Much of our interaction was in pieces, broken, shaped perhaps by emails and short messages. We could keep the same conversation over weeks, but only saying a few phrases at a time. Other times the conversation was quick, dry and just to the point yet deeper and more sincere than usual. Many of the moments I remember are like that, almost like flash stories.
I sometimes dream about her.
“I dreamed of you the other day.”
“You did?”
She was almost asleep. So was I.
“I did.”
“What was the dream about?” she mumbled.
“Not sure. We were somewhere, I don't know where. A hotel, perhaps. We wanted to be with each other but we couldn't, because there were other people. Then I took you to an empty room somehow, but when I kissed you, everything dissolved and I woke up.”
“At least you kissed me.”
Then we fell asleep.
“Do you think I'm fat?”
Women. I'd had the vain impression that Athena would be smarter than that.
“Yes. Very fat.”
“Fuck you!” She said, slapping me playfully.
“I'm sorry, should I have lied?”
Athena had a beautiful body, not anorexic like it's fashion nowadays. Sometimes she made me think of a cat; the way she moved when she was on all fours, or how she could suddenly jump around quickly. I was fond of her body, and it certainly turned me on. I liked her legs, smooth, silky to the touch, probably tended two times a day with special creams.
“Hell yeah!” she laughed.
“I learned that women don't believe when we tell them the truth. If I had answered, ‛No, I think you are fine’, you wouldn't have believed me. The secret is to answer so hyperbolically that there's no way the woman would believe. She gets pissed off at your answer, and it all goes well. You know, women are complicated, dear.”
“Oh, just fuck off, we're not like that,” she said, still smiling.
“Of course not,” I said in the most sarcastic tone I could find.
“You're worthless. Come here and pay for your words,” she said, spreading her legs.
“I like this.”
I had fallen asleep. “What?”
“The after.”
“Sex?”
“Yes. Dozing off, feeling my legs tired, the eyelids heavy. The peace. The drunkenness of orgasm,” she quoted.
“Some people feel depressed.”
“Post-coitus.”
“Don't you ever?” I asked.
“Sometimes. Not when I let myself go.”
“Do you?”
“With you? I do.”
“Only with me?” I asked.
“It's none of your business.”
“No, it isn't.”
I waited, almost falling asleep again.
“Do you feel depressed?” she asked me.
“Sometimes. After one-night stands. Started when I was in college, a sophomore or so. Sex had become usual, and it was more a physical need than a pleasure.”
“Did it often?”
“What?”
“Casual sex.”
“A bit.”
“How much is a bit?”
“None of your business.”
“That's a lot.”
“I hated it, fucking and leaving, fucking and telling someone to leave, fucking and waking up with a stranger that I felt no connection to but for the sexual attraction the night before.”
“But you still did it.”
“Less and less. Until I practically stopped.”
“Never had a girlfriend?”
“Of course I did. Why?”
“What was sex with her like?”
“It was better.”
I knew what she was going to ask. “What about me?”
“I feel really depressed. When I walk out through that door.”
She hugged me tighter.
“The first time we did it... I arrived home feeling guilt, sick, disgusted with myself. I hated myself,” Athena said. “I took a long bath, very long, because I could not clean myself. Then he arrived, behaving as he ever did. And through the next week, everything was the same. Nothing had changed. He arrived late as usual. He fucked me as usual, he noticed no difference. I wrote better than usual. You said that yourself, when I sent you a story, weeks later, that I had written then. You didn't know when I had written it. You said it was more powerful, stronger, filled with emotion.”
She took her breath back.
“He travels a lot. He really does, I know it, it's not an excuse. Sometimes he spends only one day away, goes out early in the morning and comes back at night, sometimes he spends a few days out. It's his job, but... You're a guy. Is he cheating on me?”
“I don't know him.”
“You know men.”
“Not all men are the same.”
“What would the average one do?”
I wanted to avoid answering that question, but she talked again while I tried to find a way out of it.
“I think he does not have another woman, but he screws around. Bars. Hookers, maybe. Expensive escorts, I mean. That's more like him. I am right, am I not?” I shrugged. Quite possible, going out when he was hundreds of miles away with whoever he was working with there, maybe a strip club, maybe a bar, maybe a fancy whorehouse, maybe an escort that he saw regularly, fucking her and later talking about his wife. Perhaps he did have a mistress, how would I know? “I don't know him.”
“You have a polite way to say yes. Funny, that,” she said, hiding her head on my neck. It took her a long while to ask her next question. “Are you married, Marquis?”
“No, I'm not.”
“I... wouldn't mind if you were. Who am I to say anything?”
“I'm really not.” I hesitated, but something made me say the whole truth. Athena made me feel comfortable, at home. “I was.”
“You were?”
“Yes.”
“What... happened?”
“We were young and stupid.” I only realized what I had said after I said it; but Athena didn't seem to have taken the phrase personally. I thought of Emily, and I felt nothing. There was no love, no anger, no sadness anymore. “Just that. We should never had married.”
“For how long were you married?”
“Almost three years. Two years longer than we should, actually. We didn't even cheat on each other. We were too tired from fighting with each other. One day I just walked out of the apartment. I went to a hotel, sat in front of the window for most of the night, and we got a divorce.”
“Oh,” she said. “It must be awful to go through a divorce.”
“It wasn't much worse than going through our marriage,” I said, before I could think. I once loved Emily, very much. “Actually, we were so tired of arguing with each other that the divorce wasn't difficult. We both just wanted to get over it.”
I paused, suddenly feeling very tired.
“I think I'm getting old, Athena. I look back at some parts of my life and they seem so distant that they could have been just a movie I watched, or a story I invented.”
“Don't you want to marry again?” Athena asked. I remember to have been astonished.
“I think that thought had never crossed my mind,” I said, and I meant it, at least up until that very minute.
In hindsight, one of the most pleasing aspects of our relationship was the complete openness. No subject was taboo—even things that at first would have been out of question to know, names, jobs, addresses, the tags that the world uses to label people—were later no big deal; they were uninteresting or just didn't matter. What would I gain asking her real name? I already had a name for her, one that I could whisper into her ear.
“Do you like giving blow jobs?”
The question just slipped out of my mouth. I was lying over my back, my chest covered with fresh semen, some still oozing from my penis. I remember the change in her expression, from the satisfaction of a cat that just ate a mouse to bewilderment.
“What?”
“Do you? I mean, I don't think women mind it doing it these days, but do you enjoy it it?”
After another moment of bewilderment, she started to laugh.
“What? What is wrong with that question?”
In my defense, the question was valid. Blow jobs, for Athena, seemed to be about the performance of pleasure; not like your cheap porn, not just looking straight into your eye with a wickedly naughty smile. No, she was the archetypal girl-next-door, grown up enough to know what sex is and how to do it, but not to be decadent and slutty. Her face was of interest and a touch of lust, of love for what she was doing, always intense but not tense. Her movements were slow and deliberate. The first time she blew me like this—her countenance being a sex act by itself, paused, not her mouth seeking flesh here and there in a fast ping-pong of built-up foreplay—, I was overwhelmed. It took my entire will not to come in less than a minute.
I used to feel strangely detached from my own body when she did it. Her mouth and touch were warm and fuzzy, delicate and slow; her fingers and the tip of her nose trailed smooth paths on my skin. When her eyes sought mine, they carried a small glint of curiosity, wondering whether she was doing all right—not what I wanted, mind you, but the feelings she wanted to imprint over me.
“You're one of a kind, Marquis,” she said. She cocked her head. “Yes. I like it. I like the feeling of a cock in my mouth, soft and warm. I never really liked the taste of semen, I think it's too strong—but I don't mind too much either, I guess I'm used to it. Sucking on it pleases me. I guess Freud could write a book or two on this, but I like it. I just don't like facials. I think this thing of coming on the face is pretty like like dogs peeing on lamp posts. Why, do you like eating pussy?”
“Yes, but... the position is awkward. You know, the nose sometimes get in the way, my tongue gets tired after a couple minutes licking fast or hard. I usually don't mind the taste. When a woman is close to getting a period, it often gets too strong.”
We spent the rest of that session discussing the fine distinctions of taste of body fluids, which is a conversation that I suppose not many people ever had. To us, it was just like talking about which kind of tea we preferred.
“I need some help today. You have to fuck me in the ass,” Athena said, bluntly, when I entered the Place.
“Do I what how?” I couldn't be more surprised.
She laughed, amused.
“I'm writing a scene with anal sex, and I want to describe it well. So you have to fuck me there.”
I must have looked dumbfounded.
“What? Isn't it every guy's fantasy?”
“I... well...”
“Come on. Have you ever done it?” She asked.
“I... Yes.” She didn't hear me. I was, somehow, embarrassed.
“What?”
“Yes,” I repeated.
“Good. I brought a good lubricant.”
It was my turn to ask her.
“Have you ever been fucked there?”
“Yes,” she said. “Once.”
“And...”
“Well, I hated it. It hurt like hell, he didn't have a clue. You're gentle, you'll take your time, and not try to stick your cock straight in, trying to poke my stomach on the first swing.”
I fucked her ass. It was an experiment, more than a normal fuck, and I felt I was a teenager again, virgin and hesitant, but this time calm and relaxed. I took my time. It wasn't great, but it was not unpleasant. I won't describe it here, she has already done it in her own story. “It feels... I don't know,” she said. “Not unpleasant, but not exactly sexual, somehow... We'll have to do it again.”
She didn't come, nor did I.
She didn't come every time. Sometimes she said she wasn't in the right mood, and that she wouldn't come, no matter what I tried.
“The orientals know it's not about the orgasm,” she told me. “It's getting there, it's the whole experience. You don't have to have an orgasm to enjoy it thoroughly, completely.”
We talked about that a few times. I understand sex should not be a race, but to me orgasming has always been essential. There were a couple times I didn't come with Athena, being too tired, upset or sad. But then I didn't want sex at all, and the body playing was more a distraction than a pleasure.
“I'm feeling so lazy today,” I said.
Athena smiled, leaning over her elbow, her head resting on her hand, the other hand playing on my chest. “I wouldn't have thought so.”
I grinned.
“You have such a dirty mind.”
“I have not,” she defended herself.
“You write smut.”
“It's not smut!” She almost shouted.
“Erotica, if you prefer.”
“You're so rude,” she said, slapping me playfully.
“Forgive me, milady.”
“I'll think about it.”
We stood there for some time. I watched her, her eyes moving from my chest to my eyes and back, her fingers tracing convoluted paths on my skin.
“What did you mean by lazy?”
“The work. Coming back to that. I sometimes wish time froze while we are here.”
“I know.”
“I wish I didn't have to go back. As if it matters if I am there or not.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
“I can go back, pretend to work the rest of the day and nobody would notice. But I have to be there.”
“Do you hate your job?”
“No, I don't hate it. I just don't like it.”
“Why don't you leave it?”
“I have to pay my bills.” I answered.
“I mean, get another job.”
“It will be the same, if not worse.”
“Some people find jobs they like.”
“You should be happy you don't work.”
“It's not like that. I wish I worked.”
“Then why don't you?”
“He says I shouldn't. I don't have to.” She was referring to her husband.
“And you just obey?”
She shrugged, looking down. That was the first time I wanted to be with her, all day long, every day.
“I'll be gone for a couple of weeks,” she said. I later realized that she probably had been meaning to tell it to me for some time.
“Okay.”
“Do you mind?”
“Well, I can't say that I like it. Vacation?”
“Yes.”
“Nice. Where are you going?”
Athena didn't answer for a while. I was looking at the ceiling, and couldn't see her expression. Then it dawned on me that it was the sort of question we never asked each other; I asked it automatically, not that I cared. I was about to apologize when she talked again.
“To a beach.”
“I like beaches.”
“I don't.”
“Why not?”
“My skin is too white. I get sunburned easily.”
“Oh, that sucks. Use sun block.”
“I will.”
“But I hope you'll get some tan. I'll like it.”
“I bet.”
“So we don't see each other next week or the one after it?”
“No.”
“I'll miss you.”
“You have two good hands, I'm sure you can take care of it.”
“Yes, I'll write emails.”
“That's not what I meant!” She lifted her head from my chest and looked at me, amused. “You are only naughty when it suits you, right?”
“Of course. It's no fun to be naughty when others expect it.”
“Silly.” She rested her head again.
“Don't worry, I have a nice harem in my palace. Hundreds of women, all safely stored in a little box I like to call `my computer'.”
“I can imagine. So you are a porn maniac.”
“Not really. I was talking about the stories.”
She lifted her head again. “I hate when I don't know if you are lying or not.”
“I never lie.”
“Bullshit. Everybody lies.”
“I meant to you.”
She seemed to be pensive.
“You know that's not what I meant,” she said, after a while.
“Yes.”
“Do you really never lie to me?”
“Not that I can remember.”
She again took a while to say something.
“You may be right. It's just that my life is made of lies now, so I think that they are everywhere.”
“Don't lie to me,” I asked. “Don't say anything that you don't want, but don't lie.”
“Okay,” she agreed. I thought a lot about it later, how we lie to protect ourselves, to protect the people we love, to save our asses, to pretend, and because we are just used to. And whether good lies are better than the truth. We can't be hurt by thoughts we don't have. “I don't have a reason to, anyway. Can we meet again this week?”
“Sure,” I said. “The day after tomorrow?”
She nodded, not bothering to raise her head.
“Will you fuck me like a maniac?”
“I'll do my best.”
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Copyright Antheros (c) 2008. All rights to this story are reserved.