The Mammoth Book of Erotica presents The Best of Michael Hemmingson Read online

  “What does this mean?” I said.

  “More money,” Art said.

  “More money,” Beryl said, “sounds good to me.”

  This couple – Fred and Donna – invited the three of us for dinner to talk about the possibility of a business venture. Art drove in his own car and was late. Beryl and I were both nervous and we didn’t know why.

  They had a nice, modestly furnished suburban house, not the kind of place you’d think a big Internet porn outfit would be located. Fred and Donna were also the kind of couple you might see at a PTA meeting – almost conservatively dressed, quiet, and friendly. They were in their late thirties, attractive and unassuming.

  Over dinner, we talked about our lives, not sex.

  I wondered why I was here. I was expecting drugs, hard booze, triple-X love acts.

  Fred suggested we go to the water.

  They also had a Jacuzzi, but this one could fit ten people. It was very nice and spacious. Fred and Donna disrobed before us and got in. Donna was a bit on the chubby side, but had a magnificent tan and silicone-enhanced breasts. Fred, I was quick to notice, didn’t have a hair on his well-muscled body, and his dick had to be ten inches long.

  Art stripped and jumped in. Beryl and I took our clothes off slowly, still uncertain, and joined the party.

  We were all drinking champagne, by the way. It always begins with some kind of party.

  “You have a great body,” Donna said to Beryl.

  “Thank you,” Beryl said.

  “I’d love to fuck you,” Donna said.

  “I’m not bi,” Beryl said.

  “Too bad,” Donna said. “But maybe Fred can fuck you. I like to watch him fuck other women.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Beryl laughed.

  “You got a look-see at his tool?” Donna said.

  “Oh, yes,” Beryl said. “I wonder if I could take it.”

  “It takes some getting used to,” Donna said. “His cock is very nice.”

  “Yeah,” Beryl said.

  Art and I looked at each other.

  “Let’s talk business,” Fred said.

  “Let’s,” Art said.

  “This past year,” Fred said, “we’ve cleared three million in sales.”

  I almost choked on my champagne. Beryl did.

  “You’re shitting me,” Art said.

  “No,” Fred said.

  Donna smiled. “We’ll make more each year.”

  “Porn is the backbone of e-commerce,” Fred said, “and the amateur market is in a boom. A huge boom. There are dozens, hundreds of people like us making a living off pleasure. We have something many people out there want.”

  “Intimacy,” Donna said, “and love.”

  “This business saved our marriage,” Fred said. He drew Donna close to him. They held each other. They kissed. “We wouldn’t be together now,” he went on. “It added . . . excitement. It delivered us from an absolutely dull life, the same thing day after day. You know what I mean.”

  “I was ready to leave him,” Donna said. “I wanted something more.”

  “We both did,” Fred said.

  “And we found it,” Donna said.

  Beryl and I looked at each other. I moved to kiss her. She kissed me. Art looked away.

  “We like what you have,” Donna said.

  “We can get rich together,” Fred said.

  “I like the sound of that,” Beryl said.

  “Me too,” I said.

  Fred said, “So let’s fuck and seal the deal.”

  We all laughed.

  “Hey, buddy,” Fred said to Art, “there’s a camera in the house, and a light. Why don’t you get it.”

  Art nodded and got out of the water. He looked lonely, walking away wet and naked. I can’t say that I felt sorry for him.

  Donna moved to me, and Beryl moved to Fred. I took Donna’s large breasts in my hands and rubbed them. Her pink nipples were pointing at me. Beryl was stroking Fred’s big dick and she said something like, “Oh, my.” He sat on the edge of the spa, and Beryl did her best to take him in her mouth.

  “You want me to suck your dick too?” Donna whispered. “What do you want me to do? I’ll do anything, anything.”

  Art set up the camera.

  Donna and I got out of the water to fuck. I had her on her back, her thick legs on my shoulders. She smelled strongly of perfume. She reached up and bit my nipple as I fucked her. Beryl was still sucking on Fred.

  “Hey,” Fred said, turning to me with a smile. “I think I’m about to come in your wife’s mouth.”

  Art didn’t join us. As he operated the video camera, he jerked off. He was now an observer. I could see it on his face: something was missing. He looked lonely and I didn’t care.

  V. Epilogue

  Our hair was still wet when we got in the car. We were electrified. The sex had been good, the idea of success even better.

  I touched my wife’s face.

  “We don’t need Art,” she said.

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  “Our marriage will work, won’t it?”

  “I hope so.”

  “We can be as happy and wealthy as Donna and Fred.”

  I wanted to say that we were Donna and Fred. We’d just made love to our mirror images, and it was caught on tape.

  I started the car.

  “Turn on the heater,” Beryl said. “I don’t want to catch cold.”

  I did, and as we drove, the warmth started at our feet and moved up our bodies and to our faces. We were holding hands the whole way.

  Home, our hair dry, we went into our own Jacuzzi and fucked in the water and under the stars, and there was only us, and it was very nice again, for a while.

  THE DRESS

  Michael Hemmingson

  Finding the Dress

  THIS IS THE season for Christmas parties – the big one for us is my wife’s office party, thrown by the publisher for all the employees; from the head honchos, VPs, marketing, editorial, publicity, right down to the janitors and interns. It was usually attended by somewhere between fifty and a hundred people. We’d gone for a number of years now. Time was when Ashley was conscious of her role as a member of the publicity department, so she arranged herself conservatively, in subdued colors and dress lengths ending at or perhaps just slightly above the knee. All very tasteful and dignified – and pretty. A few years ago, one of the editors, a woman, appeared at the Christmas party in a short red dress with spaghetti straps that had everyone’s eyes flying out their sockets like cannonball dare-devils in a circus. According to my wife, people talked about her and that dress until the next Christmas party. Last year, I suggested to Ashley that the pleasant reception the hot dress received should indicate she need not be so concerned about her “station” in the company; and she could attire herself a bit more – creatively. I persuaded her on one of my favorites from her wardrobe; it would be sufficiently conservative in terms of coverage to satisfy the stodgier types, but by its constitution eye-catching. This was a red leather ensemble: short leather jacket with long sleeves and a modest mini-length leather skirt ending a few inches above the knee. Both zipped up the side. Under this she wore a lace bodysuit without a bra, so the jacket worn open would allow anyone, who cared to notice, to observe she was braless, without showing her breasts. That outfit worked fine. No one blanched, but a number of the women employees whispered compliments about how great she looked. Ashley liked that a lot.

  In anticipation of the upcoming party, I looked through her wardrobe again, to see what kind of interesting attire I might suggest she wear. I found that without repeating the leather ensemble there was nothing of comparable excitement.

  So I went shopping.

  I shopped a long time before latching onto what I thought was the perfect choice. It was a slinky floor-length sheath made of a glittery silver stretch fabric. I could tell it would gently cling to her curves from shoulders to hips, then fall in a straight line to the floor. Th
e cling would be enough to show panty lines, easy to persuade her to go sans underwear. Then, besides cutting a dazzling figure for everyone else to look at, I could enjoy the extra closeness of her oh-so-thinly clad skin as we danced. I also bought this other dress, but The Other Dress is different from The Dress.

  And as I was ready to declare victory and head for home, I saw it – The Dress.

  I stared at it a long time, like a gawker’s first sight of human gore on a bad freeway accident. But I left the store, thinking it was too much for the party. Halfway out the mall, I said to myself, the hell with it; she may not want it, but I have to see her in it.

  I went back. I looked at it a long time. I was preparing myself for worship. It was close fitting at the neck, and had simple short sleeves. No fancy cut-outs or anything like that. Just brazenly bold looking, and so very short. I got out my mental measuring tape and moved close to it. I knew it measured out a full inch shorter than the shortest dress in her wardrobe, a dress she would wear only under a long coat until we were safely away from our conservative neighborhood. The possibilities were wonderful. It was made of a slightly stretchy but strong festooning fabric with a rather open weave and decorated with fine vertical bands of black. It was unlined, but looked opaque. Actually it was not opaque – more a bit like those tan-thru swim suits. Those suits are actually fairly transparent, but they are printed with bold patterns to confuse the eye. If you saw someone in a plain, unpatterned tan-thru suit, you would clearly see all their worldly goods. Same here. The fabric was not thin, but the weave was sufficiently open that if it were not so boldly spangled, you’d be able to see through it with relative ease.

  I had to see her in it, so I bought it and put it with my other items, and went home – for my private fashion show.

  That night, I sat down with Ashley and explained my thoughts on her existing wardrobe and the upcoming party, and that as sort of an advance Christmas present I’d bought a number of dresses for her to try. Everything returnable, no fragile male egos on the line – I just wanted to do something nice for her. We were in our nice mode these days, looking for alternatives from ennui and stupid arguments contained in many marriages five years down the line and older. The night we both brought up divorce was the night we decided our lives had to be different. We were becoming boring and old, and neither Ashley nor myself wanted that.

  She said she appreciated that and proceeded to strip. It’s almost a rule that clothes I buy for her are intended to be worn without underwear, so these occasional modeling sessions begin with her getting naked. We began with a flouncy little mini I’d purchased just for fun. She liked it. We moved to the floor-length silver-spangled gown that slid onto her very nicely. She looked great in it. She liked it.

  Of The Other Dress, she just said, “And where am I supposed to wear that?”

  Then I brought out The Dress, smiling, feeling anxious. She asked, “Where’s the rest of it?” and “You bought this for the party?”

  I explained how I’d been so enthralled I had to get it; she could keep it or not, wear it or not as she wished.

  She nodded and put it on. I could see immediately – see it in her eyes – that she liked the feel of it. It fit her like a queen who knows her head was made for the jeweled crown of her sovereignty.

  She looked at me; I looked at her. I was smiling with wantonness; she was smiling self-absorbedly, smoothing The Dress to her body. She started swaying her hips a little, side to side; licked her finger, touched her ass and said; “TSSSSssssssssssssssstt.” Hot indeed. She started walking around the room, laying her hands on different parts of herself; her sides, her tummy, her hips. She walked to the patio door and studied her reflection there, the mirror image. She turned to me and said, “It’s kinda short.”

  I later checked out more carefully just how short it was. In the front it stopped eight inches above the top of her kneecap (yes, I measured this time with a tape, not my mind). In back it was a little more difficult to ascertain; I’d say it stopped about an inch and a half below the thighbuttock crease; short enough that if she raised her arms over her head in a good early-morning stretch, her whole cunt and half her derrière were exposed. She continued turning this way and that, then turned to me again.

  She said “I could wear this.”

  I thought we might keep it for one of our risqué private dates. I didn’t think she’d actually wear it to the corporate Christmas party. We practiced slow dancing, sitting and standing, et cetera. With her arms around my neck in slowdance position, The Dress rode up high enough that the bottom edge of her ass was exposed. Sitting, she remained decent if she tugged on the hem as she sat and got up again; if she forgot, she sat bare-assed on the chair with daylight on her cunt, so that crossing her legs couldn’t extinguish this, and getting up again flashed more cotton-tail.

  We both agreed that as hot as this dress was without underwear, for the corporate party she would need panty hose. But we also agreed to inaugurate The Dress properly (i.e. butt naked underneath) in a more private date very soon.

  The next day we re-modeled in the strong morning sun, just to be sure that things still looked cool. There was an added bonus I hadn’t noticed before. The fabric of The Dress had some properties, as I had noted previously, similar to tan-thru suits. That didn’t really matter much because The Dress clung so nicely to all her curves except the space between her legs. In the bright sun, if she were standing at the right angle, the actual transparency of the material made itself apparent, revealing a shadowy but unmistakable view of her twat, with just enough definition to define the furrow between her labia, and a tousling of blonde pubic hair.

  The Other Dress

  The Other Dress is one of the three I bought for Ashley to try. I ended up returning the spangly floor-length number because it didn’t go well with her skin tone. The appeal of The Other Dress takes a little explaining because it is somewhat subtle.

  I find that the artistry in barely-acceptable exhibitionism lies in revealing without appearing to be revealing, or in not being revealing when appearances suggest otherwise; what I mean is playing with people’s minds. The trick is to be subtle enough so in the interval of time one has passing encounters with strangers, the unsuspecting stranger is left uncertain as to whether s/he has been treated to a peek or not. And, if possible, those who do realize they are seeing something forbidden should be left thinking not that they’ve been flashed, but they, the observers, have somehow invaded the privacy of the exhibitant; their own sense of decorum and social order can be used against them, leading them into a kind of denial; thus, they ignore the “bare” facts of what they see (Orwellian doublethink, you see) – and in fact become conspirators in the act.

  Part of this artistry lies in playing with light. For example, in choosing garments such that in the typical low light of a bar or other night spots not much is seen; but in this or that pocket of bright light a sight emerges to behold. Another aspect lies in the sense of touch, or what I like to think of as virtual touch. I liked Ashley to go without underwear – not so much to flash her privates, which was not in her comfort zone, but to smooth the look and feel of her body through her clothes. This enhances the degree to which her clothes fit her body, so as we danced, for example, I could let my hands follow the smooth contours of her body more closely and without interruption. As I did this, it also encouraged observers to follow those contours with their eyes and minds – and wonder.

  The Other Dress played on these themes. To see it on her from some moderate distance, it looked little out of the mainstream, not really remarkable. It was solid black without any pattern, cut-outs, or other decoration; and pulled over her head without any buttons, hooks, whatever. It fit closely at the neck and was sleeveless, falling in a smooth line from her neck all the way to her ankles, with a walking slit in back from the ankle up to a few inches below the knee. It was sufficiently clingy, if you are inclined to think that way, to remind you a bit of Morticia of the Addams Family; even more so
because Ashley has such fine pale skin. It also occurred to me that it would look wonderful with her elbow-length black evening gloves.

  Part of the beauty of this dress was that it had an unusually flat finish, in the sense of flat versus glossy. Although clingy, even where the fabric was stretched over her various curves, the fabric did not become shiny; it absorbed virtually all light that struck it, making it hard for the eye to make out the detail of her underlying shape. This effect confused the eye even at close range, so that without rather obviously inspecting distinctive parts, such as her breasts, it was difficult to tell whether one was seeing anything through the fabric or not. Going without underwear helped greatly in achieving this effect – although it is, in truth, more revealing: we tend to expect the outlines of undergarments, and when we don’t obviously see them, we tend to assume the outer garment to be more substantial than it is, ironically creating a “less-is-more” situation.

  The Other Dress was somewhat diaphanous; in adequate light and on careful inspection you could see through it to enjoy the view of her breasts, but this was unlikely to make itself apparent to the casual observer in typical evening lighting. In fact, the visual effect was a little like those quasi-holographic prints that require you to stare long and hard at a somewhat bizarre-looking scene while crossing your eyes until suddenly (if you’re lucky) a 3-D image appears. Because the image of the underlying breast was well filtered by the fabric, and the flat black of the fabric withheld visual clues such as the variations of shadow that we are unconsciously used to seeing, it was possible to stare right at her nipples for some time before realizing what you were seeing was not the variation of shadow but was the breast itself. Like the holographic print, once you see it, you see it, and it’s hard to go back to not seeing it. The impact of this sudden realization was as if she stripped off her clothes right in front of you when she had actually done nothing but stand there.