Body Wisdom & Uncompromising Portraits

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  He didn’t look back when he left, just took the bike toward the outskirts of town. Maybe he would be up the coast again by midnight, and I wouldn’t have to think of him.

  ***

  Unfortunately, I wasn’t that lucky.

  Attentive, vigilant, and industrious. Kurt tackled the project of his property with a vengeance. I wondered where he was living, but I spent so much time trying to stay out of his way, I had no idea. I shouldn’t care.

  In the meantime, Todd and I were together often, not daily, not without making plans in advance. But I knew I could count on him to be there whenever I wanted, and he could count on me to say yes to being with him whenever he asked.

  “Do you believe that love is something that just happens,” I asked Todd, “like bells ringing and fireworks. Or is it something that happens over time?”

  Todd and I were sitting on a hollowed out log in the state park on top of the mountain, after a forty-five minute hike. I hoped hiking back would be easier than the trip up.

  “I think it depends on what you want in love,” he replied. “I don’t think that any real love can last without some work, without nurturing and caring. But there’s something to be said for the chemistry, the fireworks.”

  “Which would you trust?” I asked.

  “Well certainly what takes time is likelier to last.”

  “Maybe the fireworks aren’t love at all, just a high degree of lust that looks like love,” I suggested.

  “Fireworks can be fun,” he admitted. “You have any fireworks happening now?” he asked.

  “You’re getting randy? You must have taken some class in sexual inspiration while you were gone.” I was thinking of the more unusual lovemaking over the last couple of weeks, on the beach and other odd places, being nothing like the comforting bed happy sex we’d had during our first relationship.

  “You’re telling me you’re not horny?” he said.

  Obviously he was.

  “And what did you have in mind?” I asked. The top of the mountain would always remind me of my first bike ride with Kurt. Nothing Todd would do would be quite as appalling or as much fun as that day.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said, and he pulled me to my feet, and led me into the trees. In a thick discreet glade where just a little sunshine could make its way between the tall trees, he captured me against an old oak, the sunshine hitting my eyes so I was blinded. Opening my blouse the sun was on my breasts too. The warmth made them tingle, and made the rest of me rush, waiting for Todd to figure out how he was going to screw me right there, standing with my back against that rough tree.

  I found it a stunning contrast to the sand, which was a stunning contrast to a comfortable bed. But then, the tree trunk only added to the sensations he was raising with his hands before he had his cock released and prodding at me, my jeans at half mast, at my ankles actually, so that I couldn’t move well. That didn’t matter to Todd. Somehow he’d arranged all the details so that the penetration was simple, the fornication brisk, and both our climax’s were first rate, mine definitely connected to the erotic rush having the sunshine woo me with its warmth.

  Collapsing to the ground afterwards was its own thrill, as my naked ass was entertaining pine needles right up the crack.

  Todd teased me afterwards, playing with my exposed cunt. “You’re going to get me going again,” I said.

  “And why not?” he asked. He pushed me back, and played with me until I came again, and I was sweating and there were all kinds of forest things sticking to my sticky bottom. I was a mess, but a happy one, especially since this lovemaking was different enough from being with Kurt up on this mountain that I wouldn’t get the two confused.

  “You trying to prove something?” I asked, Todd, when I finally had the words to speak. My spent body had taken all my attention and I was only then getting around to thinking again.

  “Prove something. I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

  “We never had sex like this before,” I said.

  “You don’t like it?” he said.

  “I love it. It’s just not . . . “ I hesitated to say it. “Just not you.”

  He didn’t look pleased with the statement. “I know we broke up before, Jess, because things got stale. I love you too much to let them get that way again.”

  “Love?”

  “I love you, Jess. I want this relationship permanent. I know you’re not ready.” He raised his hand, eyebrows and the inflection in his voice, reminding me that he remembered my reservation. “But I can’t hide what I’m feeling.”

  “You are too sweet to put up with me,” I said.

  “No. I can put up with a lot of things for love. And being away from you, I realized that you have this really quirky side, that likes things a little wild. I want to give you what you need, Jess. Not just what’s comfortable for me.”

  “I appreciate that. You’ll make some girl a hell of a husband, someday.”

  “Don’t joke about that. You know what I want.”

  “I do. And I appreciate you much too much to go making promises that I can’t keep.” I took some time before I continued, though I finally decided that he needed to understand what I was feeling too. “You might as well know that Kurt’s back in town.”

  His eyes darkened. “Is he getting to you?”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “But you think he could?” Todd’s voice was already filled with anxiety, and I wished I’d said nothing to him, but then, he’d know before long anyway.

  “What I’m saying is, if Kurt’s planning to stay, like he says. If he rebuilds the shop, I do have to settle my feelings. I have to get used to the idea of him being here. And right now that’s an adjustment for me. I don’t want him back, trust me. I just need to get used to him traveling in my realm.”

  I didn’t sound very convincing to Todd or to myself, and the worried expression on his face proved that juggling old and new feelings, a past and present relationship might be harder than I expected.

  Chapter Eight

  He was in town, and I knew it. For three weeks I lived with the knowledge, and avidly avoided the center of town, and whatever he was doing with his little piece of property.

  “You drove?” Beth asked, when I arrived at her house for tea one afternoon. “You usually walk.”

  “You want to say it now, or keep grilling me.”

  “Say what?”

  “That I’m avoiding.”

  “Sounds like I don’t have to say it, if you’re already so aware.”

  We walked to the back of her house, to a screen porch looking out on a green lawn that was rimmed all the way around with flowers, her green thumb certainly a darker shade of green than my own. We were drinking some concoction of wild berry tea and juice over ice, that took away the effect of the summer heat.

  “Things are going great with Todd,” I said, sipping my drink and changing the subject. “You wouldn’t believe what a lover he’s become.”

  “Is he?” She’d just taken a bite out of a shortbread cookie she’d made from scratch, and knew was my favorite. I wondered if she was buttering me up for something.

  “The State Park, last week,” I said.

  Her eyes widened.

  “In the woods,” I added.

  “Not the Todd I remember.” She was impressed.

  “He’s probably got a few sex manuals on his bookshelf,” I conceded, knowing Todd would study our sexual problems for a solution.

  “At least he’s willing. There aren’t many men that are,” she said. She was holding back, we both knew it. I wondered how long the little game would last, or if I should just give up and talk about Kurt which was what was really on her mind.

  “He is willing,” I said.

  “But you’re still avoiding,” she said, reminding me of my earlier declaration.

  “I don’t think that’s unnatural, considering what happened between Kurt and me. I’m not committing to Todd and he knows that I’m still
getting over another man.”

  “Makes him a real gem, doesn’t it? Why can’t I have two men like that pursuing me. Maybe you should just have them both, string them both along, Todd for security, and Kurt for thrills?”

  “You think I’m stringing them along?”

  “Well, aren’t you?”

  “And what decision should I make? Two men, neither one is perfectly right for me. And I’ve got to face the fact that I can’t make either one of them over to suit me.”

  “I suppose you have to figure which set of idiosyncrasies and problems, and fights and confrontations you want to live with, Kurt’s or Todd’s? They sure as hell aren’t going away.”

  I laughed. At least she was making me feel better. And I knew that this small sliver of time, while I remained confused, couldn’t possibly last forever. Eventually, I’d make some decision, for Todd or not for Todd; and then I’d go merrily on with my life.

  I thought about decisions. I imagined my life two ways. With Todd it was pretty easy to figure on marriage, which we both would want. With Kurt, I doubted we’d get married, and as much as I tried imaging a permanent life with him, I could never quite grasp the possibilities. It was some fuzzy unreal dream, and all I could ever get a fix on was seeing the two of us taking off on his bike and riding to ends of the earth and back again. Still, the cycle still scared me.

  ***

  Todd and I made dinner together in my house, we watched some TV and then went to bed. We didn’t make love. We’d made love like minks the night before, and being dead tired from work, it was okay just to lie close and drift peacefully off to sleep. That sensuous drifting began to take over my mind, when I heard my doorbell ring, the sound immediately frightening me, since no one ever used the bell, they always knocked.

  Padding to the door, with my robe around me, I thought of the night of Kurt’s fire and shuddered. At eleven o’clock, could it ever be good news? I peered outside beyond the sheer curtain, and was surprised to see Kurt standing on the porch.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, opening the door a crack.

  “You up for taking a little trip, something short? There’s something I need to show you.”

  “Kurt, it’s nearly midnight!”

  “It’s not quite eleven, I can see your clock,” he countered.

  “But I’m ready for bed.”

  “This won’t take a half hour,” he said.

  “I have company.”

  “I don’t care, I half expected that.”

  Todd was standing behind me, having heard the voices and coming to the door for moral support.

  “You have a problem?” he said, with a silly male bravado, as if he was taking charge.

  “I need to handle this myself, Todd,” I said turning around to him. I didn’t need him fighting battles for me, and I didn’t turn back to Kurt until Todd shrugged at me, and went lazily back into the bedroom.

  “You can spare a few minutes,” Kurt insisted.

  I glared at him. “You are one presumptuous bastard, Kurt Cezant, coming here at this hour, and expecting me to go hopping on that bike with you.”

  “I thought you needed the thrill,” he quipped.

  “Go find some other thrill seeker,” I said.

  “You’re not losing your taste for it, Jess. I see your eyes.”

  “How can you be so bold!” I tried one more time. I should have just slammed the door in his face, but for some reason, I didn’t. It had to be the way he was looking at me. There was the most unaffected glimmer in his eyes, along with all the usual things, the soft, seductive, warm things.

  “If you’d been alone, you would have come,” he said. “I guess you’d better guard yourself closely.”

  I stared at him speechless.

  “I’ll catch you another time,” he said, and he turned around and scooted off the porch.

  I was really glad Todd and I weren’t making love that night, because I was certain the whole time, I’d have been thinking of Kurt, his soft bearded face, his long flowing hair, and the energy of blatant, willful, sexual heat that would overshadow anything that Todd could cleverly contrive.

  I expected to see Kurt within a few days, offering me the same excursion. I was smart enough to admit my disappointment when he didn’t land on my doorstep again. And it wasn’t because Todd was there all the time; whether deliberately, or subconsciously, I kept clear of my new boyfriend for a few days. Maybe in the back of my mind, I was thinking it was time I got Kurt out of my heart, or back in my bed.

  Two weeks later, I was in the library, upstairs, shelving books, when I felt a hand on my shoulder.

  “You have the time now? Or is your lover still hovering over you?”

  I whipped around and stared Kurt in the face.

  “So you finally decide to bless me with your presence.”

  “I got the message to back off, so I did,” he said, with his typical smirk.

  “You know, you’re really a scoundrel, a real fuckin’ scoundrel. And no, Kurt, I don’t think being a scoundrel is cute and charming, not anymore.”

  “You’re still angry with me for leaving.”

  “Yeah, I’m still angry about that, and for arriving unannounced on my doorstep in the middle of the night demanding your way back into my life.” My eyes were flashing, and I was feeling very much like I’d like to smack him in the face.

  “Well then,” he said, noting my fury without much concern, but without the previous mockery. “Why don’t you just put down your books, and give Amy the key for an hour. There’s something you need to see.”

  “I shouldn’t go anywhere with you, Kurt. You have too much power to woo me, and I don’t want to be wooed by you.”

  “I know that, Jessie. But you promised me one conversation, give me that much, and I’ll buzz off. I won’t bother you, I promise.”

  I took a deep breath, pursed my lips and knew that if I went with him, I could be walking into a nasty trap that would leave me more hurt that I’d been before. That might just mess up everything good I was enjoying with Todd. But just like a woman still in love, I decided to go with him; all the reasoning, all the carefully thought out logic to stay away from him was not working in the slightest.

  Amy took charge of the library, while I took off with Kurt. I pulled up my skirt, and climbed behind him on his bike. Thank god it was a long skirt that I could tuck in around me, and not a short one that would have been around my waist and left my ass hanging out.

  We sped away from the library, the same dreaded feeling of fear making me apprehensive from the start, and that had nothing to do with everything else that was going on with Kurt, like where he was taking me, and what was I going to do with him once we got there.

  We rode out to the beach, to the highway north for about two miles, and then turned down a dirt road toward the water. The closer we got to the coastline, the more the air smelled of that fragrant sea concoction of salt and dampness. It always made me strangely light-headed, and on the bike the effect was that much more potent. The narrow road we were on led to houses right on the water, just five in a small enclave, each separated by coastal pines and thick undergrowth of heavy grasses and small rolling hills, that made each beach cottage separate from the others. It had been some time since I’d been on this road; though I had been here before, when I wanted to get down to the beach below, where it was permissible to sunbathe nude on the secluded strand to ocean shoreline at the far end of the road, a quarter mile hike past the houses.

  Kurt stopped the bike at the last of the five cottages. It appeared to be his home, by the way there were familiar looking things lining the walkway, behind a privacy fence. Most notably was a small bright red Japanese pagoda in the middle of a sparse though well designed garden of expertly pruned evergreens. It had Kurt stamped all over it for its simplicity and neatness.

  “You’re living here?” I asked.

  He shook his head yes.

  Opening the door, I followed him inside and found myse
lf in one long enormous room that stretched from one end of the cottage to the other, with large windows looking out to the beach, just a hundred yards beyond. Bigger than his cottage in town had been, this had much of the same unique flavor of that place, the same imprint of Kurt everywhere. Stepping inside was like breathing in Kurt, breathing in his muted voiceless feelings, and the fragrance of his body with its earthy smells, and traces of incense he’d burn to drive away anything evil. It was like breathing in a memory of how we joined ourselves at the hips dozens of times in nothing ever cleverly contrived, but in mutual understanding, a meeting of needs we both found unable to live without. There was a lawlessness about his private space that defied usual trappings, a bed nearly in the same space as the kitchen, while there was a whole unused end to the room, where in my mind the bed should have gone.

  In that side of the room, there was just open space and polished hardwood floors, qualities you rarely find in beach houses. I was glad for Kurt that it wasn’t one of those places hanging over the water on stilts, defying the laws of nature to keep it there. No, this was built on a sounder foundation, and it had been here a while, surviving the sometimes ruthless elements, looking as if it had been built in the 1930’s.

  “I’m using this end for Tai Chi,” he explained, when I stared at the emptiness.

  “Not outside?”

  “Not always. I can open these windows and listen to the ocean at night.”

  I turned back to the other side of the room, where there was just the bed, the kitchen, one chair, and nothing more. I remembered that there was nothing left after the fire, and Kurt, minimalist that he was, wasn’t likely to be buying much furniture anyway. It was probably all he needed.

  “This is where you’ve been staying?”

  “I own it.”

  “You sold the town property?”