So where it begins in Dreamstime is looking into a trunk at my grandmother’s wedding dress, and this is a true story. She gave me that at age fourteen when I was very much into vintage clothing and sort of wearing all that kind of thing as lingerie in High School. Silk teddies under Betsey Johnson sweaterdresses, and sort of riding my Peugeot ten speed around in all that garb. I hadn’t intended to make this one erotica, except that i’m back on the list at ERWA and so, well it all sort of fits because nano has a section for erotica writers —
So Dreamstime day two is at 3662, which is great because ahead of the game. Each day you need 1667 words, and if you are a little ahead that is better. In ’09 on Heart of Clouds I wanted to end by Thanksgiving because I wanted to cook. This year is different by far, my pace slower, the POV first person.
Anyway something so fab happened this morning I couldn’t even believe it! This magnificent writer I know wrote something about me. I mean? OMG! You can see that here…LOOK WHAT HE SAID! omg.
All right, now that I am back in my chair, I looked behind the scenes and there is this question: “who is valentine bonnaire ???” in the stats. Well she is me with my erotica nom de plume on. In Nano I am VB-Demoiselle, just because… i missed the meetup last night where we could have gotten our stickers, but there will be another — the month is young. So, in the tension building phase of literary erotica, or the “perfumed erotica” oh my, he said I wrote, well it looks like this a bit:
Last year when there wasn’t going to be Christmas he showed a picture of his tree. It was a bare stick in winter, the bones of winter, the white light shifting at the curtain less windows a tree barren of everything, a tree so austere in its beauty that I drew in my breath and held it because he was so much like me. I wanted to crawl into his lap and curl myself around him like smoke with arms wrapping, arms holding, lips kissing his chest his hands, his lips. I can’t take my eyes off him, can’t tear them away, can’t stop looking. Birds hung from his tree like ornaments, glass orbs, spaced, sequenced, dangling from limbs, the branches of the winter cool and cold in his house, not a present to be seen and I fell hard, fell just watching the way he could craft lyricism into poems, craft valiance into politics, craft more than that. My breath stopping, looking at his face.
I saw his tree and I made up my mind, and I went out into the windy rain three days before Christmas and I came home and brought it resin-scented covered in raindrops, green and fat and bristly and fresh and I said to my husband, “I’ve never not had a Christmas tree, not ever,” and that was the year that I knew he no longer loved me, he no longer cared and there were no presents that year because there wasn’t any money, or so he always said over and over to me, over and over until the message was drilled into my head that there should never be any fun, ever.
His mother must have done that to him. In childhood. She took away his toy cars. They moved. He couldn’t keep his things. They moved continents away and each time he was thrown into circumstances and he had to adapt. Sans toys.
Christmas beckons a few months away. The promise of a tree again.
Green, the boughs dipping laden. The room filling up with traces of vanilla and sugar and cinnamon and the possibility of cookies baked once more or breads and his lap, I can’t stop thinking of that lover’s lap and how much I want to curl up in it with his arms around me, moving in unison slowly rocking, rocking, rocking.
Wearing nothing but the fire’s warmth. The flickering light. The glow.
So don’t forget it is a first draft, ignore punctuation errors, (the bane) and tis day two, quite happy so far with it.
xxoo!
Adrienne
VALENTINE BONNAIRE - WRITER 