A few weeks ago, I dreamed of a conversion van. Its surprising presence in my dream reminded me of a van from my youth. 1994 and 19 years old. I was attending college in a suffocatingly quaint Nebraska town, hemmed in by commodity crops and abandoned ammunition bunkers.
The girl down the hall, who came from the town that bore the name of the hotdogs it made, invited me out with her boyfriend and his best friend. The few memories from that night are tenacious, having fought off fresher, competing memories for 28 years.
I clearly recall the man and his van.
A red van striped with metal angel wings and waxed fastidiously.
If it wasn’t for the heart-shaped convex window, I would’ve said the crowning jewel of this mobile aorta was the floor-to-ceiling red shag interior.
We ended up partying long and far enough way that we stayed overnight in a highway motel. One of those roadside motels that creeps along the rural landscape, basking in its single story.
Mike was in the infant stages of burly, and memorably tender.
I don’t know if it was the 90s, or my youth, but it was rare to meet a guy who approached the cunt as if it was a gift from God. And he approached mine with zeal.
I’ve been told that my labia are thick. One guy referred to them as “meaty.” It’s amazing how WHAT is said is less important than HOW it is said. Marty said it with a sense of enthusiastically respectful awe. So I let men feast, and Marty died years ago.
If tastebuds were sanded away, aren’t our cunts just two smooth tongues placed parallel to each other - a thick muscled mouth?
Cunnilingus is basically French kissing upside down.
I woke before Mike the next morning, my body the fruit to his rough husk. The curtain was open from the night before as there was no one to watch us but whiskers of harvested corn. The entire window was filled with a sky flattened by monochromatic grey. I knew without checking the clock that I’d missed my classes, but the bleak view was comforting, everlasting. In one quick night, I felt as if I lived the life of a woman loved.
All his warmth of temperature and touch, I deserved it.
His pure acceptance of all the hated aspects of my body, I deserved that too.
But just as always, and just like many years to come, the terror of his kindness turned me cold.
I was that sky, closed off to sun.
I was that field, already harvested.
I was the cold air that made breathing impossible.
If I’d picked up the dorm phone when he called, I wouldn’t have been me, and yet we are no longer the we’s we once were. But those fields, dormant tho they may be, always risk returning with the unsettling warmth of spring.
Lovely story. Love how inextricably tied the story, you, and the place are.
Might want to check out some Eliza Schlesinger standup comedy.