Through a lens darkly
II.
consummation of a craving
for Yi Sang and Jean Cocteau
Turned twenty-three years old in Lisbon alone. That night I decided that I was definitely going to change my orientation. I wanted to be like everyone else. So I can, I thought, right? The following day I met Maria in a bar. Really a restaurant and then a bar.
My sedate youth found myself in a restaurant in the Bairro Alto, I think the place was called something like "Baralto." Sitting down, a friend and I were eating fish and discussing the truth evident in beaches in very load English. She sat down next to him and across from me. I did not know what to think. She was dressed for a funeral, but too happy to be mourning.
"A special day?" I asked.
"Yes. I was paid," she responded in an English with a cute Portuguese lilt.
"Would you like a piece of my fish?"
No thank you said her heavily mascaraed eyes and with a playful smile,
"Try my cuttlefish instead."
"Okay."
My friend felt bad for me. It is a good restaurant but, your fish is embarrassing, he said much later. But we just sat there and ate and smoked in perfect silence. After eating a chocolate mousse and finishing a long cigarette, her fifth, she looked at him and carefully eyeing me, said,
"Come to my bar down the street. You'll like it."
We did and it was very suave. Mao Tse Tung smiled from red walls and became friendlier after a couple of ports, tinted of course.
"We haven't been formally introduced."
Once again her eyes smiled,
"My name's Maria."
"Michael. But, my friends call me Drake."
"A pleasure."
"Yes."
And an after an uncomfortable pause, I asked:
"How old are you?"
She looked no riper than a fig, but she was very mature, very. Twenty? I was thinking nineteen at the most, when she said:
"I'm twenty-five."
"Then how old do I look?"
"I don't know. . . thirty? Twenty-eight. No, twenty-nine."
I just folded my arms and pretended to be a bit more refined. We parted without incident.
The next day I decided to cut off my hair and my two-day beard. A friend of the apartment-mate of my friend, a certain David, never call him Dave, said that beards were political statements. Just to be safe I removed everything and almost kept the mustache. Better judgment moved me to shave that off, too. No RAF-flier nor French pedophile look for me, thanks. So then I went to meet my friend for coffee at the restaurant from last night.
"You look like a man I've seen somewhere."
"The gentleman with the beard who was here yesterday? I'm no other than his son. Even our voices are the same." In a lower voice I whispered into his ear,
"What do you think? I look good, right? Better? Hey, stop looking at me that way. . . Why not try playing around. . . see at the way she's eyeing you."
"Forget it. You know all about my proclivities. Breeders. Not for me, why not you?"
"I'm the moral majority, remember? And besides, its only been three days."
"Uh-huh. Do you remember that girl here? Yesterday?"
"How can I forget her?"
"Let's make our memories fresher, won't we?"
So we walked to the bar after a coin toss. My friend side-stepped the entire affair with a Norwegian sailor and left me there alone, looking at her.
She greeted me from behind the bar, pleasantly surprised, but with a look, I think, of knowing I would return. Looking much as she did the day before, only clothes a bit tighter, more revealing and sans bra, she chattered senseless words and meaningless sentences to the barflies and cast me glimpses that lingered longer and longer as the night wore on.
I spent that evening watching her mix drinks and accepting her gifts of coffee to keep me awake. After hours we went dancing at Fragile and later took a cab back to her place. Still feeling the beat of the last set's base line, we looked into the perfect mirrors of each other eyes and knew.
Sitting together on her bed, and after what she reportedly called a heavenly massage, she did not hide the fact that she was attracted to me, nor I her.
"Come here, you can come closer. I don't bite."
"I don't know. I've never done this before."
"Your first?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
She moved closer to me and we were in each other's arms, kissing, touching, caressing.
"Your skin is so soft."
A smile and a kiss prompted my silence. Moving my lips from her neck to her navel, I felt a warmth between my legs radiating up my spine to the base of my skull. Is this love, I thought?
"I've never felt this way for a woman."
"Here, you do it like this."
As we got closer I became softer, so to speak.
"What's the matter?" She murmured?
"I can't right now. I'm afraid."
"It's okay, honey. Maybe later," she said duskily as she clicked off the light.
"Could you. . . I mean to say. . . Ah. . .?"
Intuitively she came closer and held me between her arms and wrapped her leg around mine. I could feel the soft thumping of her heart against my chest. Her breast, soft and smooth, lay on my bicep and with every breath, her nipple rubbed against my ribs. At that moment, the absurdity of life lifted from my soul and I felt a serene, calming peace.
"This is so right." I heard my half-parted lips sigh.
"What?"
"Nothing," I murmured, "Nothing at all."
We spent the early morning holding each other and being as intimate as possible without waking the cat. As night fell deeper we fell fast asleep.
Waking up, I heard deep breathing from across the darkened room. The door was ajar and I found her in the corner, crying. The light of the afternoon and darkness of the shadows played on her features, highlighting the olive of her skin, the curvature of her chin and gentle arching of her cheeks. Two vaguely Moorish eyes looked at me from behind thick, wavy locks.
"I don't like this life," she said.
I took her up into my arms and sobbed, "I really love you, even though I've just met you. . . You know that, right?"
She smiled at me with those thick-fluided eyes,
"You do not know the difference between needing and wanting. Love or lust. You have never known true hunger. My need."
I said, "You're only projecting your fears on to me. There's no reason to be afraid. I'm not like those others. Before. . . I do know your fear, I have it, too. I'm just as afraid as you."
I moved to touch my lips to hers and was invited further with bitter-sweet tears. We started where we left off the previous evening: touching, caressing and holding; we continued loving each other into the Lisbon twilight. There is so much power in a single touch between those who love.
Finally, after a long and passionate kiss, it was time for me to go home. Together we walked down the hill from where she lived in Santana to the Rossio metro.
Over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, we agreed not to ask ourselves about bygones nor old selves. We were born again, so to speak. We smashed the old pieces of our lives and decided to put them back together, the two of us, in different ways, to re-create ourselves anew. There is no real escaping who we are nor what we were, but we can put it behind us, she said, and accept things as they come.
"Easier said than done," I smiled and lit a final cigarette. "Tomorrow will be different?"
"Sure, why not?"
"Yes, it will."
Taking a last, furtive puff, she said:
"Let's celebrate at a party this weekend. It's for my work. All my friends will be there. You must meet them. . ." and disappeared down the stairs.
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