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Marcy Arlin has been reading spec fiction since elementary school (Half-Magic, The Mushroom Planet, Bradbury), and seriously writing for five years. She studied with Chris McKitterick, Andy Duncan, Kij Johnson, Betsy James, Jill Dearman. Member of Brooklyn Speculative Fiction Writers, Broad Universe, Theatre Without Borders, No Passport, League of Professional Theatre Women, Lincoln Center Directors Lab. SF publications include PerihelionSF.com, Abandoned Towers, and Man.In.Fest/Romania (her SF play). She loves LeGuin, Gaiman, Pynchon, Chiang, F. Brown, Ellison, Butler, Pratchett, et al. She is Artistic Director of the OBIE-winning Immigrants' Theatre Project, directing over 200 plays in the U.S./Europe. Marcy taught theatre at Yale, Brown, CUNY, U. of Chicago, and teaches Theatre for Social Change at Pace University. She is a Fulbright scholar to Romania and the Czech Republic. Lives in Brooklyn with her husband, cats, and folks from many nations and ethnicities who inspire her and have great take-out menus.
***Editor's Note: Adult story, situations, and language***
We never went out. We usually stayed in all weekend and fornicated until we were bleeding and our eyes almost popping out of our heads. Fun, but after a while, every orifice stuffed with a genital or tentacle just gets repetitious.
So I suggested to Boralielmo that we take cha-cha lessons. How hard could it be? We both had two legs and two feet, even if his were cloven. I signed us up at Señorita Malagueña's Latino/Latina Dance Studio a few blocks over on 5th. My mother is from Cuba, so I figured I could teach him a thing or two. And I didn't mind showing off a little. He was always bragging about how many places he had been, how many souls he had stolen, and so forth, ad nauseum.
I wore one of my tight black dresses that showed a lot of boob, silver heels, big hoop earrings, and, what the hell, no underwear. Boral wore the formal purple tunic that came to his knees, and let his big hairy thing flop around underneath.
The music was perfect. Señorita M. had Xavier Cugat on the turntable, a real classic. The dance hall was on the second floor over the Korean fruit and vegetable stand where I get my avocados.
Boralielmo has two left hooves. He stomped on my foot. Twice. But he was making an effort to get the rhythm. I gave a little scream when he snuck a tentacle up my dress.
One-Two, Cha Cha Cha. One-Two, turn, Cha Cha Cha. We worked on this with Señorita M. for about 45 minutes. I was showing off, swiveling my hips, tossing my hair back. The music got faster and I bent over and gave Boral a nice view of my cleavage. He was all sweaty and reeking. For once, I was the one in control.
Boral scowled, showing his long incisors. He let out a howl. It cracked the glass, shook the bullfighting posters on the wall and gave the whole class nosebleeds. He grabbed me and tucked me under his right tentacle and ran out the door on his suddenly graceful hooves.
He leapt over cars and pedestrians, screeched, belched flames, and left an oozing trail of green slime.
He is so hot!
When we got back to the apartment, I looped a YouTube of Xavier and Charo. We made love for hours.
Maybe next week we can try some merengue lessons?
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, July 23rd, 2015
Author Comments
This story was written in response to a prompt by my online workshop leader Betsy James: "sex with aliens." I was complaining about something, perhaps a deadline, and mentioned that my demon lover was distracting me. I was also thinking about something my husband and I could do this weekend, as we had had a very stressful week visiting doctors. For some reason, I remembered the cha-cha dance that Amy and Sheldon did so brilliantly in a "Big Bang Theory" episode. I live in Brooklyn. Demons, local dance academies, Korean fruit stands: it's my neighborhood. I sat down at around 2 AM and wrote this story, which started out as "Teaching My Demon Lover to Tango." But according to Neil Simon, ("Sunshine Boys"), "t" is not funny; "ch" is funny.
- Marcy Arlin
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