I brought Trumbo’s book along for the ride. It was a long march we planned. Peace signs flashed from the crowd in hippie tie-dye. Too many T-Shirts were sweating up the bus. Freedom was a state of mind. We had that in common.

“Love Rules,” was what Lenny wore. All his limbs were taken. Except that last.

Hard bone is what he had. Hard heart. Hero heart.

Cinnamon, who’d sketched her name in henna curvatures all over Lenny, pushed his wheelchair.

“Tart,” he said, noticing the brown-eyed beauty of her nipple suckling their baby.

I was too old to do anything but read. I knew it was going to be up to the young, occupying everything, assuming they could peel their eyes away from the texts. Letitia slid her hand along my jeans-clad cock. Twenty to my 55, she gave me courage all over again. I was still a man. A woman still wanted me. She fingered my book and told me to shut it.

What could I say once she started to kiss me with that delicate, pretty tongue?

I got lost.

Lenny smiled at me. We were daddies now. We’d reinvented ourselves after ‘Nam.

© 2013 Valentine Bonnaire. All rights reserved. Content may not be copied or used in whole or part without written permission from the author.

Bio: Valentine Bonnaire’s work can be found in the archives at ERWA in the galleries and Treasure Chest. “Flowering” will appear this year in The Mammoth Book of Quick and Dirty Erotica edited by Maxim Jakubowski. Three chapters of “Man in the Moon” appear in “From Porn to Poetry 2” edited by Susannah Indigo. (as Adrianna de la Rosa)