A Long, Hard Death
There’s this one time I almost died giving head. I was in Vegas, which, when I tell people that, they usually nod and say, “Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” I’m not sure why, as though death by vagina has some kind of locative quality. At any rate, I was on leave from a deployment in the Iraq War and had met a small group of women enjoying a bachelorette party. One of the bridesmaids and I struck up a conversation over blackjack and eventually found ourselves in my room, wherein the near-fatal cunnilingus occurred. I’ve told this story from time to time over the years, usually just for a laugh but, I think, also searching for some kind of meaning, some moral to my brush with mortality.
She orgasmed, if that helps ease us into the conversation.
“So,” she asked, “what do you do in the Army?” Lilly and I (and no, that wasn’t her real name. I’ll call her that for the story and because I think it’s funny. Do some research if you want in on the joke), were dancing in my hotel room. Swaying, really, barely in time with the soft music filling the desert air. The night was obviously progressing in a certain direction, but for the moment, we were just enjoying the feel of our bodies pressed together. For far too many months, I’d been in the company of my fellow soldiers, the enemy, and the oppressive weight of my horrid actions.
I don’t remember for sure, but I vaguely recall the girls mentioning something about a strip club that night. By the time Lilly and her friends had come by where I’d been playing blackjack, most of them were drunk, and they all were laughing with that almost feral intensity of an aroused woman. That slightly harsh, almost sinister, and distinctly predatory sound only the human female can make when her heat is up. For those among you who haven’t heard the sound, I both pity and envy you; it’s as terrifying as it is arousing. For those of you unsure if you’ve heard it or not, you haven’t. The antelope never forgets the growl of a lioness on the hunt.
Being single and having spent several months in a combat zone meant I had money to burn. I was on leave and meant to enjoy the profits of my despair. No investing or saving or any other such nonsense; I was in Vegas to have as much fun as my back-pay would allow. I was staying in a suite in one of Sin City’s best hotels, with a view, not of the Strip and all its garish, neon offense, but out into the still-pristine desert. Strange how I took such comfort in one desert, but such misery in another. The balcony door was open, letting the not-too-hot Autumn air flow in, complementing our own rising heat. I placed a kiss on her rosy lips so light and gentle I surprised myself, and then I answered. “Nothing important. Nothing good.” I was in Vegas to forget, after all.
To her credit, Lilly didn’t push, instead resting her head against my chest. The scent of flowers and female filled me, banishing, if only briefly, the lead that had encased my soul. We kept swaying, pressing together and letting the whole world turn as it wished.
I admit I could have stayed like that all night, feeling the barely-remembered joy of a woman’s body pressed against mine. Her scent and her sound filling my world. Her curves and compassion fitting the widening crevasses of my body and heart. But she had spent the night seeing bulging, twirling, speedo-enhanced crotches, and kitty was feeling frisky. A small hand worked its way down and, somewhat fiercely, grabbed my ass.
I was rather proud of my ass back then. Most of my missions involved a lot of walking, climbing, and carrying heavy weight. So, although I was never much to look at and my muscle tone was strictly mechanical, rather than aesthetic, by God I had a nice ass. Lilly must have thought so too, as she spent quite a bit of time rubbing, kneading, and gripping said posterior. This tigress was clearly thirsty.
I don’t remember what my intention was, to spur her on or possibly extract her nails from my flesh. Ladies, keep in mind that you can draw blood with those things. Everything in moderation, my lovelies; including and especially when you have delicate flesh clenched in your eagle’s talons.
My hand, which had been resting against the small of her back, drifted down. It didn’t explore her well-toned tush, but rather slipped its way back up, beneath her loose blouse. It traced a light, almost delicate touch on her skin, marveling in the softness as the very tips of my callused fingers traced up the light bend of her spine. Few women appreciate the joy of female flesh. Lesbians, I suppose, being the obvious exception. There’s really just something to the feel of a woman’s skin. You moisturize, you pluck, you exfoliate. You do all those mystical things that take so very long. It’s extraordinary.
Gentlemen, the next time your lady-love is taking longer than seems reasonable in the process of “getting ready,” let her be. The end product is, has been, and forever shall be, worth it.
I traced small designs, gentle circuits, along the flesh of her back. I reveled in the smoothness, the perfect curves, the radiating warmth. Her breath caught and she bit her lower lip. A gaze of narrow intensity reached up from behind long lashes, spearing me. There are two memories that always superimpose over this one. Two moments that are so weirdly different I never understood how my brain put them together. I was ten and my dad had decided it was time for me to be a man. He took me deer hunting. I don’t remember much about the trip, except for the kill. My dad spotted his prey and knelt, raising his rifle. The deer paused and looked up, spotting us, spotting his death. It froze, unable to move. Then it died. I was twenty the first time I killed someone, some nameless insurgent in those winter mountains. The Army had sent us to pacify a rioting village. I don’t remember all that much about the mission, except the kill. I spotted a kid, fourteen or fifteen, carrying a rifle. He was shooting at another squad, then spotted me. He froze, unable to move. Then he died.
When Lilly looked up at me, I was unable to move. Then she kissed me.
I’m sorry I can’t give you all the lurid details. I don’t remember moving to the bed; or rather, I don’t remember Lilly pulling on some unnamed appendage. I don’t remember one body being thrown down, somewhat savagely, on the neatly-made blankets. I don’t remember the other body, trembling with need, uttering some strange purring-growl as it climbed on top. I don’t remember clothes being pulled off, heedless of buttons or zippers. I don’t remember the rising energy, the rising need, banishing the whole rest of the world.
I do remember the heat. Temperature’s a funny thing. I remember being on a plane landing in Kuwait. The door opened and, like an angry wall, the heat of the Middle East washed over the cabin. I remember the push of the Arabian sun on my shoulders. I remember panting against the waterless afternoon. I don’t remember the context of these memories. I just remember the heat.
Lilly’s body was a furnace. She pushed rounded hip and breast against me. She rubbed smooth arm and leg along me. I breathed in her panting fire and made it my own as our tongues wrestled for dominance, a fight I could not possibly win. Kissing became biting, playful at first, but quickly becoming not. Nails traced red lines along scars. I’m man enough to admit I was getting scared.
I was never scared in combat. That’s not a boast, but rather an admission. Therapists have spent years trying to explain why and how my brain works. Bullets started flying and I was calm. Bombs exploded and I was collected. Brothers screamed in fear and pain, and my voice never wavered. I pulled a private, a boy really, out of a burning tank, and my pulse remained steady. I recovered the remains of a good friend from a crashed helicopter, and felt only the need for a shower. I never felt was others did, what I was “supposed” to feel. I was blank in crisis, a machine in catastrophe. I sometimes wonder where those feelings went.
Anyway, as I said, this little horny toad was scaring the shit out of me. She wasn’t just horny, she was crazy-horny. Mindless and furious, and demanding and commanding. Impatient and indignant, and hungry and thirsty. Her eyes swirled with savage, focused madness. She licked and bit, and moaned and growled. Those who have encountered crazy-horny will understand the important distinction. Those who have not encountered crazy-horny… once again, I both envy and pity you. Lilly looked at me like I was meat; you’d think that would be appealing but there’s a limit. Hair was flying and I thought I’d start crying. Each time I teased her, a light flick of the tongue on her nipples, a nibble of her earlobe, a light trace of a fingertip just below her bellybutton, all of these made her growl a demand for more. I pulled her hands, nails really, out of my back, fearing my racing heartbeat would cause blood to spurt. I decided I needed to take charge of the situation.
Here’s a fun fact for you. Did you know the Romans had a word with some interesting implications as to their cultural mindset? Lupa, the word is. Literally, it means she-wolf. A lupa is just a female wolf. However. It’s also slang for a sexually-promiscuous woman, either an outright prostitute or just what we would today call a woman who is sex-positive. There’s a pretty strong implication in the literature that a lupa was a sexually-aggressive woman, someone who took charge during a sexual event and was dominant over the man. I’m not sure what made me think of that.
At any rate. For fear of taking some serious damage, I decided to go on the offensive. I grabbed her wrists and pinned them, leveraging my greater mass to flip us, putting her on the bottom. In response, Lilly lifted her hips, rising us both off the bed. Somehow, even as she was doing this, she also managed to coil her legs around mine… in multiple loops. The hangry succubus was somehow using her sex-magic to levitate the both of us! Hot damn that was something to feel. Keep in mind that this woman was 5 foot if she was an inch, and maybe 90 pounds soaking wet, if you’ll forgive the pun because she very much was. Yet here she was, lifting not only herself, but my big ass up in a mockery of gravity.
So I reformulated my strategy.
I locked eyes with her and held it for a moment. Then I smiled and released my grip, tracing my hands along her arms and downward. I also lowered my torso, tracing light kisses as I made clear my intention to head south. I started at her collar, then let my tongue glide along and between her breasts. I felt her predatory heartbeat in the back of my throat, as though she could reach out with her very soul to pull me in. I continued down, alternating between kissing and licking my way lower, around her navel and further.
Now, I should say that I’m rather proud of my cunnilingus skills. I can’t really hump worth a damn, especially these days with my back all messed up. I don’t have the patience or stamina or imagination for any of that really kinky shit. But by God do I know how to go mumblin’ in the moss. I was lucky enough as a young man to be taught by a very beautiful, very generous older woman. She had the patience of a saint, smoothing out my cock-sure arrogance and replacing it with skill, technique, and best of all, patience. There’s nothing like having a mentor for a job you love.
I began by teasing her inner thighs. A little lick here, a nibble there. The trick is to awaken the nerves but to leave them unsatisfied. I remember back when the Army trained me in enhanced interrogation. You never wanted to go full-violent on a subject; rather, you teased them, threatened them, and only used a little force, letting them fear worse was coming. I kept switching from one leg to the other and back, starting above the knees and working my way up. Lilly’s eyes kept rolling up, her lips fluttering between moaning desire and angry snarl, like a leopard who knows dinner is coming but is a little late in arriving.
It wasn’t until I saw the signs of climax that I actually made contact with the holy of holies. You have to be sensitive to all the little cues the female body will send you. It’s like anticipating weather, really. I remember once we were out in the deep desert. Our comms were on the fritz and nobody could figure out why. I’d looked to the horizon and saw nothing, but the nothing was what scared me. There wasn’t a hint of wind, like the desert was holding her breath. The sand would quiver, but only a little, here and there. It felt like the whole desert was shivering with goose bumps all along her dunes. You could hear a rumble, low and far in the distance, like something big was coming, and was just out of sight. I paid attention to the signs, and knew a storm was building.
So it was time for escalation. I ran the length of my tongue up, along her flooding valley, so to speak. That’s her vagina, if I’m being too poetic. Slow and deliberate, like painting a shed, I ran my tongue up and down, up and down. But each time, I stopped just shy of the button. It’s important in war that you keep a hand over the button, but don’t press until just the right moment, when the full force of released ordnance will cause the maximum damage.
Her breath caught, her muscles clenched… and I stopped.
There’s a certain trick to writing a climax, did you know that? I’ve tried for years to come up with a colorful metaphor, something to do with catching the perfect wave on your board or riding a thermal before you pop your chute. None of it ever felt true to me though. Writing a climax, some people will tell you, should be straightforward: just get to it and then it’s done. But that’s just selfish. The reader has been with you so far, gone on this journey with you, they deserve more than a quick: bam, thank you very much, and we’re done. Some people will tell you to draw the climax out for as long as possible, take in every possible narrative moment, every character beat, every point of setting. But dear God that sounds exhausting. Not just for the writer, but for the reader as well. Who the hell wants to wait that long for a single moment of pleasure and satisfaction? At some point, you’re just thinking, “get on with it, you asshole!”
So I stopped. It’s a little trick called edging. Get her going, get her really revved up, but don’t let her climax. I love this trick. It’s never failed me. It causes some very strong orgasms. There’s just one little… disadvantage? Putting it another way…
“YOU MOTHERFUCKER!!!” Lilly was pissed. And she was getting more pissed by the second. Scary-pissed. Enraged-pissed. Homicidal-, axe-murdery-pissed.
You see, your partner should know, in advance, when you plan to edge her. I didn’t clear the idea with Lilly because I was using edging as a survival strategy. This crazy bitch had gotten way out of hand with the nails and the biting and the scary growling. I needed leverage. So, I edged her.
After using my tongue on everything but her clitoris, I backed off and let her cool a bit. She gasped her uncertainty, but still trusted me enough to continue. I then started using my fingers and my tongue. I slipped one, then two, digits inside her, curving up as I pulsed in and out and around, finding that little spot that’s back in there a bit. Guys, if you don’t know the spot I’m talking about, read a frickkin’ book or something. Ladies, if you don’t know that spot… I am so very, very sorry. Tell your partner to read a frickkin’ book or something.
So after I used my fingers and tongue in conjunction, I got Lilly back up and roaring. This time, her thighs started quivering, her breath was little more than broken gasps. She was ripping (I mean literally ripping) the sheets with her nails and teeth. Her choking moans grew harder, deeper, more intense, and closer together. Kinda like the warning for an earthquake, now that I think about it… the little tremors that keep building until the big one hits.
So she got really, really close.
And then I stopped again.
That’s when all the swearing started. Turns out, Lilly was fluent in a few languages. At least, she knew how to threaten testicular violence in a few languages. And I believed her. People only liked to get teased just so much, I guess.
I remember this time we were at the qualification range. That is, the firing range to qualify on our primary weapons; in my case an M4 carbine. Everybody had to shoot a certain number of targets before we could leave. I was a pretty good shot, if I say so myself, and moreover, the whole platoon knew I was a pretty good shot. They all knew I could easy hit the required number of targets. But I thought it would be funny to intentionally keep hitting one under the requirement. I even got cocky about it, deliberately hitting all around the target, rather than the target itself, “accidentally” changing magazines at the wrong moment, suffering a weapon jam… I thought it was pretty funny. The rest of the platoon wasn’t amused: they kicked my ass up one side and down the other for keeping them waiting so long. I guess at some point, everybody’s just ready for things to be over and done.
You’ll recall that I began this story with how I almost died mid-cunnilingus. Well, here’s how it actually happened:
Lilly was fucking furious, or rather, furious at my fucking (screw you, I thought it was funny). She started reaching towards me, murder burning in her eyes so hot it would snuff the flames of Hell itself. I beat her to the punch, though. I dove down, planting my head in her lap. I munched that carpet for all I was worth. I fingered that back spot, I fiddled her button, I reached my hands up and tweaked her nipples. I even fiddled a bit around back. You name a trick, by God I was doin’ it. And she was appreciative.
Too, appreciative, as it turns out. You see, when I reached up to play with her nipples, I’d let go of her hips. Just a word of caution to anyone out there with an interest in paying lip service to your partner’s lady bits: keep a hold of her hips. This is especially important if you’re going to try edging her. Have you ever seen those rodeo horses, the ones that buck and jump all around trying to throw the rider? Imagine trying to hold onto one of those horses, but only with your face.
Lilly started grinding her hips into my jaw. She ran her hands along my head, digging her nails in. Jesus Christ… that woman and her nails. Her increasingly gasping breath, instead of mumbling oaths to a loving God or somewhat offensive compliments to the pleasure I was providing, instead chewed the air as threats to my soul if I dared stop again. I could tell she was reaching a crescendo: the shuddering, the gasping, the growling moans. And then it happened.
Her legs suddenly clamped down on my neck and head. Those sticks slammed shut like a fucking bear trap. I was so surprised I actually screamed into her love tunnel. And that was the exact wrong thing to do for two reasons. First, I guess the sudden vibrations of my terror set off her orgasm and second, I used up what breath I had.
“OH FU-GO-MUH-CUM-“ I’m not exactly sure what Lilly was trying to say, but I’d like to think it was a warning that things were about to get out of hand. Like I said, the trap slammed shut, both her legs and her clam. My head and neck were caught in the same vice as my lips and tongue. Her back arched past 90 degrees. Her arms flailed out wildly, further shredding the bed.
Do you know how much a bed costs in Vegas? I do.
Her hips bucked and the lower-half of her body twisted. All of this happened with my head trapped in her angry rose. She wrenched my head this way and that. She squeezed harder and harder against me, like she was trying to pop an ugly zit with her vulva. And it just kept going on and on.
I couldn’t breathe. Her honey pot was mashed into my face, blocking my mouth. Mid-screaming orgasm, she did a kind of half curl, rolling her stomach into my nose. I had no air at all. Her legs were so damn strong that I couldn’t pull them apart, and I was trying. I pulled, tugged, even beat at those things, but they just maintained their shuddering grip. I even tried tapping out, slapping to signal my surrender. Turns out I was accidentally slapping her ass, though, which just made her cum harder.
So, with my vision starting to blur and my thoughts getting fuzzy around the edges, I contemplated death. I vaguely remember wondering how this would play out in the afterlife. Would I get to Hell with reverence, with damned souls and demons nudging each other as I passed, whispering their awe at the this most envied manner of death? Or would I be an object of mockery, the fool who didn’t think to bring a snorkel into the cave of wonders?
Finally, she finished le petite mort. Her legs fell away and I flew back gasping. I recall lying on the floor, sucking in oxygen, and swearing to the uncaring heavens that I would lead a better life, thankful that I had survived the hippo’s yawn. Never in my life, not before and certainly not since, did I feel such a complex flood of relief, anger, fear, and befuddlement. One thing was for certain: I knew in that moment of perfect clarity, no more crazy sex.
The next day, I hooked back up with the bachelorette group. Lilly had told my tale, and a couple of the others were curious.
End
