Hotel Photographer Pt. 22 - Dreambook A12
Hi Eric
Last night I dreamt not about us but about only you, because you interest me. You're one of the kindest people I've ever met.
It was your first day back at the college after months away during the pandemic, a raining and fresh morning. Outside, an assertively soft wind drove rain against your face in a gentle fine mist. The storm was ending and new daylight trembled around you. The sun seemed to smile behind clouds dissipating high in the sky, way up where it was a dark, masculine blue.
You were running late, took a taxi. It went in the wrong direction (the driver assuming you wanted the same route most people took from the spot where you'd hailed him; you needed another). The driver returned to the starting point and got you to your destination and said the ride was free because of the delay he'd caused. You insisted on paying because that's the kind of person you are. The driver finally agreed to accept your money but less than the meter read.
Staff greeted you on your entrance to the college. You walked in the front door and saw familiar faces welcoming.
"You look good," one said. "Him not so much." The speaker pointed to a colleague who had arrived at the same time as you and stood nearby. He was older and, you noticed, using a cane. You smiled at him.
"Well, I did some push-ups on the way here," you said to the others.
"How many?" the staff member who had commented on your appearance asked.
"A hundred." You laughed modestly. (Yes, you had done the exercises even though the ground was wet. You hadn't had a chance in your rush to leave that morning and didn't want to miss a day's workout).
On your way to the stairs and the department offices where you worked, you greeted the security guards, with whom you always got along. They deferred to you. One, an elderly Indian man with a grey beard who had been there for ages, was like an uncle. He looked at you like a long-lost and much-admired son.
The men in their mostly ill-fitting or wrinkled, overused uniforms, dark blazers and grey pants, stood back in a line, giving you space to pass, more respectful than you felt necessary. They genuinely liked you and you them, in some cases more than your colleagues.
You did the push-ups for me, at least a hundred a day to build stamina, so you'd match that number of thrusts and more. You wanted not to break off, pause and catch your breath the way some men have to just when I need them to continue. You carried me straight through my orgasm and beyond. You kept going at the same steady speed amid my screams and smoothly all the way into the silence that followed. That's one thing I mean when I say you never let me down.
We talked again about your suggestion that I move in with you, approached the subject delicately from consideration for each other's feelings. We agreed living together was out of the question and speculated on how "crazy" it would be because we thought alike and were both creative, how constantly surprising every day would be and how good.
As to the gallery owner, I hope you're right. There was one, Mick, who wanted something along with the paintings and when he couldn't get it lost interest.
--
Second part of the movie (interesting)
We were going out to play sports. I'd changed my clothes and walked out of the bedroom to the landing and saw you standing on the stairs just below, your head at the same level as the hardwood polished floorboards where I stood. The surface I looked down to was a warm, roseate hue and had the good smell of just cleaned wood.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"This is the start of the second part of the movie," you joked, "with my nice view of your legs." I was wearing white tennis shorts and you admired my tan slim limbs smoothed by dance and outdoor exercise.
We stopped and got together on the floor, more attracted to each other than to sports for now. You were wearing shorts too and I reached inside to check your condition.
"It's hard!" I said. It was very.
"It's moving!" I said. You were able to use a muscle, not in your penis itself, to make it twitch first to one side then around to the other, to surprise and entertain me. It did more than that.
I climbed on top of you and braced my hands on your chest. My arms brought my breasts together in a close circle you liked.
You set your penis and I winched my hips, drawing it into me.
I shook my head- "I can't believe how good this is!"- challenging you to prove the joy was credible, my lopsided smile you like jogging from side to side, my eyes staying on you because yours held so steady, like your penis while the flesh of my bottom and hips shivered with pleasure. I felt I'd fall to pieces on you when I had my orgasm and you'd have to collect the parts of wet broken things I'd become. All over you!
You'd seen me at the college at the first-floor information desk, away from the crowd coming and going as at an airport, asking a question of the young Spanish-speaking (Chilean) guy who worked there. You saw him flirting with me, trying to at least,. He had wavy oiled black hair, a cute face, was small but had a nice body. Handsome, his eyes glittered. I liked how his liveliness, humor clashed with his handsomeness, which really was serious- and he knew it.
You saw him extending the encounter in a playful way, not just answering my questions but asking his own, keeping me there the desk (carved old wood, a little like a dais for a speech). I didn't mind. He- his style- was new for me. We laughed together, seemed to recognize our uniqueness. How else to put it? Yes, I can get caught up in flirtation too. And I think as a man not my husband you'll recognize it isn't your place to deny me harmless fun. Maybe that's all you are to me. Ha ha.
I'm joking. Of course we have something more.
The man at the information desk (he was a student working part-time) used the word "corazón" from his language, which I didn't know- he knew I didn't. He called me that, "corazón." Meanwhile, you were approaching from behind me. The student hadn't known there was a boyfriend in the picture, much less that he was a faculty member.
"'Corazón,'" you told me, "means 'heart.'" Which popped the information-giver's bubble. He deferred to you.
Earlier he'd asked about the light wool cut-off sweater I was wearing. He didn't say so directly but pointed out that my breasts were visible beneath the ragged bottom edge; just the lower part showed, about a third. "Why do you do that?" he asked, seeming genuinely concerned, let's say troubled. He was mildly admonishing. His eyes, dark and lowered, sought to remind me of a similarity in our cultures: both valued modesty in women. He also thought, said in so many words, that I was putting myself at risk, sending the wrong message, which some men, bad ones, might see as an invitation.
"But this is the U.S." I reminded him before you arrived.
The sweater was a favorite, naturally dyed wool ash brown untreated but fine, a mesh, network that looked like it would come apart in your fingers if you weren't careful.
Anyway, what happened then didn't matter now. My breasts were in your hands. We had left that guy, were in a world of ecstasy all our own, far from my husband.
Extra (maybe boring)
You said you had to write a paper for a history course, one of several you were taking to raise your academic and professional standing- success would bring new opportunities and a salary increase with them. The essay was a requirement for the class but you had put off the work until the last minute and now were left with just a few days, to start and finish a project combining research and analysis. You only had to focus on a single element of the course work, one of your choosing, but the result should reflect understanding of the whole. You'd procrastinated for far too long, hadn't done the reading during the semester. Hundreds of pages of dense prose remained. How much headway could you make in such a short time?
You told me that being a student again was funny and anxiety-provoking. You didn't even remember the exact instructions for the assignment and were reluctant to ask the teacher, from concern your question reveal how little effort you'd put into his course. If he didn't know, he might give you a pass even if your final essay fell flat. You'd have to look for his instructions in notes you'd taken at the beginning of the term, if you could find them.
I liked your sense of humor. You had swept up something you'd spilled in a classroom and then looked for a place to put the broom. A student in another room asked what you were doing. He found your behavior strange, you said. You found it and his reaction comical. You explained you wanted to leave the broom where you and others could easily find it later (somehow it hadn't fit back in the utility closet from which you'd taken it; maybe someone had stowed a different tool there in the the meantime, taking space it had occupied before).
"My job is cleaning," you said.
"You clean?" the student asked, wide-eyed. He'd assumed you were a professor.
"Well, it's only part of my job," you said, and then joked, "but the most important."
I like you.
I dreamed we went swimming at the beach, first waded out over sand from which water had withdrawn and then a hundred yards from shore Australian crawled laterally by a sandbar. You said you worried the water would come up and cover the shallow strip we'd crossed to get there and we might not be able to get back via the same easy route. We noted the rough surf between us and the beach. We have to hope, you said, that it had been high tide when we'd come out. Otherwise we might have to hang around that sand bar for hours. But when we returned to the "land bridge" we saw it was still passable. All was good. The sand glittered gold in the sun, still midday. The faint shadow of ripples in the water played on the soft surface a meter down- it was still light there, and around our feet you could see black lines wavering, jolting. I thought of a highly diluted ink drawing. The piercing rays from above also made playful parallel curved lines. Think of a musical score with notes bouncing all around it.
I wanted to show I had a sense of humor too and told you about a funny experience at the college. I'd been using the toilet and another student outside was looking for an empty stall. Rather than knock on the door of mine, she climbed up and looked over the top and asked me, "Are you in here?"
You said that was a great opportunity to give a snappy answer to a stupid question."