December 28, 2007
A Small Wet Goddess In Gotham
One does not expect to glimpse a naiad on the A train, yet there she was. Just inside the door she stood, compact yet slight, jet hair cropped short in fetching brutal chunks around her face, clad in nothing but a diaphanous tunic of algae green. An incongruous sight on the MTA, this water sprite set plumb in the middle of Manhattan, but then Manhattan is an island.
I’ve seen some sundry strangeness on the subway. I’ve seen a relentless parade of beggars, peddlers and hawkers. I’ve been entertained by strolling mariachi bands, gospel singers, drummers, break-dancers, rappers, flautists, comedians and even one mime. I’ve witnessed New Yorkers riding the subway calmly, newspaper in hand, iPod buds in ears, dressed in nothing but their skivvies and shoes. I’ve witnessed couples meet, fight, make-up, make out and all but fornicate. I’ve seen New Yorkers riding the rails with a dizzying array of objects: multiple dogs, a stand-up bass, a bassoon, goldfish in bags, a book case, and rolling racks of clothes come to mind. I’ve seen clowns, cowboys, drag queens, and one person on stilts. I’ve seen celebrities, politicians, and nobodies. I just never really thought a goddess would take the A train, but I suppose even deities need to get uptown quickly.
This naiad in the A-train’s midst stood somehow apart from the flickering crowd that ebbed and flowed around her. The train doors opened, people left, people entered. She stood still, cool and serene in the humid turgescent stream of humans around her. She alone looked still and calm and mostly unruffled, green as algae, cool as grass, happily damp as moss.
We got off at the same station, this small green goddess and I. I followed her up the stairs, down the long uterine hall and out toward the heavy wood doors to the street beyond. In the doorway, a frisky beam of sunlight hit her just so. Her dress, that simple tunic, a solitary column the color of wet kelp, and supple as kelp too—the fabric fell in undulating waves, suggesting waves lapping or streams burbling—her dress, caught in that shaft of sunlight, was rendered translucent.
For one brief moment, her small and densely compact body was limned in light. The sinuous curve of her shoulders to her waist, the twin hills of her ass, the dual columns of her thighs supporting all of her. The light bathed her nearly naked, if only for a slender moment. Walking behind her and seeing her trapped near-transparent in that wicked beam, I imagined lifting her tunic, running my hands up her thighs, over her ass, around her waist, across her belly and up to her small nymph’s breasts. I saw myself handling her roughly and reverently and I wanted to push her like paper against the wall and kiss her with my mouth hot and wet.
She would, undoubtedly, be cool and damp, like the walls of a cavern made flesh. She would smell like the inside of a seashell; she would taste like Pacific oysters, briney-sweet and cucumbery. Her tongue would taste of wet fruit and her mouth of water. She would trickle like water through my rough fingers; I would be unable to hold her; it would still be nonetheless worth trying, even if as I tried, I failed.
The spell of the sunlight lifted, her dress turned opaque once more, the door closed behind her. I was left in abject supplication to this petit deity, wondering how wrong it was to wish to molest her, however reverently.
Comments
Leave a Reply
