Slow Hand (18 page)

“Oh, my God, let me look at you.” His hands on my hips. I was on top of him, not minding that my right foot was starting to fall asleep.

I grinned. Struck a Madonna pose with my hands behind backtossed head.

“Very hot.”

I rolled my hips in that way that popped his eyes out of their sockets, and he stopped laughing.

We were sprawled in a sweaty postcoital tangle and the light had faded some when we heard the outer door open, followed by a knock at my room. Gabriel whipped a blanket over himself so fast it created a sonic boom.

“Chill, it’s locked. Who is it?” I sang in my most Little Red Riding Hood-innocent voice.

“It’s Cat.”

“Just a min-ute!” I got up and pulled my robe off its hook on the back of the door. It was a black rayon deal from East-West Gifts, with a red and orange dragon across the back.

“I can go away if you and Gabe are busy.”

“No, we’re done,” I said, opening the door.“Come on in.”

“Aw, I missed it?” She dropped her backpack, closed the door, and joined us on the futon.

“Mmmm, not necessarily,” Gabriel said, kissing her neck. I
wondered why the hell he’d bothered to make himself decent—like Cat had never seen him naked before?

I kissed the places on her neck Gabe was missing.

“Goodness!” Expressions got passed around like hickeys. I believe that one originated with Alan.

“How was work?” I asked between kisses.

“Oh, sucky,” Cat said cheerfully.“I like this, though.”

Gabe had said before that Cat reminded him of a snake, all sinew and grace. She could have been carved out of pearl. At Serling, if you were asked to describe a specific dyke and you said,“She’s got short brown hair,” the querant was likely to slap you because 95 percent of them had short brown hair. Cat, however, defied the standard kd lang DA. Her crewcut spiked naturally, without the aid of gel or Butch Wax. The three of us—as we had all commented—made a beautiful physical contrast: me an inch shy of five feet, short red curls with a green Krazy Kolor streak, pale gold skin, and curves galore. Cat perfectly lithe and androgynous, at least until you saw her naked at which point you became aware that she had killer hips and breasts; delicate Celtic features. Gabriel somehow androgynous too despite his height, broad shoulders, and perpetual three days’ worth of beard; sweet soft skin, fine hair to his shoulders.

With Gabriel and Cat I wished I could observe the scene at a distance, to see those bodies fully. The two of them together was … Gabe had described Cat and me as live MTV, the video to“Lesbians of the Congo, in D Minor.” Cat and I also agreed that watching Gabe and Alan was hot enough to make us want to be men for a couple of days. Gabe and Cat together just made me want both of them more—maybe I was the most insecure person of our circle, but when there were three of us I could never shake the fear that the other two would find each other far more interesting than they found me. We tried so hard to be all liberal and liberated.

“I think you need to take your clothes off,” I suggested to Cat. She thought so too. Gabriel thought so too. We assisted her. My Chinese robe got shed as well.

“Guys,” Gabe said when Cat and I were pretzeled,“I’m
tired. Do you mind if I just observe?” We were his favorite spectator sport. The price of being bisexual is that sometimes all the sleazy stereotyped things about it actually happen. What makes this qualitatively different from Cassie wanting to watch me fuck Gabriel? Don’t confuse the issue by trying to insert logic into it.“The two of you, goddamn ….”

Cat laughed into the valley between my breasts where she was kissing. We knew Gabriel well enough to translate. As long as we were scrumping anyway, it was no big deal being his live MTV. Cat’s lower lip just begged to be bitten. Come to think of it, I would have sold my blood to bite any part of Cat. In my modified Land of Oz, she got the part of the Witch of the West. She was working magic on my cunt, drawing blue streaks of sparks with her tongue, when somewhere back in Kansas Gabriel groaned as he came and fell back on the bed. He stayed to watch until I sizzled and melted, and then he kissed us both and put his clothes on.

“I’m going to take a shower. You guys are amazing.”

“We know,” I said.

Cat, still between my legs, propped on her elbows, laughed and kissed my belly.
“You
are amazing.”

Affirmation time! Everybody empower and validate the person to your left—it’s group therapy with orgasms!

Gabriel left; Cat and I stayed. Weeks earlier, Elliot, accosting me outside Rogers-Nelson Hall after my 9:00 A.M. class, had suggested that I install a turnstile at my door. No wonder we broke up; the boy couldn’t even come up with a creative insult.

Of course Gabriel was kidding when at the end of the week he suggested that the three of us move to Seattle and have a group marriage. Of course Alexa and Alan didn’t think it was at all funny when they got home and found out. Sarah was mercifully spared, being the only resident not scrumping one or more of me, Gabriel, and/or Cat. (Except for Kyle, who’d had the sense not to get involved in the first place. Much to my and Cat’s disappointment.)

Mr. Roarke never did show up with pineapple drinks, ordering everyone to smile. I don’t think any of us ever got
hearts or brains or courage from the Wizard. A home, maybe—the real kind, with a family you want to kill and at the same time love powerfully enough to die for.

I didn’t see much of Joel after that, but I didn’t tell Elliot. I let him think my turnstile was having its hinges spun off. Also, Cassie’s evening of debauchery never happened. There’s always next semester.

AU
THOR’S NO
TE

If one thing is certain, it is that there are no certainties when it comes to sexual attraction. And, like do many aspects of erotic awakening, the possibility for surprise is always a factor. Here, Susan Swan makes us share the unexpected sensations of tenderness a woman might feel for a lover who fits into no previous category of imagined desire and who sneaks, unbidden, into her heart.

Blessed Sankara:
Om namah sivaya!

Y
ou say you cannot live without me—that the taste has gone out of your morning tea and a sunset has no beauty because the next day will not have me in it (
Om shanti,
Sankara I Or have you forgotten the mantra, my master, Vishna, gave you?) Every day I pray you will attain God and the thrill of holy bliss. Instead you say we belong together and
that you loved me from the first day you saw me standing on the ashram dock. You said you recognized me from Padma’s old photographs in our retreat brochure. You said you’d never seen a sweeter yogi than this young woman with a dark braid down her back doing cartwheels on the beach.

Those pictures were taken more than a dozen years before you stepped off Chandrashekar’s ferry with the other guests, still dressed in the clothes of northern cities, as pale and apprehensive as children sent to stay with relatives they didn’t know. You said I still looked youthful, leaning over the railing to watch the procession troop ashore, but you were drawn to my mournful eyes. I seemed sad and perplexed for a woman hardly older than your own daughter. And then you noticed how I limped up the path by the yoga platform, lurching slowly past the upside down bodies of the other guests doing their morning headstands. Behind me trudged the giant Narayan, my faithful shadow, swearing to himself as he pushed the old cart stacked too full with suitcases.

You are always polite, Sankara, and have made no accusations, but I know you assume I’d been sleeping with Narayan before you arrived. Believe me, my darling, nothing much had transpired although naturally we were thrown together a great deal because we were preparing the new book of our master’s letters for publication. (
Siranda Upanishad
—a universal scripture in my master’s own handwriting.)

That first day you said you sensed Narayan’s possessiveness, but I paid no attention to him or the foolish display he made of himself each morning, chinning himself on the exercise bar in the small courtyard of the ashram. The other women liked to watch the muscles wriggling like snakes in his upper arms. But not me, not your Shakti. Despite his height and physical prowess, to me, Narayan was just a spoiled boy not long out of high school with big hands and ears like Jughead in the old Archie comics. He was the pet of the camp, you see, because he was the swami’s kid brother.

It is true I did enjoy discussing our project with him. Narayan does have a sardonic turn of mind, and he’d visited my master in India, and, oh Sankara—the amusing stories he
can tell about forgetful old gurus meditating in Tibetan caves and getting frostbite because they never come out of their trances! Still, I didn’t take Narayan seriously. And that first day, I paid no attention to you either, Sankara. I was carrying Vishna’s forbidden stash of chocolate (which Narayan had just smuggled in) and hoping my master wouldn’t scold me for being late.

Of course, you had noticed my sprained ankle because you coach basketball like my father, and you’ve trained yourself to spot an injury. I like to believe our meeting was preordained, a necessary form of incest, but I want to circumvent my nostalgia and tell you the truth. Who else at the Siranda ashram really worried over my foot? Oh yes, when it didn’t heal, some of the staff gave me remedies, but it was only to hear themselves talk. It’s ironic, isn’t it, that we who serve others often can’t serve ourselves.

So it was you who came to my small but carrying your blue plastic box, the first aid kit you take everywhere, like a purse under your arm. You found the ice for it in the retreat’s failing refrigerator and showed me how to elevate my ankle on pillows and then tape it tightly with a tensor bandage. R.I.C.E., you said in a fatherly tone—rest, ice, compression, elevation. When the swelling didn’t go down, it was you who insisted on taking me to the hospital in the capital.

For that alone, I will always be grateful. But I haven’t been fully honest, even here. Because I did notice you the first day. Later in meditation. As you slouched against the whitewashed wall of the temple, not bothering to sit cross-legged like the rest of us, while my master Vishna chanted his unending
bhajans
and mantras. It was the Easter our master grew lax and let those of us with bad backs lean against the temple wall. So I sat beside you, glad of the chance to rest, and found I couldn’t take my eyes off you. What an ugly, ugly old man, I thought. It was your skin. You see, there is no point now hiding how you repulsed me. I was disgusted by the spidery web of wrinkles that crawled across your face, threatening to erase your features. You looked the way my father did during his last month in the hospital—distracted and restless, a withered mummy
forced to stay alive against its wishes. But then I noticed the way you’d styled your hair in bangs that fell straight onto your forehead like a Roman senator. There’s life in the old boy yet, I thought. And you turned to stretch and caught me staring, and I was taken aback by your clear hazel eyes glittering like Krishna’s jewels in your aging face.

Sankara, I do not wish to hurt you. But I am trying to be as truthful as I can. So you will understand why I left you that morning. You didn’t deserve such an unexpected leave taking, I know. It was several months later. We were old lovers by then, and you lay naked on my narrow cot, your fingers playing with the new black hair on your chest. Once again, you were shaving twice a day, and the white hair on your face and chest had started growing in dark. Because of me, you said. Because sex with me was making you young again. Now I am being unfair. You never said “sex.” You always said “love.” And you weren’t greedy about your orgasms. You always pleased me first, as many times as I wanted, and then you pleased yourself.

Seven for me and one for you. Even steven, you’d say. No man has ever been so easy or gracious with me. Too often lovers want to please a woman out of anxiety or vanity. Not for the thrill of it, not like you.

I remember the sight of my hands in the bowl of milk cleaning the altar beads, made of real
rudrakshi,
the expensive wood my guru admired. I remember letting the beads spill off their plastic string into my palm. They were still damp, not sticky the way our sandalwood beads get if you clean them in milk.

I sat down on the bed beside you and with one hand began to stroke your forehead. I knew every inch of you by then, Sankara, and yet I still struggled to overcome my disgust before I touched you. And then when I did, I wondered why I had to struggle. I loved the feel of your skin. It wasn’t dry the way I imagined old skin would be. It was slightly oily and surprisingly pliant for a man. Wait. I lie again. Your skin was as soft as foreskin.

As I began to place the slippery beads on your body, I saw Narayan doing his chin-ups outside the window. He couldn’t
see me at first. How could he see in the glare of the morning sun? It turned everything except the roiling green ocean a sulphurous yellow. I sensed Narayan was looking for me. Then he swung down and heaved his knapsack onto his shoulders. When he finished buckling up the straps, he walked over to my hut, and just as I was putting the first two beads on the lids of your closed eyes, he whispered my name. Then very softly, he moved my shutter ajar. I looked up and he beckoned to me.