Sunday Morning

Enough of this sappy, amorphous stuff. I don't want this to turn into jejune ramblings that sound like sentiments you'd write on the inside of a yearbook. Focus, focus. My goal, outside of preserving my stories, is to be --- as particular as I can. Creating my pentimenti, evoking stronger, more sensual memories -- that shine brightest by using the most accurate words.

"Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens, it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter 'repented,' changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

"That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged now and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now."

- Pentimento, by Lillian Hellman.

The truth, as they say, is in the details.

So is sex. Or rather the recounting of last Friday.

After we came back to my apartment, I switched on the air conditioning. My cat, Scudder, came bounding out of the bedroom, determined to take over this situation all others.

"There he is," I announced, "lord of the manor." You can tell right away if someone can tolerate your pet or if they'd prefer that it was in a pound.

"Hello there, kitty," John said, and since he didn't recoil I figured it was cool. But the apartment wasn't, so I switched the fan on to quickly circulate more air.

"Wow, God, look at this view", he said, leaning against the window frame. "You can see everything from up here!"

What remained to be seen was what would happen when he turned around. I tossed a couple cushions on the floor beside the couch to give him more room.

"Come on - sit there, relax. Is that air too cold on you?"

"No, it feels great."

He looked at me and I popped up, glanced around, lowering the lights, pushing some books under the sofa with my foot.

"Oh, and -- there are candles somewhere," I said, remembering that most of them were in the bedroom where I'd secured the cat. And I wasn't going to chase Scudder around the living room. There was one votive candle plopped at the bottom of a tall candle holder. I went into the kitchen-ette (and I mean -ette, because it was really just a glorified closet with a stove) found a box of old matches. Having pulled the box off the shelf upside down, a few fell on the floor, but I acted as if I didn't notice. Causally, I reached my hand inside the long glass vase and tried to touch the flame to a curled wick. I got burned but didn't show it.

"Okay, we've got 'candle'."

I sat opposite him and he smiled. Nervously, I popped up again, rifling through my CD's. Running my thumbnail down the Broadway cast recordings and Judy at the Palace, I found the soundtrack to "Don Juan de Marco." Terrible movie. Good music. He'd gotten up to look at the sky again; he loved thunder storms and lightning was cutting through the mist. When he turned back I was on the couch.

"Thought I'd join you over here."

He sat down beside me, one pillow between us, the room dim enough to barely make out his features. He was smiling. He had that "I know that you know that I know what you want to happen," smirk. I tossed the pillow on the floor. All I did was lean in an inch and he was on me like a Hoover.

Slow down, cowpoke. It's was like he was at a pie-eating contest and I was the pie. Not unpleasant, but a tidal wave, where a gentle lapping would have been sufficient to begin with.

And speaking of lapping, he was on mine in a couple of minutes. He straddled me, face on mine so closely I almost had to gasp for air. I leaned back a little to give him the message. He dropped from 90 mph to 50, so our lips had room to shape kisses instead of slathering them on.

He positioned me underneath him, my calves lying over the sharp edge of this ancient hide-a-bed. As he got on top I thought, "I remember this." That heavy weight pushing down, and you can't move much more than your arms and fingers. He could, though, and as he started to sway I did feel other things. We started necking (a phrase my young friend James finds archaic and hysterical) and he was nuzzling like he was trying to bruise my collarbone. When I went down on his neck, the pace picked up and suddenly he stopped.

"Be careful, remember I work with small children." It took me a second to realize he was talking about hickeys (now that's an archaic term which I find hysterical) and I laughed at the thought of him covering up a mark with Cover Girl.

"If anyone should be afraid of that, it should be me. I'm fairer than anyone."

"You're the fairest in the land," he laughed. "Now you get on top of me," he instructed, lifting me up and under. Obviously, the boy had a plan. I went with it. "Can we go to the bedroom? I'm losing the feeling in my leg."

"Sure."

I led him down the hall and opened the door, stepping into a much cooler room. We were immediately encircled by the cat.

"Oh, what about him? Is he into three-somes?"

"Don't worry," I replied, and gently kicked Scudder into the hall and shutting the door.

"Now there's no music," he said, kicking his shoes off. Oh crap, if I go back into the living room the cat will shoot back in and never leave.

"Wait a minute, I have this CD player," I said, unearthing it from beside the bed. Please let there be something in it. I pressed the button and it started to play a jazz rendering of Sondheim songs.

"Hey, I like that."

"That's Stephen Sondheim, the guy you never heard of before."

He'd told me that in the coffee shop and I almost spit my juice.

"Sweet," he said, and pulled me down beside him. We made out for a while and I slowed him down when I felt it was coming to the edge of no return.

"Let's just lie here a minute, okay? Let's cool down. I don't think the air is working."

I got up in the darkness and squinted at the dial; I had left my glasses in the living room. "Well, it looks like it's on High." A bald-face lie; I had felt the knob like Helen Keller and, already self-conscious about my age, I was not going to tell him I couldn't see it.

"Well, come back. I won't touch you."

"Please, that's not the problem," I laughed. "I'm just all sweaty."

"That's how it goes, remember?" he winked. And there it was. I barely did remember.

More later...