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Full moon shines through the open window. A venerable bullfrog croaks its dirge song of living and dying in the African night. It is plaintive, mourning, calmly implacable. I make a wish. I make a wish under moonlight. My nostrils flare, assailed by the wild smell of night. The ritual setting is almost complete.
A single long-stemmed calla lily adorns the windowsill in a tall glass vase. Heady patchouli incense spirals upwards into summer evening, carried away on a quiet breeze. Marvin Gaye playing on the radio. Marvin softly singing sweet refrains. The music pours over me, pours through my body.
I slip off my embroidered white camisole. It slithers to a puddle around my feet. Head bowed in benediction for the sacred rite, I kneel naked on the woven mat, crush a handful of fresh rose petals between my hands. Watch them scatter, flutter downwards, swirling into steaming water. Crushed velvet, they bleed, leaving fragrant residue on my hands.
My altar, the porcelain tub, is encircled with twenty-three vanilla tea-lights, a magic ring, a pool of light. The dancing flames illuminate white bathroom tiles. I slip on the role of love priestess like a new silk shirt. My body, a sacred garment. Radiant skin glows in candlelight. I am luminous, ethereal, the High Priestess of the Major Arcana. I am Aphrodite by the sacred spring. I am Aphrodite by the light of the silvery moon.
I have walked this long, exhausting day in estrangement from the world
touch me
touch me
remind me who I am. I am bone-tired. My body, heavy with loneliness and longing. I unfurl, rising to full height. Where are you? Where are you tonight? This body is awakening. This body longs to be touched, to be held. I need your hands to remove the mask, peel back the layers one by one, reveal the essence, the timid wild creature. Gentle hands stroking
face, neck, breasts, belly, thighs, buttocks, shoulders, back
A woman called Saraha Doha once said, "Here in this body are the sacred rivers; here are the sun and the moon, as well as all the pilgrimage places. I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body."
I look in the mirror. My face is bare. I am thirty years old. Without make-up I look like a young girl. I stretch my arms wide above my head, arch my back, lift my exposed breasts with my hands. I imagine a great shaft of light, drawn from around me, circling the bathroom, embracing my body. Marvin's music lifts me, moves me. Arousal dances me.
Inhaling deeply, I toss my head, voluptuous hips undulating from side to side. I cup my naked bottom cheeks. I reveal my body as if it were a fine work of art. I am a Goddess awaiting her consort. Still, there is no one here
no one to caress my white neck, my full ripe breasts, my smooth bare buttocks. This body needs you to feed its fire. Softly, I exhale.
I test the water with a pointed toe, feel the muscles in my calf contract, step slowly into the deep bath. Breathe in the seductive blend of damask rose, patchouli and vanilla. The scent is powerful.
I remember reading somewhere once that rose blended with vanilla is believed to summon boldness in those who are shy. Rose water is sacred to Venus, goddess of beauty and love. Vanilla is sex, rose opens the heart. According to legend, when Venus was born, roses appeared in the world with her. Botticelli celebrated this with Zephyr blowing a shower of pink roses from the breeze which buffeted Venus to shore.
These aromatic petals, sensational crimson explosions, float, glide languidly around me. I sink back. Inch by inch, I am submerged in water. Water, medium of feeling. Water, the womb of the Mother.
Steam radiates off my body, rising in tendrils to mist up bathroom mirrors. I close my eyes, abandoning myself to the enchanted mood. Surrendering, I float, content, water lapping over me. I imagine deft, strong hands running along creamy skin, down the length of my wet body.
It is hot. Strands of hair cling to my damp forehead. My face is beaded with perspiration. Sweat droplets slide down my neck, my throat. I cleanse my face with a honey-based lotion, massaging skin with even circular movements, before rinsing it off. Honey is sacred to Oshun, the Yoruban goddess who teaches the art of wooing.
I soap my breasts with foamy lather. They float above the water. I like my breasts; firm fruit before eating, they thrust above my ribcage. My hands are slow and caressing. The nipples darken, harden, responding to teasing touch. Run my tongue over lips. Slide hands over pale rounded belly, shaven mound, along gleaming bare thighs. Leisurely soap smooth legs, the hollows behind knees, rounded calves.
Indolently, I inspect my toes. The toenails are tiny red petals resting against the edge of the bath. I think of you. I think of how you lick the white arches of my feet, how you take each toe in your mouth, suck them tenderly one by one. You watch me with intensity. You laugh because this makes me squirm.
Where are you? Where are you tonight? The moon is dumb and gives me no answers. Your face is framed in the bright white orb, staring longingly down at me through the window. Am I staring down at you somewhere? I call you to me. I summon you. Desire that echoes through the arch of time: Helen to Paris. Isolde to Tristan. Etian to her Fairy King Midir. Guinevere to Lancelot. Juliet to Romeo. Cathy to Heathcliffe. Desire is incandescent. Desire burns white-hot, mixing with the blood in my veins.
I want the intoxication of complete surrender, wildness, primal abandon. I think of DH Lawrence, how he says you must be willing "to risk your body and your blood and your mind, your known self and to become more and more the self you could never have known or expected".
In my mind you have unbuttoned me and I have come undone. Warm tension flows from my throat to my loins, I hear my heart beating, feel my skin tingling. Senses opened, barriers broken, a tangible electric force of heat and light surge through me. I am learning to become intimate with the secrets of my body.
Walt Whitman says in "Songs of Myself": "I believe in the flesh / and the appetites
/ and each part of me is / a miracle. Divine I am inside and out, and / I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from."
I open wet thighs. I open myself wide. I take my pleasure slowly, deliberately, fully. Deft hands caressing
breasts, belly, sex
I am the sacred river
I am the sun and the moon
I am the pilgrimage places
I am the temple
The doorbell rings shrilly, startling me out of hypnotic reverie. The evening breeze rustles in anticipation through the leaves of the plane trees outside. The bullfrog is silent. Has he found his mate? The moon winks down, a colossal lantern suspended from the ceiling of sky. I am the moon
I am the stars
I am
I am everywhere
I step gingerly out of the bath, surrounded by fireflies, tiny flickering stars that dance in all directions. I am weak from the heat. My knees want to fold under me. I shake glistening droplets off my body, grab a fluffy towel off the rail, and wrap it snugly around me.
I pad silently through the terracotta-tiled hall, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind me. Ceramic tiles, cool beneath my feet. Pass by the antique cherry-wood chest where earlier in the evening I had placed a profusion of red roses in a large glass bowl. The bowl stands between a pair of exotic silver candlesticks from India. Fallen petals lie next to a dark wooden statue of an African couple entwined in a loving embrace. Gooseflesh appears on my arms.
Warm tension flows from my throat to my loins, I hear my heart beating, feel my skin tingling. My hair is damp and tousled. Water droplets slide down my neck, my throat. My hand closes around the cold metal door handle. I open the door wide. You stand there framed by the yellow light of the porch. I drop the towel. I have been expecting you.
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Michelle McGrane
is no angel but she's learning how to fly. She has a gypsy
heart, believes in freedom and magic, and thinks it's a good
thing she wasn't around in the Sixties, because she probably
wouldn't be alive today. Despite the occasional lapse, she
tries not to take herself too seriously.
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