Body Wisdom & Uncompromising Portraits

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  “You’re too old for this running away crap. Like some kind of rebellious seventeen year old hellion with a statement to make. You’re too old for it Kurt, and if you think you’re not, then it’s time you did!” He looked at me with his cold side out, warmth gone, eyes like a tiger peering out of the night, his mind God knows where. Still, I stood my ground. “It’s time you grew up.”

  Faced off eyeball to eyeball, I knew I’d lose the battle, but it was what I saw as plain as day.

  “Growing up? Is that what you think this is about?” he asked. “You know, there might be another way to look at it, Jess. One you haven’t seen. You’re trying to domesticate a free spirit, pin me down to schedules and some moseying meandering lifestyle. I love you, but I don’t love that. If growing up means I have to stay here and fight what runs this place, then I guess I’ll remain a rebellious hellion forever. I’m not writing this in stone, I might be back, my mind does change. But right now, I have to get out of here. I can’t see how I can stay. If that’s not okay with you, then I guess I lose you.”

  I’d used up all my best ammunition, and I didn’t know what else to say. There was a horrible, irrational, failed feeling in me, realizing that he was really leaving, and I could do nothing to bring him back.

  My only recourse left was tears.

  My voice softened naturally, because the feelings were real. “I gave you things last night, Kurt. What I’ve never given any man. I thought we were on the same wave length, that there was some special connection between us; and now this morning you negate every fucking thing, like I’m an easy woman to move in and out of your life. Go ahead and leave, but don’t you dare come back, don’t you dare!”

  He was just going colder, the longer this disaster went on. He shook his head. “If that’s the way it’s got be, I guess that’s it.”

  Kurt swept up his bag in his arm, and left me, while I collapsed on my bed, gasping for air, looking for another useless line to spout at him.

  I’ve never been a violent person. I practice peace, preach it, think about it, meditate on personal tranquillity to the tender tones of harps and bells and oriental chimes. But the instant I got out of bed, I was throwing things. Right and left, shattering plates against the back wall of my dining room, tearing at the silk pillows on my sofa, and then just banging my hand against a wall that wouldn’t give an inch.

  I might have had as big a mess as Kurt’s burned out ruins, if Beth hadn’t happened by as I was trying to shake off the pain in my hand.

  “Good god, Jess, what the hell’s gotten into you?” she said, rushing through the screen door.

  I turned around and stared at her, feeling as cold and empty as the look in Kurt’s eyes.

  “Kurt left.”

  Her normally expressive face looked blank. “For good?”

  I shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know, he fills me with all this crap about wanting a relationship, then something horrible happens, which this “relationship” could help heal, and he runs out. The bastard! I don’t give a shit if he does come back.”

  Then I was really crying. Tears pouring down my face, and Beth’s arms were little comfort, but at least it was better than nothing. “This is the last time I go out on a limb for a hot fucking relationship,” I sobbed.

  “Maybe he just needed some time away?” she said.

  “No, this is a permanent plan. He wanted me to go with him, but he didn’t know where he was going. Just a knee-jerk reaction to all his anger. Take flight, run when things get too hot. I knew it would happen, I just did.”

  She back away, her arms dropping away from me. I watched the look on her face change from sad to contemplative. “You know, Jess, you’ve said this all along.”

  “I guess I have.”

  “A self-fulfilling prophesy?” she suggested.

  I was familiar with that term, but it was certainly not one that I wanted to think about.

  “What do you mean, self-fulfilling prophesy?”

  “You know damn well what I mean. You think he was scared of the relationship? Maybe you were too,” she said. “Maybe you ran him off, closed the door, locked it, and threw away the key, just so you wouldn’t have to deal with what’s going on with you.”

  “I didn’t want him to go,” I insisted.

  “But you also wanted things your way. You didn’t want to make it easy on him, you were hardly willing to bend, and I think it’s because you were scared, really scared. He jerked your chain, Jess. Big time. You’ve never had anyone like him. But the problem is, you can’t control him.”

  I hated everything she was saying.

  “The advice is nice, Beth. But, he’s gone now.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If you two really had that much going, he might come back, or, heaven forbid, you might just go find him.”

  “Sure, I put on my leathers, buy a motorcycle, and take off after him.” I almost laughed, but I was still so upset I didn’t want anything light-hearted to get through.

  “It would do you good if you did,” she said.

  “Listen, I was willing to give, I was bending, I was doing the damnedest job I could. I gave him everything I knew how to give him. And I know that was nothing to throw away. I know that.”

  “But he must have needed something you weren’t giving him, Jess. Otherwise he wouldn’t have left.”

  “Thanks. That’s just what I need to hear.”

  “Maybe you don’t like it, but you’ve kicked me in the pants often enough. Maybe you could use a little reciprocating.”

  I took a deep breath and sighed, wondering if the pain would ever go away. “You know, I always thought that you’d be more suited to Kurt than me.”

  “Me?” She pointed to herself, thinking it was absurd.

  “Yeah. Why’s that so strange?”

  “I don’t know, I never thought about it. Maybe we’re too much alike, Kurt and me. We could be pals, but not lovers. That’s for someone who’s got the chemistry with him, and believe me you’ve got it.”

  “And blew it, so you think.”

  “He might come back,” she said.

  “He won’t,” I said.

  “And if he does?” she asked.

  “It would take a hell of a lot for me to take him back. This hurts, really hurts.” I could feel the hurt as a physical pain, stomach gnashing pain.

  “That’s too bad. Here I thought you’d bagged your match.”

  “Sometimes, Beth, even you’re wrong.”

  Chapter Seven

  I considered Todd’s return a sign everything in my life was pointing away from Kurt Cezant, despite Beth’s suggestion otherwise. Everything was pointing away from Kurt, telling me it was time to move on, not struggle anymore with a man so different from me in so many ways. Everything was pointing away from Kurt, except my heart.

  But that was okay too, my heart would get over it, in time. Though as long as I was changing gears, moving back into the slower pace that Todd defined, I wouldn’t try to commit to anything. It was time to kick back and relax, not put myself under pressure to create a relationship. I was just too raw to tangle with it again.

  It was strictly dating, strictly hands off with Todd for several months. There was no great passion between us, so that was easy. Just as it was easy to enjoy his gentle good humor, and easy laugh and non- threatening concern for me.

  It was all so easy, that by the time Christmas came, I found that finally falling into bed with him pretty easy too. I was ready, he was gentle, and thoughts of Kurt were as far away as they would get for a while.

  And . . . by then, my body was so unused to hands, that Todd’s hands on me were lightening sharp in their ability to arouse me.

  We were on the beach, on a cool evening, though it was hardly cold enough to call seasonal, one of those rare but not unheard of times, when there were warm winds in December, and sitting on the sand while people elsewhere were shoveling snow seemed like we’
d tricked mother nature into something of our own design. As long as the trick went undiscovered, we’d enjoy the capricious winds.

  We were listening to the waves in perpetual motion, with shifting sands and sifting natures, rising and falling on the beach with the soft swishing crashes. Mesmerized by the ritual, it reminded me of the certainty of this place and how fleeting we were against this eternally pounding surf.

  I could be silent like this with Todd. I’d been that way with Kurt too, but not in the same way. Todd was not so restless and intense, though his hands were nonetheless feeling very good as one reached inside my blue parka, beyond the buttoned shirt to the skin beneath.

  It aroused me slowly, a soft crescendo building, one that would take some time to raise the surefired heat between my legs. I counted on it, because I was craving cock so much, with months gone by in a celibate suspension. Certainly it would be a pleasure, if not an inspiration.

  I didn’t want to call it love. Todd didn’t ask for it, even though he was attentive like a puppy sometimes, doing romantic charming things with flowers on my doorstep, love letters and smiles that were sweet like candy. Kurt would do the same things but in offhand ways, with a little less drama and more simplicity, and no expectation of a return in sentiment. They both had strong suits in passion, even if it was of a different form.

  “I’ve missed this,” Todd said, as his hand covered my left breast, and he ran it gently over the happy skin that was asking for more.

  “I agree,” I said, watching as his head move toward mine. His lips found my lips, and we kissed.

  I felt a little like a high school girl at the moment. Considering that Todd was so tentative, even though we’d made love nearly nightly for a year. This was starting all over again, and it was rather charming and altogether erotic.

  I liked not jumping right back in bed with him. I liked it on the beach. I liked our letting weeks of buildup make me ravenous to have him. I wondered if he was as ravenous, or just acting with the reasoned, certain manner that was so much like him.

  His one hand moved to my other breast, and readjusting himself on the sand, we were sitting side by side, though face to face. It was easier for him to fondle me, and easier for me to see the expression in his eyes.

  Pushing me down against the blanket, he was hovering over me, pulling open my parka and then opening the shirt, with its tiny buttons top to bottom. Everything aside, my torso was naked to the night, to his moonlit gaze at me, and to a heart that desperately didn’t want to hurt anymore. I was willing to let him have me again, when I’d once rejected Todd as too conventional to love with any kind of passion. Maybe the sweeping passions of the loins are not as important as the tenderness of the heart.

  I was glad when he descended on my chest, that it startled my cunt awake to have him suck my nipples, one to the other, back and forth, over and over, my body heat soared in well measured increments. Knowing I was raging hot, seeing it in the way my hips moved for him, the way every touch was making me jerk, Todd pulled me to my side, and took me in his arms kissing my lips with an opened mouth.

  With the same steady insistence, my pants were unbuttoned and pushed over my hips and thighs, so my bottom was bare to the warm winds behind me, and my cunt was feeling the breeze tickle it so that I thought I was fucking the elements, not just an attentive man. I watched him strip away his pants, watched his hard dick spring free. It was one of those shafts that was straight as an arrow with its head smaller. Circumcised, it was perpetually unsheathed.

  Drawing me closer to him, I parted my thighs, scissoring them to accommodate his entry, and gasped a little when he shoved himself as deep as he could go.

  Sand doesn’t give, like a bed that bounces back with as much enthusiasm as the enthusiastic cock and cunt. The rigid sand allowed for the quiet, slow moving heat that was climbing, with each move inside me, each touch to my ass and breasts, each soft lick of Todd’s tongue on my neck. I replied, covering his face with one kiss after another, little kisses all around his mouth, and down his chest as far as I could reach.

  In this steady measure we were both on the way to a climax, Todd’s suddenly appearing with one hard sure burst of ejaculation that I felt deep on the inside, and mine, happening as I massaged his cock with my cunt, taking advantage of his remaining enthusiasm, to bring me right to the finish with a soft wave of satisfaction rising and falling in my belly, and then falling away.

  “Ahhhhhhh,” was the purring sound that blended with the purring ocean music. We pulled away from each other, and lay on our backs and stared into the night sky, that for the wind was as clear as a beach sky would be. There was a moon as round and screaming white as my breasts. We watched it rise higher and higher in the December sky.

  “Are you glad I’m back?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” I replied.

  “I want to hear you say it.”

  “Yes, I’m glad you’re back. This was a wonderful tonight.”

  “I’m hoping we’ll get back on track,” he said.

  “That’s a nice thought, Todd. But I told you, I’m rebounding from a big time hurt. I refuse to make any commitment now, even if you’re being the perfect gem.”

  “That’s okay,” he said.

  I was very glad he wasn’t pushing.

  ***

  A week after Todd and I first made love again, I was walking through town on the way to Beth’s house, when I stopped short of Kurt’s burnt out property, where there were signs of activity all over the place, a bulldozer, garbage bins, and some workman I didn’t recognize.

  No Kurt, just activity.

  When he left, there was a threatening lawsuit from the city, and an insurance company that didn’t want to pay. I assumed the change in activity meant those things had been settled. I could feel a little sorry for Kurt again, seeing what had been his dearest love being ripped off the surface of the blackened lot, so that what was left could be turned under. The natural action of nature would repair the scars. Nature seems to have a way of restoring its own earth, when our human efforts to do the same to the human heart are sorely lacking.

  No Kurt. I decided he’d probably sold the place to one of those city fathers he hated so much, Jack Hicox, the one that had been offering him a way out of town just a week after he arrived. I couldn’t quite understand why they couldn’t accept him in Shelter Bay, though Kurt’s brand of off-beat didn’t quite click with the off-beat versions of eccentric these townspeople could accept.

  He’d probably sold the place, I thought, as I resumed my walk.

  I really hoped that Beth would take me home; I wasn’t sure I wanted to walk by the place again.

  That night as I was closing up the library, I was going home to wash my hair and get ready for a date with Todd. Turning around, I jerked back in surprise seeing Kurt on the sidewalk, looking no different than the last time I saw him, when he flew out of my life. He stared at me, and I at him, his eyes looking as remarkable as I remembered them, and that was when the fiercest pounding in my head began, and the ache that I thought had vanished surfaced again.

  “I saw someone working on your property,” I said. Finally finding movement in my feet, I walked briskly down the library steps so we were on the same level.

  “I’m thinking of rebuilding,” he said.

  “Why would you want to do that?” I asked, thinking it was a perfectly logical question.

  “You have a problem with it?” he asked.

  “No, but you don’t want to live here,” I said.

  “No, I don’t. But the property is still mine, there are things I can do with it.”

  “Did you get your insurance and town problems settled?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “So are you back, or just passing through?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?” I asked.

  “On you.”

  “You’re not expecting me to welcome you,” I said.

  “I guess that would be too
much to ask,” he said.

  “At least you understand that much.” It was difficult to be hard hearted with him, but I knew just seeing his eyes staring me down, that I was vulnerable, and could easily go to bed him for all the wrongs reasons. I could do it in a second and not bat an eye, and then regret it because he’d find another reason to be off again.

  “I’ve thought about what you said before I left,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’d like to talk sometime.”

  “What point would that serve?” I asked.

  He snickered. “Oh, we are cold, aren’t we?”

  “It’s the only way to survive dangerous men,” I said.

  “You consider me dangerous?”

  I think he was surprised by my choice of words, though I think he was also pleased.

  “Hazardous to my well-being.”

  “That offensive, huh?”

  “Offensive, no. That was your word.”

  “Just one conversation, Jess?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Now?” he asked.

  “No. I have a date.”

  He didn’t like that, though his expression didn’t give him away. I just knew, knew exactly what he was thinking at that moment, as if we were psychically connected. I wondered if it had always been that way with us, and I’d just not listened to my own intuition about him. If I had, maybe we wouldn’t be having this detestably awkward conversation.

  In any event, I could tell he wanted to move in on me, taking charge, I shuddered, thinking that it wouldn’t happen, even though my body would love it. I’d been guarding myself for months from too many rampant thoughts of him, I could certainly protect myself from further hurt now.

  “Then I guess, I’ll see you around,” he said. He turned to climb on his bike.

  “Yeah, see you around,” I replied. I had trouble not climbing out of my skin with sexual arousal when I saw the way his ponytail swished against his back. The way his leather clad legs and bottom mounted the bike, the way a firm kick of his black boot gunned the engine, the way his gloved hands gripped the handle bars - I remembered where the leather gloved hands had been. I could smell the gas from the bike, the trace of tobacco smoke, hear the creaking leather the way his boot moved in against the machine. I could taste the appetite for him on my lips, a hunger I was sure had gone away. I knew then I was wrong.