Hello Again,
I’m taking a deep breath and presenting my first short story here. It’s special to me because it’s the first thing I wrote that was erotic. “Erotic” is loaded word now; it all too often codes as “porn by any other name would be as sleazy.” That sucks. Erotic has many broad and beautiful meanings and if you go back to Sappho (the 10th Muse and I would say Patron Saint but Muse, being a goddess, I think is better) you can find some. Also, someone told me a long time ago that Plato defined erotic as anything that involved deep and profound intellectual connection, like an intense and meaningful discussion of philosophy, not just a sexual connection. I’ve never checked to see if it’s true he said that, but I totally agree with it anyway.
So erotic should mean that which connects us, binds us, gets beneath our skin, into the core of our Being and makes One; makes us Whole. Sex — good sex, the best sex — does that, of course, and it’s what we most often think of, but it’s far from the only thing.
One of the most erotic things I know of is sharing an ice-cream cone of your two favorite flavors on bright blistering summer day with a person you dearly love. The sweetness, the creaminess, your tongues tripping over each other, the giggles, the smiles, that special spark in their eyes that make your heart thump and other places… you get the picture.
Anyway, that’s what I was aiming for when I wrote this short little story when I was a lot younger. I didn’t write it as proper story, but a kind of love letter — what you’d think about at 5 o’clock in the morning.
How close did I come to achieving my aim? That’s for you to decide. If you feel like, comment. If you’d like to read more like this, let me know.
I’m opening this to everyone and I might not do that again. I don’t mean to tease. Just this once, I want to pull back the curtain and stand naked to present something that’s meant a lot to me down the years. I don’t know if I’ll get up the nerve a second time.
Here it is…
It’s early. Grey dawn light sneaking around the drawn shades. You are lying against me, quite possibly asleep, your sweet perfect mouth near my nipple. The pillows have been jettisoned during the night—they almost always are—and the sheet has been kicked into a cotton crumple about our hips. Your leg emerges below, capturing mine at knee and ankle. The ghost light lies along your torso, just a bit paler than you are, lifting you away from me, denying your warm sweet weight. The air is close about us—close and personal—entwining our scent with the night-blooming cirrus beneath the window. I can’t make out your face, lost in shadow and the dark cloud of your hair, but I can feel your expression; there is a touch of a secret smile.
When I write the history of my heart, it will in large part be the history of that smile. Like you, it is full of sweet and earnest contradiction—a softness that hides a startling angularity; after all this time, I am still ignorant of its full dimensions. Like you, it is still new, still surprising. (Of course, you breed surprises the way a light rain breeds rainbows—have I ever mentioned that?) Like you, it grows faster than I can learn it—I have given my life over to be the student of a smile. This is not a waste to anyone who knows you.
♦ ♦ ♦
Seeing you for the first time, in an art class—figure drawing, to be precise. A crowded room full of bent backs, craning necks, intent eyes. Charcoal and chalk dust. And peeking through the interstices of all this activity, the flash of hazel eyes with a touch of rust in their depths, like a forest in early spring or late summer, and the twinkle of that smile.
Very distracting. Three hours are not sufficient to capture it, to render it on paper, to know it in any way. When the session ends, I find the gall to ask you to pose for me, privately. My awkwardness amuses you, I think—awkwardness trying to pass for earnestness. It won’t occur to me for a long time that you were smiling at me.
We meet occasionally, then more often. First, when you appeared my creative writing class. Then, we started meeting for coffee, that magical elixir. Then, other things. Forever, I’m noticing new things about you. Your eyes can shift color from green to yellow (I learn to be wary of yellow). Your nose, which is slightly aquiline, fits on your face better than anyone else’s fits on theirs. Your perfect skin is exactly the color of a latte where the expresso meets the milk. You have hands like Michelangelo’s David and your short, mink-colored hair is so rich looking it begs a touch from my fingers. You laugh easily. Your feet dance when you laugh.
Other things fill themselves in—it was all new to me then, remember? I was lost in some liminal space between a life that lay on my shoulders like an old borrowed coat, ill-fitting and tattered, and a naked, new-born truth, just emerging blind and vulnerable. But somehow we discover, improvise, ad lib a relationship. A penchant for late nights has something to do with it (although you handle mornings better than I). I read my stories to you. You play your cello for me. We like mostly the same music, many of the same books, but not so much the same movies. On cooking, we usually agree, but specifics are open to question—I turn out to be fonder of cilantro. Roses are important.
Sex is important. The heart I handed you was not virgin, but for what you did with it, it might as well have been.
♦ ♦ ♦
Sand, a mountain’s crumbs, looking more pleasant than it must have felt, decorating the line of your ribs as you roll on your side. Sand too on the sculpted belly entempled by the cathedral arch of those ribs; surrounding, but not yet invading, the well of your navel—the key to the body some say. One of your keys, certainly. My fingers crab-walk between us, knowing their destination.
You sit up, one smooth swift motion, arms rising and falling, dance-like, bending and relaxing to come to rest on either knee. My hand stops, pinned by the look in your hazel eyes. A storm of butterflies is loose behind my solar plexus. I know, in that transfixed moment, that your eyes are a mirror to my own.
You feel the distance I’m beginning to build—we were just new then, remember?—and reach for me, pull me closer, touching me as my fingers touch. My eyes look questions; you let me take the answers off your lips, your tongue. Hot, molten feelings pour into me from the cool well of your mouth…
We learned each other on that remote crescent of deserted beach, exploring and groping like a pair of randy teenagers; laughing and gasping and crying out. Making discoveries. Making mistakes. You remind me of a fine musical instrument that I’m learning to play (this is silly because you’re the musician and I’m not). We come a lot. We fumble into orgasms, sometimes finding them in unexpected places: behind ears, on the back of your knee, in the palm of my hand. So we go looking for the limits of ourselves…
♦ ♦ ♦
Afterwards, we laugh and lean and bend our lips together; moist and sweet with a crisp salt tang of the sea. We’re wrapped in each other’s arms, straddling each other’s thighs, rocking gently. It feels good. Soft. Intense. Your head tips back, your eyes droop closed. You look so radiant—more beautiful than I can stand. My heart cannot stretch enough to embrace the whole of you. But it tries. A dangerous, chancy, uncomfortable tightness in me as it bangs its edges…
But I can touch you. Kiss you. Hold you…
♦ ♦ ♦
Other memories less pleasant. I embrace these like a spiky glass Christmas ornament—too precious to drop, too painful to hold. It often doesn’t start with much; just an inability to bend at crucial moments—too tired, too cranky to give another inch.
On a bad morning, I see your back, bowed and rigid, as you search in a drawer.
Did you use all the coffee filters?
No.
They’re not here.
Then go buy some.
It’s not my turn to do the shopping—
The hell it’s not…
Sometimes that’s enough. The day sours, perhaps something causes an escalation in the car. Rationality is an unbearable burden. Eruption isn’t far away.
That evening, I remember your eyes, yellow with resentment—pain, hurt, anger, congealed into nuggets and fired at me. Slingshot. I see the recoil in your burning silver tears…
I remember making up too. The anger and stupid words finally smoldering and dying out, so our hearts can heal again. Once it took all night. But I made your eyes green again in the morning.
♦ ♦ ♦
Last night. My turn to cook. I’ve started dinner and a fire; there’s a pinot noir breathing on the sideboard. But you come home with that smile again and we don’t even last through the salad—don’t finish the first glass of wine. Your fingers are in my hair, my arms are around your neck, and suddenly you are flowing unto me, offering me your sweet rivers and ravenous for mine. I yield them joyfully, spreading my thighs to your impatient mouth as I dip my head for my own loving taste. All our lips join as we lap up pleasures that well to the surface. Your long supple tongue paints me with orgasm after orgasm. I’m melting on you, spilling into a sea of primary hues…
The gold of the candlelight,
the red of our lips,
the silver of our tears…
I never came in so many colors.
♦ ♦ ♦
It’s lighter now; the shades can no longer hold the dawn at bay. You stir and give the side of my breast a sleepy kiss, mutter something unintelligible to my collarbone. I murmur in response—it’s still too early to push back the velvet silence with words—and tousle your short, mink-rich hair. Stretching, I feel your muscles slide against mine. Your arms stroke along my flanks and you raise the left, forever errant, grazing my nose. I catch your hand, dangerously close, and kiss the palm Good Morning. You lift your head, blinking those enormous hazel eyes, and answer by nuzzling my neck—a dialog of small touches.
There’s a lazy morning hunger passing between us, but our muscles are still loose with the aftermath of passion and it is just too wonderful to do anything but lie here. Finally, you rise off me, hips first, smile last, and stand up. Yours face has a languorous, lopsided expression—two cups of coffee will clear that up, and I will miss it.
Your eyebrows tilt to ask: Am I getting up?
I scrunch a shoulder into the pillows to reply: Not just yet.
Your lips tug to one side—All right—and you walk over to open the window shade. Radiance pours in.
Yes, stand in it—stand by the window, just like that. Turn to the light—slowly, slowly. Let your eyes close. Tip your head back and raise your arms just so. Yes. Yes, just like that.
That’s it—now I’ve got you.
Got you…
Thank you for reading.