Moonlight

Every human feeling and emotion has an expression in nature. Like the world outside us, each of us has our own internal landscape: our own particular geology, flora and fauna, weather and seasons. At the same time, the world inside us looks outwards to nature, expecting to see our feelings reflected there..

When the Magician said, "As above, so below," that's what he meant.

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The first time I ever really saw moonlight was when I was in college, down behind the stadium with Jessica one night in early autumn. I'd seen it before, of course, but I'd never been in a place where the moon was the only illumination there was, where everything you saw was lit only by moonlight. It was eerie. It was just like they said in the songs: magical. I was young and thought I knew it all. I saw at once that I didn't. There was more to the night than just darkness.

The light was buttery silver and the shadows were warm and brownish-blue as we walked across the field, me with the old blanket over my shoulder. The light from the moon is different than any other light. It's stained by the night and holds a strangeness, and it made us strange too. When we looked at each other, our faces were not the same, which thrilled and frightened us. When I kissed her, she kissed me back passionately, as if she didn't know who she was anymore, and just like in the songs, it was the moon that made her do it. As she broke the kiss, she looked into my eyes to see who I was, and I saw her excitement at being someone new in a place she didn't know.

I pulled her along out of that silvery light and into the forbidding shadow of the empty stadium. I threw the blanket down on the grass but we didn't lie down at first, just stood there kissing in the moonlight. I opened her white cotton blouse (I remember how it glowed) and pulled her bra down, then pushed her breasts out to where I could get to them. In the moonlight, her skin was almost the same color as her blouse.

There's an affinity between women and the moon. Everyone knows that, but it's most pronounced when it comes to her breasts. That's something I wouldn't learn for sure until years later, but there behind the stadium, it was something we both instinctively knew without even talking about it. We both looked at her tits in the moonlight, and we smiled like idiots because it was all so obvious. I bent my head and worshipped her breasts with my mouth, my tongue circling her nipples as Jessica stood and caressed my head, looking down at me, her blouse hanging loose around her arms. I still remember the little whimpering, gasping sounds she made, the way she hunched her shoulders and hissed with excitement when I touched her just so.

I might as well have been worshipping the moon, the way I worshipped her tits. I was still a poet then, and I'd been struggling to explain those vague longings I felt when looking at the moon, or at snow falling in a river, or the gathering clouds of a thunderstorm, or any of these other images that stuck in my mind and stirred something inside me. It's taken me years to realize that those longings are the same ones I feel with a woman: a sexual ache that goes beyond the need to just get laid and get off. Beauty can be carnal as much as it can be abstract, and it was beauty I was responding to. Something inside me that was bigger than me; as big as the world, maybe bigger.

Jessica wasn't a poet, thank God, and she finally lost patience with me and pulled me down onto the blanket. Those were different days, and girls were different than they are now. Those were still the days of what they called the sexual revolution, and sex was always possible, but it wasn't inevitable. Girls especially were confused as to how they should behave and what they should expect, so of course men were confused too. So when Jessica reached for my cock—actually reached out and grabbed it through my pants—I forgot all about poetry.

We were lying on the blanket and I put my arm around her and she began to unbutton my shirt. She was almost feverish, and I'd never seen her like this. She tried to pull me over on top of her. I went to kiss her but she was already busy, kissing my chest and playing with my nipples. It was one of Jessica's specialties, her fascination with men's nipples.

Different days, so there was nothing remarkable about her wearing a denim skirt, a fact I took advantage of as I slid my hand up under it and along her cool thigh. She instinctively clamped her legs together, but that didn't stop me. Her blouse was already around her back like a stole, only the sleeves still buttoned, and her bra was forcing her tits up and out like an offering on a tray. I knew what I wanted, and I knew that for once a girl was dying to give it to me. When I touched her between her legs, she wrapped her arm around my neck and pulled me down to her feverish mouth, her little tongue darting between my lips. She pressed herself up against me and hid behind her kiss as my fingers explored that hot mystery between her legs.

I worked my finger inside her panties and touched her, and her arms tightened around me, her kiss deepened, but when I worked my finger up into her wetness, that was too much for her. She fell on her back as if she'd been shot: a victim of her own lust. She spread her legs for me, as far as the skirt would allow.

We were in shadow, but the field around us was painted in the spectral stillness of moonlight, and what does the moon say except that there are secrets? There are secrets in our hearts and there are secrets in a girl's body, and the secret she was telling me now was that for the first time in my life I was with a woman who wanted me to fuck her. All the other times it had been a matter of forcing and cajoling, begging and pleading, doing it quickly before she changed her mind. But now Jessica was lying on her back on the blanket, her blouse open and breasts exposed, her hips lifting as I slid my finger inside her, and she wanted me. It was like a miracle, a gift of the moon.

I got to my knees and pushed her skirt up. I found the waistband of her panties and she lifted her bottom so I could tug them down her legs. When they got below her knees she impatiently pulled one foot out and just left them dangling around her other ankle. I got up on my knees and got my pants and shorts down. and the whole time she didn't look at me. Her eyes were closed and her lips parted. I could feel her need.

I don't know what came over me then, but I wanted to see, so instead of lying on top of her, I got down on my side and entered her that way, with her knees over my hip. I could see her face, see her little grimace as I entered her, and see her pulse beating in her throat. I don't know if I groaned. I do know I can still remember the delicious hot grip of her sheath upon me as I pressed into her, and the way her brows furrowed as the initial pain turned into pleasure. I also know that the sense of vague longing I described, that feeling I got when I looked at the moon: this seemed to be the answer. This seemed to be the answer to a lot of things.

"What— What are you doing?" she asked me.

I was pushing her leg back towards her chest, resting on my elbow, so I could see. "Hold your leg up," I said. "I want to see what it looks like."

She giggled. "You're crazy!" but she did it, hooking her arm behind her knee. When she laughed her pussy squeezed me like an elastic band. It was almost more than I could handle.

I wonder if it felt as good to her as it did to me. I know that at the time, I doubted it. If it had, it seemed to me that girls would be fucking every minute of every day. I know that if I had the capacity to make someone feel as incredibly good as Jessica was making me feel just by letting me use a part of her body, I'd throw myself open to all comers, just as a humanitarian gesture.

With her leg out of the way I could see my cock sunk into her tight little cunt and the way she was stretched around me, and it made me groan out loud in sheer salacious excitement. The thought that a piece of my body was inside her, hidden away in her darkness and yet making her feel it, just struck me with terrible erotic force. It was both beautiful and dreadfully obscene, and I felt like bells and whistles were going off all across my body. I reached down and touched the incredibly tender folds at the top of her pussy.

"Oooh! Oh! Oh my God!" she said, frantically covering my hand with hers, unsure whether to push me away or hold me there.

I knew what and where a woman's clit was, theoretically at least, but back then I was still finding my way around women, treating them as some sort of exotic alien life form, and so the idea of intentionally touching her clit during sex never occurred to me, and I'm not sure that it occurred to me then either. I only knew that I liked her reaction and that it was terribly sexy to keep my fingers there where I could feel her pussy pucker in and out as I fucked her and feel my shaft emerging covered in her juice, so I kept my hand there and kept playing with her.

"Oh! Oh! Oh Godddd!" she wailed through clenched teeth. She lifted her head to see what I was doing to her, dug her nails into my thigh and started pumping me against her, rolling me back and forth like a log and wiggling her ass in hungry desperation.

I'd never seen this kind of passion in a woman. I didn't even know it existed outside of dirty books, and it just drove me wild. You've got to understand, in those days fucking was done quickly and more or less silently and efficiently. Of course we knew that women enjoyed it, but we also understood that there was some sort of taboo against showing that enjoyment while the deed was going on. To let someone else see your raw pleasure and need is close to showing your naked self. It's close to surrender. It's like running up the white flag and saying, "I give up! Just don't stop, I need you!". It's the closest another person can ever come to giving themselves to you. Showing your passion is the same as baring your sexual soul. It's giving yourself to someone.

I really wanted Jessica. I don't just mean that I wanted to fuck her. I mean I wanted her. I wanted her like I wanted the moon when I looked at it, or my snow on the river and all those other things you can't really have. I wanted her inside me, where I could keep her with me and never let her go. I wanted her to belong to me in some way that I still feel about things and still don't understand.

But I wanted her, and I didn't know how much until I saw that look on her face, heard the desperation in her voice and felt those sharp nails digging into my thigh. I could see the way her wet, pink pussy winked and crinkled as my cock slithered in and out of her and it drove me wild. I had to have her. I had to make her mine.

But it was no good like this. Though she had her nails dug into my leg, the force of my thrusts was pushing her awkwardly up the blanket, pushing her out of the shadow of the stadium and into the moonlight, so I gave up on this position, disentangled myself and got between her legs missionary style. I leaned over her on my hands, and slid right into her: no fumbling, no searching around, just like nature intended, as if we were designed for each other.

No more clit-rubbing this way, but the face-to-face intimacy more than made up for it, and with my shirt open I got to feel those hard little nipples poking into my chest. She raised her knees, passed her hands up under the back of my shirt and pulled me down to meet her open mouth, claws out, as ferocious as any jungle cat.

The ground was soft but unyielding, and I fucked her so hard that she gave a little grunt with each bruising thrust. I felt the give of her body and her bones, the fleshy padding of her buttocks cushioning my blows, her hips the only thing between me and the earth, that hot sucking pussy the only thing that kept me from burying my dick in the cold ground.

And how sweet she was! How hot and soft and deliciously womanly. Her clothes were a total mess, her panties dangling around her ankle, her blouse tangled under her back, her hair in her face, but she was magical in the moonlight, swollen with femininity just like the moon: the roundness of her breasts and ass, the softness of her cheeks and lips, clinging to me like shadow, biting my lips and begging me to do it harder, harder.

It was then that I learned something about love, any kind of love, even this raw, physical, purely sexual kind of love. I realized that at that point Jessica was no longer in it just for herself. Her pleasure had become my pleasure, and she was getting off on my enjoyment of her body, just as I was getting off on making her moan and gasp with the way I fucked her. My excitement fueled her own, and the harder I fucked her, the harder she wanted it; the wilder she got, the wilder it made me. We were locked together in this feedback loop, engaged in something that was bigger than both of us.

But I wasn't really thinking about that at the time. I was fucking her hard, crushing her breasts in my hands, smothering her face with my kisses and sucking the cries from her mouth as my ass rose and fell like a trip hammer, spearing my bloated cock into her, overcome with love and lust.

"Oh my God! Jessica! Oh fuck! Yes, baby! Yes, Jessica!"

Well, to be honest, I don't think I called her "baby". It would be years before I would call a woman "baby" without feeling self-conscious about it. But I've always been vocal, and so I must have been saying something, and as you can see, I wasn't much of a poet when I was making love.

"God yes! Yes!" might be more like it.

I rose up to get more leverage and was over her on my knees and forearms, resting on my elbows. Jessica's hands went from my face to my back to gripping my arms. I was fucking her hard, racing for that finish, when she suddenly said, "Wait! Stop! Stop!"

I reared up on my arms and looked around, thinking she'd seen someone. I saw nothing but moonlight. She put her hands on my face and I looked down at her, and she was looking around too, her eyes glowing. She looked back at me and smiled this wicked, delighted smile, and asked, "Isn't it beautiful?"

I don't know anything else she might have said that would have set me off the way those three words did. I was levered up over her, my cock sunk in the throbbing wetness of her cunt, her knees up against my ribs, surrounded by the quiet of the moonlit night, the stars above and the crickets in the bushes. My heart was full to bursting, and she looked me in the eye and asked me that.

I just went insane for her at that point. My passion just exploded inside me like a bomb and I fell on top of her, sobbing into her mouth, overwhelmed with feeling. I fucked her even harder, wanting to actually hurt her, to fuck her so hard that she'd stay fucked for the rest of her life, wherever she might go, always feeling my prick moving inside her.

Yes, it's beautiful, I wanted to say. Yes it's gorgeous: the night, the moon, you, your cunt, everything I feel. It's so fucking beautiful I could die!

But of course I didn't say that. Not a word. I let it go, because at that point I was just too desperate to lose myself inside her, to let myself explode, let my oceans flow and flood her moonlit fields.

I must have told her I was close. As I say, I've always been vocal, so I would have said something. I imagine she was clinging to me and telling me to give it to her, to let her have it, every drop, because Jessica turned vocal that night too, and she was such a deliciously greedy lover. I really don't remember the details though.

I'd like to say that I pulled out of her at the last moment, and that we both watched breathlessly as my stomach clenched and my semen arced from my cock in the moonlight, landing on her milk-white skin, living and pearlescent. Semen is also sacred to the moon and it would have been appropriate, like an offering. But it didn't really happen that way. Jessica was on the pill, and I kept myself jammed to the hilt inside her as I crushed her to me and spurted out my shuddering release into her darkness.

I can still feel the primal waves of incandescent pleasure when I think of it, though, and still feel her sweaty hands going limp against my back as she felt me unloading and knew instinctively that she'd done her job. I don't want to sound sexist, but I do believe that women feel a deep visceral satisfaction when they make their man come, whether they get off or not. In any case, I remember the way her grip on me relaxed even as I was being seized with those whole-body spasms of ejaculatory release. More than relax: her hands took on a soothing, conciliatory tone, as if comforting me in my orgasmic frenzy, calming me and telling me that everything was all right. She was satisfied, and for her, this particular chapter was over.

The moon was creeping across the sky, and our little patch of shadow had retreated under the dark arches of the stadium. I held her in my arms. There was something terribly strange about lying out doors and having a girl's naked thigh draped across my naked thigh, but there was something that felt vaguely familiar about it too, as if we'd both done this eons ago but had forgotten.

I think I'd wanted to make a joke about doing it inside the stadium next time, on the fifty-yard line, but I didn't. Both of us were strangely moved, and joking seemed out of place. Something sacred had happened, I know that now.

We were still drunk on moonlight when we got back to the car, and we were reluctant to leave. The field still shimmered under that magical buttery light, which now seemed so familiar that we both felt we could come back to it whenever we wanted, that it would always be there for us.

The truth is, though, that it took me years and years to understand what had happened there and to start looking for that kind of magic in sex again. The moon is a changeable mistress, though. She never looks down on the same scene twice. You can see it in her face, how surprised she always is when she pulls herself up full over the horizon, startled at what she sees. That's when it's easiest to tell that the moon is all about secrets.