We played the game over the telephone of all wistful, separated pairs.
I ask a question, you ask a question.
I'd ask about her favorite pasta dish and she'd ask my favorite sex position where the girl was on top.
It was always her, the courageous one.
Where's your favorite place to be touched, besides the obvious?
(the hip; where the neck meets the chin)
What's something you've always wanted to try in bed, but haven't yet?
(outdoors; a threesome)
What's your record, in one day?
(probably two; maybe ten)
Every answer was a little gift. A new factoid or anecdote to fit into the sculptures that we were building of the other. A reminder that the world is full of thoughts, desires, and temporary embarrassments, and most of them aren't your own.
I learned about an ex's mom walking in with a whole pile of condom wrappers fished from the couch and a wicked grin. I learned about a summer dress, a gust of wind, and a busy walking bridge in downtown Austin. I learned about hot Philosophy professors. Hot Math professors. A hot therapist.
This is the most ethical person I know.
I learned about a whole scheme to fake a club camping trip and win a weekend away from parents who might be wicked but would not grin at condom wrappers. I learned about the "cool aunt" who shared forbidden knowledge about one hour hotels with parking lots that didn't face the road.
And yes, other things too, like Salsa, like Guernica, like the Dirty Dancing sequel set to the backdrop of the fall of Batista, the awakening as a girl by Charlize Theron, on alienation, the role of art in the age of reproducibility, life before the US, life as a woman, life in general.
The appeal should have worn away eventually, but it never did, at least not for me.
She moved closer. We stopped playing with words when we could start playing with actions.
It was a decadent time for us, but it left the questions to gather inside me with nowhere to go. It felt wrong somehow to talk when we could kiss. But we don't kiss between every breath anymore, and never seem to ask questions at all.
How often is too often, enough?
Is the hair on my chin too rough. I try to sweep it down at least. Eventually it will be wet and mingled with hers. Is that any better or is it worse.
Could she feel it if I used mouthwash. Is it pleasant. Does it burn.
I'm afraid to seem nervous, worried. That you can talk a thing to death.
The first time I did what I'm about to do now, I repeated a line that an ex had used on me. I was half proud for thinking of it in the moment and half ashamed for looping her unwittingly into an intimate strand between me and someone else--god it had worked on me though.
"I do need one favor," I said, then, kissing down her side.
I expected suspicion. Her to scan me like the fine print, but if she had found any price tag on me--in what I was saying--she seemed ready to pay it.
"Promise to take your time," I said, "I've got all night and nowhere else to spend it."
A minor adaptation, in truth. Different words for different worries.
I tried to sound sincere, which I was, and I think I heard relief. It's a notion that I always come back to, by hint at least. Don't rush yourself. This is exactly where I want to be.
From that day, until this day, I wish I could know exactly where to touch and how and when. I've tried to work it out, of course, but it's a process of feeling around in the dark and cavernous recesses of a nervous system that isn't your own, and all the instruments were built for experts. Breath and the tension of muscles. Ever so occasionally, words.
But why does it feel like a failure to reach the point of words. Can I trust them to come out on time and to be exactly what they seem.
Is she afraid to hurt me. To seem a bother. To risk a good thing, if that's what this is to her.
Can breath be polite. Can the tension of muscles lie.
I try to relate to the sensations that have always captured me.
It's a studied, un-native, translation. A Mercator projection of spherical pleasure onto cylindrical surface. Or maybe, just from one individual onto another. The lines might stretch and fold in unexpected ways, but I hope there are enough intersections to matter.
I like it best to feel warm and enveloped. So I place my palm above her pubic bone, spreading my fingers to maximize the skin on skin. l lace her knees into my arms, lay the broad plane of my forearms against her hip bones and up her sides, pull her calves around me. Her skin is like fire on the underside of my wrist.
At first she watches me--straining up on her elbows--like I'm a fish in the aquarium digging through the pebbles and the sand. Like she's wondering why I behave this way, and what I could possibly have found there.
I curl my fingers under one hip, working the heel of my hand into her. I widen my mouth, flattening my lips outward to annex as much of her as I can reach. Wet breath, and warm. At some point she must have thrown her head back on the pillow, I didn't catch it. For the infinite time we have tonight, I dedicate my whole body to her, and when it's over, I'll remember to lay the flat of my cheek against her.
I have a need to be enjoyed as much as to enjoy. So I engender the movements of my mouth and tongue with the lightest exhalations and the naked beginnings of moans, as if they spill out against my wishes, embarrassed to be heard.
One time she called out in French. She'll never admit it.
I explore different paths and motions like rainfall carving valleys into stone, somehow smooth and sharp. I make the study of her my nature and my hobby. And when the time is right, I lock into the rhythm of her breathing and follow in four/four time against the rise and fall of her chest.
Her abdominal muscles tighten to drumheads. I switch from pendulous motion to pressure, the merest rocking against her. By seismology alone, I can feel that every inchling is momentous to her now. Rising. Rising, for the fall back to earth, head buried in her arms. All stabbing breaths and sweat.
And I join her in her descent, never daring to peel my tongue away and break the nexus of tender flesh. Tender like a weapon in a wound, best left until properly attended to.
Lying in the dark, cheek on her thigh. I hide secret intentions. I lurk. Five, ten seconds. I send my tongue, shearing, geologically slow, over the surface where it rests, until the motion is no longer met with jerks and heaves. Only then, I'm ready to begin again, workman-like now, polishing a river stone.
I've never repeated in this way more than three times.
I remember her genuine surprise the first time I tried it, looking like someone had whispered to me the secret words in the dark.
I wonder what it's worth to her. It must not be as unpleasant at least--or intense, effervescent--as it is for me after. How much is the pleasure diminished. Is it only my own ego that I'm stroking now.
All these questions, even after so many years and so many nights. No matter how long you explore a jungle, it will be a new and wild thing.
I slide up next to her. No more surprises for tonight.
She twirls my hair in her middle finger, still looking towards the headboard a long time, then away, at the clock maybe, and then at last, at me.
"You can fuck me if you want."
It's a knife in the ribs.
--
I kiss her cheek.
Later, when we're midway through a breakup--in the way of our politely officious relationship--this will be evidence against me. That I never wanted sex.
I did want sex. Do want sex. Do, now, want to fuck her. I think back to all the ways, the nights, the beds, the hotel rooms, the backseats of cars in parking garages and rest stops and deserted, little backstreets.
