Music - Christmas Carols

There was minimal sound proofing in a four-cube square. You could hear your direct neighbors, but the cube diagnally across from you was (almost) inaudible.

One Christmas this anomaly of sound led to a horror. John and Bruce both wanted to play Christmas carols, and were on the diagnal - they couldn't hear each other's choices. The two on the other diagnal however, could easily tell that they had the same taste: The Little Drummer Boy, and What Child Is This?

That's only minorly dreadful, but when you add that the one of them lagged behind the other by five minutes -!

Innocence - whodunnit ?

She was three months older than he. While that's not very significant for adult dogs, the three months, combined with her earlier tenure with us, played an important role for the two of them. The hierarchy their age difference established remained throughout their lives.

He was obedient and listened to me, but he also responded to her cues.


"Chi, sit"

She continued to stand but turned her head and stared at him, hard.

Certain he'd missed something, he looked at me and anxiously wagged his tail.

Then oh-so-slowly he sat, convinced that she was transmitting a command meant for him.

Night - lovers

You fall into bed at 11 too tired even to sleep. Your arms wrapped around, legs entangled with. At 1, you're spooning until the contact along the length of your bodies almost forces conjunction.

At 2.30 you wake to touch hard, wet, unaware, and join again and again.

At 4 you fall away from each other, momentarily sated, still tired, still longing for touch.

Then, to hear, smell and feel a breath, and to grasp and gasp, aching in your skin and bones.

At 6 your arousal keeps you locked together. One more trial to reach completion struggling through skin.

Night

Edward Hopper is the patron saint of urban night and sadness.

When you don't sleep much night becomes grainy.

The stars shine through a dirty veil.

The dawn isn't a relief. The moon exposes gloom still further.

And yet! After the second or third insomniac night, a storm becomes peaceful, streetlights shine.

Even darkness brightens. Lights flicker. Your eyes adapt a nightime strength the day never knows.

The people you see in the diner at 3am all have the same gray grimness What is it? You show it too.

None of you talk, none of you smile. It's not spring.

Faith - a lecture

People write about "religious instinct". The search for meaning in the universe so closely connected to an existence past death, doesn't show up in people whose upbringing was wholely secular.

You're going to talk about the converts-to-whatever-fundementalism who speak of the emptiness of the unreligious lives they and their families led. The lack of religion tends to be overstated. If they're Jews, they went to temple, and sporadically kept kosher. If they're Christians, often they were Main-Line protestants of a rather ethereal sort.

Not atheist.

Those raised away from religion tend to look at it with interested curiousity, not fervor.

Blindness

My mother thinks she's brain damaged.

She can't do math. As she got through calculus and statistics, I didn't believe her. She could balance her checkbook in the days before cheap calculators and computers. She's astoundingly analytic.

She can't connect real world problems (where there are some) to equations. She can't see math.

Recently, it's occured to me that I'm also brain-damaged. I miss connections between specifics of behaviour and their underpinnings. I have to have everything explained, I often can't retain it.

My blind spot is a surprise. How could someone so curious miss -- well -- what I do miss!!

Sensuality - gourmandizing

When I first saw Tom Jones, two things struck me: the beauty of male 18th century clothing, and the sexiness of "the eating scene". You know the one -- Tom and Jenny rip apart a chicken while staring each other down, and end up -- well end up where you'd expect.

Full frontal assault on food has brought me more than one fascinated (or maybe horrified is a more accurate word) lover The first time I was seventeen, and dismembered both my lobster and his. He claimed he'd never seen less meat left on a crustacean, and fell in love right then.

Sensuality - odi et amo

As I turn around, your presence remains.

Your clothes.

Your tooth brush.

Your scent.

Reminders of you arouse. If I allow any sense memory to return I feel you once more and am drawn back.

There isn't a last or next time. Imagination can contain only your length touching, enfolding the entire length of me.

There are no words for propioception, verbally, we can't necessarily distinguish the myriad forms of touch. And yet, my every breath generates tactile reminders of you - heat, pressure, moisture, chills.

Once more, shivering, I am racked.

Nothing remains but the contact and interaction of us.

Growth - take yer lumps

I was stepping onto the number 1 train at South Ferry. Left leg first into the car, it slid across spilled coffee. My right leg fell between the car and the platform and I smashed my shin against the side of the car.

It bruised down to the bone, and left a lump two inches in diameter, five inches below the knee.

It hurt.

Its size shifted.

Sometimes it softened.

It hurt.

It was warm.

A month or so later I was in the hospital part of the leading edge of a mini-epidemic of cellulitis.

Years later, the scar aches.

Growth - discovery

He was almost a year old when it emerged into day light the first time.

There it was! Dark pink, indeed almost crimson, and pointy. A brand new -- well, what was it? I'd have said it resembled a lipstick, but he, an akita, had no words, and needed to explore it in other ways.

He bent himself double sniffing at it. He didn't recognize it. He sniffed again. Licked it. Clearly it wasn't poisonous. Sniffed it some more.

Like any puppy he was curious. After smell comes taste, and after tasting something a puppy tries to eat it. Chomp!

YELP!

Growth - tulips

Tulip time in New York.

We were wandering across town on 79th, and walked past a Very Swanky Building indeed. The flower beds surrounding the trees by its entrance were filled with large red tulips. The blossoms, classic tulip shape, fire-engine red, were too heavy for the long stems and had fallen in waves towards the street.

"Crop Circles!", A said. "Feeds those conspiracy theories you always spout."

(N.B. I don't, nor A. A teases me unmercifully, however.)

The tulips by the corner building on 82nd, yellow and red, were firmly upright. Their heads weren't too big for their bodies.

Tears - the 9th

Everyone's heard the Ninth, endlessly. My grammar school even had us sing a variant of the Chorale, apparently it's the United Nations anthem.

Eighteen or so years ago my father and I went to hear it at Carnegie. It was the first time I'd heard it live, in concert. It's so loud that it's outrageous.

As the tenor came in screaming Freunde, I started weeping- helplessly, ceaselessly. I was completely embarressed until I realized that my father, and the man at my other side, indeed all those I could see (through the tears dripping down my face) were also sobbing.

Sexy - gobsmacked

Damn! Sometimes you get it totally wrong.

Utterly convinced that this time it'll be pretty boys, or horse-faced girls. Younger, older, thinner, stronger.

And (of course) she (or he) will share your favorite kinks, and no doubt even teach you new ones.

You already know what sets your juices flowing. How not? You've navigated these shoals for years. Jaded, you accept an offer, already rehearsing how you'll end the evening politely and alone.


His brains, gentleness, and clear perception of your inanity snuck up on you.

Finally confronted by someone you adore, none of what you checked off oh-so-diligently matters.

Disgust

I'm confronted again by my own stupidity.

I have utter contempt for the occasions on which I've used my intelligence to seduce -- just because I could. Or of course the occasions on which I've been predatory towards rather younger people.

I presume (often incorrectly) that if I refer to this other people pick up that I'm almost never unconscious of my bad behaviour, and that simply talking about it is yet another example of stinging self-contempt.

The most recent occasion? I was plastered. Yet some of how little I love this in myself may have registered. If not, how could - ?

Sexy - foreplay

Years ago H and I were talking about what does and doesn't work sexually.

We agreed that anger didn't. Nor mess.

H gave a perfect example of the latter: the trail of dirty clothes on the floor.

A friend of hers used to say "that's not good foreplay".

Now it's entered the lexicon. Examples follow.

Leaving the toilet seat up: bad foreplay.

Dishes in the sink: bad foreplay

Emptying the dishwasher: good foreplay.

Noticing the new haircut: good foreplay.

Kissing you immediately after ogling the other girl: bad foreplay.

Giving you someone else's bra: bad foreplay.

You get the idea.

Sexy - a non-starter

They had spoken before, joking. Neither said anything substantive. She'd never thought about it much. His thoughts, like him, opaque. He asked her to come in while he got her her Christmas card.

He was gone briefly retrieving the card. She looked around. The room was small and fairly tidy.

The card itself was nothing much. Trees. Holiday greetings. A signature.

They were alone in silence perhaps fifteen seconds. She noticed him for the first time, noticed all attention concentrated on her. Something shifted. Nothing happened. She left.

One thought circled through her head repeatedly: "Damn. This is bad news."

Sexy

You expect a thrill from beauty.

Intelligence livens you.

Other senses explode inside you, pointing to a wider, wilder life.

Suddenly, unexpectedly you two alone. The eyes locked on your face and body. The hands that know you. Whenever you glance at them a tactile memory.

Myriad songs. Each opening you once more to the stab in the guts -- harshness, kindness.

What's lovemaking? What's desire?

The ache and its satisfaction. The remembrance of a smell. All sights, all sounds overshadowed by the other.

When we kiss, when we waken, when we sleep, when we breathe. Ourselves alone. You. Me.

Fire.

Happiness

An utterly gorgeous day is a good start. Clear, not very warm, nor very cold, but a sky which darkens as it recedes. What more can you ask?

A lover? A friend? A puppy?

Look around. Small dogs (puppies? adults?) snuffle up to feet in sandals. Their very pink tongues shoot out to lick.

Couples holding hands, so wrappedup and rapt that everyone else is invisible. Astounding that there are fewer collisions.


Let's now return to our moutons (or puppies). First scratch the jaw, now the base of the tail, observe the eyes close and the leg beat in extasy.

Confidence - who tells?

Her best friend's lover was a good-looking, sweet guy. At coffee one afternoon he quietly propositioned her. He had never even touched her.

It bothered her a lot. She told several people, some who were known to be indiscreet. All were sworn to secrecy. None told. Eventually her boyfriend pointed out that it was disloyal to keep the event from her friend.

The interesting thing was that the wicked chatterboxes had kept shtum. Had she really told them in confidence? Had she hoped the story would get out?

It was several months later that the whole thing became common knowledge.

Confidence - self assurance

Very few people have the nous to confront bullies or bullying. A does and did.

She was playing in the sandbox in Washington Square Park. She might have been three.

One child was taking toys and pushing sand at another. The typical rotten kid behaviour that half the adults fume about, and the other half declare should be left to the children to sort out. (Three year olds? Hah!) At any rate, A looked over at the other child and said in a deep gravelly voice "Stop picking on her! Now!" A brief pause. "And don't pick on me either."