Slow Hand (7 page)

Just two more days! I couldn’t leave his side. I couldn’t
bear it. Nothing seemed pressing anymore save the need, the urgent need, to hold him hostage. I didn’t neglect to feed him the boiled rice—or to sustain myself on the remains. I didn’t neglect the spongings, either. Nothing else mattered to me. Nothing.

When night came I got into bed with him, crawling into his sarong once more. I wanted rest but not sleep. Yet it was hard to fight the drowsiness brought on by the steady shushing of the sea. Trying to stay awake, I rummaged between his legs. Almost immediately, my fingers were wet.

By daylight, when I could see, all I wanted was to keep the liquid flowing—the little bit of liquid that emerged bead by bead at the nick of the crown on his mushroom-shaped sex. The first time I bent over to taste it at the source, I did it with utmost care, as though licking nectar off a thorn. But soon I grew reckless from a kind of greed, kneeling to face him as I continued the milking. I’d never known such power over another being—there he was, at my feet, exposed, unknowing, wholly at my mercy. So what if his eyes flared open without warning, and he watched me with that roaming gaze, a gaze less than pleasurable, less than human really? So what if he made those gargling noises? It would have taken a lot more to wrest me from my task, my dogged extraction of the juice that kept coming—only by the eyedropperful, it’s true; but the miracle was that it kept coming.

No sooner had I licked up a droplet than another would seep through the nick in that tender flesh like a runnel of sap. A little kneading, a little rubbing, and out it oozed. Was it the slight saltiness that set off the thirst in me—a thirst that drink alone couldn’t slake? Again and again I got up from bed for air. And for endless sips of water. I gave him to drink too—the thirst had seized him as well for all I knew: his lips were dry and white at the corners. No, I didn’t deprive him. I even remembered to feed him his rice, a mouthful or two at a time. But being on my feet was a strain. Lightheaded, heavy-footed, I moved as in a delirium, craving only to return to bed, and to that little spot of moisture seeping through his sex. That was
what gave me satisfaction. That. Not the tepid, tasteless water I drank and drank.

Is it surprising that by now I was rubbing between my own legs as well, in rhythm with the steady tapping of his sap? Pleasuring myself was hardly new to me. Maybe if things had been different, if someone—anyone—in the
kampong
had dared touch me, I might not yet have learned to touch myself so capably. But no one did; and so I did. How many times had I stood squarely in front of the window of my room, fingering myself with my sarong hitched up in front, while an unsuspecting male, the object of my heated fancy, went about his business in the
kampong
below! Even when they—for there were many such males—happened to look up and catch me framed at the window, whatever they saw of me from the chest up revealed nothing of how I busied myself below the window line. Skinny boys in their teens, paunchy men—I wasn’t choosy about these targets. Once, it was an old Hindu in a ragged loincloth, bending over to stack cordwood. That time I was somewhat more ashamed than usual afterward. But shame is not unlike a lump of ice: painful to swallow, but only for a stinging instant. Then it melts, it goes away.

Given what I knew already, it wasn’t so hard to finger myself with one hand, coaxing the drip out of him with the other—while also managing to lick. All the while I marveled at the slick rosy tip of his strange, strange growth, rubber-soft one minute and hard enough the next so that the veins beat against my fingertips. At last my licking gave way to outright sucking, in time to the sucking that pulsed between my legs just before the long tremor kicked in.

By night I was wild with abandon. I shed all my clothes—a thing I’d never done in his presence—dropping my sarong on top of his, which lay on the floor, in a coil, where I’d flung it. I bent down to look into his face and saw that his eyes were open, fixed just past me with the shock of a man gazing at a ghost. Was it my hair, I wondered—my neglected mass of frizz? He closed his eyes then, as though to shut out the disturbing vision, whatever it was.

I got up onto the bed and knelt beside him, facing his feet. The air in the room was so warm and close that I could smell my own sweat—a sour, sickly smell—along with the familiar fumes given off by his body. It felt no different from a fever—the sweating, the shortness of breath, the thirst. Naturally, I went for the liquid. Like the water I squandered while fearing drought, I kept returning to this salty, thirst-making moisture to quench my thirst.

As I squatted over him on the bed, facing his feet and bending over to drink at the source, I happened to lower my crotch onto his hand, which lay with its fingers curled, palm up, by his side. That touch, so slight, grazed me to the quick, and all I had to do—without interrupting the sucking—was to rock back and forth, back and forth, over his open hand while I climbed to that edge from which the body aches to plummet. I plummeted. I shot forward until my head came to rest at his feet. After a while I turned around and nuzzled his hand, only to discover a slickness on his fingers, so like the slickness on mine. Did our liquids also taste alike?

They did. I wanted him to taste them both. I wiped his wet hand on one of my breasts and brought that nipple up to his mouth, where I pressed it against his lips. Then I lowered my other breast down to the moisture at the tip of his sex, rubbing it around before doing what I’d done with the other breast.

The thirst was so acute now I could barely swallow. I placed my mouth over his, probing deep with my tongue—over and under his, all along his teeth, between his gums and lips. His breath was musty, his taste sour-sweet. The combination made my mouth water. I went for his ears now, first one and then the other, licking along the curves and dents and into the hole, to fetch up the bitterish taste of wax. I moved down to the armpits, burying my nose in the pungent thicket of hair; down over his chest and belly to lick his navel; and down into the depths of his genitals.

I’d never stopped to lick the sac before. I trailed my tongue over it now, over the ridged hairy skin, before lifting it to lick under as well, down the line running into his crack. I stopped at its rim, to catch my breath; then, lifting his legs at the knees,
parting the cheeks, I plunged my tongue right down into the recess, as deep as it would go.

A dark bitter taste exploded through my palette; the taste of a poisonous plant, perhaps—some wild, inedible onion. The discovery was dizzying. I wanted to subject him to something comparable. That’s when I moved up to straddle his face. I faced him on my knees, shifting them farther and farther apart until the very core, the
very
heart of that hidden cleavage between my legs was split wide open and planted squarely on his mouth. Now we were engaged in a long wet kiss; it was my lips, I should say—those other lips—that were doing the kissing as they smeared their saliva onto his.
Taste!
I said, pressing down harder on my haunches, circling faster, kissing deeper. I was dying of thirst. I was dying, dying … and in the throes of the shudders that sent me sprawling across his face, I glimpsed what it was like, that letting go and slipping away from the surge of inseparable pleasure and pain.

After a while my skin prickled and I sensed, before I saw, the light I was lying in, a light that chilled rather than warmed me. I opened my eyes onto the full face of the moon, filling my window, staring me down.

I picked up my sarong and tied it around my chest. Outside, I stood on the veranda briefly to absorb the night: the indigo shadows and shapes of the
kampong
roofs, the crooked palms and fuzzy shoreline of the sea. How still it was—not a breeze, not a drizzle to break the spell and let the monsoon in. Those yellow flowers had bloomed and withered in a burst of false promise.

The moon was not so close now; it had retreated to a distance from which it shed its path of light. The path led directly from the stairs of the veranda, down the incline, in a straight line to the sea. I set out without the slightest hesitation; nothing seemed more natural or more inevitable than walking its beam. I followed it until the sand turned wet underfoot. From there the path glittered like a welcoming carpet rolled out, in my honor, across the surface of the sea. I took my first step into the waves. It was easy, it was nothing, I could feel the slightest undertow pulling me in.

But on the threshold of that walk into the waves I turned—I don’t know why—to take a few steps along the beach … and found the beam trailing me. I stopped and turned in the other direction—and there was the moonbeam, still at my side. Back I wheeled once more, breaking into a run; and back it tagged alongside me.

Whichever way I went, up and down the beach, the path of light was doggedly at my heels.

It wasn’t the moon that was doing the bidding; it was taking the lead from me—it was I who was guiding the beam! I darted this way and that, stopping and starting, giddy from running circles round the moon.

When I could run no more I headed home, the sea behind me, the moon in tow.

There was time to give him a sponging. I hadn’t planned on it; I hadn’t thought I’d be returning. Yet here I was back home, in time for one last wash.

I hadn’t thought I could do the other thing either. But that too I did.

I let him go.

AU
THOR’S NO
TE

The lively comic charm of this monologue beautifully complements its vision of the tenderness that can spring up even between two new lovers whose erotic impulses are helped along by propinquity. Bea Wilder, like Susan Dooley, gives us a portrait of a woman at home in her body, who knows and cherishes her own ability to give and receive pleasure … and her relish is, I think, infectious.

I
was deflowered in the City of Brotherly Love twenty-five years ago. Perhaps this explains my penchant for friends’ brothers, or maybe it’s because I never had one, growing up as I did in a one-gender family of three younger sisters, a domineering mother, and a large cranky female cat. I’ve simply always been completely fascinated with the idea of having boys around the house—boys you could touch, hug, and kiss, but never screw, of course. So when Carolyn invited me out of the city in the middle of August, my first inclination was to say no. (I already had plans to go to a Red Sox game on Sunday with an old lover and friend, and who needed extra traffic hassles?)
But then she let drop that at this birthday party for her, at her family’s summer house, her New York-dwelling brother Jonathan would be in attendance; not surprisingly, although she didn’t know it, this turned out to be the very incentive I needed to tank up my car and hit the road early that Saturday morning.

In Cambridge, recycling old boyfriends and husbands and coming across with brothers and other relatives is de rigueur, but Carolyn had only been forthcoming to the extent that I knew Jonathan was in his midforties and unattached. That was enough though, and the promise of a “live one” fresh off the train from the Big Apple remained a tantalizing prospect all the way up the highway north to New Hampshire. Anyway, her directions were good, and in exactly the time she said it would take, I was turning off Route 69 onto the bumpy dirt road that led up a hill to her mother’s driveway. No other cars were in evidence, and I remembered hearing something about how they’d be grocery shopping if they weren’t there when I arrived. Hordes of daunting relatives were promised for the birthday soiree, so these peaceful moments were fleeting and precious. I unloaded my tote bag, birthday present, and tennis racquet and pushed open the front screen door to the kitchen. I put my stuff down and looked through the living room to a nice deck with a spectacular mountain view, and then I realized I was not alone. Card-shuffling noises emanated from the breakfast nook, and there was a large bearlike creature intently playing solitaire. I coughed nervously, and it got up and smiled. He had opaque brown eyes and a tender smile. “Oh, you must be Carrie’s friend. I’m Jonathan.”

He seemed tentative and shy, and I was a bit taken aback, but I managed a “Yes, I’m Jean. What shall I do with my stuff?” Now he looked confused, and he sort of pointed at the living room and said to stick it there for the time being. Then he went back to his card game, and I stammered about the nice view and he agreed, and then I said I was going out on the deck to look. He showed up a few minutes later, and we made desultory conversation about Carrie and mother gone shopping and would be back soon and about what an easy trip up it was
and about how I hoped we would play tennis and about his documentary on a famous deceased Democrat and my Suburban Hunger study. He seemed kind and sensitive and self-effacing, different from his sister, and just as I sensed the beginnings of sweet sexual tension a noisy car jarred my mood. Carolyn and their mother had arrived.

We all converged in the kitchen, and Carolyn gushed over my early arrival and Mrs. Steele said she hoped I was ready for some tennis before it got too hot as we all put the bottles and cans and jars away. No one introduced me to Jonathan. Mugs of coffee were filled, and we sat on the deck with various newspapers commenting on interesting items here and there. I felt a bit strange and distinct from this family unit. Jonathan was very quiet but pleasant in a sort of detached way that made me curious about and interested in him. We made eye contact a few times and laughed together about a pun Carolyn didn’t get. After a while, Carolyn announced that I should bring my tote upstairs to a room down the hall from Jonathan because she preferred a sort of finished basement room with only one bed. She took me on a brief tour and showed me where to drop off my bag, and then we all changed for the tennis game and met at the court nearby. Jonathan and his mother teamed up against Carolyn and me.