Penis Love

"How was your surgery?" she said.

It was lunch. She'd known him just five weeks. It all started when he came into her flower shop looking for a Maiden Hair fern.

They'd had dinner that same night, out on the deck at the Alta Mira Hotel overlooking the moonlit waters of the bay. It was early enough in June for the icy marine layer to not have breached the Golden Gate and spilled its version of wintertime into an otherwise decent San Francisco summer, warm enough for him to push out a bead of sweat above his right eyebrow as they talked about horticulture. That little pearl of body water meant he would be glowing with man scent. That made him sexy. She'd never had dinner with a man so quickly. What was it about this guy?

Yes, of course they'd had sex by now. Three times already. She remembered each time as an isolated billow of light. How strange, that sex could start as the unspoken intention to have sex, understood immediately as a bond between them in that early moment in the flower shop before words were spoken. That's not supposed to happen.

Strange also, that there had been no separation between conversation when the words did begin and the idea of sex, as if each word were connected to a caress somewhere on her body. How exciting when he finally touched her under the table that evening. That was the moment she realized she'd given permission long, long ago.

These three wild, getting acquainted fucks were now spinning in her mind, trying to merge with one another: the back seat of his car, the floor of her shop under the Stargazer Lilies, her day bed. She didn't want those memories to merge. Separate is sweet, she thought. It amused her how urgent each of them was. How they almost didn't make it to the car that night before she lifted her dress and placed his hand underneath.

What was it with him? Instant intimacy. No subject off the table. No barriers. As if the need for a time of introduction, of shadow dancing, of testing each other as if shopping for the right avocado at the grocery—all that no longer mattered.

Never a doubt about the sex! Not if, but when, she had said. Unexpectedly easy to have sex in the car in the parking lot that night, not caring if anyone saw them. Exciting, yes. . . sex, danger, the thrill of a long awaited recklessness.

"Surgery?" he echoed. They were sitting across the table, Saturday, in her apartment.

She nodded.

A slight curl appeared at the corner of his mouth. "Surgery was fine," he said. "Recovery sucked."

She took a quick breath. "How so?"

He looked away, then back. "A touch of pain and misery," he said.

The real question shot up in her head and rattled there. That question he'd not answered. Was he dodging? Being coy? She wanted that answer. The only thing to do was to ask. She would get around to it.

Hernia surgery. Yes, he'd told her how the doctor said it wasn't a large hernia but it was the proper size to be dangerous. Something about getting a piece of his. . . whatever. . . caught inside it that could get strangulated. Gangrene, shit like that. So he had to get fixed.

Yes. But the question loomed and consumed her. She shifted in her seat. "How's your penis?" she said.

He laughed. "Different," he said.

She worried. She knew his penis by the way it pressed against her, how it felt inside her, but not the kind of visual detail she needed to know. Especially now that it had changed somehow. Curiosity stirred and itched like poison oak. Oh, of course she'd seen it. She'd glanced at it as he stood at the foot of her day bed, and in those moments when he hovered over her. She loved the way it looked, long and substantial. Regal, almost.

Not circumcised. She liked that. The foreskin not the kind that covered everything and came together in a pucker beyond the tip. Instead, it paused half way over the helmet like a turtleneck sweater, stretched tight, hiding some but not all. Perfect! Always at the ready. But now there was this new something to contend with. Her concern split evenly between excitement and fear. What did the word "different" mean?

"Tell me," she said. As she spoke she felt that quality of concern for the poor penis like one might feel for an injured puppy.

"Tell you what?"

"How different."

Lunch was finished. The plates were pushed to the side. His hands straightened the tablecloth before him.

He looked into her eyes. "Larger," he said.

She gasped. Then covered her mouth.

A mischievous smile crashed his face.

"What do you mean, larger?" she said.

"Bigger around . . . and longer."

She could hardly sit still. "Describe it. I want every detail."

He leaned back. "Well," he paused, searching for the right words, "its like an Italian sausage that's become a German bratwurst."

She laughed. Secretly, she wondered how it would feel in her hands, how it would feel inside her.

"And, it's a different color," he said.

"What!"

"Yeah, darker. It's turned sort of reddish brown and the skin wrapped around it got all puffy."

Her mouth dropped open. She sucked her lower lip then let go. "What the hell is happening?" she said.

"The doctor said it's just congestion."

"Congestion."

"Yeah."

"Congestion?"

"Yeah, like the circulation to it was. . . disturbed somehow, leaving too much blood or fluids in the region. I don't know. Swelling it up, I guess."

"Like getting hard?"

"No. Different than that. It's actually really soft. Softer than before."

She tried to picture it. Larger. Softer. Darker.

"Is it painful?"

"No, but I'm aware of it."

"How do you mean?"

"Like I feel it all the time. Like it's sending me signals, or something."

She laughed. "Talking to you?"

"Kinda. It's a good thing, though."

"Sexy?"

"For sure."

"Oooh," she said, "this is interesting."

He watched her face. She was trembling a little. He remembered how he enjoyed catching her looking at his penis, how he could feel her eyes upon it, searching. . . it almost felt like she was holding it in her hands, giving it the satisfaction it constantly, urgently needed. It reminded him how his penis had always wanted to be released from captivity, to be attended to by a woman filled with aura and mystery.

He checked the expression on her face. She'd run out of questions, he could see that. What was she waiting for?

Suddenly he stood from the table and dropped his pants.

The penis dangled, swinging a little from sudden release, succulent in its new clothes, moist with anticipation out in the nascent air.

She froze to her place, eyes glued, breath short and rapid. "May I touch it?" she said.

He nodded.

She hesitated.

It was fatter. And longer. It was darker and, yes, the skin around it was puffy. It had a glow about it that was both ominous and enchanting. As if it had gotten in a fight somewhere but emerged victorious, battered and bruised.

"Is it painful?" she said.

"Not in the least."

She still hesitated.

"Go ahead," he said. "You can touch it, play with it, knock it around. Do whatever you want. It only looks like it might be tender. It's not."

With two fingers she lightly touched the shaft. It shifted slightly to the side. There was a sponginess there that reminded her of baby skin. She withdrew. Then she reached under the tip and lifted it, bending it side to side as if seeing it for the first time, recording what she saw so as to bring it back to her just this way when he was gone.

She let it drop. "Come with me," she said.

She pushed him to a sitting position on the edge of her bed. She pulled down his pants to his knees, to his ankles, off completely and on the floor. She left his socks and shirt on, standing over him, examining, inspecting.

She took hold of his shoulders and pushed him gently back onto the bed, leaving his legs off the side, feet on the floor. She kneeled in front of him.

He felt nothing but her eyes on his penis, soothing, searching.

She lifted the tip. "I love the color," she said.

"It may change."

"Then let's enjoy it while we can."

He felt her slip her palm under it and cup it in her hand. She rolled it back and forth. With one finger of her other hand she touched the shaft and retracted the foreskin to the trough behind the helmet, then pushed it forward to its resting place. The penis kicked.

"Amazing," she said.

"What?"

She laughed. "Almost like. . . like it's alive. . ."

He laughed. "Of course it is."

She got dreamy. "Amazing organ, the penis. Don't you think?"

He remembered the time he first got an erection, how he admired it, how he swung it side to side, how he stretched his body out over the end of the sofa to watch it drop straight down, firm as a stone.

"I'd agree. Nice to have one." He raised his head off the bed. "Is that what you want? A penis of your own?"

"Don't be silly," she said. "I rather have a hole to stick it in."

There was a little silence.

"Three of them," she said.

"Three what?"

No answer.

She had the penis vertical now, rubbing the underside with two thumbs.

"Don't get hard yet," she said.

"It's alive, remember. It's just responding to what you're doing."

"Get a grip. Make it stop."

"How do you expect me to do that?"

"I don't care how. Just do it. I want it tumid a while."

He tried to think about economics, politics, the ugliness of his high school math teacher.

She turned him loose.

Next thing he felt was his legs up on the bed, his body shifted, she lying beside him, her eyes exactly at the level of his penis, her body stretched out below.

She was leaning on her elbow, blowing her breath on his sex.

"It's a little hot," she said.

"What do you want?"

No answer.

She grabbed it in her fist. It was half erect. "You know," she said, "you'd think the idea of putting it in your mouth would be disgusting, repulsive." She paused, squeezing his member tight in her fist, releasing it, squeezing again. . . "Okay, maybe the first time it is. Maybe when the neighborhood boy wants a blowjob and he teaches you how to do it there is that first sense of revulsion, ugliness. . . but then there is this marvelous sense of connectedness that comes over you, as if you are never more close to a man than when you have his penis in your mouth. As if, through the door of his greatest vulnerability, you have entered him all the way down to his soul, which now, unbidden, is accessible to you." She paused. "Isn't that marvelous? In that simple act you have crossed into the interior."

She paused. "Stop it," she said.

"Stop what?"

"Your erection." she slapped his penis and turned it loose.

He withered a little.

Her knee crossed over his leg and she pressed her sex against his ankle.

He reached for her breast.

She took his hand away. "This is not about me," she said.

She resumed her watching and it slowly softened again.

"You would think. . ." she picked it up and stretched it out vertically ". . . that putting your lips to the tip would be nauseating." She moistened her lips with her tongue and then leaned over. She opened them slightly and placed just the tip inside, not quite touching her teeth. She pressed her lips together slithering the tip away, then pushing it back in just a little. She withdrew. She swallowed. "You'd think. . ." she darted her tongue to his tip and wiggled it there ". . . that it might taste bad." She licked the trough between head and shaft all the way around. "It doesn't. It's just organic, fecund. It makes your body remember the dust it came from."

She turned him loose.

She slapped his penis.

He knew what that meant.

She waited.

"It's important to me not to have you hard when I take you all the way in. You have to be soft."

"Why?"

She raised her body and crawled and to the spot where she could hover directly over his head. "You've watched too much porn," she said. "They do it all wrong. It's so mechanical they miss the best part." She settled back down.

"Two reasons," she said.

"For what?"

"For the softness." She moved her head so close he could feel her breathing. "First, I can swallow you better." She let that resonate. She moved her hand up his thigh to the place where the leg joins the body and rested there.

"More importantly, I want to feel you get hard in my throat."

The light in the room seemed to suddenly change so that it was only around the two of them. It reminded him of the tenebrism effect in classical art.

She sighed. "I can't tell you what it's like to feel you swell and stiffen inside me, having to open myself to make a space to breathe. It's worth it. Because that way I'm connected. That way I know I have control over you, I am in charge, I can start your orgasm or stop it. And when I want you to come you will come, not one second before."

His erection returned. "You shouldn't have told me that," he said.

"Waiting doesn't hurt. It fuels desire. Besides, I wanted you to know how I was working you, how I require your submission, how I can bring you close then take you away. Close, away. Like that. You will get to explode, don't worry, but only when I want you to."

The erection got harder then but shortly released itself again, during which time anticipation stood at the door begging to come in.

And the penis, when in the absence of touching and fondling, and in that pool of reluctance that follows interruption and delay, will give up its erection, lying idle and waiting, her moment had returned and she placed her teeth on his shaft and bit him gently. He lurched. She bit again, moving up and down the wavering rod. He twisted and moaned. Then, as she nibbled the tip, she advanced him into her so as to lie him snugly down in the valley of her tongue, sucking, stroking, scraping the roughness of her taste buds against the sensitive V under the helmet, feeling him lurch again and again against the roof of her mouth.

Then the little swallows came, propelling him downward, not by thrust but by the force of her will, gulping him into the vestibule above the orifice that goes to the other world.

His body tensed and seized. His breath turned short and erratic. Sweat appeared on his brow. He felt a swelling sensation all over his body as if he was lifted off the bed to the air above, suspended above two people locked together.

Yes, he did get hard. And she did feel him swell and kick deep inside her throat, tapping against the swallowing tube until it, too, gave way to receive him and squeeze him there until he exploded, and lurched, and emptied himself. And he sighed the sigh of generations of ancestors as the light around him vanished and he disappeared from the surface of the earth.