Just like a woman.
Ah, you fake just like a woman, yes, you do
You make love just like a woman, yes, you do
Then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl.
---Bob Dylan
The clock on the wall said 2 pm, and Elsa knew that across the world Serge was in front of a monitor, a whole day ahead of her pretending to be productive but really surfing the net while he planned his newest marketing strategy. She knew that he didn’t really like being the CEO of Saucony’s Tokyo branch, that each day must have been like a little death for him, locked in his glass tower thousands of feet above the pulsing city. He didn’t like cities, she also knew this about him. They put him at unease, not knowing from which direction the next blow might be delivered, not knowing when he might be expected to reply appropriately, or to interact adequately, or be caught staring, agape with pleasure as he watched the bodies race about in frenetic motion. But after all, she knew little else.
She knew that he would be looking out the window and wishing for something, but that the something else wouldn’t be her. She knew this and nothing more. Or maybe she knew nothing at all. Their brief affair had lasted no more than six months, all told, from the day that they met in the airport in Stockholm to the day she walked away from his office building in Tokyo. When they met she was grieving the fact that she would now never be able to go home again, and he caught her writing, scribbling madly in a journal that she had bought precisely for the trip so that she would not feel compelled to make real conversation with anyone. His curious stare caught her off guard, she wasn’t the type of woman that people generally stared at. Of course, she wasn’t fatally unattractive, that would be too easy, she was simply beyond caring what people thought of her, and so people didn’t seem to think of her. With Serge it had been different.
He managed to make her laugh despite her foul mood in little over three minutes and though she noticed the single gold ring on the appropriate finger she convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with conversation, after all. Was there something wrong? Yes, of course, but it had nothing to do with the band around his finger or the isolation that he purported to feel, but more to do with her. Elsa didn’t really like men. Not in the way that women seem to. She wasn’t a lesbian, and she had even experienced several unsatisfactory copulations with a boy, Hans, who she had met in college and whose love for good beer far outweighed his love for her, of this he made no pretensions.
“Oh, Serge” she muttered out loud as a car zipped by, splashing an arc of muddy water onto her as she waited at the bus stop, “when will I forget that you existed?” He was probably straightening the papers on his desk, and if she called him she would get the tight voice formerly reserved for his wife when she called and Elsa was in his office, bent on pleasuring him, behind the executive blinds. She had never really wanted to travel to Japan, its culture seemed so foreign and stiff to her, not that her own culture wasn’t stiff, but that was precisely what had made her leave Sweden in the first place. Elsa liked cities. She liked to feel encircled by pulsating, breathing life. All references to the concrete jungle and its alienating effect on man seemed to her unfounded. She and Serge really were very different, she couldn’t understand why she missed him so much. His fixation on things, accumulation and organization, classification… she admired his wife for putting up with such irritating idiosyncrasies, as she was sure that she would never be able to deal with them on a daily basis. Thankfully, she never had to. Her visits with him, which began that very day when they both abandoned their flights and holed themselves up in the Sheraton adjacent to the airport for three days, were sporadic and unexpected. She would get a phone call from LAX saying that he was in town, and could she clear her schedule, and of course, just like a woman, she would. Or a ticket would arrive via Fedex and require her to leave the very next day. This was part of the adventure, but it was also part of the reason that she didn’t like men very much, because they were, in essence, little boys, like the three younger brothers that she was forced to raise almost single-handedly upon her mother’s untimely demise. Men were always so needy, her father, rarely home and always expecting that the linens be washed and ironed, the boys fed and put to bed, her brothers constantly demanding that she be there, present, that she be their mother. That is why she left so many years before and had only returned for her father’s funeral. That was the weakened state in which Serge had discovered her, writing, in the airport, alone and needing no one. Now she needed him, but like all the other men she had known, he seemed to have no more need for her.
She knew that for him she would always be a day late and a dollar short, quite literally. She thought this as she climbed onto the bus that would take her to the airport once again. One more chance… that was all she wanted, one more. She could prove to him that she needed nothing, that she only wanted to give him pleasure. She would unbuckle his belt and unzip his perfectly tailored Versace pants, inhaling his lightly perfumed aroma. She would slip her hands in to where she found his fragility, his soft warmth, like a baby bird, and she would hold him, and kiss the skin of his chest, his downy hair on the tip of her tongue, circling the dark areolas and taking the nipples between her teeth, tugging gently, watching the gooseflesh rise on his arms as he reached for her hair. Elsa thought about this and the pleasure of pleasing spread through her body. Perhaps she was doomed to doing a man’s bidding after all. She would move slowly down, as he grew harder in her grip. She would follow the diagonal line of his abdominal muscles in towards his hip, and there she would linger, brushing her lips against them so softly it would be like a whisper. The line would lead her in to where her hands held him trembling and she would take him carefully in her mouth as she had so many times before, as his fingers grasped the nape of her neck and pressed forward. “One more chance… one more, he can’t deny me that.” “Excuse me?” the bus driver interjected, breaking her erotic reverie and reminding her that she was making a huge mistake. She balked as the tires screeched and she stumbled with the swing of the maneuvering bus. What was she going to say? How would he respond?
Serge was looking out his window. She was sure of it. She could almost sense the panting breath as she rolled her tongue in lazy circles around his aroused member, she could remember the pained look on his face when they were interrupted by his wife’s announcement that she would be up in five minutes. There was nowhere to hide, and as men often do, Serge took the easy way out. “You don’t understand, “ he had said to her, “she deserves better than this, I owe it to her.” Yes, Elsa supposed that he did. After all she had borne him his three lovely children, and who was she, after all, but a mindless distraction for a man who just needed a little attention? His wife arrived and though they were sitting across the massive mahogany desk, as if in an interview or a private conference, she knew. She knew the way a woman knows her man, with the keen animal instinct that tells her where he has been, and with whom, and where the children are and if they are sleeping or indeed playing games under their covers with flashlights. Her eyes flashed black fury, but that fury was not directed at Serge, but rather at Elsa, who lowered her gaze, ashamed not for what she had done, but for not feeling sorry about it.
Yes, a huge mistake. She descended the steps, avoiding the well-intentioned support that was offered her by the driver. The wind picked up, and she stood silently in the arc, electrically opened doors waiting for her to decide, pulsing. She just stood there for over a minute, disgruntling passengers as they had to push around her in their hurry for travel… and then she heard her name.
You make love just like a woman, yes, you do
Then you ache just like a woman
But you break just like a little girl.
---Bob Dylan
The clock on the wall said 2 pm, and Elsa knew that across the world Serge was in front of a monitor, a whole day ahead of her pretending to be productive but really surfing the net while he planned his newest marketing strategy. She knew that he didn’t really like being the CEO of Saucony’s Tokyo branch, that each day must have been like a little death for him, locked in his glass tower thousands of feet above the pulsing city. He didn’t like cities, she also knew this about him. They put him at unease, not knowing from which direction the next blow might be delivered, not knowing when he might be expected to reply appropriately, or to interact adequately, or be caught staring, agape with pleasure as he watched the bodies race about in frenetic motion. But after all, she knew little else.
She knew that he would be looking out the window and wishing for something, but that the something else wouldn’t be her. She knew this and nothing more. Or maybe she knew nothing at all. Their brief affair had lasted no more than six months, all told, from the day that they met in the airport in Stockholm to the day she walked away from his office building in Tokyo. When they met she was grieving the fact that she would now never be able to go home again, and he caught her writing, scribbling madly in a journal that she had bought precisely for the trip so that she would not feel compelled to make real conversation with anyone. His curious stare caught her off guard, she wasn’t the type of woman that people generally stared at. Of course, she wasn’t fatally unattractive, that would be too easy, she was simply beyond caring what people thought of her, and so people didn’t seem to think of her. With Serge it had been different.
He managed to make her laugh despite her foul mood in little over three minutes and though she noticed the single gold ring on the appropriate finger she convinced herself that there was nothing wrong with conversation, after all. Was there something wrong? Yes, of course, but it had nothing to do with the band around his finger or the isolation that he purported to feel, but more to do with her. Elsa didn’t really like men. Not in the way that women seem to. She wasn’t a lesbian, and she had even experienced several unsatisfactory copulations with a boy, Hans, who she had met in college and whose love for good beer far outweighed his love for her, of this he made no pretensions.
“Oh, Serge” she muttered out loud as a car zipped by, splashing an arc of muddy water onto her as she waited at the bus stop, “when will I forget that you existed?” He was probably straightening the papers on his desk, and if she called him she would get the tight voice formerly reserved for his wife when she called and Elsa was in his office, bent on pleasuring him, behind the executive blinds. She had never really wanted to travel to Japan, its culture seemed so foreign and stiff to her, not that her own culture wasn’t stiff, but that was precisely what had made her leave Sweden in the first place. Elsa liked cities. She liked to feel encircled by pulsating, breathing life. All references to the concrete jungle and its alienating effect on man seemed to her unfounded. She and Serge really were very different, she couldn’t understand why she missed him so much. His fixation on things, accumulation and organization, classification… she admired his wife for putting up with such irritating idiosyncrasies, as she was sure that she would never be able to deal with them on a daily basis. Thankfully, she never had to. Her visits with him, which began that very day when they both abandoned their flights and holed themselves up in the Sheraton adjacent to the airport for three days, were sporadic and unexpected. She would get a phone call from LAX saying that he was in town, and could she clear her schedule, and of course, just like a woman, she would. Or a ticket would arrive via Fedex and require her to leave the very next day. This was part of the adventure, but it was also part of the reason that she didn’t like men very much, because they were, in essence, little boys, like the three younger brothers that she was forced to raise almost single-handedly upon her mother’s untimely demise. Men were always so needy, her father, rarely home and always expecting that the linens be washed and ironed, the boys fed and put to bed, her brothers constantly demanding that she be there, present, that she be their mother. That is why she left so many years before and had only returned for her father’s funeral. That was the weakened state in which Serge had discovered her, writing, in the airport, alone and needing no one. Now she needed him, but like all the other men she had known, he seemed to have no more need for her.
She knew that for him she would always be a day late and a dollar short, quite literally. She thought this as she climbed onto the bus that would take her to the airport once again. One more chance… that was all she wanted, one more. She could prove to him that she needed nothing, that she only wanted to give him pleasure. She would unbuckle his belt and unzip his perfectly tailored Versace pants, inhaling his lightly perfumed aroma. She would slip her hands in to where she found his fragility, his soft warmth, like a baby bird, and she would hold him, and kiss the skin of his chest, his downy hair on the tip of her tongue, circling the dark areolas and taking the nipples between her teeth, tugging gently, watching the gooseflesh rise on his arms as he reached for her hair. Elsa thought about this and the pleasure of pleasing spread through her body. Perhaps she was doomed to doing a man’s bidding after all. She would move slowly down, as he grew harder in her grip. She would follow the diagonal line of his abdominal muscles in towards his hip, and there she would linger, brushing her lips against them so softly it would be like a whisper. The line would lead her in to where her hands held him trembling and she would take him carefully in her mouth as she had so many times before, as his fingers grasped the nape of her neck and pressed forward. “One more chance… one more, he can’t deny me that.” “Excuse me?” the bus driver interjected, breaking her erotic reverie and reminding her that she was making a huge mistake. She balked as the tires screeched and she stumbled with the swing of the maneuvering bus. What was she going to say? How would he respond?
Serge was looking out his window. She was sure of it. She could almost sense the panting breath as she rolled her tongue in lazy circles around his aroused member, she could remember the pained look on his face when they were interrupted by his wife’s announcement that she would be up in five minutes. There was nowhere to hide, and as men often do, Serge took the easy way out. “You don’t understand, “ he had said to her, “she deserves better than this, I owe it to her.” Yes, Elsa supposed that he did. After all she had borne him his three lovely children, and who was she, after all, but a mindless distraction for a man who just needed a little attention? His wife arrived and though they were sitting across the massive mahogany desk, as if in an interview or a private conference, she knew. She knew the way a woman knows her man, with the keen animal instinct that tells her where he has been, and with whom, and where the children are and if they are sleeping or indeed playing games under their covers with flashlights. Her eyes flashed black fury, but that fury was not directed at Serge, but rather at Elsa, who lowered her gaze, ashamed not for what she had done, but for not feeling sorry about it.
Yes, a huge mistake. She descended the steps, avoiding the well-intentioned support that was offered her by the driver. The wind picked up, and she stood silently in the arc, electrically opened doors waiting for her to decide, pulsing. She just stood there for over a minute, disgruntling passengers as they had to push around her in their hurry for travel… and then she heard her name.
posted by ilana at 7:54 p.m.
<< Home