Eugène Manet closed his book and gazed around his wife’s well appointed boudoir. The clock on the mantle struck eleven, a late hour for him. Outside the winter rain, lashed by northern winds, slammed against the tightly secured shutters. In front of them, next to the fireplace a cheval mirror reflected Berthe’s intimate sphere, the two of them languishing on a cream-colored sofa, bathed in the amber light from a crackling fire in the grate. Lace curtains filtered the Parisian light during the day. On nights like this one, though, they shielded her from the frigid black window glass. Rosy flowered wallpaper covered the walls. His wife’s lavender perfume momentarily tantalized him, but disappeared when the ashy aroma of burning logs settled in.

Berthe lay with her head in his lap, reading from the book of poetry Édouard had given her. She still had on the black satin evening dress she wore to his brother’s soirée, but her shoes with the rosettes sat drying near the hearth. Berthe’s feet, now clad only in almost transparent black stockings, rested seductively on the arm of the sofa. Eugene loved her fashionable sleeveless evening dress with its revealing neckline. A row of small jet buttons ran in a sparkling line down the front from the top of her bodice to her cinched waist. On her bed lay the lace-edged petticoat and bustle she had stepped out of as soon as their bedroom door closed. Next to it lay his casually tossed tuxedo jacket. Eugène preferred this room to his own bedroom and wished he could share his wife’s bed every night, but that would be too déclassé.

Looking at their reflected images in the mirror, he watched Berthe put her book down then tilt her head to watch him. Turning, he shifted his vision from the mirror to her face. Her eyes, very calm, presented an impenetrable green-black veil that shielded her inner self from him. Sometimes they sparkled like pinpricks of brilliant sunlight dancing across a breeze-caressed pond. Other times they could be chill and motionless as ice solidifying during a glacial night. On occasion fierce storms coated their surface like a hurricane. Most often, looking into her eyes reminded him of trying to see the bottom of a mountain lake—the surface of the water could only be penetrated a short distance before a dark world blocked further intrusion. But that night, he saw deeper than he ever had before.

“Thank you, Eugène,” she whispered.

“W-w-what f-f-for?” he asked, his stammer unleashed, a look of surprise crossing his face.

Berthe smiled, reaching up to stroke his eyelids. He reminded her so much of his brother that it was easy to forget sometimes. The golden firelight heightened the red of his hair and beard. In the evening darkness, his eyes deepened into the same gray-blue as Édouard’s. She thought about her afternoon in Édouard’s studio. His current painting revealed a lot about his own marital arrangement. In that portrait of a fashionable couple, he had parted a curtain that exposed the sad alienation and hollowness of his own loveless marriage. That painting jolted her. Remembering her wedding, she cringed at how defeated she had felt that day. She had mourned for remorse sealed by her father’s death, for her lost dreams, for her lost freedom and for how wrong she had been.

“I’ve never told you how grateful to you I am,” she said to Eugène. “I know I’m not the easiest person to live with, yet you still manage. You even lift me up when the terrible bête-noire of my melancholia, drags me down. You encourage me to keep going. I know sometimes I sound churlish when all you are doing is trying to help. And you support my work. I can’t tell you how important that is to me. I owe you a great deal.” In that moment, she meant it.

Eugène nodded. Berthe felt him push a loose tress of her hair back in its place then run his finger along her eyebrow and down her cheek. She looked up at his face and saw her husband, Eugène Manet, the awkward and self conscious man who gave her everything. She did not close her eyes to conjure the vision of another. She watched the gentle face marked by creases from the struggle to make stubborn words flow. A childlike, shy smile flitted tenuously across his lips and Berthe felt the luscious stirrings that only came when she was alone in her bed.

Eugène drew his fingers along the flesh that separated her smooth cheeks from the plumpness of her lips. The rosebud tip of her tongue spread a sweet wetness on his fingertip.  The feeling was excruciating and he leaned in to kiss her, experiencing the incomparable dewiness of her mouth, reveling in its slipperiness. Sliding from that warm haven his tongue traced a moist trail down her neck to deep within the fold between her breasts, revealed by the daring neckline. Berthe gazed up at him as his hand moved into the cleavage exposed by her dress. The watery veil in her eyes parted even further as his hands found their way into her bodice. Eugène unfastened a few of the shiny buttons on her dress only as far as the top of her corset, revealing the lacy chemise underneath that covered her breasts.

Berthe began to unbutton the rest, but he gently pushed her hands away. Without a word, he slipped her shoulder straps down to free her arms. Her chemise and bodice fell over the top of her confining corset and released their contents.

Eugène breathlessly absorbed the image of Berthe, stretched out along the sofa, fully clothed except for her bosom—naked, perfect and glowing opalescent in the firelight.

Then Berthe smiled. It was a slow smile with mischief tweaking the corners of her mouth. She watched with eyes wide open, seeing only the face of her husband filling her private fantasies. It had always been the image of his brother Édouard who swam with her on a moonlit night in the silvery blackness of the Lac Inférieur. It was a dream she must now share with Eugène. She motioned for him to sit on a side chair pushed up against the wall. Upholstered in creamy silk, it was a Louis XV antique, a cherished inheritance. She would change her dreams, replace one brother with another and slide blissfully into the dark green waters of her fantasy.

Puzzled, Eugène sat where Berthe indicated then inhaled deeply in surprise as she gathered her skirts and sat straddling him, brushing her breasts tantalizingly close to his lips. As she squirmed against him, he relished—even through the fabric of his trousers—the delightful negative and positive construction of their forms. Her thighs tightened around his hips and he groaned at the delightful discomfort of his damnably tight tuxedo trousers. A soft sensation brushed his lips and the aroma of her lavender perfume blending with salty perspiration reminded him of making love to her on sticky summer nights with the bedroom windows letting in country-scented breezes. Opening his eyes, he saw Berthe, her head bent back, her pale white throat stretching and enticing. The silk fabric of her skirts rustled as she moved her body closer to his. With each thrust of tantalizing promise, her thighs squeezed harder and she nestled more firmly against him.

“Mon Dieu, B-b-berthe!” Eugène yelped hoarsely. “You’re k-k-killing me!”  He stared at his own Olympia who gazed down on him and he beheld the cavernous depths of her eyes, unveiled fully for the first time, beckoning him in.

“Ssssh,” she murmered kissing him and silencing his stammer. Then, she stood up, allowing Eugène enough space to free himself from the confines of his tuxedo fly. Berthe hovered over him as he worked through the meters of her satin evening dress and lace trimmed petticoats.

“Aaah,” he sighed when he finished fumbling with his own clothes and felt for that delight of women’s pantaloons—the strategically located slit.

He thought of the prostitutes who pretended passion. They knew how to play with men’s desire and only acted as if he held the control. This was different. Now he really did have the power and for the first time he could please a woman in ways that had only been dreams. Shudders shook through her, joy filled him.

“Mon Dieu!” she breathed heavily. “Now you’re killing me!”

He drew her in deeper, pulling and caressing. Electricity seemed to flow through her and filled her with enthralling abandon.

Eugène watched Berthe bathed in amber firelight and passion. He smiled, closed his eyes and lost himself in her.

“Dear God!” they said in unison, then laughed and breathed deeply. Eugène kissed her and tasted the salty musk of her sweating skin. She moaned, but when he looked in her eyes, the dark green waters had returned and closed over her depths. Still she stayed for a long time on his lap, her arms around his neck.

############

Unity Barry escaped the brown smog of southern California to attend art school in the San Francisco Bay Area. After working for way too long in the corporate world she escaped to write about her favorite subjects, the Impressionist painters and Paris during the Gilded Age. She still lives in the Bay Area.

“Il ya des mains pareilles a des feuille capturees. Et d’autres qui parle sans arret dan leur collerette de rires.”

—Jaime Mais, Au crible de la nuit, 1948

Finland is Western Europe’s northernmost country.  Further north than much of Siberia, it hangs, with Sweden, from the horn of the cold Arctic circle, one of a pair of saddlebags straddling the Gulf of Bosnia.  All winter days are locked in darkness.  In summer, the nights are white, the watery light leaking into dreams and slumbers.

It was June.  I was traveling in Scandanavia with Lawrence.  Night after night I wrestled with the flickering glare.  Sleep-starved, I stumbled from smoldering midnights to shimmering noons, a somnambulist trapped in the endless river that flowed between those twin cauldrons.  Lawrence moved through the marathon days with an animal zeal, feasting on big bowls of herring and sour cream, guzzling down strong aqua vitae as if it were water, as if the bleak memory of winter—of hibernation and silence—were locked within him, an unspoken warning and inescapable goad.

Paris was our next destination. I longed for it.  In Paris, my friend Nanos was in the midst of his plans for an exhibit of Les Surrealists Grec (the Greek Surrealists) at the Center George Pompidou.  I could feel him pacing the cluttered rooms of his Montmarte flat, worrying over texts and designs.  The works of Elytis, Egonopoulis, Tsarouchi and Mayo would be on display.  I could already see, in my mind’s eye, minotaurs and maidens, the fantastic hybrid creatures of Egonopoulis, the contorted, teeming and endlessly metamorphosizing shapes that cover the canvasses of Mayo.

Traveling by train, the trip to Paris from Orebro, Sweden would take 34 hours.  I sleep well on trains.  The dark rattle of a rail car has always been soothing to me.  But we had a problem with bookings, and at the Orebro station, instead of the comfortable bunks of a first class compartment, we were faced with a cramped glass-doored cabinet.  Four seats upholstered in dirty brocade crowded two of the facing walls.  The green floor was marbled in grime. When we slid open the door, an explosion of sulfurous, sweet-heavy heat engulfed us.

“Lawrence,” I hissed, “this is not a couchette-lit.”

“I see that,” Lawrence replied, his blue eyes darting beneath the gold flutter of lashes taking in the whole picture.  The determined set of his jaw made it clear that he had no intention of struggling for another moment in Swedish and that any attempt to extricate us from the horns of the dilemma would, at this point, be ill-advised.

“It’s not so bad,” he added swinging bags and briefcase onto one of the seats in the foetid chamber.  “We’ll shut the door.”  Perhaps we’ll be the only ones in here.”

“July in Europe – not one chance in hell,” I thought.  I was too tired to put up a fight.  We opened the window to let the absence of a breeze blow in.  The seats, I found, could be forced to recline two to three inches.  I sat in the one nearest the window, reluctantly perched upon the rim of the first ring of our Inferno, praying that it would not get hotter, that there would be no other squatters in Hades.

The first man to enter was handsome, young and quite tall, with long, dark hair and eyes like a Siberian husky.  He sat next to me.  The second, also tall and angular, had curly, blond hair and skin as pitted as a lunar sea.  He took the seat next to Lawrence.  They appeared to be companions, or at least countrymen, for they spoke to one another in Finnish, a kind of stacatto clucking.  One of them had a deck of cards.  It was quickly opened, and they began to play a strange game reminiscent of liar’s dice.

The corridor outside the compartment was beginning to fill up.  Faces peered in, assessed the occupants, and moved on.  The river of students eddied and swelled, parting finally to reveal two girls.  One was a plump redhead, her cherub-shape squeezed into a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt.  The other was a frail blonde with a face like a Boticelli Venus, except that there was a carnal glint in her eyes when she spotted the dark-haired Fin and pushed open the door.  They greeted each of the men in Finnish, and casting only a quick glance at me, a somewhat longer one at Lawrence, settled into the seats nearest the door and chatted, girlishly, among themselves.

The card game continued, only now our phone-booth-sized residence was charged with the subtle perfume of these two girls.  The girls got up often, leaving the room in slipstreams of their scents and returning to catch the attention and, occasionally, a remark from one or another of the two Finnish men.  They were invited to join the card game and participated in a half-hearted way.  In this limbo, the train sweated its way into Copenhagen, disgorged some of its passengers, clattered through a few more dreary suburban miles, and was loaded, in Gottburg, onto a cross-channel carrier.  It was a cumbersome process, complicated by the presence on this ferry of a Duty Free Shop.  The Fins evaporated like phantoms at dawn.

“They’re gone,” I barely breathed.

“They’re at Duty Free Shop.” Lawrence replied sagely.  His smile was broad, his head cocked as if listening to some inscrutable sound.

“Lawrence,” I warned, “I have to sleep.”

“It will get easier,” he replied.  It will get darker.  We’re moving toward the sunset.”

The thought of darkness poured over me — a shadowy syrup, soothing the blister of too much daylight.  I relaxed, actually dozing amid the clank and creak of the train’s carriage resting on its hammock of metal, as we crossed the channel to France.

I awoke to a nether world of waning light.  The Finns had returned with their Duty Free purchases.  Now sweating heavily, they replenished their body fluids with the dubious aid of a fifth of strong whiskey, taking long camel-like pulls from the bottle’s too-small neck, letting the fiery liquid roll down their throats, and chasing it down with great gulps of beer.  The compartment reeked with the thick yeasty smell of this enterprise.  Lawrence, to my horror, had turned-coat completely.  Finding his niche in the excesses of Dante’s third ring of hell, he had become one with our cohabitants.  He, too, was engaged in their card game.  His eyes, too, were rimmed in blood-red oblivion.

The chubby redhead had fallen asleep, her legs in a small “y” that straddled her backpack.  a diamond-shaped wet stain had formed a small mouth of darkness against the less black crotch of her jeans.  The male Finns were intent on the pitchy aces and spades, the flame-red hearts and diamonds that smoked and flared from the white surfaces of their cards.  The young blonde girl feigned sleep through slitted eyes, one delicate hand seemingly resting, in innocence, on the thigh of the dark-haired Finn.

Lawrence, hardly the guide I would have wished for, looked up from his cards and winked as if to indicate that his complicity were all a pretence.  I squirmed in my seat and looked out at the countryside that flashed past.  The sky, purpling, had taken on the hue of a tired ventricle.  Field flowers flared like matches, luminous under the sunset.  The blonde girl had slipped further into the semblance of sleep, her hand fallen, incidentally, into the crevasse between the legs of the handsome Finn.

“Jail bait,” Lawrence whispered, leaning toward me with a nod in the girl’s direction.

I smiled tiredly, thinking of the drawn look of my sleep-deprived face, the lines etched into the corners of my mouth.  Behind Lawrence the sun was setting in a bright scarlet gash.

“You look like a nefarious poppy,” Lawrence continued, his hands resting on my knees, his eyes fixed me in a blue-grey gaze as riveting as two metal spikes.  I could smell the beer and whisky on his breath.  “I can see the sunset reflected on your face.  I like seeing it this way — indirectly.”  His hands moved over my thighs.

Behind him the sun bled red onto the black eyebrow of earth.  The dark Finn leaned over the arm of my chair.

“It is really a remarkable sunset,” he said in a clipped British-English.  His lapse into English scared me.  It had an eery effect—like a ventriloquist’s puppet, echoing Lawrence.

“She’s tired,” Lawrence said, addressing the Finn.  “She needs to sleep.”

“Yes,” came the Finn’s voice, so close to my ear that I felt it was in my own head.  “Yes, I can see that.”

I thought I was dreaming.  I felt a great vault open beneath me, felt myself falling, again, into an abyss under the spell of language.  Darkness closed over me.

When I awoke it was to a world of shadows.  Lawrence was awake, his face alight with jack-o-lantern laughter as he surveyed a diabolical sense.  A full moon, or nearly, washed the compartment in ghostly light.  Next to Lawrence the blonde man was beginning his descent, a long slow slide toward the faux-malachite of the floor.  He was aided in this by the powerful legs of the redhead.  The soles of her feet, now angled against his hip, exerted a purposeful pressure as she unconsciously claimed the entire banquette for her own.  Obliterated by whisky and beer, he colluded with her intentions, in unknowing self-sabotage.

We watched as he slid from his seat, folding over himself like a jack-knife, falling to the floor, unconscious.  Once crumpled onto the larger space, he began to unfurl like one of those small paper flowers that, placed in a bath of water, blossom and open.  He uncurled slowly, his recumbent from carpeting the floor like an exotic animal skin, his head resting lightly on the toe of Lawrence’s shoe.  If Lawrence were to move his foot slightly, the curly blond head would hit forcefully against the sharp metal rim of an adjacent wastebasket.  I notice that Lawrence was laughing soundlessly, tears rolling down his cheeks.

“Look,” he managed to rasp, indicating the compartment’s far corner.

I turned reluctantly from the Finn so delicately balanced upon Lawrence’s foot, to observe that the tender blonde Aphrodite had grasped the hand of the other sleeping man and was moving it slowly and rather thoughtfully over her small breasts.  He twitched slightly, like a large dog, dreaming.

Then murmuring something, he slowly rolled towards her, covering her body with his.  His hands, in the darkness, looked like white foraging rodents.  She slithered beneath him, finding the fork in his body, and lodged herself there, arching into him in the timeless maneuver that undoubtedly fostered Rome’s greatest engineering accomplishment.

His response was predictable.  They had formed an inseparable sandwich, fused into a coupling of delicate pressure and delectable glissades.  Then we watched as a pair of hands so fair that they appeared to be gloved, pulled the man’s jeans down over his hips and loins and the marble-white mirror-image of the near-full moon glistened in the compartment’s dim corner, rising and falling in an ancient and irresistible rhythm.

It was shocking.  It was exhilarating.  It was as if the night had become effervescent, the compartment filled with fairies.  Outside, moonlight, like a dreamy lichen, furred the furrowed fields in silver.  Lawrence’s sleepless visage was Mithras-like.  Mirth mantled him in glittering light.  A profound hilarity seemed to well up inside me, the way as children, laughter gathers and threatens in the dark bole of a church.

In a rush of soft groans, purring and pleasant animal sounds, the movement in the chamber’s corner stopped, the participants parted, rearranged themselves and exited, trysting again in the corridor for a slow cigarette.  Lawrence, cradling the head of the man at our feet, eased it past the metal rim of the wastebasket and onto the floor.  A breeze rolled in through the windows, thinning the civet-thick scent of sex that now blanketed the compartment.  I fell asleep again in the darkness.

Morning, sour and bright, awakened me.  Lawrence was sleeping, finally surrendered to the dark wave that had gathered on the other side of the leaves of his energies.  At our feet, the blonde Finn slept, curled into a fetal position, his sallow cheeks still pressed into the dirty floor.  Next to me the other man slept also, dark brow furrowless, forehead smooth as an infant’s.  The redhead, like a silky, was combing her long siren hair.  The blonde nymph’s seat was empty.

The countryside had filled-in during our slumbers.  It was full of farms, large pleasant cows and baby-pink pigs – the smug landscape of France, environs de Paris.  We rolled past a farm where four men had a pig spread out on a table preparing to slaughter it.  It’s squeals did not fill the air.  The men had wound a tight wire around its mouth.

One by one the others awakened.  Activity swelled again in the corridor.  Sleepy heads lifted.  Students rose from bed rolls hastily thrown here and there in the halls.  The blonde girl returned.  A babel of languages surged in through the door behind her.  Her return awakened the man asleep on the floor.  He rose and looked about sheepishly, his face coloring with crimson as he climbed into his seat.  The dark-haired Finn watched him in amusement and offered a few encouraging words in their language.  Lawrence, yawning and stretching his legs at last, said a cheerful good morning to all in English.

The dark-haired Finn looked over at me.  “You are feeling better?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said warmly, raising an eyebrow.  “And you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said smiling.  “Much better.”

Lawrence cleared his throat and looked at his watch.  “9:45,” he said.  “Nearly 34 hours.  We have witnessed the sunset.  We have lived through the night.”

We lurched forward and stopped in a fitful progress.  The trains were backed-up and delayed.  In this manner, we rolled slowly toward the Gare de l’Est.  Around us graffiti rose in monstrous swirls on the concrete lips of the platforms.  We slid toward the rude din of the station, sucked into the terminal darkness.

____________

©Linda Watanabe McFerrin
“Libidinous Finns” was first published in I Should Have Stayed Home (Book Passage Press)

In a world where everything is sexualized instead of humanized, I worry that we’ve lost touch with the sweet eroticism in life. To me, being human, life itself is erotic. It’s a being alive to the magical, pulsating, ecstatic body and universe we live and experience through. It’s a way of being in the world in a sensory and tactile way, leading and relating to others with your energy awareness and senses.

But you may not notice. Because you are not home much. In your body. In your flesh. In your senses. And you may be a little afraid of the sexual, creative fire that lives at the core of your being and what it might do, should you fan the flames. Will you explode? Kick your lover out? Binge on sex? Follow your dream?

The inclination of (our) nature is to (pro)create. The bees and blooms kind of thing is literally taking place all around you, all the time. It’s taking place within, continuously creating and destroying our bodies and being. Sexual communion with another human being is simply an expression of this entirely creative process. You attract, build up heat, enter one another, explode, and die. A life and death dance. The inclination to co-create is so strong and it is not for nothing that condoms were invented.

Life is fecund and sex is merely a facet of life’s eroticism.

Perfunctory or performance oriented sex with release as goal, no longer seems so interesting to me.

I know my sexuality is the central life force within me. It fuels everything from how I show up in the world, to my creativity, to play, love making and communing with the divine.

_____

Award-winning writer, fine art photographer and coach, Lone doesn’t like to put herself in a box. A visionary soul, she’s also a rebel priestess, muse, word teaser, sacred space keeper, fire-footed dancer, fierce seer and mystical being. She’s a lover, sensualist and queen of all things delicious. She’s tender-hearted freedom fighter and get-things-done diva. Above all she’s a hopeful romantic relishing life’s magic and mystery. To her, life is about exploring inner and outer worlds, expressing herself fully, freely, and she hopes to inspire YOU to discover and express yourself with depth and delight. Check out her blog: Divinely Furious.

Now this is a project worth supporting. Love, or should I say lust, is also for the dead and the restless, or is that the restless dead? Deadlings, do send in your work. This is a perfect opportunity to share the Dead Love. And many thanks to Ms. Kitty, a much-loved member of the ZIA, for sending this my way.

Call for Submissions:

The Love that Never Dies: Undead Erotica

Edited By M.Christian

An anthology of gay, straight, and lesbian stories exploring the erotic allure of the undead, to be published by Renaissance E Books/Sizzler Editions ( http://e2ma.net/go/6853000499/208372767/216287606/1404292/goto:http://shop.renebooks.com ).

Drop-dead (yet gorgeous) zombies, stylishly-immortal playboys cursed to promenade the earth for eternity, Egyptian Queens with enticing mummy wraps, bloodsucking old favorites … there’s a certain kinky ’something’ about folks who may have kicked the bucket but are still walking around ­ and looking good.

Authors are encouraged to take new and imaginative approaches to what makes a character ‘undead,’ as well as to what their allure, and sexual appetites can be.  For this anthology, ‘undead’ can refer to zombies, immortals, resurrectees, mummies, ghosts, revenants, golems, wights, and ­ yes ­ vampires.  But please keep in mind that this is not a vampire book, so only one or two vampire stories will be included in the final anthology.   Stories may feature humor, horror, romance, or mystery but all submissions must be explicitly erotic.  Stories featuring rape, underage characters, homophobia, bestiality or ‘violence porn’ will not be considered,   If you have questions about whether or not your story may work for this anthology, please contact M.Christian with your questions or concerns.   Both previously published and original works will be considered.

Story length: 1,000 to 5,000 words Deadline for Submissions: December 1, 2010

Rights: First North American Anthology Rights

Payment: $25, paid on publication

Email submissions should be sent to: zobop@aol.com (rtf format only, be sure to include contact information on all attachments)   Questions? Contact M. Christian (zobop@aol.com)

Dead Love Cover Art and Dead Love Manga Insert by Botan Yamada

Once upon a time Guido, a hunter (cacciatore), was out in the wilds of the Tuscan hills trying to roust up some dinner. He was wily. He was intrepid. He was a good shot. But this day he was unlucky. The rabbit (coniglio) made a run for it. The deer (cervo) dashed away, and the wild boar (cinghiali) bolted wildly upon his approach. The ducks (anatra) had all ducked and, having heard report of his gun, the pheasants (fagiani) were no longer present. And for all Guido knew the woodcocks (beccaccia) were attending Woodstock– there were none to be seen. He returned to Montecatini Val de Cecina tired, hungry and miffed that his hunt had gone so badly. He stopped at the grocery and got chicken, onions, tomatoes, red peppers and a nice bottle of primitivo. Even though he’d bagged no game, he’d set his mind on having Chicken Cacciatore. After all, he was a hunter and therefore he’d dine like one. Screw stereotypes!

While Guido had been out blasting up the countryside to no avail, his neighbor, Carmen, had slept the day away. Although it was early evening, she was just sipping her cappuccino, having only recently awakened. Naturally enough, this is how it goes when you’re a hooker (puttana). She had just been thinking about breakfast—which would really be dinner—and thinking that she may have to succumb to that stupid, old cliche since all she had in the house was some garlic, olives, capers, canned tomatoes and spaghetti. Apparently, Pasta Puttanesca (whore’s pasta) was the only thing she was stocked to make. Sick and tired of living the stereotype, she sighed and looked out her window just in time to see Guido coming home with groceries. Seeing an opportunity, she adjusted her red silk robe to allow him a gander at her fine Tuscan cleavage (scollatura). She opened her front door to let the cat (gatto) out making sure her leg widened the short hem of her gown enough to stop Guido in his tracks.

“Ciao, bello! What’s in the bag?” She grabbed at the shoulder of her robe just as it slipped to her breast (seno) and pulled it up.

“Ciao, Carmen. Chicken Cacciatore.” Guido tried to act naturally but he was stressed. Seeing Carmen always made him stressed and seeing her in her red silk robe with her breast (mamella)  momentarlly exposed made him much more stressed than usual.

“No luck on the hunt?” She smiled her most beguiling smile and leaned into him.

“Not today.” 
There was an awkward pause while Carmen waited for Guido to help the conversation along but he seemed to have nothing else to say and was intent on staring at the toes of his boots.

“The hunting was good last night for me,” she said.

 Carmen winked, tilted her head from side to side and put her hands on her slightly swaying hips causing the clingy fabric to highlight her Sophia Loren-like form. Guido’s boots lost the battle for his attention and he tried very hard not to stare at her. He knew for sure she was wearing nothing at all under her silk. He tried not to think about how many men she’d been with the night before. Instinctively, he could tell she was very good at her job. Not wanting to think about her expertise or hear anymore about her hunt Guido tried to end the conversation .”Well, I gotta go.” He began to turn away.

“Guido! What’s the rush?” She put her hand on his bicep, kneading it slightly.

“I … just …” Eyes back to his boots, he turned toward her again.

“Come in. Have a coffee.” She slipped her finger through his belt loop and tugged.

Guido, having had a disappointing day, had no will to fight and allowed himself to be pulled into her flat. Maybe, he thought, it wouldn’t be so bad to be the one who was hunted for a change. 

In addition to her other courtesanly talents Carmen was charmin’. Carmen was also a gal who knew what she wanted and Chicken Cacciatore sounded like just the ticket. And truth be told, she’d always thought Guido had a certain something—maybe an odd mix of Roberto Begnini and Marcello Mastroianni—quirky but handsome. She decided tonight might be the night to look into it a bit further.

It didn’t take long before she persuaded Guido to unload his groceries onto her kitchen counter. And being a girl who had her own things to bring to the table she contributed olives, capers, garlic, olive oil, thyme, basil, spaghetti and a little sweet vinegar to the fixings.

They cooked. 

Together they made Chicken Cacciatore Puttanesca. And it was good. It was indeed so good and the wine so powerful that they decided to make a night of it. Carmen did not go out for her evening hunt so that she and Guido could continue to cook—really cook. After they cooked in the kitchen, they cooked in the parlor and after the parlor, they cooked in the bedroom and when they’d worn the sheets off the bed they cooked in the shower. In fact, they cooked so well together Carmen ended up with two buns in the oven. Now that’s what you call cooking.

So they decided to go with the cosmic flow. They married, had their two buns (Franco and Francesca) and opened a restaurant. Carmen gave up hooking for cooking. Guido never once regretted being the prey instead of the predator. They continued to cook more sensibly and use precautions because with a restaurant and two babies, they had more than enough on their plates. Their special house dish was Chicken Cacciatore Puttanesca.


Chicken Cacciatore Puttanesca.

Ingredients:
•    Chicken breast, 1 large boned, skinned. Cut in half, and halves cut longitudinally into 4 pieces to equal 8 strips.
•    Red peppers, 3, seeded and sliced into  1/4″ strips
•    Onion,1 medium, chopped
•    Basil, 1/2-1 cup, chopped
•    Thyme, as much as you like
•    Garlic, 2 cloves, minced or pressed
•    Capers, 2-3 TBSP
•    Black, pitted kalmata olives cut into halves, 1 cup or more
•    Heirloom tomatoes, 2 medium chopped
•    Sweet vinegar–scant TBSP–fig vinegar, balsalmic or something along those lines. If you don’t have anything else, add a little sugar instead.
•    Red wine
•    Olive oil
•    Flour, seasoned with salt and pepper for dredging chicken

Dredge chicken in seasoned flour, and cook in hot olive oil (med.-med. hot) about 3 minutes on each side, until chicken is cooked through. Remove from pan and set aside.

 Add a bit more oil to the pan and saute onions, then add peppers and garlic. Cook until soft, about 4 mins. Add some red wine to help deglaze the pan and add tomatoes, thyme, capers, vinegar and olives. Let that cook down for a little bit, 5 mins. at most, and add back the chicken and basil. Keep at medium heat until the chicken has rewarmed. You can add some more red wine if you think it looks dry. It should be a chunky, thick sauce.

 Serve over pasta or rice, as desired.

P.S. To say they lived happily ever after would be over simplifying. 18 years went by before they were able to use the parlor or kitchen table for cooking. But when the twins went off to university, they were able to once again cook all over the house.

Lyn Nave is a biologist/writer living in the low rent district of Marin, aka, Novato. Since recently quitting her research job, and while looking for a new gig to pay the bills, she’s been cranking on her keyboard like a coked up kitty, and distracting her friends, family and former co-workers with her writings.  These days she measures her success by the page views on her blog, The Girl Can’t Help It!

Mistress Ginger Monroe was a blond beauty with an hourglass figure. She stretched across her sofa with the languor of a cat. A woman in her mid-40’s, she has never doubted her own desirability and she has a job she loves. Men pay her $250.00 an hour to spank them, berate them, tie them up and scare them.  Mistress Ginger explained her profession,  “I’m like Mother Theresa with a fucking whip. This is therapy for the men.”

On her table sat a full bowl of ripe pomodoro roma tomatoes, almost like a prop.

The tomato is both simple and complex, innocent and seductive. It is part of the nightshade family and until the 1830’s, it was thought to be poisonous and grown only for ornamental purposes. Technically, it’s a fruit, but was categorized as a vegetable by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1893 so that the import of it could be taxed. It was also believed to be an aphrodisiac, and shunned by the Victorian crowd for this reason. In the book, The Historical Tomato by Andrew Smith, he writes “It (the tomato) had been mentioned in the Bible. The Hebrew term for it was dudim, which translated into English “love apples” or “love plants.” The author then goes on to tell that it was painted by naturalist Konrad Gerner in 1553 and he labeled it with the Latin term “poma amoris” or love apple.

They are sitting on her table because she really doesn’t know what to do with them—she doesn’t even make coffee, let alone cook. But these pomodoro roma tomatoes grew profusely in the small patch of dirt that stretched the length of this corner house in Staten Island.

It was a sixplex, purchased by a Brooklyn artist, Susan, for no money down. Professional dominatrix rented three of the units.  They even set up a dungeon, complete with whips, chains and a medical station for a little mean-nurse play in the basement. In return for her understanding, the doms, particularly Mistress Ginger Monroe, made sure that nobody took advantage of Susan.

Susan collected rents throughout the month since, though dominatrix always paid on time, a few tenants—those struggling, or with young children or ill—paid rent in segments over the month. Susan understood—they were trying. But then the pipes burst, and the expense was something Susan hadn’t counted on and couldn’t afford. Her boyfriend couldn’t loan her the money as he had hit a hard time. She discussed the options with Mistress Ginger Monroe, who came up with a solution. One of her clients was a plumber. If the two of them, Mistress Ginger and Susan, spanked him in the bathroom, then perhaps he would fix the pipes as payment.

Susan had worked for one day as a dominatrix. She thought it would be easy money, but she found otherwise. “You had to learn how to tie a lot of knots,” She explained. “And there was a lot of play acting. You have to really understand what the client wants and needs psychologically. I’m just not an actor. It wasn’t right for me.”

She was fired after one day, as the Dungeon Mistress informed her, regrettably, she just wasn’t … well … dominant enough.

But under the guidance of Mistress Ginger Monroe, the fledgling landlord/failed dominatrix herded the plumber into the bathroom and spanked him hard. He loved it and not only fixed the pipes, but offered to come back and repair the boiler. Everyone was happy, except Susan’s boyfriend, despite the many times they explained to him that dominatrix don’t have sex with their clients, and while it might be sexual in nature, it’s absolutely not the act. This didn’t matter; his male pride was wounded and he never went back to Staten Island.

He had been the one who planted the tomatoes. Before the spanking, he had come by once a week to tend them. He pinched off the shoots that sprouted between the main stem and bigger leaves, so energy would go to the fruit. He added mixtures of compost and tucked a little mulch around the base of the plants. But since the plumber incident, the tomatoes were left alone on the vines. They grew heavy with fruit with no one to cut away the lower leaves, stake them up or make sure they got plenty of water in the hot months.

While the group met, divying up the ripening tomatoes and discussing what to do with the plants, and the harvest, the phone rang. Mistress Ginger answered. She had a side business, and she charged $3.00 a minute for mean, nasty talk.

“Get on your knees, you little bitch,” she started. “Have you been bad?”

While she collected for the role playing and spanking and whipping and naughty nurse games, she let some of the slaves come by and clean or do her shopping or make repairs on her car—and she didn’t usually charge them for this.

“Slaves clean our bathrooms, wash the dishes naked,” Mistress Monroe said. “When I’m hungry, I make them go get me food and deliver it.”

A little later, after the phone rang again, she commanded the next client to get on his knees, and it became clear who should tend the tomato plants. The ones who like to get on their knees would be natural gardeners.

“One of my slaves once made sauce out of the tomatoes,” Mistress Ginger said. “I could demand them to make fresh sauce all the time.”

The pomodoro tomatoes would not go to waste.

Mistress Ginger’s Tomato Gardening Instructions:

(Mistress Ginger is working on putting these instructions in her own voice. I haven’t gotten them back yet.)

1. Get on your knees, Bitch!
2. Add compost—cow shit—to soil.
3. Buy Seedlings. Check the leaves to make sure there are no yellow spots or marks.
4. Harden them– set them outside during the day so they get a little wind and sun, them bring them back inside at night.
5. Wait until it’s warm and nighttime temperatures about 55-60 F and plant them in full sun. This means about 6 hours a day.
6. Space your plants about 2 feet apart in rows when you plant them.
7. Stake your plants. Using wooden stakes that are around 3 feet high and 2 inches thick, pound them into the ground about three inches from a plant on its north side so that the tiny plant will not be shaded.
8. Tie the plants to the stake. Make it coarse and bulky so it won’t cut into the stems.  First tie a square knot around the stake tight enough to prevent downward slippage, then use the free ends twine to tie a square knot loosely around the tomato plant’s stem. As the plant grows, anchor the stem to the stake every foot.
9. Water them evenly. This means the same amount on a consistent basis and water them deeply. So every other day in the summer give them a good soaking, but aim around the plant so the water goes to the root, not onto the leaves.
10. Prune them so that there’s a single stem. But this means to cut the shoots that might become stems, but don’t cut the leaves. Use fingers and snap them off.
11. Pinch when the plant reaches the top of its stake.  Pinch out the growing point of the shoot and continue to remove any new leaves or flowers that form. Pinching directs a plant’s energy into the fruits that have already set, hastening their ripening and increasing their size.

Spaghetti Alla Puttanesca

Makes 4 servings

Mistress Ginger would undoubtedly instruct the puttanesca sauce to be served with strozzapreti “priest strangler” pasta. Troffiette twists or rotini are good substitutes. The sauce is also delicious over grilled or broiled fish, chicken, or pan-seared shrimp.

Olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

2 pounds plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise and seeded, then finely chopped

2 anchovy fillets, finely chopped

3 garlic cloves, peeled and very thinly sliced

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh oregano

1 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1/2 cup pitted whole dry-cured black olives (they are usually shriveled and packed with a little oil, not brine)

2 tablespoons salt-packed capers, rinsed

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 pound pasta

Good quality extra-virgin olive oil, for serving

Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook until soft and just starting to brown around the edges, 3 to 4 minutes, stirring often. Mix in the tomatoes, reduce heat to medium, and cook until shapeless and they threaten to stick to the pan, 8 to 10 minutes. Using a wooden spoon, push the tomatoes to the perimeter of the pan. Add the remaining tablespoon of olive oil, the anchovies, garlic, oregano, and black pepper to the center of the pan and let it simmer until the garlic is fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes, then stir into the rest of the ingredients along with the black olives, capers, and 1 teaspoon salt. Turn off the heat, cover, and set aside.

Boil the pasta until al dente, drain, and place back in the pot. Toss with the puttanesca sauce and serve with a drizzle of olive oil.

Maria Finn is the author of Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home (Algonquin, 2010) and  A Little Piece of Earth, How To Grow Your Own Food in Small Spaces (Rizzoli, 2010). She is an expert on gardens. Nature and plant lovers will enjoy her blog and weekly newsletter, City Dirt: The Bay Area Weekly Garden Newsletter for Foodies, Foragers, Tree-Huggers and Beauty Lovers.

So in honor of Fat Tuesday and the Big Easy, we offer up a tasty bit of Amy Thigpen’s yummy look at Maw Maw and the Treme and the steamy music scene in “the City that Care Forgot.” This is just an excerpt, mind you. For the whole, delectable tale, you need to buy the book!

AMY THIGPEN

SISTAH, TAKE YOUR TIME

The Big Easy, the City that Care Forgot, the Crescent City—she is

named for the crook of the Mississippi River she inhabits and the lazy

debauchery she engenders. I call her home, and I know that what is best

about New Orleans happens mostly during the dark in the neighborhoods

that my Maw Maw warned me about.

Maw Maw was born in the Treme, just the other side of Rampart

Street from the French Quarter. This place and her first husband, Roy,

schooled her early in debauchery and its consequences. It’s where Roy was

shot and killed outside of a bar in broad daylight after a fight involving the

dice or the numbers—she won’t say exactly. When my 17-year-old Maw

Maw went to collect Roy’s things from his friend, he wouldn’t believe she

was Roy’s wife because, “You’re not the blonde I’ve seen Roy with.”

My Maw Maw’s heart was double-broken that day, and I believe that

right then and there she began her retreat from the sensual joys that are

New Orleans.

Where she retreated I now advance. Maw Maw’s Treme is also home

to the best musicians in the city—past and present. It is separated from the

French Quarter by Rampart Street which rides straight through the middle

of two worlds: the French Quarter with its bohemians, gay men, and

tourists, and the Treme, the place that grew the real roots of New Orleans.

Louis Armstrong and Louis Prima played in the streets of the Treme when

Maw Maw was young. That fertile ground still sprouts today’s brass band

babes, like Trombone Shorty, startin’ out at age seven, like the Rebirth

Brass Band and the Carnival Social Clubs. These people channel

everything they’ve got into that horn or those keys or those vibes: their

sorrows, their ecstasies, all of it. They make New Orleans the soothing

balm she is.

I’ve had my share of narrow escapes at night. The summer I was a

graduate student, I dated a good ole’ boy from Virginia who held my hips

in his hands and told me they were perfect for childbearing. He had his

faults, but the man could dance in a slippery-smooth way that worked with

the funky blues. We were Uptown at Tipitina’s late. He was staying with

friends, and couldn’t invite me in. I drove Maw Maw’s huge Impala, made

for making out with long bench seats you could fit four couples in it, easy.

We parked on Melpomene, a street that sits along the thin line

between the haves and have-nots, and steamed up the windows in the

Impala kissin’ and carryin’ on even though I knew that this was a

dangerous thing to do. But it was summer and the azaleas were blooming

and scenting up the thick air, and we fit so well into each other’s arms. I

managed to stay alert though, looking up at the rearview mirror every few

minutes for signs of people coming out of the dark.

When I saw headlights flash into the rearview mirror I peeled myself

from the embrace, started the car with my right hand, put her into Drive,

rolled up the window with my left and slammed on the gas just as the

bearded man held the sawed-off shotgun up to the pane. My eyes met his

in that moment and saw surprise, then he shrunk into the night, and we

lurched forward. New Orleans is danger.

New Orleans is also eatin’ fried oysters in blue cheese dressing at

Uglesch’s on the outskirts of the projects the oysters that bring me to tears

because they are so light and fresh and the sauce such a tart complement.

New Orleans is being called baby, honey chile, darlin’ by everyone and

knowing these most often are not come-ons but the melodic mothering of

the South. New Orleans is cheese grits with andouiee sausage, and

drinking beer with my new hairdresser, whom I met at a bar the night

before because he introduced himself with “I just have to get my hands in

your hair.” New Orleans is sayin’ yes.

(Excerpt ends.)

“You might imagine, as I would have if it had not happened to me, that a near-zombie girl would just stand there like a big blow-up doll. Not at all. I am a seemingly will-less creature, and let me tell you, it takes a great deal of will to resist sex. All living things are designed for it. It is their singular purpose. There was no doubt about this in my body.  Horny as any bitch in heat, I was down to the basics. I was consumed with a slimy, single-celled reproductive certainty, swamped with a kind of glandular ecstasy. I couldn’t fight it. I wanted to crawl up the wall. The world turned hot and juicy.

Imagine that you are eating a peach and it begins eating you back. That’s how surprised Alain was when the laconic object of his attentions mounted a counter attack. I wanted to devour him, and I don’t mean metaphorically. This is the point at which murder takes place—murder or self-immolation. This is the lust that kills. Remember the praying mantis, the black widow spider, crimes of passion and desire. But, something inside me—some ancient parasitic wisdom—prevented me from devouring him. It did not stop me from trying to swallow his tongue. The drooling thought “deliciousness” popped into my head, and my salivary glands sprang a leak.

Meanwhile, I had become a balloon. All my hormones adjusted their levels and discharged. I was enflamed and unstoppable. My breasts, which I have already explained, were plenty large, seemed to swell. My womb seemed to have opened up like an umbrella, the blood in it beating like a big vodoun drum. I imagined my lips splitting, oozing blood; breasts spilling milk; innards raining spicy mucilage. I was caught in my own monsoon. I wanted more.

More, it seemed, wanted me, too. I could feel it making a case for itself between my legs at the Ark of the Grand Central Orifice. Taking a deep breath, that collapsed our cheeks, I sprang, wrapping my legs around Alain’s waist. Like a prizefighter caught by hard right hook, he staggered and very nearly fell. To his athletic credit, he managed to retain his balance. Then we became a kind of carnival balancing act, a two-torsoed creature waddling into the bedroom where we turned and collapsed onto the bed, which, in turn, collapsed under our weight. Kaboooooom.

Now Alain was beneath me, his face under mine, his lips pink and tasty. I slipped into the saddle, slid onto that brilliantly designed, perfectly sculpted horn. What a ride we had then, my pony and I. Alain was watching me with a mixture of terror and desire. He could no more stop than a male mantis can shake its amorous mate. I was a pole dancer sliding up and down, a jillaroo bouncing along in the outback, a frigate ship tossed on the Cape of Good Horn. Straddling him, both hands on his chest, I rode him into the sea. I was in some kind of organic nirvana. Mandalas and kaleidoscopes were opening up like flowers deep inside me. Waves of purple and pale chartreuse, plumes of iris and swamp grass scrolled past my upturned eyes. Lust flashed giddy tattoos all over my flesh in a rose-red flush. I couldn’t actually hear it, but I was wailing like a cat in heat, my caterwauling sailing up and out the window, turning heads all along the canal. The big dopamine hit mushroomed up and into my brain. “Oh, oh, oooooh,” I crooned as the dike burst and the waters of the Isslemeer came in, flooding Amsterdam.

I think it was good for him, too. He lay still for a moment, his face in a grimace. “God,” he said gazing up at me in a kind of adulation. “God, that was good. What exactly are you on?” he wondered aloud and put his hand over his eyes.

I sat looking down on him, my body suffused by a delirious glow. A silky endorphin parachute was carrying me back to the bed. I was paralyzed and couldn’t move. Not unusual for me, but I had also found peace and a strange form of union. In Alain, I’d touched some lost part of myself. I was transformed forever. That’s how I became Alain’s slave.”