A shy reference librarian, and a college student who was disowned when she refused to submit to conversion therapy, meet in a bookstore. He's been waiting his whole life for her. Meanwhile, she's starting her whole life over. What ensues between the...
That was in mid-April. Two weeks later came the spring formal. If you are wondering how much religious angst, self-recrimination, second-guessing, and general worrying a sedevacantist Catholic and an Apostolic Pentecostal can produce when coming out of the closet to each other and falling in love, or maybe, if we are being honest with each other, in an infatuation so overwhelming and hopeless that it seems virtually indistinguishable from love, the answer is: A lot.
None of that was enough to stop us from succumbing to desire, of course.
A cynical part of me even wonders if maybe the guilt and existential torment added spice. Few things, after all, are tastier than forbidden fruit. If that was the case, the hot sauce had a very limited shelf life. Before the school year was out, I had gone sort of generically Unitarian, bordering on Emersonian transcendentalism, with occasional moments of "what the hell can we even know about all this, anyway?" and a heavy dose of New Age; and my girlfriend, meanwhile, eventually converted to Wicca after she ignored her resolution to stay completely in the closet and poured her heart out to one of the townies, a motherly sort of schoolteacher who, like us, was a member of the local medieval reenactment group. A motherly schoolteacher whom she wound up seducing, many months later. It's funny how things work out, isn't it?
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She lies on her bed, naked. I was the one who undressed her. Her long, dark hair and tiny frame take my breath away. I've never seen anyone like her. I've studied the nude female form in works of art – statues, nude paintings, that sort of thing, I took an art history course this year – but nothing prepared me for her. She is radiant.
Her formal dress, a confection made of navy blue and white striped taffeta and ruffles, lies crumpled on the floor. My long yellow vintage granny gown, with the square neckline and lace and seed pearls that made me think I was Juliet Capulet the first time I tried it on, lies on top of it in coital abandon, a single filmy cotton sleeve nudged into a wrinkly crevasse of navy satin. The dresses seem surer of themselves than we are.
I swallow past the lump in my throat to kiss her lips. When her mouth opens and her tongue darts out to meet mine, I taste the blackberry wine we've each had a glass of.
One of us is trembling. I don't even know which one of us it is.
I want every inch of her. Her ears. Her dark walnut hair, which smells like flowery shampoo. Her eyes. Her cheeks. Her throat, oh, her throat, which feels like rich, smooth silk.
I resolve to kiss her everywhere no matter how long it takes.
Her musk blends with the vanilla scent emanating from the lit candle that sits on her dresser.
