The Seduction of Orpheus (Part One)
It was the second day of spring. Leslie and I had just ordered our wedding rings. Nothing felt real.
Peaches was waiting for me on St. Marks, pacing to and fro in torn jeans and a corset-like black blouse while chatting on her cell phone. She apologized for her appearance but I was entranced by the pale skin visible underneath the rips in her jeans.
“They’re cute,” I told her, brushing the denim with my fingertips. “I used to wear jeans like these back at the turn of the millennium — y’know, when they were in fashion.”
“Oh, you’re mean,” she said, laughing.
“Naw, I’m a puppy dog.”
I tried to be a good boy but restraint is not in my nature. At the bar she sat close to me, her thighs touching mine. After discussing the relative merits of The White Album and Abbey Road, Peaches and I kissed. She rose from her seat and spun around in my arms. We ordered another round.
“I don’t trust people who don’t drink,” she announced.
“Neither do I.”
Time passed the way it always does when two people are engrossed in conversation. The lights came up and we sat upon our stools blinking at each other. Peaches broke the silence: “You can come home with me — but I have to pack for my trip.”
We descended the stairs to one of those off-brand subway lines that serves the labyrinthine streets of the outer boroughs. “I like the view from up here,” I told Peaches as the train trundled across the Williamsburg Bridge. Hunching over to get a better look out the window, I thought about how in some ways Manhattan living has become a liability.
An enthusiastic sword-swallower, Peaches gagged on me as I stood at her bedside. She said she liked it this way. I was impressed. When I returned the favor I noticed the carpet matched the drapes, her hair kissed with the slightest hint of red.
I was behind her, peering at her round ass when the alarm on her cell phone went off. “Shit, I haven’t even packed yet,” she hissed.
“I better finish up then.” The alarm wouldn’t stop and we were in no position to do anything about it, so the polyphonic ditty became the soundtrack to our coupling. I wanted to laugh but I came instead.
I was kind enough to carry her heavy bag to the waiting car. She was kind enough to drop me off at the L stop. As I took my place among the weary early morning commuters, I wondered whether I smelled of sex and booze.
The song rose from the ashes of my unconscious while I was changing trains, a sustained, foreboding bass note that was joined, gradually, by vocal samples and the electronic whine of the synthesizers. I’d learned to heed these messages. The coming weekend would be terrifying… and brilliant.
More: Dating | Seduction | Polyamory
