On The Town / Loving Maggie

by Rob Woodard

On The Town


Maggie and I are drunk. It's a warm fall night and we're coming out of Di Piazza, this over-priced nightclub on PCH opposite of Anaheim in which we've had a pretty good time, pounding expensive Guinness and listening to Banyan, Mike Watt's howling loud jazz-punk grind band, music I wasn't sure Maggie would like but seems to have gotten into at least a little bit, as she had a smile on her face thru most of their set, even as their volume and dissonance peaked and my last Guinness pushed me over the edge and made me a little grabby, to the point where I was rebuked on more than one occasion with glaring eyes and finally a not-so-gentle slap on the wrist as I found my hands moving from her hips down to her thighs and even crotch grinding slowly with the music …

But that's already just ringing in our ears and drunken blurry memories—because the relatively bracing dewy early morning air is engulfing us in the new reality of the second phase of our night: the traditional one-in-the-morning-now-back-to-my-place phase. But this phase will have to wait at least a few more minutes before it gets underway, because I'm wrapping my arms around Maggie's waist and leaning her back into the passenger door of my truck, while she's surprisingly hugging me back as tightly as I'm hugging her, as well as going with the leaning-back-into-the-truck thing, wrapping her leg loosely around mine to keep her balance and maybe because she likes the feeling of wrapping her leg around mine like this, and now even letting me kiss her … a short warm meeting of our mouths before she slaps my butt, playfully but hard, and then drops her mouth down and bites my neck with such inappropriate force that I'm interpreting as being her way of saying, "I'm feeling something for you here, Rob, but I'm not sure how to deal with it, to the point where it's making me kind of angry, so in self-defense, I'm going to remind you that I can still turn on a dime and be as crazy and mean to you as I've been much of the time these last several months, get it?" And for me with my smiling rapturous acceptance of this it's like I'm saying "What the fuck?" to the cruel indecision she's once more displaying in my presence, both because I'm simply so used to her acting this way that I now expect it, but also because I'm so deeply in love with her that I'll happily take anything she dishes out—so long as it's dished out to me.

But as Maggie's teeth pull away from my neck and in her eyes I'm seeing the insane glare that exists so far from happiness, I'm also feeling a kind of anger welling up in me too, perfectly entangled with my love for her like some madly swirling barber pole rising all the way to God. "Jesus Christ, Maggie," my heart is begging—"Love me or leave me you crazy bitch because you can't have it both ways!" But, for the time being at least, she can have it both ways, as evidenced by the fact that despite however much hatred is intermingling with my love for her the love is still buckling my knees and causing my heart to palpitate and in manner where it takes away all my strength, just as it has been doing directly with her for months and indirectly for years …

So I guess there's nothing left for me to do at this moment other than to look deeply into her eyes and once more search for the flickers of love that I've convinced myself I've seen there on rare occasions before and pray that I haven't just convinced myself that I've been seeing something I haven't because I'm so stupid addicted in love that I will do anything, believe anything, so long as it all somehow leads to these blissfully tortured moments with her, confused angry moments peppered here and there with spots of pure empty love … like Christ deep in the wilderness or Prince Siddhartha during some middle stage of his Bodhi Tree war …



Loving Maggie


Soon Maggie begins stroking my hair, running her fingers softly thru my short blond locks. I nestle more deeply into her breasts, as I ease my body more completely into hers in general. I'm in heaven, I understand, and I want to stop time and live these moments without change for Eternity; I want to lie here until I'm no longer afraid of her or myself or anyone else, until her maternal warmth has somehow made everything in the universe OK, has turned it all into a situation that can never ever hurt me again. But my desires are profound, my heart so far from satiated that I must hold her, must touch her, must dream her flesh to flesh; and the rare hair-stroking tenderness she's displaying is telling me that the optimal combination of loneliness, lust, curiosity, alcohol, pity, confusion, inertia, and perhaps even love might just be being reached in both of us and that tonight there's a very good chance that I will not be rejected. So I must move, must strike while hope is running high. I must have her, now, forever …

Slowly I rise a bit and slide onto her completely. Her breasts splaying out under my weight, legs loosening completely from around my hips and opening wider for my advance. My face inches above hers. Her eyes are looking directly into my mine. Though the light is dim, I can see deeply into her eyes, see their general hazel madness interspersed with flickering red flames of the most amazing agitation. She's truly afraid of me, I'm once again realizing. But why is she afraid of me? Because I'm insane in my passion for her, I'm deciding, my passion for everything—and she has somehow come to understand this in a way I until now have not. In me she's seeing a passion that has been locked up for years, walled off almost completely in gulags of my own fear and anger. And she can feel that this passion is about to burst free and that she's directly in its path. And she's definitely right about her being entrenched in harm's way—because for me she is the key to everything: she connects my dick to my soul and my soul to reality. These exact thoughts, these exact words have just rushed thru my mind, are stinging me with their pulsing accuracy, (even though I intellectually have no chance of sorting out their meaning in the wild state I'm in now). I LOVE EVERYTHING! I NEED EVERYTHING! my mind is suddenly screaming, expanding the frenzied poetry that's tearing thru my head, while I continue my gazing into the jumping darting beauty of Maggie's eyes. I'VE NEVER HAD ENOUGH OF ANYTHING AND IT'S MAKING ME CRAZY! I've never really touched anything in this world before you Maggie, never really loved anyone—AND I CAN'T STAND MY ISOLATION FOR ONE SECOND LONGER! I want to run at top speed for a million years! I want to dive head first into a volcano, open mouthed to ingest as much lava as I possibly can in that fraction of a second I've got before it fries me into non existence! I want to fuck everyone and everything over and over again and finally come so hard that my mind and heart and stinking cowardly soul are obliterated and I can start life anew in some fresh universe where my being is clean and I can hopefully learn some way to love all that has imprisoned me this time around and made me so sad and desperate and lost in need for someone as broken and drifting as this Maggie creature lying beneath me …

Visions terrifying in their knowing depth, though over in the blink of an eye, in the time it takes me to avert my eyes from Maggie's. And now I'm just plain old frightened Rob again and she's just plain old frightened Maggie and my mouth is planting hot little kisses all over her neck and the top of her shoulders and then her neck again as she breathes more heavily, while she arches her neck slightly to meet my mouth, to open up the area under her chin for easier exploration. Little smacking and slurping sounds in the half darkness. Cute little groans from Maggie as my mouth moves from the round curve of her shoulder to the tops of her breasts. More little groans from her as well as heavier breathing from us both as my kissing of her breasts becomes frenzied, as I move my mouth back up her neck to devour her weak little chin, kiss her cheeks and closed eyes, before I place my mouth over hers and she responds with her own devouring kiss: hard mouth meeting mine with warrior zeal, with lacerating tongue and a cold cold heat that for a second I fear might freeze me to death.

But I won't let that happen, I decide, won't let her get away with one of her Arctic blasts at this point. I will love your cold little mouth, Maggie, even if it kills me! Pulling back for a second. Reorienting myself, while again looking down into Maggie's eyes. I'm seeing the same dancing madness and fear as before, but also something new: true desire for me. It's not quite the desire of affection, though, a desire born of empathy, but more the blood-chilling desire of a lioness for her prey. This knowledge frightens me, forces me to see how deeply wounded and dangerous she is at this point her life. But my need for her far outweighs my fears; so I again pounce on her mouth, ruthlessly, attacking her in the hopes of blunting any attack that she might be planning for me. Lips on lips. Mouths stretching wide, being forced open by the other's. Tongues meeting like fencing foils, looking for an opening, a mistake. Running my fingers thru her heavy, shoulder-length curls as we kiss. Feeling her fingers under my shirt and her nails digging deeply into my back, as we drive our bodies into the other's and Maggie pulls her mouth slightly away from mine and begins biting my lower lip hard, to the point where she must be very close to drawing blood.

Maggie laughing as her teeth remain embedded in my lip, a sharp cruel near-cackle that chills me on one level, but on another turns me on: because the fear that’s inspiring such an ugly display must mean that I’ve touched something inside of her, something soft and vulnerable enough that she feels it needs such desperate protection. And this must be why I love Maggie: because I know that somewhere deep deep in her heart there is a place for me, a place of love and warmth where I am not only welcomed, but needed, desired. So, inspired by this reaffirmation of the kernel of affection Maggie feels for me, I accept the pain of her teeth and the brutality of her laugh and slip into a state of utmost tenderness, where I begin stroking the hair off her face and touching her cheeks ever so lightly with the back of my hand, while smiling the simplest warmest smile that I possibly can while another human's teeth are all but slicing thru the skin of my lower lip …


© Rob Woodard 2006

[On The Town and Loving Maggie are Chapters One and Two of the novel What Love Is and may not be reprinted without express written consent of Burning Shore Press]



imageRob Woodard was born in Anaheim, California and lives in nearby Long Beach. He is the author of the novels Heaping Stones [Burning Shore Press 2005] and What Love Is [to be published by Burning Shore press in 2007]. Burning Shore Press will also be bringing out his first volume of poetry, King Of Long Beach, in 2008. He is currently at work on a third novel, tentatively titled Backwaters of Beauty.