Chapter 21 #2
“I know there are probably adult stores in the city,” she explains from the driver’s seat so I can record from the passenger’s seat.
“But we have to go to one of the superstores out in the middle of nowhere that has a hundred billboards leading up to it. The billboards are what my mother always commented on as being nasty. I always just found the names so entertaining because they were oddly playing on religious themes, like Garden of Eden or Sin’s Mistress.
Although I did usually wonder how a store like that could survive so far away from where most people live.
Like, do people only stock up on adult items when they’re on vacation?
Do they feel wild and adventurous on their cross-country drives?
Or do people just not want to run into their friends and neighbors at a sex store, so they go way out of town?
And how do these huge buildings still exist?
Like, how many sex toys can one building hold?
And how has online shopping not wiped them out yet? ”
She finally stops the running commentary to take a deep breath, and I am so charmed by her I can hardly stand it.
“Tell me what you’re thinking as the documentarian when someone is going on like that,” she says.
“Our doc is going meta, huh?”
She briefly flashes a grin at me. “The story is what it is right now, yes?”
I chuckle to hear my own words batted back to me. “Indeed. I’m usually thinking of follow-up questions, or what kind of footage I might already have or still need to acquire to either play under a voiceover or to demonstrate what the talking head is describing.”
“I assume multiple layered modes—audio plus visuals—communicate more impactfully and coherently.”
“Right,” I say, realizing how apt her communication degree is for this work. “What gets integrated as stand-alone commentary versus applied commentary versus scenes are usually choices I’m mulling over during interviews but can’t fully address until I have all the footage back in my studio.”
She nods thoughtfully. “And of course, most footage no doubt ends up on the cutting room floor.”
“That’s maybe the hardest part. You can only really share moments. You have to simulate the complexity of truth while accepting that the full evidence for that complexity of truth can never make it into a two-hour video.”
She hums in her throat. “The ethics of shaping narratives is rather daunting, no?”
“Your acknowledgment of that responsibility is exactly why you’re the person I would want making documentaries.”
She glances sidelong at me and slips her hand onto my thigh.
Major déjà vu moment: Didn’t she slip her hand onto my thigh just like this while I filmed her from the passenger’s seat on our maiden voyage out to Exit 11?
Her touch then flared just as many emotions in me as it does now, even though I couldn’t name them or tease them apart at that time—connection, heat, calm, hunger, rightness.
Except this time I get to slide my hand over hers and hold her to me the rest of the drive to revel in those emotions.
We continue to discuss documentary techniques, and sex paraphernalia, and the longevity (or lack thereof) of brick-and-mortar buildings.
When we arrive at the—indeed enormous—superstore quite separated from the rest of civilization, Christina makes sure the selfie stick I’m wielding captures just how thrilled she is to open the blackened door with a huge 21+ ONLY sign.
As soon as we’re over the threshold, Christina’s jaw hangs dumbfounded as she takes in the rows and rows of every erotic product imaginable. She finally pans over to me, eyes wide. “I’m guessing we’ll have to blur a lot of this out?”
I can only laugh. She laughs too, flipping the back of those fingers on her mouth. I’m close enough to sneak a kiss to her outward-facing palm, a recurring fantasy of mine since I first saw her make that gesture.
She gasps dramatically. “Thief!”
Thank god we’re rolling again. I already know I’ll be keeping that clip handy.
We shuffle through the rows, and Christina picks up almost everything.
Her reactions range from humming interestedly in her throat, to raising her eyebrows as if impressed, to asking me “What the hell is this?” I’m riding the line of being thoroughly amused and hugely turned on the whole time.
Especially because Christina keeps throwing me these sultry looks or scraping a sensual nail down my arm.
But I officially cross into turned on territory when Christina finally decides on a little pink bullet vibrator. “The dildos seem awfully superfluous,” she says, pointedly eyeing my groin, and then reaches up on tiptoes to whisper in my ear. “Would you help me figure out how to use this, baby?”
I shiver against her, and she just falls back on her heels and smiles smugly at me.
I’ll help her, alright. I’ll help her all fucking night long. She may end up regretting asking for my help on this.
As we approach the cashier, I encourage Christina to take the lead on a quick interview. She volleys her gaze between me and the cashier. “How about we do it together?” She doesn’t seem nervous. I think she just genuinely wants us to work in tandem on this.
So we do.
And it’s magic. The kind of magic that is Christina. That is us.
The interview only lasts ten minutes. We ask a lot of what Christina and I pondered on the car ride over.
But the cashier completely opens up to Christina’s loveliness.
Christina’s not performing like she had to on the church stage or as the pastor’s daughter; this is a connection she’s creating born of her own will and mutual respect.
And with Christina beside me, I don’t perform, either. I’m intense, and curious, and focused, but the way Christina reacts to my intensity changes the way the cashier reacts. Christina nods, and throws a finger over her mouth in thought, and bounces additional questions and clarifications off me.
Christina models how to appreciate me as I am.
And it works.
I’ve never felt more comfortable in an interview.
And I’ve never felt more complemented. Christina is brilliantly incisive and quick-witted. She’s pure sweetness, but with just enough mischievousness to keep things interesting. Together, we create more of a connection with this cashier than I suspect either of us would be able to accomplish alone.
When we finally climb back into the car, camera off, Christina drums her nails on the steering wheel and chews on her bottom lip. “Did that feel as right to you as it felt to me?”
I run my fingers through her hair. “Yes.”
“So our inner voices at least aren’t alone.”
I lean over the center console to kiss her temple. “No, baby. Our inner voices are right on track.”
She nods against me, and I just stay there, my lips on her skin, breathing in her scent that’s somehow sweeter than the blooming spring around us.
“Hey, Danny?”
“Mmm?”
“The cashier said this thing is all charged up.”
I go still.
“And the hour drive back feels terribly long all of a sudden.”
My breathing stutters against her hair. “You know you have to tell me what you want, Christina.”
She twists around to roughly tease her lips against mine. “I want your help now.”
My voice is positively predatory when I find it: “Then get us the fuck out of this parking lot.”
She throws the car in drive and relocates us to a little covered recess off a back country road.
“My greedy Jezebel,” I mutter as I kiss down her neck and run my hands up her dress.
She’s trembling as she attempts to rip the vibrator out of its packaging.
God I love that I still make her tremble after so many times now.
That she’s still so driven by need for me that we can’t even wait to get home.
“Okay,” she breathes as she gets it in hand. “I think you click the top to—”
The buzzing fills the car, louder than the idling engine. We catch eyes and burst out laughing.
“This is going to take my clit clean off!”
I laugh into her collarbone. “Here, baby, let me help you. Remember?”
I take the vibrator from her, and she adjusts her seat to lay back a bit.
I hold the little buzzing thing flat against my palm with my thumb, but keep my fingers splayed wide to slide up her thigh, so she gets the buzz digging into her skin along with the weight and warmth of my hand.
She releases this contented little sigh.
“That nice?”
She nods, watching my hand closely. I drag her dress up along my path until her white cotton panties flash from between her legs.
“Ah fuck, babe.” I glide my buzzing hand across the top expanse of her panties, enticingly close to where she wants it most. She squirms. “You think wearing these chaste little panties makes you an innocent girl again?”
Her head drops back on a soft groan. I smile to myself; I know what buttons to push to drive her wild. She likes to be reminded of how fuckable she is, how unrestrained. I like to activate every little bit of the Jezebel and be the one to fuck that Jezebel hoarse.
I trail the vibrator back and forth over the top of her panties near the band until she lets loose this desperate little sound, and then I quickly drag it down the length of her sex and back.
“Ah.”
“Gotta give you little tastes to adjust, babe.” I intermittently sweep the vibrator up and down over her panties. “We gotta show these panties what kind of girl you really are.”
She shudders violently and clutches at my hair. Thank god, I fucking need her owning me and controlling me by those strands.
I finally hook my fingers on the edge of her panties and yank them to the side.
A growl escapes me, like it always does.
Her pink, gleaming pussy destroys any semblance of rationality in me.
Some primal force takes over. Case in point, I thrust my hips against nothing and grit my teeth as I force myself to carefully, so carefully, run the vibrator down the inside of one fold.
She squeezes my hair tighter, a silent plea.
I run the vibrator down the other fold; she whimpers.