Philomene Long
“I FEEL LIKE I’M IN A WOODY ALLEN MOVIE!”
The artist/architect/soon-to-be-a-lover said, “I feel like I’m in a
Woody Allen movie!” after five shows of rum and cream—over which was
sprinkled nutmeg in small blue glasses that matched his blue light fine
art photography piece he had just sold for $15,000 and the Japanese
style screen which was lit from behind with pale blue light in his
just-about-to-be-leaving second story apartment/gallery over the Pacific
in Venice to go on the road for his art “to see what my eye responds to”
in Northern California, New York, Barcelona, Paris, Rome, Israel for two
or three months, and he was saying: “I am not stepping off onto ground,
but into the ether.”
There was much blue light in that room as well as an employee—a young
German man named “Wolfgang” there to help package the enormous 70-feet
wide and gorgeous blue art piece. “It is painting with light,” I had
said to him.
Here are the essential details. I should mention one twice—the
unthinkably fine five glasses of rum in those pale blue glasses after
which Wolfgang said he had to bum a cigarette and I said that I had one
so he smoked it out on the veranda while the artist/architect put his
arm around me and this time I did not shrug or pull away as I had to so
many others—perhaps…perhaps…perhaps…forget the perhaps, I let him and
then Wolfgang returned and said he needed another cigarette which I
offered. But for some reason, this time Wolfgang went downstairs and
outside to smoke it at which time the
artist/architect/very-soon-to-be-a-lover began kissing me and we moved
towards the low-to-the-floor Japanese-style black futon bed next to the
Japanese-style screen.
Over the bed there was another 70 feet fine art photograph work—this
one was red and called “Fire Bird” (after Stravinsky) about which I
said, “I’ll take it!” until he told me it was selling also for $15,000
possibly next week—so instead we lay down upon the bed beneath it and
had the beginnings of passion. This is the moment when he turned on the
many tiny blue light bulbs behind that screen which filled the room with
a blue radiance and it is at the point he asked if he could…and I
replied: “Do you have a condom?”
So he left the room and returned with a condom, saying “I have just
one” and immediately somehow it disappeared on the bed—herein began the
conflict with amazing images of him on his hands and knees in
silhouette—almost primeval, hunting through all that blue light—it was
both “stepping on to the ground” and “into the ether” his trying to find
a small pale condom on a large black futon which exclaiming, “There
years!” (that is how long it had taken for me to come to this bed) and I
was saying “Wolfgang is getting close to the end of that cigarette by
now—even though it is a long one—a Marlboro Light 100!” That is when, in
quiet desperation, the artist/architect/closer-to-becoming-lover said,
“I feel like I’m in a Woody Allen movie!” then politely asked if he
could turn me to the side and see if I was lying upon it, which he did,
very gentlemanly.
I felt like a patient in a hospital and thought of T.S. Eliot’s line
“Let us go then, you and I when the evening is spread out against the
sky like a patient etherized upon a table” and he was patting the bed
beneath me with no condom within sight or touch and I said, “Maybe I
have one at the bottom of my purse because I never go anywhere without a
condom.” I was thinking of the nuns who had taught me never to go
anywhere without a book and I had added, “Never go anywhere without a
book and a condom.” And the artist/architect/now-almost-a-lover asked
“Is it an EXTRA LARGE?” at which point I pulled my hand out from deep
within my purse, raised it high up then flopped it down to the side of
the bed—and here is where the story comes to its climax—my palm landed
on the floor right on top of the EXTRA LARGE condom!
Here is the resolution. Then I said, “I KNOW Wolfgang (a perfect name
for the situation) must be nearing the end of that cigarette!” and the
artist/architect, the moment-before-he-became-lover shouted, “I’VE
LOCKED WOLFGANG OUT!” and then we laughed and made love and then made
love and laughed simultaneously. And afterwards, we just laughed.
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