 |
| For Halloween of 1978 I wore a hooded monk’s robe with my hair sprayed grey and a long, scraggly goatee attached. My roommate, Steve, and his sister went for the then-odd look of safety-pinned punks, and together we went to a costume party at a rock ‘n’ roll bar. Spencer’s Corner was packed with various apparitions of boozing beasts and beauties as the band rocked through the dusk of the disco days. I stood off to the side, drinking and feeling the darkness of my mystic, stoic character. Presently, an angel in white glided across the room and silently extended her hand. She led me to the dance floor, and easily we portrayed the metaphysical polarity of our union. Her name was Mary. After the dance we went outside to talk, both trying to be mysterious. I told her I needed to see water to soothe my torment, so she rode with me a short distance away to the riverside. There we talked about subjects of the greater universe, kissing with our white faces in gothic splendor. By the moonlight I could see Mary was older than my 21 years. I asked, and she replied she was 39, divorced, two kids in her mother-in-law’s custody. That didn’t scare me. I told her I wanted to spend the night with her, and she asked me back to her tiny flat. Mary poured a bath foe me in the tub that formed the barrier between kitchen and living area/bedroom. As I soaked in the warm water struggling to remove the sticky grey from my hair, she changed into a silk robe and heated some frozen stuffed crabs in the oven. Mary gave me a bar of pumice soap, saying that in time I could wear away my facial blemishes, just as it had worked for her own scars after her face had torn through the windshield in a car wreck. She said it took a long time, a long painful time, but it worked, and now the only scars were inside. Mary had beautiful skin, though pale it was; similarly, her eyes were pale – dark in color, but the light from within seemed to be turned down low. We sat together on her high, narrow bed, I in my underwear, she in her robe, and we ate our modest crab dinner from a folding tray. Afterwards, Mary put away the dishes, then returned, bent down and opened a large drawer to reveal a small trundle bed within the bedstead. She kissed me goodnight, then told me I could sleep there on the lower level. “Excuse me?” I said in annoyed bewilderment. “I’m not here for some kiddie sleepover. I’m a man, you’re a woman, and I’m going to sleep with you.” With that I moved both of us into her bed and an adult position. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Mary asked, sounding as if she were giving me a last chance to back out of the situation. There was no reason for her to doubt her desirability; Mary was slender and very feminine, with long, dark hair, and while her face may have been a bit too calm, it was pretty, and yes, angelic. It was the face of an angel who remembered the torment and suffering of her corporal life and now walked the earth in passive resignation seeking other lost souls to console with blank affection. Perhaps she needed evidence of my need for her. I took hold of her left hand and placed it against the stiffness in my shorts. “Does that feel sure?” I asked her. Once the switch was thrown, Mary threw herself into our lovemaking, even pitching out suggestions on which techniques I should employ on her. In turn she was most accommodating in bed, and appreciative to be there. I slept well with her that night. Subsequent dates were pretty much the same. We’d venture somewhere close down the boulevard to look at art or collectibles, then returned to her place where she would serve me stuffed crab on that folding tray. Dinner was followed with sex, then a lie back in bed for talk. Mary told me she hadn’t dated much after the demise of her marriage to a control freak psychiatrist who would hypnotize her and her two children. I could tell the guy really screwed up her head; there was something quite spooky about her, but she was sweet and very womanly to me, waiting on me, petting me, satisfying my every physical whim. But before long she wanted me to meet her kids; I’d seen their picture, and they looked spooky, too, and emotionally dominated besides. Mary said they needed a different kind of male in their lives, someone not so rigid and oppressive. I told her it might be a little early in our relationship for me to get involved with her kids, which was true, but secretly I heeded the warning signs that told a 21-year-old boy wanting to play that this older woman was getting too serious. We were lying in her bed another time, Mary had just given me head, and I was feeling relaxed but a little uncomfortable thinking about her getting attached to me. Suddenly she sat up and said she wanted to find out what I was thinking of at that particular moment. From her headboard bookshelf she pulled out a paperback copy of Jacqueline Susann’s novel Once is Not Enough. Mary instructed me to choose a page number. I picked one, and she anxiously turned to it. On that page a young man was having doubts about his affair with an older woman, lamenting the age difference. The words I read out loud were so close to my own feelings about Mary I felt chills. Damn, how did she do that? Was I in bed with a witch, or worse – a psychic? I tried not to let on, but the phenomenon was too obvious to hide. I admitted some of the truth I had read, but tried not to hurt her. Still, we both knew it was over for us. Mary was quiet for a short while, then kissed me gently and climbed on top. She said she wanted to enjoy me while she had me. No mess, but I felt bad about leaving her alone again, and I knew I would miss those stuffed crabs. |
| Poemission |
| Stuffed Crab on a Folding Tray |