Down on It

Down on it
an4@anon.lelnet.com

   Maureen kissed Kristen one final time.
   Then Kristen slid down the naked
length of her body, the touch of her hands electric and sensuous. Maureen
felt no guilt because she had already satisfied her lover, at least none
until the craving hit her. As perfect a partner as Kristen was, the orgasm
would be incomplete unless she indulged her other wants.
   Always sensitive to her lover's needs, Kristen felt the fractional tensing of
Maureen's supple flesh, felt the goosebumps and the anguish. She probed
briefly with her tongue, not necessarily wanting to encourage her in her
habit, and yet-
   Wouldn't it make her happy ?
   Of course it would.
   She paused, then slid her hand down and let her finger do the walking. She
turned her pale blue cat's eyes to Maureen and looked deep into her grey
smoker's eyes. They might not really be grey, but Kristen had long believed
that smoker's eyes were always grey in the end and that was how she saw them.
It was an odd thing, but she could always tell if a woman was a smoker by the
greyness of he0r eyes. She'd seen pictures of her partner as a child- not that
they were far away from that age, both of them a few months short of twenty.
They had been green, those eyes, emerald and sparkling. Now they were grey,
but a pretty grey, like the moon low on the horizon, their cast kinetic and
exciting.
   "Maureen, go ahead."
   Had she been nice, she would have said it was unnecessary. But Maureen no
longer believed that niceness was more important than honesty, and honesty was
that as skilled as Kristen was with her finger, she was more so with her
tongue, and there would be no more tongue until one lover obeyed the other.
   Reaching over to the night table, Maureen picked up an unopened pack of
Marlboro Lights 100s. She thought back to her first cigarette, just five years
ago, to the man who lived in the condo which faced her, how he would walk out
onto the back porch and light one of those same cigarettes. How she would
watch him smoking when he thought he was alone and how it had become a game,
she pretending that she too had a cigarette. How she would mirror his inhales
with a Paper Mate medium point pen- how she would imitate every tap of ash
from the cigarette.
   He was obviously the sort of man who enjoyed his smoking, even if he seemed
content to banish himself to the back porch to do it.
   Finally, one day she found herself masturbating while watching him out her
bedroom window and she knew that she would have to approaching him- perhaps
even ask him to indoctrinate her to his habit.
   That had started out as a fantasy. She didn't really believe that he would
actually give her one of his cigarettes any more than she thought he knew what
it was she did while watching him out her window. But she became less and less
cautious in her spying until one day he actually caught her.
   It had been a Sunday evening in the middle of summer- July 4th, actually- and
everyone else was down at the beach, waiting for the fireworks. She'd stayed
behind because he was a loner and she knew he wouldn't go, that he'd be out on
that porch all evening and she would have him and her fantasies to herself.
   In the end, he'd done more than just give her one of his cigarettes, and the
amasing thing was that to this day no one knew about it. It was the one secret
that she would never share, how he'd not only given her a series a cigarettes
but showed her how best to smoke them.
   He could easily have seduced her- the truth was that Maureen wanted him to
desperately, but he'd been a perfect gentleman.
   They'd never again so much as spoken, but once or twice after her parents had
finally consented her smoking openly, their eyes had met across common
property and he'd smiled as she'd lit one of an endless series of cigarettes
she'd smoked on her own back porch while thinking back on how fantasies- at
least in part- could come true.
   She opened the pack, placed a cigarette in her eager mouth, wondering how a
stick of paper and tobacco could please her as entirely as Kristen's willing
tongue, and then lit it as her lover went back to the work of making love.
   Maureen inhaled deeply and closed her eyes. As much as she loved Kristen, as
much as the supple turn of her pert breasts and the round firmness of her
well-toned middle-upper class ass made her wet, the only way she could orgasm
lately was to close her eyes and imagine Kristen laying back and doing exactly
what Maureen was doing now. The thought of pleasuring Kristen while she smoked
was a necessary part of her own orgasms.
   Strange to be sure, but whatever worked-
   She tracked along her own ribs and up over the firmness of her breast,
touching herself with the gentle sexuality only a woman could exhibit or
appreciate. Stopping when she met her nipple, she began stroking the round
pointed tip of pleasure until her whole body was bound in the act.
   As always, Kristen worked in a way which made it seem not. She penetrated
with her forefinger, starting with brief exploration and continuing until she
was driving in and out with a force that was sensual and yet, again, more
gentle than any man's penis could hope to be.
   "Don't forget yourself," Maureen said, her voice throaty as she formed the
words amidst puffs of exhale.
   Kristen obliged. Although Maureen couldn't see what her partner was doing,
the change in her body language told her that she was in fact playing with
herself, and that made it all easier. On those rare occasions when Maureen was
not herself up to sex, it was enough to sit back and watch the exhibitionist
of the pair play with herself. Occasionally Maureen even broke out the
vibrator and applied it to herself while Kristen performed.
   She came quickly after that, feeling the small ejaculatory release of her own
pleasure. She drew deeply on the cigarette and opened her eyes. Kristen was
looking at her, her eyes full of both enticement and questions.
   "Why do you have to close your eyes ?"
   "What do you mean ?"
   "What I mean is that you obviously close your eyes and think of something.
You need that to have an orgasm, whatever it is. I can tell."
   "This," Maureen said, drawing deeply again, "is where I regret that total
honesty thing, isn't it ?"
   "It depends. If you tell me that you're thinking about Gillian Carter, I'll
walk out of here and not come back."
   "What ?" Maureen asked, sitting up straight and drawing the sheet over
herself so that it came to just under her breasts. She pulled it tight, making
her breasts jut out slightly. If there was one part of her own body she never
tired of looking at it was those breasts. In high school she'd used them to
break boys' will and hearts.
   It had been fun until she'd finally given in to Ms. Isaac's subtle but
undeniable advances, and that was when life had truly gotten good.
   "I see the way you watch her. She sits there in the dining hall, living on a
diet of coffee and cigarettes, and when she lights up I lose you."
   "I like to watch her smoke, but I don't bring her into our bed, sweetie."
   "I'd like to believe that," Kristen said, and it was obvious she did not.
   The truth, Maureen quickly decided, was going to work better than any sort of
casual lie.
   "I think of you. I fantasise that you're in my place and I'm in yours, and
you're the one smoking a cigarette." She stubbed hers out and lit another.
   "Why ?" Kristen asked, the barest hint of anguish in her voice.
   "Because it's what I dream of. And before you start in how silly that is, I
saw you looking up at me just now. Try to tell me that I'm not sexier with a
long white cigarette in my mouth, that my sexuality isn't enhanced by walking
around this room naked with a lit cigarette in my hand. You can't tell me
that's not sexy because I know you enjoy watching me smoke."
   Now the honesty thing reared its ugly head and bit Kristen in her pert
athletic ass.
   "All right. There is something sexy about it. I won't deny it. But that's
because smoking is a part of your- of your personality and behaviour. I love
you, which means I love everything about you which defines you. That vague,
almost canadian accent of yours. The way that you like to speak slowly and use
language as a tool to embarrass idiots. But that's not me."
   "There's more to it, though."
   Kristen rolled off the body with the agile flexibility of a gymnast. Her
breasts jiggled erotically. At times like this Maureen had the most evil
thoughts, looking at that milky white flesh, those wonderful pouty lips, the
long red hair. She just wanted to break Kristen, make her a quivering mass of
sexualised anguish.
   And then love her.
   "Yes, there is. We walk down the street together, hand in hand and the guys-
oh, I know how guys are, that they look at every instance of lesbianism as an
opportunity for a threesome. But they're not watching us. They're watching
you, with a long cigarette in your hand. Watching, waiting, hoping that you're
not just some rich-bitch girl who lights cigarettes and then holds them to
make a statement. They hope you're really a smoker, that you're going to raise
that cigarette to your lips and pull on it and make your breasts swell as you
fill your lungs with sweet smoke, that they'll be able to maintain eye contact
long enough for you to treat them to an exhale that they can go home and
masturbate over it. And you never disappoint- and no one looks at me that way,
unless they're hoping that I'll light up too."
   "Do you really care how men look at you ?"
   "I was pretty fucking jealous when DKE picked you as the first freshman to
appear in their Girls Of calendar. Smoking a cigarette, of course."
   "That was fun because everyone got pissed off at me for doing it. I wasn't
trying to make you jealous."
   "You really want to see me smoke so badly that you fantasise about it while
we're having sex ?"
   Maureen smiled. Then she stood up herself and found the flyer she'd pulled
from a bulletin board outside her developmental psych class.
   `Wanted. College-aged female smokers for clinical studies. Free counseling
and stipend. Call 800.SMOKERS. Smoker-non smoker couples encouraged to apply.'
   
   Adam slipped the newspaper under his arm, dropped the change into the deep
pocket of his black wool overcoat, and turned to the door. As he did, a late
model tan Altima with two women inside pulled up to the door. Both driver and
passenger-side windows were at half mast. The combination of those open
windows and the fact that the driver had pulled up to convenience store door
told him a sighting was possible here.
   The quick purchase. There was no one else in the store, which meant the woman
who'd gotten out of the passenger side was probably going in to buy a pack of
cigarettes and would complete the transaction quickly enough to give him at
least a chance. 
   The door opened out, which meant that he had to be careful not to hit her
with it. It also made the moment awkward. Their eyes met. 	She couldn't be
more than nineteen, and the woman in the car was definitely her mother.
   But it was the woman Adam was thinking about as their eyes locked. She
reminded him of a younger version of Brenda from the first Highlander movie,
except that her hair was fuller and blonde. She was wearing the sort of thick
wool sweater only a well-proportioned woman could pull off without looking
fat. She was also wearing a waist length beige coat and tight, flattering
jeans.	
   Of course, even though he was likely to never see this woman again, he wanted
to make the right impression.
   He began to say `Sorry' for almost hitting her with the door but she was
smiling at him and saying "Thank you," in a way he was sure wasn't yet wanted
desperately to be flirtatious. The idiot inside said that she saw something
she liked. He strolled out, forcing himself not to look back, and spent extra
time trying to fish the change from his pocket and toss it in the ashtray,
before pulling out, to give her time to get back in the car.
   She didn't disappoint, at least not initially. There was something small and
square in her hands and it looked like a box of Marlboro Lights 100s but it
might just as well have been a pack of Wrigley's gum, as the long coat sleeve
partially obscured it. The quickest way home was to turn left out of the store
lot, but when he saw the right blinker on the other car he pulled out onto the
road on the outside lane, starting up slow. The other car pulled alongside.
The driver side window was closed, but her  window was still open.
   Almost immediately they came to a stoplight. Again, a left was the quickest
way home down Exeter. But he would keep going, taking the last road going his
direction half a mile farther down.
   He spared a quick glance to his right. Surely she would have lit up by now.
   No. Her mother was laughing at some story the attractive blonde was telling.
   The light turned green. They began driving, and the whole time the girl was
talking and finally he had no choice but to turn left. They went by in his
rearview but he couldn't tell if she was smoking or not.
   "I have to see someone about this-" he finally said.

   Eileen walked into the house. She was expecting the place to smell of stale
cigarette smoke.
   It did, but not in the way she'd imagined. Her sister liked burning vanilla
scented candles, and honestly, the place had a great smell to it.
   "Eileen ?"
   The voice came from the living room, and Eileen followed it. Helen was
sitting on the couch, in the act of lighting a cigarette, and Robyn was
sitting across from her in a papisan. The teenager was also smoking, look very
relaxed. She was a gorgeous young woman, every bit as pretty as Eileen had
imagined her.
   "Eileen, this is my friend Robyn."
   The girl stood up, switched her cigarette to her left hand, and extended the
right to shake. Her flesh was warm and inviting.
   "I've heard a lot of good things about you," Eileen said honestly. "Including
that you helped my sister discover the smoker inside."
   "I think she did that mostly on her own," Robyn said, blushing, not sure what
Eileen's politics towards smoking were.
   "How was the drive ?"
   "Long and boring. It made me think that I envied you a little bit."
   "How's that ?" Helen asked.
   "Well, now that you've started smoking, you have a way to fill all that dead
time."
   "True. Are you hungry ?"
   "Yeah. Any good Vietnamese restaurants round here ?"
   "I know a place, if you don't mind me inviting myself along," Robyn said.
"With Mom working late again-"
   "On a Sunday ?" Eileen asked.
   "Multimedia waits for no man- or no woman," Robyn said through her exhale,
her smile engaging.
   "Then let's go."
   
   Eileen noticed that both women finished their cigarettes before leaving and
made no move to light up once they squeezed themselves into the convertible.
She considered telling them it was all right, then decided that she'd
compromise by letting them sit in the smoking section.
   The truth was, she was more than a little curious. She'd always wondered why
Helen hadn't at least experimented with smoking. Janet was a pack a day
smoker, and it only seemed natural that her sister would mimic her best
friend, but-
   On the other hand, she had no special desire to sit in the tiny little car
with two smokers filling the small cabin with second hand smoke.
   The restaurant did have a smoking section, small and cramped compared to the
cavern they seated the non-smokers in, but any regrets that Eileen had about
sitting in this congested area was alleviated by the menu. Carmalised Simmered
Catfish, her favourite, was one of the specials of the day.
   As soon as their orders were taken, both Helen and Robyn lit up, pulling
cigarettes from identical packs and lighting them with similar styles.
   The first thing which struck Eileen was how sexy her sister looked with that
long white cigarette in her mouth. Still, while the first hit she took on the
cigarette was clearly pleasurable, the smile was not as intense as it had been
back at the house. Eileen also found that her curiosity about Helen's smoking
was less intense in this place.
   Looking around, there was currently only two pairs of diners beside them in
the smoking section.
   The first were a pair of college girls. They were holding hands and one of
them, a sandy blonde with perfect breasts and a sardonic gleam in her bright
grey eyes, was also smoking a Marlboro Lights 100. The other girl was not
smoking and Eileen decided immediately that she was not a smoker. How she
knew, she wasn't sure.
   It was quickly confirmed.
   "Just a puff, Kristen" the woman said, holding the hand with the cigarette in
such a way that the other woman could easily take it.
   "No, Maureen. Maybe tomorrow."
   The other pair was a mother/daughter combination. 
   The mother was lighting a Virginia Slims, doing with the sort of patience
typical of a long-time smoker comfortable in her habit.
   The daughter, who also appeared to be college age, a pretty blonde who looked
like someone Eileen had seen once in a movie but couldn't place, had a longing
look in her eyes. She was a smoker as well, again, how Eileen knew she wasn't
sure. But she made no move to light up.
   "It's okay, honey. Go ahead."
   "Later, maybe."
   That, Eileen thought, was odd.
   "Helen says that you're a research assistant. What's that like ?"
   Eileen refocused. "It's like a jail term. I spend the next two years slaving
away grinding out statistical analysis of census data from the eighteenth
century, my doctoral advisor gets rich publishing my results, and then if I'm
lucky I land an associate professorship at some two-dorm state college-
knowing my luck some state school in, like Idaho, where I teach intro to
western civ and twenty-century film history until I get published by abusing
someone like me the same way."
   "Wow," Robyn said, sorry she'd asked.
   "I like it though. Who can complain about twenty-hour days, lots of pressure-
at least it's in a field I like."
   "Even I have an hard time imagining that history is such a demanding field,"
Helen said, not to be mean, but because she was impressed that her sister had
found an hot spot to work in, in a field she'd always thought was not all that
pressure-packed.
   "If I had known-"
   "You'd have tried to get in a year earlier. I know you, little sis."
   "But that's enough about me." Although her curiosity had faded, Eileen still
wanted to hear about her older sister's decision to smoke. No one in the
family had ever smoked, and it was such a novel thing that she was mildly
fascinated by it.
   "Tell me about your decision to start smoking, Helen. You wouldn't say
anything about it over the phone."
   The truth was, ever since `meeting' Darcy last night, Helen had hardly known
what to say. She hadn't told Robyn yet- she had a feeling that was something
for Elisa to help her with.
   And she had the strangest feeling that Elisa would have no problem believing
her.
   The waitress brought their bottle of wine, and without any cajoling, poured
three glasses for them after Helen okayed the selection.
   Eileen couldn't help watching all four of the women smoking. As well as the
two who wouldn't. The daughter was the strangest case. Clearly, she wanted a
cigarette. Her silvery eyes were fixed on each of the other people there in
the same way as Eileen's. At one point their eyes met and Eileen had the
strangest feeling that if she would just light a cigarette, the girl would as
well. There was no understanding the knowledge, but it was there, and Eileen
found herself wanting to help the girl out.
   "Well, you're going to think that this is a little strange, but one of the
conditions for my purchase of the house was that I give Robyn here a safe
haven to smoke. She's been going through some rough times with her mother,
and-"
   "The owners of the house before Helen taught me to smoke and gave me a place
to do it," Robyn said proudly. "I was worried when they moved out that that
would be it, and then I found out Helen had made an arrangement with Pam- the
previous owner. I was relieved-"
   "Pam left me a carton of cigarettes for Robyn and I decided I had to try it
for myself. The rest, as they say in your business, is history."
   "That's more ironic than you know," Eileen said, her eyes drawn to the pack
of cigarettes by Helen's elbow. She was holding her cigarette up near her
mouth, elbow bent, wrist turned back, the long burning brand lightly pinched
between her fingers.
   Robyn was inhaling deeply on hers, smoke curling up off it as she pulled
smoke into her lungs, her breasts expanding magnificently under a tight and
utterly flattering sweater.
   They looked so comfortable, these smokers.
   "How so ?" Helen asked.
   "Well, my research on matriarchal families in colonial North America is
basically over, and Molly- Professor Van Helsen- is moving on to a treatise on
smoking and women in twentieth century America. She's drawing a comparison
between the increase in social rights and equality in the united states to the
prevalence of smoking among woman ages fourteen through sixty. She's not sure
what the paradigm is yet, but she has some radical ideas on the subject. It's
remarkable that you've moved into the smoking category just as I start my
research. The preliminary data is fascinating, although inconclusive."
   "Does Molly smoke ?" Robyn asked.
   "Cigars. Two or three a day. And cigarettes, but only when we go out to
bars."
   "You go out drinking with your professor ?"
   Helen smiled, remembering her own graduate school days. "Only the lucky ones,
Robyn. It makes them less apt to call your work utter crap. Which they will
do. So tell me, Eileen, does this mean that you're curious about smoking ?"
   This wasn't how Helen had pictured this working out. She'd envisioned- well,
the house was a major part of her plan, but that didn't seem as though it was
going to be an issue. She had the strangest feeling that were she to offer her
sister a cigarette right this very minute, she would accept it.
   "Well, in addition to the usual number crunching, Molly's lined up interviews
with a dozen prominent female smokers. Industrialists, businesswomen,
authors-"
   "And I wasn't asked ?" Helen said facetiously.
   "Actually, Molly's quite a fan, but when she asked, that was three weeks ago,
and I told her you didn't smoke. She was shocked."
   "I get that a lot," Helen said, tossing Robyn a sly smile. "Well, if you'd
like to know more about what you're researching-"
   Eileen's hand made a fractional move towards the cigarettes and Helen's heart
leapt. She wasn't sure why she wanted her sister to smoke, but she did.
   "Do you mind ?"
   "I think she'd be thrilled," Robyn said, which earned her a faint rap on the
shin from Helen's sneakered foot.
   Eileen's hand finished the motion. She picked up the pack of cigarettes. It
was almost full, and she liked the feel of it quite a bit. She cracked the top
back, peeled the foil up, and looked inside. There were eighteen cigarettes in
the pack, and what would taking one away hurt.
   I'm not going to enjoy this.
   That was perhaps a bit of a lie.
   She brought the cigarette to her mouth and Helen lit it for her, a look of
anticipation in her eyes.
   The tip caught.
   Eileen pulled a baby puff of smoke into her mouth. the taste was sweet,
enticing. She forced it back out and sipped her wine.	
   It tasted better now. She'd read and heard that smokers had atrophied taste
buds, but that didn't seem to be the case at all.
   She brought the long white cigarette to her mouth, caught an image of herself
in the wine glass.
   Suddenly Helen and Robyn and this tiny empire of smokers all faded to black.
There was just the small woman in the wine glass with the darling blue eyes
and the pert mouth, a long white sexually charged tube of tobacco ascending
towards her. She accepted it and so did the woman in the glass. The tip flared
orange as she inhaled.
   The smoke was drawn into her lungs. It was not harsh and unyielding, but
rather silky and pleasurable. Her head swam, her eyes narrowed, and she
admitted to herself that the woman in the wine glass looked quite content.
   She was.
   The lesbian at the table closest to them, the non-smoker, watched her openly.
The woman in the wine glass was replaced by this woman. Eyes locked, an
understanding was passed, and she reached for her lover's cigarettes with a
trembling anticipatory hand. Eileen then spared a glance to the daughter, who
reached into her small black leather purse and pulled out a pack of Marlboro
Lights 100s, the same pack Adam had almost seen in her hand the day before.
She lit one and suddenly, all seven women were smoking at once.
   It became a much more comfortable room after that.

   They'd drank two bottles of wine between the three of them and even
hyperactive Helen was asleep now. 
   She'd been so good. It was now clear that from the outset, Helen had wanted
to get her sister to start smoking, and Eileen not only understood that but
loved her for it.
   But she hadn't forced her. Eileen had smoked two cigarettes at dinner, one
before, one after, and one more before they'd gone to bed. When Eileen had
asked for a pack before Helen nodded off, she obliged without waiting for her
to light a cigarette. She'd just hadn't the pack over and gone to bed.
   Now, sitting in her bed, in this strangely chilled room, the urge was
overwhelming and Eileen gave in to it without any strange feelings. There was
just a desire for something reasonable, and it would be fulfilled. She lit the
cigarette easily, surprised by how natural it felt to flick the lighter and
ignite the dried tobacco.
   But what she felt when she inhaled was anything but normal.
   Oh, she'd noticed that the cigarette she'd smoked earlier downstairs was the
best yet, but she attributed that to the way it eased her stomach- they'd
eaten far too much and she'd spent a period of time paying for that with
discomfort which almost wasn't.
   This cigarette, though-
   Awesome. Each inhale was unique, satisfying, almost mindbending.
   The urge to watch herself smoke was so overwhelming that she stood up and
walked over to the full-length mirror.
   There was nothing unusual about her appearance except for the smile on her
face, fuller than any smile she'd known in years.
   Then it began to happen. One hand was holding the cigarette, attempting a
stylish hold like Helen or Robyn. And doing a damned good job. The other was
down by her side, the wrist also bent. A ladylike pose, like smokers from days
gone by, maybe a b-movie queen. It was a good look.
   But what she knew for sure was neither hand was touching her in any way.
   And yet, there was no denying what that feeling was. Eileen knew it well,
from her earliest discovery of her sexuality, when boys had been off-limits
but auto-eroticism was not.
   The touch was gentle, unyielding and yet not forceful. It was the touch of a
woman's hand, and it was driving down the long spiral towards something she'd
long ago sworn off.
   It felt wonderful.