Why Do I Show My Body?
by Arlene Ang
The anonymous letter leaps to the screen.
Sunday morning coffee swirls steam beside
the mouse. I am grateful everyone is at Mum's.
Like reflected lights on a disco ball,
the rotator switched on, men dance to mind.
Could it be the Uluru National Park guide
whose eyes whistled up my mini-skirt when I
bent to collect his coin? That was twenty-six
years ago. He moaned deliriously about wombats
while I burrowed deeply into his faded jeans.
The most likely remains the Alemain archivist.
He had big dreams, long monologues that begged
subvention for his telluric sounding rocket,
a poor tongue when it came to French.
We separated in anger; he must be 92 by now.
Sweetly, I revive the hotel manager in Mumbai.
He was a gentleman, taciturn and rational
when it came to laying his fingers on a woman's
skin. Eighteen hours nonstop, we generated
heat in bed under unclean sheets and slept.
Nothing compares to the Taranaki bellhop
in Sri Lanka, the only one without a camera.
His station wagon, its rust like unwashed
excrement, was economical. We broke springs
in the backseat that day and called it love.
At 56, married with three children, I am suddenly
implicated in indecent exposure, perhaps
adultery. I do not panic. I calmly open
the attachment. Later, my husband finds
the worm, raises hell for all the wrong reasons.