woman in the black dress (2015)

 

 

The moment I laid eyes on the woman in the black dress, I knew I wanted to fuck her.

More than just a Friday night pickup kind of fuck, but rather something all encompassing, my whole being shaken by the site of her, hearing her sing like a siren’s song that only drew me towards her – a precarious moth towards a fire I could not help but singe myself on.

Never felt like this about anybody, and perhaps my thoughts of undressing her and having my way with her shocked even my sensibilities.

I could not help thinking how it would feel coming up behind her, letting my tongue taste her neck as my clumsy fingers slowly drew down her dress top as I cupped her breasts in each hand.

The most painful part was how aloof she seemed, a dark-haired exotic angel standing there to perform while every man in the audience stared longingly at her, we all being so insignificant, me, most of all.

The band was  always on tour, taking her to all sorts of exotic places where she had her choice of any man she wanted, a parade of men in every port.

How could a poor fool like me hope to compete.

Worse, how could I even approach her when the band’s tour took her to places too remote for me to catch up with.

I only knew I desperately needed to see her again.

I made a point of getting the band’s schedule, trying not to think too much about the other men who likely trailed behind her, male groupies who got to do everything I ached to do with her.

I bought tickets to every show I could reach, from Manhattan to Cape May, and spent hours driving from one to the next, always struck with the same intense desire, always imagining pushing her down onto a bed in some motel where I could have my way with her.

After several shows, she took notice of me, and even gave me a weak, a little uncomfortable smile.

I could only imagine what thoughts went through her head, what she thought about what I might be thinking, when even she could not have imagined all I wanted to do, to lick her from head to toe, to press against her in a rage of hormones, to get as deep inside her as I could possibly go, to feel her from the inside out.

One of the roadies recognized me, too, from other shows as well, and when I told him I bought tickets for all the local gigs, he gave me a back stage pass

“We can’t have one of our biggest fans left out in the crowd,” he said with a wink, possibly recognizing my symptoms, the intensity of whatever it I had caught by looking her.

And after one show, I even got up enough nerve to actually approach her and tell her how much I admire her.

Unfortunately, I spouted too much so I sounded silly even to myself, and while I didn’t blurt out that I wanted to fuck her brains out, I said just enough to make  it obvious just how I ached to do it with her.

That’s when, she introduced me to her husband, who played with the band. He seemed amused, telling her “Looks like you got yourself another one.”

Meaning my kind came around way too often, and my jealousy made me wonder how many of them she turned away.

Her husband pated me on the shoulder and told me I ought to go home. His wife doesn’t sleep with just anyone, especially not anyone as much a nobody as I am.

Then the  band moved on after that, to a gig, too far remote for me to get there, and it made me miserable.

My brain constantly regurgitated images of love making, of the imagined kiss, the taste when sucking on her nipples, the feel of plunging up between her legs, hearing her moan, feeling her clench when she cummed.

Again, I checked the schedule as to when they will return to the area and buy a ticket for each performance.

Maybe I was a little angry at her husband, which make me want to fuck his wife all the more, maybe even letting him watch while I did it.

Again, when I showed up, the roadie recognized me and again gave me a back stage pass.

He may have been a little bit malevolent, perhaps disliking the husband for some reason, maybe jealous that groupies like me were getting something out of her he could not get for himself.

When I approached her this time, she seemed a little scared, and yet, seemed also to admire my persistence.

After so long a way, I can’t help but blurt it out.

“I want to fuck you so bad I ache just thinking about it,” I told her.

When she laughed, I crumbled into ball inside, asking myself, how I could be so stupid to think that someone like her would even dream of letting someone like me fuck her.

Then she told her husband, who didn’t laugh. He just had the band’s bouncers throw me out, and wared me about coming to any more of the band’s concerts

True to their word, security wouldn’t honor my tickets for the other performance and the band once again moved out of the area.

By pure coincidence, the band was scheduled to play at a private charity event in my home town, where I knew the local cops doing security and they let me into the show.

When her husband saw me, he got furious, but  was helpless to get rid of me without creating a scene at the event.

She saw me, too. But I noticed something odd in her eyes, something curious, as if she admired my audacity and perhaps was a bit curious as to what it might be like to grant my wishes.

And then, again, they were gone, beyond where I could follow

I could not believe how much I ached,  having merely made love to her in my mind, recalling that first smile and later the curious look.

I wondered if her husband knew about the other men she’s had, the irresistible urges she couldn’t resist. Maybe he had her wedding vows, but I’m sure she found satisfaction in the arms of others.

Only none of those others was me.

It took a long time for the band to come back to our area.

But still I bought the tickets, hoping time may have made them forget me. Still when went, I dressed up differently.

She recognized me near the front of the stage; but she didn’t point me out. This time she smiled, a real smile.

Later, she sent to roadie to come get me and bring her to the changing room.

She stared at me in the mirror, her slanted lips giving me a curious smile.

“So you want to fuck me?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said, watching her rise and turn, making no protest when I slowly pealed off that black dress of hers, one slow piece of fabric at a time, kissing her neck, and then her breasts, before I pushed her down onto the cot in the corner, pushing myself in, the bed creaking under us

I’d never made love like that to anyone before, and maybe, just maybe it was as good or better than other men she’s had, just one night, a brief moment in heaven.

That night when I got to have the woman in the black dress.

 

 

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal Jan. 12, 2024

 

Jan.12, 2024

 I missed it the moment it went missing like an old ache I mistake as missing until it is gone, and I ach to have it back, the face I see still in the half remembered dreams I know I’ve dreamt yet can’t get back in focus once I am awake – that face she posted then removed and replaced only not quite the same face, resurrected, more doubtful, even in the depths of her eyes that still drawn me to look into for too long, maybe with a tinge of the old fear she felt way back when I doubted myself, this face, these eyes, those precious lips, stirring up the broth with a slow simmer to an intense boil – again.

 2024 journal menu 

email to Al Sullivan

Girl with the black dress on May 5, 2014

  

Again I get the idea that she is trying to reinvent herself through the arts and in the latest effort her music, through at the same time she appears to have already reverted to her old social agenda

this last may be a panic over the lack of finances perpetual problem

In seeking out possible sites for other essays I stumbled on an old post I had not seen but had been posted at some point prior to her arrival at our paper, and after her leaving the New York City chef

it has filled in yet one more missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle of her life this also answers the disparity as to how she could remain connected to her stalker after she allegedly left his employee

In her Europe essays, she implied that she left him not because he stalked her but because he was an incompetent businessman. the stalking came later apparently when she refused to continue the relationship

she apparently had seen him as her road to success which she had failed to achieve in similar arrangements elsewhere in the state during which she appeared to have trickled up not just to the top of management but also other venues such as local stance studio

but her strange posting during the month that followed her exit from New York suggest it was not voluntary

She said she managed to restaurant and served as Chief mixologist in Hell's kitchen for a while for one of the best chefs around until he was sued for sexual harassment and fled to California after throwing a really bad pastry chef into a garbage can at some other venue

She suggested that the pastry chef actually deserved it

She also made reference to her musical tour which got obnoxious, particularly the severely underpaid part and her ride on this bus with body odor, farts, racist and sexist old men who just eat in Polish food and none of the windows  refused to open

she is still plays out on occasion but on her own terms without pierogies anywhere within 50 mi radius and without a person who hired her smacking her ass and speaking to her nearest male companion without talking directly to her

In a conversation to me about that part of our life she said much the same and how she taught them not to talk the way they did about women around her and someone else I knew that knew the band called them pigs as well

Her posting of her musical material yesterday however suggests she sees music as a viable career again and I also fell over her listening music from last night and talked about being out all night and related themes she also posted photos of all her sites in which she appears in a Black dress she reserves for going out or performing with the backdrop of posh New York City musical venue

I hate to admit it but I really love her in that dress

email to Al Sullivan

When the moon gets in my eyes 2015

  

The moon careens across the night sky

even sometimes during the day

floating for a time over the steeples of the city

we watch from the wrong side of a river

we spend our whole lives living beside

moon who is pale face stirs up her face

 even when I want it otherwise

 a haunting presence ever presence in the sky

in my eyes painful for wanting

what I can never have

waxing and waning

the way she does at times

casting me in her favorable light

 or blinding me with darkness

on those terrible New Moon nights

and still I stare up taking all she has to offer

 

email to Al Sullivan

Dolphins and whales Nov. 28, 2024

 

 

The whales and dolphins appeared off the shore of Asbury Park during after Thanksgiving trip, not in the same place near the pole on the sand where she danced for her mother, down beach, in Ocean Grove, a block away from the Majestic.

And I felt the same way I had back in 2012 when I saw them off the shores of Cape May, but most acutely last year – as if their location so close to places I associated with her, I could not help but feel her spirit lingering in the waves.

After several years of posting old journal entries, such coincidences strike me particularly hard, stirring up old emotions I previously though dead and buried.

This year we did not stay overnight and so did not hear the banging and moaning from the other room at the motel the way I did during the Cape May trip a decade ago, although seeing the fins of the dolphins and my later stroll passed the Majestic brought out the same old ache, and visions of lovemaking I often had about her.

You can’t stroll through the past and not get tainted by it, the old magic spells still lingering in my brain and body, making me react in memory how I did back then nearer to the fiery core.

I could almost still feel the heat of that summer long ago, picturing her in her large sunglasses and short sun dress, standing in the lobby of our office, getting ready for long weekend she would take over that Fourth of July, to this place.

While the temperature this year forced me to bundle up against the chill, the old heat still rubbed me on the inside, the same sense of lose (and intense jealousy), I felt back then.

I thought about the dolphins, whales and my reaction the whole ride home, again struck by the ironies and my reluctance to let it all go, to keep this special thing, perhaps the last spark of what might have been something once, a sunken treasure that rises out of the ways periodically, when I least expect.

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal Dec. 31, 2023

 

Dec. 31, 2024

 

(I have no business posting contemporary poetry journals when I still have a shit load of stuff from 2012 through 2016, but since she has inspired new entries, I’ll post some of those that relate to her, and try to catch up with the old material).

 She must have something better to do than read old poems, a poor man’s banquet spread out on a table for her to devour, one tiny tidbit at a time, filling herself up with feelings long vanquished by time and experience, this parade of images that once meant too much and have lost their charm to the harshness of age, some poems like great wine get better when left for years in the vault, most don’t, and it is difficult to distinguish which is which and wish to simply bury with the emotions from which they were created, though she clearly can’t get enough of what once was, might have been, yet never became.

 

email to Al Sullivan

unreal again Nov. 26, 2024

  

I wanted it to be real

The name that popped up

Out of nowhere on my screen,

A month too early

To be the ghost of Christmas past,

Haunting none the less,

Massively disappointed when

I learned the girl on the other end

Was not her,

All this time later and I’m still

Waiting for that flash in the dark

That moment when it was real,

A moment I assumed since

Would never come

And when it did,

it was not what I thought it was,

the final nail that seals fate

telling me it will never

again be real,

just a perpetual figment

of my imagination,

a bit of undigested meat,

while I drag behind me

the heavy chains of regret,

each link linked to those

things I thought I might

outlive, link after link

clinking with each step I take,

Bob Marly warning me about

Being so selfish

Link after link

Leaving me unable

To think of anyone else

But her.

 

email to Al Sullivan

The shards of ice April 14, 2014

  

The water is still

Too cold to stick

My toes in,

Bits of melting ice

Floating on

The surface

Like dead fish,

A few brown leaves

From last autumn

Mixed in near the shore,

The cove with masts

Of ships sticking up

Like sticks

From where the superstorm

Sank them, and nobody

Expects to revive,

And if I stretch out

Far enough to look back

At the city that rises

From these shores,

I can almost see

The window behind which

She once worked,

All now as vague as fog

The cool water of this river

Creates and through which

I must walk,

A blurred vision

Inside and out,

My life as shattered

As the pieces of

The melting ice,

I am all in pieces inside,

And like Humpty Dumpty

I have no kings army  

Or their horses

To reassemble

What I was,

The shards pricking

My fingers, my heart, my soul,

When I try, unable to

Look up at that window

Where she used to reside

Scared I might see her

And she sees me

 

email to Al Sullivan

The next man Sept. 13, 2012

 

The next man

Is always

The lucky man

Dipping his wick

Into still pure water,

Which each of

The rest of us

Despoils over time

Having ruined

What we saw as

Perfection,

Perhaps our lust

Makes her luster so,

The glint we see

In her eyes,

The soft touch

We anticipate

When we stroke

Her breasts

It is all so new

Before we get

To touch or taste,

Nothing to disappoint us

When we finally do,

Except our own

Sad ambition,

The desire to

Contain the butterfly

We so admire

From afar,

Some things are best

Left to wander fee,

To contain them

Is to ruin them,

A lesson we must learn

She needs what she needs

To be free to

Spread her wings

Without someone

Pinning them down

 

email to Al Sullivan

The girl on the window sill 2015

 

I still look up

Each time I pass

At the open window

where she

No longer sits

Except for the illusion

I create

A ghost of my own making

I would love to see

Again in the flesh

Yet never will,

I come and go

To and from the river

We both shared,

But not together,

Rarely at the same time

Yet chained to it

The river, the window,

Just as she was,

Cigarette dangling

Smoke oozing out

From between her lips

Some ritual of life

I can’t surrender,

Even if the reality

Out of which it sprang,

Ceased long ago,

I still stroll those places

Looking at the invisible imprint

Of her passing

Her pauses,

Even her prayers

I am a man

Stranded on an island

She on an even more

Distant shore,

At whom I cast my wishes

To watch the waves

Wash them all away.

email to Al Sullivan

poetry journal Aug. 15, 2012

 I hide in the open, in broad daylight, a street walker too scared to get caught behind the desk they hire me to sit in, down in the most remote place, while she and the men wrapped around her fingers, try to figure out what to do about me, me, fearing she might actually get to be my boss and fire me, so, I walk in the heat of sun, desperate and scared, counting off my life with each step, if not the 13 steps to the gallows, then enough to hang me with, could she really be a boss and would she fire me if I piss her off again. I walk looking over my shoulder at her fact that his not there, the image of her eyes burned into the back of my brain.

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal July 10, 2012

 

He said I walk with God. But I don't think so, my old professor from college once telling me hell is not fire and brimstone, rather the absence of God in our lives, to spend eternity we may never look on His face again

And this is how I feel now, excluded, isolated, left out of her attentions, knowing that for all the mortal sins I have committed, I have been banished from her life, and I walk, not in the presence of God, walk in the shadow of what might have been, due to my old folly, will never be, hell being what is not and what cannot, and I feel its lac king everyday and night, a ghostly presence in a world in which I do not belong, envying those who by the grace of God still have her favor.

This is what hell is after all.

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal Jan. 14, 2024

 

(This is another contemporary poetry journal entry. I have a few of them over the last couple of months. I figure I’ll get some of these out of the way before I plunge back into 2013 entries, not to mention the remaining entries from those troublesome times during the summer of 2012.)

  

January 1, 2024

 

It is not stardust that gets in our eyes all these years later, but grains of sand, the hour glass, broken, the storm slowly fading away, not yet letting us see a clear view of the past, yet not so blinded as we once were, more a dreamscape of what we once thought as possible, lost in a rage of wind, so we are left with the remnants of the dream, shredded rays still clinging to us after we trudged so far and for so long with the rage of sand set against us, able by luck or fate to have avoided the pitfalls and quicksand we once believes would consume us.

 

 Journal 2024

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal Feb. 20, 2024

 Feb. 20, 2024

 

She must be scared to death or maybe bored to death, having to do this all over again after so long believing she would never have to – the hamster wheel in her head spinning faster and faster or maybe – as Todd Rungrin once put it – the merry-go-round she just can’t get off of or at least not on the ground, spinning round and round, up and down, dizzying to watch even from a distance, painful to endure since she assumed the ride had ended long, long ago.

This is not what she wanted when she bought the ticket; it is what she got stuck with, and must wait out the ride, for when the spinning stops, wherever that goes, and wherever she ends up

email to Al Sullivan

Poetry Journal July 10, 2012

 Would she like me any better if I put on one of those blue shirts domino delivery people wear, and the odd hate, not too different from a baseball cap only with the domino logo on it instead of the logo for the NY Yankees. 

Would she want a thick crust or thin, peperoni sliced up think, maybe even with extra cheese, taking the warm limp carton from me as she and her girlfriends debate what they'd like to give me as a tip, the perfect stranger to cuckold with, as disposable as the box once the contents get used up, the man in the uniform that is not cop or fire fighter, just this scared kid who can't quite figure out what she and her girlfriends are all about, when they invite him in and ask if he would like a little piece for himself. 

email to Al Sullivan

Sail around the world with me

 I originally wrote this after the poet and I went on a trial cruise she was covering. But I was uncomfortable because of the sexual and S&M implications, although i always knew it would be a song. 

Sail around the world with me

 

 

Sail around the world with me

Cast your arms to shield me

Every time I lie at your feet

I feel your warmth flowing over me

 

Lift up your wings and fly with me

Take me to a place only you can see

Every time I hear you whisper at me

I feel the pleasure of your company

 

Sail around the world with me

Drive your love deep inside of me

Every place your fingers touch me

Brings me such wonderous agony

 

You are all that I ever want to see

All I need and all I’ll ever need

Sail around the world inside of me

Tell me that you will always want me

 

email to Al Sullivan

acting strange May 2, 2014

  

The former temporary boss is acting strange again

 the way he sometimes did back when he was involved with our poet

 he told me someone was coming to pick him up and then a short time later, he began to act very coy, secretive

This made me wonder if he was meeting the poet again especially since I thought I saw her buzzing around the office last week

 this propelled me to check her online activities

she was not posting anything new on any site I can access but her music access songs which she listens online has been very suggestive, filled with a number of sexual innuendos such as “Afternoon Love,” and “Early today or late last night,” and “My Greatest Mistake.”

All this may mean nothing and there may be no connection between the two, but she recently said she was doing copy editing on a book, and I know that our former temporary editor asked her to read his manuscript which (an earlier version) was about his love life – detailing a history of some of the women he slept with. A later version seems to have modified this to become a novel with a female character and he asked her to read it to determine if he got the character right.

This may be his way of coming on to her, I don’t know.

Our former temporary boss seems to be one of many former lovers that continue to trail behind her with a vain hope she might turn her attention in their direction again

Our poet’s recent poem about her dream was equally suggestive.

From what he’s told me, she has retained contact with him and one of our office gossips, from which she must have gotten an earful of their bitterness at working at our paper with the exception of boosting our poet’s ego

A former temporary boss offers nothing for her.  Any relationship she intends to engage in the future will require a new place to land, a new venue that will allow her to trickle up once more

Our former temporary boss isn't it; the paper isn't it either

 she isn't going through all this work of reinventing herself to end up back where she started

Even her essays on her disorder suggest she has merely put aside her ambition for a time and not yet resolved the fundamental issue of her need for importance

 the questions are not whether she will find a new group to invade but when and which group and the bitterness of our temporary boss clearly won't be part of these plans no matter how much he aches to get back there where he wants was with her

email to Al Sullivan

Phone connect Nov. 24. 2024

  

The poet's name popped up on my telegram account a few days ago.

 the alert said that her number had just logged in

It startled me to say the least, making me wonder if this was yet another effort to ferret me out all these years later.

though in fact she could not have known I had an account because I had changed numbers more than once since those days when we texted

I had kept her number in my contacts along with that of her brother, her stepmother and others who had bushwhacked me during her birthday exchange in July 2012 but I made a point never to call it

When her name popped up on my screen as a new telegram subscriber I was tempted to delete it but was puzzled by the fact that the photo associated with the account was not of her but rather some Korean woman

I contacted the person just to check

 she confirmed she was not the poet, yet immediately directed me to another account and shortly after this the account with the poet’s number was deleted-- something that also startled me.

It's not that the Korean woman was annoyed by my contact. in fact she continued the conversation at the new link but when I asked her later how long she had had the number associated with the poet she said not long

this led me to assume the poet had given up the number, possibly because she got sick of getting texts from her stalkers or perhaps gave it up in connection with her most recent move north from where she lived

still there are several unanswered questions such as how his Korean woman currently living in Miami got a cell phone with a 201 area code

This leaves me to wonder was the number still the poet’s after all and my contact freaked her out

 the Korean woman continues to text me, seeming to verify that she who is who she is

yet the whole exchange comes off at an odd moment a bit of synchronicity perhaps or perhaps just a coincidence, making me wonder if I am actually talking to the poet after all, even though the Korean woman does not come across the way I remember the poet doing so.

Maybe I’m just being paranoid

email to Al Sullivan

That's the way it goes

 

I wrote this for Peggy, the stripper, after we broke up. I never recorded it before. She never heard it. But I was going to rewrite it to fit the situation with the poet, but decided to leave it as it is, since it also fits that situation anyway. It reflects the same feelings back with Peggy and later with her

email to Al Sullivan