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The first time we have sex, we are either fully dressed, at our table in hours of operation, bathed in the blue light of the computer. He’s processing a new package of microfichees downtown and me at the center managing the patches for a new Labrador detective manuscript. He tells me what he ate at lunch and asks me if I can take off my underwear in my cabin without anyone noticing. Your messages are accompanied by an impeccable score. He likes words like taste and spread. The empty text box is full of possibilities. Of course, I’m worried about remote computing on my PC, or my Internet history justifying some other hr disciplinary meeting. But the risk. The excitement of a third pair of invisible eyes. The concept that someone in the office, with that sweet optimism after the lunch break, can cross the thread and see with what tenderness Eric and I build this personal world.
In his first post, he issues some typos in my online profile and tells me he has an open marriage. His profile pictures are simple and loose: a grainy photo of him asleep in the sand, an image of him shaving, taken from behind. It’s this last picture that moves me. Dirty tiles and slight steam recoil. His face in the mirror, serious with careful examination. I keep the picture on my phone so I can see it on the train. Women look over my shoulder and smile, and I let them be mine.
Otherwise, I didn’t have much good luck with the men. This is not a self-pity arrangement. This is just a fact. Here’s a fact: I have some precious breasts that have warped my spine. More facts: my salary is very low. I find it hard to make friends and men don’t care about me when I get in. At all times it goes well at first, but then I communicate too explicitly about my ovarian twist or my income. Eric’s different. Two weeks after our correspondence began, he tells me about the cancer that has devastated part of his maternal family. She tells me about an aunt she enjoyed and who made potions with fox hair and hemp. How she was buried with a corn cob doll she had made herself. However, he lovingly describes the space of his years of formation, the digressions of the farmland between Milwaukee and Appleton, the yellow-breasted conversations, and the tundra swans that gave the impression that in his backyard they were looking for seeds. When I talk about my years of training, I only talk about satisfied parts. The Spice World VHS I won for my fifth birthday, the Barbie I melted in the microwave when no one was home. Of course, the context of my years of training – the boys’ gangs, the Lunchables, the political judgment of Bill Clinton – just underscores our generational gap. Eric is sensitive to his age and mine, and makes a great effort to manage the twenty-three-year gap. He follows me on Instagram and leaves long comments on my posts. Slang removed from the Internet interspersed with serious comments on how kindness falls on my face. Compared to the unsontable progress of younger men, this is a relief.
* * *
[Back to the “Lustre” report. ]
We communicate for a month before our schedules align. We go out to meet early, but things happen. It’s just one of the reasons his life is different from mine. There are other people who depend on it and, infrequently, want it urgently. Among his sudden, genuine cancellations, I want him too. In a way that makes my dreams delusional, thirsty expressions: long expanses of yellow desert, cathedrals surrounded by dripping foam. By the time we set our first genuine date, I would have done anything. He sought to pass Six Flags.
* * *
We’ll stop by on a Tuesday. When driving in your white Volvo, I only got the pre-date component of my regime to find the right maximum laugh. I put on three dresses before I discovered the right one. I ty my braids and shave my eyes. There are dishes in the sink and an invasive smell of salmon in the component, and I don’t need him to think it has anything to do with me. I put on a complex underwear that is not so much an underwear as a pack of ropes and I stand in front of the mirror. I think in myself you’re a desirable woman. You’re not a dozen gerbils in a fur wrap.
* * *
Outside, it’s parked in a double row. He leans against the car and stands still as I faint, his eyes shining and motionless. Her hair is darker than I expected, a black so opaque that it looks blue. His face is almost obsemetrically symmetrical, even if one of his eyebrows is higher than the other, and this makes his smile seem a little smug. It is the time of summer day and all the powers of the people do not influence it. I take his hand, looking not to swallow my tongue, and anything happens to me. Of course, there are nerves. In person, he is a general father, alert and hard face, softened only through the slight fall of his hair. But this feeling has nothing to do with it, it has nothing to do with the fact that I look beyond his sensual mouth and his slightly crooked nose as an indication that he is as nervous as I am. It’s 8:15 and I’m happy. I’m not in the L, smelling someone’s warm pickles, wishing I was dead.
“Edie, ” I said, achieving.
“I know, ” he said, his long hands fell between mine, too comfortably. I sought to be more direct, bending it into a simple, extroverted hug. But what’s going on is this comfortable handshake, this displeasure with my eyes, this soon and nothing surprising abandonment of power. And then the worst component of assembling a boy in broad daylight, the component where you see it you see it yourself, at that moment divided if a long-lasting cunnilingus will be enthusiastic or shallow. Open the door and there’s a fluffy blue hanging from the rearview mirror. A half-eaten bag of Jolly Ranchers in the passenger seat. His online correspondence was honest, complete with his stuttering sincerity. However, since we already tell the stories you can tell on a first date, it’s more complicated to get started. He communicates about the climate and then we communicate about climate change. After a while of regular communication about burning, we entered the park.
[Back to the “Lustre” report. ]
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