anari

WOMEN 81
She offered honesty without openness.
Befitting a happy fool, i accepted.
There is a profound hesitation in trying to project any understanding of Anari. Knowing that so much of her was hidden behind walls, i'm sure that any explanation of mine will be feeble at best.
Or not.
We met online. She'd posted an ad looking for two men. There was a bit of ambivalence as to whether she wanted two men in her life, or two men in her bed. I didn't think i was necessarily a good candidate for the latter (only imaginable under personality circumstances so rare as to make a lightning strike seem commonplace), but was open to the former (being all about female empowerment, and opposed to the ridiculousness of monogamy). How long in human history have men had far easier access to multiple partners, despite the fact that females generally outperform them by a country mile?
It turns out Anari was looking for two males in her bed...but a conversation had begun. For myself, curiosity was based on the fact that any woman who wanted two men might also be more likely to understand a wildflower living outside the parameters assigned him at birth.
The fact that she was African was also compelling. While this isn't necessarily anything to be proud of, the fact remained that i was AWARE i had never had a fully consummated sexual relationship with a woman of her pigmentation. My spirit is a human rainbow (and unlike Mr. Mayer, i knew my cock was too).
She had been born in Kenya. At sixteen, she moved to England and boarding school. At eighteen, she set out for America and college. One year earlier, she'd graduated with a master's in music business. In a depressed economy, she had been searching the past year for a job in her field, while living alone in Brooklyn. In our letters, it was sometimes easy to forget that she was intelligent...she was so good at hiding her spirit, her smarts often disappeared too.
In a number of surface ways, she wasn't my type. She straightened her hair, wore makeup, believed in (eventual) monogamy and marriage...
And i wasn't the most likely threesome candidate.
But bit by bit, she was becoming fascinated by me. In her words...
Once we embarked on our email conversations and I finally delved into your blog I was, initially, consumed by apprehension. Apprehension towards allowing myself to be in the presence of, or in any way open to, someone who is so real. And naked. And then content of our emails grew in depth and sparks, while the interludes between them diminished. It was all deliciously scary. Then we met, and my fears were completely confirmed. Not at all in a negative way towards you.
The fact that early on she declared, sans any inquiry from me, that she had no hangups whatsoever about the prospect of being written about by me, endeared her to me more than i can say. She made fun of the silent "w" i had added to my name, but embraced it completely. She was a long way from my kind of openness, but if there were voices telling me to hold back, they couldn't hold a candle to my loneliness and sexual rawness.
The night we met, we walked around the Village for a couple hours, then had dinner in a lovely vegetarian restaurant. By the end of the meal, i wanted to reach across the table to touch her hands. I sensed that she understood that, but chose to ignore it. We walked some more after dinner, and when we got close to our parting point, she hesitantly asked whether i had been disappointed by her. I told her i found her enchanting. I finally knew that she was attracted to me as well. Still, i thought she might come up with any number of reasons to walk away forever. When i asked for a goodbye hug, she came into my arms with surprising gentleness.
And suddenly kissed me.
Did not expect that.
I felt a rush of blood to my penis. We soon stumbled across the street holding hands, as she realized we'd been at the wrong station entrance. When we got underground, she almost ran to the waiting train. As it pulled away, i stood on the other side of the gates, leaning against the bars. I stood there for minutes, wrapped in the beauty of life.
I slowly walked away, not knowing whether i'd ever see her again. At home, my slightly euphoric buzz took me into slumber's arms.
I awoke with a start, around 2AM. My phone was ringing.
It was Anari. She apologized for calling, and almost hung up before i reassured her that she was allowed to call me any time. I asked whether she'd gotten the sweet e-mail i'd written when i got home. She hadn't, so i stumbled to my computer. I was naked and cold, and didn't care. I read to her, and she told me how she couldn't stop thinking of me. She told me she wanted so much to feel me against her. I told her that i was hers. I began shaking all over from the center of my chest, from the cold and the emotion. She asked whether i was naked, and when i said yes...the urgency in her voice became a palpable thing. I was feeling lightheaded urgency myself, and finally said we needed to either get together, or hang up and take care of ourselves. She tried one last effort at being coy, then stopped.
Suddenly i was on my bike, heading for Brooklyn in the middle of the night.
It was a surreal ride. A surreal time of night. She kept calling every few minutes. On the far side of the Manhattan Bridge, i came face to face with a flat tire. My own. I knelt under a lone street light, patching away. Back on the road, i arrived at her apartment quickly.
In her building's foyer, we hugged, the blood once again flowing to my loins. We stumbled upstairs. I told her i wanted to shower. She started to undress me, but gave up on my belt. I came out of the shower, and she never found the towel she'd offered me, as we were naked and wrapped in each other in moments. She took me in her with an immediacy that took little heed of foreplay. We spent the rest of the night in whispered words and sexual loving. I told her i'd always moved slowly when it came to sex, but that i couldn't say no to her on that night. This was as much about my loneliness and rawness, and need to reclaim my identity as a sexual being, as anything. Neither of us made any mention of safe sex. We just carnally took one another. Her own urgency ultimately did belie my inability to say no, when she told me to come inside her. I found the strength (or fear) to resist...though in the weeks that followed, i fantasized about being in that moment and holding nothing back.
I bemusedly noticed that we might not be entirely compatible sexually. She wanted hard fucking, while i was doing my best to slow it down and make it last. She also seemed to be into pain...several times she bit my lip until it hurt, making me go "Ow".
But mostly it was very beautiful. Her lips were amazing...i'd never kissed any so full and soft.
We managed, however, to not see each other again for nearly a week. I wanted sooner, and wondered whether it was one of the "relationship rules" that if you go a week without seeing each other after your first sex, abandon all hope immediately. She was lapsing into e-mail and phone silences as well. She had given me warning...
See from a young age I’ve built and worn, at times proudly but at all times seemingly necessarily, a bullet-proof armor. When this armor has grown weak my memory recalls hurt, rejection, judgment and pain...I’m guarded. I’m extremely private, and at times I have a wonderful ability to easily shut out the world. For all, various, and no reasons. That’s simply a layer of me, but a layer that nevertheless exists. Thus far I’ve done a pretty good job at hiding that layer, or rather overlapping it with the more favorable ones that most seem to agree with. Albeit, those who I allow to really, truly get close to me will eventually uncover it, and the darker layers beneath. And out of those who have uncovered my true layers, I can name less than I care to admit who have simply accepted not judged or shunned.
Our second night together was much like our first. We didn't plan it well, and were only able to have a few hours. But we made love as urgently as on our first night, again following a towelless shower of mine. She whispered of how amazing it felt having me inside her, something she hadn't felt with any lover in a long time, and how she adored my body, all smoothness and muscle. Her untoned physique wasn't my ideal...but i think we can and should be able to love everyone, even though this world of broken, needy people makes that virtually impossible. The most singular moment of the night was when she again asked me to ejaculate. I asked her where. She told me to pull out and come on her. It was far more than either of us expected. I shot all over her, and kept on cumming and cumming. Rainbows. Afterward, she whispered that she had never experienced that. Looking back, i wish i had crushed her to me as the ejaculation ended, face to face, reinforcing the "us" aspect of the moment. But i was already walking on eggshells a bit, realizing that it was an almost impossible line i had to walk, to not make her run away. Loving her too much was as dangerous as not loving her enough. There were plenty of outcomes i was already afraid of, not least of which was her falling for me in a Disney way. So i was off-balance, a part of me holding back.
She told me how beautiful my penis was, and we got into a discussion about infant genital mutilation, one that carried on for days and even became a point of contention, with her arguing that male mutilation was of an entirely different category than female, and me arguing that the eyes of the future will make no distinction between the two when humanity looks back on this epoch of barbarism, and that psychologically the damage is comparable for both genders.
There were more silences from her before we were together again. She wrote of being full of fear and hesitation. Fear of being hurt, or not being able to offer me what i deserve. She wrote:
This all makes me sound so self-absorbed, so selfishly closed in my limited, and probably very distorted perspective. Which I hate to admit, but currently am. I'm in survival mode and certain things need to turn around before I will feel out of the woods.
I did my best to manifest patience and equanimity, but in the face of silence it's so hard to not eventually think of worst-case scenarios. She been judged and shunned? What could be so ominous? Drug-dealing? Prostitution? An internship with Karl Rove? Had i perhaps been rawly impulsive with one who could give me an std? While i had early on told her that i hadn't had a lover for over a year, we'd never broached the question of her own status. When i proposed monogamy, she was disappointed that it was for safe sex reasons, not cinderella reasons. After acknowledging that she currently had one condoms-only lover who seemed to prompt only shame in her, she embraced the idea of our monogamy. This was in e-mails, and it felt a little bizarre to not have that conversation in person. She was also doing one of the few behaviors that actually drives me nutty, ignoring direct questions. I don't mind a question unanswered, as long as the person acknowledges what they're (not) doing. But she was silently ignoring a number of questions, virtually none of them profound or threatening.
She also informed me she had gone on the pill. I was delighted, though a part of me still feared her developing a huge case of ever-after, forsake-all-others desire for me.
Our third night was our first at my place. At the station, she greeted me with a big, lipsticky kiss. I almost shouted "Yuck!" She wore a cap like my grandfather wore, to protect her straightened hair from the rain. We got takeout and watched a move, STILL CRAZY. We both loved Bill Nighy. When we ended up in bed and started gently kissing, she told me she was having her period. I was happy to have a night of platonic cuddling, as the fact that sooner or later we'd have to spend time together without having sex, had been on my mind. It evolved into one slow, long caressing embrace. An urgency stirred in her, one tiny eternal kiss at a time. She could no longer endure it, and asked for me inside her. She was very self-conscious about getting my sheets bloody, though. I assured her that her beauty was amazing, and that i was hers to do with whatever she wanted. She climbed onto me, and for the first time in my life, i was inside a menstruating woman. It felt the tiniest bit strange, but i was quickly swept up in the force of her desire. I discovered that being under her was my favorite position, with her so-soft breasts near my face, or just lying back. Something about that night's chemistry gave me a very stiff erection, yet one that allowed her to ride vigorously. She just rode and rode, lost in the moment. It was so profound that it actually took me out of the moment, something that probably couldn't happen if our relationship had been in better balance. But eventually, i just needed to clap or laugh at a woman enjoying sexuality (and me) so utterly. I did so, and it may have taken her out of the moment as well. But that was a barely noticeable pause in the proceedings. A few hours of sleep became morning caresses, and again she couldn't resist a beautiful erection.
And yes, for those of you who didn't catch Martha Stewart's blog today, Shout! is an amazing product fully capable of handling menstrual sex sheets.
So ended our last night. As she dressed to go, i dressed to break concrete. She asked me to walk her to the station one block away. I was ready to work, and had thought she could find her way alone. But when we said goodbye at the station, she gave me long, loving kisses, and it was a beautiful moment, made moreso by the awareness of the world's eyes on us...two people of different skins, just loving. I think i was more proud of her in that moment than any other.
I went off on a weekend business trip, ready to address our relationship concerns when i returned. I was going to suggest that we remove all expectations, and just enjoy each other.
When i got back, however, she said in a brief e-mail that some part of her was rejecting me. I wrote back, but she had gone down the rabbit hole. Two weeks of silence later, i realize that we got what we deserved, as we both fell victim to fear. In the face of her overpowering ones, i was unable to keep my own at bay. Despite my objective awareness that i was a million times better off without her, a part of me didn't want to let go. I loved her as i would love any lost child. Am i not a lost child myself? Is there a single one of us who is not?