...... by E. F. Cherrytree

The thing gets bigger.

You start out at five getting turned on by Shirley Temple swinging around some bully bitch in the playground. No tits nothing, just some yelling and long hair, that's all.

Perils of Nyoka split it though. The way she and that turbaned evil queen slammed their fists into each other's face in careening chariots on the cliffs of snake pits. And then, by god, that last scene was worth the waiting when they rolled and rolled on the torture-room floor and finally - JUST AS THEIR BARE THIGHS INTERLOCKED - (a real sex lock, nothing like it except maybe Rita Hayworth in The Loves of Carmen fighting that sun-tanned Spanish girl) Nyoka rolls the bad bitch over on top of her so that the gorilla's spear goes through her stinking spine. And she falls limply right into Nyoka's arms (too bad, though, that Nyoka wore a long-sleeved shirt all through the series).

That was pretty good. Still sticks hard once in a while. And the comics back in the forties were pretty fine. Though that may be idealization.

Sheena had two good fights: one with this white-looking Negro queen and with an explorer female later on (still remember the little arcs at the elbow shading that little bunch of muscle down there on the bare arm). And Flash Gordon's Dale even got into it, but that wasn't so good because, like Blondie one time, it was to make the fighting men feel ashamed of themselves.

But, on the whole, you don't need the real stuff that early. Just catalogs will do. You look around for two models close together, arms akimbo, legs spread, limbs behind one another, and that's enough. Bam. Five times a day when you're young. Even with god getting in the way.

And then you find out about the stag magazines. They weren't much in the early fifties: a couple of gypsy girls rolling around in a campfire; two Frenchies stripping off one another's clothes in a contest; a pretty good one of two native girls fighting for a prospective husband; and a really good one of two Indian maidens just fighting because they hate one another and one getting scalped - all photos too - and it was O.K. but few and far between in the early fifties.

Then the drawings. As early as 1947, Saturday Evening Post did a good one of Ann Bonny fighting Teach's half-breed girl. And in 1958 there was a great cover of a blonde and a gypsy fighting it out on the floor with bottles and all covered with blood-all in color. And in the sixties a detective magazine (little one) brought out three months of covers with girls violently murdering each other. But they suddenly stopped. And so on. But you have to dig to remember most of them.

Finally you have to go indoors. Do your own drawings and stories. Portable pornography. Work up your own positions. There's a hell of a lot there. One time after you hold off for two weeks, you have it in you to do a hundred squares before coming. But that's an exception. Usually one or two and bam. It's the imagination that carries you to a head - a line or two is enough.

After Lady Chatterley cracked the porno laws, the literature began to carry you through. Ah, a great one written just for you (except the main character was a queer who liked to see women fight). Description won't do those scenes justice. You'd almost like to meet the fellow who wrote that. He's an artist. The girls even fall in love with one another after one of the greatest five-page scenes in literature. So it makes it all right. He knew how to do it.

But the trip to San Francisco! And the photos and the underground slicks! By god, for the first time you didn't feel like the only one of two or three around (the shrinks didn't even have a name for you). It was good at first to belong to an underground. But it's still lonely down there.

And the stuff lost its taste. You tried a novel even. It never came off but it sure was hot while it lasted. You really opened the field when you found the kid's sculpture forms and plaster. Five weeks you worked on that sculpture - bam every night. It about killed you. The old technology kept advancing. They came out with those little rubber dolls (not the Barbie dolls - their arms are stiff), the little tiny ones that bent in every direction. What in hell did they call them? And they had real little tits and mounds, and you got a black-haired one and a blonde and fought them several hundred ways in several hundred costumes. But you finally destroyed them like everything else.

And then your mistress tells you a fight story just as a joke. God, how that turned you on. And then you got your wife to do it every night. The only way. And then that night you got your wife and your mistress into a fight - oh, they laughed while they were tussling. But both told you later how much she hated the other. But you couldn't do anything then. Got a little hard but it was embarrassing. Hurts. Can't let it out that far.

Well, they're both gone now. The last trip to New York - 42nd St. was all right. Too bad you got guilty about that film you bought before you looked at it. And threw it in the ash can. Dumb bastard. But maybe next time. But where do you go now? Like I say, the thing gets bigger.

Another day.

You know, there must be a lot of us around. Take the stores in Seattle, San Francisco, New York that I have seen. The exotic magazines. A lot of them are portmanteau, though. Hitting us and our cousins all in the same packet. So in the same story, you'll get an elaborate description of the clothing (hell, I don't care about clothing), a lot of boots and black leather skirts, etc. Then you'll get a couple of roommates in college or a couple of nurses or a couple of airline hostesses (those boys have their eyes out - they know what we dream about when we're pinned down in the hospital or walking all lonely out on the campi or flying even - there must be a lot of us in the middle class - and those books aren't priced for the poor: $1.50 to $6). Or they'll take the social angle: hit the liberals with a black beating hell out of a white or a waitress crushing a customer, And then you normally get a domination scene: one girl will get top dog after some "wrestling" and start giving out kinky orders. And then you get "bondage" - all these weird goddamn knots (normally the tied-up one has her legs spread - the old mound et al., stuck up). And, of course, by this time they're down to their skivvies (we must be schizoid - black panties vs. white panties, blondes vs. brunettes, again and again - Calvinistic dualism, Manichees, or some such rot). And then the spanking (for the kiddies). And then a switch and another tussle and counter-spanking a hell of a lot of the time. Justice must prevail. I guess we like it wrapped up.

Well, as I was saying, there must be a lot of us around. But generally not enough to give us something of our own. This little book above tucks us in with the transvestites, the homos, the masochists (Venus-in-furs, bondage, spankers, whippers), the sadists.

Now I like an out-and-out fight. I don't care much about the clothes. I just want them to start with some on. I like to see the clothes get torn to pieces (anything from bikini to waltz gowns) and gradually get down to the buff. Then I project myself into the girls (one screams to herself: "A woman's tit against mine! I like it!"). She may claw it a bit, but I generally end up in Lesbos unless I've got a beef against the world (then it can get pretty bloody, but I don't care for myself a hell of a lot afterwards).

As far as the girls go, I want them EQUAL. In looks, figure, strength, face (always beautiful). Just differences in hair and skin coloring. I like a build-up all right. Some words exchanged, some mutual cussing, then some slapping (sometimes I'll run the whole thing on slapping -I remember a great slapping dream sequence between sisters in Two Girls and a Sailor or something like that - forget the actresses' names now - don't generally like one of them - too tomboy and clean) and some kicking (now Fighting Burlesque Queens has a great kicking prose section and then some arm-clawing). Well, you get the picture. And then the big build-up.

But I want fight to the end. And then the end. None of this bondage and spanking, etc. Just end. One's knocked unconscious or (in the war stories) killed short and sweet, or they turn to love and come (there was really a good one about two nurses who fought till they couldn't fight any longer, and in the last sentence broke, vowing to finish it up the next day - that hangs it. But one - it was a photo story -was uglier than hell. That's generally the way it is with photo stories, though they generally get one good looker. Maybe they're splitting tastes even there, the bastards). But make it a good fast end. Hell, sometimes I don't even get to the end. There'll be a moment of beauty somewhere along the line that I hang up on.

Now as far as the fighting goes, I want women fighting. Men wrestle and fist fight (though I don't mind a few fists as long as it's clumsy as hell). Women kick, scratch, slap, bite, rip off clothes, hug and strain, use the knee every once in a while.

I don't care about one particular setting. I like variety. That's the way of keeping the thing going (that's the hard thing - keeping the thing going - like I say, the thing gets bigger). So I'll get a couple of cave women, some models another time, some WACs, two housewives, a good frequent one is two jealous women fighting over a man (but nothing on the man unless it's me), comic book heroines, finish off a good late-late on TV that started out for a fight but didn't wrap it up. I wrap up a lot of good starts with no finishes. You know how frustrating it is. Like a prick teaser.

But back to the point. There must be a lot of us around. Every once in a while, you run into a book that's pure fight, like Fighting Burlesque Queens; or like that novel I mentioned earlier: a Spanish movie queen meets a new blonde riser in a film promoted by a pervert who likes the fight scenes. It's the standard Western: movie-hall queen vs. ranch girl (a good three or four page fight scene ending up with Spanish coming underneath the puzzled blonde) followed by a second scene in which the two meet alone in the blonde's apartment, ostensibly to settle a beef about a man (Spanish really loves the blonde but won't admit it to herself). The blonde's in just a towel. Spanish is fu11y, but lightly, dressed. And then they go for five great pages. It ends in love. Well, that one was for us.

And then there are some movies: one special called Swamp Women (about 1956) about three women cons who escaped into the bayous plus one woman detective posing as a con to trap them and find their loot. Several spats and two great fight scenes, the first the best with the little blonde and the little redhead (it's in color) fighting it out on the beach and in the water and on the beach again (but they always separate them in the movies before the end - it's sort of frustrating).

The second scene wasn't too good - the big con and the detective slugged it out like men. They even gave the fight director credits. So that was one for us.

As was the gypsy fight scene in From (?) Russia with Love (don't mind the titles - if I'm not getting them right - I'm just identifying, not giving a goddamned bibliography) - there was an article on that one in Wrestling World. It was really rehearsed, and both girls were Miss Universe contestants, (though the smaller one left much to be desired - the movie lighting covered that, though). The article said that they really got mad and one got a black eye. That's probably the PR boys, but it's significant that they should go to the trouble: it means that they know we're out there. Women's wrestling also is an indication that they know, but it never turns me on - they look like bull dykes going at it. Germany and, lately, San Francisco come through a little more with the bare tits and mud wrestling-at least the girls' parts show. And Japan has them do it in panties and brassieres. But then you get another problem. The girls are lousy actresses (if they're girls and not dykes going into it for the kicks of the thing-and the dykes don't look like girls), and, by god, start to giggle.

You could love them for it - at some other moment of your life. But you want them mad (not really, of course) and trying to damage each other because they hate the hell out of each other's guts (of course, a few superficial scratches and bites will generally be all that results - unless, as I said, you really have it against something or somebody, and that's bad) (and if it ever gets into real life, buddy you've had it - but I've already mentioned that).

Well, there are some movies, some photo-story books, some stag drawings (I didn't mention the Stan and especially the Eneg drawings which are damned good when they're on our subject - they know how- but they go several directions), some three-hundred-foot films like the one I threw away that I got at New York, some underground novels (some are really getting rough - they're pormanteau, too- as are some of the films, e.g. the "Olga" films - I don't buy them - they make me puke. And the paperbacks are going either heavy or pure Lesbos - hell, that's no good - you don't want kinks, not unless it's at the very, very, very end).

But there just isn't enough. I don't think I'm being unreasonable. To find the above stuff and a ton of third-rate junk has taken me about twenty-five years. And I know how to look. And I look. I hit the magazine stands regularly, know how to skim in seconds, know exactly what I'm looking for; skim the paperbacks; skim the movie advertisements (I generally know ahead of time from magazine publicity): sample a movie that I'm unsure about (generally disappointing - they usually put a picture outside, though sometimes the stupid bastards forget that) and watch trailers; buy the underground photo books and photo packets (they'l1 rarely let you touch before paying - a good bet, too, because nine-tenths of it is lousy). And it's mostly dry weather- desert. Why, I don't really hit water more than once or twice a year - if that much.

And, hell, you can't ask anyone to line you up with some stuff (like you could if your hang-up was a couple screwing). Because you're really a queer. At least the fairies and even the transvestites have some organization. But have you ever tried to tell someone what your hang-up is? Don't. They'll just laugh and say that that isn't so bad. Amusement. And if you press it, they get surprised that you make so much of it.

Well, it isn't really bad. There are a lot more crucial forms of hostility around, including Vietnam (or take the gladiatorial circus) (or even boxing). But it's BIG.

When it's like it is with me and you, it's BIG. And so it's important. And so it's bad for us.

You believe it, I'm a relativist. This thing's with me on and off during the whole day, every day. I've got another life. I've got a profession. I had a family until this hang-up got big enough that I tried to make it into real life and got my wife and my lay into a fight. It made me sick. This isn't for real life. But you just get bored and drive it further and further and further and further.

It not only gets big and more time-consuming, but when you live your regu1ar life and are feeling good and pretty content and are producing, you suddenly remember that you're a queer. Hell, reading comic books at YOUR age. Dodging around the underground movie houses and the stag magazine racks.

And there are a lot of guys like you out there. Oh, maybe they're not hunting for the same thing, but they're hunting. Nobody really looks at one another. A lot are well-dressed, have wedding rings, well-groomed. In the movie houses, we all sit a respectable distance apart and most leave before the lights go on if the manager is enough of a son-of-a-bitch to turn them on (one never turns them off- how in hell can you jack off in the light? Well, you can, but it's pretty dangerous - some day, some cop is going to haul me in, and that will be all, she wrote - and I've got a lot to lose). We're all pretty ashamed and afraid. Nobody laughs at the jokes. I laugh once in a while, but everybody gets a little stiffer. Though sometimes I notice that it has a relaxing effect. I guess sometimes it makes them feel like they're in a real movie. Them, hell - US! (You've got to watch yourself.)

There are a lot of us out there. And there must be plenty just like me. (I even remember an Athene Club back in 1956 - Athene is one of the few fighting-woman myths which shows, I guess, that we're not fundadmental, just new - l'd say around the Victorian period, though I'm not even sure that we're that early - well, the Athene Club sold photos and some comic books, but it was high-priced and specialized in that wrestling crap.)

But we haven't talked to each other. We don't have much of a literary history. We don't have a mythology (except Athene killing Pallas, some little group of Arab Amazons up in North Africa that club each other at puberty, and two Hawaiian (?) fighting goddesses my third-grade teacher told us about but which I haven't been able to find since). We don't even have a name.

Back in the medieval period, the psychomachia (mind war) had some fighting women personified as some mental or moral attitudes, but they mixed with men and there wasn't much sexy detail. Maybe we could be suffering from puellamachia (girl war). Just a name, at least, by god. Give us a name and at 1east we'll get a market (these rubber dollars are great - a whole technology could develop out of that one - and lately TV shows like The Avengers, Girl from UNCLE, and Honey what's-her-name - she's off now - might build and direct to us more) and get some shrinks interested. We'll get the law, too. But it's hell being a nameless kink.

l'm warming up to you now. I can use I and You now.

You know, it was sort of nice when I got my wife to tell me these stories before we'd make out. It brought us close together. I think it even got her hung up a little. And my lay, when we split, said she was thinking of trying out a woman next time. Well, whatever it did to them, it helped me to share it. The lousy part is being a loner - isolation, shame. And you think it's bigger and uglier than it is. You want to ki11 yourself.

It must be worse if you're a Christian. I hope you aren't.

It blew me clear the hell out of Christianity, and I was a fanatic when I was a kid. Oh, Onan scared me a little. But I never felt guilty when I masturbated about making love to a woman (it was about fifty-fifty sex and fight scenes with me until I was about twenty five). It was this weird preoccupation with fighting girls that got me feeling guilty for some odd reason. Did it happen that way with you?

It also helped to blow me the hell out of my marriage. But my shrink helped on that a little. Recommended the mistress.

Speaking of shrinks. The first one - Army shrink- was bowled over by it. He took notes for fourteen months. Finally, he had me appear before a whole board of pretty hostile 1ooking bastards. That hurt. But he never helped. If anything, it got worse. Qf course, I'd sort of cut myself off from women, hadn't much money then and a lot of work to do. Talking to him helped me a little, and it stuck for about six months as long as I had some women to make out with (which I didn't in the Army, which is why I landed up in his office - it really got out of hand there).

Now the second one was better. He wasn't an analyst. I'm all for analysts in theory. I hate the behaviorists - goddamn mind mechanics. But I have to admit that #2 was more effective. He tried to get me to do rather than to understand. All kinds of gimmicks to get me into bed with a woman - a lot of them mixing up the fighting women with the real ones. That's where the bed-time stories came in - pretty good idea, don't you think? But that's also where the mistress came in, and I wasn't able to handle both. I let it get into real life - not real life get into it (if you know what I mean). And that was a blow-out.

He said something that made sense. I'm 1ike an alcoholic. I've got to stay away from the stuff, don't even look at it, or I'm a goner. Sometimes now I've managed to stay off for several months. But when the going gets rough, especially when it gets rough with a woman or something that hits me in the sex, back I go.

Well, why am I writing this? You know (and you do know if you're like me), it turns me on to remember some of the stories. When I write at one for some time, I'm getting my kicks - you know that. And you're getting yours, too (nothing wrong with that). Well, it gets to you, doesn't it? It shows you that I'm there, too. There have to be a lot of us around - look at the stuff that's aimed at us.

Let me tell you that (like you) I am a liar.

Now I've been lying about several things. Don't ask me which because I don't know. But I've re-read this stuff and there are some outstanding contradictions. I ask myself: well, which is the truth? But I don't know. You understand. People like you and me live the Lie, don't we? We can't tell the others. It gets so (or maybe that's where it started in the first place) that we can't tell ourselves. So we lie all over the place. But what's the truth? To me, when I tell it, each lie is the truth. Like I said, I'm a relativist.

Take the way I'm writing, for instance. I'm just pounding it out as it comes. But I never have written like this (I can write the best business letter in the firm). I don't even speak like this (of course, I don't speak much - you get more out of people that way).

But right now I want to speak to you. Now maybe the way I'm writing is an insult to you. It probably is because you probably are a hell of a lot like me in many ways other than the big one. Now, is even the way I write a lie? I don't think so. It is me on a certain level: our level.

But there's one thing which isn't a lie. Which is me. Which is the reality. Watching pictures, sculptures, or reading about two young, attractive girls fighting gives me a hard-on and, if it's good enough, I come. It's my biggest sex pleasure and has been since I was four. And I'm thirty-five now.

You know, everyone seems to be looking around for "reality" nowadays, something that they can believe in. Well, we have it, don't we, brother? We've got bedrock reality. Obsession. I'll trade it for some doubt, personally.

I wish I could be a relativist. But all I've got is the grounds for relativism. You and I have something in us that is more important and more real than anything - war, money, sex, love, property, religion, politics, society, even our own illnesses and deaths - anything. We like comic-book pictures of two girls fighting. Why, some people may get turned on by table-legs (I hear that's why the Victorians put little skirts around the bottoms of their furniture) and I remember reading a case history of some clown who copulated with the exhaust pipe of his car. He had to have it just right, too: new chrome each time and the motor puffing back little hot breaths on him. Sure, it's funny. But not if you're in it. Then it's BIG. Though it helps when you can laugh at it once in a while.

So I'm not telling a lie on that point: I am like you. But you still doubt me, don't you? First, I sucked you in and got you all pleased and relaxed that you had a brother in the crowd. And then I tell you I'm lying. We're like lovers who have fallen out. How are we ever going to be able to trust each other again? How will you know I'm your boy and not some sadistic bastard prodding you along for some obscure kind of kinks?

You've got me laughing now. That's an easy one. And you know just how easy it is. All I've got to do is flash my badge, to open the third eye and wink. Here goes, brother. Now this is going to hurt me as much as it will you. But it sure as hell will be worth it, won't it? Sure, it will. Proof AND fun:

Once in a village surrounded by a forest there lived two young women who had detested one another from childhood. We need not inquire into the reasons for their hate but merely note that it was a raw fact. It was a stark, obsessive hate which focused most forcefully on the remarkable physical beauty of the other girl: her long, brilliant hair, her fine features, her muscular but womanly arms and calves, her swelling breasts and thighs, her flat belly, the unseen zone beneath that belly. It is difficult to describe them fully enough to give you an accurate idea of their beauty, so I'll try to draw a picture of each:

The girl at the left is Marie. Her skin is a deep tan, her coloring that of her Mediterranean ancestors. The girl at the right is Laura, an Anglo-Saxon in coloring and in her straight blond hair. Each girl now is walking in the forest that 1 told you of, to meet, purely by accident, each other alone for the first time in their lives and to expend upon each other frustrating years of a bottled-up violence. As they stride the path, each is thinking of precisely that right now.

It was Laura who entered the grassy clearing first, for she had been deliberately going that way. Many years before, she had discovered it, a small area covered by short, soft blades of grass and spotted by red wild- flowers which grew in thick bunches along the perimeter. In all the years that she had been coming here, she had never seen another person. She had come to consider the clearing hers. Especially dear to her was the small, blue pool directly in the clearing's center.

So when Marie entered the clearing, she saw the blonde sitting by the pool, her back to her and undoing her belt. She was apparently going to sun-bathe. That pale skin of hers needs it, the brunette thought. Then she smiled. Searching the path for a hand-sized rock, she found one, picked it up, hefted it, and sneaked in a semicircle through the grass, meanwhile keeping the blonde's back to her until she was within ten feet of the undressing girl. By this time, Laura had undone and spread open the front of her blouse. Then Marie threw the rock into the pool, splashing the cold water up Laura's back. Laura screamed and jumped up, clutching the front of her blouse. Marie said innocently, "Why, I didn't know you were there!"

Without thinking, Laura strode to her enemy, stepped in front of her, her blue eyes glaring into the brunette's brown eyes, and slapped her sharply across the right cheek. Marie staggered from the blow but recovered immediately and smiled: "That is what we've been waiting for, isn't it?" The slap on Laura's cheek cracked through the forest and nearly brought her to her knees. When she recovered, a thin trickle of scarlet was flowing from the left corner of her mouth, but she grimly smiled and replied, "Yes." And she returned the blow and received one simultaneously. Toe to toe, they stood slapping until their noses and mouths were bloody and both were weeping from the pain smarting in their livid cheeks. Soon they were hitting out wildly, missing blows.

Suddenly, the sobbing brunette noticed as she was rising from her knees after a particularly vicious slap that the panting blonde's blouse was wide open. She lunged for the brassiere and tore it away. Laura's breasts tumbled out. She covered them and took a few steps backward, embarrassed. But Marie had seen the white mounds with their tiny pink nipples so unlike her small brown ones (which she could feel stiffening in excitement), and she tore at Laura's hands. Suddenly, Laura stuck her white calf behind her attacker's calf and tripped her. She leaped upon the stunned brunette, ripped open her blouse and brassiere, pinned down her flailing arms, flattened herself on her enemy's bare belly, bent her blond head and sunk her teeth into one tan breast.

The brunette screamed wildly and tore at the blonde's hair. She suddenly wrapped her kicking legs around Laura's sides and squeezed the powerful thighs together until her enemy began to gasp for air and parted the punishing teeth. Instantly, Marie rolled her over, kicked her away, and scrambled to her feet, nursing her bruised breast. The skin wasn't broken. By this time, Laura had also risen from the grass. The two stared at one another as if surprised to find themselves there and in that condition - two wild beasts mauling each other. Each girl's dress was torn to her waist. Their hair hung flat with perspiration that glistened in the sun on their heaving breasts, shoulders, arms, and streamed down the light hairs of their flat bellies to disappear beneath their waistbands. And the blood on their faces. As each noticed that, she gingerly reached up to her own face, touched it, and then looked at her fingers in disgust. Blood.

Laura backed to the pool and dabbed cold water on her face. Marie went to the other side, stooped and did the same and then began rinsing the sweat from her torso. Gradually, each reclined on her side of the pool. They stared at one another unsmilingly. The blonde broke the silence: "This is my clearing, Marie. If you get out right now, I'll call it quits. If not..." The brunette spat, "Stand up, you pale little bitch!" and rose slowly and dangerously to her bare feet, The blonde did the same. Deliberately, each girl circled the pool until they were face to face and nearly breast to breast. They glared into one another's eyes, silently daring the other to renew the punishing battle. Suddenly, their erect nipples brushed. With a gasp, each girl sunk her claws in the other's hair. They didn't yank away from each other. They yanked down. Each was trying to bend the other's head back to straddle her and pummel her trapped head with a free hand. And knowing intuitively that such was the other's aim, each strained desperately, eyes fixed on the other's handsome face until heads were slowly bent back so that all that each could see through smarting eyes was the roof of leaves above. Silently, they yanked, breasts crushed together, arms locked behind one another's slippery shoulders. Occasionally, one girl's hand would slip away, clutching a snarl of the other girl's uprooted hair. She would then rapidly wipe her hand on the other's sweating back and sink her fist in for another grip. Soon they were kneeling and the tears were coursing down their soft cheeks.

It stopped suddenly, though. Laura, nearly mad with pain, brutally twisted her opponent to the right. They both toppled into the pool, gasping at the impact of the cold water on their feverish bodies. Though the pool doesn't come up to her knees, Laura intends to hold Marie's head under water until...She hadn't planned farther.

Rapidly, Laura wrapped her left arm around Marie's slender neck and propped her right hand on the sandy bottom while she tried to twist the other girl under water.But the brunette recovered her wits instantly, twisted her head and right shoulder (both slippery with water and sweat) right into the front of the blonde.

Suddenly, Marie was facing a pink-tipped breast and sunk her white teeth into the cold flesh. She could feel the nipple on her tongue as the other girl's body writhed around in agony. Her left hand groped for Laura's right wrist on the pool's bottom, found and seized it, pulled up, and under they both went. Marie bit until she could hold her breath no longer and then rose.

Her enemy slipped out from underneath her and tried to scramble out of the pool. But Marie grabbed the back of her skirt and hauled back until it gave way. Then she grabbed the elastic band of the blonde's panties. Laura's legs kicked at her, knocking across the pool and under the water. As she tried to rise and shake the hair and water from her eyes, Laura landed on her, screaming like a wildcat, ferociously ripping at her skirt in turn. As the cloth parted with a rip, both girls lost balance and splashed backwards into the water.

Now both were nude except for their panties. They struggled to their feet. For an instant, each took in the other's magnificent thighs and the dark triangles visible beneath the transparent cloth. Simultaneously, they sprang out at one another. The blonde felt her groin constrict with excitement as she splashed across the pool to the brunette charging at her. They groaned as their bare bodies crushed together and as each wrapped her arms around the other, hugging her body into hers. Then their bare legs began groping for the other's. Marie first got her brown thigh between Laura's white thighs and then twisted it to lock it back around her right calf. Simultaneously, Laura's left calf hooked outside around Marie's right. They stood there poised, in balance for one instant, a statue in tension.

And though it's only an instant that they stand here, they feel it to be an eternity. Laura's mouth is out of sight, pressed against Marie's already warming cheek. Their arms are cold on the outside, for there is a breeze. But they feel the other's hot skin on the inside. Their breasts ache as they press together, each one's breast giving where the pink or brown nipple of the other presses stiffly into hers. And hard legs twine into hard legs. But it's no longer the legs that matter to them.

In this instant, these two young virgins have become alive, truly alive, for the first time in their twenty years. For a trembling has begun in Laura's clitoris as she senses Marie's brown thigh between her legs, parting her thighs, opening her lips, and baring the organs under the thin, wet cloth. And before her flash an infinite number of pictures of that thigh in the past: under skirts, rippling and knotting in sport, rounding her wet skirt as she lay by the pool minutes before, glistening brown as her white skirt ripped away seconds before. And now between her thighs, thighs that are softening and giving. And Marie feels Laura's tremor quiver on her thigh and knows it for what it is, for what she had felt as they had yanked one another's hair in the heat, weeping in the sun. And the tremor which had begun in her then and had renewed with full force as they had just plunged across the pool to one another, had mounted even further as they embraced one another and she had forced her thigh purposefully between Laura's to start it in her, to force her to share her delicious anguish, that tremor which now mounts in her to the point of full tension as Laura's has arched into rigidity in just this instant.

*** 

I know you're irritated at this babble breaking in. You want to be alone at moments like this. You'd even kill someone who came in on you at the wrong time. lt's like keeping a dog away from his meat.

But I'm trying to get through to you, to tell you that this stuff excites me, too (hell, I wrote it - and you can't do that one from the outside - to us, it's Shakespeare and the Bible wrapped in one brown and white package), to tell you that there are two of us right now reading this and maybe several thousand more, and that we share something hard and real (no pun), and that we aren't alone. Yes, there are going to be a lot of other bastards reading this, maybe disgusted, maybe laughing, maybe bored, maybe a little excited (but it's off their hang-up). But I'm writing to you. To say, "Hello."

I told you this story to let you know - as no outsider will ever know - that on this one point I'm telling no lie. I'm no lie. You'll know. Just like I've known four or five times in my life that there's someone real out there. Someone that's in my species. And, by god that can be a relief.

But the thing sure gets bigger, doesn't it!