Down the Rabbit Hole?

I'm at a milonga here with the usual crowd. It's 10pm or so and warm for that time of night. I'm sitting on the periphery of the dance floor watching the pretty shoes and legs dance by, letting the music pick my thoughts up and swirl them in a daze when a pair of sandals attached to white-pants-wearing legs approach me. I look up to see a man I have never seen before, clothed entirely in white, white pants, white shirt, white bolero and sunglasses. Sunglasses worn inside at 10pm, in low light. He offers his hand, I have no idea who this guy is, I'm thinking maybe he's some kind of tango god, or a lunatic, I don't know, I'm about to find out.

No sooner have I let him lead me into the flow of dancers and this fellow has us careening against the line of dance doing something that is hardly identifiable as tango. I consider pulling him up short and saying "Listen mister, the line of dance is that way, do you even know what you're doing?" but I'm still not sure if he's some deranged tango star or what and I'd rather not risk offending him.

Then, never mind the line of dance, he has me dancing in the center of the circle, (mind you, this is a very small space) he has the widest, loosest, strangest, embrace I've ever encountered and his dancing... a bizarre mix of tango and insanity. Yet the insanity seemed to have a purpose, an intention, just as his embrace is very strange and yet strong, practiced. Dancing with him is like dancing with crazy only, I've danced with crazy plenty of times and I've been able to keep up, this goes way beyond.

I think I'm doing a pretty good job given the circumstance but there are moments when things don't work out so well and I'm not having a good time, a good dance shouldn't require this much energy from the follower to keep it looking pretty and to keep herself off her ass.

The song ends and he says "Thank You" like "You're Rejected" and does not walk me back to my seat. I only wish I were less dumbfounded by the experience and could have gotten in a good, cold "thank you" myself, the kind of 'thank you' that in tango culture one reserves for those they wish to discourage from ever asking them to dance again, but no, and no sooner am I back to my chair when a little old man is asking me to dance to the nice vals that is now playing and I accept, grateful for the opportunity to recover from being shaken about like a thing on a rubber band. I ask my new partner if he knows who the man in white is, he says he's never seen him before. We watch him take another victim. She looks, from her uncertain steps, even more confused dancing with him than I had felt and then when I look again, he's disappeared. Gone. And no idea who he was or what or how he'd come about dancing like that, curiouser and curiouser.

Lust Drunk

Sunday was drunk last night and he was online.
"You need to stop being so cute" he told me, "you kept me up last night with your hotness"
"Oh?" I said "I'm flattered"
"I can feel your skin on my lips now, it's bad."
Oh how I wanted to encourage him on, how I wanted to let my own fantasies pour from my fingers and bring us both to that breathless point of desire, make him come with my words alone. But no.
"Darling, you're incredibly drunk and I believe you have a girlfriend."
"I kno," he wrote, missing a key.
"So as much as I'd love to continue in this vein, I'm going to have to stop talking to you if you keep this up, OK?"

And I carried the conversation away somewhere safe.

But oh, after we'd said good night, how I imagined my hands were his, large and warm, caressing, holding, marking every inch of me, how every brush of the sheets were the whisper of his full lips on my skin and when my orgasm finally came pulsing through me, my pussy like wet satin and yet hard as iron clenching around my fingers it was only Sunday in my head, naked and twined in my long limbs, a steady and solid weight against my heaving.

Today I glow, I preen as I go about my chores basking in the knowledge of how much I can make him want me, I've made him want me oh so much and I've hardly tried yet, I marvel in the feel of my freshly shaven thighs and pussy lips rubbing together sans underwear as I walk, I take moments to stretch languidly, sultrily, enjoying living in this body that is so heavily desired. I am a woman drunk, lost in these erotic dreams, never mind for now what may come of them.

Sunburns and Sunsets

My back is turning brown, purple and mauve, the skin is pealing. I got a sunburn last weekend on my first and maybe only expedition to the beach to sunbathe with friends this summer and it's turned out worse than I had thought. I hope it doesn't leave a blotchy tan as wearing low backed dresses seems to have become a part of my job description with all the dance I've been doing. I just finished rubbing aloe vera into it looking over my shoulder in the bathroom mirror. It's disgustingly fun to peel or roll off the strips of loose and molting skin and the burn is almost pretty, it glows on my skin like a deep sunset, marks my back like a birthmark or battle wound.
Maybe I'm turning into a masochist- I enjoyed the sensations of the burn when it was most tender, the added sensitivity to hot and cold, the raw burn when scratched, the itch of it under the irritation of my bra strap or the hand of a dance partner.
Sunday said sorry when I told him I was burned and I said, no, I was finding it an interesting experience this time around. He asked me to describe and I did and he wrote "... interesting." And then he said he had to go and I wondered if he wasn't just trying to stop the conversation from going some where inappropriately sexual again like it does so easily these days because I seem to have a tendency to say provocative things to him and both of us seem to get turned on very easily. But it's mostly been me lately, I've promised to behave but sometimes I find sex in even the most mundane moments and there’s nothing else in me to say.

In the Wee Hours

Four-something in the morning and I'm suddenly wide awake and anxious, no way am I going back to sleep anytime soon unless I write out whatever it is that bothering me. Immediately my mind clings to Sunday. Sunday, who I fear must think I’m a complete idiot after the email I sent him several days ago in which I'm freaking out about a guy calling me "sweet thing" in the salutation of a request to set up a time for an informal photo shoot. True, the last time I had seen him- this man, who we can call Idol, as that's what I had thought his name was when we first met on a crowded and noisy dance floor at the beginning of this summer- he was quite drunk and I had to keep removing his hand from creeping down my lower back to my ass. He smelled like sweat, not the warm, sometimes horsey, smell of a man who has been dancing all night in a warm suit, but the pungent stink of unwashed armpit. He was wearing a kaki utility kilt and t-shirt, a stark contrast to the formal atmosphere of the dance. He said his thighs were starting to rub together uncomfortably under the kilt from all the dance, presumably because he wasn’t wearing any underwear.

“Sweet thing.” Why? Perhaps he was drunk when he composed the email, he hadn’t seemed one to use pet names. I frequently enjoy pet names, endearments- Sunday peppers his conversations with them, and it’s one of the things that I find so enjoyable about talking to him… though he tends to use endearments that I personally find more appealing “luv,” “darling,” “beautiful,” etc., other pet names make me squirm at the mere thought: “sugar lips,” “honey thighs.” I sincerely hope I can live a lifetime without being addressed as such.

Anyhow, I had been writing Sunday an email when Idol’s appeared in my inbox and I read it. I immediately began to write my immediate, squeamish reaction into that email, which for the last several days, I can only think must have made me seem incredibly immature. And now, awakening with anxiety turning in my breast I'm immediately drawn to write to Sunday again, explaining how silly I now know that I am. I am so embarrassed at how afraid I can be to trust people, to let them in, to not run away like a school girl threatened by cooties. Part of it I'm sure is that in some dimly accessible recess of my brain, I must be, and probably am, so vain that I believe every man I open myself up to is going to fall in love with me and I'm afraid to have to face rejecting them, afraid to hurt their feelings and afraid that I won't be able to, that I won't be able to assert what I need and what I want, that I'll be trapped forever with someone I never wanted to be with. I can be such a spaz about dating, or even the possibility that someone might want to date me, and it embarrasses me to no end.

I feel like I should have grown up and gotten over it all long ago and I imagine Sunday must thinks I’m quite an immature little idiot, though he says he doesn’t. Most of the time it seems like I'm far too ready to assume he thinks the worst of me while his opinion of me seems to remain more or less unwavering, if he is to be believed, that is. I suppose I have trouble trusting him too. I wish I didn't have such a hard time believing him, I wish I didn’t just think he's lying to protect me from hurt feelings, I sincerely wish I were more secure and I could just grow up and deal.

I did go out and take pictures with Idol. I insisted on bringing a friend along because I wasn't sure of his intentions and when I couldn't find a friend to bring, I brought my mom. It turned out to be completely fine. And really fun. As I said, I'm rather vain, I love having my picture taken. And I had fun with him. I felt as though it had probably been rather silly to get so worked up and worried in the first place. I came home utterly exhausted, passed out, unable even to read before falling fast asleep.

Then I woke up in the wee hours to this: worrying what if Idol is going to try to ask me out though I only want to be his friend, worried about what Sunday thinks of me and about how much I've felt like putting my foot in my mouth when talking to him lately- how much I've been impulsively drawn to write to him until he's reminded me that, yes, silly, he thinks he quite understands by now and no, he doesn't think I'm an idiot, no he finds me quite charming and he always enjoys reading what I have to write, don’t worry. And really, he's probably telling the truth. Why shouldn't he? Perhaps because he's something of a Lothario, I fear that the reassurances are just part of his act with women, some set up to make me feel good about myself and having known him no matter what his real opinion.

Simpler Things

I have been wanting, more and more lately, to curl up into a tight little ball and dream the world away. Perhaps it is because I'm on the brink of my period, my lower back is aching its first tell-tale aches of the month. Perhaps it's a new symptom I'm developing in the ever changing kaleidescope of sensitivities and pains that come a little differently each month. I'm reminded of The Red Tent by Anita Diamant- I often wish I could take time out while menstruating to honor what my body seems to want and just sit in a sacred tent bleeding into fresh straw and giggling with the other ladies or somesuch rather than dragging myself through the insanity of everyday life. When did the world become such a busy place and why do I find myself so easily wearied by it? Sometimes I think that, perhaps, I belong somewhere slower and simpler.

Blackberries, the Namesake

Blackberry-Picking
Seamus Heaney

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.
---

We analyzed this poem one early morning in an English literature class my senior year of high school. After letting us stumble over our interpretations for a while, our teacher, who I will call Ms. Olsen, gave us her interpretation:
"It's a poem about burgeoning sexuality," she said. "Innocence lost and the first sexual encounters of youth; at first these encounters are sweet and exciting, but soon the romances of youth falter to an end, rotting in the gluttony of desire, they moulder and go bad and the youth, too inexperienced yet to understand what is happening and why, feels powerless to stop it. "

The class looked squeamish.
"Eww," said a girl, "I'll never be able to think about blackberries the same way again."

I loved it. I loved the messiness of it, the sensation of ripe full blackberries bursting on tongues, thick and dark and sweet that it invoked for me so easily, the heady feeling of childhood summers. I loved the flesh and blood of it, the allusion to human flesh, to human blood, to hymens broken and a pulsing new desire. I loved too the uncertainty, the hopelessness and inevitability of failure in the last stanza. Already I identified with the struggle to reconcile passion with the deterioration of time and the failings of youth.

Over the years, this poem and Ms. Olsen's interpretation have kept coming back to me, and every time I find more to identify with. Though I've looked, I've never found another interpretation quite as inspiring as this one. So when I sat down and thought OK, I'm finally going to start a blog for real now," and I thought about my life and what I write about it was "Blackberry-Picking" that came to mind: the spoils of adolescence, the longing for the endurance of good things, the vitality of summer, sex and sweet, ripe, blackberries bursting in eager mouths. Each post a blackberry, some unripe, some perfect, some crushed, some rotten but all there for the picking. Yes, just right.