by Marie Wilson
“They should seal it with a kiss up in that tree,” she says mysteriously.
ROSE
The stars are soft as flowers, and as near; The hills are webs of shadow, slowly spun; No separate leaf or single blade is here—All blend to one.
—Dorothy Parker
In an infamous black-and-white photo, a naked but out-of-focus movie star sits on a branch holding his erect penis. The star is purportedly James Dean, but we will never know for sure. Is it the young actor, or just an extremely good look-alike? I like to think it actually is him, although it hardly matters fifty plus years after his death.
James Dean lassoed a million teenaged hearts in the vast emptiness of 1950s America. A rising star with a cigarette hanging from his mouth and a cold bottle of milk pressed against his brow. A shooting star who ignited pining hearts into rebel-red passion then was suddenly gone.
Frozen on a branch in the Hollywood Hills or created in some photographer’s darkroom, this shot, which I found in a soft-porn magazine from the eighties, holds me rapt for three reasons: Dean himself (I am a fan), the marvelous erection (also a fan) and the tree (fan again).
Ah, trees. Like marvelous erections themselves, tall and strong and sensuous. Oak, linden, pine—they gather me to their majestic selves like a moth to a flame. As a child I spent hours perched on their strong limbs, swaying back and forth, eating their fruit, showering myself with their blossoms, daydreaming in their sun-dappled leaves. The big cherry trees in my front yard, the apple trees on our boulevard, the maple beside our house.
That majestic maple’s first branch was as high as the second storey of our house, so I needed a ladder to climb it. The perch was a great place to stargaze at night or to blend in with the leaves by day.
One afternoon, while balancing on that high-up perch, I slipped and spun around such that I was left clinging to the limb with just my bare nine-year-old hands. I had to work with all my might to pull up my legs and wrap them around the branch.
As I dangled and struggled in those moments, with death itself waiting to claim me should I lose my grip—think Cary Grant on Mount Rushmore, Norman Lloyd on the Statue of Liberty—the most amazing thing happened. A delicious orgasm pulsed through my body as I hung in peril. Starting at my groin, it spread out deliriously, waves of ecstasy reaching the ends of my toes and the top of my head. It made me feel gloriously, if perilously, weak.
This marked the beginning of a beautiful relationship between the trees and me.
Once the climax had peaked and rolled away, I secured myself on the branch, where I rested in joyous, post-orgasmic bliss. From that day on, lovely orgasms transported me as I hoisted myself up from branch to branch in other, easier-to-climb trees.
CON
Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.
—Dorothy Parker
Through the seasons, Con persisted in her practice of sex magic. The man across the way moved out and Con put up blinds without ever learning of his lustful viewing. Every night she donned her vintage black velvet cape, lit several tall candles, breathed in jasmine incense, chanted melodious incantations and brought herself to exquisite, supernatural climax.
The book kept her busy with exercises meant to sharpen her magical powers: rites and rituals, hexes and elixirs. She even overcame her aversion to naming her sex organ and settled on “Elspeth.”
As an artist she was appalled by the lifeless, sterile drawings in the book, so she transformed them with her pencil crayons and paints, giving a skinny woman wearing a tawdry teddy a little oomph by adding a carmine feather boa and some vivid jewelry.
In her sketchbook she worked on symbols, one for every desire. She created beautiful symbolic renderings of her wishes and prayers with oil pastels. Experimenting with stars and hearts, busting them out of clichés and into sensual territory, she readied them to send up through her chakras and out the top of her head with orgasmic determination.
In time she had to acknowledge that it worked. She’d used the magic of sex to conjure gifts for friends and family. She didn’t tell them, though, realizing that they might not appreciate knowing she’d sent orgasmic messages into the astral network for them. The point was magic of the sexual kind often worked.
She also came to understand that when she placed a large amount of positive energy into something, it stood a very good chance of coming into being. Sexual energy, mental energy, physical energy—the key was to remember that just one kind of energy wasn’t always enough. Sex magic alone wasn’t always enough, just as praying on its own wasn’t always enough. She learned that it is the follow-up that counts, the action you take in the real world.
With this understanding, she’d realized several desires for herself: a grant for her book of illustrations, a dinner ring of pink crystal, a Betsey Johnson dress of cream and violet silk.
As for her most ardent wish, an abundance of lovers was tossed her way. Alphonse was the first she’d had since the construction worker. A shiatsu therapist with an office in a shabby east-end building, he always shouted “Lexus!” when he came. The night he yelled “With leather seats,” Constance knew it was over. Long afterward, she still saw him putting around town in his beat-up Volkswagen. No magic there.
Next she bedded Brian, an accountant who liked to walk around the “sacred bed” in robes and turbans and little bells, which Con felt was fine, so long as it facilitated the magic. But then he named his penis Randall. “Randy for short—although there’s nothing short about Randy, right, baby?” It was true, Randy wasn’t short, but their affair was. Two weeks was all she could handle of “Take Randy in your mouth, baby.”
Then came Connor—she had no idea why she seemed to be working her way through the alphabet with these potentially magical lovers—but the C entry on the list got a big kick out of the resemblance of their names to one another. It inspired in him poetry of the worst kind—doggerel and ditties weaving a panoply of cons: Comic Con and Con Ed, Genghis Khan and The Chronicles of Narnia, and every other con this side of Sing Sing.
After Connor she packed the book and the robes and the gongs away and went back to sex with herself purely for sex’s sake, a reconnection to the big blank space she travelled to when climaxing. No ulterior motives, no symbols, no pet pussy names. A month into that and she found she’d skipped the bulk of the alphabet and gone straight to T.
And this new lover, this delightful musician named Tyler, couldn’t help but think he’d met her somewhere before. It wasn’t until she disrobed in front of him for the first time (or so they thought) that he recognized her: the woman in the window, the gorgelicious lady across the way from his old apartment.
CON
Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.
—Dorothy Parker
I have been called a sparkle diva and a glitter critter and a magpie. The fashion world’s current preoccupation with all things sparkly is only just catching up to me. Bejewelled shoes, rhinestone pins, twinkling earrings—I’ve been wearing them for ages, darling. Glass, rhinestone, crystal, diamond, zircon, ruby, emerald—I’ve donned the faux and the real, the precious and the semi.
But three days ago I was given the most beautiful bit of dazzle for my finger that I have ever seen: an engagement ring of diamonds and a single sapphire. Yes! Tyler asked me to marry him!
So began my search for my inner bride, my search to uncover the true meaning of holy matrimony. It has always made me feel slightly nauseous to read about the latest teenaged celebrity sporting a huge diamond engagement ring that cost as much as a small mansion. And I can’t stand shallow chicks who flash their rocks at the grocery store as if proud to be owned by someone who can afford such a thing. I was pleasantly surprised to find a ring with a difference in that little box. A large, clear, deep-blue gem surrounded by twenty or so little diamonds, all displayed in a classi
c gold setting. It matched my eyes, Tyler said. And it spoke of his unending love for me.
He told me he’d searched long and hard for this ring. Knowing I’m not a traditional sort, he didn’t want to give me a traditional ring. Indeed, long-held customs often ring empty in the smiling face of love. Give me true love, not rote vows; give me fresh sparkle, not dusty old traditions; give me your heavenly self, not your hell-bent ego. Take me to the altar, but take me daily with your passionate, unbridled loving.
You see, a nicely cut but generic diamond in a nicely appointed but generic setting would not do. Not to mention that the price of such a nicely turned-out ring could feed a family of four for years. Hence the regal sapphire and her circle of dazzling friends.
Last night Ty’s band was the entertainment at a party I attended, and I wore that humungous hunk of hot-pink crystal I’d conjured with orgasmic spells. Next to it sat my new engagement ring. Pink dazzle threatened to upstage its blue glow, but the engagement ring far outshone the pink bauble with a glorious purity of refracted light and a depth of radiance that was downright heavenly.
The very giving of this ring was an expression of love. And that’s my idea of marriage: a daily expression of love and faith and trust. If you truly love and trust your partner, then you need no legal binding, no formal vows, no signing of contracts, no flashing of jewelry. Then, and only then, can you hold a ceremony with words (vows) and gestures (kisses) and objects (rings and papers) to share your divine and everlasting love with friends and family, or simply whisper the affirmation to each other.
Part Six
Candy Cock & the Sex Bomb
“‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.’” Wanda regales the girls with the evening’s Parker tidbit and Rose carries the Dot from there.
“Assholes! They loved my Raz Ma Taz monologue but they said I was too old for the part. That’s the end of my life in show business! Too old—at least according to a bunch of producers who look fourteen. I mean, seriously, I’m an actor. I can play any age!”
“Assholes!” Con agrees, flashing her sapphire-and-diamond ring before Rose’s eyes, which are only seeing red at the moment.
With Con ready to pop, the girls have decided to fit in a toast or two before the big day. They have settled into a booth at Prohibition in the city’s east end. Mrs. Parker would approve of the free-flowing alcohol. In the 1920s and 1930s, she bucked prohibition at every opportunity with speakeasy hopping and bathtub gin, no doubt even while pregnant (once, and it ended in miscarriage). But in the twenty-first century, Con is obeying the law of prohibition for pregnant women: not a drop has passed her lips since that test came back positive.
Wanda and Rose, on the other hand, are drinking cava as if the Temperance League were ready to pounce and confiscate. At least they don’t have to drink it out of coffee mugs. On her fourth glass, Rose is holding forth on the state of the entertainment industry.
“That little worm of a playwright, feted and funded, sat behind a table with the other little worms, trying for all his might to look like goddamn Spielberg in a baseball cap. That tiny poseur who doesn’t know the first thing about women . . .”
She has attracted an audience, as the guys at the bar lend an ear to her growing-in-volume voice. “His script was full of hyperbole and nonsense, and his female characters were totally unbelievable. Not the kind of thing for an actor such as myself!”
“You are a brilliant actor.” Con raises her glass of cranberry spritzer, diamond-and-sapphire jewelry nicely showcased against the deep red liquid.
“Sarah Bernhardt was sixty when she played the teenage Joan of Arc!” Rose exclaims. “And Jean Arthur—fifty-three when cast as the young wife in Shane. I could do the same if they’d give me a chance.”
“Of course you could, Rose,” Wanda says supportively. “Picasso said all art is a lie.” She proffers this bit of wisdom like a tipsy sage in poison-blue Comrags.
Con takes a slug of her spritzer. “Picasso lied exquisitely for art’s sake.” Her left hand arabesques gracefully in the air.
“Yes, for art’s sake, not for sex’s sake, Con. So if you’re trying to defend your pretend orgasm again, don’t bother,” Wanda says.
“I wasn’t trying to defend anything, Wanda,” Con replies peevishly, letting her hand drop to the table. “The faked orgasm that you can’t seem to forget might be classified as a white lie, if you have to classify it as a lie at all.”
“A lie is a lie is a lie,” Wanda persists.
“Mrs. Parker, come sit by me,” Con snarls.
“It was an insignificant fabrication, Wanda,” Rose offers, feeling guilty for setting the bitchy tone.
Trying to get the bee out of Wanda’s bonnet and the peeve from Con’s patter, Rose reasons, “If lovemaking is an art—and I’m sure we all agree that it is—and if what Picasso says is true, that all art is a lie concocted to reveal the truth, then the same would apply to lovemaking. What is more truthful than intimacy, that union one achieves through sex?”
“Deception is what it is,” Wanda insists, not deceived by Rose’s philosophical meanderings.
“Play-acting,” Rose counters.
“Play-acting.” Con rolls the word around on her tongue the way she does Tyler. “Ty and I do a lot of that.” She breathes huskily on her deep blue gem, then polishes it on the yellow bouclé skirt that barely covers her huge tummy.
Wanda opens her mouth to object but, as if on cue, “Take this Waltz” plays on the sound system and Wanda remembers Gorgeous Girl and the Pinstripe Suit. At the library bar he’d told her tales of his worldly travels, and at night’s end he’d kissed her so passionately and sweetly that she’d forgotten where she was and even who she was. Wanda? Gorgeous Girl? Jag’s cuckold? Leonard’s muse? Pinstripe Suit’s plaything? She sighs deeply, then raises her flute. “To play-acting.”
The girls bring their glasses together, and it is then that Rose and Wanda finally notice Con’s betrothal bling. Wanda screams and Rose gasps as Con yells, “I’m tying the knot!”
The boys at the bar applaud.
ROSE
Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness.
—Dorothy Parker
Dear Joe,
I’m in a tree and you’re on the ground. We are naked and the opposite of “exquisite dullness”; we will always be at odds with the masters of all that is “impeccably right.” Let us be only impeccably adventurous and playful in our love.
My legs straddle a large branch of deep red bark. I cool my hot self against the smooth, cherry bough and my juices penetrate its hardness. The musky scent of my sex mingles with the freshness of new leaves and sap.
As I reach to grasp a branch above me, my nipples brush against light green leaves. I pull myself up, and my clit gently meets the main trunk. Undulating, I pull myself up farther, all the better to roll my pelvis forward, as if to make love with the tree. My wetness like a balm to its ancient wood, the fragrance of sex juice and resin fill my nostrils.
I am so hot, so close to coming. I look down at you. Your erection looks as smooth and hard as the tree trunk. I could take you right now and fuck you instead of the tree, but it is too exciting to watch you watching me, taking your hardness in your hands and moving your fist up and down the length of your own fabulous cerise bough.
You stare at me with eyes lit with sexual desire, the pure light of lust. I am pulling myself up, moving my wet, hot pussy against the trunk, and I know I’m going to come. You match my heavy breathing. My clit is swollen and hard and as deep pink as cherries in July. I pull myself up and thrust my cunt into the tree once more, leaves tickling and caressing my excited breasts. My tongue wets my lips in desire for you and your enormous cherry-red cock. You move your hand ever faster. I wrap my legs around the trunk and pull my pe
lvis higher, higher one last time. And then I break. Panting, lust-filled, you squirt creamy white cum over the base of the tree. I keep coming, my juices falling down to your lips, your eyes and still you are coming . . .
Your cherry blossom,
Rose
WANDA
And I’ll stay away from Verlaine, too; he was always chasing Rimbauds.
—Dorothy Parker
We wander through the Jardin du Luxembourg, starry-eyed and travel-weary. Paris! I am in Paris with Wyatt, who is no longer wearing his pinstripe suit, just as we are no longer in the library but rather creating our own movable feast.
The magnificence of this city enters me like a lover. Gentle and powerful, it opens my soul to revelations, delights, secrets unveiled: a Delacroix mural peeking through the dim light of an ancient church; pale pink roses hiding near the stone wall of another. There are so many ancient churches that one travel book describes several as being “one of the oldest” in Paris.
After all, the city does date back to 250 BC, when the Parisii built their huts on the Ile de la Cité. The Romans conquered them in 52 BC, and you can still see ruins from that time amid the marvelous structures that have arisen in the intervening centuries.
Surrounded by such superb antiquity, it only makes sense that the old people here possess a keen awareness of their value as senior members of the populace. The Parisian elderly have dignity in their bearing, wisdom in their eyes, elegance in their deportment and scarves around their necks. Ah, the scarves of Paris!