Border Crossings
8 Midnight Sun
20 June 2016
IN ONE OF THE LONG EMAIL MESSAGES Alice has sent me over the past three years, she wrote, “Before you self-diagnose as depressed or of low self-worth, check to make sure you aren’t just surrounded by assholes.” It was one of her clever one-liners and I was pretty sure I’d seen it on Facebook. It was a good point, though. After being in my trailer for just six months, it was amazing how much better I felt about life. After two years, I felt like I could conquer the world.
But I’d been gone from my trailer for nearly eight months now and I could feel some anxiety creeping into my life. I checked around for assholes. Well, my week in Antwerp had been pretty crappy, especially after having such a great time in Berlin and Mainz. It had been my last trip on my Eurail pass and the last leg was on the Thalis high speed train and it wasn’t included on the pass. That cost me an extra €25. Then my host in Antwerp decided to play hard to get and I ended up checking into a hotel. Nonetheless, I managed to spend eight days trying to sample every dark beer brewed in Belgium and eat French fries every day.
BUT THE LAST WEEK, I was surrounded by old friends who welcomed me into their home near Amsterdam. We’d had a good time together and I’d had a good time exploring on my own. It’s amazing how little desire I had to even window shop in Amsterdam’s Red Light District, or to settle into a coffee house for a little smoke. I guess the coffee houses have mostly survived the anti-smoking ordinance. The problem was that people who came into the coffee houses and ordered a smoke of weed for their pipe or to roll, usually cut the pure stuff with tobacco. The anti-smoking ordinance specifically outlawed smoking tobacco indoors. But you aren’t supposed to smoke weed on the street. I guess they figured out a way around it.
Regardless, my interest in such things had pretty much waned.
No, it wasn’t assholes that were bringing me down. I was preparing to leave Europe. I’d just make it under my ninety days’ automatic visa. Even though I’d been in countries with six different currencies and got my passport stamped eight different times, they were all part of the EU, so I’d never left to restart the clock again.
I HAD LOTS of worrisome thoughts. What condition would I find my truck and trailer in? When I’d left it for a month in Texas, I returned to find the entire water system had frozen and I had to replace it. Would the trailer be filled with Seattle mold and mildew? I sometimes had problems with condensation in it. Did I leave the refrigerator open? I could just imagine what that would smell like. Were my tires flat? My battery dead? Had there been any vandalism?
Those little worries were building, but they masked other feelings. I wanted to be safe, secure, and cozy in my little trailer, but that spelled the end of my grand adventure. I’d gone around the world. Technically, I’d been in fifteen different countries since I left, including layovers. I had just one more stop before I returned to my trailer. My feelings were conflicted as I was excited about returning, about having one more country to go, about all the stories I had to tell to people. I was worried about what I would find when I returned, not only in my personal environment, but nationally. And I was disappointed that my adventure was over. Would I ever again have the opportunity to travel like I had these months?
I boarded the plane to Reykjavik, Iceland the morning of June 20—Summer Solstice. When I found out the international airport was thirty-five miles west of Reykjavik, I booked a hotel near the airport and a car. I wasn’t really going to Iceland to see Reykjavik. I was going for the midnight sun. The longest day and shortest night of the year.
A Long Time Ago: Winter Solstice
FOR MANY YEARS—close to thirty—the Winter Solstice has been my high holiday of the year. You’ve read bits and pieces of my rituals in some of my stories. Invoking the triple goddess with the lighting of green, blue, and white candles, reciting the story of the goddess in the underworld with a different twist each year, laying our burdens on the log and burning it, decorating the tree with memories, lighting the Yule log candles with hopes for the future. Oh, yes. And drinking champagne. Eating a huge meal. Loving our friends. Embracing our family. It’s all part of the ritual, even though the past few years, I’ve celebrated it without the huge party of friends. That’s what happens when you sell the house, close the shop, and buy a ticket to the West Coast. Only my ticket was a truck and trailer and I’d ‘left home’ three years ago.
The first time I celebrated the winter solstice, I celebrated alone. I was kind of afraid to reveal my fairly recent acceptance of an affinity for paganism. I was practicing alone as a solitary. But my wife found out.
That’s mistake number two. I’d traded in the dysfunctional neurotic Paula for the frighteningly psychotic Annabel Lee. Yes, named after the tragic heroine of Poe’s poem. The night I’d woken up to see her carrying a butcher knife into the bedroom gave me a clue. ‘Sleepwalking,’ she’d said. Fuck! I try not to have a lot of rules in my life, but here’s one: Don’t come to me for a hug and a kiss with a butcher knife in your hand!
So why did I stay with her? I think it was the adrenalin addiction. I never knew what that crazy woman would do. Half the time I was skyrocketed into ecstasy and half the time I was scared out of my mind.
I’d gotten a job teaching playwriting and dramatic theory at a small university after I finished my grad work. That’s what I went there to teach. The reality was they hired me because I could tech direct the shows. Yeah. Good old Paula and her idea that I might be able to earn a living in tech theater that I could never earn as a playwright. I guess so. That relationship was long gone. Marriage number one had lasted through getting my Master’s Degree.
Annabel was my teaching assistant and shop supervisor. I have to say I was a little shocked when she showed up in my office on the first day of school. Glamor girl. Reddish hair up on her head. Makeup perfect. Fingernails and lipstick the same 1950s candy apple red. 1940s style vintage dress that had been shortened to considerably above the knee with noticeably bare legs ending in spike heels. I was doomed.
It took almost two months of flirting before I finally succumbed. It was the Christmas card that she left me that showed a sexy elf woman on the front and inside simply said, “Want to get lucky?”
That night, I got lucky to the tune of a tight eighteen-year-old pussy clamping down repeatedly on my cock. A few months later, she was future ex-wife number two.
When she found out I was celebrating the Winter Solstice, she decided to make a party of it. I didn’t really object to that. I like parties and I guess I was ready to come out as a pagan. We established a lot of solstice rituals that I still practice. One of them I don’t practice with enough regularity is fucking the hostess in front of the fireplace after she does her impression of a virgin sacrifice. That usually happened after the guests had left, except the year that Marla stayed. As I cleaned and wiped up the messes from the party, the two women graduated to shots of vodka from the bottle of Stoli I kept in the freezer.
BEFORE LONG, they were trying to outdo each other in sexy moves on me. And sometimes on each other. When their fancy party clothes started hitting the floor, I decided to drag the mattress downstairs in front of the fireplace. I got back to the kitchen in time to see Annabel perched on the counter with Marla between her legs having a little feast. Annabel came hard when she saw me, then clapped her hand over her mouth and ran for the bathroom. I went to check on her and found her passed out on the box springs in the bedroom. Well, that sucked.
I went back downstairs to the fireplace and found Marla stretched out naked on the mattress. She opened her arms and I sort of fell into them. And her. Repeatedly.
In the morning, Annabel Lee appeared over us, still fighting a hangover.
“Did you have sex?” she demanded.
“Well, yeah,” I said. “What did you think was going to happen?”
“Without me? You fucking cheaters!”
Well, it was just one more nail in the coffin of marriage number two.
But that solstice celebration was really one to remember.
Back to Iceland
THE FIRST THING I discovered about Iceland was that it was more expensive than anyplace else I visited around the world. The cheapest hotel I could find, thirty miles outside Reykjavik was $125 a night. I’d been spending fifteen to thirty dollars a night for Airbnb lodging and the couple times I needed to use a hotel had found decent beds for less than $60. I found a car to rent on Expedia for $50 and decided to accept the $11 a day CDC coverage, simply because I was in a different country and didn’t want to get bogged down with my credit card maxed out for some insignificant damage. The rental place did a hard-sell to get me to accept gravel protection because ‘the most common damage to cars in Iceland is chipped windshields.’
Well, most people drive their cars around the island on gravel roads. I was going to go into town a couple times. I bought the $10 a day coverage. Once taxes and government surcharges were added in, the car cost €300 for the three days. Plus, I had to put up a €1,500 bond. Like I’m going to steal the fucking car and drive it to Greenland! Whatever.
I WENT TO THE HOTEL and took a nap. This hotel was so cheap, it didn’t have a reception desk. The keys were on a rack by the door with the guest name attached to it. Just pick up your key and go to your room. They only dealt with prepaid guests. Oh well. I went to sleep and woke up around eight o’clock to drive into the town of Keflavik for dinner. I chose a little restaurant that had windows overlooking the bay. I ordered the Icelandic version of ribs and a glass of wine. Later, I had a second glass of wine. I was watching the sun move across the sky and at ten p.m., I had to admit that I was disoriented in terms of what direction I was facing. The sun was moving left to right, but I was sure the map said I was facing north and a little east.
A Long Time Ago: The Dream
MORE MYSTICISM.
In The Props Master Prequel: Behind the Ivory Veil, you’ll find a scene that is based on a dream I used to have repeatedly. It started when I was a kid and continued until I finally wrote it into the first draft of that story years ago. Home, as a kid, was Northern Indiana. And that is where I learned directions. The sun rose in the east and set in the west. It was clear and evident. My room had windows that faced east and south. Every direction had meaning.
East was history. Valley Forge, the Statue of Liberty, the Boston Tea Party, and Washington, DC. It seemed like everything historical that I’d studied in school happened in the east. Keep going east and you get to England and Europe where my ancestors came from. Go farther east and you got to Bible lands. History was in the east.
South was the hills and in the hills were the hillbillies. It was a primitive and rustic place. Kentucky was where moonshine came from, and it seemed like most of the really tough kids in school had moved up north from Kentucky. Jimmy wore motorcycle boots to school. In third grade! What’s more, I’d been to the Ozarks. I knew what the south was like.
West was the city. Chicago. My family made trips into Chicago about every other month to shop and visit my relatives. I was comfortable in Chicago. At Christmas, we were given the freedom to do our own shopping as long as we stayed in the loop and met back at Marshal Fields at a particular time. Dad used to say that if you stood on the corner of State and Washington for fifteen minutes you would meet someone you knew. No matter where in the world you were from. In his day, I suppose that might have been true. I knew the city, or at least the eight blocks we were allowed to circulate on our own.
North. Ah, North. North was a positive direction. The toll road was north and a mile beyond that was Michigan. Our Indian Guides group had hiked to Michigan once. But beyond Michigan was Canada and the Yukon. And the Northern Steppes. And the northern lights. I knew the Steppes were vast tundra plains in Russia, but in my mind, I always pictured long steps that circled the North Pole. You could walk up the steps to something like an old Greek temple where Aurora Borealis lived. North was a kind of holy land.
The dream. Well, even at twelve or thirteen, I was having some pretty powerful erotic dreams. The neighbor girl, Betts, and I had played doctor and she let me touch her between the legs and play with her. Her brother, Carl, my best friend, told on us. Damn it! She wouldn’t let me play there any longer. But I dreamed about it. With her and just about every other little girl I knew. So, it wasn’t surprising that was what I was dreaming of when it all started. I didn’t know exactly how everything worked, but I definitely liked thinking about it.
We were a pretty religious family and went to church regularly. As in three times a week. I was given a new Bible when I was twelve and became a member of the church. I was determined to read it all the way through and to study it thoroughly. During Wednesday night Bible study, I learned to use the reference notes in the center column of my Bible and relate passages to similar passages. It kept the preacher on his toes.
But I turned thirteen and even then, things got scrambled in my brain. I’d think of one thing and it would lead to another and another. Pretty soon I had facts and details of one thing mixed up with stories I’d read, Bible verses, and stuff I heard in school. It was like my head was a Google search engine without any filters.
So, I’m dreaming away about playing between Betts’s legs and I was feeling really good between my own legs. I knew something good was supposed to happen next, but I didn’t know how the parts fit together. If only her brother hadn’t told on us, I’d have gotten another chance to investigate and maybe figure things out.
And then there is a noise outside. An angry noise. My room was in the attic of our house and the only window was a roof vent in the gable. I jump up and my would-be girlfriend evaporates as I look out the window and see hundreds of people outside lighting bonfires. They’re lighting everything on fire they can.
I climb down the ladder from the attic in my pajamas and run outside to find out what the hell is going on. Only I’d never use the word ‘hell.’ I didn’t want to go there. But people are lighting everything on fire they can find. The fields are burning, the woods are burning, the house is burning.
“It’s the end of the world!” someone yells at me. “We’re lighting the fires of hell!” He points up in the sky and there’s the moon. Only it’s not just one moon. There are dozens of moons in the sky in all different phases and they are randomly crisscrossing the sky. People are shouting that it is a sign of the end of the world, and being the Bible scholar that I pretended to be, I try to correct them.
“It’s not the end of the world. It’s just a fulfillment of scripture. The Bible says, ‘Many moons will come and go but my word lives on.’ It’s not the end of the world.” Yes, I know the quote is about false prophets coming and going, but it made perfect sense in the dream. But because I’m challenging them, everyone starts chasing me. I take off running. Where? North! I could get to the holy place. People are chasing me and lighting fires and I make it to the Northern Steps and have to crawl up from one to the next because they are so high. But I keep running. I have to get to the Temple of Aurora Borealis. There the three goddesses, Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy, will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever. Amen.
And then I wake up.
But I know what direction North is.
Back to Iceland
EVEN MORE DISORIENTING than the sun moving from left to right was the fact that dinner cost $75. The house wine was $15 a glass. About eleven o’clock, I left the restaurant. The sun was still well above the horizon. I drove out to the lighthouse on the point at Gardur about fifteen miles away. This point is surrounded on three and a half sides by open water. The North Atlantic. Due west, if I could see that far, was Greenland.
BUT THAT WAS NOT where the sun was setting. No. The sun was setting almost due north. There were a few of us out on the point watching the solstice sunset. A bunch of people had cameras and seemed excited about something. It turned out that there was some rare bird that had been spotted and they were all trying to get a picture of it.
I wandered along the shore a way. It was a well-kept grassy point and people could camp along the area without much hassle. A couple sites had small firepits dug down so a fire could burn without being blown all over. The wind was pretty intense. I’d never acquired much of a jacket on this trip. The heavy flannel shirt I picked up in Croatia inadequately substituted for something warm. I kept one hand on my hat and used my walking stick to help pick out the path. It was still hard to believe the sun was hanging just over the horizon slightly to the west of due north.
There were a few people who were partying along the jetty and I greeted them. I was kind of hoping that I’d find a group to join. I had a bottle of two buck chuck in my daypack that had cost me fifteen euros. But even though folks were friendly, the vibe didn’t seem right to join in. I got farther and farther from the main hub of activity.
“Sit and warm yourself,” the woman sitting by the next fire said to me. I was cold enough that I gladly hunkered down by the firepit and stretched out my hands.
“I’m arolslav,” I said by introduction.
“Interesting name. Slovakian?” she asked.
“No, it’s made up. Long story.”
“Well, we have a short night and a long day ahead of us, companion. Let’s regale each other with stories,” she said. She still didn’t offer her name.
“Are you local or visiting?” I asked.
“Like you, just wandering to find company for Litha,” she said nodding at the sun. It seemed to be taking forever for it to actually touch the horizon and it had moved its full width to the right as we talked. Litha: The pagan holiday for Summer Solstice.
“May I share in your ritual?” I asked. “I have little experience with the summer festival. My celebration has always focused on the winter solstice.”
“Ritual? Isn’t our being here watching the Oak King and the Holly King struggle for dominance all the ritual we need on this Midsummer Night?” The sun had finally touched the horizon and the sea was burning around it. I smiled at my new companion. What were the odds that I’d find another pagan out here on this windy point in Iceland wanting company to celebrate the solstice? As the sun sank, the Oak King was defeated and in the morning the Holly King would rise. End of the rising year and beginning of the decline. The end of my journey.
She wasn’t a young beauty. In the cool light of evening and flickering of the fire, I guessed she was older than me. But she had a healthy glow. Her backpack leaned against the tent that swayed in the wind. I noted it was well-anchored. It still looked precarious as each gust off the water shook it. She… Name still unknown, had the look of a real hiker. She reminded me of Leslie Prine, the hiking leader when I was back at the school in Colorado. At first glance you’d think she was carrying a few extra pounds, but when she shouldered her pack, you realized whatever excess existed was pure muscle. I bet she’d hiked around the world and her pack almost certainly weighed twice what mine did.
“Seventy,” my companion said.
“What?”
“You were wondering the age of this old broad. Seventy. I’m Hecate the Crone. You were hoping for Selene the maiden.”
“I would never have guessed you for seventy,” I laughed. Not even close! “As for Selene, I’ve met her before. I think having the wisdom of age with me on this night is better than the foolishness of youth.”
“Ha!” she barked. “Age doesn’t make one wise. You know that. Experience is what makes one wise and you get experience by being foolish. What kind of wisdom would hike out here on this desolate point alone and set up a tent in the wind? I’m no Viking.”
“You hiked out here?”
“Not much choice. Too expensive to rent a car. My flight got in at two o’clock this afternoon and it took me five hours to get out here. That included a stop in Gardur for food supplies,” she said.
“It’s nearly fifteen miles. Where did you arrive from?” I couldn’t even begin to identify her accent.
“Glasgow. We have a pretty good range of daylight in Northern Scotland for the summer solstice, but I decided to come farther north this year. It could be the last opportunity I have. Look!” She pointed out toward the water and the last sliver of the sun disappeared beneath its surface leaving the horizon glowing.
“Farewell to the long days,” I said. “Now the year declines.”
“Yes, but think about it. For the next two months, we bask in the glow of what has gone before. Did you ever consider that the hottest days of summer come as the days are getting shorter? It’s as if we reached our zenith and didn’t realize it had passed. We won’t kill the Corn King until Lughnasad.”
“In many cultures the golden age came when the victorious campaigns were over. That’s when peace came and the people thrived,” I said. “Shall we celebrate with wine? I brought a bottle.”
“It was all I could do to afford bread!” she said. “Have you ever seen such high prices?”
“I admit, it’s not fine wine. But I do have a corkscrew.” I rummaged in my daypack for the bottle and the corkscrew and the plastic cups I’d taken from my hotel bathroom. Hmm. What caused me to pick up an extra cup? I guess I just grabbed the cup and two were stuck together. My companion went into her tent and brought out a loaf of bread and a blanket. She had a brick of cheese as well. I got the cork out of the bottle and she held the glasses while I poured and reinserted the cork. She handed me back my glass and raised hers in toast.
“Welcome to Litha,” she said.
“Blessed be,” I responded.
“You are freezing. Get close here and put the blanket over our shoulders. It’s a quarter past midnight and the sun just went down. This is as dark as it is going to get.” It wasn’t very dark. For the next two and a half hours, we would see the glow on the horizon dim and then brighten again as Sol regained the heights. ‘Night’ being defined by the period the sun was not visible in the sky was less than three hours long. It simply didn’t get dark.
She stirred the fire and added a stick.
“You’ve only a couple more pieces of wood. Maybe I should go gather some,” I said.
“You won’t find any. Look around. I see four other fires. They haven’t left a scrap out on this forlorn moor. I had to hike a mile back toward town after I set up camp to buy a bundle of wood so we would have any.”
“I have a car. I could drive back and get more.”
“It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning, Ari. We might be staying up all night, but it’s hardly the time to be knocking on someone’s door to buy firewood. We’ll just have to stay cuddled together for warmth. If it gets too bad out here when the fire dies, we’ll go into the tent. Have some bread and cheese,” she said.
“Thank you.”
“I don’t eat meat, but this is a good place for cheese and for fish.”
A Long Time Ago: Honor of Thieves
ONCE MY AFFINITY for paganism had been revealed, Annabel used it as one more tool to manipulate me. One day she would mock me and suggest that Bill and I go off to dance in the woods together. The next day she would have made up some bizarre sex ritual in which I was supposed to worship a goddess by eating a banana out of her cunt. I frankly didn’t know what was going to meet me when I got home from work. She could be sweet and sexy or an absolute harridan.
We either fought or fucked. When the fighting eventually superseded the fucking, we headed into the inevitable spiral downward to a spectacular conclusion.
On the occasion of one intense fight in which my mysticism became a convenient target for ridicule, Annabel snapped at me, “Why don’t you just go find one of your new age pagans and marry her?”
I didn’t help the relationship when I answered, “Because they’re all vegetarians.”
The day it finally all blew to hell, I came home from work to find the house had been stripped. Furniture that was too big to move still remained. Pretty much everything else that wasn’t nailed down was gone. She didn’t dare, of course, touch my office. My computer and my writings were intact as was the one painting I had in the office. Aside from that, she had left my recliner and my stereo.
The honor of thieves.
Annabel Lee had been incensed over the idea that when Paula and I split, she’d taken everything, including the stereo and all the albums. In her fit of passionate fucking to make up for all the suffering I’d endured at the hands of my first wife, Annabel swore that no matter what, she would never take my music from me. She was true to her word. The stereo and my new collection of CDs were untouched.
Aside from that, the house echoed.
Back to Brighid
AS WE HUDDLED TOGETHER with the blanket wrapped around our shoulders, I ate my unnamed companion’s cheese and she drank my wine as we talked about life and the changes of Midsummer. But it was driving me crazy not having a name.
“Brighid,” she finally said when I pressed her for her name. Well, if I could make up a name and live with it, I supposed it could only be expected that my companion would do the same. It was appropriate for Litha. “Believe it or not, my hair was once a brilliant red,” she continued. “I was vain enough to color it for a number of years after it started graying. When my husband had the good grace to die twenty years ago, I let it go natural.”
Her silver-gray hair hung in a long, thick braid over one shoulder. Her clear, bright eyes reflected the firelight. I might decide differently in the light of day, but I thought they were hazel. Her skin was not so much wrinkled as weathered. She was definitely an outdoor person and I imagined this was not the first time she’d sat in front of her tent looking at the sunset. Or was it sunrise? It wouldn’t be long.
I’m not sure what possessed me. I wrapped my right arm around her under the blanket and pulled her toward me. I leaned into her and placed a kiss on her lips. It wasn’t long or intense, but it lit her eyes more brightly than the fire.
“My goddess,” I whispered.
“You are a subtle devil,” she laughed. Even though it was a light sound, it just didn’t seem right to call it a giggle. Girls giggle. This woman’s laughter was rich and, even if light, it conveyed deep content.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“My God! Don’t apologize for kissing me. It’s been a long time for this old girl. I might have wet my panties!” This time we both laughed and toasted each other with our plastic cups of wine. The horizon began to brighten minutely a few degrees east of where the sun had set.
WE SETTLED in silence. The last log had long since been added to the fire. Our arms were wrapped around each other, the wine glasses and cheese forgotten. We looked out to sea and watched the sun rise.
“We need to dance,” I said. I took her by surprise. I struggled to my feet. The sun was only going to be out for a few minutes as a heavy layer of clouds already threatened the top edge while the bottom was still below the sea.
“We don’t have music!” she laughed.
“You know the saying,” I said. “Work as if you don’t need money. Love as if you’ve never been hurt. Dance like a two-year-old. They don’t even care if there’s music.” We danced and spun around the remains of the fire, just a few coals now, as we watched the spectacle of the sun, rise and then disappear beneath the glowing overcast clouds. Off to the northwest, a shroud of mist was heading our direction. It looked like the prow of a boat cutting across the sea. When it hit the shore, a fine rain began to fall. Brighid grabbed my hand and dragged me into her little tent, pulling her backpack in behind us. She zipped the flap shut just as the drops began to intensify and pelt against the fabric. We removed our shoes and settled on her sleeping bag with the blanket pulled over us. We held each other for warmth and fell asleep to the sound of the rain.
A Long Time Ago: The Reflection
BACK IN COLLEGE, years ago, Doctors Hart and Kramer were the life of the party. Not theater parties. Those had a life of their own. I’m talking about good old, down and dirty, English Lit parties. Didn’t know English majors partied, did you? We have cool games we play over glasses of fine wine, like ‘Name That Poet,’ ‘Would You Like Fries With That?,’ and the perennial favorite, ‘Next Line, Please.’ I’m kidding about the second one. The joke hadn’t been invented yet.
Doctors Hart and Kramer were uncontested champions of ‘Next Line, Please.’ And as strange as it may sound, even without the aid of mind-altering drugs, it was fascinating to watch the two.
KRAMER: The Greeks are strong and skillful to their strength,
Fierce to their skill and to their fierceness valiant;
But I am weaker than a woman’s tear,
Tamer than sleep, fonder than ignorance,
Less valiant than the virgin in the night
And skilless as unpracticed infancy.
HART: Well, I have told you enough of this: for my part,
I’ll not meddle nor make no further. He that will
have a cake out of the wheat must needs tarry the grinding. (Troilus and Cressida, Act I)
Next:
HART: A theef he was for sothe of corn and mele
And that a sly, and usaunt for to stele.
KRAMER: His name was hoote deynous Symkyn.
A wyf he hadde, ycomen of noble kyn. (Chaucer, The Reeves Tale)
Next:
KRAMER: He trod every night then
The mist-covered moor-fens;
HART: men do not know where
Witches and wizards wander and ramble. (Beowulf, III: Grendel the Murderer)
We could sit at a party for hours and listen to the two of them try to quote a passage from old English literature (Shakespeare and before) that the other couldn’t follow with the next line. Actually, if you went to an English party, you had to listen to them for hours. I believe they prepped for the challenge for months by looking up obscure passages and memorizing them, hoping to find one that the other couldn’t recognize.
HART: No widow shall be compelled to marry, so long as she wishes to remain without a husband. But she must give security that she will not marry without royal consent, if she holds her lands of the crown, or without the consent of whatever other lord she may hold them of.
Silence.
KRAMER: What remnant of perdition is that?
HART: The Magna Carta, point twelve. I have you.
KRAMER: I protest. The Magna Carta is not English Literature. It was written in Latin.
Well, you get the idea. It was mostly in good humor, but you really had to be an English major to appreciate it.
I was. Double. English and Theater. I’d entered college as an honor student and had advanced honors classes from both professors that I did well in. Unfortunately, Dr. Denny’s seven a.m. biology class took me off the honors list. Without the cumulative GPA necessary, I could no longer take the honors courses, even in my major where I had a 4.0 average. I still got invited to English parties and if I didn’t have anything better to do, like having my arm amputated, I attended.
I was surprised when Dr. Hart sort of manipulated me into a quiet part of the house where we could talk without being overheard.
“We miss you in Honors English, Aroslav,” she said. “I understand, of course. Armand Denny is a beast if you show the least sign of weakness. He seeks the wounded in the pack and attempts to put them out of their misery.”
“I was doing okay until it came to dissecting animals,” I said. I’d thrown up on my first frog. My lab partner was not happy.
“Well, it is scarcely a necessary skill for a writer,” she said. “Or is it?”
“What?”
“Can you imagine a scene where your hero is required to watch a dissection, perhaps of a human corpse? I should like to see a scene like that played out on stage. Imagine the tension that builds both from the observer’s abhorrence of what she is witnessing and from the information revealed. Perhaps the doctor performing the autopsy becomes so caught up in describing the cause of death that he slips and describes how he himself delivered the blow that killed the victim,” she said.
“Oh, man!” I said. I’d file that away. Maybe someday I would need a scene of someone watching an autopsy. Maybe she’d throw up on the body.
“Your short story is not going to be published in The Atlantic,” she said abruptly. “I know you submitted it. We should have talked first.”
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“Nothing. But a story won’t be published in a literary magazine like that simply because there is nothing wrong with it. They want to publish stories that rise above the norm. In which everything is right, not just that nothing is wrong. Do you understand me?”
“It’s what you said in class. Simply having all the words spelled correctly and sentences constructed correctly doesn’t make the work good,” I said.
“But, not having correct spelling and grammar can make a good work bad,” she interrupted. “Don’t neglect the mechanics as you explore more mature storylines. And for a while, I think you should stick to scripts.”
“You don’t think my short stories are good?”
“I believe that you can perfect your skill within the confines of the stage play. Pound against the boundaries of the fourth wall. You know where those boundaries are and you can constantly test them. That will help your writing to mature. You don’t yet know where the boundaries are in a short story or novel, so your writing wanders about seeking them instead of pressing against them.”
“To become good rather than just error-free,” I muttered. She’d led me to her study and we sat on a narrow sofa. There was a bottle of Drambuie on the coffee table with two snifters. I could hear voices from the party in the living room, but they seemed remote as she poured a small amount of the golden liqueur into the snifters.
“Hold it in the palm of your hand so your body heat warms the liquid. Some people hold their snifters over an open flame to heat it, but it is hard to find the right temperature that way. Your body heat is the perfect temperature. It knows the boundary.”
“Like I know the stage,” I said. She toasted me with her glass, but we didn’t take a sip yet.
“It’s like sex, Aroslav.” How did we get there? And what was I, a twenty-year-old, doing talking with my sixty-plus-year-old professor about sex?
“Um…”
“I’m not going to seduce you, Ari. Not completely.” That was supposed to relax me? “You can have sex with any woman—perhaps even with any man—and there will be nothing wrong with it. But when you look into a woman’s eyes and see past her lust, past your own lust, and find a soul to love, then it is not just ‘nothing wrong’ with the sex, it is everything right.”
“Making love instead of having sex,” I said. I didn’t really have much experience yet and even discussing this was causing my tool to swell.
“Too narrow a definition,” she said.
“Dr. Hart…”
“Please, Ari. We are talking about sex in an intimate setting with a lovely warming dram of liqueur. In this circumstance, you may call me Rebecca.”
“Yes… um… Rebecca.”
“Tell me how that makes you feel,” she said. “Do you feel like Benjamin with Mrs. Robinson? I am not, after all, standing naked in front of you.” She laughed lightly and reached over to cup the hand in which I held the drink in hers. She nodded. “I think it is the right temperature,” she whispered. She lifted her glass to touch mine and then brought it to her lips. I mimicked her and tasted just a sip of the amber liquid. Just that sip warmed my mouth and throat all the way down.
Dr. Hart… Rebecca leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. Her face relaxed and I saw for an instant, what a beautiful woman she must have been when she was young. Then I thought how limited that perspective was and considered what a beautiful woman she was now. She was well-dressed, unlike Dr. Kramer, who seemed to prefer the baggiest pants and sweaters he could find at Goodwill. Rebecca took care of herself. Her short, graying hair was curled around her ears. She carried a few extra pounds, but she carried them proudly, not letting weight interfere with her self-image. No, it wasn’t the same as looking at one of my twenty-year-old classmates, say like Paula, but she bore herself like a beautiful woman and I realized I’d always thought of her as attractive.
“One day, you will have to write about women… maybe even from a woman’s perspective, Ari. You need to learn how a woman sees herself. Do you know what I see when I look in a mirror?” she asked.
“No, Rebecca. Do you see something other than your reflection?” I asked. I’d shifted my position so I was facing her with my left arm on the back of the sofa so I could turn fully toward her.
“Oh, I see the old woman in the mirror,” she said, her eyes still closed. “I’m critical of the wrinkles, the extra weight, the frown lines. I apply makeup to hide the bags under my eyes. But that is only the surface. When I look past that and look just into my eyes, I see myself as a teen. Yes, that wonderful time of my life when I became a woman. That is how I still think of myself. I think of myself as just discovering the world—as being young and beautiful with no boundaries. Even though I was never beautiful as the magazines would have it. I wasn’t a model. I was out of grad school before I learned anything about putting on makeup. I was married to Allen before I knew what sex was all about. He was dead before I’d finished exploring it.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Was it long ago?”
“Long enough to no longer mourn but not nearly long enough to forget,” she sighed. She opened her eyes and shifted so she could look straight at me as we both took a sip of the warm liquid. “When you ‘make love to a woman,’ as you put it, look into her eyes, Ari. Unless you can see the woman that she sees, you are just having sex. Look into my eyes, Ari. You might never see the eighteen-year-old girl discovering her womanhood, but until you do, you can never make love to her.”
I looked into her eyes and, in fact, something changed. It wasn’t her. It was my perception. Her eyes bored into mine and I could tell she was looking for the me that I saw when I looked into a mirror.
I kissed her.
It was a stupid thing, I suppose, for a student to kiss his major professor, but at that moment, I saw the most desirable woman in the world and I kissed her. And she did not pull away. Her lips were soft and welcoming. It was not a deep, tongue-filled kiss of passion, but still, it was more arousing than any kiss I had experienced. There was a connection. I kissed the eighteen-year-old girl inside her.
When I pulled away, she smiled at me.
“You will write some great characters, Ari. Write each one with love.” She swallowed the rest of her drink and I followed suit. “We should return to the party,” she said. “I am, after all, the hostess.”
Back to Brighid
WHEN BRIGHID AND I WOKE UP, it was still early morning—about six. The sun was a good bit farther east. It’s one of the things that still boggles my mind. Why did I never contemplate the fact that in the land of the midnight sun, the sun would appear to circle completely around you, rising and setting just a few degrees either side of due north. It wasn’t until about ten o’clock that it finally appears to be due east. Then it tracked on what I consider a normal path, east to west in the southern sky. In the evening, about seven or eight o’clock, it would be due west and begin moving eastward in the northern sky until it set. I never considered it until I saw it.
Unfortunately, this was not the time to lie with a comfortable woman in my arms and contemplate the phenomenon.
“Brighid? Are you awake?”
“Mmm. Maybe,” she said as she snuggled closer to me. She sat straight up in the little tent. “You’re wet!”
“I think we’re wet.” The storm had passed, but the water hadn’t. It had seeped into the tent and the sleeping bag beneath us, the blanket over us, and our clothes were gradually being saturated.
“I guess we’re up now,” she said as we scrambled to get our shoes on and get out of the tent. “At least it isn’t raining now. Oh, bother. It’s all going to weigh twice as much now. I need to find a laundry and get things dried out.”
“I have a hotel room,” I said. “And a car. I’ll pull it up near here and we can load everything into it, take it to the hotel, and wring it out. I have dry clothes I’ll share with you and we can look for a place with a drier. There might even be one in the hotel. I didn’t check to see if they had a laundry.” She was a little reluctant, but finally agreed. I got the car and we got everything loaded in the back. Then we sat in our wet clothes with the heat turned up full as I drove back to the hotel.
EVEN AFTER doing our best to wring out the sleeping bag and tent, they were really too soaked to put in a drier. We took them to my room and hung them in the bathroom from the shower rod. We hung her clothes from the curtain rod in front of the windows and laid everything we could out on flat surfaces or even the floor to dry. I was getting my shoes and socks off when I looked up at her and found her standing by the bed, naked.
No, she wasn’t the stunning picture of twenty-year-old beauty. But she had poise and beauty that only living a full life can give. I once met a woman at a nudist resort who was nearing sixty. We kind of made a joke that she was sixty but her boobs were only twenty. They looked… out of place on her aging body. Not so with Brighid. Her boobs sagged. She had a little bit of a belly that made her pussy puff out beneath a light scattering of grey hair. Her areolae were big—a good three inches across—and her nipples, though not erect, were thick. There was something about her… Maybe it was the glow filtering through the clothes hanging in front of the window that created a kind of nimbus around her.
She was a goddess.
“I’m cold,” she said simply. She pulled the covers back on the bed and crawled in. “Come and warm me up.”
My own wet clothes hit the floor and I used a towel to wipe off the worst of the moisture. Then I slipped into bed beside her. She moved up against me and I held her close. It was a slow but inevitable reaction as I began to harden against her.
“I can’t believe you’re getting a chub from being next to this old granny,” she said. “I… I’m not trying to tease you, Ari, but don’t have too great expectations. I’ve been dry as the Sahara for twenty years. I’m afraid I couldn’t accommodate you. You aren’t even fully hard yet and I can tell you aren’t a small man.”
“Brighid, let’s not worry about where things are going. I could happily lie here in your arms for the rest of my stay in Iceland. Goddess, let me kiss you.”
I held her there beneath the two comforters that were on the bed as we kissed until the drowsiness overwhelmed us and we went to sleep.
I HELD BRIGHID and slept with her. I slept in the arms of a goddess. When we woke up, the sun had moved toward the west, but it was still hours before sunset. We didn’t make love, but we were warm and delighted in the feeling of touching each other. I outfitted her with clothes from my suitcase and she laughed at the fit. We took all the wet things into Keflavik and found a laundry where we could plug in hundreds of Icelandic krona. A krona was worth about one-and-a-half U.S. cents. It still took three hours and nearly thirty dollars to dry everything. While it was tumbling, I ran out and got us fish sandwiches at the local bistro, so I paid as much as Brighid did.
WHEN WE DETERMINED the clothing and equipment was about as dry as it was going to get, we loaded it into the car and then took a long walk along the waterfront trail to the bluff and back. All along the way, we talked. She’d been a military brat growing up and her father was eventually attached to embassy service. That’s where she met her future husband, also working in the embassy and as a result for the next thirty years she continued to move from place to place. That’s why she didn’t have a recognizable Scottish accent. Her education had been in Australia, Singapore, India, Kenya, Argentina, and even a spell in the U.S. When her husband died nearly twenty years previously, she had settled in Aberdeen.
“You should hear me when I’m back home,” she laughed. “Then you would believe I was Scottish. I can brogue with the best of them.”
“I’d probably start speaking bad German. It seems that no matter what language I hear, if I don’t understand it then I feel like I should speak the only foreign language I sort of know,” I said.
“We’d probably assume you were just speaking English with a really bad accent,” Brighid said. “Until I got you out on the windy moors. Once we started a ritual, you wouldn’t need to speak to be a part of it.”
“I feel like I’ve found a kindred spirit,” I said.
We stayed out until midnight and watched the sun go down again.
“I hope you are planning to stay with me tonight,” I said as my lips brushed the top of her silver hair.
“Unless you are putting me out with my tent on the beach… Ari, I would love to sleep with you again tonight.”
“I’m thinking of going into Reykjavik tomorrow,” I said. “Would a little field trip interest you?” She sighed and looked up at me. The top of her head was just at my lips and I kissed her again.
“That would fit with my plans,” she said. “Thank you.”
We returned to the hotel. With the laundry removed from the bathroom, we stripped and stepped into the shower to steam the remaining chill out of our bones. We washed each other. Actually just washed. I shampooed her hair with the packet the hotel provided. Then we realized it was the only shampoo packet in the room. There was a dispenser of body wash hanging from the shower wall, though, and I used it to lather my hair as well as the rest of my body.
When we finished drying ourselves on the threadbare hotel towels, we simply went to the bed and crawled in. Brighid’s kisses were warm and had a predictable effect on me as I held her naked body against mine.
“I’m sorry I can’t do all the things you’d like—though I can’t imagine what it is about this withered husk that you find attractive,” she whispered. “I won’t leave you hanging. I have a mouth.”
“Goddess,” I whispered, “just let me worship you.”
A Long Time Ago: How Beautiful Her Feet in Shoes
JODIE WAS KIND of a strange girl in my book.
I was working on my thesis: “A Dramaturgical Approach to The Song of Solomon.” There was nothing at this stage that I couldn’t have done at my kitchen table, but I found that I preferred to work on campus. I timed things so that I could leave the library and catch a lot of people between the most popular classes, still making my way around the pit to give shoulder and back rubs. There was always someone there in need. What can I say? I’m a tactile person.
Among the people most frequently in need of a shoulder rub was Jodie, a junior focusing on music theater. I liked rubbing Jodie. In addition to the fact that she was generally cute and had a great voice, she was a flirt. And she never wore a bra. She normally wore loose-fitting flannel shirts over a tube top—what I’d learned recently was also called a boob tube. It was essentially a big rubber band that covered the breasts, just the breasts, and nothing but the breasts. As soon as I approached her, the flannel shirt would be unbuttoned and dropped down her arms, exposing acres of beautiful shoulders. She usually wore her hair in a dancer’s bun so I had full access to those tight muscles just beneath her silky bare skin. She often made suggestive remarks about how she could just imagine having me rub her whole body like that.
Paula—about to become ex-wife number one—had rolled her eyes and told me I was going to have to fuck that girl so the break area could be cleared of the pheromones.
If it was just a case of clearing the room of pheromones, I didn’t think Jodie would have any difficulty getting assistance from any number of guys who swarmed around her on a regular basis. But, still, she seemed to have a special flair for exciting me. And since Paula had acknowledged that I needed to fuck her, I considered it just a matter of time.
“I read the Song of Solomon so I’d know what you were talking about,” Jodie said one afternoon. I was in the process of losing my point of reference as I pressed my fingers into the base of her neck to loosen her muscles before dance class. “I didn’t even know the Bible had a book about sex. You naughty boy. I bet you could write better.”
“I don’t know. A lot of people have tried to improve on the story, but they all seem to lose the poetry. Even Robert Graves’s script falls short and he probably understands the mystique and sensuality of the book better than anyone,” I said.
“It reminded me of a story I read in high school and I discovered I still have the book,” she said. She reached in her bag and pulled out a tattered paperback of short stories. “It’s marked for you. ‘How Beautiful Her Feet in Shoes’ is the title. It’s about a guy with a foot fetish, but I used to imagine that my feet were beautiful when I read it.”
“I can’t imagine that your feet wouldn’t be beautiful, Jodie. Everything else about you is.” I’d long since finished any kind of therapeutic massage on her shoulders and was just enjoying stroking her smooth, taut skin. She tilted her head to the side, trapping my hand between her cheek and shoulder while she rubbed against it.
“That’s sweet,” she said. “But dancers only have beautiful feet when they are in shoes. You really don’t want to see my toes.”
“I would contest that,” I said.
“Yeah,” she sighed. “You know. Whenever you say.”
That was a clear enough invitation and when Paula and I had our first trial separation in March, I determined that I’d find out how serious Jodie was. It turned out she was very serious. I met her at a performance of Love’s Labors Lost that neither of us were working on. She sat next to me and put her hand in mine immediately. That was the only display of affection between us that could have been considered public.
But after the show, she leaned across the console in my car and gave me a kiss that let me know positively where the night was headed.
“Let’s go to my place,” she said. She gave me directions to a house in which she rented a room with a private entrance. “Don’t be too noisy,” she whispered. “My landlady is understanding, but doesn’t like to be disturbed.” My earlier assessment was apparently accurate and I was not the first lover she’d brought home.
It didn’t really take long for us to get naked. It was clear what the purpose of this night was all about. She was beautiful. And her feet were ugly. Her toes were bent and twisted. It looked like she’d been tortured. We landed on her bed when she did some kind of dancer’s leap and wrapped her legs around my waist. She liked to kiss, but everything else was pretty much below the waist. She tolerated the presence of my hands on her breasts—“I know guys just love tits,” she said—but when my hand strayed between her legs she pulled it away.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said. “I’m turned on. I’ll come when you fuck me. I don’t need any extra stimulation.” Well, that was unique. My experience wasn’t that extensive, but I’d done a lot more heavy petting than fucking and it was always a necessary step from one to the other. Jodie simply rolled onto her back, spread her legs, and pulled me to her. “Just put it in,” she whispered. “Put it in and fuck me, Ari.”
I did. My inexperience led me to be reckless and I didn’t even consider a condom. To feel her hot wet walls close around my cock absolutely took my breath away.
“My God, Jodie! I can’t believe I’m in you at last.”
“I thought I’d never get you here,” she said clamping down on me. I had never felt any girl work her pussy muscles like this. It wasn’t going to take long for me to lose control. I did and as I flooded her pussy, she squeaked out what I assumed was an orgasm.
We lay quietly in the afterglow until she squeezed and my flaccid cock popped out of her, accompanied by a flood of our juices.
“The libation of love, Zappa called it.” I couldn’t remember any of his lyrics that sounded like that, but I wasn’t all that good with song lyrics. “He used to say my cunt fit his cock like a velvet glove.” Huh? As in WHAT?
“You know Frank Zappa?” I said.
“Oh, yeah. Among others.” Well, that was something to consider. My cock had gone where Zappa had been before. Fuck! “How many lovers have you had?” she asked.
“Um… You mean intercourse?” She nodded. “Three. Well, four, counting you.”
“I am so honored. You are my forty-third.” I glanced down to see if my cock had fallen off yet. “Don’t worry. I’m always careful. I might not use a rubber, but the University Clinic has a standing appointment for me. If I’m unprotected, I go straight over and have a test. Hope you don’t mind that they’ll be scooping your come out of my cunt in the morning.”
“That’s a little overwhelming,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t have any illusions about you being pure and virginal, but…”
“I was a groupie. I came out of high school thinking I was pretty hot stuff. I’d had the lead in all the high school musicals since I was a freshman. I danced my ass off. And my feet. I’d already had a dozen lovers before I graduated and several of them were at concerts I attended. I made contacts, though, in more ways than one. Zappa helped me get my first job as a backup singer and dancer. I was on tour for a year with seven different bands. It finally dawned on me that I was just a dancing, singing cunt.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “I’ve seen you on stage. You’ve got real talent that isn’t associated with a bed.”
“Thanks. And it wasn’t all bad. I mean, I like fucking and fucking famous singers and guitarists has its own attraction. I think you’re going to be famous. I’ll be able to say I’ve fucked famous singers, guitarists, actors, and writers.” Apparently, she was still collecting. “Maybe someday, you’ll get to say you fucked a famous singer. Let’s do it again.”
“I don’t know…” I started. Her revelations had done nothing to restore my ardor.
“Ari, let it go. You’re all tense. You always rub my shoulders, though I’ve wished you’d just pull my tube top down and do me right there in the pit. You take care of everyone. You spend just as much time and care with Allen as you do with me. And he wishes you’d push his pants down and do him right there in the pit.”
“I really don’t swing that way, but everyone deserves a back rub.”
“Yeah. Including you. Now lie back and just let me take care of you,” she said, pushing me down.
Never have I experienced anything like it. Occasionally, Jodie would allow my hand to stray to her breasts, which she pushed into me so I could feel them. Once, she dragged my fingers through her pussy and then pressed them to my lips. But mostly, she enforced my submission to her ministrations. She worked my muscles and my libido. She massaged me with her fingers, her breasts, her pussy. I think there was a point where she was using her buttocks to massage me. She touched me with everything but her feet. It was a constant buildup to an inevitable, though long-delayed conclusion. She sank onto my rigid pole and while apparently sitting still and holding my hands against her breasts, she massaged me with her inner muscles until I exploded with such intensity that I passed out.
She brought me around with kisses, my cock still in her pussy.
“That was wonderful,” she said. “Ari, you’re the best.” I wasn’t sure I’d actually done anything, but Jodie had that slightly glazed look in her eye that spoke of a climax, whether she had outwardly expressed it or not.
“Jodie, honey, I’ve never experienced anything like that,” I said. We cuddled together until I slipped out of her and our combined fluids flooded my groin. She got up and went to the bathroom, apparently flushing the remains into the toilet. Then she returned with a warm washcloth and bathed my genitals.
“I don’t get along very well with overnight guests,” she whispered as she kissed me again. “I’m a real bear in the morning. You should go now.” She got me out of the bed and dressed. I said that I’d help change the sheets, which were saturated. “No. Part of the fun is sleeping in the wet spot,” she laughed. She kissed me again and pushed me out the door.
I went to the clinic to get tested in the morning, too.
Back to Brighid
THE THING THAT STUCK with me through the years was not Jodie’s incredible muscular control in her pussy. I’d now experienced that in a far more loving relationship. But she had mastered the art of worshiping her lover. Every need that I had, every desire, had been met. And that was what I was determined to give Brighid.
I held her. I kissed her. I massaged her fingers, warming them and soothing them. And she relaxed into my ministrations so that when I bent to her middle, she simply let her legs fall open so I could part the gray hairs of her pussy and lick her. She may have thought she had been ‘dry as the Sahara,’ but I found a rapidly increasing gathering of moisture between her legs. And a spicy taste that reminded me of cinnamon. Brighid was liquid fire.
I pressed a finger into her open passage as I licked at her clit. Brighid gasped at the intrusion. It wasn’t that she was exactly tight, but things were stiff. What I’ve long held about men seemed to be true of women, as well. It is far more likely to atrophy than to wear out. I took my time, carefully massaging her inside as I had massaged and loosened her muscles.
As she rose to her first orgasm, I felt her channel begin to loosen and relax. I repeatedly made sure that my fingers were well-lubricated as I probed more deeply into her. Her second orgasm was accompanied by a new flood of juices that served to relax and lubricate her even more.
“Oh, God, Ari!” she screamed during her third orgasm. “You’ll kill me!” I hoped that hadn’t been loud enough to carry in the halls, but I doubted any of the Japanese tourists who seemed to fill all the other rooms on our wing would understand anyway.
I grabbed my trusty bottle of lube and smeared my cock. I’d been rigid for over an hour as I pleasured her. I crawled up her body and kissed her face. She hungrily met my lips. I placed my cock at her entrance and slowly pushed inside. Her eyes sprang open and I felt her tense as she looked into my eyes. I paused and then pushed a little more. This time she pushed back. We took it slowly, but in a few moments, I was fully and deeply inside her.
“Ari…” she whimpered. I panicked momentarily as I thought I’d hurt her. “I thought I would never feel this again. I thought I was dead inside. Make love to me Ari. Love me!”
I was only too glad to comply. We took our time and I stayed mindful of whether she was adequately lubricated. At one point I withdrew and squirted more of the liquid lube directly into the opening of my penis, pinching it off to hold it inside. Then I pushed back into her, releasing the lube deeper inside. She seemed to like it and it was almost like coming for me.
Only my orgasm was still building. And building. When I could no longer resist the pressure, Brighid opened her eyes and sucked in her breath. A look of absolute wonder washed over her face. Her grip on me tightened, hugging me to her chest. I was afraid I would crush her, but she seemed unworried. She held me and rocked back and forth, crying into my shoulder.
There were no words for what we shared.
I TENDERLY WASHED BRIGHID in the shower the next morning. We had used all the shampoo the previous night, so we just ignored washing our hair again. She spread her lower lips and looked at them with awe, running her finger through the remnants of my dried come. Then she looked at me with a smile much brighter than the northern dawn and kissed me again beneath the shower’s spray.
I’d found a bakery just at the edge of town and we drove there to get a breakfast sandwich and coffee—€25. Brighid had carefully packed all her belongings, holding out the tent, and loaded them in the back of the car.
“There’s a camping supply store just on the edge of Reykjavik,” she explained. If they can’t tell me where it is leaking and fix it, I’ll have to buy a new tent.”
“You can stay with me another night,” I said. “I’m not flying out until tomorrow.”
“Aroslav, my dear, I have a bus to catch. I’m taking the perimeter road and camping along the way. I was supposed to meet up with my tour group yesterday, but the bus doesn’t leave until one. I can get my equipment repaired and meet them with no problem.”
“This is all we had, isn’t it,” I said softly. It had seemed so… spiritual.
“We had this all,” she replied. “Remember, Ari. You’ve made love to the goddess. And she blesses you.”
I HAD ONE MORE long kiss with Brighid before she boarded her bus to the hoots of her fellow travelers. I waved and spent the afternoon exploring the Old Harbor area. Found a great place that had an all you could eat buffet with fish cakes, dumplings, soup, coffee, and dessert. Only fifteen euros! Of course, I had a beer with it and that brought the price up to twenty-five. Ah well.
I DROVE BACK to the hotel and packed everything I had. It doesn’t take much to pack a little backpack. And to think, I’d lived out of it for eight months. I loaded everything in my rental car and drove out to the point where I’d met Brighid. I stopped along the way and picked up three bundles of firewood and a liter of wine.
I sat out on that point, watching the sun once more as it sank in the north. My fire was big enough that I could stay warm huddled next to it with my bottle of wine. I stayed there through the dusk-dawn and watched the sun rise again.
This was it. My last stop. And I’d met a goddess. No. I’d loved a goddess. Blessed be, Brighid.
I was ready to go back to my little trailer and truck. I’d been around the world. Who knew what adventures might be waiting for me in the good old USA?
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