Ballad 1; Her Brother’s Breeches
Her Brother’s Breeches
Sage and chaparral, mown grass, a hint of the ocean; I tramped along the dusty footpath, and breathed in the sweet smells around me. Wood smoke and roasting meat, good old musk incense, all welcomed me back, along with the brave pennants flying in the breeze, and the sounds of laughter, song and peddlers crying their wares. Ah, Malibu. Ye Olde Renaissance Faire and May Market; I hadn’t been since my teenage years, but the place hadn’t changed much. Except, of course, the prices. I snarled at the ticket booth, and damn me if my curse didn’t leave my mouth in Elizabethan style. “Thou mercenary high-handed dog!” Once you learn a language, it never quite leaves you. In a flash I became Mad Moll, mate aboard the galleon H.M.S Earwigge, stepping landward on this fine Spring day, eager for a little gladsome company. Aye, me hearties, many a tide has turned since the day young Molly Kennedy doffed her gown, foxed the breeches of her brother, and ran away to Sea…
The Bet at the Bar
“Want another?” Bob Daltrey had asked me, and got up from our table to head for the bar. After a rigorous day at the office, my partner and I were at The King’s Head Pub, in Santa Monica. As I watched him make his way through the crush, I guessed what was making him so generous; a lissome blond in a white Angora sweater and sweetly faded jeans. Sure enough, he leaned against the bar just beside her to place his order. He turned towards her to say something. She smiled and answered, but didn’t leave with him, and he brought two more glasses back to join the few on the table.
You Made Her a Promise
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Huh? Oh, I just said it was a nice day, fuck you very much.”
“Hey!” I raised my hands. “I just asked!”
“Go ahead, goddamnit,” Bob folded his arms and leaned back. “Tell me what I said wrong.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I pondered. “There must be something. You could start with the sweater. Gotta keep it subtle, though, Like you slide against her, and the fuzzies take you by surprise. Then you apologize for all this sensitivity you have to touch, and go from there. Blush, you know. Hmmn. Maybe.”
“Kennedy, you are an asshole,” Bobby stated “I thought that kind of stuff was outlawed by the fem-lib-seps.”
“Yeah? Maybe that’s why the women are so hungry for it, buddy, let me tell you… Didn’t you say Carol was leaving because…”
“Yeah.”
“Well, goddamnit, learn to talk! Bob, you don’t even have to believe what you’re saying, okay? They just want a hint that you come from the same fucking race that they do!” I sucked half of my third Jack Daniels. “Thanks.” I raised the glass to him; “By the way.”
“Yeah, no problem.” Bob drummed pensively on the table. “Y’know, I met Carol at the Renaissance Faire, last year. She loved my clothes. Now she’s upset ’cause I’m not Prince.”
“Prince who?” I was a little fuzzy by that time.
“Prince!” Bob pushed his hair out of his eyes. “You know, Purple Rain, all that stuff?”
“Oh. Why…”
“Well, I guess it was my clothes. You know, like a Musketeer. All black, boots up to my crotch, hat and sword. Gloves.”
“Whoaboy.” I was a little sorry I’d shook my head. “Okay, you made her a promise, see. The clothes you wore. And you didn’t deliver. She wanted you to be the man who wore clothes like that all the time, right? So, why can’t you be that? At least when you’re in bed. I’ll tell you what, we gotta go out together. You used to pick ‘em up like a deck of cards or something, buddy, what’s happened to you! You gotta get into practice again.”
Bob thumped the table. “Think it’s so easy being a man? You ought to try it.”
“I have tried it,” I said. “I got ways of being a man that you ain’t even thought of yet yet.” Yet yet? Was that right? “If I met a girl at the Renaissance Faire, she’d get everything she hoped for. No false promises here, Bob.” We got ourselves untangled from the table, and started towards the door. Somewhere in the press, Bob shouted;
“Fine! Let’s go to the Faire, buddy. Take your best shot.”
“And you,” I said with the confidence born of alcohol; “Can wear the prettier clothes.”
How we managed to remember the bet, I don’t know. But we did, planning and sewing- or, rather, hiring eager young costume-makers to do the sewing for us. After all, if you own a production house, why not use its resources?
The Captain and I
Thus it was that Bob Daltrey and Molly Kennedy stepped onto the not-yet dusty paths in Malibu. My partner was dressed to kill. Clad as a sea captain, fine and fair like Bobby Shaftoe, just ahead of me in burgundy hose and white shirt, tricorn hat. Boots high up his legs, codpiece and cape, and all buckled about with silver, not excluding the short sword that hung at his belt. Bobby was a clothes-horse, all right, and it wasn’t only the ladies who turned to watch him swash on by.
Well, Mad Moll wasn’t looking too shabby herself. I had created a somewhat rougher persona. For my hose and shirt I had chosen dusty nut brown. My weskit was of a deep green stuff, worked subtly with dull gold threads. The lines of embroidery disguised somewhat my titties, yet outlined them too, knew you they were there. My belt and codpiece gleaming black leather were, as well as my soft boots. The slashed sleeves of my shirt winked soft scarlet, and the same scarlet rimmed my grey cap. My brown hair let loose from its tail, my brown eyes flashing, I was indeed ready to break the village lasses’ hearts. I laid my coin in the hand of a goodwife selling pastries, and didn’t correct her when she called me ‘sir’. The wench working behind her smiled when I caught her eye. T’was a pleasant beginning to the morn, and my Captain and I took our ease amid the hay bales and sampled the brewer’s draft.
“Needs must we settle terms,” Bobby said, and stretched his legs out comfortably.
“First, second, third base count for one, two and three points,”I said. “Home run should be… I dunno, ten points?”
Bobby looked pained. “Jeeze, Molly…”
“I know, must I be so crude? So, okay, what sayest thou, my Captain?”
“It hasn’t been the seventies for a long time, my boy. The wenches no longer look so kindly on the sudden proposal to sport. A hand at the waist, a goodly stroll and pleasant chat, that shall count for thine First Base.”
“Aye, granted,” I admitted. “A point well taken. Base the second, then, shall be kissing on the lips, stuff like that.”
“More positive signs of affection,” sayeth Captain Daltrey. A right boon companion, still. A rogue after my own heart. “Third Base, shall our old Second be, clipping under her dress.”
“Aye, copping a feel — And Home run is still a home run, withal. Some strumpet there is out there for me,” I told him, “who will kick her heels to the sky ‘tween me and a bed of hay. And I hope for thou the like. And lay me not that peeved look, or what are we about here?”
“Methinks twill be best if I tarry not overlong in thy presence, pardner,” Bobby said. “Thou hast much to attend to.” He stretched his legs out.
“Captain, a question for thee.”
“Aye?”
“How shall the maidens deem thy intentions? All the faggots look over their shoulders when thou passeth. They think you look cute.”
“Oh, shut the fuck up!” he snapped.
We Dance a Quadrille
But the first damsels, two of them, came to us as we sat there. Brittany and Michelle came all the way from Sepulveda, to sample the joys of the Faire. Office mates. Wearing lacy tops and well packed into their prefaded jeans, they drank the beer we bought them and giggled, asked us questions that they freely admitted were dumb. A little band was tuning up and I asked Brittany if she wanted to dance. Oh, no, she coloured up, looking to her friend and my friend for help. Bobby leaped up and offered his arm to Maid Michelle, who chided shrinking Brittany into taking mine. I acted, mind you, with utmost propriety but the maid was nervous still at dancing with a creature such as I, not fish, nor yet fowl. Still, she followed my footing in a simple quadrille, and as she became proficient I called change partners! and Michelle complied willingly. Miss Brittany was glad to be relieved of the burden of sapphic assumption, and fairly melted into my Captain Daltrey’s arms, while Michelle proved to be a most sportive wench, no doubt for the shocking of her dear friend.
“Sayest thou, how went the match?” spoke I, after we had parted ways.
“An even heat, forsooth,” Bobby mused. “Second base, both of us.”
“Methinks I labor under somewhat of a burden,” I said. “Wottest thou, the wenches, who turn not a hair at a wink from thee, look somewhat askance when they speak to me and find that the man inside the finery be made of flesh fine as their own. Thine bases were gotten after the damsel ran from me–”
“Yeah, yeah, complain,” Bobby sneered. “The bargain was laid out at thine own behest.”
“Aye, in my cups.”
“Aye, so. Woulds’t call it quits?”
“Nay, buddy, not a chance. I ain’t even gonna ask for a handicap — Well, look, what sayest thou we part ways to meet again later? I’ll stand you to a beer, yonder, in two hour’s time.”
“Aye, then, Godspeed,” sayeth my Captain, and gat he on his way. I stood a moment, in the bright morn. What to do? The merry shops with all their wares called me to browse. I wandered from stall to stall, looking at toys, and finery, jewels and pleasant fairings.
“Buy my pewter goblets, good people. Buy my fine crocheted caps, dear sir!” I looked over towards the clear voice that suddenly asked; “Is that Molly? Oh, my god, you look great!”
The Way a Femme Would Say It
Shanti was a babydyke, would-be actress, new to the city. She showed up once in a while at parties. She leaned her coffee-colored arms over the counter and devoured me with her wide-set brown eyes. Her sister and she held the shop together. Her dreadlocked hair looked adorable with her muslin shift and rose bodice, and she just lo-o-oved my drag. Did I want to come inside for some iced fruit tea? Of course I did.
“It’s so rad!” Shan enthused. “I mean it’s fuckin’ great to see someone I know, you know? Oh, my god, there’s more people here every day than I would see in a year, back home in Colorado, I bet…”
“Get laid?” I said lazily. “That’s a faire speciality.”
“No…” She looked abashed. “I don’t know, I just get shy. Shit, I mean, I can’t really tell if these women are lesbians or not, you know? I mean, everybody’s in these costumes and every one flirts like crazy…”
“Trust me, if a woman comes on to you, she’s coming on to you. You look like a dyke, anyway. And adorable.”
“Yeah? You think so?” She looked pleased at the compliment, and calculating.
“You need to get laid at the faire,” I told her, grinning like a dog. “Just for fun.”
“You need to get laid at the faire, too,” she said brightly. “Wouldn’t you be embarrassed if you didn’t?”
“Mortified,” I agreed, solemnly.
“You do that Butch-Femme thing, don’t you?”
“You youngsters don’t, I know. Come on over here and let an old bulldagger be nice to you, honey.”
“Would a femme sit on your lap?” she said, coming over. She put her hands down on the arms of my chair, and leaned in to kiss me. I put my arms around her waist and gathered her in.
There was a lot of teasing of lips with tongues. She grabbed me by the hair at the back of my head and drove her tongue deep into my mouth. I slid my hands under her bottom, kneaded the springy young flesh through the skirts she wore, and wondered how best to get inside them.
“Let’s go upstairs,” she said, and I climbed the ladder after her to the loft above. “This is my secret room, isn’t it cool?” Shanti began loosening the laces of her bodice. “I made my dress for the hot weather, so it isn’t real authentic, you know, but it does go on and off easy — Come on, Molly.”
My clothes were a trifle more authentic than hers. There was a vest to unlace and shirt to take off, before I could pull off my boots, and unbuckle my codpiece.
“Oh, my god, Molly,” Shanti said, when she saw what I had under it. “You’re really packing? Rad. Wow, I don’t think I can take that. I mean I’m not into penetration, you know?”
“Now, a femme wouldn’t say it like that,” I said as I unbuckled my harness and laid it aside, too. I peeled down my tights. “She’d say something like, um… ‘Oh, you big brute, you are not going to try to use that thing on little old me’ or else she’d say ‘Ooh, Daddy Molly, come and love your baby up!”
Shanti giggled and flipped the lid up on a cardboard chest. “Every time?”
“No… But it’s usually big strong me, sweet little you.” I came up behind her and pulled her little ass against me. “You don’t need to take it too seriously.” I looked into the open box. Gloves, condoms, lube. A package of dental dams, ugh. Vibrator. Plastic wrap. I slid my hands around her to cup her breasts, firm and high, circled the wine-colored nipples with forefingers and thumbs, and relished the way my hands glowed pale against her darkness. “Anyone tell you lately that you have a perfect body?” I could not quite span her waist with my hands.
“Anyone say the same to you? Big strong you.” She turned round in their circle to kiss me, while we drifted down to the mattress, that was covered with a Madras spread. Outside and below us, the din of the crowd resounded.
The Way a Femme Would say it; II
Hawkers and peddlers cried their wares, voices lifted in song and laughter. Sunlight drifted over the mattress, from the crannies in the shake ceiling, and over the young brown body that I embraced. I made a trail down her body, winding round and round as I went, down her youthful thighs to her toes and back up. At her knees, I slid her legs open, and made my trail follow the inner line. Her thighs looked like brown satin. I became intent on the prize, my hands playing with her tight black curls, and stroking her soft, blue-black labia. Something fluttered in my vision until I looked at it: A latex glove.
“Penetration?”
“Just a little bit,” she said; “Two fingers?”
I hated to put that glove on. I knew how the walls of her cunt must feel like velvet, living velvet that clings to the hand, but t’was not for me. The heat seeped through, however, and the surge of the muscular walls. And her sweetly moaning reactions to my explorations were reward enough. But there were some things that I had to draw the line at;
“Now, dental dams, I will not accept,” I growled. “This damned safe sex shit. Tell me you’ve never tasted the real thing?”
“Oh, yes I have!” she retorted. “Me and my girlfriend, we don’t use stuff, but…”
“With tricks, huh? Shan, sweetheart… I come from the old school, you know? I mean, how can you get off at all, those things smothering your pussy?”
“Well–” She giggled. “Really, those dams’ve been in that box, like, for years now. No one likes them… How about ‘wrap?” She stood up over me, deftly pulled a long piece off the roll, and wrapped it through her legs, and around her waist into as fetching a transparent bikini as I’ve ever seen. “How about that?” she said, and shimmied her sweet ass above my head.
“Hmmn…” I reached up her legs. “Have a seat, darlin.” She slid down, nestling her wrapped clit against my chin. I tried sliding my tongue over the surface. Slick, and it had no flavor. I thrust with my tongue to part her labia, but I missed the different textures, the delicate flavors of cunt. To be kept away from her dark prize seemed hard indeed, to Mad Moll. Yet I was surrounded by her coffee-brown flesh most deliciously. Her generation expects its orgasms, no more no less, and she was not shy about telling me what she needed, nor shy about her climax. Withal, I heard the snap of a rubber glove, and felt her fingers seek me out. And just so, she shied not at asking me what I desired, until I too, came, gaspingly.
“What’s a stone butch?” Shanti wanted to know.
“Well, I ain’t one, that’s for sure” I grinned at her. “You just proved that.”
“Like, she never comes?”
“Like, that’s the myth, anyway.” I slid my hands over her young breasts once again. “I guess, when you have a hot lover, you just get so involved with her and what makes her get off that you forget to get off yourself. She gets lazy and spoiled, you call her a using femme, she calls you a stone butch. That’s what you get when you grab for power. Hey, how much do your pewter goblets cost?”
“I can’t give you any discount on them,” Shanti said. “We have to account for those.”
“Oh, honey, of course not!” I rolled her over to nibble on her glorious ass. “Sell me one, when we go back down. I hate to drink beer in paper cups.”
The social life in L.A.
Mad Moll did not want for company that spring morn. The girls were letting their hair down, and then some. I came across three damsels in white, bedecked in flowers and dancing on the green, and it was impossibly simple to clasp them each at the waist and steal a kiss. It was a strange feeling. Los Angeles is a city of con artists and social climbers, and I say it as should know. We have no room for any more. If a stranger wanders into a bar in L.A., she gets the cold shoulder. The exception is our main industry, which is Movie making. When you’re on the set, the whole fantasy is in your hands. It is your duty to socialize lovingly with the other strangers that are co-guardians of the dream. The Faire has the feeling of being a movie set, we all become actors upon its stage, and a little thing like gender might not slow down a lass who’s decided to make a day of it. And that reminded me of someone, and I pointed my boots toward the Witches dell.
How Soon Shall That Be?
Under a spreading oak stood a little gypsy caravan, gaily painted. The sight of it set my heart a-beat. Shall Mad Moll step in to have her palm read, what would the gypsy see? I took courage, and entered the shadowy little room.
“Buona Fortuna, Signor. Cross my palm with coin, and I shall read thy hand.” The seeress sat in the candlelight, in her voluminous skirts, her full breasts thrusting at her blouse, a sweet wench with long brown hair made vivid with Henna. I advanced out of the shadows, laid her fee on the table, and gave her my hand. She scryed deep, and true withal, for she told me that Romance would be mine.
“Thank’ee, Maggie,” spake I. “Tell me, how soon shall that be?”
The sorceress looked to my face perhaps for the first time, and a smile that I remembered well o’erspread her face. “Oh, Molly!” she cried out, laughing. “What a lovely surprise!”
“How have you been, Maggie?”
“My god, it’s been a long time…”
And so once more came I upon adventure, in the person of Margaret Wills, and she was once a true love of mine- some five years back, no less. In truth I had searched her out, deeming that she still told fortunes to the tourists.
“Did you graduate?” I asked her.
“Yep. I’m doing my doctoral thesis. Belief systems in the modern festival circuit community. You know, it’s a lot like the old circus subculture, it’s just fascinating. And I get to travel in my own real, gypsy Caravan. Oh, Molly, isn’t it beautiful?”
“It looks just right, honey. Congratulations.” I had helped her with the research, back then. Her pipe-dream made real at last. It had taken her three years to get it built. I had planned on swinging the hammer for her, maybe learning how to make spoked wheels in the old way. Someone else had done it. A girl like Maggie generally will find a willing slave or two. We talked on, until a client stuck her head in the door. I repaired to the far back, and cooled my heels whilst she told her tales, and watched her now-fleshy shoulders. Tis an odd feeling, ye may know it, to be again with someone ye once knew well. She seemed to have slowed down. Her gestures, movements, carried more authority than in days gone by. When I knew her, she had been a skinny little thing, all bones and nerves. Her silvery, airy voice charmed me still. The woman left, and Maggie turned to me.
“The Seven of Cups–” The door opened again. “Buona Fortuna.” Her voice became the gypsy’s once again; “No, lady, I cannot read your cards at this moment. The cards, you see, are mischievioso. They do not obey the commands always. It would not be a true reading. The stars will be aligned once again, in the noontime. Come then, lady. Half past twelve, yes?” She ushered the woman down the steps.
“The Seven of Cups told me I would face temptation today,” she said, and shut the door. “But I didn’t know in what direction. I should have recognized your hand, though!”
“Yeah, you knew it pretty well back then, didn’t you?” I said. The force of memory made my voice hoarse. Her eyes grew lazy, soft.
“Look.” She pulled her hair back, and turned her head from side to side. A ruby like a drop of blood adorned her right ear. Three were in her left, an amethyst, a yellow topaz and an emerald. “One for each of my true loves,” she said. “The emerald is the woman I left you for. The topaz broke my heart. The amethyst is the woman I’ve been married to for three years now. The ruby is you, Carnal Moll. I’ve never forgotten… Well…” Her voice drifted off invitingly. “You want to take a walk with me? I know a tent in the Actor’s dell…”
“I’m willing, honey,” spake Mad Moll. “But I would kiss thee here, before we walk.” And I took her by the chin and thrust my tongue into her throat. She moaned and clutched at me, nearly swooning, and I knew that I still had her.
