Driftwood Deeds(20)

He reached over and tapped his finger against my nose. My eyes fell closed and I angled my face up to kiss his palm.

“Both have power, we just exercise it in different ways. You are powerful in the way you let me see you vulnerable, in living out a sense of weakness that couldn’t be further from most definitions of that word. Without your permission, I couldn’t do a thing of what I love to do. My power is in guiding you, both of us, in planning and watching and steering. But it’s too deeply entwined, you know? Once I started to see it that way, I didn’t know how to have regular sex anymore... it just felt like mutual masturbation without that sense of giving everything inside of you to the other’s needs.”

My tongue sneaked out to moisten my bottom lip. I hung at his words, letting them roll around my head, slowly testing and probing their worth. I wanted to think about them, wanted time and a piece of paper to write but I also wanted him to go on explaining.

Over his lap and in the bathroom, I had learned that indulging these fantasies did not have to feel degrading at all, didn’t have to feel like I was betraying my gender and the rights we fought for. Here at this table, I was learning about him and how he was dealing with those questions. His eyes, his mouth, his neck—my glance brushed over them all, their reactions, tension, release. He wasn’t nervous, but neither did it seem altogether easy to bare his mind like this. And I wanted to kiss him for it, for being who he was, for sharing it with me the way he did.

“When I spanked you, I did it because that’s what you wanted, craved. And because you did, your reactions coursed through me like wild fire. When you hurt, I hurt —and we both loved it. That’s why I went on and did it harder. Everything is shared this way, every sensation, every orgasm...”

“Yeah...” I whispered quickly, interrupting him when he inhaled.

He smiled at me and raised his brows. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Whatever had been closed behind his smile seemed to dissolve. Our hands found each other, and like the moon never turns her face away from the earth, our eyes were locked together, spiraling through space. It was the moment that decided so many future decisions but in that point in time, I was transfixed and dazed. We smiled at each other and for that fleeting moment, nothing else existed—not my job, not the interview, not his past or the pain he masked with layers of kindness and thoughtful words.

It couldn’t last. Moments like this, moments of softness and beauty are so much more volatile than any others. A robin on the windowsill, fluttering away before you can reach for a camera as a way to hold onto it, give it substance by recording it.





X





Paul looked away first. His chair screeched when he pushed it away and got to his feet. I closed my eyes, breathed shallow breath after breath. His naked feet smacked softly against the wooden floorboards; something jangled, like glass on glass: a bottle of Pinot Noir and two high-stemmed glasses. I crossed my naked legs when he returned to the table, piled his plate onto mine, the cutlery on top, ignored his gently reproachful glare while I cleared the space between us and distracted myself from watching the strength in his hands as he plucked the cork from the bottle with a soft plop and a sigh.

“Could you mix it with water for me?” I asked quietly. Paul looked up and nodded without judgment. He took the empty plates to the sink and poured tap water into the bulbous bottom of the glass. It still swished in a circular motion when he sat it in front of me and filled the remaining space with red liquid. It looked nothing like his drink: mine crystalline red, catching the light like a gemstone, his like viscous dark blood.

“Thank you,” I said, but he waved it away and raised his glass. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.

The desire to gulp it all down like the first sip of water after hours of heat rose in my throat. My fingers played with the glass stem, I watched the wine color his lips and then I brought my glass to mine. The taste, diluted and softened, did not make my face twist into the displeasure alcohol could easily effect. I was distracted, nervous again after all these minutes of calm, of a center unlike any I’d found in my life before.

My sips grew larger, more frenzied and I only truly realized it when I let the empty glass sink back to the table. My head swam just a little and I didn’t check whether Paul thought me strange for it.

“Are you okay?” he asked. Predictably.

Not quite knowing what to say, I turned my eyes back to the glass. Down at the bottom rested a final drop of clear, pink liquid. I picked it up again, gently tilted the glass until the drop painted a thin, transparent line along its round walls. I wondered if I would always drink wine like this—not like a woman but like Italian children at dinner. I wondered what other sensations I routinely diluted—for safety or comfort or fear. Now, I could hardly see any red in that drop anymore. Unlike Paul’s pure color, this watered-down version did not have the power to stain anything. That felt important somehow.