Michael Hemmingson’s first published short novel, The Naughty Yard, was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of International Erotica and is currently being filmed in France and England. He wrote the screenplay for the independent film The Watermelon. He published twenty titles with Blue Moon Books under his name and several pen names, co-edited with Maxim Jakubowski The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels, and has published novels with Forge, Black Mask and Wildside Press. He lives in southern California and works as a journalist in Tijuana, Mexico; his weekly radio show, The Art of Dreaming, plays Wednesdays on Revolution Radio at freedomslips.com.

Mammoth Books presents

The Dress

The Best of Michael Hemmingson: Five Erotic Stories

Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

Constable & Robinson Ltd
55–56 Russell Square
London WC1B 4HP
www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,
an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

Copyright © Michael Hemmingson, 2012

The right of Michael Hemmingson to be identified as the author of
this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data is available from the British Library

EISBN: 978-1-47210-053-5

Acknowledgements

“Movements” © Michael Hemmingson, 2000. First published in Aqua Erotica, edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj. Reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, edited by Maxim Jaukbowski (Robinson, 2001) and The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 2012), by permission of the author.

“The Dress” © Michael Hemmingson, 1998. First published in The Mammoth Book of New Erotica, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 1998). Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Hollow Hills” © Michael Hemmingson, 2000. First published in The Mammoth Book of Erotica (new edition), edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 2000). Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Comfort of Women” © Michael Hemmingson, 2000. First published in The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels, edited by Maxim Jakubowski and Michael Hemmingson (Robinson, 2007). Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Brilliance, Misery and Glory of Bodies” © Michael Hemmingson, 1998. First published in The Mammoth Book of Historical Erotica, edited by Maxim Jakubowski (Robinson, 1999). Reprinted by permission of the author.

Movements

Michael Hemmingson

I. Suite for an End to a Marriage

The first time I saw my wife fucking another man, she was by our Jacuzzi the night of The Party. I was fairly convinced it would be the last party we’d throw as husband and wife.

Actually, she was with two men. One was a fellow I didn’t know and he was fucking her from behind – his large, hairy hands tightly grasping her hips in an attempt to control the backward thrust of her pelvis as if she were a wild animal. The other one (my best friend) had his dick in her mouth. She was taking this dick down her throat pretty deep, and he was no bigger than myself. She never did that for me. Maybe she never liked my dick; and this is something I could believe, given the recent sour circumstances of our marriage.

“I don’t think I’m in love with you anymore,” she told me three months before. I was trying to have sex with her. Her pussy was dry like a dry cunt. Finally she pushed my hand away and said she didn’t want to. We hadn’t made love in quite a while.

“What do you mean?”

“Is it hard to understand?” she said. “How can I illustrate it any better? I don’t think I’m in love with you anymore.”

“I see,” I said.

“No,” she said, “you don’t.”

We tried the marriage counselor routine, and that only proved to drive us further apart, snickering at all the flowery, New Age suggestions the counselor was trying to sell us.

“What a fucking waste of money,” my wife said.

Her name is Beryl, by the way.

I stood there, looking out the kitchen window, and watched Beryl fuck. The one who was my best friend, his name is Art.

I wasn’t surprised. The night seemed to be heading for this. Beryl was on the warpath to have sex with someone – other than me.

“I’m feeling frisky tonight,” she said when she pulled me aside during The Party.

She was drunk. I told her so.

“So I’m drunk” she said, “and I’m feeling good.”

I wasn’t feeling good. “Thanks for the information.”

“I just want you to know,” she said, “that I might do something wild, I might do something sexy, and I don’t want you to get in the way.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“I don’t want you to get in the way of my being happy.”

“I won’t,” I said.

It started, I suppose, with her dance – or striptease. She put on some electronic music, the kind that gives me a headache. I don’t know where she got this music. She began to dance, and had an audience of men cheering as she lifted her skirt and flashed her panties; when she opened her blouse and exposed her tits. She had small, pointed, brown breasts. She was a tall, slender woman with long legs and tanned skin and straight blond hair, a very appealing woman to many men.

“That’s some wife of yours!” someone said to me, slapping me on the back.

“Yeah,” I said.

Beryl had stripped down to her thong. Drunken hands groped for her. One pair of hands belonged to Art. Beryl giggled and ran out back and jumped into the Jacuzzi.

Watching her fuck, I knew it was the hottest sight I’d ever viewed. It was better than watching a porno: this was real.

I wasn’t the only person watching, either. Several men, some I knew, some I didn’t, moved toward the threesome. I moved with them. We were all like mesmerized cattle.

Two months ago I was sitting in a bar with Art. We were on our fourth or fifth drinks.

“I think Beryl and I are getting a divorce,” I said.

“You think?” Art said.

“Probably,” I said. “She doesn’t love me anymore.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“She said this.”

“Do you still love her?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think I do.”

“What went wrong? You two used to be the happy fun couple.”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “I think she might be having an affair.”

“You think?”

“I wouldn’t put it past her.”

When Beryl was done with Art and the man I didn’t know, she started having sex with two other men. The Party was becoming something else. Other people departed – old friends giving me strange looks. Someone said, “You didn’t say this was going to turn into an orgy.” It was past one in the morning anyway, the time for most parties to start winding down.

Art, with his clothes back on, passed me.

I grabbed his arm.

“Hey,” he said softly.

I just looked at him.

“We should talk,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

The Party was over, people were gone. Four a.m. I lay in bed, listening to my wife taking a bath. The door was unlocked. I went in. She stared at me. She was sitting in the tub, water and soap all around her. She started to say something, I held up a finger to stop her. I unzipped my pants and showed her my hard prick.

“Do you plan to do something with that?” she said.

“I have some ideas,” I said.

“You look all worked up.”

“I am that,” I said.

“I haven’t seen your dick that bulging and red since . . . since we first met.”

I approached her, my body shaking. “Did you like fucking those men tonight?”

Softly, “You know I did.”

“I could tell. I haven’t seen you fuck like that since . . . since we first met.”

She said, “Did you like me fucking those men?”

I grabbed Beryl’s head. I was fast and she was surprised. I pushed her face into my crotch. I bunched up her slick wet hair in my fists, like I was angry. I was more horny than angry, or on a fine line that crosses both conditions. She took my cock in her mouth. I wondered how many loads of come she’d swallowed this evening. Mine would be just another. Beryl pulled my pants down and grabbed at the flesh of my ass, yanking me forward, so that I was partially in the water with her, getting wet . . .

In bed, I asked her how long she’d been fucking Art. I knew that tonight wasn’t the first time – the way they were with each other: that familiarity of the body. Beryl said, “For a while now.”

II. Sonata for a New Phase in Marriage

The three of us were in the Jacuzzi. This was inevitable, this had to happen; I knew it, Beryl knew it, Art knew it.

We’d had dinner. It was a quiet dinner. I savored every bite of the mushroom sautéed chicken Beryl had prepared, the scalloped potatoes that reminded me of being a child and eating Mother’s well-cooked meals. It was a warm night. Beryl suggested we relax in the Jacuzzi, drink wine. Art wanted beer. Beryl drank wine. We got naked, acting like excited, modest teenagers doing something daring and naughty, and went into the water.

It was a clear night out, a lot of stars.

I was also drinking wine.

“That’s Mars up there.” Beryl pointed at the sky, to a bright star with a red tint.

“Think there’s life up there?” Art said.

“Mars? Or elsewhere?”

“Mars.”

“Sure,” she said.

“What do you think?” Art asked me.

“As long as they don’t invade us,” I said, “I don’t care.”

“I’m glad you’re not mad,” he said.

“I’m not mad,” I said. “I keep telling myself I should be. But I’m not.”

“It’s good that you’re not,” Beryl said. “It means you’re growing. It means you’re moving in the direction I am, and that makes me happy.”

Art waded through the water in her direction. She giggled. He backed her against the Jacuzzi wall. They kissed. I sipped my glass of wine and watched him kiss her. I watched him lift her body up, sit her on the edge of the Jacuzzi, spread her legs, and go down on her. Beryl liked this. She ran her fingers through his wet hair and made familiar sounds of pleasure. I knew those sounds like a distant cousin one has fond memories of. She leaned back, propping herself on her elbows, and let Art work his tongue between her legs, his hairy hands rubbing her stomach and breasts. She looked at me and said, “Come here and stick that dick in my mouth.”

I got out of the water. The hair on my body was matted, I was dripping. I liked walking about like this, my cock pointing the way. I crouched before Beryl so she could take me in her mouth as Art continued to eat her pussy, grunting sounds coming from his throat.

We then moved away from the Jacuzzi to a lounge chair, where she sucked on us both: Art and I standing close, almost touching, Beryl going from one cock to another. I could smell Art’s body. I could smell the musk from his crotch, and I wondered if I was emitting any odors he could sense. Needless to say, the smell of sex permeated the immediate air around us.

We took turns fucking my wife. Art went first. I wanted to watch them; watching them made me want her all the more.

“Whore,” I whispered in her ear when it was my turn.

“Yeah,” she said, “talk dirty to me.”

When we went to the bed, Beryl wanted us both inside her at the same time. “One in my kitty,” she said with a seductive voice, touching herself, “and one in my booty.”

“I have hope for us,” she said later.

We were lying in bed alone. The sex had been good. I remembered a night, not a month ago, when we were in bed together and she had said, “We should just have wild sex right now, that’d solve all our problems,” but neither of us could do it.

“That’s good,” I said.

“I really do.” She kissed me.

I kissed her back.

“I feel so sexual, so alive again. I want to fuck more men. I want to fuck a lot of men. I love you. Will you help me do this?”

She could have done it by herself, or with Art, but she wanted me involved, and I wanted to be involved. And Art, of course, wished to be there too.

It started with the gang bang. Art made the arrangements for this, being the resourceful fellow that he is, getting the guys Beryl had fucked at The Party together for another go at it. There were nine of them in all, more than I had originally imagined. Had my wife really fucked nine men that night? I suppose so. Ten, including Art. Eleven, including me.

If I should ever think that what happened was just a wild fantasy, or a dream, I have the evidence on videotape. It was, yes, Art’s idea to capture this night for posterity. When he suggested it to Beryl, she got this wild look in her eyes and said, “Yes.” I was beginning to know that look better and better. I wanted her to say no. I wanted her to say no because I liked the idea myself.

(A number of times, alone, feeling lonely, thinking of the life I once had, I will put that tape into the VCR and watch. I will watch my wife fuck all those men in a single session, fucking in every combination possible.

Others have watched her. Hundreds, thousands, all over the world. This is really what this story is about.)

It was Art’s idea – again – to create a Web site and place stills from the gang-bang video on it. He created the Web page and allowed people to access it for free. In a matter of days, the site was getting thousands of hits. Art said this was a combination of posting stills to various news groups with sexual themes, and the help of a number of search engines.

After a month, he – or we – announced that the whole video-tape could be purchased for $34.95.

In a matter of weeks, two thousand orders came in.

First we were just some people doing kinky things, and now we were in business.

We were, I guess you can say, pornographers.

III. Solo in the Jacuzzi, with Memory

I was alone in the Jacuzzi. It was another clear night. That red star was indeed Mars. I stared at it. I wanted to go there. I wondered what sex life was like on Mars.

In the bedroom, in the house, Art and Beryl were fucking. He had been fucking her in the ass when I had left, and came out here, turned on the jet streams, and sat in the warm bubbling water. I closed my eyes while looking up.

In the water, I thought about the two of them. I pictured his cock going in and out of her butt, the muscles of her sphincter contracting with each thrust. As I thought of this, I started to become aroused. The image in my head was far more enticing than returning to the bedroom and seeing and smelling it. In my mind, I was the director, I was in control, and I made my own movie of the act.

I also pictured scenes from the night of The Party.

I touched myself. I had my cock in my hand under the water, and I began to jack off.

I watched my semen clump in the water and float to the top, getting caught in a whirlwind of bubbles, spinning around, blending in with water and chlorine.

Intermission

How We Met

I met Beryl at the recital of an experimental cellist; he was on tour for his new CD. In the first half of his performance, he presented classical pieces by Debussy and Mozart. I had difficulty listening – I kept glancing at the blond woman who was sitting alone, across from me in the small concert hall. She was wearing black slacks and a white cotton blouse. She kept looking at me as well. We talked during the intermission. Small talk: what do you think of the cellist? Oh, he’s good. We sat together for the second half, and the cellist presented his own iconoclastic work, hooking his instrument to microphones, adding special effects, or playing along with a tape full of strange sounds. Toward the end, he did a manic solo and broke two strings. After, I asked the blond woman – Beryl – if she’d like to go get some coffee. “No,” she said, “but how about a beer?” Two months later, we were living together. Six months later, we were married.

IV. Quartet

“We’ve been approached with a business deal,” Art said on the phone. Beryl and I were on separate phones in different rooms, listening together.

“Go on,” she said.

He said, “There’s this couple – here in the city – who have a successful on-line business. They do the same as us: sell videos and pix of them fucking, or the wife fucking some guys. Then they started to make and distribute vids of other couples. Acting as distributors, growing their business. You know. They came across our Web site, and they want Beryl. I mean, they can sell five times the amount of videos we do. Or so they say.”

“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.