Sex Says(85)
“Read. It.”
“God, you’re bossy,” I muttered. His chuckles mirrored the same soft volume.
Finally ready to engage with his words, I read each one with full focus.
A Picture of Intimacy & Why You Need the Right Partner to Paint It
By Reed Luca
Intimacy.
Whether your mind works in stages or milestones, the most important part of intimacy, as with many other things, is the process.
But it’s not one you can follow with instruction from anyone but yourself.
“Intimacy isn’t just sex. Intimacy isn’t just sharing your body with someone else.
It isn’t a to-do list you can check off as you reach each milestone. There isn’t a manual on it, no paperback you can purchase at Target to give a step-by-step guide on how to achieve it.” –Lola Sexton, Sex Says
You may have gotten used to Ms. Sexton saying one thing, followed by my explanation of its lack of validity for some subset of the population.
But these words ring too true, their message is too insightful, and their validity on a broad scale is perhaps the most expansive view Ms. Sexton has ever written.
I blinked several times in absolute shock. Holy hell. Am I reading this right?
Real intimacy is a sacred experience. It comes from the soul, and like many matters of true spiritual satisfaction, the key to finding it, the route to get there, and the signs of its existence aren’t concrete. It comes from a place within you, and despite your best efforts to decode its composition, it never exposes that deep, secret trust. It is willingly, naturally, and without doubt or worry, reserving your soul for someone else blind of the consequences and willing to absorb them no matter how big the impact. It is giving all of yourself to that person, no matter how vulnerable and fragile it may make you feel.
There is no timeline, and it can’t be forced. It will happen naturally and without restraint.
I continued to read, expecting to eventually reach the part in the column where Reed Luca disagreed with me.
But it never came.
It. Never. Came.
Physical attraction is often craved by humans above all things, but it is fleeting. When you can find someone who slips under your skin, who can embrace the dusty and dark corners of your soul and dance with your mind into a powerful connection, you’ll look to your canvas to find it full.
Full of contentment and safety and full of something so delicate, you’d consider changing yourself to keep it.
Sex Says that intimacy’s foundation is trust.
And Reed This, America: Sex Says is right.
To my absolute horror, tears soaked the collar of my no-frills T-shirt, the beauty of his words and the imprint each one left on my soul nearly shattering.
“You agree with me?” I whispered, voice shaky.
Reed looked up from his screen at the sound of my raw emotion. It wasn’t a long trip from noticing my voice to the tears on my face, and he wasted even less time before acting. He set his computer on the coffee table and pulled me into his lap.
Each word had been written carefully and concisely to me. I felt it as sure as I felt the hard flesh of his stomach under my hand and the beating heart in my chest. His take on intimacy traced mine precisely, and I knew why—because we shared it with one another.
His fingers softly moved a few loose strands of hair out of my eyes. “I agree with you.”
“You agree with me?” I repeated like a moron, still trying to process it all. In a couple of months, we’d gone from hating one another to this. Though, maybe there really hadn’t been so much hate there, after all.
A smile crested his lips, and he nodded. “I agree with you,” he said, humoring me and my psychosis, and pressed a soft kiss on the corner of my mouth. “And more than that, I loved what you wrote.”
“I think I need a moment to let my brain process this.”
His smile grew wider just before he shoved his face into my neck.
“This makes me hate you even less now,” I teased.
“You don’t hate me.” The words were slightly muffled by my skin. He tickled my rib cage, and I giggled.
“This makes me dislike you even less now.”
“You don’t dislike me.” He tickled me again. Thanks to my squirming in an attempt to get away from his persistent fingers, my computer started to fall off my lap. But Reed, quick as a cat, caught it before it hit the ground. He started to set it on the coffee table beside his, but he stopped when his gaze caught my screensaver.
“Wait…” Little laughter lines folded the skin at the corners of his eyes as he squinted at the photo. “Is that a picture of an old lady in a park with a puppet?”
“Yep,” I said proudly. I’d found this picture somewhere on the internet and knew instantly that I had to keep it. I might even say I’d found a certain intimacy with it. I mean, it was the cutest fucking thing I’d ever seen in my life.