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In Character

The ethical question was, did it behoove me to explain to the amorous redhead that she was getting involved with a fictitious character, and not a real person?

I was the only one in the cast who could encounter this problem. My colleagues from the theater group were all dressed as clowns, acrobats, and other circus performers, each in colorful attire. And our audience-interaction-driven “stageless play”—improvised from a loose script in the real bar that we’d rented for our production—hinged on the attendees’ ability to understand that the bickering circus troupers, observed at a make-believe post-performance party, were all part of the show.

But I’d been cast as the troupe’s talent manager … and I had learned that my pedestrian costume (an ordinary business suit), and my character’s special relationship to the clowns et al., had the potential to confuse certain of our guests—notably those who had been availing themselves of the cash bar. In other words, it wasn’t clear to everyone that I was part of the act. Instead, some of our customers were inclined to think I was the real-life stage manager of this production, on hand to wrangle the real-life actors.

Marla, the redhead, wasn’t drunk; but she was a notch tipsier than that mildly lubricated state you like seeing in your theater audiences when you’re pitching comedy. And contributing to her confusion, perhaps, was the fact that she was distractible. Oh, she was consistently coming on to me—leaning in close to ask me questions, touching my arm as she laughed extra long at my various bits of shtick, staying in my orbit as I worked the room… but in between the bits of banter and gusts of giggles, there was a lot of what’s-going-on-over-there and I-wonder-if-I-can-get-another-olive-for-my-drink. In any event, the bottom line was that when she gushed over the cut of my clothes and quizzed me solicitously about the other personalities, I could tell she thought she was really, truly hitting on Jim the wiseass talent manager—and not Stefan the soft-spoken chemist, Stefan who did a little acting on the side. There was an authentic hunger in her eyes,  none of that “tee-hee, I’m playing along with a character” twinkle.

She seemed in a hurry to get me home after the show, which gave me an excuse to stay in costume, leaving my jeans and sweatshirt to be claimed after the next day’s matinee. And so it was as Jim that I left the venue.

As soon as we began walking the few blocks, I realized that my glasses had also remained at the bar. Seen without my specs, the stars looked like oily blurs, as if the Milky Way had curdled, which matched up  nicely with the lack of clarity in my mind. I was wrestling with the fact that Marla still thought I was Jim. Did it matter to her, one way or another? And, if it didn’t matter to her, should it matter to me? And what if I revealed myself, and she turned out to be disappointed? Would I have to go home? Before I’d come up with any answers, she was ushering me into her living room.

“Want a drink, Jim?” I accepted, thanked her, and took a seat. Marla had wisely moved on to tap water at this point, but the beer she was pouring for me was my first of the evening.

“Look, Marla… my name’s really Stefan.”

She was rinsing the empty beer bottle, and her back was to me. And when she approached with my glass, she didn’t acknowledge the information I’d just imparted. Had she not heard me, over the running water? Was she deliberately ignoring what I’d told her? I decided not to press the matter.

Once the drink was safely in my hand, Marla lowered herself onto my leg, straddling the crease of my suit trousers. Her derriere felt warm and solid upon my leg. I wondered if she was wearing panties under her lemon minidress: through my clothes, it was hard to tell.

By positioning herself such that her crotch did not actually make contact with me, Marla had assumed a posture more in the realm of the heavily flirtatious than the explicitly carnal. But in the indirect light coming from her kitchenette, I could see that her face held the incomparable beauty of a woman who really wanted me.

Or who really wanted Jim.

She drew a giddy finger across my chin. “I admire the way you’re able to handle a room full of prima donnas. You’re an unsung hero, aren’t you?”

Her nearness and her seductiveness were making my cock swell. “Perhaps.”

She shifted slightly, and her thigh pressed right against my hard-on.

“Mm,” she said matter-of-factly.

I reached for her ass, lifting her skirt at the back. She was, it turned out, wearing panties, and I played my fingers inside them, exploring her crack and squeezing her cheeks.

“It’s sexy the way you have snappy answers for all their whiny complaints.”

I didn’t reply to this. I was decent at improv, but I knew my best repartee had been painstakingly developed in rehearsal, as we’d cooperatively mapped out the general dynamics of conversations and polished our dialogue.

Fortunately, she didn’t seem to expect a response. Her eyes closed as she rode my leg.

I kept fondling her bottom with my left hand, but I added the right into the equation, finding the front of her panty waistband under her skirt, and tickling down to her lips. She’d been wet before my fingers got there, but she began to juice up in earnest now. And each time my thumb grazed her clit, her ass quivered against my other hand. So I kept doing it.

Her climax was a clenching, spasming release, silent yet intense.

“Thank you, Stefan,” she said seriously when she opened her eyes. She was completely sober.

And suddenly I recognized “Marla” as Janet O’Dell, a friend of my sister’s. I hadn’t seen her in seven or eight years.

Janet had done a lot of college theater, I recalled.

XXX

The libidinous fiction of Jeremy Edwards has been widely published online, as well as in some thirty-five print (and e-book and audiobook) anthologies. His work was selected for the two most recent volumes in the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica series (and he will appear again in the forthcoming volume); he has read at the In the Flesh series in New York and the Erotic Literary Salon in Philadelphia; and he has been featured in the literary showcase of the Seattle Erotic Art Festival. Jeremy’s eroto-comedic novel Rock My Socks Off will be published by Xcite Books in 2010, and you can find more of his work online at jeremyedwardserotica.com.