THE TROUBLE
WITH CLAWS
Copyright 2001 by Jean Roberta.
Not to be reproduced
without author's permission.
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I am too soft and submissive - sometimes, anyway. As I press
my fake fingernails onto my real ones, I wonder if any women
actually enjoy wearing these things. Centerfold models flash
their hard red nails at their soft pink or tanor chocolate
curves: look at this. The viewer is supposedto see those babes
as real call girls with a calling, the modern successors to
the courtesans of legend.
I am not Phrynne, and no Canadian judge would set me free
in exchange for the sight of my tits, cute as they are. Atleast
I'm not likely to get busted as long as Tom visits meat home,
and neither of us has to deal with a pimp or an agency. I
guess that's why I'm grateful.
Tom will really owe me for this favor, and I hope he won't
expect me to wear these claws every time. If I wanted to do
that, I could have grown my own fingernails to a sharp and
scary length with no help from Knox gelatin. I've heard enough
complaints about my own little claws, no matter how short
I keep them.
I'll finish painting the ones on my left hand before I do
the hand I'm using. This way, I can ease into the feeling
of being manually disabled in stages. I don't feel like a
tigress; au contraire. These things make my hands less useful,
not more dangerous. I wonder if that's really why men like
them.
All the men here on the alkaline prairies seem to need their
gall bladders removed once they're over fifty. The minerals
in the water affect everyone, but men must have more gall.
It must build up in them, as stagnant as swamp water. Tom
expected my sympathy when he showed me his scar. I wonder
if he really thinks he would like to be scratched open by
a bitch in heat. I'm sure it could be done.
I can't blame the old goat for wanting to get laid, though.Everyone
wants that, including me. I just don't want it with him, while
he doesn't want to leave me alone, especially now that I'm
trained to oil his tool with cooking oil and suck him off
the way he likes. And I couldn't survive as well without his
money.
There's the phone -- it's probably him. I hope he can't come
over until later. "Jean? Are you busy?" That velvety
voice is unmistakable.
Whatever I say, it can't be the truth. "Not really."
Thisis an unforeseen disaster.
"Well, put on a pot of tea," teases the dyke of
my dreams. I can hear her grinning at me over the phone. "I'm
in the neighborhood, so I can come over to pick up my book
if you're finished reading it. I'll be there in about ten
minutes."
"Fine," I assure her, feeling faint.
"Wear something sexy," flirts Marceline. No problem,
I think. Your wish is granted. Though I suspect her conceptof
sexy is a little different from that of the one I dressed
for.
I don't have my act together, never did, and I am very likely
to get busted after all. I should never have agreedto let
my idol come here, even on a day when I'm not expecting Tom.
I can never know when he'll call, so he is never really out
of my life. Whores are not entitled to have friends outside
the sex biz. That's the rule. I can't live two lives or three
lives at once. It's bad enough that I have to get my own daughter
out of our apartment whenever I want to play the role of a
human pissoir or spitoon for the relief of men.
That's a line from some lurid sermon that I preach to myself.
Tom is the only man I've been seeing for over a year. He knows
that, and it gives him hope that we have some kind of relationship
going on. He said: "I guess you're sort of my girlfriend."
I thought the "sort of" letme off the hook, so I
didn't set him straight.
If anything, I am now worse than when I earned a more honest
living at the agency. There are more ways to spiraldown to
the depths than to get hooked on something illegal.
My hopeless crush on Marceline is no better for me than heroin.
A connection with me can't be good for her either.
I can't take back my welcome because Markie (as she is known)
is on her way. She probably can't imagine what I could have
to hide from her. After all, we're in the same lesbian community.
We know the same people. Her girlfriend Elaine would probably
claim to like me too, if pressed for an opinion, though that's
doubtful. At this moment, Markie is probably thinking what
a relief it is that none of us has to pretend to be straight
in each other's company.
At this moment, I think a visit from the Vice Squad would
be a relief.
Despite Markie's fashion advice, I have to get out of this
dress before she arrives. Luckily, it unties in a flash. Now
I'm standing shamelessly in my black bra, panties and garter
belt with stockings and five-inch heels. What a spectacle
for the lesbian community, if Marceline should walk in with
three or four friends. I am scaring myself for no good reason.
I'm now wearing a bat-wing sweater and jeans, both comfortable
but not too old. My makeup is coming off. I look as honest
as I can look except for the purple claws onmy left hand which
contrast with the well-clipped dykey nails on my right hand.
I'll have to keep my bad hand out of sight.
There's the doorbell. "Hi Jean," she grins, making
a joke of it. The picture of health, that's me. Mark is dressed
in her usual working clothes: spotlessly clean and pressedcotton
pants and shirts. What else would a self-respectinglesbian-feminist
of the 1980s wear? Mark gives the impression of a lot of energy
bursting out of a small but solid body. Her heavy breasts
under a shirt manage to lookmotherly and butch at the same
time.
"How's the zoo?" I ask her. Mark is director of
the day care center in the shabby-artsy neighborhood where
I live, which has been called the local Greenwich Village.
She rules the staff who tend the kids who have been raised
on granola and leftist righteousness. My kid is already too
old for day care, so she is deprived of the daily sunshine
of Marceline, as well as many other things.
"The animals have been good today," she beams. "They're
making a circus mural to put up on the walls." I stand
here with a whore's hand in my jeans pocket, thinking of the
innocence of children. Is there no safe subject of conversation?
"Where's our Zebra?" asks Markie, referring to my
daughter.She was christened thus by a day care worker half
her life ago.
"At a friend's place," I explain. "She was
invited for supper." Marceline's face changes noticeably.
My little chaperone is away, so anything could happen. Am
I imagining it, or does Mark suddenly look like a horny teenage
boy whose girlfriend has just told him that her parents are
out?
She is obviously wondering why we're both still standing,
and why I haven't offered her anything to drink. I suspectshe
would accept an invitation to stay for a meal. Which might
be hair pie. She could always phone Elaine with someplausible
excuse.
Like royalty, Markie doesn't seem likely to leave her official
consort, but her interest in other women doesn't seem likely
to be satisfied in shallow social relationships. She has probably
guessed what I want. She would probably grant my wish if it
didn't cost her anything. In her supreme confidence, she probably
assumes I'm just shy, or socially inept.
"Here's your book," I tell her brusquely, offering
it with my right hand while my left stays jammed in its pocket
against my hip. She reaches out with both hands, and then
I see that one of them is holding a child's drawing of a badly-proportioned
woman with pointed breasts, big hair andred lips.
"See what Autumn Stormcloud made today," laughs
Mark, as a child-minder to a mother. "He said it's a
lady on TV." She expects me to groan over the influence
of patriarchal culture on impressionable young minds. She
also expects meto take the drawing from her hand.
I feel faint. While my good hand pushes the book at her with
unreasonable force, my left hand tries to grasp the drawing
through a pocket and a thick layer of denim, which proves
impossible. Mark watches me in disbelief as she accepts her
book.
"I'm expecting a phone call," I blurt, not wanting
to lie more than absolutely necessary. "You should come
over sometime when I have more time to talk." My hidden
left hand forms a fist. My garters have surely left marks
on mythighs like little red stigmata.
Markie's smile looks cold. "Then I won't keep you,"
she tells me. Obviously not, I think, because you never had
me. Probably never will, either. Especially considering the
way things are going.
My phone rings. "See you later," mouths Markie as
she bounces nimbly to my door, opens it and disappears. I
haveno time to digest the bittersweetness of a lost chance.
"Jean?" demands Tom in a voice that insinuates everything
Ihave done for him, and everything else he wants but can't
express in words.
"Yes," I sigh. "I'm here." He wants to
come right over, so I have an indecently brief time in which
to change clothes, finish applying my fake fingernails, and
try to restore my earlier makeup job. I hope his own needs
will distract him from noticing details.
I throw my jeans and sweater into my bedroom closet, which
seems appropriate. Wearing my dress again, I notice that my
two hands are a study in contrast.
Fuck it, I think (which will soon happen in any case), I don't
have time to give myself ten phony claws like a childpreparing
for Halloween. He will see my face first. So I reapply mascara
and lipstick just before I hear his footsteps in the hall.
He knocks quietly on my door like acharacter in a film noir
about criminal activities.
I really don't want to see Tom now, but I don't have a choice.
When I open the door, I see an old vampire who feeds off the
living, or a corrupt old sultan visiting a slave in his harem.
I must be seeing him through Marceline's feminist eyes.
I look again, and see a pathetically hungry human being whohas
never had enough of what he wants, and whose time is running
out. He wordlessly presses a wad of bills into my left hand,
and I wonder if the crass nature of our relationship has come
to embarrass him more than it does me. "Good to see you,"
he mumbles.
I try to put him at ease by explaining my good hand/bad hand
dilemma. "I couldn't finish doing my nails," I tell
him. "Someone I know showed up."
He smiles with fatherly generosity. "That's okay, dear.
I'll wait."
This is too much. Now I owe him gratitude for letting me finish
pressing on all the fake fingernails he pressed on me in the
first place. He probably thinks I've become vainabout my new
look.
While he helps himself to coffee, I sit down to whorify my
right hand. When I've finished painting the nails purple,
he looks pleased. He demonstrates his pleasure by undressing
in my front room and reclining on my sofa like an odalisque
in a smutty Victorian painting.
I begin our usual ritual: after placing a towel under him,I
drizzle oil onto his rising sausage until it gleams undermy
hands. My purple nails, now extra-shiny with grease, slide
up and down and gently over the bald head of an old but reliable
cock. He smiles and sighs.
I lower my mouth onto him and he holds my head, running hisfingers
through my shoulder-length hair. I gently squeeze his balls
as I lick my way over his shaft, following a familiar route.
He likes what he knows.
A little scratching at the base triggers his appreciation,
and my mouth is soon full of his brine. I swallow it as though
it were the salty milk of disappointment.
Tom recovers enough to tell me: "You sure make my cock
happy, honey." We both avoid discussing our hearts, thoughI
know that his is threatened by his high blood pressure. I
wonder if his heart will ever actually break, and if thiswill
happen while his chest is pressed to mine. I probablyhave
nothing to gain from his death, since I doubt whether my name
appears in his will with those of his wife, children and grandchildren.
He wants to watch me take my clothes off. First comes the
dress, which falls open as fast as a wink, then the bra that
releases my small, perky breasts with nipples hardening in
the air, then the stockings being peeled down my legs, one
at a time. I have learned to stand on one foot, and I try
to strip gracefully.
Before I can pull off my panties, Tom pulls me down to lie
on him. He suckles one of my nipples like a baby calf. Myfirst
reaction is revulsion; he is old enough to be my father. I
can't afford to think of anything that interferes with my
ability to give pleasure, so I close my eyes and focus on
the soft, warm, insistent pull of his mouth.
I know I am becoming wet lower down. This is good, becauseI
will soon have to welcome him into me as though I have dreamed
of nothing else since his last visit. Performing for him is
a challenge every time, and I am proud that I can always do
it.
He tugs at my panties. I finish pulling them off because Iwant
to finish earning my pay. I can't help imagining his reaction
if I should ever look him in the eyes and say, "I'm a
whore and an actress, you fool. I've never really liked it."
Sometimes I picture an unbearably gentle look on his face
as he answers, "I know, dear."
The inevitability of what is about to happen makes me wetter.
I can't be sure whether pride or humility is driving me or
him, but I don't want a lukewarm fuck, no matter who is with
me. His fingers tease my inner lips, and slide deeper.
Tom pulls himself over me, pushing me beneath him. It is the
kind of move which could look beautiful underwater, butit
looks faintly ridiculous on my sofa. I don't care; I spread
my thighs and he plunges into my sea cave.
He pumps steadily, gaining confidence and momentum. I wonder
if he enjoys me more now that I can no longer get pregnant.
I had my tubes tied, partly because of him, and I showed him
my discreet scars after the operation. My life feels like
a road full of detours.
He pulls my legs up, pressing into me. He looks happy enough.
I touch his back self-consciously with my annoyingfake fingernails
as he rides me toward his own release.
I realize that the long fingers of fate or time will pull
us apart, sooner or later. My wet cunt responds to a hard
cock with greed and compassion, gratitude and disgust, as
Ireach my own private conclusions.---------------------------------------------
