"Dick in a dick. Top that," Lisa said with a smile. She was sitting on her bed with Danielle, drinking coffee and clicking through their laptops.
Danielle stared at the photo on Lisa's screen. They were playing a game they had invented in college. They would compete to find the weirdest porn they could. Lisa had found a photograph of a penis with the foreskin of a much larger penis wrapped around it like a snake swallowing its prey.
Alcohol was part of the game as well. Originally, whoever lost had to do a shot, but that was deemed completely unfair to the winner, so they both just drank while searching. They had always maintained that you could not properly play the game without drinking.
Part of Lisa's sobriety, however, had included cutting out all alcohol. Although she'd never really had a problem with the sauce, she'd been convinced by Danielle that it would be a slippery slope. It hadn't taken much convincing since, again, she didn't have an alcohol problem. She'd never said this out loud, but she didn't even believe she had a heroin problem. Heroin was just a symptom of a much bigger problem. Rick had been another symptom. There were other symptoms too. The problem was, and always had been, her.
Perhaps this was an unhealthy view to have, but it did mean that cutting off her bad habits had been much easier than her friend had thought it would be. Lisa Hendricks was never addicted to heroin. She was addicted to how much she hated herself. And here was the dirty little secret; she hadn't given up that addiction. Not one bit. She'd just gotten better at hiding the symptoms, or at least choosing less obvious ones. Such as creating an entire dream world and filling it with the antithesis of everything she believed she deserved. Namely happiness.
Tonight was special, because it was the first time since she'd gotten clean that Danielle was allowing her to drink again. It was only some dashes of Kahlua in their coffee, but still. Porn Poker just hadn't been the same without booze.
"I will see your Ouroborocock," Danielle said as she spun her laptop around, "And raise you a man fucking his own ass."
Lisa grinned, "You wanna go, bitch? Because I will open a Tor browser and melt your fucking face like in Raiders."
Danielle chuckled and closed her laptop. "I concede."
Lisa laughed as she slid her laptop to the side and asked, "So how is my precocious little niece?"
"Ugh," Danielle groaned. "My daughter has officially reached the 'It thinks it's people' age. And here I thought the 'clothing optional' age was bad. I'd take that over this little fucking diva any day."
"Me thinks the apple does not fall far from the tree," Lisa said.
Danielle crossed her arms, "My clothing optional phase was different."
"How so?"
"It was in college, that's how."
Lisa laughed, "You were a grade-A slut."
Danielle mocked offense, "Don't you shame me! Besides, I was not a slut. I simply enjoyed a good penis now and then." She ended the sentence with a dismissive flick of her wrist.
Lisa snickered, "Yeah, that tone of voice should be reserved for, 'I enjoy a good danish now and then.' Not for dick."
"But I did fuck a Danish guy once."
They shared a laugh.
"My past started causing a little friction between Frank and I a while back."
"Oh?" Lisa crossed her arms.
"We didn't meet until after college. He got wind of my past after we ran into a few of my friends from those days." While Danielle had been a complete social butterfly in college, she had been Lisa's only friend. Only real friend anyway. "So inevitably they started going on about the good old days and trading stories about the dumb shit I did."
Lisa put a hand on Danielle's leg, "I never thought him the type to judge you for that."
Danielle shook her head, "He's not. But I did notice after that, whenever we were intimate, he'd be a little pensive. In that subtle kinda way you don't notice unless you see the person every day."
"Was he jealous?"
"A little, but I think it was more than that. I straight up asked him one day. 'Frank, are you satisfied with our sex life?' Fuck, he looked like a deer in the headlights."
Lisa laughed, "I can imagine. What did he say?"
"At first he didn't say anything. Then he admitted it wasn't something he'd ever really thought about. I asked why, and what he said kinda depressed me."
Lisa quietly waited for her to continue, her hand still on her friend's knee.
"I didn't think I was allowed to be."
"Be what?" Lisa asked.
"That's exactly what I asked. He answered, 'I didn't think I was allowed to be dissatisfied with it.' I mentioned how a woman who is unhappy in her sex life is literally a subplot of one of the books we read a while back." Danielle and her husband were in a little two-person book club. They'd take turns picking a book to read and then discuss it after. "He said, 'Yeah, but that was a woman. After we read that one, you showed me those articles about the, uh, orgasm gap thing, remember?"
Lisa smirked, "From what you've told me, that's not much of an issue in your marriage."
Danielle returned the smirk. "I wouldn't have married the guy if it was. But shit, I was so caught up being happy to have a guy who actually gives a fuck about my pleasure, that I didn't give much thought to his. I think we both fell into the same way of thinking about his pleasure. Like, as long as the icky sticky shoots out, I did my job. So I asked him again and promised I wouldn't be upset. I demanded he lay the cards out and be honest."
"And did he?"
Danielle nodded, "He goes, 'Well, I mean, you did all that stuff in colllege. The threesomes, the hookups. You and I have never done anal, and I have to practically beg you for doggy style. Don't get me wrong. I know I'm not entitled to anything just because you did it in the past. But, yeah, I guess I'm a little dissatisfied. I'm sorry." Danielle's face drooped into a frown, "The fact that he felt he had to apologize for admitting that."
"Dude is way too selfless for his own good," Lisa said, doing her best to hide her own jealousy.
"Sad thing is I kinda already knew all this. I mean, I didn't know that it was bothering him. But I was aware I was consciously holding back during my marriage."
"Why?"
"You were at the wedding. You remember how he joked in his speech that growing up with a highway on one side of him and a weird old dude living on the other side had made him think he'd missed his chance at falling in love with the girl next door, but it turned out she was out there waiting for him to become the boy next door."
Danielle and Frank had met when he'd had to move when taking a new job, and ended up moving into the house next to hers. They'd had their first date before his boxes were even unpacked, and only waited as long as they had to move in together because of the year long lease he'd signed.
"So you were worried about what would happen if he realized you weren't the perfect girl next door he thought you were?"
"Yup. In fact I said pretty much that exact thing to him. I told him I'd held back because I was scared that if I broke the illusion of the good girl, good mom, good wife, he'd be disgusted by me. I told him I knew in my heart that he wouldn't be, but those fears run deep and one good, loving marriage isn't going to immediately undo a lifetime of patriarchal conditioning by society."
"And how did he respond to that?"
"Ooh, boy. He tells me he doesn't agree. I start trying to explain to him that he doesn't see the issues because they don't affect him as a guy, but he stops me and goes 'no, no, I don't mean that. I mean I don't agree that you being a good wife and a good mom is an illusion. Your past doesn't undo that." I looked down at my feet and asked him, "And what if it doesn't stay in my past?' And you wanna know what this motherfucker says in response to that?"
"Huh?"
"This son of a bitch puts a finger under my chin, lifts my head up to meet his eyes and says, I shit you not, 'Good girls are allowed to be naughty too."
"Holy shit. That's enough to make a nun wet."
"Yeah."
"What happened next?"
"Oh, I made him fuck me in the ass while I called him Daddy."
Lisa sighed, "Ya know, this story was this close," she held up her thumb and index finger half an inch apart, "to being wholesome, and then you just had to take a sharp left turn into Fifty Shades of What The Fuck."
Danielle laughed, "Either way, our sex life, and by extension our marriage, has improved since then. It's funny, he always used to say that giving me pleasure was so important to him that it bordered on being a kink. Turns out I have the same kink. There are so many ways to make a dude cum. I never really explored them much because it's so hard to find a guy that can even find one way to hit my buttons, but now that I am?" Her smirk widened into a devilish grin. "It is so satisfying to reduce him to a gibbering mess. I've told him all my stories. Everything I've done in the past. And I told him that the one thing I did back then that I don't wanna do with him is a threesome."
"Was he disappointed?"
"Actually, he just laughed and said he has enough trouble keeping up with me." She leaned in close and whispered, "I'm gonna surprise him with one during our vacation in Vegas next year."
Lisa briefly considered throwing her own proverbial hat into that ring, but she'd seen crossing that line ruin enough friendships to firmly believe a third should remain a stranger before and after the act. Perhaps some people could make it work, and perhaps their friendship would survive it, but that wasn't a risk she was willing to take. She decided to change the subject. "So I had a dream about that guy again."
"Yeah?" Danielle responded as she poured some more Kahlua into her coffee and sipped from it.
"He says his name is Calvin."
"So he's a hundred and twelve years old?"
"Stop it, I think it's a cute name." She smiled, "He said he likes my hair."
"Yeah, you dreamed him up. He's kinda supposed to say what you want him to say."
Lisa shrugged, "You'd be surprised how often my dreams turn on me."
Danielle patted her knee, "Was he wearing another band shirt?"
Lisa shook her head, "No, boobies," she giggled. She waved her hand dismissively and said, "He was wearing Saitama's shirt from One Punch Man. The one with the boobies."
"One who what?"
"Okay, you have really been letting your anime time slip."
"Try having an, as of recently, extremely sexually active husband, a daughter that just discovered TikTok, and a literal fucking manic pixie dream girl as a best friend and see how much time you have for anime."
Lisa hopped up and down on the bed, "Let's watch it!"
She brought the show up on Netflix and they watched a few episodes. Lisa was worried Danielle wouldn't like it, but her friend laughed so hard when the main character lost a fight to a mosquito that she fell off the bed.
Lisa crawled to the edge and leaned over to look at her. "Okay, now I'm having college flashbacks."
"Yup," Danielle chuckled, "except I'm not wearing nothing but another guy's boxers and you're not tripping balls."
"Oh I miss tripping balls!" Lisa said.
Danielle's smile faded and she stared up at Lisa.
"Don't look at me like that. I don't miss heroin. I just miss weed. And maybe a little acid."
"The slippery slope, Leese. I shouldn't even be letting you drink."
Lisa pulled her hands from the bed and put them at her sides. She laid flat on the bed with her head and shoulders poking over it. She used her feet to push herself forward and began sliding off the bed towards Danielle.
"What are you-"
"Shut up, I'm a snake. Slither slither." She wriggled forward until she slipped off the bed and faceplanted onto the floor.
"Did that feel good?"
"Slither," Lisa mumbled through the carpet. She allowed the rest of her bottom half to fall to the floor with her and wrapped her arms around Danielle.
"You're drunk, Leese."
"Drunk like a snake," she said. "It's like crazy like a fox. 'Cept drunk. And snakey."
Danielle cradled her friend as she fell asleep on the floor. Danielle had the decorum to pretend she didn't notice the tears in Lisa's eyes.52Please respect copyright.PENANAs9k2JXb9ZC