Love and Memory by Milky Cooper

The first time I had knowledge of a woman was on a breezy coastal vineyard in southern Spain. We fell into each other at night time, under a warm, gentle rain that lovingly caressed our sun-kissed skin and dotted constellations on the clothes that lay strewn beside us.

We rolled all over the dull emerald hill, two fables of youth, wrapped in each other with wine-red lips, wearing nothing but the night air.

I said to her, "you are wonderful" in her native Spanish.

"..." she replied, because being the sole survivor of a honey badger attack that claimed her whole family had been so traumatic as to render her entirely mute.

But in her eyes I see her answer; "I love you, Milky Sam, with a heart burning over hell's fireplace - I love you."

"I told you not to call me that", I snapped, pushing her off of me, "My name is Milky Cooper."

I should have never stormed off that night. I should have stayed with her and watched the stars melt with the rising sun. But instead I ran over the hill and back to my cabin, two pendulous balls casting long, dreadful shadows over Maria's furrowed brow. Yes, I remember now, her name was Maria.

How often we are burned by the fire of our passions.

Now, I lived through the 60s. There was no such thing as social distancing back then. We adhered only to the laws of desire, which meant that our lives were a whirling hurricane of fists, fingers, mouths, and arses. Ten years of sweat and hair. A big, ten year-long wet, slapping sound. Over and over again. A horrible, wet, slapping, a little bit like velcro sometimes, sound. That was our decade and we were happy for it.

I feel sorry for the youths of today, whose courting customs are virtually identical to the process of ordering a taxi. All you do is swipe your finger and there you have it. Where's the chase? Where's the bared claws and teeth? The bearded, teary-eyed fury?

Courting in my day was the business of silken poets, barrel-chested, leering fishermen, and dainty woman-friends alike. We loved in the language of guttural humanity, which is as much animal as it is human. A digital app made by Chinese soldiers could not possibly communicate our searing want of each other.

I am no braggart, but I most certainly have knowledge of at least two thousand women, and that's not including the ones who, unbeknownst to me, crept into my lodgings to have a rummage inside my long-johns. Though it may be true that those women have more knowledge of me.

Anyway, where was I?

Among my peer group in the early 60s was a particularly silky poet named Nadine, whose fondness of the opium pipe was a sad and terrible thing.

I forgot where I was going with that story, but I also knew a woman named Maria, whose Spanish arms held me only once, but once was all it took to imprint on my mind forever. Like beautiful words on a page, never lost by their ink.

Thank you for reading.

Yours,

Milky Cooper