Black Tie Evenings

Sometimes I think I am a time traveler, cruelly misplaced
Catapulted accidentally into this century, a hundred years too late

Longing for the days of class and elegance of the early twentieth century
An age when style and poise where as common as men's top hats and overcoats

When women were dames, fiesty suffragettes in flapper skirts
Their men were equally matched in black tie and silken tuxedos

Both of them frequenting speakeasies, listening and dancing to sinful jazz
While drinking bootlegged bourbon banned by the goddam constitution itself

Often called the lost generation, the hedonistic roaring twenties
The time when Hemmingway and Fitzgerald where young, in their prime

That lull between the wars when class and fashion ruled
Clothing these sexual, sensual beasts in the finest threads

Progressives with none of today's politcal correctness
Women demanded wooing, and men pursued and courted them

Love was magical, full of passion and the chase
Many making love half dressed in five star hotel rooms

Ending in lipstick on starched collars, bruised napes
And the lingering whisper of perfume in a wrinkled white dinner jacket

Fast forward to today, when formal still means formal
Although men and women still come underdressed and unashamed

But not my love and I, we still love and follow the rules
With my redheaded firecracker in her little black dress and I in my tailored tux or military mess dress

Full of prim and proper while we dance ballroom, a little too close
Eyes locked, then undressing each other, longing to let our passionate animals free

Not wanting the evening to end, but wanting to release the sexual tension
Running to our hotel room, kissing all the way up the elevator