by Tom Crockett
Again they were both silent. An idea came to Marina. “Then teach me to be centered like you. You are so into everything you do. I used to have that experience when I photographed, but I can’t even remember what it feels like anymore.”
Rafael laughed and his smile was warm. Marina still held his hand. “Yes . . . maybe. It isn’t anything I ever thought about teaching, but Mai-Ling taught me.”
“How did she teach you?” Rafael appeared to be thinking about this, but when he didn’t answer, Marina continued. “Were you lovers?” Marina instantly regretted the question, regretted her own erotic impatience.
“Yes, we were lovers, but we weren’t until we were.”
“What?”
“She taught me to experience the moment as fully as I could, not to live in the past and not to live in anticipation of the future, no matter how attractive that future seemed.”
“But I like the anticipation, the sexual tension. It heightens the experience.”
“Only if there is an experience to heighten. If the anticipation is unrealized it turns to regret, embarrassment, longing.”
“So . . .” Marina touched Rafael’s long black hair. She was only half capable of understanding anything he was saying. She had moved beyond words and was growing impatient. “Will there be an experience?”
What am I doing? she thought. And then, I don’t care. I want this. I need this.
“Only if you learn to feel one thing at a time.”
“And how will I learn that?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He seemed to think about this for a while, then answered suddenly. “Take your jacket off and lie on your stomach.”
As much as she had flirted, as much as she had wanted this, Marina was suddenly reticent. He had seen her naked on the beach the first day, but not since then. What if she wasn’t as attractive or as young as Mai-Ling? She was grateful when Rafael got up to light candles. She quickly slipped from the jacket and lay face down on the little carpet while his back was to her.
Rafael sat next to her with his box of oils and selected several. She watched him mix small amounts from several bottles in his hands. She could smell something that reminded her of India—jasmine and perhaps sandalwood with a hint of something heavier, muskier. She closed her eyes.
“Now . . . don’t think about the past or the future. Don’t anticipate. Just feel what you feel.”
He placed his palms against the small of her back and she felt an electrical tingling. He didn’t move his hands, however, and the tingling soon subsided. It seemed as though he could tell when she had relaxed, because he began slow circling motions expanding out from the small of her back. He did not press hard but let the oil lubricate her skin. His hands stroked higher and lower at the same time—shoulder blades and buttocks, shoulders and the back of her thighs, her neck and her calves. She didn’t believe his reach could extend much further.
Then he was at her feet, working oil-slick fingers between her toes, around her ankles, up her calves. As he massaged her thighs, she subtly shifted her legs apart just a little, hoping he would touch her there. But, while he came close and she felt his fingers brush the curls of hair between her legs, he did not touch her the way she’d hoped, and she brought her attention back to the places he was touching.
He rubbed more of the scented oil into her buttocks and hips, her back and shoulders, her arms and hands. He massaged her neck and scalp, pressing places that made her almost melt. When he whispered for her to roll onto her back, she almost couldn’t. She hadn’t the strength. But he helped gently turn her, and she lay exposed and weak in the candlelight.
Her eyes were closed, so it was a surprise when she felt him back at her feet. Again he worked his way up her legs, but this time he moved them. Lifting them up into the air, bending them carefully, pulling and deeply stretching the muscles. She could not have been more exposed, more open. She felt like a doll—like a child. She felt his hands again near the place she wanted to be caressed and tried not to want it.
He pooled more of the scented oils in the hollow of her belly and spread this across her abdomen. He made light wrapping strokes around her ribcage, between her breasts, up to her collarbone. Then he cupped her breasts in his palms and held them. Despite her relaxed state, Marina felt her heart race. She felt her nipples stiffening against his palms and was embarrassed, but he did not take his hands away. He kept them over her until her heart began to calm and her breathing evened out. Then he began with slow soft strokes to work the oil into her breasts.
Next he moved on to massage her throat and then her face. He made tiny circles with his fingertips across her forehead and temples, down her cheeks and along her jawline.
It took a while for Marina to realize that he was no longer touching her. She slowly opened her eyes. He was sitting next to her, watching her.
“Thank you,” she whispered. She didn’t know what else to say. Seldom had anything felt that good, that relaxing. She tried to lift a hand up to his face. She wanted to pull his mouth down to hers, but she was too relaxed and her hand fell over his thigh.
“I want you,” she murmured.
He smiled and bent to kiss her. “Remember, one thing at a time.” The kiss was sweet and his lips were moist, but Marina could barely focus on the experience. She knew she wanted him, but she also knew she could not have him, not like this anyway.
“Stay with me . . . please.” She patted the carpet next to her. “Sleep next to me.” It was all she could do to ask. She hadn’t the strength to stay awake for the answer.
* * *
Sometime in the early morning, at the first edge of light, Marina woke from a dream. In the dream she had been making love to a beautiful Asian girl with a scar over her right eye. They were kissing and rubbing languidly against each other in the shallow water of a pond. It was night. There were bright stars in the sky and candles floated in hand-carved wooden bowls. She woke aroused, and with the peculiar sensation that she had actually intruded on Rafael’s dream.
He was there next to her in the pale blue-black light. He lay on his back, breathing heavily, deeply. Marina was on her side with one leg wrapped over his, her hand on his chest, his cool, smooth, stone circle talisman tangled around her fingers. She slowly ran her hand up to his throat, feeling the smooth muscled flesh as she went. She touched him very lightly, looking more for the pattern of him than the substance. She caressed his cheek and teased his lower lip with her fingertip. He swallowed, but did not stir.
Marina let her hand glide back down his chest, circling his nipples without touching them. She wondered if they were as sensitive as hers. Some men’s were and she always found it fascinating. That sensitivity to touch or tongue or the brush of soft hair was like a key to a secret place—best used judiciously.
Her hand drifted down. His belly was relaxed, but she felt muscle and definition at his sides. She took a deep breath and placed her hand at the juncture of his legs. He was hard. She could feel him even through the woven cloth kilt he wore.
She looked up to see if she had woken him, but he seemed still lost in sleep. She wondered what he was dreaming of, who he was dreaming of.
Emboldened, Marina propped herself up on her elbow and studied him. She rubbed her thigh, still lubricated by the massage oils, up Rafael’s leg. She used her foot to caress his calf, but still he did not wake. She reached across his waist, searching for the little bone button that fastened the kilt. Her fingers found it, and she gently pushed the smooth polished bone through the eyelet. She paused again, but Rafael showed no signs of moving.
Gently she uncovered him. He was large, but not unnaturally large. His penis bounced and twitched in its erection, now free of the fabric it had pressed against. She wrapped her hand around him. Marina did not have small hands, but he filled her palm. He was warm and smooth, uncircumcised. She felt the blood pulse through him as he swelled and hardened even more in her hand.
Rafael moaned under his breath.
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�Beautiful man,” Marina whispered. It felt like an invocation.
A kind of rapture came over her. She dipped her mouth to his nipple and drew it into her mouth. It grew hard against her tongue and his body shuddered. She let her hair wash over him as she seeded long, slow, moist kisses across his chest. She rolled against him, rubbing herself along his thigh and pressing her breasts into his belly. She felt a moistness between her legs and knew she was already opening to him. She slid down further on his body, felt his warm, hard organ cradled between her breasts, kissed his stomach and felt him tensing, coming slowly out of his dream.
Before he could fully wake she slid even lower and took him in her mouth. He moaned aloud again, but did not open his eyes. For a moment Marina wondered if he was imagining another woman, but the wave that carried her was powerful and she knew that she didn’t care who he saw behind his closed eyes. If he wanted Mai-Ling, she would be Mai-Ling for him.
She took as much of him as she could into her mouth in long slow strokes. She pumped with her hand as well. She felt his hips begin to thrust instinctively, even though she was providing the motion. She tasted a pearl of salt from him, felt him begin to come, then stop.
His hands were in her hair, clasping her head gently but powerfully pulling her mouth from him. He curled up to meet her and drew her mouth to his in one smooth motion. His tongue slipped between her lips and plunged into her mouth.
He seemed to know by instinct when she needed to breathe. He would move away from her mouth and kiss her face, her neck, her shoulders. He was sitting up now and she knelt in front of him. His eyes were open. She could see that in the pale light. He knew her.
She held his penis in both hands as she straddled him. She guided him toward her. She was slick and open and the head of him slipped into her easily. She lowered herself down slowly, prolonging the strange sensation of enveloping him. She felt stretched, filled, impaled. She looked down between them but could see only shadow as the last of him was swallowed inside of her.
Immediately, she wanted to ride him, to slide up and down his length, but he held her firmly down, his hands circling her hips.
“Wait,” he said, “just feel it. Don’t move.”
She tried to do as he asked. She let him hold her still. He stopped kissing her. He stared into her eyes. When she was still by herself he removed his hands from her hips and ran them slowly over her back and arms, belly and breasts, buttocks and legs. He kept this touch very light, sometimes almost not touching her at all. It made her tingle all over. She felt an odd kind of energy building between them. It was like an orgasm, but not something she could control, and it frustrated her. It made her impatient.
With a laugh she began moving again. “I’m sorry. I can’t hold still.” She lifted herself up with strong thigh muscles and let herself fall back onto him. Again and again she pumped and he let her. He seemed to be studying her, playfully, passionately. He touched her nipples briefly, then the base of her neck, her buttocks, behind her knees and then the soles of her feet. These were all sensitive places for her and he seemed to know them from experience. His hands moved deftly and firmly, as if he were sculpting her body out of soft clay, modeling her muscles, smoothing her skin, giving her form.
She was panting now, sweating and moaning as she felt the beginning of the little wave in her. It started far out to sea within her, and she willed it ashore, feeling it build and surge as it moved. It felt good, so good. It overwhelmed her, pushed her deeper and deeper, further and further down into some secret place within herself where the faces of other lovers flashed before her. Smells and images and tastes came to her from someplace in the past. It was like she was cycling back through other experiences, like she was lost and looking for a sign, some star to navigate by. One moment she was present, alive with anticipation. Then . . .
She was outside of herself looking on. She saw two people coupling wildly. They sat facing each other like Tantric statues—Shakti riding Shiva in an orgy of worldmaking. Their bodies glowed from sweat and some inner furnace in the growing light. It was beautiful but empty. Here she was, outside of her own passion, the ultimate cliché for a photographer, a voyeur of her own experience.
It was not, of course, the first time it had happened, but she hoped this time might be different. Sex had become confusing and frustrating. Something about the sensation, the sheer sensual weight of the experience, had somehow become too much for her. She had taken to abandoning her body in the face of it.
When it had first happened, this flight from her own body, she’d tried to reenter her own experience, to force her way back, but she knew she could not make it happen. She knew no way back in. Usually the partners of her brief encounters would be none the wiser for her absence. But if she let them stay around too long, even the most insensitive of them would come to resent her retreat from ecstasy.
She would come back to her body slowly after these experiences. Once the thrusting and sliding and moist rhythms had ceased she would be drawn back to pretend satisfaction and closure.
She had had bad lovers, clumsy and awkward men, self-centered grunters, but this problem was hers, not theirs. Even Rafael’s careful attentions were not enough to keep her in her skin. She had hoped this great erotic failure of will had been left behind when she died, but . . .
“Is it better from outside, or just safer?”
Marina was startled by the voice. It was Rafael speaking, but at just this moment the Rafael she saw had one of her own breasts in his mouth. “You won’t find that center from out here, you know.”
A shimmering, semitransparent version of Rafael hovered in the air, cross-legged, on the other side of the embracing couple. Startled, Marina thought herself backward and she drifted back a few feet. She had never realized that she floated when she left her body.
“I’m sorry. I . . . thought I could do this. I want to be with you, I really do, but this happens to me. I can’t control it.”
“But you can control it.”
“I can’t. I’ve tried.”
“How?”
“I’ve tried concentrating, forcing myself to stay in my body with all my willpower.”
“And does that work?”
“No.” Marina felt drained, as though she might suddenly cry. She wondered if she could cry outside of her body.
“So if fighting it doesn’t work. . . .” He paused as if she would understand how to complete his thought.
“I don’t understand.” Marina felt thick and slow.
“What you are fighting, perhaps you need to surrender to.”
“I still don’t understand. I wasn’t fighting anything just now. The sensation just got to be too much for me, and . . .” Something hovered at the edge of her awareness. Something important.
“What were you thinking about . . . just before.”
“Falling. I was falling down into some dark place.”
“And what did you see?”
“Old lovers, old wounds, I don’t know.”
“So what scared you most—the falling or the past?”
“I don’t know, the past I suppose.”
“Could you surrender to the falling and stay in the present?”
“I don’t know how.”
The shimmering Rafael floated over to her. “When that little current begins within you, where does it begin? Here?” He passed his ghostly hand into her belly and down as if he could touch her most private places from the inside. Oddly, she felt the touch and moaned, but the sound came from the Marina locked in Rafael’s embrace on the floor below her. “Or here?” His hand passed up through her, inside her head to some center of passion. Again she moaned with pleasure despite herself, and again the sound came from her physical body below.
“Here?” He touched her once more between the legs. “Or here?” He tickled some place within her head that set her trembling.
Both places excited her. Both places seemed to be the center and the source of her pleasure. It was like a puzzle.
She knew her own body, knew the places that needed to be stroked and fondled to set the wave in motion, but she knew this was partially illusion as well. She had read that it was theoretically possible to induce an orgasm in a person by direct electrical stimulation of the brain.
Both places were the source and neither was.
The wave that washed over her, that dragged her down, threatening to pull her into some dark secret place, came from somewhere else. But this place was not a third place, not a different site, rather it was an amalgam, a paradox, a place made out of being neither one location nor the other. If she didn’t fight the contradiction she could almost hold this new location within her, but she couldn’t hold it tightly. It had to flow.
Yes, that was it—flow. It was like knowing where to point her camera’s lens, seconds before the action occurred. It was what photographers called the decisive moment. She’d spent her life in pursuit of the paradox of decisive moments. That thing which cannot be manufactured, cannot be contrived, without robbing it of life.
Marina was panting with excitement. But which Marina? This was a trick of being in two places at once, she thought. No, not two places, many places. She knew this trick. It was the secret of her best photography, her highest art, when she was not a voyeur, not separate from the action around her, but intimately connected to it, flowing with it.
Her nipple ached. She saw/felt Rafael nurse greedily from her. The photographer’s gift, her gift, was not and never had been the ability to see. It was the ability to be there—to be where the life was, to tap the source of desire, to prick and watch blood flow. Not attached, but connected.
The ghostly Rafael’s face hovered close to hers. His eyes were dark black pools. She saw her spirit-self reflected in those pools. She saw her physical-self through those eyes. Two wave patterns spread out from her head and from her thighs, like pebbles dropped in either end of a pond. She heard herself make noises that she could not control, could not stop.