Nine Years Eight Months and a Day

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.

So why let the creature of evening linger and ultimately die there on her cheek.

I've always cared for language.

We moved into a new place. Built our bed frame--this same frame--though we didn't have a mattress yet. I put my bedroll from hiking in the empty well between its legs. High society. We slept there for three nights.

"Take this," she said on the third night, ripping the cord from her bathrobe, "and go sit in our-, our bed. I'll be in to work on you in a minute."

Wasn't that a phrase.

She tied my hands to the wrought-iron impression of climbing ivy. No slack. One hobbled, ten-fingered, mass of pitiful flesh. She slipped her robe and posed a moment in blinding red faux-lace panties, all stringy and scratchy. They didn't fit her well, her angular body, the elastic bunched around her hips. Almost a gag. A costume she wore for me. We were so in love. She knelt in front of me and said, "my turn."

Her turn, after the night before, when we watched movies on the floor of our empty new apartment; her, sitting between my legs, leaning back on my chest, while I rubbed her through, and eventually under, her cotton pajamas; her, turning her neck at inhuman angles to kiss me and then suck the breath out of my mouth, muting herself on my lips, afraid of what the neighbors might hear.

Her turn.

She was still figuring out my body then. I took so long to come. I was self-conscious, sure that she would get tired. Tired of trying, tired of me.

Oh, but did she try every motion and depth and speed and pressure. Every supplemental touch, cupping, tweak, and caress. And eventually found the combination to knock even me out of my own perilous thoughts.

And hadn't those been the sounds of pride and elation she made at last when the ending was fated. And hadn't that been a beaming smile.

"I love making you feel good," she said, "always." Her hair was matted against me. I had one hand free.

Was that five years ago already?

"You can fuck me if you want."

--

It was 12:48. I wondered if this time I had overstepped. Had I exited the corridor between the two of us and forced myself, unwanted, into the circle that was all her own. Whatever the ends, I wouldn't apologize. Not even if I was sorry. Breaking would be the end of fun, I knew somehow.

At 12:53 I felt the answer buzzing in my pocket. The text arrived first.

"I wasn't sure if these counted or not."

Then the picture, which had made its way more slowly: Her. A backdrop of solid tiles the color of earth with the cracks and imperfections around the edges that culminate in elegance. The courthouse bathroom. Lord. Her bralette was snared between her teeth, blurred from swaying, a vicious smile in her eyes. Not only in her underwear--as I'd demanded, "by 1 at the latest"--but out of her outer clothes entirely, full body in frame as if to prove her point. Flesh, and flesh. The plain gray thong she suffered to be invisible under her tailored slacks. The simple professional heels.

I hadn't, couldn't have, known she was on the docket today. But her commitment made wonderful my mistake.

I've settled into three tasks per day. Three is such a human number. Three meals. Three-act plays. Triptychs in oils.

Usually one of them is difficult enough to broach the possibility of failure.

On the third day of our new paradigm, there had been a misunderstanding about what was meant by thirty minutes' duration. I played it up. "See to those tender, inner thighs."

I hoped it was a phrase to delight and unnerve. I had expected a few token smacks, the kind that come with titters, smiles, and play-acted moans.

Her video response had been a little over seven minutes. There were no breaks. She used a thin chord. By her ferocity, she showed me that this game was serious.

I was always following her.

I hadn't been wholly sure whose idea this even was. If her enthusiasm came from genuine need or from pity.

I'm still not.

I waited an hour to respond to her picture, thinking of studied chimpanzees who would show increased dopamine when being rewarded, yes, but triply so when they were rewarded only half the time. Of Soviet institutions where the second best student would be heaped with praise, while the prized was left to seethe and wonder.

Was this evil. And did I want to be.

I sat fidgeting with the wording of my response:

"Well done. I've just sent you an email. Don't open it until you've come home, showered, had a nice dinner, brushed your teeth, and read for at least an hour."

I thought that last bit was inspired. I remembered all the times she had sat beside me on a road trip, speaking softly about the warm bath, the meal we'd have, and the secrets she had planned for the evening. Anticipation kills.

But what would be the third task.

Go stand naked on the balcony at midnight.

Pictorial instructions for a rope tie to sleep in.

Come five times before bed.

Edge yourself.

Deny yourself.

At the last moment, abandon yourself.

Oh but she'd been so good. I was so proud. How could I be mean or intrusive now.

What was her need in all this. Novelty. Distraction. To place control outside of herself. Praise. Simple success, felt bodily. Clear cause and effect. Order in the swirling world. Or simply, orders.

And what did I want from her. What had I ever wanted. To possess her; her kneeling; her dressed for me; her suffering; her in a fishbowl.

This old bitterness.

Twice I added and erased, "Have water ready on the nightstand."

I sent the text and the email:

Beginning from the ends of your finger tips, your toes, the top of your head, I want you to imagine a continuous circle of sky blue light, an inch and a quarter thick, moving slowly inward. Feel it grazing your skin like a delicate foam roller. Like bubbles clinging to you in the water. Any time the light should approach a spot that you like to be touched, it will begin to shift from blue to pink to crimson. Spend two minutes there, or four. You've got all night. Touch yourself in new ways. The back of your hand. A bit of soft cloth, your bed sheet. The dangled chain of a necklace. A new motion. The knuckle of your finger, the seam. There are so many ways to be touched. When the band of light has passed over every part of your body and finally coalesces onto that single point where you most love--the obvious--then start, and don't stop until there are no more good feelings left.

It's the minor tragedy of us, that we only started communicating our needs so directly after we had split up. That we, impossibly, explored more together, apart.

"I should tell you that I'm seeing someone," she sent, quizzically, with her proof of an evening task. Ink doodles, labyrinthine, extending outward from her areolas. As almost always, she outdid herself. They spilled out from under her breasts onto her rib cage. It must have tickled. Maybe she was just having fun. Do we need someone else to tell us that it's okay to be a little ridiculous.

I wondered if she rushed to wash it off afterwards, or whether "someone" would have questions about her new art.

The last task, it would have to be. I wasn't proud of that one. Filler.

Sometimes when the lulls in our lives intersected, I thought about sending more. No notice. We were never entirely out of contact. It played out in my mind like half a joke, like your oldest friend flashing you and running away laughing. But no. She was always the courageous one, not me.

This morning--I suppose it was last night from her perspective--I got a text. "He never makes me come." Her husband, I knew she meant. "Actually you were the last one to."

I didn't know where to put that, or where it came from, or whether it could possibly be the whole truth.

I thought it was quiet revenge. Like thinking of an old crush when you fuck. Like masturbating at lunch so you'll have no desire at night.

I think too much.