The first night.

The day’s labor complete. A man at the helm, surrounded by lighted lamps that illuminate the immense darkness on which we sail. Dinner inside us, still warm, just stocked, the water untainted and the bread fresh.

Us, floating in our beds, upon that fatigue into which we can sink, clinging to the blankets so as not to drown in dreams.

There is no sound save the waves without, the snapping of the sails, the slow groaning of wood struggling to remain joined. Closer still, someone’s breathing, the only person in this cabin.

Me.

The cold enters uninterrupted through the open door. The slow movement of the schooner makes the door swing open and shut with nigh-on no sound. An eye that blinks. What does it see? A man who cannot sleep, a dark hallway.

In another place, a different eye looks upon the crew, submerged in the heat of their fatigue, the scent of their bodies a warm mist which no one disturbs.

I put my hand over my mouth, slowly open my lips, moistening my palm.

I feel my nascent beard, my rough skin, my saliva.

I slowly squeeze my cheekbones.

Were my hand but free; were there no will directing it ….

I am two skins: the one that brushes closer and the one that awaits.

But both are none, because I know who controls them.

At times, as if in dreams, I imagine that I raise my hands to find I can sink them into the night. If I make two fists, I can all but feel it slide between my fingers like a slow oil.

There is no way to catch it, to rip off a piece. Nor do I want to. Only to feel it.

I sink myself into that night; a lifeless breath against my visage, a leviathan mouth that absorbs me.

I open my lips, wishing to drown in these sensations.

Darkness is a whole, indivisible, without members. A body unto itself, uninterrupted.

I yank the sheets aside, impatiently tearing the clothes from my body and with them, the heat I have nestled close.

I arch my back on my cot. I can feel the stitch of the fabric beneath me, but it matters not. Only my chest as it surges into the night, the slow liquid sliding, an icy breath running along my muscles, lingering on my nipples.

I sink my sex into that dark flesh that neither draws back nor opens, that throbs at my entrance without ever moistening me.

I sink into that nothing, while my own sex, tumescent, spreads the skin that covers it, as if by its own will, as if an invisible hand gently pulled back the dark prepuce.

The icy sensation is no caress; it is something that happens to another, that has naught to do with me. Nor does that throbbing member. Sterile in nothingness, abandoned in silence.

Nothing caresses it. Nothing touches it, yet still it hardens. Yet still I feel it taut against its skin, as if it might burst, might tear itself open with desperation.

I cannot long maintain that position. I drop back into bed, into reality.

I touch myself, questing for a liquid that does not exist, the cold oil of the darkness, but there is only my skin, which is still no skin, only that which covers my body. A living sheet.

I touch my sex.

So sensitive that I shudder, fingers at the base, along the wrinkled flesh, on the moistened foreskin that waits in vain. I do not caress myself.

To what end?

I have drawn away from any sensation; all that passes is time, minute by minute.

Every first night is the same.