A Lump of Coal

He has these beautiful hands. To others they may seem ugly. Not to me. They are beautiful and I crave his touch.

He is a supervisor in a small factory, where his duties include jumping right in to fix a machine when it breaks down, or helping a worker move a heavy load, or stepping in to run parts for someone who needs a break... He is a supervisor, but not the kind who might be bogged down in administrative tasks. He is a working supervisor, and what he does is chiseled into his flesh, in the slabs of muscle that wrap his torso, the knotty bulge of his forearms, and especially his hands.

Oh, how I love it when he touches me with his hands...

Hard work is written in his hands. They are raw-boned, with crooked fingers, large knuckles, calluses, and more calluses on top of calluses, and scars and ridges and wrinkles...a written record in flesh and bone and sinew of how hard he works, the way earth records in her crust her torturous doings over time.

Oh how I need his hands on me...

Thanksgiving weekend is coming to a close. It is Sunday evening. After four days at home with my family, I have just arrived back at my apartment on the second floor of a converted house, a few blocks from campus. I can hear him moving about in the ground-floor apartment below me.

Has he missed me as much as I've missed him? Does he need me right now as much as I need him? Oh how I crave his voice, his scent, his touch...

I run the water, flush the toilet, put on clogs and walk about the apartment. I rattle some pans and dishes so he will hear me. I wait and wait and wait... Have the days away from each other caused his interest to wane? The same time in which my need for him bored down into my being, turning me into a ravenous creature, starved for him, in desperate need of even a morsel of his attention...

My cell phone—his soft voice. So I am back? He was just about to go out, and then heard me upstairs.... Go out together? Where shall we go? He was on his way to see "Earhart"—all by himself—he loves historical-fiction movies—but if I don't want to, if I think it's too corny, we can go to the coffee house instead, where it's open-mic night, and listen to local poets...

"She was such an independent woman," I remind him as an excuse to let him have his way.

"Earhart" it is. We would be alone in the theater, but for one white-bearded gentleman with a round belly and a red sweatshirt emblazoned with MY SON IS A UNITED STATES MARINE, who strategically seats himself at eye-level with the screen in an aisle seat half-way up. He looks like Santa. I insist we sit down front.

"But we'll have to crane our necks."

I ignore his protest and lead him, gripping his rough fingers, down to the fourth row on the left. I am one seat in and leave the aisle seat for him. He removes his coat and asks me if he can take mine—maybe later.

When the lights go down and the promos begin, I nestle against him and his left arm goes around me. Once the feature finally comes onto the screen, I whisper I am warm and would he unbutton my coat. He hesitates at the odd request, then undoes the first two buttons. His breath catches when he realizes what I'm up to, and he stares for a moment into the opening created by his having undone the buttons. He turns his head to face the screen, leaving me that way, the first two buttons undone, exposed to flickering reflections from the screen.

We are silent. We watch the film, pretending nothing is out of the ordinary. But our combined breathing betrays uneven rhythm, gives us away to each other. As we pretend to watch the story unfold on the screen, he continues to wrap my shoulders in his left arm and I nestle against him. His right hand gently spreads the coat open more. A scratchy callus brushes me, raw, rough fingers stirring my soft skin. He slides the back of his thumb, its rough knuckle, under my left breast, where it transitions from slope to ribcage, marking a trail of sensation.

Having made a claim, he proceeds upslope. His touch leaves me just long enough for his hand to undo the next button down, then he lays claim to my breast ever so gently, rough fingers closing on its shape. My breast is in the rough clutch of an animal paw.

His breath is at my ear. "You are ever so naughty, wearing nothing under your coat..."

I nod my assent.

"...letting me find you like this after we have settled into our seats."

I wonder if Santa can hear his whisper back there in his strategically chosen seat. Maybe Santa is making a list. I will make the naughty list for sure.

Fingers release, loosening the grip, spreading out so they no longer touch. Only the palm touches—the crude palm of this workman's hand, with its cracks and crevices and healed-over blisters. A touch so light it would barely be detectable but for its location, the tip of my nipple, where with minute circular motion, friction starts a small fire, a fire of tingles that suddenly run down the breast slope, then to the other breast, whose nipple, a sympathetic sister, emboldens with sensation...

"Mmmm..." I quickly cover my accidental mew with a cough, lest Santa hear.

He leaves me then, my coat open wide at the top, my left breast exposed to cinematic flickers. Does he favor the story on the screen over me? I start to close my coat, but he moves my hand away from the task.

Still looking up at the screen, he takes his time undoing more buttons...the next button...and the next...and the last button...and teases the material open. I see, without daring to look down, my nakedness like a partially peeled fruit in the splayed coat, roundness of my hips couching my shadow of curls, legs tapering forward and down into my boots.

He does not touch me. He leaves me like this. Is there some dark, secret place by the screen from where theater attendants can look out at the audience? Air from ceiling vents tickles my skin, lightly brushes my moist curls. I know not to try to cover myself back up.

I deserve to be exposed for what I've done—for pretending to be just going to the movie with him, and then allowing him to suddenly find me this way, as if it is a case of simple forgetfulness, a small misunderstanding. Surely, I am not the only woman who has gone to the movies dressed in just a coat and a pair of boots.

I reach for his thigh, but he refuses me access.

"You have been naughty, and you are being punished." His breath at my ear.

His left arm still around my shoulders, he turns in his seat, shifting his weight more to the side of his left hip, so while watching the screen, he can have access to me. His right hand, with its rough fingers and sinews, explores the canyon of my inner thighs. It is a blind canyon—as if he didn't know—and he follows it to its dark recess, where he discovers a weeping of earth's moisture. He forms his hand into a fleshy wedge, knuckle of curled index finger a promontory, and slowly, evenly pushes against the recess, not quite demanding to gain entry to the source of that moisture, yet not backing away.

I seek to open my legs, but the hard plastic sides of the seat restrain me. If I could slip forward, I could open them, but the wedge he has made of his hand holds me—the wedge does nothing else but hold me. He has pushed it down into the cushion, so it is somewhat under me, solid and insistent against my sex. My sex is opening little by little, as if, without consulting me at all, it invites in a crude intruder. He seldom moves, but for an occasional twitch, or a tiny twist in one direction and then the other, to which my sex responds with sweet kisses and little clucking sounds. He continues to watch the screen, seeming to have become very interested in Amelia Earhart's story. For me, the images on the screen are blurred through tears. Not tears of sadness to be sure. But not tears of happiness either. Tears of need. Raw, primal need.

"Please." I hope Santa can't hear me. But then, Santa hears everything, doesn't he...

"Is anything wrong?" His breath at my ear again.

"Please... Do something. Please don't just leave me like this..."

A puff against my ear—a whispered laugh. "Are you sorry for being naughty?"

"Yes."

"Tell me. Tell me how sorry you are."

"I am so sorry. Please forgive me. Please... I will do anything. Anything you ask. Only please don't leave me like this."

He is quiet for a time, absorbed in the movie—but for an occasional twitch or twist of the flesh-and-bone wedge that holds me, and to which my sex responds with raging surges of sweetness...

He finally whispers. "Later, then, back at my place. I will give you a chance to demonstrate just how sorry you are. When we go back to my place, you will do whatever I ask?"

"Oh, yes, thank you. Whatever you ask... Please..."

He makes me wait a while longer. His left arm tightens around me. The crude wedge between my legs begins to twitch and twist rhythmically, and changes shape, the promontory knuckle nudging into me, finding a place to nestle as it circles and circles, like an animal unable to decide where to lie down... I hear myself mewing at a very high pitch, almost imperceptibly, which he mercifully covers with a fit of coughing. I turn my face into him, bury myself in the hollow of his shoulder, smelling his scent. My boots leave the floor—knees buck upward—legs punish the plastic seat sides... My sex screams for mercy. Waves of sensation rush over me, gnawing at my nipples from within. My hands, of their own accord, clutch my breasts as if to wring them out...

He goes into another fit of coughing to cover my naughty noises...

When my breathing finally rights itself again, I remove my face from its hiding place against his shoulder. The air seems saturated with my sexual scent. Can Santa smell it too? As I regain my vision, the closed hand is before my face—the source of my sultry smell.

"Time to clean up the mess you made." He places his bulging knuckles at my lips, and I kiss them and lick them and suckle them, ingest the sweet-sour evidence of my behavior.

He reminds me. "It is good practice for when we are back at my place..."

"Yes, I remember. I will do whatever you ask. I promise."

"And I promise you will have another mess to clean up."

A lump of coal for me this Christmas...