Anvers Metro

This just came in over the transom. We aren't sure if its a novel chapter or a fragment of an unfinished piece. But it caught our fancy because some of us like Paris.
Respectfully yours,
- TMD Review Editors

The two women stepped out of the photo booth at the Anvers Metro Station. They stared at the photo, giggling. The older of the couple, for they were a couple and not mother and daughter as some people mistook them, the older of the two thought about women – golden hued, long limbed naked women with long honey blonde hair and musky scents emanating from their pores. These were the women of her youth – the ones she lusted after but watched walk to and fro with boys with disheveled manes and beards, spectacle eyeglasses. She thought of one scene in one of her favorite movies in which a university professor beds an undergraduate while shooting their images on a new generation instamatic camera – it spewed photos like the ones coming out of the photo booth. What was remarkable about the scene was the cries and grunts and violence with which they mated. She had never seen or heard anything like it. They sounded like they were killing each other, despite their laughter. They ended their coupling with sounds of awe as they pulled the roll of photos out of the new instant camera and scrutinized their images of fucking.

The older woman, Stark, found it quite amusing to have that “flash” of images right at that point. It wasn’t a desire to cheat, fantasizing about those other women. It was in some way an evocation of the similar feelings she had toward her girlfriend, Emma. She thought her girlfriend represented that prize she was denied so long ago. She was after all a straight girl – someone she met in a harm reduction group. Emma was trying to kick a pernicious crystal meth habit and Stark had been attending the group for years as part of a methadone program. Stark struck up a conversation with her because she had been hearing about this exotic drug for some time, one she had neglected to try in her crazy old using days. She wanted to know everything about the experience – good and bad. She was curious with that old stone addict’s interest in any new method for getting high. She needed to know how high the highs were. But Emma was quite reticent in her details and Stark never got the vicarious thrill she sought. She might as well have been shopping for t-towels on the Rue de Prince. Instead, she emerged from her intense inquiry dissatisfied and looked across the small café table at the young blonde sucking hard on an American brand cigarette (how can she smoke those?). She noticed Emma had the face of a Modigliani angel. Long straight and narrow. Her fine wispy hair providing the halo. Stark was never a fan of Modigliani and found his elongated faces a bit disturbing. Being presented with the real thing, she saw the beauty. This was the first of their intense conversations in which they, especially when joined by another person from the group, would talk about anything under the sun. Because Emma was an intelligent young woman, the conversation would invariably migrate to the subject of men. Stark would listen sympathetically then interject her experience with women, perhaps as a reminder that not everyone idolizes the male at their table. This could elicit a wave of talk about how there was very little, this would be good liberal talk, mind you – about how there was very little difference between a man and a woman. The problems are still the same. Stark would sit back and listen to their self-rationalization for putting up with the most boorish behavior and feel grateful that she never took men seriously enough to even contemplate a relationship. She felt in her bones she was too much like them – knew them too well – there was no mystery for her with men. But with women! She found them harboring such darks secrets, a mix of pain and pleasure for anyone with the patience and sensitivity to discover them. One of her first encounters when she was 24 was with a golden hued woman of 30, a professional journalist who happened to flop into her lap at the local lesbian watering hole. Late one night. Her name was Elizabeth. Stark had no idea she was so drunk until the woman fell out of the taxi they took home to her apartment. The woman’s spill out of the cab was breathtaking. And Stark just stood by stunned until she heard the cabbie cry in disgust and come around to the passenger side and help her up. He was used to this, clearly. Stark was not. They went up to the woman’s 5th floor walk-up and made drunken love on her bed that looked like a child’s day bed with white enameled steel head- and footboard. The woman was extremely generous despite her drunkenness and Stark returned the favor by paying serious attention to her cunt. It took very little time for the woman to come. Stark felt a sense of power since she was a neophyte. She was also, however, a quick study and all the encounters she had up to this point informed her mission to please this woman. They collapsed, sweaty on the white metal coils and then slept off the drunk. Stark awoke with sun streaming in the window. The woman was already up and handed Stark the coffee cup. Stark looked out the window and saw the trucks of 11th avenue lumbering by like mastodons sending up voluminous clouds of black smoke. Said she could spend the morning there if she wanted but Elizabeth had to get to the office. She was in the middle of a story about mid-east peace talks and how “fucking Begin” was trying to fuck it up and had to get back to it. Stark had a vague idea of who “fucking Begin” was and really didn’t care. Elizabeth got on the phone sprawled naked on the bed to talk to the anchor who would broadcast the story. Stark found her casual attitude interesting and she wondered if the woman had slept with the anchor. But then her manner became whiny like a dog after a juicy bone. Stark thought it was unfortunate that the woman had to be like this with the man in power in her job. Elizabeth got off the phone and laid back on the bed, exposing her golden bush and Stark lunged for her.

Stark allowed the flood of memories to abate. She turned to Emma sitting across from her chattering away. She saw her beauty. She noticed her cleavage peeking out from a low cut sweater. Stark’s thoughts raced and she gave herself a mental slap – “stop! Too young” and filed the experience. Then later in the year, Emma began to call and ask her for advice – and then for help on her resume. Emma came over to Stark’s apartment on a weeknight for “resume advice” and Stark, in her “serious” mode, looked her resume over. She was very affected by another low-cut blouse that Emma was wearing, revealing even deeper cleavage. Stark tried to focus on the task at hand but her eyes kept drifting. She soon found a way to channel the sexual urge – she began to talk to Emma in a scolding, almost hostile manner about the things on her resume. She felt like a teacher admonishing a resistant student. Emma finally left and Stark was stricken with remorse for her behavior. She apologized later. After talking it over with her current romantic partner – a woman living 1700 miles away in Colorado. She kept telling Delilah her long distance date that Emma was “only 24 years old and straight” and no threat to Delilah. Delilah made more of it than was necessary as far as Stark was concerned.

Anyway, it never occurred to Stark that she would be sitting in a photo booth in Paris with Emma. She marveled at the turn of events. The Paris jaunt was a whim – she took a chance on a cheap fare through Lisbon and then queried Emma by e-mail. Emma snapped up the offer even though they were in the middle of a huge fight. Emma wouldn’t relax for a few days after they arrived – they almost broke up the first night they were there. Stark felt cornered and then panicked thinking about the stories she heard and read of people who brought new lovers to their favorite place in the world and the relationship fell apart promptly. Now they were getting along just fine. They were on their way to Emma’s friend’s apartment and from there to a Thanksgiving dinner thrown by local Americans.