Doppellust

This is another story from Roz that I wrote in an attempt to break my extended writer's block. Thanks very much to @Bluesea00 for their wonderful feedback.

Doppellust

I must admit, my first impressions of Sigi were not good.

"Hi there. I'm Sieglinde, but please call me Sigi," she said.

I blinked. She was not at all what I expected.

Shaved head, black leather jacket over a skin-tight white tee, a silver septum piercing, and neck tattoos of God only knows what sort of Satanic symbols. She was not the picture of the nursing student I had in mind from the emails we had exchanged before I arrived from the States. She was a Rammstein song -- grungy, industrial, sharp-edged.

I tried reminding myself not to judge my new roommate. This was my first time outside the US, after all, so I got that things would be different. Strange, even. And this was Berlin, so wasn't everyone running around with shaved heads, black leather jackets and tattoos? But all the same, a tiny voice in my head whispered: run!

She pursed her lips and cleared her throat. "And you must be --"

I realized then that I was standing there like a deer in the headlights and not introducing myself like a normal person.

"Oh, hi." I laughed. God, why did I laugh?

"... I'm Roz. Rosalind for short," I said, squeaking because my throat was dry, sounding like a mouse introducing herself to the cat.

She squinted. "Rosalind is short for... Roz?"

"No, no, no! I meant the other way. Rosalind is the long way of saying Roz."

She chuckled. "Ok, got it. So, you prefer Roz."

I nodded. Kill me now.

"Super. Then Roz you are," she said, like a genie granting me a wish. "Come on, let me show you around."

As she gave me the tour of the apartment, I grew more relaxed. The intimidation factor started to erode away when, instead of a meth lab and satanic paraphernalia, I saw a bookcase full of fantasy novels and medical textbooks, plants sitting on windowsills, and freshly cut flowers in vases.  The apartment was small, but it was bright, cheerful, and neatly organized. There was a balcony that faced south, and because the apartment was on the top floor, it had a lovely view of Berlin. The Berlin Cathedral wasn't too far away. Its dome glowed in the Autumn sunset.

"If you smoke, only smoke on the balcony, please," she said.

Then she showed me the shared bathroom and said, "Shut the lid. Flushing aerosolizes the pee into a plume, and it lands on everything. Sorry, I'm very deep into my nursing program right now, developing all sorts of phobias. I'm working on it, I promise."

"I never thought about aerosolized pee, but that makes total sense."

As we finished the house tour, I noticed the rainbow bracelet on her wrist. That changed everything. The shaved head, the leather jacket, and the tattoos... my judgy-ass mind had her pegged as some sort of scary stereotype which wasn't anywhere near the truth. Fact was, she was nice, attractive, smart, and possibly gay or bi... and possibly single?

"So do you have a boyfriend? Or... um, girlfriend?"

"No. Not now at least. That's why you're here."

"W-what?" I blushed.

She blushed.  "I-I meant that my ex moved out last month, that's why I needed a new roommate."

"Ah ok! Gotcha."

She laughed, and I noticed how unbearably adorable it was. A soft laugh with a squeak at the end of it. I was a fan.

As it turned out, she was gay. And freshly single, and so, naturally, I found myself asking: did I have a shot with her?  

***

When it comes to taking the initiative, I'm completely hopeless. So, I didn't make anything happen, of course. And anyway, life picked up speed. After a few weeks, nursing school started to wind up for Sigi. I was not as busy, but still pretty busy with university life. Beside classes, most of my energy was spent orienting myself to a completely new culture. I studied German in all four years of high school, and picked it up as a minor in college, but speaking German in Germany is a whole different ball game. I picked up new words and phrases very quickly, but to constantly think in a second language was mentally draining. Frustratingly, whenever the locals got a whiff that I was from the States, they tended to quickly switch over to English.

Sigi was patient with my German. She would wait intently for me to finish my sentences, then whenever I got anything wrong (saying der instead of den or the millions of other small ways you can get German grammar wrong), she would politely correct me. We hung out together in the living room often, mostly in our own separate nooks, quietly studying what we had to study, me feeling a nice buzz from just being near her.

Any time she went out, she invited me along. I got to know all her friends and she showed me where to find all the cheapest beers in Berlin. She was into the punk rock scene, so she took me to local shows. On sunny days, we took long walks together on her favorite path along the Spree River. We argued, of course, as roommates often argue (about cleaning dishes, keeping the living room tidy, and forgetting to keep the toilet lid down to keep aerosolized pee from contaminating our toothbrushes), but that's only inevitable.

She often swerved between sweet and lovely to fiery and sometimes downright caustic. I rarely caught the flames myself, but on any given night out, she'd find her way into a fight with a random stranger (often the biggest, burliest man in the bar). Suffice to say: do something unkind to another person and Sigi was on you like a heat-seeking missile. There were moments she downright scared me with her unhinged bravado (one time she smashed a beer bottle against a table to stop a fist fight that had broken out), but admittedly, I was grateful for her swooping in like a momma barn swallow to protect me anytime drunk men crowed around.

When the weather turned frigid in October, things finally turned hot between us.  

We had gone out to watch a friend of hers perform in a bar, and went to a club afterwards. The rain caught us in the street, absolutely soaking us, so we ran home.

It finally happened in the elevator. We both have had a few drinks. She touched my cheek. We locked eyes. I put a hand on her hip, an invitation for her to go on with what she had in mind. She took the invitation and kissed me.

I was cold, shivering, but in the instant her tongue entered my mouth, I turned into a furnace.

Our wet clothes clinging to our bodies took a tremendous amount of effort to pull off as we drunkenly stumbled through the dark, maddeningly kissing each other. We left them behind in a wet trail in the entrance hall, and by the time we got to the living room, we had both successfully gotten ourselves naked.  

She shoved me onto the couch and then she laid out the raw truth: "Roz, I wanted to fuck you the moment I met you."

I replied, "It took me about five whole minutes before I thought the same about you."

She smirked. "Let's not wait this fucking long next time, ok?"

And she jumped on me, and kissed my lips and kissed my neck, and then she went down on me.

This wasn't my first time having sex, but she was different than what I was accustomed to. She was very dominant and very assertive. She pinned me to the couch by my wrists as she sucked on my tits. She pried my legs wide open and held them open as she licked my pussy, and she provided commentary as she did so.

"Mmm... I love how soft your bush is," she said. "I love how dripping wet you get... Your Muschi ist so fucking schön."

When she ate me out, she ate with all her mouth. She wasn't shy with her tongue. She put it deep inside me, and she sucked and licked my clit like it was candy. She fucked me like we were on an airplane careening towards the Earth, desperate to make me cum before we went down in a giant blaze.

I came quickly, and afterwards, she did not waste any time to sit on my face and rub her shaved pussy against my mouth. She rubbed so hard I suffocated. When I gasped for air, she stopped, not to give me a breather, but to ask, "You like it when I fuck your face, don't you?"

Never had I ever been asked that question. When I finally caught my breath, I snorted a laugh.

"Well, Roz?" She glared at me like she was dead serious, and she wore a serious smirk, like a warning against not answering or even giving a wrong answer. I started to feel that there was in fact a wrong answer and as a clinically diagnosed perfectionist, I hate being wrong.

"Yes, I like it."

"Yes, you like... what?" Her smirk grew.

"I... I like it when you fuck my face."

I couldn't believe the words that came out, and I also couldn't believe how good it felt to say those words.

"Mmm, good, because I love fucking your face," she replied, and continued to do exactly that, without holding anything back -- why would she? I just said I liked it (which I did).

After I made her cum, we showered, and then she dragged me to her bed and we slept naked, our bodies so tightly pressed together that despite the cold (the apartment was old so it was badly insulated), we were hot and sweaty. I didn't care. What's better than holding a warm somebody tightly, and feeling their heartbeat against your skin?

The following morning, as the silky Autumn sunlight spilled in through the windows, we had sex again. Correction: we fucked again.

It started with a kiss. That's how she woke me up. With a kiss like I was breakfast in bed.

I kissed her back. "Good morning," I croaked.

"Sleep well?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Good," she said with a crinkled-eyed smile. She bit her bottom lip as her hand made its way down my body.

She found my pussy and started fingering me like it was a part of her morning ritual. She fingered me until I was wet and throbbing hard, and then, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, she said, "wait here, I have something that I'd like to try with you," and she hopped out of bed and did a skip, she was so excited, as she walked over to her dresser.

Giving me a theatric wink, she pulled open the bottom drawer and pulled out what I first thought was a purple snake before realizing that it was actually just the longest dildo I had ever seen. Impractically long. Like you'd pack maybe half of it in if you were motivated. Then I saw that it had two heads. I gasped and clasped my hands to my mouth. Sigi laughed her adorable laugh with that signature squeak, which sounded entirely inappropriate for such an occasion.

"It's for two," she said, stating the obvious. "But I never had a chance to use it because... you know, the break-up and all."

"Oh... Oh." My voice trembled. A double-sided dildo. Purple. Veiny. Girthy.

"Does it scare you?" She asked.

"U-um," I chuckled nervously. "No... Well... It's just that I've never seen one out in the wild. I always thought that maybe they were like for, you know, 'professionals only.'"

She cocked her head, confused. "Professionals only? Why would it be professionals only? It's a sex toy."

She said those words with an adorable, pouty innocence, but she brandished the dildo like Red Sonja brandishing a hefty mythical sword. And it was quite hefty. That was the worrisome part. I might have been keener to trying it last night, when I was still plastered with alcohol, and caught up in hot, horny desire. But the morning after? Sober, and before coffee? Maybe not the right time.

"I guess," I replied.

She climbed back onto bed, sidling up next to me, and slapped the dildo against my chest, right between my tits.

"If you want to fuck me," she whispered. "Then you have to fuck me the way I want to be fucked. And right now, I want you to fuck me with this."

My breath caught. She meant it, and I wasn't sure I was ready.

At twenty, I was still very much a novice at sex. I was still relatively innocent. I had been a good Christian girl, raised by conservative Asian parents to study hard, to pray well, and to abstain from anything sex related. I wasn't even allowed to watch movies or TV shows that had the briefest of naked bodies in it (I had to watch those in secret). It was only when I went to college that I started to let my sexual desires out of my shy, cloistered life, like Siddhartha stepping past the palace walls to discover a world full of keg parties, kink, and chaos.

At around the same time, I was being confronted with the idea that I was gay. To be clear, I always knew I was, but I avoided the topic altogether by drowning it out of mind with a plethora of AP classes, soccer practice, and SAT prep. College gave me too much freedom, and not enough structure conducive to an avoidant way of life, and plenty of hot gay and bi girls that had sniffed me out for what I was, circling me like sharks a wounded sea turtle -- which, of course, I enjoyed. Nevertheless, being painfully shy, I only made out a handful of times. I had sex a whole two times.

All that to say, until now, I wasn't sure I was at the purple double-sided dildo stage of my enlightenment journey just yet.

But what is the point of an enlightenment journey if not to be hard? If it doesn't push you out of your comfort zone? So, I agreed to the dildo, only I wasn't going to just take it without a little bit of personal agency.

"Warm me up to it?"

She grinned, then she went down on me. First, she worshipped my breasts, licking my nipples delicately with her tongue and sucking on them, electrifying me to the core. Then when my nipples were erect and puffy to her satisfaction, she went down to my clit, licking it hard, while she explored my insides with her fingers. She started with just her index finger, then she added another, and then a third as it became easier to penetrate me. I understood her plan. Just as Mount Everest climbers slowly and progressively climbed up the mountain in stages to acclimatize to the extreme altitude, she was acclimatizing me to the extreme girth (for me) of the dildo.

Soon enough, I grew comfortable with three fingers inside me, and with her tongue on my clit, I was really hoping she'd forget about the whole dildo thing and just continue doing what she was doing, because she was so good at it, and I was gearing up to explode.

But then she stopped.

"Its time," she sang, as she grazed the dildo tip against the inside of my thighs.

Lucky for me, she was thoughtful with her plan (how very German of her). She squirted some lube from a bottle she kept in her nightstand onto her hand, and slathered it onto the dildo, and then she worked the dildo into my slit with the slow, methodical process of climbers making their way up the world's highest peak. In and then out a bit, and then in a little bit farther. I tensed up anxiously as it stretched me, but it went in smoothly, and rather painlessly. The lube definitely helped, and so did her warming me up.  

When it had gone as far in as it could go (I took way more of it than I thought I could), she pumped it back and forth a few times. I tensed up a bit, expecting pain, and there was a little, but it was manageable. But there was also pleasure in the way it filled me up, stretched me, and challenged me.

"Ok. Now, my turn," she said after a few pumps. And just like I had seen in lesbian porn featuring double-sided dildos, she positioned herself directly opposite me, mirroring me, facing me. She splayed out her legs like I had and shuffled herself towards me, spearing herself with the other end of the dildo, squealing as the bulging tip went in.

I helped by holding her legs and pulling her towards me. As her half of the dildo disappeared into her, my half pushed farther into me.  

At this point in my short career as a sexual being, a few objects had already been inside me, but this dildo was different, which is funny to say if you consider my vagina's perspective, which was that it just another dildo. But sex isn't just about what the vagina experiences, is it? There's a psychological element to it that's more intense than the physical and in this case, that psychological element was Sigi being on the other end of the dildo, stretching and filling her slit with it as it stretched and filled mine. When she pushes herself onto it, she would squeal with pleasure, and I would feel the moment that caused her to squeal because I would feel the dildo respond to her tensing and twitching, and bucking. That is a very long-winded way of saying that this dildo then was nothing if not a pure conduit of pleasure, allowing us to share our electricity with each other.  

And that was just the start.

Slowly but surely, the dildo disappeared completely into both of us. I wasn't sure that it would fit entirely, but it did (like she had perfectly calculated the optimal length). Our pussies touched.

"Mein Gott," she moaned. "That feels so good. How does it feel for you?" 

I could write a sonnet about the cacophonous mix, or rather the delightfully appropriate German word for it -- the kuddelmuddel -- of emotions I felt, but in the heat of the moment, all I could utter was, "So good..."

She grasped my forearms and pulled us both into a sitting position so that we could kiss, and as we kissed, she began to rock and gyrate her hips so that the dildo moved in and out of her. I began to do the same and quickly realized that getting the movement right required a little bit of finesse. The dildo slipped out of me immediately. I slipped it back in and tried again, this time, thrusting my hip after she thrusted in a sort of see-sawing fashion. As we rocked, our pussies tribbed. When we got the motion down, she began playing with my clit for that extra oomph, and so I played with hers. We moaned in sync as we rocked faster and faster.

As the pleasure intensified, we locked eyes, and with our eyes made the tacit agreement to not stop until we both came.

And we did. With a final thrust, one final crashing of our pussies, we broke the dam together. She threw her head back, and I fell back onto the bed, my orgasm hitting me, my pussy squeezing the dildo in an attempt to squeeze it out of me, but it couldn't because the dildo had nowhere to go. Sigi was on the other end, squeezing back as her orgasm hit her. And in that moment, I looked up at her, trying to find her eyes again to more deeply share that incredible moment with her.

Her eyes found mine, but then they flitted to the nightstand. I followed her eyes to spot a framed photo I hadn't noticed before, of two women wearing traditional dirndl dresses with their arms around each.

I didn't think much of it since I was right in the middle of an amazing ecstasy, but afterwards, in that tranquil, buzzing refractory, as we held each other tightly, and the morning sunlight wrapped us in its warm embrace, I took another, more careful look at the photo, and realized that I knew who that girl with the long, blonde hair was. It was Sigi, but with an entirely different look. A parallel universe Sigi that was not the shaved head, punk-rock, leather-clad, beer-chugging, sailor-mouthed girl that was my roommate, but a conservative, sweet Sigi, with Rapunzel-blonde hair, more baby-faced, more bright-eyed, bushy-tailed. The girl in her arms, I didn't recognize at all.

When I finally drummed up the nerve, I cautiously asked the question that desperately wanted out of my mouth. "Hey Sigi, who is that?"

I tried my best to not sound like a jealous hen.

"Oh... that's Paulina."

She stopped at Paulina and didn't explain any further, as if I would obviously know who Paulina was. As if we had Vulcan mind-melded through the dildo so I should know everything about her life.

"Paulina is...?"

Obviously, it wouldn't take a Vulcan dildo mind-meld to infer who Paulina was, so I felt a bit awkward asking, but all the same, I was curious about this ex-girlfriend Sigi still kept a photo of right on her nightstand.

"Paulina is my ex," she said. That was not what I really wanted to know, and she knew that. She sighed and said, "God. I'm really sorry Roz, but... fuck... I'm still not over her. I hope that's not a problem..."

"No. Of course not. No." 

I chortled to make sure she understood that it wasn't. But after a short pause, in which I had the moment to think about it, I realized, that maybe I did have a slight problem with it, or at least, a pang had started to develop in my chest that started to feel like a problem.

"Its not a problem for me if its not a problem for you," I said, more to reassure myself than her. But that pang that had developed started to nag me all the same.

Why should it be a problem? Really? I asked myself. I'm only here for a few more months. At the end of the semester, I'd be going back to the States, where I would still have two more years of college, all the while, Sigi would remain here in Berlin to finish nursing school and then go on to be a nurse, if not in Berlin, then somewhere else in Germany. Its not like we had set up for anything long term. We were attracted to each other, we got drunk, we made out, and then we had sex. It was spontaneous and fun, and that was all it was supposed to be, right? I wasn't supposed to fall in love with her, right?

Ah, and then there was the purple, double-sided dildo. There's the clincher.

The dildo that was meant to be shared with Paulina. The dildo that was perhaps a last-ditch effort to mend an obviously deep and meaningful relationship turned torpid. The dildo that tragically didn't arrive in time. I showed up, though, and Sigi thought it was a nice idea, at least in her tormented, heartbroken mind, to role play a fantasy in which the dildo did exactly what she had planned for it to do. And in that fantasy role play, I was Paulina, and the sex was mind-blowing, and all their problems disappeared before the relationship could crumble into ruins. My heart sank for her. The pang disappeared. I squeezed her tightly.

I heard her swallow a tight knot. I could tell she was on the verge of tears, which meant I was somewhere in the vicinity of the truth with my theory. At the very least, she was reeling from a wounded heart, so I didn't say anything more. I decided I didn't need to. I could just be there for her.

Afterwards, we had a light breakfast and then went for a walk in the nippy but sunny morning. We walked along her favorite path along the river beneath a long row of Linden trees that rained bright yellow heart-shaped leaves on us. Unprompted by me, she broke into the story of her life with Paulina.

"We grew up in Konstanz together. We were neighbors and best friends. In high school, we fell in love and promised we would be together forever. So, we moved to Berlin. We thought we'd make a life together here. I fucking loved Berlin right from the start. Berlin gave me what Konstanz never could. I felt like I belonged here. I felt like I could be me. But it wasn't the same for her. She never got used to it. She didn't get along with my friends and had a hard time making her own. She was homesick and... well, I am ashamed to say I began to resent her for it. I know she wanted to be with me, but I guess I made it easy for her to want home even more. I miss her, and without her, this city is starting to feel..."

Her voice wavered and died before she could finish, but she didn't need to finish. There were a hundred different words with which I could fill in the blank. Cold. Empty. Lonely. Words that could not ever be changed by sharing a purple double-sided dildo with your Asian American roommate.

She brushed off the yellow Linden leaves that covered a bench, and we sat there together. I ventured to hold her hand, and she let me.

I could have said that it would get better for her, but I knew it would sound too trite. What could a neophyte like me who never had her heart broken know how to feel and what to do about it? I didn't have a clue. So, all I did was hold her hand.

We went to her favorite sandwich shop for lunch, then when we got home, she hugged me and said, "scheiße... thank you for letting me be honest with you, Roz," which was a lovely sentiment, but at the same time, silly, because it wasn't like I had any other choice. She wasn't just my roommate, she was my landlord! Of course I was going to let her be honest with me.

All the same, I was still enamored by her, and maybe a little bit in love, and I loved that she could be honest with me, and I loved that I was that person for her.

Of course, for the rest of the semester, as the weather grew shittier and colder, we kept having fun. We kept going out for cheap beers and punk rock shows. Most importantly, we kept each other warm. We kept things hot.

When time came for me to go back to the States, she went to the airport with me and we had a cry, and we promised to stay in touch.

On my birthday the following year, I received a present from her. Fortunately for me, I opened it in private. Of course it was purple double-sided dildo (to be clear, a new one).

In a handwritten note, she wrote:

Liebe Roz,

Fuck you if you can't find someone to use this with.

~Your favorite roommate, Sigi

The problem was, how could I ever use it without thinking of her? Maybe that was the point. What an absolute fiend.

The End.

Sigi's playlist:

St. Pauli - No Exit

Pictures of You - The Cure

Lasse Redn - Die Ärzte

We Will Fall Together - Streetlight Manifesto

Monotonie - Ideal

Stop the Clocks - Donots

I Just Don't Know What to Do With Myself - The White Stripes

Universal Tellerwäscher - Die Sterne

Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie*

The Winner Takes It All - ABBA**

Bonus details about Sigi that never made it into the story:

*Sigi's dad told her once that she was named after this song. He called her 'my Sigi Stardust.'

**A song she cherishes because of a memory of singing it with her dad on caravan camping trips.

Roz's playlist:

Crash Into Me - Dave Matthews Band

Heartbeats - Jose Gonzales

Yesterday - Atmosphere

Cannonball - Damien Rice

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel

If I Ain't Got You - Alicia Keys

Turpentine - Brandi Carlile

Meet Me in the Woods - Lord Huron

Lazy Eye - Silversun Pickups

99 Luftballons - Nena*

Bonus details about Roz that never made it into the story:

*Sigi busted Roz's balls hard for this being the only German music Roz could name, but surprised Roz with tickets to a Nena show. The show was amazing.