Mat Johnson - Loving Day

I literally don’t know what comes over me, I just see something dark floating right above my head and out the window, leaving behind only a physical chill I can feel even under my arms.

I hug Sun from behind. She thinks I am doing it because I desire her, which I do, but I hold her because I’m fucking scared.

I hug Sun’s waist. She moans, or groans, I don’t know which, but she definitely makes a sound before she closes the window. The breeze stops, and I feel warm again.

I saw a moving dark shape, and it felt cold, because of a window. Logic shifts back into position. Reality reseals all its tears. I got spooked. I got scared. By a shadow.

Sun turns around, looks at me, concerned.

“I was cold,” I tell her. She grabs my arm, lightly. This action makes me keenly aware I have not released her midriff.

I kiss her as if this was always my intention. I tell myself that it was, that it always was, that the last five minutes have no meaning. I kiss her but I think about that shadow, which was probably caused by a car riding by outside, something I would have never even noticed before.

I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m scared of being wrong, but I don’t believe in them. Ghosts are what we want to see when our brains have no rational story. I want to tell Sunita Habersham this. Before I can, though, Sun says she has her own confession to make to me, and I grip her hard at her waist to tell her to give it to me.

“I really do have an open relationship, and a boyfriend. I don’t want another one. We do this, it’s just tonight, and then that’s it. Just once. For fun.”

“You’re funny.”

“No really, Warren. I’m serious.” And there’s no humor there. “This is what I told Jessie, and he didn’t believe me. I didn’t mean to hurt him, and I don’t want to hurt you. So if you’re willing, you have to understand that I’m serious.”

“Who’s Jessie?”

“ ‘One Drop,’ ” she says, and my grip loosens.

The “boyfriend” doesn’t bother me; I’ve loved a woman with one of those before. The whole “open relationship” part doesn’t upset me either; it’s just a concept, a dislocated notion. But I know what One Drop looks like. I see him, big, pale, that mockery of locks. I see him with Sunita Habersham. I’m not possessive. I don’t consider myself possessive, but I can see him and her and don’t see myself fitting into that image. As my hands lightly pull away, hers grasps them.

“Come on,” Sunita Habersham says, pulling me even tighter, drawing me into her. “Let’s pretend desire isn’t the first stage of despair.”

—

I lust. I know this. I lust all day and in ways that seem to transcend my otherwise limited imagination. I desire endlessly, and constantly encounter women that fill me with want. If I was bisexual, I’d have wasted away pining for all of humanity. My body is promiscuous in its hunger. But my heart has no such appetite. It wants only one. It understands only the equation of me plus her. Sunita Habersham touches the bare flesh behind my hip and my mind wants only Sunita Habersham, in that moment and every moment that will follow. There’s no more Becks. I don’t believe Sun, that she wants just one night. I don’t because I can’t imagine that to be true. When I kiss her neck, and she moans, I can’t believe that it’s just the physical act of having teeth lightly bite her flesh, the flicker of the tongue between the pain; I have faith the pleasure is solely because it’s my mouth that does this. Already I have a vision of Sun, me, Tal, together going nuclear with family. I am a fool. Even Brer Rabbit gets stuck in the tar baby. I know this, even as I fall into her. There are few kisses. There are just my kisses, then her biting my lips back. Sunita Habersham kisses with her teeth. She turns from me, leans on the windowpane once more, signals me to take her from behind, and I get a flash that this is because she doesn’t want to look at me but when I’m back inside her, my fear is gone. Minutes later, she pulls away, guides me toward the mattress. There she picks up my pillows, drops them on the floor, pulling me down to the floor with her to rest on them. There is less intimacy on the hardwood than on the bed, or less romance, but again I’m in her so it’s a paltry symbol of detachment. Sun’s lips are close enough to kiss once more, and I do, and she’s too distracted to deflect me. Our lips meet in our second actual kiss, and stay there through long seconds of the rhythm.

All this and it’s great and this is what I wanted but another part of me goes: so my genitals are entering Sunita Habersham’s. That’s it? This is the physical act I’ve obsessed over performing with her? This simple contact? Has anything truly changed between us? Because we both allowed our hidden skin to meet? This is just a literal expression of the attraction I already feel for this woman. Nothing more. Except it also feels fucking amazing.

Sun takes the pillow she’s resting on and puts it over her face. She holds it there, with two hands. For the rest of the act. I can’t see her. So she won’t see me. And for a moment I get a glimmer of just how bad she’s going to hurt me.

“Shazam!” Sunita Habersham screams, and throws the pillow across the room. She’s so loud that I expect a thunderbolt to shoot down through the blackened ceiling and turn her into Mary Marvel. There’s no lightning, but her body thunders, shaking for seconds afterward, and that’s the only thing that keeps me from laughing. Then she rolls away like I’m not even there.

Sun falls asleep almost immediately. Or pretends to fall asleep. I lie on my side, staring, waiting for her to open her eyes, to talk to me or something, then fall asleep that way.

—

She said just that night, but it happens again in the morning. I wake up sore on the hard floor, fully engorged, and then we’re at the dance once more. The second time is more of a digestif, sure, with only one position, the side by side spoon we woke up in, yet it’s enough to remind me that the previous night not only happened but was seemingly deemed worth the inevitable trouble.

Sunita won’t look at me, won’t turn her head when my lips slide up her shoulder and neck, kiss until they run out of epidermal real estate. Instead, she thrusts her hips back into mine in several heavy jolts, finally shudders, then pulls suddenly off and away from me. No “Shazam” this time, but she’s clearly finished.

I watch Sun stand up, her knees even less prepared for the change of posture than I am.

“Can I marry you?” I ask. “Like, right now? Let’s run away to Costa Rica together. Tal too. Let’s do this!” I know I shouldn’t say this but I am so blissful in this moment that, though my testicles didn’t, my mouth is ejaculating.

Sunita Habersham gathers her clothes from across the floor in response, holds them to her chest and starts heading out the door. Then she stops, looks back into the room, but not directly at me. “I was engaged once. He jumped in front of an Amtrak train. No note,” Sun says, and then before I can respond she’s gone, down the hall, into the bathroom.

She stays in there for an hour. Which is fine because it takes me that long to stop asking myself, What the fuck just happened?

When the bathroom door opens, I hear her walk back through the hall, then down the stairs. I don’t believe she’s leaving until I hear the front door close behind her.

There are no more sounds. Not in the house. I’m still on the floor. It’s even harder than before. I get up when she honks my horn.

Sunita Habersham is waiting at the car when I get there.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?” Sun asks me, refusing to look my way.