by Rozsa Gaston
Relieved, I inched backward, seeking escape. Pascal put the wineglass up to my lips, tipping it gently to trickle into my mouth. The taste was refreshing.
Suddenly, I realized I was panting. I looked at Pascal in wonderment. Something was going on here that hadn’t happened before. I had no idea where we were going, and I was scared.
“Don’t be afraid, Ava. Just relax,” Pascal murmured, his eyes as slitted as mine felt.
“You’re going to make me scream,” I told him, embarrassed.
“Good.” He smiled slyly, his eyes golden. “I want you to.”
I reached to take one more sip of wine, then fell back limply. His hand found my flesh again, resuming its clockwise rhythm, stroking and caressing the underside of the hood of this newfound most sensitive part of my body. Again, my mouth fell open, and I heard the pants escape me, then moans. It was as if I was another person, witnessing what was taking place.
Pascal’s head moved down to rest on my belly. My hands were freed, so I sunk them in his curly-brown hair, my fingers digging into his scalp.
“Uhhh.” It was his turn to moan.
My back arched rhythmically. As I thrust myself against his hand, my mind fought to get away from his relentless stimulation. I was at war with myself, mind fighting body for control. But control was slipping away and an inner voice whispered this was what was supposed to be.
Something new touched me. Pascal’s tongue had found its way to the center of my pleasure zone. I screamed aloud, then covered my mouth with my hand.
His tongue flicked over me, again and again, until I felt something take shape like a small, hard kidney bean. My own clitoris was having an erection. Who knew such things happened? I marveled at the shock of having a virtual stranger introduce me to my own body.
As I stifled my cries, I felt Pascal reach up and pull my hand away from my mouth.
“Scream. Go on,” he murmured then returned to the task at hand.
Sensing no embarrassment on his part, I gave way.
In a minute, I could bear it no longer. Squirming away from him, I fought to regain control.
Masterfully, Pascal allowed me my moment, then continued, his tongue now flicking slower, then teeth, gently pulling.
I cried out again.
Coming up for air, he raised his head.
“You’re going to come soon,” he said.
I was? Come where? What did he mean?
His fingers were on me again, tracing a clockwise pattern that was leading me inexorably to something, I knew not what. As I flinched, he grabbed my pelvis with his left arm, pinning me down. The fingers pressed harder, refusing to stop.
“Stop!” I screamed, feeling as if I was about to drive off a cliff.
“No, Ava. Come,” he said calmly.
Where was I supposed to go? Wherever it was, I had never been there before, at least as far as I could remember.
One final time, I wrenched away from him.
“Laisse,” I hissed at him. “Laisse-moi. Leave me alone.”
“You’re going to come now” was his only response as he patiently waited while I rested.
A potent pause took place. It was the richest, fullest pause I’d ever experienced. My eyes turned to the ceiling then closed.
Pascal touched me again.
Molten sensation engulfed me. I was helpless to control any of my bodily functions. My last conscious thought was whatever happened next, I couldn’t be held responsible.
As if a giant funnel was wrapping every impulse and nerve ending in my body into the tiny bit of skin Pascal was stroking, I felt every ounce of my being compress into one swollen sensation that lifted and crested, rode the outer edges of sensation for several seconds – then shattered into a million shards of glass.
My God.
I had fissioned into one with the universe. My entire being split apart, into atoms and molecules that rocketed out in every direction, seemingly connecting with everything in their path.
“Ahhh,” I screamed in a pitch higher than any moan, more like a dolphin’s cry than something human.
“Good, Ava. Good,” Pascal encouraged me.
Good wasn’t the word for it. This was mind-blowing, Earth-shattering, a religious experience. For the first time in my life, I was centered entirely in the present moment. The past fell away, there was no future. I thought of God. This was how He wanted us to live, no?
My eyes widened as Pascal’s face came back into focus.
“You came, Ava. Good,” he commended.
I came? So that’s what it was to come. To arrive. To be right here, right now, divinely dancing on the head of a pin. A multitude of analogies for what had just happened flooded into my mind. At the same time, my body felt magnificently relaxed. I was Aphrodite in full glory, Ares at her side.
Stretching, in the most glorious full-body stretch of my life, I lifted my eyes to the ceiling, asking heaven what just happened.
Then Pascal touched me again. This time, my body was primed and ready for blast-off. In less than sixty seconds, my soul again escaped my body and shattered into space. The most high-pitched, unearthly cry I’d ever uttered escaped from somewhere deep in my belly. Again, the glass pieces shattered into a million diamonds and I felt myself connect with every living being, my life-force poured out onto everything around it.
After the second moment of fission passed, I looked at Pascal with wonder. Were we still alive? And how was it this man I barely knew had unlocked the most elemental part of me?
I gazed at him. Were we in love now?
I was impressed with Pascal. Grateful to him. My heart was warm. He was the conduit to the new world I’d entered. At last, I was a woman.
It was crystal clear. I was in love. But with the universe all around me. The one I’d just connected with. Not with Pascal.
He touched me once more. I begged him to stop. He wouldn’t. In a minute, I was speechless, in the trough before the storm. Then a scream rose again from my throat. Losing all control, I hurtled toward oblivion until sensation crested and I was flung over its top. Pieces of me rained down on all sides, landing on Pascal, on the street below, on flowers, grass and trees, fecundizing everything in its path.
So that was an orgasm.
Finally, I noticed Pascal’s excitement at watching me shatter into a million pieces. He scooped me up in his arms and staggered into the bedroom. In less than a minute, he was inside, thrusting and withdrawing, deep, then detached, until I moaned and begged for his return. Maestro.
He came with a mighty moan that eclipsed my own. His sweat-covered, hairless chest crashed down on mine, fusing our bodies in an intimate oneness that differed from the universal connection with everything I’d felt a moment earlier.
We slept. When we awoke, we made love again. Wetness made the climb to heaven easier. I was still apprehensive, unused to the relinquishment of my own sovereignty to the hands and tongue of another, but I surrendered to Pascal’s mastery. Together, we collaborated in my climb to pleasure, the plateau, again the ascent then one final ineluctable pause before hitting the summit in ecstatic explosion.
We fell back on Pascal’s bed, spent. As we rested, I watched the long rays of late-afternoon sun play over us. My whole life had changed in the space of one afternoon. I understood so many things now, to begin with why Anna Karenina threw herself on the train tracks when her relationship with Count Vronsky soured. Clearly, he had sent her to heaven when they made love, when her husband hadn’t.
I had finally discovered how to experience my own life in the present moment. I’d never really been there before – my mind always aware of the past in the midst of the present or racing off to the future the second something new took place. I’d finally experienced the joy of being one hundred percent in the present, fully connected with the universe, with no distinction between myself and what existed outside of myself. Was this how God managed His time? Nice.
Pascal opened his eyes and reached for me.
&
nbsp; “Tu as faim?” “Are you hungry?” he asked, smoothing the ends of my wavy hair.
“Yes. Very.” I must have looked like a madwoman or one who had just had seven orgasms in one afternoon. Would the average man on the street now be able to tell I was no longer a girl?
In the mirror over the bathroom sink, my lips pouted at me, swollen and bee-stung. My cheeks glowed, rosy and flushed. It seemed to me the cosmetics industry would go out of business if women used the time they took putting on make up to enjoy a few orgasms instead. Who would need make up with sheer bliss written all over their faces?
Showering, I tried Pascal’s shower gel in a green plastic bottle. It smelled of pine and the outdoors. I lathered it over me, my mind bursting with newfound knowledge I wrapped myself in a towel and went to the living room to retrieve my clothes. Charles Aznavour poured out of the radio, perfect for making dinner on a Sunday evening. I turned up the volume.
In the kitchen, Pascal was pulling salad ingredients from the refrigerator. I kissed him on the cheek then took the knife from his hand.
“Go take a shower. I’ll make the salad,” I said, newfound authority in my voice.
“It’s no problem. I’ll shower later,” he protested.
“No. Go now. There’s still hot water.” I shoved him gently with my hip. He put his hand around my waist, then bent down and kissed the spot on my body where I’d just shoved him. I grabbed the curls at the nape of his neck and tugged. “Go on.”
He left the kitchen obediently. How had I become so in command of myself in just four short world-shifting hours? As I washed the lettuce and chopped radishes and tomatoes, I looked forward to smelling cleaned-up, pine-scented Pascal again. We’d have dinner, then I could turn him into sweat-drenched, scent-of-sex Pascal. It was the cycle of life, and I was co-starring in it. Finally.
I swigged from the bottle of bubbly mineral water on the counter. Yuck. Having an orgasm hadn’t changed my desire for ice-cold water, especially if it was carbonated. I put the mineral water in the refrigerator, and took out the bottle of Sancerre. Eyeballing the corkscrew on the counter, I realized I didn’t know how to open it. Instead, I found our wineglasses in the living room, washed and rinsed them, and set them on the counter.
I wouldn’t be a bona-fide graduate of the school of savoir-faire until I knew how to open a bottle of wine. When Pascal returned, I would ask him to teach me, now that I knew what a sensational teacher he was.
In ten minutes Pascal was back, wearing a navy blue bathrobe. Sexy. We wouldn’t see more of Gerard that night, I knew.
I stuck one finger in the salad dressing I was making and held it up to his lips.
He tasted, sucking on my finger as he pulled me toward him.
“Wait,” I protested. “I need you to show me something.” I couldn’t handle any more action until after we’d filled our stomachs. Burning off at least ten thousand calories over the past four hours, I’d turned into a racehorse: sleek and supple.
“What’s that, cherie?” he asked, making as if to untie the belt to his bathrobe, a devilish smile on his face. His actions seemed more assertive and well-defined than before we made love.
I pulled his hand off his bathrobe tie. My actions were more assertive, too. Was that what having an orgasm did to you? I’d turned into a completely new, turbo-charged version of myself.
“Not that.” I smiled, trying not to get too close. I knew if I looked, a tent would form. “Show me how to open this,” I ordered, gesturing to the wine bottle on the counter.
“With pleasure.” He took the bottle opener, unscrewing it slowly, until the two handles came up slightly like half-open angel wings. “This is how you begin.”
“Okay.”
“You place the tip of the corkscrew in the middle of the cork,” he explained.
“Yes.”
“Then you twist it in, in clockwise motion, slowly.” Intent on his task, he didn’t see me smile. Slow, clockwise motion would never be the same for me.
“The trick is to not twist too quickly. Just turn it slowly until you’re at least halfway through the cork. You’ll know you’re done when the angel wings are fully open.” He stopped then directed me to continue.
I grabbed the bottom of each angel wing.
“Now push the angel wings down slowly, until the cork comes out of the bottle.”
He watched carefully as I pushed the wings down. The cork slid up the neck of the bottle until it ejected with a satisfying pop.
“So the secret is – “ I began.
“To do it slowly,” he finished.
Shivers ran up and down my spine as I watched Pascal carefully fill each glass only two thirds full. A fuller comprehension of what it was to do things slowly seeped through me from head to toe. I would never be in a rush again. At least not when I was climbing the stairway to heaven.
We clinked glasses, looking at each other through half-slitted eyes.
“Here’s to doing things slowly,” I toasted. His smile widened until his teeth showed. I felt them again on hidden parts of my body.
We dined in the living room at the table by the window. The remains of the day lingered in the sky, but it was dark inside, so we lit two candles.
The spaghetti carbonara was delicious. It had been simple to make, something even I could prepare with impressive results. When we were done, we moved to the couch.
Memories of time spent on the same piece of furniture a few hours earlier stirred us quickly to a re-enactment, this time more playfully. Pascal took his time as he moved me up progressive pleasure plateaus. I was still scared, but now I knew where we were going. The smile in Pascal’s golden eyes trained on mine reassured me it was okay to arrive there kicking and screaming.
In the same way as before, he lifted me into his arms and carried me into the bedroom. Once my pleasure had exploded and his was ripe for fulfillment, I lay on his bed, welcoming his entry. As with leading me to pleasure, he took his time finding his own. Slowly, slowly he entered then withdrew, until I moaned for his return. Skillfully, he used his fingers this time, finding my secret spot under its hood, and stroking until I reached the final plateau then shot like a cannonball straight to heaven itself. His excitement skyrocketed, stimulated by mine.
Within seconds we came together in a bed-shaking frenzy of ecstasy. Pascal collapsed on top of me, and I stroked the lean, muscular length of his back. Each caress was like swimming in molasses. I was Marlene Dietrich, every move of my body sensuous and feline.
At night with Jean-Michel, I’d wondered if the pleasant state I’d usually felt after we made love and before we fell asleep was what was meant by bliss. I’d doubted it.
Now I knew what bliss was. There was no mistaking it. I melted back into the pillows and slept the sleep of the dead.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Life in the Present Moment
The next day, Pascal walked me to the train station on his way to work. On the platform, he kissed me on each cheek twice. We agreed to meet back on the platform of the 6:13 PM train arriving from Paris that evening.
On the train, I found myself surrounded by men in blue coveralls, their feet shod in work boots. Saint-Denis was evidently a working-class suburb, something I’d missed on Sunday when the working population was out of uniform enjoying their day off. At the train stop of Châtelet-les Halles, across the river from Saint-Michel, I got off. The day was beautiful. I decided to walk home.
For once, I took the route along the Right Bank of the Seine, not the Left where I lived. It seemed fitting to be on the opposite side of the river, now that I was on the far shore of womanhood. What had happened the day before had been far more momentous than the occasion of losing my virginity. Less than twenty-four hours earlier, my whole world had shifted from black and white to Technicolor.
Yet I didn’t get the sense that there was any profound tie-in between my emotions for the person responsible for sending me to heaven and for the experience itself. Pascal had given me the most
incredible, sensual experience of my life. But falling in love with him hadn’t followed automatically.
Were sex and love only distant cousins? Or was I still too callow to have the capacity to fall in love? My adult education was only beginning. Perhaps getting down the mechanics of lovemaking preceded falling in love.
Putting aside theoretical speculation on whatever romantic love might be, I wandered back to considering what having an orgasm actually was: mind-blowing, earth-shattering, apocalyptic; the most profound spiritual experience of my life up to that moment.
I couldn’t help mixing up the event with thoughts of God and eternity. How could the two not go hand in hand? Fusion and fission belonged together as much as love and death did. One was the ultimate creative act; the other, the ultimate annihilation. One necessitated the other. For the first time, I understood the connection.
All this had happened at the hands of an unassuming twenty-six year old nurse’s aide who knew a thing or two about female anatomy. What had he said about his duties at the hospital? Now that I had experienced ecstasy, my thinking was clearer, sharper. The French phrases he’d used to describe his job the night we’d met came back to me, “Je rangent les patients, font leurs lits; je lave les morts et d’autres choses.” What did that mean, anyways? I’d look up ranger when I got back to my room, but I could guess it meant to arrange or make comfortable. He made the patients comfortable, made up their beds, and washed the dead ones and other things.
What?
He washed the dead? Of course he did. He was an orderly, for God’s sake. Who else did that sort of thing at a hospital?
Bordel de merde! The man whose hands had just introduced me to total sexual fulfillment used those same hands to wash dead bodies at his day job.
I thought about it long and hard. There was a lesson in there somewhere.
Meanwhile, the azure blue sky smiled down on me, and the river looked almost clean. I had just experienced my first orgasm. My lover and I had plans to meet again that evening. I would get through this moment.
I hadn’t been raised in a doctor’s household for nothing. Most of the time, I thought of my down-to-earth, New England upbringing as a millstone around my neck, but every once in a while, it came in handy.