But the sigh. That first purr that lets me know a woman is melting.
I live for that sigh.
When two become one. When souls start to dance. When she submits.
When she is mine.
That moment is magical, when a man becomes king.
Genevieve grunts, “Hold on.”
“What?”
She shifts away from me. “Let me move my… yeah… like that.”
“You okay?”
“My leg was awkward.”
“Better?”
“Better.”
When I make love with Genevieve, most of the time I’m conscious of every stage that we’re in. Most of the time. Maybe because she’s so dramatic and meticulous, as well as predictable. I climax, but I rarely get to that over-the-top endorphin high, never fall into that euphoric state. I’m never lost in the abyss of pleasure. I am aware of every move. Aware of time. Aware of my own breathing. Aware of things that I have to do later. I watch her face, watch all the porn-star faces she makes, listen to all of her dramatic moans, sounds that sound more manufactured than spontaneous, and wonder if she is aware too, and at times I think that she is.
During foreplay, when I think she’s in the zone, she can go from a heated exchange to rubbing her nose and casually telling me to get the condom. In her eyes lust is just a phantom.
I crave that uncivilized zone.
If you’re that hot, if you’re in that zone, you can’t control your tone like that. You don’t go from being barbaric and on fire to being less-than-smoldering, to a place of calmness and clarity and logic in the next breath. I want to blame her, but I don’t. I take it personally. That tells me that I don’t make her opiates kick in and get her where she needs to be either.
But she never complains.
I dig into my bag and remember all I have done with women, how I have pleased them and been pleased in that way since I was a teenager. I’ve learned a lot in the art of pleasure, and since college I’ve taught twice as many as have taught me.
I remember being in that zone. In that special place between life and death.
I turn her over. Kiss her face. She puts her hand on my ass, asking me to stay on task, ride the road to orgasm. She is tired. She is jet-lagged. I stroke her in a steady rhythm, go deep as I can go, come back to the tip of my penis, go deep again, again, again, like I am famished, greedy, want her clitoris to swell, breathing to thicken, want her legs to tense, want her to come.
There is pleasure in giving pleasure, in not being selfish. Pleasure in making a woman have more orgasms than she can count. Pleasure in watching a woman set free sounds and come like she’s losing her mind.
There is no sigh.
That zone. I crave it. It’s my drug of choice.
Need to get into a state where you’re oblivious to the clock ticking on the wall, where you can’t hear Luther singing anymore, where all of your body feels like an open nerve set on fire. When you shudder and howl out your orgasm, then collapse, drenched in sweat, so close to death, but feeling so alive. Where you see a thousand colors and the sounds coming from your mouth that are unstoppable, unrecognizable, and you’re floating like a dancer, suspended above the rest of the world, having an out-of-body experience and staring down on yourself.
I get to the point of coming and try to stop. I control the fire inside me.
I stroke I stroke I stroke I stroke I stroke.
My legs tense, I grip her waist, give her all of me.
She yields, her face an orgasmic expression, very few sounds.
I stroke I stroke I stroke I stroke I stroke.
I want her to scream, want her to let loose and go insane.
My mind drifts. I see a mouth. The flight attendant from Southwest. Her image comes to me. She’s underneath me, legs open for me, moaning for me, those full lips crooning for me. Her feminine gestures arouse me. Her skin feels smooth against mine. Her clitoris swells, her breath grows short, her legs stiffen, back arches, she strains to come, makes greedy sounds, and under a thicket of kisses gives me moans in that poetic language of onomatopoeia.
I fuck her good. Her hands hold my ass, her hips move against me and I fuck her good.
That fire consumes me. I strain to not come, then give in to that overwhelming feeling, work with it. I stiffen, swell, move with reckless abandon, stroke to heaven without her.
Then self-consciousness returns.
Face damp, lines of physical and mental exertion decorating my forehead, I gaze down on my wife. Her face is moist as well, her expression that of travail, the same as mine. I pant, sweat blooming on I my flesh and I stare at my Genevieve. Her skin is sultry, but there is no glow.
My wife.
My partner.
The woman who is supposed to be my last lover, the one that leads me into eternity.
She whispers, “You came hard.”
“Been a while.”
“Guess we’ve been off schedule.”
“Did you come?”
“I came.”
“Couldn’t tell.”
“We came at the same time.”
There is kindness in her lie. But even with kindness, it is still a lie.
She smiles, but there is no glow. No transition from insanity to common sense.
Then, in a clear voice, she says, “You’re getting heavy.”
She shifts to get from underneath me and I roll over, sweat dripping.
She fans herself, says, “Had forgotten how oppressive it was ‘ here in the South.”
“Oppressive ain’t the word.”
She wipes my sweat from her breasts, licks her fingers, looks so sexy, so erotic.
She whispers, “Turn the TV back on, please? Want to keep up with the weather.”
“Okay.”
“Hot as hell.”
She goes to the bathroom. Limping.
I ask, “You okay?”
“Cramp in my leg.”
“All that wine. You’re dehydrated.”
I hear the water running, imagine her cleaning herself with a warm towel, then she comes back to my side of the bed, still limping, takes my penis, and wipes me down.
I ask, “You okay?”
“Lot on my mind.”
“Willie Esther’s funeral?”
“Yes. Are you going?”
“I don’t want to look at dead people, not if I can help it.”
“What are you going to do?”
“You know I don’t do funerals.”
“Why not?”
I emphasize, “Because they are funerals.”
“Why not?”
My mind goes back to a rainy day in Pasadena, Texas.
I readjust, make my memory and demons go back into the darkness, say, “I’ll go with you and meet your family, will be at the repast, but I can’t go to the funeral.”
We all have our issues, our fears, our phobias. Looking at dead people is one of mine.
Genevieve takes the damp towel and tosses it across the room, toward the bathroom. This is a hotel. Here she will not be meticulous. She will make sure the maids earn their pay.
I ask, “You okay?”
“You want a blow job, don’t you?”
That husky voice is not the voice of the Genevieve I know. Her tone is distant. The look in her eyes is as foreign as the crass language she uses. She never sounds like a whore.
Her voice thickens. “Want me to be your slut?”
“Yes.”
“I married you so I wouldn’t have to be a slut.”
“I married you to make you one.”
“Is that what you want? Me to transmogrify into your personal whore?”
“Transmogrify?” I chuckle. “Yes. I want to transmogrify you.”
“You’re a pig.”
“I’m a man who loves the woman he fucks and fucks the woman he loves.”
“What if I told you I was a slut before I met you?”
“What if I told you to prove it?”
; “Then would you think I was eminently qualified for the job?”
“If you were, prove it.”
“What else can I do? Suck your dick? Swallow? Gargle your protein? Allow you to sprinkle your come on my face like it’s a religious ceremony? Is that what you want?”
Her raffish tone affects me, disturbs and erects me all at once.
She rubs her hand over the length of my erection, eyes tight, as if she’s in some kind of an altered state. Then she pushes me back on the bed, takes the fullness of my penis in her mouth, does that in a way that is more political than lustful, a way that tells me she is using pleasure to keep me from talking, from asking questions, that maybe the conversation we had on the plane has put her into a different frame of mind. Created insecurity. She is being a good wife to her husband. Her mouth covers my penis, consumes its entire length, makes it vanish into her face with ease. Has mastered her gag reflex and allows me to go deep down her throat.
She is good. So damn good.
The first time she took me in her mouth, that night in Fresno, when she bewitched me this way, I must admit, she gave me pleasure that made me want to cry. No biting. No pain of any kind. I want to turn her ass around, bring the sweetness of her vagina to my mouth, do the same thing to her that she is doing to me, but she resists, won’t let me pleasure her in sixty-nine ways.
She stops her slow and steady rhythm, begins moving her head like a maniac.
Tingles race through me. Toes curl. Breathing thickens. I strain, come in heated spasms. She continues until the well is dry, until I’m so sensitive I have to beg her to stop, as if she is telling me to be careful of what I want, what I ask her for, because she will give it tenfold.
She should put this on her resume. Highlighted. Bold. Italics. Underlined three times.
She sits on the edge of the bed, watching me return to sanity.
She wipes her lips in a motion that reminds me of a vampire after its feeding, and looks away. Her breathing evens out. Back to being the other Genevieve, the one who intellectualizes the world, back to a veiled and rigid expression. As I always do, I ask if she is okay.
She says, “Willie Esther finally died.”
“You never talked about her. Never mentioned her name, not once.”
“I only speak of positive things.”
In that voice I use at work, I say, “You repudiate her.”
She answers like a witness on a stand, a woman on trial. “Yes.”
“What’s up with that? I mean, you hated her because… what?”
She snaps, “She was an evil woman.”
“You repudiate your entire family.”
“Don’t badger me.”
I don’t respond to her harsh voice, one that has more disdain than grieving, not right away. I want to ask her a million questions, but I also want answers without having to ask. When I do seek to peel back her layers there is a disturbing change, I see it in her face, how her face changes to concrete. Her memories create thunder and flood her senses, give her brain its own electrical storm, the lightning showing in her eyes.
Genevieve goes to brush her teeth. Always does that after oral sex. It disturbs me. While I relish in the taste of her magnificence, she rinses mine away and spits it into the sewer.
She pulls her panties back on, does the same with her T-shirt, gets in bed. She rarely sleeps naked. Her panties are her shield, she told me when we first met. As if my six-foot frame isn’t enough to protect her, but panties by Victoria’s Secret can. Genevieve moves around until she gets comfortable, then as an afterthought she leans over to me and kisses me on my lips, then she returns to her side of the bed, either content or hoping that I am in such a state of being.
Plain and simple, in the darkness, she whispers, “Good night.”
She’s done her marital job.
I’ve come.
The itch has been salved and I should be satisfied.
I’m still restless, squirming.
There is an imbalance here. At least there is in my mind. In the beginning, our erotic life was different. After Fresno, we used to see each other once, maybe twice a week. The dam was broken and we had sex each time I saw her, each time she came over or I went to see her.
In my mind we made love every time we saw each other.
In my mind, she saw me as her desirable Adonis.
After marriage, like most men, from time to time I have to engage myself to release the pressure. If masturbation is an art, then I am Renoir. Masturbating while married, while sleeping next to a woman you desire, oh the resentment that builds up. Once I reminded her that we used to make love every time we saw each other, lived for each other’s touch. But she was quick to remind me that we’ve always made love once or twice a week, that we are still on task. Every time we saw each other was how I saw it. Once, maybe twice a week was her point of view, the way she has her marital duty mapped out.
I assume that two years from now, when her biological alarm sounds and she wants my sperm to dance with her egg for the sake of procreation, the patch will come off her arm and we will make love more frequently as she ovulates, we will be dutiful and fuck like rabbits until the mission is accomplished. Then back to business as usual, that alarm sounding again two years later when it is time for the second child. No child should live alone.
At times I think of how we take ski trips and the jazz concerts we go to where all of our friends see us laughing and enjoying life and see us as the couple of all couples.
Not being desired as much as I desire the one I love, the woman I married, makes me feel like I’m some sort of freak. As if I’m abnormal. Hard to explain how I feel at times. Like I’m a straight-A student who does his best only to get a C grade. A failure. As if whatever it takes to stimulate her loins is not in my possession. It feels as if my duties as a man, as a husband, have been reassigned, that moving from boyfriend and lover to devoted and faithful husband has been some sort of an emotional and sexual downgrade, the kind that is tantamount to a demotion.
We live longer. Death might not invite me for a cup of coffee for another fifty years. I ask myself if this is the best it will be between us, can I deal with this until they etch my name and final date in a tombstone. All that to say, I worry about the quality of our relationship. I don’t want to start living in a dysfunctional comfort zone, where marriage becomes a prison. If something isn’t working I need to know now. Not in divorce court.
A moment passes. I ask, “Do I satisfy you?”
“I don’t orgasm all the time.”
“You said you came.”
“Must I have a mind-blowing orgasm every time?”
“That would be nice.”
“I repeat, I do not orgasm every time I have sex.”
“You come if you use a vibrator.”
“It’s a stimulator.”
“Well, you come when you use your stimulator, right?”
“Well, yes.”
“Every time, right?”
“Sweetie—”
“Or if I pull out and you masturbate, then you can come.”
“Where is this going?” She shifts. “Why are we having this discussion?”
I rub my hair. “What if I didn’t orgasm with you?”
“What are you talking about?”
“How would you feel if you couldn’t make me come?”
She shifts some more. “I don’t have to come for it to feel good.”
“What if the only way I could come would be to pull out of you and jack off?”
“Fine. Then I’ll start faking orgasms. This is why women fake orgasms. The male ego is so fragile. You have to control everything, even a woman’s orgasm.”
“Don’t start that Gloria Steinem bullshit.”
My tone shuts her down.
I say, “I just want to please you. I’m feeling… saw these people downstairs…”
“What are you taking about?”
“The two couples who got on the elevator with us.”
“Nothing. Maybe I’m… nothing.”
“No, say it.”
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