up with questions she wants me to ask you. And I spend good time getting you to answer her questions instead of getting you to help me.”
“Yes, I certainly remember all the questions you’ve asked on her behalf.”
“If she ever managed to get pregnant, the gynecologist would tell her, ‘A bit of swimming is fine, but not at your usual level of exertion.’ But she wouldn’t let herself be swayed, I’m sure of it. Her gynecologist couldn’t tell her to do anything. She would drive me crazy if she were pregnant. I can’t even stand thinking about it, despite the fact that she would be the one who would have to suffer from it all. And the way she always says, ‘Good that you’re going to therapy so regularly. You need it. But I can live my life without therapy. I don’t need any help.’
“My husband always knew how negative our friendship was. Once in a while he would cautiously ask whether I had lost my mind when it came to Cathrin.
“I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Man, do I look sexy, and, man, will I be happy to be rid of her.’ That’s what I want. I don’t want to be unnecessarily obsessed with beauty. And I don’t want to starve myself anymore. I’m a little, sexy, healthy, well-built woman. Fuck, yeah!