My Affair With A Hugger...

"I hope someday, somebody wants to hold you for twenty minutes straight,
and that’s all they do.
They don’t pull away, they don’t look away,
they don’t try to kiss you.
All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight,
without an ounce of selfishness to it..." - Waitress

By Patrick Alcatraz
Editor

SANTA FE, New Mexico - Darlene carried a bag of hamburgers from a place called Bobcat Bite's, said to be the best place for such food in town. Bobcat's was a small frame building on the road in from the main highway that took you to Albuquerque. I sort of liked those burger, but it was seeing Darlene walking up the porch stairs that did it for me that year here. She would walk the bag to the small kitchen while I drew a pair of soda cans from the red fridge I had over by one corner of the small room. Eating came in between conversation, things about Darlene's flirtation with getting her paintings in some art gallery and me telling her about stuff to do with the harrier hawks, which fascinated me like nothing else except oral sex.

A Canadian by birth, Darlene put up with my eccentricities and would even kick me under a table when I flirted with waitresses. My boots helped there, but Darlene always brought it up when we ended up naked in bed. "You'd want to fuck that one, right?" she would ask, and I would smile as she bounced atop me, her longish auburn hair in a neat splay. "Well, it's not going to happen, sport - not while I can help it."

Darlene was one of those women who just loved to hug. She would reach for my arms and swing them over her shoulders and around her back, down to her waist, before demanding a long, wet kiss. I played along, knowing full-well that I was one lucky fool to have her in my life. Hugs came in bunches, like a rain that circles a town and takes its sweet time about leaving. She would hug on the porch, in the living room, in the small hallway, in the sack. Once I asked her if she'd been ignored by her parents as a youngster and she said, "You'd never know how much...too much."

So, I would hug her, softly and tightly, always sincerely...

- 30 -