>>> The Lady's Shave
By staff writer NG Hatfield
April 3, 2008
I got back with the smokes and Louisa was asleep. She was strewn in an awkward, contortionist-like position and her feet were hanging over the bed, bare and small.
She was a small woman in general, actually. Only five foot. Probably a buck ten. She was cute, but not my type, really. Her face was very doll-like and ruddy. Her tits were small, and on her hips she had a small tattoo of a griffin. I thought that it was pretentious as hell.
I looked at her there, naked, heard her breathing heavy and wondered why I had moved out of my place to be with her. At least, in such a short time.
She was an excellent fuck. And maybe that was it. Well, not it, but enough.
No. I twisted the cap off the bottle and set it down on the piano’s slick top. I took a drink and sat down on the smooth bench. I ran my hand over it, thinking, waiting for something to come. Something. A good fucking reason to stay.
She was a hell of a pianist besides being a great fuck and that sometimes did it for me. I’d get hard thinking of her when she was playing or out shopping or drinking with friends. I’d wait for hours with a hard-on until she came back.
She made me feel like a writer, too. She read all of my poems, said they were great even when they weren’t. She’d call me her writer and get wet when I read to her.
But the truth is, when the piano was quiet and I wasn’t getting my share of ass, I knew I had to whittle all the bullshit down to something else. Something more authentic, something less arcane, something I could touch and hold and have for my own.
Food and cigarettes and alcohol. Louisa sure as hell had that going for her. Tangibles. Those rotten little things that keep all of us separating each other, until we feel different enough to be defined, individual.
I sighed and drank both the Cokes, smoked half the cigarettes, and made myself three ham sandwiches. I fell asleep before anything else had manifested. I only knew one thing before I fell asleep: that I was willing to give Louisa another shot, if only because I kept giving her more shots. To do anything else would be a waste of a great fuck, and maybe even time.
I met Louisa’s parents two days later. Their house was much like her apartment, only grander and well kept. Four massive white pillars rose to a very angled black roof. The façade was made of stucco, in a Queen Anne’s lace pattern. The windows were long and skinny, and when I got a glimpse inside, I could only see a plush red color. The yard was immaculate, even for early spring. The grass was fertile, as was the laurel growing along the brick pathway up to the door.
Louisa opened the large front door that had one of those large brass knockers on it and yelled for them by their first names. “Karen! Doug!”
I laughed a little at that and she glared back at me. She had instructed me to be on my best behavior and I wanted to fuck after the visit. I stopped laughing.
In a long foyer area, her father was the first I saw. He was in a grey pin-striped suit and slick black shoes. He was fat and tan and had a mustache that made him look very similar to a walrus. He said hello. I shook his hand firm and he shook back harder, raising his elbow a little to give it more gusto.
“Louisa tells us that you’re a poet.” It wasn’t said in the usual, concerned way that I usually got from older people, but more in a respectful tone. “A very good poet.”
“Yes…well maybe. Yes. Okay.” I looked around. A polished stainless steel kitchen was to my right. I saw a half-empty bottle of port and two glasses beside it. A few pots hung from the ceiling above an island that had four electric burners on it.
“I’m a bit of a poet myself.” He stared, gauged my reaction.
I arched an eyebrow and nodded like I was interested.
“Hold on.” He stomped back down the hall from where had come. It was a bouncy walk, into a swinging door. I heard him rifling through papers.
Louisa’s mother came down the stairs. I heard her heels clicking before I saw her. When I did, I noticed that she looked quite like her daughter. Only a few laugh lines and crow’s feet differentiated them. She was lean, also. Her face had less red coloring and was much more centered in the cheekbones than in her daughter’s set of pudgy cheeks.
“Louisa has told us so much about you.” She had a young, sexy voice.
“Hopefully good things.”
Her mother walked up, gave me a hug. I felt her breasts push against me. I felt like fucking her on the polished floors right then.
“Yes, yes. All great things.” She put her hands on my arms and looked me up and down. “Yes, Louisa, he is very handsome.”
Louisa rolled her eyes.
I blushed, felt my dick announce itself. I became a little nervous and centered my attention on the kitchen.
“Oh. How rude of me,” the mother said. “My name is Karen.”
The father busted through the swinging door. “Oh, and I forgot. I’m… Judge Klein.” He smiled. He had the serious variety of humor. The kind I had seen enough working as a busboy for a steakhouse back home. He would have an ego.
I faked a smile and shoved my hands in my pockets. Louisa put her hand on my back and rubbed it around. “Doug here is a great poet too.”
“Oh, are you Judge Klein?” I laughed at my own joke.
He smiled, handed me a pile of maybe twenty pages and nodded.
“And here I thought you were just a man of law.” I smiled and took the poems. I was really laying it on thick and they were loving it.
“Go ahead and read them at your leisure.”
“Sure thing,” I said.
“Meaning now.” Another serious joke.
I was a little shocked, but it was more than a joke. Most people who think they’re writers are shitty and impatient. “Now?”
Louisa said, “We’ve got all day. Why don’t you take a look?”
I flipped the papers around and looked down at them. The first poem was titled Stardust. “I don’t see why not, I guess.”
“Would you like some wine before you get started?” Karen asked.
“Yes. Yes. I would love wine,” I said. “Anything you got.”