He was taller than he looked; I had to stand on the balls of my feet and crane my head to kiss him and totally failed when I tried to nip at his neck. He put his hands on my shoulders and, still kissing me, led me over to the couch and gently pushed me over. Very gently, as if I was a vase he wanted to tip over, but he was scared he would get in trouble for breaking it. I let myself fall, and when he climbed on top of me I threw my legs around him and nearly kicked over the end table with my boots. His hips were narrow between my thighs; his belt buckle dug into my stomach. I think we kissed and wriggled and play-humped for an hour, like teenagers. His hands were delicious, long fingered with rounded fingernails, and his body was boyish above me.
Suddenly Joe stood up and held out his hand.
“Shall we?” he asked, like we were elegantly dressed ball-room dancers in a ’50s movie.
“Yes. Yes, we shall.” I took his hand.
A streetlight glowed from behind the gauzy curtains. The bed was rumpled and slept-in; a tiny calico cat was snuggled up in one of the mounds of sheets. She saw us, yawned and ran into the closet.
Joe took off my glasses and carefully put them on the end table. I lay back on the bed, and he took one of my boots in his hands, gently unlacing it and pulling it off and dropping it on the floor, then running his hand up my leg. He kissed the inside of my knee, and I felt it all the way up. Then he did the same for my other boot. I shivered.
I sat up and kissed him hard; part of my brain wanted to take a chunk out, consume him, chew him up and swallow. We knelt on the bed facing each other. Finally I could reach his ears, his neck; I ran my tongue in the hollows of his collarbone and followed the thumping vein in his neck up to the back of his ear. His hands were all over me, under my clothes, on top of them, like they were another layer of skin that felt just as good to touch as my bareness underneath. I licked and kissed his neck.
“Did it hurt?” I whispered.
“It hummed and throbbed,” he whispered back. “Like singing or an operation. An intubation. I don’t know. Maybe like this?”
He took the front of my throat in his mouth, worrying it with his teeth, thrumming his tongue right on my voice box. I laughed.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “That’s just how it was. But not nearly as nice. Wish you had been the one tattooing me.”
“I can’t draw.”
“You can draw on me.”
“When?”
“Now.”
“No, right now, I want to see what else you have drawn on you.” I unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, and he sat there half in shadows, the illustrated man, one I could touch, and I did. I started with the heart on his throat and traced the line down to his chest; he was nearly hairless except for a few hairs curling around his nipples. The caps of his shoulders were covered with dotted Tibetan clouds and wind; I walked on my knees around him to inspect his back, which took my breath away. It was a giant scene of clouds and flowers, spirals and vines of dots, thousands and thousands of dots. The flowers were the only parts with color, pale pinks that shimmered like watercolors I could barely see in the semidark. I expected to feel the dots raised under my fingers like Braille and was disappointed to feel it was mostly like skin; I wanted to read him, I wanted to feel the needle marks like signs from God.
I massaged the tops of his shoulders, his solid deltoids, the muscles in his back that flexed beneath my fingers, beneath their illustrations. I kissed each flower and spiral, each cloud and vine.
I walked back around to his front and smiled.
“There’s nowhere else to draw on you,” I whispered.
“What about you?”
“My skin is plain. There are plenty of places to draw on.”
“You are anything but plain,” he said, his hands at the hem of my shirt, his fingers playing with and touching my belly. His hands hesitated, so I kissed him and he continued raising my shirt, and I held my arms up so he could pull it over my head. I sat back, my knees beginning to go numb, and he looked at me fully. He ran his hands up and down my arms, my belly, my sides, trickled his fingers down my breasts. I reached behind me and undid my bra, dropped it to the floor, resisted the temptation to cross my arms in front of me. We kissed, naked chest to naked chest, our hands touching each other’s backs and sides. I pushed him down this time, gently, a tiny, half-naked lumber-jack whispering timber. I lay on top of him, told him to stay still and kissed his chest up and down, his nipples and navel, the born-again soft skin just below his armpits. I touched the hair there wonderingly, thinking about how I used to stare at the boys when they raised their hands in sixth grade, waiting for the tiniest peek of fine hair to escape from their shirtsleeves. This part of the men I’ve been with never seems to age past then, or else just seeing it still awes me, reminds me I’m a grown-up and I can see the secret, finely haired places of men any time I want. I gently stuck a finger beneath the waist of his jeans, and he sucked in his stomach to invite me in.