Last Lovers

by William Wharton

  ‘People are very strange, are they not, Jacques? They are so often afraid of the best things. Have you ever tasted the seed of a man? You could have tasted your own seed. What does it taste like?’

  ‘I’ve never tasted the seed of a man, Mirabelle, not even my own. I guess I’ve been afraid just as almost everyone else is. I don’t know why.’

  ‘I am blind, and as you know, tastes and smells mean much to me. I think I can smell your seed, it smells very good to me. If you will not allow me to taste your seed, it would be as if someone would not let you see something beautiful, such as a sunrise or a sunset, or the light coming through the trees. Do you think that is right? I promise if I do not like the taste of your seed, I shall tell you; if you prefer, I shall spit it out. Would that be all right?’

  ‘You may taste my penis if you want, Mirabelle. If I feel I am going to give off some seed I’ll tell you and I’ll pull away. Would that be all right with you? It can be very stimulating to a man to have someone taste his penis, so do be careful.’

  ‘I shall be very careful. But I would like to taste your seed. It would be marvelous to have some of your seed inside me. It is not poisonous, it will not make me ill. Why are you so worried?’

  She begins by tasting, running her lips, her tongue up the shaft of my penis from the bottom where it springs from my pubic hairs. I can feel the tender stroke of her tongue as she moves it all around the length of my penis. I spread my legs to make more room for her. She stops.

  ‘Under the penis there is wrinkled skin with some hair on it and something inside. Is that where you keep the seed, Jacques?’

  I feel her hands gently exploring my testicles. She moves her fingers back almost to my anus.

  ‘Yes, those are the testicles, Mirabelle. It is there where a man stores his seed.’

  ‘They feel like the stone on the inside of a peach, it is a strange feeling. They are so different in texture from the penis, one so smooth, the other so wrinkled and hard.’

  ‘If the penis is soft, then that part is soft, too, Mirabelle. It is the way a man is.’

  ‘I never knew men could be so interesting.’

  She moves her hands back down the shaft of the penis, pulling the skin all the way back. Holding it tightly, she brings her mouth, her lips, her tongue farther up until she begins to touch the glans. My penis is stiff and hard again, I feel the texture of her tongue, rough and at the same time wet and flexible, as it licks around the top of the glans and then into the split. I can’t stop myself from squirming and only barely suppress a moan of passionate delight.

  ‘Is is all right if I put my mouth around the top of your penis? I promise I will not bite.’

  I can’t say anything, I’m only feeling, my entire body is at the point of convulsing. I feel the hollowness of her mouth as she closes it over the top of my penis. The warmth of her comes from her mouth into me and I start the slow pumping of ejaculation, she holds her mouth tight over me as I feel myself losing control.

  ‘Mirabelle, careful, I’m going to let out some seed. I can’t help myself!’

  She only tightens her mouth over my penis, holds on tight with both hands as I turn this way and that in a paroxysm of passion and delight. Her braid of hair brushes against my thigh, and I ejaculate with a force to match the twisting of my body. I feel her sucking it in, hear her swallowing, running her tongue against the source, licking, sucking, swallowing. It seems she’s drinking the very life out of me.

  As I gradually come back, breathing hard, my penis shrinking, softening, she keeps licking like a child finishing the last part of some favorite dessert. By now I’m totally relaxed. Her fingers, her mouth still gently stroking me, she takes my testicles into her mouth and now she’s tasting them. She stops and settles her head on my stomach.

  ‘Jacques, you taste so delicious, I do not know when I have ever tasted anything so beautiful. It is a taste such as I have never tasted before, like the best kind of bechamel but with something of a very good demi-sel butter on toast, too. But that does not describe it either. Thank you for letting me taste your seed. I am certain it is very good seed. I hope sometime you will allow me to taste it again. But now your penis and testicles are growing smaller and softer, is that because the seed has left them? Will the penis become big again?’

  I’m almost asleep. I reach down and pull Mirabelle up over on top of me until her face is above mine. I kiss her on the lips, she holds them tight. I realize she doesn’t know how to kiss; we call it ‘French’ kissing and here she is, she who’s just given me so much pleasure, totally unknowing in this most common of sexual activities.

  ‘Open up your mouth, Mirabelle. I want you to taste my tongue. I think you will like it.’

  She opens her mouth. I press my lips to hers and feel them tighten with mine. I slowly put my tongue between her teeth and feel her tongue. I stroke her tongue, then the roof of her mouth with mine. I’m tasting the seed of a man now, my own seed. I breathe out into her mouth and then breathe in, pulling the breath through her nostrils. Her body tightens, we break away.

  ‘Is that what kissing is really like? Or is this only your own special way of kissing? It makes me dizzy, I feel as if I could faint. Were you trying to tickle the roof of my mouth? It felt good but it didn’t tickle.’

  ‘Did it feel good to you?’

  ‘Oh yes! After I recovered from the shock, it was very good. You have a wonderful-tasting tongue but it is not as good as your seed. Could you taste your seed in my mouth?’

  ‘I think so, Mirabelle. May I taste your tongue and then let us go to sleep.’

  I turn so she is by my side and we kiss again. This time, very shyly, tentatively, the way she’d tasted the rest of me, she explores the inside of my mouth, moves her tongue over mine, across the roof of my mouth. I pass her tongue with mine into her mouth and we caress tongues, top and bottom. It’s very soft, loving. There’s nothing of thrust, much of trust. I never realized how loving someone this way could be such a quiet feeling. We aren’t going anywhere, we’re already there.

  I wonder how this night in bed is going to affect the rest of our relationship, how we will feel when we face each other in the light of day. Then I realize there’s no light of day for Mirabelle. She’s always blanketed in the soft cover of darkness and night. I begin to understand something of why she doesn’t want to see. In so many ways she doesn’t need to, and realizes how much of her life, as she knows it, would be lost with sight.

  Blind Reverie

  I shall never be the same again. When I went to sleep in Jacques’s arms, it was as if I were falling into a warm deep hole. How could I have lived so long without knowing?

  He is so bashful and kind, yet so strong and feeling. It was wonderful to feel his thick penis pressing against my leg, then actually touching it with my hands, my fingers. To taste his seed is to know how good life can be.

  What must real sex be like, when a man slides his large penis into the soft parts of a woman? It is hard to believe it could be any more exciting than this. I think my poor old heart would stop if something more stimulating happened to me.

  I hope this closeness we have felt can continue. I feel Jacques is somewhat concerened for me. I wish I could convince him of how beautiful everything seems, how I am not afraid of dying a virgin now. I do not think I actually care so much as I did before. I have known so much, experienced such pleasure, how can anything be better? I must speak with Jacques about this, perhaps he can help me understand. I love life more than ever but am not afraid at all of leaving it, because he will always be with me.

  11

  Our days blend one into the other. I’m falling more in love with Mirabelle each day and I’m not fighting it anymore.

  During the days, we work on finishing the apartment, painting, taking up old linoleum, hanging drapes, getting rid of old furniture that can’t be refurbished, taking the paint off some furniture that is painted over, and is often oak or cherry underneath.

  I consul
t Mirabelle about every decision I make and most times we’re in agreement. She helps with whatever she can. She re-upholsters the chairs and an old couch, virtually without assistance. The whole place is really starting to look light and airy. I’m so sorry she can’t share it visually with me.

  Every few days she asks me just how it looks, asks for me to take different positions in the apartment while she sits beside me. I put my arms around her or hold her hands and explain in great detail everything I’m seeing. I can almost feel her vision being constructed in her mind. In some ways it’s like putting information into a computer, knowing it will remember all and integrate it into some special pattern according to a program. The program is Mirabelle.

  We continue our painting. We are coming to the end of the places Mirabelle definitely remembers, her special places. I keep describing what I’m doing, what I’m painting, how it looks, how the light is falling, how I’m composing. She listens carefully in her wonderful concentrated way, smiling, seeing in her special private world. I paint more and more from inside myself. I listen as Mirabelle shares her vision and it is integrated with mine, but now I’m beginning to have a vision of my own. I’ve learned to see with more than my eyes. I’m becoming an artist.

  I keep hoping Mirabelle will see my paintings, that she will have such confidence in me she can allow herself sight, but it doesn’t happen.

  Every night she comes to my bed. Gradually I become active in our lovemaking, caressing her, giving her pleasure in return. Mirabelle wants me to really make love to her, to enter her, but she is too small. Even with the most tender loving I can give her, she remains dry and tight. It’s the one thing about her being older which is frustrating. I don’t see her as an older woman anymore, in so many ways she’s younger, more vibrant, experimental, than I am.

  We try different lubricants and I ‘taste’ her long and lovingly with all the love I feel for her, but she remains too small and there is no natural lubrication. Even my finger or my tongue, carefully inserted, gives her pain. Mirabelle cries in her discouragement.

  ‘It seems I shall die a virgin after all, Jacques, my love. I have waited too long.’

  But our lovemaking is not blocked by this mere mechanical impossibility. Mirabelle is so passionate in her desire to please me, so fearless and imaginative in the pleasures she gives, I feel guilty. I also feel awkward, not knowing how I can possibly give her anything in return for what she gives me.

  During all the time since I’ve left home, I’ve kept my promise to Lorrie. I’ve gone to the American Express every other Tuesday to look for mail. Then, while there, using a small counter by the window, I have written, telling how I am well, how I think of them often, how I love them.

  Only twice have there been letters to me, both from Lorrie, none from the children. Early on, only two months after I’d left, she told me she was going home to Minneapolis. It seems Didier couldn’t abandon his family and didn’t want to see her anymore. I felt she was accusing me of abandoning her and I asked in my letter back if this were so.

  But she didn’t answer my letter. I was, at that point, gradually going downhill, was not in my real mind, wandering all over Paris. Perhaps, it was only in my own drunken stupor, this idea she was accusing me existed.

  I told Mirabelle about that letter and she said it would be hard to tell, but she didn’t think so, she was only telling me what had happened and was probably very, very unhappy about losing Didier.

  The second letter I received was almost a year after I had left. It came just as I was beginning to pull myself together, when I was living in my attic, a few weeks before I met Mirabelle.

  Her letter told me she was selling the house. She said it was too big for her with all the children gone now. She was going to rent a condominium where there would be an extra room in case one of them wanted to visit. She went on to tell me she was all right and that she was working. She was doing the kind of work she’d always wanted, personnel management, for a small firm in St Paul. She said it was challenging, difficult, but she liked the work. She finished by saying she hoped I was happy.

  I wrote a long letter back explaining how I was painting and that, although I wasn’t yet painting as well as I wanted, I was making progress. I didn’t tell her how I was living. I told her I still loved her and asked if she would tell the children I loved and missed them, too. I wanted to ask her to have them write to me, but decided I didn’t want to put any pressure on them, it was probably very hard for them as it was.

  When I moved in with Mirabelle I told Lorrie where I was living. I told her how I was living with a seventy-one-year-old blind Frenchwoman who was a wonderful person. I told her if she wanted to, she could write me there, and gave her the address. I said I would also still check at American Express. I told her my painting was coming along very well.

  Every two weeks during the months I was with Mirabelle I wrote Lorrie long letters telling everything. I told of how my paintings were improving, how I felt that, at last, I was becoming a real artist. I told about fixing up the apartment. I told her my feelings about Mirabelle and how I thought I was falling in love.

  I didn’t want to be cruel and I was afraid Lorrie wouldn’t understand, but one thing I’d learned is that when there are secrets, it is hard to keep love alive. I told Lorrie as much about Mirabelle as I could, about her music, her many languages, even about her pigeons. I hoped she’d understand.

  It’s a late-summer morning when I come in from running. Mirabelle is still in her tights. Either she worked out longer or I ran faster. She immediately goes into her bedroom to change. Despite all our intimacy, she is still very proper in her dress. I’ve never seen anything of her clothing left around. Even in her bedroom, all is in order, perhaps that’s the only way you can really survive when you are blind and alone.

  And her bedroom, now, is just the way she wanted it. I’m surprised how beautifully it came out. The white four-poster bed in the center, with a deep wine-colored carpet over the entire floor, complements beautifully the two tones of deep maroon in the damask-covered walls. I painted the ceiling as white as her bed so the room isn’t dark. This doesn’t matter to Mirabelle, of course, but my own aesthetic demanded it. I’ve never had any interest in interior decoration, but I’m enjoying this experience.

  Most nights, Mirabelle comes to my bed, but she is always up and gone before I wake in the morning. I’ve thought of going to her bed, but for some reason have not. There’s something magical about the way it is and I don’t want anything to change.

  This morning, Mirabelle comes out of her bedroom beautifully dressed in earth colors, the colors of my bedroom. She walks to the table and picks up a letter.

  ‘Could you tell me from whom this letter is, Jacques? I cannot think of anyone in the world who would write to me on such paper. The only letters I receive are official ones and they are always on much different kinds of paper, slippery paper or paper with very thin windows in them, and no timbres.’

  It’s a letter from Lorrie.

  ‘It’s a letter from my wife, Mirabelle.’

  She smiles.

  ‘I thought it might be.’

  She moves into the kitchen area. This kitchen now is bright and gay. The reflections from the many yellows in the sitting area light it and I built small hooded lights over the sink. None of this means anything to Mirabelle, so I did it for myself. I’m convinced, also, that if the apartment is the way it would be if she could see, Mirabelle might actually see someday. With my encouragement, she’s even begun to turn lights on and off in each room when she enters or leaves. She thinks this very amusing. At first, she’d accidentally turn a light off when I was still in a room, and this could be disturbing but amusing. In the beginning, I’d wait awhile and then surreptitiously go over and turn the light back on. But there was no fooling Mirabelle. She knew immediately what I was doing and insisted I just say ‘Light!’ when it happened. It doesn’t happen very often now.

  I decided to take my bath, wh
ich Mirabelle has drawn as usual, before reading the letter, although I’m anxious to know what it says. I pray everyone is all right. But I’m dripping sweat, it is a hot day, and I ran hard.

  I don’t linger too long in the tub. Then I rinse myself off with a cold shower. I dress in my room and come out. Mirabelle has just put our coffee and fried eggs on the table. She has melted Camembert over the eggs. It’s something she’s taught me to eat and I’ve practically become addicted. She knows just when to put these things out, because she knows exactly what I’m doing from the sounds I make.

  I sit at the table and open the letter. My hands are shaking. I take a deep breath, hold it awhile, then let it out. It’s the longest letter I’ve received from Lorrie. I read through it quickly, afraid of what I’ll find. But everyone is fine. Still, I’m distressed by the letter. I look up at Mirabelle. She’s eating the croissant I brought her, carefully sipping at her coffee.

  ‘Do you want to hear the letter, Mirabelle?’

  ‘Do you want to read it to me? Would your wife be angry if you read her letter to me?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. But first I’ll eat this beautiful breakfast before the eggs grow cold.’

  I enjoy the food, trying to concentrate on it as Mirabelle has taught me. I finish and take my last sips of her wonderful coffee. Mirabelle is finishing hers, too. She’s looking up at me, unseeingly, and tears are forming at the corners of her eyes.

  ‘Is it bad news? You seem so quiet, and there is something of tenseness in the air. Is it all right?’

  ‘Let me read and you tell me what you think, Mirabelle.’

  I take the letter out of its envelope again and start reading. Actually this is the first time I’ve really read the letter. Before, I was so anxious, so scared something bad had happened to Lorrie or one of the children, I scarcely understood some of it.

  I read:

  ‘August 21, 1975

  ‘Dear Jack,

  ‘I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long. It is not that I don’t think of you, because I do, often. It is just I want you to feel as free to do what you want, as you allowed me to feel when I thought I was in love with Didier. It seems so long ago, is it only a little more than a year?