series mf romance Checking my face at ten thousand feet. I was standing in a big old jet plane, Delta flight 4844 heading into JFK. I was nervous, my stomach was in a bunch, the captain had informed us our arrival would be delayed TEN WHOLE MINUTES due to holding patterns or somesuch nonsense and I was feeling like a six year old -- ten minutes? What's that, itsounds like a really really long time! I rationalized, like the twenty-six year-old man I was. I've waited four weeks, I can wait ten minutes, that's nothing. Lessee, ten minutes, remember when it was ten days? One minute for every day you waited, think of that, that's so nothing. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK. I looked into the mirror (the mirror looked also, ha). Every long long blond hair in place, except for all those checking in absent up on top of course, a little tiny red spot, barely noticeable, now, just under the dimple on my nose. Would that turn into something unpleasant to look at in the three days I will be in New York? What am I, fifteen? Jesus Christ. Clean white T-shirt, spiffy black vest, the one I got in Chicago last June, the one I was wearing when Jo and I had our, uhm, thing in Indiana. A month ago. Clean, pressed. Cut off shorts, not so clean. I had polished my boots, polished them shiny, I had told her I would. She had told me she wouldn't be wearing any underwear. Gray eyes. Lookin' kinda sleepy. They love that, though, they all do. I could never figure that, I always thought my eyes were kind of bleh but women dig my eyes. Maybe it's the color, soft gray, almost blue, but they change. Flecks of color in them, reds and yellows, when my pupils are small there's a greenish ring around them. I practice looking with them in the mirror, lowering my eyebrows, my dark brown eyebrows, they are perfect, perfect arcs over my eyes, I can do anything with them, they can be comic one moment and so angry the next, and when I am aroused, well, then they are really something special. It's not my eyes, it's my eyebrows, that's it. "As you can see the Captain has turned the fasten safety belts light on over your seat. If you haven't already done so, please return to your seat and fasten your safety belt for our landing at JFK International Airport." I did. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We had to take a shuttle bus from the plane to the terminal. In one door, through another, led like cattle, up some stairs -- who would see who first -- around a corner, tromping up more stairs, my blue backpack slung over one shoulder, my other hand gripping a large pad of sketch paper, glasses slipping down my nose -- -- we saw each other first. I clearing the floor going up the stairs, she walking towards the gate. A pretty, deep blue dress with tiny white polka dots, the kind of dress grandmother would wear -- when she was twenty-four and beautiful, that is, back then. Striding toward the gate, an hour on the subway a little more than apparent, but happy, such a strange smile, must have been a little like mine. A smile that says, "I don't know what the hell I'm doing here, but shit I'm glad." All us passengers had to clear by helpful Delta attendants giving people on there way somewhere else an idea of how to get there. Jo was feet away, we were just staring at each other. Clear eyes, God she had clear eyes, and they were, yes they were brown, you people are fans, I know. And heavy eyebrows, smiling too, brown, dirty brown, unlike me, the hair in her eyebrows was identical to that on her head, which was waist length and tied up in braids and around her head, again, like grandmother would on her way to the USO or something, I wouldn't know, I didn't live then. I was trapped behind a guy wearing a black T-shirt which read "All I want is the cure and all my friends back." "Excuse me," I said, and slipped by him, straight into her arms. She's short, her arms reached up around me and placed her delicate, caring hands to my head, I could feel each finger slide through my hair and she whispered "hi" and I didn't say anything as I touched my mouth to hers and her tongue, wide and wet and lovely slid into my mouth and pulled up hungrily against my top lip. My hands slid around her waist, feeling every inch of that awful polyester and indulging in the flesh beneath it. The backpack fell from my shoulder. We were kissing obscenely and in public and god did I used to hate that and now I just didn't care. I sucked on her fat lower lip as people pushed by us to catch taxis and other planes. I pressed my cheek to hers, and caught my round glasses on her oval ones (see: grandma). We pulled away slightly to look at each other. "Hi." "Hi." No more. We put our hands together and she turned me away from there to head to the taxi stand. "It's so good to see you," I said. She turned her head to me and smiled, peering out over her glasses. She does that a lot, her glasses always slide down her thin little nose, but see had never looked at me like that before. Well, not until Indiana. "How long were you on the train?" I asked. "An hour," she said, "that's how long the cab should take." "I can't believe it's you," I said. "Yeah," she said. The doors slid open and we were outside. She talked to a few cab drivers and we got into one, a real New York taxi cab, headed to Manhattan. It was very private back there, one of those old giants with a huge, low backseat, and a pane of glass between it and the driver. Perfect. She leaned up to it and gave the cabby instructions, up to the George Washington Bridge and she'd take him from there. Back to me, slouched against my own backpack, against the driver side back door, smiling in the bright August daylight that struck through the rear window. She sat back in her dress and looked at me, the corners of her small mouth turned up in a smile, exposing her two front teeth. We each leaned in and started kissing, our mouths wide open, her big fat tongue sweeping the roof of my mouth, I drew mine against her gums, savoring each tooth, my hands sliding around her body, the flesh of her back through that nasty fabric, in front to cup a hand on one of her wonderful tits, not too big, but that's what it was, tit, it wasn't small like Maria's -- -- hmn, let's keep comparisons to Maria out of this -- -- seeing her flesh up close, the flesh of her face, god it had been such a long month and my imagination had been all over. Our letters certainly left nothing to it, great long pulse thumping memoirs, and those phone calls! We'd started out slow but by the time the date was approaching we'd sit for two hours, either very very early in the morning, six-thirty perhaps, as the sun was rising, or late into the night -- once even for two hours, and sometimes we wouldn't say anything, just listen to each other breathe. Pathetic, huh? Christ was I in -- well, maybe I wasn't. I knew one thing, I was here, and she had promised to keep me in her room for three days. Not her apartment, her room. And though I had gotten to know to touch of her skin ridiculously well in the four hours we spent rolling around in the open air and in the dirt, I hadn't fucked her and I hadn't cared. Would we fuck here? In this cab? She had suggested we might. We had each suggested a lot of things. Three days. Certainly we'd get to try them all. The cab driver didn't say anything and by now he knew we were interested in how the Mets were doing or whether that bum Pataki was going to get elected. I don't think he knew much English anyhow. I slid my clean shaven face against the soft, smooth surface of her face, cottony smooth, and licked at her earlobe and she moaned softly into me. My hands fell down to her lap and her legs parted for me and I put my hands up her solid thighs, trying to keep her dress covering her, for the sake of my modesty more than hers because I knew she didn't care. Hot and slippery, I think she was wet before she had even seen me, her pubic hair, never trimmed, spilling out onto the inside of her legs, slick with herself, I lightly grazed her vagina with my fingers and she moaned even louder, putting it right in my ear and kissed me hard on the mouth. One finger, in and out slowly, getting my finger, my hand, wet and smelly, and slowly massaging her clitoris, rolling circles of flesh with my fingertips. She spread her legs wider and I glanced down to see how much of her was showing. Enough. She obviously didn't care and I shouldn't have either. We were caught in rush hour traffic heading into Manhattan -- school buses were passing on either side and children of all ages were getting a little adult education. Jo pressed her face to mine and I pressed my hand into her and she was moaning and humming into me and that ball of tension, that nervousness I had carried with me from Cleveland began opening up, that uncomfortable lump of self-consciousness was breaking apart and dissipating, I stopped looking around, ignored the driver, who were we? Just some consenting adults having wild foreplay in his cab, couldn't have been the first time. How do you describe this? How do you write this? She came, she shuddered and came and tried not to be too loud, a nice and tidy orgasm. How do I express this? I've had so much sex in my life, so much meaningless sex, nothing felt special anymore. I had resigned myself to the reality of the Sticky Tape Theory they had taught us in Youth League. Take a piece of sticky tape, any brand will do, and put it on someone. Sticks pretty good, doesn't it? Now remove it and put it on someone else. Still sticks, but not as well. Keeping doing this until it doesn't stick at all. That's promiscuity. That's what happens when you have sex with a lot of people, it loses its meaning, it stops being something special, something that should only be shared with one person, with your life mate, with a spouse. That's what they taught me in Youth League and I never forgot it, and worse, I believed it. That's why they told us those things. I removed my hand, it was suddering too, I was quivering all over and she continued the breathe hard as I drew away, her head bent back, eyes squeezed shut and her mouth forming that small O I remembered >from Indiana. I was here, in New York, with her, I was here, not on the phone, this was Jo, one of Maria's best friends and I was here. I threw my arms around her arched back and held her desperately to me and kissed her neck and kissed her face and she drew her fingers down my back and we put our mouths together, not a tightly sealed, neat kiss, a big open mouthed slobbering thing, I ran my tongue along the inside of her cheek and she began spasming again and groaning loudly at my intrusion as I explored the deepest part of her mouth, getting my lips inside hers, licking her up and around and I grabbed her ass and pulled her to me and our faces parted to look at each other. Her eyes, small and round and close together, deep brown pupils and the whites of her eyes were the whitest I had ever seen, so clear I could cry. I smiled a big evil smile. "I'm glad I'm here," I said. She smiled. "So this is New York?" I asked. "Yeah," she said, "a mid-afternoon traffic jam in the Big Apple." I hopped up, kneeling onto the seat, facing back out through the rear window, hunkered down with my fingers gripping the leather-like upholstery. No big city skyline for me, just more and more cars and lots of run-down apartment projects on both sides. Perhaps this would be the most of NYC I'd see. I sincerely hoped so. I slipped back down into my seat and we wrestled with each other more and she opened herself to me again and I made her come again, she buried her face in my neck and tried to make no sound (yes, a little modesty, just a little) and she was panting hard and I was breathing sharply through my nose and licking the tops of her ears and we did that all the way to her apartment. I couldn't believe when she excused herself from my attentions to start giving the driver more specific instructions, and which side of the street we'd want to get off on. "We're almost there?" I asked, surprised. "Yes," she said. "That was an hour?" "Yeah," she said, "it was." "Wow." We hopped out into the gray heathaze amid the bustle of midday Manhattan. "Twenty-eight dollars," the cab driver informed us, and Jo paid him as I pulled my bag, her purse and my sketch pad from the car. "Thank you," I said to the driver. "It's nice, eh?" he said, turning his head, smiling back at us, "making love?" We laughed self-consciously as we picked up our bags. "Shyeah," I laughed, blushing, "it sure is."