Maybe it's just a question of an inch or two

Yes: I see you nod.

An inch less -- there, maybe, where your finger barely grazed my side. Grazed me as if by accident, as I lie here in bed, as I lie where I have let you lead me, where I once tried to lead a girl but now am led. An inch less where your finger barely stroked my side and there would be a curve, a curve dipping closer to my center, as if a potter's wheel had spun a little faster, as if a hand had lingered on the clay a second longer.

Or an inch more. There, say, down just a little from your touch. An inch more there and, like the slope of a gently rising hill, you'd find a curve rising to my tilted hip, like the bent wood of some ancient harp.

Or there, where perhaps it is best if you don't touch. Not yet. But there, above my heart, where your tongue on my small nipple would burn so. An inch or two more, rising as if an inner blooming could no longer be contained, as if a swell of feeling rose from deep within me. Soft as a cloud might be to touch, as two clouds.

But do not touch now. Stay instead, leaning there against the headboard, your broad shoulders resting there as if the hard V of your torso had been carved from that wood, as if it were the bite of the chisel and blows of the mallet that made you appear tonight. As if maybe that's why your arm (the color of oak after the steel's bright edge has cut) lies there beside me, waiting. Stay leaning there, so that I will not know if the pale brown bulge of your bicep is just as smooth and just as warm as I suspect, or if my touch would feel the rough burrs and cool shavings that a chisel left. Stay there, so that the shadow falls across your face, so I can't see your features, so I can't know you. Let's keep a borderland of cool white sheet between us, for a moment, for this moment.

"An inch or two," you say.

And leaning closer to me, now you show me: Index fingers held an inch apart.

"This much?" you ask.

And, already knowing the answer, you reach still farther, stretching your two fingertips towards the crown of my head. I feel you leaning, looming over me. Feel you though our bodies still don't touch.

Tensing, I try to press my back firm to the sheet beneath, backing away, backing away. I close my eyes.

"This distance, the space between my two fingers," you say.

Two fingers, an inch apart. Such a small distance that all I feel is a single gentle pressure. One spot -- right there, just where an infant's still-forming bones eventually knit together, where now that we've grown, we adults have become all-too-solid, closed. Where perhaps it may be time, past time, to let myself be open, to be re-opened, in order to be made new, to be renewed. I feel you touching me, yes. Pressing me.

"Ah," you say. "Ah, good."

Is it just one finger that you touch to me, like the finger tracing curves along my side?

"No," you whisper. "No, two. But close, so close you feel just one. A question of an inch, not even two. Trivial things, these inches-or-two, you see. Illusory things, these touches."

No, not illusion, for I feel.

"Not illusion, no," you say. "But not quite everything. The net of nerves aren't woven tight enough just here, where I touch, for you to feel the two. You need a finer-woven web of feeling, of sensation, to understand the shape of some things. But wait."

It is not until you begin to comb your fingers through my hair, that I can feel: Yes, oh yes there are two. We two. Your two fingers. Fingers, moving the way a hand hung over a rowboat's side might barely part the water, moving beyond the power of my eyes to see, like the way that a spring wind riffles through a field of wheat. Is that a ripple your one finger is stirring, a wake rejoining behind; is that a bending of the ripened heads of grain stirred by your other finger, before swaying back to their well-ordered rows?

Or is it just two fingers, toying idly in my hair? Combing down, then resting for a moment, here, where a pulse beats beneath thin skin. Feeling: A beat, slowing? Calmer? Or not.

You won't say what you feel, touching me there, won't tell me what you diagnose.

Nor will I tell myself.

Now your fingers slowly trace more lines, more lines: The outline of my face, a ridge of bone. Cheekbones. Brows. Stroking one time, twice. As if considering, contemplating.

"Here," you say, "Here, it is not even a question of an inch. Here, fractions of an inches are an issue, fractions: an eighth, a sixteenth, thirty-second. So small a difference."

So small, I think.

Fingers so lightly touching. I feel them, but barely, Feel them move the way a mesmerist's hands might move, soothing, curing.

And as you stroke I also (or perhaps instead) now feel the breeze from the window, the dancing edge of muslin curtain floating. Lying on my back, is it the touch of fingers, or the cloth, or maybe the breeze that now I feel?

Or maybe muscles tensing, rigid. A bowl bowed outward, the small of my back pressed tight against the sheet. This trembling counterpoint: The lightness of the moving air, your stroking fingers like a treble line of melody against the deep bass groan of the dipping bedsprings as you shift your weight. Your implacable presence looming beyond where I can look, dare look.

Perhaps the shift of weight will tip a balance. Perhaps the play of breeze across my skin, the brushing of a finger, brushing so lightly, a touch so delicate it might almost sink beneath a surface. Such a small distance. Not even an inch.

Fingertips: Two, now, a symmetric dance. My right brow traced, my left. Cheekbones, jaws. Fingertips: Four now stroking my cheek. Six. Now all your fingers, Trailing now over my skin -- or maybe touching, just a little deeper. Maybe a touch beneath the surface, contact with something more essential.

"Do you feel?" you ask.

A nod so small no one else can see.

"We are layers," you say. "Do I touch the outermost, or is it the next one down? Is it the farthest humming electron of my skin that's touching yours? Or do I merge a bit, the smallest bit, with you? Maybe I touch you deeper down, my finger's touch not the first layer of you, not the second. My finger's touch, here ..."

Along my cheekbone, yes. Along my jaw.

"A fraction of inch less there, that's all you'd need. "So little, we could barely measure," your voice a murmur. "So little that it would need only the slightest pressing of a finger, like the extra second that the potter's hand rests on the spinning clay."

That's all. So small.

Small as the shiver traveling up my spine, pressed flat and hard to the mattress though I still am. An undulation, a half-formed "S", a tiny wave from root to crown. Shivering, as if you touched my shoulder at the bar. As you did touch, in fact, and not so long before. And as I shivered.

I'd walked past the place once, twice. And finally, the third time, heart pounding, I pushed through the door, sure that just as I turned I saw the knowing smirk of a passing girl, a look that nearly, nearly made me flee, as I had fled before. It is a place that's known, after all. That's how I knew. A kind of place I hadn't dared to go before. Dared now only because this was a strange part of town, and I was feeling strange.

I had barely two hours before tried to peer into the steam clouding my mirror, trying to see my face, my real face, now that she'd swept herself out of my life, swept out like the swoop of her arm gathering her nylons from the shower rod behind me. Tried to see if an empty hollowness I felt within was visible without, tried to see if hot, hot water washes the bitterness of certain words away. A cold night, maybe. Or maybe I felt only the chill from all the hours of drizzle seeping from the fog today, the fog rolling in from the sea beyond, the fog that hid my steps until I'd walked past once, and twice before I turned. In the fog: Violet, ruby lights flashing, caught in the corner of an eye, the glow from dark windows only glimpsed before the blowing drops make me tear up, before the chill wind demands I bow before it. Violet and ruby sparkling in the dark wet of the foggy street.

The warmth of the entranceway momentary relief. I paused in that cramped airlock between the chill of the streets and -- and what?A step.

Dark in here, and warm; a wet warmth that makes glasses and mirrors steam. I see a smear of violet neon in the window, low lights glowing along a bar, running half the length of a wall: dimness beyond. Slowly, focus comes, slowly my heart thuds just a little less.There are two men, chatting, two feet away. One glances, smiles. I hear the sing-song of his voice, though not his words. I see him glance and look away and glance again, see the liquid dark brown of his eyes. The bartender approaches, pausing a moment with the others, laughing an instant before continuing to me.

Half-swallowed words, an order croaked out. Waiting, I just stare ahead, as if interested in the rows of bottles gleaming, the mirrored gaps, as if wearing blinders. Waiting, I shake. No tab, no thanks, I tell the bartender when he at last returns. I tell him to keep the change, waving fingers to leave a too-large tip, get a flashing grin, a speculative glance, before he spins away. Gulping a first sip, I almost decide to run. Almost.

But don't. I see from out the corner of my eye the man who had tried to catch my eye before; see him glancing again, smiling, as if to invite me over, as if the two of them and me could become three, just chatting, shooting the breeze, the easy-going way that any three at loose ends on a foggy night might do. I sipped.

A quiet night. Hardly a soul inside. Safe. As always I have wanted it to be safe for me.

And so, the feel of your hand on my shoulder is a shock.

You'd come from where? The dimness, in the back? The cold outside? Was it a shadow that I felt first, before your hand, or was it a chill? I cannot say. Perhaps both. Perhaps just a sense that, even more than I was in that instant before I pushed through that door, I am now poised for something big. A step across the threshold. You knew I shook, you must have known. So: from where did you come? Shadows? The chill?

"I'll never tell," you whisper now.

Your fingers still trace their lines, their lines on me, their hypnotic never-ending lines on me.

Were I able to turn my head now, lying here, I'd read what in your face, I wonder. If I had turned my head, there in the bar, I'd have read what?

"You didn't turn," you say.

"I was afraid to turn. I am afraid."

"I know." A long pause. "But not only afraid."

No, not only afraid.

Now, you lift your fingers, now you rest your hand there, on my right shoulder. There, just as you had done before.

"I feel you," you say. "I feel the way you shrink from the touch of my hand here, how you shrank when I came up behind you there at the bar, laid my hand here. I feel, just as I'd felt, the shivering, the S shaped wave of need, as well. I feel, I felt, how that wave rose up from deep within, how it rolled up and up and up along your spine. That's how I knew. How you know."

"How I know?"

"Shh," you say. "Not now."

For now, again, your fingers dance.

"A question of an inch or two," you say. No more. "The tiniest affair, so small a change. And yet, it seems so difficult."

A pause

"But it only seems hard."

Fingertips, two fingertips, stroking down arms, stroking back up a slightly different path along my skin, stroke down again, the valleys where my arms, press tightly, almost fearfully, against my sides.

"An inch or two here," you say. "Inch or two there."

Fingertips stroking: Approach each other, do not meet, then curve away. Fingertips tracing an hourglass on me.

"When I first touched your shoulder," you say, "You shrank, and then you grew, you rose to meet my hand. At my touch, a shivering you couldn't stop, a wave of what: Desire, need. Knowledge perhaps." Knowledge?

Again, fingertips trace those lines.

"You know," you say.

A bedspring creaks, a sagging beneath me. Tightening muscle resists the way a shifting surface suddenly demands that I must slide. Palms pressed hard to the sheet, I hold myself from sliding. You move, I feel you moving towards me though I will not look, I won't, not now. Another creak, another dip, the other side of me. And now, I feel you above me, large and inevitable, one knee grazing my hip, your knee just touching as you straddle me, kneeling above me, tall enough so that your shadow falls across me, so that the muslin curtain floating in breeze momentarily enwraps you, momentarily unveils.

Yes. Now I look.

And think: The shadows, then. It was from the shadows you emerged when you walked over to me, when you came from behind, from out of the blue, when you came and laid your hand on me.

I shiver as a tiny shift of weight means now I feel both of your knees, just barely touching me. I feel (or perhaps I merely sense) your calves alongside me. Shivering, I think: Maybe it was the cold then, not the shadow. Maybe it is from the chill that you have come.

And now, finally, I look into your eyes. Eyes like a starry sky, a summer night. I see the velvet dark of night, the distant stars, so far their color is palest blue, near-white. Ah, and the longer that I look the clearer does it seem that all I need to do is lift a hand to touch them. All I need to do.

It's not an act of will, and yet, my hand is rising, rising. Rising to meet yours, to feel your thumb brush the inside of my wrist, to feel your fingers gently close to encircle me, to trap my too-thin arm and hold me there, where I have nearly touched your face.

"A question of an inch or two," you say. "The smallest distance. Will you?"

Did I nod?

My hand, held loose, enwrapped, lost in your grasp now gentle squeezing. Squeezing with maybe just force enough to press pliable clay a final, invisible measure, press it towards a shape seen in a mind's eye. Same pressure now, moving down my forearm, as your hands stroke downwards, wrist to elbow. Elbow to shoulder.

My other hand. My other arm.

Now, one hand there, just where my arm and shoulder meet, your other hand reaches to the other side of me. You press. Firmer, a little firmer than the pressing of your hands along my arms.

Heels of hands press lightly, sink easily to my sides. And pressing again, each hand cupped, each hand containing the whole curve of ribs, back to chest, I feel you stroking downwards, downwards towards my waist. The gentle pressure of your hands increasing just the slightest bit as they travel down. Then pressing easing as you reach my hips, following the curve, forming it.

A shift of weight as you twist, so that your two hands now hold one leg, my left leg. Two hands holding, pressing, stroking downwards along a leg somehow I'd lifted just so you could reach. And as you let me go, and as I feel the briefest dip of bedsprings as you twist to my right, you take my other leg now in your hands and again I am feeling the pressing of your hands, the movement of your hands

I don't look as you touch; your touch is overwhelming, as overwhelming as you yourself are, looming over me. Your touch making me shake. But now, my right leg sinking back to the bed, feeling your half turn, feeling you lean towards me -- now, you become too much, too much a presence and now I need to look.

And now I see, now I feel the first brush of what I'd feared.

You rise and arc: A scimitar. Nested in a dark forest between your legs, curving, yearning outward. Towards me. In the dim of the moonlight, glowing: violet, ruby. As you approach, I feel the heat of you, how firm you are, how you burn, will burn, how you demand. How you need.

How I do, as well.

Now I reach. Now I hold you, feel the velvet of your skin, the hardness beneath; now my fingertip traces a line, that curving arc of the bottom of your shaft; now my fingers hold you, pressing you gently as they stroke. Now I feel you shiver. Feel you.

I feel your palms now on my chest, feeling how as you've risen, grown towards me, so now I grow, so now I rise, swelling to meet your touch. But not down where your thighs entrap me, not down where I had in my time risen to meet a different kind of lover's touch.

Rising here, here above my heart, where I feel the touch, the gentle touch of your hands on my chest, on my breasts. Feeling a warmth of my own, rising from within, from deep within -- call it my heart, yes. Call it my heart. I feel my heart expanding in the warmth as your hands cup my breasts.

Still you move, now the weight of you begins to hold me, I am bearing you on my hips, holding you now, as you approach, your fingertips on my face, most delicate work yet.

The smallest distance, yes.

Gentle pressing along the curve of jaw, a cheekbone's ridge. Touch here, there. A arc, like this, traced with a finger. Another.

Finger tip down my nose, finger tip tracing the edge of my upper lip, right side, left side. Finger laid lightly, oh so lightly on the swelling softness of a lower lip.

And then, waiting. Waiting. You fingers combing through my hair, fanning outwards, holding me.

I feel your breath now on my face, feel you coming closer, closer, closer still.

That moment, wondering if you will lean in that final inch, knowing and not knowing that lips were meant to touch. That moment, beating heart, shuddering breath. Waiting.

The first touch, light as butterfly might touch, alighting. For just an instant, I feel how your lips are slightly rough, pressing against the smooth wet of mine, but you keep pressing still. Your head tilts just a bit, or mine, so we may fit all the closer, closer still.

Your hand slides down my side. My lips part and I feel the probing of your tongue, feel you in me, feel you in inviolable me, feel my hips arching towards you as your hand slides past waist, along the curve, pulling me closer.

As your belly presses mine, I feel you, hard and warm, feel you pressing a shallow valley in my now-softer skin, your burning, purpling head below my navel. My hands now on your lean hips, feeling the ropes of your muscles tensing, shifting over steel-hard bone, each muscle sliding smoothly over others as if washed in the finest, fragrant oil. I feel you lifting hips, feel your chest sliding against my breasts, feel the bed dip, hear the creaking of springs.

My hands trace urgent circles on your waist, your hips, your thighs, feeling your muscles swell with power, poised.

And now you come to me. Like a wave rolling in from the center of the ocean, unstoppable. I feel your body's weight, heavier now. I feel a pressing between my legs, inevitable, the wave rolling, pushing, pushing. But not crashing on this shore.

For as I feel you enter where surely you couldn't, where I am sure I feel you enter, where reason, where a lifetime says you couldn't enter, I know (deeper than any feeling) that you are slicing in towards my core. Knowing this, from the feel of you, like the thrilling shock of silk or satin parting, like the way a razor's lightest touch makes you shiver in the first instant before the welling of red tells you you've been hurt. But now, no welling of the red, only you moving, moving into me. Like a wave rolling, a giant wave, an ocean's width of heaving energy in a single rolling wave.

A glowing ball, iridescent, expanding as you move in me, until, almost unbearable, it vanishes like a bubble, flash of rainbow; then comes the next, the next. I feel a thick sweet flow, like golden honey, moving like the bow-wave of a ship before your head, flowing through secret channels I had never felt before, a warming, thick sweetness.

To breath now, I must gasp, it seems. Must shudder.

Beneath the weight of you, I cannot move. And yet I need to move, must move. Beneath the surging of you into me, wave on wave, I can only be carried.

I feel you, with my arms enwrapped, my legs enwrapped, around you, hard and urgent, muscles shivering as gather and stretch, driving you onward, inward. I feel how you burn, how you throb in me.

Feeling waves iridescent, now golden, arise within, expand, I feel them grow to fill me, to the farthest ends, so that fingertips clutching you are aflame so that the ends of my hair fanned in their halo flicker orange and red.

I feel you moving, moving, feel a strange electricity that neither shocks or burns, yet still can make us shiver. Can make us tremble.

I feel your muscles bulge and stretch, feel you moving beyond any power of mine to stop you, moving against the inside of my thighs.

I feel your hands grasping me tightly.

Feel you moving, moving, waves of the ocean surging into me, easing back, surging again. Feel you more urgent, more urgent still.This cannot be, this cannot be, I think. My hands fall to the bed. Oblivious, you shake, I feel you shaking.

Feel you exploding.

I feel you pumping, pumping, pumping onto me. Into me.