"Well, studio may be a strong word. It's got a pullout couch, I promise. Sorry, I haven't got a proper spare room."
"Oh, no, that's great! I'll take anything. I slept on a floor last night," I reassure him automatically, but it's true. Not to mention I still have a crick in my neck from dozing off on the Greyhound. "Honestly, thank you so much just for letting me stay here at all. It's cool that you're a potter. Is that the right word for it? Potter?"
"Well, I make some very crooked pots. You're a poet, right?" Phil leads me through the little yellow bungalow to a large sunroom at the back. Sure enough, there's a long table smeared with clay, and a throwing wheel; and next to the door, a blessed couch. I sink into it happily, easing an aching foot out of a shoe.
"Hah. I guess I write some very crooked poems. Are you in the middle of working? I can wait til you're done."
"You'll be waiting till I'm dead in the ground, in that case. But I do have to finish few vases today before I can leave you be. Do you mind?"
"Oh, no not at all! That's cool. I hope this isn't weird, but I actually kind of love watching those like, pottery throwing videos online."
"Oh no! Don't tell me you're going to be a critic!"
We chat lightly while he moves around the studio, weighing clay and settling in at the wheel. Phil wants to hear about Aisha-- my cousin, who he was friends with in undergrad-- and where else in California I have spoken-word gigs lined up. I want to hear about pottery and about his teaching at Berkeley. Now that my soul is returning to my body after the fluttery excursion of meeting a stranger, I'm pleased to find that he's easy to talk to. Fun, even. I can feel myself relaxing enough to actually take in my surroundings, and to get a good look at Phil.
He's coiled over his work like a spring. Lean and muscular. Spots of pale clay bright against his brown forearms. I can't stop watching his hands, working the wet clay up and then down again.
Anyone will tell you there's something erotic about throwing pottery. Stroking up the sides of a tall cone, drilling down into a wet centre, the careful pressure of firm finger tips pulling out and pressing in. He is so still and so insistent; slippery; prying. I feel a sticky arousal starting to coat the roof of my mouth, and I try not to show it. He's working, I tell myself. This is his work.
"--It barely pays for itself, in the end. But of course that's not the reason to do it," he's glances up at me, "Is your writing is the same as well?" And our eyes meet and for a yielding breath I'm sure he knows what he's doing to me; he must know. But then he's looking at the clay again and I'm embarrassed. He's only trying to do his job, and here I am ogling at it like a giggling teen. I hope I haven't been staring.
I've lost track of our conversation through the heat of desire and the afternoon sun, and the wheel spinning hypnotic into my thoughts. Phil's lips press together in soft concentration. We fall into silence, and then there is only the whirr of the electric fan, the thrumming of the wheel, the sounds of insects outside and the far-off static of suburb. I feel my body vibrate into the slow hum of sleep.
In my dream, the room is turning. Or rather I am turning, slowly, at the centre of it. I am slick and smooth and naked, only I cannot be naked because I am not me. I look down and see only black and shining porcelain.
A firm touch shivers up my sides as steady hands graze my smoothness. Around and around I turn under their touch, as they hold their place in firm caress. Now and again the pad of a finger glances over some little bump or imperfection and I feel each tug and pluck as if it were on bare skin or the most sensitive parts of my body. Here, my nipples tweak again and again, spinning under a thumb. There, my swollen nub is turning, ground into a fingertip. Wet probings slide against every crevice and ridge as I am made and unmade again; now the curve of a woman, nipples erect, clitoris singing; now only a dark and slippery mound, molten and yearning.
