We were sitting in a booth at the deserted Vietnamese place, across from each other. The banh mi sandwiches are only five bucks, on baguettes, they're good. Soy tea, it's a nice lunch; we were there after the normal lunch rush. Lisa was looking lovely with the bright window behind her, her mane glowing like a halo. She takes the seeds out of her jalapeño pieces so it's not so hot, and I give her extra twigs of cilantro that fall out of my beef sandwich. It's just what we've always done.
We had been talking about politics when she leaned forward across the table and I automatically leaned in, toward her. "So," she said. "Your birthday is coming up."
"Yeah," I said, "I'll be another year older."
"What do you want for your birthday?"
"I don't know, it doesn't matter. Nothing."
"Okay," Lisa said. "Well I have an idea for your birthday that I think you will like."
She waited, looking at me. I said, "Okay, I'll bite. What is it?"
"You have to tell me what you want."
"What do you mean, what I want?"
"Sexually. What would you want? You must have a fantasy." I'll give her this: she is not predictable.
A million images passed through my mind in the same instant. I pictured her blushing bottom over my knees, I pictured myself naked, serving lunch to her and her friends, I imagined her and her friend Gina sucking my dick together, I imagined a session with a professional photographer hovering over our naked, sweating bodies, I imagined her hitting on a guy in a bar with me across the room watching, I imagined her bent over the bed with my cock ramming her asshole... these thoughts came simultaneously, in a fraction of a second.
"I don't know," I said. "What would you want?"
"That's not the question," she said. "I'm asking you."
"I don't have any big secret sexual fantasy," I said.
She gave me a knowledgeable smile. "Uh huh," she said. Sip of soy tea. "And I'm a virgin." She was wearing her yellow sundress, and as she leaned forward her cleavage rose subtly over the neckline. It was not immodest, but my eyes had to dart there, and then back to her face.
"If there's something I want to do, we do it," I said.
"Uh huh."
"What makes you think I have some deep dark fantasy?"
"I just do," she said. "I know you. You have lots of them."
"Okay, and let's say I do. What then?"
She looked at my eyes. I could see her reviewing her words, before she let them out. "Maybe we could do it," she said.
"I see, so I have a fantasy and you are saying we could do it, whatever it is."
"I don't want you to be bored," she said.
"Oh, I'm not," I said, but I knew what she meant. It has been nearly ten years. She might be feeling a bit of over-familiarity with the routine, too.
"So," she said. "What would you want?"
"I don't know."
"Me and Gina?"
"What?"
"Oh come on, you would jump her bones in a heartbeat."
"You would never forgive me."
"I'd be there. It would be both of us."
"You wouldn't do that," I said.
She shrugged. "I'm trying to find out what you want. I'm not such an old dog that I can't learn a new trick."
"You and Gina, huh?" I was hard in my levis under the formica-topped table.
"I'm pretty sure she'd go for it," Lisa said.
"She would?"
"If I talked to her about it, yes. She's got a little history, you know."
"You and Gina, huh?" Gina is a lawyer, slender, energetic. There had always been a spark between us. "Interesting."
Lisa said, "It would be me and Gina doing you up one side and down the other. Two on one, I don't think Gina has any more interest in me than I have in her. Me and Gina doing you."
"I see," I said.
"Something kinky, maybe," Lisa said. She glanced around the room. There was one Asian man eating with chopsticks near the far wall, otherwise no one. "You could fuck me in the ass."
"Well first of all, I wouldn't call that kinky. Second, you wouldn't do that."
"You never know," she said mischievously.
"I would like that," I said, imagining it as I spoke. "But it is not a great, deep birthday fantasy of mine. It could just be something we try sometime, if you're game."
"Butt-fucking is not kinky?" Lisa asked.
"No, I don't think so."
"So what is?"
"What is kinky? Shit, Lisa, I don't know. I think whips are kinky, and pain. Tying somebody up. People do all kinds of stuff to each other."
"I don't think I like the idea of whips," Lisa said. "Would you want to whip me?"
"No," Doc said. "Well, maybe with a little whip. A riding crop, I don't think that would qualify as kinky. I could smack your pussy with it."
"Why would you do that?"
"Lisa, you like it when I smack your pussy with my fingers. A nice smooth little riding crop could be even better."
"I hate it when you do that."
"So why do you have huge orgasms when I slap your pussy with my hand?"
"Is that your fantasy, to beat my pussy with a whip?"
"Just a little one. And not beat it, really, just sort of make it sting and tingle. And no, that is not my great sexual dream."
"Would you want to tie me up?"
"I've thought of that," Doc said. "It might be fun to tie you up but then, I don't know, that's the thing. Just tying you up doesn't seem like a big deal. I could do anything I wanted to you, but I can do anything I want to you already."
A waiter came by and filled our water. American music was playing on a cheap radio, making the Vietnamese atmosphere seem even more genuine. The waiter did not look at our faces but only concentrated on pouring the water. Even so, he spilled some on the tabletop. When he left Lisa wiped it up with her baby-puke-yellow cloth napkin.
"You could spank me," she said.
"Really."
"Yes, really. Once."
"You wouldn't like that."
"It's not about me," she said.
"I would love that," I said. "Maybe sometime. Over my knees, panties down."
"Of course," she said. "Offer expires at midnight."
"It does?"
"No," she said, "Just joking. Spanking doesn't seem very kinky, does it?"
Doc said, "No, spanking is like butt-fucking, I think it is just normal stuff that people do. Kinky means unusual things, I think."
"How would you like a blow job in the men's room?"
"Now?"
"If that's your fantasy."
"That sounds like fun," I said, "But it's not my great dream."
"I could flash you in public."
"Where?"
"I don't know. Somewhere."
"Would you flash a stranger?"
"I don't know," she said. She looked away and sighed. "Okay, if that's what you want. Yes, I would do that."
"You would sit somewhere and spread your legs and let a stranger see your pussy?"
"I told you already. Don't keep talking about it, if that's your fantasy I can do that." She had a great fear that somehow she would accidentally be exposed, that someone would see her panties when she stood up, or look down her top when she bent over. It always struck me as an oddly irrational concern, since it would only last a second, it wouldn't hurt anything, and the other person wouldn't even know who she is. I was tempted to ask her to flash a stranger just to see if she would.
"We could get a photographer," I said.
She laughed. "You son of a bitch. Yes, of course. If that's what you want." I had teased her in the past about having a photographer come in when we were having sex. Of course my comments usually suggested that the photographer would lend a hand or tongue occasionally, or hold a toy, but the gist of it was someone taking professional, well-focused pictures of us in our most intimate moments.
"Two guys," I said.
"What about it?"
"Me and another guy at the same time. We could find somebody with a big dick and the two of us could fuck you silly for an hour or two."
"I don't," she started, "I don't know." She swallowed. "I don't know if I could do that."
"I see. Okay."
"Is that your fantasy?"
"I would only want to do it if you wanted to do it," I said.
"If that's what you dream of, I'll tell you what, I'll do it. I said I would and I would."
"You would go to bed with me and another man?"
"I said I would." She did not sound happy about it.
"Who would it be?" I asked.
"Don't ask me. It's your fantasy, you choose."
"Yes, I see."
We sat in silence. She took a bite that left a drip of sauce at the corner of her mouth. She quickly pulled up her napkin and dabbed at it. "Did I get it?" she asked.
"Yes," I said.
She replaced her napkin in her lap and then grabbed for it. "Woops, it slipped," she said, and she reached under the table to get it. "I'm a klutz," she said. "But it's still clean. So, what did you think of?" Her cheerful mood had returned and she looked at me with a curious, mischievous expression, almost laughing.
"It is an interesting question and I have never thought about it," I said. "Let me think out loud. If I have a fantasy it is like this. In my deep, dark dream you go completely wild, indulge everything you have ever wanted, you have amazing experiences and in the end you still want me."
"That's stupid," she said, matter-of-factly.
"No, it's not," I said. "It is the most normal thing in the world. Look at porn, all the porn I have ever seen has one thing in common, an uninhibited woman with a huge appetite for sex who ignores the norms and restrictions of society and does everything she wants."
"Who said anything about porn?" Lisa said.
"You asked about my fantasies. I have the same fantasies as everybody else."
"Your fantasies are porn?"
"My fantasies are an uninhibited woman going wild."
"Me?"
"Well, since you offered."
"What kind of wild?"
"Dirty, slutty, over-the-top, nasty," I said. "Every sexual thing you are not supposed to do. Everything. Clothes, makeup, everything. Knee deep in puddles of cum, orgasms till you can't keep your eyes open."
"You want me to be a slut?"
I laughed. "No, Lisa, I don't even understand the concept."
"You just said it."
"Yes, I did. What do you think a slut is?"
"You know."
"No I don't."
"A slut is somebody that fucks somebody else's boyfriend, I guess," she said. "At least in high school that's what it meant."
"And now?"
"And now what?"
"What does a slut do, now that we're grown up?"
"I don't know," she said.
"Okay," I said, turning the tables a bit. "So let's say a woman - not you - was to go wild and do everything she is not supposed to do, everything she dreamed of. What would she do?"
"I guess she would fuck different guys," Lisa said, taking a sip of soy tea. "She'd be a slut, pretty much same as high school."
"Okay, good, that's a start."
"Well I'm not going to do that," she said.
"What if that was my fantasy?"
"God," she said, "That wouldn't... you wouldn't want that."
"What if I did?"
"I don't know. I guess I could try it. No, I don't think so, I might break up with you, rather than do that."
"I see, so you want my birthday fantasy to be something you approve of."
"Okay," she said. "If that is what you really wanted me to do, I could do that. I wouldn't like it, but I'd do it."
