A Lavender Thong
Emma lured us uptown last Friday with promises of good company and cheap booze. I couldn’t resist. The area is familiar to me: the upper-wiggidy-wiggidy-west-side, around 109th. Just up the street there’s St. John the Divine. I go up there every year for the Philharmonic’s Memorial Day concert. I’ll never forget, years ago, hearing Bruckner’s Symphony no. 7 reverberating throughout the cathedral’s splendid, vaulted chambers. Sometimes listening to great music is like falling in love.
We met Emma and Derek at a charming, modern little bar decorated with bits of pomo art. The music was decent—house, hip-hop, a little progressive rock. Whatever set the mood. We shared Halloween stories. Emma had dressed as Janis Joplin. Derek said they’d been hoping we’d come out that night. The party had been legendary, they told me.
It wasn’t long before Leslie began chatting up the pretty bartender as the rest of us looked on in fascination.
“She’s better than I am,” I said, smiling. “I taught her everything she knows, but now it seems the student has surpassed the master.”
Derek and Emma laughed. “At least she’s still with you,” Derek said.
“True. What is it they say? Those who cannot do, teach? I know a lot of smart people like that; I’ve had a lot of professors like that. They say in mathematics, for example, if you haven’t come up with anything new by the time you’re thirty then you never will.”
Derek looked pensive. “I worry about that sometimes. Like I’m running out of time to make my mark.” Derek is a playwright.
“You have time. I’m a fan of mature genius. Sure, you have those child prodigies—look at music—Mozart, that little twit, was composing decent stuff at age eleven or so. Beethoven, on the other hand, didn’t come into his own until his mid twenties. Hell, he even considered ending his life. His genius was a matter of lifelong struggle. Bruckner didn’t produce anything worthwhile until he was in his forties. Yes, you have time.”
We threw on our coats and headed up the street to another bar. On our way, Derek and I continued the conversation. He spoke of some of the projects he’s working on. “A lot of people I know are solely focused on producing for production’s sake. I want to produce something unique.”
“Then you’ll have almost no competition. Look at all the crap that comes out these days—stuff that’ll be forgotten in ten, twenty, thirty years. Shakespeare already taught us everything we need to know about life. Clever bugger he was—appealed to the commoners and the chattering classes alike. Now all you can do is focus on some specific aspect of the human experience and hope to say something original. Take the long view. Just do something great.”
The next bar, an unremarkable tavern decorated everywhere in mahogany, was brimming with fresh-faced lads, blue shirts stuffed into beige khakis. Emma said it’s not her kind of place, but she knows the bartender, a pretty, outgoing Puerto Rican girl. The Puerto Rican refused to take my money for a round of drinks. Emma had been right about the cheap booze.
I stepped outside for a smoke and gazed at the dark cathedral grounds across the street, trying to recall details of the concert that had so moved me years ago. Had I hesitated in front of this bar on the way home that night? A black woman—homeless, toothless—bummed a ciggy. She asked for money. A drunken white girl wanted to know what the woman was planning to do with the money. I found the whole thing distasteful and gave the white girl a funny look. “Oh, she’s mah girl,” she said.
Safely back inside, I told Derek the sad tale. “What is it with white folks anyway?” I asked. “Always talking street. Trying to relate. Trying to out-black everybody.”
“Yeahiknow. It annoys me too. Places like this scare me a bit.”
“But Derek, you fit right in. I mean, you speak so well.” We laughed. “You need to visit blackpeopleloveus. You’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.”
We talked some more and the bartender came around to buy us shots. The shot sent Derek’s eyebrows flying upwards. “Christ! What is this?”
I drained the stuff, poison burning tracks down the back of my throat. I nearly hacked up a lung upon inhaling the lingering fumes. It was a familiar pain. “Jameson’s, I think.” I waited for the spasms to subside. “Damn, that’s a powerful shot.”
Emma hopped into Leslie’s lap. Leslie touched her hesitantly at first but soon they were locked into an embrace, kissing deeply. This caused a commotion among the fresh-faced lads. It was as if a riot were on the verge of breaking out.
“Those two are having fun,” I said to Derek, cocking my head in the direction of Emma and Leslie.
“What is it you like about Emma?” Derek asked. For some time I’d been getting the impression he was keenly interested in seeing how the situation would play out.
“Well, obviously there’s the physical—she’s small and soft like Leslie. And beyond that, well, she’s one of the sweetest girls I’ve met. Takes a genuine interest in us, you know? She can hold her liquor too. And I like her friends.”
After a moment I sat down and turned to face Emma, smiling. I stroked her hair, caressed the small of her back, brushed her thigh. I reached underneath her and palmed one of her ass cheeks over her jeans. I gave the cheek a firm squeeze. “Yes, you do have a nice ass,” I sighed, looking into her eyes. A lavender thong was visible above the cut of her jeans. I toyed with her underwear, letting my fingers wander down to the soft skin just above the cleavage of her buttocks. I gently pinched that skin between my thumb and index fingers. “You know what this is?”
She smiled at me and shook her head playfully, a cascade of curly hair falling against her face. “What is it?”
“It’s my favorite skin. The softest, smoothest skin on a woman.”
We wound up sitting in the back watching Emma play pool. She put up a good fight but her opponent was a natural. One of the shots she was setting up brought her ass in close proximity to my face. I placed my hand against her rump, gently this time, trying to visualize the soft skin beneath the fabric of her jeans. She brought the cue forward, sinking a ball in a corner pocket. She looked back at me and smiled.
The rest of the night was a blur as the liquor took hold, scrambling my synapses. Somehow we all stumbled back to her place. My companions had multiplied on the way; each of the original crew now had a doppelganger. The Leslie twins looked rather fetching. Maybe I’d take them back to my place, I thought. “I think I’m seeing double,” I announced. “It’s probably a good time to go home.”
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