Up and Down, Side to Side

Someone once told me that Bulgarians shake their heads up and down when they mean 'no,' and side to side when they mean 'yes.'

* * *

I followed Ana through the house as if I had broken in. Every time a board creaked, I froze, waiting for the effect. She took me upstairs to her room. I wondered if she would like the way I looked when I was naked. I wondered if she'd look as I had imagined her, with full, strong curves, and graceful, assertive movements.

The wallpaper was peeling from the walls. I sat on the bed. It reminded me of my grandmother's bed, an ancient acetate bedspread on a plastic mattress. My ears buzzed, filling the aching silence.

I tried to figure out what to do with my hands as we walked into her room. I thrust my hands in my pockets and pretended to read the spines of the books on one of the bookshelves.

She laid across the bed, closed her eyes, stretched, and sighed. Her eyes opened and looked at me expectantly.

"What do you want to do?"

I almost stumbled backward at the question.

I wanted to climb into the bed with her and pull her over top of me like a cover. I wanted to hold her and I wanted her to hold me. I wanted to fuck her. I wanted to put my hand on her waist. I wanted to kiss her upper lip when it was beaded with sweat. I wanted to sit in her lap while she rocked me back and forth. I wanted her.

I shrugged and turned away. I picked up a book—the spine started to crumble in my hands. Sweat mixed with dust. It smelled like sex.

"Jason."

"Huh?" I feigned interest in the book. A Henry James novella—A Passionate Pilgrim. Perfect. That was me.

"Jason, come over here."

I turned toward her, still keeping my gaze firmly locked on the thick yellowed paper of the book. "Listen to this: 'If he could ever have been said to threaten complications he rather visibly did so now. I began to regret my officious presentation of his name and prepared without delay to lead him out of the house.' I know all of those words, but I understand none of it."

"Jason, put the book down."

I looked up. She was laying back on the bed, her dark hair arrayed on the pillow. She was turned toward me, her right hip dug into the saggy mattress, her left hip echoing her beckoning hand.

"Come lay with me."

My hands dropped to my sides, the book in my right briefly, until it slipped from my fingers and hit the wooden floorboards with a thud. This room is ancient. The wood floors. The dusty bookshelves. The saggy mattress. Us. This tension. What was about to happen. All ancient. Determined. Written. I had to do as narrated.

I didn't yet know what the pilgrim in James' novella was passionate about. I would have to do my best to adapt the work based on what I knew—the title and two obscure sentences. Chapter 1. He approached the bed.

She patted the bedspread in front of her chest and smoothed out a little circle, beckoning me with a target. I pushed my shoes off one at a time with the opposite foot, abandoning them with the book. The bed was small for two people. I settled next to her, our knees and hips kissing, laying my head next to hers on the pillow. The closeness of her eyes, dominating my field of vision, gauged the proximity of her lips.

"Jason," she said, "what do you want to do?" She giggled at how obvious her question was now. I tilted forward, as if losing my balance, until our lips touched. I felt her hand on my left arm, tipping me further into her, our shoulders touching now.

"Ana," I murmured into her lips, finally brave enough to answer her question. "I think I found something for us to do." My left hand reached out to her arm, buttressing her body against mine. There must be something about architecture in James' oeuvre.

"I think I found something, too," Ana said, surprising me with a hand on my groin. I collapsed into her, our cheeks connecting, finally laughing now. I pulled her into me with a hand on her back, feeling her breasts rub up against my chest through our shirts. I put my left hand on her right hip and moved it up, catching the hem of her shirt, feeling the belt loops of her jeans against my palm and then—skin. Smooth, hot, soft. Inviting. A contrast to the ancient dust surrounding us.

She continued to fondle my hardening member while I worked to remove her shirt, pushing the cloth up into her armpits. Taking the hint, she sat up suddenly, pulled her shirt off the rest of the way and reached behind her back with both arms to unhook her bra. Slumping her shoulders forward, she shrugged off her bra, and tossed it over onto the book and my shoes. This story was definitely getting more interesting.

"Ahem." I looked up from her breasts, realizing I was staring. "Do you want to take off your shirt?" This Ana, she was full of questions, intriguing questions.

"I do. I do want to take off my shirt."

"Permission granted, soldier," she said with a nod back toward the tent in my pants. I unbuttoned quickly without once taking my eyes off of her breasts, imagining the feeling of her erect nipples pricking my chest.

It was everything I imagined. We continued making out, naked breasts to naked chest, her magnificent nipples and my superfluous ones. There were interesting things happened below, as well, as we ground our hips into each other, roughly, without consideration of the antiques that surrounded us. Maybe someday there would be a historical marker on this bed. Certainly there would be as far as my sex life was concerned.

"Okay, I need to take my pants off now, Jason. I'm starting to chafe. I invite you to do the same."

"Right."

I don't know if this is a Bulgarian thing or a European thing, but she was not wearing any panties. I was. Or boxers, rather, but I didn't let her get far ahead of me, pulling them down with my pants, my socks, adding to the pile that started with the lesser James. Thank goodness there's nothing lesser about me. Mine could rightly be classified as a 'tome.'

Relieved of our clothes, we renewed our ministrations. My tome sometimes shelved between our soft bellies, then re-shelved between her gorgeous thighs. She slipped a hand between us, wrapping her fingers around my width. I put my hand flat against her pubic mound, pushing my fingers down between her legs and up between her lips. Parting them, feeling for her g-spot, letting my middle finger slip back and forth across it, each time feeling her grip grow tighter.

I wanted to taste her. I wanted an antidote to all this dust. I wanted to wear her pussy like a mask. Fuck oxygen. I just wanted to glue my lips to her and suck. I slipped down her body, drawing each nipple in between my lips in greeting, kissing her belly button (this made her laugh), drawing my lips down through her black public hair, and finally slipping my tongue into her.

I was kneeling now, on the wooden floorboards, in prayer. My arms outstretched, my palms pointed upward in receipt, each firmly grasping a glute. I buried my face into her, pushing my way in, sucking with abandon, living off of her juices. I could feel her squirming, and looking up past her adorable little belly could see her grasping and tweaking at her nipples, and up further, her eyes closed, her hair drawn across her mouth.

It was getting darker now. Her thighs closing in on my head and blocking out the light from the windows. I could still hear her need echoing against her ivory skin and into my ears as she struggled to hold off. This I loved. A pilgrim of passion holding her captive. I pulled her into me further, sucked more vigorously, nibbled at her clit. A story always has a climax and I was determined to keep writing until I found it.

A scream, her thighs boxing my ears, her hand pulling my hair. It was written.

I stood up and dusted off my knees. Ana laughed at that, then beckoned me to the side of the bed with her right index finger.

This time it was my turn to ask the question. "What do you want to do?" She answered with an arm around my thighs, pulling me into her, swallowing me whole. I could tell this was only her preface—that she had something rather more comprehensive in mind. She gripped me with her right hand and shuttled up and down my shaft, the tip still in her mouth, her tongue swirling as she looked into my eyes.

"I know what I want to do, Jason. I know what I want."

I didn't want to be presumptuous, but I knew what she wanted, too. She was generous with the foreshadowing. Still holding me between her lips, she released me with her hand and repeated a theme from the prologue, circling her palm on the bed in front of her. She wanted me to lay down.

She moved to the far edge of the bed, allowing me space to lay on my back in the middle. She straddled my hips, reached down between her legs and positioned me at her opening, rubbing the tip of my penis between her lips before lowering her hips, plunging me inside of her. She leaned forward, her breasts brushing against my chest, her face next to mine, cheek to cheek again. She rocked forward and back, grinding her pubis against mine. I placed my hands on her obliques, but was merely following. She was in the author's chair now—the ink was all hers.

I tried to hold off. I tried to think of baseball. I tried to think of judicial precedents. I tried to think of the novels of Henry James. But Ana's body—thrusting, needy—superseded everything in my arsenal of unsexy thoughts. I was going to come, but she seemed determined to get off again as well. I moved my hands down to her hips, and thrust up inside of her. I could feel her getting closer through the tension in her lips on my neck. Closer, tighter, harder.

Closer, tighter, harder.

I felt like I could see the dust unsettling from the bed, the floor, the shelves. Upsetting the ghosts of history. Redefining a passionate pilgrim. Maybe James would be more widely read if he'd written about this. Primal. Sticky. Pulsating.

Her panting in my ear sounded off like an approaching train. I could hold off. One. More. Minute. Her hips alternating between up and down, stimulating me, and back and forth, stimulating her. Almost. There.

The wallpaper, faded with the decades—I could feel it drawn off the walls toward us. The books marching briskly toward the shelf edge. Nails popping up from the floorboards. Everything pulled in to this new singularity. Almost. There.

History. Literature. Time.

Almost. There.

Her arms curled around my shoulders, her nails digging in. A building scream.

Almost. THERE.

We exploded simultaneously. Me into her. Her on top of me.

"Is that what you wanted to do?" we asked each other at the same time. Ana shook her head from side to side. I nodded mine up and down.