Affection (25 page)

My skin was heated in a sun pattern. I settled my knee against hers. She didn't shift away. My hand was close to her buttons and I touched one with my finger. I struggled it through the tight enclosure of the buttonhole. When it was open I eased my finger into the space, feathered it back and forth. Maybe she felt the gentle rustle of it so close to the swell of her breast.

She didn't move. She didn't shift away when I eased my fingers upward to where another button held the delicate fabric closed across
the generous proportions of her breasts. I eased her shirt away and her bra was revealed, thick and delicate as an orchid, her flesh rising above the albino petals.

I unbuttoned my own shirt and gazed down at the inconsistencies of our flesh. Her pale and delicately scented breasts. My generous dark oiled flesh. I wondered if I would ever tire of comparing myself to her.

I eased the cups of my bra down and there were my brown nipples, enlarged areolas, the tight nubs clenched at their peaks. I wished I had thought to pluck away the scattering of dark hairs before revealing myself to her.

She still hadn't moved. I looked to her face, the heavy-lidded eyes gazing down toward those now-erect stray hairs. She hadn't asked me to stop but she hadn't invited my attentions either.

I wanted to show her what to do. I wanted to lead by example. I clutched one of my breasts in my fist and raised it out of the loose droop of my bra cup. I bent my head toward it and I licked the nipple so she could see the flesh grow taut. The nipple ached out toward the touch of tongue like an accusing finger. I took it all into my mouth. I suckled, a show for her, a demonstration. She could lean down and lick it, too, alongside my own mouth. She could replace my attentions with her own. I lifted both of my breasts toward her mouth, so close that her breathing disturbed the fine pale hairs that lined the swell of them. If she were to yawn she would swallow a nipple, but her mouth remained firmly closed. She sighed and settled
closer to me. I felt her hips brush mine. My knee was caressed by the fine swell of her calf. She raised her legs.

My hands released my breasts back into their holdings. My fingers traveled the swell of my stomach and touched the elastic of my panties. Her crotch was somewhere down there. I stretched my index finger out and there was the tight press of white cotton, slightly damp but perfectly laundered.

She nestled closer, pushed her crotch against my fingers, closed her eyes and settled where she was within reach of my shivery finger. It was all I could do not to tear away the pretty white cotton, but I restrained myself. I eased my finger under the elastic. She was wet; I felt the same pleasure at this discovery as I had in our brief tussle with the chosen boy.

I wondered whether I dared shuffle down her body and taste the nectar once more. My mouth watered at the thought of it. Her breath was sweet, her skin was sweet, her hair was sweet. I was hoping that her cunt would add a savory edge to a palette that was otherwise all pales and pinks and sugary pastel hues. I moved my fingers into the nest of fine cropped hair. I imagined she trimmed it with scissors. It was so fine and neat, manicured like expensive lawn. I opened her as I had opened her buttons, easing my fingers under the delicate fabric of her skin, fluttering my finger back and forth, making space for the rude invasion of my own flesh. She opened to me, moist and soft and I remembered that she would
be seashell pink like the inside of some spidery white mollusc. My tongue itched for mussels, oysters, pipis.

The phone rang. She opened her eyes and stretched and my finger was abandoned to the harsh cold Sunday afternoon air. I shifted back away from the darkness into the spotting of sunlight. She rolled off my king-size bed and I heard her little bird voice from the next room as she answered the phone.

“Hello? No, nothing much. Now's good.”

I sniffed my finger, licked it. Sweet. She was sweet. There was no hint of a base note. She was all sugar, all the way through. I shuffled over into the darkness where I smelled her sweat and perfume sweet on the pillow and I curled my damp finger around a single, abandoned, blond hair.

There was, of course, her boyfriend. I think he knew that she was flirting with the idea of a lesbian lover. He glared at me jealously across the dinner table whenever we were alone together. There was rarely any conversation between us. Sometimes he would talk about the Living Game and about how only the unenlightened would refuse to take part in it. He kissed her in front of me, open-mouthed.

One afternoon I was reading
Alice in Wonderland
naked in her bed. She was barely clothed. It was summer and our clothes were abandoned by the doorway. I felt her held breath close against the bare skin of my breast. My nipple pulled tighter, inching closer to her slightly parted lips.

I was all wound up. I was reading to her and wondering if we would make love. I needed to make love. This time, I thought, this
time we would definitely make love. Then there were his footsteps on the stairs and he was with us.

He had never seen me naked before. She had been naked with us, dripping out from a shower with her hair all dark with scent and water. He had once lifted her onto the kitchen bench and then there was that thing he did with the Lebanese cucumber and I watched, pretending this was the sort of display that all my roommates had treated me to. But he had never seen me even partially unclothed. Now, he was watching from the doorway.

I sensed her turn toward him like a sunflower photosynthesizing. She never turned like that in my direction. The few times that we had made our odd uncompleted kind of love, it had been all me. She might sigh and part her thighs just a little farther, making those little dove sounds at the back of her throat that made me want to bite down on the pillow, tear the sheets, force myself into the perfect peaches and cream of her skin.

So—the sunflower thing, the gentle movement of her body, and there at the apex of her attentions was the boy. Looking at me naked for the first time, my body pressed close to hers, my nipple almost, but not quite, entering her mouth, the pages of
Alice
closing, dropping to the bed beside me.

There was a leveling up, a squaring off. I know I settled my shoulders more firmly on the bed. It was her bed, smaller than my own but with nicer sheets and the scent of roses. I held my ground and
he held his, pulling up straighter in his casual lean, filling his chest with air, tensing his shoulders just a little, making him look stronger than he had a moment before. All this alpha stuff that we share with dogs and lions and rats. We might have stayed that way all night if she hadn't snuggled just that little bit closer, latching on to my breast like a suckling child, with that full red pout of her lips that both of us had kissed at one time or another.

He took his clothes off. He settled down beside her, pressing his hips into her. I might have rolled away then and left them, but she was licking my breast and cooing like she did and I knew she wanted me to stay. I wanted to stay. I wanted to leave. I saw him lift her thigh and slide himself into her and I felt an acid burn of jealousy rage through me. I was her show and tell. I was here for her to wave before him and as he started to push himself into her in a rhythm, I hooked glances with him and I could see that same jealous spark burning in him like lust.

He fucked her, and I was aroused by the fucking. I stretched my finger toward her delicate pink cunt and I felt his penis entering her, bare, no condom anywhere to be felt and I remember thinking that I would never let him ride me bareback. I would have to be certain of his fidelity before I opened myself up to that kind of risk. He went to the sex seminars. He played with nonmonogamy. How could she let him be inside her like that, pumping his diseased juices into something so sweet and clean and perfect?

But there was excitement in that kind of risk. I held my fist against my clitoris and rubbed against it. I inserted my fingers into her alongside his penis. I felt his rhythm and timed my own movements to it. When he paused I was close to coming. I kept on at it. I pushed my fingers into myself and rubbed myself and moved my fingers into and out of her. I felt his penis tighten and then pulse. I came. My head kicked back and I squeezed my eyes shut and I wondered if the openness at the moment of orgasm was some animal signal of submission.

When it was over I slid my hand out of her. I couldn't tell if she had come to orgasm. All my attention had been diverted to the palpitations of my own flesh. My fingers were coated in stickiness. It might have been her juices, but perhaps there was some of his semen on them. I wiped them on the sheets. I stood and gathered my clothes and I was at the door when I heard him.

“Sorry,” he said to her. “I couldn't stop myself. Someone was moving.”

Someone moved now. Down the stairs and into the bathroom and under the scalding heat of the shower I rubbed at the paint stains on my fingers until my nails gleamed and my fingers were prunes.

I needed to see other people, I thought. I needed to stop obsessively following Jessica from work to home to the supermarket to her bed. I needed a romantic project. I had seen this boy at the restaurant where he worked and I liked the look of him. There was perhaps a moment of flirtation. I wrote the address on a note card. Meet me at—a time and a place. Dress: Formal and had it delivered to him by one of the other staff. High romance.

I thought about him all afternoon as the food was cooking. I took off Jessica's wafty girly music and played old David Bowie as I stirred the sauce. A vegetable lasagne, easy to transport to my picnic spot in the vacant block across the street. It would stay hot wrapped in a tea towel, and if the boy didn't turn up I could take it all back home and offer it to her. We could dine on it for several nights.

It all fit into the one basket: two plates, the cutlery, the food, the wine, and two dozen candles. There was a bit of work in setting the candles in their paper bags. I had to clear away long grass, chip packets, an abandoned shopping trolley. It looked quite pretty when it was done, the picnic blanket in the center of a flickering glow. I had put on an evening gown and heels. Away from Jessica and Mary and our extravagant evenings together, I felt vaguely like I was in drag. The heels sank into the loose earth when I walked and there were insects. I checked my watch and poured myself a glass of wine. He was late. He wouldn't be coming. He was late. I had decided that I should eat my portion anyway and watch the stars. A picnic for one in a vacant lot. I had brought a book and I would read by candlelight.

I was therefore surprised to see him, dressed in a suit. The remarkably comic bow tie should have been a warning for me but I thought he looked quite beautiful. He loomed above me, looking at the world of candlelight that I had created, and had a good laugh. He told me I was completely mad; I poured him a glass of wine.

We picnicked, and then we threw the blanket on top of the dirty plates and kicked dust onto the candles, watching the scraps of paper bag catch fire and drift up toward the sky. The air was alight with hope and there was laughter and holding hands as we headed back across the street.

Jessica met us at the door; I had forgotten my key and Jessica opened the door in her nightgown. She looked like an angel with
her perfect body and her halo of brushed blond hair, and I realized, suddenly, that he would want to sleep with her.

I felt him shift and he let my hand slip away. His whole body turned toward her as if she were the fireplace on a cold night. My fingers caught chill and I rubbed them against my thigh to warm them.

Bad to worse.

 

 

There is a kind of man who will not use a condom, a generation of boys just a little older than myself who were unmoved by the vision of the grim reaper. We lay naked beside each other. The condom was a little flaccid thing, drooping between my fingers, until, exhausted by negotiation, I let him slip inside me, skin on skin, for just a moment. I lay beneath him with my knees drawn up to my chest and my toes pressing against his nipples and all the joy had gone out of the thing. I pushed him away with my feet. There was the wet sound of our parting. I nestled down to finish the job with my mouth and he told me he liked the idea that I could suck his penis when it was ripe with the taste of my own juices—which, of course, he had not tasted.