Galaxies Away

19. Erect

Like no dancer I've ever seen. So bold and fast and free! Her limbs flew like ember rising, flashing against a sky that dreamed for more stars. So wild and angry was the gliding of her feet from shift to shift, but still rhythmic, thrusting her own warmth into an abyss of eyes and mouths, thrusting fire in and out and inside herself again. If you have seen the thousands of those lips turn moist and tender, you would understand "thirst". So bold and fast and free! And flesh so rough with painful story, sorrow emanating from her skin like poisoned steam. But for once pain did not kill, but bring life— right before my eyes she poured love in the hearts of spectators that grew so cold with their assigned role. She gave the sort of love that began with erect bodies and ended with longing souls, at which the path in between such things creeped to the golden meeting point between thighs.

The golden meeting point between two pieces of time, and the way they've withered bones but not spirit...Erect bodies, erect, erect and hungry for this foreign thread of blood and muscle, this lion dancing in the robes of womankind. Erect was I, even? To watch feet pound like thunder and legs flash like lightning and arms fall like rain? Erect was I in my make-believe that such movements were for me? So bold and fast and free, she, the catalyst of textures euphoric and milky. Oh the beauty! The beauty of breasts that feed and nurture our lust, the beauty of a stomach so strong and mighty, the beauty of hips so fluent in motion, Oh the beauty! How it enchanted us so.

One would believe such things were good...So bold and fast and—but unlike my peers, our army of the hungry, I took it upon myself to avert my gaze, glide it upwards to her face. The horror, she looks at us with hate burning in her eyes. I saw the hundreds of lines in her furrowed brow, and the clenched teeth, and the sweat, and the light brown complexion running red. The teeth, those clenched teeth, she binds together with pain and fury...and helplessness.

Such a face, though beautiful, made me uncomfortable. When I looked at her body once again I saw something I did not see before. None saw it but me, so I dismissed the image as a figment of my imagination. Metal linked to metal linked to metal linked to metal linked to feet...linked to her. Erect was I, to watch feet pound like thunder and legs flash like lightning and arms fall like rain. Erect was I watching chains fly and grind. Erect was I watching the way she clenched her teeth. Erect was I watching this woman in the robes of a chained and tamed animal. Erect was I in my make-believe that such movements were for me. So bold and fast and—

I've come to realize years later, the perverted and grotesque tendencies of us men. To this day, I am ashamed that it took years for me to realize that not a single one of us had the right to look at her in such a way.