Post by goldenmyst on Jul 30, 2018 11:20:49 GMT -6
Sonja at 18
My small town naïveté leaves me quite unprepared for life in the city. The circuits of my brain overload after one too many acid parties. And so I crash landed in an asylum for those of a delicate nature.
Our healing village is down by the levee in New Orleans. I am deep in Psyche hospital funk. I am curled in a ball on the couch. My mind is afloat in a Sargasso Sea of drugged peace. Richard and Gavin walk by. Richard says, “What should we do with him? Take him out to the levee and beat the shit out of him?”
Gavin looks at my roly poly boy body. “Yea that sounds like the best thing,” he says.
The mind doctors take me off all my meds. I am alert and sitting for a change. Valerie and Shari walk by me wearing tight jeans with curves to die for. Valerie looks at me. “Paul, did you know Shari poses nude for artists in the French Quarter?” I hide my secret turn on like a locked locket. But my eyes take a walk all over Shari’s femme form.
One afternoon Shari sits next to me on the couch. She is whittling on a stick. I speak and she listens. I get worked up and say “My babysitter cousin spanked me when I was a little boy because I asked her too.”
Shari locks eyes with me and says, “Did you enjoy it?”
I am at a loss for words. She holds her carved stick up to my face. She asks, “Does this look like a human face to you?” I nod yes. Shari’s girlfriend Valerie walks up. Shari rises like Bathsheba from her bath. I sit quietly as a monk deep in prayer.
We are refugees ensconced in the seashell world of our village for the divinely touched. The nights and days turn like a merry go round in the madhouse where I reside. Then a cappuccino hued girl with raven hair walks into my life. She is a patient named Sonja whom I approach timidly like a fawn ready to eat out of a human hand.
From the moment she comes in I am entranced by her. She is an eighteen-year-old girl of Honduran descent who enchants me. She has a lyrical way of talking. Her talk is sheer sensual poetry in words. She sits next to me.
Upon our first encounter, I am reclusive. She seems like a girl who wouldn’t be interested in a dotty boy who talks about his long lost girlfriend from Mississippi all day.
The sun of her smile melts my walls. “Can I sit with you? My name’s Sonja.”
She smiles like a mother of pearl. “Mine is Paul but I’m not a great conversationalist.” I answer.
“That’s ok. I just need someone to talk to. Just be yourself. I’m not hard to please.” For our debut together she puts on a wallflower persona which is later revealed to be a disguise.
I sit facing her. Her eyes gleam like gems from a Persian mosaic. “What should I get my boyfriend for Christmas?” Sonja ponders out loud. “Oh, he’d love a subscription to Playboy. I’ll get him that.”
With a tinge of jealousy I reply, “You wouldn’t mind that?”
She smiles big as Texas. “Oh not at all, he’ll love it.”
Our conversation meanders into her disclosure which is a startling revelation. “They took me to the quiet room last night” she whispers. “The men pinned me against the wall. A female nurse ordered me to drop my panties. I was stunned. Therefore, she tugged my nightie up and yanked my panties down. Those males getting an eyeful of my nudist pose was mortifying. I felt the prick on my bottom as she injected me with Haldol. The nurse dressed me. Then the men released me.”
“That breaks my heart. What utter humiliation and what necessitated such measures?” My question goes unanswered. Unashamed, her sun-flower smile beams blue sky love.
Later that day Sonja says, “I’m going to wash your coat for you, Paul.” I wear that coat all day every day, regardless of temperature.
I reply, “You don’t have too.”
She beams and says, “It will be my pleasure.” And she washes it for me. The persona she presents to me that day is one of a kind and compassionate soul with an orchid flower grin.
Soon my turn comes to be dominated like Sonja was, but at the hands of a woman. I sink deep into the oceanic bliss of my twilight dream sea. My eyes twinkle open in the shadowy chamber. A statuesque blonde Goddess gazes down upon my supine form. Firm resolve is written in her glacial eyes. My trembling voice offers acquiescence to her regal dominion.
Her slender fingers grasp the hypodermic as she orders me on my side. She decrees that I expose my posterior. My compliance is inadequate. Therefore, she nimbly grasps the hem of my briefs. In one fluid motion, she briskly tugs my pajama bottoms down, leaving my nether regions bare and vulnerable. She presses her fingers into my supple flesh. Her needle is poised for insertion. I feel the prick of a pinpoint on my sensitive skin. She injects the elixir of psychic peace into my quivering body.
Then she gently pulls my briefs upward. She covers my nakedness in silky soft cotton. My dark angel departs, leaving me in the afterglow of sweet obeisance. Unlike Sonja’s forced submission, mine is consensual as a plebe in the hands of his queen.
When I first meet Sonja I think she is unapproachable. She seems like a yuppie who won’t be interested in a guy who left his heart with an old flame. Over the days to follow I see deeper into her. I see beyond the illusion of her airs, and into the heart of a very vulnerable and beautiful person. She confides to me her fears and anxieties.
We couch sit close enough to feel each other’s
body heat. She curls in fetal ache. “My ovaries are hurting like hell” she exclaims. She says her ovaries are hurting because of birth control pills. I want to reach out and hug her but hospital rules forbid physical contact between patients.
We nestle like hungry birds in our autumn nest. We are inches apart. I feel her breath like a tropic breeze scented with bougainvillea tree. In the winter of my solitude, I cuddle her with eiderdown words.
Sonja tells me what happened. She gets worked up and says, “My boyfriend gave me LSD while we were in the French Quarter. I laid my head in his lap. He turned into a laughing clown with a black crow stare before my madhouse eyes. He changed from being my lover to the Joker from Batman. God, it felt real. That is why they put me in here.”
I look down at her and say, “That LSD trip is a sign. He sounds like a bad trip altogether. That would have scared me. You will get better.”
She rolls on the couch. “Thank you, Paul. I needed to hear that.”
She hugs her knees. Her lipstick is a darker shade of midnight. She looks vulnerable as a winter
sparrow. Her eyelashes flutter like dove’s wings. Her outward display of calm assurance belies a deeper angst.
One of my most endearing memories of Sonja is playing touch football in the quadrangle with her wearing a knee length skirt. She crouches like a tiger with her derriere raised but untouchable by me. Yet she is so close I can reach out and clasp her in my hands. But I watch her every move as she darts like a falconess across the grass.
Her maiden hips have my boyish eyes wide with wonder. Her cotton frock clings to her form. Though young and nubile her curves are those of a woman. She runs like a nymph. I imagine a golden orb of heat swelling like a ripening orange between her legs. A wafer-thin fabric is all that conceals her naked moons, so close, yet so far away, I muse. My eyes undress her so that sultry sunlight licks her bare bottom.
One night I plant myself beside her as she lies on her stomach in her bed with John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” playing on her boom box.
She looks up at me with her streetwise gaze and asks, “How does this song make you feel?”
I look into her abysmal eyes and say “Moved.”
Sonja counters, “The first time I heard ‘Under the Bridge’ by ‘Red Hot Chili Peppers’ I cried and cried. The loneliness of the song felt like stigmata in my soul. Being alone on the streets with the city as my only friend is a feeling I know all too well.” She is too young to be so old.
I counterpart, “Music can be a religious experience. One night I was listening to a woman singing a medieval song on the radio. It was probably in archaic Spanish. However, it sounded like she was saying, ‘Follow me to the end.’ At that moment I knew that if I ever fell in love it would be for life. No matter where my lover’s path took her I would always love her.”
Sonja asks, “Is that how you feel about me?”
A shepherd of our flock bursts in. “PC, PC, physical contact” he jokes.
Sonja looks up at him with her sleepy eyes. “Yea I remember that from the adolescent ward but me and Paul weren’t touching.”
He decrees, “I know, but no men and women in the bedroom together are allowed.”
Sonja wiles her way with the warden. “Richard you are the best. Can I kiss Paul one time?”
He says, “You’re pushing it, Sonja.”
Pleading for crumbs, Sonja says, “I know Richard, but you don’t know how much it hurts not to have a parting kiss with Paul. Please have mercy on me, just one.”
Richard nods assent. Sonja swanks up to me. She plants a wet, sticky kiss on my fresh young lips.
Sonja turns her back to me. She says, “Thanks, Richard. I’ll behave myself. I’ll go to bed now, alone.” I watch Sonja prance away as tears cloud the luster of my eyes.
Me and Sonja sit in the empty cafeteria after hours. “Paul, let’s split this joint,” she says.
I reply, “I feel like a bird in a gilded cage here. It’s time to fly free.”
Sonja says, “Then we’re in this together. Here’s the plan. We’re going to make a run for it holding hands. My girlfriend will be parked in the getaway car in the parking lot. She has a safe house we can stay in.”
“Sounds like a prison escape movie” I say.
Once Sonja told me, “If I fell in a pond or something, you wouldn’t come in and save me, would you?”
I reply, “Of course I would.”
She insists, “No you wouldn’t.” She is like an iceberg whose mysteries I glimpse, but so much remains below the surface.
However, what is to come will test the limits of our friendship. One dreary winter afternoon Sonja and I take a walk outside. She is quiet.
I ask her, “Are you ok, Sonja?”
She says, “I feel like killing someone.”
I ask, “Who?”
She says, “Myself.”
We sit outside. She begs me, “Please don’t tell the staff what I said. I’m going on an outing with my parents tonight.”
I say, “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”
She pleads with me, “I promise, I won’t injure myself.”
That night I stop the administrator as he is leaving. The woman with him says, “He is tired. Can it wait?”
I say, “Sonja made a suicidal comment today.”
The next night at the Cafeteria, I tell Sonja, “I jumped in the pond for you.”
“You mean you told Dave about my suicide comment” she nonchalantly replies.
The next night Sonja’s girlfriend from the outside, Goldie, flamenco hip struts into the cafeteria.
“Paul, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. However, the hospital staff informed me that if we take you along for our escape, they’ll call the police” Sonja laments.
Goldie replies, “Oh sweethearts we can’t get the cops involved. But when you two get discharged you have a couples massage coming on the house.”
Sonja says, “Goldie gives a rapturous glut massage.”
Goldie asks me, “What kind of massage do you want?”
I say, “Pop my nexuses, shake my Chakras, roll my meridians, make my Chi surge.”
Sonja answers, “Be careful what you ask for Paul, you might get it.”
“I can dig that Sonja. You know Sonja I’m trying out different religions. I want to paint myself blue and dance like the Druids. Or maybe I’ll find the truth in a sweat lodge. Then again I could recite creation stories with Aborigines in the outback.”
Sonja’s brow wrinkles. “Paul, you’re mixing up your cultures.”
“Anything but Christian” I smile big.
“I did a pagan ceremony once and it was fantastic,” Sonja says with a grin.
“I must be crazy” I lament to Sonja.
She replies, “No, you’re not crazy. I bring out your wild side.”
“That’s why I like being in your company” is my gleeful reply.
Goldie says, “I’ve never met saner people than you Paul and my Sonja. This place would be the perfect vacation and retreat spot for me. Folks like you all make for refreshing company. There is too much stodginess in this world.”
Sonja replies “Goldie, you wouldn’t like it here. There is so little privacy. I can’t even get myself off. Vibrators are out of the question here. They’d confiscate them. You can’t hide them from the sex toy police but I’d love to see the look on their face if they caught me red handed, especially if it was a guy staffer.”
Goldie replies, “I doubt he’d pry the dildo from your fingers.”
Sonja replies “The decibel level must be kept low because the walls have ears. Any loud noise is suspect. Paul, I can hear the box springs on your bed squeak from the hallway. It sounds like a trampoline in need of greasing.”
“On that note goodnight, enjoy each other sweethearts.”
“I toss and turn in my sleep” I answer Sonja.
“You’d sleep better with a bedmate,” she says.
“Oh please. I’m going to join a monastic order once I’m discharged. Romance isn’t in my language and I’m not talking Latin tongues” I protest.
Sonja says, “There is no monastery in your future. Everyone in this loony bin sees how you play the innocent while flirting with me. You aren’t fooling anyone. None of your fakeries will pass muster in the boot camp of love. Even Plato won’t save you from loneliness.”
I rap back, “Sock it to me Mamacita.”
“Even hearts as cushioned as yours can be broken.”
I say, “Men like me are lone wolves. We don’t run with the pack.”
“You’re more like a lone teddy bear.”
“Hey don’t knock my lupine kinship.”
“Well then, howl at the moon by yourself if you must, but try self-inflicted love” her words tumble.
I exclaim “Are you, saying what I think you’re saying here?”
Sonja expounds, “You’re reading me right but compulsory socialization doesn’t come naturally to me. Please forgive me. Sensory overload sends me into a pussy riot. The nights here are strange and I feel all sweaty and hot like when my body was inked in butterflies with my legs in fishnet stockings. My hormones are raging like when I was sixteen and punching at basement zombies.”
“You sound like a mad chick who cruises the hot asphalt seeking kicks in steamy encounters full of blood pumping spiritual violence. No disrespect intended. I think it’s great to be dark, mad, and free” I juice her but not drug induced.
“No disrespect perceived. That’s “dark, mad, ‘liberated’, and free” to you, bucko; a woman to be reckoned with, invincible in stiletto heels, feminist in a pink miniskirt and thong panties, heretic in a world of pop icon worshippers, born-again Wiccan, Gnostic oatmeal lover, not to mention my um... dark side” she says.
“Well, I’m reprising my role as a goody two shoes Boy Scout. But when I found naughty magazines in a trash heap it changed my life.”
Sonja replies, “I do it too. When I rub my sweet spot I get all schizzy and crazy. It is all I can do not to scream; living in a house with two brothers that would be embarrassing; Though they no doubt get many surreptitious thrills from my night noises. Mom would have put me in this place long ago if she caught me red-handed.”
I sit out in the common area and woo Sonja, telling her places I will take her in Europe. She responds “If you pay for it surely!” I sit next to a staff guy on the couch who has overheard our conversation and has a mischievous grin. He says, “She seduces you with her body and you seduce her with your mind.”
One evening Sonja and I are inside the aerobics studio. “Fight me, Paul. Fight me” lilts Sally the dance therapist. She waves me into her with her hands. Lights flash red. I side kick at her pulling just before contact. She smiles and urges me on. My karate thrust of the foot toward her breasts pumps to the beat of the music. The glint in her eye sparks my libido.
The class ends and the sweaty people disperse. My sweetheart Sonja and I linger in the room. We face Sally who stands resolute.
A strange sensation erupts in me. I tell Sally that my legs are pulling apart. She wants to go with this phenomenon. I let my legs split while Sally holds my thighs. My primal moan grows with the widening spread of my legs. Sally grips my upper hind limbs with womanly strength. Energy surges from my schism. Sonja watches and says “Oh my God!” The crack in my being finally closes in exquisite pleasure.
Afterward, Sonja and I sit on the floor with Sally. We word paint impressions of each other. I think Sonja is a yuppie. Sonja jokes “Well I can be.” This moment of intimate sharing between me and the two women helps coax me to rejoin the human family. The room hums with the healing vibrations of an earthquake receding into oceanic quiet.
During our last gabfest in the commons, I ask her, “What were you doing when you landed here?”
Sonja replies, “I was in college just like all the other girls my age.”
“What was your major?”
“I am a freshman in anthropology. My concentration is in Mayan folklore. I just turned eighteen.”
I am flushed with joy. I say, “I just turned eighteen too. What will you do with your degree?”
“Maybe I’ll curate a museum, or perhaps be a barmaid on the beach in Cancún. Instead of wearing a stuffy a pantsuit I’d sport a bikini.”
“I want to be a poet. Yea I survived four years in an all-boys monastery they call a high school.”
She says, “Oh I bet you made your own fun, with all those hormones raging.”
I say, “Oh my, there you go again, Sonja. You seem obsessed with solo sex.”
I have a dreamy smile and she says, “You look like you popped the cork on your first bottle of champagne. But I’ve seen you sit all day reading books. I can’t hang with that. I want someone to talk to me.”
I reply, “Hey, of course, I’ll talk with you. That’s what bookmarks are for. I’m more than a book-worm. I like romance and travel. I’ll show you
a good time, trust me.”
“I need a real man and you seem effete to me. I’m not into feminine men and don’t need a pet.”
“I am a real man. Feel my biceps. I’m built like a locomotive. Go ahead, squeeze my muscles.”
She feels me. “Hey, you’re right. You do feel manly. But are you good in, well you know?”
“I’ve only tested the waters ankle deep so far.”
“So please tell me, don’t be shy, how often do you, well, do it?”
I blush and say, “Well to answer your question, I must confess I am active in that area. I don’t mean to evade you. Do you mean my love life with a woman? I’m so embarrassed. I’ve never had the pleasure.”
“But you are changing the subject. I want to know how often you do it by yourself. So do tell me. I won’t share it with anyone.”
“Well, I am virile. I can do it twice a day at least.”
“Oh you must be kidding me. I’ve heard from the boys who shower with you that your endowment is like a shrunken prune, is that true?”
“In the shower, I do experience shrinkage.”
“Ha! How big is it? Tell me the truth.”
“Don’t you want to be surprised?”
“Don’t be bashful. Tell me!”
“Well, when in full form it is about eight inches at least.”
Sonja tells me “You know Paul when we fly this coop I’d like to do the watusi with you. With all that pent-up sexuality you’d be a Tasmanian Devil.”
I say, “But we’re not married.”
She says, “A mere legal contract easily overlooked in the heat of passion.”
“But fornication is a sin.”
“God won’t mind me having a little appetizer like you.”
We fly under the radar of the staff’s prying eyes for a last private meeting in her room.
I say, “Remember, this hospital has a rule that upon discharge the patients are never to have contact with one another again.”
She says, “One day when we’re older. We’ll run into each other at a sidewalk café in New Orleans. We’ll talk and remember this moment. Then we’ll go to my place. I’ll give you that to hold onto. But for now, let’s kiss one more time.”
I reply, “But will we recognize one another?”
She says, “God, all this farewell talk has me sweating bullets. I need a hot shower.”
“Could you use a partner to scrub those hard to reach spots, one for the road?”
“Oh get out of here you silly goose.”
I listen to her sing in the shower like when she harmonized with pop music on the radio from disco to alternative rock. But her melody sounds
like our swan song.
I break into her panty stash and fondle her surprisingly modest intimate apparel. My fingers trace the seams and luxuriate through the cotton on a sensory memory journey.
Her songs end and like a shoplifter in a lingerie store, I stuff her sweet nothings into a bag in the closet.
She emerges wrapped in a towel and digs through the dresser drawer. Her lips look like she just got a taste of lemon. “What did you do with my panties?”
My sly smile is really a poker face. “Sweetie I only wanted a keepsake.”
She laughs as though she were blowing bubbles.
“The case of the purloined panties” she exclaims.
“I guess I have to give them back.”
She sighs and smiles saying, “I should think so and please tell me what other of my intimate apparel you’ve got squirreled away.”
“Only negligee memories of our naked love tucked away in my heart forever.”
Sonja’s eyelashes flutter like black butterfly wings.
“Give me back my heart and you can keep all my lingerie.”
“Of course my little chickadee, the pages will turn in due time.”
“Paul if our paths ever cross again let me find you having grown some long hair like Jesus. It is long overdue that you let your hair down like Jesus did with Magdalene.”
“Lead me, dear Beatrice, to understand how you came upon this knowledge.”
“Jesus was a man after all. I know men. A man created the Lord’s Supper to feast on the body and blood of Christ because the male finds God through feeding his hunger. Men are cannibals who devour the hand which feeds them. They confuse the offering with the woman.”
“It is a wonder women put up with men.”
“Here I’ve written my phone number. For a good time call Sonja. But please don’t spread it around. I don’t want a reputation.”
“Let’s share the Eucharistic Passion by breaking bread in bed” is my offering.
“Oh God, I want religion!”
My small town naïveté leaves me quite unprepared for life in the city. The circuits of my brain overload after one too many acid parties. And so I crash landed in an asylum for those of a delicate nature.
Our healing village is down by the levee in New Orleans. I am deep in Psyche hospital funk. I am curled in a ball on the couch. My mind is afloat in a Sargasso Sea of drugged peace. Richard and Gavin walk by. Richard says, “What should we do with him? Take him out to the levee and beat the shit out of him?”
Gavin looks at my roly poly boy body. “Yea that sounds like the best thing,” he says.
The mind doctors take me off all my meds. I am alert and sitting for a change. Valerie and Shari walk by me wearing tight jeans with curves to die for. Valerie looks at me. “Paul, did you know Shari poses nude for artists in the French Quarter?” I hide my secret turn on like a locked locket. But my eyes take a walk all over Shari’s femme form.
One afternoon Shari sits next to me on the couch. She is whittling on a stick. I speak and she listens. I get worked up and say “My babysitter cousin spanked me when I was a little boy because I asked her too.”
Shari locks eyes with me and says, “Did you enjoy it?”
I am at a loss for words. She holds her carved stick up to my face. She asks, “Does this look like a human face to you?” I nod yes. Shari’s girlfriend Valerie walks up. Shari rises like Bathsheba from her bath. I sit quietly as a monk deep in prayer.
We are refugees ensconced in the seashell world of our village for the divinely touched. The nights and days turn like a merry go round in the madhouse where I reside. Then a cappuccino hued girl with raven hair walks into my life. She is a patient named Sonja whom I approach timidly like a fawn ready to eat out of a human hand.
From the moment she comes in I am entranced by her. She is an eighteen-year-old girl of Honduran descent who enchants me. She has a lyrical way of talking. Her talk is sheer sensual poetry in words. She sits next to me.
Upon our first encounter, I am reclusive. She seems like a girl who wouldn’t be interested in a dotty boy who talks about his long lost girlfriend from Mississippi all day.
The sun of her smile melts my walls. “Can I sit with you? My name’s Sonja.”
She smiles like a mother of pearl. “Mine is Paul but I’m not a great conversationalist.” I answer.
“That’s ok. I just need someone to talk to. Just be yourself. I’m not hard to please.” For our debut together she puts on a wallflower persona which is later revealed to be a disguise.
I sit facing her. Her eyes gleam like gems from a Persian mosaic. “What should I get my boyfriend for Christmas?” Sonja ponders out loud. “Oh, he’d love a subscription to Playboy. I’ll get him that.”
With a tinge of jealousy I reply, “You wouldn’t mind that?”
She smiles big as Texas. “Oh not at all, he’ll love it.”
Our conversation meanders into her disclosure which is a startling revelation. “They took me to the quiet room last night” she whispers. “The men pinned me against the wall. A female nurse ordered me to drop my panties. I was stunned. Therefore, she tugged my nightie up and yanked my panties down. Those males getting an eyeful of my nudist pose was mortifying. I felt the prick on my bottom as she injected me with Haldol. The nurse dressed me. Then the men released me.”
“That breaks my heart. What utter humiliation and what necessitated such measures?” My question goes unanswered. Unashamed, her sun-flower smile beams blue sky love.
Later that day Sonja says, “I’m going to wash your coat for you, Paul.” I wear that coat all day every day, regardless of temperature.
I reply, “You don’t have too.”
She beams and says, “It will be my pleasure.” And she washes it for me. The persona she presents to me that day is one of a kind and compassionate soul with an orchid flower grin.
Soon my turn comes to be dominated like Sonja was, but at the hands of a woman. I sink deep into the oceanic bliss of my twilight dream sea. My eyes twinkle open in the shadowy chamber. A statuesque blonde Goddess gazes down upon my supine form. Firm resolve is written in her glacial eyes. My trembling voice offers acquiescence to her regal dominion.
Her slender fingers grasp the hypodermic as she orders me on my side. She decrees that I expose my posterior. My compliance is inadequate. Therefore, she nimbly grasps the hem of my briefs. In one fluid motion, she briskly tugs my pajama bottoms down, leaving my nether regions bare and vulnerable. She presses her fingers into my supple flesh. Her needle is poised for insertion. I feel the prick of a pinpoint on my sensitive skin. She injects the elixir of psychic peace into my quivering body.
Then she gently pulls my briefs upward. She covers my nakedness in silky soft cotton. My dark angel departs, leaving me in the afterglow of sweet obeisance. Unlike Sonja’s forced submission, mine is consensual as a plebe in the hands of his queen.
When I first meet Sonja I think she is unapproachable. She seems like a yuppie who won’t be interested in a guy who left his heart with an old flame. Over the days to follow I see deeper into her. I see beyond the illusion of her airs, and into the heart of a very vulnerable and beautiful person. She confides to me her fears and anxieties.
We couch sit close enough to feel each other’s
body heat. She curls in fetal ache. “My ovaries are hurting like hell” she exclaims. She says her ovaries are hurting because of birth control pills. I want to reach out and hug her but hospital rules forbid physical contact between patients.
We nestle like hungry birds in our autumn nest. We are inches apart. I feel her breath like a tropic breeze scented with bougainvillea tree. In the winter of my solitude, I cuddle her with eiderdown words.
Sonja tells me what happened. She gets worked up and says, “My boyfriend gave me LSD while we were in the French Quarter. I laid my head in his lap. He turned into a laughing clown with a black crow stare before my madhouse eyes. He changed from being my lover to the Joker from Batman. God, it felt real. That is why they put me in here.”
I look down at her and say, “That LSD trip is a sign. He sounds like a bad trip altogether. That would have scared me. You will get better.”
She rolls on the couch. “Thank you, Paul. I needed to hear that.”
She hugs her knees. Her lipstick is a darker shade of midnight. She looks vulnerable as a winter
sparrow. Her eyelashes flutter like dove’s wings. Her outward display of calm assurance belies a deeper angst.
One of my most endearing memories of Sonja is playing touch football in the quadrangle with her wearing a knee length skirt. She crouches like a tiger with her derriere raised but untouchable by me. Yet she is so close I can reach out and clasp her in my hands. But I watch her every move as she darts like a falconess across the grass.
Her maiden hips have my boyish eyes wide with wonder. Her cotton frock clings to her form. Though young and nubile her curves are those of a woman. She runs like a nymph. I imagine a golden orb of heat swelling like a ripening orange between her legs. A wafer-thin fabric is all that conceals her naked moons, so close, yet so far away, I muse. My eyes undress her so that sultry sunlight licks her bare bottom.
One night I plant myself beside her as she lies on her stomach in her bed with John Denver’s “Annie’s Song” playing on her boom box.
She looks up at me with her streetwise gaze and asks, “How does this song make you feel?”
I look into her abysmal eyes and say “Moved.”
Sonja counters, “The first time I heard ‘Under the Bridge’ by ‘Red Hot Chili Peppers’ I cried and cried. The loneliness of the song felt like stigmata in my soul. Being alone on the streets with the city as my only friend is a feeling I know all too well.” She is too young to be so old.
I counterpart, “Music can be a religious experience. One night I was listening to a woman singing a medieval song on the radio. It was probably in archaic Spanish. However, it sounded like she was saying, ‘Follow me to the end.’ At that moment I knew that if I ever fell in love it would be for life. No matter where my lover’s path took her I would always love her.”
Sonja asks, “Is that how you feel about me?”
A shepherd of our flock bursts in. “PC, PC, physical contact” he jokes.
Sonja looks up at him with her sleepy eyes. “Yea I remember that from the adolescent ward but me and Paul weren’t touching.”
He decrees, “I know, but no men and women in the bedroom together are allowed.”
Sonja wiles her way with the warden. “Richard you are the best. Can I kiss Paul one time?”
He says, “You’re pushing it, Sonja.”
Pleading for crumbs, Sonja says, “I know Richard, but you don’t know how much it hurts not to have a parting kiss with Paul. Please have mercy on me, just one.”
Richard nods assent. Sonja swanks up to me. She plants a wet, sticky kiss on my fresh young lips.
Sonja turns her back to me. She says, “Thanks, Richard. I’ll behave myself. I’ll go to bed now, alone.” I watch Sonja prance away as tears cloud the luster of my eyes.
Me and Sonja sit in the empty cafeteria after hours. “Paul, let’s split this joint,” she says.
I reply, “I feel like a bird in a gilded cage here. It’s time to fly free.”
Sonja says, “Then we’re in this together. Here’s the plan. We’re going to make a run for it holding hands. My girlfriend will be parked in the getaway car in the parking lot. She has a safe house we can stay in.”
“Sounds like a prison escape movie” I say.
Once Sonja told me, “If I fell in a pond or something, you wouldn’t come in and save me, would you?”
I reply, “Of course I would.”
She insists, “No you wouldn’t.” She is like an iceberg whose mysteries I glimpse, but so much remains below the surface.
However, what is to come will test the limits of our friendship. One dreary winter afternoon Sonja and I take a walk outside. She is quiet.
I ask her, “Are you ok, Sonja?”
She says, “I feel like killing someone.”
I ask, “Who?”
She says, “Myself.”
We sit outside. She begs me, “Please don’t tell the staff what I said. I’m going on an outing with my parents tonight.”
I say, “Promise me you won’t hurt yourself.”
She pleads with me, “I promise, I won’t injure myself.”
That night I stop the administrator as he is leaving. The woman with him says, “He is tired. Can it wait?”
I say, “Sonja made a suicidal comment today.”
The next night at the Cafeteria, I tell Sonja, “I jumped in the pond for you.”
“You mean you told Dave about my suicide comment” she nonchalantly replies.
The next night Sonja’s girlfriend from the outside, Goldie, flamenco hip struts into the cafeteria.
“Paul, I hate to be the bearer of bad news. However, the hospital staff informed me that if we take you along for our escape, they’ll call the police” Sonja laments.
Goldie replies, “Oh sweethearts we can’t get the cops involved. But when you two get discharged you have a couples massage coming on the house.”
Sonja says, “Goldie gives a rapturous glut massage.”
Goldie asks me, “What kind of massage do you want?”
I say, “Pop my nexuses, shake my Chakras, roll my meridians, make my Chi surge.”
Sonja answers, “Be careful what you ask for Paul, you might get it.”
“I can dig that Sonja. You know Sonja I’m trying out different religions. I want to paint myself blue and dance like the Druids. Or maybe I’ll find the truth in a sweat lodge. Then again I could recite creation stories with Aborigines in the outback.”
Sonja’s brow wrinkles. “Paul, you’re mixing up your cultures.”
“Anything but Christian” I smile big.
“I did a pagan ceremony once and it was fantastic,” Sonja says with a grin.
“I must be crazy” I lament to Sonja.
She replies, “No, you’re not crazy. I bring out your wild side.”
“That’s why I like being in your company” is my gleeful reply.
Goldie says, “I’ve never met saner people than you Paul and my Sonja. This place would be the perfect vacation and retreat spot for me. Folks like you all make for refreshing company. There is too much stodginess in this world.”
Sonja replies “Goldie, you wouldn’t like it here. There is so little privacy. I can’t even get myself off. Vibrators are out of the question here. They’d confiscate them. You can’t hide them from the sex toy police but I’d love to see the look on their face if they caught me red handed, especially if it was a guy staffer.”
Goldie replies, “I doubt he’d pry the dildo from your fingers.”
Sonja replies “The decibel level must be kept low because the walls have ears. Any loud noise is suspect. Paul, I can hear the box springs on your bed squeak from the hallway. It sounds like a trampoline in need of greasing.”
“On that note goodnight, enjoy each other sweethearts.”
“I toss and turn in my sleep” I answer Sonja.
“You’d sleep better with a bedmate,” she says.
“Oh please. I’m going to join a monastic order once I’m discharged. Romance isn’t in my language and I’m not talking Latin tongues” I protest.
Sonja says, “There is no monastery in your future. Everyone in this loony bin sees how you play the innocent while flirting with me. You aren’t fooling anyone. None of your fakeries will pass muster in the boot camp of love. Even Plato won’t save you from loneliness.”
I rap back, “Sock it to me Mamacita.”
“Even hearts as cushioned as yours can be broken.”
I say, “Men like me are lone wolves. We don’t run with the pack.”
“You’re more like a lone teddy bear.”
“Hey don’t knock my lupine kinship.”
“Well then, howl at the moon by yourself if you must, but try self-inflicted love” her words tumble.
I exclaim “Are you, saying what I think you’re saying here?”
Sonja expounds, “You’re reading me right but compulsory socialization doesn’t come naturally to me. Please forgive me. Sensory overload sends me into a pussy riot. The nights here are strange and I feel all sweaty and hot like when my body was inked in butterflies with my legs in fishnet stockings. My hormones are raging like when I was sixteen and punching at basement zombies.”
“You sound like a mad chick who cruises the hot asphalt seeking kicks in steamy encounters full of blood pumping spiritual violence. No disrespect intended. I think it’s great to be dark, mad, and free” I juice her but not drug induced.
“No disrespect perceived. That’s “dark, mad, ‘liberated’, and free” to you, bucko; a woman to be reckoned with, invincible in stiletto heels, feminist in a pink miniskirt and thong panties, heretic in a world of pop icon worshippers, born-again Wiccan, Gnostic oatmeal lover, not to mention my um... dark side” she says.
“Well, I’m reprising my role as a goody two shoes Boy Scout. But when I found naughty magazines in a trash heap it changed my life.”
Sonja replies, “I do it too. When I rub my sweet spot I get all schizzy and crazy. It is all I can do not to scream; living in a house with two brothers that would be embarrassing; Though they no doubt get many surreptitious thrills from my night noises. Mom would have put me in this place long ago if she caught me red-handed.”
I sit out in the common area and woo Sonja, telling her places I will take her in Europe. She responds “If you pay for it surely!” I sit next to a staff guy on the couch who has overheard our conversation and has a mischievous grin. He says, “She seduces you with her body and you seduce her with your mind.”
One evening Sonja and I are inside the aerobics studio. “Fight me, Paul. Fight me” lilts Sally the dance therapist. She waves me into her with her hands. Lights flash red. I side kick at her pulling just before contact. She smiles and urges me on. My karate thrust of the foot toward her breasts pumps to the beat of the music. The glint in her eye sparks my libido.
The class ends and the sweaty people disperse. My sweetheart Sonja and I linger in the room. We face Sally who stands resolute.
A strange sensation erupts in me. I tell Sally that my legs are pulling apart. She wants to go with this phenomenon. I let my legs split while Sally holds my thighs. My primal moan grows with the widening spread of my legs. Sally grips my upper hind limbs with womanly strength. Energy surges from my schism. Sonja watches and says “Oh my God!” The crack in my being finally closes in exquisite pleasure.
Afterward, Sonja and I sit on the floor with Sally. We word paint impressions of each other. I think Sonja is a yuppie. Sonja jokes “Well I can be.” This moment of intimate sharing between me and the two women helps coax me to rejoin the human family. The room hums with the healing vibrations of an earthquake receding into oceanic quiet.
During our last gabfest in the commons, I ask her, “What were you doing when you landed here?”
Sonja replies, “I was in college just like all the other girls my age.”
“What was your major?”
“I am a freshman in anthropology. My concentration is in Mayan folklore. I just turned eighteen.”
I am flushed with joy. I say, “I just turned eighteen too. What will you do with your degree?”
“Maybe I’ll curate a museum, or perhaps be a barmaid on the beach in Cancún. Instead of wearing a stuffy a pantsuit I’d sport a bikini.”
“I want to be a poet. Yea I survived four years in an all-boys monastery they call a high school.”
She says, “Oh I bet you made your own fun, with all those hormones raging.”
I say, “Oh my, there you go again, Sonja. You seem obsessed with solo sex.”
I have a dreamy smile and she says, “You look like you popped the cork on your first bottle of champagne. But I’ve seen you sit all day reading books. I can’t hang with that. I want someone to talk to me.”
I reply, “Hey, of course, I’ll talk with you. That’s what bookmarks are for. I’m more than a book-worm. I like romance and travel. I’ll show you
a good time, trust me.”
“I need a real man and you seem effete to me. I’m not into feminine men and don’t need a pet.”
“I am a real man. Feel my biceps. I’m built like a locomotive. Go ahead, squeeze my muscles.”
She feels me. “Hey, you’re right. You do feel manly. But are you good in, well you know?”
“I’ve only tested the waters ankle deep so far.”
“So please tell me, don’t be shy, how often do you, well, do it?”
I blush and say, “Well to answer your question, I must confess I am active in that area. I don’t mean to evade you. Do you mean my love life with a woman? I’m so embarrassed. I’ve never had the pleasure.”
“But you are changing the subject. I want to know how often you do it by yourself. So do tell me. I won’t share it with anyone.”
“Well, I am virile. I can do it twice a day at least.”
“Oh you must be kidding me. I’ve heard from the boys who shower with you that your endowment is like a shrunken prune, is that true?”
“In the shower, I do experience shrinkage.”
“Ha! How big is it? Tell me the truth.”
“Don’t you want to be surprised?”
“Don’t be bashful. Tell me!”
“Well, when in full form it is about eight inches at least.”
Sonja tells me “You know Paul when we fly this coop I’d like to do the watusi with you. With all that pent-up sexuality you’d be a Tasmanian Devil.”
I say, “But we’re not married.”
She says, “A mere legal contract easily overlooked in the heat of passion.”
“But fornication is a sin.”
“God won’t mind me having a little appetizer like you.”
We fly under the radar of the staff’s prying eyes for a last private meeting in her room.
I say, “Remember, this hospital has a rule that upon discharge the patients are never to have contact with one another again.”
She says, “One day when we’re older. We’ll run into each other at a sidewalk café in New Orleans. We’ll talk and remember this moment. Then we’ll go to my place. I’ll give you that to hold onto. But for now, let’s kiss one more time.”
I reply, “But will we recognize one another?”
She says, “God, all this farewell talk has me sweating bullets. I need a hot shower.”
“Could you use a partner to scrub those hard to reach spots, one for the road?”
“Oh get out of here you silly goose.”
I listen to her sing in the shower like when she harmonized with pop music on the radio from disco to alternative rock. But her melody sounds
like our swan song.
I break into her panty stash and fondle her surprisingly modest intimate apparel. My fingers trace the seams and luxuriate through the cotton on a sensory memory journey.
Her songs end and like a shoplifter in a lingerie store, I stuff her sweet nothings into a bag in the closet.
She emerges wrapped in a towel and digs through the dresser drawer. Her lips look like she just got a taste of lemon. “What did you do with my panties?”
My sly smile is really a poker face. “Sweetie I only wanted a keepsake.”
She laughs as though she were blowing bubbles.
“The case of the purloined panties” she exclaims.
“I guess I have to give them back.”
She sighs and smiles saying, “I should think so and please tell me what other of my intimate apparel you’ve got squirreled away.”
“Only negligee memories of our naked love tucked away in my heart forever.”
Sonja’s eyelashes flutter like black butterfly wings.
“Give me back my heart and you can keep all my lingerie.”
“Of course my little chickadee, the pages will turn in due time.”
“Paul if our paths ever cross again let me find you having grown some long hair like Jesus. It is long overdue that you let your hair down like Jesus did with Magdalene.”
“Lead me, dear Beatrice, to understand how you came upon this knowledge.”
“Jesus was a man after all. I know men. A man created the Lord’s Supper to feast on the body and blood of Christ because the male finds God through feeding his hunger. Men are cannibals who devour the hand which feeds them. They confuse the offering with the woman.”
“It is a wonder women put up with men.”
“Here I’ve written my phone number. For a good time call Sonja. But please don’t spread it around. I don’t want a reputation.”
“Let’s share the Eucharistic Passion by breaking bread in bed” is my offering.
“Oh God, I want religion!”
