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How the hell have I come to this? What am I doing here? The opening
of my show, and I'm lurking high on a shadowed stairway looking
down at the bright rectangles on the gallery walls, at my photographs,
my visions, my studies in light and dark. And my whole, bone-shaking
desire is to step back into that sun and shadow, that scintillation
of sky mirrored on rippling water, that light as it strikes so
harshly even the smoothest of stream-worn granite, but flows like
a lingering touch over the angles of your body.
What I'm doing here is watching for you. Without any reason to
think you will come, though you recognized the name of the gallery
when I mentioned so casually that I sometimes show here. Or any
idea of what I will do, if you do come. So much for the wisdom
of age.
Nature is playing tricks on me. Not that I'm complaining; a second
adolescence is a torment I'm in no hurry to escape, and my body
still gets me wherever I want to go. But where does this surge
of raging hungers fit into life's cycle? Where's the archetypal
progression from maiden to mother to crone? I've made it almost
through the first two, not without joys, not without scars, not
without clawing at the boundaries. You'd think some wisdom would
have been gained, in all that time; but not enough to ease me
through this turmoil. Or even through the next few hours. How
will I bear it if you don't come? How will I bear it if you do?
The first time you saw me, you retreated.
I should have been glad. The few days to myself had been hard
enough to pry from a life of too many entanglements. No matter
how graceful the undulation of your line out over the stream,
how elegantly precise the settling of your lure onto the water,
barely creasing the tension of its silvered surface, you were
an intrusion. Good fly fishing form, skilled hands, nice balance,
but?go away, kid. You bother me.
I watched, unseen, as you moved upstream, searching out the deepest
pools among the rocks. No closer, I thought. Go back. Even at
a distance, even before I understood, I was reluctant to let your
serene concentration be rippled by a chance encounter.
My elkhound Raksha tensed on the opposite shore, her gray fur
blending imperceptibly into the rocks and driftwood. A low growl
rumbled in her chest, a prelude to whatever menace might be required
of her. I signaled her with my eyes to be still, since my hands
were occupied with balancing stone on stone, building edifices
to be photographed?some as cover art for a book set on a distant
planet, some as a sequential study of "ephemeral art" showing
the effects over time of wind and water and ice, and some for
my insatiable obsession with aspects of light and dark. I should
have wondered at how quickly she subsided, but I had forgotten,
for the moment, her savage distrust of unknown men.
Then the trout struck. Your lean, intense face transformed with
joy?and I knew. I watched you play the fish, draw it carefully,
inexorably toward you, stoop to deftly grasp and then release
your prize, the lines of your body revealing what the multi-pocketed
fishing vest, the baseball cap over close-cropped hair, had at
first concealed. But I already knew.
The stream swirling past my hips might as well have rammed a log
into my crotch. A hunger raw as pain, irrational as the jerk of
a hammered knee, lurched deep and low inside me. I cursed at my
old-enough-to-know-better self?and in that moment of distraction
my balance wavered.
One stone shifted, then another; I tried to restore the equilibrium
of my construction, but the pebbles in the streambed turned under
my feet. I staggered, and stones from the disintegrating tower
bruised me on their way to the bottom of the river.
You heard the avalanche of rocks and looked up. In a calmer moment
I might have enjoyed your expression as your gaze traveled over
the surreal array of stone circles and pillars, the camera and
tripod on the shore, and Raksha observing you with a lupine grin.
By the time you saw me I was pulling myself up onto a wide, sun-warmed
boulder, and then wishing I hadn't, realizing how mercilessly
revealing my soaked t-shirt had become, how inadequate my denim
cutoffs had always been. Damn it, how far into the wilds did I
have to go to be spared seeing myself through someone else's eyes?
Expressions shifted across your dark-browed face like the drifting
shadows of clouds on the mountainsides. I knew you were cursing
the shattering of solitude, and considering what, if anything,
of yourself to reveal. I saved you the trouble of deciding.
"Raksha, stay!" I commanded, turning toward the shore, knowing
that she had no intention of doing otherwise. I stepped from rock
to rock until I stood beside her. Then, one hand on her shaggy
neck, I faced you again, smiled, and nodded in a casual acknowledgment
of shared humanity.
Your answering smile was brief, startled, and lit with a sweetness
you would have cursed yourself for showing. You could pass, in
the right circumstances, but never with that smile. Then you turned
away. I watched you retreat downstream, leaping from boulder to
boulder with a long-legged, impetuous sureness that sent a frisson
of delight through my skin.
So I've done it, I thought, gone completely round the bend. Fantasies,
delusions...and delusions of what? I wasn't even sure which I
wanted more, to fuck you or, in spite of the scars the world could
be counted on to inflict, to be you. Not that it mattered. My
chances of one were about the same as of the other.
But then, in the morning, you came back.
Extension of my dreams or not, I went with it. Those dreams had
left me sweaty, slippery, tangled in my sleeping bag, and utterly
without relief. Raksha sniffed at my crotch with interest. I pushed
her nose away and headed for the river.
Mist rose from the water into the early coolness of the July morning.
I eased into the deep cascade-fed pool between the largest boulders.
The current here had often swept away tension, pain, everything
extraneous to pure being; but I didn't even want it to cool this
fever. Some aches are to be savored.
Raksha stood above me on the bank, testing the breeze. I knew
by her focused stillness when she caught a human scent. There,
across the river, half-hidden by hemlock branches, you stood,
watching her wolfish form, and watching me balancing breast-deep.
This time I wore nothing but my river sandals. Fantasy, delusion,
whatever; I chose to pretend that you cared. "Good morning!" I
called across the rush of the water. "It's all right, I won't
turn you into a stag."
You grinned, not startled this time, and came down in easy strides
to the riverbank. "You sure? Might be too late. Kinda feels like
you already have, antlers and all. But I would've taken you for
Venus, not Diana."
"Venus?" I said. "That manipulative bitch?" If this were delusion,
I'd make the most of it. Your deliberate drawl and uptake on the
Actaeon myth made my skin tingle; your voice, low and with just
a hint of huskiness, would have done the trick all by itself.
"Nothin' wrong with a little manipulation," you said.
Damn, why hadn't it occurred to me before that this could be fun?
Whatever else it turned out to be. It was a gift you offered,
your willingness to play the game, to take the risk of sharing
this self with me.
"Could be," I said. "Depends on the hands." I turned and waded
to the shore. Slowly and deliberately I stepped up onto the flat
rock where I'd dropped my towel and stood there drying myself,
concealing nothing, regretting nothing. What you see is what you
get. On the off chance that you might care.
You didn't try to hide your frank gaze, but there was a trace
of wariness in your stance. It made sense to be unsure, yet, how
much I understood, how much I intended, how crazy, after all,
I might be, building towers and arches of river rocks in the wilderness.
Just as it made sense for me to wonder whether my eccentricity
was all that drew you.
"Come on across," I said casually. "I'll make some coffee." Without
watching to see whether you were coming I stepped onto the bank
and headed toward my lean-to shelter. My shorts and t-shirt still
hung damply on a branch, so I pulled on jeans and the old flannel
shirt that doubles as a pillow. I didn't button the shirt, just
tied it up under my breasts for a little support; it's been twenty
years since I could comfortably go braless. Not that fullness
of flesh doesn't have ample compensations.
By the time I had the fire going under the kettle you found the
upstream ford where, at this time of year, legs as long as yours
could negotiate a crossing on rocks. When Raksha went to meet
you, you took her inspection serenely in stride. I had to struggle
a bit myself for any semblance of serenity. Something in the way
you moved, with the sureness and grace and wariness of, yes, a
stag, made me shiver in places the cool breeze couldn't touch.
I saw, with relief, that you weren't quite as young as I had thought
at first. Old enough to know what you were doing; but damn, still
so young! What the hell did I think I was doing?
"Invisible antlers or not," I said, when you were close enough,
"you don't seem in any danger from my hound. Raksha seldom shows
her fangs to women." Just so you'd know, in case you still wondered,
that I knew. "Raksha is, in fact, a slut," I added, as she rolled
on her back and wriggled for a belly-rub. "Not that I don't understand
exactly how she feels."
"Always happy to oblige a lady." You bent and gave Raksha, at
least, what she wanted. To me you gave a sidelong glance of amusement.
Fevered dreams notwithstanding, I wasn't about to roll over and
beg. Not yet. "I'll have to bear that in mind." I turned my attention
to the coffee, giving you my only cup and sipping mine from a
bowl. A little pacing, I decided, might be in order, a little
rational conversation beyond repartee and innuendo. Mae West,
for all her subversive virtues, was never my style. If I ever
had one. Still.... "I see you didn't bring your rod," I said,
and then, as you managed not to splutter more than a trickle of
hot coffee, added blandly, "I could show you where the biggest
trout hang out. Rainbows, brookies, a few salmon, now that they've
been reintroduced, but those are mostly fingerlings." I untied
my shirt and raised a corner to wipe the coffee from your chin.
The direction of your gaze let me know that stone towers weren't
all you had come to see. Then I tied the shirt again. "Come on,
if you're interested." I turned and moved downslope toward the
river.
We sat on the highest rock and talked of fish for a while, and
rivers, and the pair of hawks wheeling high in the warming sky.
Nothing personal, nothing to distract from the place, the moment.
Just acknowledgment that this place, this moment, was a bond.
We had come, separately, to the river, the mountains, for the
rich scent of spruce and balsam, the flow of water over stone
and wind over forested slopes. These needs we had in common.
Not that the other needs receded. I wanted to lay my hand on your
thigh, take your hand and press it between my own thighs to show
you how every inflection of your voice, every tilt of your chin
above your strong, smooth throat, every shift of expression letting
beauty flash across the angular strength of your face, made the
denim crotch of my jeans get wetter and wetter. It seemed impossible
that you couldn't sense, and scent, my arousal; it seemed, now
that you were more than a personification of my fantasies, just
as impossible that you could share them.
You grew quieter, leaning back on one elbow and watching me, dark,
narrowed eyes glittering under heavy lids, body a blend of stillness
and tension. I wished I could catch it on film. But not now, not
while my pulse accelerated and the compulsion grew to either touch
you or take to the river.
Then, just as I tensed to move, you said, "So, you gonna make
up your mind which goddess to be, or do I jump down there into
what passes for a cold shower?"
"I don't think the Romans had a name for this one." I lay my hand
over yours where it rested on your thigh. A tremor rippled almost
imperceptibly through the muscle there; or did I imagine it? Your
watchful expression didn't change. "I knew what I wanted," I said,
"when I saw you flycasting. Such good hands."
I lifted your hand and turned it over. You didn't resist, just
gazed at it as though it were some found object of only casual
interest. "Think so? Too big, some say."
"Not for me." I fumbled to untie the knot in my shirt, leaned
toward you, and raised your hand to my breast. "I think I can
fill them," I said, as your fingers curved to cradle the fullness.
You sat up, and filled your other hand too. "Not too bad a fit,"
you agreed, pressing just hard enough to make me feel the weight,
the heaviness increasing until it tugged at me all the way down
to my cunt.
"Might be as good a fit...in other areas...." Talking was getting
difficult. Hell, breathing was getting difficult. I pulled away
with an effort. "Might be somewhere more comfortable than on a
rock to find out." I stood and began edging down the sloping crease
in the boulder's side. Raksha waited below, whining softly as
I descended from a place her claws couldn't handle.
In a single motion you uncoiled and leapt six feet down the sheerest
rock face, your landing spraying damp gravel into the river. You
pulled me from my foothold and swung me around to face the water,
gripping me tightly from behind. "Comfort," you growled into my
ear, "is highly over-rated."
Raksha began to pace nervously, until she caught my mood, and
scent, and understood. I pressed back, rubbing against your crotch.
"Mmm...but a light touch can work wonders..." and you read my
mind, or my body, and ran those strong, deft hands up over my
breasts until you were stroking me so delicately, teasingly, that
you forced me to strain toward your touch. Even when my swollen
nipples jutted out like thumbtips, even when my breath came so
fast and shrill that it drowned out the rushing water, you didn't
relent, but kept luring me closer and closer to a peak that could
never quite be reached.
"All you gotta do is ask," you murmured against my neck, and then,
"Wonders is right! How much bigger can they get?" And you kept
up the torture, and I couldn't stand to make you stop, until finally
I couldn't stand not to.
I squirmed around to face you, and rubbed gratefully against the
thigh you thrust between my legs as you pushed me back against
the rock. "Come on, damnit, suck me, bite me, now!" I said, and
pulled your head to where I had to have it; and, after a few teasing
licks, you did. Hard. When you shifted from one breast to the
other I could see, as I already felt, how the pressure of your
hot mouth had forced my nipples to even more extreme engorgement.
By now my clit was at least as engorged, and pounding as I rode
your thigh. I let go of your head and fumbled at your belt. You
pushed my hands aside, in classic mode; an old-fashioned girl.
I let it go. For now. You spread open my jeans and pushed them
down, and I kicked them loose as you worked your mouth down across
my belly and your hands gripped my substantial ass. Then you were
kneeling, but, as I arched my hips forward, you leaned back and
grinned up at me.
"So, Goddess, what next?" Your voice was husky and not entirely
steady, but the challenge was clear. You were prepared to tease
me for longer than I could hold out.
"Shut up and use your mouth for something better!" Which you did,
with skill and a rhythm perfectly matched to my compulsive thrusts.
My clit spasmed against your tongue and teeth, and hardened again
before the exquisite pangs could quite subside. The throbbing
demand of my cunt shook me so hard I would have fallen without
the rock at my back. I needed more than the flickering fire of
your mouth. "Now," I said, "now!" and tugged at your arm, but
you raised your head, just the hint of a smile on lips slick with
my juices, and said, reflectively, "So that's how a Goddess tastes!"
I yanked at your arm again. "You'll find out how a Goddess curses
if you don't...don't..." but you had half-relented, and brought
one hand around to stroke and probe gently into my aching crotch,
and it was all I could do to breathe.
"Don't what?" you said. "Just tell me what you want."
Beg, you meant; and why not? It was little enough to give you.
"I want," I said between ragged gasps, "to hold your hand. All
of it. Please. Right now. Please."
So you let me feel one long finger, and two, and three, too gently,
too gradually, not just to tease but to be sure I knew how much
I could take.
I knew. "More," I begged, demanded. "More, all of it, harder!"
My slippery depths clenched around the maddening pressure, tried
to gulp it farther and farther in, and then you were past the
narrow point and filling me the way I desperately needed to be
filled.
Your eyes were closed, your mouth firm but unmoving against my
clit. All your focus, all your movement, was inside me, your curved
hand probing, thrusting, working my need, pushing my ache to waves
of intensity surpassing even orgasm.... Until orgasm struck, and
nothing else had ever came close. I scarcely heard Raksha's howl
above my own raw screams.
Gently, you withdrew, soaked with the flow of my coming. Gently
you stood and wrapped your strong arms around me and supported
me, until, not quite so gently, I nudged my knee between your
thighs. "Please, I need this, too," I whispered as you stiffened,
and you let me rub against you until there was no telling who
rode whom. I worked your t-shirt up until I could press my full
breasts against you just under your own high, tight peaks, and
you buried your face in my shoulder and let my flesh muffle your
shuddering release.
Raksha's cold nose on my thigh made me jump. We eased apart, and
she sniffed at us, and I laughed and moved down into the stream.
"Come on," I said, not looking back, giving you time to regroup,
"Let's clean up before she decides to do it for us."
Not that I wanted to wash away your touch, my response, even the
sweet soreness. But what I did want, I got. You pulled off your
clothes and joined me in the water, and somehow I managed not
to stare too overtly at the beauty of your lithe, naked body.
Later, I thought, I'll make you truly howl. Later.
We stayed in the river until the sun was high and hot enough to
threaten sunburn. You asked about my stone edifices, and I gave
you the grand tour, describing the uses and goals of my photographs.
"Light and dark," you echoed musingly. "Good and evil? Either-or?
Is that what you're hung up on?" You fingered a smooth, flat pebble
with distinct striations of quartz and basalt.
"More like yin and yang, solid and space, stasis and flow, each
defined by the other. It isn't opposites I find compelling, but
their convergence." Strange, to be standing naked in a mountain
stream trying to verbalize the unexplainable. "I keep trying to
catch something on film that exists only in my mind, a sort of
stark, transcendent beauty that flashes at the point where opposites
meet."
"Sounds like a matter/antimatter reaction," you said, and sent
your pebble skipping across the pool. Then you began to assemble
a construction of your own from the stones I had knocked down
yesterday, and I pretended to do a little of this and a little
of that, while all I could really think about was the graceful
strength of your body and the residual throbbing of mine, and
how I might force your own matter/antimatter to the exploding
point.
Later you moved your gear to my campsite, and we shared provisions,
and when the late-afternoon light was right I shot roll after
roll of film before the shadows got too long for the balance I
wanted. I even took a few of you, just for myself, I said, but
you'd only let me do it from the back. "That's fine," I assured
you, "You're just as magnificent going as coming." You looked
so startled that I wondered how blind the younger girls could
be these days, to take what you so skillfully give but never tell
you how beautiful you are.
You fished for our supper, and we watched the sunset clouds glow
bright salmon and slowly fade to steel, while the cascading song
of a wood-thrush rippled hauntingly from the darkening forest.
Then, by the firelight, we lay together on combined sleeping bags,
and I challenged you.
"No hands where you don't want them," I said, "no tongue, just
lie back and let me try to make you howl." Your slight frown turned
to laughter when I leaned over you and pulled your hands to my
breasts and added, "C'mon, how can you turn down a tit-fuck? How
often do you get an offer like that? The harder you can make me,
the better this will work."
Your answer was to cooperate with such skill and zest I could
barely subdue my own aching need for more. It was worth it, though,
when I knelt between your thighs, my breasts steadied in my hands,
and teased your sweet ache with thrusting nipples until you writhed
and dug your fingers into my shoulders. If you didn't truly howl
until after you flipped me and ground your crotch against my hipbone,
you came close enough. And then, while you still struggled for
breath, I drew your head to my breast and slid my nipple, still
slippery with your juices, into your mouth. "That," I said, "is
how a Goddess tastes."
I hear your voice before I see you, and the petulant reply of
your companion. I struggle to be glad you aren't alone. I watch
you move slowly through the gallery, studying the pictures, while
she fidgets with her hair. Then you stop before the central work,
the one that makes everyone stop. Your body takes on that blend
of stillness and tension I remember so well; and this time you
see it, too, in the photograph before you. You lie there on a
wide, flat rock in midstream, leaning on one elbow, looking down
into the rushing water. Sunlight slants across your naked, smoothly
muscled back and buttocks, your long, lithe legs, but your head
is in the shadow of a higher boulder and your face is turned away.
The arm you lean on hides all but a mere, subliminal trace of
your curving breast.
Your companion pauses, says, "Ooh, sexy!" and moves on. She doesn't
recognize you. No one could recognize you unless she truly knew
you, truly saw you.... You should be with someone who will always
know you, always feel her heart jump and her breath catch at the
sight of you, at your least movement, at your stillness, all through
a long, long life. It can't be me, but it won't be her, either.
You lean forward to read the caption, then turn and scan the gallery.
I have retreated up around the curve of the spiral stairway, but
you come unerringly toward me, and your movements as you climb
quickly and easily up the stairs make something lurch deep inside
me.
I look into your face, watching for anger, half-wanting to see
you angry, at least once?your anger could be as breathtaking as
your joy?but never hurt. Though your expression is casual, detached,
your dark eyes are intense. "Nice bunch of stones," you say, gesturing
below.
"I'll take it down," I say, "if you want me to. You could sue
me for not asking your permission, but I didn't know how to reach
you." I had deliberately refused to let you tell me how to reach
you, for fear that I might descend into stalking. You, sensing
that my life is not elegantly simple enough to be all my own,
had let it go at that.
"You might as well leave it up," you say. "Just another pile of
stones."
"No! That's not how I think of you!" My throat is so tight I can
scarcely breath.
You tilt your head slightly, considering. "Where did you get that
title? 'All that's best of dark and bright.'" You glance down
briefly toward the photograph. "Sounds familiar. From a poem,
isn't it?"
"Byron," I say. "'She walks in beauty, as the night/ Of cloudless
climes and starry skies,/And all that's best of dark and bright/
Meets in her aspect and her eyes.'" I manage a slight smile. "On
top of everything else, you've turned me maudlin."
You give me that sudden, blindingly beautiful smile, and relax,
and lean your shoulder against the curving wall. "So, will you
be going back to get more pictures of those 'ephemeral' towers?"
"Next month, over Columbus Day." I'm still far from relaxed, but
at least I can breathe again. "I was hoping you'd ask."
Your wide grin makes my heart leap. "I kinda feel an urgent fishing
trip coming on," you say, ignoring the querulous voice from below
calling your name.
Then you're gone, leaving me throbbing from a quick, hard, incendiary
embrace. And a promise. |
