...ABOUT LESSON #45: AIN'T THAT LOVE?
I never would have shaved my head again as long as he and I were together. That being the case, of course, you and I would never have met. Well, perhaps we would have met, but wouldn't have been drawn so quickly or tightly together. Which is not to say I ever thought you quite that shallow, but rather, surmise you appreciate the subtle and the not so subtle gesture.
You'll agree it would have been a tad too much for the two of us to run around together with so much of our skulls exposed. People would have sniggered cruelly after we were introduced as a couple. A matched set. Really, too funny.
Not long after it was clear he and I had quit the love struggle for good, I shaved my head once more. Friends said I looked younger; said my smile was more poignant. Strangers assumed I was ill, politically incorrect, or a lesbian.
Fact is the pattern the dark and gray form on my head seems artful in an organic way, and after a week or two the hair feels like velvet, so people tend to run their hands over it, for luck or something. And frankly, I like to rub it on people, in a strictly pet-like way.
You've never said exactly what drew you to me, why you followed me from the Flatiron to Washington Square and struck up a conversation of sorts—our first conversation—though I've always imagined it was my boyish hair.
While I'd noticed you at 23rd Street, it wasn't until we reached Union Square I began to think you might be following me. In order to be sure, I turned sudden corners, unpredictably crossed streets, then ducked into a deli at 11th for coffee and a paper, watching your movements from behind a curtain of dust and sun bleached boxes of Brillo pads.
As you traversed University Place, skipping briefly through the oncoming traffic, I appraised your stride as—forcibly intent. Upon reaching the sidewalk, you pointed at me with your raised chin; craned and twisted your neck, searching for a glimpse of something beyond your own reflection.
You tried to appear as if you didn't care a whit when I let it be known I’d found you out. Emerging with my purchases I placed my body not more than five feet away, still as cast bronze with a perfectly burnished long grin, observing your technique for distractedly fondling cantaloupes, presumably for ripeness.
I paused, waited for the response I knew must eventually surface, savoring the excruciating stillness of our tableau vivant, for you too had become momentarily inert, but then you continued to grope and sniff, watching me on the periphery of pyramids of red, yellow, orange, and green.
Then you laughed. Guffawed, actually, with four wild convulsions of your diaphragm. I adored your laugh and was, thereby, sold on playing the game it seemed you offered up to me. Nonetheless, I rolled my eyes to the clouds, giggled silently, then turned and walked away, leaving you to settle your pulpy evaluations in the vacuum that remained in the wake of my departure.
In retrospect, I realize you played a certain type of roguish character from, say, a Raymond Chandler short story. Your skin pale, translucent; your chin a soft V; nose, angular and sensitive, shifting with the windblown scents of diesel, fresh cut flowers, and my sandalwood. You wore a loose-fitting light green summer suit, no tie, and a straw fedora, one hand always in a pocket as if you clutched something dangerous.
It was only then that we began to execute the moves of our game in earnest. Exaggerating. Enticing. Gambling.
Think like a fish, I thought. Gracefully cast the line. Gently reel. Twitch the worm through submerged, dancing greenery, then rest a moment before pulling in again. Jerk, slowly spool and jerk again. Be the bait.
Waiting for the light at West Eighth, I bared my neck to the sun, bedroomed my eyes, brought my lips up and apart, wetting the center of the uppermost with my tongue, luxuriating in the heat and your gaze. A drop of sweat tickled its course down the back of my head.
At Waverly Place, I bent at the waist to retrieve a discarded flyer from the cement, presenting for you the twin protrusions of my bum. Upside down, you leaned on a tree ten yards behind, and picked your teeth with the corner of a matchbook.
Your hands would either be soft or callused. Your style, tender, rough, or a combination of both. I was betting on both. Would you take your morning coffee regular or black, no sugar?
The left shoulder of my thin summer sweater drooped so that when I turned to face you right-side-up from under the big arch, perhaps a crescent of nipple caught a glimpse of your face. I don't know, but I pulled the seams in place and shuddered, just a little.
When you asked me for a light, you allowed your fingers to brush against my palm too long and with too much force for me not to raise my head and meet your eyes. "Light," you said again—this time not a question—as you stroked my head definitively with your free hand, placing the burning cigarette in your mouth with a squint of assessment and invitation.
Once met, our eyes stuck together as if connected by rubber cement, and how could I have said anything but yes when you said you wanted to fuck me everywhere and then make me cum on your hand.
The moment was especially meaningful to me because we met within an hour of my having learned the fantasy man with whom I'd fallen in interest had found a serious girlfriend in the month since I'd last seen him. My ego and body were thoroughly dashed. What I wanted was a stiff drink or someone, stiff: another brand of fantasy altogether. Medicine: a soothing fuck-him, fuck-it balm.
In the empty vestibule of a Chase Manhattan ATM you lifted me onto your hips and drove the first taste of your confidence into me. As we gyrated and spun, drooling in celebration of our mutual victory you spotted an interesting looking woman stepping back and forth on 6" heels as she impatiently waited to cross West Fourth and whispered, "Go get her."
And I did. You said you were thirsty and I brought her to you like a frozen Gin Rickey on a hot summer day—juniper berries, grain mash, fizz, lime and sugar on crushed ice.
Remember how, after, you stroked my head so tenderly it hurt.
to forum