Anonymous
Lingerie
"I love Venus' bosom,
Her little lips, lttle feet especially:
But love's focus--
The goal of my desire...
What is it?...Nothing!..."
Pushkin"A woman in a green Edsel convertible."
"Scarf around her head, tangled in the steering wheel, killed while masturbating, snatch in the air."
"You have to have a sense of humor when it comes to sex," I say.
She smiles and nods in agreement.
"My father was a chef in Jamaica.” she says. "He loved food."
Same as in my family. My father was a glutton.
It's impossible not to stare at her.
*
Peach silk panties. Cool as my hand slips into warm flesh. Slips. Sleeps. Slippers. Sweaty feet in slippers. Snap. Strap stings against her thigh. High hips.My finger slips deeper.
*
I am in her apartment. Touching her things. Looking at her privately. The way I wanted to. Imagined I would. Gloating. Pleased with myself. I can't catch my breath. Can't make small talk. Naked pictures of her on the wall.
*
A picture of a naked woman over the toilet. I'm pissing into a pool of water beneath her round ass. Hourglass back and ass. Feet tucked invisible. Hair, long, thick, black hanging down to her ass, an upside down heart. Upside down, inside myself, looking at a photograph of a woman. I think it's her. Pissing through that image.
*
In her bedroom. Futon in black net suspended from ceiling. Macrame nest for potted lovers. Suspended from something indefinite. Something other. Net. Love chamber. Web.
*
Houseplants on narrow wrought-iron balcony. Plants not grown especially well. Yellow tinged edges of spider plants. Sunburned leaves of corn plant.
She stings me. Somehow. A spider.
Vining plants, green grows in rich humus. Thick, black soil, curly pubic hair. Parted. Potted. Moist.
My fingers in the web. Musty mosquito net. Black mesh. Enormous bundle of flesh drawn up, heaving, in seams of blackness. Enormous flesh heaves against the drunken seam.
I am the drunken man.
*
"You want to get a bite to eat?" she asks, suggesting Mel's.
Soft, greasy fries. Bacon slips through mayonnaise while we talk. I listen to her. She listens to me. I tell her about breaking a spiritual fast with apples and honey.
"Twenty-four hours isn't much of a fast," she says. "Not like a week in protest of something."
I knew the meal would be bad, but I wanted to go where she wanted to go.
Someone told me men go out for dinner with their lovers, stay home and talk to their wives. Is that wrong?
"Sure," I said, "let's go to Mel's."
*
She likes to water houseplants in her nightgown in the morning, before she brushes her teeth, when she's not fully awake. I want to lift her nightgown while she's watering the plants.
Every morning, moving inside the gauze of lingerie. Rose kimono.
"I wouldn't want to be found dead, naked, sticky fingers stiff with rigor mortis," she says, retelling a story of an anesthesiologist friend who examines patients genitals while they are unconscious.
"Say, for example, a really nice looking women comes in. She's on a stretcher. He looks under the sheet, checks her out," she says. "It doesn't do much for me. It's sort of creepy."
*
I'm thinking about how I'm saving it for her. Putting it off. Just thinking about her. I want to make her love me first.
Agitated. She distracts me. I would like to go with her to a vista point overlooking The Golden Gate Bridge. Watch from a distance, the city lights, out of breath, and close to suspension, in the cold night air, feel the height.
She slips her hand into my arm, pulls me next to her. Kisses me.
*
She kisses me. Leans into me. Her strange face against mine. Her fierce piercing eyes. First the smell of her. I get hard. I want her to press against me. Press. Telling myself don't be afraid. All the time telling myself...
*
Fingers in her flesh. The sea and putrefying fish flesh engorges the spider web net. The lump quivers.
*
"I fasted for Yom Kippur," I say.
She laughs, when I tell her it was only for a day. She thought I did what her friend did. He chained himself to a prison door, refused to eat for a week, until the nuclear fleet left San Francisco Bay.
The fleet stayed and he started eating again.
*
She dispassionately nurtures. Busily, bossily, nurtures. In lethargic halfsleep, nearly lethargic in her web.
She has a window in her bedroom. Warm light filters through.
By the window, on the wall, high and out of the way, there's a picture of her. Dark face, thick hair. One naked breast visible enough to fully appreciate.
*
Think about erotic art. I brought up the subject.
Novels and sculptures of geisha, elaborate robes raised over invisible faces. Raped by Samurai. Hindu gods copulating. Mandala's of sexual gluttony.
Her round, chocolate breasts. Muscular breath. Sucking, dripping, overflowing. Pearls of juice spill from webbed caves, hums rich, musty rainforest mountainside. Ecstasy leaps into esctasy.
Walking through a garden.
*
Liquid shell compresed. Easing muscle. Contracting muscle. Throat, lips...
Lumps of contracting flesh. Muscle, membrane...
*
"So you were a model?"
"Yes, do you want to look at my pictures?" she asks, placing her portfolio on my lap.
"Yes," I say, trying to catch my breath. Holding my breath.
I try to laugh make light, defray embarassment of pleasure, studying, awkwardly, her one naked breast.
"I have a hundred negligees, but never wear them," she says. "Men are always giving me negligees. I don't know why. I'd rather sleep naked."
Nipples, face. Her face is her sex. Different positions. Walking. Standing. Looking over her shoulder. Different situations. On a beach. On a sofa.
*
In a restaurant, eating french fries at Mel's.
*
One picture slips from a plastic sleeve. One of her breasts slips from a negligee. She is watching me, looking at naked pictures of her. I slip the picture quickly back into the plastic sleeve, so as not be seen, as if she could read my mind sucking her breasts. Can she see what is on my mind?
She's watching me, watching her, as I turn the pages of her portfolio.
I want to make love to her.
*
Inside the liquid shell, compressed, easing muslce of groin. Stems to bundled fabric, liquid rolled. Oil, lips. Lumps of contracting flesh. Muscle. Dripping membranous grip, clutch, hip, hump.
*
I brought my dog along for protection.
We stopped at my house. I was giving her a ride home. I wanted to talk. She knew this. She'd never been in my house. Maybe she was gloating, secretly, looking at my things, touching my things. Conquest. The way she imagined it might be. But I couldn't know for sure.
I stopped, as we passed my house, to pick up my dog. Take him for a ride. I wanted her to see how I lived. I invited her in.
She looked through the house, quickly, as if intruding. As if she were in a hurry. But maybe she was gloating.
When we got to her house she invited me for coffee.
"I don't drink coffee in the afternoon. Only in the morning," I said, "but yes."
I carried the dog up terra cotta stairs. Lobelia in small clay pots on the stairway up to her second story apartment.
I studied pictures of her on the wall. Her naked breast. Her house plants.
When the dog sniffed around, it gave me a feeling of power. Gloating. Could the dog smell a fragrance of her on the white leather sofa, an animal fragrance, fragrance of peach and humus, blood and chocolate?
She pets the dog. She lowers her face to his. I stop her. That's when he bites. I warn her. He's nervous. I'm afraid he will bite her. He looks at her. Smells her.
*
Sea storm. Beach foam. Sea creatures beached and blossoming.
Chrysanthemum blossom white within her.
In her.
*
I tell her I enjoyed looking at her pictures.
And the one picture she drew of herself. I put it back in the erotic art book she gave me to look at. Fetish within fetish.A pencil sketch, signed Clara '89. Pencil sketch of a woman's torso.
I zip up the portfolio. Absently petting the portfolio on my lap. I handed it to her.
"I can't look anymore," I say, afraid to look in her eyes. The book of pictures bound in black.
"Why?" she says, without smiling.
"It is too much to swallow in one breath. It will take me time," I reply.
*
The scar you hid. And her star. Bending over. Star butt. Slip up your stockings. Pull them up. Strapped to avalanche of milky come.
*
Pink sky. Fall.
Halloween. Masks. Faces behind faces.
I bring her a gourd.
My feet are too cold.
"Do you like Mel's?" I ask, wiping grease from my chin. I scrunch up my nose.
She doesn't reply.
She wants to use me, I think. She wants me to give myself over to fantasies of her. To imagine her entirely. .
We sat there. Saying nothing. We weren't going to make love. The dog was there. She was getting hungry.
"I like to make love and I like to eat. And there's no orgasm without chocolate."
She didn't ask me to make love to her.
"Are you hungry yet?" She takes the black bound portfolio and sets it on the glass and white whicker table.
"I could eat," I reply, casually, at least trying to sound casual.
"Want to go to Mel's now?"
I shrugged, why not? I didn't ask her why she was inviting me over, or if she wanted me as much as I wanted her.
It didn't matter that I wasn't hungry. Though I should have been by then.
A sandwich. Meat between two pieces of toasted white bread. Stuffing my face. Dripping mayonnaise over my chin, onto my shirt.
*
I break my holiday fast with apple and honey. Then Caviar. No onions. No eggs.
Then lobster.
"With butter?" she asks.
"No," I reply.
"Why?"
"Because lobster tastes like butter."
*
I want to unload her lingerie closet. Unload the closet. Fill the flesh cabinet of mail order catolgues with my milky load. Unload. Ivory silk robes. Champagne sashes. Satin slips. Venetian lace. Purple, black, taupe scalloped bras. Blue floral panties. Unload.
We end up at Mel's.
*
She reads my story.
"I can't believe you included Mel's," she says, "It ought to be a story about a woman in a nightgown watering her plants, standing on her balcony, a morning breeze lifts her nightgown. Her perky nipples dark against the thin white gown. And he takes her in the rich humus."
"What about the green Edsel?"
"Do you want to watch me make love to another woman?" she asks.
"Yes, I would." Why did she ask me that?
*
Her closet of lingerie.
Veils. Scarves. Black, blue, lace, cotton, leather corsets. Scarves. Red, black, blue, green, zebra and tiger striped panties. Black garter belts. Blush panties.
*
I roll the car window down slightly, so the dog won't suffocate. We go in.
Mel's, replica of a 50's diner. Chrome counter trim. Jukebox at each table. Burger fat frying. French fry grease popping.
"Sit anywhere you like," says the hostess, pointing to one empty table.
We take the table near a trinity of aging Asian transvetites.
The waitress takes a pencil from a cell in her beehive hairdo. "What can I get you two?"
Fries, and a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.
The waitress scribbles our order and hurries off, wagging her ass.
"Do you think we will ever make love?" I finally ask.
She smiles. Those dark brown eyes.
Am I going too far?
"No, you're married, it's not right," she says.
But I can watch her make love to another woman, watch her undress, slip out of her lingerie into the caress of another woman. Press hard tongues into ocean foam darkness.
"Look at those three strange people in the corner booth," she says, fully dresssed. She nods at the aging transvestites.
"Yes," I reply, not sure I can trust her any longer. What is she doing to me? Trying to make me harder.
"I like to look at people," she says.
"I like to look at you," I say. "Do people take you to dinner just so they can look at you?" I ask.
One transvestite gestures to another.
*
Neon blue scarf knotted fur around your wrists. Bone erupts from giant's wrist. Knotted, tight, behind your back, tied tighter. Knotted. Pulling myself up inside you.
*
"What are you doing tonight," I say, my throat catches. I hold the telephone in my hand, sweating.
She is staying home tonight, watching a horror movie. She doesn't invite me to join her.
We talk on the telephone about erotic art. And this interest I have in erotica. Would she mind if I took notes while we were talking.
"No," I don't mind. "Why don't you use a microphone?"
*
She doesn't laugh much.
She thinks she has a crooked smile and horse teeth. But I don't think so.
Shows me her horse teeth across the dinner table. They look alright, but I'm not a dentist.
*
"I can't believe you included Mel's," she says again.
Am I a prospect? Does she bring all her prospective suitors to Mel's.The waitress acts as if she has seen it all before.
"You know, I'm not a golddigger," she says.
I don't care if she is, as long as she's got other things going. I hate singleminded people.
*
My mouth is dry. Her dark brown eyes say nothing.
I suspect she is amused at her captive.
Looking at her through a mail slot. She's looking back. Only her eyes.
Was lunch at Mel's a way of marking me as a prospect?
My dog marks the bushes.
*
Why am I afraid?
Her body on the shower towels. Her black lace corset on the back of the door.
Is she calling me into her world? Did she win the game?
*
I pause against the desire to rip the corset. Then I rip the corset. Stuffing my imagination of stockings, panties, bows and lace, up her nothingness.
She shows me her closet of lingerie. Cranberry thong bikinis. Eggshell. Cocoa chemise. Spandex thong bikini. Scalloped, embroidered, laced, bras, corsets. Vanilla chemise. Coffee lace. Purple, red, blue garter belts. Prizes from men who have admired her. This is her chamber of horrors. Her gallery of conquest. Her net. Her web.
*
"It's funny how men are when they get near sex," she says, wagging a soggy fry. She measures the distance with her hand. "They get..."
"Crazy," I say, measuring out a very tight space.
"Crazy," she says, almost smiling,
She is beautiful. Jamaican/French/Swiss. High cheekbones. Lips carved from tropical hardwood. Raised in Cleveland.
*
"I don't like to make love without my legs being shaved," she says.
Why did she tell me that?
"Take these stamps and think of me when you lick them and stick them," she says. They are stamps with pictures of seals and whales.
She says she doesn't take her makeup off before she goes to bed with someone.
Sea foam.
I want to take her makeup off and see who she really is.
Blood and chocolate.
"Women are better looking than men, but boring in bed," she says.
She describes the mascara smeared on her pillow.
Her friend says she should be a telephone sex talker. I don't think so. She should go to school.
*
Teeth. Sucking flesh between teeth. She falls into the net. Heartbreak. Knotted. Web. Matrimonial mosquito mosque. Mosquito groans with lost breath. Grunts. Sternum kinked up, she raises herself for me to enter. Massages her thighs, warming herself for entry. I slides my wrist against the moistening bristle, until I enter.
Her sex is not so much in her breath. It's in her face, serious.
Her sheets a mess, smeared with mascara.
*
I pay fourteen dollars for lunch. Give the waitress a two dollar tip.
*
"Why don't you sit in the lobby of one of those bath clubs," she asks. "You could learn a lot."
Sternum against cotton pilllowed futon. Head arched up, reaching for air.
She collects lingerie. Like a straightjacket.
Stiched black lips of lace, stitched with red ribbon.
Bows between mesh.
Sage and bow trimmed shawl on the floor.
Cream panties. Pale pink lace.
Star raised, she tempts me with rejection.
Nothing left. Nothing.
"Have you ever been to one of those clubs?" I ask.
"Lots of times."
*
She tells me a friend of hers said she's a liar. Another threatened to stab her.
"You could watch who goes in and out of the baths. Old men and young girls." She pauses. "I lost my virginity when I was 18 to a 48 year old man. He knew what he was doing. It was some of the best sex I ever had."
*
I lift you. Raise your hips up. Bundle of lingerie tucked up under your belly. Emerald green robes. Pink lace chemise. Hot pink scalloped bras. Black garter belts with red lace bows. Butter silk and satin. Spandex thongs and cotton. Sheer scarves and corsets. Apricot nighties. Scalloped lace bras. Panties. Antique, powder blue. Seafoam. Magenta. Lilac panties. Bed of lingerie bunched up under you. Star raised heavenly toward my curving erection. I tie your ankles with a blue scarf. Your ankles are crossed. I touch the rising star with my curving erection.
*
Over dinner I describe to her what I remember she wore each time we met.
Day one: Black mesh blouse and beige vest. Black slippers. She took them off. I didn't warn her about broken glass.
"You want it both ways," she says.
Twenty dollars for a hot tub.
Day two: A black corset and black crotchless panties.
"I would be happy to pay. I'm learning about myself."
"If you want, I could ask my friend to come along. She's done things I've never done before. Would you like that?
What has she never done?
Sun sets chrome glare on foggy sea, glints of gauze in trees.
*
Weeping flood of humus. Flood from the prison. The enormous flesh.
*
She blushes when she laughs. I'm afraid to touch her. I wouldn't like it if she said no.
She says she's been going to comedy clubs lately.
"I love to laugh," she says, blushing.
*
I came early. The plants look better today. Creeping Charlie. Spider plant. Palm tree. Philodendron.
Pictures of herself. Black gloves on the coffee table. Pictures of Paris.
Calla lily on the mantel. Euphorbia by the open glass door leading out onto the balcony.
Clock says, "6:15."
Fog castrates twin peaks radio towers.
Seagulls cry.
Sweet smells in apartment. Rock & Roll on TV. She's in her bedroom, just out of the bath in terry cloth leopard skin bathrobe.
My throat is dry. I didn't want to do this. I only wanted to...
*
Early. I should have come late. Made her wait. How about coming when I say I am coming.
Lobelia. Petals spilled on terracotta steps.
News: "House Approves Budget Plan." Raise taxes on wealthy. President says he will fight it.
Geraniums in red bloom. Phaelanopsis in white bloom, pink lipped. Bowl of seashells, sea skeletons. 1st Jump Parachute Certificate.
Shakespeare. Plato. Einstein's tongue on the wall.
Relax. White rap music.
She's talking on the phone.
*
Silver satin bra. Chocolate lace.
She sucks my cock between muscular lips. Sucking with teeth holding the flesh slightly, licking the head, nipping, the bending erection.
Then stops.
*
"Cranberry juice. You should drink cranberry juice. Lesbians drink cranberry juice." she tells me, "They don't eat asparagus."
*
"I've been tied up before," she says. "But it didn't do anything for me."
Small, strong body. Her buns not too round, friendly. Long sleeve black lace blouse and white vest. Wide bluckle bucannerlike around high gray jeans, waist band folded over belt. Bellybutton, a warm brown oily mushroom.
Buttons to unbutton.
*
Discovered naked masturbating, snatch in the air.
"A green Edsel convertible."
Mel's. All I could do was roll the top down. She took off her bucanneer buckle. Masturbated while I ate a sandwich and fries.
I look over my glasses, my sandwich, study her.
She is staring back.
"I prefer sleeping naked."
The waitress brings the check. I pay.
She started to get into the wrong car. A green one. I drove a maroon Volvo. She wanted to suprise the dog, who would've been crouching behind the seat. She was playful. But the dog was not there. And she rarely smiles. It was a green car. Not an Edsel. My car was maroon. She didn't remember.
"Volvo, I expected it to have a kiddie seat," she said. "All Volvo's have kiddie seats and their owners have 2.5 children."
I have no children. I have a maroon Volvo. The dog is crouched behind the passenger seat. She gets in the car. I take her home.
"Wait one second," she hurries from the car. "Don't go, I have something for you."
She runs upstairs, then returns with a book.
"Erotic art," she says, handing me the oversized book, "tell me what you think. I'll call you Thursday."
She never called.