About Yvonne by Donna Masini

Author:Donna Masini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

.11.

The other day I read something Yeats said about the ethical impulse always breaking the ethical law.

That afternoon I finally got Brian into bed.

It was different from what I’d expected—what with everything that had led to it. Friendship. Desire. Whatever. When we were finally lying together, Brian inside me, gently moving in and out, me holding him, sweaty against him in the way I’d so often imagined, it almost felt less real than it had in my head. When you’re alone, imagining, you can bring all your concentration to bear on what he feels like beneath you, inside you, above you. When he’s there you get diverted thinking about what he’s thinking, how he’s responding, what he’s feeling, wanting, what your body feels like to him. You monitor and modulate his arousal. Your arousal. All that stuff. It’s much more complicated. In some respects, the other person always gets in the way.

Brian’s a quiet lover. Not like Mark. Mark fucks emphatically. Talking talking talking. Ordering me around. Bend. Kneel. Lift. Suck. I climb and move all over him. I feel like I’m a part of something. I couldn’t tell if it was me coming or him coming when I finally started to come and despite what people say about it—about knowing when it happens—I still often confuse our bodies at that moment. What’s moving, spasming, contracting. Which one of us.

With Brian it’s different. I mean it’s lovely, but I’m as quiet as he is while we’re fucking. It’s almost like I’m afraid to disturb him. Afraid to say anything to break his concentration. The way they say you should never wake a sleepwalker. His sounds of appreciation and excitement are low and deep and genuine. But quiet, which is strange for someone so talkative and generally boisterous. It’s like being in church, a library.

He keeps his eyes closed and I feel like I want to bang him against the bed to crack him open. Let me in, I remember saying when we were making love, and I know he had no idea what I meant. He’s a puzzle. It surprises me because I feel so connected to him, attached. When my mouth closes over his cock it feels right in there. I feel I could touch every part of him. Reach inside him. But it’s harder than I thought it would be. Harder to get inside.

I was thinking I’d have to train him, bring him out. The way Mark did for me. But it’s not the same thing.

“It seems like you want to be dominated,” he said after we made love again the next afternoon. He said it in a disinterested sort of way. Anthropologically. It was funny, him spelling it out like that. We were on his floor. He ran his hand down my back, pushed away a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal he’d been reading to me.

“I’m not like that, Terry,” he said.

“It’s okay. I’ll teach you.” I climbed back on top of him, but there was a gulf I couldn’t cross.

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