It's the first time.
We've known each other for a while, but not in the flesh. This is the first time. The first time we have seen each other.
We've talked for a long time, millions of words back and forth between us. Fears, likes, needs. We've talked about everything but this is the first time we will see each other.
We've fucked a hundred times, maybe more. Fucked each other in words, in imaginings. But this is the first time we will touch each other.
It's taken a long time to get here, and maybe we should have left things the way they were. Ignored the flesh, the touch, and the sound.
But hey, were only human.
He comes into the restaurant and I know straight away it's him, no need for the book he's carrying as a sign. We've gone for old fashioned because in some ways that's how we are, fashioned in an older time. I have the same book sitting on the table in front of me, Gore Vidal's autobiography, 'Point to Point Navigation'. He doesn't pick me out quite so quickly, but the light is a bit dim inside after the brightness outside.
I am immediately aware of him and nervous of him, we are both smiling and saying 'Hello is it you?', ' Hi.', 'Well.' Etc, all that, saying nothing - but everything about how we are nervous.
I reach out wanting to shake hands, to touch him now. He reaches back and our fingers slide across each other before we grip, our palms locking, and we stay there hanging on, making an intimate connection in a public place. Fingers, palms, locked and squeezing and releasing, our eyes locked. For a while we are lost in that first touch. That first embrace.
My body is electric, and I am sure his is even more so, he is more physical than me. More easily aroused and quicker to flame up. Quicker to burn with passion. I feel him shake a bit and then we release each other. As if by some mutual reading of each other we know that to hold each other longer will mean we have to step closer and join in a way that wouldn't be acceptable, here, in public.
We order coffee, we have to order something, you can't sit and stare and mumble at each other without ordering something. We stare a lot or examine, though it's not necessary, its only confirmation.
Confirmation of the truths, the slight exaggerations, the difference in perceptions. I am overcome by his long strong fingers, and I want to reach across the table and touch them, finger tip to finger tip contact, sending something running from my body through to his.
'I've had a good trip, warm weather', 'Me too,' he says, 'yes, only 3 hours', me, ' Oh, two and a half. The freeways were clear today.'
Neither of us has finished our coffee. But it's been long enough.
We leave the money on the table wanting to move on without interruption. We are in a private place now, just us, and we both know that the clock is ticking for us.
My room has a nice view overlooking a park filled with thickly planted tall trees that sit below the window like a carpet of green clouds. I have walked beneath them earlier and the ground under them is mossy, or thick with leaves, cool and dim. Secret. A place of coolness.