Moonlight And Macalania

Here is where I jump into your abyss.
Here is where I splay myself, vulnerable, before you.
Here is where I reach out and steal, with my own nimble fingers, words from the air: “Kilika” and “Beautiful”; “Moonlight” and “Macalania.”
Here is where I abandon all care.
Here is where I release my heart.

Here is where you crush me, naked, beneath your own hot weight, into the wet sand beneath my back.
Here is where you pull my legs toward what they were already seeking: your waist.
Here is where your hand runs seamlessly down my left leg to wrap it around you.
Here is where both of my legs eventually end up: pushing, pulling you into me.

Here is where your childhood begins again.
Here is where your helpless whimpering returns.
Here is where my arms curl around your neck under the light of the moon, and your arms curl beneath my shoulders, pulling me into you, clutching me to you with so much tenacity, so much passion.

Here is where you shudder.

(I feel it along the length of you: in your arms; in your legs; in your groin; rippling throughout your skeleton and your musculature.)

Your quaking subsides.

So much happens between your shuddering and its ceasing.
So many glimpses upward, from between spread legs.
So many glances downward, in thanks and awe, at lips wrapped tightly around flesh.
So many looks toward the heavens, as the moon plays hide-and-seek with the clouds, when it finally graces our visages with its light.
So many opportunities to retreat, to say, “No,” to beg, “No, thank you, no, no, no.”

So many times we returned for more.

Here is my head in the sand, crushed by the pressure of your mouth on mine.
Here is your hand, strong, in the small of my back.
Here are my legs stretched around your body.
Here is your other hand, shamelessly moving up my spine, both hands lifting me up, toward, and onto your goal.
Here are my teeth, grinding as you pierce the penetrable depth of my interior with the unforgiving length, breadth of you.
Here are strands of my wet blond hair, green in the moonlight, dangling onto your cheeks like some underground phosphorescent growths, themselves desperate to remember your flesh, to capture how you feel inside of me.
Here is my mouth: gasping, smiling, laughing, into yours.
Here is your mouth: breathing, wondrous, incredulous, quickly gasping (and quickly willing to forget) into my own.
Here is your hand on my back.
Here is my hand on your jaw.

Both seeking to move something they will never have toward the other.

And here is where it ends…

All Kilika, and Beautiful.

All Moonlight, and Macalania.

All Light, filtered through a single point of a cluster of long-dead embers.

“Light shining from a dead star.”

Filed under: Writing , emotional landscapes, erotica, ghost town

Ceci n’est pas erotica.

[Instant Message Session with Edie 09:28:32 HST:]

Edie: How is your article?
Atherton: I’m not going to finish it today.
Atherton: I feel like just posting my NetFlix ratings for the day.
Atherton: I am so lame.
Atherton: How is yours coming?
Edie: Um not.
Atherton: HAHAHAHAHA!
Atherton: Well at least neither of us is alone! LOL!
Edie: Finish yours.
Edie: You havvvve to!
Atherton: LMFAO!
Atherton: Ugh I am so uninspired right now. It’s muggy and everyone is yapping all around my office.
Atherton: Like in my head right now it’s all: “You braced your fingers in the small of my back and arched me back into the sand, pulling me onto your levels of employment practices liability coverage are not up to the benchmarking data for your industry.”
Edie: OMG I had to read that twice.
Atherton: I know me too!
Edie: The first time it almost made sense!
Atherton: LMFAO!
Edie: LOL!
Edie: You should post that.
Atherton: LOL!
Edie: Avant garde erotica.
Atherton: OMG!
Edie: LOL!
Atherton: I am so going to right now!
Edie: YOU SHOULD OMG!

Filed under: Writing , a-list, alucina, being a gay, erotica, humor, office love, repartee

ThirtyNine

I stumbled into him as I rounded the corner of the too-tall, too-narrow, and too-long stairway.

He instinctually grasped my waist as I recovered, looked into my eyes, smiled crookedly, and said, “And who are you?”

“I am here with the photographer,” I said, only half-lying (I was meeting her there). “So you are…here for the re-opening, as well, yes?”

He looked at me.

Licked his lips.

“Yes,” he said, smiling as if he was in on my own private joke of the evening.

His hand moved slowly down my back. Rested on my ass.

“You write often in fragments,” he said, sipping his gin and tonic from an improper martini glass and smiling at me, chidingly.

“I do it on purpose,” I recountered, wrapping my right arm around his waist, if only to balance myself. “To make the improper seem more…proper.”

He laughed in my face.

Pulled me closer toward him.

“Let’s take a tour of The New Place,” he suggested. “And then…leave?”

I smirked.

“Now who’s talking in fragments and not to mention clichés?” I laughed, wrapping my other arm around his neck.

He giggled.

“Touché,” he smiled, spilling his drink only slightly on the back of my Paul Smith Of London Shirt.

“Star!” I called, mistakenly, to a server from two years ago who was not, in fact, Star, “two more gin and tonics?”

She was gracious enough to accept my mistake.

“I realize that the flight of stairs may impair judgment,” she cudgeled. “My name is Summer. G and Ts? Call?”

“Tanqueray,” I said. “And I am so sorry.”

“No worries!” she chirped happily. “BRB!”

She left to allow Random Asian Boy and I to entertain ourselves.

We did so in a corner of the newly-remodeled space, carefully attending to all of the fabrics, flesh, and nefarious other areas of such dalliances.

“We’re done,” he announced.

“And we’ve been photographed for the website relaunch!” I applauded.

“So we can leave now,” he said, more seriously.

We trekked to his sensible Japanese sedan in a public parking lot in Downtown.

Held hands along the way.

Embraced in his front bucket seats.

Kissed.

We were in the cave-like apartment as was featured in my “Atherton Bartelby Dream.”

It began with me in your bedroom, on the floor, left leg stretched upward, draping over your two legs spread wide open lap. One dog on my chest. Laughing at something you had said.

I embraced the dog. Felt the leg that was draped over your open lap being lifted, by you, to your mouth. Felt your lips on my calf. Heard the sound of your lips meeting my flesh there. Reached up to encircle your nearest knee with my fingers. Squeezed. Laughed. Leaned upward to kiss your knee myself.

I awoke on the floor of my bedroom, seconds later, already crying hysterically into the knuckles of my fists.

And stayed there for several more interminable minutes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hand on Random Asian Boy’s chest, pushing him away.

“What?” he inquired, genuinely perplexed.

“Because,” I said, remembering my dream of the evening before, and like a line ripped straight from an episode of “Sex And The City,” “I just cried in your mouth.”

And I dashed out of his passenger door with no further explanation.

This afternoon Dr. H inquired of me if I still felt anger toward Bartholomew.

I reflected for only a few seconds before returning, “Yes. Actually. I do.”

“Because he still fucks up my Red Carpet Situations.”

“Did you want to hook up with the Random Asian Boy?” Dr. H asked.

I thought about the question for only another few seconds.

“No,” I replied, glancing at his glass chess set.

“I really did not.”

“But,” I hesitated.

“I kind of did.”

“Just so I could be over this.”

“Because it is only The Next One who is able to do so.”

Filed under: Writing , emotional landscapes, epic rage, from the couch, ghost town, red carpet situations

Dances In The Rain

I heard laughter as I opened the large glass door to my office’s reception lobby when returning from delivering a completed project to a client on my office’s seventh floor. One of my twenty-something colleague-friends, Kameko, was laughing with our receptionist and one of our twenty-something temporary employees.

I leaned playfully across the reception podium and announced, “All right. I am experiencing post-traumatic therapy session depression and am in a shitty mood and am in need of a good laugh; what is so hilarious?”

Kameko caught her breath and replied, “I decided this afternoon that I was bored with work so I started giving everyone I see in the office Native American-esque names.”

“What,” I replied, raising an eyebrow and smiling archly.

She explained, gesturing toward the temporary employee, “For example, she is now ‘The Quiet One.’” She then gestured toward the blonde receptionist, “And she is now ‘Hair Like The Sun.’” All three young women laughed.

I shook my head in mock chastisement. “Kameko, you are too silly.”

Then I laughed. “What is mine?”

Kameko laughed along with me. “I haven’t thought of one for you, yet! I only started doing them ten minutes ago! I’ll do yours next, though, but it will take some thought because it has to be a good one.”

“All right,” I smiled, and returned to my office.

Twenty minutes later, she walked past my cubicle, having returned from picking up the afternoon mail from our seventh floor, propped her chin on the top of my cubicle wall, and smiled widely at me.

“‘Dances In The Rain,’” she said, with more than a hint of pride.

I thought a moment. Smiled.

“I like that,” I replied, nodding my head affirmatively. “‘Dances In The Rain,’” I repeated. “That is awes…I mean, that is fabulous!”

Kameko’s smile grew wider as she turned away and, now quite clearly proud of her choice, nearly skipped toward her own office.

Filed under: Uncategorized , a-list, humor, needful reminders, office love, repartee

Endgame.

I stare at the glass chessboard most of all.

It winks at me, often, throughout each early afternoon session with Dr. H, the island sunlight dancing off of the harbor water’s surface, through the windowpanes, and into the clear and frosted glass of the chessboard on Dr. H’s credenza.

(Funny, these toys that my therapists have, on which I become fixated during sessions; Dr. G had his absinthe wave machine, Dr. H his glass chess set, both providing an odd mixture of comfort, strength, and guidance throughout the emotional journey of each session.)

I steal a furtive glance at the glass chessboard at the beginning of every session of “It’s Just Lunch.” It’s like a talisman.

“How are you doing this week, Atherton?” Dr. H opened, crossing his legs, opening my file, uncapping his pen, and smiling his somewhat wry smile.

“I’m fine, actually, thanks, Dr. H, except for the fact that my belief in the theory of Six Degrees of Separation between every gay man on this island was even more firmly cemented last evening when during a cocktail party I was introduced to no less than two other homos who also see you. Jesus Christ is it not enough that I dated the ex-boyfriend of my ex-boyfriend? I have to share my therapist, as well?!”

“I’m awes…I’m fabulous, actually,” I smiled (still attempting to break an acquired habit of a certain New England adjective).

“Tell me,” Dr. H replied, cupping his chin in his hand and leaning back in his chair.

And so I did.

Sessions with Dr. H are more…difficult…than my sessions with Dr. G. The latter would kick my ass in a truly subversive and Freudian way. The former just…listens. Arches his right eyebrow. Smiles crookedly whenever I make a particularly self-deprecating observation. Rephrases the words that I have just uttered in such a way that sends me off onto another tangent.

He makes me work in a way that Dr. G never did; he makes me do my own work, on myself. And I have rather grown to appreciate that. It is more work, to be sure, but it is effort well-invested.

Because it makes me think about myself in a way far removed from the ways in which I have always thought about myself before now.

“And you do not feel…vulnerable?” Dr. H inquired of me, following a protracted recounting of the fabulous week I have had, the fabulous weekend I hope to have, and the tale of reclaiming an online space quickly deemed sullied, dirty, violated, raped, by a long-gone friend who still desires to make her miserable presence known in my new blog. “You are…comfortable…with this…Batshit Crazy Person?”

I laughed.

Because it looked as if he was swallowing a mouthful of arsenic à la Emma Bovary as he pronounced her name.

“I think…” I hesitated. “I think it is important for me to realize that The Little People do not matter. That Tiny People with Tiny Lives should not be allowed to ruffle my regal feathers. And that no one, no one, will make any of my decisions for me, ever again. Of that, I can be certain.”

Dr. H smiled from behind his hand.

“Because if there is one thing the last three months have taught me,” I said, saw a glimpse of refracted light from out the corner of my eye, and looked, once again, at the chessboard, and looked back at Dr. H, “it is that there is nothing that I cannot survive.”

Dr. H smiled wryly. Looked at his closed-circuit television monitor behind me. Closed my file. Filled out my next appointment card.

“Back to ‘It’s Just Lunch’? Next Wednesday?” he inquired, pen raised above parchment card.

“That would be awes…SHIT…That would be fabulous!” I said.

I remembered the glimpse of light through the pieces of Dr. H’s chess set as I made my way quite jauntily down Fort Street Mall under the late afternoon sunlight, and I felt a smile stretch my lips across my face, all in genuine goodness.

Funny. How those who often mean us the most harm…often turn out to be the ones who make us feel the best about ourselves. And those therapists who don’t seem to do any work at all, for $1,000 in one month, often make us do the most work on ourselves.

I remembered the chessboard.

And how often I stare at it.

And I finally realized: the game may be close.

But the time for the razvyaska has not yet come.

Because there are many, many, more things about myself that I need to discover before that one, final, endgame.

Filed under: Writing , a-list, from the couch