Rafael Yglesias - Hot Properties

She seemed relieved when he entered her. She hugged him to her gratefully. The ease of her body seemed designed for him, from the glove of her wet vagina to the soft pillows of her breasts. To be inside her forever in this blissful peace was all he wanted, all he wanted from life and the world; acceptance and comfort; a place to be, nothing more, just be, without effort or pain.

Marion urged him with her hips. He began to move. He felt reproved by her movement, assumed she had been displeased by his stillness, his willingness to remain parked inside. He moved. Withdrew and pressed back in hard. She liked that. For all her gentleness, she liked him to move hard and fast. Had said so in therapy in fact, complained (to his astonishment) that he liked foreplay too much, that she liked to screw vigorously.

She had tried so hard — shouldn’t he? He pushed himself, pulling out and then slamming back in, each time harder, surprised that she liked the force, and never reacted with pain, even though it felt to him that their pelvic bones must be bruised and battered by now.

And the itch had begun. The restless tickling yearning of his penis, desperate for more and more sensation while he felt its liquids gather and hope for escape. He tried somehow to restrain it despite the powerful tease of moving out and then quickly into the softest, most desirable home in the world. When he felt the cool air on his balls and most of the length of his penis, only the head peeking inside at the warm fires, the longing to return was overwhelming. And then the relief, after the collision of their privates, the sweet relief of complete docking in the harbor was so quickly taken away by her desire for more and more and more …

He started to come without warning. He tried to cut it off, freezing his movements, but she pulled at him, and the liquid dribbled out of him guiltily, guests skulking out early from a party, hiding their escape from the host.

The fuel was gone but she wanted to continue. He pushed in and out, praying he would stay hard. Suddenly everything felt uncomfortable. Her substantial thighs pressing against him were hot and irritating. Her big belly and wide hips seemed too crowded to penetrate. Each time he tried to press farther in, they seemed to frustrate him, the goal of her pelvic bone receding. I’m losing it, he thought, listening to her breathing to judge if she was near climax. He reached down with a hand to infiltrate it in the traffic jam below and speed things up, but she angrily grabbed his hand and moved it away, putting her hands on his ass and pushing him in at her, irritably.

He pushed. He pushed. There was no goddamn way past all the flesh and hair. Everything was awkward. No place to rest his head: having to hold the upper part of his body up, as though he were exercising, not making love.

She began to moan. They were choked sounds — coughs repressed at a concert. Quick, short sounds increasing in frequency. He gathered himself for a final effort and pushed in hard — feeling nothing, the bottom half of his body numb — but she did let out one long last satisfied moan. The tension in her body evaporated and it was over. Thank God.

By the time Lois called back, he knew. After her hello, * he made the accusation immediately: “You’re in love with somebody else,” he said coldly.

“Uh … yeah,” she agreed,

“All right,” he said. “Good-bye.”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and laughed. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

“I’m not hanging up. But I’m not kidding.”

“You can’t blame me!”

“I’m not blaming you.”

“You dumped me. You didn’t even call to say you were dumping me!”

“I didn’t dump you. Jesus Christ, what a phrase! I needed time to think. I told you that.”

“Oh, I see,” she answered sarcastically, challenging him. “And now you’ve figured it out?”

Well, she had him there. He was dead wrong, as wrong as a human being could be: his position was illogical, arrogant, deceitful, probably insincere, certainly selfish. “Who is he?” Tony asked. “How serious is this?”

“Uh … what do you mean? What do you — I’m not gonna report to you. What’s the matter with you? I really expected you to have …” She stopped.

“What? Have more class?”

“Yeah, exactly.”

“Guess again, honey. I’m just as stupid and mean as everybody else.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” she answered.

This was a mistake. Probably she had just begun a romance. It could fall apart, fail to move beyond dating, he might even be able to break it up — there were lots of possibilities. The nicer he acted about it, the more points he would have racked up for the day, the inevitable day, when she would seek more adventure, and he would be back in the game. It happened to everybody, to every relationship, to every marriage, it would happen to her and this guy. How could he be a major writer and be so inept at dealing with people? He knew them inside and out. “I’m jealous,” he said quietly, convinced this was a lie, a manipulation. The silence on the other end told him he had finally come up with the right approach. “I’m still in love with you.”

“No you’re not,” she said, but there was a lot of emotion in the voice, what sounded like relief and pleasure.

“Yes I am,” he answered very softly. “I’m glad you’re happy, though. Are you getting married?”

“We’ve only been dating for two months, Tony,” she answered self-deprecatingly. How amusing this game was— now she was minimizing the seriousness of her commitment, just as he had once played down his marriage with Betty. “Life is a performance,” his mother had said countless times, only moments before entering a party. Standing gloriously in her fluffy white mink, Tony dressed neatly and conservatively in gray flannel pants, a white shirt, a gray cashmere sweater, a red tie, and a cute little blue blazer, his hair a little long the way she liked it, just before ringing another door to enter another show-business party. Squeezing his hand and smiling brilliantly, “Life is a performance,” she’d say, her rich voice making music of the words, the syllables stretching and moaning like a lover in ecstasy. When he was very young the phrase was magic, an incantation that summoned up a mother he loved and admired Her gloomy and scary moods were gone at those parties, she was funny, a little dangerous sometimes, but fast, fast, fast, catching people with their ideas down, showing up the pompous and the self-righteous. Later, in adolescence, he realized the sentence was desperate, a tiring athlete hoping to have one last good game. Indeed, the quick wit had slowed, the years of drinking slurring more than simply the words: the new faces blurred into the old, the politics of the sixties merging oddly with positions of the fifties, attacks and defenses losing their accuracy and cleverness, the fast talk now merely garrulousness. That made her seem more right than ever: life was a performance. People began to have less patience with her acting, and the invitations came less frequently, and then so did the parts. The same loss of muscle tone and quick reactions were happening to him, witness the blunder at lunch with Hilary Bright and this conversation with Lois. And he didn’t have his mother’s valid excuses: the blacklist, a monster for a husband, a career crippled, an addiction to drink. The truth was he didn’t have his parents’ virtues: his father’s ability to command, his mother’s brilliant talent; he only possessed their faults: his father’s arrogance and impatience, his mother’s vanity and weak nerves.

“I love you,” he said.

“Then why the hell did you stop seeing me?”

“I was scared.”

“Of what, for God’s sake? Hurting Betty? How do you know she’d even miss you?” Lois groaned at herself. “Oh God, it’s starting.” She sounded wounded. “I hated this the most about our affair. It turned me into a shit. I don’t even know Betty. She’s probably a wonderful woman. I’ve got somebody else now, Tony. And I’m glad. God! Am I glad!”