Kissing My Spanish Woman It’s so amazing just to sit with her for a while. It’s not just the music or the wine or the comforting antique warmth of the room, it’s all of it around her and how her presence ties it all together. Sitting in my old, worn out skirted arm chair that’s been picked on by the cats for years, leaning back the light from my writing lamp bathes her and suddenly there she is, my Spanish woman relaxing in the evening sun. I enjoy her coming into my home, knowing that she’ll smile or cry or just talk incessantly of nothing. Sometimes she just sits and says nothing at all, stepping away for a moment to some place she’d rather be. It doesn’t bother me though, as I often do the same as she speaks of events and people I’ve never known. We talk of everything that our stoned minds can imagine and sometimes laugh obsessively while looking at one another with surprise that something common between us was found. I think of how perfect the light is falling all around her, and looking at her takes me away from my life, to another place that I’d rather be. And she would be there too, the sun bathing her, the blue water crashing into white sands and the warm breeze through us like God’s whisper. I could sit there forever. Her beauty is almost tranquilizing to me. I feel good sitting with her. We are in a good place and I don’t want to leave. Looking at her youthful beauty, I fall into thoughts of her and how she sits so attentively when she’s really listening or how she sits up when she’s talking or how she leans over her knees sometimes when she laughs so hard at something I say that she finds funny. I don’t know if she is aware of how I wish the best for her or that I want her to have all she believes will make her happy. Though I know that many things will change as the years pass, I struggle to avoid preaching my fourteen years experience to her. Feeling as though it might be worth convincing her of what I know, yet it might be best for her to do as I did and learn from a thousand mistakes. But this hurts and it scars and I don’t want that for her. Life is cruel in the sense that through humiliation and constant error one learns who one is. But there is beauty in it if one accepts the lessons learned and wears the scars with the pride of assuming responsibility for the self. I have decided to let it be for now, after all, who am I to teach another? I’m just a student of life myself, fourteen years older, but forever a student. Along with her astounding beauty come the particulars of who she is at this point in her life. Though I don’t know all of them, I appreciate the ones she has allowed me to share with her. Even the little things make me smile and feel good inside. I have pointed a few of them out to her even at the risk of her misunderstanding in a way that I did not mean, as if I dislike these things, quite the contrary, I adore them. Little things like putting a roll of toilet paper on the holder where it belongs – something I have failed to do for the past five years. Or clamping shut the lid of the glass Skittles jar in the kitchen – something I don’t think I have ever done. Just the other night she folded close the knife blade of my corkscrew back into its proper position. I have left that knife blade exposed since the first time I touched that corkscrew. I remember seeing it after she left one night. Still slightly dazed from our night of dope and music and talk, I thought it was broken as I held it in my hand. Looking all about the kitchen floor for the knife blade I finally realized that the blade was simply shut, put back in its place, put where it should be instead of where I had left it in sheer laziness or absent-mindedness or both. But I smiled at the discovery for it reminded me of her. It told me that she was here. It showed me that she is Sarah and that Sarah was here relaxing with me, talking with me, laughing with me, smoking with me, thinking with me. It made me smile. It was good to know that she was here. The light cast about her; the sun, the sand, the water, my time with my lovely Spanish woman was real. Though her beauty is flawless and all consuming, it would be difficult for me to indicate one single aspect of her beauty that I adore the most, though I have never before seen such lovely hands. They are hands of perfection in every detail, long and thin, bony and sexy, soft and tan. And though she works hard to make her nails perfect, her long, slender fingers are pure, natural and elegant. It’s due to a weekly manicure and constant attention to detail on her part. I see it as a great waste of time and money, for the natural beauty still lies beneath the work of the manicurist, it’s God given and will never fail her. And in our moments of silence I drift away into a vision of laying my weary head across her lap, drifting into a much-needed sleep as she gently strokes my face with her soft, cool fingers. At times I cannot stop looking at her hands for they flow with such clean exquisiteness and natural splendor, as though the sound her long nails make as she rests her hands on the kitchen counter top momentarily consumes my attention. Even in pure friendship, I know that it would be a great joy for me to clasp her hand in mine, but for a while though, a long, peaceful while. Every aspect of her beauty has always captured me and as I get to know her more, the beauty only ripens and becomes more defined, glowing around me like the sun. What is she thinking behind the brilliant glow of honey in her eyes? Are there ever those thoughts that seem to find a home in my mind? It’s as though she is just too lovely for me to let go without knowing what her lips taste like and how they would feel against mine; just one time, for the downright, raw experience of it, to live it. To live it because not to would be cowardly and false. And to fall into that moment with sheer excitement and complete wonder and anticipation would be a gift of bliss from her to me, then to wait and feel that magical high which ensues and consumes us deeper with each fading second of our lips stirring together. There is no other feeling of elation that shades the pleasure of kissing a beautiful woman’s lips for the very first time, a kiss born in anxiety and timidity, then in the moment, blooming with comfort, as we get closer. From within grows absolute euphoria and human intimacy converging just beyond the boundary of our joint virginity. And as we feel the need to pull away, sensing that this may not be just for the experience alone, but feeling it as an isolated collision, something in and of itself that continues until neither of us is afraid of giving in to the other. And then the feeling of friendly embarrassment is so overshadowed by a pour of rushing thoughts of wanting it to continue because it was good and human and close and soft and warm and bursting with sensation. But, for me, not to continue is too difficult. And we must pretend something other than what our true thoughts ask of us, at least of mine. I wonder is this thought hidden behind the honey? Finally I could no longer stand the thought of letting her go without once again tasting those lips. I told her that it was going to be a long. A connection that would yield whatever feelings might ensue during or after. And so it was. My lips melted into hers and the seconds slipped away like the wind and after it was over I knew that I wanted more. I wanted it to continue, to last forever. And I leaned heavy into her lips as I closed my eyes. “No!” she said. And I kept on for another moment as if to call her bluff, but there was no bluff. She wanted no more. No more of my lips. No more of us touching like lovers. No more of me. And I sank. With great embarrassment I smiled at her and let her go. I let her go and wished her a careful ride home, but did so with the stirring sickness of an unwanted loser swirling inside of me. She drove away as I gave into what I have become an older, poor, simplistic writer and accepted what I no longer was, something she’d want. In her glorious youth I knew that I was nothing more than a simple friend to this creature of beauty that God will give only few. But the kisses were lovely to me, whether she thought so or not. I will always remember them, but more so I will never forget how meaningless they were to her. How she was doing a favor for a poor soul who was lost in loneliness and isolation and who never really had a chance at having her. “I have to go to bed.” She said. “I’m glad that you made it home okay. Mozart is calling me.” “Okay, I’ll call you tomorrow.” “Sleep well,” I said hanging-up the phone. Her voice was like cool air flowing over me, but the words are sharp and sometimes wild and solecistic, cutting me with their sharp ignorance, but still I like the taste of the blood they bleed. It tastes so individual and youthfully naïve, yet reared from a life of times not always so wonderful. You don’t know what it means to win, to lose, to love, to feel, to appreciate, to live. I can see that you have been denied the pickings of heavily thorned roses and you cannot see through the veil over your eyes even though it is transparent but obvious. You’re not even Spanish, but you speak it well when you must. You’re an American gold digger with the perfect tools to complete the job. It’s still about things for you. Could you have asked me why Mozart was calling me? No. You don’t know that I often write to his music late at night. You don’t even know who he is, yet by not asking, you assume I’m sure that you do. Do yourself the favor and move away from the materials of this world and take a step onto the road less traveled. This trip will bring to you the truth through humility and the truth, as few know, will set you free. It has all changed now. I know that she considers me an acquaintance and nothing more. Though as much as it tore me apart to be unwanted by her, I will never forget leaning into those lips and watching those glorious globes of honey fold for me. I will never forget my lovely Spanish woman and the kiss that she gave me from the goodness of her, young, vulnerable heart. But it’s her loss. So fuck her. I’ll survive with distinction and let her watch from beyond. That’s the way it will be.
Copyright © 2000 Branson Storm |