Koibito: Lovers

By A. Geerling

Love crosses boundaries between distant cultures. Love builds walls to protect, cradle and contain. Love has talons. It can rend the heart and break the mind. How do we stand it? How do we stand without it? In these four tales of Sapphic desire, women from different backgrounds come together in love’s embrace, to stand or fall, in doubt and fear, in hope and yearning.

While challenging life abroad in the outskirts of Nagoya, Japan, a young woman forges a friendship with her student that grows in unanticipated directions in Connection.

Among the heat and bustle of a Tokyo suburb, In Tender Arms, a woman has her love and her limits tested when her lover presents her with a proposition that is beyond the pale.

In My New Girlfriend, a chance encounter in a movie theater lobby brings a woman together with an old antagonist, first in friendship and then in love.

And on a rain-soaked Sunday Afternoon, trapped in the house with nothing to do, a conflicted young woman meets with a capricious lover, whose mind games oscillate between the playful and the pernicious.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. Geerling
• Release date: Feb 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507002070

A. Geerling

Amanda Geerling is happily married, lives in Japan, teaching, writing, and painting as much as possible, while scaling mountains of books, games, and CDs. Not always successful, but never relenting, she bends words to her will and tries to make another story take shape. To contact, please write to geerling42 at yahoo.com and allow time for response, for she is busy and does not always remember to check her email.

Book preview

KOIBITO

—Lovers—

By A. Geerling

All text copyrighted © 2014 Amanda Geerling

Cover illustration and design by the author © 2014 Amanda Geerling

Versions of Connection, In Tender Arms, and My New Girlfriend first appeared on ASSTR, 2007

My New Girlfriend subsequently appeared on Literotica in 2009

All rights reserved. No parts of this work, its words or images, may be copied or printed without prior written approval from the author.

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Connection

In Tender Arms

My New Girlfriend

Sunday Afternoon

Introduction

I wrote these stories beginning as a technical exercise. Writing erotica is excellent practice for conveying character, relationships, action and changing dynamics without having to worry too much about plot. It is relatively easy to tell if the story is working or not. If the energy is there, you can pretty much tell right away. So that was my main interest in approaching the genre.

It also turned out that I enjoy writing erotica. It isn’t something I do often: usually once or twice a year between other projects, as a way to clear my palette. I get to revel in it. I had a lot of fun writing these stories.

Connection was the first story I wrote, in longhand back in 2003. In Tender Arms came shortly after that. Both were inspired by people that I knew. I didn’t do anything with either story until 2007, when I discovered the Alt.Sex.Stories Text Repository, ASSTR, on the internet, and decided to try putting something up. Those were the first two that I uploaded and I got a nice response from them. I wrote several others, including My New Girlfriend, later that year. I published My New Girlfriend on the Literotica website in 2009.

Sunday Afternoon is the only entirely new story written for this collection, and I think it is a good one with an interesting voice and style. The other three were fine stories for when I wrote them, but in rereading them after many years, in preparation for this collection, I found that there was a lot of room for improvement. I have rewritten them substantially, adding depth and clarity to the narratives, lengthening each by about fifty percent. For the curious who wish to see what changes were made, the original versions are available for free on the ASSTR website. However I feel these new versions are far superior, and I’m confident you will agree with me.

In any case, I hope that you will get at least as much enjoyment in reading these tales as I had in writing them.

This collection is my first effort in making an ebook. All editing and preparation of the stories, as well as the cover artwork, are my own.

A. Geerling

Connection

It was Sunday. As had become our habit over the last month and a half, I went out to lunch with Chiemi, my student. She was thin with long hair, an oval face and a sweet smile. Her English was quite good, and through our lessons together we had become friends. At least I liked to think we were. She was twenty-two at the time, and worked part time at a Pachinko parlor to save up money so she could go abroad. She lived with her family in town and wanted to be a translator.

I was twenty-four. I had graduated college and found myself with no idea of what I wanted to do. I had come to Japan following my then boyfriend, Tim, and I got this job teaching English at a private conversation school near Nagoya. I have to say I don’t think I was very good at teaching, and I fumbled through most of my lessons in a mix of broken Japanese and messy English. But the students didn’t seem to mind much, and I heard that my classes were generally enjoyed.

Anyway, I broke up with my boyfriend after only two months in Japan and I was left with the remainder of a year-long contract. I hadn’t spoken to him since our break-up, and I was lonely, without any friends in the country. That was why I was really happy when Chiemi asked me out to lunch. I had taught her English class every week for six months by that point, so we knew each other pretty well. I was really happy at how close we had become during that time. The teachers at my school weren’t supposed to meet with students outside of class, but I thought it was ridiculous to be so strict. We just kept it a secret.

Chiemi took me to small coffee shops and restaurants around town, the sorts of places I would have never tried on my own. They often had hand-printed menus I couldn’t read and were on twisty back roads that I would never have dared wander alone. Of course with a native guide it all became an adventure. Not every place suited my taste – particularly as the concept of a non-smoking area was pretty much absent – but they were all interesting, and every week I looked forward to wherever she would take me next.

On our first date, it was an udon shop: thick, white noodles in a salty soup with tempura. We talked for hours and came out stinking like cigarettes. She invited me to a public bath, but I demurred, that time. Our next two dates were at coffee shops that both had excellent food. We talked about our jobs, about learning languages and about our love lives. She told me about her first boyfriend in high school, who had been stupidly proud. He even jumped off a bridge on a dare and broke both his legs.

Wow. Was he okay? I mean, did he recover? I asked.

Yes. He’s okay now. Can walk. But he was so stupid, I broke up with him.

I guess so.

I didn’t have anything so dramatic to offer, but I did have one story. I mentioned that in my first year of high school, I went out with a girl for a little while, Kaitlyn, and not just as friends. She had been a year older than me, and she introduced me to a lot of things. We broke up after only a couple of weeks, and I was never with another girl after that. It had all been too confusing to deal with. Now I just laughed about it.

Chiemi laughed, too, a lot harder than I had expected. You do that? You like girls?

I felt a little embarrassed for mentioning it. No, it was just that one time. But I did like it. I mean, I don’t feel bad about it. Why should I? She just laughed some more. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Then she changed the subject and it didn’t come up again.

The next week, we went out to an izakaya – a Japanese pub – to eat dumplings and sing karaoke for the shop owner, who all but thrust the microphone into my hands. My singing voice is weak, but I can carry a tune. Chiemi sang really passionately, missing only a few notes on the high parts of her songs. It was fun. Again, after we came out of there, we both reeked of cigarettes.

God, I hate that, I said. How can you stand it at your work? I mean, Pachinko parlors are smoky, right?

She wrinkled her nose at me. It’s terrible. I always go to a bath after. Want to try?

A public bath? She nodded. It’s not mixed bathing, is it?

No, no, there is men’s side and women’s side. I decided to give it a try.

She took me to an old wooden building down the street where an older woman checked us in. We undressed in the women’s changing area, put our clothes in one of the many cubbies along the walls, and then went in to the washing area. I had once been to a hot spring, and the routine was basically the same. You wash yourself first and rinse off all the soap and grime before getting in the bath. Chiemi offered to scrub my back, but I thought that was a little too much. Once we were clean, we went to the bathing area and got into one of the many tubs. The water was hot, but after a little while it was really relaxing. The tubs were big enough that I could stretch my legs out and lounge a bit.

There were a few other people in there with us, mostly older women. I got a few stares for my height and my blonde hair, but no one said anything. Chiemi sat next to me and stretched out her arms. Her skin was a light olive color. She had a slim frame and small breasts with strong, dark nipples. Between her legs was a neatly-kept patch of black hair. She stretched her legs out, too, and they brushed against mine, smooth in the water.

Ah, it feels good, doesn’t it? she asked.

Do you always come here?

No, not this place. It’s my first time. Isn’t it good?

It’s good. I like having room to stretch out.

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