In civilization nothing snaps together faster than a woman's legs but the pattern doesn't follow to the mountain: not once she's put her feet in heavy boots and bound them to long boards.
Once upon a time the first thing would-be skiers were taught was the snow plow. You stand on your skis, face at least partly downhill, and point your ski tips toward each other, making a big V. You use this wedge to push against the snow, resisting the pull of gravity, controlling your speed: then learning to turn. At the slightest trouble, recent intermediates revert to the snowplow. Getting their weight back, the v switches points to the tails: and they fall. More advanced skiers are forever correcting lack of alignment between their skis toward the parallel. The expert wants the full length of both skis at his disposal, for speed, for control: turning, stopping.
It's wonderful to ski well, to ski daring slopes, but all the tush, splayed or upright, is on the bunny slopes. The rare girl on the daring slopes instantly has my heart.
Girls out-leverage men in the lower body. We'll beat them at arm wrestling nearly every time, but more than one man has been surprised, and humiliated, if he tries to leg-wrestle an in-shape female. Nevertheless, in absolute terms, women are weaker of leg. Serena's got the most amazing thighs, but however strong she is there, she's not as strong as Lawrence Taylor, Michael Chang, Wayne Wong ... And girls in the 1960s were no Serenas. Upside down on the sidewalk after a slip, their legs would snap together. But on the mountain, slipping seems to go with the territory. And they're handicapped with these heavy weights on their ankles. And the skis, well more than six feet long in those days, even for the girls, didn't cooperate with modesty.
I'm in my late twenties, maybe thirty. I'm at Hunter Mountain. For some reason I can't explain after these decades I'm at the C area: beginners, novices. I'd ski the C area with my young son in my early thirties, but I'm fairly sure that this was before then, my son was no older than three. I was alone on the occasion. Hunter's C area had an "upper mountain," labeled intermediate. I'm on this upper mountain, off the trail, in the woods. And between two trees, half in a bush, right under my nose, is the splayed crotch of a willowy young blond I'd never seen before in my life.
That memory is embedded like a snapshot, quality-studio clear. I remember nothing else about it. Had I left the trail for the woods to offer her help? That doesn't sound right. Had I entered the woods to pee and suddenly an airborne blond crashes through the brush? Definitely not. I'm blank on the circumstances — I definitely wasn't with her, but I'm nevertheless clear on the tableau.
She's smiling, an embarrassed smile. She's clearly not hurt. But she's stuck with her crotch taking the breeze. I'm stuck too, also embarrassed. If I had seduced her into this position, it would be one thing. She can't say, "Pardon my Poon'. I can't say, "The pleasure is all mine." I can't even say, "May I help untangle you, get you to your feet?" Least of all can I say, "God, I can taste your pussy-print with my face." Amazing how the imagination can ignore all the layers of clothing she must have been wearing: not just ski pants and the usual underwear, but quite likely long johns as well.
A woman's beauty does not belong to her alone.
JM Coetzee
JM Coetzee
What astonishes me about the memory, so vivid today, is that the two of us were somehow in a private little alcove, screened from the more public slope. There are dozens of things I wish I had said to her, wish I could have said to her. I also wish I could figure out how we got there together.
Different, but related:
I'm about twenty-four. It's mid-way through my first full season of skiing. I was already strong of leg however weak of upper body. I was already courageous. I'd made rapid strides. I was an aggressive intermediate skier: a bit of parallel, regressions to the snow plow still too automatic, very poor hand-foot coordination (in other words, ineffective pole plants, nearly irrelevant to weight-shifts. As always, I'm skiing with Hilary. If it weren't for her mother's mountain cottage, we couldn't afford to ski at all, me earning $99 a month as an army draftee. With the cottage, with Hilary's car, we skied frequently. Hilary and I have arrived at the top of Hunter Mountain's B lift. The A lift goes to the mountain's summit, the B lift goes to a ridge. Bearing to one's right encountered a decent intermediate slope, going left brought one to an easier though more narrow novice slope. My boots are quickly buckled up, my pole straps rapidly over my wrists. Now I stand and wait while Hilary adjusts herself.
Other skiers pass us and begin their descents of the intermediate slope: we've gone to our right. A teenaged blond stops just downhill of me to me, rightward, to buckle up her boots. Pink stretch pants. She's bent over as bent as she can go. Hilary still hasn't slid up to my side to signal that she's ready. The blond's buttocks stretch her pink pants sere. Oh, Jesus. Even stretched the pants are still opaque; still, it's almost as though one could look right up into her inner sancta. She's bent over. I'm staring. Her little brunette companion comes up, sees me looking, gets all flustered, covers her friends ass with her gloved hands, steam coming out of her ears.
If you knew Hilary in those days you'd know that no one ever had a cuter behind. And no one knew it better than me. My hands were over her every other minute. But Hilary is behind me: and this girl in the pink pants is right in front of me, aiming her nether apertures in my face.
No comments:
Post a Comment