Summer of My Vagabond Vixen

Summer of My Vagabond Vixen    
   
     Life in a group home for the unrepentantly mentally ill is mostly hard work but has its rewards. We take turns cooking for the entire household. Every resident has to mop, sweep, and mow the lawn in the swelter of summer. However, one day I get a surprise which breathes life into my sojourn there.  
     The headmistress of our home for the divinely touched summons me to her office. There before my eyes is a young lady dressed too casually to be staff who is all too familiar to me. Ms. Kate says, “John, this is Fatima. She is homeless. The police found her sleeping under the interstate in Baton Rouge. Unfortunately, the group homes for women are filled to capacity. None of them are willing to take her. We really tried John. No matter how much we looked there were no beds available.  
     So I’m going to ask of you something I wouldn’t trust any other man here to do because you are a sterling gentleman. I know you will respect her boundaries and privacy. Please, say you won’t mind her being your roommate for a while.”  
     I say, “Ms. Kate, I’ll treat her like my very own sister. There will be nothing inappropriate between us.” The young lady smiles at me. I teach her the ropes of this place and help her with the chores.  
     She says, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this. How come the heavenly wheel keeps landing us together in places for the divinely touched?”  
     I reply, “It is written in the stars. At least we’re not in prison.”  
     She says, “How could you even think such a thing? But tell me, what landed you here?”  
     I say, “I wanted to go to college but my doctor said I had to rid myself of my delusions about my past lives first so they sent me here.”  
     She replies, “Me, I was camping under the interstate. With the economy on the skids, I couldn’t find a job. I was ashamed to ask my family to subsidize my rent and truly didn’t want to return to living under my parent’s roof like a teenager. Fortunately, I had a diagnosis as a bipolar. Otherwise, I’d be in jail. But all this is why I never called you. I didn’t want to drag you into my  
mess.”  
     One night she is in the bed next to me crying. I say, “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”  
     In between sobs she says, “I feel so lonely. I need someone to talk to me.”  
      “I know the feeling. It feels like a life sentence here.”  
     “I’m sorry to bother you with my weeping. We women have emotions which men don’t understand. I’ll try to be quiet and sleep now.”  
     The next morning I wake up and take a shower. Afterward, I browse one of my men’s magazines while standing over the sink. I left the door unlocked but figured she’d hear the shower and know not to come in. But to my surprise, she bursts in. “John, what fascinates you men about those women in the girlie magazines?”  
     I cover my pinnacle of rock with the magazine. She says, “Too late, I caught ya!”  
     I say, “I was just taking in some eye candy. I’m fully in control of myself.”  
     She smirks and points between my legs. “It looks to me like your tart popped out of the toaster.”  
     I hear the staff calling names to the boys for breakfast. She must too because she dashes out leaving my timber even stiffer.  
     Around noon she is out of sight. The door to the powder room is cracked open so I figure it is safe to enter. There before me, she poses naked by the sink looking at my naughty magazine. She says, “Why get your thrills gazing at those hotties when you have me here? I can pose just like them. Look at the picture and compare it to me. Is not my pose exactly the same?”  
     I approach and glance from the image to her. “Yes, my dear. Your poise is even more graceful than the floozy. I could say you are art in motion.”  
     She says, “No one has ever said that about me. You have touched my heart. Let me turn for you. Describe what you see.”  
     “Your complexion is pale as a noon moon.”  
     “What about my bottom? Put that into words for me.”  
     “Your derriere is chiseled like that of a marble statue. It is proportioned in perfect symmetry but with the fleshly suppleness of a model Renoir might have done a study on.”  
     “And what about my nose?”  
     “Delicate as a rosebud encased in snow.”  
     “I wish I could stay here with you. You sure do wonders for this gal’s self-esteem, but one last thing. How would you describe my breasts?”  
      “Not mountainous but rather hillocks, standing proud and rising with each breath into the softness of gentle clouds.”  
     She says, “Let me give you one more stance with me on the bed with the curtains wide open.”  
     “We can lock the door. But the farmers out here already think we’re nuts. If they see you through the window posing for me it might drive them through the roof!”  
     “They’re taking lunch now and what they might see won’t hurt them. Am I hard on your eyes?”  
     “Good point.” I lock the door.  
     “What do you see now?”  
     “I see my wife from a previous lifetime in Pompeii just before Vesuvius erupted, lying on our bed about to make love to me.”  
     “Well, there aren’t any volcanoes around here but what if a tornado swept us away? Wherever your soul migrated to wouldn’t you regret having  
turned down a luscious lass like me?”  
     I roll her up in her blanket like a tamale fresh from the oven but am careful not to get my fingers burned. She says, “Aw, that’s not fair. You’ve got me all bundled up but you’re not wearing your briefs underneath those PJ bottoms. You are trying to tease me, aren’t you? Well, it worked.” She snakes her fingers past my buttons and gives me a tweak. My snaps come undone from her action. She says, “My, oh my, what do we have here?”  
     “It is a natural reaction men get in the morning which has nothing to do with getting turned on.”  
     “My Pinocchio, what grows with your fib is something other than your nose.”  
     “It has been documented in medical journals. The sacral nerve controls erections and brings about morning wood.”  
     “This blanket is really uncomfortable and unneeded since it is summer. Mind if I take it off and sit up?”  
     She doesn’t wait for an answer but throws the blanket aside. “It was an unnecessary impediment to the flow of our conversation,” she says. She tells me, “If we’re going to do chit-chat, we need an icebreaker. So, God do you remember your high school teachers? My school days seem eons ago. Yet, I remember Ms. Adolfa. The resemblance of her name to the evil man wasn’t lost on me. And her similarity to him didn’t stop with the name. She would slam your willy into the wall if you didn’t watch your grammar. She was a bitch Goddess.”    
     She elaborates, “Then there was Mr. Shaq my Arab history teacher. He was the bomb. Of course, you’re a guy so you won’t understand. But to me, Mr. Shaq was a gorgeous Sheik. I used to get off on him in the girl’s room after class. He just turned me on, I don’t know why.”    
     “I grew up Catholic with all that guilt about sex.”  
     She puts her hands in her lap as her legs fall open. She says, “My father and mother are strict Muslims. They have really old-fashioned religious beliefs. They’re even more conservative than Baptists down here. They act like they’re living under the Caliphate. My father spanked me if he caught me with condoms. If he suspected I was having sex he told my teachers to monitor me. I can’t tell you how humiliating it was. He even made me do pregnancy tests and show him the results. He also made me take ovulation tests forbade me to leave the house when I was ovulating. I felt degraded. I love my heritage and my people but I couldn’t tolerate this.”  
     “Every sperm is sacred was our mantra.”  
     “While we’re on the subject, I found your latest erotica book in the drawer by the sink. But I admire men who get turned on by reading.”  
     “I read Virginia Woolf too.”  
     “Yes, but I bet you don’t get off on her.”  
     “My risqué reading is purely mental gymnastics for when I meet the right woman.”  
     “And I guess those nudie magazines are to learn the female anatomy?”  
     “Precisely.”  
     “Didn’t you take sex education in school?”  
     “She was just a woman drawing doodles on the board.”  
     “You need an illustrated physiology book.”  
     “I need to find another hobby, like basket weaving.”  
     “Do you prefer arts and crafts over me?”  
     “Only until I’m ready.”  
     “I normally don’t do it with basket cases. But with you, I’ll make an exception.”  
     “I’ll take that as a compliment. Hey, you know what? I think Ms. Victoria took the other residents shopping in the van and left us behind. Let me take a look around. Yep, they are gone pecan. I guess she thought I was visiting my parents this weekend. While the cat’s away the mice will play.”  
     “Hot diggity dog, you came through after all.”  
     “You make me feel special in a good way.”  
     “Instead of jumping headfirst into sex, pardon the pun, try this. You must strip for me. The boombox’s detachable speakers can tickle more than the eardrum. Proximity is the key. We’ll sit on the floor cushioned by pillows and wrap our legs around each other with only the speakers between us propped respectively against your cock and my Mamie. You better hug my hips like you love me.”  
     “Ok, you’ve got me naked which I never thought would happen so soon. Now, I’m just wondering if there is a diagnosis for this form of deviance in the DSM?”  
     “Aurally fixated?”  
     “Saxodicktion.”  
     “Nymphonic.”  
     “All right my sensual psychonaut. I’m a-gonna pump up the volume and jiggle your noodle.”  
     “Music has never been my aphrodisiac but rather an accompaniment. But let’s jam together and let come what may pardon the pun.”  
     “This birth control is as storkproof as abstinence. I never met a guy who would follow me into this far side of lunacy. Open minds think alike. So for our foreplay, you sing along with me to the words of this chanteuse of yesteryear.”  
     “Let’s jam to that jazz and let come what may pardon the pun.” The dusky chanteuse pours her blues from the boombox for us like a barmaid serving whiskey on the rocks. It feels like a ménage à trios with the jazz singer on the CD player as the other woman in our tryst.  
      My sweetie chimes in, “The rent’s unpaid dear, we haven’t a bus, but smiles were made dear, for people like us. There’s nothing surer, the rich get rich and the poor get children. In the meantime, in-between time, ain’t we got fun?”  
     I pick up, “Just to make their trouble nearly double, something happened last night. To their chimney a gray bird came, mister Stork is his name. And I’ll bet two pins, a pair of twins, just happened in with the bird.”  
     “Jezus, don’t you dare get me preggers, you rascal you. I am in the not ready for maternity fraternity,” my girly friend puts her verbal foot down.  
     The next track is Mozart’s “Jupiter Symphony.” The sonic waves rise like beachcombers on a sea after a storm. They roll from the speakers and jingle my bells with the roar of the ocean.  
     My voice cracks like I am in for a good cry. Then something similar to whale song yet oh so human bursts from my voice box as Amadeus’ music inspires her psychobabble which in turn sings pleasure into my vibratory body.  
     She exclaims, “Pillage me! Plunder my treasures!  
Hallelujah fucktilicious!!! Be my sexual salvation. Slam dunk my hoop like you’re the NBA all-star from heaven. Let me be the first female coach to lick you into shape.” She pulls the sound machine into her Mamie while grinding her hips.  
     The feel of her hips pumping between my legs makes it hard to focus on the music, pardon the pun. And so my panting becomes an unscripted motif or phrase in the music. Her moan lingers until the last movement of the symphony climaxes as do I.  
     “Damn, this is a better place to be mad than in a nunnery such as Hamlet proposes to Ophelia because this girl can’t hang with being a virgin bride of Christ” she pronounces.  
     “This is like a monastery” I refute.  
     “Yes, but our Abbess treats sex as a personal matter.”  
    I say, “What happens in the boudoir stays in the boudoir.”  
     “You mean this bedroom is the domain of my womanly self?”  
     “You’re the only woman who sleeps here as far as I can see.”  
     “Oh, you make me feel all empowered.”  
     “As the sole female resident here it stands to reason that you should have certain privileges.”    
     She says, “Oh no. I hear the van pulling up. Let’s put on our bathrobes, sit in the living room, and turn the TV to the Gospel channel.”  
     Ms. Victoria walks in and says, “Look at you two raggedy heads. You look like you just got out of bed. But it is great to see you two listening to the word. Too many young’ uns don’t pay no heed.”  
     “There are a lot of lost souls,” I say.  
      “Amen,” my girlfriend says with a giggle.  
      Our headmistress, Kate, detects vibes of unrest among our population. So she gets us a comfort dog to pet and play with and has the women who babysit us take us to the Comite River to picnic and swim. One fine summer day we are at the river enjoying the warmth and the fragrance of the magnolia petal-strewn forest. We walk barefoot on the fallen blossoms with the traffic overhead on the bridge.  
     To my surprise Yogi, our Labrador retriever plunges into the river and swims by the pilings of the bridge. But to our shock, he begins swirling in the current while struggling to stay above water. I dive into the river and swim to Yogi where I hold him against my chest only to find myself suctioned by the whirlpool. Abruptly I feel Fatima grab my arm. My God, she has followed me in a futile attempt to save me. Then the three of us are spinning like tops until I feel the water surround and embrace me in Stygian darkness.  
     Then I rise from the water but there is no river or dog. They are replaced by Kelly’s Pond on the plantation land with its cypress knotted shore and black tea liquid. But where is Fatima? I rise dripping from the pond and an egret stands before me. It takes to the air like a spirit voyager and I follow it on foot while it stops to rest every so often giving me time to keep up.  
     Finally, we arrive at the horse stalls and there is Fatima feeding an equine apple slices. When she sees me she beams and feeds me a quarter of an apple. Once my appetite has been satiated she tells me the equine is Yogi, our dog. We embrace out of love for each other and celebration of our two thousandth anniversary.  
     We share a luxury room in the bed and breakfast of the big house with other transients on the karmic cycle of rebirth. One spring day I hear a knock on the door. The concierge tells us that our reservation of the room is over and another guest has booked the room for the rest of the season.
     Fatima says, “But we’re not decent.”
      The concierge says, “Wear your birthday suits proudly because you two have birthdays coming up.”
     No more room service for us because our next stop is earth.