Bar Louie

Yes, I’ve grown, or grown up, since my in awe days of a newly chubby, newly stimulated fourteen to sixteen year-old girl and here I am, almost 22, and well seasoned in the touching, talking, and tumultuous living with, near, and through musicians. “Artists,” men, young boys, the lovers I can’t get away from—not to say that I have tried—and long for in their absence and lust for in their presence. As their nimble fingers climb the guitar, like my neck and back, they begin to curl and curve, hooking, and I tingle and tense knowing what they do. Sunken inside of me they navigate through my insides. Pleasure and vibrations, music through my muscles and bones, and scales as I scream and breathe and pant and die a little. They bring me back to life. Those fingers, that internal engine. Smoke billows from wet mouths fogging a microphone or dripping over an instrument. And when my body presses against theirs—staggered knees, rubbing hips, hungry chest and compressed bellies—all the fault is mine. Wet mouth, blanketed with rough skin and hair, devour me just enough, like it devoured a microphone or the undulating waves of sound. When I say that I have learned, I truly mean that I have. I have learned that I am doomed to this man. It’s not every one of them, I now pick quite closely and meticulously. I know the fingers; I know the sound, the wailing blues, that dripping sweat. The carelessness, the utter care, it makes them, their show, their instrument. The movement of their bodies, the nod of their head, the bounce of their knee or foot. I know the vibration and when I close my eyes, when I’m home in bed after watching those fingers climb on necks and backs, they climb in me, and I know the fingers, and I know the sounds, and I know the vibrations, and yes, yes, I have learned.