Slow Hand (13 page)

It is a midsummer day just before dusk. Twilight. I am twenty-eight and walking with anticipation and S.F.s along the river near the footpath of pink roses. I think about my state of readiness and my yellow karate belt. I imagine it wound neatly around my karate
gi
and am visualizing a block to my chest, when, in that instant, I feel an actual blow to my upper back. It forces me to lose my balance and my wind. Gasping for air I try to regain my balance and am helped by being grasped at the shoulder, straightened, and held with a man’s hand over my mouth and my neck squeezed into the V formed by the bicep and forearm of a man’s arm. In an instant we are sharing an intimacy that can often take weeks to achieve under normal circumstances.
My upper back is held tightly against his chest. I can feel the contours of his body and know that he worked at it. As he pulls me backward I can feel the muscles of his upper thighs brush against my buttocks. The elbow of the arm wrapped around my neck rests on my breast and with each movement grazes my nipple until it stiffens. Can he feel it? Will he think it is arousal? Is it?

As he drags me toward the footpath of pink roses I try for a moment to convince myself that I am having a trancelike experience. As my mother would describe,“Going to one of those windy places” I am prone to go. I attempt to follow her advice, breathing deeply from the diaphragm, chastising myself for not eating that day. As I breathe in I can smell the skin surrounding my face. He smells of the outdoors and smoke, not of cigarettes but burning cedar. One of his fingers is cushioned between my lips, and I can taste the salt from his skin and sour cream and onion potato chips. My senses are acute and trust-worthy. I am not on the edge or going over it into madness. I am being dragged, by a man, into the rosebushes.

As I strain my eyes, forcing their muscles into an unnatural elongation, a discomforting downward look, I see the skin of his forearm, chestnut brown and hairless. An Indian. Despite my reason that has urged me to prepare for my defense, my instinct fixates on his brown-skinned forearm and the possibility of fulfilling my fantasy. Perhaps, in this moment, with my innate will to survive, I can convince myself that what will happen next is within my power and control. My choice. The illusion of choice is vital to me. Ravishment or rape. I choose to surrender to ecstasy.

He stopped and dropped to the ground, his hand still over my mouth and his arm in a V around my neck. His legs formed another V and my lower back was pressed against his penis, my back and head at his heart. His chest was heaving, and like a rider out of sync with her horse, my body bounced off of his. He pressed me closer to correct the bounce. Force or willful surrender. The scent of roses enveloped me. I corrected my rhythm and we rode as one.

As his breathing normalized, his penis grew erect in the small of my back.“Gimme your money,” he said. I was thrown by this. I had been readying myself for one of the most profoundly rationalized experiences of my life, only to find out that I was to be neither raped nor ravished, but robbed! Mugged for money!“Gimme your money,” he said again. The V of his arm tightened around my throat. I cupped my hands around the hard muscle of his forearm. His voice deceived me too. It was a whisper, a warm breeze over my forehead with a hint of fake parsley. I moved my fists into the proper karate pose, positioned them, one on each side of his rib cage, then I punched.“AAAAA-Ah!!” I growled. He fell back into a rosebush, his arms circling his chest. I scrambled away on all fours and turned to face him. Here was my perfect Cree lover, and I was looking him straight in the eye. His face was framed by tiny pink roses like the cherubic angels of seventeenth-century religious paintings. An ingenuous mugger.

“That hurt. Y’ fuckin’ yahoo,” he said.

“Gulliver’s Travels
,” I said.

“Whose?” he asked.

“The yahoo in
Gulliver’s Travels.
Have you read it?” I asked.

“Ya sure. Two or three times,” he said.

“Not my favorite,” I said.

“Me neither,” he said.

“What’s yours?” I asked.

“ The Ocean Almanac,
“ he answered.

“I don’t know it.”

“It fuckin’ hurts. What did you do?”

“Karate,” I said.

“Like black belt.”

“No, just yellow,” I said.

“Probably busted my floating rib again. Fuck.”

“You really frightened me,” I said.

“Don’t go wanderin’ around here. Full moon t’night,” he said.

The moon was low on the horizon. As I often would, I gave myself the challenge of a fake deadline and wondered where I
would be when it was high in the sky. I could have walked away. I kept talking.

“Are you a drug addict?” I asked.

His mouth broadened into a wide, white-toothed smile, a practiced smile, one that was proven to work, a bread-and-butter smile, money in the bank.

“No,” he said.

“What do you want the money for?” I asked.

“Nintendo.”

“Oh.” He has family. I felt foolish for my fantasy.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Sarah.”

“What’s yours?” I asked.

“Eddy.”

Eddy and I were rooted to our spots like fence posts about fifteen feet apart and connected by the signals of arousal our bodies had revealed.

“Sarah,” he said.

“Yes, Eddy,” I said.

“Sarah,” he said.“Yes, Eddy.”

He walked over to me, slowly, saying my name with each step.“Sarah. Sarah …” He was close enough that I could smell the cedar smoke in his shirt and the potato chips on his breath.

“You’re bleeding,” I said.

“Fuckin’ thorns’ll do that,” he said.

“By your temple.”

“Yeah?”

As he rubbed it, the tiny ruby of blood broke and trickled down the side of his face. Spontaneously, I reached out and wiped it away. Struck by another attack of S.F.s I quickly withdrew my bloodstained hand and suspended it like a beacon in the twilight. I stared; my molecules of skin were mixing with his molecules of blood.

Eddy, reassuringly, pressed my hand to his chest and mopped the blood onto his T-shirt. I kept my hand there. Now a reckless Land Rover, it traversed the terrain of his pectoral
muscles, over the ridge of his jaw to the final crest of his cheekbone. And it filled my palm.

Reaching up, he took my hand in his and placed it by my side. Then, with the back of his hands and nails he slowly began to graze—featherlike—the inner skin of my forearms. I shivered and thrust them forward for more. Over and over. I arched my neck up and back, and it was next—over and over—then my face, my hair, his fingers, his nails—over and over.

He paused for a moment and stepped away. Eddy took off his clothes—his T-shirt, his boots, his jeans. Lit by the moon, the contours of muscle, highlight and shadow, were hills and valleys, relief on a map. He was a journey waiting to be taken. He would guide me to new sensations, a prospector mining me, vein by vein until we struck the motherlode.

I took off my clothes, my tentlike dress, my sandals, my panties. He made a nest amid the rosebushes with our clothes, and we lay down, watching the moon as it reached its zenith in the sky. I wondered where I would be at its descent. Eddy leaned over, resting on his arm. He removed the elastic band holding his ponytail and let his black hair fall loosely over his shoulders. On all fours he straddled me, dropping his head, and his hair fell over my breasts. Like a whisk of down, his hair swept my body from head to toe, tickling my skin to the next plateau. I arched my back to meet him and met his lips skimming mine. Gliding over the surface of my skin, his warm lips teased the ache that craved him. Skimming like a schooner, gliding like a clipper over my rippling body, the ache became me. I undulated in the breeze, yearning for the hurricane.

I felt the power he could wield as he raised my torso off the ground with one hand under my back and the other nearly encircling my throat. He could have snapped my neck like a twig. I looked him in the eye, his equal, not his prey. He raised his hand from around my neck and placed it on my cheek, raising me like a platter to his lips. He kissed me. Harder and longer, harder and deeper, stronger and longer his mouth enveloped mine.

The moon like a spotlight opened our eyes, his riveting on
mine, diving deeper and deeper. We grabbed hold closer and closer, gripping, licking, rubbing, squeezing, kneading skin into flesh. Crablike I clutched him, and we rolled like tumbleweed out of our nest onto the earth. Tumbling under the roses he filled me. Again and again. A mold of my buttocks in the earth. Again and again. Deeper and deeper into the lode. And the molecules of earth mixed with the molecules of flesh. And the moon became his eyes, the roses his hair, my hand his shoulder, my breasts his chest, my thighs his thighs, and he became me and I became him. Ravished.

AU
THOR’S NO
TE

Like the heroine of the previous story, Sara Davidson’s Lucy if ravished. A sexual challenge, issued in the mutual excitement of new lovemaking, presents her with an excuse to indulge in the passivity for which she knows she has secretly longed. It’s obvious that this self-censorship alluded to is another way many women today are forced to police themselves for an impossibly elusive correctness, caught between the exigencies of sexual politics and the actual sensations of the flesh. Although dome will argue that“The Wager” and stories like it cause us to continue to believe too susceptibly in the myth of the master lover, personally, I can think of no greater barrier to fulfilled desire than any use of the word“should” and whatever lie it leads us to.

I
t was like falling through a chute; they sped down and around past darkened houses and moist night lawns with sprinklers running until they came out on the Pacific Coast Highway, the beach. The sand was gray and damp, the parking lots closed up. Joe shifted gears impatiently when they hit the light at Sunset Boulevard. There was tension in the car, the
accelerating tension of sexual possibility, and the sweet scent of Thai grass. Lucy guided him along the foggy streets that led to her house. He put on the hand brake, opened the door of the Porsche, and helped her out.

They had the house to themselves. Pam was staying with Henry and would not be back until Sunday. Lucy poured amaretto into glasses and told Joe to pick out an album. She heard familiar chords, then Mick Jagger.

Wonderful party, Lucy thought. Her pockets were crammed with phone numbers written on scraps of paper and matchbook covers. Elated at the appearance of so many prospects after a dry few months, she slipped out of her shoes and sat down on the rug, facing Joe.

They knew little about each other. He was from Los Angeles, she from New York. Both had made films for television and had been married.

“How long have you been separated?” Joe asked.

“Two years.”

“What was he like?”

“Want to see a picture?”

“Sure.” He lit another joint.

She went into her study and brought back a photo she had always liked. Her former husband’s face was split by shadow, so that the right half appeared sunlit and ingenuous, the left half withdrawn and dark.

Joe studied it, then frowned.“I don’t like him. I’m sorry.”

Lucy took the picture back.“No one feels neutral about Jerry.”

“How long were you married?”

“Seven years. And you?”

He stretched his arms over his head.“Ten months. I’m afraid it wasn’t serious.”

“What’s the longest you’ve been with someone?”

“Few years.” He smiled, dimples coming to his cheeks. He was tall, athletic, with dark blond hair and a beard that, together with his close-set eyes, gave his face a soulful cast.“Can I help it if all the women in America are screwed up?”

“Funny, they only say wonderful things about you.”

He laughed, as if to say, your point. They talked some more and listened to music, and it was 3:00 A.M.

“Want to go upstairs?” Lucy said.

He shook his head no.

Pity.

“Not yet.”“Hmm?”

In a casual tone, Joe said,“I think we should prolong this through the evening. I’m going to arouse you one small step at a time.”

“What are you talking about.”

He moved closer, picking up the amaretto bottle.“The rest of the evening is in my hands. You don’t have to do anything. You’re not going to do anything.”

Something prickled in her.

“I know it won’t be easy, you’re the kind of woman who likes taking charge.” He tilted his chin, as if to say, come on, I dare you.

Who do you think you are …

“I bet if you’re with four people trying to decide on a restaurant, you can never just sit back and go along.”

“That’s true.”

He set down his drink, moved toward her, and kissed her. She was aroused, he was aroused, she thought they were going to lie right back on the floor, but he broke away, leaving her beached and breathless.

“I don’t like this,” she said.

“Too bad.” He smiled.

She threw a shoe at him. She could feel that crazy, instant intimacy—the almost palpable sense of closeness—induced by the Thai grass. He turned over the record.“I wish you had some Sting. He’s the only guy around still saying something. Course, the reason I like the Stones is that they don’t want to say anything, except fuck me.”

“They’ve had some good lyrics.”

“It’s all fuck me, all just one lyric.”

“‘Jumping Jack Flash.’”

“I can shake it good, fuck me.”

“‘Brown Sugar,’ no, that’s obvious.”

“Fuck me, black woman.”