Compatible Bedfellows

She began an earnest lope, flexing herself up and down along my rigid pole. I let my hands ride up and down on her hips. I cupped them to gently accept and release the jiggle of her breasts. I stroked her neck and shoulders, her sides, her thighs, her backside. I began to flex my own hips in a reciprocating motion.

Maybe she didn't always, but this time she did, quietly but contentedly, right there astride me, right there in my hands, her haunches taut, her breasts erect, her nipples bursting, her expression looking inward much further than I could see. My pretty roommate. She flexed and flexed and held and strained to squeeze out, to savor, every last sweet drop, and then she let herself sprawl down over me like a cozy, discarded comforter. I held her, softly, still pegged, one downy handful of unguarded buttocks, one satin palm's breadth of bare naked back.

"Did you come?" she purred, contentedly.

"Not yet."

Without uncoupling, we worked ourselves over onto her back. I held part of my weight on my elbows, but only part of it. I looked into her eyes as if to make sure she knew who was doing the fucking now. She looked back, meekly, but unflinchingly. I pivoted on my knees, rocking every stroke along her full torso. She opened her legs even wider. And her eyes. And she came again, quietly, contentedly, even before I did.

---

It was a typical Magda solution. If there are two people sleeping in the same bed, it's just so much more practical, more neighborly, more natural for them to sleep together. It didn't mean we were lovers. We weren't really even boyfriend and girlfriend. She went about her business, I went about mine. We were just roommates. We shared chores, the occasional meal, the occasional fuck. More than occasional, actually. Pretty much every night. Some mornings and afternoons. Human beings are meant to cuddle, to feel the gentle warmth of each other's skin, to conform their concavities and convexities, to search for the fulfillment of their mutual yearning. If roommates can help each other with shopping and laundry, why not with that?

Suppose your roommate has been reading late. She turns out the light, takes off her robe, folds it neatly, and gets into bed beside you.

Suppose it's a lazy Saturday morning. Your roommate is still asleep, her warm bottom nestled cozily up against you.

Suppose you're lying in bed, lightly brushing your roommate's back with your fingernails, paying special attention to each of her reflex zones, each of her chakra points. She turns to smile her appreciation. The two of you realize that you're not as tired as you thought.

It's not rocket science.

---

One night I had to work late and didn't get home until way after dark. Magda was curled up in her chair, engrossed in her book. I collapsed into my chair, too brain dead for anything else.

She started to absent-mindedly unbutton her blouse. She did it with one hand, still completely submerged in her book. She leaned forward in the chair, wriggled out of one sleeve, passed the book between hands, and wriggled out of the other. She reached behind herself, unhooked her bra, and shrugged it off as well, passing the book between hands again, not missing a single word. My brain files were still spinning down, logging transactions only fuzzily.

Then she started fiddling with the button of her jeans. She slid them down on one side, then on the other, transferring her weight from haunch to haunch, never taking her eyes off the book. When she'd gotten them down to her knees she kicked them off the rest of the way. After another page or so she reached down and worked her panties off too. Or so my circuits told me.

She stood up from her chair. She wandered vaguely in my direction, holding the book in front of her, like a naked sleep walker, a naked sleep-reading sleep walker. She sat down on my lap, as if I were part of the furniture. She leaned back against my shoulder, swiveling her legs up over the arm of the chair, still lost in her book, settling her bottom comfortably down into the crack between my legs. Her perky breasts were right in front of my face. Her legs were open just enough to reveal the intricate folds at the top of her slit where the inner and outer lips all came together.

She idly picked up my hand from the arm of the chair and started to lightly stroke herself with it, brushing my fingertips up the underside of her breast, across the nipple, then down the top side. She must have come to an exciting part of the story. Her nipples got stiffer and stiffer.

She wet my index finger against the tip of her tongue and used it to turn the page. She took my hand down between her legs. She began to stroke herself there, weaving my fingers lightly up and down her silky slit, then massaging her mound, then back down the slit and back up again against her firm little nubby, swirling it with more and more pressure each time.

Her pelvic muscles began to clench, her thighs to clasp. She shrugged her shoulder, cuddling my upper arm closer against her breast. She pushed her groin against my hand, my hand against her groin. She closed her eyes, the book now down against her chest. She clasped and clenched and shuddered and gasped and held everything, everything, just there, just there, just there, just there.

And then she shuddered once again.

And then, slowly, she exhaled; unclasped; unclenched; unshrugged.

"Good book?" I asked, softly.

Slowly, languorously, she arched her back and rolled her head. "You're here," she said, dreamily. "Want to fool around?"

It was a request I never thought I'd ever turn down. But my tired circuits were perfectly immobilized by her warmth, her familiar heft, her irrefutable girliness. "Mind if I take a rain check?"

She regarded me with a concerned look. But not too concerned. She brought my fingers up to her lips, kissed them, and pressed them against mine. They smelled of her cum. She tucked them back down between her legs and went back to her reading.

---

"Cioppino!" I announced, toting in a big bag of groceries.

"Cioppino?" she inquired, looking up from her book.

"Cioppino," I confirmed, a Dungeness crab in one hand, a green pepper in the other.

"Cioppino," she mused, coming over to get a better look.

"Cioppino," I explained, dicing the red onion and tossing it into the sizzling oil.

"Cioppino," she recited, chopping tomatoes and zucchinis.

"Cioppino," I griped, cleaning out the crab guts, cracking the shells.

"Cioppino," she crooned, stirring in the mushrooms, the scallops, the shrimp.

"Cioppino," I beamed, the pot asimmer, the steamy kitchen redolent of the sea.

"Cioppino," she smacked, prong deep in claw, plate awash in angel hair, napkins piling up.

"Cioppino," I whispered, later, in bed, licking the last stains from her lips.

---

Magda was sitting on the futon, leaning back against her pillow, reading her book. She was wearing a colorfully embroidered peasant blouse and nothing else. She had her knees up and her legs spread a bit apart. I had my face down between them, taking a leisurely self-guided tour.

I got it that her outer lips were like the sides of a pudgy pot pie that had split open, revealing all the exotic fruits de mer within. I could recognize the little oyster at the top where her clitoris was supposed to be. But I could never really figure out the inner lips. What were they lips of? What were they supposed to be enclosing? They led down to her vagina, but why were they centered so high above it?

"To attract guys' attention, I guess," she offered.

I parted them with my fingers. I loved the way that they were so thin and frilly, more like jellyfish frills than real lips. Everything down there was so pink and moist, as much inside as outside. I looked and looked and finally found what must have been her pee hole. I'd never really seen a girl's pee hole before. I put my face closer and tried to touch it with the tip of my tongue. I couldn't tell if there was a taste of pee or not.

"Is that your pee hole?" I asked.

"Yup," she replied.

"It's so far back. How do you keep from getting everything wet when you pee?"

"Everything does get wet. Girls have to wipe themselves after they pee."

"I didn't know that." I licked around to see if maybe she'd missed a spot last time.

I ran my finger down her frills to her vagina itself. Looking into it really was looking up inside her, although the relaxed pink walls didn't let you see very far. It was super arousing, but at the same time kind of clinical, like looking down someone's throat. I noticed one other thing.

"Your vagina is so close to your asshole."

"Is it?"

I had my thumb in the vestibule of her vagina and I put my index finger up into the pucker of her asshole. "They're like this far apart."

"Well, they always tell us to be careful when we wipe our butts."

"You girls and your wiping."

"Boys never wipe anything, I suppose."

I took off my pants and knelt back between her knees. I brought the tip of my hard-on gently up against the opening of her vagina, like I was going to give her an injection. I loved the way my big, fleshy cock head pushed its way into her compliant entrance way. I had my hands on her knees, and I rocked my hips back and forth, gently bringing my tip up against her, giving her little cock-kisses with my own pee hole. She put down her book.

"You know something?" I said. "If you think about it, just about everything we do in our whole lives we do with our hands. We use our hands to plant our crops, to harvest them, cook them, eat them. Sew our clothes, build our houses, drive our cars. Just about everything important survival-wise we do with our hands.

"Except for one thing. If I want to plant a seed in you, I have a whole special little gizmo just for that. A little nozzle that sticks out just the right amount. And you've got a special little orifice just to receive it." I put my hands up in the air and jockeyed my cock head right up to her opening. "Look, ma, no hands!"

"You sound just like a guy," she replied. "Planting the seed, that's the hard part I suppose? What about taking care of it after it's planted. You forgot to mention that my 'orifice' is connected to a whole little nursery. I think that plays some kind of role in the overall operation."

"Yeah, yeah, you're right of course. But it's weird, isn't it? We go through so much of our lives typing away on our keyboards, fingering our violins, grasping our wine glasses, thinking how sophisticated we are. But when it comes to propagation, we've got to put down our keyboards and take off all our fancy clothes and just do it the way the cave men did. The way that dogs and cats and horses and cows do it. They don't even have hands to begin with."

"So what are you getting at? You want to propagate?"

I snorted a little laugh. "Yeah, right. The sound of little feet running around our little apartment? Parent buddies? What would your magazines say about that?"

"My biological clock is ticking, you know."

"I know. I can hear it."

"You're a goof."

"Takes one to know one."

She stuck her tongue out at me. I stuck mine out at her.

She pulled her peasant blouse off over her head and shook her hair. Her nipples were hard as cowrie shells. "There," she said. "I've taken off my fancy clothes. Can you go over that part about the cave man one more time?"

I gave her a few more little cock-kisses. "Now pay attention," I said.

---

Sunday morning. Magda still asleep, half tangled in the sheet, her pretty bottom peaking out.

Yesterday we'd taken a bike ride out past the University and up into the hills. It was a long, sweaty climb, and we stopped, panting, under the shade of an oak tree. She'd packed avocado sandwiches and nectarines. Once in a while a car would roar past, but in between times it was so still and peaceful that you could hear the stalks of grass creaking in the breeze, the buzz of insects, the occasional pant or whir of another cyclist. I must have dozed off. When I woke up I saw Magda sitting there beside me, her arms around her knees, a stalk of grass in her mouth, looking out over the valley, and I felt for a moment as if the lumpy earth, the playful air, the cozy sunshine, the busy insects, the two of us, the whole vast humming immensity of the world were all spun from the same purest sparkling golden happiness.

We flew back downhill, standing on the pedals, gliding like hawks, mile after mile, chilled by the wind, faster than we should have. I looked around and saw her, way back, walking her bike. She'd popped a tire. We sat by the side of the road and patched it up. The pump was for the other type of valve, but we figured it out. We coasted down the rest of the way at a less breakneck speed. Then long blocks of city streets to home.

We teased each other about who would get to shower first, then went in together, soaping each other's tired biceps and hamstrings. We lounged nude on the futon, not even bothering to fuck. Our plan was just to open up a can of tuna, but my stomach came to its senses. I hauled her up, dressed her in a pair of shorts and a tee shirt, and dragged her over to the burrito place. We ate on a bench in the park, watching the kids on their skateboards. It was a long, warm, summer evening with music playing on every corner.

Later, back at the apartment, we had hardly any clothes to take off. This time we did fuck, wordlessly, sunnily, soaringly, glidingly, scrub-a-dubbingly, sparklingly, goldenly.

And now it was Sunday morning, and we had a whole long summer's day of weekend still to go.

---

We had a steamy carton of chow mein from the hand-pulled noodle place. We spread a towel over the futon and sat down to eat it picnic style.

"Our lease is going to be up in a couple of months," I pointed out. "We'll have to figure out what we're going to do.

"I mean, we could keep this place, or we could look for someplace else. This place is all right, but maybe we could do better. We should probably start keeping our eyes open.

"Assuming we want to stay together. It's not that this hasn't been a terrific summer, maybe the best summer ever, but sometimes I think, well, maybe this has just been a vacation, not real life. We go to our little jobs, we come back and lock the bolt, and nothing else matters. Our careers. Our biological clocks. It's like the apartment of the lotus eaters. It's wonderful, but where is it getting us? Maybe it's time to get on with things. Maybe, for our own good, it's time for us to go our separate ways."

She was letting me have my say. I was falling behind in the chow mein department. I wolfed a couple big mouthfuls and then I went on.

"But, then I think, maybe things here aren't so bad after all. Not this place, but the two of us, you and me. Maybe we are getting on with things. Maybe we're laying a foundation for all the rest, the careers, the pitter-pat. Maybe this is what life is all about. This. What we've got right now.

"Because, when you stop and think about it, how do we ever make the important decisions in our lives? We say, 'this is my favorite song,' but how does it get to be our favorite song? We didn't write it, it didn't just pop into our heads. Maybe we heard it on the radio. Or maybe someone else liked it, or maybe people were talking about it. The important thing isn't how we heard it the first time, but how we heard it the rest of the times. How it moved us, how it grew on us, how it wove itself into the texture of our lives.

"I guess what I'm trying to say is, maybe someday people will ask us how we met, and we'll say, 'Oh, we both answered the same ad for this apartment on Fulton Street.'"

Magda had been picking around in the carton with her chopsticks. She'd come up with a plump orange prawn, all beaded with sauce. She held it up for me to see. She poked it into my mouth.

"We've still got a couple of months," she said. "We'll figure it out."