contract to leave each other alone. We exchange glances of acknowledgment without pretending to apprehend the other’s agendas. Our separate reasons for being here at sunset overlap enough to make us allies: we like feeling fresh air against our sweat-dampened skin, the nearness of other humans, creating tempo without a radio, velocity without a motor. The intimate sounds of the game, the skid and shush of rubber-soled shoes against black-topped pavement, the casual endearments passed like nods between players—“Nice one, dawg,” “Shoot the rim, bro”—and the display of moist, muscular young men cavorting gives me a wonderful (totally false) feeling of fitting into a timeless community tradition. Of course, I am not only the wrong age to belong here on the swingset, I’m the wrong color with the wrong accent. I may be wearing the plaid cotton shift of a Louisiana sharecropper, but my pinkish SPF-30’ed skin and my ninety-dollar Manhattan haircut give me away for sure. But during these few spring moments while the sun takes its final plunge, there is a new innocence at the St. Claude community pool (the pool itself is closed in the wintertime, fenced in and tarped, like a field of poppies in a frost). This is the innocence of collective recklessness.
I was not a sporty girl, never one to race outdoors when I heard the thwack of a kickball game in the cul-de-sac, or the shrieks from a raucous beachside volleyball game. There were solitary pleasures—swimming, riding my bicycle, skateboarding—but the degree of athletic excellence involved was elastic, and up to me; no one was going to holler me off the team if my form varied from spazzy to elegant and back again. I liked climbing trees. There was a sort of mathematical challenge inherent to the activity: once you discovered the perfect route, even the most intimidating, inscrutable body of foliage would give up its secrets. Standing at the base of a century-old oak and narrowing my eyes, I could sometimes decipher how to reach the small pockets of blue between the uppermost branches—those plush, cornflower-saturated plots of sky seemed like little doors to Providence. Once you got up there and squeezed yourself inside them, you could do no wrong; you were forever protected from harm.
I have the same sensation when I’m swinging high in the air. When I’m feeling low or lost or horny or just plain dumb, a good sturdy glute-powered ride in the sky cheers me up. The slight nausea that hits me when I’ve pumped up as far as I can pump or the unsettling hello! of the swingset’s legs jumping off the ground each time my toes puncture the stratosphere give me an electroshock out of the blues. The skirt of my dress billows out parachute-like every time I hit my apogee, even though I’ve tucked it under my thighs as tightly as possible. I love leaning way back on the upmost pull, arching my spine to look at the cluster of trees behind me, upside-down apparitions that seem to float in the cobalt sky like plumed green clouds.
Casey is enigmatic—sexually fervent but as profound as a baby. Silly me, I thought that offering a guy a month of free pussy with no strings attached was a proposition unlikely to be refused. The first week, he suggested that I never go home to New York. He thought there might be an opportunity for me right here in New Orleans: I could turn the Triangle into a burlesque club and call it “Jan’s Pink Triangle.” I thought “Jan’s Pink Wedge” sounded nastier, but he said, “Burlesque, not porn.” On our third date, he showed up at my gate clutching the Queen of Spades I’d left on his doorstep, one of those old Victoriana playing cards with a plump naked lady on the back, sloe-eyed and knock-kneed. I’d found this one in a shop in the French Quarter, in a basket filled with silver milagro charms of tiny hands and breasts. I was surprised to find the card genuinely erotic when I picked it up; there was something about the model’s
I was not a sporty girl, never one to race outdoors when I heard the thwack of a kickball game in the cul-de-sac, or the shrieks from a raucous beachside volleyball game. There were solitary pleasures—swimming, riding my bicycle, skateboarding—but the degree of athletic excellence involved was elastic, and up to me; no one was going to holler me off the team if my form varied from spazzy to elegant and back again. I liked climbing trees. There was a sort of mathematical challenge inherent to the activity: once you discovered the perfect route, even the most intimidating, inscrutable body of foliage would give up its secrets. Standing at the base of a century-old oak and narrowing my eyes, I could sometimes decipher how to reach the small pockets of blue between the uppermost branches—those plush, cornflower-saturated plots of sky seemed like little doors to Providence. Once you got up there and squeezed yourself inside them, you could do no wrong; you were forever protected from harm.
I have the same sensation when I’m swinging high in the air. When I’m feeling low or lost or horny or just plain dumb, a good sturdy glute-powered ride in the sky cheers me up. The slight nausea that hits me when I’ve pumped up as far as I can pump or the unsettling hello! of the swingset’s legs jumping off the ground each time my toes puncture the stratosphere give me an electroshock out of the blues. The skirt of my dress billows out parachute-like every time I hit my apogee, even though I’ve tucked it under my thighs as tightly as possible. I love leaning way back on the upmost pull, arching my spine to look at the cluster of trees behind me, upside-down apparitions that seem to float in the cobalt sky like plumed green clouds.
Casey is enigmatic—sexually fervent but as profound as a baby. Silly me, I thought that offering a guy a month of free pussy with no strings attached was a proposition unlikely to be refused. The first week, he suggested that I never go home to New York. He thought there might be an opportunity for me right here in New Orleans: I could turn the Triangle into a burlesque club and call it “Jan’s Pink Triangle.” I thought “Jan’s Pink Wedge” sounded nastier, but he said, “Burlesque, not porn.” On our third date, he showed up at my gate clutching the Queen of Spades I’d left on his doorstep, one of those old Victoriana playing cards with a plump naked lady on the back, sloe-eyed and knock-kneed. I’d found this one in a shop in the French Quarter, in a basket filled with silver milagro charms of tiny hands and breasts. I was surprised to find the card genuinely erotic when I picked it up; there was something about the model’s
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