Gardenias - the NC 17 version
Posted on April 14, 2008
Filed Under marriage, fiction, writing |
I’ve been told I need to sort of elaborate on the sexual climax at the center of my story Gardenias; that I abandon the reader to their imagination when I should show them the very thing that occurs. So it has been revised with a little help. See the original bit here and come back and read the racier version. Let me know what you think. This is new for me. I tend to shy away from explicit. God only knows what kind of traffic this post will attract. Taking all comers.
She talks to herself in the bathroom mirror. Her lips damp with rum, her cheeks glowing with drink. He is only sharing the truth with someone, anyone. There is no harm in this. She manipulates her shirt back into the waistline of her denim skirt, she smoothes her hair and purses her lips. She stares at herself long enough to discern the slight difference between her two eyes, one just a hair smaller than the other. And she returns to the kitchen where Ted offers her another full drink that he has busied himself with in her absence.
He brings it to her, setting it and himself close again at the island counter. He touches the side of her face, which, to Kate, feels like a minor triumph, his saying he finds her adequately attractive. Then his mouth covers hers, like the hand before on the counter, completely, confidently, as if he does this often, seduce married women in empty houses.
And when he clears away the glasses to the far end of the counter top to make room for their groping, she is relieved that at least they can do it here, in the kitchen, without the protracted migration to the bedroom where there is sure to be photographs of grown children in their likeness to Marilyn, perhaps a photo of Ted and Astrid, their lighter lustier selves. She would feel criminal in front of that sad audience. She needs no witness to the culmination of this thing that they have been working towards for months.
It begins almost perfunctorily. Efficient is the word that occurs to her, and she finds herself oddly and inexplicably pleased by this. The way he accomplishes seduction like it is just another task on his long to-do list.
His hand traces the swell of her breast from the rise of collar bone to the stiffening nipple. He draws at her shirt, dragging it up and over her head. He takes a nipple tenderly in his mouth. She weaves her fingers through his hair, her thoughts drifting. She wonders whether every mouth on every nipple the whole world over feels exactly the same sense of ownership, so powerful an exchange established between one small nibble of flesh and the rub of a tongue.
He surprises her by withdrawing from her breast and kissing her strongly on the mouth, pressing in hard against her, an act she finds more invasive than intimate. He kisses her in a way that is surprisingly different from the kisses she has exchanged with her husband of ten years. There is a deeper yearning, the earnestness of need.
And for a moment he has taken her breath – quite literally. He is not kissing her so much as inhaling her, an act that leaves her dizzy and resistant.
She is so busy maintaining her balance, so intent on restoring breath that she misses the exact moment he removes her panties, bunches up her skirt and enters her. Quickly, without warning, he explodes within her. And just like that he has transformed a kiss into possession, as simply as if he has swallowed something she once held on the tip of her tongue.
She leans forward, uncertain about whether she is pursuing the open kiss or the thing that he has taken from her. But he has withdrawn, panting with the effort expended having staked his claim. He does not hold her in a long embrace, he does not kiss the top of her head with marked tenderness, he does not whisper profound thoughts that elicit torrents of great relief.
She thinks of Amy, she thinks of God, she still misses the idea of him.
As he stands and stretches, she is exposed, her face like a diary accidentally left open to a particularly awkward passage. He turns to fasten his pants, to re-button his shirt and she feels just the slightest surge of gratitude because he has not noticed her disappointment.
She quickly straightens the hem of her skirt and tucks in her own shirt. She lets her hand rest on his shoulder briefly before she lets herself out. He is back sipping at his drink, now mostly dilute, all melted ice and mint leaves.
Surprisingly, despite the fact that she will not shower off their damp, salt sex until the following morning, she feels less an adulterer than just one of two people working through their own separate but equally pressing needs to feel someplace other.
For a short time, she wears the effects of it like a school girl with a secret. She is less curt, given to sudden bouts of laughter and warmth. But the secret fades and each day becomes more ordinary as she slowly lets go of the hope she long held for the thing between them. As she suspected it might, her life goes on much as it did before, without the romance, without the new fluster and flush all bundled up in her wish for love.
She returns to her husband, to her young family because she knows her children think their father hung the moon. She assumes her role as their mother, bolstering this quaint notion for at least a little while longer. And, in his own way, the way that would rather see forward than back, Paul forgives her the trespass.
Kate returns to 61 Alfonso Court only one more time. She chooses a day when Ted’s car is not in the driveway. She sets to restoring order to the garden, gently trimming the spathiphyllum and the begonias, coaxing the gardenias at the front door to remain deliciously fragrant conveyors of sweet southern gentility until the property is sold.
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