“Ya have to leave, huh?”
“It’s not easy, trust me. If it wasn’t for my mom, and all that went on yesterday, I would stay in your warm bed for sure.”
Martin and Angela were standing by his apartment door facing each other. His hands were on her hips and her arms were resting on his arms, stroking his biceps with her open hands.
“Besides, I do feel over-dressed for my government job.”
She stood on her toes a moment to give him a peck kiss.
“See you again?”
“Ah, Beautiful, you know you will,” Martin said as he leaned down slightly to return her kiss with a longer one.
Angela did not get much sleep at home before waking to have a cup of coffee with her mother. Angela talked about working with Congress Ramos’ staff in a joint effort to get a wider environmental study done on Vieques, as well as about dating Martin. Her mother eventually stated that she was thinking of calling Loretta Gavin at the newspaper, and telling the “Narly News” editor about her run-in with the law. Angela tried to resist rolling her eyes, but she couldn’t.
“Just promise me you’ll take it easy today, Mom, okay?”
Despite putting up a good front the day before, Pamela did seem a bit humbled by the whole experience, and nodded yes.
Over the next few days Angela and her co-worker, Chuck, worked diligently with Congressman Ramos’ office to assemble all the data that could be found on the now-retired U.S. Navy base on Vieques; an EPA Super Fund site that had been left untouched since it was closed nearly 20 years before. Before the week was over, the final product was run by their boss and then sent to the congressman himself, who was scheduled to present it to the Congressional Committee on Environmental Affairs Monday morning.
With that done, and her work week behind her, Angela was able to turn her attention back to her personal life. Angela and Martin spent a lot of time together during the weekend. Saturday night they rented a DVD from the Red Box in the neighborhood supermarket, and stocked up on popcorn, ice cream, lubricant and condoms. Angela was surprised how it seemed the more they made love together, the more she wanted to.
She felt something special was going on. So she wanted to tell Martin the truth about what had come over her, her new talent, or maybe more actuately, deformity. But she was afraid of rejection and didn’t want him to change his mind about her. Instead she filled his mind with all the facts she could gather on the Navy activities on and around Vieques, and how risky it would be, particularly for her career.
“I could really use a big smart guy like you with me when I go back there“
“You mean, to carry your luggage.”
“Yes, that’s it. No, I really mean it. Would you come with me? It should only be for a few days.”
“Well, I’m not going to let you go on your own, after all you’ve told me. Let me ask you a question: why do you feel like you have to do this; almost single-handedly. Wouldn’t this all come out eventually?”
“Martin, it hasn’t yet. It’s been 20 years since they labeled the base a ‘Wildlife Refuge,’ thereby putting it out of the reach of EPA scrutiny. And, well, I can’t tell you more right now, or I’d have to kill you.”
“Oh gee. Yes sir, Captain. On a need-to-know basis, I don’t need to know.”
As they shared a laugh, it was all Angela could do to keep from glowing. Luckily she had spent some time practicing controlling that, so she did not go luminescent on him, just a little gooey.
Angela and Martin greeted each other warmly when they met in front of the movie theater. In the theater they sat as close as they could to each other.
Martin found Angela’s hand and held it, resting both hands on her leg. As the movie progressed his hand slid under hers and spread around the inside of her thigh. As Martin stroked, and squeezed her leg, Angela rubbed his hand and arm. The warmth of Martin’s hand ran up her thigh as she imagined him touching her between her legs. Eventually he did move his hand up to the top of her inner thigh, but only brushed her there for a moment as he slowly pulled his hand out and placed it around her neck gently, pulling her closer for a kiss. She placed a hand softly on his face as they continued to kiss, gently and slowly.
Angela loved every minute of it. They did manage to see some of the movie, stopping whenever they reached a peak they could not traverse without ripping off each other’s clothes. Angela loved kissing and she sensed he enjoyed it too.
As the credits rolled Angela said, “I guess we’ll have to rent the DVD when it comes out.” In response Martin just kissed her again. So when they left the theater they were two hungry lovers looking for release.
“Can I interest you in a glass of faux wine at my place, Gorgeous?”
“I don’t know about the wine part. Oh, faux wine; I get it. Sure. You’ve made me a little dizzy, you brute. Take me home already, and give me whatever you got.”
So he did.
As Martin walked her up the two flights of stairs he softly ran his open hand up and down her back, giving her goose bumps every time his fingers moved over her bra strap, and his thumb strummed it occasionally.
“Should I brace myself for a view of a singles guy’s dump; I mean, pad?”
“No, you’re with a gentleman. Heck, I even have a couple of GQs lying around.”
Once in the apartment the wine was poured, they toasted to love and life, but very little was drunk after that. Martin talked a little bit about his apartment, and Angela talked some about moving out of her mother’s place, but before long the two lovers started to make out with long passionate kisses and rambling hands. Angela’s blouse was open and her bra unsnapped and floating about her, when she began unbuttoning his shirt, slid her small hand over his broad chest and said, “Take me to your bed, big guy.” Then she pinched one of his nipples.
With his arm around her shoulders, Martin walked Angela the short distance to his bedroom, where he picked her up and laid her sideways across the bed. They locked eyes. Martin mouthed a kiss as he unzipped her jeans. Angela returned the air kiss as he removed her jeans and panties. They kept eye contact as he stroked her legs and knelt down between them. With his fingers he gently encouraged the corolla of her venus flower open, lovingly revealing her petals. He made love to her there with his lips. Angela’s eyes gradually closed. Her tongue wet her lips as his tongue teased her bud. Small surges of pleasure tingled up her body.
She was lost in those sensations till he stopped, stood up, and keeping his eyes on her, pulled down his black pants, past his cock which was straining the seams of his underwear. Angela watched, sighed and bit her lip slightly as he released his growing penis from its holster. Before she had a chance to bring up protection, Marty had opened a drawer by his bed and pulled out and then slipped on a condom. Then, while stroking her leg, he placed a pillow under her hips, lifted her feet up to his chest, and as they looked at each other, he slowly began entering her. With her legs up like that against him, Angela had control over how quickly he entered her and how deep. They kept eye contact until he fully entered her, at which point Angela closed her eyes, tilted her head back and lost herself in their rhythm, and began to sigh and moan with the billowing pleasure. Warm surges rose up from her core in waves and continued till eventually Martin pulled out slowly, at which she sighed a low protest. He removed the pillow from underneath her, as he bent over and kissed her mouth, her neck, her shoulders and her breasts.
“Oh Angela, you are such a sexy, beautiful woman.”
He then turned her over onto her knees, got on the bed and mounted her from behind, entering slowly as he held up her hips with both hands. Once inside, he squeezed her cheeks together, sighing and moaning as he quickened the pace.
“Yes, Marty. Yes! Oh Marteeee, yes!”
He grunted and pumped her harder in response.
“Oh my God!”
After that no more words were exchanged, just sounds of pleasure and panting until they peaked. Gradually they fell on their sides, linked together in the spoon position till Angela turned over. They then hugged, kissed and fondled each other till they both fell into a light sleep. Angela hadn’t felt this wonderful and spent in long time.
Angela woke with a start and saw the concern and wonder on Martin’s face. Then her heart skipped a beat when she looked down at her naked body as it illuminated slightly, then suddenly stopped. She felt she willed it away, but there was no willing away the look of shock on her new boyfriend’s face, though she did close her eyes for a second and tried.
“You all right, Angel?”
Angela secretly loved being called Angel by a romantic interest. It helped her put on a broad sweet grin on her face, as she reached over to stroke his cheek and said, “Sure, He-man. Why do you ask?”
“Well, you, just like, glowed in the dark! Didn’t you see it?”
“Of course – I’m glowing. You’ve just made wonderful, stimulating love to me. You’ve got a magic touch, Marty.”
The flattery seemed to distract Marty some. He narrowed his eyes, looked her body over, then pulled her closer for a kiss. She kissed him back hard, and kept them locked together for a while.
“You make me glow, Big Guy.”
He looked willing to brush the event aside, but Angela knew that if they were to continue as lovers she would have to tell him her secret. But how could she explain what she didn’t understand herself?
Angela wrote down the address of the precinct her mother was taken to. On the way out, she let her boss know she had an emergency at home, and was on the elevator before anyone had time to ask any questions. In the elevator she called Marty’s cell, and he agreed to meet her at the police station in an hour or so. Angela figured she would need some time to deal with the paperwork, or whatever needed to be done down at the precinct. Angela herself never had a run-in with the law in her youth, a rare thing in her neighborhood, and now here she was going to bail out her vigilante mother.
As it happens, Pamela wasn’t actually in jail, but appeared to be holding court herself in a visitor’s area, chatting up a small group of citizens.
“Mom! What happened?”
Those words came out of Angela louder than she had planned. She had planned on having a one-on-one, intimate conversation with her mother, but instead here she was shouting across a large room filled with people.
A short, stern-faced black female officer, in full uniform, made eye contact with Angela, then moved toward her slowly. The policewoman actually swaggered when she moved, due mainly to the items on her utility belt. After stunted introductions, Officer Jones explained to Angela that she and the precinct chief thought Mrs. Perez should be given a quick–and she emphasized free–psych evaluation, by a social worker on site. Just to make sure she wouldn’t be a danger to herself or others.
It took a lot of charm, wit, and assertiveness, but Angela was finally able to get her mother out of the station in her custody, with a promise to get her a psychological evaluation as soon as possible. No charm, though, was going to undo the citations Pamela had received, especially since the bicyclist insisted on pressing charges.
As the two women walked out the precinct door, they were having a very animated conversation until Angela noticed Marty standing across the street, waving at her. The exterior of the car he was driving looked like a junker, with the doors and fenders painted different colors. When they crossed to the other sidewalk, Marty opened the back door for them.
“There’s no passenger seat in the front of this loaner car from my boss,” he said, touching Angela’s arm, giving her a peck on the cheek, and pointed to the empty void near the driver’s seat. Then he turned to introduce himself to her mother, “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Lopez.” Clearly a little overwhelmed by Marty’s look and size, she just smiled, nodded, and stepped into the back seat of the car, followed by her daughter. An immediate, uncomfortable silence hung inside the vehicle.
Marty pulled the car out into traffic, and although the sedan was not pretty, its inner workings were well maintained and ran smoothly. Angela wanted to vent and tell Marty about her mom turning into a vigilante, but it dawned on her that he and she had barely begun to date, and she had already involved him too much already. So she cleared her throat, gave her mom a “we’ll talk later” look, and said, “Thank you, kind sir, for coming to our rescue today.”
“Oh, sure thing. Just another day for this mulatto knight. Where to, damsels?”
“Can you just drop us off at our apartment, please?”
“You got it lady,” Marty said in his best cab driver impersonation.
The rest of the drive was quiet, until right before they turned down the Lopezes’ street, when Marty asked Angela if their movie date was still on for tonight. She had really forgotten about it, with all the excitement during this long day. Though tired, Angela suddenly was looking forward to escaping to a movie house for a couple of hours. So she said, “Yes,” then turned to her mother, “Can I go out for a few hours tonight, Mom, and not expect another phone call about you?”
“Am I under house arrest?” Pamela asked.
In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll stay at home and keep a low profile. You two go out and have fun.”
“Here you are, ladies.”
“Thank you, Marty. Nice to meet you.”
“No problem, Mrs. Lopez.”
As Pamela headed for the front door of their apartment building, Angela walked over to the driver’s window, and put her hand on Marty’s shoulder.
“Thanks for coming to my aid so quickly. I didn’t know exactly what I was facing when I called you.”
“No sweat; your mother sounds like fun.”
“Should I bring her with me tonight?”
Marty’s jaw opened, but nothing came out.
“Only kidding. What time is the movie?”
“Well, its 6:15 or 8:15 tonight. Should I wait for you?”
“No, I’ll just meet you there at 6. OK?”
Marty Just nodded, smiled, and put the car into gear.
As the car pulled away, Angela tried not to dwell on what Marty was thinking, as she looked up at her mother’s apartment, sighed, and walked to the front door and up the stairs. Her mother was already in the apartment and apparently hiding in her bedroom. Thinking it would be best to talk the events of the day over another time, Angela went about getting ready for her date. Hopefully we will be able to think and talk about something else besides my mother tonight. It would be nice to get lost in Marty’s arms and kisses instead. It had been quite a while since Angela felt this romantic.
After a quick shower she pulled out, from the back of a dresser drawer, a new pink pushup bra she bought on a whim a few weeks ago.
Copyright 2014 by Sean O’Connor
Ebenezer,
you call ‘em as you see them,
standing alone in a world of wintry cheer,
speaking your truth.
They pity and mock your frugal ways
in the season of giving, and
cast you away from their sense of Rectitude.
I can see your eye’s hard glint as you’re being
bullied into acid conformity, submission to
the nagging mob’s manipulation.
I know your heart is pure,
your belief remains strong
despite the goose you grasp while
grimacing a ‘god bless us all’.
You yearn for the New Year, the season
when resolutions fail and living returns to normal.
As the months repeat, conviction sustains you;
never doubting; never wavering;
you’ve seen the light, you know the truth.
Your “Humbug” may seem severe,
your world disturbed with
unwelcome sounds and visions;
Xmas bruises your soul, but
Ebenezer, you the man.
“Oh, Congressman Ramos. Hi, I’m Angela Lopez and this is Chuck Edwards. We were part of the eco-team that went to Vieques.”
“Nice to meet you both. How did it go?”
Chuck answered, “I think Mr. Jenkins would like to report those results to you.”
“Well, yes, he would, but, Congressman, I’ve been studying up on the U.S. Navy base’s history there, and I . . . well, I think we’ve barely scratched the surface of the situation there.”
Despite Chuck giving her the “cut it off” signal, Angela went on, “I won’t hold you, Congressman, but I did submit a proposal to Richard, Mr. Jenkins, proposing a broader environmental study of the entire island, particularly focusing on the base itself.”
“Interesting. I will ask Jenkins about that ,” Congressman Ramos said as he reached out to shake hands with each of them, and then turned toward the door.
“Second door on the right, you said?”
They both nodded yes. Once Ramos was out of their office, Chuck said reproachfully, “Has Richard even had the time to read your proposal?”
“Probably no, but I had to put a plug in for it, when I had the chance, or it would just collect dust on his desk.”
It was not long before Angela received a call from Richard’s secretary paging her to his office. As she entered his office, she could see Richard was not particularly happy. Ramos stood to offer her the guest chair near Richard’s desk, but she politely refused with a gesture and a smile, and sat in a chair along the office wall.
“The Congressman said you’ve discussed our test results from the Bio-Bays , and your proposal to return for further studies?” Richard said in as stern a voice he could get away with in front of company. He held Angela’s proposal in his hand.
“I – we did not discuss those test results. Chuck and I deferred to you, boss, but I did bring up the idea of broader studies when we happened to meet by accident earlier.”
Richard was somewhat appeased by her answered, but still appeared uncomfortable as he continued, “Well, Congressman Ramos would like to work with this office on such a grant proposal. I’ve had my secretary make him a copy and have tentatively decided to have you be the point person from this office to work with his office on it.”
“What do you say, Angela? My staff is experienced with grant writing. Put that together with my personal knowledge of Puerto Rico and Vieques, and your scientific knowledge, we can put together a plan that should get approved. A study that is long overdue.”
Before Angela could respond Richard said to her, “You must keep me up to date, constantly, Angela.”
“Of course, boss.”
“You both should be aware that the reason such a study has not been done long ago, is that the Navy turned the retired base over to the Interior Department, so it can be labeled a National Wildlife Refuge.” Ramos continued, “Technically such lands are protected from any kind of disturbance, federal or otherwise. It’s time they are challenged on this. People’s health and lives are at stake here.”
After saying that, Hector suddenly stood up, reached across Richard’s desk, gave him a quick handshake, and said, “Thank you Richard. I’ll be in touch and hopefully we’ll bust open this can of worms.”
Turning to Angela, Hector said, “Will you walk me to the elevator, Ms. Lopez?”
“Sure, I’d be glad to, but you can call me Angela.”
He smiled, held the door for her, and said, “Hector will do, Angela.”
As an afterthought Hector thanked Richard for his time as the door closed behind them.
Angela was practically beaming over the fast turn of events, which she expected would bring her back to Puerto Rico and Vieques, and hopefully the cause of her strange new talent.
Suddenly she realized her standing there in silence, beaming, might be giving this handsome man the wrong impression, so she went motor mouth, elaborating on what she hoped to accomplish, and how quickly she hoped to get to work. Without missing a beat, the congressman promised that he or his office would be in touch very soon.
Angela’s cellphone started to vibrate as the elevator doors closed on the congressman’s final goodbyes. Angela waved, smiled, then reached into her pocket to see if the call warranted her attention at work. Her screen showed “Rachel,” her mother’s closest friend and their neighbor. What could this be about? Angela was at her desk when she finally answered the call almost as if it was her office phone, “Angela Lopez here.”
In a loud, excited voice, which made Angela suddenly hold the phone away from her head, she heard, “Angela, your mother has been arrested and she’s headed for the police station.”
Angela’s eyes crossed as her mind tried to digest this information.
“How can that be?”
“She up and smacked a bicyclist with her pocketbook as he was peddling along and playing with his smart phone. She insisted she was doing him – and get this – society a favor, but the policewoman didn’t see it that way.”
“Jesus, Rachel, they can’t be arresting her!”
“Yes they are, doll. The cyclist is pissed, and she gave the officer nothing but lip.”
Oh, Mom.
Determined to pamper herself, Angela ran water for a bath, lit a candle, and eased into her hot bubble bath, letting it burn her skin slightly till all her muscles relaxed. She kept her eyes closed in case she went luminescent, because she did not want to think about anything for at least a few minutes, especially that. It was Wednesday night, the night her mother ate over at her old friend Rachel’s apartment. Angela was glad to have some quiet time alone.
After her bath she ate a small meal, then logged onto her computer where she read an acknowledgement from the Life editor of the Narly News, Loretta Gavin. The email stated that Angela’s letter would be one of the letters Loretta was highlighting in her new column, “Manners Data,” starting the following day. Angela had to admit that was a catchy title, and applauded the idea, but was immediately gripped with regret about writing the letter describing her ugly experience on the A train. Oh well, she thought, I did want to be part of the solution. I’ll deal with that tomorrow.
She moved on to Google Earth and focused on the old Navy base on Vieques. The place was loaded with abandoned bunkers, storage tanks, buildings, and damaged equipment. At another site she saw photographs of piles of old bombshells and saw a fresh headline describing a child getting second degree burns from a chemical vessel she found on the beach there. Angela was determined now, more than ever, to visit the island herself and soon.
Luckily Angela fell asleep early, because she was awakened before her alarm went off by her mother bursting through the bedroom door waving the Narly News at her. She was glad to see her mom happy, but Angela woke up focused on a mission of her own, so she did not linger, grabbed a travel cup of coffee and some cookies and headed out the door for work.
On the way to her subway stop, Angela picked up in her peripheral vision a child with his mother. They were holding hands until they reached the curb at a crosswalk. It seemed the mother assumed the child would stop as she did, so she let go of the child’s hand to type something into her Blackberry. Instead, the child kept walking into the busy intersection against the light. Instinct took over Angela immediately. She whirled around in a faint green blur, pushing the child back onto the sidewalk, bumping him into his mother. That in turn caused the women’s Blackberry to fly into the air and bounce once before falling down the curbside sewer opening.
Angela landed next to the passenger door of a Yellow Cab that had slammed on its brakes to avoid the child. Without hesitating, Angela opened the cab’s door and stepped in. An ensemble of car horns started to honk as she made eye contact with Josof, the shocked cabdriver.
“How’d you do that?”
“Do what? Never mind, shouldn’t you be driving?”
“Where to, Voodoo Lady?”
“Oh, just to the next A train station, please.”
“You going to work, lady?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll take you there,” Josof insisted as he drove through the intersection.
“I can’t afford that.”
“It’s on me. I would have hit that child if it weren’t for you.”
Josof was a recent immigrant from Haiti, who appeared to be still shaken by the near miss.
“I would have wound up hating myself, and losing my job, both on the same day.”
Angela spent a couple of minutes trying to convince Josof that he did not see her save the child, but it was fruitless, so she gave him the address she worked at. Once there she did try to give him some money, but he pushed it aside and instead gave her his card, saying, “Call me any time you need a ride. Glad to help a good voodoo woman. What do they call you?”
What do they call me? Crazy would fit, but instead she answered, “Angela.”
“Good day, Angel Lady, and thank you again.”
Angela just returned a soft, weary smile, gave him a quick wave, and turned toward her place of employment. She sighed and walked in.
Upstairs the whole office seemed abuzz about something. It did not take long to realize it was owing to her letter to the Narly News. She never realized how many people read the daily newspaper; the reaction was a little overwhelming. The whole idea of the column itself was just as much a topic around the water cooler. Even her co-workers, whom she had seen texting while walking down the narrow aisles and hallways of the EPA office, shared how they were annoyed when other people did the same. Clearly Loretta, the paper’s Life editor, had touched a nerve regarding the lack of manners when portable technology and people mix in public, and Angela was glad that her mother and she were helping create awareness on this issue. Still, today Angela had weightier issues on her mind.
When Angela got to her computer, she found that the EPA agent on Vieques, Thelma Hernando, had forwarded a broad history of the U.S. Navy’s activity on and around the island, some detailed studies done in the past, and several location pictures, as well as a picture of herself in uniform. That last picture came with a note offering full cooperation, said she was looking forward to meeting Angela some day, and suggested Angela send a picture of herself or “friend” Thelma on Facebook.
Angela got a funny feeling from the tone of the correspondence. She did remember Thelma saying that Angela had a sexy voice over the phone, but had not realized that Thelma had become curious about the rest of her. Well, no matter, if it’s happening at all, it would not be the first time a women was attracted to me, Angela thought. I’ll have to tread lightly; Thelma is too important to risk alienating her. She certainly is an exotic-looking woman. She’ll make some other woman happy some day.
Just then Chuck walked by and caught a glimpse of the photo.
“Well, not bad looking; is she your sister or cousin?”
“No, Chuck it’s the lone and lonely EPA staff member stationed on Vieques.”
Chuck studied the picture a little closer.
“Forget it, Chuck, she’s not your type. Do you think you could look through this well test data for me, and see if any anomalies pop up at you?”
“Sure, anything for that pretty lady’s new BF.”
Angela could only return a twisted smirk back, taking a moment to wonder what actually made him tick.
“I’ll forward it to you right now.”
Chuck sat at his desk, which was not far from Angela’s.
“Angela, this study is from 10 years ago.”
Looking more closely at Thelma’s notes, Angela was surprised to read that the study was the latest one.
“Apparently, Chuck, it is the last study taken, which is crazy since the whole island is on EPA’s Super Fund list.”
“Odd indeed. I’ll look this over closely. And, Angela, I’ll help you sift through whatever data you get on this island. You’ve piqued my curiosity now.”
Chuck might have said more, but he was distracted by the visitor who had just walked in, so instead he gestured for Angela to turn around and look. Congressman Hector Ramos was walking through the door behind her.
“Richard Jenkins’ office?”
___________________________________
Copyright 2013 by Sean O’Connor
Was there blatant enmity between them
In that lush green Garden?
Did a cool raw animus
Waft through its luxuriant splendor?
He and She at odds
By primordial necessity
With naught at stake
Save what to find delight in
Did the Serpent find fertile ground
On which to sow sour discontent
With the unctuous promise
That one might have dominion?
Yet both partook of the proscribed fruit
And were therefore cast down
To where they would need each other
And rancor have no value at all
_______________________________
Copyright 2013 by Dennis McCann
It is the wee hours of Thursday, September 17, 1964. The narrator, 22-year-old Hal, has registered to be part of the Mississippi Freedom Project as a “Freedom School” teacher and voter registration helper, and plans to be going there within a week or so. Right now, though, he is driving his VW bug (named “Freya”) from Berkeley, California, to Seattle. He agreed to drive his friend Roger there (Roger needs to matriculate at the University of Washington [the “U-Dub”] in order to maintain his student deferment from the draft). Hilbert, his friend from the Berkeley campus chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, is along for the ride, to keep Hal company on the way back from Seattle. They left Berkeley at midnight, and now they are on the freeway in northern California; Roger is asleep in the passenger bucket seat, Hilbert stretched out in back. Hal is ruminating.
I was tired, but comforted by Freya’s soothing, hypnotic roar, I was pulling reserve energy from my nervous system. Since early childhood I had resented my need for sleep; there was just so much to do. Life was short enough without wasting a third of it in sluggish idleness. I rolled down my window all the way and gulped in the brisk wind.
I turned on the radio again and twiddled the dial until I found a mariachi band played by a Tijuana station, well over six hundred miles away, its powerful beam bouncing off the ionosphere to me, the aggressive vocal, brass, violin, and guitar (including the huge bass guitarrón) strains rousing my blood as much at that moment as would jalapeños. Visualizing the machismo players in tight-fitting outlandish black-and-gilt uniforms under grand white sombreros with floral decorations, embroidered white sequins marching down their trouser legs, their high-heeled boots stomping the pulsating rhythm, I imagined myself in that band. Now thus stirred, I forgot my weariness.
It was now the wee hours of Thursday. We would probably reach Seattle around ten that night, after mooching a quick supper at my parents’ in Cochran’s Landing [Hal’s hometown in southwestern Washington]. Unwilling celibate for six months, I planned to phone Sharonanne as soon as we arrived at Allerlei [the off-campus student co-op where newly graduated Hal had resided as a U-Dub student before moving to Berkeley]. In her last letter she had invited me to “drop by anytime,” that she would be happy to receive me. She had underlined the word receive three times.
Roger and Hilbert asleep, soothed by the reassuring roar of Freya, I recalled my relationship with my hedonistic fellow U-Dub student Sharonanne Flannigan. I had met her two years earlier at the Seattle World’s Fair, the yearlong municipal blowout somewhat pretentiously dubbed “Century 21,” where she held a summer job as the Bubbleator operator. The Bubbleator was a large, bubble-shaped elevator with transparent acrylic glass walls, which gave the illusion of looking out from inside an actual soap bubble by refracting light to obtain a rainbow effect for us riders, the scores of us who could fit in, slowly riding up—floating up, levitating, effervescing—a single floor through a structure of interlocking cubes to the “World of Tomorrow.” Boarding the weird conveyance, we were commanded by a disembodied, ethereal female voice to “Please move to the rear of the sphere.”
Anyway, Sharonanne operated the Bubbleator from an elevated chair, the hem of her short skirt well above her crossed nyloned knees. Those healthy legs were what I noticed first about her as I boarded the thing with a number of other passengers. Those legs were almost at eye level, and they certainly were where my eyes tended to drift. With effort I brought my gaze up to her face, framed in her dark brown hair styled like First Lady Jackie Kennedy. That’s when I realized she was smiling at me, her eyebrows raised in a scolding tease at my ogling. At first I was abashed, started to look down at the floor. But after a moment I dared to look at her face again, and she was still smiling at me, warmly too. Then I realized how different I was from every other passenger—I, with long red hair and beard, an evident beatnik, they in their business suits or touristy garb.
Now, smitten, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Reaching the upper terminus, I decided to ride down again through the interlocking cubes, just to keep gazing at her, up and down between her smiling, provocative face and her ample, inviting hips. Back and forth in the Bubbleator voyage, between the dazzling World of Tomorrow upstairs and the mundane, quotidian, but familiar World of 1962 downstairs, three times, we drank each other in as crowds of straights went up or down with us, all of us commanded with each trip by the disembodied female voice to move to the rear of the sphere.
As the crowd exited at the end of my third round trip, she told me she would be free from her shift in fifteen minutes and we could maybe talk over a cup of coffee. I heartily assented. And that was our first date.
Over the next couple of years we studied together, shared dinners at Allerlei or at various bistros in the U District, went to Fellini’s exuberant and phantasmagoric 8½ for its Seattle debut, savored our sense of alienation obtained from the absurd Ionesco or the bleak Beckett plays at the Penthouse Theatre in the Round, twice watched burlesque shows at the Rivoli downtown, ambled hand in hand through a drizzle on University Way, then skipped and sashayed through the same drizzle on Northeast Forty-fifth Street, listened to my records back at Allerlei of Vivaldi or word jazz or Middle English bawdy songs, read aloud portions of Shakespeare or of Voltaire’s Candide, shared our own poetry we were pouring our hearts into, admired together prints of Hieronymus Bosch and Salvador Dalí, laughed at the drawing of a critic pissing ink on an honest painting, wondered what it would be like to take LSD or peyote if we could get it, committed to memory the words of the new Melvina Reynolds song “Little Boxes,” about suburban housing just being little boxes all made out of “ticky-tacky” and all looking just the same. Or we just sat and talked over coffee or tea.
After we’d both been overwhelmed by a heartrending staging of Death of a Salesman, we retired to my room at Allerlei and talked for hours.
“When Mrs. Loman screamed, it just sent chills up my spine.”
“I know that actress,” I told her. “Kara Chessman. I’ve worked with her in acting class, on the Angelo-Isabella scenes in Measure for Measure. She knows how to make a scene so real it’s scary. Sometimes I’ve forgotten we’re just acting.”
“It didn’t seem like acting to me at all.” She arched her eyebrows at me for emphasis, soliciting my assent.
I nodded, remembering what Kara had told me, that she “forgot” the lines she had worked so hard to learn from the script, so that she could make them sound like she had just thought of them at the instant of saying them on stage.
After a pause, Sharonanne went on: “I just couldn’t help but cry when Willy went to his friend for money. My God, Hal! He had to put up that big front, to be so proud, he couldn’t be real, no matter what! And then when Biff went to his dad in tears, I had to hold on tight to the seat not to sink to the floor in tears myself.”
Here she started crying all over again. And on and on like that. I had wept during the play, too, and I’ve never been very good about holding my emotions in, but I came to appreciate how almost frightening Sharonanne’s fervor could be.
She told me how her “Catholic Thought” upbringing had narrowed her mind, how restrained she felt by the brainwashing she had suffered from early childhood through her parochial high school years from nuns civilizing their charges with Catechism and Dogma—“cats and dogs,” which was how she now professed to disparage the hodgepodge indoctrination. She told me how she so admired my freethinking, at the same time my being conversant with those cats and dogs of hers, not only because I was majoring in medieval European history, with all the ponderous ecumenical councils defining what was orthodox and what heresy, but also from my three years’ Knights of Columbus correspondence course, an inscrutable bedlam that was supposed to help me better comprehend the recondite Catholic faith my sister Laura had been growing up with in Wyoming.
I was flattered by Sharonanne’s admiration and I drank it in. Unlike almost all other women I encountered, she nurtured my fragile ego when she was receptive to my half-baked “natural relativism” philosophy. I both shocked and intrigued her with my hyperbolic insistence that, to be truly human, we had to discard our conventional shields, emerge from out of our moldy armor, never push the self-confrontation away with a dismissive “it’s not important” or “it doesn’t matter,” to experience our lives with the openness of the child, to realize that such an openness was far more important than whatever knowledge we might glean from our courses, that the college degree we were working toward had little ultimate importance to our lives. Mostly I just encouraged her to honor the impulses she most certainly had but was holding back.
Sharonanne called me her catalyst, and, only occasionally plunging into self-doubt, I assumed that role with her, the role that my crazy opera singer friend Camilla had sometimes assumed with me. In one of her letters Sharonanne had written: “I think I’m in love with you (sort of). You are becoming some kind of ideal (of love)…. I should like to rephrase the first sentence. I have a very special kind of love for you. Hal, you are such a beautiful person. You have helped me so very much. It is so beautiful that you can be yourself and alive and open to others.” She regularly baked me cookies.
Sometimes we made out, too, but we’d never gone all the way. Now driving through a northern California night somewhere around Lake Shasta, driving toward her, aspiring to “go all the way,” I recalled last winter in Seattle when I hungrily read and reread her letters from Snoqualmie Pass, where she was working as a live-in waitress at a busy truck stop. “My handwriting indicates that I have a strong sex drive—yes. But it is also repressed. Hell yes again. Why? Because there is absolutely no one. No one at all. I have been so damnably celibate since I’ve arrived atop this mountain… I hope that you’ll be able to make it up here sometime during your break. I miss you and your ideas (which I realize are one) so very very much. I’d love for you to see the sunrise, when the world outside turns blue. The mountains actually glow, at first a deep indigo and then a light blue. The snow shan’t last terribly much longer. And the blue mornings will fade also. If it is a question of finance—never fear, I’ll provide. You have to come up. That is all there is to it. Hal, please!”
I had so wanted to get up to that mountain truck stop during midwinter break, to sate that drive her handwriting indicated she had and afterward to share with her the sunrise she had painted in my mind. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to escape the commitment I’d made to Mrs. Tsai, my boss at the Science Library. I was needed there to search for “lost” books, almost all of them scientific studies of sexuality, classified under either Dewey Decimal number 306.7 or 392.6, probably smuggled out by furtive students too embarrassed to check them out officially. Having your name on the circulation card for Dr. Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, or its companion …Female, was more mortifying than looking at your hand after your joker friend tells you that masturbating makes hair grow on your palms. Once I discovered two dog-eared sexuality titles in a dusty nook behind a carrel, apparently stuffed there by an avid anonymous scholar not quite up to theft but intent on commandeering a secret private library deep within the stacks. Alas! Such compelling, obsessive research, such delving into carnal theory was keeping me from practical carnal knowledge up at the pass. But, just a few weeks later, Sharonanne and I had steamed up my brand-new car.
Now I remembered our liaison across Freya’s bucket seats the past April, I in the seat I was now in, she where Roger now was. Remembered, even embellished the remembrance. Remembered, following our long drive together in a vaporous night like this one during which we had shared insights, had really listened to each other. Remembered, following our just looking quietly into each other’s faces. Following our exploratory hour of ever-more intensive kissing and fondling and selective undraping—ground we had covered before—my first taste of her redolent loins at the summit of those lovely, healthy, now shivering legs of hers, remembered my tongue’s wet expedition there, remembered relishing her estrous aroma, her musk, remembered finding her clitoral button, kissing it, sucking it to a firmer tumescent knob, exploring further but ever returning there, engulfed.
How much remembering that button of hers made me now think of Freya’s foot knob switch for raising or lowering headlight beams: In my mind I raised her beams. I remembered holding, steadying each supple buttock cheek in my hands as I dined, grazed, slurped, fed, feasted, face beard intermingled in juice with nether beard, my lips to her lips there. Far more than routine oil change, yes, her lubrication and mine anointed Freya’s ball joints, the fluids greasing and smoothing the shifting of gears. I remembered especially Sharonanne’s rutting tremblings and moans and purrs, as Freya’s roar now deepened to a growl. I remembered Sharonanne’s crying out my name, her pressing my ears with her soft, voluptuous thighs, her clutching and stroking my head with her frenzied fingers. I remembered Freya’s gearshift as the obstacle I writhed around that night last April, as now it vibrated convulsively, twitching like the pulsating, throbbing stalwart iron lever in my pants, focusing all my pounding blood and consciousness.
Suddenly I realized that my face was hot, that my breath was shallow, that I had slowed to fifteen on this dark, mostly empty California freeway, that Freya’s transmission was lugging in low baritone. I shifted down to second gear her “synchromesh” lever standing there between my bucket seat and Roger’s. I also shifted in my seat; slipping my right hand into my jeans, I adjusted my skivvies to unconstrict my erection. Then moving the gears through third to fourth, I resumed my cruising speed, resumed my regular breathing. Roger and Hilbert continued sleeping. Freya passed the barely lit Lakehead exit.
I remembered how mortified I’d been that April night, parked on a suburban street, when the cop had pounded on the windshield, interrupting our passion. I had bolted upright, nearly banging my head into the windshield, nearly blinded by the flashlight beam probing into the car. Sharonanne had folded down her skirt, pulled a shawl as best she could over her disarray. I rolled down the driver’s side window. After the cop examined my driver’s license and registration, he’d asked “And how old is the girl?” Satisfied that we both were (just barely) legal adults—“free, white, and twenty-one,” he murmured—he told us we couldn’t do what we’d been doing on that residential street of respectable families.
In her most recent letter, the one where she’d said she would receive me, Sharonanne wrote how she’d just that week listened to “Gary, Indiana” in her album of The Music Man. “I could not help but to think of how you’d made up your own words to the song: ‘Corby Cunnilingus, Corby Copulation.’ I still chuckle when I think of that officer of the law asking ‘And how old is the girl?’ What an end to a most delightful evening!” In that letter she had determined what my middle initial C stood for.
Now I was looking forward to another such evening, and I surrendered to my prodigious horniness. Surrendered to the extent of totally banishing from my mind how I’d bristled a few weeks earlier at her remonstrating with me in a preceding letter, a letter I’d not responded to, the letter challenging my plans to take part in the freedom project in Mississippi, how she threw my relativism back at me, absurdly suggesting that I was discriminating against the white segregationists by forcing integration on them. Being received by Sharonanne, I would resume my discarded Seattle personality, temporarily eschew my leftist Berkeley self.
Not willing to entertain any disconcerting self-judgment of hypocrisy, I dug a Pall Mall from the half-used pack in my shirt pocket, kindled it with Freya’s lighter, and inhaled deeply. A tractor-trailer passed us, and soon afterward another. With my left foot on the toggle knob, I lowered Freya’s beams for each, and each gave me the double-flash thanks.
_______________________________
Copyright 2013 by Allan Edmands
The next day, back at work, Angela was on the computer researching the Island of Vieques and viewing pictures of the numerous bunkers and ammunition holds. Acres and acres of the island, though no longer being used by the U.S. Navy, are unavailable for development, though apparently the locals and tourists can stroll through the grounds. I’ve got to go back and investigate the whole picture there. It may not be related, but I won’t really know until I eliminate the environmental impact of those years of bombing by the Navy, Angela said to herself.
She then started looking up what exactly was on Vieques, and found a few small towns and low-key resorts, all on the west side of island. One resort stood out, because it was a collection of humble cottages near cliffs overlooking the Caribbean Sea. It would be nice to rent one of those for a week.
Talking while he entered the room, Richard said, “So, Angela, Chuck says there is nothing out of the ordinary to report back to the congressional panel. “ Chuck sheepishly followed.
“Maybe so, but I thought we were going to go over the data one more time together first, Chuck, before we talked to anyone.”
“Don’t be mad at Chuck, Angela, I practically water-boarded him to get an early report,” Richard said. He continued, “Quickly write up what you have now, so we can get back to our regular caseload,” and then he left the room, leaving them alone.
“So, Angela, I’ll finish the report while you’re fishing on the computer; no pun intended.” She nodded, gave him a soft smile, then went back to learning more about the small island, and planning a long weekend trip down to Vieques in the near future, even if it was on her own dime. “Maybe, just maybe, I could get funding for this; it’s worth a few hours of writing to try. These ghost bunkers look so surreal on that piece of paradise,” Angela said to herself just loud enough for Chuck to hear. He smiled over at her with a quizzical look, followed by a slight shake of his head.
That night Marty and Angela had scheduled their dinner date at the Mexican Radio all the way down in the Village, near the Little Italy neighborhood. Angela came prepared to change and freshen up at work; it was going to be a late night for a weekday, so they agreed to get together as early as they could after work and meet downtown, and then ride home together afterwards.
Marty, wearing a dark brown leather jacket and dull black pants, was leaning up against a brick wall between two large show windows near the restaurant. His smile broadened as he spotted Angela coming down the street with her dark red scarf flowing back from her open black coat, under which was a bright red dress. As their eyes met, Marty said, “Good thing this is not Barcelona, ‘cause all the bulls would be chasing you.”
They kissed lightly and Angela said, “Your bull will be enough for me tonight, but pace it out because I’m not wearing boots.” They both laughed and went in.
The restaurant had a comfortable yet top shelf feel to it, with its dark wood contrasting the bright colors of yellow and orange of the Mexican decor. They got a table by the wall, which was private enough for Manhattan, until a cell phone loudly rang out a generic rap song, and an overstuffed fellow with dark hair and rumpled dark suit answered the call with a loud greeting, “Slamming Sal here, speak your piece.” Due to his volume and location in the middle of the floor, everyone glanced at Sal for a second, and then did their best to continue their conversations and eating their meals, despite him.
“Ya gotta be kidding me, Lou. I need that lobster shipment down here by five a.m. the latest, if I’m gonna get Joe to move them at South Street tomorrow. It’s like a fire sale after seven a.m. down there . . . You gotta . . . I’m not happy.” It didn’t take long for the room’s attention to gravitate to Sal and his phone; he had a voice and a volume that was hard to ignore. He did make an effort to look around the room, and gave anyone who looked back at him an insincere smile, including Angela and Marty.
Angela leered back at him. Just then the waiter came by. Marty got his attention and asked him to do something. To their surprise, the waiter seemed to indicate that the man was too important to interfere with.
At that, Angela excused herself to go to the ladies room. She took a circuitous route which brought her close enough to Slamming’s table to fake a trip and block his vision for a moment with her amplesized pocketbook. In a nano-second and with a neon blur, Angela relieved Sal of his phone and dropped it in his wine glass.
She was well on her way to the ladies room by the time he realized where his phone wound up. She moved even faster than in the past, she surmised, for no one was looking her way as she turned the corner where the restrooms were located. Marty stopped giving the waiter a piece of his mind after Slamming Sal stood up cursing and fishing his phone out of his wine glass. When Angela returned she let Marty tell her why Sal was no longer at his seat yelling into his phone.
“Oh well, shit happens,” was all she said.
At one point during the evening, this dinner with an old friend turned into a date; the flirting back and forth was free and easy, so when Marty put his arm around Angela on the way home it was natural, as well as expected. The couple stopped a few times during their walk from the subway station to her apartment to exchange soft kisses. Angela gave in easily to the kissing, knowing that the fact that she lived with her mother would ultimately draw the curtain on the evening before these affections went too far, too soon.
At work the next day, Angela was on the phone introducing herself to the manager of EPA’s field office on Vieques – Remedial Project Manager Thelma Hernando. This office was set up to monitor what damage the 63 years of U.S. Navy exploding, bombing, and shooting up the island’s east end did to the island’s environmental health. Vieques was still on the EPA’s National Priorities List (Super Fund). All the different compounds found in bombs, explosives, flares, and machine gun fire along with aluminum and depleted uranium were the reasons why. Technically the U.S. Navy was self-monitoring the whole situation; The Navy Radiation Safety Committee (NRSC) was set up for this purpose. Some of the other chemicals used were organic nitrated compounds, hydrogen cyanide, methane, propane, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and carbon monoxide. EPA’s Field Office goals were limited to the issues of the residential/occupied area. After filling up a couple of sheets of paper with notes, Angela asked Ms. Hernando to forward a few specific reports and thanked her for her time.
Ms. Hernando on her end was trying to imagine what this Angela looked like; what kind of face and body went along with that sexy voice. She hoped to find out soon. In the meantime she was willing to hand over the information Angela wanted. This was unusual for Thelma, who kept her job in the Caribbean Sea mainly by being an obstructionist bureaucrat to everyone except the Navy. She knew the U.S. Navy had helped keep her there these past eight years, because of her steadfast loyalty to her prior employer.
“Get this Chuck,” Angela said, getting Chuck’s attention. Chuck slowly raised his head from his work, and peered over his glasses while saying, “Get what, Angela?”
Angela continued, “Despite the EPA being down there for several years, the validity of the test levels for explosives and munitions data is uncertain and incomplete .“
“Incomplete?”
“Yes and ‘uncertain’; what a combination! It’s a good thing that most of the water the residents use there is piped over from the mainland.” Angela answered.
“Mainland? As in the huge continent of Puerto Rico,” he said with a crooked smile, which made his glasses sit cockeyed on his face.
“Yes, wise guy,” Angela replied while making a fist in jest.
Chuck, more seriously, said, “Angela, why are you so determined to find an ecological problem down there?”
Realizing that she had not anticipated this obvious question, and not wanting to disclose her recent personal symptoms and weird experience, Angela managed to just shrug her shoulders and say, “Just my gut,” and turned away to hide her fib; she never was a good liar.
Before the work day was over, Angela had scheduled time to confer with her boss, Richard, and hopefully convince him to at least consider a return trip to Vieques to develop a broader picture of the ecological issues on the island as a whole.
Richard’s office had an executive office layout that included a chair for his visitor that was nearly a foot below the height of his chair. Angela wondered at his motivation for this arrangement. He really wasn’t all that short at five foot eight inches, so she figured it had to be some power technique he picked up climbing the management ladder. On the office walls were numerous pictures of him with various executives and politicians, including Congressman Hector Ramos.
Her manager entered the room in a rush, looking hurried and stressed in an obviously staged way. “Oh yes, Ms. Lopez, you wanted to talk to me; about what exactly?”
“Well, Mr. Jenkins, manager per excellente,” Angela said in as sugary tone as she could manage. “I believe that we are looking at the Bio Bay Study in Vieques as if it existed in a vacuum, and in too narrow a scope. The EPA has a field office on the island for a reason.”
”Hold on there, kid, I mean Ms. Lopez, where are you going with this thesis?”
Ignoring the kid reference, Angela answered, “Congressman Ramos represents Vieques and its mother island Puerto Rico. We need to help him push for a larger study addressing the issues which placed Vieques on EPA’s national Super Fund list in the first place. Boss, I know you have a lot of studies to get to, but that congressman is a friend to EPA on the hill. We owe it to him to dig a little deeper before we hand over what would be taken as a clean bill of health on Vieques.”
Seeing that she was getting through to him, she continued: “Why not label this: ‘In Need of More Study.’ I’d be glad to write up a follow-up action plan for your approval.”
Taking the bait, Richard sat back and placed both his hands behind his head. “I at least understand your thinking here now, Angela, but I’ll have to brew on it some more.”
Just then Judy walked in holding some curtain samples. She was beaming a little more than usual. “Oh, hi Angela! What do you think of this shade for Ricky’s office? I think it’s him.”
“Ricky, is it now?” Angela said before biting her tongue, a little too late.
Obviously feeling a bit flustered, Richard Jenkins put Judy on hold with a hand gesture, then turned to Angela and dismissed her, saying, “Why don’t you write these thoughts up into a plan of action I could digest and possible present to my higher-ups here, and Hector, Congressman Ramos. And Angela, keep it scientific without a lot of emotional Latin coloring.”
Angela could not even look him in the eye as she left, but did manage to squeeze out a “Will do.”
Angela felt basically numb on her way home, even zombie-like, as she joined the rush hour herd through the streets and into the hole in the ground where the moving sardine cans would bring her back to her home neighborhood. She wondered if this was how most people got through their day – numb to the street and subway noise and the inconsiderate ones among them. Angela laughed, thinking about her mother’s reaction the other day in the subway, and the positive response she got in the newspaper to her letter. No, it was too early to give up on being a human being and tuning out the world as she traveled through it. “Be Here Now” was a saying she tried to live by. How would her mother phrase it? “Wake up, and watch where you’re going, you bums!” or something like that.
Angela did feel better in general when she stepped out of the subway and caught a fresh breeze from the Hudson River. Tonight she would nurture herself and recharge her batteries. The thought of batteries, though, reminded her of her new energy source, or whatever it was. Before she got home she was determined to use her new talent for good, while working to understand the source of her anomaly.
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