It Only Takes One

It is the heat of summer, one of those days when all things seemed extra sultry and bleak. I climb aboard a bus headed south. It is a nondescript bus with an even more un-determined path. Eyes peer out of sweat coated faces as the air conditioner gasps above the slender rows. Two petite girls with their bug eyes and cherry faces exit with their mother just as I enter. The bus was suddenly empty of all things youthful. A college girl in her mid twenties with her legs wrapped around her professor boyfriend are the only thing that will keep this trip from being a bunch of salty old crackers baking in the sun.

"May I sit here?" I ask a woman about my age with graying black hair to shift her bag so that I can place my weary bones on the already dripping leather.

"Sure," she seems overly cheerful to have a seat companion, but I don't think much of it.

I have reached middle age and with that came a sense of responsibility to go out and make something happen. I have to go out and change the world before it is too late. Well it is either change the world, buy a Ferrari, or go live with your kids outside of Boca. The truth is I am already outside. I lived my life on the outskirts with my long hippy hair and my mustache that always seemed out of place on my slender Italian face.

"I'm Mary," she says taking my hand in hers.

The shake leads to a dripping of sweat between us as we pull away. It was way too hot and no one seemed to notice but me. Sure, they fanned themselves, wiped away the sweat, but they didn't complain. Instead we all headed south hoping to find something that wasn't autonomy from the high temperatures.

Mary intrigued me as much as any man my age can be intrigued by a woman they had barely talked to, which was a lot. There were a million fantasies already going through my mind about her overly small mouth and ample thighs that touched mine especially when the crazed bus driver barreled over a bump. Sweat trickled down her nose and touched the bare flesh of my hands. I dream of licking the sweat from my hand but think better against it.

"You got anything to eat?" Another old fart like me leans over smelling of tobacco.

"No," I say firmly pressing myself closer to Mary.

"I keep trying to quit smoking, but it makes the appetite more. I guess I got an oral fixation. Freud would have a field day with those of us who continue to smoke even though the health department is against it. You know I heard Freud worked for the health department somewhere in Austria or Russia, somewhere like that."

I could barely keep my cool as I continue to stare at him. Surely he realizes what he just said. Surely he knew how ignorant he has been, how invasive?

He continues, "I'm headed down to my grandkids birthday party. She is a beautiful little baby girl, but I fear for her with a mother like hers. I told my son to marry a good girl but he just wouldn't listen. He went behind my back and married that little..."

"I got a piece of chocolate," I say fishing the melted bar out of my pocket.

"Thank you," he says stuffing it into his mouth.

I close my eyes. Sleep comes almost instantly.

I awaken to a frightful spectacle of hell. Outside the window the waved lines of pavement lie motionless around us. The bus is stopped. I rub my eyes and wonder where the restaurant or bathroom is located. Surely there is some outhouse or fishy bar stool awaiting me for fifteen minutes of my journey? Nope, there is nothing because we are un-ironically stopped in the middle of nowhere.

"Where are we?" I turn to Mary.

"The bus is broken," she says lifting her hair off her neck, I freeze.

Mary has the kind of neck that a man like me imagines spreading lips on and running finger tips over. She is the pale color of flame outline, with even paler hairs spread along her mid-neck leading to her collar bone. I harden in my pants as her blackish hair is swooped neatly about fingers that could do a million things to a man. Her nails are natural and dainty with only one crack on the index finger on her right hand. I would kiss that hand.

"They can't call for help," my talkative friend next to me relays the information.

"Why not?" I say with my voice much louder than it should be.

"Radio is broken too."

Broken, I hate the word, broken.

We are all broken, I see that now. I thought I was different falling prey to that frail woman with her big doe eyes who eventually said she divorced me. I said she needed reasons and she said that I just gave her another. I walked out the door then and practically fell onto the bus. This bus would actually prove to be the only settlement that I would be allowed, broken.

The bus driver scrambles back onto the bus a blur of thick waist and knotted hair all over. He looks sweaty and nasty but for once I keep a thought to myself.

"We are going to be here for a while folks," his New York accent reminds us all of our mistake to think that we could travel south and suffer no repercussions.

"It's hot," the college girl says still sitting in the lap of her boyfriend.

"Then I suggest you take off some of those layers," the bus driver says pointing to the professor's arms around her.

"What layers?" She says it with a grin, "these layers?"

Suddenly she is pulling her shirt above her head and staring at the bus driver defiantly. She must not know New Yorkers.

"Suit yourself," the bus driver shrugs and then makes his way back to his seat to try the radio again.

People try their cell phones, but there is no service.

Mary's leg against my own seems overly close and liquid. She has become liquid as the lines outside have become waves. Everything surrounding me is wet but it is closer to lava that anything cold.

The college girl sits completely nude from the waist up. Tiny hairs spread along her tummy like a second coating of innocence and sex. Her breasts are sex layered flatly against a ribcage. They offer up no weight and no dimension, but her unattainable youth is contained firmly in her beau's hands.

He removes his shirt next quickly applying his hands back to there slick collegiate mount. His olive skin molds against hers with a glue of their sweat. People stare and look away.

The stares are jealous stares of years gone by. Not one of us wants to throw out the confines that keep us together, mummies without their wraps. We just haven't quite gotten to the fuck it all age where even the fabrics reveal what once was and obviously no longer is.

"Do you feel cooler?" Mary asks mindful that we are all watching her.

"Yes," the college girl says beginning to take off her skirt.

No one is going to stop her and yet it feels all wrong. She strips away decency revealing that only one layer separates her from the nudity that we all want as the cabin of the bus burns from the heat. The seats begin to stick and pull but not in a good way, and yet there are still two people more alive and more relaxed than the rest of us.

An hour passes.

"I can't take it anymore," Mary shouts ripping the buttons as she opens her shirt.

It only takes one.

Part Two

It only takes one person in a crowd to say they are an individual. Once this declaration happens, the rest of the crowd follows squashing individuality. Clothes begin to rain down around me, but I'm the enigma. I'm the voyeur, the watcher, and my throat is quenched with the sweat around me. My nostrils shiver from the salty stench. I'm the maddest one of the bunch.

Mary's nudity is all encompassing beside me as her furred mound presses slightly against the pleather seats. Her thick thighs wind and unwind around each other but her sex still peaks and my eyes wander to her cavern and upwards to a mature but flat belly below thick breasts.

Her breasts are a canvas of tiny woven freckles and stretch marks that sketch her age. Oh and her neck, that glorious neck is oh so tantalizing. I clasp one hand against the other afraid of what they might do so close to her neck.

The old man next to me, Herbie is nude too, a mass of poorly digested salt and wrinkled flesh. He is nude and flaccid next to me with a man-sized member of half salute.

"Well I certainly feel better", he announces to no one in particular.

My eyes wander away again to the perfect juxtaposition of the college girl. There are others on the bus, old people with a last chance ditched effort at conforming. No matter the canvas, or the painter, I only am interested in the art. I'm enthralled by it all and still fully clothed.

"And yourself?" Mary asks.

"I feel fine," I admit.

She roars with laughter. She thinks I'm lying.

"You are inhuman then," Herbie says assured.

I'm not the same but I am human. I grab Mary's arm and fit it on my member still clothed, but fully erect. Her eyes go wide. I can tell by her face now that she thought I was ashamed, but shame is the furthest thing from my mind. I'm cool. The ice of pleasure is coursing through my veins; I've animalized them in away.

"Yeah you're fine," she admits with a smile.

The radio blurs to life.

"Rescue is on its way," the bus driver says.

The clothes become make shift confetti. As they begin to put their clothes back on, I begin to strip mine off. They pause to look at me. It only takes one.