Steven Hunley
12-30-2014, 05:26 PM
Midnight Rendezvous
It’s ten o’clock and I’m getting ready. Barb is due home at midnight after her jet gets in from Atlanta. Alli borrowed her for her mom’s good company and educator’s expertise. It’s been four days since I’ve seen her. I’m starving, starving I tell you, starving for her touch. I’m not used to her not being around!
Every night she was gone I’d lay me down to sleep and think of her. I’d start on the top of her head and work my way down with sensory images I’d saved up before she left. Then I’d work my way back up. By this time a part of my anatomy was solid as a rock. Just the way she likes it. It’s the softer parts of her I adore. I’m getting excited just at the thought of her, seeing her, touching her, again.
“The Very Thought of You,” I considered, and looked it up on U Tube. Oh yes, without a doubt, Nat King Cole will be singing it tonight when I slip her into her bath. Fragrant tea-candles, soft music, even softer woman, just a kiss away.
I can’t wait. But there’s still a lot to do, like drawing her bath, picking the music, straightening the house, and littering the bed with rose petals. Lavender spray on the pillowcases, Riesling chilling in the fridge, fragrant oils smoking in all the right places, scenting the scene of heavenly delights.
Oh yes, as Sherlock Holmes once put it, “The Game is afoot.”
In the dining room, the crystal candle holders break the light into rainbow pieces and cast them on the tablecloth. Each rainbow is my bright Barbara. In the mirrored hallway to the bathroom her Pirate Girl pajamas are right where she left them, in a heap on the floor. I guess she didn’t want Alli to know she had a secret identity. In the kitchen, she has a funny pitcher shaped like a chicken. When I water the plants early in the morning, it makes me want to yell ****-a-doodle-doo! like the Pathe Rooster.
In the bath, the water has to be hot enough to melt the fragrant salts that will soothe my Babygirl’s weary skin. I love to give her a bath and place tea-candles around the tub. Her make-up mirror is set to just the right angle if she cares to watch me suds her magnificent back and curvy shoulders, her round bubble-butt bottom and legs. While the bath salts are soothing her nerves, I plan to stimulate her heart at the same time and watch her blossom. Barbara is perceptive. She’ll know what’s on my mind. It’s been four days for her too. She might as well have been as far away as Timbuctoo, and speaking of salt.
Were you and I speaking of salt?
Barbara is like salt, like in Farewell to the King. ‘What's life without a little salt, eh?’
It’s nothing, and I’m nothing without her.
Now I’m going to admit I have mixed feeling about seeing Barb again after four days. I’ve passed the daytime hours yearning. During the night I dream about her. Of course, I’m ravenous for her love. I notice there’s a hungry look on my mug while I’m shaving. Seems like the mirror is hip to my shenanigans. Seems like it has thoughts of its own, and if that isn’t enough, it has a voice too.
“It’s a hungry-man look you’ve been wearing on your mug, Steve, and you’ve been wearing it for some time. You don’t want to scare her and look like a cannibal. What are you going to do about it?”
I laid the towel down on her fashionable glass jar with its chromium top stuffed with Egyptian cotton balls. I can’t see anything, only fog. Where’s it coming from?
“I don’t want to seem needy, you have a point,” I say back to the mirror like a very disturbed fellow. Too many Twilight Zones are under my belt, they’ve been there for years. Next thing you know I’ll be seeing Yetis on the wing of a jet like William Shatner.
“I’ll say you do,” said a disembodied voice, while I was rinsing the razor. It sounded exactly like it was down the drain coming up through the pipe like on the Titanic. Reminiscent of a voice that sounded like it came ‘from down below, from the bowels of the ship,’ and according to Joe Conrad that couldn’t be good. I listened anyway and ignored the foreshadowing.
“Understand this, and follow my instructions to the letter. Don’t let her get to you. If she appeals to you too much, try to ignore her. Get stoic on her. Under no circumstances allow her to see you’re as needy as you are. You’re pathetic. I mean, no offence, but I’m your doppelganger and I ought to know. I was watching while you were longing these few days away, imagining you were a sad character in a fat Russian novel.”
“Was it that obvious?”
“Couldn’t have been more. Every time you’d go to bed you wouldn’t be satisfied until you crawled over to her side and fell sleep clutching her ‘pillbow” as you call them, breathing the scent of her perfume.”
“We called them pillbow because Melissa called them that when she was a toddler.”
“Well, baby talk is excusable, but nobody needs to smell what’s left of their woman when they’re out of town.”
“She smells better than any woman I’ve ever met! It’s a proprietary fragrance worn by Barbara and no other woman. It’s not her perfume alone. It’s nature, it’s magic.”
“Don’t be so defensive! I like the woman myself. No kiddin’! But I’m just saying to watch out and not appear so hungry. Cool down. Be your own man. Watch her and take note. She’s what I call one of those, “Dangerous Types.”
“Dangerous Types? What kind of crack is that? What are you? One of the Cars or something?”
“No,” laughed the voice in the sink with a guttural growl. “But I am going to drive you crazy.”
“Very well then, but allow me to prepare my toilette in peace. I’m getting so nervous I almost nicked myself shaving.”
When I looked in the mirror the fool there took the same attitude but from a different angle. Again, I couldn’t see sh*t.
“You dinged yourself on the other side,” sounded the voice, as through a metallic bellows. “Staunch it with toilet paper and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Alone for now, or alone forever?”
The voice had left the drainpipe, and the room, just like Elvis at the International. ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, the drain-pipe Doppelganger voice has just left Las Vegas.’
Then my Dumb Phone went off. Celestial news I wanted to hear. Barb announced she was pulling up in the driveway. I get to see her pull up in a California driveway in a pure white car just like in a movie! It will be in the moonlight too! A dark-haired beauty opens the door of a snowy-white car, bathed in amber moonlight, and chrome reflects her virtue. How romantic is that? That’s one of the forty-two thousand and sixty-five reasons I love her. She’s romantic in the finest sense. I’m one at heart too. Heart to Heart, like Kenny Loggins.
Sometimes we find ourselves out of place in the modern world, racing here and there. We are the only ones who will listen to each other and calm our acts down. Day by day, with love and caring, calmness and affection, we add to each other’s lives. We actually add to the quantity and the quality of the days we have left. Life is a one-time shot. Live it large and loving. Heart to Heart.
When I meet her in the driveway we hug and kiss.
“Did you miss me?” Barb smiles, because she already knows the answer.
‘Oh, not very much.” I say glibly, and glom onto her like Gorilla Glue, like white on rice, like a fool for her wild crazy love.
‘But wait a minute,’ I figure. ‘I’m supposed to be stoic and all. Even if I can’t wait to get at her. Do I really need this?”
I gave Barb the once over, up and down, head to toe. Oh Jeez. I really need this. But I must appear to be cool. I’ll say nothing. No laying my cards on the table, no heart pinned on my sleeve, the strong silent type. Women always go for the strong silent types, Hollywood says so, and so did the doppelgänger voice in the drain.
I love every inch of her, head to toe. But I’m Joe Cool, I’m John Wayne, I’m Arnold the Governator, for goodness sakes. I regain my aplomb. I release her and go for her American Tourister baggage instead.
I’m determined to spend my passion on two over-packed pieces of American Tourister, they’re much less dangerous, so I head straight for the trunk and looking as muscular as possible, give her bags the old heave-ho. I’ll show her what a real independent man looks like. I’ll display my elephant strength!
I’ll demonstrate what stoic means, like I’m one of the Three Hundred Spartans at Thermopolis.
But now were going inside where it’s all warm and close and cozy. I got trouble brewing, I just know it.
How can I describe what it was like without her? How empty was the house minus Barbara?
I counted my way around its emptiness with measured paces. Seventeen to the bathroom alone, down the Hall of Mirrors, mirrors I chose to camouflage my hiding place; while I watched our communications disintegrate. It was on that spark-filled and tempestuous night of misunderstandings, and the misunderstandings proceeded with vigor from the salon de la paix to the salon de la guerre and back again, ‘till it was ‘off with your head’.
I had feelings about that place. It reminded me of Versailles. I was Louis and she was Marie Antoinette. Like the fated couple, we were bound to make trouble. It’s funny because I always thought we were the opposite ends of the same stick. We fascinated and beguiled each other, but looked for weak spots and strengths, always trying to feel each other out. I guess it was just a primitive courtship dance, the cosmic dance of life, with its inherent ups and downs.
After all, we were mature adults, and it had taken years of hard knocks to build our battlements. Frozen in the respective positions we assumed with the people we’d known before, we were eager to defend our positions. I never wanted a woman to kowtow to me anyway, it showed lack of character. Barbara was anything but easy; nothing of value is ever easy. But the prize was worth it; a look into the mind of a genuinely beautiful woman inside and out, a woman who could be a friend and lover, one that wouldn’t back down.
Tough as it could be with her, it was a barren existence without her. I’d come to the point where no other woman would satisfy me. With her gone, the large house with its usual comforting appeal was a sterile warehouse littered with poignant but musty memories.
There were thirty-nine steps to the kitchen where one night I made her an apple sliced into thin wedges and sprinkled with cinnamon. I never told her it was the same way I always made it for Sean and Elle and Nichole, and the grandkids. Someday I’ll make it for her Nicole and Alli, and their kids too.
Only twenty two steps to the black-lacquered Howard baby grand, where sheet music was usually propped sit two books, Art and Love, An Illustrated Anthology of Love Poetry. Vanity Fair, Photographs of an Age, 1914-1936, with a photo of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks on the cover. I figured they were romantic. I figured we were romantic too, when we, the mature and seasoned English-teaching kind of couple, picked out two used books from the tiny shop at Scripps Library. It was our first afternoon at the library together. Mine was Chance by Conrad, and hers was The Humbling by Roth.
While Barbara was gone the house was holding its breath just like me. While the mistress of the house was absent, I suffocated, and seconds dragged on like minutes.
But now the house is alive and filled with light. Laughter, sparkle, style, substance, reigns supreme, now that Barb is back.
And talking about sparkle, that’s something I just noticed that I haven’t seen for four days. Under the light hanging above the walkway, I see sparkle on Barb’s lips. Knowing her as I do, it’s explainable. She refreshes her lipstick every once in a while, and most likely did it on the way back from Lindberg Field.
But wait! I’m not supposed to be enjoying her so much! Wasn’t I the guy who was supposed to be stoic? The tough no-nonsense kinda guy? Mister Manly and all, on accounta I want to project myself as independent and do what those head-shrinkers call differentiation! That’s the word I remember, differentiation! It’s real psychological and all, the word ‘differentiation’. At least I think I’m pretty sure I know what it means. I’ll have to look it up some day, as Barb says it’s a key component to good relationships. God bless differentiation anyway. So I intend to be as different as possible. Hope I’m right, because there isn’t time to research the subject.
But gee, just look at that exquisite mouth. See it there under the glowing filament?
It’s a luscious mouth. I wish Maupassant could have lived to see that mouth. He would have written about Barbara’s mouth with eloquent prose as only the French can do. Each curve is expressive. Every shade, every nuance, of bloody crimson on her lips is to die for. When she applies Chanel lip gloss she holds the brush deftly like a renaissance master, and looks to heaven for inspiration. That’s all she requires.
Like her cousin once sang, “She an artist, she don’t look back.”
She doesn’t have to look in a mirror. Every other woman I’ve known needed a mirror as a crutch to prop up her ability with a brush. They needed practice.
Not Barbara… she’s confident!
My woman is much too much and just too very very. I don’t want to seem like Ella Fitzgerald about this, but she’s Too Marvelous for Words. I can’t say enough about her.
But wait a minute.
I’m supposed to be demonstrating my manly manhood here. Even though I was miserable when she was gone I’m supposed to be John Go Your Own Way Wayne about this.
And right then the reptilian voice from out of the drain chimed in.
“You’re perfectly right. Don’t ignore promises you made to yourself and to all men in general. Instead of being grateful she’s back, be harder about it. Don’t ever acknowledge the power of the spell she’s cast over you. Never admit it, especially to her. Go Rolling Stones bad boy about her instead. It’s an attitude they took that served them well, and it will serve you. After all, she’s under your thumb, you’re not under hers.
I’m not saying you have to join the He-man Woman-haters Club. But just rejoin up with ninety percent of men on the planet. Show her what you’re made of.
Well, I’d always been a fan of Hal Roach and Our Gang comedies so what else could I say but,
“Okay, Spanky!”
It’s easy to consider being stoic about your significant other when you’re in the driveway. After all, it’s out in the open. But once we get in the door, it’s different. There are distractions, like the four gifts I’ve wrapped and placed on the kitchen counter, one gift for each day she was away. They were guaranteed to provide a distraction to my reptilian ego that was keen on having her right there and then.
“What’s this?” she says, with a look of surprise on her fabulous mug. She doesn’t want me to refer to her face as a ‘mug’. Says it sounds too jail-like, says she’s way too refined and pretty for such a phrase. I like using it. It allows me to get under her skin, like that old song. You know, deep in the heart of her, with real thirties dialogue.
“Just some small stuff I gathered up. You call me a hunter-gatherer, remember?”
“That’s when you set out to find my cell phone or keys,” she beamed fondly. “You always come up with the goods.”
She says this last phrase with a look on her mug loaded with suggestions and innuendoes. Do I love it? You know I do, no matter what the doppelgänger voice in the drain says. And it’s true, perfectly true. I always come up with the goods.
I retained my aplomb and handed her the first package, long, cone-like and crinkly.
“Oh, how sweet, flowers,” she says, and unwraps them carefully so as not to disturb the blossoms, and picks out a vase from the kitchen cupboard.
Just look at her hands. Barb possesses slender artistic fingers. I love her Maupassant hands. I ripped the idea of pale slender artistic fingers straight out of his pages when I first discovered him. Guy, you’d be pleased. Over two years later, and I finally found a woman with admirable hands. And Guy, there’s even more to admire about them. Barb has the magic touch, it’s irresistible.
“And what’s this?”
“Smell it.”
“It’s heavy,” she says, and lifts it to her nose. I adore her nose. No matter how warm she is, no matter how close we are, the tip is always as cold as Everest.
“A lavender candle!”
“It’s supposed to help you relax. I thought you’d need it after the flight.”
“And this?”
She picks up a cylinder wrapped up in birthday paper even though it’s nobody’s birthday, and reads the label.
“It’s Aveeno Positively Nourishing ™ calming body wash!”
I got that one because I’m a fan of her porcelain skin and want her to nourish it frequently just like her presence nourishes my love. She’s a Smooth Operator and I want her to stay that way. Wow, these song titles are really getting to me. They replay in my psyche at will. I’ll have to see a shrink about it. Not being able to go two minutes without thinking of a popular song you heard a million times. Being in the business, Barb can hook me up.
That only leaves two presents. Right now I have the impression that I’m forgetting something, like there’s some kind of something going on here I’m not quite aware of.
When she unwraps the package of tea candles and bubble bath, I suddenly remember!
“The bath! It’s overflowing,” I shout, and dash down the hall of mirrors to the bathroom at break-neck speed.
Just in time it turns out, the hot water is nearing the edge.
But at the same time my game is given away entirely. The scene was already set and the players were on their marks. Twenty two tea candles flickered around the edge of the tub. Three clustered in each corner, next to her earrings and between her perfumes.
The tub was filled with mountains of suds scented lavender, and a sea sponge the size of a football floated like an exotic island in the center. She’d never seen anything like it.
“Is this for me?”
I love it when she asks ridiculous questions. Then she gave me a demure look. By the beard of the Profit and by all the Christian saints, I love it when she gives me a look like this. When a mature sophisticated woman can give a look of an innocent girl I simply melt. The translation is this:
“I’m a sophisticated woman, and privy to every secret of the lovemaker’s art. But I’m a mature woman, newly in love, and an ingénue at the same time.”
Then she put up her hands in arabesque fashion like Anna Pavlova, forming a minaret.
“Help me in, won’t you?”
Here’s the tipping point, Hemingway’s moment of truth. I help her in, but as her toe enters the water I realize I’m standing here touching her, listening to the sound of her voice caress me, admiring each and every curve she possesses, and I’ve had just about enough.
I decide the doppelgänger voice is just that; a doppelgänger voice. It’s not me; it’s the opposite of me. It’s the manly society-expected Hollywood version of me that’s no more real than a celluloid hero.
I’m no Iron Man, or John Go-Your-Own-Way Wayne, or Conan Governator- Schwarzenegger.
I’m me, and I need her and want her. No one else will do. And here she is in her magnificent flesh, living and breathing and radiating love. Barb is the best thing ever to happen to me. Since I met her I’m not anxious anymore, and who am I anyway?
Mister Anxiety, born and shaped by outside events and public expectations? By circumstance? By setting? By images of comic book or celluloid heroes? Doing what’s expected even though it’s against my nature?
Just then she gives me the most inviting look since the lioness looked at the lamb.
“Won’t you join me?”
I think about it for all of a millisecond. I dash to the toilet paper, spin off a few yards, ball it up, and stuff it down the drain in the sink.
“Move over.”
©StevenHunley2014
http://youtu.be/rpTV7kABcx8 The Very Thought of You
http://youtu.be/85lRPbb_FWk Dangerous Type
http://youtu.be/g62FAjh400A Heart to Heart
http://youtu.be/Vj27SShGrwk Too Marvelous for Words
http://youtu.be/nvlTJrNJ5lA Won't Back Down
http://youtu.be/51Iq8JmmfxY Head to Toe
http://youtu.be/NqjNafyQFQ4 She Belongs to Me
http://youtu.be/yreYIs3JWoQ I've Got You under my Skin
http://youtu.be/4TYv2PhG89A Smooth Operator
http://youtu.be/gIl9XS3u9Kc Midnight Rendezvous
It’s ten o’clock and I’m getting ready. Barb is due home at midnight after her jet gets in from Atlanta. Alli borrowed her for her mom’s good company and educator’s expertise. It’s been four days since I’ve seen her. I’m starving, starving I tell you, starving for her touch. I’m not used to her not being around!
Every night she was gone I’d lay me down to sleep and think of her. I’d start on the top of her head and work my way down with sensory images I’d saved up before she left. Then I’d work my way back up. By this time a part of my anatomy was solid as a rock. Just the way she likes it. It’s the softer parts of her I adore. I’m getting excited just at the thought of her, seeing her, touching her, again.
“The Very Thought of You,” I considered, and looked it up on U Tube. Oh yes, without a doubt, Nat King Cole will be singing it tonight when I slip her into her bath. Fragrant tea-candles, soft music, even softer woman, just a kiss away.
I can’t wait. But there’s still a lot to do, like drawing her bath, picking the music, straightening the house, and littering the bed with rose petals. Lavender spray on the pillowcases, Riesling chilling in the fridge, fragrant oils smoking in all the right places, scenting the scene of heavenly delights.
Oh yes, as Sherlock Holmes once put it, “The Game is afoot.”
In the dining room, the crystal candle holders break the light into rainbow pieces and cast them on the tablecloth. Each rainbow is my bright Barbara. In the mirrored hallway to the bathroom her Pirate Girl pajamas are right where she left them, in a heap on the floor. I guess she didn’t want Alli to know she had a secret identity. In the kitchen, she has a funny pitcher shaped like a chicken. When I water the plants early in the morning, it makes me want to yell ****-a-doodle-doo! like the Pathe Rooster.
In the bath, the water has to be hot enough to melt the fragrant salts that will soothe my Babygirl’s weary skin. I love to give her a bath and place tea-candles around the tub. Her make-up mirror is set to just the right angle if she cares to watch me suds her magnificent back and curvy shoulders, her round bubble-butt bottom and legs. While the bath salts are soothing her nerves, I plan to stimulate her heart at the same time and watch her blossom. Barbara is perceptive. She’ll know what’s on my mind. It’s been four days for her too. She might as well have been as far away as Timbuctoo, and speaking of salt.
Were you and I speaking of salt?
Barbara is like salt, like in Farewell to the King. ‘What's life without a little salt, eh?’
It’s nothing, and I’m nothing without her.
Now I’m going to admit I have mixed feeling about seeing Barb again after four days. I’ve passed the daytime hours yearning. During the night I dream about her. Of course, I’m ravenous for her love. I notice there’s a hungry look on my mug while I’m shaving. Seems like the mirror is hip to my shenanigans. Seems like it has thoughts of its own, and if that isn’t enough, it has a voice too.
“It’s a hungry-man look you’ve been wearing on your mug, Steve, and you’ve been wearing it for some time. You don’t want to scare her and look like a cannibal. What are you going to do about it?”
I laid the towel down on her fashionable glass jar with its chromium top stuffed with Egyptian cotton balls. I can’t see anything, only fog. Where’s it coming from?
“I don’t want to seem needy, you have a point,” I say back to the mirror like a very disturbed fellow. Too many Twilight Zones are under my belt, they’ve been there for years. Next thing you know I’ll be seeing Yetis on the wing of a jet like William Shatner.
“I’ll say you do,” said a disembodied voice, while I was rinsing the razor. It sounded exactly like it was down the drain coming up through the pipe like on the Titanic. Reminiscent of a voice that sounded like it came ‘from down below, from the bowels of the ship,’ and according to Joe Conrad that couldn’t be good. I listened anyway and ignored the foreshadowing.
“Understand this, and follow my instructions to the letter. Don’t let her get to you. If she appeals to you too much, try to ignore her. Get stoic on her. Under no circumstances allow her to see you’re as needy as you are. You’re pathetic. I mean, no offence, but I’m your doppelganger and I ought to know. I was watching while you were longing these few days away, imagining you were a sad character in a fat Russian novel.”
“Was it that obvious?”
“Couldn’t have been more. Every time you’d go to bed you wouldn’t be satisfied until you crawled over to her side and fell sleep clutching her ‘pillbow” as you call them, breathing the scent of her perfume.”
“We called them pillbow because Melissa called them that when she was a toddler.”
“Well, baby talk is excusable, but nobody needs to smell what’s left of their woman when they’re out of town.”
“She smells better than any woman I’ve ever met! It’s a proprietary fragrance worn by Barbara and no other woman. It’s not her perfume alone. It’s nature, it’s magic.”
“Don’t be so defensive! I like the woman myself. No kiddin’! But I’m just saying to watch out and not appear so hungry. Cool down. Be your own man. Watch her and take note. She’s what I call one of those, “Dangerous Types.”
“Dangerous Types? What kind of crack is that? What are you? One of the Cars or something?”
“No,” laughed the voice in the sink with a guttural growl. “But I am going to drive you crazy.”
“Very well then, but allow me to prepare my toilette in peace. I’m getting so nervous I almost nicked myself shaving.”
When I looked in the mirror the fool there took the same attitude but from a different angle. Again, I couldn’t see sh*t.
“You dinged yourself on the other side,” sounded the voice, as through a metallic bellows. “Staunch it with toilet paper and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Alone for now, or alone forever?”
The voice had left the drainpipe, and the room, just like Elvis at the International. ‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, the drain-pipe Doppelganger voice has just left Las Vegas.’
Then my Dumb Phone went off. Celestial news I wanted to hear. Barb announced she was pulling up in the driveway. I get to see her pull up in a California driveway in a pure white car just like in a movie! It will be in the moonlight too! A dark-haired beauty opens the door of a snowy-white car, bathed in amber moonlight, and chrome reflects her virtue. How romantic is that? That’s one of the forty-two thousand and sixty-five reasons I love her. She’s romantic in the finest sense. I’m one at heart too. Heart to Heart, like Kenny Loggins.
Sometimes we find ourselves out of place in the modern world, racing here and there. We are the only ones who will listen to each other and calm our acts down. Day by day, with love and caring, calmness and affection, we add to each other’s lives. We actually add to the quantity and the quality of the days we have left. Life is a one-time shot. Live it large and loving. Heart to Heart.
When I meet her in the driveway we hug and kiss.
“Did you miss me?” Barb smiles, because she already knows the answer.
‘Oh, not very much.” I say glibly, and glom onto her like Gorilla Glue, like white on rice, like a fool for her wild crazy love.
‘But wait a minute,’ I figure. ‘I’m supposed to be stoic and all. Even if I can’t wait to get at her. Do I really need this?”
I gave Barb the once over, up and down, head to toe. Oh Jeez. I really need this. But I must appear to be cool. I’ll say nothing. No laying my cards on the table, no heart pinned on my sleeve, the strong silent type. Women always go for the strong silent types, Hollywood says so, and so did the doppelgänger voice in the drain.
I love every inch of her, head to toe. But I’m Joe Cool, I’m John Wayne, I’m Arnold the Governator, for goodness sakes. I regain my aplomb. I release her and go for her American Tourister baggage instead.
I’m determined to spend my passion on two over-packed pieces of American Tourister, they’re much less dangerous, so I head straight for the trunk and looking as muscular as possible, give her bags the old heave-ho. I’ll show her what a real independent man looks like. I’ll display my elephant strength!
I’ll demonstrate what stoic means, like I’m one of the Three Hundred Spartans at Thermopolis.
But now were going inside where it’s all warm and close and cozy. I got trouble brewing, I just know it.
How can I describe what it was like without her? How empty was the house minus Barbara?
I counted my way around its emptiness with measured paces. Seventeen to the bathroom alone, down the Hall of Mirrors, mirrors I chose to camouflage my hiding place; while I watched our communications disintegrate. It was on that spark-filled and tempestuous night of misunderstandings, and the misunderstandings proceeded with vigor from the salon de la paix to the salon de la guerre and back again, ‘till it was ‘off with your head’.
I had feelings about that place. It reminded me of Versailles. I was Louis and she was Marie Antoinette. Like the fated couple, we were bound to make trouble. It’s funny because I always thought we were the opposite ends of the same stick. We fascinated and beguiled each other, but looked for weak spots and strengths, always trying to feel each other out. I guess it was just a primitive courtship dance, the cosmic dance of life, with its inherent ups and downs.
After all, we were mature adults, and it had taken years of hard knocks to build our battlements. Frozen in the respective positions we assumed with the people we’d known before, we were eager to defend our positions. I never wanted a woman to kowtow to me anyway, it showed lack of character. Barbara was anything but easy; nothing of value is ever easy. But the prize was worth it; a look into the mind of a genuinely beautiful woman inside and out, a woman who could be a friend and lover, one that wouldn’t back down.
Tough as it could be with her, it was a barren existence without her. I’d come to the point where no other woman would satisfy me. With her gone, the large house with its usual comforting appeal was a sterile warehouse littered with poignant but musty memories.
There were thirty-nine steps to the kitchen where one night I made her an apple sliced into thin wedges and sprinkled with cinnamon. I never told her it was the same way I always made it for Sean and Elle and Nichole, and the grandkids. Someday I’ll make it for her Nicole and Alli, and their kids too.
Only twenty two steps to the black-lacquered Howard baby grand, where sheet music was usually propped sit two books, Art and Love, An Illustrated Anthology of Love Poetry. Vanity Fair, Photographs of an Age, 1914-1936, with a photo of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks on the cover. I figured they were romantic. I figured we were romantic too, when we, the mature and seasoned English-teaching kind of couple, picked out two used books from the tiny shop at Scripps Library. It was our first afternoon at the library together. Mine was Chance by Conrad, and hers was The Humbling by Roth.
While Barbara was gone the house was holding its breath just like me. While the mistress of the house was absent, I suffocated, and seconds dragged on like minutes.
But now the house is alive and filled with light. Laughter, sparkle, style, substance, reigns supreme, now that Barb is back.
And talking about sparkle, that’s something I just noticed that I haven’t seen for four days. Under the light hanging above the walkway, I see sparkle on Barb’s lips. Knowing her as I do, it’s explainable. She refreshes her lipstick every once in a while, and most likely did it on the way back from Lindberg Field.
But wait! I’m not supposed to be enjoying her so much! Wasn’t I the guy who was supposed to be stoic? The tough no-nonsense kinda guy? Mister Manly and all, on accounta I want to project myself as independent and do what those head-shrinkers call differentiation! That’s the word I remember, differentiation! It’s real psychological and all, the word ‘differentiation’. At least I think I’m pretty sure I know what it means. I’ll have to look it up some day, as Barb says it’s a key component to good relationships. God bless differentiation anyway. So I intend to be as different as possible. Hope I’m right, because there isn’t time to research the subject.
But gee, just look at that exquisite mouth. See it there under the glowing filament?
It’s a luscious mouth. I wish Maupassant could have lived to see that mouth. He would have written about Barbara’s mouth with eloquent prose as only the French can do. Each curve is expressive. Every shade, every nuance, of bloody crimson on her lips is to die for. When she applies Chanel lip gloss she holds the brush deftly like a renaissance master, and looks to heaven for inspiration. That’s all she requires.
Like her cousin once sang, “She an artist, she don’t look back.”
She doesn’t have to look in a mirror. Every other woman I’ve known needed a mirror as a crutch to prop up her ability with a brush. They needed practice.
Not Barbara… she’s confident!
My woman is much too much and just too very very. I don’t want to seem like Ella Fitzgerald about this, but she’s Too Marvelous for Words. I can’t say enough about her.
But wait a minute.
I’m supposed to be demonstrating my manly manhood here. Even though I was miserable when she was gone I’m supposed to be John Go Your Own Way Wayne about this.
And right then the reptilian voice from out of the drain chimed in.
“You’re perfectly right. Don’t ignore promises you made to yourself and to all men in general. Instead of being grateful she’s back, be harder about it. Don’t ever acknowledge the power of the spell she’s cast over you. Never admit it, especially to her. Go Rolling Stones bad boy about her instead. It’s an attitude they took that served them well, and it will serve you. After all, she’s under your thumb, you’re not under hers.
I’m not saying you have to join the He-man Woman-haters Club. But just rejoin up with ninety percent of men on the planet. Show her what you’re made of.
Well, I’d always been a fan of Hal Roach and Our Gang comedies so what else could I say but,
“Okay, Spanky!”
It’s easy to consider being stoic about your significant other when you’re in the driveway. After all, it’s out in the open. But once we get in the door, it’s different. There are distractions, like the four gifts I’ve wrapped and placed on the kitchen counter, one gift for each day she was away. They were guaranteed to provide a distraction to my reptilian ego that was keen on having her right there and then.
“What’s this?” she says, with a look of surprise on her fabulous mug. She doesn’t want me to refer to her face as a ‘mug’. Says it sounds too jail-like, says she’s way too refined and pretty for such a phrase. I like using it. It allows me to get under her skin, like that old song. You know, deep in the heart of her, with real thirties dialogue.
“Just some small stuff I gathered up. You call me a hunter-gatherer, remember?”
“That’s when you set out to find my cell phone or keys,” she beamed fondly. “You always come up with the goods.”
She says this last phrase with a look on her mug loaded with suggestions and innuendoes. Do I love it? You know I do, no matter what the doppelgänger voice in the drain says. And it’s true, perfectly true. I always come up with the goods.
I retained my aplomb and handed her the first package, long, cone-like and crinkly.
“Oh, how sweet, flowers,” she says, and unwraps them carefully so as not to disturb the blossoms, and picks out a vase from the kitchen cupboard.
Just look at her hands. Barb possesses slender artistic fingers. I love her Maupassant hands. I ripped the idea of pale slender artistic fingers straight out of his pages when I first discovered him. Guy, you’d be pleased. Over two years later, and I finally found a woman with admirable hands. And Guy, there’s even more to admire about them. Barb has the magic touch, it’s irresistible.
“And what’s this?”
“Smell it.”
“It’s heavy,” she says, and lifts it to her nose. I adore her nose. No matter how warm she is, no matter how close we are, the tip is always as cold as Everest.
“A lavender candle!”
“It’s supposed to help you relax. I thought you’d need it after the flight.”
“And this?”
She picks up a cylinder wrapped up in birthday paper even though it’s nobody’s birthday, and reads the label.
“It’s Aveeno Positively Nourishing ™ calming body wash!”
I got that one because I’m a fan of her porcelain skin and want her to nourish it frequently just like her presence nourishes my love. She’s a Smooth Operator and I want her to stay that way. Wow, these song titles are really getting to me. They replay in my psyche at will. I’ll have to see a shrink about it. Not being able to go two minutes without thinking of a popular song you heard a million times. Being in the business, Barb can hook me up.
That only leaves two presents. Right now I have the impression that I’m forgetting something, like there’s some kind of something going on here I’m not quite aware of.
When she unwraps the package of tea candles and bubble bath, I suddenly remember!
“The bath! It’s overflowing,” I shout, and dash down the hall of mirrors to the bathroom at break-neck speed.
Just in time it turns out, the hot water is nearing the edge.
But at the same time my game is given away entirely. The scene was already set and the players were on their marks. Twenty two tea candles flickered around the edge of the tub. Three clustered in each corner, next to her earrings and between her perfumes.
The tub was filled with mountains of suds scented lavender, and a sea sponge the size of a football floated like an exotic island in the center. She’d never seen anything like it.
“Is this for me?”
I love it when she asks ridiculous questions. Then she gave me a demure look. By the beard of the Profit and by all the Christian saints, I love it when she gives me a look like this. When a mature sophisticated woman can give a look of an innocent girl I simply melt. The translation is this:
“I’m a sophisticated woman, and privy to every secret of the lovemaker’s art. But I’m a mature woman, newly in love, and an ingénue at the same time.”
Then she put up her hands in arabesque fashion like Anna Pavlova, forming a minaret.
“Help me in, won’t you?”
Here’s the tipping point, Hemingway’s moment of truth. I help her in, but as her toe enters the water I realize I’m standing here touching her, listening to the sound of her voice caress me, admiring each and every curve she possesses, and I’ve had just about enough.
I decide the doppelgänger voice is just that; a doppelgänger voice. It’s not me; it’s the opposite of me. It’s the manly society-expected Hollywood version of me that’s no more real than a celluloid hero.
I’m no Iron Man, or John Go-Your-Own-Way Wayne, or Conan Governator- Schwarzenegger.
I’m me, and I need her and want her. No one else will do. And here she is in her magnificent flesh, living and breathing and radiating love. Barb is the best thing ever to happen to me. Since I met her I’m not anxious anymore, and who am I anyway?
Mister Anxiety, born and shaped by outside events and public expectations? By circumstance? By setting? By images of comic book or celluloid heroes? Doing what’s expected even though it’s against my nature?
Just then she gives me the most inviting look since the lioness looked at the lamb.
“Won’t you join me?”
I think about it for all of a millisecond. I dash to the toilet paper, spin off a few yards, ball it up, and stuff it down the drain in the sink.
“Move over.”
©StevenHunley2014
http://youtu.be/rpTV7kABcx8 The Very Thought of You
http://youtu.be/85lRPbb_FWk Dangerous Type
http://youtu.be/g62FAjh400A Heart to Heart
http://youtu.be/Vj27SShGrwk Too Marvelous for Words
http://youtu.be/nvlTJrNJ5lA Won't Back Down
http://youtu.be/51Iq8JmmfxY Head to Toe
http://youtu.be/NqjNafyQFQ4 She Belongs to Me
http://youtu.be/yreYIs3JWoQ I've Got You under my Skin
http://youtu.be/4TYv2PhG89A Smooth Operator
http://youtu.be/gIl9XS3u9Kc Midnight Rendezvous