Tempting Tangerines and Leonardo Fucking DiCaprio
For better or worse, produce reminds me of people. Though varying shapes and multi-hued colors indicate nothing of tasteless interiors and less frequent, hard to resist deliciousness. Still, my hope lingers on branches weighed down with fruit ripe and ready after catching the sun.
The lifespans of both produce and people mirror the quick and the dead. Sudden opportunities, missed by hesitation and doubt remind me of this truth. Recently, a guy just thirty-years-old saw past my crow’s feet to stir in me desire I forgot I possessed. He was delectably ripe, and my imagination had grown tired of restraint. Dismissing the considerable age gap, I dub him, Tangerine to stoke some forgotten flames.
This was not the tender musings of Romeo and Juliet. His eyes lingered just long enough to cause a tide of sensual thoughts that took away my breath. A static charge skimmed down my arched back as the wolf of wall street possessed me.
Suddenly self-conscious, I halted my next lascivious thought.
Then a murmur heard — “Don’t stop there.”
I whipped around to look at empty space behind me.
Get a grip, I whispered. Who am I explaining myself to?
“I believe you’re talking to me.”
That snark, that arrogance, brought darkness of a total eclipse, clouding my Tangerine into nothingness. To my horror, my mental tryst was intruded by the vaporous form of Leonardo DiCaprio. Really? I’m being cock-blocked by a six foot Peter Pan just by poking one damn toe into waters desperate in need of rippling? My conscience sends me the one guy so easy to loathe: Leonardo Fucking DiCaprio. What could this boy’s life of dating women barely legal to drink have to do with me? Besides his mom, what other post-menopausal women does he give a thought to? Back off Meryl, icons don’t count.
His presence shifted the sand beneath my wannabe cougar feet.
“I’m not planning the great Gatsby,” I defended. “Just a little catch me if you can in what was a private moment.”
DiCaprio grins, “Private and hot. Is that coming off you?”
Leonardo Fucking DiCaprio, the little brother I never wanted. I side-eye him to hide my flushed cheeks while feeling fire hotter than taking the last bite on Hot Wings.
“I loved your girlfriend’s prom dress.” Lame, I know but it was all I had.
“Funny, she graduated five years ago.”
“Pardon me, that makes much more sense now.”
I don’t know if it was excitement or revulsion that I felt but the warmth had stirred the ivory tower conscience. A by product of living alone, I’ve named inner dialogue by the duties they perform. Mostly to save me from myself are Moral Compass and Common Sense; obvious pragmatism. Magical Thinking, forever pushing Imagination toward the jagged cliffs of indignity. Regret and Doubt offer persuasions as I teeter, then lay bets on the manner of my fall. I have listened to and ignored them before. The latter to my own peril.
Common Sense, always first in opinion, “Woman, you’ve been off the branch for eons. Don’t embarrass us, get off that baby produce.”
It’s true, where gravity once kept my feet on the ground, time has pulled my ass there as well.
Moral Compass adds, “Your age is what’s relevant, indignities are plentiful after sixty. Just ask the lothario.”
“Lothario?” Leo hears, “Thank you but I’m only fifty.”
Regret giggles, “Not a compliment.”
Enter the breathless one. Magical Thinking whispers, “Age is a revenant; a return to what we were. Tangerine is begging to be peeled.”
“Are you smoking that incense?” Moral Compass asked. “Lose the crystals and stop whispering, this isn’t porn.”
“Calm down,” I say. “I’ve only had a few risqué thoughts.”
Doubt, ever the digger ask, “Is it revulsion or envy that you feel for Leo who gives zero fucks about what people think?”
“Envy,” DiCaprio crowed. “She’s wavering.”
The libidinous incense smoker still echoing in my ears.
“The hippie’s right,” says Leo. “I bet Tangerine likes produce that’s been around. Someone past all the growing pains bullshit.”
“Are you offensive by nature or choice?” I ask. “Off the branch isn’t expired or around the bend.”
My Better Judgment asked, “Noted, but why the Gerber fruit?”
“Tangerine isn’t Gerber. His cherry is long gone while mine has regrown. Why is he forbidden fruit and not guilty pleasure?”
“Fuck guilt,” says Leo. “But nothing under twenty. That’s no bueno.”
I’m dripping in ectoplasmic ick.
Common Sense laughed, “Not exactly revolutionary road.”
Leo elbows away my sensible side. “Don’t listen to her, it is guilt free revolutionary road. Your engine’s humming. Put it in drive, already.”
My teeth about to pierce my lip, I feel my cool vintage wink fade to post-menopausal Q-Tip with an unfortunate twitch.
Regret knows but asks anyway, “Is he younger than your son?”
Searching for defense, I ask; “Finding long, lost fire has no age. Does Leonardo Fucking DiCaprio ever say she’s too young?”
Leo bristles. “Hell no, except under twenty, remember that’s no bueno.”
Finally, a titanic opening. “You do know there was room for you on that door floating in the freezing Atlantic?”
“It was just a movie,” Leo shrugged.
“Said the departed.”
The source of carnal angst returns in a mist for the moral tug of war between my ears. With barely a line on his face, Tangerine smiles. His abundance of collagen has cougar sand slipping further from my feet.
“Fine,” I relent. “This feels good.”
Leo winks, “Don’t it though?”
“You’re overthinking this,” says Tangerine.
“One more word from you and it’s to bed with no dinner,” I reply.
He purrs, “Come with.”
Adorable but, no. With the return of terra firma, Tangerine drifts from my Imagination.
For this round of chatter, Magical whispers her last, “It’s always been up to you to fan the flame.”
Leo swaggers up, giving my shoulder a nudge.
“Engine still humming?” Leo asks.
“Yes, because I’m not dead.” I too long ignored my pilot light that is still aglow.
“Feel a bit younger?” Leo asked.
Without thinking, I find myself smiling at the vanishing specter of Leonardo Fucking DiCaprio. Exhilarated and exhausted, I kind of get this vaporous rogue. The utterly beautiful and torturous experience does beg the question:
How does Leo do it?
