AN IMPROMTU EVENING

It had been a humid Friday. Hours after the sun went down, I went out to walk my dog, it was pleasant out and I felt relaxed. A couple blocks up, I ran into him. This beautiful Italian boy/man I had met in the pizzaria a couple of years ago. I was sitting eating a slice when he came in. He walked in, he was so beautiful, I couldn’t lift my slice to my lips. As he walked towards me, he brazenly attached himself to my eyes, it made me feel almost embarrassed, like my well of hunger was showing. I would run into him occasionally after that, he lived just a couple of blocks from me. We eventually started talking, exchanged numbers, he never minced words, he scared me. It was my raw sexuality daring me to do something awful and wonderful, how could I?

Now, a couple of years later, he was there again, on this sticky night. I was freshly showered and wearing my favorite perfume that I always put on fresh out of the shower, if I have a date, if I’m going to bed alone, even if I’m going out to walk the dog. He was coming down the steps of his brownstone with his beagle, he looked at me with his usual I’d-still-like-to-fuck-the-shit-out-of-you smirk. And at that moment, I thought maybe tonight is the night that I’d like him to yes, fuck the fucking shit out of me. I thought of his taught 30 year old body standing in front of my bed, his cock with an audience of me. Thoughts and images flooded me, my perfume started to intensifying on my chest. I walked past him and started to strategize. I knew where he and the hound would walk, I thought how I could do a similarly timed loup, and find him again and approach him back here on my way back. I started to think about how much time I would need, what panties I would wear, and what I would let him do to me. What his t-shirt would smell like when he would pull me to him, how exquisite his tight chest would look as he pulled it up over his head. I was reeling with images and plans and timing, and that’s when I heard my name being called, it wasn’t the old school macho neighborhood accent of my prey, but of a couple that used to live in my building.

They were rounding the corner, I was immediately annoyed that they had interrupted my must get dirty sex plotting zone. They would throw me off my game, want to chat, blow my timing. I knew that my initial ‘hello’ must have sounded dismissive, it embarrassed me as it escaped my lips. They were a very cool couple. They had once invited me to drink champagne with them on the landscaped roof of my building. I remembered how random it was, and how much fun it had been. So I regrouped, and tried to appear relaxed as they approached to chit-chat. I still had the filthy boy/man’s phone number, if I missed him on this walk, I could still order him up like a pizza, and have him inside me within the next hour or so.

I politely asked them where they were coming from, they had been to Ikea, it had been a scene. They had bought a mattress, and returned some kitchen stuff they had found they didn’t need after all. I nodded and smiled, and said I had heard that Ikea was a scene on the weekends – that I sometimes went on weekdays to eat salad and enjoy the floor to ceiling glass view of Manhattan, having the entire dining room to myself. My subtext, the ripped, olive skinned dirty boy/man, who was no doubt circling back to his apartment by now, at this point I would have to go to plan “B”, and make that booty call. So I relaxed into the mundane Ikea-chat, which meandered into a brief discussion of the wonderful gourmet superstore down the cobble-stoned street from there. The two of them were heading in to the Japanese restaurant we were poised in front of, to have some drinks and a couple of rolls. I lied, and said that I was thinking about taking out some rolls from there, I wanted to throw them off, I was sure that they could see the intercourse in my eyes, my plan to fuck an almost stranger that I could never love.

But my lie turned into something unexpected, an invitation. They asked me to join them for a drink inside. I started to hedge, I thought about the boy/man’s tight stomach, how his Irish Spring underarms would smell tenting my face. “Come on,” the husband said. “Drop the dog home and come back.” His words cleared my head of its filth for a moment, my pussy exhaled and my stomach started to pipe up. “Okay,” I surrendered, “sounds nice,” as I did a 180 back towards my place. I passed the boy/man’s apartment. The lights were on now,
I imagined him up there watching TV and absentmindedly coaxing his cock to full-on hard. He had placed my hand on it once, through his pants, on his stoop one night when we were talking. It was absurdly large. But something else was pulling at me now – my dog and thoughts of sushi, so I put his cock back in his pants, and followed my preemptive thoughts home.

They were all smiles when I returned. I think my mixed signals had been picked up – they looked surprised that I had made it back. I ordered the beer that they were drinking, and he asked if he could order me the same sushi they had ordered for themselves, their favorite pieces at their new favorite place.

The beer was cold and gave me a light buzz, and relaxed me into accepting my high-jacked night that was transforming into something quite pleasant. They were as cool as I remembered from that night on our roof. He was a highly intelligent, well-traveled man who was cynically funny, she was a sweet, open Brazilian women, they had been married 30 years. We talked about all sorts of stuff, travel, tattoos, the fall of banking, his father who had been married 7 times. I looked at the two of them; they seemed to be happy. He was a bit critical of her, but it seemed to roll off her back, she would joke him out of it. 30 years between them, it made me feel silly, my plans to take a seriously younger, educationally challenged boy/man into my home to ride. I wondered what they would think if they knew. Would they find it absurd, or exciting? Would they still want to pick from the same bowl of edamame? It was fun hanging out with grownups. Talking about grown up stuff, eating grown up food. The sushi he ordered for all of us came out, it was fresh and wonderful, every bite felt new, I ate it slowly, savoring the evening, finishing long after their plates were clean. I couldn’t remember the last time I had sushi this good, or had sushi at all – I forgot how sexy it was. A young couple sat at the bar, feeding each other gleaming pieces of sashimi, and making out in between bites, they had rings on. They weren’t fucking strangers either – they would be fucking each other with abandon, as soon as possible after their check was paid.

The three of us at the table split another beer between us, got the check, my new friends insisting on treating. It was a random gesture that felt so good to me, I was ashamed that I had been initially annoyed at their approach, that I had tried to avoid this whole lovely impromtu gathering. This is the stuff that makes living feel special. It doesn’t have to be exceptional, dirty, or illegal. Pleasant, kind, and gentle took the day, and the pay-off was gently satisfying.

We walked out together, and gathered on the corner where the boy/man lived. I felt oddly at peace, almost like the feeling you have when you drift off to sleep in your lover’s arms. I didn’t look up to see if the boy/man’s lights were on, I didn’t give him another thought until I started to write this piece. I kissed both of them both goodnight on the cheek, and headed home, on down the sidewalk of this neighborhood that I’ve loved for decades. This is the stuff that’s good, that’s soul satisfying. It’s not something you do as an addiction, a reaction to something you’re feeling, it’s just an nice impromtu evening that happens if you let it.

THE NIGHTWATCHMAN

We were on the phone until 2AM again, it had been happening a lot lately. He was a guy I had known for years, he was one of my partners back in the day at the ad agency, but lately it seemed that we were riding the line between friendship, romance, endearment, sexual innuendo, the gambit. Recently, in all these ways he was burrowing deeper in to my life. Texting me sometimes during the day just to see how my day was going, or on a Saturday, updates on what he was up to, asking me the same. And then the midnight phone calls came in, and his tenor would deepen. I started to pick up the phone more often lately – it was nice to have the sense that someone thought about you throughout the day, and wanted to hold you close to them at the very end of it.

These late night calls would be different in tenor, I didn’t always know who I would get.
Cliff was a superstar in the world. He was a huge gorgeous black man, with an always at the ready movie star smile. He had VIP Room status, partied with Yankies, people in the music business, and the fashion world. I had recently gone to his birthday party at an elegant club, the birthday boy maximus, a black man in a sea of blonds. I could tell that most of them had their hearts set on finding a slot in Cliff’s world, and I would look at him across the sea of peroxide heads, and he would see me, and in a glance let me know that I was floating somehow above them. About six months before we had run into each other again after not seeing each other for years, and we had begun to hang out a little, going to bars downtown with a couple of other people, until the nights would cull down to just the two of us, sitting alone side by side at the back of the bar, whispering in a simpatico lite beer trance.

And now months later, my phone would ring just past midnight. It would be Cliff sounding like a late night DJ, “hey, baby”… it would be Cliff The Enticer, or Cliff The Player, when he would tell me some recent exploit that read like a Penthouse Forum letter. Or there would be Cliff, the human being, the one I hoped it would be - heart in his hands, his PR agent gone from the building, the 6’5” man, now vulnerable and cupped in my hands. He would talk openly and simply about how he was feeling, and then open his ear to me, his give and take skills rivaling any of my closest female friends. He took my emotional well-being seriously, and would get his back up when he thought that I was being treated less than respectfully. “I have yet to hear anything in the plus column here,” he would firmly say in the space after my exhausting run on sentence justifying my involvement with some ne'er do well. His words, cutting through my mental crap with a cool thug-like delivery, like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

His protective instinct towards ran deep, he had come from a family of all women – a patriarchal mom and what seemed to be like 16 sisters, I could never keep track. His fate of being surrounded by females continued when he fathered two girls by his now ex-wife. He knew women well, how to listen, how to care about what he heard, how to nurture and protect them, and I was now one of them, gathered up in his strong arms with the few he held dear.

These days he was opening up to me without artifice, as part of our unspoken contract of care. It was uncanny to me, this man who encountered women on airplanes, hotels, bars, and public transportation who would ask for his email, his phone number, his shirt size, and his hotel room key. This mecca to beautiful women, handing me his soul through the receiver. Coming home after an award show or a night at one of the city’s hot new clubs, he would take off his custom tailored Ralph Lauren suit, his tone on tone silk tie, his 400 dollar shoes, and dial my number.

I wasn’t sure what my relationship with Cliff was headed, I wanted it to stay just so. I didn’t want it to become physical, and cause harm to what we had. I liked how he needed me now, how we needed each other, as friends, souls, kindred spirits, as children finding each other on the chaotic playground. He was my protector, the nightwatchman of my heart, and I felt tiny, yet strong under his watch.

HEART AND CUNT ARGUMENT

The heart is trying to keep the cunt down in the hole. The cunt is lurching, in need of a fix; addicted and awake at 4AM plotting.

The heart is exhausted. It's tried to reason with the cunt, comfort it, even take its side- but the cunt will hear nothing of it. The heart wants to be held, make a home cooked meal, to talk about stuff ‘til 3 AM, but there's no one around but that stupid cunt, pacing, choking, and cruel, spewing taunts from the filthy corner of the room. It wants no fucking pot roast and roasted potatoes, it's sickened by reason, it has no fucking problem.

The heart is so tired of living with this insidious cunt, sucking up all the air – refusing to listen to what it might need. The heart is overcome with a sudden impulse to strangle the life out of that selfish cunt – but that’s behavior unbecoming to a heart, the heart remembers and regains composure. Perhaps it could corner the cunt, and after a horrific struggle lock it in a room tied to the bed until the sweats and tremors subside. Could things ever be the way they were between them back when things were good? Holding hands strolling down the street, simpatico – finishing each others sentences? The heart longs to share its thoughts with the cunt, talking to it gently, calling it by some sweet term of endearment, might that put the cunt in a sentimental place, would it then listen to reason? “Aw, to heck with it, I’ll just go for a walk,” thought the heart, as it heard the cunt piping up back there in the other room.

INHALING THE WEEKEND

The scent of the weekend is on me. The air, the ocean, the smell of us pushing ourselves into each other, his chest against my face, his breath swirling with mine – our mouths wide open, pressed together, greedy for oxygen – as though we need it to keep fucking. This centrifuge of combined bliss, the brain tastes it at that moment, I try to hold on to it to reopen it later like some pate you hide in the back of the fridge. But it’s locked there in your subconscious, stubbornly waiting until the day it can spill itself all over that same experience when it happens again that exact same way; the memory attaching itself to that new same moment, multiplying it, amplifying it, the familiarity making it oddly more dizzying.

I am doused in him now, it’s lulling me to sleep – but I will wake and shower, and watch it puddle around my feet. There’s no holding on to this morning, this weekend, the taste of myself on his chin. It will all be usurped by Monday morning coffee, the smell of Tide, the scent of my showered skin. Soon, though, my body will ripen with want as I try to recall how the room filled with us as he pulled himself from inside me, or the essence of his breath as he lay sleeping and spent pressed against my neck. I’ll try my best to remember as I walk down the street, or drive around in my car, or maybe I’ll just wait until I’m naked in bed, nose pressed against unwashed sheets.

THE KITCHEN COMES IN

The plastic sheeting that separated my demo’d kitchen from my living room is down now. I can again see the lights and the water through the large window. The air from the terrace flows free through the doors and elicits my skin. The cabinets are here, one by one replacing sections of ravaged wall. Each one holding the promise that this will soon be home again. I look forward to friends standing around, the full hollow pop of that first bottle of wine uncorked on virgin countertops; the man that will come from my bedroom, satisfied, naked and hungry, kissing me on my mouth and neck, before the orange juice is poured, before the bacon spatters against the green glass backsplash. Everything will be new here. The wood, the metal, the granite, glass, how I am touched and held, the way his hand will coax a swell between my legs as we face each other barefoot on fresh tiles. The bacon, the eggs and toast preempted by sweat, perfume, and sunburned skin.

All of this is being installed behind me as I write; the cabinets, the gas range, the freshly squeezed juice, the smell of syrup, burnt toast, testosterone, and cum – everything I’ve dreamt of in this new kitchen.

BIG MAN IN THE FIFTH GRADE

He was the MAN in the fifth grade. It seemed like he was like 47. Michael was poised, wryly funny, audaciously charming, and solidly real, all by the age of 9. I don’t remember ever seeing him in the playground with the little boys – I would sometimes catch him standing alone under a tree, right outside our homeroom, I’d look up to him because he was very tall, and man sized, his proportions weren’t those of a boy’s, at least that’s how I remember him. We’d talk about the records that I would bring to the dance party I was planning for the class. I was on fire about music that spring, but I was captivated by Michael, the Man/Boy. I wanted to be close to him so his charm could rub off on me. I couldn’t get enough of him, and it wasn’t because he was the most handsome boy I had ever seen, there were some other cute boys in my class, but Michael was the first guy to make me feel like I was a big deal.

This weekend, we were riding around in his pick up truck, windows down, his American Spirits scenting my clothes. There were a bunch of us from high school - back in our hometown, for a reunion of our high school drama department. I had seen Michael on and off over those early years, but he seemed to move in and out of our town, like a pre-teen drifter. He went to rehab before I had ever seen a joint, there were rumors that he had moved with his mother at some point, I remember being shocked to hear that Michael even had a mother, he seemed to just come out of the woods each day, like he had raised himself back there, by a stream. I don’t remember seeing him again until we were in high school, both of us rehearsing for a production of Godspell, Michael, of course, was cast in the lead. He was always destined for greatness; he was recently elected First Selectman in the town where he lives.

And yesterday, I’m 9 years old again, still looking up at Michael as I sit next to him on the bench seat of his truck. I’m no longer talking to him about dance parties, now I’m about my life as it appears in my blog, of which he says he’s an avid follower. He likes all of it, not just the parts where I talk about masturbation, or fucking, or riding Harleys. He thinks I’m special not just when I’m naked, sucking cock, or being outrageous. But when I’m sitting next to him on the sofa, being insipid, talking about the guy I was dating, how the ride had always been crazy and bumpy. “You never saw THAT coming with this guy,” Michael says looking back at me, as he gets up to go outside and catch a smoke. Leaving me there feeling stupid and loved.

It was a great weekend, Michael was one of many who have my number and make me feel somewhat less ordinary. New friends can think you’re pretty great, but old friends know your history, know all your mistakes, knew you when you were un-cool, or did stupid things, and like you in spite of it. So they follow you through the years, are still curious to know how you’re doing, how your story came out. And that's why we all get together every decade or so.

And as I was driving away from the weekend last night, Michael’s voice was inside of me, deep, wise, kind, and ironic – that voice that he’s had since he was 8. I would follow it into the woods behind school, on to a ferry, across the world, because since I was a small girl, it had this magical power over me, almost making me feel like I was special, or something.

LEAST PATIENT PERSON IN THE WORLD

My friend say’s I’m the least patient person EVER.

I never use a microwave or convection oven in the kitchen, I prefer to wait for the slow cook, the results are so much more satisfying. So why must I force the issue, break up on a dime, insist that a person talk to me when they won’t, rush to resolution? The story is unfolding right now, instead of just being, my finger is on the fast forward button. Pushing it, pushing it, no batteries in the remote.

I like TV, story start to finish in 59 minutes. But in the real world you have to wait to see how it all ends, but wait, there I go – it never does.

I like the idea that the story ark is not about May, or 2009, it’s a whole life ark. It’s a better way to identify algorithms, cosmic messages, or maybe just scrapbook if you’re not that deep.

So what’s the rush? My friend said that the mind abhors uncertainty. But everything’s uncertain. The breaths you take, your next could be it. You could fall in love next week. Your roof could leak next month. One thing is for certain, I am typing and there is satisfaction in that. The plate of eggs and toast in front of you, the certainty that your eggs are over easy, and your toast is a too well done but edible, that is certain and satisfying.

It’s certain that it’s a beautiful day right now. I’m certain that my stomach is growling. And I’m pretty certain that I may be in the mood to make myself cum today, it’s been way too long. But I’m not going to rush to finish, I’ll be the most patient person in the world: enjoy the build, bring myself to the edge, then slow it down, build it up again, just have fun with it – this whole experience is play time.