by Retha Powers
I reached back and took his hand, leading him to my bedroom. I lit candles, which I’d placed around the room, and checked for both safety and flattering shadows.
“No,” I told him as he reached beneath my dress’s shoulder straps. “I want to undress you.” Picasso looked surprised for a moment, but then he smiled wide and nuzzled my neck with his mustache, traced the same pattern with his open lips. As I unbuttoned his starched white shirt and slipped it back to his shoulders, he was still smiling. Picasso’s shirt slid to his elbows and I slid down his body, reaching around his waist. I pulled gently at each sleeve, and his shirt fell onto my bedroom carpet. Picasso’s hands were out to the sides. I looked up at him. As I expected, he was more than ready to let me have my way. But he was breathing harder and I could feel his ass muscles tightening under my palms. I pushed my head into his groin and he moaned softly.
I unbuckled him and took his black dress pants and pale blue boxers with their navy blue stars on them down to the top of his boots. When I looked up now, I saw the guitar between me and Picasso’s smile. Now I haven’t seen that many instruments, but this was certainly one of the finest, from the rich deep color of the wood, to the healthy, muscular shape, to the energy and life it had just waving there above my head. Picasso leaned down slightly and laughed. “Hola. Hola, señorita.”
On my knees, I smiled back. “Hola, yourself.”
He reached to lift me from where I was kneeling, but I had no intention of stopping. I’d never made love like this before, taking the man for myself before I let him touch me. It gave me a feeling I wanted to remember, one I knew I could grow to really enjoy.
I opened my mouth wide and took one of Picasso’s balls in, releasing it quickly. I went to the other side. He arched back and groaned. I started up the shaft of his dick with my tongue and stopped at the head. Sitting up quickly, I stared up at him. I was Rotina Washington, Conqueress. I held on to Picasso’s dick as I eased up onto my bed and reached into my nightstand drawer. I’d bought Lifestyle Mano Grande Sensitivo. I didn’t have that much practice, but we had a special meeting at L.H.A.L. on Good Sex and Living to Tell about It. We practiced on bananas and all the girls teased me on how well I did putting the condom on it with my mouth and then oral-sexing it down.
I was able to tear open the package without letting go of Picasso’s dick. With the condom in my mouth, I moved my fingers gently up the shaft and parted the lips. Picasso’s entire body tightened like an iron clamp. I was enjoying my Woman in Charge Sex. I placed my finger directly into the eye of the guitar. Picasso’s face turned the color of eggplant and I thought, I’m better at this than I expected. Go easy on him, Rotina. Make it last, girl. Make it last.
Then Picasso screamed as though I’d bitten the head off his dick and wouldn’t let go. “Aaaaaaah!” I released him and rolled backward onto the bed. “What is it? Tell me! What did I do?”
“It’s burning! Burning! Aaaeeeeee!”
Picasso ran into the bathroom as quickly as he could, considering his pants were at his knees around the tops of his cowboy boots. He’d stopped screaming openmouthed, but he was grunting now, like he’d been shot. I was right behind him, feeling helpless, confused. What had happened that quickly?
Watching him at the sink throwing water onto his dick, I put my hand up to my mouth, terrified. What? What? Oh, no. No, it couldn’t be. Slowly, behind him, as Picasso continued to dance in front of the sink with his dick in it as far as he could get it, I held my fingers over my nose and breathed in my answer. Jalapeño.
Cortez Rojo Picasso Velasquez was experiencing Rotina Washington’s Jalapeño Love. It had been a long, hungry time in coming and now my Picasso was trying desperately to cool his dick from the heat of my touch. Oh, Rotina Washington. Jalapeño Love! Who, at Leave Him and Live next Saturday night, would ever believe me?
Almost an hour later Picasso and I lay on my bed eating flan and Breyers Vanilla Nut. I’d made an ice pack with one of my best towels and placed it between Picasso’s legs. He’d told me about twenty-five times it wasn’t necessary, that he was perfectly comfortable now. He’d even looked down at his crotch and joked, “I’m afraid to tell you, it has seen much worse.” But he quickly apologized, realizing I was still too shook up to find it funny and it certainly wasn’t my idea of romantic.
Picasso stayed the night. I began to dream as we held each other. I remember rolling over onto my side and thinking for just one moment of pulling Picasso closer behind me and guiding his hand up where I’d missed a hand as I slept. I felt his foot slide up my calf, but I shifted slightly so that he had to move it.
“Sing to me, Picasso,” I whispered. And he did. His own funny, lovely version of “My Spanish Guitar.”
Planting
_________________
by s smith
The collective rays of the September sun bear into her back and shoulders. It is an intense, deep-heat treatment. Slowly her anger at Jack flows out of her, down her brown arms, into her fingers, and into the deeper brown of the earth. On hands and knees she labors, using the small shovel to turn the dirt. The smell of earth is like fresh-cut, raw potatoes. Subtle and sustaining. It is aromatherapy and the sun is the masseuse.
Small beads of sweat, like delicate pinpricks, spring across her forehead and along her top lip. Short breaths softly escape through her slightly parted lips each time she bends, stretches, and digs. With each release of breath goes another angry thought: Jack’s words urging her to sell her grandmother’s home; Jack’s smug assurance playing along the corners of his mouth when he smiles. He is so sure that she will leave this place and live a life of urban bondage.
She develops a comfortable rhythm—bend, stretch, dig—planting bulbs of narcissus, jonquil, and gladiolus. She continues a rhythm developed by her grandmother, continued by her mother, and passed down to her. True, she and Jack do not live at this house and have slowly allowed the four-hour drive to become more burdensome. But knowing that the place was there provided a foundation for her. And she never misses a September planting her bulbs. She remembers the joy on Grandmother’s face as the blooms and fragrance signaled the beginning of spring.
This year she has carefully prepared the soil, just as Grandmother showed her, adding just a touch of vermiculite so that the right amount of moisture would succor the bulbs. So intent on the digging and careful planting, she jumps when she feels a trickle along her side. She laughs as she realizes it is a rivulet of sweat.
Sitting back on her heels, she gently dabs the sweat on her brow by pressing the back of her forearm against her head. This only spreads the sweat, however, since her forearm is also wet. She enjoys the sun massaging her scalp with its filament fingers. She closes her eyes and silently blows out the last bit of tension she is holding. Sweat trickles down her back, slowly, like fingers playing gently along her spine.
A minute turning of the soil draws her eyes toward the damp, cocoa-brown-colored dirt. A pink, questing head lifts from the soil. Eyeless, it waves about before diving into a patch of dirt next to itself. She watches it as her sweat rolls down her back and meanders down her cleavage. Her shirt begins to cling to her as if shrink-wrapped. The worm’s body, a rich magenta muscle, smoothly enters the earth. It hardly disturbs the soil, she thinks. She wishes, just for a second, that her efforts at gardening were so graceful.
Bending forward to continue with her planting, she pauses, not wanting to harm the worm or his mates. Funny that she had not considered them before. She sees another pink head rise from the soil, twisting about. She does not know if it is the same worm or a different one. Curious, she gingerly digs with her hands. The grains of dirt scrub her flesh with a gentle roughness. Soon she feels a rolling movement against her palm and freezes. Looking carefully, she lifts the dirt and lets the earth sift through her fingers. Two magenta bodies remain in her palm, coiling and twining together, seeking the soil. Their heads press insistently into her palm. Their bodies turn and stroke her hand.
Fasc
inated, she watches them contract then expand, moving until they, like the earth, slide through her fingers back into the fresh-turned dirt. What must it feel like, she thinks, to feel the soil all over your body? The worms writhe as if in extended ecstasy. They ride the dirt, rolling and turning endlessly. Their questing heads search and search for the source of their delight and they dive into the dirt with exuberance. In a minute they have sensuously wiggled their way back into the earth.
Sweat trickles from her scalp and rolls down her neck and over her breasts. The fecund smell of soil wafts into her. The sun has climbed higher. The crest of dirt shows dry, tan patches like an ocean shows whitecapped waves. The sweat travels down her stomach. It feels cold against her skin. She licks her lips and tastes salt. She savors its flavor.
Sighing, she takes off her shoes, pushing each heel with her toes so that the shoes fly away from her and thud against an uncultivated patch of ground. Careful to avoid the earth in which the worms have entered, she puts her feet into the cool dirt. She wiggles her toes in the soil, enjoying the rough crunchiness.
The sound of muffled steps causes her to look up, squinting into the sunlight. Jack is just a dark silhouette against the sky. They are frozen for one of those timeless seconds. Jack looking down at her, feet covered in the soil, and she looking up at him, made faceless by the bright sun’s light. The quiet in the garden is like the hush of a cathedral. The sound of birds and the buzz of insects seem to intensify the sanctity.
To her surprise, Jack bends and puts down a bucket and a gardening shovel. In two strides he is sitting opposite from her. He begins to remove his shoes. She watches his hairy knuckles as his caramel-colored fingers loosen each lace. Once freed, the yeasty smell of his feet mingles with the loamy scent of earth. He digs his toes into the soil and leans back, resting the weight of his body on his hands. The black hairs on his toes are in stark contrast to the pale, ginger-colored skin on his feet. His feet, obviously, have been hidden from the sun for some time.
The cooling dirt and the twittering of sparrows carry the weight of words, the need for words, away. Through the dirt, Jack’s feet creep toward hers. Their toes touch. Jack’s foot rubs the gritty dirt against her instep. Sweat has sealed her blouse tightly against her back, and her skin is suffocating. She pulls the blouse over her head and tosses it away.
Jack’s foot continues to massage hers with the rough dirt. He almost smiles as she throws her blouse away. Slowly his foot works its way until it rests on her calf. He looks at her, waiting. Smiling, she leans toward him, as if to kiss, then gently rubs her dirt-covered hands against his cheeks and over his neck. The dirt mixes with his sweat, creating muddy smears over his skin.
“Umph!” he says. Picking up a handful of soil, he sprinkles it over the top of her head, as if it were baptismal water. It tumbles over her face, onto her shoulders, down her chest, sticking to her sweaty skin.
Her response is to lie down and roll in the drying dirt. Over and over, back and forward, until she is dusty and muddy. His laughter cascades over her like sunshine. Her mahogany flesh prickles with warmth. She sits up and leans toward him until her face is resting in his lap. He smells of earth, and she sighs.
Lifting her face, Jack looks into her eyes. He smiles. With both hands filled with soil, he tenderly holds her face in his hands. He kneads the soil into her cheeks. She presses her face into the scratching grains of dirt, eyes closed. Suddenly she falls forward. She catches herself before she falls, palms digging into the dirt where Jack had lately been. Lithely he stands above her, offering her a hand. He leads her to the garden hose, smiling.
The cold water causes her to breathe in quickly. It flows down her scalp and over her body. She begins to shiver in the warm sunlight. Jack steps toward her, awkwardly holding the water hose, pressing it between their two bodies. It bubbles like a fountain under their chins, held in place by his chest and her breasts. With a free hand, Jack unfastens her pants. Wet, they fall heavily around her ankles. Water splashes her in the face as Jack struggles to pull his T-shirt over his head. The water hose gets free and scatters iridescent drops around them. She helps him shimmy out of his pants. His boxers sag with the weight of water. His member, languidly rigid, bobs against the wet cotton.
Picking up the lost hose, Jack turns and sprays her. Sputtering, she lunges at him, but he dances away, the hose again flying and scattering water around the yard.
The sun shines warmly on the flower bulbs. They sit neatly in a tray, waiting to be immersed in dirt, where they may thrive until spring calls their flowers forth. The water from the garden hose flows and creates a small lagoon. From inside the house the sounds of quiet sighs and the patter of water hitting bathroom tiles mingle and add to the occasional chirps of birds and the steady drone of insects.
Good-Bye
_________________
by Eric Jerome Dickey
The sun was setting as the last of the golden-brown leaves fell from the trees. A few had refused to change from green to rust colored, even though it was time for a new season. A mahogany leaf caught my attention as it was carried away by the winds, blown out of my sight, beyond reach. I wondered if it had voluntarily fled its haven, or if some force had expelled it. With closed eyes, I imagined where it might finally land as it pirouetted and fell three floors below.
Then there was a knock at my door. My heartbeat quickened, my palms so wet. She was here. I wiped my hands on my jeans, counted to seven, opened the door, and she stood there in the dim lights of the hallway.
Her black hair in a bob with a hundred strands of premature gray adding salt to her cosmopolitan and conservative look. Her dignified, schoolgirl smile actually widened when our eyes met; then it vanished, as if the memory of what had happened between us had returned in full force.
I saw her, and then I was sixteen again, staring at the wonderment of a woman, my hormones out of control, making me realize how much of a man I was, how much I was a primitive who had bowed down to social order, wanting to touch the breasts of a woman, of that woman, to invade her mystery.
She whispered, “Never thought I’d see you again.”
Her hands were folded in front of her, as if she wanted me to see the wedding ring on her finger, drawing a thick line.
I asked, “You coming in?”
“You wanted to talk.”
“Yeah.”
“So talk.”
“You promised me that when things slowed down we’d get together, maybe meet at a coffeehouse, get a cup of cappuccino, and talk, see if we could try again—”
“Things changed.”
“You married him.”
“Yeah. I did what was best for me.”
“And I had to read about it in JET. Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged. My heart was in her hands, small hands that were slowly closing into a fist, and she shrugged like it was no big deal.
She’d been married two weeks. A big diamond was on her finger.
She came in, didn’t take her coat off, strong body language that told me this would be a brief encounter, and drifted toward the window.
She said, “It’s cold. Don’t think it’s ever been this cold in Palmdale.”
“Yeah. Ice was on the freeway. It’s a record low.”
Then a moment of silence as she watched the tree outside my window.
She said, “Only one leaf left. That’s weird.”
“Yeah. Weird.”
I moved next to her and we watched that leaf struggle to hold on.
I asked, “Are you happy?”
“On my honeymoon, I was in Maui.”
I made a hmming sound, the tune of jealousy and envy.
She went on: “You ever see the golden sunset in Maui? Ever watch the sun sink into an endless body of clear blue water?”
“No. As far as we ever went was a four-hour ride to Vegas.”
“Well, it’s life changing. You see it, the colors, the majesty, the hugeness; you feel so small, feel the po
wer, experience the tranquillity, and you know there’s a God.”
“Sure it’s not the mushrooms?”
“Hush.” She sighed and her smile turned upside down. “I was in beautiful Maui, a ring on my finger, a man who told me he loved me more than anything, and in that moment, when contentment should’ve been the blanket that kept me warm, I was chilled by my own restlessness.”
We watched the leaf for a little while, afraid to put our eyes on each other.
She whispered, “I need closure.”
“That closure have anything to do with me?”
She nodded. “Has everything to do with you.”
I nodded and smiled. “Sounds like that old song.”
“What song?”
“The one about—are you gonna stay with the man who loves you, or are you going back to the one you’re in love with?”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“Unconditionally?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to want me to be happy?”
“Yes.”
I wanted to hug her. But she kept herself feet away, arms folded, closed off from my world, the world we used to share.
She chuckled. “I think about you, my stomach jumps, my coochie jumps; all kinds of things happen to my body. Today, knowing that I was going to sneak away and see you, well, I went through two pairs of underwear today.”
“Is your coochie jumping now?”
She cleared her throat, looked at her watch, sighed again. “This is the only time you’ll ever see me. I came here because I want you to respect my marriage.”
“Cut the bullshit. You came because you want to see me.”
“Stop calling my job. Don’t ask my parents about me. Set me free.”
