Experiments

It had been years since her first experiments, since she'd met him in the park down the avenue from her place, in daylight, in plenitude.

He'd always been rather rakish with blue eyes and wanton smile. Much prone to teasing her with the possibility of his presence and her definite desire for something real to coalesce. Ready to leave her dry as dirt, alone, and wanting, but not sure what water would feel like, or in what form it was craved.

She hadn't known he was one of the hypotheses until much later, but it fit like water in the glass that held it.

Charms, he brought an arsenal, fortified with intellect and looks. And words, and hints, and promises. Peripatetic, obtuse, and bringing thoughts of the moores and drizzle to the scorched earth of the July playground, littered with grass and hopeful weeds, dog leavings, public peregrinations.

Once at dinner, in a seen and be seen place, "You are the most beautiful woman here, and the best part, that you don't know this." Smile. Feigned liking for the raw beef in paper-thin slices that she herself devoured. More salt of the earth than that pretense. She took the check, chastized.

Years. Occasional calls and visits. Pickled sweet jalapenos and that insufferable grin. The dozen-years intimations of a possible tryst, revelation of a sister soul, small one, companioning in brief sweat with the larger moon or planet, barreling out of orbit, long in returning.

The offers intrigued her, always had, like a chip of paint to peel, but eyes there to see the wanton demolition, preventing alleviation of the itch.

As a concept, as energy-matched pairs, as Calder-like shapes floating in space, separated by balance and curves, valences and gravity, pairing up or swinging away with the vagaries of moon and season. She still wanted.

She became uniquely grounded again, in sex, in carnal needs, solitarily satisfied, taking forms she was uncertain were not his desire. Blood circulating and the inexorable feel of its passing. After too long disappointed by a careless or selfish lover, a small boy in the clothes of a man, she was verging on full bloom once again, and remembered his grin, and reached for him.

She knew they scened in the basement of his townhouse, quaint and practical, private and perverse, alone or as a pair, per their own accords and treaties. Open in their orbits to taste that first spice with others then return both lovers to each others trajectories.

She felt odd, contacting him on the summer's long road. The quick reply, the allegation of return in September, so far away.

"She is here... could I meet her without you? Or rather, before you return and we can convene as all?" Then several intervening thoughts and the message "I prefer you would be here. Perhaps best if we do this all together." Perhaps, in the all together...

She had been the third, and taken to it as a fish to water. Feeling the apex from between two bodies in love, as a journalistic observer, in the middle but not taking a part, instead coming apart, stitch by stitch in the intervening seams, their concern, neither of them her own.

When it came, his reply was "you should meet, you are both people I admire, with places in my heart and esteem," oddly victorian and certainly bereft of contact information, yet flattering to the core. Once again, that teasing, that promise of the possible or present...

In her dreams, heated and relaxed, she arrives. They greet her at the door. It is dark. It is night. There are candles around the inside. There is comfort in soft music, assuaging their mutually savage intentions that come with divergent tactics.

She takes the proferred drink, symbolic as Persephone and the seeds. They make small talk on the sectional, throats gleaming in the light of flame. She likes R. Finds an electricity growing between them that is similar to his, but different, and more intoxicating in combination.

She has a moment aside with herself, shutting out the candlelight, the music, their obvious eddies of energies. Will this happen? As with other situations, ones that produced nothing, if this works out, if this does not, she does not think she can stand the rejection—or would it be solely an interruption? As with other situations, she is unsure she could handle the acceptance, if it comes.

R talks of their trip to New Orleans and recounts a reverie of a time when two bodies seeking pleasure annexed her to their bed. She makes full eye contact and says "You are away from us now. You must be present."

She stammers "So sorry, yes, you are reminding me of other... situations" or should she say "scenes"? Nothing she knows was so deliberate.

He captures her gaze and says "full attention is required. It is an absolute." The silence that follows proves this is their truth.

Slowly, the glasses are abandoned on the low table. He leads the women down, down to the basement. Where light is restricted and walls and sound are shielded by the neutral earth. Insulated, quiet, darker than the upper house, and fully inexorable.

She's not sure if the intention to move latitudes was voiced or simply intimated. She has a certain inkling of what awaits the descent.

He leads ahead of R and she followed, with R's hand clasped in her own; cool, relaxed, at times assuringly gripping. The hand is soft, dry, confident: it applies its fingers to her palm teasingly, lasciviously, a promise and a threat.

She barely has time to absorb the surrounds before he holds a blindfold to her eyes, not yet applying, tightening or tying, but saying with low, slow, drawling surety, "I know you love to watch. I also know it can embarrass you to see. And you are here in part to elate you and simply be in your sensations. This is a gift, if you will consent."

And she leans into the fabric on her eyes.

And he asks, "How should our guest be best adorned?"

"Naked," comes R's breathless reply. And the room darkens and spins around her.