Eclipse

For the second time in a week, I’m trying to meet up with a Man From The Internet.

This is because in the new year, my only real resolution is to Find A Lover. After a protracted and inconveniently timed text flirtation that frequently made me slick in the middle of my work day, a hot young fuckboy chef blew me off and left me sitting alone in my favorite bar with a cranberry cider, waiting, thinking lustfully of his dark eyes and beautiful wrists and the slope of his bare side in the pictures he sent me before he disappeared for good, having stood me up, a true ghost. But he did not dim my determination.

Four nights later, I’m sitting in the same bar, off to the side, watching people stream in and out.

It is the one year anniversary of the day my twin flame and I fell suddenly, breathlessly back in love during a total lunar eclipse. I did not purposefully make a date for this day, but when the stars aligned, it seemed like a good thing.

My twin flame and I had watched the edges of the moon turn black together—my heart radiating an energy I only ever felt with him. Our relationship ended the very next eclipse season, our breathless wild attraction burning away in the revelations and pressures of the cosmos. The ending changed me, and a deep dark wound grew in my core. I have not been the same after eclipse season. 

The weight of losing him sits heavy in my chest, even now, a gray stone wall built over my heart that keeps me away from certain kinds of hopes, from certain kinds of quiet languorous dreams, keeps me away from memories of his low voice and his tentative suggestions of what we could do to one another, given time, given space to be alone, finally. We have time, he’d say to me. But we did not have time, and he is gone, and I am no longer looking for love. 

I am looking for A Lover. It is another day, with another cider, waiting for another man who gives me an interesting tingle in a different part of my body. (Never my heart, I tell myself. Not again.) I don’t believe the intensity I felt with my twin flame will ever come to me again. I do not think I want it to come again, nor anything else like it. I think I am done with things that are fragile. 

But I have a sense about this man I am currently waiting on—we’ll call him Z—like the universe is whispering: pay attention, be astonished, pay attention, be astonished, wait for something good. I was drawn to him immediately when I found his profile on the website I’ve joined for the vague purpose of “moving on,” which in my mind means “perhaps fuck some people.”

In his photos, Z has a sweet mischief in his smile, a certain playfulness that makes me want more, and a cute crooked finger in his mouth, and from what I can see of his body, his shirt pulled up over his stomach, I want to run my hands over every inch of him. He is the only man whose profile and pictures draw me in so much that I message him first. The rest of my time is spent watching messages pour in from men that I’m not interested in — too sporty, too pushy, too dominant, too Republican. Sixty-five men that I want nothing to do with. Sixty-five men who want to tell me I’m a naughty girl and convince me to please them wholly. One tells me that he’ll take me for a ride on his tractor and finger me as it vibrates beneath us, hot as a purring tiger. One tells me that he’d like to choke me before he asks me any questions about myself. Z is different — his deft softness comes through to me even in his bio. 

In the bar, I nervously sip my cider, journaling, my loping script smooth and curved, not betraying my soul-shaking anxiety. I have never done this before. I have never done this before. I have never done this before, I write.

I spot Z, half in the doorway, and I’m so flustered that I look away and pretend I haven’t seen him so I can eye him from my spot against the wall. I check to see how my tits look and pull my skirt down and smooth it back over my legs again. I think fleetingly of touching up my Lipstick, but don’t because I know my hands will shake and I’ll fuck it up and look like Courtney Love. 

I’m so surprised Z is actually here that I drop my pen and have to put everything away and somehow act casual and be the chill girl that I never, ever am, never have been, probably never will be. He is tall and dressed like a bit of a punk, patches, buttons, a wallet chain, and the inner teenage me who wanted to be wanted by boys who stitched studs on their black jean jackets is instantly lustful. Teenage me wants to suck his cock in the bar under the table. Teenage me wants to act out her slut fantasies. Adult me just wants to make it through this moment without puking from stress. I eye him stealthily.

He gets a beer, walks over to me, and says, “Hi,” and I say, “Hi.” He sits down, and we chitchat, eyeing each other closely. My hand ends up on his arm, his hand on my leg, and still we chitchat. I’m talking when I see the way he’s looking at me, and I pause, mid-word—he surprises me by coming close and kissing me suddenly. We twist there in the moment, his lips hot on mine, soft, questioning, searching for something, and I’m searching, too. A sensation, a breath, a certain electricity. We both find something, and then find it again, our lips playing together.

“Hey,” he says, “Do you want to go back to my house?”

I look at him, that spark in his eye, and think of his warm hand on my thigh and the trickle of slipperiness between my legs during our first kiss. Everything feels right. 

“Yes,” I answer. We smile at each other, tentative but seeking.

Z leads me out to his car, and we kiss for a moment in the night air. It’s January, and everything is cold and still. When we get out of the car at his house, he turns the key in the lock and pulls me inside immediately. Before the door is even closed, my arms are around his neck and we are full scale off the rails making out. He tastes so good I want to eat him completely and I feel ravenous, like I’ve never eaten something this sweet, this filling. He swings the door closed and we stand there pressed together, his big hands on my hips. I feel a sense of giving in, giving up, surrendering to this moment in the most luscious way. We break apart, both looking tentatively excited. My head is reeling.

He catches my eye for a moment—that smile, that mischievous do-you-wanna on his face. Oh fuck, yes. I want to. I want to. I can’t not smile at him when he looks at me like that.

We come back together in a wild burst, my arms winding around his neck, our lips exploring each other’s taste and soft tender places, his hands all over me, feeling my curves under my black dress, running his palms over the swells of my breasts. He smells so good and I want to tear him apart and ravage him - my body wants him, wants his beautiful body, to take and kiss and bite and suck. I want every bit of him, this gorgeous stranger who I’ve known for 90 minutes. Less than the length of a rom-com. I want to get to know every part of him and all the things he desires deep down, maybe things he’s never said out loud - that’s how I want to know him. I want him to tell me what he’s thinking when he looks at me like this, like I’m something unbelievable, an erotic queen.

Z gets on top of me with his hand under my dress, and I rub against his fingers—come here, come to me. He slides one finger in and says, “God, you’re so wet.”

“Yeah,” I say. “For you.” I’ve driven him mad. Z kneels in front of me, pulling my skirt up.

“Come here,” he says, “Fuck, come here.” He pulls me easily to the edge of the couch and has my lacy panties off before I can gasp or giggle or sigh. He looks at me with the do-you-want-me, do-you-wanna, can-I-have-you, come-on face. “You want me to lick you?”

“Fuck,” I say out loud, while in my head the chatter of old wounds comes tearing through. For a moment, I almost say no, frozen between staying behind and moving forward. Is this a feeling I can allow myself to have again, the pure syrup of desire pouring over my entire body. Can I feel myself again? Can I let it happen?

He pauses, running his hands over my thighs, looking up at me lustfully. I think: What do I want? Me, me, me, not the murderers drifting in my past, but me, what do I want? I can feel his breath on my leg and it makes me drip for him. I want what I want. This is who I am now, I think. This is who I’ve always wanted to be.

“Yes,” I say. “Do it. Lick me.” I do not have to tell Z twice. He buries his face in my pussy, tasting, then making thick hot noises of hunger and pleasure and satisfaction at what he’s found there. I lie back, my fingers in his hair, and give myself sweet permission to feel it, feel him, feel this moment that I’ve found for myself. 

I give myself permission to let go of a few wisps of pain that has threaded through me since the day I heard my twin flame’s voice for the last time; to give up the sensation hanging sick in my chest—the poison falling to the bottom of the glass, soaking through the water, soaking through me. I give myself permission to feel good again for at least this one night with this one strange man. I give myself permission to be a slut, only thinking of the heat of his breath on my spread pussy, inhabiting my body deeply for the first time since the end of eclipse season. I give myself permission to feel alive again. Permission to feel the beating of my own heart in my clit, pulsing out at Z, pulsing I want you, I want you, I want you. Permission to pulse with the universe again, no longer out of time, no longer Disconnected.

“Fuck, fuck,” Z says, breathing hard. He darts his tongue in and out of me, wondrously inside me, gloriously everywhere, long sugary licks, hot pinching kisses on my inner thighs, and all the while his starbright, roguish eyes on me, watching every shudder that runs through my being, noting each where, and how long, and how much, delighting in me.

I give myself permission to delight in him, in anything, in the world again. We delight in each other, and somewhere above us, the moon shines, a naive girl listening to my upward gasp.

Photo by Thuanny Gantuss