Because it was her fantasy. Because I wanted to give her that experience, that is why I was there. We chose the busiest time of day and a bus route we knew would be jammed. I was a typical man returning home from too much work that was the corporate, soul-crushing, tedious kind. She was the college student, or the new young professional, a young woman not yet scarred by the grotesque realities of American capitalism.
A spring day where the sun had overtaken winter and I could feel the days lengthen into my heart. I gathered the warmth and light into my body and I had to honor it, to celebrate it. I had one request if we were going to carry out her wish: the perfume. THAT perfume. The one she wore that danced with something on her skin, that made love with her body, with the chemicals and the pores of her essence, so that in the very space around her, the molecules were re-arranged. Some combination of lilacs, and spring and sex and chocolate.
I entered the crowded bus first, and found the only remaining seat, toward the back. She followed close behind. For the sake of her fantasy, we were strangers, two lives moving toward each other, like comets on a collision course. Her fantasy, I kept repeating, her fantasy. The crowd was intense, all around us, just stacked portions of humanity with all its sweat and and anxiety and loneliness and rage. She stood in front of me, pushed close by a river of human desperation all wanting to be home, or at least somewhere else. Her frame was like that of a young deer, long, lean, athletically efficient. One look at her and you thought about physicality and the gift of form awarded to a race hungering for beauty. This was her fantasy, but it was I who she’d chosen to participate in it, to make it more than just a daydream at her soul sucking job. She wore the sundress she said she would. I took in the perfume. Her back to me as I sat, gazing around, wondering who might see what would happen next. My hand found the softness of her leg under that cotton dress. Immediately warm, like silk, a texture constructed in God’s workshop, given to me for this moment. Her caramel skin, that radiant black hair, all curls and attitude. I slowly slid my hand up, feeling for an instant that Inca or Aztec blood that had been hers for ages, her ancestors alive in her essence. Her fantasy. Public groping. And my hand traveling cautiously, slowly, approvingly…