“I should not design any websites with stark white backgrounds,” I said, mouth full of two madeleines.
“Why not?” he inquired, his own mouth full of sticky toffee pudding.
“Because they remind me how drastically I need to clean my laptop’s screen?”
He laughed.
I could hear him spitting a mouthful of the confection out onto a plate or something.
“What’s up, Buttercup?” he recovered, borrowing a phrase once used by both me and my friend Johanna.
“I’m just…depressed,” I admitted. “And blocked. And behind on deadlines. And really angry. I was a snarky bitch all day long on Twitter, did not write anything otherwise productive, and turned to re-designing my Twitter and Tumblr pages because I couldn’t write.”
“Hmmm.”
“What?”
“I like your Twitter background.”
“That’s because your screen isn’t filthy.”
He laughed.
“I need inspiration.”
“Write about how sex feels.”
“Huh. No other parameters?”
“No. Go.”
+ + +
The pain shot through my plexus like lightning.
[Did I tell you I once won an Illinois state spelling bee by correctly spelling "lightning"? The other girl spelled it "lightening."]
I could not focus on anything but the crystal blue of your eyes. Maybe also the tremors you were making inside of me. And your tears that were falling onto my cheeks. And the feeling of your slick, wet vertebrae under my fingers, and your skin.
“I love you,” you gasped, breath heavy with Colgate.
[The words of a woman as blonde as me, from far in the future, sprang into my thoughts at just that moment: "You'll find the shame is like the pain. You only feel it once."]
“I love you…too,” I managed, clamping down on your own muscles with all of mine.
Although I hurt everywhere. Trembled with pain. Could feel my bed quaking with it, so intense was this “love” that you professed for me.
[But G-d, how good it felt, too.]
I raised my legs above both of our heads in an attempt to lessen the pain, intending to hook my feet onto my bed’s headboard, but suddenly the bed was no longer there. Nor were the green velvet curtains surrounding my bed. Nor were the mahogany walls, nor the cherry floorboards. Just sand in my hair and moonlight in my eyes and your musculature wrapped around me, quivering.
Silence.
But for the waves.
[I wanted to rage at you, yell, scream, "Say anything! But not nothing! Say, 'I want you,' say, 'I need you,' say, 'I just want to feel myself inside of you,' but please, please say something!" I wanted to run off along the beach and hurl pointedly-phrased epithets into the wind and up to the moon about your perfect body and your perfect dick and your fucked-up brain and stupidity and just...why...why the silence?]
“I feel that it is important that that bit remains parenthetical,” I said, lowering myself between his legs and allowing my tongue to protract lewdly between my lips, as if begging for feeding time.
“Wasn’t Derrida fond of the parentheses, though?” he sighed, as my mouth enveloped his flesh.
[I had to stop, though, for correction. "Margins."]
“Ah, yes,” he sighed again. “I love that you know your Derrida and your Hegel and your tumescent vocabulary and your Bézier curves and your Gaussian blurs. I love your mouth. I love your heat. I love you.”
[Much like the shame, and the pain, though, apparently, with me, "love" only comes around once.]
“Hello?”
I emptied my mouth.
“I heard you.”
“No reply?”
“Not at this moment, no.”
[He said it, though, eventually, years in the future, following a quick jaunt in the gentleman's room during a de Kooning exhibit at The Tate. The art and the flashes of the photographer's cameras had turned him on. He felt the muscles, the moistness, the heat of the man beneath him in the stall, and said...]
“I love you.”
He looked up at him and queried, “Why do you say that just now?”
“One of de Kooning’s pieces made me think only of your eyes.”
They laughed. Cleaned up. Kissed.
And left the gentleman’s room holding hands.
Filed under: Academia, Art, Food, Music, Philosophy, Relationships, Web Design, Writing , a-list, erotica, humor, memories, painter
Today’s the day to share you with the world. Like I said. I’ve always wanted to. I love you so damn much. <3
Jen: Really, I cannot even describe how much what you, you beautiful, amazing woman, wrote today means to me. I really want to post it as an entry and so hope you will allow me to do so, because I want to be reminded every time I check in here of just how damn much I love you, as well.
Safe flight, Darling.
<3
How beautiful your conversation while your “mouth enveloped his flesh.” This entry is like a dream, more like in that moment- that moment of lust- where it’s as if you are under a lecherous spell.I love that feeling. Your head in the clouds or it in your mouth. ;)
Thoughtfully woven piece. I love the commentary of thoughts interspersed with conversation. Brilliant.
I didn’t expect this, when I suggested it.
Depressed?
But don’t you see how much life you have in your words?
I know that when you write, you do it with your heart, your whole heart- no matter what.
Just remember: no regrets, no worries and no matter how low things are, never settle for anything other than what you want.
xoxo
Clove: I once wrote a piece in a fiction workshop in college in which I interspersed the fiction with lines from a Joni Mitchell song, trying to be all William Burroughs cut-up, but different, etc. I’ve found it’s difficult to break the habit, but I’m glad that people still like reading it!
Also, as with all of the men portrayed, I would feel secure in writing that I actually was under a lecherous spell, in my head and in my mouth. ;-)
Painter: What? Did you expect it to be all about you? *smile*
Annes: Well. Any time that I write about sex, and men, or want to write about it, it becomes kind of a darkening space for me, if that makes sense. Because I do put my heart into it. I am not always sure that is a good thing, for me. But I am always reassured when others like me writing with my heart in my words, as you did.
And, absolutely, I agree with you: no regrets, and exactly what I want.