Part IV
He never wished for things. He never thought or considered himself deserving or entitled. All too frequently he’d be explained his humility and selflessness, but if you’ve never seen it for yourself the descriptions of it seem basic and assumptive. And it’s much worse if you see it. None of that took form or mattered because he stayed with now and rarely strayed to then, but once in awhile there could be an insatiable was that ground in, dug its heels deeper, and trampled today.
It was absurd. Unbelievable. Unfathomable, even. It will always be there until he is gone and then a senseless memory beyond him, but the difficulty with the past is the way it bleeds now. It stood over him, on his brain, and kicked away thoughts that crossed the line of time. Set up intuition barricades and left him lost in mazes of hope. What a waste of energy hope was. Just to build up expectation for that projection leading to some hedonic slake wetted with spite or obsession or ego. He kept replaying the moments, splitting them into this and that moment, with the repeating scene changing into various imaginations then returning to the hindsight he had no control over but saw so clearly.
He held the tube like a pencil and pressed his thumb into the colorful words until the yellowed jelly formed chaotic piles of opaque snakes covering the identity of his index finger. He looked at the abstraction that was about to lubricate its way inside of him. Leaning over the sink he straightened his legs and reached up with his hips, taking small steps to open himself comfortably. His hand followed the goose-bumped skin to the blood bunch and pressed the still reptile pile onto the opening, bending his finger backwards to avoid any contact with the nail and shivering at the thought of a scratch or snag. He took a breath and relaxed everything from the waist down and pushed the pectin pointer into the cavern.
Part V
Awkward? Yes. Uncomfortable? For a little bit. But the important part was that her excitement for the coming evening continued to grow. In her tenderness she found a bit of appreciation for his apprehension, some grounding in his gratitude, and mostly moisture for his masculinity. He was so rigid. Flexed. Stiff. She kept replaying the words:
Could I bother you to let me have the honor or pleasure of taking you to dinner tomorrow or the next evening you’re free?
Bit wordy, but his nervousness made it cute. Such difficulty in expressing something towards her, it almost made her feel powerful, as if her sensual beauty was the reason for his stumbles. A Dionysian dilemma, and, finally, the moment his ideas of her melted away and she stood there looking back at him: me and you.
Part VI
She stood and looked at him, looked into him through the draped lines of hair, saw his wounds, watched him walk, and held the basket with his relief as if showing off that she had been a few steps quicker. An ignorant cow that considered things in front of but never behind her; inanimate eyes focused on. Chivalry unthanked.
The heels of her boots struck waves his way and he felt them vibrate into his ears then down through. Then down through. He kept his stare on the hole burned into her back: first the purse strap would snap and the jacket and whatever else underneath would quickly catch and finally her shell would melt off of a spiny eraser that could only remember having known foundation.
He placed his hand into the empty box on the shelf and dreamed of a mistake and looked at her shrinking and dreamed and looked and dreamed and looked. She didn’t drop any opportunities to steal relief so he mustered up some kind of irrationality and brought her into his words.
Everything was done not to startle: the touch easing as the loose fibers extended a first resistance, the phlegm cleared for any vowel, a low tone chosen because of the relaxation or, possibly, sexiness. As he ran through his own steps he shadowed hers; her scent elevated him into forgetting. Her hair curled randomly and unlocked itself to rest on either side of her face and the length took his eyes straight from one favorite to another assemblage, no time for the supine.
As she turned, the basket that seemed so distant and away began to open and present the seriously sought pearl, it was so close that all it required was a dual-knee-bend and a quick pardon. He could even fall and make it an embarrassing, calculated mistake. Her turn became harder and the longest curls swung out past her shoulders, just under his chin, where the scented hooks pulled him in once and withdrew twice.
He broke away from the backyard meat market and followed the buttons of her jacket to the ones on her face, feeling an innocence that made all the previously-stepped-dirty-thoughts unrequited and difficult to justify, the code unwilling to amend. The color in her eyes was far from vivid, an attractive plainness, and the separation of her lips welcomed and feared and seduced. As her turn came to completion he started realizing the actual stupidity of the words thought to work and the assembled idiocy those words would try and make seem reasonable, but things in motion don’t ever just stop on their own.
Every attempt to say what he meant was a total failure and the embarrassment of it all led his thoughts into a panicked scramble to avoid humiliation. How many times did he trip over an um or tried to buy time with an ah, only to sound dumb and dumber? She was a perturbation. His course had been planned and understood and almost completed, but the intended design continued unfulfilled. Defeat came as a prolapsed pronouncement.
Although, within that fiery warmth that washed over him as she stared into his insecurities, he glimpsed a moment of alimentary amnesia. He searched for situational sugar that could be placed inside the scratches upon his ego: she may have delayed one relief, but an other was blooming.