Dreamweavers Ch. 03

"Soon, he's asking me to help with makeup and shit, you know, his nails. After that, he wants to go out with me as two girlfriends. As long as this was in our house, I could deal with it. Alright, we go to a bar. We make up the D'Arcy part. I have to admit, he looks good—hot, even. We're not there five fucking minutes and he's got three drinks sent over from different guys hitting on him. I'm nursing the fucking martini I ordered! I'm chicken livers and he's fucking filet mignon!

"We go out like this for a few weekends. Then, one weekend, he tells me he's going alone, in drag, without me. That just about does it. He starts coming home late, doesn't talk, and we don't have sex anymore. Tonight, before I came to St. Nick's, he tells me he can't have sex with women anymore. Maybe he should have an operation, he says. I tell him that he and I are through. Did I miss anything, D'Arcy?"

I stand there like a pillar of fucking stone. Actually, about 20 eavesdroppers stand with me like pillars of fucking stone.

"I saw a picture of a Vibrating Butterfly once on the Web," Chelsea continues. "Never owned or used one. I founded, own, and run DreamWeavers. We write up the fantasies people want but can't or won't live out. I don't know if they masturbate to them, pass them on to friends, or use them to live out their dreams. I know there are thousands who pay decent money to read about themselves getting dressed as a monkey and someone fucking them with a banana. Whatever they want! But you know all about that, Patrick! You're the Whore of Words…Just like me. D'Arcy is one of our writers. Specialty, D'Arcy?"

"That would be alternative sexual preferences and practices," he, or she, offers, with a grin.

"This started out, Patrick, as kind of a business deal for me. When we had coffee and you said you wrote porn—well, I'm always looking for writers. And you said you wouldn't mind if I flirted with you. You got it—and more! I liked the sex, but I like the poet much more."

"I've been on a fucking job interview? Is that what you're saying?" I shout as loud as I want to in a public place.

"Shit, no, Patrick." Chelsea pleads. "Honey, I fell for you right away and the poem drilled my feelings home." She stops. "I wanted you for my lover, since I met you. I just had a lot of weird shit going on, you know?"

D'Arcy chimes in. "Tell me truthful, Patrick! Weren't you hot when you first saw me? Ain't I the black bitch of your dreams?" I am a deer in headlights and a pickup truck filled with men dressed as gorgeous women is barreling down the highway. Hooooonk! Splat!

"Keith and I came here looking for some suck and fuck. You going to share your daddy, Chelsea?" D'Arcy says with a laugh.

"Bitch-ass!" Chelsea growls at D'Arcy. "He's mine and I'm going to fuck him senseless all night, if that's what he wants!" I have decided I no longer want to be part of this unfolding drama and walk to the door and then outside. I breathe deeply. Several times. The night is not dark enough.

I am grateful that Chelsea doesn't follow immediately. I then feel her hand on my shoulder. "I asked for the truth and got it. Way more than I wanted!" I turn to her. "I got some simple questions. Please, Chelsea, give me some simple answers?" She nods.

"You and he are through, getting a divorce?" She nods yes.

"Do you like me?" She nods yes.

"Will you really come with me tonight and fuck me senseless?" She shouts "Yes!"

"How much does it pay?" She looks at me quizzically. "The pay. At DreamWeavers. How much does it pay?" She laughs. "It'll buy you a double latte, mocha grande, fucking something!"

"One more question?" She nods yes.

"Does D'Arcy have it in him…or her…to, like, hunt you or me or both of us down and do us in with a shotgun?"

"Patrick! I am a shooter, but not with a handgun, Sweetheart!" That is D'Arcy's unmistakable baritone voice behind me. "Don't you see? This works great for everyone. I get to be the woman I want to be! You get your pretty butterfly! She gets the poet and writer she's wanted and the lover she needs! God's in His heaven…."

"Where's Keith?" Chelsea asks.

"Oh, he got picked up by a Latin domie who's going to train him to be a maid for a leather fetishist on the Gold Coast! Not the Cardinal, by the way!" He's real happy. Besides, he was kind of boring, anyway. He played Donna Summer every time we had sex!" D'Arcy laughs. Actually, I'm getting to like her.

"So, you two going off into the sunset and live happily ever after?" We begin walking to the exit.

"Day at a time, D'Arcy," I say. "For most things." We're approaching the Ferris wheel, where Marcus stands, no customers to keep him busy. D'Arcy remarks, "This the twink nigga who took you on the ride of your life?"

"Hi, folks!" he waves at us. He walks up to me.

"Are you some fucking bitch magnet, Man?" First, the white girl and now this hot nigga bitch? Jesus!" A thought occurs. It is wicked, perverted, and delicious.

"Marcus," I ask. "How complicated is this ride to work?"

"Yeah, like it's rocket science! Like an elevator, man. I let people in, close the door, push the green button, and everything else is done by computer. I'm only here to help people on and off, clean out the cars, and push the green button."

"Excuse me a second, Marcus." I walk over to D'Arcy and whisper in his ear. "Oh, fucking yes, Patrick! You are fucking cool! Yes!" Chelsea is not sure what is going on. D'Arcy goes up to Marcus and plants a big wet kiss on him, grabbing his ass. "Sho' would like yo' sweet black meat fucking my face, Stud Nigga!"

Marcus looks at me. "It's okay, Marcus. Been there. Done that!" I fake a yawn. "You two have a wonderful time." D'Arcy leads him to a waiting car.

"Just push the green button, Sir!" Marcus yells. I walk up to close the door. Before I do, I get into the car and I reach to D'Arcy and pull her to me. I kiss her deep and long and passionately. "Mmmm-mmm! Patrick! That is a wicked tongue!" I slip my business card down the front of her dress. "Call me some time, D'Arcy. You've aroused a longtime curiosity of mine." She smiles wide at me and I click the door shut.

"Don't forget to wear your seat belt at all times!" I yell. Two "fuck yous" echo from the car.

I walk back to the terminal and push the green button. Three times. "Isn't this a little bit cruel, Patrick?" Chelsea asks with a giggle.

"Maybe Marcus will just get the fucking blowjob of his life. Maybe he'll get much more and like it! Life's full of great moments and cruel lessons, Chelsea! It is—what it is." I then say, half-serious and half-joking, "I drank as a lark and became a junkie. You married a man who wants to become a woman. Some people flying on 9/11 were flying home, expecting to make love to their spouses. I loved a woman who died on me way too soon. I wrote a poem for a woman I hardly knew…."

"And she fell for you!"

"Did she? I know I fell for her. From the top of a Ferris wheel!!"

"Yo! DreamWeavers. 'Tell us your dream and we'll make someone cream!' Simeon on the line—to do your dream phyne!"

"You're fired!"

"Say what?"

"Simeon, you're fucking fired!"

"Patrick? Ol' Paddy-O, my bro? What are you talking about?"

"Chelsea put me in charge of all her writers, so I'm firing you."

"You didn't like Part 2? You two walk happily into the sunset! You got to cum, like you asked!"

"Simeon, I wanted to cum IN A WOMAN, prickhead, not in my fucking pants! INSIDE A WOMAN! Then you give me three pages on D'Arcy! What do I give a shit about him for?"

"It explains the plot, in a kinky sort of way. How else could I get the two of you together?"

"Does the phrase 'sweep her off her fucking feet' mean anything to you? How about 'knock her socks off'? How about 'make her train go whoo-whoo? Or 'float her boat'?" Drop your iBook off tomorrow and get your last paycheck. I'll also give you the way the story should have ended!"

We get on the expressway and Chelsea looks through my CDs.

"Got any Van Halen, Patrick?" she laughs. "Bet not. You don't seem the type.! She then pops in a Little Feat CD. She exudes happiness, radiance, vibrancy. It's contagious. She skips to Track 6, Let It Roll.

Rollin' down highway 95

Sailin' through her hometown countryside

Move on over stand astride

My cruise control's in overdrive

Need to take my baby for a ride

Oooh she's like a smooth stretch of highway

Oooh she's like a cool summer breeze

If my motor's runnin' right, we might lose control tonight

Got the shape I love to squeeze, looks that bring me to my knees

Oh please, let it roll tonight

Might be doin' more than fifty-five

When I sit my baby right down by my side

Where the rubber hit the road

This rig don't dig no overload

Come on, and let my baby ride

Oooh she's like a smooth stretch of highway

Oooh she's like a cool summer breeze

If my motor's runnin' right, we might lose control tonight

Got the shape I love to squeeze, looks that bring me to my knees

Oh please, let it roll tonight

Now I know just how heaven feels

When she reach beneath my big old steerin' wheel

Dyna flow, power glide

Bored and stroked, I'm satisfied

When I take my baby for a ride

Oooh she's like a smooth stretch of highway

Oooh she's like a cool summer breeze

If my motor's runnin' right, we might lose control tonight

Got the shape I love to squeeze, looks that bring me to my knees

Oh please, let it roll tonight

Let It Roll © Bill Payne, Paul Barrere, Martin Kibbee

Oh, God, I had forgotten how life can be playful, that Ferris wheels and hot dogs and singing loud in a car with a girl can lighten the heart. Chelsea is light in my life—not just illumination, but lightness. I can be so utterly dark and plodding. She is dangerous, but she is light. She plays with the zipper of my pants and I pretend to be horrified. I reach over and squeeze her ass, pinch her cheeks, and she jerks up and grabs my balls. Tight. She kisses my ear and licks inside it, blows in it, and I almost swerve into a semi barreling down the highway next to us.

The CD is over and Chelsea nestles against me. I miss bench seats. Transmission shafts and cup holders have eliminated the sheer romanticism of driving with your baby snuggled against you, your left hand steering, your right cupping her to you, reaching around to her breast, reaching down to her fanny, her reaching up to kiss you on the cheek. My place is clean. Dishes done. Clothes picked up. I have extra toothbrushes, I think. What I don't have is a condom.

In high school, most guys carried a condom in their wallets. It was the same condom from year to year. You carried it until it made a permanent "O" in the leather. You could even take it out and the impression would make you think it was still in there. It was not done as a precaution. It was meant to say "I am a soldier ready for battle. Any time. Any beachhead. Semper Fi!" They disintegrated the moment you opened them, as if you would use them. My hormones flowed in a torrent of seething lava during that very tiny window in world history when STDs didn't kill you. Today, I need to use one.

I pull into the parking lot of an all-night grocery/drug store, explaining I'll get a toothbrush and I'll just be a minute.

When I first read about AIDS, it was in Science 84, a now-defunct magazine. I read about this incredibly awful disease from Africa that had been spread into the gay community. It seemed the disease from perdition. As Karen and I continued to live together and remain monogamous, it was not my disease. I remember the day I walked into work in 1987 and read the memo.

"We regret to inform you that Frank Barger died yesterday after a long illness." My gay supervisor—Karen's good friend—told me he died of AIDS. Chelsea or I or both may drink ourselves to death. I do not want to fuck myself to death. Not literally.

In the condom aisle, I am overwhelmed with the selection. In the '60s, Trojans, lubed or not, were just about the only choices. And back then, you had to go up to the pharmacist and ASK FOR THEM! This is like a fucking cereal aisle. Ribbed. Ticklers. Feelers. Colors. Flavored. Anything in a Long-Island-Iced-Tea, ribbed, pre-lubed model, in mauve? I pick out several and decide to let her have her pick, though I pick out one brand labeled "Magnum." It's a little joke.

I stand in the check-out line, more than a little red from embarrassment. I watch as boxes of condoms, a tube of KY (who knows?), and a Hershey bar (as a distraction—"I wanted some candy and thought I'd pick up a few other things!"), float toward the check-out guy. The high-school girls behind me buying hair color giggle. I hear one of them say, "He's going over to your Grandma's!" I turn to them and glare. "She swallows, you know!" I want to crawl into a hole. Maybe I can get a seventeen-year-old guy to buy this shit for me and I'll buy him a 24-pack!

Chelsea suddenly appears next to me. She places a can of fancy talcum powder with the stuff I'm buying and then decides to have some fun.

"Oh, you must have one helluva hot cock-slut-bitch waiting for you!" she says, just short of a shout.

I am now the color called cerise. But I can come back.

"That's what your business card says, ma'am, doesn't it? Three holes—no waiting!?" I ask.

"Oh, good—you got the K-Y! I brought that strap-on you love so much! Oh, and you did get the Magnum size, didn't you, Honey? You know, the regular ones always break!"

"Now, Cunt-Muffin, that's only because you always forget to take your clit ring off!" I say. The store is stunned. I pay and we leave. "Potty mouth!" I yell at her outside. "Cunt muffin?" she asks, and we double over again in laughter.

We finally get to my place. My stomach is knotted up and my hand shakes as I place the key in the door, turn the lock and knob, and open it. "After you," I say. It is stupid but I look to the sky and say I'm sorry to Karen. She has died, Patrick. Move on. She loved life much more than you did anyway. Bringing Chelsea here is a celebration, not an offense to Karen.

I follow Chelsea in and switch on a light. Jordan and Pippen, my two mutts and my best friends, come to greet us. They are too old to care about barking, but they are very curious about this new species I've brought home—another alpha dog? beta dog? dog at all? Standing behind her, I put my arms around her waist and hug her to me, kiss her on the neck. J and P seem satisfied she is no foe and go back to wherever.

"I have a question you have to answer, and I probably should have asked it before, but in the heat of the moment, it just didn't occur to me." I pause. "Karen and I were married and monogamous for a very long time. The 'D'Arcy Factor,' shall I call it, and him having sex with men…." I let the comment hang in the air like a sword suspended over her head.

"We were both clean when we got married a year ago," she says. "I definitely had that checked out. I haven't had sex with him since he started having sex with guys."

"So, then, you just wanted to enjoy watching me change fifteen various shades of red in the store?"

"Hell, no! But I've never seen a fluorescent-green, glow-in-the-dark french tickler on a cock before! I thought tonight might be my night!" she laughs. Then asks, "Do you have something I could change into? You know, like pajamas, or a t-shirt and shorts, or a shirt?" During our drive home, I fantasized about us ripping each other's clothes off as we walked through the door and then fucking on the carpet like William Hurt and Kathleen Turner in Body Heat.

I am glad she sets a slower pace.

"Sure. I'll be right back." She is thoughtful not to ask for a nightgown. It took me a year before I cleaned Karen's closet and dresser. I bring her a worn-and-washed-to-buttery-softness flannel shirt. My favorite.

She unzips her boots and kicks them off and drops her pants and kicks them off as well. I forgot she never put her panties back on. She peels off her socks and her top. Chelsea. Beautiful butterfly. Naked in my garden. Everything else turns to black and white. I burn the image of my first look at her like this. No matter what happens, I will have this picture until I die. She slips on the shirt. It drapes her like an elegant gown.

"Got any candles, Patrick?" she asks. I lead her to the kitchen pantry and open the door.

"My daughter makes them as a hobby," I explain as Chelsea gasps at shelf-after-shelf of candles in all colors, shapes, and scents. "She was a bit of a pyro. Had to keep her away from matches until she went off to college!"

As I stand leaning against the counter, Chelsea fills her arms and walks through my house, lighting candles and turning off lights. She returns to me, clasps me to her, and kisses me gently and fully.

"Shower?" she asks. As we walk to the bathroom we are bathed in a flickering yellow glow like the sunshine at late dusk. I am now at what I knew would be the inevitable point I had been consciously and unconsciously dreading since Karen died—undressing in front of another woman.

"I'll get it started," she whispers to me, and goes into the bathroom and closes the door. I am often amazed at how God can pay attention to the smallest details! I strip and put on a light robe. "Are you coming, Patrick?" I open the door and walk into steam, like an August day in New Orleans. Her hand reaches out from the curtain. I slip the robe off and join her.

We clasp our hands behind each other's waist. I look at her and laugh a little, our foreheads pressed together.

"What?" she asks.

"I can't believe what you did in the store! That was so fucking funny! Those people are going to tell that story for years!" I kiss her firmly, and she opens her mouth, sucks my tongue into her, cups my ass with her hands.

I am suddenly aware that my body, up until this moment, was an overwound guitar string about to snap. I feel every muscle begin to relax. Chelsea knew this—that's why she eased into it: changing clothes, placing the candles, allowing me to undress alone, creating the steam so I could slip in. I am liking her more and more. Every passing moment.

While still kissing me, she reaches for the soap and lathers my back, shoulders, and ass, the soap gliding gently over me like a figure skater on ice. I moan into her mouth and she sucks harder on my tongue. She breaks our kiss and asks me to turn around, and then she lathers my chest, rubbing my nipples, massaging them. I do not think most women understand that men like this. I don't know—maybe most men don't. I do. It's very sensual. She kisses my back as a butterfly flits—left, right, up, down—I never know where next. She gets on her knees and soaps my thighs and calves and again asks me to turn around.

"Oh, fucking cool!" she says. "You shave! God, that is so fucking sexy!" I am cerise for the second time tonight! I had forgotten!

"I can explain," I offer. "It's a part of my writing!" Oh, who the fuck cares! Instead, I feel the most intense warmth on my left ball and a jolt of many volts jerks my body, and my cock pulses with her suck. She releases me, saying "Not yet, Patrick. Just a tease!" She soaps my cock and up my belly. Then, she takes the showerhead in her hands and adjusts the setting to pulse. She waves it over my shoulders, across my chest, letting it hover at my nipples, and then turns me around and finishes my back.

She changes the setting to a stream and opens my ass to work there. Oh, that feels much better than I thought it would! Back to a shower, she rinses my thighs and feet. Lifting my cock, she changes to pulse and lets the jetting water work my balls. Lord! This is a poem in a shower!

I take the soap and the showerhead from her and kiss her. "Incredible! A touch of the poet in you too!" and she smiles. She knows. Why not?