No Pablo Neruda
Essays on life, work and literatureArchive for June, 2010
Pomp and Flash
Her back was like a pin – straight, lean down the sides – and she sat with the poise of someone who had spent maybe a year or two modelling – upright, but with a relaxed slump to the left shoulder, which he found appealing.
She wasn’t presently smoking, but she smoked. This was evident from the four or five black ends of cigarettes in the glass ash tray by her right hand. That hand, studded by short, slender fingers, was poised as if about to reach for another, the finger (in the dim light, not obviously discoloured by nicotine) were shrugging toward her half empty packet with obvious intent.
She was too engaged in conversation to finally slip one out. He watched her – her wide open mouth like a perfectly shaped sideways ‘V’ glossed in something expensive and pink and glossed again in something equally expensive and shiny. Everything about her was immaculate. Her long, straight blonde hair was sitting loosely around her shoulders, the front combed back in a delicate arch, and her blue eyes were wide beneath subtly thinned eyebrows. While it was clear that she was wearing make up, she had applied it with such an artisan hand that it was impossible to tell the difference between the chemical surface and the natural patina of her flesh. All of it blended seamlessly – as it was her intent. She was a marvellous picture – a really glorious, classy, perfect image of what a woman should be.
He had wanted and been with these women all his life. He had bought the accroutements that they suited – driven them to restaurants in expensive cars and paid for their drinks with crisp, fifty dollars notes that he leafed from a brand name leather wallet. He had chosen his after shave to match the subtle, flowery scent of their perfume and cut in his hair in a modest rendition of a fashionable style so that when they were together they were a good looking couple – a likable couple. An It pair.
Only that wasn’t what they were, most of the time. They were tired by the others drivel or bored by the lack of conversation or revoltingly bad in bed. And yet, he insisted, despite all better sense and knowledge, to pursue these women, collecting the experience of them like other men would collect vintage collections of red wine. He wasn’t sure what it was that he particularly liked. Certainly, they all had their respective charms. Usually, they were young and with youth came the benefits of small, pert breasts made to fit his own small hand, and arses that curved around like the lickable edge of a child’s lollipop. They had vaginas which seemed barely touched, packaged behind folds of flesh which they’d waxed clean and then tanned with fake emulsions, so perfectly, with such delicate care, you wouldn’t really know that they hadn’t spent a week prior laying in the hot, Australian sun.
They were beautiful – yes they were beautiful. And they wore clothes well and when he was with them he felt like he had a certain status. He had status in other respects, admittedly. He was intelligent and hard working and had succeeded in his field despite several doubts over the past few years. But it was the women that really capped it off. When another man saw a man with a beautiful woman on his arm, that other man knew the lucky bastard had it all. He would be spread eagled in bed with a saucy smile that took all the hurt out of sexual demands and be pleased, and, of course, please in turn by his purchases, his idolatory and his general contedness to be around.
What a glorious life. He knew it was revolting to be so indolent. But these women were peppered around with the profuseness of flowers on a country hill. They were everywhere he went – every fashionable club in an metropolitan district, behind each marble bar and drinking champagne from the dark, curtain corners of cocktail joints well into the early hours of the morning.
A person simply could not avoid them. So then why not indulge them – all that they were was made to be touched and consumed, much like a product, pretty wrappings removed to reveal the long, lean legginess, the blonde and brown ephemeral beauty of female youth.
He would never see his fattening middle or his graying hair, not the crinkles at the corner of his eyes or the furrow in his brown while he was around, and so any one else he loved, or any better companion, could take a back seat while the access to those beauties was not barred.
Coke, and champagne and cigarettes rolled around in the heady vapour of easy, plastic sex. It was a charming life. A veritable birthright for some lucky fuckers. And fortunately for him, marriage, upbringing and the right amount of schmarminess had it served up on an endless, flashy platter.
Dissatisfied
You saw them, fair,
with love in their eyes,
gaze one to the other,
surprised, rapt, and
happy young lovers,
tender as jasmine,
that blooms in the night,
convivial things,
making love by moonlight.
How then were we
in their path but obtuse
to the soft things they sang
and the sentiments used,
while we stood in their shadow
we never confessed
to having such fervour
or joy in our breasts.
Click
His mother had always said to him that as he got older his face would mature and the downy white fluff that crept along his jaw would grow dark. He waited on this false pretense of his future physiognomy, perhaps knowing secretly that it was only maternal love which persuaded his mother to spring false lures. His was a body that would be eternally youthful – elegantly limbed and white and covered in the same peach coloured hair that he was born with.
It was anaethema to women. Women did not like a man who, despite whatever years he had accrued, still resembled a pre pubescent teenage boy. While there was of course that catalogue of porn which catereed for the interconnection of very young boys and mature women, in reality most seemed put off by his delicate hands and his halting, creaky voice.
When he said how old he was he was often faced with a confused look – the eyes darted about his face and took in his almost invisible eyebrows, his small, deft nose and his pursed lips and the thoughts were as clear as if they had been spoken. He was not normal. He was so deeply attached to his youth that he could not, not by smoking cigarettes, consuming alcohol or pumping himself almost violently to hours of porn, make a more mature man than what was before them.
He had academic excellence though – as was expected of men who had none of the obvious physical traits of brute masculinity he had laboured through high school and in tertiary education until he graduated at twenty seven with three degrees.
While women did not throw themselves at his feet for the want of his kiss, the corporations were seduced by his credentials and he was quickly hired to, at first, assist a bank with its transactions and mergers, and then to run a team. He was not particularly eloquent and so his rise up the corporate ladder wasn’t necessarily going to be smooth. It was his experience that the corporate employer generally wanted someone who had a basic level of intelligence but an above level of persuasiveness and charm. He had neither of the latter so had to make do with being exceedingly proficient and faultlessly accurate in his calculations and the prepartion of his work.
This seemed to serve him well and he prospered under some regard, receiving commensurate pay increases from time to time which he secreted away into a bank account that he didn’t have the lifestyle to deplete.
His mother was proud, his father was distant and incommunicative but generally proud, and so he accepted his indefatiguable youth and marched bravely on. This didn’t mean he was without hope.
When he took the train in to work in the morning he leant with his arm, sleeved in a neat, modest, charcoal suit jacket against the metal standing rail and looked down the aisle at the various of female faces turned toward books or windows or companions. He didn’t care if they were ugly or pretty, in throes of disgust or deeply lined with fatigue, he wanted them all. He wanted them under him, while each of his finely boned and blue veined hands pressed on their shoulders and his cockle shell shaped dick snapped to attention, growing as turgid as the tubular head of a tulip against their lipglossed mouths.
He wanted it with such rapacious need that it shocked him. He was softer because of it, denying himself, flushed hot with guilt. Yet would it happen. He hoped though he didn’t know and fell asleep with perversely infantile dreams of their faces, rapt at being made powerless to his in part gentle and in part vindictive touch, their red cheeks streaked white with his cum as he dove into them – a man at last.
Intemperate
My passions, here they are,
these vicious, fickle things
putting whim where
I was permanent, and
bleeding red beneath my skin.
I am intemperate and
swollen, I am hot with
such hot fuss, I am
captured by the romance of
comraderie and lust.
And can’t I just be purest
like an angel, like a bride,
can’t I put on now a halo
and put all my sins aside.
It seems not,
I think you’ll find it,
that I’m wicked and complex,
and brains before I’m beauty,
and warm for messy sex.
I am stories, tens and thousands,
Confounding, but I’m sweet,
I’m romantic like a love song,
the most lovely girl you’ll meet.
