Friday, September 11, 2009

Erogenous Composition

Driving through a dusty construction zone, my iPod switched randomly to a song I haven't heard recently. It's an old song, five years old this fall in my memory. It hardly seemed decent in public, on a sunny day, but it reminded me of a dark fall evening and a crisp fall morning. The first time I heard it, when my friend gave me a burned copy of the cd, it had a sultry, salty flavor and it sang with purpose.
Another night, just a few weeks after I first found it, it would find its purpose as a soundtrack, as a metronome. I welcomed him at my door, pulled him inside near the wooden stairwell and tied a soft black scarf over his eyes, tucking his glasses in my pocket and leading him upstairs, pulling his hand behind me. The room was a glow with candles, and I hoped the ghosts weren't watching. I hid our deeds under a gossamer canopy I had newly attached. It draped the bed and swathed behind, trailing on the wooden floor.
He seemed unsure, excited. Our energy filled the room, like the glowing light he couldn't see and the hum of the music on my old stereo. He was the experienced one and I was the innocent in the light of day; this exercise was to be a strange role reversal. He was always the one desiring, chasing women in the past, never the chased. I was chasing him. Pursuing him, winning him over because I was entranced by his beauty. I stripped him sensually. I unbuttoned his casual plaid, long sleeved shirt, then pulled his slightly tight white t-shirt over his shoulders. I pulled off his big black boots, slid off each sock and unzipped his boy-next-door denim, sliding it down around his ankles. I looked at his gorgeous body, white shoulders into muscular arms, a narrow waist and slender, powerful legs. With only finger tips I pushed his chest and his body fell back onto the waiting comforter, sprinkled with rose petals that I found at the local grocery on my way home from work. They were fresh, soft and fragrant.
It was an exercise in tension with no release. I teased him, finding tiny tastes of his body to tickle, touch, lick, caress and massage. His face was electric with excitement and curiosity about this woman who was leaving him in tingling desire. His lips smiled and separated as I ran the soft edge of a rose petal against a nipple or the inner crease of an elbow. Erogenous zones were discovered in utilitarian places. He would try to reciprocate touch, but I would gently refuse, focusing on a new unknown place with the lightest touch of my fingertips. I took a long feather and ran it along his shoulder, his neck, his ribs, his inner thigh. I had a collection of sensations in my bag of tricks and I strung them together like a composition, forcing him, coaxing him to experience something outside the ordinary.
The music gave a rhythm to my tactile experiments. The haunting melodies and electronic noises filled the empty seconds between. I pressed a breast against his lips, only to pull away and watch him search. I streaked a cool stripe of chocolate down the skin on his stomach and blew on it, causing a shiver down his spine, then licked it up with a warm tongue. When my masterpiece of tactile connections was finished, I laid beside him, feeling the warmth of our bodies close together. I pulled the blindfold up over his hair and saw his full expression for the first time. His warm brown eyes were sparkling with intensity and interest as he nuzzled close for satisfying kisses. We weren't lovers yet, not then. We hadn't tasted each other. It was a beautiful exercise in sensual restraint and aching temptation. We kissed and talked and desired so intensely, so deeply. Then we fell asleep in each other's arms.
Then there was another memory, a memory of driving him to his monthly obligation at 5 a.m. before the sun had risen. It was a frigid November morning and the sun was just beginning to approach the horizon. It felt like driving him to the airport, watching him leave forever on a jet plane. He would only be gone for 8 hours, but I had a premonition. For some strange reason I had picked up the music from a night months earlier and slipped it into the disc drive. What once had a sexual bent was now sultry sadness, haunted. I remember driving away in the deep blue morning with just a touch of blushing sunlight at the horizon, pushing green then blue sky away, the music blaring in his car.
Now when I listen to the music it is both sensual and haunting, tempting and morose. I will never be able to play it with my new love. It's old and used up for me. In the same sense, it belongs to that old memory of a new love budding, a new love that ran its course and expired. The death throes and broken spirits from the overdue, overdone ending tarnish the tensions and releases in each song. When I hear the album now, it feels out of tune with my life. It feels private and full of old meaning. I keep it though, because the memory is interesting. A chapter in my awakening as a woman.

2 comments:

Nikki said...

This is beautiful! I actually feel the same way, although I'm too young for sexual experiences. I can listen to the same songs while I practice running, but when I run a marathon to a song, it's finished and can never be used again.

Thank you for this very interesting composition!

cyn kuhn said...

ummm can i say...yummy!..and...memories like this will feed me well past the grave.