The evening went even better than Susie had hoped, Brian moodily silent, drinking beer as he watched the TV ball game, then going off to bed and a dead sleep. During the night he erected once, jabbed at her behind but apparently fell asleep again.
In the morning she got him off to work and sat drinking her coffee, smoking a cigarette, and wondering. She felt trapped. If she had a job, made some money to be proud of – but she was a house slave, hating the master of her life.
Do something! Something new!
With sudden decision she butted out the cigarette and rose, strode out the kitchen door.
She paused a moment in her yard, gazing at the overgrown hedges about the monstrosity old house next door, at the chicken-wire fence which Morning Glories grew, at the lattice gate beside the fence. She moved slowly toward the gate, unsure now, afraid she would be disappointed in the new neighbors. But what else had she? Every other woman on the block had a job.
She opened the gate and stepped inside. The new people had certainly been busy.
The overgrown yard was neatly mowed, and flower strips planted against the house. Out back a vegetable garden showed new green shoots. All very tidy.
She climbed steps to the roofed back porch and at the screen kitchen door called in, "Hello! I'm Susie from next door!"
She heard a girl's voice. "Come on in, Susie!"
Entering, Susie found a darkish kitchen with antique equipment, except for a big new automatic washer. A girl was about to dump an armload of wash into it. She had glossy, dark straight hair cut in bangs, and eyes like black velvet. She smiled dazzlingly over the mass of clothing at Susie.
"I'm Rita," she said.
Then she spilled the clothing in and Susie's eyes went round, for Rita's housework costume consisted of a South Seas sarong from waist to mid-thigh, yellow and orange flowers on a blue background. Otherwise she was naked, and came toward Susie with big white breasts wobbling and tossing about.
Rita seized Susie's hands and pressed them warmly in greeting. Then, seeing Susie's blush and her open-mouthed gaping, she laughed.
She said, "You're shocked by my bare boobies, Susie? Well, it's summer. Hot weather. And I'm on a South Seas kick, reading all about Polynesia, learning to dance the hula and play the ukulele, and how to cook fish with bananas. So I wear a sarong like the Hawaiians did before the missionaries got at them, just hip down and hooray for bare tits!"
Susie surprised herself by giggling.
Rita said, "You don't mind? I mean, we're a nutty bunch, the six of us, and we do things different. I don't want to offend you."
The notion of recreating the South Seas here in suburbia appealed to Susie. Why shouldn't Rita do this? It was her house. But she was a bit shocked, especially since Rita's breasts were so big, the dark crowns enormous. Hard to avoid looking at them. And what about the men at the house? They were such luscious boobs.
She asked, "But don't the fellows just pant – stare?"
"Only when I hula," Rita said, and started to, raising her arms and clapping her hands rhythmically above her head while her hips began gyrating and her breasts, wow, they practically seemed to revolve! Rita added, "Doing this, a girl can get very quickly fucked, you know."
Her eyes twinkled so impishly that Susie burst out laughing.
Seeing this, Rita stopped dancing and threw her arms about Susie, hugged her, crying, "Susie, how you laugh! I believe you should be one of us. Love and laughter are what we care about. Welcome to the Zoo, which some call the Pageant, though my husband Howard says it's Howard's Horny Haven."
Susie felt a burst of affection toward her new friend, and returned her hug.
She was delighted with the Zoo, the Pageant, Howard's Horny Haven.
But never had she blushed so furiously, as though her cheeks and throat were on fire.
Rita started the washing machine while filling Susie in on the denizens of the house. Her husband, Howard, invented things. Nick was an artist, and his wife, Gwen, was deep into yoga. The third couple, Phil and Willa, were not married. She worked as a secretary. Phil had quit his job to inner-search homosexual tendencies that Rita thought non-existent.
As she spoke, the bare-breasted Rita's hand caressed Susie's, and vined up her arms.
These affectionate gestures warmed Susie's heart, for she had always been one to hold friends' hands, be they men or women, when in deep conversation.
Still, when Rita hugged her, squeezing a hot, bare breast to hers, she blushed. Well, she thought, I'm just not used to it!
"Now for the guided tour," Rita said.
She took Susie first to the dining room, which contained a round table lacquered Chinese red, green chairs, a yellow highboy and abstract paintings in exploding colors. Despite the shading of the porch roof, the room dazzled the eyes.
"Now the yoga parlor, Susie."
This was darkish, paneled in natural wood, with a couple of posters and no furniture except a wood platform raised a foot on which a girl sat in what Rita explained was called lotus-seat position, cross-legged, her thighs winged out at right angles and her feet intertwined. Her hair was bound up in a white snood held by a red-jeweled clip above her forehead. She sat chin-high and straight-backed, the position cruelly painful in Susie's view, yet her hands, on her knees, thumbs and forefingers forming circles, looked completely relaxed, her face serene. It was a lovely, flat-cheeked face, hazel-eyed, with a speck of red paint in the middle of her forehead.
The girl was nude. More than nude, for her pubic hair was shaven off.
"Gwen, you're busy?" Rita asked.
Eyes that had been fixed on the facing wall turned slowly to Rita. She smiled, a very gentle smile.
She said, "No, darling. I'm only at the second level."
Then Rita astonished Susie by bending down over the nude Gwen and kissing her on the mouth.
Susie gasped on seeing that their mouths were open, pink tongues twining about each other.
Rita straightened, said, "This is Susie."
Gwen's placid gaze washed slowly up Susie from feet to face.
"Hello," she murmured.
Rita said, "Susie, the rule of the house is that we kiss if we haven't seen each other for some hours, and of course on meeting people."
"My goodness," Susie said, eyes and mouth round. She had never kissed a girl on the mouth but good taste said when in Rome do as the Romans, so she bent down to Gwen, whose face turned up, smiling, and Susie held her breath and kissed her.
A dainty tongue-tip slid into her mouth.
The sensation so startled her that she licked the girl's tongue without realizing what she was doing, and when she straightened she felt stunned, saw stars spinning in the darkish room.
The wall posters had come into focus. There were two, in garish colors, mostly dark red and blue. One showed a man in lotus-seat position. He had a Buddha smile and a vaguely Oriental look about him. But more important, from between his crossed legs rose a penis of elephantine dimension.
Gwen said, "He is the Nepalese Virile Buddha, and she is a Sikkanese Siva."
The Siva was the other poster, a woman with impossibly globular breasts concealing her torso, and a round, red vaginal opening the size of her head.
Gwen added, "On the higher levels, these Gods can be quite nicely mimicked."
Susie had a hunch what she meant. She slipped a glance at Gwen's hairless crotch and saw her split spread wide open, the mouth of her vagina a gaping red ring.
Flushing up to the roots of her hair she looked quickly away.
"Susie, I will instruct you in yoga, if you wish," Gwen said.
Susie gulped. "That's terribly kind of you."
"It is my Karma."
Before Susie could decipher this, Rita had taken her arm and was leading her to the next room, leaving Gwen to her meditation.
This room was spacious and walled with books, clearly the library. There were footstools and cushions on the floor and a single couch, on which sat an angular woman wearing a cocktail dress, earrings, makeup, high-heeled shoes. She had exceptionally broad shoulders and long feet.
Rita said, "Susie, this is Phil."
Phil looked appraisingly over her, then said in a bass growl, "Hi."
Rita bent down and kissed Phil on the mouth.
By the time Susie had offered the ritual kiss she saw that Phil had missed shaving a patch of stubble beard under his jaw. The kiss, though, was soft and seemed feminine.
As their mouths parted he said, "Hey, you're a luscious broad, Susie. Welcome to the Zoo."
Susie thanked him, though she was not used to being called a broad by strangers.
Then Phil turned to Rita and said, "Shit, Rita, this Goddamn costume makes me feel like a jerk. I'm just no transvestite. Except for the panties. They give me a hard on. Christ, you should see it!"
"Well, show me," Rita said.
Phil raised his skirt, revealing hairy thighs and pink nylon panties stretched by the stiffness of his massively swollen penis.
Rita laughed.
Susie gasped.
He grumbled, "The earrings hurt and the fucking wig makes me sweat and I can't walk on these high heels. I think I'll chuck it except for the panties. Do they make me fae. Huh?"
Rita said, "You're always trying to get into panties, so to speak. Though of course here at the Zoo you're the only one wearing them, ever!"
Susie had noticed that when Rita walked, her sarong gaped on the hip where it was tied and she saw no panties, just white flesh, so that left Phil wearing panties and her, Susie.
Phil kicked off his shoes and began unscrewing the earrings, grumbling, "Fucking things women wear. Transvestites got to be nuts."
Rita took Susie's arm and led her out of the library to a hall. Across it, through open doors, Susie saw a room full of large, potted plants, gilded bird cages full of twittering and flittering feathered creatures, plus a two-person swing hanging from the ceiling by chains wrapped in crimson velvet.
"The swing room," Rita said, and without further explanation led her to the next doorway and inside. "The ward robe," she said.
It was a small room walled with racks of clothing, a medley of colors from which Susie picked out certain costumes, a clown suit, a fireman's helmet and raincoat, and many indecipherable gossamer garments.
Rita said, "You can be a bullfighter, lion tamer, acrobat, ballet dancer, whatever turns you on. Some of our bunch change every day, though Gwen sticks to saris and I'm on sarongs right now."
Susie was delighted. Dressing up, becoming someone else – wonderful! Escape being Brian's wife!
"I'm going to change, now that I'm finished in the kitchen," Rita said, untying her sarong. She stripped it off, naked now, though less naked than Gwen had been, for Rita had a dark pussy bush that big birds could nest in, a wealth of belly and crotch hair. She flung her sarong onto a rack and took another, this one of flowering hibiscus on maroon. She said, "Susie, you remind me of the White Rock girl, you know, on the soda bottles. The woods nymph perched on a rock gazing at her reflection in the water? Here!"
From a hanger she took a brief pale-blue garment so lightly woven that it was almost a mesh.
"Put it on, Susie," Rita said.
Delighted, Susie peeled off her dress. She was fitting it to a wire hanger when Phil came in carrying his female garments.
He still wore the pink panties with his penis standing out like a hammer handle tenting them.
Susie, in bra and panties, choked back a cry of alarm. She tried to cover her front with her dress.
Phil hung up his dress. He was chewing on an unlit cigar.
Rita was laughing. "Susie, continue undressing. Phil sees us girls nude all the time. Besides, he has this fag hangup, like he's really hot for guys. Huh, Phil?"
"Shit," Phil said. "I think the trouble is, like the book says, guys have no way to show affection for other guys. I see you broads kiss and hug, but guys just shake hands. So I dressed in drag to see what dreams might come, like if there's queer in me. But what happened was I got horny for Susie. Susie, you got a really cute ass, you know?"
Susie swallowed hard, and said, "Thank you, Phil."
"I'm going out and work in the garden. Susie, later you and me will have a talk, huh?"
And Phil left.
Susie was puzzled. She asked, "Is he serious, Rita? I mean, his dressing up like a woman seemed silly to me."
Rita smiled. "He may have been merely begging for attention. Or testing his fantasies? I don't know. It's his bag. Come now, sweetheart, undress. I'll help."
She began unhooking Susie's bra.
When she had done that, her hands lowered and Susie felt them trace the form of her pantied behind.
Rita murmured, "Phil's right, Susie, you have an adorable ass!"
She helped push Susie's panties down, then laid lingering caresses on Susie's high-sprung, pearly globes.
It felt rather pleasant, Susie thought, but scary, and she hurriedly struggled into her costume.
The wood-nymph outfit, she discovered, had only half a top, a left shoulder from which the gauzy material angled down across her left breast to her right waist, leaving one pink-capped orb completely exposed.
The skirt reached just below her crotch. The material was so sheer that it did no more than veil her pussy hair. She needed panties but knew they were taboo in this house.
"You look utterly toothsome!" Rita cried.
She seized Susie's hand and led her out to the hall, saying, "Come, we'll make tea, then have a swing."
Susie cringed with fear that Phil or one of the other men would appear in the hall and see her bare breasts. But the house seemed empty except for them, and of course the shaven-crotched Gwen on her yoga platform.
In the kitchen Rita put water on to boil. From a row of tea canisters she chose one called Kashmir Karma. She spooned some into the teapot, poured on boiling water, and from a shelf got tall cups made of bamboo.
When the brew had been poured, Susie was at first bemused by the woody feel of the bamboo on her lips, but the tea proved much stranger, having the fragrance and sort of the taste of perfume, if perfume tasted as it smelled.
"It's weird," she commented.
"I agree. And it is slightly narcotic, besides having aphrodisiac qualities."
"Oh!" Susie cried. "You mean, it makes you feel sexy?"
"I bet it will wet your pussy," Rita chuckled. "Drink up, and we'll go swing."
Susie was feeling very odd when they left the kitchen, as though her feet did not quite reach the floor. She was glad for the security of Rita's arm about her waist, despite her embarrassment at the plopping of her bare right breast against Rita's.
In the swing room Rita asked, "Want to try a jiji?"
"A jiji?"
"Howard made some in his workshop." She opened a drawer and took out two small plastic egg shapes. She said, "Inside each are two ball bearings of unequal size. Japanese women have used them forever. Come, sit on the swing."
The swing was comfortably padded, seat and back, and had room for the two of them.
Susie watched with horror as Rita sat, spreading her legs. She raised her sarong and tucked the jiji into the hairiness of her split, pushing it up her channel. She then closed her thighs.
She handed Susie the other and said, "Up your love hole, darling."
Susie could only think once more, when in Rome do as the Romans…
The jiji was slippery, and so was her vagina. It popped right in.
"Now we swing," Rita said.