What can you do...

When you see the train headed for the end of the tracks and the brakes are out. Not a whole lot I expect. You can run around the train trying to stop it, turn it around, change its course some or just slow down, but if the train is full steam ahead, you're going off the edge anyway. Which wouldn't sound so bad if this was a toy train, but it's a ten ton steel locomotive ready to plunge into the abyss and smash into pieces. You might feel a little better being the one that runs around trying to save everyone on board, but it's a train wreck - there's nothing to be done. Why not sit next to the other person on the train and watch it hit the rocks? Then you can sing the old Neil Diamond song "Love on the rocks, ain't no surprise." And you can lift your broken body off the ground and keep moving. But you can't be too angry. You, after all, were the one who decided to get on the train.

What to say, what to say

I haven't seen you in at least 7 years. I was underage at that bar and drinking brandy over some silly joke to impress a boy that didn't know I existed. You were there, quite a bit older than me... at least six years older. I remember sitting in a flimsy resin lawn chair on the bar's patio next to you and talking awkwardly about this and that. I can't even remember the conversation. You were cute with a prominent nose and handsome features, but short - yes, I seem to remember that you were 5'2 or 5'3 or so. That didn't bother me, mind you. You asked me if I wanted to hang out for a little while, and I drove off with you, leaving my car in the gravel parking lot across the street. We pulled up at your parent's house, and you showed me in through the kitchen, past the living room down to the basement. I recall some photos on the fridge and family photos in the living room that assured me you were part of a normal family just like mine. Once in the basement, the advances were quick and decisive. We were kissing in moments and touching and caressing. It was already well past 4 a.m. and we crawled up to your bedroom, careful not to wake your parents. What happened there I can't say I'm exactly proud of. We didn't make love, but we crossed at least one line I would have preferred to have held steadfast on. Soon it was dawn and we were sneaking out to the car so you could drive me back to mine. Later that morning I would rear end another car on my way to work, forever burning this moment into my memory. I can still remember your plaid basement couch, the brown blanket on your bed, and other things I'd rather I'd forgotten.

So now I'm sitting here and we're new social media friends. We're also both grown up, married and far past any of the silliness of that evening. Since we literally never saw one another before or after that, however, I find myself at a complete loss for words...

Thin Line

There's a thin line between lust and love, I thought to myself as I wiped the crust from my eyes and rolled over to stare at the alarm clock, bleeping and blaring into the silent morning. In my dream, you were there, you, the unattainable. Asking me, begging me for comfort, contact. I brushed my hand along your arm lightly, a small gesture to comfort you, connect with your suffering in a difficult moment. Your neck snapped towards me, your soft brown eyes slowly searching mine for meaning. I slid my arm around your shoulder and pulled you close to me - just an embrace, nothing more. We held fast, frozen. For the first time in a long time I felt your shape, the curvature of your shoulder blade and the slight softness with lean muscle beneath. Our faces slid together and I felt your breath on my neck, the roughness of your five o'clock shadow scraped lightly against my cheek. I was held as much as holding, feeling every tiny motion of your limbs. The feeling in my heart, my stomach, the firing synapses of my brain, was so intense I nearly choked on it and it sent shivers through my bones. Love, pure and unadulterated. Or so I thought, for as it broke over me like a shimmering wave, I desired a culmination, a completeness of our expression. Then I stood there and looked at the shoreline, the thin line between love and lust. I decided to stay on the sand, but I relished every wave until the tide receded and we separated at long last. I woke. I laid in the bed, contemplating the meaning of our dreamtime rendezvous. I snuggled under the covers, warm with sleep, and contemplated the decision made by my dream-self to be true to the real me, not to the dreamer who had you in her arms.

Erogenous Composition

Driving through a dusty construction zone, my iPod switched randomly to a song I haven't heard recently. It's an old song, five years old this fall in my memory. It hardly seemed decent in public, on a sunny day, but it reminded me of a dark fall evening and a crisp fall morning. The first time I heard it, when my friend gave me a burned copy of the cd, it had a sultry, salty flavor and it sang with purpose.

Another night, just a few weeks after I first found it, it would find its purpose as a soundtrack, as a metronome. I welcomed him at my door, pulled him inside near the wooden stairwell and tied a soft black scarf over his eyes, tucking his glasses in my pocket and leading him upstairs, pulling his hand behind me. The room was a glow with candles, and I hoped the ghosts weren't watching. I hid our deeds under a gossamer canopy I had newly attached. It draped the bed and swathed behind, trailing on the wooden floor.

He seemed unsure, excited. Our energy filled the room, like the glowing light he couldn't see and the hum of the music on my old stereo. He was the experienced one and I was the innocent in the light of day; this exercise was to be a strange role reversal. He was always the one desiring, chasing women in the past, never the chased. I was chasing him. Pursuing him, winning him over because I was entranced by his beauty. I stripped him sensually. I unbuttoned his casual plaid, long sleeved shirt, then pulled his slightly tight white t-shirt over his shoulders. I pulled off his big black boots, slid off each sock and unzipped his boy-next-door denim, sliding it down around his ankles. I looked at his gorgeous body, white shoulders into muscular arms, a narrow waist and slender, powerful legs. With only finger tips I pushed his chest and his body fell back onto the waiting comforter, sprinkled with rose petals that I found at the local grocery on my way home from work. They were fresh, soft and fragrant.

It was an exercise in tension with no release. I teased him, finding tiny tastes of his body to tickle, touch, lick, caress and massage. His face was electric with excitement and curiosity about this woman who was leaving him in tingling desire. His lips smiled and separated as I ran the soft edge of a rose petal against a nipple or the inner crease of an elbow. Erogenous zones were discovered in utilitarian places. He would try to reciprocate touch, but I would gently refuse, focusing on a new unknown place with the lightest touch of my fingertips. I took a long feather and ran it along his shoulder, his neck, his ribs, his inner thigh. I had a collection of sensations in my bag of tricks and I strung them together like a composition, forcing him, coaxing him to experience something outside the ordinary.

The music gave a rhythm to my tactile experiments. The haunting melodies and electronic noises filled the empty seconds between. I pressed a breast against his lips, only to pull away and watch him search. I streaked a cool stripe of chocolate down the skin on his stomach and blew on it, causing a shiver down his spine, then licked it up with a warm tongue. When my masterpiece of tactile connections was finished, I laid beside him, feeling the warmth of our bodies close together. I pulled the blindfold up over his hair and saw his full expression for the first time. His warm brown eyes were sparkling with intensity and interest as he nuzzled close for satisfying kisses. We weren't lovers yet, not then. We hadn't tasted each other. It was a beautiful exercise in sensual restraint and aching temptation. We kissed and talked and desired so intensely, so deeply. Then we fell asleep in each other's arms.

Then there was another memory, a memory of driving him to his monthly obligation at 5 a.m. before the sun had risen. It was a frigid November morning and the sun was just beginning to approach the horizon. It felt like driving him to the airport, watching him leave forever on a jet plane. He would only be gone for 8 hours, but I had a premonition. For some strange reason I had picked up the music from a night months earlier and slipped it into the disc drive. What once had a sexual bent was now sultry sadness, haunted. I remember driving away in the deep blue morning with just a touch of blushing sunlight at the horizon, pushing green then blue sky away, the music blaring in his car.

Now when I listen to the music it is both sensual and haunting, tempting and morose. I will never be able to play it with my new love. It's old and used up for me. In the same sense, it belongs to that old memory of a new love budding, a new love that ran its course and expired. The death throes and broken spirits from the overdue, overdone ending tarnish the tensions and releases in each song. When I hear the album now, it feels out of tune with my life. It feels private and full of old meaning. I keep it though, because the memory is interesting. A chapter in my awakening as a woman.