Poems That Speak To The Heart

Karl was standing next to the open passenger door of his Audi, bowing slightly, moving his extended arm across his body and looking like Prince Charming ushering her into his carriage. “Lunch in town today, Madame?” he asked with a sly grin

“That would be lovely,” she said with a French accent, smiling and sliding into the car.

“Where to today, Madame?”

“I chose yesterday. You have to pick today,” she said, dropping the accent.

“Okay. It will be a surprise. But today I get to hear about you. Who is the core Monica?” He sounded like he genuinely wanted to know.

She stared out the passenger window of the car, her eyeballs raised and cocked slightly to the left, thinking. Finally she said, “That’s a tough question. I don’t really know where to begin.”

“Okay. Then what do you like on your pizza?”

“Red sauce, mozzarella cheese, ham, pineapple and no anchovies,” she answered, exaggerating her facial expression for emphasis.

“All right. How about if we go to a pizza place and get what you just said, but with anchovies on only half the pizza?”

“I have a better idea: how about if we get your anchovies on the side? I don’t want them smelling up my pizza.” She knew from experience that once anchovies got cooked anywhere on a pizza, their salty, fishy stench permeated the whole pie.

“Okay. Our first fight and you won,” Karl said with a comical grin. “So now will you tell me who the essential Monica is?”

“All right, but give me a minute to think about it.” Her mind briefly traversed a number of things that were important to her.Finally, one answer rang most true.

“The most core thing about me is that I want to directly experience ‘being’—without labels or mental constructs, without social expectations or appearances and without the need for achievement. Just me and beingness, or what I call the true nature of reality. This is more important to me than security, predictability, reputation, recognition, or just about anything else. I want to experience myself and the Great Is/Is Not in the raw.” Without moving her head, she glanced sideways toward Karl to see his reaction.

He looked serious. “I knew there was something about you that was drawing us together. What you just described sounds quite similar to my quest for the Theory of Everything.”

“It is. Your String Theory has more labels and mental constructs than the rawness I want to explore, but it seems to validate and deepen my experience. Your theory could mean that I’m not just experiencing an idiosyncratic fantasy, but touching actual being or the source itself. It really excites me.”

He appeared to be thinking. And she surrendered to what she had just said. It might sound crazy, but this was really who she was at her core. If he did not like it, he did not like her. She would not and could not change this. Not for Karl, not for Emily, not for medical school, not for anyone or anything.

After a couple of minutes, he pulled off the highway onto a dirt road. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“We’re going to stop for a little raw experience,” he said, then added, “Is that okay with you?”

She giggled as he parked behind a grove of trees, out of sight from the highway, and treated her to her first “car sex.” It was very exciting, she discovered, maneuvering together in the car, out in the middle of nowhere. It also was a bit of a logistical challenge, given how big the two of them were compared to the small size of the Audi. This however, did not stop them from turning the ultra-cramped space into an intimate capsule. Monica felt greedy to feel the contractions, hers and his, and the pushing down, hers and his, again, and she refused to let cramped quarters get in their way. She even found that she could turn the car’s surfaces into leverage points. If anything, the otherworldliness of this vehicle in the forest carried her to new heights (or is the word “depths”?) of primal pleasure.

“Was that ‘raw’ enough for you?” Karl asked when they had exhausted themselves. She just giggled again.

Back on the highway, Karl’s whole body relaxed behind the wheel. Even his facial muscles looked released. Monica became aware of her own face and realized that it had softened as well. It was as if layers of masks—of facades—had melted away, and they were meeting one another with their more basic selves underneath. It felt good.

“Well, let’s start with this,” he said after they had driven for a while. “You absolutely are the rawest, most intensely sensual woman I have ever met.” Then he added quickly, “And I love it.”

Monica grabbed onto the word “love.” What did he love? She reviewed his words and concluded that it was her rawness. Well, that was a good thing. “So now that I have told you what’s most key to me, tell me more about you,” she asked.

“No, not today. Today I just want to hear more about you. Give me an example, perhaps a nonsexual one, since we seem to have that covered,” he said with a knowing smile, “of another experience you have related to in a raw way. Please?”

“Okay, but remember: you asked!” They both laughed, recalling that was what Karl had said yesterday.

They pulled up to the pizza parlor in town. Inside, they sat next to each other in a booth and Karl ordered the pizza they had negotiated in the car. “Oh, and we want that raw,” he said.

The hometown teenage waitress looked at him bewildered. “Raw? Do you mean before he puts it in the oven?”

They burst out laughing. “No, I was just kidding. Sorry. That was an inside joke.”

Monica pretend-slapped his hand and rolled her eyes. “And do you have any juice?” she asked the waitress.

“No. Just soft drinks, Ma’am.”

“All right. Then I’ll just have water to drink,” Monica said. Being called “Ma’am” by this teenager was not nearly as charming (or as flattering) as being called “Madame” by Karl earlier that day. Karl ordered a Coca Cola, and the waitress headed back to the kitchen.

Over lunch, Monica told him the story of her river trip as an example of an experience she had related to in a raw way. (Okay, not everything about the river trip. She underplayed, okay, omitted, the sleeping with Paul part—for now.) She knew she would need to reveal her sexual past to Karl before they left for California—if she went, that is. But now she had a different point to her story.

The portion of the river trip she told him about was when she was trying to be at one with the waves and the river and instead was so overmatched by their power. And she told him about wanting to be so in tune with what is, that she could have passed unharmed through the concrete columns under the bridges.

He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time. “You are incredibly intriguing. What you’re saying is amazing.” She blushed, but was glad at his reaction. He asked, “What led you to contemplate what you’re describing?”

“Good question,” she said, wondering about the answer. “I don’t really know. It’s just the way I’ve always tried to make sense of the world around me. How I can experience it at a deeper level, beyond everyday appearances, that is.”

“So have I; however, I was coming at it from a scientific angle. You bring a whole visceral dimension to it.”

They just looked at each other. Then he pulled her over to him and kissed her like his long-lost soul mate. Despite just having had sex in the car, she wanted to do it all again, right there and then. Given that this was a small town, sex in the pizza parlor probably wouldn’t be such a good idea. So she pulled away, blushing, caught her breath, and said, “Where were we?”

Karl composed himself. He must have been thinking the same thing she was. After a moment he said, “Let me show you something beyond the world of everyday appearances.” Then he burped loudly three times in succession. They