story

Someday I hope to have a blog or site where I could feature more literate erotic stories, rather than the forced cocksuckery....


Threatening rain persuades him into a cafe. He asks for green tea. The waitress introduces herself, Luisella. Not old, not young, long chestnut hair...occhi belli? (pretty eyes?) He would practice even more Italian and tell her she has pretty eyes, but feels momentarily too shy. The tea is too hot to drink. He sits, waits.

Waiting is not a good thing. In such a suspended interval, he feels compulsed. He does not know who to confess this to, a stranger? This pretty waitress without any other customers on a slow afternoon? She lights a cigarette. He sees she wears no rings. She tells him he can smoke if he wishes, but he says he does not smoke. She asks if he is on vacation. He tells her two weeks. Not many tourists, not like before, she sighs, seems sad. Usually he hates smoke, but the smoke is not tobacco smoke. It is sweet, aromatic, spicy. He looks at her, tilts his head. Oh, my cigarette. I'm not sure how to say it in English? Clovers. Cloves, he corrects her. Cloves. Not so bad for your health. She raises a small Espresso cup and toasts him, to our health!

He so badly wants to tell her about his dream, but they continue to make small talk. The weather. The best restaurants in town. Where is he staying. Where is he from? She has never heard of it. She only knows New York, California, Florida. He asks about a pharmacy, he needs something to help him sleep. The time change, he lies. She refills his cup with more green tea.

It isn't the time change, but the dream, the same dream, like the same song playing in his mind, his only dream. He forgot how the dream even started. He stares into the verdant tea in the ivory cup to concentrate....and lets the dream overcome his wakefulness. Long palm fronds are stirred by a sea breeze, a rustle in the palmetto beach grass. Burgeoning lushness. Sitting, with his back to him and motionless, a tall young woman in an ivory kimono-like robe. Long black hair, lustrous despite the sun which does not penetrate the low, dark clouds. Clearly her dunes and beach, here in the dreamer's mind...and he's confused since he finds himself at least a dozen paces behind her, somehow naked and hunched and embracing his own arms for warmth. Chilled from the sudden rising wind. Body bent, he sees his manhood, limp, lifeless, contracted. The wind barely covers his awkward silence. She laughs a familiar, fluid laugh, but does not turn.

Luisella speaks surprisingly good English, and is getting more flirtatious with him, but he informs her he has a girlfriend, as a shield, so she will not think his friendliness is anything more than a simple exchange between customer and server. “Well, I hope she is a good cook, at least. Capellini and marinara...or pesto, lovely green color, pesto, hmm? Why don't you just say 'angel hair' like all Americans? It makes you sound smarter, I suppose and less...'unmanly' than saying 'I love angel hair pasta.' The pesto is the best in this region. It's in the soil, you cannot fight it. Does she know all the things you like?" Then he begins to daydream, like... besides jazz, old Madonna songs with pulsing beats, colors like plum and turquoise, having long talks about small things, the smell of saddle soap or the thrilling prospect of an athletic male in restraints at the mercy of a determined woman?

Back crouched on the beach, he sensed a long dark eyebrow lift with the question, but without seeing it. He concentrated to swallow. “Wasn't it a bit rude to never explain your dropping our chats you enjoyed so much?” His busy brain suddenly matched the sultry voice to the letter 'S'. “You think you've buried your old passions and life, but you're mistaken. While you babble your excuses to me, I want to look squarely into my...”

His knee bangs the table enough to rattle the cup noisily as some tea spilled onto the ivory saucer. He feels his face flush, reaches into his pocket, produces some coins, and quickly bidding farewell to Luisella, he gets out into the open air. Finds himself gasping for breath.

He walks several miles thinking about definitive things to “clear his mind”. He drums up old movies, the tenets of Buddhism, a favorite running coach's training advice and of course his feelings for his present girlfriend. Suddenly feels exhausted. His sleep has been poor, he keeps waking up from this same dream. But to finish up the day he is compelled to visit the local museum as planned, and maybe sketch something.

He was always weak at drawing, but the “new man” he is these past months likes to keep busy. Soon, his heels are echoing on the marble of a museum gallery and then another. Rather at random, he sits on a bench in front of a few breath-taking Renaissance oil paintings. Out comes art pad and pencil. Eyebrows, has always liked long brows and finishes them energetically. The eyes, he thinks, are an unusual blue like the calm Mediterranean. Leave the eyes for later. The nose is not Greek, but has the nice, natural flair of most girls. He is drawn to the chin. His tiredness makes him vulnerable to the soft girlishness of this “mento bello”. He fixates on it and surrenders to conjecturing about it and the girl's sweetness. He glances back up at the eyes. “Blue eyes?” He rubs a bleary eye of his own. As clouds move outside and light swarms through windows, he sees the eyes are green, bottle-green maybe.

He goes back to his drawing, and he thinks of this Italian girl at a train station, even though she is not from the time of trains. He sees the dark hair framed by a billow of steam on the platform. Her chin quivers as the good-bye approaches. The male facing her, a young soldier going off for a year of duty. “You'll write me?” she asks as the eyes fix on him. “Every week” he says without thinking “...at least”. The soft chin quivers a bit..."yes?" He hopes for a tear or two to roll downward to show her grief at parting, but tears don't come. Why not? Any softness in the eyes, he hopes? The bottle-greenness brings on an image of a bottle on the sea. He knows painfully well that inside the bottle is the penned confession of his love for this exquisite girl. The bottle bobs and hopes...inside it is a message that she may never get or may never read. The light changes and the eyes are the emerald eyes of a Persian princess and then they are the haughty green of a regal cat of the Pharaohs. And he sees finally the perfect and unforgiving curvature of the chin, that of a statue of stone or alabaster. He stops, his eyes travel downward toward her clavicle and its dimple, because he is afraid he'll become frozen and helpless at the sight, as if he were trapped in a classic myth, or like some ancient sailor who comes across the fatal song of the Sirens. Going back to the eyes, he finds no precise name for the color, as these eyes are of an intrinsic beauty and have no need to be copied or be like anything else.

The eyes belong to the distinct voice he knows so well, the familiar soft laugh. “So, how is that going for you now, burying your memories?” And he notices now a slight smile to the lips of the girl. “In any case, whatever you decide to do, I wish you well.” The sunlight fades from the gallery as quickly as it came, and he puts away pad and pencil.

As he walks outside he feels pretty good for the day he's had so far. Busy-ness buries dreams, memories of dreams. Now to think about where to go for dinner, considers Luisella's suggestions. There is a soft rain falling, but it doesn't bother him that he doesn't have an umbrella. He shields his sketch pad under his shirt, so as not to dampen his drawings. “She's absolutely right that pesto sauce is the best in this region”, he mutters as he walks over the worn brick sidewalk and sings a bit of an old Madonna song, a message from a message in a dream he cannot fight. "If I'm smart then I'll run away, but I'm not so I guess I'll stay, take my chance on a beautiful stranger. I looked into your eyes, and my world came tumbling down, you're the devil in disguise, that's why I'm singing this song."