Years ago a young woman fell for a young boy. He was her exact physical type. The short lived infactuation died. This short fiction was established based on the premise that what if years later, this now mid 40s man re-appeared in her life, and the woman is now in her late 30s, and what if they picked up where they left off years ago, and continued to explore the what-ifs?
I. The Museum
I saw the intensity in his eyes. The way he murmured "baby" when we sat at the empty screening room, watching an art installation in the dark at the museum. He wondered aloud if the workers in the film were actually live or still images.
"They are moving. You can see that guy reading the paper." He observed.
I nestled next to him. It was one of those things where the guy may have noticed, but not a woman who just wanted to cuddle, in the dark. But he was right. I saw another naval shipyard worker slowly turning his head, towards the moving camera, ever so slowly; if you blink you'd have missed it.
In the dark where the film continued to play, I turned my head, found his lips, and kissed him. His lips felt soft and moist. He was always so restrained when he kissed me in public. I instead pressed on. I wanted more of this, from him. If only he knew how much I desired him physically.
He kissed me back, this time; I felt a bit more emotion this time, a bit more strength from his end, as if he was holding less back, as if he was more relaxed and aware of my presence. Then I heard him whispered in my ears, "Baby." He went on to say something else, but I couldn’t hear anything. The sound from the film was drowning out his quiet, controlled voice, but it was unmistakable that he just called me "baby". It caused a stir in me, a physical ache that was unfamiliar to me. It was an acute sensation, sensation that I would rather suppress, if I knew what was good for me.
II. On Edge - Sexual Fantasies
I often wondered if I could be collected, cool and contemplative about our relationship, but more often I just found myself in a state of sexual frenzy, like a cat in heat, I suspected that I’d eventually make some silly animalistic sound or movement that would wound up on Youtube, some embarrassing video, and he’d never look at me the same way.
I felt on edge: sitting next to him was a difficult business, I had to focus on things that were not sexual, like the artist’s polka dot dress, a piece of motionless art installation, a still photography, a documentary film, the shadow on the concrete floor casted by the plump and tired museum worker nearby, something that did not remind me of him, his physical presence, that caused me to be in an agitated state, where all I could think of was sex, sex with him.
Sex with him was distinctively different – from when we were together the last time, from other men.
Earlier that month, I had gone to my shrink, and confessed that I had been looking to fulfill some sexual fantasies, to be specific, I wanted to act out these fantasies: to be dominated, to be tied up, to be raped, to be fucked like a whore, to be handcuffed, to wear a collar around my neck, to be suffocated, to be forced to suck him dry. I wanted some S&M activities. Was I insane? Was I normal?
She handed me a bunch of books to read. Conclusion: there was no normalcy in sexual fantasies. I was both relieved and troubled. Relieved that I was not insane, troubled because I had no such partner. Until he came along. He knew what I wanted. He could satisfy my urges. I saw it in his eyes.
III. Photos – Nudes and Otherwise
I took out my iPhone and started to take candid shots of him. I had asked him to send photos of him, but he had not done that, why not I could not know for sure, other than the fact that he probably thought that he did not have to send them and I'd be OK with it. I was not OK with it. I wanted his images with me, because he’s got mine. So I was snapping photos of him, whether he noticed or not, I was busy clicking away, and all of sudden I had his images in my phone.
Just like that, he was alive in my world. I could look at them, and could imagine what he was like, when I was not with him.
Perhaps that's why he was not as communicative to me as he was when we first started this thing, because he had already lots of photos of me, so he could look at them, he did not have to worry so much about sending me an email when he could just look at those photos. All alone, I imagined, in a hotel room, in his apartment, after his son had gone to sleep, when he was not with me, when he needed relief.
He was sent nude photos. I had taken them using my new MacAir, not airbrushed, au natural me. Creating those photos was a way for me to connect with him sexually. The experience of taking erotic photos was rather arousing to me.
I envisioned what it was like to fuck him, to be fucked by him. I thought about how much I enjoyed having him in my mouth, how delicious he tasted in my mouth when he came, and how I enjoyed being tied up by those white, firm, nautical ropes that he produced, how he covered my mouth to keep me quiet, and how he entered me from behind, so deep that it hurt.
It was unexpected, this sexual experience. When I took those photos of myself, in front my computer, I thought about the fantasies that I wanted him to fulfill. The perverse, the filth, and the excitement he could bring to my life. The sexual adventure that I was determined to embark on early in my twenties, but failed to realize, for I did not meet a willing partner before. And now I might have a chance to accomplish my goal, at last.
Could it really be the case? I had asked myself. Could I be alive in his memories, even when I was not around, he could see me through those photos?”
But now I understood.
I felt grounded now that I had his still images in my world. I could look at them. I liked how happy he looked when he smiled. He seemed genuinely pleased and satisfied. It was the smile you’d see from an ecstatic boy who just got to ride the train twenty times and each time there was a new tunnel to go in and out of it. I hoped that I had partaken in generating that joyfulness that he displayed on my camera.
I liked how he looked in these photos, his back towards me. I took those shots of him while he was walking through the exhibition halls, while he was admiring the art on the walls. In those photos I took of him, he became a piece of art himself: he was erect, his form fitted naturally into the gap between the large mounted photographs, in the evening hours of the museum, when the halls were mostly deserted. He was wearing a dark suit jacket, a pair of dark slacks, black shined shoes, and he was holding my black raffled scarf and coat.
My longing was curbed somehow, when I was looking at those photos. My lust of him was more muted, like the sepia color I turned his images into, not the throbbing pain I felt the week before, when I was high from just consumed ecstasy and mushroom.
IV. First Time
Sometimes I wondered if my craving, my physical yearning would persist, and if so, for how long.
He's not a young man. But I was no longer young either. I never felt this way when he was in his thirties and I was in my twenties.
He had reminded me that we first met in the spring of 1998. I recently did the math and I realized that I was twenty-five then, and he must have been thirty-two at the time. We were babies. Thirteen years had passed. In between those years, marriage and two children for me, father for him.
It felt a little uncertain, tentative, and strange when we first reconnected. I read a note from him, back in August. He had said that he had always lived in the same place in North Beach, since we first met. I had trouble picturing where he lived, for I had never been to his place, during the brief time we dated.
That note took me back briefly, and I found myself trapped in a wrong kind of looking glass, where the history was clouded by the lack of memory. Years of sleep deprivation and insomnia had caused this, I thought. I had forgotten how we met; I tried hard to recall how I felt about him, or what we did. I remembered vaguely that I had written a story, or two, about him, then. I knew one of the story title contained Vacaville, and the other story took place in Salt Lake City. I was hoping to find the stories I wrote. It was in that disk.
All of my twenties were condensed into one disk; it used to sit in a drawer in my study, the one drawer that I had not opened for years.
V. The Squirrel
There used to be a squirrel that lived in the roof above the study. Every night he'd be chipping away and wandering about. I had thought of many ways to rid of him, including poison and a bb gun. So one night I decided it was time to do some spring-cleaning, thinking the noise would eventually get rid of him. That’s when I opened the drawer that had not been opened for years, and that’s where I found the disk titled Creative writing. I looked at the disk, without any lingering thoughts, I threw it into the trashcan. I thought that I’d never have any use for it. I thought that I would never write again.
That evening the squirrel was in a particularly active mode. I could hear him stumping, moving about, and hovering, on top of the roof. As it turned out, he was doing some spring-cleaning of his own, because the next day he just left, packed up his nuts, left without a trace. I missed him to this date.
And I missed the disk to this date.
It was the only thing that tied me to my past, now I had nothing left. I had nothing left of him, or us. I could hardly remember what he looked like back then, and what we did. I remembered a few years ago, perhaps on his Facebook profile, I saw a picture of him. I remembered then that he had flashed a bright smile in that photo of his, and I thought to myself, I knew this man once, intimately.
VI. Gay vs. Straight
In my head, I was convinced that he was a closeted gay. That was the ongoing thought that came across my mind over the past thirteen years, whenever I thought of him. My flawed logic was that if I liked a man, it was because I either liked him as a person, whom I was not attracted to, or he was gay. Straight men whom I was physically attracted to, were really only meant to be sexual partners, they could not be friends. After our brief sting as lovers, we remained friends. I liked him and was attracted him. So it must had been that he was gay, I was sure. The men in my world fit into two categories: fuckable = not friends, not-fuckable = friends. I formed emotional connection with friends, I formed sexual bond with “not friends”. He did not fit into either category, so my interaction with him became limited, at best. He just did not want to come out, not yet anyway. I would think that to myself. So I waited, waited for him to come out of closet: waited for him to tell the world that he was really in love with men, and women were his beard.
Until I realized recently that perhaps he was never in the closet, because he was really straight.
I had finally been persuaded, this time: he fucked me hard, the way I wanted to be fucked. The way I had described to my shrink.
VII. In Sync, At Last
Though I might not have remembered what we did when we dated, I did remember how we couldn't really find the rhythm to dance together. How it was exciting for a while and then the feeling just vanished. He vanished, for a while; and I, moved on.
So thirteen plus years later, we asked ourselves:
“Whatever happened then? Why didn't we continue?"
He couldn't find an answer, neither could I.
"Perhaps we were out of sync then."
"But now we are in sync."
He squeezed my hand, agreed, that night, in the boat.
I looked into his eyes. I found his intensity was hidden behind those framed lenses.
He was not wearing glasses when we first met. He might have been wearing contacts, and I couldn't tell what was hidden behind.
Not that I knew what was hidden behind those glasses now, but I was content with the unknown. There was a sense of peace when I was with him, even the uncertainty of the future, the unorthodox guilt-free relationship I was having with him, was therapeutic and natural to me. I needed no answer, no reasoning.
VIII. Heart Matters
Regardless what he felt, how he felt, I instinctively knew this world would be all right. Wherever he was, I was there in the same space with him. In that same wildness, the same Great Plains, the same forest, the same ocean, the same shore. I was not far behind. I found the rhythm, this time. I suspected that he found his as well.
When I was with him, paradoxically, I felt both sexually charged and anxious; and, yet, emotionally settled and at ease. I was just myself. I was never like this with others, through the last nine years of my thirties, or in my more adventurous twenties. I was often inquisitive about the future; I despised the notion of que sera sera. I needed an answer always, often right away, and when the answer was not presented to me, when I couldn’t figure out where things were going, I panicked, retreated, drew a conclusion, and moved on.
I could never settle on one person, at one time. I needed my heart to be in different places, lingering over different people, to feel whole.
But not anymore. I had grown up, as it turned out, I could, after all these years, learn that you didn’t have to parlay your heart to win your hand. In fact, life did not have to be a gamble; life could be just, life: calm, chaotic, uncertain yet inspiring. You didn’t have to change yourself, or others. You could be OK with whichever direction this detour would take you.
I appreciated what he had brought into my life: friendship, sexual freedom, adventures, and the unknown future.
Whatever this was, I would be all right, and he would be all right.
This time, it just felt all right. I told him so. Well, not directly to him, but to the still, sepia images of him, the back of him, to be exact, as he walked through the vacant art exhibition halls that evening, at the museum, holding my raffled scarf, and my coat.
And if he were near, and if he could hear me, I knew that he might just echo me.
I saw the intensity in his eyes. The way he murmured "baby" when we sat at the empty screening room, watching an art installation in the dark at the museum. He wondered aloud if the workers in the film were actually live or still images.
"They are moving. You can see that guy reading the paper." He observed.
I nestled next to him. It was one of those things where the guy may have noticed, but not a woman who just wanted to cuddle, in the dark. But he was right. I saw another naval shipyard worker slowly turning his head, towards the moving camera, ever so slowly; if you blink you'd have missed it.
In the dark where the film continued to play, I turned my head, found his lips, and kissed him. His lips felt soft and moist. He was always so restrained when he kissed me in public. I instead pressed on. I wanted more of this, from him. If only he knew how much I desired him physically.
He kissed me back, this time; I felt a bit more emotion this time, a bit more strength from his end, as if he was holding less back, as if he was more relaxed and aware of my presence. Then I heard him whispered in my ears, "Baby." He went on to say something else, but I couldn’t hear anything. The sound from the film was drowning out his quiet, controlled voice, but it was unmistakable that he just called me "baby". It caused a stir in me, a physical ache that was unfamiliar to me. It was an acute sensation, sensation that I would rather suppress, if I knew what was good for me.
II. On Edge - Sexual Fantasies
I often wondered if I could be collected, cool and contemplative about our relationship, but more often I just found myself in a state of sexual frenzy, like a cat in heat, I suspected that I’d eventually make some silly animalistic sound or movement that would wound up on Youtube, some embarrassing video, and he’d never look at me the same way.
I felt on edge: sitting next to him was a difficult business, I had to focus on things that were not sexual, like the artist’s polka dot dress, a piece of motionless art installation, a still photography, a documentary film, the shadow on the concrete floor casted by the plump and tired museum worker nearby, something that did not remind me of him, his physical presence, that caused me to be in an agitated state, where all I could think of was sex, sex with him.
Sex with him was distinctively different – from when we were together the last time, from other men.
Earlier that month, I had gone to my shrink, and confessed that I had been looking to fulfill some sexual fantasies, to be specific, I wanted to act out these fantasies: to be dominated, to be tied up, to be raped, to be fucked like a whore, to be handcuffed, to wear a collar around my neck, to be suffocated, to be forced to suck him dry. I wanted some S&M activities. Was I insane? Was I normal?
She handed me a bunch of books to read. Conclusion: there was no normalcy in sexual fantasies. I was both relieved and troubled. Relieved that I was not insane, troubled because I had no such partner. Until he came along. He knew what I wanted. He could satisfy my urges. I saw it in his eyes.
III. Photos – Nudes and Otherwise
I took out my iPhone and started to take candid shots of him. I had asked him to send photos of him, but he had not done that, why not I could not know for sure, other than the fact that he probably thought that he did not have to send them and I'd be OK with it. I was not OK with it. I wanted his images with me, because he’s got mine. So I was snapping photos of him, whether he noticed or not, I was busy clicking away, and all of sudden I had his images in my phone.
Just like that, he was alive in my world. I could look at them, and could imagine what he was like, when I was not with him.
Perhaps that's why he was not as communicative to me as he was when we first started this thing, because he had already lots of photos of me, so he could look at them, he did not have to worry so much about sending me an email when he could just look at those photos. All alone, I imagined, in a hotel room, in his apartment, after his son had gone to sleep, when he was not with me, when he needed relief.
He was sent nude photos. I had taken them using my new MacAir, not airbrushed, au natural me. Creating those photos was a way for me to connect with him sexually. The experience of taking erotic photos was rather arousing to me.
I envisioned what it was like to fuck him, to be fucked by him. I thought about how much I enjoyed having him in my mouth, how delicious he tasted in my mouth when he came, and how I enjoyed being tied up by those white, firm, nautical ropes that he produced, how he covered my mouth to keep me quiet, and how he entered me from behind, so deep that it hurt.
It was unexpected, this sexual experience. When I took those photos of myself, in front my computer, I thought about the fantasies that I wanted him to fulfill. The perverse, the filth, and the excitement he could bring to my life. The sexual adventure that I was determined to embark on early in my twenties, but failed to realize, for I did not meet a willing partner before. And now I might have a chance to accomplish my goal, at last.
Could it really be the case? I had asked myself. Could I be alive in his memories, even when I was not around, he could see me through those photos?”
But now I understood.
I felt grounded now that I had his still images in my world. I could look at them. I liked how happy he looked when he smiled. He seemed genuinely pleased and satisfied. It was the smile you’d see from an ecstatic boy who just got to ride the train twenty times and each time there was a new tunnel to go in and out of it. I hoped that I had partaken in generating that joyfulness that he displayed on my camera.
My longing was curbed somehow, when I was looking at those photos. My lust of him was more muted, like the sepia color I turned his images into, not the throbbing pain I felt the week before, when I was high from just consumed ecstasy and mushroom.
IV. First Time
Sometimes I wondered if my craving, my physical yearning would persist, and if so, for how long.
He's not a young man. But I was no longer young either. I never felt this way when he was in his thirties and I was in my twenties.
He had reminded me that we first met in the spring of 1998. I recently did the math and I realized that I was twenty-five then, and he must have been thirty-two at the time. We were babies. Thirteen years had passed. In between those years, marriage and two children for me, father for him.
It felt a little uncertain, tentative, and strange when we first reconnected. I read a note from him, back in August. He had said that he had always lived in the same place in North Beach, since we first met. I had trouble picturing where he lived, for I had never been to his place, during the brief time we dated.
That note took me back briefly, and I found myself trapped in a wrong kind of looking glass, where the history was clouded by the lack of memory. Years of sleep deprivation and insomnia had caused this, I thought. I had forgotten how we met; I tried hard to recall how I felt about him, or what we did. I remembered vaguely that I had written a story, or two, about him, then. I knew one of the story title contained Vacaville, and the other story took place in Salt Lake City. I was hoping to find the stories I wrote. It was in that disk.
All of my twenties were condensed into one disk; it used to sit in a drawer in my study, the one drawer that I had not opened for years.
V. The Squirrel
There used to be a squirrel that lived in the roof above the study. Every night he'd be chipping away and wandering about. I had thought of many ways to rid of him, including poison and a bb gun. So one night I decided it was time to do some spring-cleaning, thinking the noise would eventually get rid of him. That’s when I opened the drawer that had not been opened for years, and that’s where I found the disk titled Creative writing. I looked at the disk, without any lingering thoughts, I threw it into the trashcan. I thought that I’d never have any use for it. I thought that I would never write again.
That evening the squirrel was in a particularly active mode. I could hear him stumping, moving about, and hovering, on top of the roof. As it turned out, he was doing some spring-cleaning of his own, because the next day he just left, packed up his nuts, left without a trace. I missed him to this date.
And I missed the disk to this date.
It was the only thing that tied me to my past, now I had nothing left. I had nothing left of him, or us. I could hardly remember what he looked like back then, and what we did. I remembered a few years ago, perhaps on his Facebook profile, I saw a picture of him. I remembered then that he had flashed a bright smile in that photo of his, and I thought to myself, I knew this man once, intimately.
VI. Gay vs. Straight
In my head, I was convinced that he was a closeted gay. That was the ongoing thought that came across my mind over the past thirteen years, whenever I thought of him. My flawed logic was that if I liked a man, it was because I either liked him as a person, whom I was not attracted to, or he was gay. Straight men whom I was physically attracted to, were really only meant to be sexual partners, they could not be friends. After our brief sting as lovers, we remained friends. I liked him and was attracted him. So it must had been that he was gay, I was sure. The men in my world fit into two categories: fuckable = not friends, not-fuckable = friends. I formed emotional connection with friends, I formed sexual bond with “not friends”. He did not fit into either category, so my interaction with him became limited, at best. He just did not want to come out, not yet anyway. I would think that to myself. So I waited, waited for him to come out of closet: waited for him to tell the world that he was really in love with men, and women were his beard.
Until I realized recently that perhaps he was never in the closet, because he was really straight.
I had finally been persuaded, this time: he fucked me hard, the way I wanted to be fucked. The way I had described to my shrink.
VII. In Sync, At Last
Though I might not have remembered what we did when we dated, I did remember how we couldn't really find the rhythm to dance together. How it was exciting for a while and then the feeling just vanished. He vanished, for a while; and I, moved on.
So thirteen plus years later, we asked ourselves:
“Whatever happened then? Why didn't we continue?"
He couldn't find an answer, neither could I.
"Perhaps we were out of sync then."
"But now we are in sync."
He squeezed my hand, agreed, that night, in the boat.
I looked into his eyes. I found his intensity was hidden behind those framed lenses.
He was not wearing glasses when we first met. He might have been wearing contacts, and I couldn't tell what was hidden behind.
Not that I knew what was hidden behind those glasses now, but I was content with the unknown. There was a sense of peace when I was with him, even the uncertainty of the future, the unorthodox guilt-free relationship I was having with him, was therapeutic and natural to me. I needed no answer, no reasoning.
VIII. Heart Matters
Regardless what he felt, how he felt, I instinctively knew this world would be all right. Wherever he was, I was there in the same space with him. In that same wildness, the same Great Plains, the same forest, the same ocean, the same shore. I was not far behind. I found the rhythm, this time. I suspected that he found his as well.
When I was with him, paradoxically, I felt both sexually charged and anxious; and, yet, emotionally settled and at ease. I was just myself. I was never like this with others, through the last nine years of my thirties, or in my more adventurous twenties. I was often inquisitive about the future; I despised the notion of que sera sera. I needed an answer always, often right away, and when the answer was not presented to me, when I couldn’t figure out where things were going, I panicked, retreated, drew a conclusion, and moved on.
I could never settle on one person, at one time. I needed my heart to be in different places, lingering over different people, to feel whole.
But not anymore. I had grown up, as it turned out, I could, after all these years, learn that you didn’t have to parlay your heart to win your hand. In fact, life did not have to be a gamble; life could be just, life: calm, chaotic, uncertain yet inspiring. You didn’t have to change yourself, or others. You could be OK with whichever direction this detour would take you.
I appreciated what he had brought into my life: friendship, sexual freedom, adventures, and the unknown future.
Whatever this was, I would be all right, and he would be all right.
This time, it just felt all right. I told him so. Well, not directly to him, but to the still, sepia images of him, the back of him, to be exact, as he walked through the vacant art exhibition halls that evening, at the museum, holding my raffled scarf, and my coat.
And if he were near, and if he could hear me, I knew that he might just echo me.
No comments:
Post a Comment