Corinne and the Cheese

Corinne and the Cheese (Part 3)

By September I found myself in Bushwick, New York. I had met a musician, a pianist in D.C. named Jeff, who was also looking to manifest his dreams, or at least catch a glimpse of them, in a city that seemed to be teeming with them

We were crashing with a friend of one of Jeff's old college roommates Stacy—as these things go—Stacy had been on an email list for the Rainbow Brigade, a self-described intentional community, a collective of artists and alternatively minded individuals who lived and worked and partied together in an undisclosed warehouse in the neighborhood. They were having a party that weekend called Taste, and who could turn that down?

I learned you always have your ride drop you off a couple blocks away, that way the cops don't get suspicious. But given the sound system these guys were working with, I don't know if ten blocks would've made a difference.

We entered the party through a cellar door on the side of the building. The basement level was lit only by flashing strobes and the glow of cigarettes watching like eyes in the night. Sweat, molly, and the thumpity-bumpity beats of dangerously well-intended gum-chewing youth filled the room. I lost Jeff in the crowd and made my way through the sea of humid bodies and smoke until I found a staircase and began to ascend.

Upstairs I was confronted by a world no less alternative, but stylized as if to say that it was a privilege to be there. Velvet curtains draped from the 15-foot ceiling to the floor, candelabras adorning wooden tables surrounded by couches. A woman walked by and exchanged glances with me, wearing nothing but silver-plated pasties in the shape of a flaming sun, and a long sheer skirt in moonbeam blue, the same color as the glowing makeup beneath her eyes. She held a plate of baklava, honey and almonds.

I followed her into the next room. There, an even larger room, more couches, and now mattresses, occupied by men and women tangled with one another, some in similar degrees of elegant yet earthy garb, but most in nothing at all. Platters of various foods and hukah's surrounded the mattresses. It felt like I was somewhere between Eyes Wide Shut and Burning Man.

"Care for a bite?" A man put his his hand on the small of my back and approached me from behind. He was 6 feet and entirely naked. His hair was thin but his beard thick, and the room's flames reflected in his eyes which pierced through me. He breathed out as if with intention to intoxicate me, and the effort was not in vein.

I looked down at his platter. Strawberries and apricots, table crackers and cottage cheese.

"Yes, please."

He took my hand and guided me across the room, navigating between contortions of bodies. We landed on a couch in the far corner.

He shared his name and asked for mine.

"Is this your first time here?"

"Yes," I said.

"This is a place where a lot of things happen for the first time."

"That's why I'm here," I said

He leaned over and began kissing my neck, undoing my bra through my dress in the process.

Soon I was propped up on the couch, my new friend on his knees on the floor before me. As he ate me out, one hand propped back my leg while the other grazed a strawberry over my nipples, eventually gliding down towards my belly button.

He brought the strawberry closer to my opening, and then looked up at me.

"The cottage cheese," I said.

He looked surprised, and in that moment I could see a speck of self-consciousness.

He dipped the strawberry int the cottage cheese.