Protection

"A little help here? I can't tell which parts of me aren't blue."

My hands are, my arms, most of my legs. My face is red and yellow, even to the insides of my ears. I stand in the white light and cover my hands from the bowl of inky food coloring before me, running them up my chest to my throat, rivulets of indigo curling around my breasts.

Quiet the way you are, your hands reaching around me to dip into the bowl. I watch, half fascinated by your palms turning blue, half distracted by your breath on my neck. Then your hands are at the small of my back, gliding up, painting me. You're taking longer about it than strictly necessary, and I'm not going to find the will to make you hurry.

When you're finished and I'm completely blue from head to foot, I hang the painted cloth over me, front and back. There's no connecting piece, and so I've a long strip of exposed blue skin from my shoulder all the way down. It's cold outside, so I tie a cord around my waist to close the garment somewhat. I turn for your approval.

"What do you think? I look like Dreamland to you?"

A crooked smile from you. "You do. If you still want to go we should do it now, before I'm forced to ruin all your work."

Outside the wind is blowing, working its chilly fingers in all the holes in my clothes as cleverly as you do. I pull the cloth tighter around me and try to avoid rocks—I'm barefoot, after all, in spite of your and everyone else's advice.

Fourth Avenue, when we get there, is already packed with people for two blocks in either direction—some three thousand is the usual attendance at this party. Where we've come onto it, aside from a huge assortment of costumed locals, there's a collection of drummers warming up, which is wonderful—right where I wanted to be. I take your hand and lead you into the crowd—I don't want to lose you, and after all I'm still not quite sure how much you really want to be here, and how much you're doing it to indulge me and see me in my revealing costume. I guess in the end it doesn't matter—I'm glad you're here.

The drums start, and I'm ready to walk, to run, ready to dance. Flutes, drums, maracas, tambourines—everyone in our immediate area has found something to make noise with. I'm given a child's rattle by a nearby mother, and I shake it, though I feel my heart should be loud enough... I'm sure you, at least, can hear it. My favorite day of the year, my favorite celebration, and I'm humming, twitching, aching to move, feeling intensely in my body the way I sometimes do when I'm dancing, and sometimes when I'm drunk. Intoxicating, indeed, this night's beauty and your gaze on me like a hand.

Under the overpass at the end of Fourth, near the parade's destination, and I feel like I'm entering Abbadon, people on either side dressed in white death's-head masks with torches, leading us down. The dissolution of death seems almost erotic to me tonight, I'm not afraid of it...coming apart to be put back together in another order, incorporating fragments from all around—from you, from the rest of the dancers, from the music, from the wind. I'm warm inside with excitement, but my outside is cold, so I twine my arm around yours and walk closer, communicating my thrill to you by osmosis.

We come up out of the tunnel into the field where the performance is getting under way. All the people ahead of us are here now, which means there's room about to breathe but not much else. We're able to get closer to the stage, though, and the crush is even greater up there. You're behind me, still holding my hand, and I can practically chew on the shoulder of the girl in front of me, should it take my fancy.

Flam Chen is onstage and doing what they do best: dancing and burning things. Great white stilt-walkers strut about, making circuitous arches over the whirling dancers below, who swing balls of fire on the ends of chains in patterns that linger in my eyes. Before long my front is blazing with heat and my back is cold, with a line of confused skin along either side of me, which a certain wicked man behind me now begins to trace with his fingertips.

I lean back against you, the bass of the music vibrating my breastbone in sync with my heartbeat, and yours, as I feel it near my left shoulder. Your fingers are giving me shivers to go with the goosebumps I already had. But the crowd is like a New York subway—even as you tilt your head and kiss my neck, even as you make my knees weak, I couldn't fall down if I wanted to. Trapped between you and the fire.

A new song begins, a song I know. It's Massive Attack, Protection, and it's well-known to me and to every other member of the audience, I think. The kind of people who are here to see this show tonight are the kind of people who know this song, have danced to this song. The heavy bass begins and the crowd seems to sway as a unit, dancing as best they can in such confined conditions.

The blazing light onstage makes our place very dark, as you continue tickling my sides and kissing my neck below my left ear. I reach up and tangle my fingers in your hair, leaning my head back against your shoulder, but still watching the show through hooded eyes.

A girl in a white cat-suit begins to whirl onstage, trailing a ball of fire after her, and on the speakers Tracy Thorn begins to purr, murmuring: "This girl I know..."

A low hum, rhythmic. Everyone knows the words. I know the words. I reach down and grab your hands, pulling them inside my shroud as I turn my head toward you, singing softly against your lips...

"...you can put your arms around her..."

Your hands are cold on my burning skin. The girl onstage lights a fire at her feet and it spreads into a wall, encircling her. In front of me two women, swaying with the crowd as we are—can't help it. I hear their voices, raised and treble like cold water down my back, like your cool fingers up my stomach...

"...stand in front of you..."

My legs are gone, just gone. I don't know what the devil you did with them but you and this crowd are the only things holding me up now. I leave your hands to their devices inside my costume—they know what they're doing, do they ever—and reach around to touch what I can of you, my fingers finding an exposed strip of skin just above the loose waist of your pants—unusually loose, that... Further exploration reveals more.

"Hmmm..." I murmur, then breathe deep as you tickle me, just the tips of your fingers lightly drawing on my breasts.

"...and I don't have no fear..."

My back's warm now, my front blazing, the whole inside of me molten. Incoherently I manage to convey some of this condition to you in your ear, and, ever the detective, you send your left hand on down to search for clues. The girl onstage has been joined by a man wearing a giant carnival head and a few scraps of cloth... gods know how he got through the fire, but his feet are joining the drums and she's wrapping her burning arms around him. I have the thought that we might get paid if we got up onstage and just kept at what we're already doing, but that thought, like every other, doesn't last long. I have to try not to shake as your right hand caresses my breast, rubbing my nipple agonizingly slowly.

You need some encouragement. Definitely. I find that strip of exposed skin on you and track it farther this time, down past your unfastened pants. As I find you, as I stroke you, the crowd is still singing.

"...I'm a girl and you're a boy..."

You nip at my shoulder with your teeth and sigh with me, pushing forward to meet my hands... not too much, the girl in front of me is so near... close enough to touch. I could touch her, draw her in, into this blatantly secret tableau, pull her up against me and caress her the way you are me, pinch her the same way when you pinch my nipples right... oh, right there. Maybe I will. Maybe another time. Right now all I want is you, your lips and tongue on my neck, your right hand warm now from my body and stroking my breasts, my nipples that are dark blue points in my ocean of blue skin concealed beneath this thin shroud. All I want is the other hand, teasing my legs, my thighs, holding me against you so I don't fall and finding the very center of this aching indigo whirlpool... all I want is you, you and the part of you I've found with my own explorations, hard and hot and streaked with blue from my rubbing fingers.

"...you know you can lean on me..."

Your left hand, by your intent or the sheer gravity of my need, has found its target, and my weight's on you as you burn away my supports and then delve within with those wicked fingers, setting off a paroxysm of pleasure that ripples through my body fluidly. I moan helplessly, my head falling back against your shoulder, and the fire onstage is flickering in my eyes, no more than a hazy flash compared to the conflagration being set off inside me. I pull you closer, needing you nearer, not a molecule of air intruding between us, and my hand guides you to where you're needed... needed so desperately.

"...more than love..."

"Here, love, please," I whisper. Your devilish fingers have found the evidence they sought and have called in reinforcements more suited to an in-depth investigation. I feel you there, rubbing up and down, teasing me, so close but not... not close enough.

"Ask me again," your voice against my ear, followed by your gentle teeth, and I moan. "Beg."

I shudder, grasping at your right hand and pressing it to rougher work at my breast. "Please... god, please, I need you... need you inside..."

Your soft chuckle in my ear, your hot shaft sliding up and down against me, unfolding me, unwrapping me like a truffle but somehow refusing to eat your fill.

"Beg," against my neck, licking, tasting, tantalizing. Can't take this anymore.

"God damn it..." I gasp, pushing back against you, you keeping just out of reach. "The hell with that," and I reach back to you. "Fuck me." I grab your hips with strong hands and jerk you forward, plunging you all the way into my heat, spasming against you as I'm filled.

Oh god...

"...that's the way it should be..."

My body quakes against you as a rush of ecstasy overwhelms me with my first climax. Clenching around you, my fingernails digging into your hips, moaning loudly, openly. Fortunately the music is louder now, the bass rising, the people around us dancing in place... they look like they're having their own orgasms, the way they're gyrating, so it seems I'm in good company. You begin to move within me and I gasp, feeling the voluptuous sensation of you all the way in, holding me up, supporting me, plundering your prize. Oh my god... it doesn't end...

"...the way I feel..."

I close my eyes, blinded by the afterglow of the fire onstage, taking one of your hands and knitting my fingers with yours. I'm imagining the painted expanse under this shroud, imagining your lovely flesh pale against my midnight breasts, stomach, legs. I'm imagining, as below it occurs, your cock streaked with blue and disappearing into scalding heat the same color as the night.

The music is rising, an ascending piano line that has always made me think of a building storm, growing from within like the rapturous feeling you're giving me. I can feel you getting close, the way you gasp and hold my hand tighter, the way you swell inside me, losing your habitual cool, and I'm wishing I could see your face properly; I love to see your blue eyes go dark, dark like my dyed skin, like the hand twined with yours, like the other moving down to our intersecting points, feeling the silk of you sliding in and out of me.

You're nibbling my shoulder, but as you lose control you're biting too, your lips slightly blue. I raise my hand, wet from between us, and slip my fingers into your mouth and as you bite down a shudder runs through me, the pressure of your teeth and your tongue tasting me on my fingertips. Then the shaking moves to you, growing between us, and you moan around my hand as you explode inside me. I convulse against you, my head snapping back, gazing at the stars through the billowing smoke, feeling inexorable waves of pleasure unknitting my spine, feeling you shaking and releasing into me...the crowd supporting us as both of our legs give out.

We stand still a long, warm time, you buried in me, little aftershocks making us tremble against each other. I turn my head to find your mouth, withdrawing my fingers so I can kiss you. I drag my fingertips across both of your cheeks, leaving long streaks of dark blue, and kiss you again, and again as the music fades with the sound of rain.

***Lyrics borrowed from Massive Attack's "Protection," from the album of the same name. The Dia de los Muertos Parade happens every year the weekend after Halloween in Tucson... Flam Chen and Tucson Puppet Works are among the many performers.