263. TOPPING THE PLATE, OR, DOMINATION SHIFTS IN THE TECTONICS SINGLES BAR

From the Archives. (October 2006) A geologist at UNC Chapel Hill recently discovered that the Amazon River once flowed in the opposite direction. Yep. Just think about it. The world’s largest river basin once flowed from the Atlantic to the temperate Pacific but suddenly reversed course some 500 million years ago when a butchy Grace Joneslike tectonic plate from Africa felt the pull of a saucy plate from South America and remembered longing.

Africa shuddered briefly then slid her way across the crowded dance floor as South America anticipated the pleasure of promised resistance. Then Africa was sliding her long fingers along the South America’s curves and moaning softly as something solid gave way inside her. Recognition disappeared as suddenly as it appeared though, as South America’s mouth found Africa’s taut raised peaks, licked hungry stone.

The plates stepped back, took in the full enticing length and breadth of each other with wolf-quick motions, each still confident that nothing could dislodge her geography. Then South America pressed wrapped her long muscular legs around Africa’s eager hips and pressed the full intoxicating weight of her passion against her.

Dampness sprang from Africa’s deserts as they embarked together on an expedition into each other’s lush valleys and mounds.

Their mouths went dry. Then wet. Then dry again, their landscapes slick as the lovers gyrated through the long opening moments of this inevitable dance, during which one partner moves from controlled cautious motion into full-blown erupting earthquake, quivering and screaming as ridge finds fissure finds cave finds pounding contraction and caution tsunamis into all-out heaving gasps.

Then one plate shifted her significant weight long enough to press the full gravity of her presence into the other and the other reciprocated and they sucked in air and held on, drinking in the intoxicating musk of each other as caves throbbed open and tidepools filled with water.

Africa’s fissures were already stretched taut when the two shifted gears just long enough to stare into each other’s astonished eyes. Then the floor gave way and Africa's backbone arched and she found herself screaming with each alternating heave and thrust.

When South America tightened her legs around Africa’s bucking hips, whole valleys flooded as her stone façade gave way, spreading spewing molten lava over twitching thighs with each eruption as sedimentary stone and watery amens spewed full force from her dilating caves.

Then Africa fell headlong into that timeless moment when the slightest shift can re-establish gravity, tear open all boundaries as bodies move into and out of and over and around another’s in a heaving tectonic vibration that can leave whole rivers churning with release.