Wednesday Sneak Peek: A Night Out (Patreon)

For higher-tier subscribers, a glimpse at an important scene. After the shopping trip, and under Julia's thumb, David prepares for a night out with her. The bit with the hair brushing was unexpected, but provides a glimpse into her backstory. Hopefully, it generates an additional bit of sympathy for her, whilst hinting at a reason for her fixation on David--was he a replacement-father figure for her, back in the day?

In any case, enjoy the scene!

***

By the time we returned to Julia’s condo that afternoon, I was tired, anxious, hungry and desperate for a drink. She provided for two of those. We ordered in some Thai food, and she cracked open a bottle of white.

            “So, now what?” I asked, sinking deep into her sofa. My feet ached after their hours of scurrying about in heels. Spreading my arms across the back of the sofa, I left my head drop back and stared at the ceiling and was suddenly powerfully reminded of my first time here. That night, too, my feet ached and my soul felt heavy. That night finished with the two of us, arms and legs entwined in sweaty slumber, in her bed.

            Julia checked her list. She smiled, face lit below by the glow of her screen. “We eat,” she said. “We drink. We get dressed, do each other’s makeup. Gossip about boys and shit like that. And then we go out.”

            I groaned. “Really?”

            “Really,” she said.

            Yes, really, and we spent the next few hours getting ready for a girls’ night out. And it was—fun, I had to grudgingly admit. Different, than doing the same with Mel and Emma and Willow. Julia layered everything with a healthy dose of self-deprecating irony and wry sensibility: the woman nearing forty playing at being half her age, opposite the man performing the vivacious girlfriend. We emptied out the day’s shopping bags. We drank white wine spritzers. She passed me the purple-and-pink bustier from earlier today.

            I held the garment up and grimaced. “Really?”

            She smirked. “Really.”

            “Not fair,” I grumbled, stripping. I nodded towards her pile. “I’d rather wear that.”

            “Tonight, I’m the classy older sister.” She held her red dress up against her frame, turning this way and that in the mirror. Clearly, she liked what she saw, and smiled. “You’re the trashy younger sister.”          

            After noodles, she brushed out my hair. Long hair, I’d discovered long ago, was equal part nightmare and fantasy. It looked awesome; drew compliments; and stroking it—or having it stroked—felt divine, sometimes. But maintenance was a goddamn pain in the ass and brushing out the tangles hurt like fucking hell; more than once I’d been tempted to hack my mane back to shoulder length.

            “Ow!”

            “Oh, quit whining, you little sissy,” Julia said, not unkindly. She continued brushing, and I worked at my nails, cleaning off the day’s colour. “My dad used to brush out my hair when I was a kid. Every day. Not my mom but my dad, even though she’s the one who wanted me to grow out my hair.” Her voice softened, each stroke slowing and becoming longer. “Mom loved long hair. Even at the end, at the hospital, she smiled at me, at my hair, so beautiful, she said, thank you. I don’t know why. But when she got sick, when she was so tired she couldn’t get out of bed, Dad took over brushing my hair.”

            The brush ceased its motion as she took a meditative sip of wine. “Eight years old, and my dad’s trying to yank this comb through my hair. I remember crying.  It hurt. But by nine he was a pro. Every day, we’d sit, and he’d brush out my hair and he rarely said anything but his presence behind me, every day, that solidness, stability… we were together, and that meant something. Especially after mom was gone.” Her voice wavered. “As a teenager, you know, I didn’t have time for that kind of thing. I know he missed our time together. So did I, though I couldn’t admit it, then.”

            She sighed and resumed brushing. “I’d give anything to have that time with him again. Now, I’m lucky if he fucking remembers me when I visit the home.”

            “I’m sorry,” I said. My nails were clear, denuded of their earlier pink. I laid my hand flat on the table and stretched out my fingers. “I didn’t know.”

            “Yeah. Well.”  She gave a final desultory stroke of the brush. “You never asked.”

            She picked a glittery purple for my nails. I suggested she go for the metallic silver, and she agreed. Acetone sharpness balanced against the slightly floral scent of her more upscale nail polish as we started.

            At first, we worked in diligent silence until Julia said, nonchalant as she fanned her fingers: “You know, you never did tell me what happened with Dan.”

            “How do you mean?”

            “Your date. The one I set up. You texted me from the toilet, said you couldn’t do it—then you disappeared to your Clinic. After, you told me nothing happened—but what did happen?”

            “Like I said—nothing.” I smiled wanly at her. “And… everything, I guess.”

            She cocked an eyebrow and waited.

            So I told her—skimming some details, obviously—about the whole ordeal. Dan’s late arrival; steak and mushroom, red wine and tedious conversation, the guy’s arrogance and dismissiveness until I said something he found worthy of latching on to. The walk back to his. Making out under late-night halogen streetlight.

            “You kissed him?”

            “I mean, yeah, sure, you could call it kissing, I guess, if you want to be polite.” I grimaced in recollection. “He was all over me. Tongue down my throat. Hands on my thighs, my tits. The whole way up the elevator, and the hallway, and his condo.” My blush wasn’t entirely for show, and I left out that it hadn’t been just Dan, I’d hardly played passive victim en route to the evening’s conclusion. And to be clear, at this point, telling this story ten months into living Cindy’s life, I was way beyond worrying whether kissing a man was gay or something: I’d crossed that line in the sand so long ago, I couldn’t remember even drawing it. Those session with Crystal a few months back had expunged the seething guilt and shame I’d suppressed. What happened, happened. I was fine with it.

            Yeah. But.

            There was a difference, sharing this with Julia than with some counsellor. She knew me as male; wanted to punish me as one. She yearned to see the humiliation she assumed implicit in dressing a heterosexual man up in a dress and having him kiss another, and under that heavy expectation I once again felt the implications of my actions. Doubt gnawed at me, and I gazed upon my glittery purple fingernails and felt the tight embrace of the bustier and wondered, again, how I’d ended up here.

            “And that was it?” she asked. She started on the other hand, confident strokes varnishing her nail to a vivid mirrored sheen.

            “No,” I snapped. Not particularly enjoying the conversation, I started on my other hand, too. The polish was cheap; it didn’t flow well, and I was getting frustrated. Julia raised an eyebrow, her expression a clear warning. “No,” I repeated, mollifying my tone. “We drank, we made out on the sofa, he knocked the ball out of the part and made first base, second and was approaching third and he wanted—well, you know what he wanted. So did I.”

            “You wanted it, too?”

            “No!” I flushed red. “I meant I knew what he wanted.”

            “Sure,” she said. “Freudian slip.”

            I swallowed a sharp retort and instead muttered, “Obviously, nothing could happen.”

            “Why not?” Her eyes sparkled with mirth.

            “Because I still had a cock back then.”

            “Oh yeah,” she said. “I forgot.”

            I rolled my eyes. “So instead—”

            “Yes?”

            I mimicked fellating him, lips a moist O, tongue pushing my cheek out.

            “You said—”

            “Yeah. I tried; couldn’t do it. So drunk the whole room’s spinning. And there I was between his legs wearing—well, something like this,” I said, indicating the bustier and fishnets she had me wearing, “but classier, you remember that lingerie set you strapped me into. Black and crimson, really classy-like, and I had my heels on, tits out and on my knees, and….”

            She leaned forward, and maybe it was the wine but she’d gone a bit red in the face.

            “I couldn’t do it.” I shook my head, long hair dancing around my shoulders. “Ended up jerking him off instead.”

            Julia stared at me for a long moment, eyes bright and hard, and her lips trembled somewhere between a sneer and a laugh. “Oh—David. This is perfect!” she said.

            My stomach churned with Thai noodles, wine spritzer and fear. “How do you mean?”

            “Tonight,” she said, and I swear she would’ve clapped her hands together in glee if those silvered talons weren’t still drying. “Tonight’s going to be Cindy’s big night. We’ll hit the bars. Pick up some sexy guys. And tonight, Cindy’s going down on her first man, and I’m going to watch.”

            And because that’s what Julia wanted, that’s what happened.