Moontalk
Take me to the moon!
I want to bathe in moon dust! Oh, yes, I know it’s crazy, but, you know, bathing in moon dust would be like bathing in dead people’s ashes, but I have had a different picture of the moon all my life – in all those romantic songs about the moon. “Fly me to the Moon,” and all that. I want to make love in the moonglow. I know the moon itself is cold, but she will be waiting for me in our moon cabin. It runs on wheels, and it has a sail. The sail is an illusion, of course, in that windless atmosphere, no wind to carry us along as we make love. Yet the sail does provide the solar energy that makes it move. But maybe you have seen some of the moon cabins. Maybe had a tryst in one with some moon maiden?
She – my lady, Diana – is one of the first to be born on the moon, and raised there. She’s never been to the earth. Ain’t that a kick. The reverse of most of us who have always been on earth, never been to the moon. Good thing I’ve got this periodic engineering project there. It makes a difference, you know, being raised on the moon. She’s never seen grass, only virtual grass, virtual woods, virtual everything. Well, of course, in the crystal city they do have fountains and trees – I forget – but they just don’t look wild like on earth.
A woman like that, born and raised in an artificial world, is not like a woman born on earth – and I don’t mind. In fact, I love it! The poets and mythmakers imagined a moon goddess, but my girl Diana is the moon goddess they only imagined – and the real thing is so much better than the dream. All of them born and raised there are different than we eartheans. Each of them dedicated to being very individual, almost eccentric, each learning a different earth language. Diana, for instance, only speaks Latin. It turns me on. Me being ex-Catholic, her Latin makes me feel like I’m her ritual sacrifice – but do I mind? Hell, no! Her altar, you may have guessed, is our bed.
I don’t mean to say that we don’t leave the bedroom at times, even though lovemaking takes precedence because my furloughs from my work on earth are so brief – and too seldom. But we also wander in and out of the crystal-walled buildings and in the gardens of the moon. The plants there are half like the plants of the earth, but so many are artificial creations that look like plants but are silver, although they move like plants in the artificial breezes under the great domed city, and their blossoms are crystal and full of light.
It’s a real turn-on, the moon. They used to say it was torn out of the earth, leaving the big chasm that is filled with the Pacific Ocean, and, even if that is not true, it has that feeling of love that is born from the pain of separation just the way Diana and I love each other the more intensely because we must endure long separations. I think of the way whales, mammals that had crawled out onto the land, then returned to the sea, sometimes beach themselves inexplicably and die on the beaches, longing so much for their old homeland, I think. But don’t think I’m sad. I’ll be sad on the trip back maybe, but now—Now I can hardly wait. Maybe you will see her before you drive away – Diana, Diana, my moon goddess. If you get back to earth before 10 p.m., earth time, they say they will be laser-projecting that wonderful film MOONSTRUCK, using the moon as a movie screen. Get out and get under the moon with your girlfriend and watch that happy romance.