You're at a party. A person walks across the long room working around and through knots of people to get to you. This person is so attractive. The force of their attraction has no name. It is aimed at you. From a distance their gaze draws your breath from you, leaving your ribcage empty. Your lungs forget to breathe. Your eyes nearly close till what you see is the one, just the one. You can't really believe that hips move in quite that way. You can't really believe that this person, this paragon, is coming to you. Fingers tracing a heiroglyph indecipherable, hypnotic. The whole body carrying a message, a rhythmic mystery.

But you're not thinking of sex. You don't think that way. You are the chaste one. Clothes fall away. Limbs intertwine. But those are thoughts unbidden. You put them away from you. Pay attention. Pay full attention.

The person sits, begins to talk. You're a little confused. Can't make out why this singular person is sitting with you, chatting so amiably, so animatedly, with such intense interest. You reciprocate without hindrance, giving all, openly, quietly, smiling again, ignoring that cowed internal whispering voice telling you over and over without end of your unworthiness. You feel a deep rapport settling upon you both. But you are certainly not thinking about sex. You are the chaste one.

The person launches into a tale, the recitation of a recent dream:

There's a barrista, lithe, muscular and dark, dark as Kenya, ready to levitate, tense with a barely bridled eagerness to serve. Takes your order with a look of deepest sympathy. Listens intently with every fibre of their being. Understands what this drink means to you. Then crosses a line you hadn't known was there. Leans across the counter, closer than a barrista should be; in a low, breathy voice:

"I'm going to make you the best espresso you've ever had."

And it's not the anticipation of perfection that forces a short, nervous laugh from the back of your throat, it's that this dark little cave of a café (where are all the other customers?) has shifted, time has slowed to a spider's silent crouch, and you watch with a crystalline grain of hunger rasping at your stomach as the thumping scraping hissing suddenly stops. And there on the counter sits the whitest porcelain demitasse, nested on the whitest porcelain saucer, a thin line of cobalt just below the rim of the cup proclaiming as firmly as any incantation this locus, this altar, upon which sits this slightly smoking liquid offering. As you reach, the barrista snatches it away.

"No. I can do better."

Tends once more to the whistling metallic beast. Returns with a new cup. Again snatched from your seeking grasp. 

This stylized dance repeats itself. Once, twice. Thrice. The blessed bowl of Java appears, disappears, appears, and is spirited away.

"No. I can do better."

Comprehension begins to dawn. You intuit, and then you know precisely that this is just a game. A game that could go on forever.  

So you turn to the passing server, pluck a glistening flute of champagne from their platter, turn back to the person sitting so intimately next to you and say

But this is not a dream. I know that other people's dreams never fail to bore, and I wouldn't do that to you. I would never tell you my dreams.

I am the chaste one.

8/23/2022