Twisted

A. F. Cronin

May 2006

Before we begin, if I may, I’d like to say a few words about pretzels. Pretzels can be soft or hard, crunchy or chewy, salty or not. But to be considered authentic, a pretzel must twist. Pretzel-sticks are nothing more than a pale, rod-shaped rip off of properly twisted pretzels. If they were mammals, pretzels and pretzel-sticks could not reproduce. They are as different as water and ice: same substance, different form.

I bring this up so you won’t internally whine later on, as I am sure many of you will be wont to do when you read the pretzel section. You will want to complain that the metaphor is not apt because not all pretzels are twisted, and I’m sure some of the more cynical will proclaim that the parallel symmetry of actual pretzels is so imprecise as to be non-existent and that only a fool would consider their shape geometric. Think what you want. It’s my story. I get to define the terms. In this tale pretzels, as most things, are perfectly twisted, and tasty, and hard to stop munching on once you’ve started in on them.

There. I’m done with that so we can begin.

Luscious. Yes, she, my Beatrice, is luscious. And I mean luscious in the purely sexual, want-to-just-chew-on-and-taste-something-you-can’t-actually-chew-on-and-taste-way that only a man can find a woman luscious. She was especially luscious at the beginning of our time together, since we met after my disastrous relationship with Miranda and my subsequent nine-month self-imposed celibacy.

If you ever meet her, Miranda that is, I’m sure she’ll tell you our sex life sucked. But she would be lying. Miranda, for your information, is expert at lying; trust me on this. The only thing in our relationship that didn’t suck was our sex life. In actuality, it was the only thing in our relationship that had any substance at all. But she, for some weird reason, could not admit that. Instead she claimed she wanted a "eudemonic emotional connection"-- whatever the hell that is. And those were her actual words, spoken (or shouted) at me more than once. She insisted that she wanted more than what we had. I, for the most part, was fairly content. We had sex often enough and we took meals together. What else is there? But she insisted that I did not take her seriously, that I did not respect her mind or her talent, and that I treated her like a whore. If only it had been so easy.

But I want this story to be about Beatrice, not Miranda, so enough of that. It’s irrelevant anyway. Except for the fact that not having been with a woman for nine months (this does not include the last few frigid, basically sexless months when Miranda and I were splitting up), has made me appreciate and marvel at the subtle, simple aspects of woman-ness more than I would have otherwise. Thanks Miranda.

Here’s the story.

At the risk of sounding cliché, I have to tell you that Beatrice is a gymnast. She is. And she isn’t a figurative gymnast or former child gymnast but a current, working, trapeze swinging, horsie-thing-vaulting, floor-exercising gymnast for a secret, roving, magical burlesque circus on the lower east side of Manhattan. Sometimes it roves into Tribeca, but not often.

Right now you’re probably thinking, "what a crock. But it’s true. And it’s impossible to prove that there’s not a secret, roving, magical burlesque circus in Lower Manhattan. It’s like the weapons of mass destruction thing. Just because you can’t find them, doesn’t mean they weren’t there. So give it up, and get on with your reading.

The secret, roving, magical burlesque circus in lower Manhattan, where Beatrice works, is a trip; complete with beautiful leather-bustier-wearing clowns with Pinocchio noses that, by the way, are not there to indicate the telling of untruths but for a myriad of far more clever, creative and entertaining functions that only a burlesque clown would ever imagine -- or consider performing. Even though they don’t make me laugh, I sure like watching those clowns.

There are dancers in the secret, roving, magical burlesque circus as well as clowns. Strip-teaser sorts with various gags. The gags aren’t as good as the girls themselves, but I suppose they add a bit of something to discount the pure puerility of staring at women’s naked bodies for the sake of staring at women’s bodies. One of the girls, and I never understood the why of this, did this dance where she started out dressed as a lumberjack with an axe and somehow she ended up naked and using the axe like a golf club. That’s one of the problems with strip-tease dancers; the little scenarios aren’t as important as the completely naked part, so they tend to skimp on the narrative structure. But Pamela, that’s lumber-girl’s name, swings the axe with such verve and looks so incredibly great doing it who gives a damn?

My Beatrice’s act is sort of a naked Cirque du Solei thing done to a heavy metal ballad. It’s quite good. She is really amazing. Not only can she jump up on stuff, swing on bars and trapezes, and tumble and vault around amazingly well, all while being, for all intensive purposes, naked, but she can get her body into these intricate poses really slowly and then stay in them for a long time. When she does that it makes your eyeballs go sort of wacky. It’s hard to comprehend the shapes she creates. For me, it’s a lot like staring at a sculpture by Michaelangelo; I can never get quite far enough past my sheer amazement at the technical perfection of the statuary to grasp the purity and breathtaking beauty of the form itself.

I had met Beatrice before I knew her to be a burlesque gymnast, so her profession had absolutely no bearing on my attraction to her: at first that is. In fact, when we met, her blue hair was tucked up under a big knit ski hat with a red pom-pom and her exquisitely lean and muscular body with the fantastic shoulder to butt flamenco and skull-headed pirate-girl tattoo were concealed beneath layers of shirts, sweaters, and a massive down coat. And her boots were knee high, furry and black, something out of a Conan the Barbarian film, but with platforms. Beatrice isn’t a tall girl. But she is limber.

It had been a cold and snowy day in New York and everybody was bundled up like Ralphie’s little brother in A Christmas Story. I was hungry and had gone into my favorite neighborhood eatery, the falafel place on St. Mark’s and 1st, to assuage my hunger. Beatrice, then an unknown quantity to me, had tromped into the place just after I did and she stood right behind me as I ordered. She moaned in despair when I ordered the last of the falafels in the warmer. I turned around and looked at her.

"Have the chicken." She said. "I want the falafel."

"You want the falafel?" I asked.

"Yeah," she replied.

"So do I," I said. I thought she was nervy for asking me to give up my falafel. I turned away from her in disgust.

"Fucker," she whispered.

I slowly turned to face her. "Did you just call me fucker?" I asked.

Her cheeks were bright red from the cold and her eyes were an eerie whitish-blue and they glowed with an evangelical fervency. Clear snot had congealed on her nose and with the pom-pomed hat pulled down to her eyebrows she wasn’t exactly sporting the sex-kitten look.

"Yes, I did." She responded. "You’re a fucker. You won’t let me have the last falafel."

Ahmed, the falafel guy, was a little concerned about the escalating conflict in his establishment. He suggested "Five minutes. I’ll have new falafel."

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