Dear Kurl,
I’m going to go ahead and write about Thursday night in hopes you’ll give me permission, but I’ll wait to give you this letter until I hear back. Here goes. We were standing there in your bedroom, kissing, and I noticed that you suddenly weren’t quite kissing me back. You weren’t even really quite breathing. Somehow my clothes had come off but yours hadn’t. Your jeans were open but still on, and when I lifted the hem of your shirt, you pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“Nothing,” you said, but you looked everywhere except at me. You leaned in to kiss me again, and I could sense the awful change as you tried to do it but didn’t really want to do it.
I pulled back. “We don’t have to do anything. I just came over to see you, not to—”
“No, I want to,” you said, but I spotted that panicky look in your eyes, the lockdown look.
“Oh, no,” I said. I stepped away from you. “I swear I didn’t assume anything in particular would happen, when you asked me over here. It’s not a big deal.”
In retrospect I will admit I was a little hurt—well, it was a little humiliating to be naked and not wanted—but I truly was resigned to the idea of getting dressed and going back downstairs to hang out, playing some mandolin tunes for you, talking more, maybe ordering pizza. I kicked my boxers free of my trousers and picked them up.
“Don’t.” You snatched them from my hand. “I don’t want you to get dressed.”
“What do you want me to do, then?”
You paced a little circle on the rug, looking wildly around the bedroom. Then you opened a dresser drawer and took out my paisley scarf. “I want you to wear this,” you said.
“Oh good, you found it.” I slung it around my neck. “You want me to wear it? Really?”
“No, I mean over your eyes.”
“You want me blindfolded?”
“Yes. I mean, not like that—it’s not some kinky thing. It’s just… if you wear it, we can do anything you say, anything you want.”
It’s possible I was curious what you had in mind, but mostly, I think, I just wanted to put you out of your misery. And maybe already then, at some subconscious level, I knew it without really knowing I knew—I knew what you were so worried I might see.
Whatever the case, I held the scarf to my eyes and turned around for you to tie it behind my head. When it was done I said, “Now will you please take off your clothes?”
I didn’t touch you, just listened for the sound of things hitting the floor. When I felt you closing in, I stepped back. “Now get on the bed.”
And then I exercised my right to do whatever I wanted, which involved, first, jabbing you clumsily with my knees and elbows and apologizing repeatedly, until we were both laughing and cracking jokes about the not-sexiness of being blindfolded. Second, slowing down and telling you to lie still so I could figure out where my limbs ended and your body began. Third, sensing instead of seeing how you were responding to my touch, my kiss. Allowing my fingers and tongue to speak directly to your skin, to make you gasp and arch.
Then we lay side by side. I let you take me into your hands, Kurl, and the blindfold made everything a surprise. I was never sure where I’d feel you next. You laughed at the way I quivered—“like an amoeba,” you said, “only louder.”
But afterward, when I could think clearly again, I decided it was time to face up to reality. I’d received a few clues already, by then—I’d felt you wince once or twice when I was touching you, and I’d found a raised line of skin at the small of your back when you lifted your hips.
I slipped the scarf off my eyes and blinked in the glare of the side-table light. Your chest was broad and smooth, scattered with a handful of freckles matching the one under your ear. I rested my cheek against it.
“Roll over, Kurl,” I said.
You noticed I’d taken off the scarf, and you stiffened. “What for?”
“I need to see,” I said. I tried to keep my voice very gentle. “Blindfolding me isn’t going to be a long-term solution.”
For a minute I thought you would shove me away and bolt from the bed. Your ribs leaped against mine with the force of your heartbeat, and you were staring at me with your lockdown look again.
I was just about to retract. I was thinking, Jonathan, you moron, you are ruining, ruining everything!
But then, abruptly, you rolled over onto your belly, your face turned away and hidden against your pillow.
“What…?” I got my voice under control as soon as I could. I knew I needed to say something, and I knew it mattered to you what I said. “What… did this?” I finally managed.
“Belt,” you said. Your voice was muffled by the pillow.
I touched a scab under your shoulder blade. “What about this?”
“Belt buckle.”
There were red and blue marks, a few awful, scabbed-over gouges, but there were scars, too. Older wounds.
“Fists, sometimes,” you said. “Occasionally a steel-toed boot.”
I remembered something and lost my breath for a second. Then I said, “You weren’t in a fight, were you.”
A whuff of sound into the pillow—amusement, almost. “No.”
“I mean your face. That time in your car, the first time you touched me, when you were drunk.”
A pause, as you realized what I was asking. “No,” you admitted.
“Ever,” I said. “You don’t ever get in fights, do you?”
“No.”
“And that time your back was sore, and you missed school. It wasn’t sore muscles you were referring to, was it?”
“No.”
“Okay,” I said.
You half lifted your head from the pillow. “Okay?”
“Not okay, okay. Just—” I stroked your hair. I splayed my hand at the top of your spine, my middle fingertip just touching the line of bristle on your neck where your hair stopped—“Okay, Kurl, I’m seeing this. I’m seeing you.”
I touched some of the scars. I felt you getting more and more tense, trying to not react to my touch, trying to tough it out. I could tell you’d made a pact with yourself not to pull away, not to try to hide. I kissed the scar on your shoulder. I was crying, but it wasn’t pity, Kurl, I swear it.
“Stop, now,” you said. “I can’t stand it anymore.”
“You’re beautiful,” I said.
“No. This does not make me beautiful.”
“It’s part of you, though.” I traced an older, nearly healed bruise on your ribs, curving down to your hip bone.
“It isn’t like laugh lines, for God’s sake. It’s ugly.”
“It’s ugly what he does to you,” I agreed. “It’s hideous what he does. But you, you are beautiful.”
“Stop,” you begged. “Jo, just stop. Stop.”
So I stopped, and I climbed on top of you and pressed my chest to your ravaged back. I tugged your wrists out to each side and pressed my arms along yours, pressed my temple to your cheek, pressed my knees into the backs of your thighs. We lay together like that a long time, until it felt as if there was no longer any skin between us, just bones twining like vines around each other’s bones.
Yours,
Jo