I like to drive. I like to leave the overcast and lonely city full of fast going people in their obscuring beige and gray trench coats. All of them blending together and yet ignoring one another, like pigeons milling about. There, in the city, I despise driving. It is stop and go, a jilting journey of endless lights in which I never actually enjoy going anywhere That final release of arrival is unsatisfying after the staccato actions of getting there.
I allow my desire to leave build over days and weeks, a pent up restlessness. And then I let myself go. I drive south, the ocean to my right, and am liberated from the road blocks; the pearl string of traffic lights; the un-desirous tonations of cars and sighing, depressed bridges.
When I pass the final light onto the old freeway, I flow unobstructed on the gray winding pavement amongst the beautiful and verdant giant trees. Slowly and languorously I direct my car, as if the road to getting to a place is the pleasure itself. I hum lowly and small sighs and gasps escape across my warm, damp tongue. My soft belly moves out, sucking my breath in more deeply and more slowly with each breath. As I take the winding turns and my hands slip gently over the cool wheel, my muscles loosen and my eyes droop into a half gaze. My neck gently gives and my head rolls minutely from side to side with the curves of the road. I am like the tiny apex of a redwood just moving slightly as if aroused by a small breeze.
When I come deep into the valley just before it climbs up again to the last hill that then drops to the ocean, I do not often see another driver. But I have encountered one from time to time.
A man comes up behind me slowly and quietly from long distances. He comes on a matte black Ducati, his face and skull covered in an iridescent black helmet with no seams. His limbs look as if flat black leather has been melted onto them.
He will tail me for miles and miles. I never can even estimate how long he has been there because I am so engaged in the round voluptuousness of the road. When I finally do notice, I watch his body fluidly bob to the left and then to the right as he balances the curves of the road. Sometimes I will catch him leisurely let a knee fall to the side, opening the groin of that side of his body into an exposed triangle. Sometimes, he will even lean backÑalmost uprightÑand carefully but fearlessly take one hand to a hip. What skill he shows, in these moments of leisurely bravery, I admire.
I slowly lick my lips after he finally begins to pass. When he does pass, it is not fast. The velocity is just slightly faster than my own. It is only as he slowly but deliberately cuts in front of the hood of my car that he will finally bolt forward. He may wave at this point, a quick flip of his wrist and then a finger pointed to the sky. Then the leather above his wrist will slide down, exposing a slim line of skin. I lean forward and smile lightly, secretly, as if I am conspiring with myself. The hidden dimples of my cheeks come out, which only appear when I am aroused and my mouth sets into this very specific pose.
