Woman as a Foreign Language

by Katherine Wyvern

  “Please,” I whisper. “Please.”

  She kneels up again, smiling, reaches up to kiss my lips again, and while doing so, starts pulling down my panties and pantyhose, both at once. As the nylon peels off me, my skin tingles and breathes out, suddenly cool and alive, and full of new sensations. I hug her hips with my legs while we kiss. I can feel her smooth, warm skin with the inside of my naked thighs; I can feel her member bouncing softly on my mound and I almost moan again, reaching out for it, trying to draw her closer, down onto me. But she slithers down along my body once more, kissing my neck, my breasts, my navel. When her mouth finds its way along my belly and then there, it is so intense that I cannot bear it. I jolt away from her, even if I want her so much.

  “Easy,” she whispers, and her lips move to the inside of my thighs, round and round, and round, and then slowly come back to the very center of me, where I feel so much that it almost hurts. She kisses me so lightly that she is gone almost before I know it, and then she’s kissing my thighs again, a lick here, and a tiny bite there, in a dazzling pattern of delay and distraction, and gentle misdirection, until, the next time she touches my clitoris, the ache and throb are gone, and only pure bliss remains.

  I relax completely, and let her have her way. She knows me better than I do myself, I think, vaguely, as her tongue digs inside of me and then strays to my clit again, licking and sucking and teasing. She is so skillful and patient that I am almost overawed. That is almost my undoing. It takes me a long time to come. I am terrified that she’ll tire of this, of me, of us, but she never hurries. One of her hands caresses my side slowly, tenderly; the other hand is between my legs, and her long fingers play at the entrance of my slit as her tongue flickers on my clitoris. And when slowly, slowly my orgasm comes and I arch back and away, unable to bear it anymore, as my world explodes into scattered light and muscular surges of deep, deep ecstasy, I can still feel her holding me, holding me…

  I am not drowning after all. I am afloat, and she’s the ship that carries me.

  When Julia slides up over my body to kiss my lips, she tastes of me. She’s not quite Julia anymore. Most of her makeup has rubbed off on my skin. Without any lipstick, her mouth is Julian’s mouth, which is wider, softer, more generous than Julia’s rose-pout. Julian’s freckles are surfacing like shadows on the face of the moon. But her eyes are still Julia’s eyes, magnetic and mysterious, shadowy under dark, dark lashes. S/he is neither male nor female, and a bit of both, poised exactly halfway between the two, just like the angel of my dream.

  S/he is heartbreakingly beautiful.

  When her member, which is hard again by now, enters my wet, wet slit, it locks our bodies together like we are pieces of the same puzzle. I fasten my legs around her waist, my arms around her shoulders, and s/he sinks deep inside of me, so deep that s/he is in fact a part of me, and me of her. Her long hand presses my head in the curve of her shoulder as she thrusts deep inside me. After the third thrust I don’t know any more if s/he’s in me or I in her. It doesn’t matter. Our bodies dance the same dance as one. There is no me or her or him anymore … it’s just … us.

  ****

  Julian

  Julian lay absolutely still on his back, listening to Nina breathing beside him. She was curled up with her back against his right side, and a hand on his outstretched arm, as if, even while falling asleep, she had been a little bit worried he might disappear or run away from her.

  As if I would, he thought with a slow smile, but in fact, he did gently, very gently, disengage his arm and slip out of bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress and undid the clasp of his pocket bra, dropping it and the breast forms on the chair by the bed. He gathered his long hair in a loose braid, undid the zipper of his boots trying not to make a noise, and let them flop on the rug. He peeled off his stockings, balled them up and tossed them on the chair. It was always the queerest feeling, shedding Julia like that. But, strangely enough, he felt easier in his own skin today than he had in a long time.

  He switched off the light, and lay back in the bed, on his side, curling up around Nina’s sleeping body, enfolding her small dark shape in his long pale one, while he pulled a duvet over both of them. He laid an arm around her and drew her a bit closer. He felt her stirring, but she didn’t wake. He smiled. She had fallen asleep right after they made love, exactly as a boy would. He nuzzled his face in the short hair on the back of her head, and settled down on the pillow.

  He was hungry. Good sex always put him in the mood for complicated cooking. Is that why I haven’t had a decent meal in months? Or is it years? Maybe tomorrow he would shop for some fresh groceries. They both needed to eat some real food, he thought, while drifting off to sleep.

  ****

  Nina

  It must be almost morning when I wake up slowly from the deepest sleep I ever slept. All is dark and quiet in the room. The palest glow of urban lighting filters in from the window. At some time while I slept Julia left the house.

  The boots and stockings and lacy bra have gone, and it’s Julian lying beside me now, completely naked, deeply asleep, slim and flat-chested, his hair bound back in a loose braid that is slowly coming apart on his pillow. Only a smudge of dark mascara around his eyes bears witness to the fact that Julia was here a few hours ago. Without the fiery intensity of his green irises, and quite expressionless, his face is almost unrecognizable. I lean to kiss his white, freckled shoulder. By touch, it’s easier to know Julia’s smooth, familiar skin. The last, faintest, warmest trace of her strange, memorable perfume still clings to Julian, like an echo of her presence. I curl up to sleep closer at his side, pressing as much of my skin against his as I can. He does not wake up, but even so, he shifts a little to accommodate my body.

  I never, ever want to leave his side again.

  ****

  Julian

  Julian checked the clock.

  5:38 PM.

  Mh. Still an hour, more or less.

  It was Friday evening. There was a fairly promising chicken curry simmering on the stove, the first real meal he had cooked in this flat, in fact, and a bottle of white wine in the cooler. The scent of curry and bell peppers filled every room in the flat, and it occurred to Julian that he was feeling at home for the first time in a long, long while. Nina didn’t stop working until 5:30 PM in the afternoons (he was learning her hours, since they had spent the last two delicious nights together), and then she almost always did some shopping on the way home, to make sure there’d be some food in the house for her mother, so he went back to his desk, and sat down with a no-nonsense, concentrated attitude.

  There is such a thing as a disciplined brain, he thought.

  But not in this house.

  He sat in front of his laptop, his mind blank.

  He desperately needed to craft a good, forceful conclusion to his Letters paper, but it was uphill work. He was like a medium trying to divine some sense in the foggy swirling chaos of his own brain, and all that the babbling spirits in his head provided him was Nina, Nina, Nina, Nina sweet, sweetie, sweetums, sweetheart. It was enough to send a rational man banging his head against the damn wall.

  Nina sweet.

  “For crying out loud!” he cried, aloud, to the empty flat. The room stared back at him critically, and almost immediately someone thumped the other side of the kitchen wall. “Whatever,” he muttered, and went to brew himself a cup of tea, smoking ferociously, as if the tobacco trade might come to an end tomorrow, and leave him stranded and naked in a nicotine-deprived world.

  He checked the clock again, 5:44. He carefully resisted the impulse to shake the thing, went back to sit at his desk, and was downright startled when the kettle began to whistle. He had forgotten everything about the tea.

  He poured himself a mug of Darjeeling, went back to sit at his laptop and carefully tried to collect his thoughts. Nina sweet, said his thoughts, unhelpfully—and, what’s worse, in very questionable grammar—and he gave up, slammed the laptop’s screen shut, and strode t
o the bedroom, to make an empty shelf in the wardrobe for Nina.

  By the end of the operation, it was almost 6:14. Maybe there’s time to go and buy flowers, he thought, and suddenly he was in a desperate hurry. He pulled on socks and boots, shrugged into his coat, collected his keys, and threw the door open to rush out, just to find Nina standing there with a finger raised to ring the bell.

  “Oh! Were you going out?” she asked, surprised.

  “Me? No,” he said.

  He drew her inside double quick, shut the door, shed his coat on the floor, and pulled her by the hand to the sofa, where they tumbled together laughing and scattering cushions all over the place.

  They kissed for a long, long time.

  “I missed you,” he whispered in her ear, and she smiled at him, a shy smile, uncertain, as if she still doubted this was possible. “I missed you,” he said again, slower, lower, and cupped the back of her head with his hand, kissing her forehead tenderly, holding her to the kiss.

  When will you believe me? he thought, and he held her tight, as tight as he could, until she slowly broke the embrace to kiss him again, on his cheek, the corner of his jaw, his neck, and then down under his chin, his Adam’s apple, the hollow between his collarbones. He sighed and lay back on the sofa’s armrest. For the first time that day, he felt totally at ease.

  Nina sweet, indeed.

  Anyway. Flowers. What a silly idea. She’d probably prefer a set of screwdrivers, or something. But then, who knows.

  He almost laughed out loud and she looked at him, questioning, but he just smiled and kissed her again.

  They ate the curry at the tiny table, holding hands, and with their ankles locked together.

  “I can’t believe you can cook, on top of everything,” sighed Nina, after cleaning her dish from the last remains of her second portion.

  It was a pleasure to feed her. She ate every bite as if it was a gift from the sky above.

  “Of course I can cook,” said Julian. “I always wanted to be someone’s good wife.”

  They both burst into laughter.

  “Do you want to go out somewhere? Have a walk, a drink? Some music? I can’t imagine the Basset hound will be singing again at my usual place. I am sure someone must have done away with him by now. Garroted him, most likely. There may be something better tonight,” he said, while lighting a cigarette to go with the last sip of wine.

  “I could just stay here with you forever, you know?” she said, smiling.

  “Me too. With you, that is. But it does get a bit claustrophobic, for me. I work here all day, when I’m not in class, you know?”

  She looked a little taken aback.

  “Sorry. I never looked at it that way. Of course. I just love being here, I guess. It’s so clean and quiet and smart. But I see what you mean. Let’s go out then.”

  Julian smiled at her, trying to imagine how it was back in her flat, and probably failing. He caressed her hand tenderly. “Just a drink? We can be back early, I promise. Julia needs to stretch her legs and breathe some air, is all.”

  ****

  Nina

  After putting on some makeup (foundation, kajal, eyeshadow, and mascara, no lipstick), I look quickly into the bedroom. Julian is standing in the middle of the room half naked. He turns to smile at me, while tossing his jeans on the chair in the corner.

  “Pretty,” he comments, simply, while shrugging out of his long-sleeved t-shirt, but there is this tenderness in his smile. I go to stand behind him and put my arms around his slim waist. I nuzzle his long ponytail to one side and start laying kisses along his spine. He’s so skinny that I can feel each of his ribs and vertebrae through his smooth warm flesh. I kiss them one by one, religiously. He’s so delicately and exquisitely chiseled, like fine, pale gold jewelry, like something out of a Celtic treasure trove. A lifetime of gazing, kissing, and caressing will never tell me enough of his unbearably elegant bone structure. I rub his back slowly down along his spine with my fingertips.

  “If you carry on like that, we won’t be going anywhere at all this evening,” he purrs. There is no describing his voice in words sometimes. Something melts inside me just to hear it.

  I give him a last long, slow kiss between his shoulder-blades, and I let go of him. I sit on the edge of the bed to watch him shedding his briefs, and he smiles at me again, before bending to kiss my neck, cheek and temple.

  “Say goodbye to Julian,” he whispers in my ear, and I do, long and deep, before I let him go, not without regret. I wish I could clone him, so I could have them both, Julia and Julian, my beautiful, beautiful lovers.

  While he’s in the bathroom, I make some order in the kitchen, do the dishes and steal another bite of curry from the pot. It is a completely new experience, being fed something so delicious instead of having to fight for every miserable bite of junk food. Perhaps he will teach me to cook properly. If he is not too fed up with teaching.

  The fact that I have a shelf in Julia/n’s wardrobe is absolutely mindboggling. I am folding my pajama and t-shirt in it, standing naked in the bedroom, when s/he comes out of the bathroom, also naked. I stare with my mouth open.

  From the neck up she’s Julia, impeccably made up, not a freckle to be seen, her hair a glorious mane of brown-blond waves that hangs down the sides of her face, its ends brushing her nipples. From the neck down he’s Julian, freckled, flat chested and boy-slim, with his stuff, as he calls it, hanging out, terribly enticing as it swings between his smooth thighs at every step. S/he is the angel of my dream. I can almost hear the rush of huge swan wings.

  I sit down on the bed, with my hands under my ass, to resist the impulse to reach for her and drag her down with me. I will just watch her getting ready. If I get dressed now, I will lose sight of her, and I don’t want to miss a second of her.

  ****

  Julia

  “Well, are we going out this evening or what?” asked Julia, seeing Nina sitting down still naked on the bed.

  “Oh, it will take me two minutes to get ready,” said Nina, smiling up at her. “I am not such a woman as you,” she added, grinning impishly.

  “Oh, indeed?” said Julia, and pinched her nose in passing, then went to the wardrobe to fish out some stockings, a pocket bra, and breast forms. Boobs were invariably the first thing. She liked her body well enough, as a man or a woman, except for that flat chest. A girl should have tits, and a boy should have some muscle at least, but somehow, she had failed to achieve either. The sweet, soft, bouncy weight of the breast forms immediately made her feel better about herself. Stockings were always the next thing. Her legs were as smooth as silk in any case, but the sleek feel of stockings on them was almost an aphrodisiac. Time was, long ago, when she was much, much younger, when just wearing a pair of stockings would give her a hard-on. She was not such a green horn anymore, luckily, because the last thing she needed right now was an erection.

  She stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror, and pulled on her gaff half the way. She gently maneuvered her testicles back up to where they were before they dropped (if only they had stayed there, she thought despondently, and not for the first time), then gave her empty scrotum a slight twist and pushed it down and back towards her buttocks. She was on the point of tucking her penis down and under the same way (if she laid them side by side, they looked every bit like labia through her gaff … et voilà, instant pussy … more or less), when she caught sight of Nina’s eyes. Nina was still sitting on the bed, still naked, and gazing at her with those gorgeous gipsy eyes, studying everything Julia did and every inch of her body. Julia threw a look at her own lean, white figure in the mirror. She was standing with a hand between her legs and her gaff askew, half way between her knees and her hips, which felt somewhat less than graceful and dignified, and she wondered what Nina was seeing that was so entrancing.

  “What?” she asked, smiling.

  “Nothing. I did wonder where they went, when … you know.”

  Julia grinned. “They don’t go very f
ar, worry not.”

  Nina stretched herself long, like a happy cat, still gazing hungrily at her, eating her with her eyes.

  And suddenly Julia stiffened. “Oh dear,” she said.

  “What?” asked Nina, in a somewhat comical echo of what Julia had said less than a minute earlier.

  “Er … ahem. Stop looking at me. Just don’t. I can’t tuck it with a hard-on!”

  Nina covered her face with her hands, vainly trying to suppress a fit of laughter. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t!”

  Julia was laughing too by now. It was hopeless. She let the whole lot hang out again and took two short steps to the bed (the gaff half-way up made it impossible to step out properly). She kneeled on the bed and started tickling Nina’s feet, the back of her knees and her sides.

  “I didn’t do anything, I didn’t,” Nina repeated, between peals of laughter.

  “Ah, but you were thinking, don’t deny that you were thinking.”

  “Ok, ok, maybe I was, a little bit, please stop, stop, please!” Nina turned on her side, and curled up in a tight ball, still shaking with laughter. Julia stopped tickling her and pushed her on her belly, wiggled out of the gaff, then straddled Nina’s small buttocks and leaned down to nuzzle her neck and the back of her head.

  “What were you thinking, you imp? Mh? What were you thinking?”

  She bit gently into Nina’s earlobe and kissed her cheek. Nina smiled beatifically.