28 :
You can’t keep a secret forever. Whatever you do, wherever you go, someone somewhere will always know your dirty secret. That’s my secret. For so long I got used to not discussing my life so my life became a secret.
Sleeping with someone again, for the first time in a long time, is one of the most alien experiences you can have. This was my big secret. One that the few knew and only the few would ever know.
Not just the sexual aspect of things, but the act of sleeping itself. The act of lying next to someone. The act of closing your eyes and voluntarily drifting into unconsciousness. The act of laying yourself open to someone else, defenceless. Knowing that if someone were so inclined you could wake up with a gun in your mouth, and that would be the last sight you see. The act of moving together with someone, where two bodies move to become one whole in two parts.
To sleep, just sleep with someone, is the first act of trust.
The way bodies move together, the space they occupy in the bed, the shapes they make. All this has to be relearned. All this has to, silently, instinctually, be discovered.
She could reach over and kill me in her sleep. I don’t know how, or why, my imagination had failed me, but she could. Should she so want.
I was no longer blind. I was no longer lost. I knew the geography of love. I knew the map. The contours. The rise of her breasts, the curve of her flesh.
No longer would I look at strangers and wonder. What did they have that I did not, apart from her? They had nothing I wanted anymore.
I knew the way her body moved - the curve of each muscle, the movement of each sinew. The way her fingers curled inside mine as the day became night.
The warmth of her flesh. The touch of my arm as I wrap around her in the darkness. The heat of her body that lights up the void on an infrared camera. The rise and fall of her chest as dreams soothe her shallow-breathing. The warmth of her feet as they wrap around mine in the blanket of dreams.
I got used to sleeping on my own in a fractured sort of way. Now I have to get used to sleeping with company. I didn’t sleep last night - I was sharing my bed with an alien presence. But I wanted to. And somehow, sleep seemed easier than ever. Sleep was no longer a foreign land. No longer an adversary to be battled into submission until I could possess it, until I could rape sleep.
It was what I wanted. This was the man I wanted to be. A continent of united states. Not an island. A lover. Not the lover who admires from afar yet is unable to connect with the object of desire. But a warm, flesh-real, actual lover. A man who loves and is loved back. A man who can change the course of our lives with the power of a single, lingering kiss. A man who can bring new life into the world with his partner, and who can change history with the strength of our love.
That’s the man I wanted to be - a lover.
Sleeping with someone again, for the first time in a long time, is one of the most alien experiences you can have. This was my big secret. One that the few knew and only the few would ever know.
Not just the sexual aspect of things, but the act of sleeping itself. The act of lying next to someone. The act of closing your eyes and voluntarily drifting into unconsciousness. The act of laying yourself open to someone else, defenceless. Knowing that if someone were so inclined you could wake up with a gun in your mouth, and that would be the last sight you see. The act of moving together with someone, where two bodies move to become one whole in two parts.
To sleep, just sleep with someone, is the first act of trust.
The way bodies move together, the space they occupy in the bed, the shapes they make. All this has to be relearned. All this has to, silently, instinctually, be discovered.
She could reach over and kill me in her sleep. I don’t know how, or why, my imagination had failed me, but she could. Should she so want.
I was no longer blind. I was no longer lost. I knew the geography of love. I knew the map. The contours. The rise of her breasts, the curve of her flesh.
No longer would I look at strangers and wonder. What did they have that I did not, apart from her? They had nothing I wanted anymore.
I knew the way her body moved - the curve of each muscle, the movement of each sinew. The way her fingers curled inside mine as the day became night.
The warmth of her flesh. The touch of my arm as I wrap around her in the darkness. The heat of her body that lights up the void on an infrared camera. The rise and fall of her chest as dreams soothe her shallow-breathing. The warmth of her feet as they wrap around mine in the blanket of dreams.
I got used to sleeping on my own in a fractured sort of way. Now I have to get used to sleeping with company. I didn’t sleep last night - I was sharing my bed with an alien presence. But I wanted to. And somehow, sleep seemed easier than ever. Sleep was no longer a foreign land. No longer an adversary to be battled into submission until I could possess it, until I could rape sleep.
It was what I wanted. This was the man I wanted to be. A continent of united states. Not an island. A lover. Not the lover who admires from afar yet is unable to connect with the object of desire. But a warm, flesh-real, actual lover. A man who loves and is loved back. A man who can change the course of our lives with the power of a single, lingering kiss. A man who can bring new life into the world with his partner, and who can change history with the strength of our love.
That’s the man I wanted to be - a lover.
posted by Mark at 7:28 AM
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