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Bourbon Street Lady

     Before my very eyes, Rowena strips out of her lily-white as first communion dress into her black as Wicca lipstick on the eve of Samhain, lingerie.  
     Ro says, “There is the law of averages. Though some deny it I’ve seen it at work in my daily life. I’ve put myself in harm’s way for those I cared about. I didn’t do this out of a sense of duty but rather the love of an army nurse who sees a wounded soldier with a ticking grenade and throws it with all her strength to save a man who was trying to commit suicide because she believes his life is worth saving even though he doesn’t. And the soldier dies of his injuries because even a seasoned nurse like me couldn’t stitch him up enough to stop his bleeding. Then there are the times I ran for my life away from the minefield between me and the certain death I faced if I tried to treat the wounded warriors of my life. But they healed without me being their angel. On the baseball diamond of life, God is the umpire and he
has the last word.”
     This evening we lay in the heat with a ceiling fan our only solace till I stumble into slumber when the sensation of age creeps upon me. “You are like an old lover of my catty youth. This heat washes over me like a wet dream. Even women can leave the stain of their dreams on cotton. And I’ve done it as good as any man” she muses out loud. In the wee hours of a delicate morning, I feel her shiver against me like an old crone nearing the end. But I know she has many years ahead. Don’t I? I glimpse the once starry-eyed Catholic school girl who wandered the hallways of “Our Lady of Perpetual Penance.”  
     I ponder wide and deep. Her ragged breath sounds like a death rattle. But I face my personal demons with the strong prospect of immersion in the River Lethe to wash all the taints of my past into oblivion.
     The sun peeks through the window and touches her sober nakedness with an aura of golden heat which awakens my restless libido. We answer Helios’ summons with our eyes wide to the opening future.
     Rowena retires to the powder room to wash the sweat from her mascara smeared face. I watch her rub the moistened cloth to wipe away her makeup. Soon her lips are pale, once again, as Poe’s Annabel Lee’s. I tag behind her to wash my face. Each splash of cold on heat feels like a bath in a baptismal font to christen me into a new age.
     Together, we step in the manmade waterfall of her shower and ballroom dance under the pelt of liquid joy. Each hot bead steams my skin into blushed manhood. She shuts off the rush of water. Then I close my eyes and feel the opium rush of cool air on my drenched body.
     With sure feet, I follow her footsteps to the window and stand caressed in the late spring breeze. I know that in the French Quarter her nudity is a form of art that is appreciated by a passerby on streets littered with beer cans and condoms.
     She wraps herself in terrycloth. Her bathrobe looks like a pre-exhibition drapery on her nude portrait. She tells me, “I see myself as a bare woman whose beauty is appreciated by many but seen by few. Yet my profession, which is said to be the oldest, exposes me to many clients in my world of men and some women who are privileged to know my charms. But that elusive emotion of love is one I’ve only known once before you. He was stolen from me by a woman who paraded her virtues like a cheap Betty Crocker TV ad. And so it goes for me, whose Easter lily complexion implies virginity, but whose luster belies more experience in the flesh and spirit.”
     “I am jealous,” I say
     She replies, “I will only paint my face and offer myself in rooms I dare not consider home; for the sacred space of our apartment is my womb where only my heart beats by itself but not alone in this church for a fallen woman who has done enough penance for an army of adulteresses.”
     “I am capable of making the distinction between how you earn our bread and the home we’ve made together.”
      Ro says, “If your heart can stand it you can come with me if you like. Some of these men like rough play, which if given free rein can get out of hand. Would you stay outside their bedrooms so I can feel safe?”
     “I’m built like a locomotive whose brawn is at your service.”
     I follow Rowena to the wharf where she finds her calling as a flapper girl doing the Charleston on the loading docks of New Orleans with her hips swinging to the beat of ragtime turned jazz which plays on her imaginary jukebox. Oranges in crates scent her wharf dance. Her wild-haired seduction wins whistles from the skirt-chasing longshoremen. But her whiskey lips will kiss only one tonight.
     Her waggish tongue is ticklish to the ear with the British charm of a peasant girl raised on tongue in cheek earthiness.  
     She auctions herself off to the roughnecks until with a wink her choice is made. She gives her choice a sidelong glance with the fiery eyes of a Lass ready to properly greet her sailor. The lucky man sips cognac with her this night with the calliope serenading them in his smoky room and me close at hand. And so we emerge into the pre-dawn swelter of lust and beer.
     With the urge of sunbeams, we rise from our mattress with Rowena’s witness to me. “I have found a kind of fragrance all my own with you, my man. But each time those men pound into me the crack in my China doll spreads with my widening legs until it is almost from head to toe so that if it grows further it will break me in two.”
     I say, “Do you pour your voice into the act?”
      Rowena replies, “My scream is modulated to sound like pleasure. But it comes from the terror of being penetrated oh so close to my center. Trust me, my love, not once have they touched my core. Yea though you walk through the valley of the shadow of adultery let not jealousy hold sway for only you can feel that breakage where light and darkness meet within me.”  
Written by goldenmyst
Published | Edited 25th Jan 2020
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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