Page of Wands

by Cheyenne Blue

Rose reads my tarot cards under cloudy skies on St Kilda Esplanade. The Sunday market is in full swing, and Rose's stall is one of many, tucked into the confines of the yellow lines painted on the pavement. I'm keeping her company as I often do, killing the time between when I crawl out of bed and the pubs open. Rose is looking more eclectic than usual today; red cotton Indian skirt with a tattered, uneven hem, a rainbow headband which does nothing to contain her dyed orange hair which escapes from an untidy plait to clash with her purple shirt.

She's never read my cards before since I won't pay her $10 fee. I don't believe in this crap anyway, and she's always told me she never reads for free. But today business is slow and the seagulls circling aimlessly overhead outnumber her customers by twenty to one.

She wipes a splodge of seagull shit from the vinyl table and stirs the cards face down. "Go on, T.J.," she says. "Pick a card."

The dare crinkles in the corners of her eyes.

I shrug and pick a card at random.

"Oh-ho." She studies me through narrowed eyes. "The Fool." She flips it back over, stirs the tattered deck with her hands again. "Pick an easier one."

She always says that a battered pack signifies an intuitive and accurate reader. Then she winks, "I let the punters think that, anyway."

Deliberately I pick one from the bottom, and skate it out, flipping several of the cards to the sea breeze.

She glares at me, retrieves them, and studies the card I've picked. "The Page of Wands - someone young, ambiguous of gender. Know anyone who fits that description?" she asks off-handedly.

I have no idea what the Page of Wands is supposed to look like, and I wonder if her comment is deliberate - is it me she's describing? "No," I say, rather too forcefully.

"Then you'll probably get laid tonight." She winks.

"Yeah, right." Fat chance of that, I think. Why tonight to break the drought?

"So who do I look out for? Doubt I'll meet a movie star in the Espy." The battered old St Kilda pub is as well known as Luna Park and Melbourne trams. At least it is around here.

"Oh, I don't know." Rose looks pensive. "I once got laid by a bloke I met in the Espy. There was something odd about his dick though. It was small and had a kink in the middle. Not really worth the effort of dropping my knickers." She shuffles the cards. "Pick another."

I hesitate, and then a potential punter appears in Rose's line of vision. Her voice changes, becomes mellow, deeper, seductive almost. Far different from her normal smoker's croak.

"So make sure you do the lotto, love," she says to me, gathering up her cards. "You might get lucky. And watch out for a mysterious stranger in a red car."

I take the hint, and slink off, although I do think she could have come up with something a little more original for my fortune. I see her mouth moving in practiced patter as she lays out the cards for an anxious middle-aged woman, who leans forward and whispers something in her ear.

What secrets Rose must hear.

We meet later for a beer in the Prince of Wales on Fitzroy Street, taking our drinks to the pool room at the back where the gay boys prance. The barmaid is a trannie with black slashes for eyebrows and bulging hairy arms. Rose eschews the trendier bar at the front, once the gay boys' domain, now trespassed upon by the yuppie kids who sit at the open windows drinking Chardonnay and watching the parade outside. She says she'll be recognized by her customers. I think she'll be murdered for their money back.

What an odd pair we must look. Rose so petite and colorful, downright weird looking really, her whole look screaming Wilderness Hippie. And me. Well, I don't exactly look conservative, with my cropped brown hair and androgynous body and Don't Mess With Me attitude. An attitude that gets me into as much shit as it gets me out of.

I like the Prince because it's as ambiguous as I am. And the clientele here are rather fond of me too. I can see a couple of the boys looking my way, but they keep their distance because I'm with Rose, and that's just fine.

Rose is complaining about her landlord again. I try to listen, but out of the corner of my eye I can see one of my boys trying to catch my eye. If his pants were loose they'd be wig-wammed from his erection; I can see the thick outline of his cock, flattened under the denim. He moves towards the dunny, slowly, so that I can't miss seeing him. I mumble something to Rose, stand and saunter toward the toilets at the back. The regulars know me well. Sometimes I go into the women's and that means fuck off and leave me alone. Let me drink my pots of VB and brood out over the pool tables. But if I go into the men's... ah, then that's a different story.

I vacillate briefly; Rose is waiting for me; she knows nothing of this, and better that she doesn't. Our friendship is built on fluid lines, but some things have never been defined. However the promise of fat white cock is a temptation I find hard to pass up. But I can be quick, and he will have to be. Before I can look back to Rose, drawing patterns in the fog on her glass, and change my mind, I enter the men's.

He's in the end stall, as always. "T.J., that you?" His voice squeaks at the end, on the upward inflection. This one tries so hard to be female. He's thinking of having The Operation -- you know, the final gender-bender dick decapitation. But right now, it's still all there and still all mine.

I slip into the end stall, where he sits on the can, his pants around his ankles. I lean over him, drop my head down and take him in my mouth. I won't kneel, too bloody subservient, and no one in their right mind would kneel on these floors anyway, they're all streaky with piss from He Who Cannot Aim Straight. And I'm limber, lean and long, an agile skinny streak of nothing, I can twist over and bend down with ease.

I worship him with my mouth, and he groans and thrusts up, and lets me caress his fat white slug of a dick with my tongue and teeth, lips and mouth. He thickens, grows, lengthens, stretches, and I adore the taste of his pale blind cockhead, and the soft skin on his shaft, softer than silk, so sweetly vulnerable. And I fancy I can feel it pulsate against the roof of my mouth as it engorges, throbbing with blood. I lick underneath its proud helmet, run my tongue around that circumcised ridgeline. He tastes sweet this one, I bet he rubbed his dick with almond oil before he came out today.

I slurp him hard, my reward the salty fluid that seeps from the tip. I push my tongue into the slot, the better to taste him, and I grip his shaft hard. How I love that sweet babysoft skin, the spongy resilience, how I love his desperation as he thrusts into my mouth. I go slack jawed, letting him set the pace, then, when he's about to come I take over again, suction on the shaft, vibration with my tongue on the head.

He's so vulnerable as he comes, his hips jerking; the thick little pool of semen spills onto my tongue. I straighten slightly and move to kiss him. He's wide-eyed and slack jawed. He's had his little slice of heaven for today, and he kisses me eagerly, tenderly. Oh, how I love my sweet gay boys, how I love their feminine kisses and their masculine bodies.

"T.J., lemme do you," he whispers into my mouth, his hands groping for my crotch.

I move back with practiced ease, evading the seeking hands. I wear my dungarees loose, and I know that they can't sense what's under there, although I know they wonder. Is there a coiled little cock nestled there, or is there moist and dark femaleness, or simply nothing? They'll never know. My body throbs, I'm as aroused as hell, but, as always, I'll take care of myself later. Now, I have to get back to Rose and finish my beer.

"Another time," I say, knowing, that like free beer tomorrow, it will never come. I wipe my mouth and slip from the stall, leaving him wide-eyed and grateful, his pants still around his knees.

Rose has finished her beer, I must have been gone longer than I thought.

"Quite some crap you had," she says, matter of factly. "Thought you must have died in there."

"It's my shout." I avoid answering her, and go and buy the beers.

I weave my way back to our table the long way, so that I can watch Rose unobserved. She's idly flicking beer mats and catching them, two, three at a time. From a distance they look like her gaudy tarot cards. But it's Rose that I watch; I see the line of her plump white arms underneath the thin purple shirt, the curve of her breast, jiggling slightly as she flips and catches the mats. I see her long bright braid, wispy with escaping hairs, and the undulating form of her legs, propped up on the other seat, ankles crossed. She doesn't shave her legs and the brown fuzz on her shins makes me want to rub it the wrong way, like a cat, and follow it up, under her skirt to see where the hair stops, and then joyfully find where it starts again. I'd like to kiss her mouth, bite her throat and breasts, and delve under her skirt with my fingers.

I'd let Rose find out what's underneath my loose clothing, but then I don't know if she would want to.

_______________

Cheyenne Blue combines her two passions in life and writes travel guides and erotica. Her erotica has appeared in Cleansheets, Best Women's Erotica, Mammoth Best New Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica and Mind Caviar. Her travel guides have been jammed into many glove boxes underneath the chocolate wrappers. She usually lives in the southwestern United States. You can see more of her work on her Web site, www.cheyenneblue.com.

Page of Wands
© 2003 by Cheyenne Blue

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