Dana Jerman

Sugar In The Well

The drink was so good it reminded me of nothing else at all. I had no frame of reference in either smell or taste for how to log it. It took me away from both time and pain. Too, it reminds me that I could go a long long time wearing the heat of many words and ancient beautiful nothings inside me. Ages for keeping my mouth shut. 

Hindsight afforded me the notion that if I had showed up to the rescheduled potential second date, he would have lost respect for me. So much had been cocked-up in the lack of translation between our communication styles by now I wasn’t sure either of us wanted to enlist our interpersonal clean up crews to make it right. Would we only create more of a mess?

Then the future comes and there I am: Las Vegas, Day 3000 — all the west side apartments I used to inhabit are gone and now I live in a part of town far flung from them at the end of a street in the vintage city proper.

My backyard scintillates by day with early light and wind turning suncatchers and spinning bees. By night with the glistening backs of stray cats, black and calico, who leave the feathers of their prey askew by the back door.

Everyone has been telling me lately that I look different. That something has changed. But really I think my hair just went thru a growth spurt.

Sitting there with that cocktail in a moment that becomes a meditation I bring him in. What if we had that promised date?

Inside my imagination’s hotel I embrace him and hold him fast. I kiss him and touch his head and move my palms over his shoulders. I keep kissing him in different places as I let the desire build inside my body. Fluids rushing like a dam break.

His hands are across my ass. They bunch my skirt and expertly interpret the shape of my underwear. In a flash his shirt is up and I am inhaling the warmth radiating from his chest. A perfume uniquely masculine, undeniably his. My shoes come off. My bra undone. Stockings tugged away. Breath growing fast. Panting as his erection drops out. My lips part to what I can’t look away from. Hungry to taste and swallow precum from the throbbing head of it.

Inside a break in the action we can hear soft moans from the next room over. A woman cries out as her orgasm builds. He closes his eyes and sighs — the sound makes a warm hum in the air which has deepened his fantastic pleasures. As if inside a movie and from behind the camera of my eyes I watch. I say nothing. I don’t move.