In the flash of an open smile

So you know that feeling when you’re in a strange bed in a strange hotel in an inconsequential little town in southern Germany after having spent the whole day with the half-German, half-Greek girl you’ve been fantasising about over the past few weeks and who you like in basically all the ways man likes girl. You know this feeling, don’t you? Just you and her because the other guys on the team went home yesterday right after work. You respect her, which is a rarity. And on this Saturday you’ve both travelled to Nuremberg, where you’ve straddled countless paving stones, ducked in and out of alleyways, mounted and descended steps and crossed tiny, herald-bearing bridges. Her arm periodically locked under yours, and her smell so soft and welcoming, that when you catch wind of it, you feel somehow beckoned into this ineffable dimension where human form dissolves and olfactory spirits reign.

So you talk.  Just enough to keep things comfortable, just enough to hold sexual tension at arm’s length. And sometimes she’ll just stop dead in the street for no apparent reason, turn towards you, and flash this mighty smile, which could light up whole cities; a smile infinite and much bigger than time. Sheer elation. And then when you go for lunch a bit later at this traditional Bavarian Stube on the Sankt Bartholomewgasse, it’s there that you really feel the intimacy pour out, unmistakeable, and you’re one-on-one/face-to-face like a real consummated couple.  Now fearless, you plumb greater depths. Off the back of this omnipresent smile you tell her with complete sincerity that she seems to be such a happy person, implying you’re in favour, and that this is good, whereupon she replies that she tries her best, a reply surprisingly delivered with such deviatingly earnest facial expression that you get the message that she’s not that happy at all and so you’re still about as perceptive as a hedgehog. But that’s ok. Then she elaborates. Her moments of sadness are actually regular and pronounced, so it suddenly dawns upon you that this nugget of pure sweetness is a real sentient and sensitive person prone to morbidity and self-analysis just like you, and at that very moment you want nothing more than to engulf her and transfigure your combined sadnesses into some great chimera of lavish, romanticised sorrow.  

But the point though is this. The whole time along, the whole time really since you got to this stupid little town ambling along in and out of myriad formulaic clothes’ shops, you’re wondering when could be the right time to kiss her -- that’s what’s consuming your entire personage --  and you’re waiting for it to strike, because you don’t have long and the question just keeps on pressing and invading your whirling mind, not to mention your aching balls. So when then? Under lamplight by the remnants of the old castle? No. Side by side in this bar sipping post-seasonal Glühwein? No. Back home in the blinding glare of the regional train? Don’t be ridiculous. And though you’re hardly even able to look at her face because she’s so ablaze, glorious and gleaming, with eyes so powerful that you’re scared of hypnosis or petrification, scared that she’ll see the hypnotic effect she has on you, scared that you might catch her seeing this effect, yes, though you’re so scared of giving yourself up and showing yourself to anyone, so fucking scared of the moment and all the gazillion things that can go on therein, you brave it timorously and tentatively anyway, but when you’ve just about plucked up enough courage to raise your eyes to chin level, you feel something inside almost akin to the starting pulse of a retch, and your eyes slink back down in defeat. Yes, just a glimpse of these vast rabbit eyes spells misery, eyes that you’re now convinced are of that similar caramel/chocolate brown hue to your own – wishful thinking -- and that teeny French nose so artificial it looks like it’s been sculpted only moments ago, and those perfect lips, big, thick, fulsome lips, which makes this whole ordeal even more tumultuous and full of turmoil and totally off-putting as these are lips that you’d be willing to kiss even if you found them disembodied and resting on the nearest Bavarian dustbin lid. Oh to be so and continually obsessed by the logistics of a kiss. And to cut a long story short, you end up back in your room, soothing yourself with an ardent resentment-fuelled wank such that when you’re done you feel a pit so hollow you could just blow your head off right there and then. And further, guess what.....guess which room in this 100-or-so-room corporate boxhole they’ve put her in, yes it’s only the one right next to yours, she’s there right now, watching TV or something, and if you only just once in your sorry existence had the fucking guts to do anything useful, you’d get up, rap stalwartly on her door and in the flash of an open smile possess her as she needs to be possessed...