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A girl called me up. I hadn't seen her in months. She was in my neighborhood. It was night.
I took her to a restaurant. She was prettier than I remembered. Sleek and dark. Nice legs. Smooth skin.
She had to be up early in the morning so I drove her back to her place.
Her room was cluttered, but not in a bad way -- it was full of life. Books. Strange art hanging from the ceiling, a sewing machine, two cats, pretty dresses.
We lay down. I held her from behind. I felt soothed.
"I want to take this dress off," she said. "I've been wearing it all day."
So then I kissed her dark nipples. Her breasts were meager but the nipples took care of me.
I looked up from her nipples and she was smiling. Then I kissed her smooth, cool belly. Then I kissed her pussy through her panties. I like to do that--to have that barrier, at least for a moment, to keep me from the prize.
The panties came off. I licked her. I loved it. I love being in there far away from my life.
But she pulled me up to her and said, "I'm impatient." She said it in a good way and got a condom from a drawer next to her bed. All my clothes came off and the condom went on. It was dark in her room and I was hoping it wasn't a condom with spermicide. The last time I had been with her, at least six months before, she had given me a condom with spermicide--a spermicidal condom which makes me think of the words suicidal and homicidal and, anyway, that condom had scorched me. When I had left her I could hardly walk down the street. It did something anti-Pavlovian to me, made me not want to see her again. That and the sex had been fumbling and I had felt embarrassed, not virile. You see, I'm 47 and she's 22 and that fumbling had humiliated me. But this time it went better. I didn't make her come and I wanted some direction from her as to what felt good, but she didn't speak. So I did the best I could. After about 15 minutes I though I might lose my hard-on, so I came. Then we lay there and she seemed happy. I figured she needed a man inside her, she just needed it, even if there was no love. Later, I got dressed and found the condom wrapper. Outside, under a streetlight I saw that it was a normal condom. I felt fine. I drove home. I'll see her again.
There was no love, but I haven't loved anyone in a long time.
Jonathan Ames is the author of the novels I Pass Like Night, The Extra Man, and Wake Up, Sir!, and the essay collections What's Not to Love?, My Less Than Secret Life, and I Love You More Than You Know. His next book, a graphic novel, The Alcoholic, with artwork by Dean Haspiel, will be published in 2008 by DC Comics.
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