Me an' my xtz tea, we're where it's at, man. Add to that a few energy mints, the occasional aphrodisiac mints, some VROOM VANILLA! hyper-caffeinated flavoured syrup, and I haven't tasted coffee in days and yet somehow the walls are sparkling with the glow of happy spirits.
And maybe a part of it is the lingering fingers of afterglow, still wrapped like a crown of smoke about my forebrain...
From "The Zen of Sex" to the slow and methodical perusal of every page of the Kama Sutra, and the books of tantra, I find myself wondering if he lied about never having read these before.
He takes to them so instantly, so hungrily, I find myself writing sonnets to his tongue, those langourous moments in the shower after he has left me covered in kisses and the softest embraces... I find myself mulling over the poetry that he has traced along my hips with curious fingers.
Saturday, The Great Princess Shopping Trip, my car and my soul dedicated to my beloved for her birthday (secretly delighted to be spending time with the one honest and true-to-herself person left in the world), we wandered through furniture stores where the side-table for my if-it-weren't-so-filled-with-reptiles-and-ski-equipment ultimate dining room was priced at $6000. On sale. No, I'm not missing any decimal places.
And we tried the goth shops where my new ultra-tight "La conformite c'est la mort de l'ame" hooded shirt drew approving glances when I wore it on Sunday (is it just me, Gila, or are your boobs like, way bigger), where my many-shades-of-lavender sweater had me feeling oddly feminine and out of place yesterday.
Funny how princess can pick up a shirt off a rack and no matter how many I try on, no matter how many I snap up, no matter how many I spy with the corner of my not-very-agile-eye, the ones she chooses always end up the ones I wear to work the following day.
Good choice, princess. You're still magic, purple sweaters or no...
And we made plans to open a gallery, playing the role of the proper-sugadaddy.
And my tenth-ear-hole is healing nicely, I was going to get my inner ear pierced but when I saw what a butcher the guy in the randomly-walked-in piercing shop we went to, I chickened out. I have to call Aura and let her poke holes in me. I think I want to pierce the hood of my clitoris. I keep thinking about it... Never my nipples, never my fat belly, I've always wanted to do my lip but I'm not sure how over-the-top it would be...
...but a tiny little bead hanging right over my clitoris...
Anwyay. Back on topic. I was going somewhere with this. Must be the sugar, I broke for french class (where I learned to swear and discuss various impurities of fine cocaine) and upon returning to my desk was surprised by a coworker who I was convinced thought little of me, handing me a bottle of home-made maple syrup. Mmmmmm. SUGAR HIIIIIIIIIGH. It's delightful and soft and smoky, not quite as sweet as Marn's home-cooked stuff, but who am I to be picky while I'm stuck buying my liquid sugar in a can? He's selling bottles for $7 each, I guess he figures if people see that I have some...
So we went to Indigo, where among the towers of fascinations I lost my princess but collided with thousands of ghosts from my past, from CEGEP, from past job hunts, from casual bar conversations, we spoke and chattered and realized how many common friends we've developped over the years and then we parted ways again, my arms slowly getting heavier and heavier with Calvin-and-Hobbes books, books about India, books about Oscar Wilde, Ezra Pound, when I finally broke free of the mesmerizing daze of this city of knowledge and caught up with my princess in the section that I'd been looking for.
Sex.
So I sat down, legs folded under me, with one copy of each book from each shelf.
And I went through them, muttering aloud, half for my lady's entertainment, half for my own accompanyment, and proceeded to announce, in running monologue: "Yeah, yeah, yeah, bullshit bullshit, oh PLEASE who didn't know THAT when they first started out, oh sure, as if any modern fourteen-year-old doesn't know about THAT, and pullleeeeze... I've been doing that one for a decade now..."
Hopeless advice for hapless housewives desperately trying to make up for their sag but more importantly their lack of passion and lack of life.
Not what I was looking for.
I was looking for two things: Eastern philosophies, tantra, kama sutra, empire of the senses type stuff, shakti type stuff, to remind me of how inspired I could be by a lover, and detailed instructions in case I could improve a technique here and there.
The first surprise that struck me was a book filled with erotic poems. They were good. Very good. Translations of Jacques Prevert, (otherwise known as Jack the Pervert, but in the perversion of reality sense, not the sexual one), even Allan Ginsberg and e.e. cummings and handfuls of authors that I'd never read before.
I bought it for his birthday, in a month. Sex and poetry, the only two things that we ever do together.
The second surprise was the utter disappointment with a book entitled "The Eastern arts", splashed with zen-style pictures of copulating, serene, fat and round and rosy asian couples. The utter disappointment was that the cover was the closest thing to art that was contained within the entire book.
And it was a helluva doorstoop kinda book, too.
The third surprise was this horrendous little pink book, with loud red letters and the picture of a hideous televangelist-type woman with big hair and too-red lipstick and a floral print dress that turned her cleavage into an adventurous eyesore...
I flipped through the pages, desperate to learn something. Anything.
I found the blowjob section.
It was divided into parts, ten different parts of a blowjob, with several tips and techniques described in detail for each.
I began to read through the list, nodding my head and muttering "yup, yup, that one always gives me results, and oh yeah I learned that one from Betsy, and hey, waitamminnit what a GREAT IDEA..."
And up I jump, exclaiming with glee, "LOOK! LOOK! I'VE NEVER TRIED THE TWISTY THING!", suddenly bringing the world back into focus, wooden shelving, crisp books, plush carpeting, and the crowd of women surrounding us and looking rather oddly at the excitedly dishevelled girl in the big coat, wearing the rabid grin.
I spent the weekend aching to try them out, behind every conversation, every hug, every silent moment.
I spent the weekend thinking about the first lesson of the Zen-style book that I did finally manage to find, about giving myself entirely to the moment, to the person.
I finally met up with him on Sunday evening, after a long evening's work, and we watched "Kama Sutra" which is still a poignant and painful love story after so many years of having forgotten it entirely.
I explained a few of the theories put forth in the movie.
I practiced my new techniques to exuberant results.
Then I gave myself to him like I haven't had the strength to do for anyone in so long, without changing my actions or movements or sounds, simply letting the moment past certain barriers that I never believed I had set up in my brain. In so long. Since ever, really. Since my virginity and any meaning it could have had was taken from me. I reached out to him with lips that tasted the entirety of him for the first time, and not simply lips that caressed and cajoled and gave pleasure, but lips that trembled with the ecstatic tingling of every contact.
And I came, and I came, and since then my days have been tenderness and touching fingers to lips as gentle reminders of moments recently passed, and soon to be taken up again.
And since then I have been composing poetry to him in my head,
"Tender and curious
The gentle probing of your tongue
Takes me on journeys where time moves in luxuriating circles
And horrors stand outside of them, pressed jealously to the glass
And all I can feel is myself falling."
And yesterday we trapped ourselves into strange questions, him asking me about violence that I had unintentionally alluded to, my asking him if I frightened him.
He said yes.
I asked why.
He shuddered and looked up at me and said "because of the ease with which you take and leave people"
And I asked "and you think that I will do the same with you"
"Yes."
And I still don't know how to tell him otherwise. And I still don't know how he is reacting to what little he could pull from me about the 'bad days'. I know how the two others who I'd ever uttered this to reacted with fear, revulsion, expulsion even, and then they wondered why I couldn't trust them anymore.
Him? He took my hand in his and there were tears in his eyes, and I put my head against his chest, and we stood there a moment before returning to our desks.
And he still isn't pretty, short and thin (but with every so perfectly toned muscles, enough to lift me and hurl me through the air into snowbanks), with bowed-legs and thinning hair and lips pursed nervously when confronted with uncertainty. But when he sings, when all I can see are his dark, shining brown eyes reflecting candelight and peering at me from unexpected angles and corridors built spuriously from my sheets, when I feel the impossible silkiness of his surprisingly fragile skin, when I forget momentarily the acne on his back and his already failed marriage and his beautiful daughters, when I forget that he is never stunned by a story, a poem, a movie, a play, so much that it sticks in his brain and tumbles about until it finds the heart and burrows into it, when I forget the blank look when I say something that is utterly incomprehensible to him...
When I forget all these things that normally thrill me in a person, then I look at him and realize that he is capable of a kindness that no man has ever been rumoured to be.
And I can feel myself falling.
Only there is nowhere to go from here. No future. No plans. Only the now, and the warmth, and the wetness.
And when I take him, or he takes me, whoever it is that has woken first in the middle of the night or just before daybreak, or both or more often, even, it is a joining like I have never felt before.
And yet I'm still terrified of that pretty little four-letter-word that has landed me in trouble so many times.
Not beautiful, not brilliant, not exciting, but oh so passionate... And so simply, beautifully, dreamily alive.
He dreams. And we dream of a new sort of kindness.
And we tell each other that we are wonderful. "You are wonderful." For us, those are the three fateful words. Not the other ones. Not the ones with the cupids and the hearts and the inbred expectations.