“Oh, but I do want. I want what you want. It is what you want, isn’t it?”
Great God almighty! Are my ears deceiving me? Is she suggesting what I think she is? Is my sexual quarantine ending at last?
“Are you saying that we …”
“Well, why not? Only we’d have to do it quickly.”
Oh, I’ve waited and waited and waited for this nudge! This green light! It is unmistakably green, isn’t it? I haven’t gone color blind, have I? The suddenness quite takes my breath away. The initiative having fallen into my lap, I realize that it’s up to me to match her boldness with my own. I look her straight in the eye and say, “Julie, I want you and I’ve wanted you from the very first moment I saw you.”
I take both her hands in mine. Little tanned paws with tapering digits, expensive-looking rings, nice nails.
“I’ve thought about you every day and dreamed of you at night,” I add for good measure.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you either,” she says. “Now you know what I came for.”
Her wantonness is hard to figure out. Is it my gray-beard masculinity—ahem!—or does she have other reasons? Like she’s a swinger or a nympho or she’s tit-for-tatting her husband’s infidelity. Or perhaps it’s a spontaneous, sperm-of-the-moment thing. Well, if it’s out of the blue, so be it! Stranger things have happened between strangers. What I’m unprepared for, however, is a true-life encounter that so perfectly matches my fantasy. This is new territory for a writer who’s had no sex in a very, very long time. I had no idea it would happen this expeditiously.
“But we have to hurry,” she reminds me again. “I need to be home in an hour.”
She follows me into the bedroom. The stopwatch is ticking.
“May I undress you?” I ask tentatively.
Julie laughs. “Oh, let’s not bother with all that. Let’s just get down to business.”
She’s wearing a T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. No bra under the T-shirt, which she quickly pulls off. God, her breasts are beautiful! She unbuttons the waist of her shorts and slips them down, then peels off her pink panties just as quickly. Lastly, she kicks off her sandals. She’s a paragon of tan-lines, pale-fleshed where it matters most. Proportionally gifted and completely uninhibited, she stands before me ready for sexual intercourse.
I’ve been shedding my own clothing as quickly as possible, and now I’m naked as well, with an erection that’s achieving full strength by visual stimulation alone. Two people newly bare-assed to each other in full daylight—it’s almost shocking! Tentatively, we draw closer. Like automatons, we’re programmed to engage each other. We’ve come this far, we might as well keep going. We bump and then lock. The fact that she is so much shorter than I am gives us an almost awkward imbalance. My arms want to draw her upward, while her arms wrap themselves around my lower back. Her breasts and my penis press into our respective stomachs. I crane my neck way down and she tilts her face way up, and thus we manage our first kisses.
“Mmm, this is nice.”
“Sure is.”
“You seem good and ready.”
“You make me that way.”
I’m thinking I was fortunate to have changed the sheets on the bed. Recently, I’ve become lazy about doing the laundry, despite the washer and dryer being right in the middle of the kitchen. Somehow, they escape my vision and the laundry basket grows mountainous. Today, though, I’m completely caught up—everything’s washed, dried, folded, and put away. Aside from our clothes that just now fell to the floor, there’s no mess to speak of, not even a stray sock.
Our height difference soon becomes negligible as our mouths turn into rubbery wet canyons to explore. Her lips taste like cinnamon—cinnamon portals to her very soul—and between these explorations occur random anointments, even as our fingers exchange random strokings. I bend down to kiss her frontally, beginning with the soft swelling that rises from her ribcage to the semi-pendant orbs that women always refer to as their “boobs,” finally concentrating on the aureole itself with its hard little cork of an epicenter. Mouthing her nipples, I suckle each one just enough to draw a spritz of sweet human milk (Julie’s encouraging hands caressing the back of my head tell me this is okay). I don’t mean to rob the baby, but I need to taste for myself what this lactating lover is all about. To call it a turn-on falls short of its aphrodisiac description. What sublime nourishment! What grace, what communion!
And she gives as well as she gets. I’d almost forgotten the sharp sensation of a heartfelt penile squeeze (she makes it stick out in front of me like an iron flange). She strokes my buttocks until they’re aflame. I haven’t felt so engorged in months. Panting with lust, I gather new physical strength. Now all hurdles seem possible to leap over. My brain stops churning; I no longer think, for example, about the laundry. Her touch eases my mind even as it excites my senses. Deliberateness is the key: devouring one another calmly and digesting every tingle.
“Come lie down,” I whisper hoarsely.
Flushed and gasping, she lets me topple her. Supine, we’re more equally sized because our heads share the pillow. Arms flung across each other, we scrutinize each other’s face close-up, smiling tentatively. Her skin and hair are radiating lavender and castille—possibly mingled with another perfume—overlayering a musk of sexual readiness. My hand drifts down across her soft stomach, testing her navel’s depression, patting the mat of her pubic hair with my palm as my fingers gently prod the goal between her legs.
“Wait a minute,” she gasps. “We ought to ask each other some questions.”
“You mean about protection and STDs and herpes and all that?”
“You’re reading my mind,” she laughs.
“For me, no STDs, no herpes, but I haven’t got any protection either.”
“Same here. I’m not ovulating, that’s for sure, so I guess everything’s okay.”
Mouth to mouth, a new suction emboldens her kisses. She wants me inside her now. She parts her legs incrementally so I can stroke her vulva, my fingers working their way into the hot liquid infinity of her vagina. God, is she ready! No K-Y jelly needed! But I’m not going to consummate the sex act quite yet; I want to taste one more of her flavors. Kissing her along the route my fingers so recently explored, I kneelingly reposition myself at the lower end of the bed so that my face is between her legs. As my tongue lightly flicks her clitoris, the pressure of her thighs on my ears tells me I’m doing the right thing, and if that weren’t enough, the way she jerks her head from side to side indicates, I think, that she’s almost ready to come. I raise my head from the muffy dankness.
“Do you like that?” I ask.
She answers with her forearms, which, as I have previously noted, are exceptionally strong. She tugs at me now; she’s had all she can stand of foreplay. As she draws me upward, my penis slips inside her almost as an afterthought. Thus we begin that one-on-one reckoning that makes the world a livable place.
A hallmark of satisfactory lovemaking is when a man’s lips impart to a woman’s lips the flavor of her own cunt. Deep and highly seasoned kisses are what she apparently relishes, too. Our fusion is nothing short of a miracle; I probably should be pinching myself—is this really happening? From strangers on the beach to partners in bed seems the stuff of televisionland, yet here we are, fused and fuzed, on the verge of detonation. Much as I’d like to prolong it, this frenzied mouth-to-mouth, groin-to-groin contact can only last so long—one or the other of us will surely burst. Perhaps sensing this, she breaks away for air.
“Wait a minute,” she gasps.” Let me get on top. Hurry!”
I withdraw to a kneeling position, while she pulls up her knees and scoots out from under me. Obediently, I roll over on my back. Now superior, she lifts one leg to straddle me, a mattress arabesque that I help to steady by gripping her hips. She rises on her haunches to impale herself on my erection, grunting as I slide within her. I have to will myself not to ejaculate during this procedure; the oblique angle of penetration creates exquisite pre
ssures which, combining with her gyrations, minimize my last vestiges of control.
But control myself I do, because I want to behold her from this position. Her compact foreshortened body is performing again, as of old. Above me, she rises and sits, rises and sits, her breasts lolling fetchingly, her hands gripping my armpits. Like a wild mare, she tosses her head, completely giving herself to the pleasure she both experiences and creates. Her breathing is measured and sharp—I can feel the exhalations lightly buffeting my chest and shoulders. Tenderly, I grab for her breasts, as if to spur her on; then, with more force, I clutch at her bottom, sinking my fingers in its pliant mass. She’s doing all the work now. My pelvis is passive for the most part because I don’t want to interfere with whatever she’s accomplishing for herself clitorally.
She’s so wrought up that she comes before I do, which is a first for me. In my experience—which is by no means slight—women either don’t come at all, or fake it, or resort to fingering (or battery-operated appliance), or manage to come eventually in a great grinding ballyhoo—a sort of Olympian assertion of sexual equality. Julie does none of these. All along, she’s been working linearly toward her goal, eliminating the competition (or inertia) along the way, and now that she’s there, she’s bawling “oh, oh, OH, OOOHHH!” Her involuntary spasms set off my own payload. Ahhh, I have no choice! Yet our mutual St. Vitus dance, ripping as it is, gives me a distinctly ancillary feeling. My semen fills her cunt not by poking and plundering, but by persuasion. She draws the life-stuff right out of me—more extraction than explosion. And I’m not complaining; I’m sure this is the way consensual sex was meant to be.
Stillness engulfs us now for the better part of five minutes. Her hands leave my armpits as she uprights her torso. I’m the hull and she’s the conning tower. She’s peering down at me with that sly grin. Wordlessly, I grin—or perhaps grimace—back at her. She doesn’t have to ask if it was nice and I don’t have to ask either. Still conjoined, we form a tableau of intermingled thoughts and body fluids. The peacefulness is profound. I’m thinking I could really love this woman, were she mine. I could appreciate her, worship the sandals she walks in and the bathtub she bathes in, donate an organ to her if necessary. What we accomplished is the most commonplace of endeavors, yet we’ve brought something new to bear: a surprise compatibility, awesome in its promise. Ours is an accidental friendship that now means more to me than anything else in life. I want her and her children (and her parents if necessary) to come and live with me. I want to give her another child if she wants one—we’ll make it just the way we made this (childless) miracle.
Sending a final shudder through my loins, she rolls expertly off me, taking care not to put her weight on my legs.
“What time is it?” she asks.
I reach for my watch on the bedside table. “Half-past four”
“Uh oh, Mommy needs to be going.”
She strides to the bathroom to wash up, and I sit on the edge of the bed in a daze. How can I tell her that she has to alter her life’s course and I have to alter mine? How can I tell her that what matters is us—building a new life together from scratch. Hubby’ll just have to bow out as gracefully as he can. Who is he, what’s he like? I don’t give a hoot. Will he understand that he needs to let her go? He has no choice. Will she understand? I hope so.
“Gotta run!”
She yanks up her panties, puts on her shorts and T-shirt, slips into her sandals, fluffs her hair. I’m still fumbling with my underwear.
“Will you come back?”
That’s all I dare to ask at this point.
“Sure,” she replies. “I’ll bring a book for you to autograph, if I can find one.”
She takes three steps in my direction, rising on tiptoes to give me a quick hard kiss that just misses my mouth, and then she’s out the door.
Thus Budge taps out his imaginative version on the keyboard, wholly untrue. But he is writing fiction, so it can be expected. Real life, as usual, is sadly lacking in sexual fulfillment.
This is what actually happens: the week goes by and Julie never shows up. Mulling her absence, Budge considers several possible reasons. Maybe she never intended to come back. Or maybe she did, but now it’s impossible with her husband on the scene.
Maybe she talked herself out of returning. Maybe her husband talked her out of it.
Budge clings to the hope that she will reappear. She was so sincere, so understanding, so intent on acquiring a book of his and reading it. Only gradually does he realize his folly: his mind is making too many anticipatory leaps, as usual. How can a ten-minute conversation with a stranger on a beach result in relational nirvana? It can’t, he knows damn well it can’t. So why has he gone to such great lengths to build this love-castle in thin air? This one and all the others?
My situation smacks of desperation. I thought it would be an easier transition from marriage to remarriage—I mean, playing nuptial chairs is no earth-shattering event, is it? Everybody’s doing it. You lose one, you find another. But here I am, months later, finding no one, yet more determined than ever, and so my brain kicks into overdrive. I’m connecting the dots where there are no dots to connect. Desperation is the handmaiden of determination (or is it the other way around?).
But exactly a week later, when he is at his desk trying to propel this disjointed first-person account forward—and not having an easy time of it—he is aware of several vehicles idling outside the cottage. Pickup trucks or SUVs, by the sound of them. Perplexed, Budge hits the save ikon. Has there been an accident? He heard no crash. Just as he is getting up to investigate, there comes a rap on the screen door.
“Hi! Remember me?”
It’s Julie. She is holding her youngest and a book.
“Of course I do. It’s so good to see you. Won’t you come in?”
“Can’t stay but a minute,” she says, indicating the waiting caravan. “We’re on our way home.”
In her T-shirt, shorts, and sandals, she is the spitting image of his fantasy. “I managed to locate a copy of one of your books,” she’s saying. “Would you mind signing it?”
“I’d be happy to.”
Budge would detain her, even for a few precious seconds, to get a good look at her again. Gratitude wells up within him—she came back, just as she promised.
“Please, c’mon in. I’ll fetch a pen. And while I’m at it, let me give you a quick tour of the cottage. This is the kitchen and living area, over there’s the bedroom—where the headlights wake me up at night—and here’s where I write.”
Jiggling the baby, she nods approvingly at his desk by the window and the view of the bay behind the portajohn. Outside, there is a rude blast of a horn. Budge grabs a desktop pen to inscribe the frontispiece. To Julie Kleczynski in true friendship, Budge Moss.
“How nice! Thank you,” she says. “Well, I’ve got to be going.”
The horn blasts again.
“Oh, that jerk!”
Budge finds her reference to her husband comforting. He probably is a jerk.
“So it was nice meeting you and all that. Maybe we’ll run into each other next year.”
Julie takes three steps in his direction, rising on tiptoes to give him a quick hard kiss that just misses his mouth, and she is out the door.
Chapter 10
As cooler weather arrives, I’ve begun walking more. Midday and evening as well as morning. In the environs of Beach Road, I’m probably known as The Stroller—or perhaps The Prowler—because I’m so often stepping out for a breath of fresh air. This monastic life combines work and solitude seamlessly, and I must admit that my writing’s coming along well—in this respect, I can pat myself on the back—but my bachelorhood remains abysmally bereft of female companionship. I’d give almost anything to find a lover, one I can positively relate to.
While the veracity of Budge’s ultimate statement is beyond reproach, his penultimate one isn’t exactly true (of course, it’s understood that he is writing fiction, so he’s excused
). He has made one good friend, an elderly lady who lives seven blocks away—also on the water. Her name is Sue Baskin and she has been in Rock Hall for longer than anyone can remember.
Sue, age 92, is—to put it bluntly—a wrinkled old prune, but one with an aura of such kindness and concern that it’s easier to visualize her as a ripe plum. Right from the start, Budge pegged her as a worthy acquaintance. She was sitting in her porch rocker one afternoon when he was walking past, and she called to him in such a friendly manner that he came over and introduced himself. She then followed up her amiable quizzicality with an invitation to tea, and poor Budge, flattered by the attention—and famished as usual—was only too glad to oblige. They sat and talked for nearly three hours as their friendship took root. He ate more chocolate chip cookies that afternoon than he had eaten all year.
Having appraised Budge’s loneliness over the subsequent weeks, Sue has taken it upon herself to be thoroughly supportive (she herself may be termed lonely, but in an altogether different way, having buried two husbands, the last some fifteen years ago).
She’s a heavyset woman with thinning white hair, a mouth that’s glibly mobile, and eyes behind granny glasses that belie either amusement or merriment—I’m not sure which. She retains a dependable memory, has excellent hearing, drives a car (an Escort about the vintage of my Corolla), and has no qualms about saying what’s on her mind. At present, she is the most unselfish, unstressed-out, at-peace-with-herself person I know.
As it is, Sue is known to nearly everybody in Rock Hall, and those who don’t know her on a first-name basis, know her by sight. She is one of the town’s enduring institutions; she spearheads fund-raisers, volunteers at fire hall benefits, collects food for the needy, and is an ever-present participant at any gathering of civic boostership. Credentials like these make her eminently suited to tackle the plight of Beach Road’s literary arriviste. For all his obtuseness, Budge recognizes her worth.
The friendship also happens to be evolving at a significant moment, because Budge is pretty much burned-out on the Mainstay potlucks.
Washed Up with a Broken Heart in Rock Hall Page 10