People In Hell Want Icewater
a web.journal
newest shit
ancient shit
tell me shit
look at my farking
my podcast
my profile
about the title

get your own
read others
recommend me


Want to know when I post new stuff? Add your email here:

17


April 09, 2004 - 2:28 a.m.

The breakthrough finally happened. And no, I haven't had sex with her. Melody and I finally... kissed.

And it was terrific.

Tonight was my night to cook, so I went over and invaded Melody's kitchen, after undergoing the ritual sniffing from her cats. I made breast of chicken topped with Gulf shrimp in a spicy cream sauce... cream, butter, cayenne, diced jalapenos, mushrooms and some garlic, with steamed asparagus. We talked a little during dinner, but then really got to where we were talking about interesting things... different things. She talked about the theater she's done in the past, we talked about the cats, read cat books, and listened to hours of good jazz on the iBook, which the cats also had to sniff. Melody brought out some chocolate-dipped strawberries she had taken a few minutes to make while I was cooking the shrimp, and we tasted them while listening to Charlie Parker.

Somewhere in there, it made sense for us to end up in a heap on her couch, and we talked and talked more, getting used to the feel of each other. Unlike a lot of small women I've known, she's very warm and fits me well, though she does fidget quite a bit until she gets settled in. I was trying my best not to be all burpy from the shrimp and cream sauce at dinner, but if she could hear my guts rumbling, she didn't say anything about it.

And right in the middle of Jane Monheit's recording of "Blame It On My Youth," we kissed.

You know, at 41, I shouldn't feel the sort of tremor I felt then. You all have read some pretty graphic stuff in these pages over the last few months, and by comparison, a fairly chaste kiss after weeks of awkwardness should seem pretty tame. I assure you, it was not. Some things have the power to recall the best times in your life, and turning Melody's little face up and kissing her softly, eyes closed, lips a little parted, made me feel like I was 17, the best of the world was ahead of me and I found the woman to explore it all with.

But no, 17 was never like that. Here we were, two adults, in a house she owned, no one to bother us but the cats, no parents to come down and look in on us because they were either dead or hundreds of miles away... free to do anything we liked... yet it seemed like the furthest thing from our minds to progress much past that. That feeling, that we, anytime we liked, could go off and make love and have no one object, but we chose not to, was a remarkable feeling indeed.

I don't think I have ever felt quite so adult.

We talked and held each other until midnight, until she was so tired she could barely stand. We kissed once more in the doorway, as if it was something we'd always done, as if we'd known each other for our whole lives, and I came home to clean catboxes.

Women like Melody might still exist. I don't care. I have the original.


previous - next