Hi everyone, thanks for reading! No, the person telling this narrative is me in this life. I just completed it. Have a look and let me know what you think! It's too long to put in one post I am posting it in separate ones.
Winter Flower
“You are the handsomest man in the world.” I say quietly to the seven foot tall man sitting in front of me. Placing my small fingers on his forearm, they seem lightweight on it that is stretched taut with muscle. I glance down at my feeble act of intimate bravado, my buttermilk white skin a contrast to his own bronzed. The tattoo of a roaring lion on his bicep gazes intensely at me, but I find myself to be unafraid and somehow at ease in his presence. His hazel grey eyes, wide, attentive and penetrating, watch me with such directness, and observation as I speak; it is impossible to know what is being thought behind that leonine-like gaze. Two large bronze statues stand on either side of him where he sits at the table. They are replicas of wrestlers, but they give off an other worldly majesty. Though it’s a shoe store, it could have been the lobby for a temple or a palace, the occupant of the chair at the center of the room, a king or some mythological god. I half expected to smell incense wafting through the corridor and servants serving him food and drink. A sharpie marker and sheets of paper lay on the table before him, instead of a scepter or a cup of wine.
He gives a good natured laugh, two dimples appearing on his cheeks, and turns away to chuckle, hunched over, his broad back a curved knoll, heaving with amusement, his face averted from me, as if what I had said sounds so foreign to his ears; like a new language that is unknown yet melodic, having the same medicinal effects as a cup of golden honey. He raises his posture and asks me quietly to embrace him, his bass voice turned soft, said exclusively only for me to hear. I comply and enter his arms the moment he opens them, all around me silencing. Awash in an abundance of utter calm that overtakes me the second I enter his arms, I close my eyes and place my cheek on the back of his neck, the bristles of his beard prickling my shoulder. Something inside me slides in upon itself, and lethargy overtakes my limbs. I do not recognize the feeling as I try to name the emotion with my cheek still on his neck. Relief? Not soon after, I weave my way through the line that files out the door, of men and boys holding mock wrestling belts and posters, and stumble back out into the sweltering August sunlight and make my way down Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street lightheadedly, past the tourists, couples and families that seem so carefree in the brilliant wash of a summer afternoon in New York City, completely unaware of my hallelujah.
Back in my hotel, I collapse in my burgundy halter dress and pearls, at the foot of my bed upon entering the door. Throwing off the dress and ripping the clip-ons from my ears, which I slam onto the bedside table, moments later, I become savage, parading naked in front of the full length mirror, raising the balls of my feet from the floor, picking up my breasts, and allowing the sweltering sun at the window to radiate onto my cleavage. I gulp in bouts of recycled air conditioning. This was a testimonial. It was a guttural cry from the depths of me, and I completely in its carnal and ecstatic hold, unsure which emotion to feel first. Lamenting and yet glorifying the second meeting that had just taken place, I sing Lecha Dodi, the Jewish hymn that welcomes the Sabbath bride, which I sang only the night before at the Fifth Avenue Jewish community center. My voice draws out the Hebrew stanzas, swaying to the ancient and traditional words, replicating the congregation from the previous night, feeling transformed, raw and vulnerable, as a bride would. Observing my rubenesque form, I no longer a docile, quiet, dutiful Jewish girl of 24, my blood boiling, desire and joy seizing me as well as lament for what could not be. I smear my perfectly applied lipstick all around my face, mocking myself for having tried to alter my appearance. From under the scarlet crayon muck, I see the girl, the real girl, and wondered if it had been better if I had not worn any lipstick at all.
A few seconds of composure instill, and I begin dabbing at my lipstick stained cheeks with a moist piece of toilet paper, asking my reflection, my angry and lust filled brown eyes what had been the purpose of this meeting? What did I hope to accomplish? To commit one of the greatest sins of mankind? I was aware he is married. “You fool! You fool! Idiot!” I hiss at myself through gritted teeth, staring at a rectangle of sunlight on the opposite wall in an effort to be calm. It had gone well, according to my mother, who was not aware of the catastrophic and sinful longings that worked itself in my mind, who tried to console me later that night. I only lived a borough away, but due to the ordinances of Jewish law, I could not travel on Saturday morning, thus I had rented a hotel room for the day the wrestler was to be in my city. I bemuse and inspect my appearance, critiquing with merciless alacrity. Was there any part of my face that was repulsive to him? Did he think me a child? I turn my face from side to side, my toes squeezing the soft carpeting of the bathroom floor. Amongst my possessions on the hotel’s bedside table, an autograph does not sit among them. I had declined. All I had asked for was for him to accept my gift and to grant me my soul’s release.
I scrub the ink residue that had rubbed off onto my hands, which came from the blank journal I had given him, a pouncing lion adorning its covers complete with a copper lock to secure his writing within. The heat being oppressive, as I had held the journal while waiting to meet him outside, standing with a few men that I conversed with, who knew nothing of the years of internal trepidation, and impeding answers, some sort of prophecy being revealed to me, now at last, I knew the answer. That morning was nerve-wracking, as I selected my articles of clothing carefully, spraying a generous amount of peach body spray from Bath and Body Works over myself, and furiously running a brush through my long hair. Now, all that I had worn seemed mundane and excessive. The meeting seeming adulterous and sinful, somehow, being naked right after this event seemed more appropriate than the dress I had been covered in. How ironic, that at the Sabbath dinner the night before, I had worn a more modest dress, white crocheted lace, the picture of elegance, as I pushed challah crumbs and rice around my plastic plate, sitting amongst strangers, anticipating the meeting to come.
This was no longer a pious, bashful Zerlina fell victim to the heady clutches of her Don Giovanni, this was now a transformed young girl turned woman; a Carmen aware of her sensual mission; hair loose and heavy, blouse undone, ready at any beckoning call to her Don Jose. I fall into a fitful sleep, his eyes burned into my memory forever, waiting for sunset, when I’d be able to walk the streets of Midtown with music in my ears, and a marble notebook and pen to sort out my thoughts. That night, in my white lace dress, I sit upon a bench, the stone beneath me cooled after the day’s heat, and relive the meeting through photographs sent to me via text. Each prophetic description had come to pass. The hazel grey eyes, the massive height and build, the tiger essence, the street it occurred on. Nothing was out of place. This was no arbitrary coincidence that I had stumbled upon this man three years ago. He was as familiar to me as normal as it is to breathe. To quote the words of songwriter Phil Collins, “Something’s familiar about this stranger like me.”
My childhood, altogether, a lullaby, soothing and secure, if not altogether, a multihued cavern of bliss that graced my eyes, if it not were for the restlessness and steadfast fear that gripped me like a vice the moments when I was confronted with the option of misbehaving and taking free rein of running into the wild open as children are often faced with. I clutched the hand that held mine more tightly, and peered up into their loving faces, a yearn to remain by their side and not cause them any grief, while my sister ran onwards, content to break free from the scrutiny of our familial caretakers. As I grew, the wedge of restlessness remained lodged in my being akin to the likeness of a dagger, its handle I could not pry from the depths of my conscious. A rather quiet and melancholy child, I seemed to remain harbored in this feeling of unease that seemed to reveal itself when confronted with the notion of one being powerless to alter one’s fate. And all along, a lover of all things vintage, lace and high collared blouses became my selections for fashion as my body altered and became a woman’s. The gathered dust of a 19th century room, with its former occupants now obsolete, or the mysterious allure of a Degas or Sargent would make me sigh in a wistful recollection of some sort. Obscured by the immediate knowledge of a past long gone, and yet, it still manifested itself in my young life, refusing to leech itself from my bones, I began on a quest inward.
