Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 21.1: May 9th, 2010
"Caramel Kisses" is an unfinished novel I began to write back in 2009 and stopped working on in 2010. The two main characters - Adriana Maguire Reynard and Emma Burking - would ultimately be revised for my later completed novella, "The Liffey Is Half-Asleep," in 2011. Several elements of "Liffey" can be found in their original forms in "Caramel Kisses," such as the characters' names, the haiku scene, and Adriana's penchant for writing. This chapter, in particular, also originally had the Amaretto dialogue that was later used in my one-act play, "Enjoy."
Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing.
Caramel Kisses: Chapter Seven
by Belinda Roddie
I had been with women before, but I hadn’t really loved them. Emma had opened up a new doorway in me, entering a dusty attic where she only had to remove the cobwebs and she could make it good as new. But she was not the first I had touched, or embraced, or even kissed. Shards of past passions like glass were glued to me, stuck to me like sweat as I let my chest rise and fall against the covers.
Lying beside that beautiful sleeping Brit, I remembered one night when I was still at the University of Redlands. My third play was being performed at a large lecture hall and I would drive from my condo to frequent rehearsals like an extra shadow, to talk with the director over the obligatory coffee and grit my teeth at the more unorthodox suggestions he had for the production. The director had a generic name I could not remember and a generic face that was now a blur in the confines of my memory. I do remember he had brown hair and glasses and he seemed passionate enough about the work, as much as I was passionate about seeing those actresses carry out their parts of angst while I quivered at the slightest movements they made.
There was one girl who I was very much infatuated with, playing a supporting role, and whose acting prowess I liked very much. Ironically, she was much more natural onstage than she was in real life, playing more of a part when I congratulated her rather than when she rattled off the lines in my shabby script. She’d give that curt nod and thank me for the compliment and then she’d ask for a cigarette because back then, I was a smoker and a drinker and I didn’t want to give either of those vices up for the sake of my hybrid college student and writer persona. I had expectations to follow, and I had expectations for her, that actress, that woman who was charming when the spotlight hit her just right.
It was typical of actors. You could think of them as the most beautiful, smartest and most natural people in the world, but you couldn’t have them that way, oh, no. Because you were admiring a character. You were admiring an archetype or a literary technique, a theatrical notion. And you could not have it, you could only look at it wondering if she would ever walk off that stage and hold you like the character held her lover in that one scene in the second act. You could only have the actor, not the action. An incomplete set. A waste.
I tried to accept the fabrication as the best I could get, though. I agreed to hold the cast party at my place because it had a great view and overlooked a swimming pool. We set up tables with crystalline bottles all lined up in military rows, and we were drill sergeants assigned to break those bottles open and lap up the entrails. I kept one bottle to myself: Amaretto, a drink of love, of some leftover desire I could enjoy. That actress was one of the last to arrive, and I could tell in the midst of swelling words in a warm living room that she was getting bored.
“Had anything to drink?” I asked as soon as I was in earshot of her. She turned to look at me and screwed up her face at the sight of me, that playwright, that broad-shouldered playwright with the tousled brown hair and the gray jacket with the zipper and those men’s jeans. She disapproved of my presence before she even made it clear vocally.
“What have you got?” she asked. I introduced her to the bottle of Amaretto like it was an old acquaintance of mine, filled two glasses, and toasted to her acting. “Think of it as warm cherry cola,” I told her; that’s how some of my college friends described it, and it worked for the situation. “It’s a sweet liqueur. I’m sure you’ll like it.”
She sniffed the Amaretto and frowned. “Smells like candy,” she said, then sipped. Puckered her lips. “Tastes like cough medicine.”
“Two of the finer things in life,” I smirked as I tilted my glass and let the amber flow.
***
We made love in my bedroom, with the windows open to let the night air in. She wasn’t a lesbian, but she seemed to enjoy licking me clean as though it were another simple pleasure of hers, another part of her routine, maybe. I did most of the kissing, and a little prodding, and she curled and arched her legs and back like a feline goddess. Kitty wants to play, I was tempted to whisper, right into her ear as she pawed at me. The October wind chilled the sweat on my brow. Kitty wants to play, and I don’t have a piece of string but I’ve got rough spots to scratch, so scratch away, you bitch. Scratch away.
When we finished, she wanted a cigarette. I told her that was too cliché, but I got her one, anyway. I found a pack of Marlboros I’d forgotten about in a desk drawer, old but tolerable. She lit it, sucked it down like a licorice stick, and lit another. She began to smell like dry earth and clay ashtrays. So much for smoking in the afterglow.
“You ever do this with men?” she asked through an exhalation. She touched my damp chest with her fingertips, tracing and outlining my hardened nipples.
I was obviously distracted. She was playing a part again, a role straight out of a 1940s film noir. She was perfect. “What?”
“Or do you just fuck girls most of the time?”
I licked my lips. I was starting to taste like nicotine, too, combined with that sweet almond flavor. The Amaretto bottle lay empty by the door. Her fingertips grew cold and clammy against my breasts, the cigarette smoke wafting in her honey hair.
“Do you normally do this with your performers?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“And only if they did well? Got a nice review?”
She was sharper than I thought. Impressive. “I like a good actress.”
She spat, a quick, hissing sound. A stream of brown met my cheek and dripped into the open corner of my mouth. The taste of tobacco and lipstick and sex. I drew a thumb across the residue before it cooled on my skin. So that’s how I tasted, I thought to myself, and I smiled painfully.
She left silently, defiantly, gathering her little cocktail dress and her cheap flip-flops and tossing back her hair in an attempt to look tidy. She probably went home immediately after that in order to wash the aftertaste from her mouth. But in spite of it all, I felt this strange sort of hunger, a gnawing feeling in my stomach and my ribcage, as I rose and my spine popped into place and my skin glistened in the bare-boned moonlight. She was good. I loved a good actress.
***
I stayed up for the rest of the night, long after the party was over, emptying that pack of stale cigarettes and lighting them one by one and choking them down. My throat burned and I was exhausted. Bravo, Reynard, you had done it again. No autographs, please, just polite applause and the occasional rose tossed onto the stage. And I’d attempt to pick up that rose and pinch it between my fingers until the thorns sank in like teeth and drew blood and I had to resist screaming.
Because of its influence on my later writing, I figured that this story, though incomplete, was worth sharing.
Caramel Kisses: Chapter Seven
by Belinda Roddie
I had been with women before, but I hadn’t really loved them. Emma had opened up a new doorway in me, entering a dusty attic where she only had to remove the cobwebs and she could make it good as new. But she was not the first I had touched, or embraced, or even kissed. Shards of past passions like glass were glued to me, stuck to me like sweat as I let my chest rise and fall against the covers.
Lying beside that beautiful sleeping Brit, I remembered one night when I was still at the University of Redlands. My third play was being performed at a large lecture hall and I would drive from my condo to frequent rehearsals like an extra shadow, to talk with the director over the obligatory coffee and grit my teeth at the more unorthodox suggestions he had for the production. The director had a generic name I could not remember and a generic face that was now a blur in the confines of my memory. I do remember he had brown hair and glasses and he seemed passionate enough about the work, as much as I was passionate about seeing those actresses carry out their parts of angst while I quivered at the slightest movements they made.
There was one girl who I was very much infatuated with, playing a supporting role, and whose acting prowess I liked very much. Ironically, she was much more natural onstage than she was in real life, playing more of a part when I congratulated her rather than when she rattled off the lines in my shabby script. She’d give that curt nod and thank me for the compliment and then she’d ask for a cigarette because back then, I was a smoker and a drinker and I didn’t want to give either of those vices up for the sake of my hybrid college student and writer persona. I had expectations to follow, and I had expectations for her, that actress, that woman who was charming when the spotlight hit her just right.
It was typical of actors. You could think of them as the most beautiful, smartest and most natural people in the world, but you couldn’t have them that way, oh, no. Because you were admiring a character. You were admiring an archetype or a literary technique, a theatrical notion. And you could not have it, you could only look at it wondering if she would ever walk off that stage and hold you like the character held her lover in that one scene in the second act. You could only have the actor, not the action. An incomplete set. A waste.
I tried to accept the fabrication as the best I could get, though. I agreed to hold the cast party at my place because it had a great view and overlooked a swimming pool. We set up tables with crystalline bottles all lined up in military rows, and we were drill sergeants assigned to break those bottles open and lap up the entrails. I kept one bottle to myself: Amaretto, a drink of love, of some leftover desire I could enjoy. That actress was one of the last to arrive, and I could tell in the midst of swelling words in a warm living room that she was getting bored.
“Had anything to drink?” I asked as soon as I was in earshot of her. She turned to look at me and screwed up her face at the sight of me, that playwright, that broad-shouldered playwright with the tousled brown hair and the gray jacket with the zipper and those men’s jeans. She disapproved of my presence before she even made it clear vocally.
“What have you got?” she asked. I introduced her to the bottle of Amaretto like it was an old acquaintance of mine, filled two glasses, and toasted to her acting. “Think of it as warm cherry cola,” I told her; that’s how some of my college friends described it, and it worked for the situation. “It’s a sweet liqueur. I’m sure you’ll like it.”
She sniffed the Amaretto and frowned. “Smells like candy,” she said, then sipped. Puckered her lips. “Tastes like cough medicine.”
“Two of the finer things in life,” I smirked as I tilted my glass and let the amber flow.
***
We made love in my bedroom, with the windows open to let the night air in. She wasn’t a lesbian, but she seemed to enjoy licking me clean as though it were another simple pleasure of hers, another part of her routine, maybe. I did most of the kissing, and a little prodding, and she curled and arched her legs and back like a feline goddess. Kitty wants to play, I was tempted to whisper, right into her ear as she pawed at me. The October wind chilled the sweat on my brow. Kitty wants to play, and I don’t have a piece of string but I’ve got rough spots to scratch, so scratch away, you bitch. Scratch away.
When we finished, she wanted a cigarette. I told her that was too cliché, but I got her one, anyway. I found a pack of Marlboros I’d forgotten about in a desk drawer, old but tolerable. She lit it, sucked it down like a licorice stick, and lit another. She began to smell like dry earth and clay ashtrays. So much for smoking in the afterglow.
“You ever do this with men?” she asked through an exhalation. She touched my damp chest with her fingertips, tracing and outlining my hardened nipples.
I was obviously distracted. She was playing a part again, a role straight out of a 1940s film noir. She was perfect. “What?”
“Or do you just fuck girls most of the time?”
I licked my lips. I was starting to taste like nicotine, too, combined with that sweet almond flavor. The Amaretto bottle lay empty by the door. Her fingertips grew cold and clammy against my breasts, the cigarette smoke wafting in her honey hair.
“Do you normally do this with your performers?” she asked.
“Maybe.”
“And only if they did well? Got a nice review?”
She was sharper than I thought. Impressive. “I like a good actress.”
She spat, a quick, hissing sound. A stream of brown met my cheek and dripped into the open corner of my mouth. The taste of tobacco and lipstick and sex. I drew a thumb across the residue before it cooled on my skin. So that’s how I tasted, I thought to myself, and I smiled painfully.
She left silently, defiantly, gathering her little cocktail dress and her cheap flip-flops and tossing back her hair in an attempt to look tidy. She probably went home immediately after that in order to wash the aftertaste from her mouth. But in spite of it all, I felt this strange sort of hunger, a gnawing feeling in my stomach and my ribcage, as I rose and my spine popped into place and my skin glistened in the bare-boned moonlight. She was good. I loved a good actress.
***
I stayed up for the rest of the night, long after the party was over, emptying that pack of stale cigarettes and lighting them one by one and choking them down. My throat burned and I was exhausted. Bravo, Reynard, you had done it again. No autographs, please, just polite applause and the occasional rose tossed onto the stage. And I’d attempt to pick up that rose and pinch it between my fingers until the thorns sank in like teeth and drew blood and I had to resist screaming.
The work you see here has not been edited nor modified since May 9th, 2010.
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