Propositions

There was a smut store near my high school, and I was one of the few daring enough to go in. The Purple Onion, it was called. I suppose I expected one of those hybrid head shops/kink stores, but it was full-on dirty movies, mags, and...video booths.

I remember seeing a mag full of hermaphrodites, which may explain why I have such a fetish for big clit/tranny porn. In case that is something you were interested in knowing about me. But then, I have a fetish for just about any kind of porn.

I convinced friends of mine to go in with me, once. A couple, and they were far more sexually active than I was, so it seemed fitting - Stacy and Danny, in the land of -y, -ie, or -i names. Stacy struck up a conversation with Roy the clerk, who told her a story about a woman who came in and asked if she could have the largest dildo free if she could fit it inside her (it was 20 inches, and yes it fit, and yes she got it for free). I'm sure the story was false, just this old man's way of chatting up an 18 year old. 

In the meantime, Danny and I ventured into the booth area. I remember using my foot to turn the channels, like you sometimes do to flush a toilet in a public restroom. Danny and I were entranced, watching all of this SEX. Neither of us noticed the man who came into the booth with us until he spoke. I don't recall his exact words, but it was definitely a proposition. Something about he and his wife and such an attractive young couple as ourselves.

We both froze and politely said no, but thanks. I wonder, though, what Danny's reason was...because mine was simply that I was not part of that couple. Otherwise, I believe I would have jumped right in.

Oh, and the purpose for the visit that day...my boyfriend/future husband needed a little ego adjustment and a bit of payback for a few sins committed, so I was buying him a copy of the book, 'Boot Camp Cocksuckers.' That and a pair of silk boxers were delivered to him the following week at USMC boot camp.

Bliss

In that moment of still expectation with eyes full of each other and the heat of flesh close enough to touch. There isn't a detail that I miss. The pattern that shapes your face, the swell of your bottom lip, the aquiline grace of your nose. My balance is lost, I am falling into you. 

All thoughts of explosions and wonderstruck romance long gone, only the texture of you against me. The movement, the head shift, the hand on my waist. It's all peripheral and nothing, not in this moment. It is soft and learning and tender. For a time.

Then there is pressure, and my teeth are aching to gnaw, and soon I'm fighting my way to your skin, that fragrance so heady. My bruised lips sliding across your body like the outstretched fingers of the blind.

A delicious tumult of clothing and grasping and then you're inside me, urgent. A pause, a lingering, an accommodation, and your eyes and lips are mine again while my body becomes your punctuation.

Parchments

When I lived in Ohio, I found a treasure trove of used books. It was an old church, renovated as a bookstore. It was creaky and drafty and I got a particular thrill of finding 'U.S. Military History' in the pulpit. The pickings were slim, but the hunt was a joy. The smell of old books is better than the smell of old money. I just want to writhe around on the floor, surrounded by old books.

I'm lucky to have three near me now. Today was Wilson's Books, in what seems to have formerly been an auto repair shop, or gas station. I found a 1949 printing of James' The American, a beautifully bound and well-maintained 1979 copy of Madame Bovary (with illustrations!), a restored edition of Plath's Ariel, and a collection of poems by Adrienne Rich.

The James has a sticker from the original bookseller. B.H. Blackwell LTD, in Oxford. I wonder what strange route it took to arrive in a sweaty little Florida town.

An excerpt from Rich...

But art requires a distance; let me be
Always the connoisseur of your perfection.
Stay where the spaces of the gallery
Flow calm between your pose and my inspection,
Lest one imperfect gesture make demands
As troubling as the touch of human hands.

from Love in the Museum

Update: My favorite thing to find is a book full of marginalia (as it sounds, notes scribbled in the margins). Ariel is FULL of scribbles from the previous owner. My favorite so far - beside the lines "It can sew, it can cook, it can talk talk talk", she has written the word OBJECTIFY.

How utterly appropriate.

Meeting at Night

It wasn't poetry, not that way, no matter how long I cooked it in this overheated mess of neurons.

It was just this - two people with a connection and no patience for the whims of chance.

And oh christ how I loved the anticipation and your preparation. All that taunting before the hour, and my nerves were on edge. I was 16 on my first date, I was 17 losing my virginity, I was 37 and finally seeing a man the way he is meant to be. I was all that wrapped up in a satin shirt and peep-toe pumps and I was yours for the taking.

That moment of indecision, of seeing it also on your face. The wine flowed and the conversation eased and you had me follow your directions just enough to humiliate myself. That egg, and that wireless remote, and not believing you'd given it to some random stranger until that random stranger returned it to our table.

Your laughter at my shocked face.

I remember all of this and more. The shirt, ripped. The tangle of our legs, how quick it was over, awkward laughter and more laughter, and more that was not so quick.

You snored. I didn't mind. It was comfortable. I allowed myself to live that moment. And it was a fine, fine moment.

One More Day

Speaking of schoolgirls...

I begin the next step of my long-neglected secondary education next week. Yesterday, I went to campus for mundane things...parking permit, student ID, meandering trip through the bookstore. It's move-in week for the little quaking freshmen. Once I got over the smell of too much freesia-scented bath & body works products on top of mild b.o. and acne cream (my nose is very sensitive), I was amused to find I was being deferred to as if I were a professor.

I wonder how I can use that to my advantage.

I have just this day left at work and then a long stretch of glorious vacation. Good wine, good books, and lots of good napping.