Writing Exercise 6--Kate

The flight attendants were in the front of the plane serving cocktails and coffees and peanuts—depressants and stimulants and proteins—and the passengers were by now occupied by the time the four hour flight provided them; they were watching movies with headphones or were asleep in their seats or engaged in conversation or reading magazines that wouldn’t otherwise meet their morality standards. Moviestars, affairs, pregnancies—none of it other than the primordial related to real life. Regardless, they were occupied. And the young woman in seat 18A was feeling wild. She’d had three screwdrivers since they’d been on the flight and was beginning to let loose. Her denim jacket had come off. Her feet were bare. She was talking in a whisper into Harley’s ear. When she rose from her seat beside the window, he rose as well, allowing her to pass, and he stood in the aisle with his elbow propped on the headrest of his seat, looking at her intently and gravely and somewhat sleepily—her high cheekbones, her dark hair—and as she moved past him she hid the discerning smile on her face because she knew what he was thinking, what he was planning to do. On top of the beers at the airport bar he’d had three more since his time on the plane and he didn’t wait a moment, didn’t sit back down and wait for people’s attention to refocus away from her, didn’t even think about how it would be perceived. And when she entered the lavatory and turned around to secure the door he was standing there with his hand on it, preventing it from closing, and because she had shut it only slightly he pushed it back open so he could enter, and she let him, and then he closed it gently and securely fastened the lock. It was occupied. Two bodies taking up the small space made for cramped quarters. Two feet by two feet, that’s what Harley would consider later. The faucet, the trash can, the toilet, even the mirror—it all seemed to be on display, confined as it was. “So what did you have in mind?” The young woman was smiling, as was he. “Whatever you want. Whatever you wish I had in mind.” He was moving closer, closer that he already was. He was sweating, so was she. And then he started pulling at her clothes, unfastening her bra, tugging at her panties. They handled one another, at first, not with the definitiveness and confidence that comes with a relationship already established, but slowly, making sure it was agreeable. As they found, throughout the course of their encounter, that each contact they made with one another was indeed pleasing merely in the newness it presented, the sex turned into something more forceful, and it was as if they were dancing the bolero, slow and controlled with intermittent bouts of speed. The young woman, however, wasn’t quite as turned on by his penis as he thought she might be because she had brought pleasure to herself just earlier that day. And Harley—he wanted to steal her panties and put them on his own body. Pull them up beyond his thighs and around his buttocks so that his penis was snug as a bug. And erect. Definitely erect.