Sunday, April 7, 2024

Love the one you’re with

 

            I was already half drunk when I saw the woman down the bar from me.

            I had come here engaging in a bit of self torture by hanging out at a place where the girl who had dumped me hung out.

            So I was just one more hanger-on the bar crowd could buzz about in the string of such men trailing behind me ex.

            Then, this other woman appeared, a grand icon stirring up my hormones better than my loneliness did.

            This woman had no more business being in this dive than a Greek goddess did.

            And even less business smiling at a loser like me.

            The room buzzed about it.

            And I was so turned on I provided my stood with a stiff fifth leg

            And still feared I might fall off.

            She had so little on she risked pneumonia

            Yet I was the one with goose bumps.

            Her nipples poked through her silk blouse like well-aimed bullets.

            Other patrons started as us as if we made love on the bar top.

            And the bartender threatened to break a bottle over my head if I didn’t buy her a drink.

            So I did.

            Then, as if pulled along by a string attacked to her crooked forefinger, I stumbled over to sit on the stool beside hers.

            She asked me my name and gave me hers.

            But so lost in the cloud of lust that encircled us, we both forgot them.

            I needed a fog horn just to find my drink.

            I tried not to stare at the swell of her breasts – but I did.

            I pretended not to understand the message she telegraphed – her sharp red nails tapping on the bar top, but I knew what she meant.

            I struggled to keep from drowning in her seductive gaze – but I was lost.

            The bartender told us to take it to a motel, so we went,

            Making love with our moths for the whole cab ride until the motel clerk ushered us into a room where we eased into each other, fulfilling with other parts of our bodies what our mouths had promised.

            No Greek statue seemed so perfect as her body, the curves of her breasts fitting my fingers as if I was creating her.

            And she in turn created me, her mouth moving from my mouth to the very core of my pain, accepting my eruptions with her moans.

            Yet even at that moment of perfect, I ached for something else, my body feeling this woman’s caresses while my closed eyes envisioned the woman I had lost – the woman at whose side I had walked so proudly and had possessed in the way I possessed this woman now.

            And while this woman cured me of the pain my body felt, my soul ached more than ever.

            Hours later, I woke alone – the empty motel room recalling the memory of neither woman, the one I loved nor the one who had pitied me

            And for that briefest of moments in time, I felt no pain.


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