by Marina Kris
(03/09/11)

"You are like a garden locked up, like a walled in spring, a closed up fountain."
                                                           --Song of Songs 4:12

Kimberly peels the curtains the rest of the way back. Jana has just left. They are not lovers, but straight friends who share the room's rent for the literary seminar in a Southern city. They are both women, both single, both writers. She doesn't know, afterward, what has overtaken her.

Song of Songs is how the experience was, sensual without being ostensibly sexual. Kimberly was, at one time growing-up, a Presbyterian Sunday school student. This was years before she shaved her pubis clean, running the razor over the wiry hairs before standing at the mirror, tracing aloe with her index finger over the bare mound she'd made, electrified that something so smoothly girly, so turn-back-time tender was hers once more.

This experience in room 418 is about her, but it is not a mirror. It is not a mirror like one that Kimberly once used to investigate herself, a la My Body, My Self, a book her mother kept on the top shelf.

This experience is a whiff of a whim. This is the last day of the conference. Jana had just gathered up her pink suitcase, her duffel bag of books and filled notebook. They'd eaten a late brunch at the overpriced hotel bar below; Kimberly had half a melon and a shivery-thin slice of prosciutto artfully draped to the side, Jana had a bowl of raisin bran with watery one-percent. They'd chatted about their respective drives home from the Southern city, how soul-baring it was to workshop what they'd written each morning.

Kimberly recalls Jana had said, "like peeling back your skin, then peeling it back further."

They were used up with their own narratives, they were drowsy after several days of pulling three-hour nights-- drinking pricey cocktails while talking shop with other writers downstairs after late-night readings, then returning to their room to critique piles of fellow-students' 20-page manuscripts until almost dawn.

This was less than an hour after Jana left, over an hour until 2 p.m. checkout. Kimberly still has her own creative writing texts cluttering the desk, her suitcase flung open by the air conditioning vent, a moist white towel from her morning shower crumpled on the bathroom tile. As soon as Jana hugged goodbye and they promised to e-mail stories to critique the next week, Kimberly remembers her sodden towel on the bathroom floor.

She'll pick it up and tidy the beds, to make the maid less work. Kimberly's mother had once worked part-time as a hotel maid; Kimberly does what she can to watch after others, to be thoughtful, though she seldom practices such thoughtfulness with her own needs.

There are many experiences Kimberly wants for herself -- most are career-oriented, particularly a full-time job so she can have health insurance and give up the three part-time freelance jobs she uses to cobble together enough for her student loans, car payments, and rent. Her one life extravagance is her writing, is this conference. Not many of her wants are overtly sexual, but several are deeply sensual. When next she has a boyfriend she imagines sitting astride his lap, feeding him an unpeeled orchard peach -- the deep suction of a lover's mouth taking in the nourishment of the juice appeals to her, his lips working the soft flesh until it gradually parts, the slick juice running down her wrist as his tongue offer the slippery sweetness. Her last love, Todd, had never eaten fruit that didn't come from a can. Before Todd, she'd almost asked a guy she'd dated for mutual masturbation; secretly she wants to observe a man in this most intimate of touches as his manhood stiffens from the mere sight of her curves, secretly she wants to savor her own tender self-stroking as a lover takes in the sight of her uncontrolled spasms.

She'd first found the magic of the ruffled slit between her thighs when she was thirteen, but she didn't tell anybody, even her sister, with whom she'd grown up sharing a bed and all other secrets. Part of the pleasure of the warm spangles spreading her body was watching for signs her sister's breath had steadied enough to take the risk of shaking the mattress, even in the slightest of rhythmic thrusts. If her sister ever woke to realize, she never admitted.

Kimberly turns on the television. There is nothing she wants to watch: an infomercial for exercise equipment, a 1980s comedy that isn't particularly funny, another infomercial. Kimberly's life feels like an infomercial sometimes -- advertising something no one else wants. Todd had used her to get to an acquaintance. She didn't admit this to her roommate, her sister, or her mother. Kimberly told them she and Todd decided they had little in common -- which was technically true. Todd talked about video games more than books; he chose Mexican or fast food while she preferred crisp tastes-- raw veggies and fruits prepared at home or sushi. His arms though, God -- his arms were firm and tender, knowing without her asking to draw her to his chest when she worried about making rent or where, if anywhere, her writing was taking her. His mouth knew just where to melt her when she needed to forget -- a rejection slip or not-so-subtle hints from her mother about her married sister, that Kimberly should consider Todd husband-material or move on if she wanted biological children. Despite what she found, she misses those arms, that mouth, the intimacy of clasping another body close. She tells no one that, for a few weeks, she'd toyed with the idea of proposing to Todd, to see how serious he wasn't or was.

She has an hour left to pack the car she's still got seven payments on, then home by dusk. It's late April so the light will last until at least 8. Restless, her finger codes in Pay-Per-View. For a moment, Kimberly flirts with the idea of ordering a dirty movie. She won't need to watch the whole thing. She's seen skin-flicks with Todd on his computer -- once they'd watched the same one twice because the male lead reminded her of Todd and it gave her the feeling of watching themselves go down. Mostly, the scenes did more for Todd, but twice, she too had come to them. This movie, though, would cost her. And it would appear on her bill-- the bill towards which Jana had given her $250 in fifties. Kimberly's going to put her share, when she checks out downstairs, on her credit card.

Kimberly turns off the TV. She walks to the bathroom, drapes her dirty towel neatly onto the metal hanger, then moves back into the room. The sun splashes a buttery shade of sepia across the side-by-side Queen-size beds with their tangled empty sheets. The beige walls of the room are cheerful, warm without sweltering. She is wearing a white cotton tank top and a pair of red shorts that make her legs feel youthful and springy. She is thirty-one. Her mother calls her legs sexy. Kimberly is slightly embarrassed by this-- her people are long-married, working-class Protestants who only infrequently mention having bodies, much less pointing out the positive parts. They are not cold and sexless, but they are by no means European with their bodies. They do not discuss tits and ass, except in the vaguest terms.

Kimberly is not bored or cold, she is wanting. It's been almost a year since last making love with Todd at his apartment. They'd more frequently spent nights at his place, since she had hollow walls and a roommate. The morning after, still wrapped in the sheets that smelled like him -- a faint man musk and their love-play-- she noticed he'd left his cellphone on his dresser while going out to get them a hasty breakfast. She'd sat up on his mattress, the sheet cupping her breasts, for a full five minutes-- debating, then trying to talk herself out of her decision. Todd's tongue knew just how to lavish her ruffled slit; she'd had a handful of lovers, but Todd had been the first one who'd brought her to orgasm before tending to his own. He'd been the first lover she'd admitted she had a thing for mirrors, and she'd experienced the pleasure of watching while he ran his tongue the length of her body. How could she give that up? Then again, didn't she deserve to know? Her mother would argue so. She'd found three months of suggestive texts between him and her acquaintance. When Todd returned with a bag of soggy fast-food breakfast she didn't even want, she'd confronted him -- feeling half guilty she'd pried into his messages, half glad she'd followed her gut that their emotional relationship wasn't moving as fast as their sexual one. On the way to her suitcase now, she stops in the middle of the rose-braid carpeting, the plushness comforting against her bare toes' pale skin from a still-chilly Midwest. It has been too long a wintry season.

Her index finger and thumb ache with impulse.

She has unzipped her shorts, steps out of them, kicks them from her unpainted toes with a jolt of energy -- almost like she is out of her own body. She does not stop to consider her mind or morals or talk herself out of what she is about to do. It is not exactly power and it is not altogether sexual. She has always had roommates, even on the road like this. She is alone for this once with her wants.

Kimberly has never been able to afford the plush of absolute privacy. She can barely afford this hotel, this writing program she's charged hundreds on her credit card to attend; that's why she had split the room cost with her friend. She had read A Room of One's Own for several courses, but had never had one, not in college nor throughout her growing-up years. She is used to accommodating for someone else's dishes in the sink, someone else's sleep schedule and keeping off lights or turning down stereos. She is not accustomed to her own choice.

She has never before in thirty-one years stripped her panties without clear purpose, never pulled off her tank and unclasped her b-cups in the bright afternoon. The spillage of her breasts feels intoxicating. Even stepping into the shower this morning, with the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, she only gave a cursory glance to her breasts. Now she looks down, satisfied with the supple undercarriage of flesh in a way that saturates deep into her belly then pulses at her clit. Her face is perhaps pretty in a way unconventionally beautiful, but she knows now without a second doubt her physique is succulent as is.

She moves as if this moment has been ordained. If she were writing this scene, she'd refrain from calling it destiny, though it carries that kind of magnetic motion. She does not stop to consider, as so many times in her life. She does not question: what would Jana think? Jana whose absence was still a slight presence in the room -- Jana's wispy blonde hairs fallen from a comb where she'd brushed her pageboy in the entryway, Jana's cake of evenly-used soap on the right-hand side of the sink. Kimberly does not stop to wonder if Jana would censure her as horny or irrational, if Jana's opinion would make her embarrassed or make her change her mind. In this moment, Kimberly is her own universe and universal need.

An hour ago, she was chatting with Jana at breakfast about their professor's glasses perpetually sliding down his nose and wondering if he were as unselfconscious as he seemed in workshop, or just absentminded as Jana suggested. Now Kimberly steps to the double-embankment of windows, she peels back the curtains with the rosettes patterned on their cloth, the damask sturdy yet supple beneath her fingertips. She presses them to the ends of the rods.

In one motion, Kimberly removes her wire-rim glasses, rests them on the mahogany desk beside the unused telephone and her partially-filled notebook. Then, she faces forward.

She does not blanch, she does not pull back.

Looking out, without her glasses, the hotel guests in the far parking lot are just figures -- faces are faces but without the contours, indistinct and smoother. She can see the back of a man's glossy black head of hair. Is he her age? Older? Anyone she knows from the literary seminar?

The blur of blue below is her own second-hand car she'd pack up later. How many of these people, crossing this lot to their cars, were business men? She wants them to perceive her. Her nipples are pert and deep pink, almost coral, and small as acorn cups. Erect, they graze the cool window panes. She always wanted the wide saucer-shaped nipples of her mother and sister, but Todd had always complimented her on hers. Had said, in fact, he preferred them, as they fit perfectly in the warm pocket his mouth made.

A feeling akin to release spreads through her body. The air conditioning caresses her thighs, her buttocks and legs. The contrast between the sun washing her breasts and the room's sixty degrees is delicious. Her every pore exhales satisfaction.

Sunlight fingers Kimberly's shoulder-length auburn hair, her bare shoulders, her innie belly button, the scoop of her convex belly that is soft but had never born a child to the tangled line of hair at the top of her womanhood. There is none of her usual shyness or insistent patter of questioning when preparing to love -- no thought of where should my hands be?, should I cover my breasts with my elbow to be demure?, or at least my nipples?, should I cover my crotch?, should I caress the warm spot spreading from my chest to my torso to this heartbeat in my ears? should I open or close my eyes? should I turn? should I close the curtains?

Bare, she is more herself than ever. Like a one-night stand, this the feeling of tumbling, exultant and fearless, before the regret. From this experience, though, there will be no regret -- only splendid self-discovery.

Naked at the glass, Kimberly does not consider danger. She does not think even one step ahead, to having to cross that same parking lot alone later, to men who might lurk in the lobby after seeing her to hurt her. Similarly, her mind does not produce the words flashing or indecent exposure or voyeurism. These terms too pedestrian, too negative to match the magic rippling her body.

Thinking back later she realizes a trench coat had been a sometime-part of her pubescent fantasies. Though, this was different. In Sunday school, they'd said Song of Songs was not sensual but an allegory. She doesn't know if she fully believes that, but she knows this experience is no allegory-- this is all body, all physicality-- though it quenches, also, an inner realm. Exposed in the windows of the fourth floor, in the Southern city, she can't be sure if ten or five or even just one person has spied her nude body filling the windowpane. Has that bald man pulling into the lot in his red truck spotted her? He doesn't point, but he's slowed his progression through the paved lot. What about the genderless figure wheeling a black case into the side-entrance? Does she cause them to catch their breath at finding her there? Will she fill their minds long afterward as they touch their own lonely bodies in the dark or lying on a mattress touching a partner, imagining myriad positions they secretly wish to try with the nameless woman displaying her body unflinchingly in the window? Or will they admit, in half-drunken whispers after a party, to being unable to quite forget this mystifying woman whose gaze never left them. Would she frequently make a third body, unseen, in their beds?

No one touches. her yet she's drunken with their fingerprints, their gazes saturate her skin.

She doesn't have to touch her cleft to know she's wetter than she's ever been. The pools of her essence warm her belly, start the pleasant quaking behind her knees. She leans into it, rides each subtle wave's swell. She surveys into the bright amber haze where she knows anyone passing can see all, can witness this operatic ecstasy. She can see all, she can see nothing. She could never write sex this satisfying.

The warmth an all-over wash, she backs away slowly and sensibly, back into her old personae, back into her glasses, back into her old skin, putting an arm across her breasts as Eve with a fig leaf, as if to protect them, but from what? There are no eyes, no embarrassment inside the empty room. With her other arm, she draws the curtain closed. Without the sunlight, the room is dank. The air conditioning against her torso makes her flesh shiver. She gathers her clothes from the carpeting, dresses calmly, then packs.

Lying in her own bed with its faded flower sheets later that night-- one thin wall separating herself from her roommate arguing again with her mother on her cellphone-- Kimberly will imagine these hotel strangers silently using her body. Her fingers dipping beneath the lace waistband of her panties, she will stroke the ruffled slit gently, rhythmically, until the magic returns, when she will turn to smother her love-cries in her pillowcase so her roommate cannot hear. She recalls with sated pleasure how perfectly that morning's blinding bath of sunlight awakened her skin, how -- without a partner, without a friend -- she'd needed only what she already possessed. How she had neither turned nor blanched but stood absolute, unveiling all. Her own and only creation.

Jana's words from breakfast replay themselves in the dark-- "like peeling back your skin, then peeling it back further."

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