In my dreams I wasn’t even jealous to see her in the throes of pleasure as another man’s cock slowly entered her and I would listen to her moan and writhe, and watch in sheer fascination as her so pale blue eyes took on a glazed sheen. After our first time, as I walked her back to the train station, she had told me her partner would know immediately she had been with another because her eyes shone so much. No, I felt no jealousy at the idea of seeing her perform with another. It would be for my pleasure and edification. I would position her on all fours on top of the bed, her rump facing the door and would let my fingers slide across the cleft of her buttocks and dip into her wetness as I would introduce the stranger to the beauty, intricacies and secrets of her body. See how hot she is inside I would say, how that sweet cunt will grip your cock and milk it dry. I would be the director, set it all up, orchestrate their movements, stroke myself as her lips would tighten across his thick penis and take him all in, sucking away with the energy of despair (hadn’t I told you how good her blow-jobs were? she sucked with frantic energy as if her whole life depended on it but still retained that amused air of innocence in her eyes as she did so, demonstrating her sheer enjoyment of the art of fellatio, much as I hoped I did when I went down on her and tasted her and shook while the vibrations of her coming coursed through her whole body and moved on to my tongue, and heart, and soul, and cock).
So, she stripped for me in a hotel room. Now down to just her stockings. Delicately undulating, thrusting her pelvis out, shaking her delicate breasts, allowing her hanging arms freedom, her hands caressing her rump in a parody of sexiness, just like a stripper in a movie. No music, just us in the otherwise empty room. A jolt, a jump, a shimmy, there just like Madonna in that video, just a tad vulgar but sufficiently provocative, there exuberant like Kylie Minogue, but never as frantic as Jennifer Lopez or Destiny’s Child.
And I drank in every inch of her body. The pale flesh, the moles and blemishes, the deep sea of those eyes which never reached bottom, the gently swaying breasts, the ash-blonde hair now growing down to her shoulders, the trimmed triangle of darker pubic curls through which I could easily see the gash of her nacreous entrance, the thicker folds of flesh where her labia, lower down, grew ever so meaty and protruded, the square regal expanse of her arse which looked so good in the thong briefs we had purchased together at Victoria’s Secrets on Broadway.
Then she would look down and see me, no doubt with tongue hanging out and my erection straining against the dark material of my slacks, and she would smile, and my heart would melt. And though I right then wanted to fuck her until we would both be raw and out of breath, I would also strangely feel so full of kindness, a sensation that made me feel like a better man altogether.
This body I have known so intimately that I could describe every minutiae of her sighs, the look in her eyes when she is being entered, the stain on the left side of her left breast, the dozen variations in colour of the skin surrounding the puckered entrance of her anus and the hundred shades of red and pink that scream at me when I separate her lower lips and open her up. And the memories come running back, like a hurricane, rapid, senseless, brutal. Of the good times, and the bad ones too. Of the time we went naked on a beach swept by a cold wind. The visit to the Metropolitan Museum when she felt so turned on by the Indian and Oceania erotic sculptures that we almost fucked in the nearby restroom (I was the one who felt it would be too risky and by the time we had reached the hotel again, the mood had evaporated . . .). The e-mail informing me she had shaved her pussy and then a few days later another terse communication informing me that she had found a new lover and my anger knowing he was the one who could now see her bald mons in all its erotic splendour. The first time she allowed me to fuck her, doggy-style, without a condom, watching myself buried inside her and moving to and fro, our juices commingling. The evening we ate oysters, she for the first time, and she recognised their flavour when she swallowed my come some hours later in the hotel room.
That hotel room where she stripped for my entertainment and amusement, eyes lowered, a sober gold necklace around her slender neck, where once down to her fishnet stockings she slowly moved towards me – I was sitting on the edge of the bed – and, the delicate smell of her cunt just inches away from my face stepped onto the bed cover, towered over me and opened her legs wide, the obscene and wonderful vision of her visibly moist gash just a couple of centimetres from my wide-open eyes, teasing me, offering herself, my naked lover, my private stripper, my nude love.
“You like it, Mister?” she asks, a giggle stuck in the back of her throat.
I nod approvingly.
She lowers her hand and, digging two opposing fingers into her wetness, she widens herself open.
“You want, Sir?” she inquires of me.
I smile with detached and faint indifference. Somehow come up with some relevant joke which I can’t for the life of me recall now. She bursts out laughing. Once upon a time, I could make her laugh like no other. I warn her to temper her hilarity and remind her of the time on the Boulevard St Germain when she had actually peed a little in the convulsions of laughter. She hiccups and lowers herself on me. The hypnotic warmth of her naked body against me. I am still fully clothed.
All now intolerable memories, of hotels, of jokes that were once funny.
Now, too much has happened since the times we were together and happy in our simple, sexual way, and she wants us to be friends, and no longer lovers. There has been a Dutch man, married, now divorcing, a Korean with dark skin and God knows who else. And finally I am jealous. Like hell. Surely, she insists, we can still have times together, just be friends, no sex, it’s better that way. How, I ask her, but then I would, wouldn’t I? How can we spend days in foreign cities, share a hotel room and ignore the fact her body and her eyes and her smell and her words and her cunt just shout out sex to me and I know I couldn’t accept that ridiculous compact of just friendship any more.
You can go with other men, I say, and I will not blame you, hold it against you, I understand that I am not always available and that you are young and have needs. But she knows I am lying inside. That I would say anything to have her back.
In hotel rooms.
Stripping for me.
Laughing with me. Laughing at me.
In darkness she moves; I am deaf, can’t hear the music she is dancing so sensually to. Maybe a blues, a song by Christine McVie or Natalie Merchant. Or “Sing” by Travis. Or maybe it’s Sarah McLachlan’s “Tumbling Towards Ecstasy” (the Korean man who later abandoned her for a Russian woman, after breaking her fragile heart, had introduced her to that particular music; ironically a man of melodic taste . . .). Or again that Aimee Mann song from Magnolia (we saw the movie together; oh, how she enjoyed seeing movies with me). I hear nothing. Can only try and guess the tune from the languorous movements of her body as every piece of clothing is shed to reveal the treasures of her flesh, her intimacy. The crevice of her navel, the darkened tips of her nipples (so devoid of sensitivity she would always remind me), her throat, the luminosity of her face, her youth, her life.
I open my mouth but I can’t even hear myself saying “please” or “come back” or “forgive me”.
She dances, my erotic angel, my lost lover.
The silent words in me increase in loudness, but she is lost in the music and no longer even sees her audience. Behind her, the hotel walls are all black and she is frozen like a photograph, her pallor in sharp contrast to the surroundings. Stripper in hotel room. A study in light and darkness.
Like in a nightmare, my throat constricts and words fail me totally. I shed a single tear of humid tenderness, all too aware of the fact that I will never again be able to afford a private stripper. Let alone a hotel room.
The Death and
Life of Edward Grable
Adhara Law
Edward Grable was among the greatest lovers who had ever lived. Were sex an art form, galleries would have devoted entire wings to the master and his work
during his lifetime, studies in the evolution of his genius. The aura of artistry surrounded him and people who coveted his secret hovered around him continuously, hoping to siphon some of that genius off of him.
But none of that mattered now, because Edward Grable was dead.
To understand the sexual artistry of Edward Grable’s life is to understand his fitting and timely death, and this begins in his youth.
His first lover was a woman almost twice his age. She lived next door to him in a split-level house, the kind that dotted every suburb in the fifties. Her husband paid Eddie – he was called Eddie back then – to take care of the yard, to trim the shrubs and mow the lawn and generally keep the estate ahead of the rest of the neighbourhood in that unspoken-of contest for suburban domination. Eddie had just finished mowing the lawn and was about to start trimming the shrubs when Mrs Carlson appeared in the door, her capri pants and tight pink sweater leaving no curve to the imagination. She leaned against the doorjamb and called Eddie’s name.
“How about a glass of lemonade? You must be parched.”
Eddie thought that sounded nice. He followed her into her kitchen, admiring the decor on the way – he had never been this deep into the Carlsons’ home before – and graciously accepted the cool glass, the condensation dripping over his fingers in tiny rivers. At his last gulp, Mrs Carlson reached for the glass and set it with fluid grace on the counter, then settled a perfectly polished and manicured red nail on his shoulder. She traced the outline of his oxford button placket down the front of his chest. “Eddie,” she whispered, “would you like to see the bedroom?”
Eddie gulped.
She led him by the hand to the master bedroom, her swaying hips enticing the young Edward Grable forward the way a snake charmer seduces the cobra out of its basket. In the bedroom, she turned to him and pulled him closer.
“Mr Carlson is away on business,” she whispered in his ear as she began unbuttoning Eddie’s shirt. She noticed his nervousness in the uneven rise and fall of his chest and said, “Don’t be nervous, honey. This is perfectly natural.”
They eased onto the bed, Mrs Carlson guiding Eddie’s hands to her nipples, Eddie nuzzling the warmth between her neck and shoulder. There was something innate that told him what to do even though he’d had no such experience before. Amidst the sighs and moans of Mrs Carlson, Eddie worked the magic he didn’t know he had.
It is said that prodigies are infused with an old spirit that guides them through their art, giving them knowledge that would take them years to learn in school. It is said that Mozart began composing at the age of five.
If Eddie could be said to be a prodigy, then this was his composition.
Mrs Carlson’s surprise at Eddie’s experience was clear. Watching Eddie through the years next door, she had seen him buffeted by the turbulence of puberty. She had watched him grow up from a shy, awkward, and gawky teenager into a shy, awkward, and gawky young man. She could not recall ever seeing a young woman on his arm.
She watched the blond bristles of his buzz cut as they moved ever so slightly up and down between her legs. “Oh, Eddie,” she moaned. “You’re absolutely incredible!” And with her back arched and her head thrashing from side to side, she came for the first time in years without the aid of her hand.
And so it began. Composition No. 1: Mrs Carlson.
Though Eddie visited Mrs Carlson as often as time and Mr Carlson’s busy travel schedule allowed, he was suddenly beginning to notice just how many women there were out there. Women he had never met began striking up conversations with him on the street. Waiting for the bus downtown, he would be surprised to find himself in the middle of a pheromonally induced circle of femininity, soft hands accidentally brushing against his thigh accompanied by the sounds of, “Oh my, excuse me . . .” He would find himself making apologetic faces to the men who were left standing alone at the other end of the bus stop, scowling at him. He would later learn never to apologize for his gift.
His next composition was a young woman by the name of Marilyn Cullers. Only a year older than he, she’d found a way to sit next to him on the bus downtown every day for the past week. Eddie was oblivious to the wordless catfight that ensued every afternoon between the five or so women who rode the same route home that he did. Marilyn had schemed to be the first on the bus when it came to her stop so that she’d have first choice among available seats. Now as she sat down next to Eddie and smoothed her skirt, she shot a smug smile back at the women who gave her dirty looks as they passed by.
“Hi, I’m Marilyn.” She demurely offered her hand to Eddie, who was staring out the window.
“Oh,” he said, taking her hand awkwardly. “I’m Eddie Grable.”
“Eddie . . .” She said the name as if it was a holy password into some unknown vault of treasures. “Would you like to come home with me?” Her wild whisper sounded almost like a plea for help.
She nearly tore her own clothes off as she dragged him to the bedroom, pulling at him wildly as she fell onto the bed. Eddie’s artistry took over and soon he was creating art on the canvas that was Marilyn. His fingers and body moved over her as he watched her face carefully, controlling the moment so as to elicit just the right facial expressions, the right twist of the head and the right parting of the lips. As she moaned, writhed, contorted under him, he waited for the perfect moment and then released the power of his genius.
Her face was a study in angelic, epiphanic beauty.
Composition No. 2: Marilyn Cullers.
At a time when most men of his generation were looking for a woman to marry and settle down with, Edward Grable never even flirted with monogamy. The fifties gave way to the sexually liberated sixties, and though Edward never gravitated toward the hippie lifestyle, his sex life certainly espoused the free love sentiment that surrounded him. Still somewhat shy and socially inept, he didn’t have to worry himself with the awkward task of meeting women; they flocked to him. And it was around this period that he learned the technique of slowing time.
He was in the bedroom of his small apartment with a tall, sleek redhead, her form stretched languidly beneath him. As his body slowly brought forth the art that was in her, he studied her carefully. Her eyes were shut, her mouth open in what was about to be a cry out. He realized that the moment was slowed so that he could work the canvas until it was perfect. It was as if he could get inside the moment, crawl around in this little bubble of time and stretch it, compress it, tinker with it until it was absolutely right.
He took advantage of it. He moved his fingers and his body, watching her expression change. There – her mouth was set so perfectly, almost but not quite an O. Now the eyes – he moved and played until they were open ever so slightly, just the way he liked it. She was ready. He let time expand back into regularity and watched as his work of art blossomed like a flower beneath him; he admired the delicate arch of her back as she came, the sound of her cries resounding against the walls of the small room. When the moment had passed, she smiled lazily up at Edward.
Edward Grable developed a photographic memory out of necessity. Where most artists had a gallery in which to display their work, Edward had only his memory and a sole audience of one – himself. Even his lovers, his compositions, could not see the genius in their own faces, being wrapped up in the moment as they were.
Awkwardness and social ineptitude eventually left Edward Grable as he matured through the sixties and into the seventies. In the early part of the decade, he moved to the west coast in a fit of artistic ennui. Word of his arrival had somehow spread prior to his coming, and women of the rich and famous elite were already banging down his door before he’d unpacked the boxes. He realized he had a new challenge: take the faces and the bodies that had been seen all over the world and transform them in his own vision.
He was invited to all the important social gatherings; he was often the only one who was introduced without a title. A simple, “This is Edward Grable” often made the new acquaintance’s eyes ope
n wide with recognition. If he was a man, he shook Edward’s hand and for the next hour tried to pry Edward’s secrets from him. If she was a woman, she used every ounce of her charm to get into his bed before the night was over. “Please,” she would often say. “Let me be your next composition, your new canvas. I won’t disappoint you.”
Sometimes Edward took them up on the offer; sometimes he didn’t.
He was getting discriminatory as his art flourished, choosing only those faces that, like a slab of unchiselled marble, told him what new creation lay hidden inside. And he no longer limited himself to a single woman. In the late seventies Edward embarked on what was to become known as his pivotal work – menage No. 1. A group of three women.
By now, people begged Edward to let them see a creation in the making. He only had to say the word and tickets would be sold at exorbitant prices, auditoriums would be filled to capacity. The outpouring of admiration nearly brought tears to his eyes. So he agreed to showcase this most astounding, most daring work yet.
He arranged the women on a soft landscape of velvet and satin pillows, making sure that the lighting was right for each one of them. The players were stunning – a young African-American woman with skin the color of flawless mahogany, a strong Nordic blonde with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen, and a delicate Asian woman whose features were exotic and enticing. The spectators were gathered at a discreet distance, none of them wanting to become known as the one who disturbed the master at his greatest moment.
He began with the Asian woman. They watched as he moved over her, his once awkward and stringy body moving with a fluid ease that was borne of his inherent talent. She writhed and moaned and her hands clutched at him wildly. While one hand worked between her legs, the other hand moved on to the African-American woman. She arched her hips toward him. And as he worked the canvases of these two women, he lowered his lips to the blonde.
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