Friends Help Friends

This story is based on a combination of true stories, with a lot of fiction thrown in, actually, to make it (hopefully) a better story.

Friends are good to have. Friends like Joanie, though, are rare.

Warning: There is group sex in this story

**

Call me naive. Or better, call me Rod, which is my name: I'm Earl Cornfeld, to be precise, but everyone calls me Rod. Don't ask.

Even at the beginning, I knew it was too good to last. I had fallen for Melissa Bock, hook, line, and sinker. We were sixteen and off at a summer boondoggle for around six weeks, far away in Britain, and I was taken with her eyes, which resembled kaleidoscopes, with amazing specks of emerald, gold and brown, and an overall blue effect. She was only feet five tall, and aside from her pretty face, most of the rest of her body was her boobs. We were sixteen at the time, and the way she would look up to see me, with adoration in her eyes, would melt the heart of any teenage boy. My own heart was a case in point.

I also could not get over her glorious boobs. Hey, I was sixteen and had a lot of hormones.

Melissa and I fooled around, of course, but she wouldn't give it up to me for two long years, until we were both eighteen. I was too young to realize it, but having sex with her was the best I would ever have for the rest of my life. The kicker was that we ended up going to schools across the country from each other. I went to college back east, to please my father, and she went to the local branch of the University of California, which was Santa Cruz, a kind of redwood forest summer camp masquerading as a college.

You take a girl like Melissa and put her far away in a different college, and you have to think a lot of yourself if you expect the relationship to last forever. It didn't. Melissa met someone else, although she didn't tell me that when we broke up, but it didn't matter. I was history for her, and that was that. She couldn't handle having two lovers at the same time. Pity. Well, we had a good run.

Now I was back in California, going to graduate school to try to make something of my life, and Melissa was off in Texas, of all places, working for a living, and no doubt trying not to get shot. I had not yet replaced her with another girlfriend, not that one can ever truly replace a true love; but one can certainly find a girlfriend to prevent terminal blue balls, and that, I hadn't yet done. It was by now, I must say, fairly high on my to-do list.

As it turns out, however, fate has a way of deciding things for us.

I live next door to a sexpot. We live in a small apartment complex not far from the beach, in Southern California. Despite that, neither I, nor my neighbor, are beach bums. We both work for a living, and we both work hard. Some would say we both work very hard, at least if the criterion is the number of hours spent at work on a given day. We're both in our mid-twenties, or some might say late twenties in my case, and carving out careers. That's definitely the case for me, and I assume it's also the case for my neighbor Joanie Higgins.

Joanie and I couldn't be two more different people. Joanie's body, those parts she shows to the world, that is, are adorned with tattoos. Her hair changes color often (this week it's blue; last week it was green). Her body jewelry makes her a walking advertisement for a punk jewelry store in Mission Beach.

In contrast, I'm a Brooks Brothers kind of guy.

Joanie, like almost everyone else our age who is looking for the big time and has some smarts, works in high tech, which easily tolerates her extreme counter culture appearance. I, on the other hand, work for the fisheries. That's a branch of the Federal Government (NOAA, to be precise) which 'supervises' the fishing industry. I say 'supervises' in scare quotes, because what we really do is help the fishing industry in every way we can. They compensate us with bribes, uh, I mean, consulting contracts. All in all, it's not clear which is a more lucrative career choice: Joanie's, or mine. One thing is clear, both are lucrative, eventually; just not yet.

Joanie and I are not just neighbors. We're friends, and we help each other out. Mostly, actually, I help her, and happily too, because whenever she asks me to come over, she is rather scantily clad. When Joanie asks for my help, her requests are genuine. In the last two months, she has asked me to open a jar, kill a spider in her bathtub that was the size of Montana, change a lightbulb she could not reach, and fix a dripping faucet.

I thought about suggesting she buy, or even buy for her, a leverage device for opening jars; an aluminum step ladder so that she could reach things high up (such as the light bulb -- Joanie is only five feet, two inches tall); and a book about fixing trivial household plumbing repairs -- but I didn't.

I refrained because I like going over next door to help her. She always rewards me, you see, with either a glass of top-flight cabernet, or a selection of cookies she just baked, or both. I also inevitably receive the benefit of some kind words, and some flashes of delectable female flesh.

It's not all one way, either. Sometimes I ask Joanie over to help me with a computer issue. I'm pretty good with technology, but computers don't like me. I don't know if they like Joanie or not, but clearly, they are scared of her. When it comes to malicious computers, it is better to have them scared than affectionate. I think Machiavelli wrote something about that, in his famous book, The Prince. He put it more elegantly, although everything sounds better in Italian. He wrote something like, "It's better to be feared than to be loved." Of course, he wasn't talking about computers back in the 16th century when he wrote The Prince, but if he were alive today, I'm sure he would agree that his insight applies equally well to computers.

One day it was super-hot, a perfect day to be wasted at the beach, but alas, I spent it in my air-conditioned office at the fisheries, located on the cliffs of La Jolla. Back home in the evening, after a burger and fries, washed down with a Negra Modelo, at The Last Race, one of the few remaining working class bars in the beach town area near the Del Mar race track, I was relaxing on my couch, watching the tube. My sliding glass doors to my small balcony, overlooking the recessed railway, were wide open, and my noisy fan was on top speed. I barely heard the soft knock on my front door.

"I need a big, strong man," Joanie said, as I opened the door. No doubt she was once again using her technique of flattering me to get me to do something trivial, such as opening a jar.

If I was a shade embarrassed to be wearing only my briefs, it was nothing compared to what Joanie was, or wasn't, wearing. I wondered if she heard the BOING as my cock jumped to full mast, creating a prominent tent in the obvious place. Luckily, her eyes stayed focused on mine. My eyes, in contrast, could not get enough of Joanie just then. The reason is clear: I'm a heterosexual male, and Joanie was wearing bikini cut, lace panties, a tight T shirt, and nothing else, if you don't count body jewelry, nor perfume.

I should point out that I'm a sucker for perfume, especially the strong musky scents, such as Opium, by Yves St. Laurent. I'm also a sucker for women with delightful boobs, no bra, and a tramp stamp tattoo on their lower back, as Joanie had. Add to that a tight T shirt that offers lots of potential free peeks, cut off to reveal some flat, taut midriff, and sexy, lace panties, and I was totally sunk. Joanie, at this point in our neighborly relationship, knew all of that quite well, too. She clearly needed a major favor, and she was pulling out all the stops!

"You're big and strong. You were in the army, too, weren't you?" Joanie asked.

"Yes. I was an MP and a Ranger," I said. Joanie should have known that, but she may have forgotten. The woman is scatterbrained.

"You say that meaningfully," she said

"It means I was tough and knew how to subdue angry men. Men who were trained to kill," I said. Okay, okay, I was trying to impress her. So, sue me.

"Were you good at it?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, in all simplicity.

"Good! I suspected as much. I need your help against Brian, please. I'll make it worth your while," Joanie said, standing there suggestively in T-shirt and panties, smelling wonderfully of Opium. Worth my while? Was she finally going to agree to teach me C++?

"Brian?" I asked in reply. I had no idea who Brian was.

"Brian Seames. He owns the seedy bars lining Railroad Avenue, and also Mystic Happiness, you know, the one where the girls dance and are scantily clad?" she said.

"I know the bars. I like The Last Race, myself," I said. "They have good, honest hamburgers." It went without saying that I knew Mystic Happiness. Every man with a pulse knew about Mystic Happiness.

"That they do," she said.

"So Joanie, what do you need vis à vis Brian Seames?" I asked.

"I broke up with him. He's a great guy, perfect in many ways, but he doesn't take rejection well," Joanie said, biting her nails.

"Most men don't. I imagine losing someone as special as you, could be considered a big loss, worth fighting for," I said. I like to flatter women. It never does any harm.

"Thanks, Rod, but you're not helping. Brian will come looking, and he'll come with brass knuckles and a hunting knife. He'll be coming for you," she said.

"For me? Why for me? What I have done?" I was taken aback by Joanie's almost casual warning.

"You've stolen my heart, and I dumped him for you. He'll want revenge, both on you and on me," Joanie said, studying my face as she said it.

"Joanie, I'm your neighbor, not your lover. There's a difference, you know," I said. Just how scatterbrained was she, anyway?

"I kind of exaggerated what I told Brian. I told him I was leaving him for you," Joanie confessed. "Even though I'm not, of course. I'm just leaving him."

"I see," I said.

"Please, can you shelter me and protect me? The last girl to try to leave Brian was in traction for quite some time, and she still doesn't walk right," Joanie said. "It took a long time for the doctors to get all of the splinters out of her vagina, too."

I just looked at her.

"As I said, I'll make it worth your while." Joanie was getting quite nervous at this point, worried, apparently, that I'd say no.

"Why are you dumping Brian? I could use a little background, here. I'll tell you this, though: I don't like men who beat up women, no matter how much they might be provoked," I said.

"Well, then you should know that Brian beats me. I kind of like it, however, as it relates to sexual play, you know; but now he is out of control, and it's far from sexy; more like terrifying."

"That's a good reason to leave him," I said.

"Yeah, but I have other reasons, too," she said.

"What're those?"

"Drugs. He deals drugs, through Mystic Happiness, and he has lots of scurrilous friends and business associates. They come looking for him, and if he's not home, sometimes they find me, and pissed off that they can't find Brian, they try to take out their frustrations on me," Joanie said.

"What happens?" I asked.

"Well.... they often try to force me to, you know..." she said.

"Force you?" I asked, wanting to know what she meant.

"They try to force me to pleasure them," she said.

I looked confused.

"You're humiliating me, here; I really have to spell it out? These are big, dangerous men, two of them at a time, and if they want to get their rocks off using me, well, I don't have much of a choice, do I?" Joanie said.

"It sounds like rape," I said, finally understanding.

"Yes, it does, doesn't it? I do enjoy it, though, sometimes," she said. "It's kind of kinky having sex with a guy, while another guy is watching, and drooling, you know? I'd just like to choose the time and place myself, as well as the guys!"

I let that go. "So, you want to take shelter here, with me, next door to your own apartment?" I asked.

"Yes, please," Joanie said, her upper lip trembling with nervousness.

"For how long?" I asked.

"All night??" Joanie asked.

"As you know, this is a studio apartment, albeit a large one (it's L shaped), and I only have the one bed. The couch would not be that comfortable, even for someone as small as you," I said. "Also, I rise at 6AM." I knew Joanie was not a morning person. My 'couch' was more of a loveseat than a couch. To be honest, it was more like a large chair.

"I don't mind. The couch is fine. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" Joanie said, and she exhaled as if she had been holding her breath this entire time. She collapsed into my easy chair, her legs slightly apart. God, did she look sexy!

We talked for a while, I made us some dinner, and then we did the dishes. "I don't have a dessert," I said.

"I do! I made some brownies. I'll dash home and get them," Joanie said, and before I could stop her, she was out the door. Next thing I knew she was rushing back into my apartment with the brownies, a tub of ice cream, and a look of abject fear on her face. "He saw me! He knows I'm here, at your place. This is bad; this is so, so bad!"

"Who saw you?" I asked.

"Brian! Who else? He's got his orange Cadillac parked out front. He's watching. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit! God, I'm sorry Rod. You're such a nice guy, and all. I hope he didn't bring his gun. Oh, shit. This is really bad," Joanie said. She seemed hysterical.

This was the first I'd heard of a gun possibly being involved. Guns are bad news. Introducing them into a volatile situation is never -- I repeat, never -- a good idea. Brian, however, while possessive and macho to a fault, ran a string of successful businesses, apparently, as well as his drug business; so stupid, I assumed, he was not.

He'd probably researched me, and if he had, he knew that bluffing with a gun wouldn't work with me; and using it meant a lot of attention would fall on him, and with his drug business, he most likely couldn't afford that. So, that's how I reassured myself that no guns would be involved. Brass knuckles, sure; a hunting knife, possibly; but a gun? I think not.

There was a loud and forceful knock on my door. We were on the second (and top) floor, so it seemed doubtful anyone could enter via the patio door. Nevertheless, Joanie slid it closed, and she locked it. I screwed my courage to the sticking place, as Shakespeare would have put it, and went to get the front door. I opened it wide, to reveal Brian Seames standing there.

"You don't have to knock so loudly; this is a quiet neighborhood. How may I help you?" I said, standing tall, to emphasize my full height. I'm six feet, two inches, with broad shoulders, and lots of muscles.

"I'm looking for Joanie Higgins," Brian said.

"You've got the wrong apartment. She lives next door," I said.

"I think she's in your apartment, hiding from me there," he said.

"Well, she's not," I lied. "And if she were, I wouldn't help you, anyway. I like Joanie," I said.

"She's mine, asshole. Don't you try to fuck her, you hear me?" he said.

"We're done here," I said, and I closed the door in his face.

Banging on the door and some ugly screaming followed my action. I opened the door again.

"May I help you?" I said.

"I want Joanie," he said.

"That's nice. You have good taste in women. As I said, however, she lives next door. Now please stop bothering me," I said, letting an edge creep into my voice. I forcefully closed the door.

Brian would not give up. Again, he banged and yelled. Now I was getting mad. I threatened to call the police, and he laughed. I quickly figured out that Solana Beach was a small beach town, and he was a small-time gangster, so probably he owned the local police. He wanted to search my studio apartment. Joanie was hiding in the bathtub/shower. Obviously, I couldn't allow him inside my apartment.

It happened, and I must say I wasn't surprised. He tried to push past me, and I blocked his path. He moved to slug me with his right hand, itself enhanced with his brass knuckles, but I saw it coming and blocked the blow. I saw by his footwork, or lack thereof, that he didn't know the first thing about boxing. It was child's play to let loose a fusillade of body blows that would have had him on the ropes, if my porch were to have had ropes. I then followed it with a vicious right cross to his chin, and even without the benefit of brass knuckles, he fell like a ton of bricks, almost spilling down the stairs.

I was glad he didn't fall down the stairs, since he could have been seriously injured, or even killed. As it was, I figured at worst he had some cracked ribs and a very sore glass jaw. Joanie had snuck into a position where she saw the brief exchange, and she was astonished.

"My hero!" she exclaimed. I did my best aw shucks, Andy Griffith imitation. Joanie was clearly turned on by the two of us fighting over her, and my brief, but intense display of masculinity. Joanie ran to me, jumped up upon me, as my hands held her ass, and she wrapped her legs around me. She began kissing my bare chest, frantically. Her hands went up and around my neck. She had to stretch to reach the top of my head, but she did, and her hands began to move up to run through my head of hair.

I carried her over to the couch. The girl seemed to be in heat. Her chest was heaving as she looked up at me adoringly. "Sex between neighbors is not a good idea," I said, since it was clear where we were headed.

"I don't care," Joanie said, as she spread her legs, revealing every detail of her black, lace panties.

"Still," I said, trying to resist the compelling scene of a sexpot in heat, with a nearly perfect body. When Joanie pushed up her T shirt, revealing her boobs with their gorgeous shape, their huge areolas, and her long (and erect) nipples, however, my attempt to be noble became cast seriously into doubt. Now Joanie was only in panties, with her T shirt around her neck, and her chest was again heaving with desire. My own cock was hard, and begging to be freed.

"I can't Joanie. I have a girlfriend," I lied. Well, six weeks ago it would have been true.

"Just tonight. Nobody needs to know," Joanie said.

"No, I can't; I'm sorry," I said. I really was sorry, too. I had to be an idiot to pass on this gold plated opportunity to have some free sex with a lushpot.

"If you have a girlfriend, where is she? How come I've never seen her?" Joanie asked. "I do live next door you know, and I'm the curious type. I would've noticed."

"She's in Texas," I said. She was, too.

"Harrumph! Some girlfriend, half way across the country. I can help you out in the here and now, you fool," Joanie delicately pointed out.

Just then my cell phone rang. The ringtone was the theme song of "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and it was not subtle. It was the ring tone I had chosen for Melissa, since sometimes she's good, sometimes she's oh so bad, and recently, her behavior has just been downright ugly.

Hi, Melissa, I said into the phone. Melissa and I were no longer together, but we'd often call and talk.

Joanie grabbed the phone from me, in a surprise and particularly deft maneuver.

Melissa, this is Joanie Higgins, and I live next door to Rod, and we're friends. Since you're not here, would you be okay if I seduced Rod tonight? I promise to give him back to you, but he must be horny, you know? He needs some relief. Men can't wait forever and.... Oh! Well, okay, then! Will you tell him yourself, please?

Melissa told me herself, on the phone, that as far as she was concerned, I could fuck Joanie's brains out, and not to forget, Joanie's giving me back to her.

What do you mean? I asked.