DINNER DANCE
For P.M. Am I still on probation?
* * * *
I could barely walk, you know, could hardly place one leaden foot before the other, as I came to meet you, wading through the bustling throng on Robson Street. I was early, you see, passing the restaurant entrance at eight. You weren't there, so I trembled on. I never wear a wristwatch as you know, so I looked for a clock. Tick tock. If you knew how my heart marked the seconds. I shook. By the time I'd dragged myself around the block, like a diver lugging weighted boots, you had materialized in brown. I whistled, every bit the gamine flirt. After all, it's just a game, is it not?
I knew we'd be shown to that table, the little one for two, up the open staircase and around the gallery. Fate is a comfort, as if we are just pawns, moved by some invisible hand.
"Coincidence," you said.
"Balls," I replied.
Six months before, I dined there with another man, the one I met after I left you so abruptly, so sharply, so cruelly. You'll be sorry, I thought, inserting my knife between your ribs. And God, the worst thing is that you were?
Your knee meets mine beneath the table and I do not flinch. You're talking on in a reasonable, lucid, measured way. Some of the time I'm listening, smiling, laughing, responding, some of the time I'm just not there, for I want to be in that deeper place. How can I sit and chat--whoops, there goes my fork--when you've stirred me up the way you always could? I'm breathing in the scent of you, the powerful musk of your skin. Why can't the whole room drink you in the way I can? Just as well they can't or you'd be torn to shreds. Your key turns in my well-oiled lock and I'm caught in the mechanism of our chemical love.
"Pheromones," you'd say. Ah, Fate.
I try to listen but your voice fades in and out and I've ordered a second glass of wine, which I didn't intend to do (must keep a clear head) but I had to do something with my hands, my dear. I wanted to reach out across the crisp white cloth and stroke your fingers, trace the hands which used to wield a fine oak switch, burning, burning into my skin. I'm branded with your disciplinary love. Yes, I tried to escape, I even fled four thousand miles to another man who could give me pleasure/pain. And now that man has found another love.
Rebound.
Rebound.
Rebound.
I feel like a little shiny ball in a machine. I think I sculpted him in your image, that other master of mine. And Woman created Man.
You must love me, really love me, to be here tonight, for I seem to recall my final exit was less than polite. I always want it all, you see, and what could you offer me but a fleeting moment in time? Snatched sweet, harsh pleasures, caught between the measured compartments of our everyday lives. You know me, though, my darling, and not just in the biblical sense. I can feel that your guard is up and how could I blame you? So, I sit and eat my fish and sip my wine and watch your lips move. I think of a witty exchange in "North By Northwest", Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint on a train.
"Do you recommend anything?"
"The brook trout. A little trouty but quite good."
I want to break these bonds of careful caution, this game of evasion you play. You might as well have tied me to the chair, arms behind my back, wrists bound together with a silken cord. Your shoulders are very broad beneath that plain brown shirt and your musk skin scent maddens me. Can't you hear me screaming? Chemistry is a potent thing.
I want you to beat me.
I remember when you did.
It was summer and I had to be punished (didn't I always?) You disliked the term "beating", perhaps connecting it with the boxing of your youth, the crunch of bone on bone, a vicious visceral association. You wouldn't want to picture me with blood trickling from the corner of my mouth or a darkened, half closed eye. You spoke of discipline, correction, straight edges, hard lines, boundaries, walls, limits. You counted the strokes you delivered with your fine oak switch, which came sharp and fast in groups of twelve, as I clasped the damp rough bark of a tree. Forgive me, but I thought of it as beating, although you maintained an admirable restraint. The veneer of constraint can never hide the beast within. The thing is, master, I want to be raped by that primeval force, for what gets me off is Power. If, in this play, I can choose any role I wish, I shall be martyr, scapegoat, masochist, slave. You gave me elegant violence, carefully measured, marking my soft white flesh, cutting and burning. Three summers ago, you bound me to a tree and reddened my buttocks and the backs of my thighs with your limiting love. Oddly, I was calm, but I felt your heart thump in my head, was mysteriously diverted into your bloodstream, sensed your passion, your love, your strange near humility at my sylvan sacrifice.
I'm a bundle of excess in all directions. I seek out the dark place, locate the demon in your eye, open wide Pandora's box. I want to bring your darkness out, draw you, tempt you, lure you with the promise of my tears, soft salt tears on long wet lashes, begging you, imploring you, please, please, please? Only beat me. Let loose the savagery, the primeval mindless, heartless center of blood lust, rising like a scarlet tide, suffusing your brain, beating in your skull like a tribal drum. Discard convention, the politically correct. Abuse me. You told me you gave up fighting when you realized you were liking it just a bit too much. But the danger in you fits the dancer in me, the retreating, provoking, taunting one who murmurs "thrash me" and thus completes the ring. So, put on your gloves?
At last, I pay the bill, my treat, to thank you for doing the cover for my latest book. Your lay-out talent was never in doubt. I just didn't care to be compartmentalized, my love. You drive me home, as prearranged, and I ask you to take the long way round and stop by the church. Finally, after midnight, far from the restaurant, miles from downtown, you take me in your arms and, oh God, it is as if I'd never left, never crossed the continent to have adventures in foreign lands, never flew high over glittering turquoise seas and courted unsuitable mismatched mates, but had always been here, breathing you, melded to your side.
"The chemistry is astounding."
You're not one for superlatives so I know I've left my mark. Shakily, I delve for my keys and bid you goodnight, saying that tomorrow we'll talk for I'm weary tonight. And you know, I am tired, for my journey covered many miles and months. But what goes around, comes around, and it seems the wildest place of all is in your arms.
)
