Paranormal Romantics

It's Utopia, Baby!!
by  Francesca Quarto

"Oh, don't get me wrong sweet cakes. This Utopia place, sounds like some kinda Ocean City fun park!  I mean with all that perfect harmony stuff you're talking about."

Franky stopped speaking and she was relieved.  He had cultivated a life-long New Jersey accent. Every word he spoke was like a trip down a cheese grater on her ears.

"First, don't call me sweet cakes, or any other moronic sexist idiom you can create," she said through her teeth.

"Second, Utopia isn't like a fun park, or any other gathering place for flip-flop wearing, soda swilling, Board Walk Bunnies in bikinis!   it's an imaginary place; an island, that was described by Sir Thomas More, in a book he wrote in fifteen-sixteen.  It describes his vision of a perfect political and social system.  Maybe you would have known about it, if you read a book, rather than the Sports pages, once in a while."

"Huh?  I mean, you don't have to get all up in my face with attitude, baby!  When we hooked up last night, you didn't seem to mind my sports-perfect body!  I got a degree in Physical Education by the way."

He seemed hurt, but she went on.  Now Carmella was incensed by his bringing up her greatest weakness in life; sex and security.  Not necessarily in that order.

At twenty-eight, Carmella had a fear of turning thirty without any prospects for a long-term relationship, let alone, marriage.  Her Italian heritage ran deep and the large family gatherings she endured over the years, were hell.

With endless questions about boyfriends and plans for settling down, code for getting married, she was beginning to feel like her spinster great-aunt, Florencia, or Floppy as everyone knew her. Already, well-meaning cousins would glance in Floppy's direction when talking to her about potential husband material.

Floppy had grown up in lower Manhattan.  New York had managed to squeeze her like a vise, until she was as stunted as a pygmy shrub.  Her enormous head of frizzy gray curls, did little to alter the vision of a walking bush and her breath smelled like a garden compost pit.

All in all, Carmella knew she was nothing like this horticultural anomaly, but the fear of remaining single haunted her every decision.  And Franky was one of the results of that process.

"You're an idiot, Franky, if you think I'm impressed with your perfect body.  It just proves you spend more time working your biceps than your brain."

That shot seemed to hit somewhere in the unconscious part of that gray matter; the part that wasn't concerned with being a muscle-bound Viking storming the Jersey shore.

Franky looked deeply into her eyes and suddenly lurched forward, pulling her into a deep kiss.

When she could breath again, he spoke softly, the knife edge of his Jersey accent barely registered in her hearing.

"I love it when you talk like a professor to me, with all that fire in your eyes and your lips kind of trembling with all that...passion.  Oh,baby!."

Carmella felt herself melting into those well-formed abs, as they fell back onto the bed they had recently vacated.  It was still damp from their exertions, the sheets hanging like dead sails over the side.

She no longer thought of finding the perfect man, matching her intellect, point for point; she didn't think about the perfect symmetry of two well-trained thinkers...in fact, she stopped thinking altogether.

After, would be time enough to reflect on the inequalities in society.  Time enough to contemplate the myth of male superiority.  Here, wrapped in the arms of this adoring man, there was no cogitating and thank the gods, time was standing still