Ruminations on an Extraordinary Puss

“Twenty thousand people are killed each year in Africa, by snake bite.  There are twenty thousand tear-tracks, down the face of my soul; twenty thousand who had nothing and died a horrible death in poverty.  …but I digress. 
         “Gaboon vipers have the longest fangs of any snake in the world, two inches, and they inject the largest dose of venom of any snake.  Gaboon vipers are in a dead heat for the most lethal snake in Africa.  The other candidate is the little Puff adder.
         “Puff adders are responsible for more African deaths; they have shorter fangs, which is a somewhat meaningless statistic, but they’re pissed at the world because they aren’t physically ideal; a Napoleonic complex with poison to boot, they’re small with an attitude.  Bad tempered little guys, cranky and very aggressive, saw scale vipers are responsible for more deaths than any other African snake, mainly because of their size and temperament, they easily go unseen, and so much of their enormous range is in remote backcountry areas a long distance away from proper medical treatment. 
         “Gaboons, on the other hand, have the most painful bite, producing excruciating pain for three or four days, as their hemotoxic venom dissolves the flesh, making life easier for the snake’s stomach, which contains no digestive enzymes.  Listen to me!  I sound like a damn encyclopedia.  The pattern on the Gaboon’s skin, broad geometric planes, could have been painted by Braque, de Chirico, Cézanne….  But they are a handsome critter.  Don’t you think?” 
         “Yes.  It was absolutely striking!”
         “Very punny.  Ha!”  His laughter was genuine.          
         “How did your fascination with snakes come about, Brant?”
         “I played with fire a lot, as a child.  How did you learn snake dancing?”
         “I’m serious!”
         “So am I!  …Danger intrigues me, more than snakes do.  Danger – living on the razor’s edge – reminds me that I’m alive, and, how much I have to lose!  Curiosity!  I’m curious.  That leads to research.  You’re the same!  When you know you’re going to visit a place, you learn as much about it as you can, before you go.  I do, anyway.  The people, foods, languages, customs, culture, local animals and plants, history and politics, weather, religion and sports!  I think that covers most of it.  And, animals fascinate me.  Venomous animals are just one example of a real miracle: evolution.  The most fascinating of all animals, of course, is the female of the species Homo sapiens sapiens.  That’s one critter I just cannot get enough of.  Ooh!  …There’s  one, now.”
         “Ha-ha!  I’m glad you didn’t kill that viper.  Thank you for saving me, too, Sir Dragonslayer!  Or, is it Saint George?  Nuits Saint Georges?  Ha-ha!” 
         “I do happen to have a very nice bottle of Pommerol.…  But, you’re not saved yet!  And I’m no saint!  I spared the dragon.  Saint George killed his.  If he did that today, he’d be pilloried!  In the Fifth Century, they canonized him…  sic transit gloria!  Do you play the oboe?”
         “Well, thank you just the same.”
         Without reply, he smiled at her and their eyes met, completing a circuit.  She kissed him softly, then again with more appetite.  He felt a powerful rush of hot new blood, from his femoral artery, stiffen his resolve to please her.  She felt it, too, and buttons began to lose their grip.  She disinvested herself of the sheerest of encapsulating fabrics in a most provocative manner, seeming to take great pleasure in teasing him.  He took pleasure, as well, and returned the kindness, ushering her into the journey  to come, on which they were about to embark.

         Finally, he had the opportunity now to observe her gorgeous young body in the relaxed light of unperturbed abandon.  She was mercifully hardware-free; though never averse to new experience, he was not yet sure how to deal with the ring in clitring; the word ring, in general, in the same breath as ‘woman,’ still brought a chill to his spine and warmed the engine of his getaway car. 
         Her breasts were perfect.  They seemed to lead a life of their own, independent of the rest of her; a buoyant, charmed life, that impatiently anticipated her every move.  They appeared to avoid gravitational force; she was a pencil test titleist.  Her toned tummy’s sympathetic curves posed a proud prelude, with judicious epilation, to the coming fugue: her dainty and smooth-shaven mons Veneris begged veneration.  Full of grace, glistening, like a dewy morning meadow, it shared the herbal aura of a summer rain.  His face glowed with a happiness that now illuminated his labors, at this unremittingly mystifying cleft, between her legs; his smile met hers, lip to labium;  his tongue, serpent like, scrutinizing, testing and tasting, and toasting, as he lingered, reverent and pensive, at her altar: the Vestibule of Being… to ponder… and wonder …and worship… at the shimmering scissure before him – that this quaint little wattle… could wield such worldly wallop – holding it in easily twice the awe he had once beheld, with a similar grin, a vaster gash, from a grimmer rim – the Grand Canyon of the Colorado – never mind that his current view was vastly superior, and, pondering the eternal predicament of the hetero human male who, once expelled from it, is by hormones doomed to spend the rest of his life trying to get back in; once there, cannot wait to get back out, again; this greater than the greatest of cats and ironies, as she bucked and gasped, her first sky-scratching, fighting-for-air orgasm, of several more to come, each of which saw her glow of a more urgent release than the last; then simply lost himself in the succor of her soft shelter.

                                            *      *        *
“I’M DISAPPOINTED!”  Her voice sounded playful, but he was unsure.
         “Disappointed!?  Ha-ha!  . . .At what!?”          
         “At not seeing those catacombs.  Of course, I know they’re not just catacombs, but I’m disappointed!”
         “Aren’t you over disappointment, yet!?  How old are you?” 
         “We can’t all be supermen; …women!”
         “I’m hardly a superman.  It’s just that I’ve had so much experience with failure I’ve had to learn to deal with disappointment.  It’s a sad but true fact.  The alternative is unacceptable.  …Hey!  You want to see the catacombs?”  Her head nodded as he continued, “Tomorrow, maybe.  Not tonight!  I’m going in tonight, and I’m going …alone!”