by Gary Sandman
(09/11/02)

Gary Sandman's Ceremonies takes us through snapshot descriptions and lists that define a variety of the narrator's past lovers. Some are enticing, some are difficult, all are passionate. Based on the format of Japanese pillow books -- sort of random and personal books of notes -- Ceremonies is a sensual and poetic meditation on the erotic and how relationships are transformed by our memories.

33. When I thrust

When I thrust my tongue into Valentine's vagina for the very first time, her hand half-rose to her mouth, and she blinked delicately. After a moment, her hands slid onto her gently rounded belly. She fanned her fingers across her modest navel.

I licked at the right lip and then the left lip. As I sucked hard, the inner lips squeezed into my mouth. It was early spring; the smell of the white roses below Valentine's window filled the room. My tongue flicked against her clit, pushing it around. It twisted, shiny now with her juice. My fingers settled onto her thighs. I slid my tongue deep within.

Valentine rocked her head from side to side, lips pursed, pale blue eyes half-closed. She placed her hands on my shoulders and bent forward. After I thrust my tongue inside again, I rippled it over her musky vagina. I ground at her cunt harshly, my face washing in its wetness. She jerked and closed her thighs against my cheeks. I heard someone come into her parents' house downstairs.

I whipped and yanked my tongue within Valentine. She slumped back and listed sideways on the creamy bedspread. When her hands left my shoulders, she began to flush. She smiled weakly, long blonde hair strewn across the pillow, small buttocks flattened out. On her slight, vulnerable breasts her nipples were hard like needles. She put her teeth jagged against her lower lip.

39. Description Two

Valentine's pink cotton shirt. Her breasts small but well-shaped. Arms gently muscled and elegant. Firm and the flesh rough with goosebumps. Ribs rippling faintly, and a neat line between them, where they divided. The skin tanned, with downy hair. Her navel a vertical slit. Her abdomen rounded, though only slightly.

Valentine's white skirt. Her small, soft buttocks. The zip. Sky-blue panties. Her cunt between narrow, slightly boyish hips. Thin, coltish legs. Her ragged tennis shoes. Long, slender toes.

47. List Four

When Valentine had her period, she gave off a vivid smell.

She blushed at the mere sight of my penis. She got very red. Laughing, she covered her face with both hands. Her rounded eyes peered through her fingers. She placed her fingertips over her mouth.

Valentine kept stealing my Doors T-shirt and wearing it when I wasn't watching.

At Marengo High School, in Senior drawing class, Valentine called to me but I didn't answer. So she started to sob.

As I was masturbating, she loped into the room. She saw me and threw her arm over her eyes, cackling hastily.

She stole into the room late at night and woke me with a gesture of her tongue.

I fingered Valentine's old, faded jeans with pleasure. The seat was shiny, and the crotch was worn thin. The legs were somewhat frayed at the bottom. The jeans smelled of her scent. They recalled her curves.

I wet Valentine's thin lips with my stringy semen.

Spit and come soaked the hair around my cock and balls when she finished.

Dreamily, she remarked how she hated it when her panties bunched up in her crotch.

Tiny bruises tattooed her small breasts.

When I glanced up, Valentine, a pom-pom girl, shifted her eyes to me and then away, smiling. She whirled around and revolved her hips, her small behind and short maroon skirt swinging around. As she dropped to the gym floor, she rocked her ass, still smiling.

Valentine and I sat in my pick-up truck, necking. She was drunk. Suddenly she pushed me away and held up a finger. She leaned out the window and as I watched began throwing up.

She sucked my cock for an hour after I came. Her mouth brought me from softness to hardness over and over again. Valentine made my cock sore, her eyes shy.

110. I lay naked with Ross

I lay naked with Ross, in a gray darkness, my heart beating hard. Though we had removed our clothes, I still felt very warm and noticed her animal scent, heavy, forbidding. I gazed at her triangle of hair, squat and black, and then I stared across the room, without thought. Wind hissed through the trees outside her Northern Illinois University dorm room.

Tentatively I slipped my arm over Ross and grazed my lips against hers. Then she returned my hungry kiss. I placed the palm of my hand over her fat, little breast. We kissed again, thoroughly, patiently.

I lay mute for about ten minutes, aware of the warmth of Ross's body. Trembling, I slid my leg over both of hers, pressing my weight against her belly. I flicked an index finger inside her cunt's pliant walls and yanked it up and down. Ross moved convulsively. We exchanged some words, and then my cock, erect against her perinaeum, jerked briefly, almost unnoticeably, wetting the pink cotton sheets beneath us.

A few minutes later, Ross stroked my cock, like a small, wet bud now.

149. Sarah, lanky and red-headed

Sarah, lanky and red-headed, another college student, clapped with delight when she saw my penis was hard at last. Giggling, pert breasts bouncing, she scrambled for a condom but tripped.

205. She handed me a note.

She handed me a note. Abruptly she kissed me on the lips, then hurried out the door. I went over to the windowsill, sat down in the sunlight, and unfolded the blue sheet of paper. It was a vivid description of our lovemaking the night before. She was unusually graphic, unconsciously poetic. She used obscenities several times. I noticed the heavy paper smelled of lavender. A thick spray of flowers and leaves was attached to it. Sometimes she wrote me such things afterward.

212. I rested on my side

I rested on my side, one leg bent at the knee. Gently, I caressed my inner thighs and balls. I grasped the shaft of my penis, and massaged it. As my forefinger and thumb rubbed my scrotum, I inhaled deeply and shook my head. My thoughts were about Sarah.

I stroked my swelling penis, then paused. My fingertips massaged my balls lightly. While I caressed my belly and thighs, I inhaled and exhaled quickly. I caressed my penis, then stopped and waited. Bit by bit my body tightened, then relaxed. I grabbed my hard penis again and pumped it up and down. As my balls began to strain, my hand faltered. Then white spunk spurted over my fist thickly, running down my fingers and catching between them.

221. Enthusiastically Sarah rose up on her knees

Enthusiastically Sarah rose up on her knees, grasped my condomed penis and sank herself down on it. As our hair meshed, her warm buttocks curled over my thighs. A blueberry candle flickered behind us, its scent drifting over. The Allman Brothers played on the stereo. I had dropped out of college; it was the night before I was to leave.

Sarah wiggled her wide hips, my penis squirming deep within her. I closed my eyes briefly. As she laughed, her breath hissing in and out of her mouth, she bounced up and down a bit. For a moment, she swayed, her small breasts shifting. Traffic roared by on the University street outside. Sarah lifted up, then fell down my hard penis. She began shifting back and forth from my hips. She moaned softly.

As Sarah rocked on me, her breasts flopped. She paused, slumped back on her ass, then ran a hand through her short, boyish haircut. I started groaning. The candle wavered behind us. After more of her thrusts, I grabbed her hips and arched up to meet her. Our mingled grunts filled the apartment. Sweat pooled on my chest. As Sarah's breathing deepened, her hips accelerated, and she squealed, saliva flying from her mouth. I slammed her down on me. Sarah's head dropped, and her lips sagged. She locked her thighs and moaned as she came. I inhaled, then emptied myself fully inside her.

232. List Fifteen

The Yellow Kid checked my cock cautiously, out of the corner of her eye, her face tilted up, at Plastek in Woodstock, the factory at which I was working. Then she lowered her head, dropped her mouth open and stared at my groin. Her eyes flicked up to mine. They darted back between my legs. She turned back to the plastic injection machine she was operating.

When I asked her for a date, I found myself concentrating on her long fingers and the emerald rings upon them.

She had painted blue, cross-hatched, on her belly.

The Yellow Kid's scent and stain varied.

She said she felt she was ugly. She said she had crooked teeth. Her Southern accent drew out the consonants. She showed me the blue track marks on the inside of her right elbow. She said her daddy called her the Yellow Kid after a cartoon character.

The Yellow Kid frowned angrily at me before her wide lips touched my cock. After a few perfunctory sucks, she slumped back on her heels and twisted her head away. The Yellow Kid pushed her thick, blonde hair back. She rubbed her hand over her lips once. When she took my cock back in her mouth, her eyes closed and her nostrils flared.

I think she liked to see me coming up the stairs to her apartment with violets and a hard-on.

Since she lay hidden beneath the sheets, I couldn't tell which end was which.

She bent over to pick up one of my oil portraits, then straightened up, wedging her thumbs under her tight, green panties to pull them down over the half-moons of her ass, her broad hips swinging up one at a time.

My buttocks rose and fell between her spread legs, and in reaction her knees swayed up and down.

I finally convinced the Yellow Kid to stop wearing panties.

She bit me.

The Yellow Kid turned a patchy red at the Plastek lunch table. She looked at me funny, a Braves baseball cap pulled low over her forehead.

She jerked her hips slightly as she poked her fingers inside her genitals. After a moment, she produced two shiny metal balls. She rolled them wet and clicking in her palm, then tossed them across the room to me, one at a time.

The Yellow Kid handed me the telephone, frowning. Ross had called me up unexpectedly; it was good to hear from her.

We were making love dog-style. As an experiment, she wrestled her hips at mine; by accident my cock fell out.

In the middle of the night the Yellow Kid put her foot against my ass and shoved me out of the bed to go turn up the heat. I shuffled across the room, then flew back under the covers, where she wrapped her body around mine.

She slouched, amused, one foot daintily up on a chair, inserting a cherry-red diaphragm.

The Yellow Kid held the telephone out of my reach as, laughing, she tried to set up a blind date for me.

I handed her some pornographic sketches I'd been working on.

As I got out of my car to go into the store, I spotted the Yellow Kid and said hello to her. I hadn't seen her in some time. My throat was gravelly, however, and my voice broke. She looked at me, startled, and passed by. When I returned to my car, she was standing by hers. She mumbled something and smirked.

264. The Yellow Kid strode toward the living room couch angrily

The Yellow Kid strode toward the living room couch angrily, in her cramped Woodstock apartment, and laid down next to me. It was sunny; a summer breeze tumbled through a nearby window. Phil Collins crooned on the radio. We kissed, then she lifted her loose, white T-shirt up over her head. She pulled her hair back roughly into a ponytail. My arms looped around her tiny waist, and her arms linked around my neck. She spoke to me, slurring her words, her brown eyes slitted.

The Yellow Kid clicked open the catch of her jeans and wrestled them off. Clumsily she tugged a thin tampon out. She shoved her jeans to the floor, grabbed a towel from the nightstand and stuffed it under her hips Quickly she wrapped her arms around my neck and swung my lips to hers again. One of her legs flew over both of mine and weighed them down. She put her hand on my hip, then abruptly grabbed my ass.

We kissed again, our tongues flicking, still lying on our sides. The Yellow Kid flipped over and fit her skinny ass against my belly, like spoons. Her left shoulder blade was adorned with a scarlet cat tattoo. She grasped my cock and jammed it between her legs and into herself. I grabbed one of her springy breasts. As she turned her head, we kissed again. I began rippling in and out. The couch springs squeaked. The Yellow Kid moaned and brushed a strand of her hair out of her face. She whispered to me, asking sharply about some drugs she wanted me to buy for her.

I dispatched my semen inside of her, bit by bit. She rocked her hips fast, then slow, then seized my hand, suddenly inhaling. Her legs lifted, and she rolled away. My cock was streaked with blood. The Yellow Kid rose and pulled her T-shirt and jeans on, eyeing me with loathing. She curled up on the window seat. She said she didn't want to see me again.

296. I loved

I loved the things she did in the ear to me.

301. Her strong, once broken mouth

Her strong, once broken mouth had held many things: tongue, cock, word, wine.

308. Marthe smiled

Marthe smiled when I unbuttoned the thin sweater she wore. As I pulled it off, she bowed her head. I shivered. When I cupped her breast, its thick, brown nipple stirred. Downy hair rose on her skin.

Marthe had met me outside North Line Homes, the Evanston group home at which we were both employed. She was a social worker. We had walked over to my apartment through the heat. Sweat had run down our bodies in streams.

But here it was cooler. Only grey light disturbed the darkness, wafting across the floor. As Marthe took my shirt, it sent her serene face into shadow. Her bell-shaped breast was warm now under my fingers. When I looked at her, her green eyes seemed mesmerized. She touched her auburn hair vacantly, then lifted her arms to me.

After a while, Marthe stopped nuzzling my jawline. She stood in the window's shaft of dust motes and light, then apart from me in the late afternoon shade. Bending, she slid off her jeans. When I held out my hand to her, she slipped her hand into mine. In bed we took hold of one another.

323. In the darkness Fannie

In the darkness Fannie, a graduate student who worked at the home, reached toward me and pursed her long, elegant fingers against my zipper. She tugged my jeans open, snaked her hand inside, and grasped my penis. She drew it out gently, flopping a bit against her fingers. Fannie bent down, her coarse, corn-rowed hair arcing forward. She kissed the soft, pliant tip. Her broad tongue swirled languidly against its length. She sucked the glans past her thick lips, murmuring.

344. She lay sprawled

She lay sprawled across the bed so I brought her a cone of red and yellow irises. Smiling, I scattered them across her rounded breasts, which were the color of just fallen snow.

387. Finger

Finger in cunt, tongue on clit.

397. List Fifteen

Delicately, Red Cloud, a poet, fixed a girdle of bluebells about her naked hips. Her breath smelled of gin.

My hand lay cupped between the legs of Red Cloud's tight jeans; the movement of the Citroen on Paris's Grand Boulevards ring road made her come.

When she climaxed, her cunt curled, then tightened around my finger, and she guffawed loudly.

A tender, black flower gored by a thick, brown root, above the cheeks of her ass, below my belly.

My penis dipped far down into her vagina and tapped the tip of her womb, and Red Cloud flinched suddenly.

Red Cloud bent over the sink, staring out a small window of my St-Germain house, her big pink breasts hanging out of her robe. She turned to me, sipping a whiskey. She smiled, then tried to hand me the whiskey.

It took me a while to get used to sleeping with someone every night again. I could only seem to nap lightly.

From beneath the green, silk robe, from between her wide, curved breasts, Red Cloud produced a spray of rose plum flowers and presented it to me, smiling sweetly.

I ran my fingers slowly over her big, round glasses, which she had just removed and which were still warm.

Wrapped only in a creamy towel which coiled at her waist, her curly, black hair streaming past her shoulders, she arranged the stalks of dried sunflowers in a vase. She chatted with me in French. I crouched at an easel, painting her. She sat down at a piano and picked out a Laurie Anderson tune. She had stopped drinking.

Sometimes when Red Cloud passed the windows, she would stir the big, clay wind chimes strung along them, then close her eyes, listening to them.

We found ourselves, later, in a field of wild grass, clasping hands, on a hazy summer morning, by the Verdon River, having spoken not at all.

In Rome, perched on a stool, she pulled a length of thick, chunky beads out of her wet cunt slowly. Sipping gin again, she poked them back in. Linked to the beads were tiny, copper bells that rang faintly when she moved them. They had been given to her by an old boyfriend.

She always kissed me like she was making an offering.

As soon as I slapped her rump, she made an "OH" with her mouth. She spun toward me, knocked me down, threw herself on top of me, and began tickling me, hooting.

She carried my semen around inside her.

In the wildflowers of Vosges, Red Cloud and I lay kissing. Later on we lost ourselves in the woods. At day's end she and I stood by a pond, looking at our reflection. After she took her leave, I found a note by my jacket. In gorgeous characters she had written my name. Once again, she was trying to get sober.

She was naked on the floor. She had a wet, red primrose lying over her navel. Drunk again, vomit dribbled from her mouth.

424. Description Thirteen

My penis was long and thick, a deep pink lined with blue. Thick, black hair curled at the root, spreading across and downward. The skin was soft, the core firm. Underneath it ran a thick, bulging vein. A ring of tender skin erupted suddenly into the glans. The tip was shaped like a condottiere's helmet, peaked and arched. A small slit crowned it.

Beneath my penis nestled my two dense, narrow testicles. They were draped in a loose pouch of skin, which was covered by light hair. Veins criss-crossed them.

Red Cloud sketched me, smiling.

486. I kept thrusting

I kept thrusting, popping past a ring of muscles in Red Cloud's cunt. Her skin, particularly around her collarbone, began to get flushed.

I dropped down and nibbled her neck. Slowly I pumped. The Paris Metro thundered underground nearby. It was past midnight. Red Cloud grabbed my face and stuck her tongue in my mouth as my cock rocked from side to side. She groped for my butt. Her black hair was plastered across her forehead. I rose on locked arms and started thrusting more quickly, the ring of her muscles still massaging my cock. Her chunky right leg was half-tossed over my ass. Grunting, she bucked her belly against mine. We rocked faster. My balls strained and strained. We slowed. I tried to pull out my sheathed cock. But she wouldn't let me, at least not right away. She started snickering.

488. My lover

My lover's light brown hair shone where the sun hit it. She had pearl skin. Her eyes were large and clear. She was plain spoken.

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