Lover Come Home Ch. 18

Thursday, clear

Beloved V

I've never written the word beloved before. One more thing that you have called forth from within me.

Swimming is my new pleasure. Not as good as you but what is. I use my mask and snorkel, so I can see beneath the surface and not worry about breathing. The water supports and encompasses me. It enters all my openings, but so completely that I cannot feel it as separate from myself. It is simply me, extended forever. I used to think I was a person contained in a sack of flesh. Now I imagine that I am a large body of water, with indeterminate banks. You come to swim, and fish, and do nature studies, and find new species and fossils. Or perhaps you are the water, and I am the swimmer. Water is a world with no up and down, only around and over.

We sleep like that too, around and over in each other's arms. But you are a light sleeper, and I am a bear. My sleep is so intense that I barely move. I know that you sometimes wake up in a panic beside me. I am so quiet. Could I have died in the night? The lover's dread is always present. Absence of any sort is a kind of death.

You reassure yourself by bringing your head close to mine, to feel the light breeze of my breathing. Horses greet one another that way, by breathing into each others nostrils. Sometimes you do too, greeting me in the night, relieved that I am alive. But I am living in another land, journeying in my dreams to somewhere else. Maybe even to someone else. Are you jealous perhaps? Or simply lonely? You do not scruple at trying to bring me back to you from the path of my dreams.

The lightest tickling is your usual beginning. How do I know? Because sometimes I am not really asleep. I am playing my version of the game Sleeper Awake! The rules are simple. If the sleeper shows she is awake, she loses. She must keep her body still, except for only the slightest of sleepy motions. She must pretend to prefer her dream land to the real world. A few soft sleepy sighs are allowed, but nothing more.

The rules for you are different. You must not do anything to disturb my dreams. There can be only the most subtle of indications to my sleeping self that a better world awaits me awake in our bed. Nothing as obvious as a kiss is allowed. You must be totally circumspect. From your distant shore you must somehow influence my dream path so that it returns home to you.

The light tickles are a good beginning. I am not a school girl, not outlandishly sensitive to even the threat of a tickle. No, the brief joggle of my skin, down my ribs, across my stomach, brings only the tiniest response. You are only announcing your intentions. I remain asleep, but my dream may have a very different ending.

A clever choice on your part is to brush the light hairs on my arms. This seemingly is a step back. My skin is no longer being touched. But hair is embedded into a deeper layer of the body. You are coming closer.

You have even been known to whisper things into my ear while I am sleeping. Your breath is warm. My body feels it. My mind hears the warmth of your words. I'll not repeat what I've heard you say. But we know.

Dreaming becomes more difficult.

Then you do something diabolical. You stop. I sleep on my back, like a pharaoh. You lie beside me, and watch. How can I sleep when you are watching me? Is that all you want? Just my existence next to you? Even if I am faraway in the world of dreams? Your pleasure in my distant presence in our bed makes any dream an ordeal. I want to wake up and join you.

But that would end the game. So I continue to slumber.

Finally, you decide to act. Cunning. Have you known all along that I am shamming and you are playing a double game? Are you the master mole in the spy game? I do not know. But I maintain my artful sleep while you lick the inside of my arm. Clever. Not an obvious erotic place. Only you know how delicate that makes me feel. How precarious it makes me. I cannot control my breathing anymore. It starts to sharpen.

Sensing victory you act more boldly and put your hand on my stomach. Palm down, fingers spread, I am held in place by you. The sleeper quivers abit to give notice that her watcher may have been hasty. Her dreams must not be disturbed, only satisfied and finally completed.

But the hand remains.

Now the game is more difficult. It is hard not to laugh, not to reach for you, not to take your hand and move it further downwards. But I do none of these things, only dream on.

You begin humming. Tuneless. Helpless. Do you even know you are doing it? How can I maintain my purposeful quiet when you are humming to yourself? It reminds me of the dwarves going off to work in Snow White. You are happily looking forward to a long day mining gold, while I must stay home like Cinderella. Mixed metaphor. I am no Snow White. You are certainly not a dwarf. Or Walt Disney. Oh damn. I woke up. And you are not here.

I cannot continue this letter. Lost my thread. Game over. Come home and go swimming with me.

C