Chapter 2

“Did he see me?” I stepped back. Catching sight of him was intense. It was more intense than I imagined. It wasn’t that he was handsome. He wasn’t. Rather he possessed a charisma – he appeared humble, with a searching presence as he leafed through a couple of books. He glanced up. He was professorial. I smiled.

How can you tell if a man will submit to you? I sensed it. Call it a mixture of intuition and vision with the attitude displayed by his posture. I watched him for several minutes then departed as another man approached the table. The two men quickly became actively engaged in a conversation.

As I walked away, I thought he looked over in my direction out of the corner of his eye. “I’m going to have you,” I murmured, as I exited the bookstore.

My mind returned to the hotel bed. I stared at his face. His pudgy cheeks, and bulbous nose reminded me of squirrels in Central Park in the fall, stuffing their faces with acorns. My gaze traveled lower to his shaved body, pouched stomach and muscled calves, long arms and broad firm fingers were in stark contrast to his face. I took note of the solid gold bracelet on his wrist. It spoke of wealth, a wealth I was indifferent to. He was with me to satisfy his hunger. I also wanted to soothe my physical appetite. I’m oversexed. He was an alternate choice. There are some days I can’t get enough and other days it feels perfunctory, formulaic and meaningless like a plot-less porn film. I guess it’s the nature of life. What do I expect? I surmised the sex was ultimately neither good nor bad for him. It was inadequate for me. My want and desire are more provocative. Breathing quietly, my inner voice meditated with mixed emotions.

My reverie was interrupted by the distinct audible sound of another taxi’s horn seeping through the window from the street outside. I slipped out of bed and walked over to the window with its parted curtains and stretched my body as I looked out at the buildings across 76th Street. My bedmate stopped snoring, then started again. The experience with him was part of an informal business arrangement and was quickly vanishing into an alcove of my memory. I wanted to be loved and fucked emotionally as I fantasized about the man in the bookstore.

I reached down and slipped my fingers into my warm divide and slowly pressed them against my engorged clit that stood erect measured in inches. I like playing with it like a man who masturbates, prolonging the foreplay before reaching an orgasm. My nipples hardened as I thought of the man I saw in the bookstore. With each thrust I pushed my long fingers in harder, vigorously massaging my clit, moving deeper inside. My breathing became heavy. I could feel the man in the bookstore inside me. My eyes photographed him. He possessed a seeker’s look, like a curious minded foreign correspondent in some remote place digesting events around him, with longish hair and a provocative sexuality on display through his sensual, deep blue eyes and an unreadable smile. He was a banquet for which I sought to satisfy my insatiable hunger. I imagined him sucking my clit. I thrust my fingers deeper, drenching them with my juices. I lusted for the distinguished humble stranger. I fucked him in my mind. The city outside paid no attention to my inner lust. My fingers gently played with my erect clit as if I was masturbating a man.

My body jerked. I took a deep breath. I moaned. Shuddering, the fluid dripped down my inner thighs. Exhaling, I raised my sticky fingers to my mouth and tasted my juices. I savored the flavor of the mild tasting, sweet climax.

The man rolled over on the bed, his breathing punctuated again with a gasp. He was even more out of shape than I originally estimated. His body masked the lack of stamina. I tiptoed to the bathroom and looked in a mirror. I gazed at my statuesque figure and wiped the wetness from my pussy and thighs with tissue. The deep brown ringlets surrounding my mound were an expression of my natural self. I briefly gazed at my Mediterranean visage. On my lower left leg above my ankle was an abstract tattoo that hinted more about my heritage than what I confided with any particular lover. I was considered an exotic work of art from the men and women I slept with. I walked over to the closet and removed my charcoal pinstripe skirt, matching jacket, lavender blouse, and black lacey bra from a hanger next to his dark blue suit and dressed in the sound of snoring in the background. I applied a touch of Brazilian tan lipstick on my thick, soft lips then slid my feet into four-inch black ankle strapped heels. It was then I noticed a nametag on the nearby dresser. Leonard.

I paused briefly and exited the room without looking back, carrying my leather satchel slung over my shoulder in the early morning hours down the hallway to the elevator, pressing the lobby button. Already crafting my next steps, I walked out of the boutique hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and feeling the morning rain turned mist pour over my body. “Taxi!” I waved at a nearby vehicle. Getting in, “Tarrytown, please,” I said to the driver.

He gazed in the rearview mirror. “Ok, lady,” Making his way into sparse traffic, I saw the knowing smile and bob of his head, counting the high dollar fare.

“The shudder of an orgasm is simply measured by the instant of a memory like an exclamation mark. Memory?” I whispered looking out the taxi window.

“Did you say something?” The taxi driver asked.

“Talking to myself.”

He shrugged, “So what’s new?”

Glancing at the passing cityscape, it seemed of late I second-guessed the men I slept with - a glass of fine wine, soft words and a moan and offering my oral expertise after fifteen minutes of dancing. “Some days I’d rather be alone than be a participant in a liaison or rendezvous.” I whispered to myself. “If I want the universe to change I have to change.”

Vera, my assistant, once counseled me, “You need a humble, compassionate intellectual who’s searching but not sure of what he is seeking. He has a grasp of his internal wiring, is a man of intense curiosity and willingly monogamous to your poly nature. Ask yourself, how many years did you spend in a disjointed marital union to the philandering narcissist you called a husband? He was a charismatic Manhattan lobbyist and financial wizard while you were a head nurse in an emergency room. Where did it get you? Your parents died during your honeymoon to the Bahamas. That was the first sign. And then years later a nervous breakdown, weight loss followed by weight gain. You were on pills for depression and vitamins for energy. Where did all the tears get you?” She answered her own question, “A divorce. A settlement.”

I didn’t make out so bad. Yet, I pondered Vera’s frank words as the taxi jostled through traffic. A conversation with Dr. Sheila Chasteté, my friend at Columbia, came to mind. We belonged to the Goddess Circle. She went on occasion by the name of Dr. Sheila and suggested I needed to meet Micah Zunge, an associate professor of Medieval History at Columbia University, and close friend that might fancy my deeper passion and intellectual interests. “You both appear to me to be on the same field of inquiry, exploring the quirky terrain of relationships but have yet to find each other. Micah is a humble and lusty intellectual who has arrived at an emotional impasse. He seeks a special woman to guide him…a dominant feminine woman,” Dr. Sheila told me over a Manhattan during a late-night rendezvous at the Hamilton Bar on Amsterdam Avenue.

Dr. Sheila looked at me, “Both Micah and my husband have similar levels of curiosity. Except my husband’s parents named him, Jean-Paul, after the French existentialist, Sartre. My husband hates the name Jean-Paul and what he represents. He prefers Albert Camus’ writings. I told him people could give a shit. And in my husband’s case, he doesn’t know how to manage his instrument of pleasure in light of his exotic desires. The musical notes of his biological rhythm are flat. The result inevitably provoked a sexual void in my opinion. Whereas Micah, in my opinion, is from a different time – the Knight–errant from the Medieval Ages seeking a goddess who would offer a path to a satori or awakening. Micah is an unfinished canvas in that regard.”

“I appreciate,” I said with a partial grin. The more I looked into Micah’s background, the more I wanted to know him. I thought of Dr. Sheila’s arrangement with her husband. I knew she experimented with chastity devices for men as she and others talked about the use of cock cages at our meetings of the Goddess Circle.

As I sat in the taxi watching buildings recede in the distance, I reflected on the intimate scenarios with the men and women I experienced - the hunger, thirst and avidity for the little details the enhanced the relationship even if it was one-night stand. “Micah,” I repeated his name when a billboard with a butterfly landing on a flower petal came into view. I smiled and reached for my cell phone checking the time, 6:00 a.m. I decided to make a call and then paused.

I remembered Dr. Sheila telling me she was also an early riser. In my Columbia University contacts, several names were filed. Among them: Dr. Sheila Chasteté and Assoc. Prof. Micah Zunge that I had recently added to my contacts. I smiled at his name’s meaning. If my understanding of Hebrew was correct, then Micah translates into he who is like God, and Zunge…mm…perhaps a conspicuous tongue. “So, my dear Micah…” I mused to myself. “Micah, you’re an intriguing and humble man with a voice of your own.”

Drops of rain speckled the window of the taxi as I glanced at the passing scenery.

“Looks like we’re in for more rain, “ The taxi driver interrupted my thoughts.

“It does look that way.” I said, wondering whether Micah was still asleep.

I pressed the keys on my cellular phone.