Death Of A Centerfold

I move my chair closer to her,
her long brown body dolloped across the beach towel
like congealed honey.
I move close enough to see the breeze
flutter the tiny wisps of blonde baby fuzz
that rise and fall on the various orbs, satellites and planetoids
that constitute the galaxy of her.

The man in the other chair seems to be agitated.
His face is slippery, assuming new proportions
every time I glance in his direction.
He's an adolescent wastrel, a junkie gypsy,
emotionally progressed into early adulthood at most.

I move away from the woman and he settles, his motor idling.
His snaky nest of hair goes dormant,
his torn rock-star t-shirt comes to rest;
the one he once wore while running from the police.
His head is a rolodex, a flip-book of faces:
pugnacious, defiant, bewildered, sullen, enraged.

As an experiment, I once again move closer to the lollipop trollope.
As expected, the multi-faced man-boy trembles and sputters
and spins around in his seat,
his hair turbo-morphing in a territorial, peacockian display.
It seems that every time I move towards the voluptuous love-doll,
stretched out tanned and sphinx-like,
with the remote yet very real promise of sex
tucked into the faintly curved corner of her mouth,
druggie-boy over there gets his bowels in an uproar.

The proximity of my chair to his chair
to the babe on the blanket
most likely holds some secret pythagorian significance.
There is the remote possibility that we're in a minimalist play;
three actors, two chairs, one blanket.
Where exactly are we anyway? Are these floorboards?

I lean forward and reach under the woman's breasts,
squished into such pleasing ovoids against her towel,
groping for her spongy nipples
to which I attach small form-fitting cups
of silver studded with precious jewels.

The woman's reaction is as noncommittal as the twitch of a lizard's eye.
Her expression says that she could just as easily have sex with me
as with change-o spastic man in the other chair.
We're faceless to her, interchangeable,
two spermy-boys, carriers of libido-fire,
circling around the giant goddess egg-woman,
illuminating the blackened id-space like two fireflies
hoping to win favor with the moon.
One's strategy is worship; the other's, jealous possession.

In a moment of epiphany, I choose to abdicate, drop out of the race.
I cross to stage right where I see another woman waiting.
Her face is as warm and welcoming as a loaf of fresh-baked bread.
Her shiny dark eyes are oreo cookies
and the cream filling in the middle is reserved only for me.
She is as deep and wide as a mountain,
and as sparkly and small as a ladybug's wing.
Her angels and devils dance minuets on her shoulders.
And when she smiles at me, a whoosh of energy
shoots straight up my spine,
dissolving the dirt-clods in my chest and throat,
and exploding out the top of my head like kundalini fireworks.

I take her hand and as we exit the theatre
I look back over my shoulder
to witness the final orchestrated cum-shot,
the gooey, drippy tapioca
sprayed all over the glossy pages,
splattered against the blinking video screen,
and ancient, crusty, balled-up tissues
blowing across the floorboards
like forgotten tumbleweeds.

David Aronson
April 2010