At a movie, Bill watched me. I saw him out the corner of my eye. Over and over he looked away from the screen, his eyes on my face. I ate popcorn, laughed at the lines, and pretended I didn’t see him watching me. Enchanted. Captivated. Even after five months together, he thought I was better than what was on the screen.
After the movie, I waited for him to take my hand, take me in his arms, tell me how much he loved me. He didn’t do any of that. He said. “I had the weirdest feeling. A really strong urge to go home and be alone. Put the stereo on and turn the music up and be by myself.”
“Oh.” I was a falling heart. He wasn’t enchanted. Not captivated by me throwing wads of popcorn into my wide-open mouth and laughing my silly laugh.
“Okay.” I held my don’t-let-him-see-you-hurt face, like a thousand tiny bricks building back the wall I’d let down over these months.
“Listen to me.” He bent a little at his knees to catch my eyes. “It’s not what you think. That’s why I’m telling you.”
He said, “I was watching you and I felt all this love for you. Huge. It was overwhelming, because I realized you could go away. I wanted to protect myself. To be alone. I’m telling you now so you know me. So you’ll know how I feel about you.”
To know himself this well. To reveal himself this way. This stunned me and scared me.
“I don’t even like to listen to the stereo by myself,” he said.
The small tremble in his cheeks.
How easily I could hurt him.
On a weekend trip to the ocean Bill and I walked on the beach, held hands. The waves moved in and out, a fog bank hovered on the horizon. I stopped and picked up a small white rock.
“Here,” I said. I turned to Bill and placed the rock in his palm. “Keep this to remember this day and how much I love you.” He smiled and kissed me and put the small rock in his pocket.
We walked on a little farther and he let go of my hand. “I’ll catch up,” he said. I kept walking, imagining he was looking at me, admiring me from behind.
“Jackie,” he called out. Then louder. “Jackie.” His voice was strained.
I turned. He had a huge rock in his hands, heavy enough to hunch him over. He pretend-staggered toward me. “Here,” he said. “I want you to keep this to remember this day and how much I love you.” This man made me laugh.
One night, after many months of mornings and afternoons and evenings of making love, I didn’t come. After, when Bill was on his back and I had my head on his shoulder, and his breath was smooth and mine was the same as it had been because this time it hadn’t gone fast, he didn’t ask me why I didn’t come or what he had done wrong. I wouldn’t have had an answer anyway. I was used to this pattern. Sex was easy with a man, until we got to know each other. Until it was safe and he loved me.
Bill said, “I’ll do what you like if you tell me and show me.” He reminded me, my body was my own. “But you’re responsible for your orgasm. And I’m in charge of mine.”
No man had ever said a thing like this.
Alone, I’d understood this. The pleasure I could give myself. But, with a man, I didn’t know how. My focus always on him, his needs, his pleasure.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll let you know if there is anything.” I turned on my side, away from him and spooned my back into his front. I pretended to be tired.
This talk made me feel bare, exposed. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what I liked or didn’t like when I was with a man.
I’d been on a long search for the man who would find the magic way of me, how I could make myself feel when I was alone. At first, with each boy or man, I thought I’d found it. But the pleasure of my body came from the paperback-novel excitement of first times and the unknown, of imagining our perfection. The excitement of showing off: See how sexy and free I am! See how easy it is for me!
After a month, or months, or a year, the heat of the new cooled, and it wasn’t easy anymore.
Maybe this was already starting with Bill. Going numb from the closeness of him. Thinking it wasn’t love I’d felt because I stopped feeling the easy pleasure. I’d never stayed long enough to know what happened after that.