Mary

Mary wanted to be a superwoman. Well, we were just children when we knew each other so I guess she wanted to be a supergirl. My friend Mary was a beautiful tomboy…with long dark hair and dark sparkling eyes (their light as often guarded and pensive as it was bright and smiling) and smooth tan skin that paid proud testimony to her Mexican heritage…just one of the guys who didn’t seem to realize that she was well into the process of blossoming into a breathtaking woman.

I, of course, had an unspoken crush on her. Nothing, I convinced myself, would come of it…I was a year younger than her, not to mention shy and chubby, and she…she was a coltish goddess…but I luxuriated in the intoxication of “loving” her with the silent passion of the young would-be poet that I was.

My family…my mother, my brother, and I…and Mary’s family…her mother, her stepfather (though, to be honest, I’m not sure they were actually married), her older sisters, and her little brother…lived in a duplex in South-Central Los Angeles (back then a great neighborhood, we were within walking distance of USC, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, some amazing museums, and a big library.) My family was upstairs, hers was downstairs.

Mary often hung out with us guys…joining us on our “adventures” and actively sharing in our boyish dares. I still vividly remember that day that she took the dare to leap off the roof of the duplex down to the lawn; the roof slanted down and the distance wasn’t that far but it still seemed like a bad idea to me. I shared my misgivings with Mary but she just gave me a jaunty wink and told me not to fret so much.

I remember Mary up on the edge of the roof, hesitating while looking down while the other guys egged her on. And then she jumped and for a painfully long moment time stopped as I watched her plummet to the lawn with gangly grace. Mary hit the ground with a dull thump and then she was still. The guys went still and quiet. I raced to her side as her sister came out of the house to see what was going on. She wasn’t really hurt… she just had the wind knocked out of her. I helped Mary to her feet while her sister screamed at her for doing something so stupid and screamed at us for encouraging her to do it.

Mary, for her part, winked at me and whispered…”told you I could do it”. I just nodded, loving her all the more while, at the same time, wanting to protect her from her impulse to take dares in an effort to be one of the “guys”. Mary’s sister sent her into the house and sent us guys away.

Mary’s family moved out of the duplex and my family moved across town into our own house (a house my mother still lives in all these years later.) Eventually the two families lost touch.

I know, without a doubt, that Mary turned into a beautiful woman. I hope, with all my heart, that Mary found someone who appreciated her…that she had the beautiful babies that, in her rare reflective moments, she admitted to wanting to have and raise and love with all of her expansive heart.

I’m not sure why Mary has come to mind of late…it’s been a long while since I thought of her so vividly…but I hope that she is indeed happy and well and fulfilled wherever life has taken her.

Sleepless

The air was thick and steamy; it clung to Chloe’s naked body like a humid shroud. She hated the heat…she hated the nights so swampy that it was impossible for her to sleep. She even hated, if only idly and without true rancor, the steady drone of Peter’s husky snore. It both amazed and annoyed her that Peter could sleep so easily when she couldn’t sleep at all.

In the languid moonlight, Chloe leaned on one elbow, her breasts glistening in the pale golden glow and her dark hair lying limply behind her, and watched Peter sleeping. Peter was all rough-cut curves and hirsute masculinity from the top of his big head to his soft black beard…from his fireplug neck to his barrel chest…from his hard belly to his casually insolent sex to his thick, sturdy thighs; Chloe adored him still and always…he made her feel tiny and protected and deliriously overwhelmed when he touched her…but she still felt irrationally jealous of his ability to sleep through the sweltering.

She resisted the urge to touch him…to snuggle into that place in his strong embrace that belonged only to her…the heat Peter was radiating was palpable even through the thick air and she didn’t need or want that.

Chloe sighed and sank into her pillow turning away from Peter. Peter stirred and the sound coming from him stopped for a moment…and then he sighed as well, deeply and with satisfaction, and he began to snore again.

Chloe closed her eyes and tried to force herself to quit the hellish waking night for the cooler realms of the dreaming world. It didn’t work. She rolled over and looked at the man again. “How can you sleep when I can’t?’ she asked in a small whisper, a bit accusingly but mostly with admiration and love.

Peter stirred again, his massive arm flopping over in her direction.

Chloe laughed and reached out and touched his hand. She closed her eyes again and, feeling Peter’s steady pulse dancing through her fingerprints, she defied the heat and found her way into the dreaming world at last.

I Thought of You Today

I thought of you today...
and that thought surprised me
in subtle, delightful, bittersweet ways.

I imagine the years have been kind to you…
they could, in my most heartfelt beliefs,
do nothing less.

I imagine that you’re happy…
warmed by seasoned passion…
enveloped in the safe haven of strong, tender arms.

I imagine, somewhat foolishly and wistfully,
that, every once in a blue moon,
you think of me not unkindly,
not without a whisper of a humid smile.

I thought of you today…
and that thought made me smile
happily, ruefully,
oh so tenderly.

150 Words: Letting Go

She bid him to close his eyes; he complied. He trusted her completely.

She touched him, gossamer glances warming his flesh, and the darkness before his eyes morphed, a soft symphony of entrancing color.

“Keep your eyes closed,” she said gently, knowing that his impulse was to open them and look into her own fathomless eyes.

She touched him, fleetingly, and the color took more vivid aspect. He held his breath as every fiber of his being sparked with energy so sweet it was almost painful.

“I want you to listen to me,” she said, her hand lingering on him. “Will you do that?”

He nodded…his eyes closed, his breath held, his being sparking. “What do you want me to do?” he said, somehow finding voice.

She leaned close, her breath soft and intoxicating against his ear, and sighed. “Let go.”

And, falling willingly into a warm abyss, he did.

Making Renee Cry

When I was 11 I made a girl named Renee cry. It was purposeful thing and, briefly, I took smug satisfaction in the deed. The thing was that I liked Renee…a lot…and she didn’t seem to like me…at all.

At 11 I didn’t know quite what to do with what I would come to learn was an often recurring fact of life so I did the only thing I could think to do…I made Renee cry.

I don’t remember exactly what I said…to be honest I’m not sure that the portrait I have of Renee in my memory is accurate (it very probably is not)…but I remember that it worked.

And for a very short while I felt vindicated.

And then I felt worse…I felt like an utter bastard…and I desperately wanted to apologize…but I didn’t know how.

And so, sadly, I never did.

It should go without saying that Renee avoided me like the plague for the rest of the semester (and then she moved away.)

When I was 14 I deliberately snubbed my best friend Bobby. We were having an argument over an argument that Bobby and my brother Guy had engaged in…I had taken my brother’s part and Bobby and I stopped speaking.

The strange thing was that at the time I liked Bobby…who was like a brother to me (the short white R&B loving brother my mother could never have possibly produced)…a lot more than I liked Guy…who was a pain in the ass most of the time…and Guy was in the wrong in his argument with Bobby…and yet I still took my brother’s part. Family is a strange and paradoxical thing sometimes.

Bobby and I found our way back to each other…brothers again until time, distance, and circumstance pulled us apart once and for all…but I don’t remember ever making an explicit apology for my behavior (or, for that matter, wanting or needing an apology for his contributions to our estrangement.)

Over the years I have delivered slights…real and imagined…to people I care about, to people I loved and respected and cherished.

I like to think that I have gotten much better at making apologies when I am in the wrong.

Though, I know all too well, I am as stubborn as ever when it comes to not making apologies if I don’t think I’m in the wrong. There are those…and they know who they are…who think that I am a willful son of a bitch for this.

And maybe they’re right.

Though, in my heart of hearts, I don’t think so :-)

Namaste, y’all.