They were desperately alive back then, in their late twenties-early thirties. Manic and hopeful in their relief at having freed themselves from ill-chosen men.
They were smart, funny, vital, and laughed at everything. They were shot through with sexual energy and on the make for any new encounter. They glowed with an abundance of self assurance and joy at simply being.
They plucked their eyebrows, shaved their legs, put on perfume, wore high heels, and felt like women again instead of dish washing machines with vaginas.
They made love as often as possible, choosing their partners with an eye toward continuing freedom. In other words, they were like men; on the prowl, and disinterested in anything more than a few good times.
Of course some grew weary of the game life presented. Some of them missed the old ball and chain because they forgot what it was like. They married again, and occasionally, again and again. Trial and error doesn’t always work, but they had a naïve hopefulness, for which they must be forgiven.
There are those who remained single, and decades later, drabbed down and a little tired of it all, would ruminate on the fact there was nothing more interesting between their legs than the crotch of their underwear, which in some cases was still black-lace sexy, but wasted on an audience of one.
They are like the waning Moon, and the only waxing that gets done is to the outdated furniture they inherited from their soured marriages, or maybe their rooms as teenagers, when they were flowers; restless to know life, still safe with parents keeping them in check.
When they look back, what do they see?
Rubble?
Little bits of glitter they should have picked up with reverence, to be stored against all the rainy days to come?
The glitter these days is a flash of mica embedded in the stones they tread; not to be mined by them…beyond their grasp.
What could cheer them up and on?
A cluster of rampant penis’s perhaps?
Penis’s attached to healthy males, preferably a bit younger who gave them the eye, and smiled that secret smile at a few still-pretty women. The kind of men who would adore them for a while because of their sophistication, wit, lack of demands, and in some cases, lack of inhibitions. The types who love women just because they are women. Men, who will flirt outrageously, then follow it through with a certain air of gratitude and delight.
Of course the old girls would flee these encounters, laughing uproariously, escaping the bondage of good sex.
They’d fall in a heap into a booth at a ratty diner, order coffee and giggle, while normal color came back to their flushed faces, and their hearts raced with that high feeling of excitement, which comes in part from possibilities, in part from the somnolent embers that suddenly heated up even though they were assumed to be dead.
They’d glow again from the electrical charge of being seen as desirable.
They’d go home to slow baths with bubbles and emollients, shave their legs, put on perfume, seductive earrings, a bit of makeup, dress sharp, and then go dancing.
That’s all it takes… a little genital buzz.
Dedicated to Carlos, one of those men.
