satisfy her?”
She’d go on like that. And I could never find anything to say.
Until that evening when she’d been with the old lady and her filing cabinets. At first she didn’t seem very interested in doing anything at all, even though she said she wanted to stay the night. She got undressed and laydown on my bed, flat on her back, and stared silently at the ceiling. But since it always still feels like Christmas for me just having her here, I couldn’t keep my hands off her.
Sometimes I think I’m trying to learn her body off by heart, as if it was going to disappear. I know the hollows behind her collarbone, her straight little toes, the birthmark under her left breast and the white fuzz on her forearms. If we’d been playing blind man’s buff, I’d never have mistaken her for anyone else, at least not if she was naked. I think, in fact, I could recognise her just from the way her nose turns up. The funny thing about her is, she thinks she’s completely uninteresting. I’ve no idea if she’s ugly or beautiful; it’s kind of irrelevant. As long as she’s her.
That evening she didn’t say a word. I didn’t know if I could start making love to her or not; she usually gives me a clear signal when she thinks it’s time. But then she gave a big sigh and pushed me down onto my back, took my hands and crossed them on my chest. And then she started playing blind man’s buff with me, still in complete silence.
They say lonely people go to the hairdresser’s and the dentist’s and the chiropodist’s when they don’t need to, just to feel someone’s touch. She’d never touched me like that before – and it was nothing to do with erogenous zones. Not for a while, at any rate. I think I was on the verge of tears. And I know she was crying. Her tears were falling onto my hand, but when I tried to say something, she put her finger over my mouth.
“Shhh, I’m trying out my life!” she said. I don’t know what she meant, but just then it seemed so obvious, like it does in a dream.
Your caressing hands
give me shoulders and breasts.
You give me foot arches, earlobes
and a little squirrel between my thighs
He’s got a couple of little chicken-pox scars on his face, one on his temple and one at the corner of his mouth. Right in the middle of a complicated computer search for reference material at work this morning, I found myself stroking the keyboard with my index finger as if it were his face and his scars. I closed my eyes and traced them across from P to D, caressed the slightly concave keys with my fingertip, then opened my eyes and looked at my hands as if I’d never seen them before. Those bony white fingers know the down on his neck bones, the hollows at his collarbone and the twisting veins on his forearms, and they’ve followed the line of hair from his navel and down…
Existence has become so physical I feel I’m losing mygrip on it. People have told me that when they stopped smoking, they could suddenly appreciate how fragrant tea was, how cream tasted, how springtime was a whole composition of scents. My tactile corpuscles seem to have taken that leap; I can feel a chair soft and wellsprung beneath my thigh; the roughness of linen to the touch, a precise little sensation if you run a feather across your lips. If it goes on like this, people will start tapping their heads knowingly and rolling their eyes to heaven whenever I start fingering the things around me.
I had to ring Märta. When I told her I’d been stroking my computer keyboard, she made such a strange sound, a sort of low, warm, protective cooing, seeming to express how pleased she was for me. But all she said was that I should watch out I didn’t get myself arrested for sexual harassment of office equipment.
I’ve never been a particularly sensual person; life with Örjan taught me that. I took it with equanimity, in fact, I may even have been proud of it, as if it made me a rational being, above more carnal
She’d go on like that. And I could never find anything to say.
Until that evening when she’d been with the old lady and her filing cabinets. At first she didn’t seem very interested in doing anything at all, even though she said she wanted to stay the night. She got undressed and laydown on my bed, flat on her back, and stared silently at the ceiling. But since it always still feels like Christmas for me just having her here, I couldn’t keep my hands off her.
Sometimes I think I’m trying to learn her body off by heart, as if it was going to disappear. I know the hollows behind her collarbone, her straight little toes, the birthmark under her left breast and the white fuzz on her forearms. If we’d been playing blind man’s buff, I’d never have mistaken her for anyone else, at least not if she was naked. I think, in fact, I could recognise her just from the way her nose turns up. The funny thing about her is, she thinks she’s completely uninteresting. I’ve no idea if she’s ugly or beautiful; it’s kind of irrelevant. As long as she’s her.
That evening she didn’t say a word. I didn’t know if I could start making love to her or not; she usually gives me a clear signal when she thinks it’s time. But then she gave a big sigh and pushed me down onto my back, took my hands and crossed them on my chest. And then she started playing blind man’s buff with me, still in complete silence.
They say lonely people go to the hairdresser’s and the dentist’s and the chiropodist’s when they don’t need to, just to feel someone’s touch. She’d never touched me like that before – and it was nothing to do with erogenous zones. Not for a while, at any rate. I think I was on the verge of tears. And I know she was crying. Her tears were falling onto my hand, but when I tried to say something, she put her finger over my mouth.
“Shhh, I’m trying out my life!” she said. I don’t know what she meant, but just then it seemed so obvious, like it does in a dream.
Your caressing hands
give me shoulders and breasts.
You give me foot arches, earlobes
and a little squirrel between my thighs
He’s got a couple of little chicken-pox scars on his face, one on his temple and one at the corner of his mouth. Right in the middle of a complicated computer search for reference material at work this morning, I found myself stroking the keyboard with my index finger as if it were his face and his scars. I closed my eyes and traced them across from P to D, caressed the slightly concave keys with my fingertip, then opened my eyes and looked at my hands as if I’d never seen them before. Those bony white fingers know the down on his neck bones, the hollows at his collarbone and the twisting veins on his forearms, and they’ve followed the line of hair from his navel and down…
Existence has become so physical I feel I’m losing mygrip on it. People have told me that when they stopped smoking, they could suddenly appreciate how fragrant tea was, how cream tasted, how springtime was a whole composition of scents. My tactile corpuscles seem to have taken that leap; I can feel a chair soft and wellsprung beneath my thigh; the roughness of linen to the touch, a precise little sensation if you run a feather across your lips. If it goes on like this, people will start tapping their heads knowingly and rolling their eyes to heaven whenever I start fingering the things around me.
I had to ring Märta. When I told her I’d been stroking my computer keyboard, she made such a strange sound, a sort of low, warm, protective cooing, seeming to express how pleased she was for me. But all she said was that I should watch out I didn’t get myself arrested for sexual harassment of office equipment.
I’ve never been a particularly sensual person; life with Örjan taught me that. I took it with equanimity, in fact, I may even have been proud of it, as if it made me a rational being, above more carnal
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