A Part of the World

He thought it strange that he had not noticed any of this before. With a shock, he recalled his perceptions of their first time together, of how she had seemed to him then. She had been an angel hovering above him, sharing herself with him in an act of spectacular condescension. There was no room for desire in how he felt at the time, just a mixture of gratitude and relief that his isolation had finally ended. Now, a week later, he thought it astonishing that he could ever have felt that way about her. All this time they'd been together, and only now was he beginning to realize how exposed she was to him when they made love.

He recalled having experienced the same feeling before. He'd been playing with a cat. Suddenly, in a paroxysm of excitement, it had wrapped its paws around his lower arm in an awkward bear hug, and then alternated between rubbing its head against his arm and softly biting it. That was how he felt. That was why he wanted to be on top of her. He wanted to hold her. He wasn't holding her to express affection. He was holding her down. He was holding her to restrain her, to make her be still, so he could smell her and feel her and taste her and know her and own her until he was done with her, until his seed was in her and his smell was on her, until she was resigned to it, unresistant, certain that nothing she could do could affect the outcome of what they were doing, of what he was doing to her. In a perfect world she would have been still, but of course she couldn't be counted on to do this, wild thing that she was, and so he had to hold her.

It was remarkable that he never fell in love with her. All of the girls or women who had, up until then, been important to him had been the objects of intense romantic attraction, and not one of them was ever aware of how he felt. His previous fantasies about intimacy had always involved mutual feelings of love; but here, it was not speculation about her unexpressed thoughts or feelings, but rather the mere fact of her holding him, that created his sense of connection with her. The entire abstract idea of the exact state of her feelings seemed strangely irrelevant. It was enough for him that she so obviously wanted to be touched.

* * *

She had warned him. She was polygamous, she said. She would never again want only one man. She used the wrong word, but he understood what she was saying. He ignored it. Knowing her, knowing that she had never deceived him, he should have listened.

They saw each other on Sunday, two weeks after their first night together. The last time they made love she screamed a lot. It didn't sound normal. This was more like being-knifed-to-death screaming than sex screaming. After they were done, she was panicked that the upstairs neighbors were going to call the police.

Tuesday morning, in class, she passed him a note that said: after what happened Sunday, we should never make love again. He thought, what a nice thing to say. When he got to her apartment that evening, she told him in a conversational voice about some guy she'd had sex with the day before. That would have been Monday. She had passed him the note Tuesday morning. He was so angry with her. The rest of the evening, they were polite, and made small talk. They did not touch each other.

Years later, he discovered how routine sex could be, realizing at last that he was not the great lover he had supposed; that was just the way she had made him feel. He gradually became inclined to believe that there are no such things as great lovers, just, occasionally, great sex. He eventually got over his anger towards her, and began to realize what a miracle it was that he had ever known her at all. She was an adventuress. Knowing exactly what she was doing, she helped him up. Having no idea what he was doing, he helped her up. She got up. She moved on.