2:43 am, a Tuesday, he lays wide awake next to her. It's late spring, the window is open and he can hear rare glimpses of life moving along in the distance. She's next to him. He's alone. Alone with spiraling thoughts, insistent desires that will not go away, that he does not want to leave.
His mind wanders in this hall of mirrors repeating iterations of the Same. There, he feels full. And her breathing next to him. Her body somehow further away than the pixels of his fantasies. Her body, too full of compromises she's not even aware of. When they touch, the distance brought by desires left unsaid, unseen. Not always. Sometimes. Right now.
Often times their bodies attract, and the mind is pulled in the breath, bound to the touch. And Time dissolves, the Self dissipates. There is nothing to grasp, nothing to want, to go towards. He, She, They disappear, become One, become Void. Making Love. Bodies embraced under the sky, orbiting through the cosmos. It is Her. It is Him. When their flesh, rubbing to the rhythm of Life itself sends pulses of electric bliss through their whole beings, they float weightless until they fall peacefully. Falling to the sound of their breath exhaling. The moan of bodies cascading back to the triviality of their bedroom.
After making love, when her head is lying on his chest, hearing his heartbeat settling, there are no secrets. There is no more desire. There is contentment, fullness. Then seconds, minutes. They get up, get dressed, get on. Then come fantasies. The mystique force of Life sometimes wanders through the mind, serpents across the body whispering in ageless, unknown, unavoidable tongues. Summoning flesh. Wanting to play. Keeping him awake in the middle of the night. The image was precise and played in a loop in his mind. Fantasies don't need context, they exist in the mere repetition of a fragment. A repetition where She became foreign.
He gets up and goes downstairs. He's sitting, hunched, in front of the vulgar blue hue of a computer screen. Miles away, in this dark, cold and lonely place. Watching bodies do what he longed for but kept hidden, out of shame, out of fear. Watching bodies descend in the wetness of desire, of sex, of cum.
He doesn't hear her footsteps. He's fixated on pixels. He doesn't notice her watching him pumping his lonely male flesh.
'What are you doing?'
He's startled. Fumbles to close the screen, put his erection away, like a teenage boy. Shame floods over him, he's hot, cold, weak. He tries to explain, but can't find the words.
'Come back to bed'. She doesn't even look at the screen. She doesn't really want to know what he's doing. She isn't curious. She's disgusted, insulted, betrayed.
Their bed is colder still.
*
The talk.
'How often? Why? How could you?'
He can answer all those questions. He does. But she never asked the right question : 'What?'
'What do you watch? What do you like? What do you want? Who are you?'
She said she couldn't compete with images of other women, doing things. What things, she didn't know. But she couldn't compete.
One night, after many glasses of wine, she asked him if he'd agree to stop watching porn for an entire summer. From June to September. She wanted to be liberated from the ghostly presence of these women on his computer screen. Could he do it? He agreed.
He wouldn't see Them anymore. The question now was, would She see Him? Would he show himself, and would she accept?
That evening, he found the courage to answer the question she hadn't asked. He told her what he he craved when he masturbated. Not making love. Masturbation. Playing with sex, with arousal, with the body. Did she even know he masturbated? Did she masturbate?
Masturbation for him was about cum. Not simply achieving orgasm - an abstract climax, an energetic spasm, an hormonal surge -, but first and foremost achieving ejaculation - the liquid manifestation of pleasure, of lust. Cum, that was the point. That was the game. The wetness of sex. The smell, the texture. And the taste. Nothing made him feel as aroused as the thought of tasting sex. Of giving, of taking his ejaculation. This is what he found the courage to admit to her that evening.
He so profoundly longed for cum to become more central to their sexuality. He wanted her initiative. Her to want it. He wanted the pleasure of anticipation. He fantasized about her warning him, in advance, of the messy conclusion he would inevitably be in for. He fantasized about her tormenting him with the promise of abundance. He wanted to hear his wife say she would feed him cum. Wanted her to touch it, acknowledge it. To see it for what it was to him : an elixir of lust. An Offering.
Away from porn, his desires, his fantasies didn't go away, but they were transformed in many ways. Liberated from the enticing, intoxicating shadows of porn, his wife became more visible. He could no longer take refuge in Them.
He agreed to quit porn. She agreed to acknowledge his desire. He wanted one last thing though. Could he put away a few of his favorite clips away in folder for her to keep. 'These are some of the things I like, I want' he said. Feel free to do with them what you want. She agreed.
Over the course of the summer, they grew closer, more confident in their sexuality. His desires remained unchanged, but he was no longer lonely. He bought her lingerie for her to wear when he wanted to play with her, masturbate with her. Through the course of the summer, he secretly worked on a project : a Tarot deck depicting various ways masturbating with her indulging in cum.
One evening, he presented her with the deck. He was so completely aroused and vulnerable, showing it to her. They could either pick out cards randomly, or they could select them to create a scenario. But either way, he would know how it would end. This was the whole point.
She did like the idea. It brought play and randomness to sex. It freed her of having to guess her role. Still, she wasn't sure what role masturbation should play in their life. Was it the opposite of making love? Wasn't it more superficial? Puerile, even?
The cards were there, tucked away in a drawer, and they rarely got used. They remained peripheral, a novelty more than a mean of communication. She would sometimes ask if he wanted to pick one. Of course he did. And he did appreciate how she sometimes did it for him. But he secretly longed for something more. He wanted her to do it to him, with him. And if she so wanted, he would like to do things to her, with her. How would she like to play? He wasn't sure if this was a reasonable desire.
*
As weeks passed, she found the courage to explore her own sexuality in a more explicit, voluntary way. She explored masturbation for the first time. She shyly touched herself. Finding confidence. Trying to listen. And when she could hear, she tried to accept. A voice she didn't control, but could, if she wanted, make hers. But always alone, away from his gaze. But still, a hint of disdain persisted. It didn't elevate her, did it? Maybe the opposite, actually.
One afternoon, alone at home, and she sensed curiosity, rather than vertigo at the thought of the images his husband had looked at. Since their agreement, she had felt the distance between him and them, those people, those ghosts that haunted him, she had felt that distance growing. Enough for her to find space between them. She was real. She could take it. She went in like in an abandoned house. With the same caution. Not knowing what she would find, but feeling like she was entering someone else's life. Entering strangers' sex life. Her husband's secret sex life.
Her heart paced as she opened the folder, provocatively called : 'PORN'.
On the screen, thumbnails and folders. Her first instinct was to close it. She took a deep breath. Each thumbnail the still image of a film that could play in an endless loop if she chose to open it. Underneath each one, words that were both familiar and novel. 'Creampie', 'Cum', 'Blowjob', 'Cum Kiss', 'Cuckold', 'Anal', 'Facial', 'Bukkake', 'Gloryhole'. All these words, like primal, malevolent incantations. Spells that entangled her husband The depiction of a lowly underground world full of primitive noises and vulgar bodies. She felt distraught. But maybe she also felt strangely aroused? This was taboo for her.
She couldn't bring herself to opening them. All she was left with were still images of flesh and occult words.
On the following days, she found herself drawn to this obscure folder again. She read the words without ever seeing what they promised. Memorizing them. Trying to stop them from creating images in her mind.
She had an idea. It took her a few days to find the strength, and still she wasn't sure she'd be up to it, but she'd try to give him something he seemed to want.
*
One night, a Wednesday, he walks into their bedroom after his shower. She is laying in bed, legs spread wide open, wearing a crotchless piece of lingerie he bought her a while back. She's fingering herself. She's never done that in front of him before. Not only rubbing, but fingering herself. Would she eventually dare to dildo herself? Taking charge of her own penetration? The thought doesn't yet occur to her.
She had worked herself up to this moment. She would masturbate in front of him. She would talk to him. Say words she had never said, but had read in his folder. She would try to be confident and sexy. She made an appointment to have herself waxed. She had kept the bush on her pubis, but had taken off all the rest. She was completely bald, smooth, exposed. She had gotten ready when he was in the shower. Rushing to put on the suit, putting herself in the right position on the bed. It felt forced, artificial. Was she sexy? It wasn't spontaneous, authentic in the way she was used to. But she tried nonetheless.
Next to her, on the night table, there's his laptop, and three of their custom tarot cards, face down.
She orders : 'Open your laptop'. Trying to be commanding. Does he notice the shaking in her voice?
It's his folder. Full of thumbnails.
'I looked', she says.
