Intermezzo, noun: a short connecting instrumental movement in an opera or other musical work.
Chapter 15: Red-wing intermezzo
A thing often remarked by writers discussing their craft is how, once truly launched into a particular work, serendipitous passages appear as if by magic in other reading. As I wrote my Iliad, I was reminded of this by a Grisham legal thriller about nefarious coal companies destroying Appalachia. A subplot involved sex between the female New York lawyer and the Virginia bad boy fighting Big Coal. Parenthetically I seldom found Grisham particularly valid in sex scenes.
This time his book’s sex started okay. Supposedly hot for the bad boy, even after satisfying consummation the lawyer kept him at emotional arm’s length. Okay so far — a nod to sexual pragmatism of Venusians so long concealed beneath hearts-and-flowers propaganda that, like legend, it supersedes the truth. In the book the bad boy rationalized what more could a guy want than satisfying sex without commitment. Still valid. In the decade of my debauched maturity I had been there, done that.
Then came the book’s deal-breaker. Frozen night, furnace barely keeping her apartment livable, bad boy calls to say he’s outside and freezing. Once inside with hot coffee and warm kisses, she informs him sex is out of the question — it’s an inconvenient time of the month! He accepts without cavil and settles for chaste snuggling to share body warmth. And their arms’-length fondness continues unaltered.
Not on my planet. I have slept sexless with women for emotional reasons, or if one of us was too tired or stressed, but never for the excuse she gave. The passage evoked an almost forgotten movie about a young Jewish male coming of age. Seduced by a mature sexpot, the scene was heating up nicely — and he stopped. Just stopped. There was dialogue I did not comprehend and do not remember. He didn’t sleep with her — he left. Just left. I felt gypped. My wife was amused.
She explained his cultural caveat against sex with a woman having her period. I was incredulous, which amused her even more. I had been known to theorize that vampire stories of sucking blood from a lovely’s neck were censor-proof code for diving like Henry Miller’s happy porpoise beneath Mons Venus to sip life’s blood from the fountain of all life. “Ish, you’re a savage,” she smiled. “Different strokes for different folks.”
Between that movie and the Grisham novel, a lot of life’s water flowed under the bridge. Somewhere in there I discovered some women use the phrase “a sour stomach” to forestall sex during their period. Never would have known this if I hadn’t immediately offered Tums. I always carried antacids because I always ate too much greasy fried food. She laughed at my literal interpretation of her condition, and explained. I departed shaking my head. Never went back.
As rascal time plots our lives, it was not an eternity later — though still before I read the Grisham — when I held a job that entitled me to sit in on an Organized Crime briefing about outlaw motorcycle gangs. These were a scourge of the West in the eighties, often linked to the rising tide of illegal drugs. Drugs were often dispensed to the afflicted through licensed liquor establishments where motorcycle mamas danced topless to draw in the rubes — a literally seamless blend of sex and marketing.
The “true gen” on bikers was fascinating stuff. I recall how Harley handlebars could be rigged as a concealed shotgun barrel. If stopped by a cop on a traffic beef with saddlebags full of cocaine, you kick-stand the bike, angle the handlebar just so. If the cop shows undue interest in your saddlebags — boom! And off and running.
Also memorable was biker sex culture: gang bangs as a rite of entry for motorcycle mamas, stuff like that. I once noted that a tall curvy lovely who graced our agency’s word-processing pool was picked up after work on a rumbling hog ridden by a Moses-bearded tough flying gang “colors.” Wondered if organized crime had planted a mole in the place through which every enforcement report flowed for clean typing and typo correction. My paranoia was dismissed by the administration, and maybe they were right. She departed without explanation while the topless-tavern wars still raged. Maybe back to pole-dancing.
But what struck me most in the confidential report on their sexual practices was how a biker earned wings for his “colors” jacket: muff diving. Silver wings for simple cunnilingus, green for going down on a woman with a venereal disease. But highest award of all, earning most macho points — the trooper lecturing smirked — was red wings. For an act I considered routine. I was sure I could not have heard correctly. But I was the only one present who questioned.
The assembled badges stared at me as if I had grown two heads when I spoke up. So I shut up. The VD dive seemed reckless and stupid, in keeping with their outlaw image. But red wings? Hell, I’d have oak-leaf clusters and a red star above the wings if bikers followed military protocol for things like combat infantryman badges. Seemed I was more barbaric than notorious outlaw bikers, if they were timid as a virginal Jew about a woman’s menstrual blood.
Guess they never used those tiny motel bars of soap to scrub bloody stains out of sheets because the lady was embarrassed to leave evidence. It did, I suppose, resemble a crime scene. Or virgin sacrifice. But the little bars of soap worked. On my beard too. They can keep their red wings. I have my memories to keep me warm.
