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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