A Pornography

There was a time when I watched it happen. Strangers pressed to other strangers in one bed, clothes on, air humid with the cloying scent of fruit juice and vodka; none of us giving into another and yet unwilling to leave the scene of that possibility, pretending to sleep, actually sleeping. Then waking again to slip a hand over a shoulder, slide a finger inside the waistband of a skirt; so young (we are even now still so young) in that hotel room turning blue then lighter blue. We wouldn’t have tried for more: the kiss, the button; firm, white shape of an image slipped wholly into the mind, acted upon, dreamed upon, filling the thin vessels of the lungs. Earlier, a film, its forced sounds of lovemaking. The tension I felt winding into the muscles of some of the others in the room. I remember I left for awhile. We all left for awhile; even the music was frightening. How to strip ourselves like that, point at the places that were wanted, plucked and peeled; speaking the words, hearing them form us, the nature of what we were and could do to each other? The music, the rocking, the sobbing. The man called the woman by parts of herself. Some laughed at this. I remember I must have been one of them. In the morning, the hotel room was turning white. After the long night, hands were slipping and unslipping, moving over the flattened pillows as if in hopes something small could still satisfy us. Someone turned and looked at someone else; we all heard it. Legs shifted, sheets slid themselves down waists or shoulders, tightened again at the necks of those pretending to sleep as the unblinking sun crawled in our window. From another room, coughing, We all heard it. Someone looked at someone else. The room turned white. The air began clearing.