Strange Magic

I smelled you yesterday.

Just for a brief second but it was you….

I’d been rushing about the shop, stacks of new value Bordeaux sliced open, the “tick-a-tack-a-tick-a-tack” of my price gun spitting tiny rectangular stickers upon the shiny new bottles. Running up to the front to answer the phone, answer a, “what would you pair with this?” question and scan purchases into the point of sale system before bending over to retrieve paper bags, plunking paper swathed bottles into them and bidding adieu to one customer just as another walks in. Lather, rinse and repeat all day. I was beat but in that good way, the way that pounds against your bones and sanity and remind you that each day is full of tasks as meaningful or less as you make them. Not solving the big problems, but handling enough of those little ones to make me feel as if I were doing something. 

My body tired and slippery with that sheen…you know the one, that one that causes your clothes to hang just a little longer on your skin. That one that coaxes those tiny hairs to lie flat and moist at the base of your neck. Between the recent construction at the shop, the warm weather and my incessant need to keep moving, physically to keep at bay the gnawing of the deep thoughts and, as it seems of late, enervating emotional fuckdom, my body was in need of a quick break and a splash of cold water. I headed back to the kitchen to refill my water bottle, my fingers tugging at and prying open the cap, hips in full stride and head slowly leaning back as my lips parted to take in the very last trickle of cold liquid my well worked bottle had to give. In classic Samantha form I swung a bit too much this way, or that, and found those last cherished drops of cold water gliding down my chin and landing in tiny beads across the front of my sticking to me shirt. 

“Oh goddamn it” I grumbled as I took a swipe at my dripping chin and tugged at the collar of my shirt, gathering it in a wad and pulling it across the puddle on my mug. It was there. There that I could smell you. I stood there like an idiot, shirt pulled so far up the skin above the waistband on my jeans was exposed, fistful of black uniform shirt pulled across my face like The Elephant Man seeking cover, my heart beginning to thump so hard I could feel it behind my earlobes. A tiny shiver shot down my spine as my nostrils expanded to take more of you, of us, in…..holding on to us as long as I could before having to exhale and dive back for more.

My oily and sweaty skin, the particles of shaved wood, fabric softener, the flinty and mineral whispers from inside my water bottle, sweet gamey sweat and the very familiar aroma of my own saliva, the way I’d smelled it over and over again as I ran my lips and tongue about you. In the middle of a construction zone, shirt hiked up, saliva scented water receding down my chin and landing like drops of, of fucking want, along my bare tummy as my heart set the pace for my breathing and my mouth begin to water. The sensual making me forget and remember.

It was you…

Wonder

Want

Obsession

Fascination

Undefinable

Fleeting

Twisting

Staining

Haunting….

It was you

Meet me again…

Please

I promise an open mind, wide heart and spread open palate that is

Yours and yours, in this way, yours only

Come inside

Live in me

Feed me

Feel me

Teach me...

Use me to feed, feel and teach them…

I’m willing, wanting, craving and

Slippery with ready.

Friday night.....can't come soon enough 

I've Got Your Square Hole

“It’s just nice to be home again. Feels so good I think we should do it every year” up late the other night watching some lame chick movie. One of those deals that crosses from the current to back in time as we watch how our young pod of best girlfriends spend a coming of age summer, one that would showcase their differences, the differences that would send them spiraling apart, you know, until this coming home visit where all is righted once again. Harmless enough and just the kind of mindless junk I have the intellectual fortitude for at 3:00 AM. The cast worthy of watching and the throwback music nostalgic, and the only real thing I related to in the film.

When the credits began to roll over the picture of friendship and coming home again, I grabbed the remote, tossed back the puddle of whatever wine was in my glass down my gullet and shuffled off to the bedroom. Teeth brushed, fan whispering the promise of some sort of relief, I gently tugged at the sheet and folded into bed. The night, or morning rather, everything my soggy mind was not….still. I lay there my head flipping back and forth from the silly film to the screaming silence of a missing voice in my life, the clashing of both causing me to sit up in bed, expel the beaten-down groan of surrender and slip out of bed once again. 

I walked past the empty room where my son once lived, even more empty in some weird way now that he’s back. His posters gone, his bed and dressers moved into his new home here, the hope of walking past and seeing my tiny little man in deep snooze gone and causing me a mildly stinging flicker of pride, and sadness. My bare feet finding comfort in the soft carpet as I kept moving down the hall, past the poster from the event I attended in Champagne this year, past the print we picked up at a museum on one of our vacations and the framed maps of Burgundian vineyards that hang helpful and colorful behind my couch. No television this time, I just let the quiet bounce off the noise in my head, the words “It’s just so nice to be home again” in the context with which it was intended so foreign to me and just another reminder that most of the time….I kinda don’t fit.

I let the word “Home” flicker over me in the darkness of my unmoving living room. I felt home where I was. The pictures of the places I’ve visited, the increasingly wheezy couch, the kitchen just over there, a place of pride and elation for me when I’m feeding the people that I love, the ones that love me back. This is indeed my home and really, the only one I’ve ever known. Going home again would mean walking right back through that horribly ugly colored green door with the number 408 affixed to it. 

That other kind of home is a feeling that I can’t quite wrap my head or heart around. I lived another place, a couple of them actually but the last of “that” feeling, if there ever was one, was taken to the trash heap along with the dresser drawers that were falling apart from years of roach and termite infestation, the swollen plastic bags bursting with unpaid bills, the broken and stained couch that smelled of the brother that was slowly trying to kill himself on it…like stolen Scotch, cigarettes, unwashed flesh, failed potential and self-righteousness…the call, that call that took away that bitty shred of just in case, the call the made me a matriarch at 29 years old.

Home as a feeling or source of soothing is something I’ve never quite got and has once again shone a light upon one of those areas of me that I try and pull the material over, try and hide. One of those things that I’d rather listen to you share with me and make me understand because the twisting in my tummy assures me that not only do I not have anything to truly share, I envy even the tiniest bit of comprehension of. I have a family but for the most part we don’t quite fit into the pre formed roles, shapes and ideals. I have a black son and while I can smile as people of all races feel comforted enough to ask him, “Can I touch it?” with regards to his massive and puffy afro, I can’t not feel Ferguson. An anecdote or annoying bit of civil discourse to some, paralyzing fear to the mother of a sweet, puffy afro wearing, dark skinned son that bows to let 90 year olds of all races and colors touch his pillow of sweet smelling hair, runs across the shop or courtyard to help anyone that needs his girth and strength, melts when a wee blonde 3 year old calls him his “best friend”. Kinda wish my mother were here now, curious where her history and reality of right now would stand on this one. No going home again….hurts. I can squish and shove my bits this way and that but still, I don’t fit. 

“Who the hell are you going to sell these to?!” the warped face of a coworker as he ran through a few wines, well not wines but Vermouths that flipped on all my switches and set my motor a running. “There are some, a few of us that relish in the different goddamn it” I barked back as I let the last bits of butternut squash vermouth trickle down my throat. Big notebook slammed shut and nibble of “how could you?” at my spine. “They don’t fit but…I want them” my argument as I stole, flat-out stole funds from Jeremy (um, that would be my son) and ordered him slightly impossible, and expensive vermouths to put on his shelves.

Been a couple of days since I got these wild things in but….they make sense to me. They make sense to those of us that aren’t confined to the tiny pieces of puzzles that can’t be figured out by what we think we know or get. These are vermouths built by someone I’m guessing is just as displaced by ideals and looking to create a narrative full of questions….a discussion that includes a normal that might make us think a bit more. Drinking these, this feels like a homecoming, and that sexy as fuck bent finger tucked beneath my chin that not only keeps my head up but encourages me to keep looking forward. 

So nice to be coming home again….

Uncouth Vermouth Apple Mint $39.99

The one I didn’t try before ordering and while I wish I had I get where this elixir places. Bright, easy, clean, full of minty notes that live forever on the palate long after the vermouth is gone. I thought of ceviche the second I smelled this, hasn’t gone away.

Uncouth Vermouth Beet & Eucalyptus $39.99

Can’t stop smelling this stuff. I’ve been given to sneaking off to the kitchen where I’ve hidden a bottle, just to burry my nose in the glass and feel my knees give as the earthy, gamey and slutty aromatics pry me open and fill me up. The nose is full of spicy minty or eucalyptus up front it is the beguiling beet earthiness that pulls the shoulder forward and wraps its life and differentness around you. This is begging for a plate of cured meat, stone ground mustard, pickles and a glass full of ice with a kiss if gin in it. Wild but in that way that makes you ache for just a little more investigation.

Uncouth Vermouth Butternut Squash $39.99

Fresh, vibrant, raw, spread wide open and unwashed. The kind of beverage that defies the column A or B…it’s way more complex and twisting than that. That face across the room that looks familiar but has teeth sunk deeply in its lip and eyebrow raised….it has been waiting for you, what are you waiting for?       

 I don’t fit.

They don’t fit

There is a home for all of us

Sliding Down Below

“This is Jim, Josh and Samantha” Aline’s sweet but confident voice doing a roll call of sorts as our not-quite-worse-for-wear crew poured out of our self-assigned car ride seating and extended our arms in the direction of a trim smiling gentleman. I tucked the windblown hair behind my ears, tugged at my already wrinkled and poorly fitting shirt. The sun beating warm and comforting as my Converse clad feet crushed the tiny white pebbles in the driveway at P-L & J-F  Bersan. A blast of cool damp air met our sun-warmed faces as we walked into the tasting room of our first Burgundian winery. I looked around at the very rugby decorated, clean, sleek and slightly modern feeling tasting room. At first taken aback by the clean lines and glass cases but knowing where we were, in the Burgundian village of Saint Bris, well I was fully aware that below the cool tiles of the tasting, or retail space, there were miles and miles of caves dug beneath the street, a meeting place for French soldiers during war. My Chuck’s landing lightly on the tiles, my memory of my last visit to this amazing and historic region in the heart of the Auxerrois sending a bead of thrilled skin bumps down the length of my frame. 

Jean-Francois Bersan smiled gently in our direction and spoke in a tender tone as he and Aline handled a little business, in French before he called to his young, strapping rugby playing son Pierre-Louis to come over and give us a tour of the twisting caves that rested below the city. Pierre-Louis, a young twenty-something with a swath of dark hair, a firm athletic build and a smile that assured me that while confident, this young man was as genuine, and humble as they come. His English just fine as he walked us through the snaking caverns stopping only to point out a piece of the wall that had been dug out, long ago, that was a makeshift oven, “used to bake bread while the soldiers were down here” and to point to a façade wall that separated their winery from the one across the street. “At one time there were none of these walls, we were all connected to each other through these” with a swerving hand motion, “These streets under the street.” Pierre-Louis’s voice lilting and exact the soundtrack as I took in deep chest filling breaths that were scented with damp chalk, and history. 

My fellow travelers and I emerged from underground, bits of broken stone stuck in the grooves of our shoes and morsels of fuzzy mold stuck to any part of our clothing that may have touched, or brushed against the mossy and moist walls. I stood there picking off remnants of antiquity while Jean-Francois popped corks and poured us cool, lip-smacking white wines. I listened, took mental notes and soaked in each and every line of their faces, each stony bite of white wine, committing those men, that place and the flavor of all of it to memory…a postcard to share with my customers when I got home. 

I knew those wines belonged at our shop, those men and their humble but genuine life’s work had dinner tables and palates that were craving them, they just didn’t know it yet and I was starting to writhe with the need to tell them. As we piled in the car, my tummy humming with the energy of falling in love and gnawing at me from the inside to “get to stepping!” and discovering more. The warm hug of a slight buzz pinching at my cheeks and flipping the switches that prepare, and warn me, my filters are getting looser…perfect as we were headed to Chablis to taste and have lunch with the wondrous, charismatic, unfuckingbelieveably talented wild man of Chablis, by way of Canada, Patrick Piuze.

https://thewinecountry.com/shop/bersan-2012-saint-bris-sauvignon-burgundy/ 

Um, You Might Just Be Lame...

So after a couple days of mulling it over I have come to the careful conclusion that this

Not only makes more sense, but would likely taste far better than these....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anneli-rufus/professionals-tips-on-pai_b_5605993.html 

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/07/rose-wine-mister-softee-pairing 

What the fuck?!
I swear my face just puckered
Palate just quit
And brain just atrophied reading this nonsense. 

Shame
On
You...

Oh and I wonder what the belly hole guy is dipping that cheese stick in a little more than I wonder what any of these "professionals" would pair with it. Can't you just see it now, "What To Pair With Toe Jam & Other Bodily, Um, Sauces"
Whimper.....
You all let me know when it's safe to come back.

Safe In The Insecurity

 

 

 

“If you can overcome the fear, you have nothing to worry about. It's a matter of wanting to do it, and believing that you can...and taking the risk.”- My Dear Friend Thomas Nearly A Year Ago...

Thomas’ words swam around in my head as I drove home from work tonight. His staunch support, mild irritation with my reluctance and gruff exterior covered bits of hope, all swishing about between my ears as I signaled the direction of my course to the sea of cars behind me, one left and right turn at a time. My route home so worn into my subconscious that I often make it to my front stoop without one shred or flicker of a bump in the road, face in a car parallel to mine, a missed or made light. Point A to point B taken so many times that my mind checks out to wander into all sorts of cavernous possibilities while my autopilot knows to slow down while making that sharp right and recognizes that there is a four minute window right before that light turns green for the folks waiting to make a left and we can “just make it”. 

Not nearly as hot tonight as it has been but when I arrived home the big fan was still on the stoop, screen door open and resting upon the back of it in an effort to bring more of the cooler air from the out to our in. Did the whole obstacle course climb trying to shimmy my bloated bits past the doorway hogging fan with my backpack and box of The Wine Country acquisitions, (wine, cheeses, canned tomatoes and the tiny jars of Spanish almonds cooked in olive oil, the ones with just enough salt to convince me, at well past midnight most often, that I need one more glass of wine to wash them down. Always sexier those, “Come on, you know you want to” voices when the world outside is still and you are bumping around in your home, lonely and seeking) past the screen and whooshing fan. Dumped my box on the counter, spun around in one flourishy ballet like move that admittedly ended up looking more like a linebacker squat as I flung my backpack in its spot at the dining room table. Wasn’t in my kitchen more than forty seconds before I felt my chest expand, the heat from the 450 degree oven stifling and suffocating, my shoulders given to a deep shiver as tiny soapy scented beads of sweat began to collect and puddle around the loose fitting material around my waist. 

 

 

 

Much like my drive home my head was busy working on my inner puzzles as my body  just moved about and reacted. Opened the box of stuff I brought home, put the wine in the fridge, stocked the pantry staples and began to unwrap the cheese that needed to be scraped, (fucking hate plastic wrap and how it imparts itself on the flavor of cheese. Crazy sensitive to that so all my cheeses get a good shaving before being wrapped in Cheese Paper and stashed away in the fridge) before I grated it for the Cacio e Pepe, Cheese and Pepper Pasta that was on the menu for the evening. A plume of salty sheep’s milk cheese aroma bounced off the grater, the starchy smell of spaghetti getting just fork tender in its bath of bubbling hot water, the splash of fresh lemon juice across the top of now crispy skinned chicken thighs that were baking in the oven. My kitchen, my food, the way I do it…empowering. 

 

 

 

An exhale so deep that I swear it came from the balls of my feet as I slipped out from the sweat inducing furnace that was my kitchen, fan peppering my lower back with cool, sweet kisses as I tugged at my work top and began to wriggle out of my jeans while walking down the hall to my bedroom. There I would pour my wet noodled self into dark grey sweat pants and one of those shamefully thin white shirts that stretch and cling to my frame in that way that would make me blush if it didn’t make me feel so goddamn sexy. My outfit for the night telling the story of my life, frumpy, wrinkled bits but mixed with plump, craveable curves, slippery skin, and vulnerability combined with a mouth, soul and mind that ache to be fondled and engaged. Walking past the mirror in my bedroom I found myself in absolute wonder about any man, any one for that matter, that would be curious about me…pulled that thin white material tight across my breasts, watched as my ribcage expanded and nipples amplified, sank my top teeth deep into my bottom lip as I felt the very powerful, and terrifying reality of being looked at and the possibility of being wanted. Sticky…I felt smugly and humiliatingly sticky.  Quickly pulled the gauzy material away from my flesh, smoothed out my hair, caught my breath and headed back to the kitchen to finish dinner. 

 

 

 

 

 “Another pool party Sam?” my mother annoyed that my third ever birthday party, (and let me just point out I was like 10 at the time) was once again going to be spent outside by the pool. I was in the 5^th grade, I had more friends than I’d ever had before, (probably like 8…woo hoo!) and my birthday was in June for fucks sake. If there was one thing worth enduring the rather horrific and humiliating existence that was living in that sullen and sadness swollen house, it was that pool. I’d snuck out to find peace and silence there, probably hundreds of times, feeling safe while floating weightless or blowing all the air from my chest and sinking to the dark and soundless bottom of that sloshy retreat while the cruelty and unrestricted abuse continued inside. I felt safe there and that was the only place I wanted my friends to be. In some weird way I thought they would be safe there too. Pool party it was, and for one of the few times in her life my mother was able to give me what I asked for, another reason to feel good about my request, no matter how much she protested. 

 

  

 

 Pool parties brought with them a number of assorted games but there were none as thrilling to me as when my mother would throw handfuls of quarters into the water. The “Plonk” sound they made as they broke the surface, their slow, swishy decent and the slightly metallic thud they made as they settled on the bottom. I would stand at the edge, toes gripping the cement so assertively that I’d surely walk away with blisters, chlorine damaged red eyes desperately trying to focus as my mother blew a whistle and pointed to everyone but me to dive deep and claim their monetary prizes. My browned from the sun arms would be folded into a pouty square in front of me as each and every one of my friends was invited to scoop up the silvery treasure at the bottom of the pool, the one I was not allowed to go after until everyone else gave up. I had just one ace in my bathing suited pocket, that deep end was anything but scary to me, it was a treasure of a different kind, one I craved more than almost anything. I’d watch my young comrades’ jump goofily into the water. Eyeball them as they plugged their noses and flapped their tiny legs trying to plunge themselves as far as they could into the deep end. Sat all pudgy but shark like as each one of them drew their soaked and tired frames from the kidney shaped pool, hands empty as they jumped on one leg to try and knock the water from their ears. I’d just sit and wait for that final whistle…hands held in a diamond shape, arms extended, toes pushing off the side and body curved into a loose U as I rushed to the bottom to claim the ungrabbed and unreachable. 

 

 

“If you can overcome the fear, you have nothing to worry about. It's a matter of wanting to do it, and believing that you can...and taking the risk.” Thomas’ words once again floating amid the 500 hundred other voices bumping around inside my noggin. His voice just a little louder as it flicked at my stubbornness and fear.

Tucked the sweating bottle of San Lorenzo Il Casolare Verdicchio that was left over from dinner under my arm, slipped my key ring around my thumb and headed out to indulge in silky, still-warm-from-the-sun pool water and the very grownup treasure of glugging down crisp white wines, ones so unique and indelible that their stamp or imprint have become so woven into my memory they have begun to overwrite some of the ugly that used to plague me. The second my toes broke the glasslike surface of the still pool I knew my feet would not be the last of my bits to be….wrapped and caressed by slowly moving bands of sumptuous water.

 

 

 

Felt the weight of my sweat pants as they drank in the cool liquid, shivered a touch as the thin material of my shirt wrapped itself around my flesh like a wetsuit. Let the muscles in my thighs flex and pull, push and propel me through the water, my shirt billowing and constricting like a jellyfish while my body slithered about just above the bottom of the pool. Nearly all the voices and dramas in my melon silenced by the utterly captivating sound of water lapping and trickling, breaking, dripping and falling off my skin. I pulled my thick calves through the water in our pool tonight. I let myself move about in viscous liquid, a feeling so sultry and carnal I can only compare it to the way it feels when you run the tip of your tongue along the insides of your mouth….better yet, someone else’s mouth. There is no other feeling like that on the planet for me, the submission of my body into water. Tonight it made me feel strong, powerful, cold, erect, saturated, liberated, shy but flirtatious, erogenous and less afraid and once I pulled myself out of the water, the material clinging to my flesh and bones, droplets of pool water dripping down the sides of my wine glass as I drank deeply......... standing there, in my wet street clothes gulping Verdicchio and not giving a shit what anyone thought about it, empowered.

 

 

 

 I used to practice diving into the deep, cold, water in the blackness of night. Sucked my breath in hard as the ripple of my presence skipped from my little corner of the silent pool to the expansive deep end and splashed against the curved edge of cement that stood between those loud and angry voices inside and me. Bobbed around in the relative quiet, water lapping around my neck and sucking at my ears. Fear and running from the inside used to send me there but my legs stopped shaking once I settled in, felt the caress of water as it pushed me to spend those fearful hours, not afraid but making myself stronger. A stronger swimmer, a better diver, more capable of grabbing those thin treasure coins from the bottom of the pool, fingers shriveled like golden raisins and all. The fear of those people lurking inside a hard slap to my backside that as fucked up as it might seem now, inspired me to push myself harder. Strive to give just a little more, notice every little beautiful and terrifying thing…feel each and every second of my life. For the most part, I’ve been able to do that, just turns out that every once in a while I need to drink deeply from my glass, give myself over to absolute pleasure, splash about in silky wetness, look at my body with the eyes of someone that craves me, not give a shit who might be watching and yes, sometimes I need a firm slap on the ass to get me going.

 

 

Here waiting for one more firm tap....