A new piece

It's so rare these days that I break away from The Project and just write something off the top of my head, so when this came to me, it felt great. I was out yanking weeds in the garden and the first lines just showed up in my head. I came in, washed my hands, and went right to the computer. Sent it to a bunch of people when I was done. I wanted immediate feedback, which is fairly rare these days.

So here it is ....


When she comes she thinks of sushi, the properties of something melting in a mouth, moving to caress the tongue. When she sucks him off she considers oranges, the round body, the tough exterior, the ripe heart.

She is a schoolteacher, accustomed to smooth flesh and quick movement. Sometimes when she’s formulating her lesson plans he’ll come from behind and drape his arms around her shoulders or slip his hands about her waist. She is slim and alert. Her skin has a purity, an obligatory cleanliness. Sometimes she pauses under his grasp, not quite stiffening but not yet comfortable. Occasionally he’ll notice. Usually he will move closer.

His name is Arthur and he does not mean offense. She met him at a gas-station convenience store, Exxon she thinks, perhaps Chevron. The reason he wears ties in the mornings is because his work involves numbers. She sometimes asks questions over dinner, but when he answers, the information melts and caresses, pleasant but temporary.

In bed they play out their power exchange, switching. She is small and more comfortable on top. From there she can watch his face as it changes, ripens and liquifies and then re-solidifies, a pounding heart beneath her, a clammy brow. His mouth will open before he finishes. His eyebrows will knit. Sometimes she finds this funny. Sometimes she wants to find a sharp object and fling it at him, maybe his head, maybe the body. It is at these times when she leans over to kiss him, and she means it, and his pupils will expand with gratitude.

Left alone she will not waver from hooded sweatshirts, denim, Keds. Arthur prefers her in skirts, tank tops, feminine flowy gear. She is a woman, he says, why not act like it? But she doesn’t want to be that woman she sees around her, in the markets, on the roads, in her classes where the girls become grownups in what seems overnight and then it’s all over from there, the mascara and the mirrors, the magazines, snowflakes designed to melt at a touch. But they don’t. Instead they sit in the front row, bored with a patina of defiance, and when she asks them about Hemingway or even Sweet Valley High, the response is a roll of the eyes.

This isn’t womanhood, she tells him. It’s not my kind of womanhood. My kind of womanhood doesn’t have spikes and claws. It’s not the shameless glare, the full-body, up-and-down look of appraisal in the streets, in the women’s bathroom, in the 7-Eleven or wherever it is we met. It’s different, Arthur, can’t you understand?

When he moves between her legs, ducking, she sees a paintbrush. She wonders about his design, his intent. She sees canvas. She is flat form, an open sketchbook. She is hungry.