Gwen suddenly smiled an oddly wistful smile. “Mate?” she asked. With that, she tilted her head down an inch... and kissed him. ‘Predictable,’ was Art’s one startled thought, before he lost himself in the joy of kissing those well–kissed lips. He still held her arms straight out from her body. Gwen’s breasts weighed heavily against his chest through the thin fabric of her t–shirt, and her hair fell uncontrolled against his face.
If there was one thing Art had learned, it was kissing, after hours of stage kisses with cold women under hot lights. Before he had only met the semblance of passion — now passion was hitting him full force, a desert storm. The room was burning in Gwen’s kisses. He was drowning in the sand.
She was writhing against him, and finally he let her hands go, uncertain what else to do. Gwen seized the opportunity, and quickly reached down to her waist, lifting herself up as she pulled off the shirt. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her soft breasts hung free in the glaring light. Art reached out suddenly and turned off the bedside lamp. It was too much, somehow. Having his beloved, and beautiful, sister staring him in the face, with breasts he hadn’t seen since they shared a bed in grammar school. Asking him to do this in bright light was too much.
Before he could start thinking whether it was too much even in darkness, Gwen was pulling off his shirt as well. She muttered curses at him when he moved too slowly to help her, and was soon skinning off both their jeans. Long before he could have finished “Tomorrow and tomorrow” she had them both naked as the day they were born. Minutes apart.
“What are we doing?” Art asked her softly. Gwen didn’t answer, just lowering her sweet body to his eager one. Their skin burned at the touch, yet Arthur shivered under the assault. He took her silence as his cue, and from them on silence reigned, broken only by her softly moaned encouragement, and his startled sighs.
Gwen gently directed Art whenever he seemed lost, and he took her direction flawlessly. Obviously Gwen’s talent in bed was a shared family trait. Familiar hands caressed skin, sweaty bodies entwined on the mud–stained bed. They separated only briefly enough for Gwen to reach out and grab a condom from her nightstand. She thought briefly that she was quite positive she didn’t want any children from this union. Then the thought was buried in long–suppressed desire. She, at least, had wanted this for a long, long time. It had just taken her a while to admit it, and a little longer to maneuver it into existence.
Much later, Art lay there humming, his sister’s head cradled in his shoulder. Gwen said to him, “You sound happy, little brother. What are you humming?” Art shook his head and laughed softly. “You don’t want to know” he replied. Gwen twisted her head to look up at his face. “Don’t try to tell me what I want,” she said. “Would you have predicted tonight?”
Art kept his memory of that first startled thought to himself, and gallantly answered, “No, though I might have dreamt of it occasionally.” Gwen continued staring up at him, obviously waiting for her answer. Art laughed and gave in.
“It’s from Camelot. It’s the song where Arthur wins Guinevere by telling her about Camelot’s scenic beauty.” Gwen punched his side indignantly. “We pledged that we would never, ever see that show.” Art tried to fend her off, “Enough, big sister! I was auditioning for it, what could I do?” Gwen didn’t seem particularly calmed by this explanation. Art continued, “If it’s any consolation, I was auditioning for Arthur, and I didn’t get the part.”
That won a startled laugh from Guinevere. Arthur took the opportunity to lift himself up on an elbow and begin to sing to her in a low tenor, “And there is simply not, a more congenial spot, for happy–ever–aftering than here...”
Art paused suddenly, his eyes locked on her smiling face. “We can’t ever do this again, you know” he said. His eyes were suddenly wistful. “I know,” she replied, as she put up a hand to caress his face. “Thank you for the lesson, big sister” he said softly. Gwen suddenly laughed again, rolling around so she was seated on his stomach. “We’ve got at least five hours till mom gets here. I think you need a little more tutoring before I let you go.”
With that, Gwen leaned down to kiss him, and Art gave up the last of his worries and kissed her back. He started humming softly... until she bit him. Then it was silence once again.
Letter Found Near a Suicide
This is for Maureen. This is for Maureen to tell her all the things I could not tell her. This is for Maureen O’Reilly, who lives on Elm Street, near the old church.
You have the sweetest lips I’ve ever seen. I wonder sometimes how many guys have kissed them, sucking hungrily at their fullness, drawing you in deeper and deeper. Many, I know. They swarm around you, bees to red honey, and you give them a taste before pulling away. A deep taste. A long, slow, rich taste. (I’ve hid in the tall grasses behind the gym and watched you in the toolshed. Twice I was brave enough to stay for a while and watch as one of them kissed those full lips, and large breasts.) You’ve had large breasts for years now, pale and slightly freckled when you lie in the sunlight with your shirt unbuttoned and your bra undone. And from ten years old you used them to tease the men. The nuns were always giving you disapproving looks. Sister Agnes actually walked over once at recess and buttoned the top button. The nuns in high school seem easier somehow.
And you were easy. Even I, who loved you, can’t deny that. You were so ripe, hanging there, waiting for someone to reach up, laughing, and pull you down and you would fall willingly into his arms. (I could never watch after he’d taken off his clothes. You, I could watch naked forever, your masses of red sliding over your skin as you moaned and shivered. But when he took off his clothes I closed my eyes... and only listened). But you never stayed. You’d pull yourself back up into that tree and bloom again, a scarlet flower, a pomegranate, a cluster of raspberries, an apple.
Maybe cranberry suits you best. So flaming gorgeous, but sour inside. I hated you sometimes. Your easy laughter with them. Your easy smiles for them. Your easy dismissal of me. I would lie in bed on hot August nights with the fan turned on me and the sheets kicked off, my hand below my waist and my eyes focused on the sky outside the window... and I would plot revenge. Plans to drug you, and keep you tied up in my room, where I would spend hours (with you blindfolded, so you would never know whom I was) caressing that lush body, those overlarge breasts and pale skin. Plans to beat you gently, then fiercely, with my father’s heaviest belt... to punish you for never noticing me enough to reject me.
Maureen, Maureen, Maureen. I could never do it. The first tear from those amber eyes and I would be lost. I am lost. Lost in my love, in my lust, in all the things that should not be but are.
Perhaps you will truly hate me after this. Perhaps this letter will make your life miserable... depending on who finds it first, out on the front steps of the school. The pills are starting to work... I’m getting very sleepy, and it’s hard to write. I hope they don’t publish it. Whoever reads this first — don’t send it to the paper. Don’t tell the whole town. I just want the school to know. And Maureen. That I loved her for the last three years. Maureen, maybe you can carry my love with you. You don’t need to sleep with all those men. Then again, if you stopped, you wouldn’t be you.
Sincerely,
Caroline Tilden
Honor Student, Class Vice President
Unabashed Paean
Daily new crocuses push their way through the moist soil, and
A fall of ivory petals sheathes the swooping vine–like
Feathered branches of the old tree along the walk. Song
Fills my throat and aches to burst free; villanelles and
Odes dance in my brain, whispering, chanting spring.
Do you feel it, my dears? Do you feel the blood racing
Its sudden course? If you do, you will find a sweet body and
Lay yourselves down in the grass amid crushed daffodils,
Singing silently with every inch of sun–touched skin.
Japanese Garden
> If you’ve ever been to Chicago, and are at all the museum–going type, you’ve probably been to the Museum of Science and Industry. It’s worth seeing, with the Omnimax 360 degree theatre, the over–priced coal mine ride, and the tons of cool techno gizmos. If you’re anything like me, you can’t resist the glass globe with the sparks that reach out to caress your hand, or the computer quizzes. But the best thing about it in 1989 was that it was still free. Only a ten–minute walk from my dorm, it was irresistible during those rare weeks of Indian summer, when it was warm and humid enough that you desperately wanted to be naked, or at least outside by the lake.
And it was a good place to go kill an afternoon with a new boyfriend.
Dean was scum. Or at least he had a totally scummy side, but I didn’t find that out till many months later. In early October I was a freshman in college and terribly in love. In love with a poor Physics sophomore, who couldn’t afford dinner and roses but could kiss better than anyone I’d kissed before. That wasn’t saying much then, but he could kiss better than almost anyone I’ve kissed since, and that is saying something. A funny–looking guy over a foot taller than me, with long, greasy hair and wretched taste in t–shirts. I think he was wearing the shirt with fake bird droppings that day, and cut–off jeans and new sneakers his mom had sent. And sparks were flying. We couldn’t keep our hands off each other. Luckily for us, we didn’t have to try very hard.
It was evening, and we had been duly kicked out of the museum at 4:00. Now if you’re only a casual visitor to Chicago, you’ve probably heard about the Museum of Science and Industry, but you’ve probably never seen the small pond nearby where you can go paddle boating (so they say — I’ve never seen it myself), or the Japanese garden around the back. I’m not sure why they call it a Japanese garden, which I always though was a rather spare arrangement of sand and stones in a box not much bigger than a dining table. This place was lush. It had winding paths and strange trees — large trees, not bonsai. Mostly, it had little secluded nooks, and statues. I don’t remember anything about the statues now... whether they were Greek, or Indian, or even Japanese. But the statues are important. Remember them.
So we had been kicked out of the museum, and had found our way to the garden. We’d only been going out a month. We were both virgins at the time, not surprising for the type of students who found their way to the University of Chicago, and I at least didn’t plan to rush things any. I may have been in love, but I had also been a good Catholic girl for far too many years, and some of that had to rub off. I’ve heard that the Catholic girls are the wildest once they finally get going. Worked for me, anyway. So back then I wasn’t having intercourse, but boy, were we doing everything but.
Kissing and fondling was where it started, and it generally ended with us mostly undressed. Once we’d fallen asleep naked in my tiny dorm room in the middle of the afternoon, and when my roommates came home and fiddled with the door, Dean rolled over me, so they only saw his slightly hairy butt before hurriedly backing out into the hallway and hollering at us to please get dressed. He had a gallant streak in him — one of the things I loved about him, although looking back, I certainly exaggerated the size of it. Typical with old lovers, I suppose. They somehow seem kinder, more romantic, more attractive, and have bigger penises... until you decide to call them up, just to see how they’re doing, and are reminded of just how boring they actually were, and just why you were glad they broke it off. Before you had to.
But at that point, I had no vast experience of ex–lovers to compare him to, and Dean seemed like heaven itself. His hands sliding under my white t–shirt, to reach in back with already–practiced fingers and unhook the over–small bra, somehow slipping it off me and dropping it in the grass. His mouth on mine as we fell to the ground and rolled around, trying to be quiet, although there was no sound but us and the cars on Lake Shore Drive. His tongue was long, and the memory of it can still occasionally bring a flush of heat to my skin. We humped, fully clothed, in the itchy grass, my hands with their bitten nails digging into the back of his t–shirt, his hands in my still–short hair, pulling it back so he could leave dark, hot hickies on my neck while his chest pressed my breasts back into my ribs, and my ribs into the ground. My legs were wrapped around one of his, the rising musky scent seeped through my thin skirt and combined with sweat and and the smell of Tide that permeated his clothing, until it was hard to breathe from that and his weight. And I must have whimpered, because it was suddenly too much, and he was standing up and hauling me with him, no doubt planning to go back to the dorms where we could strip and finish this properly.
Only I wasn’t willing to wait that long, and I pulled him to me, grabbing the back of his head and pulling him down to my level so we could keep kissing, because at that moment, I wanted nothing more than to kiss him until he or I burst. He groaned softly then, and pushed me back against one of the large stone statues, its solid cool bulk a shock after all that heat. Then suddenly, his hands were under my skirt, pulling off the white cotton underwear I still wore back then. I lifted each leg so he could remove it, at that point not caring that we were in a public garden, and that at any moment the City of Chicago police might come and take us away for indecent exposure, or disturbing the peace.
Dean paused a minute, then slipped his hands under my ass and lifted me up, startling me, then put me down to rest on a ledge of the statue. It had hands, you see, cold smooth hands that jutted out in front, just at the level of his head. It was a huge statue, and perched on that pair of hands, I was taller than I’d been since I was a small child perched on a friendly adult’s shoulders. He’d pushed the short black skirt I’d borrowed from a roommate’s friend out of the way as he set me down, and I worried briefly about the hordes of outdoor germs on the cold stone. I didn’t worry long, though, because at this level it only took a second for him to push the front of my skirt out of the way as well, and all he had to do was lean forward and start licking as if his life depended on it. Or mine. I almost screamed right then, arching under his touch. My arms were behind me, so my hands could help maintain my precarious balance, and my legs were wrapped around his head as he licked and sucked and slid fingers in and out of me, until I was shaking and quietly begging...
And he started doing something, I still don’t know what, and I was suddenly coming so hard, so fast, that I lost all balance and slid right off the statue, falling into him and crashing to the ground. And it was then that we heard voices coming towards us. He grabbed my underwear and bra and stuffed it in a pocket, and pulled me to my feet, both of us still dizzy. And we ran.
I don’t think we ever made it back to the dorm that fast again, or were ever quite so glad that his roommate wasn’t home. We locked the door and tore off clothes and fell on each other with fingers and slick skin and eager tongue... and I’m still amazed that it took a whole three months before we got around to having intercourse.
Amazing the power of inhibitions. And the power and excitement that comes of ignoring them.
Renewal
It has been a long long time since I have known
such delights. Summer’s close about us,
with sluggish days that beg for storing sleep. And yet,
a rain–swift rush of blood cries out that it must be spring.
And all the turning leaves and orange blossoms must proclaim
that life, not death, has sovereignty this day.
I am a garden, love, run wild and fertile under your caress.
No gardener could better train these creeping vines
and scattered blooms. So wander in my pathways for awhile,
your fingers tracing waterfalls along a shaking soil.
And we will surge and rush and come again to silence —
there is no sweeter sorcery on this earth.
Radhika and Matthew
She is stunning in a white and gold sari, a princess more beautiful than any of the German fairy tales. White suits her far better than it could have any of
the those milksop blond maidens. She seems cool and calm, despite the August heat. His palms sweat in the white New England church, his pale skin incongruous against the sea of brown faces. All he thinks as he breathes is what a shame that custom binds her hair, studded with carnations and gold.
They’re tying the heavy thali around her neck, the crimson–clad mother stepping forward to help the trembling groom. Mrs. Annadurai was born and raised in a village near Jaffna, and believes in her heart that it would be a very bad sign if he dropped the wedding necklace, though she’d never admit it even to her Indian friends. And then they exchange the rings, and raise their voices in hymn. Most of the church is silent, filled with Muslim and Hindu neighbors.
He remembers suddenly, sharply, the way she falls asleep immediately after sex, unlike the few other women he’d known. She curls trusting into a slightly flabby shoulder, and he rocks her gently, unbelieving of his luck. The scent of sandalwood clings to her skin, long after the incense has burned away. She burned it often in those days, whenever she had been thinking about the rift between herself and her parents.
They’re filing out now, having skipped the traditional kiss, to the discomfort of the few white faces in the crimson–flowered church. Groom and bride, hand in hand. And Radhika is smiling, though perhaps looking a little nervous; standard for the bride. Despite her college experiences with men, she has, after all, never been married before. Her plump parents, however, show no such restraint in their smiles.
Torn Shapes of Desire Page 7
