the ballad of beautiful scars

Small-town back-road fanging in the fast car, looking for some kind of something new. Pulled into the curb to get coffee on a Saturday morning, sun-shining and feeling good. A woman was standing outside the coffee shop; mid-thirties, brunette, fit looking but not skinny, good solid stance, like those busty German girls who carry arms full of beer steins, her dressed like a ‘50s rock-and-roll chick, red skirt, black top, and for no reason at all I walked up next to her, said “you know you would look good, in those colours, sitting in my car”. It wasn’t a question.                  
                 
She turned, saw my long-and-low red ride with its black soft-top, smiled, then turned right ‘round to face me. Her eyes were a soft blue, and steady. She looked me up and down, slow, saw the snake-skin shoes and Mopar tee-shirt, same red as her skirt, said “yes, yes I would” and smiled again, then said nothing more. We stood, still looking at each other.                  
                 
She had a look you don’t see often; cool, no blink, holding nothing back, giving nothing away. It’s the look you see in the eyes of people who have been tested, and survived it; the look of a fighter, the by-product of fire. She kept looking. I keep looking back. Finally I started talking, asked her some shit about the town, asked some other shit, then asked for her number, ‘cos why the fuck not. She gave, touched my arm a couple of times while doing it. I got a coffee to go, got back in the car, drove, sure she was watching; women love trouble.                  
                 
Next morning I called her, to sort out a date for 'round sun-down. I picked a spot next to the river where the dolphins hunt the shallows for stingrays, just a few meters off the bank. Makes for good watching, and yes, women get stupid for dolphins. Besides, it’s also a good place to park a car you like looking at, especially from sitting at ground level. She said yes, and I hung up, smiling lucky. Good.                
                 
That evening she drove to a carpark close to the river, parked her car under some trees, walked over to where my car was parked. I got out, opened the passenger door, let her in. We said polite hellos and I pulled out on to the river road, heading for the spot I’d picked. I gave the car some guts, ‘cos yeah, why the fuck not, and she grinned as the small-block made power, biting the road. A woman who likes a good engine is better than one who don’t.              
               
We sat on a low table, looking out, and sure enough the dolphins were there doing their thing. We cracked some wine, started talking for real. I’m old enough now that I don’t give a fuck for lies and dance, so I decided to give her the five minute version of my life, told her about the murderous days that made my childhood, so, if there’s a later, there’ll be no why-didn’t-you-say shit, told it fast and frank, so she didn’t think I was playing for pity. She listened close, said “Well, if we’re doing early truths, I’m eight years out of remission from leukemia,  and my sister was pack raped and murdered when we were young”. We said nothin’ a while after that, then toasted to shitty truths. When our drinks were empty I told her the second glass wasn’t coming without a kiss. It was a promising kiss, and I said so; good lips.                
                 
While I was pouring, she reached forward to touch me, and as she did her top pulled away from her upper arm. I saw scars. I asked her straight “you go through a windscreen or somethin’”. She looked at me soft, glowing almost, some kind of gravity solid in her,  said “no, when I was sick they took my kids away. I hated my guts for it, so I cut”. She pulled her skirt up to well passed her knees , to expose slash after slash after slash on each leg, all six inches long at least, and a quarter inch wide, and the same on her arms. They were not play-scars. I looked at ‘em honest, took ‘em in.                  
                 
I thought they were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen on a woman.                  
                 
I leaned back and she came in against me, whispered  “I don’t do it anymore”. It wasn’t an apology, or even an excuse. She was just sayin’ it. I looked at her again, that same gaze. I had been right about that look. For the first time in my history of women, here was one I didn’t have to explain a lifetime of self-hate to. I didn’t have to brush over years of stories that all ended in harm, in destruction of self, in anger and pain and the same old death-games repeated and repeated. I have never felt so easy sitting next to a woman. No-lies-needed is good livin’.            
              
After that we got to other things. The liquor was starting to work, and so were her curves and skin. I got a few more kisses in, did a bit of brushing of breasts while pointing out landmarks, all the usual plays. She seemed to be going for it, so I kept on pushing, laid her back a bit, put a bit of pressure into the kisses, stroked the top of her arse with a reached-around arm. She warmed up to me in sighs and open lips, and the night laid on.                  
                 
When it got dark I suggested we retreat to my house just up the road. She said yes and we went. The laughter was coming nice and full, so I played up to that too, stopped every few hundred meters on local side roads, insisting on more kiss and skin. Every time I did it she leaned a little further into her seat, laying back, opening her legs a little wider. By the time we were parked around the corner from my place, one stop before home, I had my hand in her knickers, hovered over her playground, touching nothing, but marking my ground.                  
                 
Once we got to the house, the game was changed; my home, my music, my grog, my bed. We were on it before we were through the next glass of wine. After that was all skin and heat and fuck-living. She was built solid, like I said, and fucked like a wrestler. By the time we were into the flow of it she was taking as many points as she gave away, scratching biting clamping clinching heaving her sex-deaths to her own drum, me coming at her every which way, working my angles, tangling in, tumbling out.                  
                 
We fucked on the bed, the floor, halfway on, in between, round and round and up and down, her tits, her mouth, from behind, laying down, standing up, then rested a while and I went after her again, ran her ragged, and always she came back sweaty and serious, ready to get back on the horse. We went until our mouths were too dry to kiss, the bedroom destroyed, her body played out, make-up ruined from running tears and sweat, her hair tangled like a sex-witch, the sheets so wet it was like we were dying in a shallow pond of salty brine, and then we lay back, not touching for the first time in hours, waiting for our lives to come back.                
                 
After a time, real quiet, she says “It’s been a very long time since a man fucked me like that”, and I held back a growl. That was what I had been waiting for. Her first flag of surrender; a man’s call to arms. I steeled myself for the job ahead, looked down at my burned and blown cock, saw it twitch and rise, knowing fuck-work coming. I rose myself up like the arch-angel himself, spread my arms wide, held a moment while she stared up at me then fell down on to her, speed and strength, shock and fucking awe, drove my elbow into the bed above her shoulder, used my knees to shove her body up against that anchored elbow while pivoting her pussy up to me, her legs falling open. I grabbed a fist full of her hair, yanked her head back and clamped my other hand tight over her eyes, pinned her, drove my cock into her cunt until we were bone on bone, hooked my feet in the headboard and began my real work, to become the man who did her best, who came off the ropes in the fifteenth to take a win on points, the under-dog on a charge, building a pace she couldn’t even gasp to. I ran her fucking raggeder, an inch away from violence, an inch past violence, never gave a moment for her to re-gather, she unable to find air enough to breathe her death-cries and I held her there, riding her like the world was ending, her tears coming streaming from under my fingers as I ran for the wall of my own last death, throwing everything at her; the world, the end, the start, and she was Gaia making the universe and all creation come to life, she was the goddess carved in stone and prayed to on the harvest moon, heat and death and endings, always endings, low tide, high tide, on and on, destroyed undone fucked to stillness, and then, after that, after that brutality at the anvil, there was nothing but us on a ruined bed, and some kind of unspeakably hopeful beginning, made in the honesty of said-aloud scars. Then we slept.                  
                 
Hours later I dropped her back at her car, the night gone quiet around us. I whispered to her while she leaned in against me on that short drive...said I’d call her. I don’t even remember the last time I said that and meant it, but that’s the funny thing about going out looking for something new; you risk finding it.                
                 
                 
                 
                 
{apologies to devilish, who commented on this last night....I was editing it and accidently killed it}