Jay Fox - THE WALLS

I come back into the bedroom, Vinati bathing in the pacific and milky glow of the moon. I get back into bed. Vinati's fingers softly roll over the few hairs on my chest. We begin kissing again, slowly, without much tongue or need for theatrics. She glides on top of me, her hair pouring over my face. Her lips get lost in the chaos. We exchange positions. When I manage to push the hair away to look into her eyes — bright, clear, ethereal — I feel her long fingers sliding from my chest to my shoulders. Sweat permeates the air. Her lips approach yet again. Another J, M, or Z pulls into the nearby station. We once again embrace, tightly; I feel her thighs fall upon my hips. She grips the back of my head and kisses me with abandon.

By six in the morning the sun has already begun its parabolic journey, and the street is once again drenched in pastels. Vinati doesn't stir as I shift my weight; she only murmurs quietly. I am thinking clearly now. There is no hangover to speak of, though I do feel incapable of understanding what transpired the day before: brunch in the Village, the trip back to Williamsburg with that mild, daytime buzz, a few drinks at a bar on Union, a song with a whistling refrain, an overpriced veggie burger at Kellogg's, the complaint of too much money being spent, the trip to the bodega, the half-finished beers still sitting on her cabinet like discarded toys. I've never heard of the brand. From this angle it looks like “Lethe.”

It doesn't seem normal that the events followed in the manner that they did. I've been over this. Still, why did this beautiful woman decided to do all of this with me? Of all people. As straight men we are always seeking permission from women. When we finally receive consent, the reason rarely seems clear. For men, that's always been one of the paradoxes of sex: the more we think about it, the less enjoyable it is — especially for the women whom we are fortunate enough to be fucking. In fact, I even had to revert to an old trick that I had not utilized for a long time — as it had been a very long time since I had found myself in bed with someone. Some people think of baseball. Nerd that I am, I tend to see how many squared numbers I can compute. It's a pathetic practice, to be sure, but it is certainly far less pathetic than having a premature mess on your hands…well, actually the fact that it's not going to end up on your hands is exactly the reason why every second is so valuable.

What struck me as so odd, however, was the countenance worn by Vinati during, and particularly after, the act that is colloquially known as making love. (It is a conceptually spurious outlook on sex, as love has its origins around and within sex, though copulation is by no means explicitly reserved for creating the fog of love in two people: it is responsible only for galvanizing those sentiments, assuming that they are there. Love is not restricted to the bedroom; it can be created and made epic with the most simplistic of acts — I've seen lovers at their most tender sharing a box of fried chicken in Cobble Hill Park, huddled together on a bench awaiting the three am D train, passing a cigarette back and forth in the din of Times Square. This is not to say that sexuality and eroticism obfuscate the purity of love; it's simply that these two are components of love, necessary but not sufficient.) In the light of the moon I watched her surrender to the sensation of tiny death — the deeper breaths, the tightening of her thighs around my hips, the increase in speed with which she forced herself up and then down, the ferocity with which she bucked back and forth, swirling, moaning, speaking in tongues or Hindi or some language with a purely internal lexicon. I watched her, drank in the sight of her surrender, and I noticed that her expression did not appear to be a display of ecstasy or even pleasure. No, it seemed to be a look of terror — terror, perhaps, that I was both capable of producing and witness to the Big Moment.

As I lay watching her sleep, I cannot help but think about this. I try to write it off, to once again lose myself in the presence of her naked body. Cast your fate to the wind — you're in love, Charlie Brown. No, not love. The potential for love. Maybe.

I had watched Connie, my previous girlfriend, sleep (Gabrielle with pillow, with blanket, in twin bed recumbent, alone). It isn't one of those things that I like to admit; it certainly isn't something that I have revealed to her or those who know her. It was a reflex. It is a reflex. Some may stare to the ocean to find that moment of peace; personally, I see it in the tranquility of others, a form of empathy that is somewhat rare because it doesn't concern happiness or misery. I continue staring to Vinati for a long while and anticipate that she is soon to wake up (because they always seem to sense your eyes); yet she remains defiantly asleep, the halcyon moment uninterrupted.

After a few minutes, I lift myself and place my feet upon the cool wood floor. I look upon the heaps of clothing with its myriad shadows succumbing to the gray light of dawn-through-the-blinds; soon I am combing through the articles in this mound hoping to find something with which to cover myself. A towel is the best option available. I make my way to the bathroom.

A condom greets me in the toilet. It's a nice reminder of the previous night's experience, one that I will probably come to revisit frequently. In conventional parlance, it has been placed in the spank bank. Then again, it may come to pass that sex with her becomes the norm for the coming months, years. Will that make it any less special? Is that what happened with Connie? Is that something that all men are doomed to feel? Is that something that all people are doomed to feel?

It's difficult to establish any clear reference point as to how Vinati sees this whole thing. Ilkay has said “She's weird with relationships.” What that means is anyone's guess. He wouldn't elaborate. Was it a need for a quick release or a desire for something of substance? From here will we attempt to create a symbiotic relationship founded on a mutual love for one another? Will we engage in one of those shallow, give-and-take enterprises, complete with poorly contrived histrionics arising out of that tedium that is known so eloquently as settling? Or will we remain two autonomous drifters who just happened to share a bed for a night, who will never share so much as an earnest conversation ever again? Posing successive questions is certainly a nuisance, isn't it?

These are clearly not the only possibly scenarios; they do seem to be the most likely, however. Still, it is probably not the best idea to try to divine the future of the relationship, if any, from the Coney Island whitefish lazily floating around the bowl. So I set it free, down into the nether regions to live with its brethren. They swim there, the whitefish, trading stories and living in the past (it's an existence not at all unlike the image of heaven as painted by the boring and the dim). Not that it's all fun and games down there — at least not since a good portion of the croc population became addicted to crack. It wasn't their fault, though — the crocs, that is. They are instinctively drawn to bright-colored objects; and the balloons that started appearing during the eighties — sometimes due to hasty flushing, sometimes due to an impending bust — were bound to attract some attention. So it was an accident — the crack addiction. The attacks upon the whitefish, on the other hand, are mistakes. They, the crocs, are not known for their brilliant sight, and, to be fair, the difference between a balloon and a condom is fairly insignificant until one considers the uses the two serve. But this has nothing to do with Vinati and the situation on this side of the toilet. A beautiful woman is naked in the next room, and I have no idea how to maintain either of those temporary, perhaps temporal, qualities.