Sappho's Leap Read Online Free PDF Page B

tents or huts in the precincts of the temple and remain for weeks at a time to earn their dowries. There is healing in a woman’s delta, the Babylonians believe.”
    â€œAre you saying this to shock me?” I asked. “Because if you are, I can match you obscenity for obscenity. Delta, daleth, kusthos, sacred space, zone of Aphrodite, the triangle of our beginnings, the source of all our blessings, the three-cornered passage to our end. There! You are not the only learned sensualist on this island!”
    Alcaeus ignored me and went on with his exotic descriptions of foreign travel. “Not for nothing do the Egyptians smear blood on doorways to symbolize birth and death. They worship the divine delta, that all-seeing eye. The Babylonians do the same.”
    â€œYou seem quite fascinated yourself,” I said. “Strange that you sought all these exotic women out if you really prefer boys,” I said teasingly. This encouraged him to try to shock me even more.
    â€œAll manner of sickly men would come to try their luck with these temple virgins. I watched all this and took the most beautiful women as my partners, but I always returned to my pretty boys with a great sense of relief.”
    â€œI wish I were a boy,” I said, “so I could experience these things.”
    And I meant it. I did want to devour the world and all its pleasures as Alcaeus immediately had known. But maybe I was also thinking that if I were a boy, he’d make love to me.
    I tried out this theory on the night before we set sail on our murderous expedition. We found ourselves alone in an olive grove in beautiful Pyrrha. The hills embraced us with their calming green. The olive leaves fluttered their small silver flags. I had made my obeisance to Aphrodite, had burnt incense heavenward, had sung hymns of my own making to my tutelary goddess. Then I dressed myself as a shepherd boy just for the fun of it.
    Alcaeus watched all this with a smirk upon his face. He openly laughed at both my devotions and my disguise. Then he challenged me.
    â€œYou know, little whirlwind, there is only one way to honor Aphrodite truly.”
    â€œHow?”
    â€œI cannot tell, I must show you.”
    I looked at him in childish perplexity. Then he pulled me under the silvery trees.
    â€œHere in Aphrodite’s grove, we must do Aphrodite’s bidding,” he said.
    I jumped back.
    â€œAre you afraid of your own goddess? You’ll never become a singer that way,” he teased.
    I felt my heart race. My knees began to knock. My delta grew wet.
    â€œAre you challenging me to grant you the gift of my virginity?” I was always too direct, too incapable of artifice.
    â€œWhat a quaint way to say it!” Alcaeus said with a laugh, making me blush furiously.
    â€œI am ready,” I said bravely, closing my eyes and opening my arms, “but I thought you liked boys!”
    â€œAren’t you a boy? You look like a boy! After all, boys are less trouble in the act—and afterward. They are less apt to whine and cling, less apt to try to trap you forever. Poor darling, you’re shaking,” Alcaeus said, wrapping his arms around me.
    â€œI’m ready,” I trembled.
    â€œLet’s lie under these tender green branches and drink a little wine and water. We don’t have to do anything but hold each other,” he said. (They always say that.)
    His arms enfolded me. His heart thundered against mine. We stared into each other’s eyes as if they were torches lighting a pitch-black room. His lips found my lips. The inside of my mouth and the inside of his became one. His huge legs wrapped around my tiny waist. The inside and the outside of my body became one.
    Aphrodite smiled down on us and blew her hot breath into all the orifices of our bodies. What was hard and strong opened into what was soft and warm. We moved together like dolphins playing in the waves, tail chasing tail, head nuzzling head.