Way Down Deep, page 13
Do you moan when you come? Tell me. Tell me as I do it.
Fuck, I’m so fucking close. Moan’s not the right word. It’s a sound. Like seething. A desperate sound sucked through my teeth. Honey, it hurts. Make it stop hurting. Just tell me where—tell me where to come and I will. So goddamn hard.
Inside me. Come inside me—fuck yes, that’s what I want. Fill me, fill me as I go over yes now now now. Now, Malcolm.
11.59pm
Are you there? Maya?
I’m still here. Just.
Me too. In a sweaty, undignified heap with my pants still half off, but I’m here.
I look like I’ve been destroyed by a sex hurricane. Somehow my underwear is on the dressing table—though I don’t remember hurling it. Maybe the ghost of you did it.
Never stop looking exactly like that.
Fuck.
Sorry, I swear so much. Though it’s your fault, really. But FUCK.
I love your swearing. I want to marry your swearing. Your swearing and me are going to run away together to a fantasy world.
You and your fantasy worlds.
There’s so much I want to teach you about sex. Real sex—not just the hot things. Like, I want to show you how some of the sexy shit people get up to in movies is so fucking stupid. Like how fucking in the shower is completely impossible, not unless you enjoy slipping and hitting your head on the edge of the tub, or taking turns being the one scalded by the tap or standing there on the other end all wet and shivering.
And how anything involving food is the fucking worst. Like how you’ll have to sleep on your bare mattress that night if you don’t want to lay on a souring, sticky puddle of whipped cream.
That’s the shit that pops into my head sometimes when we talk, all this ridiculous, anti-sexy stuff, but it feels so intimate to me. All the stuff that fails. Maybe because it’d be so easy just to keep on saying only the cinematic stuff. Easy and obvious.
Do you honestly think that’s anti-sexy? To share things like that with me? I live in fantasy. That’s all I have. So far, fantasy is really all we’ve had. And it’s lovely and awesome and safe—it’s made me feel very safe. But it’s done the opposite of what reality usually does. I imagine it dampens things for most people.
For me, it’s a raw and ridiculous thrill. I’m almost craving those mistakes. The frantic fumblings and fucked-up things we could dream up together. And I shiver over you saying them all to me, telling me how it would really be.
So go on, go on. Share with me how it really feels.
Tonight, everything we did, everything we said… It was perfect, worthy of that movie that doesn’t exist. But if it were all real, if you and I were actually real…
Maybe three days from now, I’m going to go down on you for forty-five minutes, until my jaw’s aching and my left arm’s gone numb. You’re going to start panicking because you haven’t come yet. Then you’ll get close, so close, only you’ll get a charley horse right before you get there, and you’ll just about fall off the bed, it hurts so bad.
Three weeks from now, we’ll be fucking for ages. You’ve come already, maybe twice, three times. And now it’s me who’s close. But I really, really need to pee. But I’m so close, and so stubborn. But eventually I’ll shout, “Fuck!” and I’ll limp out of the room to piss so I can fucking finish already, because that’s how sex looks, sometimes.
Three months from now, one of us will fart in the middle of it all, and we’ll die a little inside and pretend like it didn’t happen.
Three years from now, we’ll fart in the middle of it and not think twice. And I can’t fucking wait, because I’ve never gotten there with anyone. I’ve never been that comfortable. But I know I could be, with you.
I never thought I’d say that not thinking about farts sounds like heaven, but it does. All of that does. You make even my silliest fears seem like sexy things I should want.
I want those years with you. Those messy, so real years.
If we were together for real … you and me, on that couch the way we started tonight…
As much as I’d want to race to all the predictable places, I almost want to take those hands, move them away. I want to fall back and drag you down with me, just feel the weight of you on top of me, wrap my arms around you and sigh or laugh or fucking cry, I couldn’t even guess which. I want to ignore my dick and just let that impatience simmer inside me. Listen to you breathing, listen to whatever’s happening at this point in Blade Runner, and when the DVD ends, listen to the radiator ticking and the rain hitting the window.
That doesn’t seem strange to me. It seems lovely—just to lie there with you, maybe feel your heart beating against the side of my face and smell whatever you smell like and know that you want it, you want me, but at the same time that you need something else too. I’m the one who was racing ahead to sex. You’re the one who wants to slow down and savour.
I can’t deny there’s something sweet about that.
Fuck, Maya…
There’s something I want to say to you.
But I can’t. Not quite.
Because I’m not drunk enough.
And because I’m too drunk.
Because to say it now would be a waste. Because I’d wake in the morning and remember, and I’d know I said it at the wrong time, and be sad I was too buzzed to trust that I could remember it right.
But I think you know what I mean. I don’t know if you want to hear that, to read that. Not yet, or ever. I don’t know. I hope maybe you do. I hope maybe my saying what I am, it’s like that hand on my buckle, the way we started out. So close, too much, yet not anywhere near enough. Maybe it’ll simmer inside you, sweet torture. Maybe I’d make you wait.
Maybe I’d make you wait, because I could only ever say it in person.
You don’t have to do anything but say it in person, if that’s what you need. I’m okay to wait, or to only go the places you feel comfortable going. After all, you wait for me. I’m the reason you can’t say it in person, yet you don’t make me feel bad about it. So in this, I won’t rush you. Tell me what you want, when you want to.
I can tell you one thing right now. I can tell you how we’d fall asleep if you were here. Us, realizing once again how cold this room is, with our sweat cooling. I’d want us to take our clumsy turns using the bathroom, feeling awkward and shy, realizing how we’re naked, how we managed to forget about it during the sex. I’d want you in one of my shirts and nothing else. Watching you leave my room, watching you come back, your breath smelling like my toothpaste and the rest of you smelling like sex. I’d try to make the covers warm. Your feet would be ice blocks, but I’d just hold you closer, tucking your head and your messy sex hair under my chin, hugging you from behind.
God, you give good reality. Yes to all of that. Yes to your shirt, yes to the taste of your toothpaste, yes to me curling into the curve of your big body. I’d be your little spoon, so comfortable that I think I’d almost be unconscious before I’d had a chance to say goodnight.
I’m yawning. Maybe you can even feel it against the crown of your head, smell that same toothpaste. Should we say goodnight, right here? Both of us in my bed, before the orgasms burn off and the imagining gets harder?
That sounds sweet to me, I have to say.
Perhaps tomorrow night, I’ll take your virginity all over again.
Picture me laughing as I drift off to sleep.
I can feel you here in my arms, trust me.
All right, someone has to say it first. Goodnight, Maya.
Goodnight, Malcolm. Sweet dreams.
12
Tuesday
6.43am
It’s just starting to get light here, and I haven’t slept a wink. Instead I’ve just laid awake, as sweetly tortured as you wanted me to be. Imagining what you wanted to say; knowing what it was anyway.
And cursing myself for focussing on your reticence instead of wondering if you were really asking me to say yes. Yes, I want to hear you say it. Yes, I wanted to read the words. I’m not afraid of them, or of you letting me down when I do.
In fact, I’m not even afraid of saying them myself. Of taking that leap over the chasm of what-if-he-doesn’t and braving the swamp of I’m-so-sure-he-won’t. And once I’m on the other side, I’ll show you the way:
I love you, Malcolm. I love you.
4.17pm
Was it not enough to help you across?
Because I can do better:
I love you like cheese toasties and my blue shoes and the ending of Neverending Story. I love you the way I used to love being alone. My love is a bridge—and not the scary kind from Indiana Jones. The strong kind, like that one people have to paint continuously because it’s so enormous.
You’re safe to join me on the other side, I swear.
Nothing has to be different once you get there.
13
Wednesday
5.27am
Okay, I don’t want to be worried.
But I’m now genuinely worried that I’ve said the wrong thing.
And if I have said the wrong thing, then you should really know: we can pretend I never said it at all. Just rewind and go back to whatever it was you were actually going to say, and then I’ll answer that instead.
I don’t want to push you, because you’ve never pushed me.
14
Thursday
1.34am
Are you there?
Malcolm. Are you there, still?
Please just tell me you’re there, because part of me is honestly starting to wonder if I just imagined you somehow. Like maybe I’m sleeping while Tyler Durden texts me from a secret phone I don’t know I have.
Or I guess it could be that you were a ghost.
I have a lot of them. They’re bound to attract more.
Just a couple of words would really reassure me that I haven’t attracted more.
15
Friday
10.00am
You don’t have to be with me again.
There’s no need to say anything sweet.
But if you could just message me that you’re not dead. That you haven’t died, somehow, that you’re not gone. I can’t stop thinking that you might be gone. I mean, that’s been a pretty strong theme in my life. People I love are there, and then suddenly they’re gone.
And I don’t mind, I wouldn’t mind, if you were only gone because you realised this was too much or too foolish or too something. I can carry on okay if I’m just foolish.
But I don’t know if I can carry on not knowing if something happened to you.
Please, at least give me that.
16
Sunday
12.01am
Goodbye, my love.
17
Monday
Unknown Number
6.17pm
Are you there, stranger?
I’m here. Mostly. A bit misshapen.
I’ve got so much to catch you up on. When did we last talk? Almost a week ago, I think. It must have been, since it was Tuesday morning when I got partially run over by a hatchback.
We said a lot of things that night, and one of us wasn’t entirely sober. I hope you didn’t think I was ghosting you. It’s been torture, not having any way to get in touch.
Let me back up.
So. Tuesday morning I took the boy out for a run. I’d had big plans for the afternoon, to go on our first mission in search of bedding and all that stuff I’d mentioned. I think we were probably three miles in when… Well, I don’t remember the moment it happened. But basically a car shot out of a blind drive and hit us.
The boy’s fine. I want to throw up when I imagine what would’ve happened if I’d been running just a tiny bit slower, the stroller taking the hit instead of me. But he was okay. The stroller got flipped into the road, I was told, but for that price you better believe it was safe, plus the street was quiet. He had a couple scrapes on his face, but they’re already faded almost to nothing.
Me, I’m not quite so lucky.
I’ve got a shit ton of bruises and a broken collarbone and my arm isn’t so much fractured as… Crushed? I won’t get graphic, but suffice it to say it was disgusting, and it’s going to take months to heal and it might not ever work quite right again. But on the plus side, it’s my left arm and I’m right-handed.
I’m texting very slowly now, let’s say.
What else? The woman who hit me… Not even a woman. A girl. I was really, really angry at first, right up until she came to see me the day after the accident. She’s seventeen, and I swear she was more traumatized than me about almost killing some dad and his little boy. She was a fucking wreck, probably needs therapy for a year. So my anger’s fallen aside, for the most part.
One thing that’s come out of this whole nightmare that’s sort of miraculous was how the boy reacted. Like I said, I don’t remember what happened right when I got hit. I think I came out of shock a few minutes later. By then, someone had gotten the boy out of the stroller. The first thing I was aware of besides the pain was that he was on me. Like, physically on me, latched to my leg and shrieking “Da! Da! Da!” over and over. Which, as it turns out, is his first word.
So that was actually rather special, in its perverse way. Not how I’d have chosen to snap the kid out of his selective muteness, but here we are.
Since the accident, he’s also said “tar” and “mag jee,” which mean guitar and mac and cheese, respectively.
What else?
Oh! I was on the local news. They interviewed me on Wednesday in the hospital. The accident was the most interesting thing that’s happened around here in ages, apparently. If you ever wanted to know what the boy and I look like, you could probably Google your way there.
And that’s the gist. I’m not sure what became of my phone, whether it got run over or lost or picked up by somebody after I got taken off to A and E.
The boy’s grandma got me a temporary one from a corner store. But I didn’t have your number, and I’d never logged into my O2 account for any reason, just paid the paper bill and tossed the records. So I had no idea what my account info was or if I had a password, didn’t even know my own fucking phone number. And I was stuck in the hospital for days. I got home last night, and today my only mission was to get to the nearest O2 shop and convince somebody to print me out a copy of my latest statement. Which is how I have your number!
I have no idea what you may have been texting me since we last spoke. That’s all trapped on my missing SIM card, along with all of our other texts.
That’s been the worst loss, in a way. Losing our history.
We have a history, one that’s been entirely documented. The moment we met, the moment we first went to bed together in our weird way. The moments we turned ourselves inside out and bared everything, and the moment I nearly said something to you, something I now wish I had.
I have no idea if you’ve been angry or sad or scared all this time I’ve been silent, though I can safely assume you were confused. Maybe pissed. Maybe you blocked my number. If so, guess I got around that one!
I know I’m coming off kind of weird and up and cheerful. Part of that’s the pain pills, but part of it’s because I’m pretty fucking lost, and when I feel lost I tend to act like everything’s extra fine.
But things aren’t fine.
I hurt. All the time. Down an arm and a collarbone, I’m basically useless, especially when it comes to caring for a toddler. The boy’s grandma is here a lot, and I appreciate that, but I don’t enjoy it.
I can’t really bathe; I’ve got a massive cast, and I can’t even wrap it in trash bags or whatever, because that requires the use of both hands. Sponge baths—hooray.
Even texting hurts. I have to tap the screen just so, otherwise it tweaks a tendon or nerve all the way up my good arm and tugs at something painful in my busted collarbone.
I can barely get food out of packages and into either of our mouths, to say nothing of cooking. And I probably don’t need to spell out the guitar situation.
His grandma’s been staying with us while I adjust. I’m basically a stinky, ungroomed, doped-up misery, pretending to feel warm and grateful toward a woman I frankly don’t like especially.
My aunt’s offered to come and help, but she can’t get over here until early April. And even then, she can’t stay for more than a couple weeks.
It’s looking like I’m going to have to head back to the States.
7.26pm
Had to just pause and stare at those words for a few minutes.
I’ve given it a lot of thought. What’s best for the boy, and what it is I want, myself. I think it makes the most sense. If I go back, my aunt can help long-term, part-time, instead of just for a couple weeks around the clock. I mean, I couldn’t afford a visiting nurse here for long.
It’ll take some time to move. Not stuff-wise—I hardly brought anything over, and the flat came furnished, so it’d just be my clothes and the boy’s things, the car seat, and maybe the stroller.
Or maybe not the stroller. Maybe fuck the stroller.
But the boy will need a visa or passport or however that’ll work. I’ve only taken the very first steps toward proving he’s entitled to dual citizenship. I hope I can finish sorting it out by the time my aunt has to head home, if she does come, maybe pay through the pee-hole for expedited processing if I can.
