Degrees of Nakedness by Lisa Moore

between your lips, suck it.
    You shift so your penis hangs in my face; I rake my fingers down the backs of your thighs. I have to lift my head off the bed to take your penis in my mouth. You stop licking me just as I’m about to come, my spine arching stiff as a bridge, each vertebra locking like a keystone. You don’t let me come. You push the cucumber inside me, shocking cold.
    I suck your cock hard.
    The phone rings. The phone rings.
    We are statues, like in the children’s game when the music turns off and everyone freezes. Then you put your mouth back on my clitoris and I come in long shudders, the cucumber dragging the orgasm longer, gritty like the trail of a wet towel in the sand. You put the cucumber in my mouth and I bite it, a burst of jelly and seeds. My foot cramps, stiff, surprised as a starfish out of water. You bellyflop onto my stomach, your penis deep in my vagina. I reach down and rub my clitoris; my gold rings clink together, a tiny sound between our wet bellies, digging my heels, I’m coming again.
    When you’re about to come all the muscles in your face draw down in a surprised grimace, your eyes open wide. You pull out of me, jerk yourself a few times so you come over my belly. That’s our birth control. Our teeth kiss, awkward. We lie side by side on the bed.
    Who do you think was on the phone? I say.
    You say, Your mother.
    Your mother, I say.
    Did you have a good time?
    Yes. Did you?
    I had a very good time, did you?
    Yes I did.
    I pull the blanket over me. My arms are under the blanket and you sit up on your elbow. What are you doing?
    Nothing. What do you think I’m doing?
    Ellen, you weren’t putting my sperm inside you, were you?
    Jesus, Rob.
    Were you?
    No. I wasn’t. What a thing to accuse me of.
    Then I’m thinking about if I had. I’m thinking about all the possibilities that spring up every time we act, then fall away to be replaced with another set of possibilities. Sometimes the import of our actions catches up with us. Import settles on one thing or another, the rim of a coffee cup, for instance, like a butterfly.
    Carol told her boyfriend for six years that if he didn’t marry her she’d leave him. She got pregnant and left. She and the baby moved in with us. Her boyfriend knew the split was coming and didn’t know. It was a possibility that existed simultaneously with the more likely possibility that Carol would never leave him. He wanted to marry her then, but it was too late. He’ll never get over the loss. That happens sometimes, a loss is indelible.
    If you left me I could never sleep beside someone else in the same way. It would be more like a business agreement. I’d be terse. Silly or not, I believe in this particular love. I’m sealing my fate.
    Your mother said when you were five you went up to your waist in surf, holding a sandwich out of the water and a seagull snatched it out of your hand. You covered your eyes with your arm and the wings slapped your face. The seagull screeched, hovering, touching you repeatedly. When you looked, the sandwich was gone. I imagine that the seagull bestowed on you the gift of charm in the sandwich’s stead, like a fairy godmother. Your charm is made of a kind of nerve and innocence. You trust people and it takes them by surprise. Your trust is an ambush.
    I’ve thought about cheating on you only once. I hitch-hiked a ride with a stranger travelling through Alberta. The sun fell through the windshield into my lap.
    He said, But I admire you, that you can have these crushes on other men and not be afraid of cheating on your husband. You admit the possibility exists, though? Look!
    I looked and it was a field of rippling sunflowers. Vivid yellow. A transport truck flew past on the other side of the highway and our pick-up veered into its path. The man gave the wheel an involuntary jerk. The height of the transport truck, the chance of being crushed to death, the thought that sex with this man would be an isolated act, without