there was the moonbeam, still at my side. Back I wheeled once more, breaking into a run; and back it tagged alongside me.
Whichever way I went, up and down the beach, the path of light was doggedly at my heels.
It wasn’t the moon that was doing the bidding; it was taking the lead from me—it was I who was guiding the beam! I darted this way and that, stopping and starting, giddy from running circles round the moon.
When I could run no more I headed home, the sea behind me, the moon in tow.
There was time to give him a sponging. I hadn’t planned on it; I hadn’t thought I’d be returning. Yet here I was back home, in time for one last wash.
I hadn’t thought I could do the other thing either. But that too I did.
I let him go.
AU THOR’S NO TE
When I began this, it was the setting I had to think about; the action in an erotic story, after all, is a given. I grew up in the tropics, but that’s not entirely why I came to select them as the background here. Rather, it was also because of a powerful construct of the tropics shaped by the likes of Conrad, Orwell, Melville, Malraux, et al. All of them captured—and sometimes brilliantly misrepresented—this region as a zone of mythic heat and torpor that destroys decorum, breaks down morality, and erodes the will. It is to them that I owe my having settled on a tropical island as the backdrop for my story. Where else but in a steamy jungle could such a switch in rules take place? Where else could exploitation occur so illicitly?
The old tropical stereotypes, yes. But why fight them, if instead you can stand them on their head? “Drought” is my version of what happens when a restless native tends a wounded knight.
OH, BROTHER
By Bea Wilder
The lively comic charm of this monologue beautifully complements its vision of the tenderness that can spring up even between two new lovers whose erotic impulses are helped along by propinquity. Bea Wilder, like Susan Dooley, gives us a portrait of a woman at home in her body, who knows and cherishes her own ability to give and receive pleasure … and her relish is, I think, infectious.
I was deflowered in the City of Brotherly Love twenty-five years ago. Perhaps this explains my penchant for friends’ brothers, or maybe it’s because I never had one, growing up as I did in a one-gender family of three younger sisters, a domineering mother, and a large cranky female cat. I’ve simply always been completely fascinated with the idea of having boys around the house—boys you could touch, hug, and kiss, but never screw, of course. So when Carolyn invited me out of the city in the middle of August, my first inclination was to say no. (I already had plans to go to a Red Sox game on Sunday with an old lover and friend, and who needed extra traffic hassles?)But then she let drop that at this birthday party for her, at her family’s summer house, her New York-dwelling brother Jonathan would be in attendance; not surprisingly, although she didn’t know it, this turned out to be the very incentive I needed to tank up my car and hit the road early that Saturday morning.
In Cambridge, recycling old boyfriends and husbands and coming across with brothers and other relatives is de rigueur, but Carolyn had only been forthcoming to the extent that I knew Jonathan was in his midforties and unattached. That was enough though, and the promise of a “live one” fresh off the train from the Big Apple remained a tantalizing prospect all the way up the highway north to New Hampshire. Anyway, her directions were good, and in exactly the time she said it would take, I was turning off Route 69 onto the bumpy dirt road that led up a hill to her mother’s driveway. No other cars were in evidence, and I remembered hearing something about how they’d be grocery shopping if they weren’t there when I arrived. Hordes of daunting relatives were promised for the birthday soiree, so these peaceful moments were fleeting and precious. I unloaded
Whichever way I went, up and down the beach, the path of light was doggedly at my heels.
It wasn’t the moon that was doing the bidding; it was taking the lead from me—it was I who was guiding the beam! I darted this way and that, stopping and starting, giddy from running circles round the moon.
When I could run no more I headed home, the sea behind me, the moon in tow.
There was time to give him a sponging. I hadn’t planned on it; I hadn’t thought I’d be returning. Yet here I was back home, in time for one last wash.
I hadn’t thought I could do the other thing either. But that too I did.
I let him go.
AU THOR’S NO TE
When I began this, it was the setting I had to think about; the action in an erotic story, after all, is a given. I grew up in the tropics, but that’s not entirely why I came to select them as the background here. Rather, it was also because of a powerful construct of the tropics shaped by the likes of Conrad, Orwell, Melville, Malraux, et al. All of them captured—and sometimes brilliantly misrepresented—this region as a zone of mythic heat and torpor that destroys decorum, breaks down morality, and erodes the will. It is to them that I owe my having settled on a tropical island as the backdrop for my story. Where else but in a steamy jungle could such a switch in rules take place? Where else could exploitation occur so illicitly?
The old tropical stereotypes, yes. But why fight them, if instead you can stand them on their head? “Drought” is my version of what happens when a restless native tends a wounded knight.
OH, BROTHER
By Bea Wilder
The lively comic charm of this monologue beautifully complements its vision of the tenderness that can spring up even between two new lovers whose erotic impulses are helped along by propinquity. Bea Wilder, like Susan Dooley, gives us a portrait of a woman at home in her body, who knows and cherishes her own ability to give and receive pleasure … and her relish is, I think, infectious.
I was deflowered in the City of Brotherly Love twenty-five years ago. Perhaps this explains my penchant for friends’ brothers, or maybe it’s because I never had one, growing up as I did in a one-gender family of three younger sisters, a domineering mother, and a large cranky female cat. I’ve simply always been completely fascinated with the idea of having boys around the house—boys you could touch, hug, and kiss, but never screw, of course. So when Carolyn invited me out of the city in the middle of August, my first inclination was to say no. (I already had plans to go to a Red Sox game on Sunday with an old lover and friend, and who needed extra traffic hassles?)But then she let drop that at this birthday party for her, at her family’s summer house, her New York-dwelling brother Jonathan would be in attendance; not surprisingly, although she didn’t know it, this turned out to be the very incentive I needed to tank up my car and hit the road early that Saturday morning.
In Cambridge, recycling old boyfriends and husbands and coming across with brothers and other relatives is de rigueur, but Carolyn had only been forthcoming to the extent that I knew Jonathan was in his midforties and unattached. That was enough though, and the promise of a “live one” fresh off the train from the Big Apple remained a tantalizing prospect all the way up the highway north to New Hampshire. Anyway, her directions were good, and in exactly the time she said it would take, I was turning off Route 69 onto the bumpy dirt road that led up a hill to her mother’s driveway. No other cars were in evidence, and I remembered hearing something about how they’d be grocery shopping if they weren’t there when I arrived. Hordes of daunting relatives were promised for the birthday soiree, so these peaceful moments were fleeting and precious. I unloaded
Similar Books
