Retreat
by
Daniel Kolos
June 11, 2000
Pert breasts, a small, slightly protruding belly and a
most perfect set of buttocks I’ve ever seen is all I remembered from that first
night when I went to sleep in a crowded dormitory. It was crowded not only by people of both
sexes, but also with their scents, their sounds, their hundreds of belongings
scattered around the floor and their thousand and one dreams.
None of these were strong enough to distract me from
my vision. How can a woman that old have
such a youthful body? And how can an old
man like me remember only the five clumps of fat, those three sets of sexual
handles, when I, as a teacher, have preached the wholistic
approach all my life? I have not felt
like this since my youth. It is not
love. Rather, it is like walking through
a grand forest and finding among its thousands of trees the one which is by far
the most majestic, the most outstanding, the
incomparable king of the forest.
I saw her on the beach talking to another old
woman. Then they came into the water,
swam past me and continued on to the deep water dock. I did not exactly stare at them on the beach,
but I looked and I should have remembered more than her breasts, belly and
buttocks. When she climbed the ladder to
the dock, then I stared. We were all
naked to begin with. Swinging breasts,
hanging penises and dangling balls should not have aroused anybody’s interest
in particular. It is very likely that
among the hundreds of naked bodies sunning on the beach, swimming in the lake
or sweating on the volleyball court, it was probably only I who got hung up and
attracted to this one particular woman’s features. I chuckled to myself because it was usually
the uppity, firm, bouncy breasts of young girls that attracted old men’s eyes
and imaginations.
I probably fell asleep with a smile on my face.
In the morning I remembered more.
That meant she was not just in my dreams.
It was a restful night. My sense
of balance had not been disturbed. I lay
in my bed, fully awake, wondering what it would be like to find her curled up
next to me, breathing in the crisp, health giving morning air, her brain waves
rejuvenating her cells and her organs, her perfect buttocks nestled in my lap.
Looking back at her with my clear morning mind, I
could see her completely on the crowded beach.
She had long, shoulder length white hair around her red, sunburned
face. Not a pretty face, but an
interesting face. She looked younger
than the crone she was. I could see her
long legs, still shapely, calves and thighs that walked, that swam, that held
lovers. I knew then that I wanted to be
one of them. I wanted to be her lover. I saw her climbing up the iron ladder to the
diving dock, her pubic hair softened by the water, tightly plastered over the
folds of her lower lips. She is frozen
in my memory, bent over the deck, one foot on the last rung, the other pulled
up under her small breasts just before it sets foot on the cedar boards.
How come I didn’t remember these things last night? Where was my nose, my tongue? It is as if a veil had come down and covered
my imagination, formed a straight jacket around me and allowed only my hands to
follow the contours of her soft, fleshy parts.
That night and that morning, was a year ago. Yesterday I stood across the table from her
at a cocktail party. She was clad in a
body fitting, ankle long dress held up by two thin straps. Too thin!
They were waiting to be removed.
No, that’s my imagination intruding.
This was reality. The dress was
tight around her chest because when she bent forward, the gap did not reveal
her breasts. She picked up a smoked
salmon curl on a cream cheese cracker with her left hand. She waved it at me. Her right held a long, graceful glass of
white wine. She wore neither a bra nor
panties. Two nipples simply announced
that “We are here, whatever you want to make of us.” She was obviously not apologizing for her
small breasts. Her small belly hung
forward, again without apologies. As
someone said ‘Hello!’ to her, she turned around and the tight dress ran
smoothly over those divine buttocks.
Michelangelo's David has a pair of those in cold marble. This woman brought with her, from whatever
past life, his artistic spirit sculpted right into her body.
If she highlights her own love handles like that, then
it is not necessarily my randy mind that has singled out those blobs of fat
from a state of lusty need. She is
simply making a statement, such as “I have a mind, I have a body, the one will
match your wits, the other is bawdy.” Not all that different from the military
drill, “This is my rifle, this is my gun, the one is for fighting, the other is for fun.”
She exuded wholesomeness, or even wholeness. If I wanted to fantasize about her, and then
bring those fantasies into reality, I would have to match her wits. I moved around the table.
“Hello, I am George,” I said and I raised my glass of
red wine to her. She had just swallowed
the smoked salmon cracker and I noticed that her face was still red, offset by
her white hair, mostly smooth skin that wrinkled only when she broke out in a
smile.
“Yes, I know,” she said without raising her voice or
showing any emotion. “We met at the nude
beach last year and had an interesting chat.”
She just stood there and I searched my memory about an interesting chat
but there was only this vague recollection about a group of naked women talking
about writing and publishing, and I, being a writer and publisher, stopped and
joined in the conversation. “And my name
is Linda,” she added. I did not remember
Linda being a part of that conversation.
“Are you a writer, then?” I asked.
“Not tonight,” she said and her mouth and eyes widened
into a smile. “Tonight I am a seeker.”
“Would I be interested in what you are seeking?” I asked hoping to stir the conversation toward my own not
so alternate motive of searching for a partner for the night, if not for the
rest of my life.
“I certainly hope so,” she said and picked up two
salmon crackers, handing me one with a cocktail napkin. “I don’t know what I’d do if this tray of
salmon disappeared. I would have to go
somewhere else and continue to seek truth, wisdom and pleasure.” She brought the cracker up to her mouth, her
tongue scooped out the rolled up orange meat from its soft white bedding. I watched it slowly disappear into her
mouth. The green hue of the scallion
poking out from that roll remained a frozen frame of time in my mind’s eye.
Linda’s girl friend turned to us, the fellow who had
spoken with her having excused himself.
“Oh, my shoulders are just so tight! I wish I could get a massage.” The two women just stared across the room
with an air of expectation. I glanced in
that direction to see if a masseur was actually manifesting out of thin
air. But nothing happened and neither of
them said anything more. How do events
become so surreal so suddenly? A sense
of awkwardness crept into the space among us.
I could give her a cursory massage, I thought. After all, a friendly massage is as
pleasurable to give as it is to receive.
I have enjoyed massage for the past thirty years and I certainly know
how to give one. What stopped me was
that I didn’t know this lady. That
thought, however, only lasted a second or two.
I’ve gone on wild trysts with women whom I didn’t know either at the
beginning or at the end at our intimate but brief acquaintance.
“I can give you a short massage,” I finally
volunteered. Dali could have easily
captured this frozen absurdity in the midst of a mass of moving, talking, clinking
group of people. The moment I uttered
these words, animation resumed among us.
The woman turned around and backed into me. Linda turned to the table to fill up her wine
glass. I placed my hands on the woman’s
shoulders and gave a small squeeze. Her
buttocks backed into me some more which was a problem because that is how I get
excited very, very quickly.
“Let’s sit you down on a bench,” I whispered in her
ear. Her rear end action must have been
an automatic response because the moment she heard my suggestion she disengaged
and shifted her buttocks onto a nearby bench.
For the next ten minutes I gently massaged her shoulders, up and down on
either side of her vertebrae, around her shoulder blades, the full length of
both her arms and up into the base of the skull where the neck muscles become
tendon and attach themselves to the skull.
After a few minutes she took off her shawl and dropped her halter
top. Her shoulders and most of her back
were bare and available. I didn’t look
to see what she looked like from the front.
Linda was engaged in a conversation with a couple who were younger but looked far older than she
did. They were our hosts, charming
people. They attended my workshop
earlier that day in a part of their garden they called the Grape Arbor. It was an ideal setting for the topic,
“Intelligence of the Heart.” The woman
came over to the bench, put a hand on my shoulder, gave me smile and left. I heaved a sigh, gave the shoulders beneath
me another, final squeeze and stepped away from the bench.
“Nonononono
- nooooo!!!!! Don’t stop!, Don’t stop! The pain’s not gone,” she protested. My patient reached out for me and grabbed my
pant legs and pulled me back to her. She
buried her face in my belly and moaned:
“Please continue, Please continue!
PLEASE CONTINUE!!!”
“Did you learn this insistence from your daughter,” I
asked her, referring to the nine years old girl who came to announce in the midst of the massage that she and her
friends will be setting up their book club by the creek where the belvedere was
equipped with lights, “or did you never lose it form your own childhood?” I cradled her head for a few seconds, but
when I tried to move it she clasped her arms around me and made like she was
panting. Linda appeared and they both
burst out laughing. The woman rose,
turned and walked away - or almost did.
She turned around, gave me a big smile and said,
“No, I didn’t learn that from my daughter. That was the real me. Thanks.
It was great. But it was tooooooooo short.” Then
she left.
That’s when I realized that
Linda had also disappeared and I stood there confused. Another glass of wine might clear my brain,
or cloud it enough that I won’t have to worry about what’s happening. I held the balance between my own self
respect and self doubt, between the apparent silliness of other people and the
probable integrity they might have and hold.
I chatted with people, refused several trays of cheese and crackers,
fat, salty olives, and whatever else was being circulated among the
guests.
My erstwhile patient
reappeared, sat back onto the bench and engaged me in conversation.
“I don’t know if I should go
to bed and get a good night sleep or go and dance the night away.”
Since I didn’t respond, a
voice behind me said, “Dancing will refresh you far more than sleep will.” It was Linda’s voice. I became animated again and suddenly had an
opinion:
“I’ll walk you over to the
dance and you can make up your mind in situ.”
The two women looked at each other and I glanced
away not to interrupt whatever non verbal communication was passing between
them. When I turned back, they were
already walking through the gardens towards the dance area. I walked after them. We left the din of the cocktail party, but
could not shake the testosterone filled sounds of the concert under the main
tent. Down and down towards the lake we
made our way through a sylvan path and found ourselves in a different space
altogether. What we saw was not the
dance we expected, although it was a dance.
A high pitched, thin voice
was belting out a strange hybrid of
We did not sit apart for
long. I leaned over to her and asked if
I could resume the massage. She didn’t
say anything, just moved right off her buttocks and settled them right in front
of me. As soon as I touched the muscles
above her collarbones, off came her shawl, her halter top and a moment later
the top of her dress fell on my outstretched legs. I don’t know how long I massaged her, but
when I stopped she did not protest. She
pulled her dress up, replaced her shawl and excused herself. I never saw her again.
I could neither stand nor sit
still. The drum beat went in a
complicated rhythmic 8 which I simplified for myself like this:
Tum, tum; dim-dum, dim-dum; tum,
dum-di-da; dim-dadada
(silence), where ‘tum’ is a whole beat, ‘dim’ and ‘dum’ are half beats, ‘di-da’ are quarter beats and ‘dadada’ are
also quarter beats that are followed by another three quarter beats of
silence. I was drumming on my thighs and
the rest of my body was dancing except for my head which was turned up to the
moon. I was intently watching the
gathering clouds from the west encroach upon our only source of light. Occasional distant lightning went off like
flash bulbs from the paparazzi. The wind
had long ago blown out the torches set up around the amphitheater. When the music stopped, wine was passed
around. Linda and I found one another. A collective protest pierced the night air as
the rain shower caught us in the open air.
People fled, mostly laughing.
Linda and I stood in the rain talking.
I usually look people straight in the eye when I converse with them, but
I was looking at Linda’s bare shoulder as a pool was forming in the hollow of
her collarbone. She did not have tense
muscle problems. When the hollow filled
up it occurred to me to offer her half of my jacket. She accepted it, then remembered that she had
hidden a small bag with a shawl, a flashlight, a bottle of water and micky of scotch in the bushes above the beach. She motioned me to crawl under the
overhanging branches and I followed her as into a cave. The ground was still dry. She placed her shawl around her shoulders,
took a swig of water and passed me the scotch.
It was Glenlivet.
We talked. It was neither inane stuff, nor deep
philosophical meandering. We spoke of
personal things. We were getting to
‘know’ one another in the best sense of the word. We explored the meaning of being a
‘crone’. My concept came from Clarissa
Pinkola Estes’ book, Women Who Run With
The Wolves. Linda had read it. She filled in her own concept with the
physical characteristics such as being post menopausal, over 56 and self
reliant. I was smiling from ear to
ear. I don’t know if she could see me in
the returning moonlight under the thick branches. She spoke animatedly in a strong, loud
voice. I spoke softly, often whispering
as if to keep our conversation private.
Yet, anywhere else I don’t give two hoots for privacy. What was happening to me? When I change persona like that, some self
defense mechanism kicks in to evaluate the cause of the change. At once I understood that Linda and I were
close enough in body, mind and soul to make a night together worthwhile for
both of us. We were already reclining on
the soft grass, my face inches from her nipples protruding from the tight
dress. But we were practically by the
main walkway and another dance was in progress.
Individuals and couples came walking by from time to time. The place was simply not private enough for
me, although thirty years ago a sense of privacy would not have occurred to me. In fact, on a Sunday afternoon, one of my
first lovers and I were walking down a pathway at my university and we stopped
to kiss. In spite of the hot and heavy
night we had previously, we stepped off the path and dragged each other down
onto the grass and made love. Did
anybody see us? I have no idea. But no one stopped or commented on the performance!
“Let’s go back,” I said and
we both crawled out from under the bushes, stretched and began walking back,
up, to civilization and some form of privacy.
We walked off the property to Linda’s motel room. She turned the key and we walked in upon an
unusual scene. An ample breasted older
woman sat across the table from a thin young man. They were staring at Tarot cards. The bed was rumpled and there were obvious
relics of love making. A candle stood
between the couple, its flame dangerously bent from the wind created by the
open door behind me and the open window behind the table. I closed the door.
Linda made the introductions:
“This is Marlene and
Ted. Marlene is the most experienced
Tarot reader in the state.”
Before we even had a chance
to do anything more than to greet each other, Linda had sat down on the edge of
the bed and asked Marlene to do an Astrological Tarot reading for her. It was the simple version, for Marlene
separated the cards into three decks, one for the Sun, one for the Moon, one
for the Planets. Linda drew a card from
each deck and, before I could see them, the two women were giggling and
squealing with joy.
“I knew I was going to make
some major changes, but I didn’t know it had to be my lover,” Linda said to
Marlene. They both looked at me.
Marlene said, “The nine of
Pentacles means either that you choose the successor, or that you choose for
success.”
“I was going back home
tomorrow to pay him a visit for his birthday.
But I am confused, or too weak.
Things have cooled down between us, but you know, sex is like a habit. I was going to turn up there and if he even
gave me a warm hug or a semi-passionate kiss, I was going to go through the
whole thing. Who knows when it will
happen again?” The two women looked at
me again.
“Tonight?” I
asked.
They looked at each other at
this anachronism. I obviously I had not
yet adjusted my timing to Linda’s life.
“Do the Inner-Outer reading,”
Linda commanded Marlene. Marlene took
another deck and asked Linda to shuffle it, took it back and spread the
deck.
“Take one with each hand,”
she said to Linda. Linda reached out
with her right and drew the nine of Wands.
She reached out with her left and drew the Hermit.
Marlene explained the
Astrological setting of all five choices Linda had made,
a language I did not understand. Then
she continued with words that made sense.
“Your right hand represents reaching out, so it is the outer world. Your left hand takes in energy, so it
represents your inner self.”
“So the nine of Wands is like
a hurdle that gets in the way,” Linda offered.
“Or a defense mechanism you
use to cope with the change,” Marlene turned the symbol to advantage.
“Or even a choice among nine
lovers waiting for your will,” I added without a second thought. It was a conversation stopper. The room was dense with silence. After a while Linda’s nose wrinkled up:
“Do I always have to make
such hard choices?” she whined. The two
women put their heads together and laughed again. Linda drew a deep breath and continued, “I
understand the Hermit. That’s me. I am a loner.
That’s why I never married.”
“Nobody ever asked you?” I asked in amazement.
“Oh, they asked, they asked
all right, but what did I have to look forward to? Washing someone else’s dishes and
clothes? Not me!” Linda drew herself up straight. “I told my lovers I will sleep with them as
much as they liked, but I will not marry them.
Those who didn’t like it left.
Those who stuck around enjoyed it.
The Hermit, that’s me all right.”
We chatted about independence
for a while. Marlene said she had
none. She had three children and a
husband, a teaching position, a Tarot practice and an Astrology practice. She had to go off to parties and retreats
like this by herself to figure out where she was in the greater scheme of
life. Her lover stood up and
stretched. “I think I will go back to my
family. They have likely returned from
the dance and my wife will miss me.” He
left.
“Can you do my reading?” I asked.
“Which one do you wish to do
first?” Marlene asked.
“Inner-outer,” I said.
“Shuffle the deck,” she
instructed me, then took it and spread the cards. With my right hand I drew the nine of Wands,
with my left, the nine of Pentacles.
Both cards had appeared in Linda’s draw as well. The two women fell silent. They looked at each other, looked at me,
stared into space. Finally Marlene asked
me, “What does nine mean in your system?”
“Completion, fulfillment,
choice, success,” I listed the possibilities.
“What do you make of two
nines?” she continued her probing.
“Balance,” I said. “It has been my lifelong pursuit to live in
balance between the inner and outer worlds, in balance between the experiences
of the body and the concepts of the intellect, in balance between pain and
pleasure…,” I stopped because Marlene’s eyes were beginning to glaze over.
She prepared the other deck
for me and the nine of Pentacles appeared as my Planet card. Marlene rolled her eyes. I kept mine on Linda. Another of my cards matched hers. She knew exactly what that meant.
“I don’t know,” Linda burst
out in frustration. “I live a very
content life juggling bookkeeping for a few people and doing art on
commission. I’ll do anything for fifty
bucks. I am going to walk out on my
lover tomorrow and then what?”
I was waiting for myself to
say that “I’ll be there for you,” but I really didn’t know where I stood. In a sense Linda wore her heart of her sleeve
and all I had to do was to pick it up and warm it my hands. She also lived in a world of crones. For all I knew, her ‘lover’ could be a
younger woman and my intended intrusion, nay, penetration into her private
life, may not be welcome, not even if it is in the cards.
“Let’s go dance the night
away,” Marlene called to Linda. Without
a word the two of them left. I returned
to my own motel room. It was four in the
morning. I lay down on the bed. It started out as a night full of
potential. What happened?