Dear Violet

Talking with him, at a bar, in a restaurant, with the imminent promise of a bed - it is enveloping. Violet, you and all Michael’s lovers must know what I mean. It is a slow, sexy, layered descent. It is stepping down a wide spiral staircase in glasses and a gown, teetering on sparkling heels. Surveying each unfolding idea like so many eager party guests coming into view, crowded together in some vast, many-windowed vestibule. I tried and failed to convey this feeling to Michael, how exquisitely long that staircase feels, how grounding it is to make it down there and mingle, feeling gorgeous and observed.

We sipped bitter virgin concoctions and bubbled with months and years, births and deaths, unborn embryos, drug trips, and the tiny triumphs of everyday. You were there, Violet, wandering in and out of the decadent courses, the sex we’d had together, with others, and inside our minds. The conversation weaved towards my life; I explained how I was in a place of happiness; of resilience, of energy. The subtext was please - please tell me what to do to you, how to give it to you tonight, while I can. I felt giddy and desperate and as self-conscious and confident as the 19-year-old I’d been when we met. You have read that poem, Violet - lasers of vicious yearning.

Whatever we’d covered in that grand ballroom of an evening was fading, but the surreality of escaping with a lover only deepened as we entered the pristine oasis of a hotel room. The white bed a reminder that I was simultaneously wet with want - and bleeding heavily. Michael and I were kissing within seconds, floating again in a vague familiarity of scratchy beard and soft lips and the eye-to-eye clink of two nerds diving into each other. Holding the camera, trying sloppily to show you the meeting of our tongues and hands. You wanted him to worship me, Violet, though you know submission is my default. What I felt at first was the impatience of needing to be naked and trapped under his body.

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