To say I idolized Ella would have been an overstatement, but not by much. She was better than me – she worked harder at almost everything. Playing solo cello, eyes closed, swaying with the bowing, she was angelic. The 1960s were a time when the cello came into prominence as a solo instrument, and whether I watched Ella playing hers or held mine between my legs and bowed it, the vibrations coursed through my whole body, focusing between my legs.
In February, with a busload of other Berkeley students, we traveled to a youth music competition in Santa Cruz, seventy-five miles away. There, part of a gifted mob of young musicians from all over central California, we were shocked to find so many others whose skills and discipline equaled ours. Nevertheless, Ella and I placed high in the cello solo division, the judges citing us both for “unmistakable passion,” Ella’s “worthy of the composer.”
Exhausted on the way back, Ella and I commandeered the bus’s back bench, and she lay her head in my lap and fell asleep. Coming into Los Gatos, a delicate voice emerged from the gloom, “May I sit with you?” I recognized her from orchestra: Alice, a petite Asian flautist. Shy, always mannishly dressed: suit coat, ankle-length skirts or voluminous pants. My hands on her waist, I helped her scootch in on the side away from Ella. I found an unimaginably small body. Settled, she whispered in my ear, “I watch you two. You’re lovers.” Not a question; a flat declarative. I didn’t know what to say.
“Yes,” whispered Ella, who had apparently been playing possum. I looked down at her in surprise. “I have been watching you play, too,” Ella whispered on, “since sixth grade. You’re prettier than you look.”
“Hunh? Oh, you mean the way I dress? That’s for my father. He’s very strict. You guys won, right?”
This one I could handle: “Yes, Ella took first. I thought she played perfectly.”
“I’m Alice,” said Alice, then laughed, “I guess you knew that. . .” then softly, “I took first, too.”
Never good at sleeping on buses, I stayed awake, but Alice nodded off, cuddling close to me, and soon was sleeping with her head tucked against my breast. Arriving at Berkeley High, both awoke. “Could I hang with you guys after school sometime?” Alice asked plaintively before she left. “Maybe we could make some music?”
Once she was gone, Ella offered, “I could make some music with her. She’s cuter’n a speckled pup.”
“Shy, too. More there than we see. What do you make of her spotting us as lovers? Pretty forward, hunh?”
“She’s perspicacious.” We had been studying big words for our SATs, and some of them were just too yummy to forget. “If she’s discreet too, no worries. Let’s invite her for tea?”
– o –
Grace’s journal, February 17th, 1967
Coming home from Santa Cruz this cute flute player, Alice, told us she knew that E and I are really close. We think she meant more than she said. She told us she’d like to meet up with us, so Ella made a little invitation, delivered it privately, and after school Friday we walked to Ella’s house together, carrying our instruments. “Maybe we should have chosen flute?” I said. Cellos are so unwieldy and fragile.
“I thought about cello,” Alice said, “but considering the bus and the long walk home, I decided: piccolo.” She looked at us sharply, to see if we would like her joke. We both hooted, and felt a little closer. Alice is very shy, but bold and funny, too. Very interesting.
At tea, she told us she’s her family’s baby, very protected by her much older brothers and sister. For her eighteenth birthday in November, Alice attended a talk given by my Mom (on her usual subject) at the Berkeley Women's Civic Club. She confessed, “Since then, I’ve been so horny, but that would never do in my family. Father insists that boys are off limits until I’m 21, or move out. He says ‘I was a boy, and I know what boys want. Stick to your studies.’” With coaching from our families we reached the same conclusion, so we laughed and agreed about ‘boys,’ but looking at each other, Ella and I realized we didn’t know about ‘horny.’ We always had each other. We invited Alice to join us for a slumber party at my house Saturday night. We’re curious.
February 19th, 1967
Late Sunday, Mom not home yet. Alone with my thoughts, my pussy humming a happy tune.
I want to remember it all, so I’ll start at the beginning. Before we met Alice, E and I discussed ‘strategy,’ agreeing to ‘cool the sex’ and, ‘if anything happened,’ keep to the purely sensual. ‘We’ll make an evening for the senses, okay?’ meaning we’d shop and cook together, and maybe listen or play a little music, and then . . . well, who knew?
Alice met us on upper Shattuck where the fancy food stores are. Mom had dropped a $100 bill on me by way of apology for once again leaving me alone for a weekend, and we wallowed in luxury: artichokes, out-of-season raspberries and tomatoes, three kinds of lettuce, truffle oil, champagne vinegar – things we’d heard about but of course never tasted. We danced around the kitchen like little housewives, doing our best to delight each other, Alice weaving between us effortlessly. Lots of appreciation and ‘accidental’ touching. By the time we were eating, we were in a blissed state, basking in the freedom of three teens unburdened by adults.
After dinner, we bundled together on the sofa opposite Dad’s big speakers and state-of-the-art stereo and listened to a new album, Jaqueline du Pre playing Elgar’s Sea Pictures . . . bathed in glory. The music ended, and Ella stretched theatrically: “I’m tired. Let’s get ready for bed.”
Wink wink.
No surprises from us – baby doll nighties and conservative but frilly undies. Alice out of her everyday shell was a revelation. Barely five feet tall, two inches less than E and ten less than me; short shapely dancer’s legs, flaring hips that seemed wide until you considered her small scale . . . and perfect breasts almost too big for her tiny frame. Naked, she caught us staring. “I know. California girl, good nutrition. Japanese women are supposed to be flat . . . but I’m not apologizing,” she laughed, and jiggled her generous superstructure before getting her pajamas on. “I want to do something nice for you. Can I rub your feet?”
I watched Ella bliss out as Alice rubbed her feet and calves intently, eyes closed, humming softly a bit of the cello line from the Elgar. When Alice grasped my big feet, I swooned. Her little fingers were magically strong, and she knew something about pressure points. “My sister studied reflexology, and showed me some points. Here’s the kidneys, and this is the heart . . . and this . . .” I could feel our cautious strategy eroding as she manipulated a point that made my pussy swell and moisten. I looked to E for help, and got back exactly nothing. ‘Just enjoy,’ her knowing smile told me.
‘Magic’ is right: Alice wove hers all around us both. We didn’t completely abandon our strategy, and E and I learned something special about our love for each other: showering love on another person brought us ever closer. As a reward for those blissful foot rubs, we offered Alice a two-person back rub, and she immediately agreed and surprised us by slipping out of her PJs and, after arranging a pillow to keep from squashing her bountiful bosom, lying on her belly. E twinkled knowingly and said, “She’s been managing those for a while.” I worked Alice’s shoulders and neck, feeling her relax under my hands; she was purring. El was working her legs up to her pert apple buttocks, carefully not slipping too far into the inviting space between. “You’re a dancer?” E asked, stroking the shapely musculature of A’s calves and bum. “Mmmmm,” Alice replied.
Alice turned out to be a sensuality mirror. Touching her body soon became caressing, and the energy flowing back into my hands as I massaged her warmed me, as if I was feeling hands on my own body. Ella’s and my hands met, and then our eyes, as she rubbed Alice’s tight little bum and I traced the delicious curves from her lush sacral dimples to her hip bones. I lack words for the emotion we exchanged.
When we finished our first pass and were preparing to focus on places that seemed most pleasurable, Alice surprised us again: she flipped over, and there she was, gloriously full-breasted, tight nipples, soft flat belly, cute inny navel, neat pubic mound, her clit peeping out temptingly. When I touched her breasts, she moaned, and I felt my crotch get swampier. I could tell it was a struggle for El to avoid delving into the tempting valley between Alice’s legs. ‘Maybe next time,’ I thought to myself. ‘Not on our first date.’
After Alice left – “Sunday chores,” she apologized – El lingered long enough for us to take care of the pent-up passion we were both barely containing.
I can’t believe how much I wrote!
– o –
Ella and I were sitting on the sofa, thighs and hips close together, in front of the big picture window with the white-water view of the rocky coast, a photo album between us. We had just turned to a spread of pictures of us with Alice, and we both teared up a little. We lost our sweet Alice a decade ago to undetected breast cancer. She had remained close despite relocating to Philly. where she’d been the principal flutist in the Symphony. There had been several joyous reunions over the years, the sparks of jealousy and attraction never completely resolving. “She helped us perfect our connection, don’t you think?” I asked El. The spread of pictures included candids of us three, bikinied in the waves at Stinson Beach, on horseback together in Hawaii, playing in a sextet; at the far lower right corner, three gorgeous Cunningham-inspired nudes: Alice, body torqued, breasts in profile, elongated nipples flirting with her long straight black hair. No faces, nothing really erotic, simply her spectacularly shapely body.
“Yes, that was a hard time. I thought you might leave me for her,” Ella agreed. “I got to face my own jealousy, realizing I loved you so much that whatever made you happy should make me happy too.”
I smiled, remembering those dicey passages. “I loved Alice, but mostly for the light she shed on you and me. We were just ‘making art’ together. Nothing ever happened between us without you, you know . . . ?”
“Now I do. You always brought the juice your photo sessions generated home to me. And the pictures – well, so good to have these memories.”
“I loved saving myself for you, partly because when Alice joined us, the fireworks were almost unbearable. I don’t know if my old body would be up for that kind of intensity anymore. . . . But I’m not against slipping out of these clothes and finding out?”
– o –
