six elaborates...

I’m always surprised at how light it still is when I leave work and head through the mobbed Times Square area, the countless visitors to the city that never sleeps seeing it lumbering through the last throes of the day. My manager (the seventh one I’ve had in five years, which could tell you something about my employment history) sneered at me in the elevator, lips curling into a lewd smile only shared between men: “Dude, there is some fucking hot skin out there.”

He smelled of his mid-afternoon cigarette, where he’d been surveying the bared thighs of the girls trotting slow and timid tourist steps while they looked up at the lights that somehow still outshone the afternoon sun. He resembled a shorter and less-bulldog-jowled-and-less-bulb-nosed Nixon, and I quickly scribbled “Tricky Dick” in my mind, imagining his leering eyes slithering up and down every attractive girl’s slender body.

Cutting my way through the slower foot-traffic, weaving past the gridlocked cars, I took the long way to the subway station on 42nd. The air hit my neck slightly cool; I knew I’d started to sweat a little from the quick-but-long strides characteristic of a New-York-speed walk. Heading through the doors and down into the station, I made good time, listening for the train, deciding whether to hit the shuttle or the 7: I was in luck, catching the final moments before the door closed.

I emerged from the subway into the afternoon sun, fading but still strong, setting but still bright, the crisp air tasting pure and bitter at the same time. And even as I got home, my keys and phone dispensed from my pockets and placed on top of the hallway table, my bag and jacket left in a crumpling pile on the floor, I felt this strange in-between-ness of hunger and lust, and want and need, and so as I heard Smarty Pants’ iTunes belching out some random ’90s pop music I licked my lips, began unbuttoning my shirt, and confirmed in my mind just how much I enjoy fucking with the daylight streaming through the bedroom windows.

It takes me a while to estimate what time it is; the indiscriminate gray of morning washing pale through the windows and filling the room. I know that I lie pinned to the bed, my left arm under her neck, my other draped over her body, hand stuck between the squashed cleavage of her breasts. Her back is to me, her ass out with her legs curled, and my body contoured to press against it.

It’s a time to slowly take stock in the memories of the night before; before their intensity fades like watching a Polaroid in reverse, the colors and detail blooming in reverse, the inky darkness swallowing everything up before your eyes.

She had come hard against me, legs finally shaky and unable to stay balanced on her knees as her hips gave way in my hands. The explosion of her hair half flung in the air and half clung to the sweat on her back below me. The tightness of her pussy squeezed further in rhythmic pulses matching the trembling of her body, and it made me cum, my body continuing to thrust into her body as it grew limp.

My hands had gotten so used to the half-slap-half-grab of her ass, and I used it to spur her on. She shot her feet upward, balancing her legs on her knees and pointing her toes to the ceiling, propped up on her elbows and pushing back against me. It was about the entry and exit now, my cock slippery wet and sliding in and out of her pussy with ease. And with friction.

The last kiss was symbolic as much as it was physical, her mouth just on my cock and my lips still wet with the slickness of her pussy, and it was clear what was next. Making out on the couch, tearing each other’s clothes off and placing our mouths on each other, the next step was to leave the crumpled mess and get to the bed.

And before that was the conversation we had while sitting on the couch, the television volume so low it murmured in the background. It was a potpourri of topics, the kinds of talks that waltz from the banal to the reflective. I would start a new job, soon (yes, again!) and it prompted a look at the recent history of our wanderings. She’d been to med school, tried her hand at being an inner-city grade school teacher, and worked for a pharmaceutical research laboratory.

There’s the most recent of modern history— one that we don’t talk about as much, or as often. I’m partially to blame, and I believe I’m still trying to understand exactly how I feel about her current gig of providing a body rub and a (penis) tug on a price per hour basis. It’s lucrative, easy, and in her mind the best use of her youth and looks without the strain of a real job. And whoever the strange men were, at the end of the night she was mine.

“That’s enough, right?” we had silently asked each other.

And just like all myths of New York City winters, we wouldn’t dare venture out to find the truth; instead, digging in, staying close, and waiting for the Spring thaw, where these troubles would slowly melt, fade, and disappear, like the dirt-encrusted glaciers on the street sidewalks.

We cling to each other like the dim salt stains of winter slowly creeping their way up the hem of my pant legs and up and over the toe and upper of her Eskimo-inspired boots. The embrace, now, is just part of the leading edge of that saline line— the chalky crusty white residue that stiffens soft fabric to thick crinkly paper.

There seems to be a menagerie of emotions fitting in the seemingly impossible space between our bodies. There’s an underlying glow of green jealousy, a flash of white hot anger, moody purples of regret, and pale blue sadness. These are glancing shots across naked skin, living and dying in the exhaled air burning out of nostrils flared as we’re bathed now in the deepest crimson of lust.

Hands flat against the small of her back, curving along the rounds of her ass and drawing the contact of bare breasts against my chest by way of her hips first, stomach next, and only after the arching of her back subsides do our mouths meet, and with lips and tongue pulled, tugged, and bitten, I’m emptied of all other thoughts.

There’s enough space, in an instant, to raise my hand up and I’m able to hold my forefinger and thumb two centimeters apart, with her nipple between them, and then press. Squeeze.

Hard.

Hard enough to spring tears; her face wincing at the pain, a retaliatory bite on my lower lip before she gives way, and snaps her head to the side. My mouth slides past her cheek and I taste the trail of salt rolling down. And that’s how it starts.