Date: Fri, 5 Jan 2007 00:05:03 +0100
From: Julian Obedient <julian.obedient@gmail.com>
Subject: Secret
Lucas shivered. He felt Matthew's warm breath cause oscillations
starting in the shell of his ear and ripple through the canal causing
his very center to pulse.
It is afterwards now. They have gone into the other world together and
now they are together, again, in the hotel bed, slowly reentering the
world in which they do not belong to each other.
Mathew's voice weaves in and out, riding the warm currents of his breath.
You belong to me, Luc, and I belong to you. Others think they possess
us, but they are only temporary. You and I, beloved Luc, we are
eternal, even if now we must steal time like thieves, thieves of love,
my darling; we have always been thieves of love and we always will be.
For you and me duration is measured by the depth of our meeting, not
by the length of time we can spend together.
Matthew whispered, gently, so gently, and as he whispered he stroked
the muscular, masculine chest of the man he loved.
How I love those words that describe you: strong, masculine, muscular.
How I love the shape of your jaw and the slight abrasiveness of your
skin when you have gone a day without shaving.
My wife hates it, Lucas said laughing.
And I love the glow of your auburn hair, its thick and silken texture.
I love the strong silken skin of your strong, smooth, muscular chest
and the hard mounds on which stand your nipples which are always erect
when I touch them, strong nipples and delicate, sensitive, longing
nipples, he said blowing a soft breath upon them before touching his
lips to those nipples with offers of reverent kisses.
I love the hard ripples of your belly, the wiry rope muscles of your
thighs, the impudent independence of your cock.
I love that you have given me your cock and accepted mine.
I love your heart, your fast beating heart which beats as well within
my breast as it beats inside yours.
How hard it is to hold you close enough.
How hard it is to part our flesh even though our souls, our spirits,
our desires, and our hearts are never apart.
They kissed; they gazed; they exploded; they slept.
==============================================================
The morning light fell on Matthew's naked chest through the window
through which all that could be seen was nothing but sky.
Matthew woke to the joy of Lucas kissing him. Lucas kissed the smile
on Matthew's lips and Matthew opened his mouth to him and consumed his
kisses.
It frightens me, Lucas said, this love. I did not expect it. I thought
I would remain whole and separate. But now I am vulnerable. I thought
I would just see how it felt to hold another man. I wanted to feel the
emotions men can feel with each other, that I had heard of, that
lurked hidden in my flesh, but I had not thought about love. I thought
to free myself. But I have bound myself to love, to you, Luc. There is
nothing more I want than for you to possess me. My very being is a
poem I compose again and again to you. You are my flesh. You are the
words I say, the language I speak.
Thus they made love, not only with their bodies but by immersing
themselves in each other's words, surfing together on the waves of
their words.
They dressed and after breakfast went back to their room and changed
into their black bikinis and wrapped themselves in their white terry
robes and went to the Olympic pool and swam for an hour, back and
forth, beside each other, each in his own lane, each finding the
strength of his stroke in the other's proximate physique, breasting
the water like dolphins, their bodies, parabolas breaking the water
line, arching and submerging and arching again until they hoisted
themselves up and sat on the edge, breathing deep and hard, laughing,
without thinking why, the laughter of the bodies of lovers.
============================================================
Three years before, each walking with his wife on Central Park West,
half attentive to what she was saying, half somewhere else, but
nowhere they could locate, thinking about something they kept
forgetting, about their work or feeling the shadow of a lost memory,
feeling tired, they passed each other one evening, Matthew and Marie
on the way to see The Magic Flute; Lucas and Florence rushing, almost
late to meet a colleague from the university at The Tavern on the
Green.
Both men abstracted, feeling weighted down, it was strange they should
catch each other's eye, but they did. And stranger still that each
should know how it was with the other, but they did, and involuntarily
they exchanged a knowing smile, the smile of those who have committed
a similar folly and are making do. And even stranger still that
something airy entered them.
And then the couples passed, and the moment passed, and three months
passed until they came upon each other accidentally.
==========================================================
Things which must be, must be, even if it were better for the routine
order of the world if they did not come to pass.
Wishes breed in each of us despite what we think is our better wisdom,
even though it is disconcertingly true that our buried wishes are
really our better wisdom. But it may be better to leave them buried,
for once they begin to emerge, they are willful, take command, have no
regard for reality, for the comfortable arrangements we have made, for
the well-enough in which we live, for the commitments to which we have
pledged ourselves.
==========================================================
It was snowing and Matthew sat in the locker room pulling off his galoshes.
Galoshes!
Matthew looked up and saw a nearly naked Lucas, looking to him like
the statue of a god in a museum, his taut and muscled physique
gleaming in sweat.
Galoshes, he repeated.
I haven't seen galoshes since I was in the fifth grade. I did not
think they still manufactured them.
My wife insists I wear them, Matthew said before he had time to
realize he regretted saying that, letting this gleaming man know he
had a wife and, worse, a wife who told him what to do.
But Lucas was not fazed.
I know how it is, he said.
You are married, too? Matthew asked, unaware why the question seemed
so important to him or why Matthew's affirmation that he was afforded
him such relief.
I've not seen you here before, Lucas added, still standing in only his
jock strap and daubing himself with a towel.
I haven't been here before, but I've been feeling all sorts of kinks
in my body, at a desk all day. I thought that swimming and using a
sauna might do me good.
Are you about to swim now?
Yes, Matthew said, if I can get these galoshes off.
Do some laps with me? Lucas said. I've got to rinse myself off under
the shower. See you at the pool in a few minutes?
Matthew nodded and, tugging at the heel, pulled one galosh off.
===========================================================
It was simple what they did afterwards.
They showered and dressed and went to eat oysters together and drank champagne.
As if it were New Year's Eve, Matthew said.
To our New Year, Lucas said, raising his glass, and they drank and
became giddy, and in the dark corner where they sat, they pressed
their lips together, and no one saw them.
They walked to Bryant Park in the snow and rented ice skates, and held
hands as they circled in grace and breathed in the winter.
And afterwards they drank Irish coffee and laughed, and Matthew, who
had the key to a friend's apartment in Brooklyn, in Park Slope, while
his friend was in Washington D.C. to testify about net neutrality
before a senate committee, said to Lucas, do you have to get home or
can we spend a few more hours together? I have the key to a friend's
apartment in Park Slope while he is in Washington testifying before a
Senate committee on net neutrality.
There's a cab, Lucas said.
===========================================================
In the morning, sitting in his office, Lucas switched on his computer.
When he checked his e-mail, this is what he saw:
you came to me and told me that you loved me
and i believed you and told you i loved you too
and when i drift off now every part of me remembers
my belly contracts
my heart beats
my chest swells
my cock wishes
my asshole yields
and my mouth and my eyes devour you
i am startled
by the wish to have you over me
my arms and legs wrapped around you
your hard man body mine
your hard man cock slowly penetrating me
slowly entering and withdrawing
and with each thrust going deeper into me
with each thrust coming nearer to my heart
beloved darling mine oh
with each thrust
your eyes
oh my body is a hardness under yours
a perfection you have made because you are perfect
your words are my words
your breath is my breath
your body is my body
oh, luc
you beat in me like an irrepressible tom tom
i only want you
more
there is no part of you i do not kiss
beloved
==========================================================
You thrive on deprivation, Matthew wrote. I don't. I'm needy. I need
to feel you with me. We say I love you to each other, and it's real^Åat
the moment. But there are so few moments. And the rest of the time^Å
I was afraid of this.
Afraid of what? Matthew wrote.
That I would not be able to live up to your expectations.
But I have no expectations. I only want you to be the way you are.
But it's not enough for you. And there's nothing we can do about it.
We're both married. And that's your real life. This is only something
else.
No, this is my real life, and there's hardly any of it. My marriage is
what I do every day. But the person who is in that marriage is not me.
Who is it then, Luc wrote, if not you?
I don't know, Matthew wrote, the person I'm supposed to be. This is so
twisted. I wish we had never gotten into this. And I am afraid you are
going to stop seeing me. I'm all in knots, and that's not the thing
we both wanted and which we had at first.
I have to go, Luc wrote.
Can we meet Thursday late afternoon?
I'm not sure, Luc answered. I'll let you know. Please don't be upset.
I'm not. I just^Å
I really have to get off.
Me, too, Matthew thought as the green button next to Luc's name turned gray.
[When you write, please insert story name in subject slot. Thanks.]