Free Macho Sluts by Patrick Califia Page A

hand before the bird was hatched. In fact, my dear, you didn’t really want any of the ladies who made themselves agreeable to you. You had your sights set on Jessie, and when she walked out with her latest cheap thrill, you just weren’t going to settle for second best. Well, you sat on the merry-go-round with a poker up your ass. Now you can twirl on it.”
    I reminded myself that masturbation is the foundation of female sexuality, a mode of gratification that is every bit as valid as getting it on with a partner. I tried to work up a little enthusiasm for the new forty-dollar vibrator a friend had bought for me in Japan. It was only a week old, and bright orange. I asked myself, what would Betty Dodson think if she could see me standing here, practically in tears because I can’t get some woman who doesn’t even know my name to seduce me? She would hit me over the head with my own cunt portrait and send me back to Remedial Sexuality with my index finger taped to my clit.
    I could make myself laugh, but I couldn’t make myself any less horny. I started thinking about Jessie, lovingly enumerating all those things about her that made my toes curl.
    One of my more articulate lovers once told me I was a star-fucker. She was as accurate as she was hostile. Oh, my, yes, Jessie was a celebrity. She played bass for a women’s band that performed regularly in the city. And she was good. In fact, The Bitch had been playing for the dance tonight—which is why I showed up.
    There wasn’t a woman in town who didn’t want to be held the way Jessie held that bass guitar, and she new it. At every performance, she had this little ritual she went through. The whole crowd knew it by heart, and some of us shook our heads and said, “Oh, Christ!” as we watched it unfold, but we all loved it. She always started off behind the rest of the band, in the shadows where you could hardly see her. The Bitch did their tuning up while restless women milled around, greeting stray friends with the demand, “When are they going to start, for godsake?” While the rest of the band was still trying to find high C, Jessie would slip off her leather jacket and hand it to her current lover, who would worshipfully accept it, carefully fold it, and carry it offstage, to jeers and cheers from the audience. We all thought it was humiliating as hell, but none of us would have refused to do it.
    Just when you were ready to bet they wouldn’t get started for another half hour, Jessie would hit a chord and they’d be on. They nearly always opened with the Stones’ song, “Bitch”—what else? She didn’t sing on that one, but if you sat in the first two rows, you could catch her cynical smile at the crucial lines.
    She wore tight, ragged T-shirts that clung to her frame. Her lean body an arc of total concentration, she would bend over her instrument, creating a hard, clean rhythm that was the power behind The Bitch. It was irresistible. You couldn’t help but respond. The beat she laid down could have taught a fool how to dance.
    As the set progressed, she would move closer and closer to the audience until she had assumed front-center stage. By this time, they were playing some of their own music—“Boxcar Bertha,” “Snake Goddess,” “How to Liberate a Lady”—and Jessie had kicked out all the stops. The music kept getting faster, louder, and more dangerous. Women would be jumping up, dancing on their chairs if there wasn’t any room in the aisle, possessed by the music. She would be moving too, taking these incredible leaps and coming down to hammer out another riff, never missing a beat. She rarely looked at the audience, and the occasional wicked grins she flashed at us elicited roars all the way to the back of the crowd.
    They closed with “Backdoor Man,” Jessie’s solo. She didn’t bother to introduce it or justify it. She just