For Dee
It still stands out in my memory. A moment passed and an opportunity lost.
I was never big on Renaissance Festivals. I suppose in looking back now, I should have been but I had always tried to shoulder off the geek image. A Ren Faire seemed to be embracing it and so I avoided. I had spent my teenage years trying to avoid that geek image as much as possible, not that band or drama were shouldering it aside, and had probably posed myself out of all kinds of rampant, urgent teenage sex. Hell, sex into adulthood.
You see up to at least that point in my life I never saw how easily women had manipulated me. Therefore, I went into this sure that everyone just wanted to meet everyone else. Now, so many years later, I know better. A majority of the group was there to get me into bed. In most ways it was really creepy. There were like 12 of us all planning to meet there and about half of the group met at a Denney's the night before. I was, of course, one of the 12, and so was the woman I had fallen in love with. We were having a long distance relationship and, truth be told, I was the weaker part of that for the first several months of that relationship. We were to meet the woman who was her friend, another woman coming from the Mid-Atlantic down to our hot and sticky neck of the States, and then Susan and her two girls, the oldest of which had her not too bright but bulky boyfriend. Myself and my love were the second to arrive. When I saw Dee I thought I might of had an idea as to why my girl had polished off two bottles of wine in the hour and a half before we needed to leave for this initial meeting. She was a very pretty woman but there was more to her than just beauty, no, her smile was like a powerful search light and there was a spirit about her. It was this raw primal vitality and it struck an instant response in me. Perhaps it was an instinctive response, something hearkening back to the days when men drug women off to their caves. All I knew was it was raw and primal, my reaction to meeting her and seeing her million watt smile and hearing her lilting melodious voice. Only my raw and primal reaction was lust. Later that night I would recall Nina looking at me they way a man two days without food might look at a freshly grilled steak and the way the mother and at least her oldest daughter seemed to be competing to hold my attention as if they expected the reaction Dee had provoked. My girl got to enjoy, I suppose, the results of the raging lust in reaction to that first meeting. After, on the drive to her room, we had discussed that no know knew we were a couple and no one should know when tomorrow was over and everyone had gone their separate ways. I was sure I slept restlessly than night.
I thought once we met in the morning, the bulk of us in costume, save for the posturing teenage boyfriend and the family he was attached to, that things would be better. It is really funny how wrong you can be even when you are so sure of being right. I can still recall the shade of violet of the scooped neck dress and cloak she wore and how pale and gleaming her skin seemed. I sampled and talked and we split up after meeting the last two males in the group predominantly made up of women. We laughed and joked and talked and I stayed close to Dee. I wanted to be close to her. No, I wanted to be in her. I knew it from the start. I was not the only one, so in the end I got in a great deal of trouble for it, but there it was nevertheless. As a debate started on which way to go, people began peeling off in threes and twos. Dee and I ended up in quartet and within an hour I managed to make it her and I. I remember flirting, I flirted with a good many women in those days mostly to avoid real conversation and to make them feel happy about themselves. I enjoyed the sensation of having bettered someone's day and a few careful chosen words and double entendres. I got to settle my arm around her a few times and feeling her body through the dress and under my hand was heady. The dress was a silky material and her skin under it, I could tell would be just as soft and silky to the touch. Like some moronic kid, I tried any time I could to peek down that scooped neck line. I don't recall ever succeeding. We walked together, just her and I for the majority of the day and I talked and flirted and tried to seem witty. What I wanted to do the whole time was to pull her firm to me and kiss her. Not one of those silly porno kisses that take no time to enjoy the sensation of being so close to someone like her. I wanted to feel her body press against mine and to see if it made her heart beat as hard as mine. I wanted to whisper in her delicate ear. I wanted to lay there soft words to made her heart race and her mind reel as mine did that whole day. It would have come out clumsy and stupid and my kisses would have been most unwelcome, so I didn't. We laughed and talked and watched and joked and met with the others throughout the day. All the time I wanted to suggest the grape arbor or behind the shops for us to duck behind where I could her and touch and feel her the way I wanted to. I talked and dreamed of raising that long dress and seeing her beautiful pale skin and perhaps even evidence that I evoked as primal a response in her as she did for me. I wanted to feel our bodies mering into one and see the pleasure of that joining in her face. I ached for it.
I did nothing about it because I was afraid and very assured she was as attracted to me as she would have been to one of the scrubby pine trees around the fair.
Since a vast majority of the group had come for me and one for her and she and I had spent the day off on our own with me desperately trying to find a way to communicate to her how much I wanted her without saying something so witty as, “My gods I want to fuck the shit out of you right now”, I ended up as persona non Grata among just about everyone in the group. Many of them out right refused to speak to me.
In the very end of it, things turned out as I suppose they were supposed to turn out that day. For me, I try not to think of it much. When I do drift to that day though, I find that my response, my urge, my raging need has not diminished. I suppose I will want that stolen moment in the grape arbor until my mind goes and the memory is lost in death or utter forgetfulness.
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