The Abstract Tattoo

“Breathe!” My back arched. “Rhythm.” My thighs straddled the man’s hips. I pushed down. My ache is insatiable. The desire is unquenchable.

My eyes glanced at the erotic impressionist painting on the wall. “Breathe!” I whispered again.

“‘I’ve never, I’ve never…” He gasped. “Jesus!”

“Are you okay?”

“Oh god, who are you?” he grimaced with pleasure.

Smiling, I thought of Parvati, the goddess of relationships. Matriarchy was the answer to the divisive nature emanating from patriarchy. Me? I’m physically and spiritually an ambiguous nymph and goddess possessing an androgynous attitude. I have an exceptional clit. It’s who I am. I don’t know how to explain it other than an awareness of my two spirits. I embrace the feminine divine.

I’m also Egyptian. And I happen to be Illegitimate. My father? I once asked my mother who just smiled and said, “Reine Sharifa, you brighten my day.”

I know my voice and my heart. Schooled in biology and philosophy I appreciate the protein of my heredity. How else can I explain the two spirits within my body? An abstract art object I received at the death of a friend and the abstract tattoo that arrived with me at birth. Both are symbolic of my traits.

My body gyrated. The grip tightened. The man’s chest heaved. “Christ help me,” He gasped.

“Relax. Relax.”

Colleagues at the New York Goddess Circle grasped the tattoo’s meaning. A caring, dominant, ethical nurturing slut were phrases used to describe me. I would just grin. Measuring a person by a temperature reading is crude, amusing and familiar. I relished a throbbing cock inside my pussy. Depending on the man I could be a cock whore for him.

The eyelids of my one-night stand twitched. His breathing was quite heavy. He knew obedience. I want a man to feel his submission to me. Bliss.

When I was younger I sought affirmation. Self-confidence. I reached a point when I woke up one morning realizing I no longer needed or desired affirmation. If it came, I was gracious, otherwise, fuck it. I had already accepted my worth. My mantra was from Egyptian and Hebrew theology - I am what I am. It’s a universal saying among the ancients and becomes hypnotic if repeated. Much like everything else in life. My empathy, lust and compassion are instinctual. I care in my own way.

Beads of sweat dripped from my protruding brown nipples, dripped down over my visible stomach pouch and disappeared into an entangled, luxurious covering of my divine wetness. My heart beat more from angst than the night of desire. My bare papaya shaped breasts still hungered for the attention of a truly ravenous tongue. While my body felt the heat of the moment, my mind drifted. I tilted my head back and gazed at the ceiling for a second. Straddling the man, his thick cock wrapped in animal skin, the quiet of the hotel room was punctured by an abrupt spasm of heavy breathing. He shuttered. My suitor’s ecstasy bathed his fat, bowed shaft, now drained of its milky fluid.

Sympathetically, I looked down at his distorted face. Eyes closed, he gasped for another breath in sexual agony. I lifted my dripping femininity from him. Soft and tired, he slid out from the trickling wetness. His balding head fell back on the soft oversized pillow, eyelids closed involuntarily over large brown eyes as his chest expanded then contracted. He was semi-conscious and experiencing a form of sexual exhaustion. His fatigue was temporary. My eyes felt the sting of a forming tear. Why? I quickly wiped the saltiness away with a finger.

The sensuous pressure inside me, the rubbing against my petite cock shaped clit, the titillating feeling, satisfied the surface of my libidinous desires. It was a minute feeling. I enjoy the girth though I relish a man who knows how to use his tongue. The thicker the tongue the better. The sonorous tapestry of a cunnilingual orgasm can haunt my mind. Still, I find the arousal of the intellect imperishable. The taste buds of an orgasmic event remains a thought away. Still, I wanted something I didn’t have. Perhaps it existed only in my imagination. I wanted the emotional comfort of a partner waiting for me at home while enjoying the reality of my internal wiring and external behavior. I became a familiar woman with an insatiable sexual instinct. I like the taste of sweat.

An ache seeped into my heart. The ache was for a man who was in another part of the city. Up to this point my sexual liaisons were pragmatic and negotiated. They were unsigned provisional aphrodisiacs where the partners agree to an erotic act. And increasingly they were like the rain clouds that dissipates after its release of moisture, a dampness ensued but never enough. I enjoy diverse partners. I missed a primary partner who would greet me in my home. A deeper connection. And yet I wanted my lovers on the side. As I mature I probably have become more selfish and yet, still I love to nurture.

I moved my body down next to him for several minutes, I listened to him breathe. Eyes shut, the man’s body was still, until suddenly he turned toward me, and his mushroom head fell on the edge of my thigh. He would survive. And my extrusive phallus clit hungered for a man not in the room. In the brevity of a breath an emptiness enveloped my heart and then receded into a mist of hesitation and memory. My eyes gazed at the off-white ceiling.

I was born backstage during a rehearsal of a saucy and amorous off-Broadway play. It was at the Cherry Lane Theater on Commerce Street in Manhattan. I grew up near Washington Square. My mother was an impassioned actress married to a man other than my father. Sharifa was my mother’s surname. Our family was live theater. And I came to know Manhattan as an unchaste offspring of exotic dancers who my mother told me were inspired by Terpsichore, the Greek Muse of dance and song. She also said to me, “Reine Sharifa, to be a credible actor in life you must learn to play the gender roles of both a woman or a man.” And then would add, oral performance is a life skill for both genders. “You’re a sexual being. And you are a natural leader. To know what and who you are may take what seems as a lifetime.”

I matured young. My theatrical career didn’t last. I became acquainted with the city like a soothsayer examining the curved and splintered lines on the palm of my hand. There was no deeper meaning to the elusive reality of the theater in which I was exposed. I learned in the process there are no straight lines to a peculiar desire. I didn’t need to be physically inside a theater to be on stage.

It was during my ever-evolving educational curve the previous night, on an unusually warm, rainy evening, when my desire began sketching the detailed character lines on my brain. I had ridden in a taxi that weaved in and out of the late hour traffic. The driver stopped at a corner for pedestrians crossing the street near St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A striking young woman held onto an umbrella as the wind and rain swirled around her body and the short skirt she was wearing rose above her waist. I noticed she wore a lavender colored crotch-less pantie, her trim pussy accentuated by a car’s headlights as if she was a nude dancer performing on a live stage. I half-smiled as the young woman didn’t appear embarrassed as much as flustered while managing her dilemma. She shrugged her shoulders and looked over at me and laughed. She reminded me of my youth. The wetness clung to her like a sweaty lover after hours of passion. I wondered if she was someone’s inamorata.

And now here I am with a suitor I agreed to meet in the Café Carlyle on East 76th street down a block from Central Park. I thought of the sensuous woman crossing the street as vehicle lights from the street outside danced in bursts across the ceiling through the parted curtains of the hotel room. The tranquil was pierced with a grunt like snore of the man lying next to me.

Minutes passed silently as I adjusted my body against the pillow without disturbing my suitor. His flaccidity weary from battle, partially retreated inside the condom which served as its transparent suit of armor. I shrugged trying to recall the person’s name my suitor uttered when his body shuddered and after he closed his eyes. Was it Rae or Ray, had he gasped? Was he referring to a man or woman? It didn’t matter.

I breathed an anxious breath. The shiver of regret was altered by an unmet desire. I pinched my nipples between my thumbs and forefingers. My thought was redirected to the other man, an associate professor at Columbia University. A confidant and friend at the university intimated to me, “You need to meet this man.” She texted me: “Here’s a recent photo of the man I spoke about to you. His name is Micah Zunge. He’s Jewish.”

A sheet lightning lit up the room. My mind uttered “Micah!” My heart pounded as I recalled him in the flesh browsing among the books at a local bookstore.

“Breathe!” I whispered to myself at the time. I watched him walk over to the adjoining coffee shop with a book in hand. My hand grazed the divide between my legs. I was wet. How could this happen with a man I had yet to meet? He turned his head in my direction. My heart raced.