There is darkness in the city, always. When the sun falls from the sky like a down-trodden angel plummeting to Earth only to rise with the morrow, it peaks. Somehow the black of night gives cover to more than the shadows; somehow it covers our souls, too. Shifty glances mean more. Seductive smiles carry the weight of dark encounters and shadowed liaisons. I like the night. It has potential. So much potential.
Crowded bars steal quiet desperation from the ale-scented mouths of the hollow. Neon signs garishly bleed into the night the way you expect them to and somewhere things unnatural sing to the world and all listen. Further away, where the cool grass kisses the night air and things more natural than not have fallen to the call of sleep, trees grow and the thinkers place benches for all to sit and see, to watch and wait. In the park at night you can almost hear your own heart beat but the gentle wind caresses the tress kindly, and drowns out that endless drum.
We always meet there. Our bench. The preternatural glow from the lamps falls short of it. The voyeur moon peeks through black leafed trees at it. They watch and wait as I do. For her. It’s too black to see the once luminescent face on my watch but I know midnight is bearing down on me on my little bench. I can feel it’s cold weight only minutes away, her warm bosom only moments away. She’s punctual. Always was. Always will be. I like that.
The elderly church tells me what I already know by the scent of her perfume. I don’t have to stand to know she’s behind me. There could be a thousand people there, living out their lives, being born, growing up and writing poetry and I would know. I can feel her smile. She knows, too.
Warm breath parts the cold night and it carries a whisper to my soul. I never repeat the words. They don’t mean anything to anyone but me, but to me they mean everything. I lose time when she whispers to me, something magical in her voice, something forbidden and pure and dangerous. The haze fades into the shadows where she called it from and I realize she’s watching me, luxuriating in the affect, sitting on the back of the bench. Waiting. It’s a game. A playful game we play. Nobody loses. I like the odds. I pull her over the bench and onto my lap. It’s one swift motion, practiced and artistic, though the first time I did it I’m pretty sure she landed on her ass. It didn’t matter. Then like now, I kiss her before she can say anything, breathing in the laugh that would escape her perfect lips either way. She smells fresh and light, a welcome break from the earthen park, and her golden hair cascades over my hands like silk in the breeze.
We meet like this every month, to give full way to the darkness, to rejoice in the cover it gives us. The world is oblivious in the day when everything is obvious, but at night it watches, and the dark scolds it and hides us from ourselves. My brief moment of reflection breaks and she’s watching me again, the way she always does when I drift. I think it amuses her. She asks nothing, I say nothing. Nothing to say when I know she understands. The black cashmere coat she always wears is soft, like cashmere should be, and it holds fast to her perfectly pale flesh with a sash, loosely wrapped around itself in a more than inviting knot. I would untie it but there’s no need: she knows what I want and the coat falls away before I can move to help it on its course.
Moonlight has a peculiar effect on flesh. A blatant moon paints the body blue but tonight the goddess of the night is hiding, flashing her silvery smile through synchronized leaves. Her flesh looks pale and almost perfectly white and I realize too late that she has shocked me again. There’s usually something to hide her, in case we’re discovered, but she’s grown bold, and nothing stands between us but the crisp air and the heat rising off of her to dispel it. I smile the way she wants me to, which is, for this sight a wicked little grin. She’s earned it and she knows she deserves it. I don’t like to disappoint. She rises up smoothly and kisses me. It’s hard to look wicked when someone so beautiful embraces you this way, but it’s damned easy to feel wicked. I don’t argue on either account. Nobody loses.
I never have understood how a woman can move so fluidly, how she can shift position and direction in one motion, like suspending time and altering space. When I think about it, I don’t really care, either. Some things should be mysteries, to be pondered and never known, but always appreciated. She does it well, that shift, and before I know it I’m the one laying down, her hair falling in rivulets over my face. Kissing. Yeah, I like it. A lot. It never hurts if the person you’re kissing looks like this and is in fact, very naked. Perfect. I always wear something loose on these nights, and I never wear a belt. They get in the way. We’re going to have sex here. That’s what we do on these nights, on this bench, in this park hiding in the blackness. I know it, she knows it and if the bench could know, it would know it, too.
Loose clothes rock. She does that mind trick/stop time/fluid movement thing to me again and I love it. My clothes hit the ground and lay still like some wilted flower in the moonlight. Pants and a shirt, socks and some shoes. Nothing else, it would only be in the way. Her kisses become transient, and move down and back up, teasing me the way she does. A kiss on my cheek, my nose, my eyelids. I don’t speak, but it doesn’t matter since there just aren’t words for feeling like this. Nor should there be. Some things have to be experienced. So do some people. Kisses. Did I say that I liked them? Good. They stay on my flesh, a warm reminder of where she has been and when they cool, they remind me of where I want her to be again. She knows when they cool and goes back to them. How does she know? Something to ponder when she isn’t taking me into her mouth. Heat floods over me with the most sensual of kisses and I grow for her.
Soft subtle laughter escapes her breast the way it’s done a dozen times before when she slips back and lets me fall away into the cool night. It’s a brief pain to endure, not being inside her. But it’s a necessary evil. The bench isn’t wide enough to straddle me this way: we’ll have to move. No magic this time, just a simple gesture, a twist of the hips as her body grazes me for a fleeting moment as she stands. Something warm and silky
falls to my thigh, a perfect droplet, lost to my flesh, but not to my sight. Her walk always captures me, and I can’t move until she stops behind the bench where she started. The trees could be speaking Latin to me, or dancing a fine dance, but I wouldn’t know. She owns my attention as she leans forward, and steps back, making that inviting and always beautiful forward-fallen “L” with her body. She has a sly grin on her lips but doesn’t say anything for a moment. Neither do I. Neither can I.
She’s toying with me and I could not possibly love it more when she lazily moves her legs apart. She makes it look nonchalant, but it’s not. A clever ruse that I wouldn’t ignore for the world. I spring over the bench: going around just takes too long. My turn to kiss, my turn to tease and I intend to take it. I kneel down and kiss her ankle, her calf. I leave that same warm trail up her right leg, but I don’t go back. They won’t cool before I make good on the promise of pleasing her. A kiss near her hip, not too close…if the scent of her body graces me I may not finish the tease. One on her side, above where her underwear would have stopped, had she worn any…one on the delicate line of her ribs, another on her shoulder, and I’m kissing the back of her neck as I enter her. Everything always fits so well. I like that.
A soft cry escapes one of us but I can’t tell which. Maybe both. It doesn’t matter. Her hair falls over one shoulder and exposes that tempting neckline. I’ll mark it tonight. I always do. I’ll blame it on the darkness and she won’t argue. Sometimes she marks me as well, perfect teeth leave small bruises and I cherish them. But not tonight. That’s another night, usually in a closed bar. There is something intense about being so warm in such a crisp place. The night wind steals away the heat like a clever thief, but the rhythm we make gives it back only to let the thief strike again. We move like this, syncopated, while chaos rules the trees and their black leaves and the moon watches intently, waiting for…?
She breathes like me and it always makes me smile to know we are in the same place, the same time, despite her uncanny ability to fool with it. The look that glides over her shoulder always steals my breath away though, but she can have it. The look is worth the price.
I know the look well: it’s the one that means she wants me, the one that turns up the volume and sets our pace. We move with intent now and the sounds of the night quiet and listen to us. It watches and waits now, too. We won’t disappoint. Her hands dig into the aged wood of our bench and mine hold fast to her young skin. There is something graceful about sex like this up to the point where gentle frenzy sets in. It’s a dance reaching it’s final movement, a moment of order to chaos. We don’t care who hears us now and the natural and unnatural singers listen to us for once.
Her back arches and she follows it up to me, her arms reaching behind her to embrace me. The rhythm shallows but does not stop. Climax with her is not a moment, but rather a series of them. Her shift in position is intentional, drawing out the experience and bringing our bodies closer to share the warmth that is flooding off of her soft skin. I drown in it and I know for a fact that if it were to kill me it would not be so bad.
She lets me grow soft naturally, no reason to spirit things away. The singers return to their eerie song as she turns in my arms and I pull her coat over us from the bench. Kissing again. Deep and meaningful and dark and passionate. My breathing will quiet on its own, as will hers, but for now we help it along with our embrace. She’s stopped time again and I know it. Whispering again…I close my eyes and let her work the magic on me. Voodoo, witchcraft. I don’t care. A sly smile slides over my lips and when I open my eyes she is walking away. It’s late and the world has other things to watch and wait for. I pull on my pants and shirt, but I leave it unbuttoned, embracing the cool air that the night has worked so hard to give me.
I can whisper, too. “Good night, beautiful,” falls from my lips, breathed more than spoken.
She turns slightly, no hesitation in her gait and I can see that smile again.
I know a little magic too, you know.