Louise

by Paula Kaye

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

I remember that summer.

The last summer I spent with Louise.

The days, hot and fierce, reeling, like a slap in the face; gasping, like the wind knocked out of you.

Hot as corrugated iron; dry as drought. The long twilights, lingering and languorous, cooled by the soft sea breeze from over Coogee beach.

The last summer I spent with Louise. The last summer she wasn't Louise.

The last summer she wasn't a woman.

Almost ... almost wasn't ...

She dressed then exclusively, exquisitely, in soft sarongs, in lilacs and blues, the colour of sky, the colour of serenity. Her floaty, filmy Indian shirts and blouses brilliant white against her honey brown skin.

I remember her hair, brown and long, a river of dreams flowing lusciously down the hollow oilier back. Soft and straight, in shades of auburn and amber with flashes of copper.

Dark drifts drawing me in to their warm, fragrant secrets, highlights bleached light and golden by the sun. I see her now, silhouetted by the moon, silvered, charmed, on all fours over me, a she-wolf, swaying and brushing that long, soft, feather light hair across my bare breast.

Oh! Louise! Where have you gone? Where have I gone?

I remember her body. Tall, slender, slinking, sensuous; sliding with an easy grace through my heavy hearted days. Her skin a golden honey brown, warmed by the sun, fragrant with patchouli and jasmine, Spiritual Sky.

The moon rides high over Coogee Bay, a bright white belly moon, swollen with promise. Louise is a sliver of silver drawn along my bed. My hand, nut brown against her honey, slides over her arm and onto her soft, smooth stomach, slightly rounded already. Is she too swollen with promise ... then ... now?

She whimpers and stirs, stretching her long limbs under the moon. I slide onto her penis. She is the shape of heaven, the size of paradise. I have never spoken of my love, my fingertips speak my truth. She moans, she turns, hunching into a foetus-child in my arms.

She has reached the outer limit, the knife-edge. Tasting honey, she withdraws before the sweet turns bitter.

But I am bitter. Bitter as gall with the sharp, hot fire of desire coursing my veins like acid. Distressed and with no repose.

I rise and pace the cool, smooth tiles of the veranda.

Through my window, Louise melts into the moon, her tide ebbing.

Headlights search the stucco, feeling like blind men around a difficult comer. Gone, they leave the street silent, bathed only in moonlight. I watch the chrome and duco reflect the moon reflect the sun, long gone.

The night air is cool, soothing like a mother's cool touch on a child's hot fever. My fever subsides. Louise is draped across my bed, draped across my life, like a shawl, decorative, insubstantial, impractical.

I grip the cool iron of the railing and for an instant, almost not there, my hand delays its release. Then I come free.

Returning to my bed I watch the slow rise and fall of her breasts, already swelling, moonlight catching on pale hairs.

Nuzzling the fragrant warmth oilier hair I bury my head and my troubles. Stirring but not waking she spoons into my stomach, her bottom already soft and substantial.

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