grayspike

Much as I enjoy New York, getting away for a while defuses the mind.

I saw a sign in somebodys office which aptly sums up living here: The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.

My absence let matters settle down. Business and personal matters. Especially the latter. All my staying here wouldve done is kept them stirred.

I vacationed in the Southwest. I attended university at one of the regions more reputable schools. Sorry. It never makes any Top 10 Party School rankings.

For the first time in a long time a number of long-scarce former running buddies showed up to join us usual November refugees. Throughout the years some of us have preferred to maintain our contact via e-mail. The more social of us occasionally will gather in Philly, Chicago or Phoenix. New York isnt on that list because something about this city frightens too many of them.

Drake, along with Tatiana and Inez, are exceptions. They need no prodding to visit. Any day ending in y is reason enough.

I think the more timid see New York as overwhelming. Yes. It is. Yet thats no reason not to come and indulge.

Anyway, this time people whod seemingly preferred existing in ether presented their flesh and blood selves. Years have passed. Hairlines have receded. Waistlines have expanded. Some careers have been exchanged. Voluntarily and involuntarily. As have many wives. Again voluntarily and involuntarily.

Some like our friend the Shah is on his third wife already. (!) Hes not Persian though a ringer for the dead monarch. For those of us still seeking our presumed only soulmate, three is a mighty big number.

I wouldve thought that after two marital misfires hed be cynical. Instead the Shahs the most optimistic among us. Hes shrugged off his first two wives to fucking up and moving up. I actually knew the first Mrs. Shah. She was a pretty and superficial blonde. Deep surface. Shallow core.

Those two were well on the way toward perceived bliss when immaturity theirs temporarily saved his bachelorhood. While Shah furthered his career, she wed someone else. For a time.

He grabbed her off the rebound of a short-trajectory starter marriage. Given a second chance, the Shah took it. His first instinct had been correct. Hed forgiven much of her past and ignored the rest.

Much like her first go-round, fidelity eventually played little importance. Among her flings was a grungy sex bout with todays equivalent of a bowling alley pin boy.

However, the Shah got even. In divorce court he explicitly detailed how he nabbed his wife fucking other meatsticks. He gave his most no-holes-barred testimony while his soon-to-be former father-in-law sat in attendance.

The second Mrs. Shah was as dark and impenetrable as the first radiated light. After his description of her I thought hed married Lilith.

She was a widow. The circumstances behind her first husbands death as well as how her marriage to the Shah collapsed clarified everything for me.

Her first husband died by his own hand. In a manner of speaking. While performing auto-eroticism he asphyxiated himself. Presumably accidentally.

It didnt take the Shah long to seek comfort, certainly less foreboding, in anothers gentler embrace. His second marriage scrambling towards abyss, her catching him in a bald lie sped their end.

He started hanging clean suits in his car. He intended wearing them after leaving his lovers apartment. Scentless, clueless clothes wouldnt betray him to his wife. In theory. A good theory. Unfortunately, the Shah hadnt considered random chance disrupting his best-laid preparations.

One afternoon his wife drove by a strange address. One which had his car parked in front of it. She recognized the car, its license plate. She mightve thought nothing of that. Except she noticed he returned home dressed in a clean suit. Raven-eyed as she was, she realized hed gone to work dressed entirely differently.

Using the car as a base, she grilled him. The Shahs answers were unsuitable. Soon after he was back grinding in divorce court.

His third marriage seems more solid. Itd provided children. That alone should make everybody think twice and work twice as hard to succeed.

Johnny Who, a former roommate of mine, appeared with his second wife. We believed hed bottomed out with wife No. 1. We were wrong. His new No. 2 should be considered that stuff beneath the bottom of the barrel.

Shes only slightly less bulky than him, uses charm as an offensive weapon and isnt below groping any unattended male crotch or two. It must be great when couples can share the same hobby.

To be kind, Johnny Whos first wife was, uh, unattractive. But then we understood some guys marry for love. Whatever that is.

Hey. College graduates can rationalize away almost any affliction.

After that love thing wore off and their children reached independent ages, the couple grew apart. Or his sight improved.

No. It didnt. The second Mrs. Johnny Who boosts the first into an MILF. Im sure the new Mrs. Who has an appeal. None of us was able to unearth it. Not that we tried hard.

She tests that guys will screw anything female canard. Away from them, among ourselves, we asked what would be sufficient compulsion to fuck her. We discovered there is no bullet large enough nor direst urgency. If she were the last fertile woman on earth and humankind required her to propagate in order to assure its survival, to a man wed let our species die out.

The epitath wed provide: She blocked desire and blunted erections.

Worse, Johnny Who dragged her to The Game. Our school played its rival Thanksgiving weekend. With Mrs. Who around we couldnt fully exhibit our baser, beer-swilling, horndog alumni selves to all the sweet and firm female students.

Believe me we couldve gotten in the mix, too. We stood close to clutches of lesbians until graduation who decided conditions were ripe to initiate those first meaningful, sloppy, drunken expressions of burgeoning sexuality. Their tender gropings and confused kisses had us immediately slobbering. Why, I myself feverishly started scheming how I could persuade hungry, yearning, pliant, quiescent flesh to let me manifest myself in any one of those dewy female raptures. (Man, where were LUGs when we were undergrads!?)

Unfortunately for lust, Mrs. Who was there. Her just being wasnt enough to derail the urges, but her behavior did yank some brake cords. Mrs. Who became one of those party girls who stopped holding her liquor. By ears or glass. She became the sort of rubber-legged commotion requiring male support. Funny thing was Johnny Who had gotten so engrossed in the Classes of 07 & 08 antics he failed noticing his wifes distress.

Which left it up to us to make sure the second Mrs. Who didnt face plant in concrete or broken beer bottle shards. We proved chivalry wasnt dead, though it could be timed better.

Marcel showed up too. He used to be an Easterner. Since his wife ditched him then skipped with his kids to the Left Coast, hes also gone transcontinental.

Unlike the rest of the gang, Marcel has been refined from birth. His parents had been part of what remained of pre-Iron Curtain Eastern European culture. Rather than flee west early, starry-eyed idealists they were, Marcels parents decided to stay put and give Socialism a chance.

Ha!

Socialism in Ruritania, the area where -Vakia, -Slavia and Bovia converge to form human miasma lurched into Marxism.

His folks sure hadnt signed on for that!

Marcels family eventually defected. They landed in France. After spending his childhood there, they migrated to New Jersey. (Oh. Paris for Newark. What an improvement.)

In forsaking Eastern Seaboard colleges, where his accent wouldve conferred princely status upon him, for a distant land grant school whose locals saw him as a true dude, I assume Marcel succumbed to the American Southwests allure. As did I and other multitudes.

John Ford movies are so persuasive!

Out there, Marcel found his ideal woman. At a nut and bolt party. As a casual hook-up she more than sufficed. As an equal to base an enduring relationship upon no, not in this lifetime. Least not with him.

Past her obvious brunette beauty, she was gimlet-eyed, flighty and opportunistic. Marcels devotion only intensified these traits. For Marcel she epitomized American womanhood. Taken to an extreme, I guess American femininity is somewhat soulless.

Or so Ive surmised through his choice.

Regardless of the angle, shes in his blood. Marcel trailed his broken family west more for her than proximity to his children. She makes him seethe and swoon. Still.

Heres how far the pendulum swings: Marcel brought along a curio for our perusal. A flipbook. (For those too technically advanced, a flipbook consists of images that when riffled create a moving tableau.)

Marcels ex-wife formed his books subject. She was frozen in a block of black & white frames.

She reclines naked in bed, knees up and together. A blank gaze defies the camera lens.

Flipping the pages spread her legs wide, exposing her sex. Her pubic thicket dated this session way before artful waxing became common.

Getting past the pelt flashback, remembering theres something above her waist, the viewer sees her expression change. Why, its a whole attitudinal shift!

Quite a startling one at that. Her vapid face blooms into mirth before reflecting coquettishness.

Captivate as Marcels keepsake did, his fascination to those of us skeaving his ex-wife surpassed our own enjoyment. Joy and anguish chased themselves across his face. If anything, his reactions to our perversity seemed far more obscene.

Later, Marcel confessed the flipbook originated early in their romance. He suggested it, shot the sequence himself. They agreed then that such revelation shouldve forged an unbreakable bond.

This link kept them shackled, all right. Even if he wanted release from her, he couldnt manage the freedom.

I told that story to Inez and Tatiana. During the telling, I watched both ponder their own circulating nude photos. Surely nothing as, um, elaborate as Marcels. But still rendered young, trusting and vulnerable forever. Likely in the hands of strangers.

Coincidentally, Marcel, Johnny Who and the Shah, three whod been in the wilderness longest, each inquired about Astrid. An old taste of mine. Their curiosity sounded like a conspiracy. Nonetheless I was generous, giving each benefit of the doubt.

They asked if Id seen Astrid. Had we kept in touch?

Man. Astrid and I were hot and heavy, it is true. Yet that was x years ago. I suppose we left deep impressions.

Until today I must confess she was my favorite lover. I remember Astrid clearer than the last woman with whom I warmed a bed.

I cant even fantasize a composite perfect woman who can improve upon Astrid. Without bogging down in dead-on description, Astrid strongly resembled Louise Brooks. (And thats when I had no idea who Louise Brooks had been!) Right down to the black bob atop her head. Except Astrids mouth probably yielded easier and her eyes were more gelid than those of the Silent Eras actress.

After catching the scent behind possible complicated romantic mischief, Tatiana and Inez picked up the beat. They also began wondering whether Id recently spoken with Astrid.

Although we hadnt maintained contact, our alumni association is thorough. Several years ago curiosity brought on by boredom let me seek her out on our school site.

I knew shed become a townie after graduating. She also kept her maiden name. I merely husbanded information. Nothing else.

The three seemingly random queries piqued my dormant interest. Despite our ending on nuclear winter terms, I decided to phone the ghost. Maybe the years in between had mollified her.

So I phoned that Saturday after Thanksgiving. No answering machine and no answer. Maybe Astrid had started her Christmas shopping.

I dialed again Sunday. No Astrid. Just ringing. Perhaps she skipped town over the long holiday weekend.

If Id phoned Monday, my last full day in the West, third-time charm likely wouldve produced a voice from the past. Much to Tatianas and Inez disappointment, I left Astrids phone quiet.

Wed had our fun, I thought. Weve endured a bearable split.

When it was good between us, it was delicious. We shared little else. I dont recall much of what she ever said to me. Who knows what perfume she wore or how she painted her nails.

Astrid began and stopped with romps in bed. Or car seats. Or Jacuzzis. Or on lawns and park benches.

So even should we have spoken, there simply wouldve been just those remembrances. And by now our current selves only couldve offered strained platitudes. To have thought otherwise mightve suggested delusional lovesickness.

Thankfully I cured that illness Friday before I first tried phoning her.

Inez and Tatiana were most upset that I let Astrid be.