by Adrianna de la Rosa
(12/31/03)
I don't have a name, or a history. I've been invisible for so long now that I have forgotten the place I started out once upon a time. I can't remember myself. Was there ever a time when I was innocent? When, as a child, I walked freely and a pebble called to me?
Maybe I don't want to remember myself at all, he thought. I'll invent a new reality for myself and a new name to go with it.
The chair was very comfortable. It seemed to be made of a kind of cloud-like pillowy substance and he felt warm. He had positioned himself as she directed, naked and blindfolded on this large white chair in the middle of an empty room. And then he waited for what seemed an eternity for her to arrive. He listened to the rain outside as it pelted against the window. Just the rain and his breath, that's all. Silence in the dark. The velvet blindfold felt strange to him. It made him even more invisible inside its darkness. I'm a mass of secrets under velvet, he thought.
No one will ever know me. No one ever has. I'm afraid.
When she entered the room he felt the air stir around him in tiny ripples. A kind of chill ran up his spine and every hair on his body seemed to lift at once. He was afraid, but her presence made something in him quicken and vibrate. Suddenly he was aware of his nakedness, but he had chosen this. His cock had never felt more vulnerable in his life. He had always used it as a sort of weapon before, against the world, but that would change now. He was tired into his bones, of women and men and his history. I don't know who I am anymore, he thought.
I don't know why I am here, or why I have chosen this experience with a stranger. She's here now, with me, in this empty room. I can feel her....
"I'm going to wash you clean," she said.
Her voice was soft and it tinkled like a little bell near his ear. He felt the brush of something delicate, like silk against his arm. Music entered the room, suddenly, and pierced the air with Buddhist flutes that sounded like Japanese cranes in the wind. He heard the ringing of temple bells and the low keening sounds of the flutes crying. Under the blindfold, a tear escaped his eye and trapped itself wetly against his cheek. The music called to him inside, someplace very deep, but he couldn't have explained its effect if he had tried.
"Don't be afraid," she said, and her cool hand traced up the skin of his thigh. He shivered and trembled a little under her fingertips. She seemed to take hours brushing over his thighs and chest. Her hands were so dreamlike they swept over him like feathers, or like the sound of the flutes calling in the distance.
She moved over all the skin on his body that she could reach, like wind from some distant high mountain plain. As she touched him, his fear of her lessened. I'm floating like a cloud, he thought. Just the bells and the flutes and her touch and the rain.
I don't know who I am. Who am I? Where do I begin and where do I end?
She took his hands in hers and guided him to his feet.
"Wait here a moment," she said.
He could hear her in the distance rustling and preparing something. He didn't feel as frightened anymore. Only curious. I wonder what she is going to do? It was odd to stand like this, in the middle of an empty room with a woman he couldn't even see. My heart feels like the rain, he thought. I feel like the space between the notes of these flutes. Like bamboo, or a reed. Empty.
She led him to a large basin, and guided him to stand in the warm and fragrant water. His legs were submerged to his knees. Slowly she poured the water over him. Over and over like a warm waterfall. Some fragrance that he didn't know the name of haunted his mind. I can't tell what it is, he thought, but I recognize it from somewhere. It curled inside his head like mist on a mountain top.
"Let your mind empty," she said. "Become the space between your thoughts."
She guided him to stand just beside the basin and ran her hands over him. She began to soap him, starting at his shoulders and moving down each arm very slowly to his fingers. Something in him was beginning to soften at her touch. He wasn't sure yet just what it was, but something was melting. The soap smelled wonderful, maybe it was lime, but spiced with something else. Her hands traveled over him like currents in the sea, flowing.
"Imagine you are walking down a path that leads to a little gate inside of you. Only you have the key to this place. Inside is a beautiful garden. What would be there?" she asked, while she continued to bathe him.
"You don't have to say it aloud, just see it."
Something in him unwrapped itself in that moment. Someplace that had been so tightly coiled for years inside freed itself with a whisper. He shivered slightly. Her silken kimono sleeve brushed him like a wing.
"There is a very large rock in the middle of this place, that is warmed by the sun. It's as if this rock has been sitting for a million years in this vastness and emptiness. If you were to sit on this rock, what would your thoughts be?"
"You don't have to say them aloud, just think them."
He saw the rock before him in his mind's eye. It was so large and hard. Granite, like the place inside him that had always been stone. He lay on the surface of it; in his mind, and watched the sky above. He saw a word there, written in the sky, while her hands traveled over him, gently.
She led him back to the basin and guided his feet. Warm currents rinsed him again. The water washed something very old away from him. Something he had been carrying for years fell aside into that water. It was washing away like a teardrop.
Warm towels surrounded him suddenly. She dried him slowly and with great care. Some kind of momentary peace descended over him like a balm. He heard the sound of silk whispering as her kimono dropped to floor. She pressed her body into his, her breasts against his back, arms around him.
"I'm going to write you a poem," she said, quietly.
She began at his back. She kissed him, pressing her lips gently but firmly into his warm skin. He stood listening to the sounds of the rain, and the flutes crying softly while she kissed him. Her lips traced his every curve. He could see them in the darkness. Lip prints that covered every part of his body. Every square inch of his flesh, like invisible tattoos.
