Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 00:51:41 EDT
From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com
Subject: "Cool Moonlight and Warm Guitars"

		      COOL MOONLIGHT AND WARM GUITARS
			   By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
		     "WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM"

     The sun was a brassy trumpet in the washed-out sky, the light pounding
my eyes like the trumpet blasts of the triumphal procession, the heat
pummeling us as heartlessly as the drums beating their cadence.  For the
toreadors were entering the arena.
     "I tell you, it is because he is afraid." Manuel said to us through
the din.
     "No, no, it is because the spirit of the bull enters him.  It drives
him." Enrique insisted.
     "How could a man who is afraid of bulls become a matador?" Salvador
said gently.
     "He tries to face his fear." Manuel said, confident in his answer.  "I
would do the same.  Then, with the bull slain, the fact he could have died
himself stares at him in the eyes of the dead bull, and he gives in to his
fear."
     "You mean to say that you are afraid of the bulls." Enrique said.
     "My friends, my friends." I said quickly, before they could come to
heated words or even blows.  "This is an old argument and it can wait.
We'll watch again and see if it is fear, or if he is possessed by the
spirit of the bull, or if he is just a private man who just wants to avoid
the crowd coming down into the arena to congratulate him."  This was my own
argument about El Posador.
     We were in the seats on the eastern, sunlit side of the arena, they
cost less and it was hard enough to make a living without spending the
extra pesos it took to get into the shaded western side.  The sun was in my
face, even my sombrero could not block it entirely from my eyes.  I wiped
away the sweat without thinking about it.  I had been living like this for
a long time; if I wanted to see the bullfights, I had to settle for the
sunlit side of the arena.  At least the sun would drop even further and we
would have some shade for the last part of the show, and it was the most
important part.  It was when we would see El Posador.
     "There he is!" I shouted when I saw the familiar gold costume beneath
the red cape among the matadores in the procession.  "There he is!"
     "We have eyes." Salvador said.
     "But not ears any longer." Enrique said, holding his fingers in his
ears in pretended anguish at my shout.
     When I get excited, my voice rises both in volume and in pitch.  As my
mother said, "Juan does not shout, he shrieks."  It was true, even my own
mother admitted it.
     So I sank back, ashamed.  El Posador had heard me, even, upon the
arena, for we were near the bottom rows.  He turned his face up to mine, a
square of noble manhood beneath the black cap, and he smiled at me.  I
could see it, a arc of moonlight white on his face, I could see it!
Smiling, smiling at me!  Me!
     "He's seen me!" I shrieked out.  "He's looking right at me!  El
Posador!  Viva El Posador!"  I waved like a maniac and he raised a genial
hand in reply.
     "Juanito, my friend, please!" Enrique said.  "Your mouth is too close
to my ears.  I must move or be deafened and never hear the voices of my
grandchildren."
     I sank back, dazzled by this event.  He had never seen me before but
today!  Today he saw me, me!
     "You shall be lucky to even have one child." Manuel taunted him.
Manuel was married and had two children, and so he could afford to be
arrogant.  For us other three, no lovely unmarried woman had yet been won
over by any of our sweet words into forgetting our empty pockets.  As
Enrique once said wryly, it is difficult to talk smoothly to a girl without
money to buy her drinks or flowers or small gifts, to make your words more
sweet.  I forebore from pointing out that with his prominent nose and
skinny cheekbones that jutted out on either side, a woman would have to be
blind as well as in love to find Enrique's finer qualities.
     For myself, my mother was always trying to get me to meet this young
lady or that.  I argued that I was not yet ready for marriage, I wanted to
be free.  And while to her friends she repeated my words loyally, in
private she moaned that she would die without ever seeing a grandchild from
me, and me her only son.  I was too interested in watching the bullfights
to find a wife and make a family, she groaned in heartful despair.  And
then she would go off to the church and light another candle in prayer for
me, begging Mary and all the saints to find a girl that I would like and
send her to me right away!
     How could I tell her that I could not give her grandchildren, because
my heart had already found its match, and it was El Posador?  I could not
even tell myself that in so many words, when I lay on my lonely bed at
night, every night, my hand at my manhood, pumping away in defiance of the
priest's warnings about self-abuse, only when I would reach my peak and
stain my blanket would I murmur so much as the name.  "El Posador." the
words would murmur unbidden from my lips.  "El Posador, my love is yours."
And I would wipe the salty stains away and fall into a fitful sleep, filled
with black bulls and golden, beautiful El Posador.
     And today, today! he had seen me and smiled at me.  For the first
time, he had looked right at me!  I wanted to race back to my bed right
now, throw myself upon the pallet on the floor, and yank my pud, spray my
seed in white fury all over myself while that smile was still clear in my
mind.
     Still blinded by the light of the memory of that smile, I ignored the
first fights, all the beauty and artistry went on around me unheeded.
While my friends applauded or derided every action in the arena, I sat
there unmoving, unseeing, seeing only that face, that smile.  Right at me!
He had looked right at me!
     El Posador!  The settler?  The placer?  The putter?  Nothing could
tell our dazzled minds why he had chosen this name for himself inside the
arena.  When other matadors were eager to have their Christian names all
over on the posters on the walls, he was simply, enigmatically...El
Posador.
     When he walked into the arena, the final fighter of the evening, we
were in shade and the sun was beginning to touch the horizon.  But he lit
up the arena himself, by removing the purple cape from his shoulders and
accepting the plaudits of the crowd with the red cape.  But none applauded
or cheered so loudly, so heartfelt, as I did, and I wasn't applauding the
fact he was about to fight the bull.  I applauded because I could see him
now.  My reason for living, here, now, was this...to see him.
     "He is afraid." Manuel insisted.  "See how he quivers?"
     "He is not quivering." Enrique insisted.  "Only when he slays the bull
does his body tense up and he runs out of the arena."
     "He runs like a frightened child."
     "He runs like a man possessed by demons."
     "My friends!" I said to them.  "Wait and let's watch him."
     I barely saw the bull he was fighting, I was too entranced by his
body, the way he moved around in gracious circles, like he was dancing, his
brown limbs moving like the swaying trees in a wind, arced towards each
other to grasp and switch the cape over if need be, and so I could envision
myself in his extended arms.  His body was large and strong, you could see
the broad chest beneath the golden jacket, his face was beautifully still,
almost stern in concentration of his art, I could envision his eyes burning
down like that into mine.
     "El Posador!" I shrieked out, and fell silent again.  He had done
nothing to merit my shout to the crowd around me, who were engrossed in his
movements and otherwise quiet.  My shout was a single burst of sound in a
moment of tense quiet.  I had not even known I was going to shout until the
words came pouring out of my lips, full-grown, in all their fury.  His head
jerked towards me, my overloud shout, and the bull charged.
     I groaned in fear.  My shout had distracted him.  But he stepped aside
as smoothly as ever and the next few passes of the bull he handled with his
back to the beast and its fatal horns!
     The crowd poured out its shouts of praise to this intrepid hero.
     "Afraid of the bull, is he?" I said to Manuel.
     Manuel could only shrug.  His theory of El Posador was gone.  El
Posador was NOT afraid of the bull!  No man, even one out to prove his
courage, would turn his back on a pain-maddened bull.
     El Posador worked his poetry of motion, he wore down the bull, and
then motioned for the sword.  I leaned forward with the rest to the very
edge of my seat to see the finale.  Most matadors fought two bulls, but El
Posador, only one, always.  This would be his only kill of the day.
     The light was getting weaker, the sun was diminishing.  The bullfight
was over as soon as the sword was driven home.
     The flash of steel.  The red spray of blood, a clean kill to an
honorable opponent.  The bull gave a last whuffle and dropped, decently
dead.
     The crowd waved their handkerchiefs.  Both ears and the tail!  Both
ears and the tail!  He must accept it this time for certain!
     But El Posador didn't wait to receive the judge's call.  As always, at
this time, with his bull dead, El Posador's body jerked upright, and the
crowd hushed.  El Posador dropped the sword and the cape to lie filthy and
forgotten in the dust of the arena, and fled, running madly for the exit,
out of the arena and into the streets of the city.
     I wanted to run after him.  But I was with my friends and too far from
the exits.  One day, I swore, I would come without my friends, and I would
sit by the exit and I would dash after El Posador.  I would not shame him
by telling anyone what I saw if I could but follow him.
     I know it would have been simpler to wait outside for him to dash out
of the main gate as he always did.  But I never did that.  If I did, then I
couldn't have the joy of seeing him in the arena, the graceful moves of his
body.  So, as always, I sat where I was, a miserable coward, and only left
with my friends and with the crowds when the final moments of the bullfight
was over for another night.
     I went home for a light supper and then back into the streets.  It was
night now, and the hot day departing was giving myself as well as everyone
else some renewed energy and interest in life.  The air was still warm from
the day, and while the summer sun slept at last, we lived and rejoiced in
the cool night air.
     In the cooling air of day now gone, the guitars began to play.  It
seemed that night like every corner held a man with a guitar, making its
warm melody.  So soft, so slow, like a lover's touch, I felt so much at
peace with my emotions, my dreams of El Posador.  I could imagine, in those
golden notes that floated through the air, that he would reach out and
touch me.  I found a bench and sat for a time, still tired from the hot day
seated in the arena.  I would but close my eyes for a time....
     It was the moonlight that woke me.  I was not sure how much time had
passed, but the full moon was now high in the sky.  The guitars played on,
only a few now, but nearby.  Slow, golden notes, soft as the light of the
gentle moon.
     I looked around and saw I was alone, then up to the sky, and the
moonlight was the color of the smile of El Posador.  And I saw that the
moon bore a ring about it, what my mother always called "the wishing ring."
It was only a superstition, that when the moon had a ring, you could make a
wish upon that ring, but I felt a special power in that light.
     "Ah, El Posador." I spoke to that white light.  "If I could but hold
you for one night, I could die a happy man in the morning."
     Far off, some people laughed, and at first I thought they laughed at
me.  But when nothing more came of that, and I grew braver in my solitude,
I turned again to look at the moon and I prayed, "Gentle Moon, only you
know where El Posador hides after the fight.  Guide him to me this night, I
pray, let me speak to him as I have always wanted to.  I can no longer bear
the distance between us in the arena, for this day he saw me and smiled at
me and my heart is broken in two.  Please, take me to him, or send him to
me, for this one night."
     Some nights are magical, and the world moves to fit itself to your
needs.  I heard the footsteps on the alley behind me and I quickly turned
and moved to sit down.  And knowing the magic was mine that night, I was
not very surprised when I saw first the suit of lights, and the lights that
glimmered in the moonlight turned themselves into El Posador.  So when he
turned his deep eyes into my own, I was able to meet them with something
like self-confidence.
     "I saw you in the arena today." he said to me, recognizing me at once.
     "Yes." I said to him.
     "It was you who called out when I was facing the bull."
     "That was me." I admitted.  "I was afraid for you then.  The bull
nearly got you."
     He only smiled.  "The bull never gets me." he said.
     I knew then that Enrique was also wrong, that he was not possessed by
the power of the bull he had slain.  And since the magic was mine that one
night, the Moon had answered my prayer, I asked him the question that
everyone wondered.  "Why do you run out of the arena once you have killed
the bull?"
     "That is not easy to explain." he said to me, seeming to be willing to
explain it.  It was like he wanted to talk to me.
     "Sit by me, and tell me." I said.
     He moved and sat beside me on the bench.  From nearby, the slow
guitars continued their warm melody, and he was golden sparkling beauty
beside me on the bench, lit only by the moonlight, we were wrapping in
moonlight, moonlight and warm guitars.
     "There is danger in the bull." he started.
     "But you face that danger, unafraid." I said, fearing that he would
say he was afraid.
     "I am not afraid." he said.  "But the danger is there.  I would be the
biggest kind of fool not to know that one day a bull may catch me and toss
me about like a child's doll."
     "It nearly happened today, because of me." I said.
     "It was close." he admitted.  "I like it when it is close like that,
when there is something to take my attention away from the bull."
     "You turned your back on the bull for a time." I said, in awe at his
courage.
     "I like it when I cannot know what the bull is doing for certain." he
said.  "The danger makes me feel...alive."  And his eyes sparkled now with
their own fire, the fire of the matador.
     "Then why do you run when the bull is dead?" I asked him again.
     "Because the bull is dead." he said.  "And because I am alive.  When I
see the bull, see how strong he is and how cruel, and I know that I have
killed him, I am alive."
     "But why not stay and face the crowd, who only wish to honor you?"
     "Because I am alive." he said, stood up and paced with the fierce
energy of a cat.  And all the beauty of movement of a cat, as well, his
body shone with moonlit luster, the proud, strong body, the wonderful
smooth face.  "Because my blood is pounding in me, because my heart is
racing, because I can see everything about me as clearly as if it were just
created by the hand of God.  It moves my feet, it makes me run, because I
must see it all while it is still new, because my heart must do something,
because I am alive."
     "And so you run because you are alive." I breathed.
     "Yes." He said and sat beside me again.  "But then there is the
problem of what to do next."
     "To do next?" I asked, puzzled.
     "How to keep that feeling, the feeling of being alive." he clarified.
"My heart craves adventure, it needs excitement.  Nothing I have found is
enough.  And so I return once again to the arena, to face the bull again
and to feel alive once more."
     "You could go dancing." I suggested.
     "I have danced every dance there is." he said.
     "You could drink the way many men do after a bullfight." I said.  I
had seen other matadors, flushed with their glory, drinking to their
success.
     "I have drunk all there is to drink." he said.
     "You could take the attentions of a beautiful woman that has thrown
you her rose." I said, my heart sinking to think of him in a woman's arms,
instead of mine.
     "I have taken the flowers." he said heartlessly to me, piercing my
very soul.  "I have sunk into their bodies and tried to drink myself alive
from their bosoms.  But there is nothing there for me."
     "Then what else will you try?" I asked him.
     "Everything there is to try." he said.  "Until I find the one thing
that makes me continue to feel alive, on and on, not just when the bull is
dead.  Then I can stay in the ring and accept the people's applause,
instead of running out as I do."
     "What will you try tonight?" I asked him.
     "Tonight." he said.  "I shall try you."  And moving as if it were his
right, as if it were my destiny, he took me into his arms, and that face,
that beautiful face, reached for mine!
     When his lips kissed my own, it was like the gates of heaven had
opened up for me, and choirs of angels were singing all around me,
surrounded by streamers of yellow light.  His mouth tasted of sweet nectar,
no hint of tobacco or alcohol was upon it, only the gentle, rare essence of
him, El Posador, and he was giving it to me.
     His hands clutched my back and pulled me to him tightly, and it felt
as I had always dreamed it would feel, I could hear the faint rustle of his
suit of lights, and his hands moved upon my back, feeling me, touching me.
And the background to this music of our shared bodies, was the strumming of
guitars.
     I felt myself a clumsy child, I didn't know what to do!  In fantasies
everything moves so smoothly, but now, here, with El Posador holding me in
his arms, I couldn't think what was best to do!
     I reached below his arms to touch his waist, his slim,
muscle-tightened waist, and it felt as if I could touch my fingers both
before and behind him, though I knew that was impossible.
     He pulled me tighter and I either moved with him or sprawled in an
ungainly mass on the ground, so I moved up against his body though I had to
stand with one foot on the ground and the other hovering in mid-air, my
weight on that leg's thigh, but I didn't care for that.  I was pressing my
body up against his now, or he was pulling mine up against him, and I could
feel it now, feel it as a knob against my stomach...El Posador's manhood,
beckoning to me.
     And he moaned into my mouth and shifted and his groin was pressed
against me even more tightly, and now the knob became a shaft of warm
strength that strained to get next to me, and my own penis was a gnarled,
tangled, painfully constrained bulge below his own, and I dared to hunch
upwards with my buttocks and I pressed my knot of turgid flesh against his
own.
     We rutted against each other like that for some time, long slow
strokes of our bodies against each other, each movement running a line of
passion up and down my body.  I was kissing him still and his tongue
entered my mouth and I greedily sucked it into myself, tasting it, tasting
El Posador, making his flavor a part of my own senses, to be remembered
forever!
     El Posador let me overbear him, or perhaps he was still in charge and
chose to be the one reclining at ease in this joining of our bodies, for he
lay down on the bench and I was on top of him and I released his body and
chose instead to touch his chest, his broad, strong chest, feeling him,
knowing he was here, he was real.  This was my night of magic, my one night
with El Posador as I had wished.  I had to make it last, make it special,
make it everything my dreams had always wanted it to be!
     My need gave artistry to my hands, now I touched him in the ways I had
always wanted, now I caressed his body with long, slow, sensuous motions
and he groaned his pleasure up into my face staring ceaselessly into his.
I felt him though that suit of lights, and he let me feel him, let me touch
him, let me make love to him, while he lay there and enjoyed my eager,
worshiping touches.
     I touched his face, running my fingers over his strong jaws, across
his smooth cheeks, around his dark, smiling eyes, I traced the smile that
he wore on his lips and when my fingers had circled that soft track, he
reached up and kissed my fingertip, and that kiss, more so than anything
else, gave me courage.
     He was mine, this night.  Mine to make love to as I chose, I sensed
that now, he was not just soaking in the sensations of my hands upon him,
he was waiting to let me choose!  Such a wonderful gift to receive, your
dream lover in gentle compliance to your desires!
     I unbuttoned his shirt at the bottom, at first intending to unbutton
it all the way to the top, but when I first saw that part of him I had
never been able to see in the arena, when I saw the faint trail of hairs
upon his midline, broken only by the faint line of the navel, I had to
press my lips against it, and I did!  His skin tasted of the arena, of
bulls and barns and exertion and flirtation with death, a strong, firm,
leathery taste that was composed of everything I went to the bullfights
for, all of that which makes up a man was in this taste of his skin.
     He groaned as I kissed his stomach and moved upwards, and I felt his
cock like a sword-thrust at my neck.  "Ah, my gentle, my own, El Posador."
I breathed softly.  "For this one night, you are mine.  I shall give you
such pleasure as you have never before had, nor even dreamed of.  And your
pleasure shall be mine."
     With that promise of ecstasy for him, I turned my hands to the
unfastening of his trousers, faintly astonished that they were so
pedestrian in their design, a simple fly as adorned my own pants, quickly
unzipped and unbuttoned, and this his only covering, his tower of
masculinity sprung free and waved at me the way the sword waves at the
bull, searching for the right place to bury itself.
     I took the cockhead into my mouth, and it was salty and
strong-smelling, smelling of sweat and heat and the torrid air of the
arena, the first hot hours of the bullfight all nestled there in his groin.
I heard again the trumpets and the drums, felt again the heat upon my face,
and I reached up and grasped his foreskin and pulled it down and his glans
caught, strained, and then burst free into the air and I covered it once
more, this time with myself, my tongue tasting and swirling about the
tucker of skin at the lower part of the glans, where the foreskin holds
fast to the shaft with a curling, wrinkled pulpy mass of flesh, and I
tasted it.
     "Ah, ah!" came the soft sighs of desire from El Posador.  "Yes, my
little one, yes." he crooned.  "Take my manhood into yourself, drain me of
my very life, my strength, let me die like this, with you."
     I lifted my lips from his blessed manhood, and it wept in gratitude.
"Nay, El Posador, it is I who shall die at the end of this night, happy,
because I at last have you with me."
     And I dove back onto his pillar of virility, and now my body brought
up from some unknown place the knowledge I needed to properly move upon El
Posador's prick, for I was suddenly the most capable of lovers.  I darted
my tongue about his cockhead until he moaned in frustration, then sated
that frustrated desire by delving deeply onto him, and I would make hard,
fast motions of my head, and wring mountains of joy from his cock, until he
was groaning and panting with the sheer sensation of bliss upon bliss, and
then I would move slower, making shallower strokes, slowing down his
pleasure and leaving him sobbing for breath, small, guttural, inarticulate
sounds for mercy, yet I showed him none, for this was my night, my sole
time with him, and I would make it last!
     So I nursed his prong until it was a tower of steel in my hand, until
it burned so hotly that I thought it would glow with its own light, until
the beautiful face of El Posador was a sweat-drenched, lust-doused,
breath-bereft ghost of my hero, for I had him at the very heights of
pleasure and he was helpless now before me.
     "Ah, my gentle El Posador." I said to him as I stopped my
ministrations of my mouth upon him and worked him carefully with my hand,
the heavy dong making slorp-slorp sounds, heavy moist plops of noise, with
every motion of my hand.  "This night is mine with you, and now I have done
all I can with my mouth.  You must now, if you wish a relief from this
unending source of pleasure, become now the master, and take me here and
now, in this alley, with this moon and the gentle sound like rain of the
guitars."
     And I lay back upon the bench as he rose, quivering, his chest heaving
with his aroused passion.  I felt now how he must feel in the arena, with
the dark beast hovering, looking at him, about to impale him if it can.
But unlike him with his cape, I did nothing to block the charge of the bull
towards me.
     My trousers I had unfastened but done nothing more.  Now he was nearly
ripping them from my lower body, my boots remaining in place, the pants
stripped off around them, and flung down to the ground beside us and I was
bare below my waist, and he reached out, his two hands like the horns of a
bull, and he grasped my legs and he lifted them up and he held them wide
apart, and pulled me up on the bench some, so that he could straddle the
bench and my virginal ass was his for the taking.
     "Oh, nobody else!" I moaned as his cockhead found my entrance.
"Nobody else has taken me before you, El Posador.  Take me now, take me as
you will, it is all yours and only yours!"
     He was maddened with desire and deaf to any entreaty from me had I
begged for gentleness, so it was well I wished him to be the master here.
He pressed his cockhead against my anus, and the pain was a bright spear at
my vitals, but I only moaned and he pushed into me.  I was being stabbed by
El Posador with his sword of manhood, he was plunging it into my very
innermost self and I could only stay as I was and let him do it.
     His cock was a flexible saber that managed to fit itself into my
curved channels, or perhaps it straightened them out in some gentle way, I
know only that after the first burst of pain, there was no pain more, only
the overwhelming feel of fullness, I was filled with El Posador, his
powerful rod was filling me to capacity, and he looked at me with his head
cocked to one side, his eyes wide and glazed over, lost in his passion.
     With strong, sure moves like he used in the arena, El Posador began to
fuck me and my glad cries were flung from me like the flowers thrown by the
pretty ladies in the arena, while he closed his eyes, wandering about in
his own pleasure while his body wrung more from my bowels, both for him and
for me.
     I could not dream of a better fate than this, to be fucked by this
man, this hero, this legend, and I began to help him to fuck me, moving my
buttocks to increase his depth and his joy, while my sphincter clutched at
his tool tightly, milking at it, and he responded with small gasps of
ecstasy, oh, oh, oh!
     He released first one leg then the other, and I wrapped them around
his waist while he leaned over and grasped the bench on either side of me
and he hunched into my body harder and faster, while his mouth gaped open
with a small "O"of his delight, though no sounds came from his mouth other
than the hiss of drawn and expelled breath.
     I felt it then, the familiar creeping puddle of ecstasy building
within me.  "Oh, oh, El Posador, I am near!" I warned him.  "I will burst
out upon you, I will soil your beautiful suit of lights, El Posador, you
must be careful!"  My warning done, I gave myself to my climax, my orgasm
assailed my senses and I groaned loudly, fucking myself by clenching and
releasing my legs upon him, and I expected all this time that he would move
away so as not to be splattered with my explosion of joy.
     But he did not, perhaps he was too lost in his own pleasure, and when
I reached my peak and my volcano erupted, it sprayed all over him as I had
warned it would.  I was soaking El Posador, splattering the beloved form
with my seed.  He felt the first burst of it on his stomach and he gasped,
his eyes wide as if with surprise, and then he humped me all the harder and
then he was venting his pleasure the same as me, with the sounds of joy and
the feel of hot jism spraying into my innards.
     I clenched and milked him harder than ever when I felt that first
burst of jizz into my bowels, I was a frenzy of clutching sphincter, I
wrenched and squeezed his cockshaft hard and fast as I could, while he was
driven to greater heights of passion by my body, so that his climax
extended itself, even after he was done with his load of sperm into my
body, still he was moaning and jerking his body and hunching at my buttocks
and still I milked at him, determined to wring every last drop of his
climax out of him and into myself.
     Finally, he was done and he laid himself on me and I let my abused
body gasp for air as it would without hindrance from me.  His breath was
the zephyr of springtime when the world is cool and alive, brushing over my
chest and I reached up to stroke the sweat-soaked hair on his head, and he
turned his face up to smile into my face, and this time, instead of
becoming a maniac as I had in the arena, I smiled back into him, my body
sated, my wish granted, my life complete.
     "It was worth it, the wish." I said to him almost sleepily.
     "What is that?" he asked me, puzzled.
     I explained about the wish I had made, and how quickly it had come
true.  "And now I have my life's greatest wish." I said.  "For you have
made love to me and I now have memories instead of fantasies.  It is all I
could ask out of my life, this one night, with you."
     "So you have found what you were looking for?" He asked me, smiling
gently.
     "Yes." I said, and remembered that he, too, had come looking this
night.  "And I hope that you, too, found something of what you wanted on
this night with me."
     He stroked my body, a loving but final sort of stroke and arose,
adjusted his clothing and refastened it as I watched him.  "I fight in the
arena again tomorrow." He reminded me.
     "I know." I said to him.  "I wish that I could be there."
     "You will not?" He asked me, puzzled.
     "I come as often as I can." I pointed out.  "But I have no money."
     He smiled.  "What is your name?" He asked me.
     "I am Juan Garcia Esparza." I said.  "My friends call me Juan the
Crow, because of the loud way I speak sometimes."
     "Well, Juan the Crow." he said to me.  "Come to the arena tomorrow and
give your name to the ticketmaster." he said.  "And you will get inside,
with your friends.  I promise."
     "I thank you, El Posador." I said gratefully.  Of course he could ask
the man to let me inside for free.  It was a mere nothing to him, but it
meant I could see him again.  "I will see you tomorrow."
     He smiled, his teeth a crescent moon of light, and then he turned and
walked away.  I rose, dressed myself, and walked off to find the sound of
the guitars that echoed still in the alley, hoping that it would be a party
and I could find some company there.  But the guitars came from some
upstairs room somewhere, I could not find them, and so I went on home.
     My friends were suspicious when I said I was going to the arena.  None
of them had money and knew I had none.  I chose not to tell them of El
Posador, only said, "Come, let us go and ask the man to let us inside.  We
buy so many tickets, perhaps this day he will be generous."
     "He never is." Manuel said pragmatically.  But they had nothing else
to do, they came with me.
     I gave my name and nickname to the ticketmaster, and he was quick to
reach down and pull out four tickets to us.  Enrique was surprised.  "These
tickets!" He exclaimed.  "They are on the west side!"  For once, we were
going to see the fight in the cool shade of the western side.  He gave a
thousand thanks to the ticketmaster, who waved him away and waited on the
next in line.
     We settled into the seats, right down in front, and my friends and I
were happy.  Salvador even reached into his pocket and found enough money
to buy us each a small iced drink from the vendor.  So we drank in comfort
and were ready to watch the bullfights in style.  I waved happily to El
Posador when he came out with the toreadors, and he waved back, right at
me.
     They were as wonderful as ever, the bullfights, and it is so much
better to see them from the shade, so that the sun does not block any
single move.
     As always, El Posador was the last bullfighter, and I watched him
moving, that body which had so wonderfully pleased me the night before now
moving in equally smooth harmony with the bull.  I watched as he was in
excellent form, never better, and the bull at last collapsed beneath his
blade.
     "Now he will run." Manuel prophesied.  "He always runs."
     El Posador stood, looking at the dead bull.  Then his eyes lifted and
he looked at me and as he did, a stiffness went out of his body, which
stopped quivering.  To everyone's uproarious delight, he turned to the
judge's box and took his bow for the first time ever in any arena.
     "He did not run!" Salvador said in wonder.  "He did not run."
     "He is no longer afraid." Manuel judged.
     "He is no longer possessed by demons." Enrique pointed out.
     El Posador turned and looked at me, and I answered, "No.  He has found
what he is looking for."
     I had wished for one night with El Posador, and then death with
nothing else to wish for.  But now I saw my life stretching out before me,
the many thousand nights to come with El Posador, and all of them filled
with cool moonlight, and warm guitars.

				  THE END