Poppy Red
The lean body wore blue jeans and was dry humping a young woman on her back, splayed across a frayed and colorful blanket. It was lunchtime and the two were doing real-time erotica in the middle of a park ringed with ancient elm trees. A pock-marked carpet of grass helped cool down this warm spring day, an anchor, a go-to place for residents of the surrounding neighborhood who might want to toss a Frisbee, walk a dog, munch on a picnic of chicken salad or contemplate the contents of a freshly opened tube of Pringles.
It was the lean body having its way with the splayed body that had my attention this day, but I didn’t want to stare, having been admonished as a child and teenager that it’s just not polite. So instead of staring, I glanced, which only served to engage me more in the encounter playing out. Stretch out the glance and you’ve got a stare. Hard d to avoid sometimes.
Looking around for other snapshots to store in my mental box of memories, I focused on walking my dog, an aging Blue Heeler mix, and teasing my new friend, who was walking her exuberant Lab adolescent. This new person in my life, who was the focus of much flirting on my part, had a shy streak, giggled about the lunchtime interlude, then got serious and suggested any glances towards the lean body in jeans was an invasion of privacy. I thought that was really stretching it and used her comment as a segue to move the conversation towards a sweeter spot. What a perfect time to let her know I was really a voyeur at heart.
A second couple was lying on the grass near one of the Chinese Elms, only somewhat interested in the dry humping. The two twentyish-year-old gals seemed most aware of each other, holding hands sweetly while they both gazed skyward, deep into the blue. A sharp-shinned hawk, back lit with early afternoon sunshine, glided from one high tree branch to another, a post script to its kik-kik-kik call. Surely it was that same hawk whose feather I would later pick up while beachcombing the park as my new friend, talked and I listened, keeping on with the occasional flirt. This person, with whom I was smitten, had been taken aback when I spoke the word voyeur and chose to ignore my awkward conversation-continuer.
Just as I turned around for another glancing stare the lean body in the blue jeans jumped off and up from the young woman. The lean body had long, blonde hair and a feminineness about her. She was fully engaged in her moment of public ecstasy. I wondered why I had not watched more, given in to my voyeuristic inclinations. Now I was really interested, because my initial glances and stares at the dry humping assumed boy-girl interaction. Not so much.
Within a few hours, another friend and I were sitting at a bar eating chunky quacamole laced with fresh-squeezed lime juice, rolled up in corn tortillas. This good and dear friend was sipping a Negra Modelo and I was drinking vino tinto, a Tempranillo. It was the perfect setting for the park story.
Towards the end of the story, my friend of many years asked if I thought the lean body and her girlfriend had reached orgasm. “I’m thinking maybe so,” my response colored by a flashback of the lean body sliding back, pulling herself up off her girlfriend, and shaking her blonde-ness in slow motion, smiling down at her splayed girlfriend.
Dry humping, a misnomer as far as I’m concerned, can be a wild ride, a soft co-mingling of the senses, or a flickering at the very tip of what makes for sexual. But it’s rarely dry I observed, sipping on the Tempranillo. My friend laughed.
“Let me tell you another story from that park.” I took myself back to a particular day, a few weeks earlier, while walking my dog when I saw red. This forthcoming story was related to lean body in jeans, something I figured out in retrospect.
The woman looked to be in her mid-twenties and was sitting upright, her dress poppy red in color. Legs crossed in yoga position and hands resting on her knees, the woman’s palms were facing up in receiving position, ready for godly grace and love. Her eyes closed, she sat in stillness in the shade of one of the park’s very tall and very old elm trees. A red speck in the grass, she embodied the particular species of poppies that are attractive, cultivated as ornamental plants, an overwhelming contrast to all that surrounded her.
When my dog Lucy and I walked by, the poppy woman did not flinch or open her eyes. I drank in the still life. Lucy and I walked on by and a few minutes later made a u-turn.
By now the dark-haired woman lay flat on her back, her legs crossed at the ankles, her black pumps the period of a quotation mark. She was as still as she had been when she was upright. Dressed as she was and lying in state the way she was, the young woman, the red poppy, symbolized sleep, peace and death.
A thin black cell phone rested in the center of the woman’s solar plexus chakra, between rib cage and navel. Some say this chakra is important to our existence as human beings, that a balanced solar plexus has the ability to provide each of us with a clear picture of who we are and what our place is in the universe. Self-esteem, self-confidence, self-respect, strong will and empowerment characterize this chakra.
It was a contemplative moment. I wondered about the meaning woven into this still-life of the woman lying in repose, in a blood-red-poppy-colored dress with a cell phone on top of her solar plexus chakra. Lucy pulled on the lease, headed for a spot under a nearby tree where there was surely something fascinating to sniff. Following along on Lucy’s whim, I turned and took a few steps and as I did the poppy’s cell phone rang, the sound of an exclamation.
I've been obsessed with my solar plexus chakra lately. I'm taking your essay as a sign from the universe, although I have no idea what the sign is for.
You rock Kay -although you also make me blush