A Fugitive Grace

As she drew him inside of herself, first his tip, then a pause and a coy grin to tease him, and up to the mid-point before shifting her weight to take him in entirely, he understood the riddle she'd seduced him with, whose solution is expressed not in the chatter of an unquiet mind but in the direct act of submission to the will of a lover...

The other guests had already left and Justin had been unburdening himself to James and Meryl about his latest breakup. Sacha was there too since the party was at her place. It had only been a short fling, but something about it--he couldn't tell just what--had felt more nearly right to him than any relationship he'd been in. Then she dropped him.

"She told me the strangest thing. She said, 'I'm not who you think I am. You don't know me because you don't know yourself. I know what you want better than you do, and that's why you think you like me.' That was the last thing she ever said to me. I can't see what she meant by that." Justin thought he saw Sacha smirk when he said that, which stung a little.

James and Meryl were good friends and good shoulders to cry on. They had a lot of patience, and that night Justin had needed it. He was exquisitely sensitive.

He found Sacha harder to connect with. She was cagy, distant, and bright, but in an anti-intellectual way. Once she told Justin that she didn't read books for fear of infecting her mind with other people's thoughts. Her apartment was somewhat sparsely furnished, aside from her big music collection, and it conspicuously lacked a television. She did have a couple posters, but not pictures of anything, just abstract, geometric patterns.

But what Justin found most unsettling about Sacha was her intense way of looking you right in the eyes without speaking. He had found it intimidating when they first met, and sometimes he still did.

Sacha was closer to Meryl and some of the other girls in Justin's set of mostly unmarried 20 and 30-somethings. He couldn't imagine what they talked about. For his part he could never seem to start a serious conversation with her. To begin with, she was sort of cruel, but always in ways that suggested she wasn't completely serious. She avoided talking about her thoughts or feelings. And she never seemed needy or self-conscious or soppy. He couldn't imagine her keeping a diary.

And yet she could also be an oracle. Every now and then she would suddenly come out with a profound observation, made more striking because her voice was unusually deep and rich for a woman's. Justin was always a little surprised by it, as though he had walked for a long time beside a tall, gray, stone, wall and then passed a narrow gate that momentarily revealed a vast, vivid garden just on the other side.

She'd been listening silently to Justin's somewhat rambling recounting of the affair. Actually, he wasn't entirely certain that she was listening at all. She was kind of staring distractedly as though a fascinating film was being projected onto the inside of her wide, brown eyes.

"You find what you're ready for," she said abruptly, and drained the last of the beer from her bottle. "Because when you're ready, you figure out how to ask for it." That ended the conversation, and thus the party.

James, Meryl and Justin walked together for a while, until James and Meryl reached their own apartment. They said their goodbyes and Justin shuffled off to catch a bus home. It was January, dark and bitter cold.

Three or four months passed and Justin didn't even try to date anyone. His last relationship and how it ended had caused him to mistrust his judgment. He spent the winter just trying to recover his emotional balance.

From time to time Sacha's remark would occur to him. And because the remark intrigued him, Sacha intrigued him too. He only saw her occasionally, maybe once or twice a month at parties, but she'd become a presence in his mind. Among other things, he'd begun to notice her beauty.

She was naturally athletic, with muscular shoulders, arms and thighs, but as far as he knew she didn't play sports. At least, he didn't imagine her playing sports because whenever he saw her she was arrayed in post-punk type outfits that seemed to suit her better than gym shorts.

He guessed that she'd inherited her father's looks: She had short hair, dark, somewhat pronounced eyebrows, high cheek bones, a flat nose, large lips and a well-defined chin. She had a pert bottom and large breasts, but instead of dressing to show them off, she hid them, or rather, she seemed almost unaware of them. She had tattoos in places he only caught a glimpse of when she stretched.

But he couldn't figure out how to approach her. They were so different from each other. And her sexuality was a mystery to him. She seemed to be by turns asexual and hypersexual because she never talked about sex except to make jokes, and she made sex jokes all the time. He wasn't even sure of her orientation. She never mentioned a girl- or boyfriend, or anything like that. And he was too "polite" to simply ask her.

So he never phoned her or invited her out anywhere. Evidently he hadn't "figured out how to ask for it" yet, and he supposed this impasse might go on indefinitely. He told himself it wasn't that important to him anyway.

But spring changes things. On the first warm night of the year Justin felt like he could almost sense the sap moving in the trees, which is to say that something hidden was stirring inside of him as well. Beneath the deadwood of his heart his feelings were beginning to flow again.

That night when he got home from work, he opened a window and, restless, went straight to his PC. He sat in the fading twilight, and then the darkness, lit only by the screen and a small lamp, and, in a kind of springtime induced trance, began typing a letter that he had no intention of sending--or none that he could admit to himself.

But sometimes our desire guides us, with a secret inspiration, long before its true purpose manifests on the mind's horizon. When that happens it's either the devil disguised as an angel of light, or a fugitive grace reaching out to us covertly through the veil of the flesh. It's the sort of thing that ruins marriages and destroys friendships, that takes lives--and sometimes saves them.

As he wrote to her his heart was heavy with a passionate tenderness--like mine as I write this story for you now.

This is what he wrote:

I have a fantasy about you.

It's always the same. I've been invited to your apartment for one of your parties. I'm the first one to arrive; maybe I misunderstood the time. So I help you get everything ready.

And there's a transgression. The details are always different, but I misbehave somehow. Maybe, on impulse, I try to kiss you in the kitchen, or maybe you merely catch me glancing furtively at your cleavage. Or you leave your bedroom door open and I accidentally see you changing for the party as I pass by, or perhaps I even stop in the doorway and stare, forgetting myself. You always notice and scold me for it. Sometimes you slap me.

All of that is just the back-story. The fantasy begins with me sitting abashed on your couch while you finish changing in your bedroom--with the door firmly shut. I'm wondering how awkward this is going to get, whether I've just ruined our friendship or whether you'll forgive me, whether I should apologize or just pretend like nothing happened. It occurs to me to slip out quietly while I have the chance: I don't deserve your hospitality.

You emerge from your room dressed in a skirt and blouse and long socks or stockings, with no shoes. Your top two buttons are undone. You aren't wearing a bra. I look at your face, trying to see whether you're still angry, but I can't read you.

You sit on the couch with me, as far away as possible, and let me stew for a while. Suddenly you grin wickedly and say, "I caught you looking, didn't I?" I blush, and begin to stammer an apology. But you lean towards me and hold your finger to my lips.

"Let's play a game," you say. "The object of the game is for you to touch me as much as you dare before the others get here. But I must remain fully clothed. The game ends when someone knocks on the door."

So we play. I'm cautious at first, but I get more and more bold.

There are two endings. In the first, we hear a knock, just as I'm beginning to disregard the rules. "Poor you," you say, and pull away from me. But then you look straight into my eyes and whisper, "Call me this week" before turning towards the door.

In the second you unbutton your blouse and slide your panties off from beneath your skirt. You pull me towards you and we kiss. "But, the others!" I murmur. You adopt the bearing of a teacher addressing a slow pupil: "There aren't any others. There never were." My other fantasies are about no one in particular, but this one is yours alone. It belongs to you somehow, and in its fevered moment, so do I.

Immediately after he wrote it, he emailed it to her. And immediately after that, he panicked. But it was too late. He cursed himself. Then he wrote her a nervous, apologetic note and sent that, then began another, but decided that he was only digging himself in deeper, so he stopped. He cursed himself again. There was nothing he could do. It was up to her now.

He didn't hear from her that night, and he didn't hear from her the next day. He kept frantically checking his email and voice mail messages from work. Later he remembered thinking that it would almost have been better if she had left him an angry message because at least then he would know where he stood. Not knowing was the worst part. But in the evening his phone rang and it was Sacha.

"Hey," she said.

And Justin said, "Hey. How are you?"

Then there was a long pause.

"Do you want to come over tonight?" she said.

There was a second pause as he tried to think of something really clever to say.

Finally he said, "Yes."

"Well why don't you then?" she said. It sounded almost like a taunt. He couldn't tell for sure.

An hour later Justin was headed towards Sacha's apartment building, trying to work up the nerve to knock on her door. But she met him on the street outside, so he didn't have to. She said she was coming back from the drug store. Neither of them had had time to dress up.

Sacha only lived on the third floor, but she insisted they take the elevator. As the elevator doors were closing, she placed her right hand on the back of his knee, slid it slowly and deliberately up his thigh and then goosed him, hard. Surprised, he turned his head, glared at her and opened his mouth as if to say, what are you doing? But instead he just gasped--with pleasure. She raised one eyebrow at him. When the doors opened she let go.

Once inside her apartment, he hesitated, wondering how to begin. She almost laughed at him. "Take off your shoes," she said. They were still standing in the doorway when she suddenly kissed him hard and deep, forcing her tongue into his mouth. A warm shiver shot through his body and he clung to her to steady himself.

Then she kissed him again more slowly, still open-mouthed. He reached to caress her breasts but she wouldn't let him. He tried to unbutton her blouse but she pushed his hands aside. She was teasing him. And teaching him--but what was the lesson? He felt his skin flush. He was frustrated now, and he wanted her more badly because of it.

She pulled his t-shirt off and reached for the top button of his jeans. Things were moving fast--too fast, he thought. When he demurred she ran her right hand up the inside of his thigh, then back up to the button. It didn't her take long to persuade him.

She finished undressing him, then pushed him down onto the couch. She was still fully clothed. The apartment was well lit. He felt a bittersweet flush, part exhibitionistic pleasure, part embarrassment.

He reached for the top button of her jeans, but she pushed his hand away again. She said nothing and stared straight at him with her strange, penetrating look.

Then she unbuttoned her jeans herself, slowly, pausing between each button, as though performing a striptease, and slid them to the floor. She hooked her thumbs onto the center of the waistband of her briefs, and cupped her hands around her flower. She pulled the waistband downward until her middle fingers touched her lips, then pulled her hands apart and upward, tracing the seam of her briefs with her fingers until she was holding them by the hips.

She eased them down and let him get a good look. She was closely shaved and she had a rose tattooed on the left side of her waist. Those were her only concessions to femininity. Her thighs were strong, beautiful. Even now she kept her blouse on; He was still at a disadvantage.

She straddled him and when he was pinioned, leaned into him pushing his hardening shaft up and back against his belly, so that its soft underside was pressed against the crease of her mound. For a while she just rested there with her clit against his tip. If they had long been lovers it would have been a tender gesture. But they had arrived at this point so quickly that he felt a little violated, at once thrilled and uneasy. Now that they had gotten this far she seemed to relish keeping him in suspense.

After a little while she leaned back and ran her wet lips along the length of his shaft to moisten it, until, satisfied, she leaned forward again and began to make love to him with long strokes of her clit.

All this time she held him with her eyes. He couldn't fathom her expression. It was neither tender nor predatory, but rather, confident, playful and self-satisfied. Selfish, he thought. It wasn't like dancing: I lead, you follow; and it wasn't like playing a game: I move, you move, I move. It would have been like a struggle, except he'd already been completely routed and she was enjoying the spoils of battle.

She wouldn't let him kiss her. Every time he tried she would pull back and smile coyly at him. He couldn't bring himself to meet her gaze and neither could he avoid it for long. He kept getting drawn back to those big brown eyes, and then, overwhelmed by their intensity, he'd feel bashful and look away again. But there was no escape. Exposed to her view, he was made to feel his nakedness.

When he sighed a little with pleasure she grinned and beamed at him with an unmistakable look of pride. Then he understood. She was selfish, but causing him pleasure was her aphrodisiac.

He began to express himself more freely, and found that she was increasingly responsive and attentive. The more he surrendered to the experience the more she came alive in his arms. She had an uncanny way of anticipating his reactions, which created the illusion that she could read his mind. It felt as if she had a direct apprehension of his thoughts and sensations, unmediated by words or signals. Soon she was reading only his involuntary symptoms, for he was overwhelmed beyond all expression. He could have sobbed.

But he didn't climax. Or rather, he didn't come. She was careful to massage the tender place at the base of his shaft, avoiding the head. In this way she kept him continually pursuing what she continually deferred. He remained rigid, engorged. But his shaft felt more relaxed by each new stroke, even as the rest of his body became more and more aroused, seemingly without limit. First it was like climbing a never-ending staircase, then, like falling into a bottomless well.

She was secretive about her own sensations. He saw now that what she had been struggling for was the ownership of their pleasure. She wanted all of it, hers exclusively to create, control and enjoy. And she got it, hording her own pleasure by concealing it and plundering his by forcing him to reveal it to her.

But gradually she began to stroke faster and her breathing became heavier. As she climaxed she succumbed to a few sharp cries.

Then she sighed deeply, unbuttoned and removed her blouse and bra, and at last she held him close to her and kissed him slowly. As she pressed her soft breasts close to his chest, he could feel her heart beating. This sudden display of tenderness was more affecting for having been so long denied. He needed it. He was mixed up inside. Later he remembered thinking "Other girls have made love to me, but this is the first time I've ever really been fucked."

She moved him to her bed and lay beside him, and continued to kiss and caress him for he knew not how long. Every once in a while she would caress his thigh, cup him in her hand, or run a finger along his shaft. She wasn't finished with him yet. Again she was keeping him in suspense, but casually, effortlessly, and with the same mixture of tenderness and control. She was also letting herself rest. She knew he would wait until she was ready.

When she was she reached down beside the bed, found a box of condoms in the bag from the drug store and removed one from the box. She slid her left arm like a pillow under his head, drew her face close to his, held the condom where they could see it and used both hands to open it. She slipped it out and pulled it over the length of his shaft with her free hand.

She kissed him once, a short, quick, sassy kiss, like a wink, then got up, seized his shoulders, and straddled him again. This time she pulled him inside of her and began slowly thrusting.

She studied his face carefully, watching for signs of over-excitement. She wasn't going to let him come without her permission.

"Look at me," she said. "Look right at me. Look in my eyes."

He did, with difficulty. And when he did he thought he'd never seen such a beautiful face.

"Do you want me?"

He nodded.

"Tell me you want me."

"I want you."

She rewarded him with a few hard thrusts.

"Tell me you need me."

"I need you."

"Tell me you belong to me."

"I'm yours."

"Say it again."

"I'm yours. I belong to you."

"Don't look away. Look at me. Tell me you'd do anything for me."

"I would. I'd do anything for you."

"Would you?"

"Anything."

"Tell me you're my bitch."

He hesitated.

"Say it!"

"I'm--I'm your bitch."

"Again! Look at me, bitch!"

His shame intensified his arousal, and the knowledge that he was being aroused through degradation intensified his shame which heightened his arousal yet again--and so on like a hall of mirrors. In such imperfect ways flesh and blood creatures grasp the infinite.

"Now kiss me." She still had him by the shoulders and she made him really struggle to reach her. When they finally kissed he was crazed with desire. She saw that he couldn't stand it anymore, rode him harder and let him come. It was a tremendous release.

He was shattered. He almost thanked her, but caught himself at the last moment, and instead, wrapped his arms around her and held her tenderly. She didn't return the gesture, but neither did she turn away. She accepted his embrace the way a champion accepts a medal: as a matter of course. He didn't know it then, but he would never see her again.

He fell asleep with her in his arms and dreamed that he was at a street protest where anarchists disguised as police were savagely beating police provocateurs disguised as anarchists. Something was unsettled inside of him, like he could no longer distinguish between his heart's cops and robbers and wasn't sure anymore which side he was on.

In the morning before he left she pressed a sealed envelope into his hand with instructions not to open it until he got home. It contained the address of an organization called the Center for Sex Positive Culture. He turned over the note in his hands a few times before deciding he might try it.