Read by Daisy Whyte
A gorgeous meaty smell pulsed from the open hearth that separated the restaurant from the lacquered bar where Pen waited for Amy233, a first meeting. She was early, straight from yoga, trying to decide what she wanted. She ordered the Think Pink! rosé tasting flight. If one was unpalatable, she could move on to the next. Not far from her bar perch, various meats and a tidy row of ever-larger fowl rotated with precarious dignity over licks of hickory flame--Quail, bantam, duck. Duck, duck, goose. Pen could almost hear the sizzle of fat dripping, almost feel hungry. She tasted the first wine set before her.
If you would like to read the rest of this story, please check out Lovers' Lies, the Arachne Press anthology in which it, and many other sexy and lovable stories from the League archives, appears.
Pen suffered displacement, having lost a day somewhere, or her voice, or an important list, or the spelling of her middle name. Perhaps her chakras were out of whack. They were whacked. Maybe wacky. Pen’s first chakra, her base chakra, even her second, and possibly third chakras, were undercharged. Or was it overcharged? One or the other. Her chakras were whacked, and her empty stomach soured at the first rosé.
The bartender smiled when he poured a French offering. Pen studied the sweating bottle, as if it revealed a matter of great interest, as if memorable. Mmmmmm, she nodded, but this one tasted sour, too. Shouldn't pink wine taste sweet, more like candy, more like SweetTarts? Were her sense receptors whacked, too? Maybe she was miswired.
Plugged, unplugged. Or worse, tripped at the breaker. The heart breaker! Ha, thought Pen, with a bit of an ugly twist around her second chakra. Maybe just gas. Getting ripped on blush wine. Another symptom of a shocking chakra problem.
She balanced her elbows, sipped from the third pink. This one reminded her pleasantly of André's Pink Champagne, prom night, and Henry devoted in his performance of true love, if not exactly straight. That stood for something! Her consciousness expanded.
Cologne. An older guy at the wine bar. All in his dark blue suit, Italian (the suit), and banana-colored tie. Polish on his nails, Mister Advertising Man with his two-olive martini.
Well, hello, he offered. Yes, hi, she said. It seemed polite to take less space on her stool, to make more room for his elbows. Then, sudden as a rooster pecking an egg, he's telling her about his stepson, Dismissed from boarding school! he said. First one wife, and then another one, this one with a miscreant son. Can you imagine? Pen could well imagine. The first wife's aura, soft-shelled like a crab, a fading bluish-green--flushed out by someone younger, livelier, easier. But that son was trouble. Mister Disappointed.
Mister leaned close, with questions. He was handsome, in a fatherly aftershave kind of way. He popped an olive, grinning. I like you, he said, for no good reason. Did she look so good on her toothpick?
My date. Waiting for my date. She was vague, looking pinkly through her fourth taste. Feeling the cool wineglass soothe all the little foreheads of her fingertips. Oh, it was warm, so close to the open hearth.
Oh your girrrlllfriend, he said, all sly like a fox--sinful, silver fox. Mister Hipster. You bi? asked Mister Withit. He wondered if maybe his first wife was bi, she was so angry. Is it easy to tell?
Sure it is, Pen said. Easy.
I thought so, Peg, he said.
It was easy to mix her up. This did not help her self-esteem (a depletion of the third chakra). She pictured her esteem in a dismal little pile, like underpants kicked under the bed. Her first and second chakras were probably in the toilet.
She needed the bathroom, but would she miss Amy233? It was 233? Not 223? What if she'd emailed back and forth with 233, but made a date with 223? There was probably more than one Amy. What if she was mixed up?
Pen often got mixed up with other people, the wrong kind of people, the not so nice kind, the cheating kind. She would get herself mixed up with someone else, forgetting her own name and such, thinking she was someone’s mirror, or mattress, or dishwasher, or any number of home furnishings. Then suddenly, her chakras were kicked under the bed.
Nose. Powdering, she said. Mister chuffed, elbows expanding, endangering her flight. But she was brave. She pushed away. Mister ordered another martini.
She walked past the open hearth into the ladies' lounge, where she almost cried to catch the last strains of a Beatles song -- Norwegian Wood or Eleanor Rigby, she always mixed those up--piped into the bathroom. She examined the full expression of her pinkness in the mirror, her raw nature. Only four-fifths through her flight, barely off the ground. She could leave. Could it matter? She cooled herself with water.
Pen came back to find her place crowded out by Mister's wife and stepson. The woman--styled, fluid, cared for--took up little space alongside hubby and her droopy-lidded teenager. Like her mate Mister, the woman was very with-it, or at least with a lot of it.
Pen reached around them to recover her place, but her flight was gone. Flown. No empty coop, not even a ring of moisture. Pen had no seat, she was not grounded, she was ungrounded, she was a live wire dropped in a puddle, she was at risk of serious shock, unwarranted electrical discharge.
Did you see my fifth blush? Pen asked Mister. Mister shifted politely out of Pen's way, unruffled, elbows tight, martini aloft. I'm sorry? he said, as if to a total stranger.
At Pen's question, Mrs. Mister's eyes flicked like a snake tongue over Pen's face, her body. Pen could smell the sizzling arc of suspicion before the wife tucked it back in like a bra strap. The wife wiggled the knot of her son's tie, then reached for her husband's. Mister puffed his chest towards the missus, making his tie easier to reach. This helped Pen remember herself, remember why she was here, a least for a minute.
A water? Flat, please, she told the bartender. Soon Amynumber should swoop in, cupping the air for a skidding, hiccup of a landing.
Pen had other strangers to meet. She was open, her heart chakra was open. She watched the door closely. Open, open, open, Pen thought.
Tasting Flight by Catherine Sharpe was read by Daisy Whyte at the Liars' League Wine, Women & Song event at The Phoenix, Cavendish Sq, London on Tuesday 11 May.
Catherine Sharpe wrote mostly for live performance in San Francisco in the 90's before turning her attention to gay marriage, IVF, parenting, gay divorce, dating, fiction, and nonfiction. Her first collection Ambition Towards Love hasn't yet been published, but read some more of the interlocking essays and fictions in Opium Magazine, Errant Parent, The Battered Suitcase, and upcoming in Weave Magazine and the Decameron Annual.
Daisy Whyte's credits include: Ophelia, Lady Macbeth, a sink estate mum, the ghost of a dead Suffolk farmer and a bonneted Regency lady who ends up at the bottom of a lake. She recently completed a six month national tour of Ashmeed Sohoye's new play Rigged.
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