Mouth-Feel

Originally written Sunday, December 18, 2005 (continued)

“Move so quickly. You were right behind me, and when I turned around, you were coming out of the bathroom.” I was already moving my hands up her waist, the unrelenting noise of the club requiring close contact and the energy of the moment facilitating it further.

“I wasn’t behind you. Must have been someone else.” With her mouth so near to my ear, she barely had to raise her voice.

Paradoxically, the chill of my objectification had thawed my reserve. “Someone else, huh? So you didn’t do this?” I slunk around her, looping my fingers into her belt loops so she wouldn’t turn with me. When the front of my body was a shadow against her back, I pulled her against me and wrapped my arms about her middle. I mimicked with my lips and tongue the route that had been mapped on me a minute before (or mostly mimicked it… damn that choker) until I, too, had kissed my way nearly to her shoulder. Then she turned her head and asked:

“What’s that buzzing?”

“Huh?” It was then that I noticed that the charm was vibrating between my chest and her spine. I hadn’t been aware of it before, but now that I was, I realized it had been doing so since the encounter with the mysterious stranger. I immediately put my hand around it and willed the words STOP IT, CUT IT OUT at it, and the vibration soon subsided. Jeanine had turned around fully and was looking at my fist clutching the pendant. “Must’ve been picking up the vibrations from the bass.” There was indeed a track with some very heavy bass playing, but the charm hadn’t been shaking in time with the thump-thump-thump that shook even the floor. Still, it was plausible enough.

Now facing me, she leaned even closer and pulled me into a kiss, pulling my hand away from Bella’s charm and drawing it down to the small of her back. She felt good and tasted better (and I wondered vaguely why the culinary phrase “mouth-feel” had never crossed over into erotic discourse when so many other sexual metaphors and food metaphors had made the transition), and I felt that strange tingly-buttocks feeling that I get when I’m filled with sexual anticipation but that I’ve tried to describe to others occasionally, only to be met with bemusement for the effort. I was lost in her presence for what in retrospect must have been ten or fifteen minutes, forgetting for the time all the odd and disturbing goings-on (which isn’t to say that I was thinking of nothing beyond her skin and her beautiful asymmetry and her mouth-feel all the while—since I only tend to focus my attention when I have a particular reason to—but that my thoughts were of a relatively indiscriminate variety).

Then I heard my name being called from far away. I ignored it. Jeanine’s mouth-feel: firm yet yielding and soft… The voice repeated itself, closer now…. assertive and deceptively forceful yet eagerly pleading for a chance to succumb…. It was suddenly next to me, and it wasn’t going to go away.

“Em! Marya!”

I opened my eyes and closed my mouth and turned to face Patrick. “What?”

His eyes dropped to my chest, and I knew he was scrutinizing the pendant. “What the hell are you doing?”

Jeanine fielded his exclamation, saying, “Geez, Mar, your whole little circle is all with the chaperoning.”

“No,” I said, “he means this.” I opened the clasp behind my neck and returned it to the depths of my drawstring bag. “It—it’s not exactly mine. I was just holding onto it.” For the second time, my role and Patrick’s had reversed. He was suddenly the supervisor and I was the instructed. But as soon as the necklace left my direct contact, the universe reordered itself, and I said managerially, “What do you need?”

And he responded dutifully, “You need to see something.”

I made the slightest of head tilts toward Jeanine. He responded with the slightest of shrugs. He turned, and I started to follow. Jeanine was close behind, asking as we went, “Should I come? What’s it about?”

“It’s up to you. It’s probably not as exciting as he’s making it sound. If you want, you can go hang with Joey and I’ll find you.”

For practical reasons, I hoped she would, but I didn’t make any effort to sound encouraging, and our bond for the night had been forged. Being together seemed right for now, so she continued to trail us through the masses. Patrick led the way to the curtained door the vampires had passed through before, but instead of taking us down the stairs, he pushed open an emergency exit door I hadn’t noticed previously. A thin veil of sheer cloth hung from the ceiling and had been pulled to the side. In the dark passage, only the brightly lit EXIT sign would have been visible through the fabric.

A cold gust of air met us as we stepped outside of the building. Dennis was there, along with a small circle of other young people, all still with their coats on (as, I now noticed, had Patrick). They apparently had only just arrived at the club and not yet entered. They were whispering to each other and looking at the ground. Police sirens were already growing louder. I knew before I followed their line of vision what I would see, and I only hoped it wouldn’t be who I thought. However, the body that a very authoritative woman in a black suit and a belted leather trench seemed to be guarding from the onlookers as they edged unconsiously closer was indeed that of the young woman who’d walked out with Moshe just… how long before? I hadn’t paid attention to the time for a while, and I was surprised to discover it was past twelve. Blood rushed straight to my face as my heart dropped. I wasn’t sure if my rage were directed at the perpetrator for doing it or myself for not preventing it, but it was undeniable.

The events of this day to be continued...