He’s
searching for God. She’s just looking for a fuck. But that’s not
quite right. She knows, somehow, that you don’t have to seek God.
God’s already there, inside. You just need to figure out how to
open yourself and let divinity out.
For
her, sex is the way, the consummate opening. When she’s writhing in
a lover’s arms, the barriers crumble. For a few glorious moments,
she can experience first hand the communion she normally has to take
on faith. The bliss and the certainty are as brief and fragile as
they are transcendent, She’s left with mere memories that fade the
more she tries to clutch at them—scraps of joy, glimmers of magic.
She’s learned over the years to let them go, the same way she
releases her lovers when it’s time for them to move on. There are
always new bodies, new hearts—new truths.
He
doesn’t understand, thinks she’s been put there to tempt him him
from his path of purity and righteousness. He’s not pure, though.
He knows very well he’s not. If he were, he wouldn’t want her so
badly.
She
loves his youth, his shyness, his awkward innocence, his cleverness
with words and with his hands. His intuition astounds her; the depth
of his feelings humble her. When they meet for coffee and intricate
conversations, she aches to touch him, but he’s armored in
self-denial. The most casual brush of her hand makes him flinch away.
A
veteran of many couplings, she can read his desire like the books he
cherishes. It’s in his darting eyes, his flushed cheeks, the sweat
she can smell, even across the cafe table. It’s more than lust.
It’s like a prayer.
He
stares into his coffee cup to escape her bold stare, even as he
speaks of Japanese folk tales or dissects King Lear.
In the fragrant and bitter dregs he reads his fate—an
instant of forbidden indulgence then a long, hard fall. He vows to be
strong, but her magnetism draws his traitor body. His stubborn cock
is a pillar of iron between his tensed thighs.
Iron,
and salt, the destiny of sinners.
Every
Monday they come together to pace out the same steps in this dance of
frustration. What can she do? Perfume and decolletage don’t dent
his desperate resolve. If only she dared make a first move—but
she knows terror and need
will send him skittering away. She cares too much to cause him that
distress.
She
dreams of him, imagines the magic they’d create in connecting. He
might be the one to finally set her free. No virgin, still she
succumbs to the seductive promise of a soul mate. And if that promise
fails, the mystery of opening remains, illusion vanishing like fog in
the white-hot flare of pleasure, incandescent truth shining forth for
a few seconds before the curtain falls. That’s what he craves, too,
or so she believes.
But
how to reach him? She ponders the conundrum as she twists and tosses
on ocean-scented sheets, her fingers an unsatisfactory substitute for
his maleness. His aspirations to holiness make her feel like a whore,
but that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except her need to wrap
her legs around his waist and pull him inside her.
Finally,
she writes him a story.
