#StrangerToStronger

Chapter 1When you don’t know many gay people in real life, the lesbian groups on f*******: are a good place to find some. I lay in bed on a cold December night, and posted a question on my phone about the lesbian erotica book I was writing. I wasn’t sure if the book was any good. I’d had three books published before that were no longer in print for reasons I didn’t like to tell, but had self-published two more. Still, erotica was new to me, and I wasn’t sure I was doing it right, so I liked to ask for advice. Surprisingly, I got a private message from a woman named Sofia Price not long after, and was intrigued because Sofia is my middle name. Sofia: Hi, I’m Sof. Can you help me with the book I’m writing? Well, actually I have this idea but I don’t know where to start. I squinted and considered. Lots of people have talked to me about working on writing projects over the years, but exactly zero percent of them have ever actually followed through. I decided to look at Sof’s profile pic. She seemed to be a few years older than me, and she was absolutely beautiful. She was black, as were most of the women on the lesbian pages I’d found. I didn’t know where all the other white lesbians went, but they were missing out. Sof’s braid-like twisted hair fell to her shoulders; her brown eyes looked full of both mischief and wonder. Her smile was amazing, highlighting prominent cheekbones. Even if I hadn’t already had a girlfriend I would have still considered her too pretty to ever consider dating me. She wanted me to work on a writing project with her? What the hell. In my experience, most people usually gave up after a few pages. Rave: Sure. Sometimes the trick is to just get started. You can keep an idea in your head forever, but writers write. You can always go back and make changes later. Just then, I got a text from Tiffany saying she was at my house. I went back to my messaging. Rave: I’ve got to go right now, but we can talk about it later. Tell me more about what you want to write and we’ll go from there. I shrugged and walked from my room to the kitchen. My sister Roni was busy doing her thirteen-year-old daughter Liv’s hair. Roni was taller than me, with short blonde hair, and three years younger than me. Liv was biracial, taller than me already, and her thick, curly hair was being straightened. “I’m leaving,” I announced. “See ya,” Roni said, uninterested in where I was going, not looking up from Liv’s hair. Her boyfriend Ray walked in the room next, followed by their youngest daughter, eight-year-old Nadia. Ray was a tall, stocky black guy, mid-forties, with a goatee flecked with gray. I’d been living with them for about three years, ever since I’d left my wife. Nadia ran up to Liv and tried to tickle her, laughing mischievously. Nadia was small and always smiling. Liv smirked and rolled her eyes. “Your hair’s going to be done next, so don’t think you’re getting out of it.” As I watched Liv and Nadia bicker back and forth I smiled and thought of my eight-year-old son, Luke. Roni and I had gotten pregnant at the same time, but with me it was with a sperm donor. My ex-wife had custody of Luke at the moment, and being around my nieces often made me wistful, wishing I were around my own child. Luke was a boy-version of me, with my auburn hair, brown eyes, and smile. But his freckles definitely came from the sperm donor, a man who was known to both my ex-wife and I, a really great guy. I remembered Tiffany was waiting for me outside, and I was glad no one was asking where I was going. Roni knew about my past with her. At first I said I’d never date again, but the chance to be with Tiffany when she was actually single had been too much of a temptation even though she had lost a lot in her life due to too much partying over the years. I walked outside and got into Tiffany’s borrowed four-door truck. “We’ve only got two hours,” she said, backing out of the driveway. She was about as short as I was, with shoulder-length, brown hair, and hazel eyes. She had her own kind of charisma, despite looking older than her years because of too much drug use. I’d been with her off and on, mostly off, for the past eighteen years. I was thirty-seven, and she was about to turn forty-nine. Most of those eighteen years Tiffany had also had a husband, but now they were divorced. Tiffany and I had recently reconnected, and spent our borrowed time at parks and parking lots near where she was supposed to be for her house arrest. She lived with an old Baptist preacher and his wife, so there was no way for us to get away with the kinds of things we wanted to do at that place. And I didn’t want to bring her around Roni and her family. The straight Indiana roads were pretty clear, but a light dusting of snow lay on the ground. Tiffany pulled into a big wooded park. We got out and walked silently, hand in hand, to a gazebo far from the playground, surrounded by trees, and sat on a freezing stone bench inside. “I’ve missed you,” Tiffany murmured in my ear. Then she bit my earlobe and I felt adrenaline through my whole body. We kissed passionately, and soon I had Tiffany lying down on the wide bench, our body heat keeping each other as warm as possible. Luckily I’m a giver, because Tiffany was definitely a taker. Most of the time that didn’t bother me. It was more fun to get her off. It made me feel powerful, and gave me deep satisfaction that m**********n could finish off later. As wind whipped through the gazebo, I moved my hand from Tiffany’s face to her breast. I knew exactly where to find her n****e after long years of practice. “Yes, Rave,” she sighed, arching her back. There was no time for drawn-out foreplay and romance. We were on a time limit, and besides that, we had the risk of being caught out here. I knew exactly how to get Tiffany off, fast and hard, because I’d gotten to know her body so well. I unbuttoned her pants and slipped my fingers inside them. “You’re so wet,” I whispered, not bothering to pull her pants down any farther. I rubbed her p***y, then focused on the c**t. “Raven,” she said loudly. “Shh.” I slid my fingers inside and moved them slowly. As I felt her p***y tighten, I moved faster and faster. Within seconds she was crying out with no inhibition and soaking her jeans. Tiffany made me feel like I was the s*x master. On and on I went, and she came again and again, not caring about the consequences. She pulled up her shirt and bra, and I sucked and bit her n*****s as I continued to get her off. With one last cry, she violently pushed my hand away from her and lay still, breathing heavily. I smiled and lay on top of her with my head on her chest. “Damn, Rave. When was the last time you got me off like that?” I laughed. “Uh…the last time we were together?” She chuckled and wrapped her arms around me. It was really f*****g cold outside. “Let’s get something to eat before I have to go back,” she said. Back at the truck, Tiffany had another pair of jeans and underwear waiting for her, and she changed in the back seat, cleaning herself off with wet wipes. She planned ahead for that sort of s**t. “We’ve got to get a place soon,” I said as we drove back into an area of town full of businesses and pulled up to Rally’s. “I can’t stand this weather.” “Next week I’m going to get a four-hour pass and get us a hotel,” Tiffany said, handing me a box of fries. “Hell yeah.” After eating and driving around for a while, Tiffany dropped me off at my place. Well, it was more of Roni and Ray’s place than mine. Everyone else in the house was asleep, so I crept inside, took my stupid medication for bipolar disorder, and after getting off my own neglected p***y, rolled onto my stomach and passed out. * * * * The next morning I woke up and read a phone message from Sof first thing, as I still lay in bed. Sof: My book will be a sci-fi utopia mixed with dystopia. It’s all about finding the common denominator in chaos. It’s everywhere, it’s just things not being said or done yet. Everybody wants to think how wonderful a utopia would be. What they could do to move the world to that area. How they could become a nice person. Nobody wants to do the work, just think about it. Push the tables over a little bit from the complete fantasy of thought to doing, to being, to it is. Sof: You don’t open the book and get the answer to something. You open the book and get the questions you should be asking yourself. This isn’t a story about the truth, it’s a story about your interpretation, or your dreams of it. There’s no such thing as truth, baby, it’s all an illusion. Everything you see is an illusion until you do something. It’s just an image until you do something. It’s just an image until you move. And when you move you broke the image. This was followed by a brief description of her main character, who would be living different lives in a futuristic machine, each life telling a different story, with the reader having to guess which life was the true life, and if the character would ever break free and make changes in the world. I read over what she wrote again. I liked it. I smiled, saw that her f*******: Messenger status said, Active Now. Rave: This is a great idea, Sof. I’d love to help you. Do you want to write some and then send it to me to edit or what? She responded instantly. Sof: I don’t have Microsoft Word or anything, So I don’t know how we would do this. Can I just text you what I want to write and have you do something with it then? Rave: Sure, that works. I’ll just write everything you send me word for word, and after the first draft is done we’ll edit and put things together. The first draft might be a mess, but that’s all right. Sof: Thanks, Rave. I’ll start sending you some in a few minutes. It’s all here in my head. Just let me get high first. I laughed out loud and got up to see if anyone else was in the house. Everyone was gone. Perfect. I grabbed my morning dose of medication and went back to my room and shut the door. My medicine wasn’t doing a very good job. I took a mood stabilizer and an antidepressant, but I was still having some pretty intense symptoms of bipolar, and the most powerful one by far right now was hypersexuality. I was constantly turned on. All I wanted to do was have s*x, and it was a very physical, primal urge. It was almost painful. Sometimes it annoyed me to no end, but other times it was amazing. My orgasms were more powerful than they had ever been in my life. But I was actually getting tired of the feeling of being constantly turned on. Having s*x, or m**********g, was the only way to get the feeling to just f*****g go away for a little while. I turned on some music on my phone, then lay on my back with my eyes closed. My whole body felt electrified. For no reason, goosebumps rose up on my arms. I could feel that I was already wet, and my c**t felt like it was an eight-inch-long, hard d**k. I liked to make my own porn images, complete with storylines, in my head as I pinched my own n*****s and finally began to rub my c**t. Luckily I had laid a towel down on the bed, because my orgasm came quick. It seemed like it would never end, and c*m gushed from me over and over again, Soaking the towel in a way it never did normally. Had I reached some kind of s****l peak in my life, or would this go away someday? I didn’t know. Sof’s face jumped into my head and I stopped m**********g immediately. Damn, she was beautiful. But I couldn’t allow myself to think of her while doing that. It seemed disrespectful. If I was going to think of a real person, I’d better stick to Tiffany. Finally I lay in bed, a soaked and sweaty mess, breathing heavy, needing a cigarette. After my heartbeat slowed back down to a reasonable pace, I showered and got ready for work. I didn’t have a car, so I had a job at the gas station just because it was so close I could walk there. I had a terrible time saving money, so I still hadn’t been able to afford a car so I could get a better job. One thing I didn’t admit to many people, was that I was actually on disability, after a horrific manic episode that had ended with six months in a state mental hospital. I wanted to work a full-time job again eventually, but right now my doctor didn’t recommend it, as I was still having such problems getting my moods under control. I checked my phone and saw Sof had messaged me several paragraphs of her story already. I’d transcribe it to my laptop later on. My mind raced a thousand miles a minute as I walked to work. I thought about Sof, Tiffany, the book I was working on, and Sof’s book simultaneously. Hard rock music blared from my ear buds and I wanted to bang my head and scream. Hypomania. Not full-blown-never-sleeping-f**k-up-my-life-mania. This was a lesser form that didn’t really mean I couldn’t function, but still affected me. My medicine didn’t seem to be effective at making me feel “normal,” and I was going to have an appointment with my doctor the next day and probably get my meds switched or adjusted yet again. Fucking bipolar. At work I barely paid attention to what I was doing. s*x scenes formed in my mind, scenes I wanted to put in my book as soon as I got home. After writing Sof’s scenes first, of course. That would be easy. Then I’d move on to my own work. I read Sof’s texts on my smoke break. Her writing needed a little polishing, but the story itself was intriguing, and I thought it could really turn into something. Editing could come later. Just getting the story out was the important part for now. We messaged back and forth a little, making small talk about how our day was going. She really seemed like a very interesting person. Then Tiffany texted me, trying to make plans for when we could meet up next. Our s*x from the night before turned me on, and I spent the rest of the evening at work in a state of uncomfortable arousal. Tiffany called as I walked home from work in the bitter dark at nine P.M. “Do you work Thursday?” she asked. “Three to nine,” I said. “I’m going to pretend to go to work. Meet me at the hotel down the street at eight A.M. We’ll be able to f**k until you have to go.” I didn’t know exactly how house arrest worked, but if she could get away with pretending to go to work and meet me at a hotel instead, I was down.