Where other people sleep...

The sound of sex--distinct and invasive--is louder than the ticking clock, more demanding than the chromium kettle, more pervasive than the parade of drips coming from the kitchen sink.  

plop

plop

plop

plop

plop

The ruckus of it, the rhythm, the raw and breathless energy of the silences between…   ALL OF IT! :  this body against that body, these convivial souls, the perfect nubile agility of every act, speaking, walking together, dancing, laughing, holding hands, courting the forces of nature--obvious gods.  

They would advise us, "Be happy!  As the hundred thousand animals that copulate without evaluation, nor justification, nor some proscription from the cultural council in their lazy and apologetic brains.  Celebrate!"  

You know the instinctual hierarchy of the sounds we have been using… explaining ourselves to the cluster of "fans" to fight against the distance that elongates us.  Some confuse the television star's elation over his or her good fortune against  the dissonance in meaning when,  in the course of our real conversations, little voices interrupt...

There is no point in trying to find that thread again.  

Your candy- apple green mustang sped out of the gas station that afternoon.  You felt reckless and horny.  This one was wearing a tube top.  Your roommates sister.  She really did have a fuck-me vibe.  But we were all pretending to be better people than we are.  The kind of people that believe that there is a "better." 

Now here you are, awake at 3. a.m., at home, in a hotel, or over the holidays in the claustrophobic spaces that your parents afforded the summer of your second year.  And in bed, alone or beside your spouse, your mistress, your wife from your first marriage, your hunting buddy, the distinct sound of sex comes like shadows through the floor--your ceiling.

Moist and moldy that familiar language is finding you, finding you feeling him.  The scene is blue and patient.  It is framed by the stalactites growing from the ceiling,  dripping from the darkness above.  Below, the stalagmites are calculating calculus as they grow like legendary monsters under your bed.  The is no better sculptor than nature.  These forms--phallic and marble--are as eternal as the ghosts of Rome.  

That is quite naturally, most certainly, true.