Two Americans in Paris (17 page)

By the time the film ends, tingles are coursing through my bloodstream, numbing my sense of reality. My entire body is so relaxed I feel as though I am made of rubber.

You stand up and again face me with your back to the door. You’re not fidgeting or restless this time, though.

I sit up on my knees and stretch, pushing my chest out toward you and turning my gaze away so you might admire my body without my seeing you look. I shuffle on my knees toward you. As I move, I feel as though my skirt is rustling through a fog of shimmery lust. My room smells of rich tree sap and the intense daydreams of desire playing through my mind.

You again say you need to call your mom because it’s her birthday, but I don’t believe you. All you are doing is avoiding what you must know is coming next. The question of sex.

Because you are so clearly avoiding the question, I will have to ask it, but I am unsure how I should phrase it. By this point I am almost certain you are going to say no to having sex with me. Probably you will say it is because you have a girlfriend, but I want you to tell me whether you would have sex with me if you didn’t have a girlfriend. What I say should instantly convey that I want to sleep with you. It should also sound innocent enough that I don’t come off as a total mate-poacher so we may, if you would be willing, continue to spend time with each other. The words fall out of my mouth like heavy stones I must cast even though I know they will only sink, “You’re welcome to stay.”

You grin and shake your head. “I would . . . nine out of ten times I would.”

I draw my body back slightly and raise my eyebrows. Nine out of ten times is not enough.

You grin bigger, your eyes on me like pots of moonlight pooled with your warm, coffee brown irises. “Twelve out of ten times I would. But I have a girlfriend.”

“You’ll give in eventually,” I say with conviction.

“Probably.”

“I can be patient.” What you do not know, and what I am only beginning to become concretely aware of, is that although I hope you will give in to me this summer, I will remain patient as long as necessary.

“Well, I guess you’ll have to be a little more patient.”

“I will.”

“I feel hokey giving you hugs, because I’d like to give you more,” you say, your words wound with the desire you have chosen not to give expression to, at least not right now.

“You can still give me a hug.” Hugs are the only physical contact we may share at the moment, and the thought of you leaving without at least hugging me is unbearable.

I open my arms and you walk into them, pressing your hot, weighty chest against mine and resting your arms firmly against the curve of my back. Having you in my arms, even for just a moment, feels so licentiously wonderful. It’s like a teaser for the full experience of your naked embrace. I would keep you in my arms, but you soon pull back. As you do, my heavy hand grazes your lower waist, the soft cotton of your shirt concealing the flesh of your torso I long to feel so much more of.

You turn toward the door and grasp at the various locks. I get off my bed and swiftly unlock the door for you. I don’t want to see you go, but feel it is essential to show you I completely respect your decision to not stay longer.

You walk out the door so fast you nearly walk into the wall opposite my room. “How do you get out?”

I point you to the stairs and you bolt down the hallway. You make loud, chaotic thuds as you descend the steps as fast as you can. If anyone heard you going down the stairs, they would surely think you were being chased by something frightening. Maybe it’s my deluded state, but I cannot help but think you only felt the need to run away so quickly because the temptation to stay was so great. Any of the alternative reasons for your leaving so quickly are so upsetting I cannot bear to think them through.

Once I am sure you are safely on your way home, I shut my door and sit on my bed. I repeat in my head the last couple things you said to me: “twelve out of ten times, I would,” and the expression that feels more genuine and therefore dearer to me, “I feel hokey giving you hugs, because I’d like to give you more.” I stow your words deep within my mind, creating a capsule of hope for our future union. I believe it is possible you will give in to me later this summer. If you do, the lust burgeoning between us will combust in a fiery, explosive display all the more magnificent for the additional fuel built up in the meantime between now and then.

Filled with the happy chemicals of arousal, I lie down on my bed. I imagine lush ivy hanging from my ceiling and careening over the furniture, the result of all the powerful sexual tension that came to life here. I did not ever think I would feel good about your leaving with just a hug goodnight, but I am elated. I feel invigorated, full of life. There is within me an ocean of bubbling hope and optimism for all the beauty the future may hold. I may be incredibly horny right now, but I am relieved you said no to having sex with me. There will be no guilt, none of the awful consequences of cheating. If you had said yes, I could not have stopped you. My bloodstream is so drenched with hormones that it would have been impossible for me to control myself if you began to touch me more intimately than a hug allows. Although I in no way intended it to be, my careful, calculated efforts to incite you to cheat acted as a test of your morals, and you passed (what this says about my own morals I do not care to consider at the moment). You may sometimes say inappropriate things and not call when you say you will, but when it comes to the things that really matter, you do the right thing. Deep down, you really are a good guy. The fact that I can’t have you because of your goodness only makes me want you more.

Interrupting my thoughts, my phone rings. To my surprise, it’s you. I naively wonder if you have changed your mind and want to come back. “Hey!” I say.

“Hey. I left my backpack there,” you say. “I don’t need anything in it. I have my Navigo in my pocket. I’m already on the RER, and it would take too long to get it . . . could you bring it to class tomorrow?”

“Sure!” I am so glad to be able to do you a favor. I have already decided that I must be the loveliest friend to you in order to keep you in my life until we may do more than hug. Right now, being friends is all that is possible.

“Are you sure it’s not a problem?”

“No, not at all! I don’t mind.”

You shift in your seat on the train. “And, it’s not you.” You pause, choosing the rest of your words carefully. “It’s not even me. It’s just, I have a girlfriend.”

“I still think you’ll give in,” I say, convinced of it. Even though I may vainly hope we will have sex later this summer, my determination to have you is so great I will do whatever it takes. The matter of time is almost negligible.

“We’ll see . . . we’ll see . . .”

“Well, I’ll see you tomorrow in class! With your backpack,” I assure you. “Bye!”

“Bye.”

I look at the shadow beneath the hood of my umbrella and there is your forgotten backpack. The fact that you forgot to take it with you is proof of just how quickly you wanted to get out of my room. It wasn’t just my imagination that you left so fast. While I put my dried umbrella away I find your umbrella, still wet, on the floor. I open it to let it dry so I may return it to you tomorrow well-cared for and clean.

I sit back on my bed and look at your backpack, determining what to do with it, if anything. Never have I been so obsessed with anyone as I am with you. If I wanted to, I could easily open up your backpack and study your things. You would never know. In the movies, doesn’t the hopelessly-in-love, obsessed lover always pilfer through their beloved’s things when they have the opportunity? Yet what I want is not in your backpack. Besides, it would invade your privacy and would therefore be immoral. Inviting you to cheat is more than enough immorality for me today.

What I want is to feel your weight pressed against mine, to hold you in your entirety in my mouth, to feel your girth deep inside me. My body is sparkling with little tingles, hormonal rushes are flashing up my abdomen, and my bestial desire to have you here with me sends my mind running off on a wild fantasy of what would have happened if you had not left. I could masturbate, but doing so would not satisfy my cravings, and in any case, the various hormones coursing through my system feel amazing. Giving myself an orgasm would only drain them away. There must be another way for me to express my desires and abate my incredible longing. I eye my laptop, its screen glowing in the dark, and feel an impulsive need to write. I open a blank Word document, shut my eyes, and let the thoughts coursing through my mind flow out freely through my fingers.

The sex you most want to be having is the sex you should not be having.

-Sigmund Freud

Every surface of my skin is covered in sense. I want it all and more and over again.

If you were in love with her I wouldn’t mess. But you are mine. I have you between my fingers hard and slick and salty, between my teeth, sour and sweet and huge.

You are inside me already. Too soon. Far more late than the train that already started.

If I were more stupid I could give you myself completely and already. Miss me and sing of sage of sage sing. I could love you even if it’s everything I’ve already tasted, below my wizards and above every cumulation.

My teeth. Your tongues. Every slide of your inside. This is it. This is how it always was, better than think, more than a pulse. Squirrel. Horse. Nut. Eat divine and lay your every egg. Harness me deeper and let it grow. Out and round and puncture the wound.

I can’t take it. Come now closer, how shit it is. Fuck me sickly warm and hot. Flick and seed. Miss me madly.

It’s all over. But I’ll always love you, too, on that list of lovers. But one day, I’ll forget your name, forget your face, and miss you in the thoughts.

Feel me madly. Singe me bust. Flom and bust, marble and rust. It’s all over.

Close your eyes, little child, and hold them tight. O mind oh heart.

Bloom and bust.

Again and again. Brush paint full wet toxic dream. Wet. Full wet toxic dream. Soak. Blew blow bloom. Eruption erosion explosion. Flame burn. Savage sauvage. Feel me deeper, deeper, deeper.

I am end now. Oh yes. Because I satisfy. But it’s all the beginning, the raw ends exposed and turned down to begin new threads and ever more. More boom bust dust ploufy suns. This is lust. And lust is hier. Speak to me of you. You are all I ever wanted and more than I could ever have wanted. Stay and I’ll sing you to bed.

This is all I ever wanted. There are sexual sections in my head. Chemical bath in my brain. In my belly. In my legs. In my arms. In my toes. In my palms. In my fingers and tips. In my knees and the soles of my feet. In my everywhere.

The shared demon, the twisted toe. This is Eros, tapping you on the shoulder, smearing arrows through your heart. This is all you can do to make life mean, to make living, to high hell and back.

I will know you and you will know me and in our physical bodies unified into a writhing schism…

What did I do last night? I wrote. I believed myself to masturbate to high heavens—several times, with the most intense orgasms I’ve ever had. But no. I wrote. I wrote for two hours or more. This is freedom. I was in your place.

For this? For this I would skin kittens alive and eat them, too. For this I would lift mountains with my fingertips. For this I would skewer the innocent and release the mad. For this you are mine, your min, your every drop of seem and sum, your sun and winter, your cold and rain. For this you are kingdom come and will be done, how art thus it is in heaven. Give us…daily bread, the kiss of lovers passed through cross sections and down corridors, the small tricycles, the bicycles, and the rain. The wet. For this is it. My Truth, my revelation, my own.

I read what I have written several times. Although my mind is a very vulgar, crazy place right now, there is hidden in the gobbledygook a jewel of beautiful truth: the realization that I have
written
my feelings out. The writing is cathartic, functioning as an outlet for my feelings so I do not damage our friendship with them. The writing is therefore a part of my determination to keep you in my life so that we might one day be more than friends.

I shut my laptop and go to bed, but cannot sleep. My drowsy, lustful mind plays the thought of your hot weight pressed against mine, your ragged breath in my ears, my legs twisted around yours for hours, until finally my fatigue outweighs my unrequited desires.

A thousand white lilies run from her eyes and dance like sugar plum fairies through the weave of your mind

Overnight, the chemicals created in my body in response to your presence in my box have settled in, giving me a sense of euphoria. I feel like a stream of little opalescent bubbles containing the complete, delusory happiness I find in the thought of you is flowing through my bloodstream. This warm, pleasurable high caused by the duration of your body’s closeness to mine last night fills me so completely that although on any normal day I would eat breakfast, I have no appetite for food.

In preparation for seeing you in class this afternoon, my focus isn’t on what effect I wish my outfit to have on you, as it recently has been. My focus is entirely absorbed by having your things here. I think of the tenderness with which I care for your things as a symbol of my care for you. As I tuck your umbrella inside your backpack, I imagine stitching my fluttering affections between its folds. I carefully arrange your backpack and my purse over my shoulders, the straps crisscrossing my upper body like some sort of S&M bondage. I fear that anyone who sees me will think I look ridiculous, but no one on the métro looks at me twice. Even so, I feel like I am performing a backwards walk of shame. Rather than bringing you with me to class because you stayed the night, I am bringing your things to class because you left.

I’m running a little late for class, partly because I spent so much time fussing with your backpack straps. I also had a hard time falling asleep last night, so I hit snooze a few too many times. When I arrive at the entrance to the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, our class is gathered around Professor. He’s giving his usual scene-setting introduction to the afternoon’s material—in this case, modern art.

I spot you standing near the back of the class and you turn your head toward me with an expectant look. I smile and discreetly remove your backpack from my back and hand it to you, thinking of how glad I am to be returning it to you safely. It’s a friendly gesture of my care for you, even if the reason for your having left it
chez moi
was because of my more-than-friendly advances.

Now that I am free of the weight of your things, I make an effort to shift the focus of my hotly infatuated mind from you to Professor’s lecture. It takes all of my energy to keep my focus on Professor’s words and the notes on my page. I limit myself to mere glances at the strong, supple curve of your spine and the way your chestnut hair falls neatly against the ball of your head I so long to crack open and devour. Metaphorically, of course.

Once Professor has finished his introduction, he leads us into the museum. We drop our purses and backpacks into two white, cube-shaped bins and go down a flight of stairs into the permanent art collection.

Professor brings us to Matisse’s
Pastorale
. The painting is composed of two well-fleshed, nude women, a young boy, and Pan lounging on a rolling landscape. Patches of teal, aquamarine, lavender, and chartreuse are interspersed with pale umber and sienna trees. Each color is interconnected like a musical note to every other color, creating a complete, perfectly harmonized symphony that reflects the beautiful nature of the painted world.

Professor explains how Matisse’s
Pastorale
is Fauvist, almost abstract, yet is still playing with classical motifs. He then asks us what makes a painting abstract.

“No subject matter?” Sloppy Sandals offers.

“Yes—there’s only color, shape, line, texture, and scale,” Professor says. “Monet and Matisse’s paintings are made of color. They are not based on line anymore. No drawing—only color. When they do draw, they do it with color. They are basing this idea on the musical model, which is not supposed to sound like anything. It’s a musical composition in color and light.”

Between scribbling down Professor’s lecture, I happily admire the strong curves of your shoulder blades. I just can’t help myself. Modernist art is only of secondary interest to me at the moment, though Professor’s lecture does remind me of something my professor of Color as Communication taught me. She said color in the Western world is synonymous with corruption, sex, and chaos—three words that also describe my state of mind. My bloodstream is flush with hormones released in preparation for the sex we could have had last night. Now that I am again near you, my mind is whirring off in wonderfully delusory directions. I hear a steady buzz like that of a powerful electric grid wired between us, though I know you cannot hear it. Certainly no one else can. Becoming conscious that the sound of electricity is not real—that it is just a result of my overwhelming desire to believe we have some kind of literally electric connection—makes the sound go away. But like emotional vomit that is just going to express itself in one way instead of another, I instead feel spurts of energy burgeoning between our bodies. My vision is tinted with a hazy lavender, my palms are red hot, and my chest is filled with such a big, rich magenta that it emanates from me. Sounds—of Professor’s voice, of the quiet chatter of the other museum visitors around us—are gilded and vibrate across my ribs. My mouth feels like a tingly, irritated pink, as if all the fantasies coursing through my mind have left a physical mark on the tender insides of my mouth. All of these sensations feel amazing, like a sensory rollercoaster controlled by my unstable mind. I imagine that this is what being on club drugs must be like. My deluded state is probably just as unhealthy as club drugs are, though. I force myself to become fully conscious that the sensations I have just experienced are not real, and my realization makes them fade away completely. Thankfully, I have enough control over myself that I have kept my delusory sensations within my mind only. I am taking detailed notes and have the appearance of paying rapt attention to Professor just like everyone else.

Finished with Matisse’s
Pastorale,
Professor addresses the painting next to it, André Derain’s
Three Figures on the Grass
. The three male figures in the painting have muddy, marigold flesh and are shaded with strokes of wine red, indigo blue, olive green, and plum. “Do you notice anything odd about this painting?” Professor asks. “Does it portray anything of the real world? What is Derain doing here?”

Because of my state of mind I have a different insight than I otherwise would. “Painting color where there isn’t any,” I say.

Professor smiles, amused, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps because my answer has a childlike simplicity to it. “He’s using non-medic color,” he says, applying the correct art-historical term to my answer. “Instead of color based on how things actually look, he’s using color based on the harmony the painting requires. The Fauves use lots of complimentary colors. They study the relationship between color and temperature. Certain colors are cooler, like the dark blues, which push the element back. Others are warmer, like the golden yellows, and pull the figure forward.”

Inspired by Derain, I imagine painting your body. I rub lilac across your eyelids, skim your nose with the green of freshly torn grass, coat the breadth of your chest with mango, shadow your ribs with deep turquoise, and warm your lower back with pink heat. I choose the colors not according to any sort of harmony, but my whims. It’s all pure fantasy, just for my amusement. The colors have very little to do with how I actually see you.

When I look at you, I see you foremost not as some sort of muse for my creativity, but as an individual unique and valuable. In terms of colors, I see how your irises turn the color of black coffee under the shadow of dusk but glimmer with the warmth of roasted chestnuts in afternoon sunlight. Your fingertips are lightly pinked by the blood coursing through your body and the fine hair on your legs is a rich, coppery terracotta. The handsome branches of your veins appear cobalt beneath your lightly bronzed skin. When you are fatigued, the half-moons beneath your eyes are tinted with light pinks and blues. I like to think that while others see nothing extraordinary about your appearance, I notice details no one else cares to see.

Pulling me out of my reverie, Professor asks me, “What is that you said again?”

Even though I wasn’t paying much attention to what Professor was saying, I know what his question is referring to. “Painting color where there isn’t any.”

He smiles, “Ah, yes.”

After discussing the innovative color techniques of a few other modernist artists’ paintings, Professor takes us to some of Picasso and Braque’s early Cubist work. He tells us of how the two artists lived together in Bateau-Lavoir and critiqued each other’s work every evening, developing Cubism. Professor’s passion for Picasso’s work keeps my mind focused more on his lecture than my various fantasies involving you, naked.

At the end of class, Professor reminds us that tomorrow we’ll be at the Musée Picasso in Le Marais, and dismisses us.

We make our way up the stairs, I following behind you. My desire for your body is greater than ever since it is has so recently been denied to me. I delight in noting how the bruise on your pinky toe has tints of yellow around the edges, evidence of its healing. My gaze clings to the line of your leg from the conical shape of your calves to the lithe strength of your thighs upon which your glorious and very spankable, squeezable butt built by years of playing ice hockey reigns.

I take my purse from the white bin and feel a wave of concern rising in me as I watch you adjust the straps of your backpack over your shoulders. You are deliberately avoiding even a glance in my direction. Rather than come up to me as you had after our past few classes, you instead strike up a conversation with your Frame-twin. I feel as though my breath has vacated my body and my emotions are in a tailspin. This change in who you talk to after class is certainly a result of my having invited you to have sex with me last night and is absolutely adverse to what I want from you right now. While I definitely still want to sleep with you, I want to keep you in my life as my friend until being more than friends is possible. Seeing you talk to your Frame-twin instead of me means I have made you want to avoid getting too close to me. I have lost your trust. Realizing this causes me to panic about whether you are going to want to stay friends with me. I also feel an underlying regret at my efforts to seduce you.

On top of all this, seeing you next to your Frame-twin makes it apparent that he now looks nothing like you to me. He now appears gangly, the angles of his body harsh, the parts disproportionate, his hair scruffy. It is now clear to me that my vision of you has become so distorted, because I know just a month ago I did not find you so awesomely attractive as I do now. But seeing you through the eyes of my heady lust is like being on a drug that makes every interaction with you feel like a festival. I’m not giving it up.

I decide I must appear nonchalant about your change in behavior so you do not become aware of how obsessed I am. I slowly walk out of the museum in order to have the appearance of being on my way while hoping that if I linger long enough you might join me. I hear your Frame-twin tell you he is going in the opposite direction from you, providing me instant relief. You wave goodbye to him and head toward me. We walk together.

“So, I dried your umbrella—it’s in your backpack,” I tell you.

“Thank you.” You keep your voice almost purposefully level, as if you want to sound like everything is normal, which only draws attention to the fact that everything isn’t normal.

There’s a pause and I count our strides: left leg, right leg, left leg. “Oh! I just remembered. Lady and I are going swimming on Friday. Would you like to come?”

“Sure.”

“Perfect. I have to check the times the pools are open.” I make a circular motion with my hand. “I’ll call you later.”

“Sounds good.”

I look up ahead of us and see the intersection where I will turn right, possibly away from you. “Where are you off to?”

“Oh, just to the metro.” Your voice again strikes me with what I interpret as a concerted effort to sound casual.

“I’m going to walk to the library. It’s close, just across the Seine. The RER B is right by the Seine, if you would like to walk with me.”

“No, that’s okay. The metro is just up there.” You point in the direction opposite from where I am going. You stop and rather than wave goodbye, you thump your fist against your chest and extend two of your fingers into a V. It’s the kind of goodbye frat boys share among each other. A look of surprise and disgust flashes across my face. The gesture is so far removed from the warm hug you gave me last night it doesn’t feel genuine. Even so, the gesture is a potent signifier of how determined you are to convey to me that you see me as a friend only. I decide the best reaction is to pretend like I also see you as just my friend and think that’s great. I force a smile and wave, “Bye!” You walk away and I turn away too, heading toward the library.

On my way, I stop by a boulangerie. I’m hungry now, but because of the excess of chemicals flooding my system, a baguette sandwich, what I sometimes eat for lunch, doesn’t appeal to me at all. I order a
religieuse aux chocolat
instead.

The woman behind the counter says in French “Of course, mademoiselle,” as though it’s quite typical for people to have days when they eat a pastry for lunch.

In the library’s tiny snack room I carefully unwrap the decadent pastry and take a generous bite. My taste buds tingle as soon as the heavy creams and rich, bitter chocolates contact my tongue. I find it ironic that such a rich pastry is called
une religieuse
. Then again, in Bernini’s
Ecstasy of Saint Teresa
, Saint Teresa opens her mouth in orgasmic pleasure as an angel stabs her with a long spear of gold tipped with fire. I feel a little bit like I imagine Saint Teresa felt. I am on a pleasurable high, my entire body flush with chemicals created in response to the rampant pleasure I found in your closeness to me last night. Though, my high has nothing to do with religion. Saint Teresa wrote that her ecstasy had to do with being filled with a great love for God.