Johanna never got more than two drink silly, and I managed only a couple more Belikans before we were communicating in doppelgangers and the wind died…light had passed hours ago and it was easy enough for me to say “let’s get on to my house, y’hear?” And for her to take my hand and lead the way down the dock to the beach…Easier still to tell her laughingly that my mother would be home and asleep and that we would just be quiet and slip in through the rough and back door, this through her mock protest of respect and decency...but I could see she was along for the entire ceremony…I had long forgotten about the streak of Ramona guilt from earlier, and I had no plan to tell Johanna about it…not yet.
Once inside, we headed straight for my room and closed the door…with no ceiling, I just hoped my mom had remembered to put in her earplugs and was dreaming sprites, quivers, and handsome men with mustaches…it was moonlight dark and I could see the lovely lyre bird outline of this person pausing for me, pulling back the bed sheets in a quick movement that had her pants miraculously at the ankles and then off…she was in bed before I could pull a face or protest, call a rebuttal witness, or object…I took down my trousers and let hang my hard facts…I had been ready to go since dinner, through blossoms of words, teething and necking, and some close dancing, and Johanna knew this because she had been up against it more than fifty times…there was thick fornication in the air…breathing hard, I thought Johanna is easy, and by easy I mean easy to be, not make—she cared little for chestnut-colored ex-wives, for after the first death, there is no other…she had a pernicious sense of reproof, papal and weighty, making us sweethearts on the hour of midnight…her move to the bed, the crisp white sheets, and the severity of my hard-on made it all more so…
That which is unsayable was before me, spread black velvet so dark, of the color this much I know. That which is black around that which is pink. Blacksploitation for a white rune at a time certainly not noon but black midnight, black evil midnight. One black butt. Two white sheets. One top. One bottom. The pale yellow moon. A gentle Barrier breeze. A shot of sentiment. One mongrol protagonist of blanch hues. A dazzling and unpredictable sexual organ. An unknown depth in her peerless eyes. An honest encounter in a Samsaric play. “Against nightsky black nature humps”
I look for her with my hands and find the tangle of arms and long braids, just like Ramona’s, which is a comfort and a curse…chills up and down the back and again to where they were made, the cleft of human pathos at the base of the spine, where her hands moved in a nocturnal gesture of tenderness…my hands have found her hips and the small swatch of fabric there, which I stop to navigate with a delicate touch…on down those legs, where tiny accommodating frictives of pure sex meet my prints, relaying the most hurried and excitable messages to my mind and organs, pushing further all manner of anatomical exploration…I closed my eyes and let Johanna’s will take over…long tongues, deep breaths, hands and more hands…
- Michael Price
