Lover Come Home Ch. 17a

Wednesday, fall coming

Dear V

Continuing our story, I feel like you are coming closer to home.

I stayed with my brother & D until their genuine old fashioned happiness began to nibble at my soul. I will not bore you with my suffering. I wondered a lot about yours. You had secrets to keep.

I did what I do when I am sick, I wallowed. I wallowed in you. Listened in my head to every word you had ever spoken in my presence. And like an adolescent, looked for clues to a future in those past words.

By the end of my stay I could have written an Encyclopedia of you. I was going to spend every moment with your memory. What else could I do? You were gone from my life. While you were going on inside me, my body sat like lump on P & D's sofa, or was carted around on errands in the back of their car. Domestic life.

Lady Jane, my new found inner voice, slowly began to assert herself. First she announced, in a gentle but imperial way, "Nothing bad EVER happens to Lady Jane."

I wanted to believe her, even with her put on upper crust accent.

She then told me to get a job (I was freelancing then, fairly successfully), clean out all my closets, consider buying a horse, take up gardening as a hobby, eat more red meat, wear more black, and read more history. For starters. I may have been a lump, but she was a brick. Going through the window of my heart, intent on breaking my grief. When I got home I began with the want ads and my closet. Later I started going to a livery stable.

I never expected to hear from you or see you again. Maybe a Christmas card, because your wife sends them routinely. Maybe I'd run into you one of your brothers, as I had in the past.

I thought a lot about what I really wanted in life. It had always been my practice to try not to want anything. Not out of any oddball asceticism, but simple common sense. I might get it. Better to accept what the world offered me, then to desire something ill-suited or second hand or possibly dangerous. I certainly didn't trust or know myself well enough to make any blindingly good choices. But it seemed the right time to think about what I really wanted. Or needed. I didn't think that this was going to get me my heart's desire. Otherwise you'd have flown in on a magic carpet.

What I want now is that Tabriz. I am feeling light hearted/headed tonight. I would like to play one of our silly games. Something to disguise the fact that you have been gone, more than three weeks.

Not the one I always win, "Can you make airline reservations on the phone while I am..........!" You can never get past "I must be in Washington Thursday morning" before you lose your concentration. You are too easy. I on the other hand (yours) can get to Washington any Thursday I want by turning into Lady Jane and steadfastly refusing to believe that you are really removing my clothing, beginning with my best silk underpants. I always win. No fun. Games must have even matched players to make them interesting.

One of my favorites is "V the Cave". You may not have known you were playing this one. When you are lying in bed I cuddle up next to you. That's not uncommon. But when I am playing Cave the goal is to get you to curl around me so that I am completely enclosed by your body. You are the Cave in which I am hiding.

Points are awarded. If you remain stretched out for more than a minute, I lose a point. If your knees come up to shelter my bottom, I get a point. If your arms completely surround me, I get another point. If I wiggle down into a smaller ball of woman, you are sometimes inspired to try to contain me by completely covering me with your giant's body. I get another point for that. I also get a point if I can make you laugh while I am in the Cave. But Caves can be serious. I also get points for every kiss from the Cave. If any part of me can be seen by a pair of eyes staring down from the ceiling, points are lost. Usually I lose track of the score.

Hide and Seek is fun. Our version demands mandatory lovemaking on the nearest available surface immediately after having been found. That odd man who sits on shoes would always hide in the closet, wouldn't he? I never hide in the bathroom; the tile is too hard. My favorite place is in plain sight. Losing the game fast means winning faster too.

I also like Postures. The goal is to discover how many ways we can make love that do not involve lying down. I think our record is in the twenties or maybe even thirties, though again it is hard to keep track of the different new ones and add them to the old ones. Scoring gets as tangled as we do.

One of my favorites is you standing with my legs around your hips. My arms around your neck hold you close to me. You cradle my ass while you thrust. Another one is face to face, on our knees. That one is always a slow, elegant dance. African in its rhythm and simplicity. Or standing up my left leg stretched out, supported by your right hand. I hold on to your shoulder with my right hand while your left hand explores my crack, now so conveniently open and available. I got the idea for this one looking at a Tibetan painting. Compassion, the male deity, holds Wisdom, the female, that way. Art teaches us many things.

Come home and find me soon, dear Cave, sweet Wisdom, and I will never let you go to Washington on Thursday again.

C