Seattle Erotic Art Festival Literary Art Anthology 2018

The Summer After

Maybe he wanted me or maybe he just wanted another human being to feel good with. Maybe he was desperate, and that was his reason for going upstairs with me. And if so, that was fine. He had plenty of reason to be desperate, far more than I did. We didn’t need more noble and refined motivations, or to be romantic. Friendship was better. Romance risked changing too much.

We were shy animals at heart, still.

There was room enough in my queen-sized bed for us to settle without crowding each other. But we were on the verge of it. Sex, after all, involves some crowding. And here we were, two people who liked our space. At first only our hands connected. Despite my impulse to touch him all over, to hold him, to cuddle, I was able to resist throwing myself onto him. I got the impression that, by keeping track of my hand in his, he was making sure of me. No sudden moves.

…

“Clothes,” I said again. Then weighed how much it mattered to me, compared to how much it might matter to him, for whatever reason, and added, “If you want.”

He asked, “Do you want?”

“It’s not impossible to make love to someone who’s fully dressed, but it’s kind of tricky.”

He made a short sound, like a laugh or a gasp—maybe at my choice of words. Make love. Why not have sex, which was after all what we were doing? But I hadn’t meant anything by it.

He was already far enough from my eyes to become blurred, a shape and pattern of color moving along my body. Then he reached down to remove the two long bluish stripes—I had to admit I felt relived, because having my way with him without causing those poor jeans to disintegrate was more delicacy than I felt capable of—and the indistinct mass of his shirt. Sunlight touched his bare skin, and although I might not be able to make out much, I could see that.

“You’re beautiful.”

For the second time, he didn’t answer in words. About halfway up my right thigh there was a scar from a long-ago accident. Although I couldn’t make it out clearly now, I knew its shape, like an attenuated arrowhead, angled as if to point the way up. He bent and his lips pressed that signpost. Then he followed its directions.