the drapes. She thought of the people on the planes reduced to dust motes, the middle-aged lady in the woolen suit. The new mother, her babyâs head tucked inside her shirt; the two of them smelling like sugary milk left over after cereal. Without an armature, her desire moved around the woods flinging a nightgown onto bushes, saplings, brambles. Spread over the arching branches of a thicket, the white material looked best. She thought of the last letter she sent him, each word like a day when it rained and she made soup and put on an extra sweater to warm herself.
Then she thought about the last time. How his room was slightly arrogant, with the fireplace, the leather reading chair, the strange print of a dock scene done in neon colors. It was a room from her parallel childhood, one her brother would have inhabited if sheâd been a bankerâs daughter instead of a ministerâs. She walked over to look at the picture and he had come up behind her exactly as he had in the dream the night before. Turning her around, he kissed her first on the lips and then below the ear. She moved her hand up under his shirt, her palm resting on the slope of his back. Then came the whole economic system of skin against skin. Lips first, the nerves sending subtle charges down her chest out into her limbs. A sort of possession began, desire manifesting first in the touch of his fingertips and then in the proximity of big swatches of warm skin. Her favorite landmark: the moment before all hell broke loose, when he took off his glasses and set them carefully on the nightstand beside the bed.
All this was still pleasant to recount. The figurative confabulations were what pained her, the forms they had created in space. His body hanging over her, cock in her mouth, her finger up inside him. Her tongue ringing around that clenched circle of skin. Somewhere inside of him, there was an ancient Chinese city governed by a boy who was constantly fighting back death. Paper lanterns hung in the courtyard, brightest at twilight. There was a city inside of her too, but more like Baltimore than Peking. Vacant storefronts and a fat lady living over a convenience shop. She was anxious to fuck. And the fucking was very nice, especially the part when they were standing against the wall, she up on her tiptoes, him behind her, and then that moment he leaned over and kissed along the raised vertebrae of her spine.
The hole opened up. For a while she sated it with Caesar salads but then it demanded books of poetry in blank verse. She understood after a time that it would only be satisfied with sex soup. One wet pussy. One hard cock. And a bottle of black nail polish. But that recipe just made the longing worse, elemental to her now as the fallen light at the window, as the feel of her own palm against the bones in her hip.
Had she mentioned that the bed was king size? That its scale in proportion to her body was making her sick? And you should always think twice before slipping out of your skin. You hope it will be this great event, that congress will fill with democrats, that glamour will be unmasked as the fraud she really is. But in the end itâs so hard working with people, you want them all to like you and be happy but you get caught up in their frailties, and sometimes you canât help becoming a conspirator in their gloomy conception of original sin.
Flight
BY ROBERT ANTHONY SIEGEL
MY FATHER HAS GOTTEN HIMSELF into some kind of trouble involving money and the law, and for the first time I can remember, I have a role in his life, that of confidant. We spend large chunks of the nighttime hours riding around town while he formulates his plans: compromise, counterattackâall depending on the fluctuations of his mood, which are extreme, from tears to rage and back again. I listen and egg him on toward the more fantastical choicesâbecause at sixteen Iâm not aware that they are fantastical, and because they give me the chance to
Then she thought about the last time. How his room was slightly arrogant, with the fireplace, the leather reading chair, the strange print of a dock scene done in neon colors. It was a room from her parallel childhood, one her brother would have inhabited if sheâd been a bankerâs daughter instead of a ministerâs. She walked over to look at the picture and he had come up behind her exactly as he had in the dream the night before. Turning her around, he kissed her first on the lips and then below the ear. She moved her hand up under his shirt, her palm resting on the slope of his back. Then came the whole economic system of skin against skin. Lips first, the nerves sending subtle charges down her chest out into her limbs. A sort of possession began, desire manifesting first in the touch of his fingertips and then in the proximity of big swatches of warm skin. Her favorite landmark: the moment before all hell broke loose, when he took off his glasses and set them carefully on the nightstand beside the bed.
All this was still pleasant to recount. The figurative confabulations were what pained her, the forms they had created in space. His body hanging over her, cock in her mouth, her finger up inside him. Her tongue ringing around that clenched circle of skin. Somewhere inside of him, there was an ancient Chinese city governed by a boy who was constantly fighting back death. Paper lanterns hung in the courtyard, brightest at twilight. There was a city inside of her too, but more like Baltimore than Peking. Vacant storefronts and a fat lady living over a convenience shop. She was anxious to fuck. And the fucking was very nice, especially the part when they were standing against the wall, she up on her tiptoes, him behind her, and then that moment he leaned over and kissed along the raised vertebrae of her spine.
The hole opened up. For a while she sated it with Caesar salads but then it demanded books of poetry in blank verse. She understood after a time that it would only be satisfied with sex soup. One wet pussy. One hard cock. And a bottle of black nail polish. But that recipe just made the longing worse, elemental to her now as the fallen light at the window, as the feel of her own palm against the bones in her hip.
Had she mentioned that the bed was king size? That its scale in proportion to her body was making her sick? And you should always think twice before slipping out of your skin. You hope it will be this great event, that congress will fill with democrats, that glamour will be unmasked as the fraud she really is. But in the end itâs so hard working with people, you want them all to like you and be happy but you get caught up in their frailties, and sometimes you canât help becoming a conspirator in their gloomy conception of original sin.
Flight
BY ROBERT ANTHONY SIEGEL
MY FATHER HAS GOTTEN HIMSELF into some kind of trouble involving money and the law, and for the first time I can remember, I have a role in his life, that of confidant. We spend large chunks of the nighttime hours riding around town while he formulates his plans: compromise, counterattackâall depending on the fluctuations of his mood, which are extreme, from tears to rage and back again. I listen and egg him on toward the more fantastical choicesâbecause at sixteen Iâm not aware that they are fantastical, and because they give me the chance to
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