Scott Spencer - Endless Love

She was even too expert to forget me. She fixed her eyes on mine for a moment and then closed them, as if in a swoon. She bent low to touch my face with her lips—so dry, as if she were lost in a sexual desert and my face was only a mirage. But she did kiss me, and when I captured her retreating mouth with my own kiss she lingered, breathing the air out of my lungs and exhaling into me the pungent blend of our combined redolence—the flat red wine, the long night, and the radiation of our nervous systems.

The dome of pleasure my senses had crouched beneath was no less opaque but it seemed to have risen: it no longer enveloped me like a blanket but now sheltered like a tent. I could feel my own orgasm moving within me but it would suddenly dart in some new direction, like a fish hiding within a coral reef.

When her climax came—and it appeared suddenly, like an accident—Jade trembled and made a high whinny, as if in distress. Then she was absolutely still, like a startled animal etched in the brightening beam of speeding headlights. Her mouth was open; it seemed as if she might drool but she closed her lips and lifted her chin, breathing out so heavily that her belly swelled and made her look pregnant for a moment.

Of course when you love someone it is a tireless passion to experience their pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. Of all the many perversions, the one I found myself most capable of succumbing to was voyeurism—as long as the object of my voyeurism was Jade. I never failed to be moved by her expressions of sexual pleasure. When we were first learning to make love and I had some trouble in controlling myself, she had to be careful to keep as quiet as possible. Even heavy breathing would speed my climax, not to even mention moans. Later in our life together, when we were making love three, four, and five times a night (for our passion grew with our prowess), Jade would sometimes become impatient for my final orgasm—which would come with more difficulty than hers, because of the natural differences between the genders—and to bring us safely home so we both might fall asleep she would feign groans of pleasure with her lips right next to my ear, or say my name. It wouldn’t really take anything more than that.

And so it was that night. As soon as her body began to jerk and shudder in response to her climax, I found myself astoundingly moved—as if by choral music that surprises you, or a kiss from behind bestowed by your lover on tiptoes. Jade let out her high keening call and I felt an abrupt rush of my semen, racing through me like twin rivers, turning with an acidic twist but not slowing down. I grabbed hold of her back, instinctually afraid she might leave me, and I arched myself toward her as I came. I could sense my pleasure passing through me almost unnoticed and I tried to fix my entire concentration on it. A perceptual lunge—like trying to discover the silver arc of a shooting star whose dive through the sky you’ve just caught out of the corner of your eye. When Jade felt the blurry warmth of my climax, she moved up a little and tightened herself for a slow, deliberate slide down. Whatever semen I had surrendered at the coaxing of Jade’s fingers had left a prodigious storehouse behind—almost a creepy abundance. My scrotum, feet, hands went icy cold and my mouth—moments before filled with the slosh of desire—was dry as a wafer. My muscles were collapsing, my lungs shriveled like burst balloons, but I continued to come.

Jade looked down at me. Smiled. Her eyes were glassy, indistinct, like someone who has breathed in smoke. A burning room. She was about to say something but she didn’t. She leaned forward until I was no longer inside her and then she was flat out beside me. She was breathing deep, easy breaths and I suppose I was too, but the silence between us was troublesome, dangerous. It lay coiled like a sleeping cat, graceful in its way but liable to claw if stroked indelicately. I could feel Jade considering and rejecting possible things to say. Her leg touched mine but then moved away. She sighed: relaxed, slightly pleased.

I began to plunge into the static blackness of sleep, like someone who is staggering along and walks into a ditch. But I pulled myself short, dug my nails into my palm.

Jade reached down and switched off the fallen table lamp.

Finally, she broke the silence: “My bones feel like lead.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. I had prodded myself into a state of wakefulness and I was just realizing how furious I was. Then I whispered, “That was the first time I made love since the last time I was with you, you know.”

“Amazing,” she said, rather quickly.

“Why?” Because it’s so pointless? Because you’ve made love so many thousand times since?

“Because you’re so good.” She stretched her body and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Propaganda for sleep. Getting me used to the idea; pointing everything toward it. It was how my parents used to put me to bed. Arthur would check the time. Eight o’clock and both of them would break into extravagant yawns…

“Good? “I said.

“Yes.” She seemed to regret bringing it up.

“That’s funny,” I said. “I didn’t feel like I had much to do with it. Where’d you ever learn to do that?”

“Do what?” There was a real edge on her voice now.

“That thing with your hand. You were making love to yourself, weren’t you?”

“Oh God, David,” Jade said in an older sister accent.

“Well, weren’t you?” I loathed my voice. Consciousness roamed the circumference of my brain, turning like a lighthouse beam, stopping here and there when a dense patch of darkness threatened to swallow the light, extinguish it. Unexpectedly, I found myself wading through that stream of unconnected images that surrounds the heart of sleep like the rings of Saturn. I had only a slight hold on myself and I realized that Jade must be in much worse shape: it wouldn’t take all that much to have us screaming at each other. “You weren’t making love to me. You were just fingering yourself, for Christ’s sake.”

“Oh shut up, David. You don’t know anything about it.” She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling for a moment and then closed them again. I could feel her thinking: Why did I come here? But I didn’t know if it was what she really felt or if she was just wondering if she might say it, for its effect. She needed to push me back, that much was certain. And I would rather have us end up with our hands on each other’s throats than to drift apart now, to descend into the privacy of sleep with our makeshift pleasures clutched to our breasts. The kind of junk jewelry that turns you green.

“Jade…”

“Let me alone. I’ve got to sleep.”

I was silent. I put my hands on her.

“You make me feel really stupid ,” she said, accusingly. “I could prove to myself backward and forward and inside out that it was fucking stupid to come here and really stupid to make love with you—but no one could prove it the way you are doing right now. You really prove it, David. How stupid I am. You really do.” She was up on her elbows, looking at me.

“But that’s not how we make love,” I said. “We don’t do that, that business with your hand. It’s not our way.”

She sighed as if finally realizing she was attempting to speak rationally to a madman. She fell back on her pillow and then said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” and sat up again. “I’m bleeding,” she said into the darkness. “I almost forgot.” She patted the mattress between her legs. “Oh God. I blew it.”

She swung her legs out of bed, bent down, and turned on the light. The fallen lamp reflected directly into the grimy window, in that three inches of black glass between the hastily drawn curtains. Jade peeled the covers down to see what had happened. An oval of blood, bright and sticky, rather more brown than red, the color of an apple bruise. “Lovely,” she said, shaking her head. There were little wisps of bloodstains here and there, but most of it was in that oval—the size of a bar of soap.