American Backroads
A Rogue and Peasant Slave
24 May 2015
WE SLEPT SOUNDLY our first night and woke up spooned together. I had my hand on her tummy rather than her breast. I don’t know why that made a difference except that we were both completely naked and my morning hard cock was being squeezed between two very nice buns. Ella’s tummy muscles were clenching rhythmically. She was awake before me. I’m not sure if she was intentionally trying to milk my cock with her ass or if that was just a side-effect of her manipulating her clit with her fingers.
Ella was masturbating.
My fingers drifted up to her breast and I softly caressed it, eliciting a quiet moan. While I’d held her breast often enough, I’d never really made a conscious effort to stimulate her nipples. That was an oversight I rectified, and in the next five minutes, Ella’s voice rose from quiet moans to louder whines. When she came, her ass cheeks clamped down on my cock, trapping it between the two of us. She pulled my hand away from her breast and brought it to her lips, kissing it over and over.
“Did you come?” she whispered.
“No. I was enjoying your orgasm.” Her butt against me picked up speed. I had enough pre-come leaking to slick her crack.
“I got so turned on by having your cock there. I think I’ll come again if you do.” She pulled my hand back down to her breast and I started seriously playing with her nipples. And joining her in the thrust. So good. She squealed when the first shot of hot jism splashed between us.
We held each other for a long time as we both came down from our orgasms. She periodically squeezed her butt against me, but my cock was not going to recover quickly, no matter how much I enjoyed the sensations. I placed a line of kisses along her shoulder.
“We could do it now,” she whispered. “I know we’re going to be lovers. We could just stay here and do it.”
“Um…”
“Oh, yeah,” she giggled. “I should have thought of that before you came. I need to go clean up a bit.”
“That’s a good idea. It’s difficult to shower in the trailer and there is no shower house here in the park. Let me know if you want me to wash up your back for you,” I said. “I’ll get coffee made as soon as I mop up a little, myself.”
“Yeah. Wash my back, my front, my middle. I know this isn’t all there is to traveling with you, Ari, but I’d be okay with it if it was.” We rolled out of bed, but before she went into the bathroom, she turned in my arms and raised her lips to kiss me. We pressed fully together as we lost ourselves in each other’s passion. As I reckoned it, it was truly only our third kiss at this level. I could see myself kissing Ella again. A lot.
“What’s our next big adventure?” Ella asked as we broke camp. I was hitched and was checking the lights and making sure all the cubbies were locked.
“Mammoth Cave,” I said. She hit me in the arm. I turned to see her scowling at me.
“You haven’t even had a finger in it yet! Don’t you think it’s a little insulting to call it Mammoth Cave?” she asked. What?
“Ella… um… Oh! I didn’t mean…” I stammered out. She started laughing.
“Gotcha!”
“Jiminy Cricket, Ella. You about gave me a heart attack. Get your cute ass in the truck and let’s get out of here.” I put the steps away and closed the handrail before I went to the driver’s door.
Ella was rearranging the front seat. My CD case was on the floor, cup holders were retracted, armrest was up, and Ella was buckling herself into the center seat.
“There’s not much legroom in the middle,” I said. Stupid.
“I fold. Do you mind having me sit next to you?” she asked.
“Not at all. You just have to promise not to distract me while I’m driving. The truck and trailer weigh about three tons and I want to keep them on the road. Ella, I’d feel terrible if we had an accident and something happened to you.”
“I promise, Ari. I just want to be close to you so we don’t have to shout across the room. Or truck. Now take me to this mammoth cave you were talking about.”
We reached a campground near the National Park but I hadn’t been able to get a site in the park proper. It wasn’t yet Memorial Day, but the park was already full. The advantage was that we had full hookups and a nice shower available. My Passport America discount of 50% dropped the rate to below $20 a night for two nights. That’s one thing about RV camping across America. I could have camped in the National Park for $10 if there had been room because I had my “America the Beautiful” pass. But even outside a national park or national forest, there are discount programs that will cut the cost of RV spots in half. I’d never be able to travel if I had to pay full rate. It was a good deal.
Of course, it was too late in the day to really go into the park and see anything, so we settled into the campground, took showers, and I built a fire. I thawed out a couple steaks and scrubbed potatoes that I wrapped in foil and tossed in the fire. I was working at the counter in the trailer preparing a salad when Ella came in from her shower. In a second, I felt her arms come around me and her hands slide under my T-shirt, raising it in the back. She pressed her bare breasts into my back.
“Diminutive grotto,” she whispered. What? “La Cuevita. Petite coochie.” Oh! I need a word for little cave. That was a lot harder to come up with than it sounds.
“Um… Are we discussing your Lilliputian pussé?” I asked.
“Ow! Let’s not be too extreme here. I’ve seen the size of your cock and Lilliputian is not going to accommodate it!” I turned in her arms and kissed her. “Let me get my clothes on so we can go out and enjoy the fire.” I watched as she slipped into a pair of running shorts and a T-shirt. That was all.
A Long Time Ago: Intramural
Just because I’m a theater geek doesn’t mean I never participated in any sports. In high school after my brief football career and in college, I played intramural basketball and ran track. Where I grew up, just about every boy in school played basketball. If they didn’t make varsity, B-team, or freshman team, they played intramural. I had a graduating class of sixty-five students. Figure 32 of them were guys. Times four years makes 128 guys. The three official teams took out thirty of them. That left ninety-eight boys in the school. We had eight intramural teams.
In college, it was more selective, but I liked to play and needed to get exercise. I managed to play until I was a junior and started managing the scene shop. The schedule was so heavy that I couldn’t participate on the court any longer. It was too bad, really, because when I was a sophomore, they made our intramural basketball teams mixed men and women. There weren’t that many women playing intramural basketball, but we had some deadly ladies with a round ball.
Sara Rich was one.
I’ve just always had a thing for tall ladies. Sara wasn’t huge, but she looked me straight in the eye when we talked. The guys on our team soon learned to treat her like an equal when, in fact, she was better than most of us. She was too light to play under the basket. Big guys were used to throwing their weight around to get rebounds. She gladly took a position as guard and playmaker. And she was deadly from beyond the circle. Her outside shot went to the hoop like a magnet. If we’d had the three-point line back then, she’d have been the high scorer in every game.
We talked a lot when we were off the court and, since we roomed in the same dorm, we walked back from games and practice when I didn’t have to rush to a rehearsal. We were in the ‘New Dorm’ that had just been constructed and had a men’s wing and a women’s wing.
This is about uniforms. Those long shorts that hang down to a guy’s knees didn’t come into play until about the mid-90s. Prior to then, we played in regular gym shorts. They pretty much covered our asses. You wore a jockstrap because otherwise your junk would be hanging out of them. Women just wore panties under their gym shorts, I guess. That was what I saw, anyway.
Yes, I saw. Before and after games, we stretched out. Sara was really into stretching and read me the riot act for not doing a good job of it. From that moment on, we were partners in stretching, often sitting with our feet against each other, stretching forward. I could see her cotton panties and the sweat that darkened them. I had to assume that she was looking up my shorts at my jock as well. Not that girls were interested in that kind of thing.
This was before the ultra-support of jog bras. That meant that female athletes either wore regular bras or went without. Lately, there had been a lot of women shedding the restrictive articles. Bra burning had started about the same time as draft card burning. I didn’t mind that a bit. I liked the look and feel of a woman’s nipples poking out her shirt. Deb always wore a bra in high school but, on our dates, it was usually pushed up above her tits anyway.
Sara didn’t have enough boob to flop around a lot, but I loved the way they moved under her jersey. And when we leaned forward in our stretches, I liked the view even better than her panty-clad crotch.
“You can get a better look if you want,” she said as we stretched. I looked up into her eyes. Busted!
“Sorry, Sara. I just… Sorry.”
“Well?”
“What?”
“You want to get a better look?”
“God, Sara. Just having this view is making my jock uncomfortable,” I said.
“We can take care of that, too. I’ve been trying to get you to make the first move ever since the season began.”
“Am I that stupid? Sara, I don’t even know how to make the first move. I didn’t even know you were interested.”
“Did you really think the dark spot on my panties when you look up the leg of my shorts was just sweat? Haven’t you noticed it gets bigger while we’re stretching?”
“Shit! You knew I was looking…”
“The same way I look up your shorts. And I like what I see,” she said. I was blushing. I knew my cock was straining at my jock. “Well, since you don’t know what to do, I’ll have to take matters into my own hands. Just say so now if you aren’t interested in dipping your dick.” With that her hands slid up the inside of my thighs and into the leg holes of my shorts. She didn’t grab my cock, but just let her hands rest on me on either side of my jock.
“Hell, yes, I’m interested,” I said. “Sara, you’re great. I’m just not very experienced. I really like you and…”
“Save it, Ari. I’m not asking you to marry me. But girls get horny, too. What do you think the whole women’s liberation movement has been about the past ten years? I’m a senior. I don’t have much time left before I have to start acting responsibly as a nurse. I’ll have to focus sex on doctors so I can trap one into marrying me. He’ll knock me up and I’ll never see a new dick again.” She grinned at me. “Oh, Ari,” she said in a higher voice. “Won’t you come to my room and help me study tonight. I have a test in human anatomy I need to practice for.”
I held out my hands to her and she slid hers out of my shorts to take them. We stood up and headed toward the dorm. We agreed to take a quick shower in our own dorm wing and I’d come around the back to the emergency exit on the girls’ wing. Sara would meet me there in fifteen minutes.
“Wear your uniform,” she said. “I like the look. But lose the jock.”
I showed up at the side door of the dorm just as Sara opened it and rushed me up the exit stairs to her room.
“No roommate?” I asked.
“Gone for the weekend. Isn’t that convenient?” Sara giggled. She had also donned her jersey and shorts after a shower. I expected her to slow down once we were in private, but she hit overdrive instead. “I think gym shorts are the sexiest thing ever,” she said as we sat on the edge of her bed and she ran a hand up under the leg. I’d taken her at her word and in a couple seconds, my bare cock was rock hard in her hand. At twenty, I didn’t need much stimulation to be ready. “Don’t you think gym shorts are sexy, Ari?” She pulled one of my hands to her thigh and I got the message.
I’d had enough experience fingering girlfriends to know the terrain and on my bike trip summer before last, I’d gotten a face-to-face introduction to the hidden charms of a woman. And as of last summer, I was no longer a virgin, just inexperienced. I found Sara to be wet and writhing as soon as I started exploring. My other hand went under her jersey and I found the swell of her breast with its hard tip.
“Yeah! You learn quick. We’ve got all weekend to explore and be loving,” she said. “Right now, I just want you to fuck me.”
“Let me get your clothes off,” I suggested.
“No time for that,” she said. She squirmed around and lay back as she got my stiff cock out through the leg hole of my shorts. She just pulled the crotch of her shorts to the side and guided me in.
“Protection?” I gasped as I sank into her.
“I’m on the pill. Fuck me.”
I did. It didn’t last long for either of us. Which was a good thing. Her shorts rubbed against the side of my cock with every thrust. I could get a blister from this if it went very long. I leaned back with both hands under her shirt and pinched her nipples as I rammed home one more time and started spraying. “Ye-ah!” Sara screamed.
Over the course of the weekend, I got about ten times the experience I’d had up to that night. Licking, sucking, fucking. Sara introduced me to half a dozen positions, including standing up and leaning against her door. She was tall enough that it didn’t require any booster to match my cock with her pussy.
We kept this up through the rest of the basketball season, usually just heading for her room on Friday night after our game and fucking until I had to go to rehearsal on Saturday. There was never anything serious between us. She was clear that she had to get all her experiences in before she graduated and that included picking up a hurdler when track season started.
Since then, there’s been no better way to turn me on than to parade around in gym shorts.
Back to Ella
The evening was beautiful. And so was Ella. I grilled the steak and got the potatoes out of the coals. We ate at the picnic table next to the trailer. We took a glass of wine and cuddled in my camp chair to watch the fire. I set my wine glass down and kissed Ella.
Is it a character flaw to be reluctant to make the first move on a woman? Well, there’s a limit to how many times I can accept rejection. It’s 73. That’s probably why I quit trying to get someone else to publish my books and started my own company. The rejection to acceptance ratio for manuscripts is about 99:1. Somewhere along about 73, I quit submitting things. I believe that’s the exact number of times Treasure rejected me before I quit trying.
I decided this was going to be different. While we kissed, my left hand slid under Ella’s shirt to caress her breast while my right hand slipped into her shorts to cup her ass.
“Ella,” I said as we came up for air. “I promised I wouldn’t push you and I’ll back off if you say to. But sweetheart, may I make love to you?”
“No,” she said. I sat back and started to withdraw my hands, but she clapped her hand over mine on her breast. “With me, Ari. I don’t plan to be a passive receptacle. Don’t make love to me. Make love with me.”
It was dark enough, even by the embers from our fire, that I felt comfortable switching my hands. I wrapped my right around her frame so I could continue to touch a breast with it and moved my left hand down to her thigh. I moved deliberately up her leg and into the leg hole of her shorts to find her wet and welcoming pussy.
“I want your cock out, Ari. Let’s go inside so I can have you naked.” I spread the ashes out in the firepit and followed her butt into the trailer.
Once the door was closed and locked, we got rid of each other’s clothes quickly. Ella stroked my hard on and made sure I was fully stiff.
“I’m going to suck you later,” she said. “I don’t want to risk getting you off and having to wait before you can get it in me.”
“Be my lover, Ella. Come to bed with me.”
We fell onto the bed and into each other’s arms. Though it might sound like we were hell bent for leather, our lovemaking was truly soft and sensuous. We faced each other and kissed as we petted, knowing at last that it wasn’t a question whether we would make love or when we’d make love, but rather the fact that we were making love. That relaxed us and let us simply enjoy the act. I couldn’t help but think of other bedmates over the past two years with whom getting to the act (and repeating it as frequently as possible) consumed our encounter.
Lying face to face on our sides isn’t the easiest way to make copulating pieces join. In fact, the only person it had ever been easy with was Alice. And I still didn’t know how we managed it so effortlessly. Eventually, Ella pushed me onto my back and straddled me. It’s probably my favorite position, especially for a first time. The woman can control speed and depth and when she is on top there is absolutely no question in my mind that she wants to be making love to me. To think that she is taking me inside her gives me an overwhelming feeling of love.
Ella kept eye contact with me as she sank down and engulfed me. Reality hit me about the same time our pubic bones touched.
“Ella, honey, we should have protection. I love this, but it’s so reckless of us.”
“Oh, god, Ari! Please don’t tell me you have a disease. I’m clean and was tested after my abortion. I haven’t been with anyone since. I got an implant so I wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting a pill again. I don’t want to take you out.”
“I’m clean and shooting blanks. Alice and I got tested while we were in Arizona at Christmas.”
“You even make Alice get tested?”
“No. That was kind of a courtesy to me. But we were with another woman in Phoenix and we both wanted to make sure.”
“The two of you with a woman?”
“Yes.”
“I think I just got wetter. Do you think Alice would be interested in me? She is so hot!”
“Let’s just enjoy the two of us together for now. Speaking of hot. You know, there was a time not that long ago that I thought I would never feel my cock inside a woman again in my life. Now that I’m in you, I want to lose myself in you,” I said.
“I’m not a mammoth cave,” she laughed. “I don’t think there’s a danger that you’ll get lost.”
“I don’t know,” I said as we moved together. “I want to explore every inch of you.”
“You’re exploring some inches that haven’t been touched in a long time. And, honest to god, you are so much better than a plastic cock! So. Much. Better.”
Have you ever stopped to think of the fact that when a cock meets a pussy, there is about a foot (or a little more) from the root to the maximum depth? As a guy, I’d only thought about the six inches of me that was being enveloped. But there’s an equal amount of woman being stimulated as we stroke together. I felt the familiar tingle and contraction that signaled an orgasm, but there was no accompanying spasm. I stayed hard. Ella came hard. I’d had a dry orgasm for the first time in my life and was building to another. When Ella dipped her head to kiss me deeply and passionately, my second orgasm was anything but dry.
“What are we going to do in Bardstown, Kentucky?” Ella asked when we pulled away from Mammoth Cave two days later. We’d explored the cave and been in a little boat they took into the caverns. It was amazing to find such a vast underground network. I suppose that if there was some huge catastrophe, several thousand people could be housed down there. It made my spine crawl with shivers. Even two hours in the cavern had me nervously looking at every exposed light and focusing on breathing so I didn’t panic. It just creeped me out.
On the other hand, there was Ella hanging on tightly.
“Mmm. I’ve just recently been introduced to spelunking and there’s a tiny grotto I’d like to explore some more,” I laughed. Ella slapped me on the thigh. We had made love tenderly and vigorously the previous night. Nor was I the only initiator of the contact. When Ella said with, she meant a truly equal partnership in bed.
“The tiny grotto might be closed for repairs after your spelunking this morning,” she laughed. “You’re supposed to explore, not excavate.”
“We were a little wild this morning,” I said. “Are you sore?”
“A little. You might have to see if there are any other nearby caves for you to explore.” That didn’t discourage me. “But you could go spelunking till your heart’s content anywhere. Why Bardstown?”
“Kentucky Bourbon,” I answered. “It’s the Bourbon Capital of the World. Of course, I wouldn’t have discovered that if it wasn’t for Nat. He was one of my two or three best friends in high school and retired there. Possibly the most interesting life of anyone I know.”
“Hmm. An old friend and whiskey. Why don’t you teach me anything I need to know special about driving this truck so I can get your drunk ass home safely.”
“I’ll try to stay sane. Neither of us are big drinkers. But since you are traveling with me, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have you able to drive the rig. Let’s go to Walmart,” I said.
“We need some supplies to teach me how to drive this?”
“No. We need a big empty parking lot.”
“Technically, we were smuggling. But no one had put a value and tax on jade and it wasn’t until some professor made a big deal about how valuable it was that the locals figured out they could make money off it,” Nat said. “The thing is that we had to drive almost to Guatemala to get the stuff. Bill and I loaded up the Econoline with the rocks until it practically dragged on the ground. We paid the locals, who thought we were loco, about a hundred bucks for a truck full of rocks. In Chicago, we could sell it for about ten grand.”
Ella and I had a polite and somewhat reserved dinner with Nat and Pat, his wife. It was soon obvious that neither of the women had anything to contribute to Nat’s and my conversation about growing up in Indiana and everything that had happened since. Eventually, they dropped us off at my trailer and I lit the propane firepit while Pat and Ella went off shopping. I broke out some of my best cigars and Nat contributed a bottle of Triple Crown Bourbon. Then we sat and told stories.
A Long Time Ago: Pinochle
I boycotted the girls in my class during my junior year in high school. That’ll show them. Think they can choose who I date. They didn’t notice. Of course, the fact that Jill went to a different school and there were a couple of other cuties there who were interested made it easier to ignore the girls in my class. But since I wasn’t hanging out with girls at lunch, Nat and I often ended up in an unused classroom playing pinochle during lunch. It wasn’t a private game and a few other guys would occasionally join us on a rainy day. Most of them wanted to play poker and a few would play euchre. Whenever we had a choice, though, Nat and I played pinochle.
It was almost unheard of for a girl to join the game. Of course, when word started to spread that we had a classroom to ourselves at lunch and didn’t sit in the gym with everyone else, there was a quick scurry to camp out there. It got so noisy in the room with a dozen girls in a corner giggling, a dozen guys talking about football and Notre Dame’s chances for a national championship, three couples making out, and five of us trying to figure out if there was a five-hand variation of pinochle. Coach Hancock walked into the classroom and blew a whistle.
It was his classroom. We all got thrown out.
Eventually, the card players were allowed back in under the auspices of being a school club. Nat had presented the idea to the principal as being the equivalent of a chess club. He was even more a geek and social outcast than I was, but he could put together a convincing argument for just about anything.
When the club reconvened, there were four of us. Perfect. Nat and I, Tom Little, and Anne Waverly.
There’s always someone in your extended circle that you never notice and then twenty years later, that person has turned into something incredible like an astronaut or a rock star or something. Anne was that person. She was a mousy girl with black-rimmed glasses and nondescript brown, stringy hair. Her skirts hung below her knees and she wore baggy sweaters, the sleeves often completely covering her hands. She was easy to overlook because she was less than shoulder-height on me. And she seldom looked at anyone.
But she was a good card player and when we partnered, we usually won.
Anne was interested in the cards for other reasons. She often had a comment about the design and had several decks in her big purse, all from different manufacturers. She’d sometimes mutter about getting the lovers together in a foursome and then lay down a double-pinochle. That’s two queens of spades and two jacks of diamonds.
“The Queen of Spades is the empress,” she’d say. “The Jack of Diamonds is her mistress.”
“You can’t have a male mistress,” Nat argued.
“What do you call it?” Anne demanded.
“Consort,” I suggested. “Isn’t that what they call Prince Phillip? The Queen’s Consort?”
“Hmm.” Anne got a sketchbook out of her bag and made a note, quickly sketching something out. “I’ll be the Queen of Spades one day. If you’re lucky, I’ll choose you as my Royal Consort.” She was always sketching something. After lunch, she’d disappear into the art classroom. I wasn’t sure she took any other classes. I never saw her during the school day.
At our twenty-fifth class reunion, I thought I was pretty hot stuff. I brought Treasure with me, though she chose to leave early so I could have fun with my classmates. My first non-fiction design book was out and doing okay. I was earning a living as an editor and book designer. And trainer. I was in demand as a public speaker. None of my plays had hit Broadway, but Fishbowl was enjoying a run at a semi-professional rep company in Indy.
I was disappointed that Deb didn’t make it to the reunion and devastated to find out she’d passed away from cancer the year before. She’d become the first member of my class to die. Shannon got me out on the dance floor and occupied me for a while suggesting that we had some unfinished business from the last week of senior year we needed to get to. With my wife and daughter waiting for me at the Holiday Inn, that wasn’t going to happen. We’d just chalk it up as an unfulfilled fantasy.
“Who’s the dish in the corner?” I asked, pointing at a blonde in a slinky black dress, spike heels, and pearls.
“The bitch in black?” Shannon spat. “Every girl in our class has put on twenty pounds in twenty years. She decides to dump her frump look and be the Queen. She calls herself the Queen of Spades.”
“That’s Anne?” I gasped.
“You have to know, Ari, that Deb wasn’t the first girl I’d ever been with. I was her first. But if I’d known what was under those baggy sweaters of Anne’s, I’d have arranged a different threesome that night and wouldn’t have left you to get sucked by my sister.”
“You knew?”
“She bragged.” We finished another dance and Shannon shoved me toward the Queen of Spades.
“Anne? It’s Ari. I didn’t recognize you. How’s life?” I asked when I approached her table. She looked at me and rolled her eyes.
“Honestly, Ari. Do you think I wouldn’t know you? I wondered how long it would take for you to figure it out.”
“Well, Craig didn’t recognize me when I came in. I assumed I’d changed as much as everyone else. Like you.”
“I saw your play.”
“You don’t sound enthused.”
“Nothing wrong with it. You just needed a plot and characters.”
“Ouch. Why did you bother to see it?”
“My famous classmate? I needed to see what the Queen’s Consort was up to.”
“He’s, um… happily married.”
“You sound disappointed in that. I brought you a present.” Under the table, she had a large bag. I guess some things don’t change. What she brought out was a deck of cards. It seemed thicker than most decks. “I was thinking about giving a deck to all my classmates, but decided to keep them for myself. Here. I’ll give you two decks. Go ahead and take a look, but don’t show them around. I think you’ll appreciate the Queen of Hearts.”
I quickly leafed through the deck. Every card was a face card with different names and several additional suits. Each was painted with the image of one of my classmates. Most were shown in fantasy settings and wouldn’t be immediately recognizable. They were suited, but there were more than the four normal playing card suits. Acorns? Slide rules? A legend was written at the bottom of each card with power and points. I didn’t really understand. I finally found the Queen of Hearts and looked down on the face of my lost high school girlfriend, Deb. I had trouble looking at the rest.
“Take your time with them, Ari,” Anne said. “But you know who the Queen of Spades and the Jack of Diamonds are.”
“These are pretty amazing. I’ve never seen a deck that resembles it.”
“Believe it or not, I found a job that would let me do these. This set is a prototype that we tested on a dye sub printer. I hand cut them, so they might not be perfectly the same size,” she said.
“What do you do?” I asked.
“I work for a game company that specializes in cards. It’s going to be very big. It started as a combination between collector cards—like baseball cards—and Dungeons and Dragons. The games involve dice as well as cards and a layout that lets you play against another person,” she said enthusiastically. “Of course, when the game comes out, it will have my fantasy art on the cards, not our classmates.”
“Anne, I wish I’d paid more attention in high school,” I sighed. “To you.”
“Ha! If you’d paid the least bit of attention to me beyond playing pinochle, I’d have had our first child before graduation. We’d be living in a trailer park with six kids and you’d be working on an assembly line while I contemplated running away,” she laughed.
“What?”
“If you had ever so much as touched me, my legs would have fallen wide open. Half the time, I didn’t wear underwear on days we played cards. When we were partners, I played with my knees apart and my skirt pulled up under the table, imagining that you’d take my trick.”
“I was totally clueless,” I said.
“Like I said, it’s a good thing. I’m happily married, to quote an old flame. Of course, that doesn’t preclude the possibility of a double pinochle.”
Back to Bardstown
“Ever hear from Anne?” I asked, not even realizing that I’d betrayed my thoughts. Nat was pulling a beautiful Native American flute from a leather case.
“She sent me a couple decks of cards a few years ago. Made me out to be the King of Slide Rules. Haven’t heard from her in years.” He started playing a bit of ethereal music on the flute. I stepped into the trailer and grabbed my drum out of the storage compartment over the bed. I hadn’t used it since I played while Angie danced in the desert. I filled our glasses again, lit another cigar, and began tapping out a rhythm to Nat’s flute.
Home Again in Indiana
“I couldn’t believe that master distiller!” Ella laughed after we’d finished our distillery tour and were back in the truck headed north. “He had to weigh three hundred pounds. And he was at least six-six. But so enthused about the specific gravity of fine bourbon and what it means to have proof.”
“I imagine him going home to a wife who is like five feet tall and weighs about ninety-eight cents.”
“Oh, god, yes! Can you imagine what they’d have for kids?”
“A girl who is about six-three and is as big around as my forearm,” I laughed. “I might have to work that into my story.”
“Why stop there? Double your pleasure, double your fun…” she sang.
“Twins? Oh, man. And the other one is five feet tall and weighs two-fifty.”
Ella and I enjoyed our trip. We stopped to see Mitch but didn’t camp there. He had a new girlfriend. Well, sort of new. It turned out that they’d lost their virginity to each other in high school, had gone their separate ways and had recently reconnected.
“She’s just as horny now as she was in high school,” Mitch confided as we went out to see his pigeons. “Best sex I’ve had since high school, too. Of course, the last time I had sex with a high school girl I was in high school. What’s with you and Ella?”
“Mitch. She’s not in high school.”
“Yeah. I’ve got grandkids her age.”
“They’re safe,” I laughed. “We’re just enjoying each other’s company for a couple of months before she goes back to work on her Master’s.”
“Well, I hope you enjoy a lot!”
We camped in Brown County State Park for a week and did a lot of hiking. We also went into Nashville—the one in Indiana—and explored all the little shops. It was a little more commercial than it had been when I was in college, but still retained the hippie vibe it was famous for. And I got to introduce Ella to an Indiana specialty—deep fried pork tenderloin sandwiches. Every restaurant and grill had their own version of the pork tenderloin sandwich. It was Indiana fast food.
Of course, since I was working on the end of LNDtH Book 7: Hearthstone Entertainment, we did a lot of driving around the Bloomington area, spotting places where the ranch could be located, looking at old barns that might have been renovated into a huge home, and exploring the IU campus. One thing I’d failed to take into account after my visit a year earlier was that none of the roads in Monroe County were laid out on an even grid like they were up North, where I came from. I needed to do some rewriting on that.
I led Ella to Dunn Woods and sat with her on a bench looking at my favorite sculpture. As we looked at The Space Between, Ella edged closer to me and tucked herself under my arm.
“I don’t know why it speaks to me so,” I said. “I’m just drawn to it.”
“It’s you and Alice,” Ella said. “You love each other, but there’s all this distance between you.”
“Or me and all the women I’ve loved in my life. Not just miles. There is a metaphysical distance as well. Like our ages. Our professions. The general stage of life,” I said.
“Our ages are almost as different,” Ella said. “But we’re not having any difficulty.”
“Right now, we’re traveling the same path. Maybe that’s part of the problem. When Alice and I get together, it’s a destination. She’ll meet me at Quartzsite. I’ll meet her at Yellowstone. When we get together, we stay put. She’s never really traveled with me like you are,” I said.
“You need to remedy that. Make her part of your journey. Why don’t you have her come and join us for the Shakespeare Festival?” Ella asked.
“You really want to see if she’ll take you into a threesome, don’t you?” I laughed.
“Me? I was only thinking of you, Ari dear.”
Alice was enthused about the idea, but unable to make it a reality. She had elected to take a summer course to give her extra credits toward her major. She wouldn’t be able to join me until August and Ella planned to return to Nashville in mid-July.
Nonetheless, Alice spent a long time on speaker phone with us that night as Ella and I made love and described every sensation to her.
Ella and I continued north, a little at a time, without a great deal of pressure one way or another. We went to see things together. I had fun showing her the campus of my alma mater and she laughed over my frequent exclamations about how things had changed since I was a student. I didn’t know any of the professors. Bill had died a few years ago. I had no idea where Coop went and assumed Dr. Hart had passed on. It was such a long time ago. An annual award plaque with my name and Lora’s on the first brass nameplate still hung in the theater display case.
Farther north, we visited the small town where I finished high school. The only part of Tippecanoe Valley High School that still stood was the gym and I couldn’t believe how small it was. Five rows of bleachers on each side of a basketball court that couldn’t have been more than three-quarters regulation length. It was a community center now with a new twelve grades school just north of it in what Jon and I had once dubbed Lake Dewey.
I drove past the old homestead that had been such an important part of growing up. Nothing looked the same. No house. No neighbors that I knew. I took Ella to the beach where Jessica had been so playful that one summer afternoon so long ago. It was on the way to visit my cousins for dinner.
“How long have you known each other?” Emily demanded. She scowled at me.
“About a year and a half now,” Ella answered.
“You were together when you visited last year and didn’t bring her out?” Naomi said. The youngest of my cousins, her grandchildren were as old as Ella.
“Oh, no. We’d just met. We didn’t get together until a few weeks ago. Ari was willing to let me tag along for a couple of months,” Ella answered. She wasn’t letting my cousins get to her. Dick shushed Emily before she could ask another embarrassing question.
“How big is your trailer, Ari?” Naomi asked. I pointed at her dining room table.
“About that big.” There were a few gasps to think that not only was I homeless and living in a little hovel, but that I’d kidnapped a young girl to travel with me. Dick broke in again and remembered his dad’s 100th birthday.
“Al was making a joke at the party and said he went to Hallmark to get a birthday card. The clerk said they didn’t have any for hundred-year-olds. She wanted to know if he’d take two fifty-year-olds. Dad hollered, ‘Hell, yes! I’ll take two fifty-year-olds!’ Al spit his beer out his nose.”
Fortunately, I wasn’t drinking anything or I would have, too.
Dinner went pretty well from that point and was mostly stories of our parents and some poetry recitation that we’d all been forced to memorize when we were kids. I guess we weren’t forced. We just memorized them from having our dads repeat them so often.
“We don’t read Ari’s dirty books,” Emily said. “His mysteries are pretty good, though.”
“Oh, I read them!” Ella answered. “They’re hot!” Naomi raised her hand and wiggled her fingers at me.
“Me, too,” she said.
“Naomi!” her sisters all exclaimed. She just shrugged.
I breathed a sigh of relief when it was time to go. I’d had a couple beers with Dick and Les while we were talking and tossed the keys to Ella.
We headed on into Michigan and across north of Detroit into Canada. Ella was quiet, but I guess I was, too. I’d become steadily more liberal as I got older. My cousins, except for Dick and maybe Naomi had become more religious and more conservative.
We set up camp at an RV park right in Stratford, Ontario so we could walk to the main theater. I could have found a cheaper site about twenty miles out of town, but I’d basically be spending the difference on gas driving in to see the shows. Might as well be where the action is. Ella went to take a shower after dinner and I sat to get some writing done. I was surprised to see it was after dark when she got back. We were pretty far north and it was the middle of summer. I started to say something, but she cut me off.
“Ari, turn off the lights and look out the window,” she whispered. I complied while she stripped. I still had shorts on and she tugged them off.
“What am I looking at?”
“Other side of the street, two trailers down. Where they have the fire going.” She wiggled her way in front of me and held the blinds open with one hand. I leaned over her back and automatically dropped a hand to cup one of her dangling breasts. “Mmm. Yeah.”
A Long Time Ago: To Be or Not to Be
It wasn’t my first time in Stratford. When Paula and I moved to Minneapolis, her parents enticed us back later in the summer with the offer of a ‘real’ honeymoon. They put up $500 for travel and tickets and loaned us their car and travel trailer to go see some plays before we started work on our master’s degrees.
I wanted to get back anyway because my dad had been sick and I wanted to see him. Fucking cancer. After our brief visit, Paula and I headed to the Shakespeare Festival. We’d found an RV park halfway between Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake where the Shaw festival was held. We immersed ourselves in Shakespeare and Shaw. Tickets must have been a whole lot cheaper back then because I’m sure Paula and I saw at least one show every day the whole time we were there. We even saw Cleo Lane and the Johnny Dankworth Trio in concert. She’s still one of my favorite singers. Must be 85 by now.
On Saturday night after the show, we went to a restaurant called The Church which was just an old classic church that had been converted. The food was fantastic. And after dinner, they served Ethiopian Harrar coffee prepared in a French press. I think all the coffee I’d had up to that point was perked A&P Eight O’Clock. My eyes were opened in a big way.
But Paula had decided to go lie by the pool for a while one afternoon and I was making notes for a new play I was thinking of writing. I could never tolerate just lying in the sun. I glanced out the window and saw the volleyball court about fifty feet away. It was filled with teenage girls in bikinis. I was mesmerized. A dozen girls, probably all less than eighteen. Twenty-four bouncing breasts. Twelve nearly bare butts. As I watched, I started getting hard and loosened my trousers so I could pet the puppy. The blonde—I always had a thing for blondes—was very active. I think it was probably for the benefit of the teenage boys who were watching the game from the other side. It benefited me, as well. She did a lot of tumbling, bouncing, and bending. I did a lot of stroking.
“What are you doing?” Paula exclaimed as she opened the trailer door and saw me. Shit!
“Um… just relaxing. You look great in that swimsuit.” I wished she was wearing one like the blonde instead of the one-piece super-duty she had on.
“Relaxing?” She marched straight to the window and looked out the way I’d been facing. “You pervert! You’re masturbating while watching teenage girls. We’ve been married two months and already you’re cheating on me!”
“Cheating? I was all alone in the privacy of our room. I can’t help it that I found them stimulating.” I saw the whole vacation going up in flames. Paula could get upset over so little.
“Well, just see if you get any from me if you’re going to stare at other girls and masturbate. I can take care of my own needs, too!”
I didn’t have any more needs. I’d wilted and shoved myself into my pants. Just what I needed—a wife who belittled me.
“Just change clothes so we can go to the show,” I growled. I grabbed my legal pad and walked out to sit at the picnic table. From this angle, I couldn’t see the volleyball game, so I had plenty of time to write while Paula got dressed.
We did eventually make up and made love. If it weren’t for Paula’s needs, I’d probably still have a hard on.
Back to Ella
Ella was not like Paula. Even like the twenty-two-year-old Paula I fondly remembered most of the time. Ella was pointing out the window. A couple were sitting by the fire across the way, only back far enough that they couldn’t be easily seen from the street. The girl had her top off and he was happily sucking her tits. She was good looking, too, from what I could see.
She was wiggling around and reached behind herself to pull her bikini bottoms out of the way so he could insert himself. I could almost hear the sigh as she sank down on him.
Ella had a hand on my stiffening cock.
“Do me, Ari,” she whispered. “Ooh! Yes! In me like he’s in her. In. Out. In. Out. That’s it. I never thought I was a voyeur, but that is so hot. Touch me, Ari. Yes! I’m going to try to hold out until she comes. Look at her! Look at her bounce on him! Oh, God! Ari, you’re making me feel so good!”
My view of the couple wasn’t as good as Ella’s, but my view of Ella was great. Her round bottom cushioning my pelvis as I jabbed into her repeatedly. I bent forward so I could kiss her shoulders as I fondled her breasts. Ella was panting and carrying on a running commentary.
“Yes, pinch my nipples. I might come. Oh! Look! She’s turning around. She doesn’t think anyone can see them. Look at him pinch her nipples and pull them out like you are doing to mine. She’s going crazy. Oh! Ari! I’m…” Ella’s words dissolved into a screech that shook the windows. She let go of the shade but the last thing I saw was the other couple swing their eyes over toward our trailer with their mouths wide open. I was sure I heard an echoing screech.
Ella looked great in her little black dress. I dug my one and only tie out of the bottom of a storage bin. When I was so worried about looking nice at my reunion the previous year, I bought a nice pair of blue wool slacks that went great with my custom-tailored sport coat. I’d had it made for myself on my last trip to Singapore. I looked okay. Ella was stunning.
Our seats in the Festival Theatre were in the nosebleed section. I’m not sure when theaters started imitating sporting venues, but it was row ZZ and we could clearly see the tops of all the actors’ heads. It made no difference to me. Even though I have a little difficulty hearing, Hamlet came through loud and clear. I sat enrapt through the full three hours, with a break at intermission for a glass of wine that we shared. After the show, we went into town and had a burger.
That isn’t the most elegant meal to have after a beautiful evening at the theater, but it was a great burger and the people in the restaurant wore a variety of fashions that extended from ripped jeans to elegant evening gowns. We weren’t the most fancily dressed. I took a big bite of my burger and closed my eyes in ecstasy. I heard Ella giggle.
“What?” I said. “It’s a really good burger.”
“It’s not that,” she said. “I was just thinking about the show. It was like watching it twice.”
“How do you mean?”
“I kept glancing over at you and you were mouthing all the words. Do you have the entire script memorized?”
“Crap! Was I being distracting? You should have said something!”
“No! Ari, you never uttered a word. But your lips moved in sync with what the actors were saying. I didn’t think a PhD in playwriting required you to memorize all of Shakespeare,” she laughed. “You’re amazing.”
“Probably not as amazing as you would like to believe, but thank you. Hamlet has a special place in my heart. It’s funny, I remember nearly every word of that play, but just ten years ago I did Duke Vincentio in Measure for Measure and I don’t remember a single line.”
A Long Time Ago: That’s a Fair Thought
It was the first time Bill had directed Shakespeare on our college stage and he’d decided to start with Hamlet. People thought he was crazy. Everyone thought all theater people were crazy. Bill just happened to top the list at the moment.
I was cast as the Player King, the exact role I’d auditioned for. All the other men in the department, and many from other departments, had come to audition for the role of Hamlet and I could see Bill cringe every time another started “To be or not to be.” I did an understated and rather quiet rendition of the Player King’s speech that seemed to capture the moment. I stepped down to the edge of the stage and sat on the steps to capture the lull in the speech.
But, as we often see, against some storm,
A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still,
The bold winds speechless and the orb below
As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder
Doth rend the region
Bill cast me on the spot. We’d been in rehearsals for a week, still working on reading the script and making the cuts he thought were necessary when Bill surprised me during break.
“I was going to cut most of the Player King’s speech, but you convinced me otherwise. There’s something else I want, though, Ari. I want you to understudy Hamlet. There won’t be a lot of opportunity to rehearse you for the role, so I’d like you to work with Melody as Ophelia. It’s an emergency thing. If either of our leads goes down, I’ll put you both in for the night. The school has decided to put a lot into promoting the show as part of the Indianapolis Cultural Events Festival. We can’t risk cancelling a performance,” he said. “Are you in, Ari?”
“Why me?” I gasped. I was sure I was the only male who hadn’t auditioned for the lead.
“Because you are the only male in our cast who wouldn’t attempt to murder Rick to get the opportunity to play the role,” Bill laughed.
I’d love to play it, but rehearsing it would be almost as good. Melody was a cute and bubbly girl who was a senior, two years older than me. She’d been cast as my Queen in the traveling troupe of players. I’d only met her during auditions and didn’t think she’d ever been in a play before. But she was exactly the kind of willowy blonde that Bill had cast as Ophelia. In fact, I could see some of his logic. The two of us looked a lot like the Hamlet and Ophelia who had the major roles. We could probably wear the same costumes. If we never performed the roles, we’d still be on stage performing the play within the play reflected in the positions of Hamlet and Ophelia next to us. I could see Bill’s concept and thought it was brilliant.
I captured a lot of this experience when I wrote The Props Master 1: Ritual Reality so I won’t go into all the details. Suffice it to say that our performance won us a trip to England to perform and tour for three weeks that summer. There was a lot of shuffling around of roles. Several people couldn’t make the tour. I was afraid that I’d have to start training a new understudy. We were about to open our spring show at the same time we started rehearsing the new cast for Hamlet. I hadn’t seen Melody since the show closed in October, so seeing her at the rehearsal was a surprise.
“Melody! Are you going to make the trip?” I asked as I gave her a hug.
“Yes! Isn’t it exciting? My parents are paying for it as a graduation present.”
“Graduation! Wow! It seems so far away for me. What are you planning next?”
“Things have pulled together like you wouldn’t believe. I really need this break before everything goes out of control again. I’ve been accepted at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburg to start my MFA. And a private school in the suburbs has hired me to teach part time. I’ll be moving as soon as we get back from England,” she bubbled.
“That’s great! MFA in what? I guess I never knew what your major was.”
“Art. I’m a painter,” she said.
“I had no idea. I’m so glad we’ll be able to work together again for a while. We had good chemistry on stage and it will help unify the production,” I said. I just realized how many women in my life had been artists.
Hamlet. England. Performance. The Lakes. And finally, London for a few days of theater before we flew back to Indy. The context for that trip was captured in my story, but the real events… I guess there’s a first time for everything. If you’re lucky.
One of those firsts came while Melody and I were rehearsing just before we left for England. Bill wanted us to do one complete run-through with the cast so he was confident that we could go on if needed. It wasn’t even onstage. We did it in the rehearsal hall and it was only the principals. Melody and I had studied the blocking that the leads had, but working mostly by ourselves, we’d developed our own bits. I’d rehearsed catch as catch can with the other principals, but this was the first time I got to do everything all the way through.
Melody surprised me. Bill was shocked.
OPHELIA: My lord, I have remembrances of yours,
That I have longed long to re-deliver;
I pray you, now receive them.
Before I could respond, Melody—I mean Ophelia—kissed me. It was sweet and tender and took my breath away. It wasn’t like we’d never kissed. The blocking for the dumb show and play within a play both included stage kisses. This was not a stage kiss. I gasped out my line.
HAMLET: No, not I;
I never gave you aught.
OPHELIA: My honour’d lord, you know right well you did;
And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed
As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,
Take these again;
She kissed me again, wrapping her hand around the back of my neck and drawing me inward to her. I was lost as the tip of her tongue brushed my lips.
OPHELIA: for to the noble mind
Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.
There, my lord.
Another kiss. Bill’s direction of Ophelia and Hamlet was very different than the sudden electric dynamic between us. I was surprised that he didn’t stop us, but my confusion over Melody’s sudden change in the blocking poured over into my interpretation of the brooding prince. I was genuinely confused by her behavior and turning on her to send her to a nunnery was more impassioned than I’d ever felt.
There was only one more scene with her. Then I had to wrap up the last two acts before Bill called us all together for notes.
“It’s a very different show. I’m glad Rick and Janice weren’t here to see you. They’d start changing things and that would damage what they have. But yours is unique. Maybe you’ll get to perform it sometime.”
That was it. All of Bill’s notes. Not a single change in the new dynamic Melody had introduced.
And that changed things for Melody and me, too. We sat together on the plane to England. We held hands. We accompanied each other on tours. We sat next to each other on the bus. And I found that the kisses during the dumb show and the play within a play were less staged and more natural.
The kisses when we parted in the evenings to go to our hotels were heated.
While I snapped photos of the countryside, the theaters we performed in, and the architecture, Melody drew pictures. As often as not, I was her subject. Sitting with a glass of wine on Friar’s Crag. Leaning against one of the standing stones of Carles Castlerigg. Waiting in the dressing room after I’d switched makeup from Bernardo to the Player King. I became comfortable with her pulling out a sketchbook at random and drawing something… or drawing me.
We finished our last performance and never got a chance to do the show as Hamlet and Ophelia. We had a big dinner at the Walpole to celebrate and toast our hosts. Bill called everyone’s attention as he stood at the table.
“We had understudies for Hamlet and Ophelia, but Rick and Janice didn’t have the courtesy to get sick,” he said. Everyone laughed. “I think it’s only fair, though, that Ari and Melody get to do at least one scene. No costumes, no makeup. There is a stairway. Okay, you two. Get thee to a nunnery.”
Damn! We were on the spot. It took us a few moments to orient ourselves and figure out where we’d be positioned. And then we began.
HAMLET: Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remember’d.
Performing the scene in front of the whole cast and our hosts in the intimate environment of the sitting room and entry to the old hotel amped up our performance. Melody was certainly on and the kisses she gave me left me almost unable to give my lines. We got a lot of applause when we finished.
“Shit! Why didn’t we do that scene like that?” Rick shouted. “All this time I could have been kissing Janice!”
“In your dreams,” Janice said as she took her husband’s hand. She and Phil had been married just before we left and the England tour was their honeymoon. Rick’s Hamlet and her Ophelia had a completely different dynamic going on.
The next day, we left the Lake District and arrived at Stratford-upon-Avon in time for the evening show of Measure for Measure presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was standing room only, but I loved the performance with Melody beneath my arm leaning against me. Little did I know that twenty-five years later I would play the role of Duke Vincentio, directed by one of the young extras on that stage.
We were all checked into our hotel in London the next day. It was the first time during our trip that we were all in the same hotel. And we had four days to enjoy London with only the shows we would see as scheduled events. Melody immediately wanted to take me to tour the Tate. Listening to her describe the paintings we saw and feeling the love she had for art transmitted through the hand I held changed my perspective. That day I became an art lover.
“Will you pose for me like that?” she asked. We were standing in front of a drawing by Joseph Mallord William Turner. It was a muscular man, reclining. Nude.
“Um… I’m not exactly built like that,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I was referring to the muscles or the hanging equipment.
“I only asked for the pose, not the body,” she laughed. I nodded. “I’ll come to your room tonight after we see The Mousetrap. No one will know.”
Melody wore a nightgown and peignoir when I opened the door to her light knock. She carried her ever-present sketchbook and pencils. I still had my slacks and a polo shirt on.
“You’re not exactly ready,” she laughed.
“I didn’t know… I mean… I wasn’t sure…”
“How about if we make this easy, Ari. We’ve been making out for four weeks. I want you naked. I’ll go first.” With that, she slipped the peignoir off her shoulders and dropped the straps of the nightgown. With a little tug, it fell to the floor at her feet. She was beautiful. “Undress, Ari.” She didn’t wait for me. She pulled at the hem of my shirt and I raised my arms so she could lift it off. I got my belt unbuckled and she pushed my trousers to the floor, freeing my hard cock. She stepped back to arm’s length with her hand on my chest. “Oh. And you said you weren’t built like that. Liar.” She gave a little shove and I fell back onto the bed. She followed me.
“Are we going to sketch?” I asked.
“In a hurry?” She kissed me with the rising passion that we had experienced over the past few weeks.
“I don’t have much experience with this,” I said as I caressed her naked breast and placed little kisses around her nipple.
“Neither do I, Ari. But I want this. I’ve wanted it since the first kiss I gave you during that rehearsal. Do you want me, Ari? Will you be my first?”
“If you’ll be mine,” I answered. We kissed some more.
HAMLET: Lady, shall I lie in your lap?
OPHELIA: No, my lord.
HAMLET: I mean, my head upon your lap?
OPHELIA: Ay, my lord.
HAMLET: Do you think I meant country matters?
OPHELIA: I think nothing, my lord.
HAMLET: That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.
“Perhaps you should try it,” Melody sighed tugging me over her and between her legs.
“Oh! Do we need protection? I don’t have anything.”
“Are you really a virgin?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t think we have any diseases to spread to each other. And I’m on the pill. For medical reasons.”
“Melody, are you sure you want me?”
“Ari, can’t you feel how wet I am against your penis. Please, lover. Be my lover.” I pushed forward and Melody lifted her hips to meet my pressure. I looked into her eyes as, for the first time in my life, I slipped into a woman. She was smiling at me and held me tightly with her hands on my waist so I would not move.
I couldn’t move. I’d even forgotten how to breathe. This was what life was meant to be. This was where I wanted to spend it. It was miraculous. It was wonderful. We moved only slightly and I began coming in her. A few more twitches and she came, too.
“Look at us,” Melody whispered. The first time had been over too quickly. We’d spent only a few minutes kissing before we were ready for the second. Finally, we lay together, my head on her tummy where I continued to lavish kisses. I glanced up.
There was a dresser with a mirror at the foot of the bed. I could see our reflection.
“Lift up a little,” she said. I did and she leaned out of bed to reach her sketchbook. “Now lie right back where you were.” I did. For the next several minutes, Melody worked on a sketch of the two of us lying in the afterglow of our first sex.
I can’t say that we saw much of London after that. We were present and accounted for whenever there was a group activity. We disappeared as soon as the group dispersed. We spent most of the next three days in bed, sometimes even sleeping.
We spent one more night together when we returned to Indy. It was intense, tearful, and passionate.
“I didn’t intend to fall in love, Ari. And now I’m leaving. This is so difficult.”
“Melody, I fell in love the first time you kissed me. You swept me away. Maybe I can transfer to Carnegie Mellon. I’ll start making calls.”
“Only if you really want to major in scene design instead of playwriting,” she said. “Ari, we’re young. Life is going to change. But for the rest of my life, when I think of our parting, I will weep. Goodnight, sweet prince.”
Back to Ella
“Is this what being married is like?” Ella sobbed.
We had just had a rousing fight. We’d been packing up the camp to leave our paradise of Shakespearean plays, and several others, when she excitedly started to roll in the slide-out. I opened the door behind her, saw what was happening and yelled, “Wait!” She turned and looked at me without taking her hand off the button. I grabbed it and pulled it away.
“What are you doing? Let go of me!”
“I said wait! That means take your hand off the fucking button.”
“What’s the big deal?”
“The big deal is that the bathroom door is open.”
“You’re so anal!”
“It’s not about being anal. It has to be closed.” She slammed the bathroom door. It bounced back open, shaking the mirror on the door. I reached around her and closed it firmly. “I’ll leave you at the next airport,” I said.
“Because I left a stupid door open? You bastard!”
“With the door open, the slide will catch on the knob as it comes closed. You keep bringing the slide in and the best case is you rip the door off its hinges. The worst case is that the hinges are too strong and you bend the tracks for the slide. And the power cords haven’t been unplugged. Keep bringing in the slide and all our chargers will be sheared off,” I yelled. Christ! I can’t believe she didn’t just stop when I told her to. Was I that big an ogre? The answer to that question was staring me in the face. Ella had a look of complete horror on her face.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know! Please don’t dump me here. I’ll fly home from Detroit. I promise. Please don’t leave me!”
“Oh, crap! I’m sorry, Ella. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like that. I panicked. I’d never abandon you,” I said. I held out my arms and she tentatively came into them.
“Is this what being married is like?” she asked.
“You mean having a big row and then making up?”
“Yes. But no. I mean being with someone you love and still not understanding him. I mean being terrified of having done something irreparably wrong and that you’ll lose him with the next breath. I mean spending every night cuddled naked in the arms of your lover and never making love.”
I had to think. That summed up my marriages. Loving but not understanding. Always being afraid this was the end. Having a lover but never making love.
“Uh… What do you mean never making love?” I said. Trust me to get right to the important part.
“We’ve been in Stratford a week and haven’t made love since the first night when we saw that other couple,” she sobbed against my chest. “And before that it was the night after your cousins’ party. Twice in the last two weeks, Ari! I feel like I don’t… you don’t… I’m not attractive to you anymore.”
“Oh, my god! Have I really been so dense? Such an idiot?”
“You just wrote that beautiful love scene between Brian and Pam where she just wanted to be with a boy but not have intercourse,” Ella said. I knew she’d been reading everything I was writing. Occasionally, I’d find a little note in the margin suggesting a word or that just had a heart in it. “And look at your story. That’s the only love scene in the past two chapters. Everything has been about Elaine’s monologues and Hannah’s directing and who was going to be the guest on whose show. And there’s one little love scene for a guy who has fourteen lovers. And Pam isn’t even one of them. Am I?”
Crap! Just fucking damn!
“I’m so sorry, Ella. It’s not what it’s like to be married. It’s what it’s like to be old,” I said. “Shh. I know I’m not that old. It’s not that I’m incapable or that I don’t desire you. It’s that for years I’ve been told ‘The honeymoon is over. Settle down.’ I learned the slow lesson that if I wanted to have that naked lover next to me, then I’d better not cross the line. It’s an imaginary line in my head, not a real one. It’s nothing you said. I just can’t imagine, even after all we’ve done together, that you want to make love to me and not just have an occasional cuddle. You are so desirable I can hardly speak.”
“I don’t necessarily want to make love every night and every morning and every afternoon,” she giggled. “But isn’t there a middle ground between that and once a week?”
“Help me with it, sweetheart. Remind me. Tell me what you want and when you want it.”
“Now.”
We camped west of Detroit for another four days. We did not spend all our time in bed making love, but we got there frequently. We talked even more than we had in the truck during the first two months of our time together. I learned a lot about Ella. I learned more about myself.
“We’re never going to be more than we are right now, are we, Ari?” Ella sighed as she came down from another orgasm. I lifted my face from between her legs and she held her arms out to me. I crawled to her, pausing to kiss each of her nipples and to kiss her under the chin on my way into her arms.
“What do you want us to be, sugar?” I asked as we pecked lips a few times.
“Sugar in the morning, sugar in the evening, sugar at suppertime. Be my little sugar and love me all the time,” she sang.
“You know I’m always going to love you,” I answered.
“Yes. And I will always love you, Ari. But I’m going home. It’s time. I had my fantasy. It’s time to face reality.”
“You’re more than a fantasy.”
“Are you sure, Ari? How do you tell the difference? I know what you will do when I leave. You will mope around for a few days while you drive up to Sault Ste. Marie. What, a week? Then you’ll start part eight of your story. You’ll look forward to meeting Alice. You’ll think of all the good times we had and forget about our little fights. In a month or two, you’ll fit me into a story that you are writing. Maybe I’ll be your next Galatea. You’ve been talking about joining the Damsels in Distress universe. Maybe I’ll be a damsel. You certainly rescued me. Or maybe I’ll be the love interest in your do-over. Or a model for some artist. I’ll be prettier than I am. Probably smarter. I’ll be the world’s greatest lover who made you come again and again. You’ll love me till the end of time and we’ll live happily ever after. It’s what you do, Ari. I’ll love you in that story and I will be happy. Our problems will disappear. Our ages won’t make a difference. I’ll probably be independently wealthy and could travel around the world giving you blowjobs on demand. My demand. You’ve never demanded anything. Me? I’ll get my master’s, a job, and a life. You’ll stay in touch. At least until I find my Prince Charming. Then you’ll slip away from me. But I’ll always be your perfect lover in print. That’s not reality, Ari. Not my reality. It’s your reality. And what I’ve realized is that I’m happy with that. I’ll read the story and, in the story, all our fantasies will come true. When I’m fifty or sixty or a hundred, I’ll read that story again and I’ll think that I was loved more than any woman alive. And I’ll always wish that I could have lived with you, have actually been the fantasy you wrote about.”
Tears were streaming from my eyes. Had she pegged me so well? Was I, in fact, any more than what I write?
“Look around you, Ella,” I said. “Look. My entire life is in this room. It’s sixteen feet long and less than eight feet wide. With a three-foot by six-foot extension that makes it seem less claustrophobic. My whole world. Is that what you want? Do you want to live in this tiny space with an old man who will never give you children? We’ve lived and traveled together for two months. How long before we parted hating each other?”
“Ari, I never want to hate you. I want to carry this love in my heart forever. But you are right. I don’t want to live like this. I want to dream about living like this.”
“I’ll write your dream.”
“Words. Words. Words.”
“But what is the matter, my Lord?”
“Don’t expect me to quote the next line. I only saw the play a few days ago. I never memorized it. Make love with me, Ari. Let us make love like it was the only thing we will ever have to do in this world. When we’ve exhausted our lovemaking, hold me and pet me and tell me I am yours for all time. Do it tonight, Ari. I have to go home tomorrow.”
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