Gingerbread

(ginger)

A pair of narrowed, washed-out blue eyes, perhaps indicative of Nordic ancestry (as has been reported to me), seem to be aimed in my direction. Ever ill at ease with my public presentation, the additional scrutiny is difficult to ignore. When I glance at him, he smiles, and there seems to be a genuine sense of joy behind it: the recognition of something potentially pleasurable.

Sam pushes me his way, whispering, “I don’t know anything about him except he’s from Louisiana, or something. Be nice!”

But I veer toward a nearby window, and observe both the twilight outside and the shadow of his approach as reflected in the glass.

“The fog is pretty, isn’t it?” he notes, and his accent makes every question a good-natured declarative.

“Yes, I’ve always liked the way it seems to lay on the hills. It’s very Tolkien.”

He chuckled. “It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to see some hobbits ‘round here, now would it?”

I turn my head to my left, as he is standing behind my left shoulder, and I notice he doesn’t move to give me a better view of himself. There is a greater intimacy afforded in his current position. I can sense a rounded face and full mouth, and his smile seems to resemble his eyes in that they both retain a quality of being sleepy, hooded, sensuous. Then he opens his mouth again and it’s like I can taste the molasses in his speech, thick and sweet.

“Audra pointed you out to me, and she said, ‘That’s Lisa, go talk to her.’ Were you equally encouraged in my direction?”

My laughter in response is slightly embarrassed. “Yes, I guess we were set up. But Sam didn’t know your name.”

“It’s Jeremy,” he replied, putting a hand on my shoulder in lieu of a handshake.

“Oh,” I said, and I remembered the mention from earlier in the evening. “And you have one of those really hard-to-pronounce last names, with dual vowels and whatnot?”

“Yes, you have no idea what it’s like to grow up Finnish in the South. Your name gets drawn out about four syllables longer than normal.”

“How is it supposed to be pronounced?”

“Mar-yanna,” he replied, “but it’s spelled like this.” With that he handed me a business card. Jeremy Marjaana, Attorney-At-Law.

“Nice,” I observed, running my thumb across the card stock. “But understated, elegant.”

“What, no snarky observations about bloodsucking lawyers?”

“I have no opinion one way or the other.”

“Where have you been all my life?” he asks, and I am instantly charmed.

Or maybe he is, I’m not sure. But he puts his arm around me and the feel of his palm on my shoulder is warm and reassuring. As we perch in a corner and flirt, occasionally drinking or nibbling on snacks, he reaches over at various times and runs a finger along my upper arm for emphasis. My usual reservations thaw and drain like melting ice. But he nails my remove with one profound observation.

“You take a particularly Marxian view of attraction, don’t you?”

“I’m not sure what socialism has to do with dating, unless we’re talking about the labor theory of value, or something.”

His smile dawns, first that slow seductive stretch of his mouth, then a full-on grin of appreciation.

“You’re so clever.” Jeremy glances down at his glass then back up again, as if to pull himself back from some more unconscious impulse to his original gambit. “No, what I meant was that you tend to be suspicious of anyone who is attracted to you. Am I right?”

I frowned, not wanting to expose my obvious lack of self-worth so easily.

“It’s okay,” he said, his voice dropping into a conciliatory tone, the drawl further accentuated. “It’s actually quite interesting, from a sociological perspective.”

“Oh, you mean Groucho,” I blurt out, finally comprehending the reference point of his quip.

“Ah now. . .I knew you were a smart girl.”

I think about tar pits, and swamps, and things one can become mired in when distracted. It’s that sexy slurring which pulls me along, stumbling and reluctant, further into a place where the charm may have finally realized its’ ability. Perhaps this is what I feared all along, but it is the kind of fear which leads one trembling into places we know better than to enter.


Sam and I are supervising the dessert table when Sylvia, another coven member, comes bustling up, caftan a-flutter.

“So, how do you like Jeremy? Is that accent to die for?!”

“It's very charming, yes,” I say, smiling. But I have to look elsewhere lest she see how much it has affected me. She leans in close, delivering a secret.

“Get him to say 'gorgeous.'”

My expression in response errs on the side of skepticism.

“Trust me, when he says that word, it's like someone poured hot fudge on your pussy.”

“Wouldn't that hurt?” Sam asked, deadpan. The two of us began giggling.

“Ach, you girls wouldn't know seductive if it bit you in the ass!” She fluttered away.

“Again, wouldn't that hurt?”

“Well, not if he didn't bite too hard.”

“So, what's the verdict?” Sam rearranged the cheesecakes three times waiting for my response.

“He's my gingerbread man,” I finally said, and I closed my eyes as I did so, expecting when I opened them again that he would be gone, banished by the power of my utterance, but the party continued when next I gazed upon it.

“Really?” she asked. When I looked at her I was touched to see an excited grin.

“Yeah. Audra said we would know, and I know. I can't explain it, but -”

“I get it. Yay!”

“Don't get all hippie-dippy on me now.” We turned towards each other so I could teasingly smirk.

“Kiss my ass!”

“Can I play, or is this game girls only?” Our tandem gaze turned to behold Jeremy leaning in the kitchen doorway not out of curiosity – because his drawl was unmistakable – but to give him the benefit of our collective seduction.

“I could have her anytime I want, just remember that,” Sam said to him, in the smug fashion that along with her ice queen blonde demeanor made her more irresistible than she realized.

“Oh I've no doubt,” he replied, then looked down at the floor and attempted humility. “But surely you'd take pity on an outlander like me.” His eyes fluttered and his lips pursed.

We burst out laughing and Sam gave him a raspberry as she passed him in the doorway.

“Oh that was good,” I said, taking Jeremy's hand and pulling him toward me. “Positively antebellum.”

“Look what I found,” he said, pulling something out of his pocket. “Is it too soon for our first kiss?” He held the sprig of mistletoe above my head.

“Not at all, but I don’t want to kiss you here.”

“No?” he pouted, looking bereft for my amusement.

“If I kiss you, that’s not all that’s going to happen. I don’t want to cause a scene.”

“Ah. . .” he replied, and his smile evolved from surprise to lasciviousness. “So can I kiss you elsewhere then?”

I puckered my lips and pretended to give the question some thought.

“Hmm, well since you put it that way I suppose I can think of a few places on my body that need to be kissed.”

He laughs and pulls me to him in a tight hug.

“Can we politely duck out? Or am I rushing things? I admit my enthusiasm is a bit overwhelming in certain situations.”

I look at him, the way his haircut is threatening to grow out of professional-demeanor boundaries, the way his coloring is more washed-out murk than shiningly pale, that he could probably stand to lose twenty pounds, that he’s got a weird sort of giggle in contrast to the well-mannered yet lazy insolence of his cadence. . .and I get hungry, all of a sudden. My mouth waters and my stomach cramps and roils with apparent emptiness. So I kiss him, a shade past propriety, but still demure enough to allow for public scrutiny. I kiss him, I claim him, I taste my Gingerbread Man.

“Darlin,’ I thought you said we had to wait,” he murmured.

“You know how you go grocery shopping when you’re hungry and then you can’t wait till you get home and you start eating right out of the bags?”

He giggles again, I’m going to have to get used to that.

Someone who is not afraid to laugh.


“So clever, you look gorgeous in this light,” Jeremy says, as I unbutton his shirt and I understand what Sylvia meant. It was perhaps a little cruel of Sam and me to mock her, but I feel a prod of possessiveness in this moment. He too looks seductive in the candlelight.

“I’m calling for a moratorium on your use of that word. Apparently it has a devastatingly erotic effect on all women.”

“All women? Why I had no idea!”

“And you can’t use it with me either, I’d never win a fight. One minute I’d be venting my spleen and the next I’d be a puddle on the floor because you’d said something like, “Aw honeychile you’re so gaawjus when you’re angry.”

He burst out laughing, the type of laughter that spills out of a person unawares. I’m progressing, in increments, towards that perspective of loving indulgence of his quirks.

“Now I must protest, I have never used the word ‘honeychile.’ That’s a Maw-Maw word.”

“What?” I continue undressing him even as we discuss semantics.

“Something that your Maw-Maw would use; your Grandma, I guess y’all say here.”

“I see. Well that’s too bad because you sound pretty sexy saying that one too.” My hands are chilly and he starts at their touch upon his warm skin. I think of my journey through all the possibilities of pleasure and this desire within me now is more intense, more fitting, than the other permutations. I tremble even as I am kissing him, encouraging him to undress me as well.

“And here I thought I only had the power to sway a jury. Women have always seemed to be suspicious of my rhetoric.”

“You have a bit of the huckster in your diction. But I like it.”

“Do you now?” he said, then kissed me again as he unhooked my bra and gently cupped my breasts in his hands. “Lucky me.”

“I am far luckier.” A pause, a kiss, my tongue twisting his own. “Trust me.”

Once unclothed I simply pull him on top of me and onto my bed. Clean sheets, clear conscience, and I am so eager to meld and mold and mesh that I’m anxiously pained. Jeremy is incredibly warm and I feel I am melting underneath his weight. He starts at the spot where my hair meets my forehead and works his way down, kissing various spots, all the way to my feet. The touch of his lips is reverent and soft.


I lose every recollection of being on top and get lost in the feeling of having him inside me, clutch at the mass with a grip that even as it strains is slippery. He looks slightly ridiculous with wide mouth and whispery oh god oh god oh god litany but he is mine and I am claiming him even as I can feel myself, my own sense of erotic detachment, fall away in the overwhelming rightness of our union.

Someone who is not afraid to feel.

“Hey,” Jeremy whispers, as I am on the edge of sleep, narcotic languor. He moves the hair hiding my ear and traces its’ shape with his tongue.

“Mmm.”

“I almost forgot, Audra gave me something she said to give to you.”

I turn over onto my back, leaning on my elbows and watching as Jeremy swings his legs over and gets out of bed. His pants are across the room resting on my all-purpose dumping spot: an overstuffed wing chair I rescued from a thrift store years ago. He reaches into one of the pockets and pulls out a foil-wrapped mass. I get an instant pungent whiff of the package and realize just what it is.

“Uh, what did she say, exactly?” I ask, then clear my throat, as my voice has gone nervously hoarse.

“She said you need to eat this, and you would know when. She also said there was something for me to eat.”

He hands me the package and I look at him for a moment, pasty and sagging in a few places, which is what people who spend most of their time behind a desk tend to look like with their clothes off. And he’s beautiful, he’s mine. He smiles as he gets back under the covers.

“So what is it? If it contains illicit substances I should probably refrain.”

“Don’t want to lose your license?”

“No, it’s just that I might not perform well if I’m chemically compromised, and I want to impress you.”

Awwww. . .but I just give him a cheesy smile and gloat internally, my psyche doing a victory dance.

Peeling back the foil, there are two gingerbread cookies inside, each wrapped in plastic. One is missing a leg and part of an arm. I hand Jeremy the other, whole, cookie. He looks confused.

“This,” I say, laying my finger upon the confection, “is your gingerbread girl.”

“I thought this,” he replied, laying his finger upon my nose, “was my gingerbread girl.”

“No, I’m a real girl. But if you eat that girl, then maybe you’ll get to eat this girl too.”

I’m a little shocked at how easy it was to say that, to voice my desire in such a direct fashion, but he is mine, after all, and there are no boundaries to my rhetoric or my lust.

“I see. But how will we know if I ate her properly?” he asks, carefully unwrapping the cookies and taking it into one hand to examine. “There’s not even any decoration, how do I know it’s a girl?”

“Because I know this one is a boy, so that one has to be a girl.”

“And why is the boy broken?”

“He’s not broken. I ate parts of him already.”

Slight eyebrows disappeared into the overhang of darker hair.

“I’m not going to explain, just eat your cookie. Slowly.”

I’m displaying a mischievous grin and his is equally playful as he lifts the cookie to his mouth and immediately begins flicking his tongue against the spot directly above where the legs parted. I’m not surprised to feel my own muscles contract.

“Mmm,” he said, eyes closed. “Is this the way to start?”

“Slowly,” I murmured, now a mantra.

Jeremy kept his tongue out and moved the cookie across it, at the instructed speed. I get that liquid feeling again, but this time it’s of a different familiarity. On a hunch, I look under the bedclothes and sure enough, there’s a dark spot on the sheet.

“Uh, excuse me for a minute,” I said, placing my cookie on the nightstand and rushing towards the bathroom.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, pausing in his task.

“Uh, the moon is full.” What was that, exactly?

“Huh?”

“I started my period, much earlier than I expected.” I must have grimaced as I said that, because he literally leapt up from the bed and rushed over to where I was standing near the doorway.

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m not squeamish.”

“Well neither am I, but now my sheets look like a virgin’s wedding night.”

He giggled at that and followed me into the bathroom.

“Uh. . .” I fumbled in the cabinet under the sink, and suddenly things were more absurd. Being eye-level with Jeremy’s penis, for example.

“You need some help?” he asked.

I started laughing, tumbling from my crouch to land on the floor, the tile very cold against my ass. That had to have been one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard any man say, and yet, it was completely in character with what I had hoped for.

Someone who’s not afraid of learning my mysteries.

Once returned to the bed (having made sure to sit on a dark towel), Jeremy picks up his cookie and examines it.

“Hmm, now that I look at it, it does resemble you.”

I smiled. Then I steeled myself to eat the rest of my cookie. . .but experience complete surprise when upon first bite I find it tastes exactly like gingerbread should: spicy, earthy, and sweet enough to want more. Before I realize what I’ve done I’ve eaten it all. Then I sat there, crumbs in my hands, waiting.

No new feelings, no sense of overwhelming epiphany. But perhaps that was still to come.

I looked at over at Jeremy and he was eating his cookie as well; and the action is surreally comical, given that he sported an erection of nearly boastful proportions.

“So, what was the point to all this?” he asked.

I took a breath, but reassured myself that no matter what explanation I offered, Jeremy would attempt to understand, because he was mine and he wanted to believe. I turned my gaze to his face, his sweet smile, his eyes containing a glimmer of mischief, hopefully of the sexual kind.

“Do you believe in magic?” I asked.