"Angela at Night" (c) 2006, 2007

(In honor of that week in Georgia, a year ago...a Story of Desire & Donuts)

“Angela at Night”

© 2006, 2007 Stu Jenks
[Image: "Angela at Night"]

June 10th, 2006

    My heart is racing. I’m feeling a little out of my body and a little too deep inside of it, all at the same time. A good feeling but perhaps dangerous, for I can barely see the Interstate through the high levels of testosterone and adrenaline rushing through my veins.
    The rental compact KIA is humming along at 80 miles an hour. Everyone is driving 80 miles an hour on I-75, southeast of Atlanta. Been like this for the last two hours. I thought we drove fast in the desert. Not like here.
    I think back to yesterday at the Mythic Journeys 2006 conference. Great but not so great. Actually pretty fucking shitty at times, yet wonderfully balanced, at others, by the exceptional food, the good drink and the wonderful company in the evening. But yesterday afternoon was a mind fuck.
    The panel I was on entitled “What the Soul looks like” started out good enough. Brief intros by each of the panelists. Each from a very different discipline. An older man who runs a spiritual retreat in North Carolina; a middle aged woman who is a Jungian psychiatrist; the other featured visual artist at Mythic Journeys 2006 who studied with a Sufi master, and me, Art boy from Tucson, Arizona. The moderator was a very nice guy from the Joseph Campbell Institute. Liked him then, liked him later. I can’t say the same for the other three folk.
    The discussion began with talks on soul and spirit. I was next to the moderator so I started first and we worked our way down the line. I talked about what I saw as the differences between Soul and Spirit. The Soul is eternal, interconnected with all souls, indestructible. When I die my Soul goes back to be with all the other Souls, but my Spirit? That’s another thing. It isn’t eternal. My Spirit dies when my body dies, my Spirit can be hurt, diminished, destroyed, by myself or by others. But my Spirit can grow and blossom and be of great use to others and myself while I’m alive. That was part of my pitch. Later on I referred to Peter Gabriel, to Addictions a bit, a little about Intuition and Desire. I didn’t say fuck once. Two ‘craps’ and one ‘prick’ is all. Thought I was doing ok.
    One problem.
    The three people to my right hated me. Iced me out of the conversation around the 15-minute mark. Don’t have a clue why. Basically they just talked among themselves and won’t acknowledge me. After about an hour, I politely confronted one of their ideas, in an attempt to be brought back into the circle of conversation. The Jungian woman talked about having The Surrender, which I said I didn’t understand for I see surrendering as a life long process, done quite often. They looked at me like I was an idiot, and even arrogantly chuckled in my direction. Granted, some of my emotional baggage from childhood is about being ignored by loved ones who wouldn’t talk to me, and I’m sure that fueled some of my anger, but being so rude as to usher me out of the discussion? Well...that just pissed me off. I wanted to take off their heads, especially the arrogant asshole from North Carolina that spoke in cryptic messages. At one point, he answered a question with some poetic mumbo jumbo and the Jungian woman to his right was so in awe that she said ‘Did you just make that up? That was amazing.’ I kept my tongue but I felt like saying “You know, I went to college and I’m pretty smart but that didn’t make one bit of sense to me. I think you’re just trying to appear like you’re a great spiritual man when in actuality you’re just an egomaniacal prick.”
    I was good. I didn’t say that.
    Later on though, at the bar, I ran into a number of the people who were not on the panel but who were in the audience, and I did let fly then.
    I said to them, (two women, one man, all attractive), that there were two reasons I didn’t take off that asshole head and shit down his neck.
    One, it would make me look bad, and two, it would have diluted the entire message of Surrender, and Spirit and Balance I was trying to get across.
    Still royally pissed me off though.
    The two women and the one guy at the bar did mention that they could tell I was angry but that they were impressed how I handled myself. The guy said you were the only one who was Real and not trying to impress us, and one of the women said that it was wonderful to watch you model behavior that she would like to do someday.
    I smiled and laughed with them. They had booze, I had a Diet Coke. We had a great time that night.
    But it’s still fucking with my head, this Saturday afternoon, and I have to admit, that I’m not real hip on hanging out with folk like that today.
    I think I need to go to Savannah and see if I can’t get laid. It's been a long time. Angela said to come on down.
    But I got a feeling about something, and I need to check it out.
    I see an exit up ahead. The land here is flat farmland. Beautiful with rows of pines around the edges of the large fields. I see a gas station. I stop and get some fuel, and then park off to the side and make a call on my cell phone.
    “Hello,” she says.
    “Hey, Angela, it’s me,” I say.
    “Hey, where are you?”
    “Just past Dublin,” I say.
    “You’re about a hour away,” she says.
    “That’s what I figure,” I say.
    “Let me give you directions to where I can meet you. My dad suggests that we met near the airport.”
    “Before you do that, Angela, I got to be honest about something.”
    “What’s that?”
    “That what I would really like to do when I get there is find a hotel and put you in it,” I say.
    Dead air on the phone.
    “Well, let’s just take it slow and play it by ear,” she says.
    “That’s fine. I just wanted to be upfront about my intentions,” I say.
    “OK,” she says, “Here’s where I think we should met.”
    She gives me directions to a Wal-Mart outside of Pooler, Georgia. I write the directions down. Tell her I’ll call her when I get off the Interstate. She say bye. I say bye. I get back on I-16, a little crestfallen.
    I’m not going to have hot sex tonight. Then again, I could make that same statement every night for the last year, and be accurate.

    But Angela is quite a passionate person, a woman who on the phone just a couple weeks ago said, that from what she can tell by my pictures on the web, from the sound of my voice, and from our long art-filled deep conversations on the phone…well, that she’d love to fuck my brains out, if she had the chance. Almost a direct quote.
    But Momma didn’t raise no fool. Actually Momma did raise me to be naïve and foolish, but after years of active drug addiction and a few years of recovery, I know a few things now.
    And I know “Let’s go slow” means “Not tonight.”
    Shit.
    Nothing I can do about it. Just accept that that’s the way it is.
    Let’s just try and have a good time. It’s not that often that I get to have dinner with a vibrant sexy smart blond that thinks I'm attractive.
    Oh, Oh, I think.
    She might not find me fetching after all. All she’s seen are JPEGs of me and as I told her, I look better in photos than I do in real life. I remember she asked why is that. I laughed and said ‘Some of my friends are photographers and they know how to make me look good.’
    God help me, if she thinks I’m just an old wrinkly Art-Boy.
    Sweet Jesus, God help me.

    I’m standing outside my rental car, in the late afternoon sun, smoking a cigarette, in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Pooler, Georgia. Not exactly Faulkner, but not that far from it either. Waiting to see Angela for the first time.
    I see a beat up old Cadillac cutting across the parking lot with a blond behind the wheel. The blond is smiling. I bet that’s her. She sees me and drive toward me, parking the Caddy next to my KIA. With a big smile on her face, out steps a beautiful blond woman. 5’8” at least, in tan short shorts and a tight spaghetti strap top. Her breasts are obviously real by the slight bounce they have as she walks and they are being presented to me as if they are food on a serving tray. She was right. She does look better than her photographs.
    We hug. She gives me a little pat on the back as we hug. I hate that, but I’ll let it go. We break the hug and we stand almost nose to nose with each other.
    “Hey Angela, I’m Stu,” I say laughing.
    “Hi, Stu. Good to meet you.”
    As I drive us away from the Wal-Mart, I can sense her eyes on me. I turn and look toward her, look into her eyes. She is not unhappy with my appearance so far as I can tell. I may be a fool but the vibe does seem to suggest that she wants to have hard passionate sex with me too. Maybe not right now, but someday. I feel my dick get semi-hard.
    We get back on the Interstate and head toward Downtown Savannah.

    Dinner at the tourist trap along the harbor was nothing special. Loud drunks behind us. Angela and I talked about this and that. She talked a lot about her recent trip to Ireland, me, about the Mythic Journeys conference up the road. After dinner, she showed me around her hometown. Spanish moss in all the trees, orange Sun going down. We left downtown and walked deep into an Old Victorian neighborhood just to the South. Angela is talking a mile a minute, about her ex-boyfriend, about ghosts, about the Irish, about her ex again. Seems like she isn’t as over him as she thinks she is. Kind of breaks my heart. I've fallen a little for this woman and sure, I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere, not beyond a brief sexual fling, nor anything long term. Still, it makes me kind of sad. My heart has opened to her whether I like it or not.
    It’s around 8 and I just want to drive back to Atlanta, but she wants to show me this old house and that dark park and that special place. I oblige.
    We stop after a bit for ice cream on our way back to the car. We make more small talk. I still have a semi hard in my pants. Can’t help it. While she talks about something at the ice cream parlor, I barely listen. I'm think about my trip back up the road. It’s four hours back to Atlanta. Going to miss the Saturday night jam session with Charles and Mary Ann. Fuck. The price of love I suppose. The price of the hope of a horizontal mumbo, more like it. But I had to know. I had to see Angela in the three dimensions.
    Back at my rental now, in the small parking lot right on the harbor. A Coast Guard cutter has come in since I parked here hours ago. Angela’s talking about the yachting business now, all the money to be made. Bit boring to me. I say nothing. Just nod. Been nodding a lot the past 3 hours. You think I talk a lot. You should meet Angela.
    We climb into my KIA. Tourists walks on the sidewalk in front of us. Angela’s talking about something, and then she stops. I put the key in the ignition and I don’t turn it. I look over to her. She looks at me. I lean over and place one hand on her cheek as I gently kiss her on the mouth. Just a short kiss. I then lean back in my seat and fix to turn the ignition when Angela says…
    “That was short,” a slight annoyance in her voice.
     I take my hand off the car keys. I take off my glasses, throw them on the dashboard with a bit of flair, mind you, and dive right in. Both hands on her face, our tongues now involved. My right hand runs through the hair on the back of her head, and then I gently tug it. He moans. She then grabs me a bit, pulling me tight into her kissing, into her breasts. I grab a bigger handful of hair. We get into a rhythm now. And then, after an unknown while, the rhythm slows and our kiss ends. I gently let go of her hair. I slowly back away and settle back into my driver’s seat. I stare straight ahead, saying nothing. I glance over at Angela. She’s doing the same thing. Straight ahead, fifty yard stare.
    “Wow,” I say softly.
    “Yea…Wow, “ she says, still looking out of the windshield.
    I start the car and back out of the parking place. We don’t talk for at least a minute. Then, I talk now, about God-knows-what. She laughs. I laugh. We’re laughing a lot now. Soon we’re back on the Interstate, heading back to Pooler and her car. Just talking about this and that but there is a slight lilt to our voices now. Hap, hap, happy.
    We skirt the edge of the airport. A Red Roof Inn sign peaks above the pines. Angela is talking again about Ireland. I look at the Red Roof sign and feel sad. Won’t be going there tonight. Pity.
    Soon we’re back at the Wal-Mart, the KIA idling next to her Caddy.
    “Well, It was great to finally meeting you, Angela,” I say.
    “Thanks for driving down, Stu. And buying dinner. We’ll talk soon,” she says.
    “Angela,” I say, “Come here.”
    Another handful of hair. Our kissing a little deeper, more comfortable. Our second kiss. Her body moans and begins to sway. She giggles into my mouth. Our rhythm increases. My other hand squeezes her waist. I moan now.
    Then she slows and stops and breaks the kiss.
    “I gotta stop,” she say, breathlessly, “If I don’t stop now, this will go where I don’t want it to go tonight.”
    “Don’t worry, “ I say, “ I won’t let you.”
    “Yea, right.”
    “No, really. You stated earlier that you didn’t want to have sex tonight, and even though I really want to, I won’t let us.”
    Angela looks at me with the look of ‘What kind of fool do you think I am?’
    I stare right back at her with my look of ‘No. Really. I ain’t going to fuck you tonight.”
    She doesn’t believe me. But it’s true. I won’t fuck her now. I know this place. She isn’t teasing me. She just doesn’t want to turn this into ‘Just a Fuck’. She actually likes me and wonders if there might be more than just a vacation fuck here. And I know if she fucks me now, after making that decision hours ago not to fuck me, that in the morning she will hate herself and hate me a little too. Been there. Done that. Don’t want to do it again.
    “Take care, honey. Drive home safely,” I say to her.
    “You too. Be safe. I’ll talk with you soon,” she says.
    She gets out of the car quickly. She really doesn’t trust herself, I can tell. I smile. Nice knowing that I can still drive a woman a bit crazy with my kissing. I’ll take that.
    I grin and wave as she gets in her car. She starts up the Cadillac, and away she goes. One little glance from her is all. Then she’s gone.
    Minutes later, I’m on the Interstate, heading back to Atlanta.

    Midnight, West of Dudley, Georgia.

    Need to get some coffee. Still a couple hours plus from Atlanta. Probably get back after two a.m. Shoot. Would have loved to have jammed with Charles tonight, but I pretty much knew that wasn't going to happen. I had to see her. I had to know.
    The KIA hums along at 75 mph. I see a sign advertising Shell Oil a mile ahead. I rub my testicles through my pants. Seems I got a little case of blue balls tonight. Didn’t even know I was walking around with that much of a woody tonight. Well, yea, I did. I just tried to ignore it. I sigh, then give a half grin. That’s all I can muster right now.
    I exit the Interstate and get on a two lane country road. Nothing on it but a Shell station on the other side of the bridge. I cross the bridge and pull into the gas station, then pull up to the pumps. I turn off the engine and then I notice something wondrous through the plate glass windows of the station.
    Something that will make my blue balls feel just a bit better.
    Something that will take a bit of the sting off not having sex with Angela tonight.
    There, inside a large brightly lit white plastic cupboard are dozens and dozens of Krispy Kreme Donuts.
    Two Chocolate Crème filled and two Original Glazed, please.
    Here I come.