Jacks Christmas Angel

The clock in the living room struck 11. Jack had already made significant progress towards his mentally decided upon though stated out loud to nobody goal or making it through another Christmas eve as peaceably as possible. This he'd done admirably, even, he now thought to himself, impressively, smiling all throughout dinner, although not too much smiling, and even laughing when laughter seemed what was required of him. Now he and his wife Mavis were together in the bedroom, as they were every night about this time, getting ready for sleep. Along with TV watching, that accounted for all they ever seemed to do in the bedroom these days, sleep. As per usual they were doing their best to avoid conversation. Mavis did it by way of fixating on a wall mounted flat screen, and Jack by changing into his bedtime clothes in the most obscure unobtrusive shadows of the bedroom he could find.

Mavis thumbed through the channels; after having bypassed both

A Christmas Story

and

A Christmas Carol

, she settled on

It's a Wonderful Life

, not even looking at her husband while he slipped on his pajamas. That was unfortunate; a more interested eye might have seen how Jack, despite being now in his 60s, the late prime of his life, was still noticeably handsome, albeit in a non-precocious way. He wore an attractive, neatly printed pair of men's pajamas, clean white and patterned over with a navy pin stripe. These fit him very well, thank you much, not too tight and not too loose on his slim, mid-height body.

Jack seemed young, a lot younger than he was, maybe because he was slight, and somewhat Balanchine, or at least he liked to think he came across like that, tried to think so, on nights when he struggled futilely to rescue his ego from the sinking suspicion that he was really just an aging and unwanted little personage attached to Mavis. But a more neutral less critical person might have said that Jack was neither too tall nor too short, not too thin or too stocky, but was simply what he was, and had long now been: a kindly looking older man with a full head of hair and brown, intelligent eyes that held warmth, and, just lately a worn-out hunger.

Jack and Mavis were entering their fifth decade of marriage now, and though actually three years his junior, Mavis look more settled, older. It was as though she had resigned herself to the apparently preordained rule that these years of their life would and ought to be boring, sexless years where she and her husband would atrophy side by side together like two pieces of dried fruit, and his piece did little but get on her nerves. It was sort of sweet just for it's apparent long-lastingness, but it was also kind of gross and unnatural. They'd been married a long time, a time interminably long, it lately seemed to poor Jack, though he chastened himself for thinking it, and sometimes quite mercilessly. Mavis was, after all, his first love, and the mother of his three children; she had once called him the love of her life, but that was many, many years ago, long before his mustache had turned year after year a little whiter.

Nowadays Mavis managed the local business they ran and had started 10 years ago; a little Mom and Pop shop where Jack worked the register and took care of inventory. Mavis decided he was best managed and utilized in that capacity, rather than allowed too much control, so she handled the books and took care of all things managerial. That was Mavis. They'd met just out of high school, and quickly fallen in love. Young and smart, but somewhat awkward, Mavis had been the first girl with whom Jack had had any kind of sex, first just kissing and petting, and ultimately a full year after they'd first met each other, full on intercourse. And soon after that, Mavis had gotten pregnant. Jack still in the earliest blushes of their love and having been raised to honor his responsibilities, had asked her to marry him. All these years he'd tried to be what Mavis wanted. But as time went on he wondered if they shouldn't have dated a little longer before making the commitment to be together for life.

When their courtship began, Mavis had seemed delighted with everything Jack did for her. She laughed at all his jokes, packed picnic lunches which they took to the park and sometimes, after feasting and under a grove of cool, white bottomed oak leaves, kissed him passionately, pressed herself to his body and even pushed an ardent palm supplely against the place in his jeans where her love for him generated heat and aliveness, the best feeling.

But all that was a long time ago. Now the children were grown and their sex life had become non-existent. This seemed not to bother Mavis, though it did bother Jack. Awkwardly he'd brought up the topic with her on occasion, asking what they might do to bring the passion back to their relationship. Mavis suggested that this part of their life would naturally be more geared towards friendship, a shared life among people who had known each other a long time, were comrades if not passionate lovers. They were old, and sex was for young people. Jack had tried to accept this, out of love for her and, truth be told, feelings of guilt over an affair he'd had ten years ago, but despite that he still felt abandoned, and neglected, and untouched. Poor Jack was a man married to a woman who'd lost interest in him, but who was still interested in sex himself. He still wanted to be touched, to make love and feel pleasure, but, given that the woman he shared a bed with seemed to have outgrown all that silliness, he began to think of himself as bad, kinky, abnormal. Was it true that most men had lost interest in sex by this time in their lives, and, if so, shouldn't he have? What was wrong with him? Was he freakish for still wanting sex with his wife, now that, as she pointed out rather mercilessly to his mind, they were old enough to be grandparents?

Jack kissed Mavis good night, a dry kiss on the cheek, which she acknowledged by patting his thigh without turning her eyes from the TV set. He then closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep.

He must somehow have succeeded. Around 2 AM he glanced at the clock on the night stand and became aware that at some point his wife had turned off the television. Jimmy Stewart must have reached that final moment of realizing he mattered to somebody for yet another year, but as for Jack, he felt as unwanted as ever. He thought of how this was the night when, as a little boy, he'd lain awake in rapturous anticipation, wondering if Santa would bring him whatever toys he'd most wished for that year. Now, finding it hard to make out the numbers on the bedside clock as they rolled over to 2:02, he suddenly realized the filmy, blurry look of the numbers was a direct result of his vision being clouded. Jack was crying, crying quietly and pitifully into his pillow, curled in a crumpled human half-hearted approximation of a C, shaped away from his wife, like a child who didn't want to be noticed. In an effort not to bother Mavis with it, not to, worse, provoke her further disdain for his silly "sensitive love stuff" as she called it, Jack stifled his sobs. The truth was, Mavis had never cared much for Jack's sensitivity. And in so many ways over the years she'd let him know it. She no longer considered him much of a man, Jack knew that deep down, however he tried to avoid it during the day time. Mavis had always wanted someone rugged, and, in the early part of their marriage, Jack's mental quickness and enthusiasm for learning a little about everything had seemed to pass in Mavis's estimation as that kind of male aggression. But now, after decades of married life, the jig was truly up. Mavis regarded Jack as a contemptible irksome little sniveler, someone she was tired of having to share space with, let alone fuck.

For at least half an hour Jack tried unsuccessfully to will himself out of this worthless crying, back to sleep, back to the serenity he'd thought he'd achieved earlier. But he couldn't. What was worse, he admitted to himself that he couldn't even explain why he was crying, here on Christmas, in the 2AM moonlight that dripped in from the cold winter window. It was almost as though the façade he'd managed to successfully keep up all evening now forced its way up and out through the path of least resistance; in this case, that was his eyes; and then that sorrow exited, left his body in a stream of unwanted but unstoppable water works. Finally accepting he wasn't going to be able to prevent himself from crying in bed all night long, Jack sat up, crept from his side of bed carefully, careful, careful not to wake up the lightly snoring Mavis.

He wasn't sure what he'd do. Maybe make some warm milk? Sometimes that helped him sleep, the tryptophan launching peacefully from the heated milk molecules while they seeped down his throat and then into his blood stream. On his way to the kitchen, he paused to look at the Christmas tree. Though he'd felt certain he'd turned off the lights himself before he and Mavis turned in, here it was, all lit up again and sparkling. Even still, it was pretty through the soft glow of his tears. Stupid tears. What would Mavis say if she ever saw!? He was barely even a man anymore but some washed out, insufferable mouse, or at least he felt that way around her. There were times now when he felt he barely knew Mavis, their marriage had become so lonely. It'd been months, so many he'd lost count, since they'd had sex, and the bored look in her eyes after she pecked him on the cheek now and then cut right through him.

It was during this torrent of sad thoughts that Jack noticed, to his surprise, the lit Christmas tree was actually moving! One of the branches on it's left side shook. Ornaments glistened and wobbled as did a far string of lights. Was he dreaming? Was he losing his mind? Wiping his tired eyes he suddenly observed that all this time, someone had been watching him. Somebody was lurking hidden just behind the tree, and in fact, a shadowy figure now slowly came from back there.

First an arm stretched out, a little arm, slim but substantial, and then a small hand...then a body followed, long haired in its silhouette; and then legs, a pelvis, two small feet. What was going on!? He was having delusions, had to be, otherwise, well...it looked like right here in his living room a young woman had fully emerged from behind his Christmas tree.

Jack had never seen this person before in his life. He backed up, startled, muttering, "Who the hell are you?" Quickly, almost terrifyingly fast, the young woman moved toward him, deliberately, placed her right index finger over Jack's mouth and stared urgently at him.

Looking into her face only inches from his and dimly lit by the Christmas lights, Jack found him self peering into the most eerily beautiful eyes he had ever seen. These were young eyes, belonging to a thirty year old, maybe, but they seemed sort of...otherworldly, not really placeable by age the way most people's eyes were. Their color felt difficult to put into words: blue and green, but not really, and not even like the sea...like the green of a lake maybe, one he'd visited as a little boy in the summer, when the pine trees reflected in it, when his mother had let him lay in her lap and sometimes stroked his hair absently while she chatted with a friend. It flew in waves under the sun, the color of the young woman's eyes. She said, "Shhhh," and indicated to him he should remain still, and then, and then, as though nothing he did could prevent what was about to happen, this strange unexpected person who'd appeared in his living room began kissing him. For a moment Jack did nothing. His mouth felt like a cave, vacant, forgotten. He resisted then---he was, after all, confronted with an intruder in the house—who was this?! And besides, he was married.

Even so, his resistance quickly softened. The young woman's kiss was determined. She pushed her tongue through his mouth, filled it with tender slick wetness. Jack had never had a dream like this before. He hardly knew dreams like this one existed; she still pressed her lips into his, placed her hand against the side of his face, stroked gently down his cheek with her fingers. All the time she pressed into him, harder and harder, with her lips, tongue, her body. She was coaxing his mouth, coaxing him to remember. There was something from summers as a young man, his first crush, his first kiss, the first time he felt the blood flow through his penis from a lover's touch. Slow and intricate. His mouth opened and opened. She pushed down with her tongue. Jack soon found himself reeling. Her tongue pushed around his mouth and she used its tip to pet inside him. Jack started to feel himself not dead anymore; now instead, he fluttered. His cheeks flushed, his stomach felt soft and eager, very light, and she knew as she did this everything he was feeling. She did something else that sent Jack over an internal hurtle he now couldn't get back from and didn't honestly want to. She pressed her body against him. She had soft, intoxicatingly warm breasts. She pushed them into him too, and he felt their urgency. Full and soft, female and human. Now her fingers were moving through his hair, now her tongue moved deeper inside his mouth. Jack relaxed. This was, of course, a dream! A happy dream, a soothing dream, the kind of dream desperately lonely men were lucky enough to have sent to them every once in a while. To soothe his sad, lonely heart and unloved body, his mind was dreaming. And given that, why shouldn't he just go ahead and enjoy it, every goddamned passionate part?

Here was something he'd wanted so long now, something he'd done without for so long. Yes, and now the pieces got brighter, the room hotter. He moved his hands to her breasts, cupped them soft and floated into her welcoming kisses. He moved his thumbs round her nipples, all around their aureoles, up their hot, hardened points. Now she was doing something else, what was she doing? Running her cool little fingers under the shirt of his pajamas, touching his back with so much kindness, moving forward towards his own nipples. What was she doing? She was rubbing her thumbs, one for each nipple, over the soft sensitive little rings he too had on his chest, maybe not full like hers but still supremely soft and sensitive. She kept rubbing and rubbing until both of them filled up with blood. On his chest now sat two little stiff monuments of flesh, molded up to her desire for him. They got achingly hard; she soothed them, first with her fingertips, tracing the nerves light and electric, pushing harder with the pads of her thumbs; back and forth, and then finally with the sweet wetness of her mouth.

The old couch stood by the Christmas tree; she pushed him back toward it, down onto it, pushed him down, and now straddled him. He hardly knew where he was and didn't care. For the first time in weeks maybe months, Jack felt wanted. Of all the parts of himself that appreciated that feeling—not the least among them his heart—it was true he was intensely aware now how much his long-suffering penis appreciated it. That was where he felt needed and wanted by her the most, felt desire to give something that her own heart required. Jack barely had time to recognize he was getting an erection before the sensation of the young woman's lips on his chest started moving down his now seamlessly undressed body (somehow she'd gotten every one of his pajama buttons undone, how on earth did she do that?)

The soft skin of his belly felt her lips working towards him. Then came her mouth. The strange, beautiful woman lightly pulled down his pajamas and placed her lips on the tip of his penis. Then she started something that was nothing like he'd felt from Mavis, not even in the beginning. She started something that made him question whether Mavis had ever wanted him at all. This stranger wasn't so much "performing" oral sex on him as she was devouring him. She wanted something primal, raw, and he gave, he gave and gave. She lapped the tip of him with her tongue to get at his sweetness, and then glided the roof of her mouth down along his cock. His skin was velvety sweet and she savored it; warm and male, cleaned with faint castile soap, taste of sweat and male flesh; he was good, he was perfect, she loved the taste of him. She held him now in her mouth, partly still, softly suckling, and the taste lit her up, seemed to turn something loose in her chest. They turned into their own private ecstatic mound of fully human writhing. She put him further in her mouth, and her mouth closed around him and she sucked like a child sucking at its mother to satisfy irrefutable hunger.

Everything felt urgent now. She loved the salt, earth taste of him and Jack closed his eyes. He, who had not had a woman give him oral sex for years and more years now had such a feeling of gratitude welling up inside him. He had to catch himself from crying again, but would this woman have cared? How long had his marriage been over, at least the sexual part? How long had he felt so unwanted and alone in it? He opened his mouth, spread his legs, and she made him feel wanted again.

The room slowed down and whirled and became far away and more beautiful. Jack felt this old new sensation of being cared for. Now she took him out of her mouth and crawled on top of him. He opened his mouth more when she leaned down to kiss, reached around her as her hair spilled around his face like dark bird's wings. And she kissed him and he felt his penis surrounded. Covered up with this woman's warm body, Jack understood how good it still felt to make love. He let her ride him, loving her forcefulness, letting his penis get, through her strong body, watered, soaking wet; it was like that, like bringing something of himself that had been long parched with neglect and was dying. She bore down on him, gripped him in wet muscled tightness, like a fist. He could feel himself again, finding himself again in that wonderful, natural, familiar urge to give. He let her have everything there was left of him, let her use it for something if she could find it useful, and somehow, giving to her made him feel he had part of himself back; her surrounding pulses, undulations, hidden ripples, that was all he wanted to belong to; he was still worth having, that she wanted him meant that he was. Now the way he'd been starving dawned fully on Jack and he leaned back while the young woman held him. They made love all that night, sometimes she was over him and sometimes they were rolling around all over each other, crying and laughing and pushing through each other. When they finally came, and then came again, and then again, she stroked the small of his back, kissed his nose, cheeks and eyelids, and held him so close up against her.

The sun pushed through the window making Jack bunch up his brows to block it out. Though his eyes were still closed he could feel it was morning, Christmas morning. The feeling of last night's dream still hung around him too, and he smiled to himself, pushing back the memory of that strange living room tryst. He rolled over to see if he'd out-slept Mavis. Usually he woke up first but today she wasn't there. Well, she was probably making a pot of coffee before getting things ready for Christmas lunch when the children would come over. Jack swung his feet off the side of the bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, found his glasses and walked stoically into the living room.

But no Mavis. There instead, adding a few brand new ornaments to the tree was the woman from his dream, her dark hair framing her face like bird's wings. She turned to him, smiled in a way that seemed somehow both strange and bizarrely reassuring. He walked over to her, where she stood near the little green tree, lit reminder that life still goes on even in the middle of winter, and when he stood in front of her, she reached out and took both his hands in her hands, pressed them up to her cheek, and then held them and kissed them all over. Nothing like this had ever happened to Jack before and even to this day, as he lives out the rest of his life in his warm little home with a woman who loves him, he doubts anything so miraculous could ever happen to him again. But now it really doesn't need to. As for Mavis, she was never seen or heard from again.