by Ana G. Rhein
(04/16/03)
The miniature box arrives with the afternoon batch of campus mail, unmarked. It is after lunch time, and she is exhausted, too tired to even drive herself home. In spite of the deceitful brilliance out her window, there is a chill that seeps in through her skin, igniting her bones with ice. Glancing into the empty office...is she being watched? Lately the paralyzing grip of paranoia follows her about, but she slowly unwraps the package.
It reveals a small plug, a sex toy. With quickened breath, she stands, embarrassed and blushed. She looks out the window...toward her door...at the two-way mirror. She is alone. Who is this from?
Resenting her body's immediate arousal...hardened nipples press against her thin brassiere, exposed through the layer of her sheer silken shirt. She ignores the warmth between her legs. Her body lowers back into the chair. In a disgruntled mood, she carefully takes out the anal toy. Barely holding it between her fingers and her thumb, she examines it. Two inches long, half an inch wide and heavy, it is the vibrating kind. Turning it round and round, then holding it on her open palm, she notices it lacks a switch. It apparently can only be operated with a remote
control.
The operating gadget has not been included with the anonymous gift.
Hmm, she thinks...this could be fun. Then the fantasy stops abruptly as she realizes it could have been sent by anyone. The faces of several men come to mind, and she feels filthy. That there is more than one man possibly willing to play this game with her is a disgusting thought.
Each of these men, one of them her husband, is worthy of her lust. But none really know her; they only know the slice that is needed for their
lives.
The perfect photograph, the perfect fantasy, the pages and pages of words, the distracting game...sighing, she takes the box in her hand, and notices a note...call me, it says. It is a cursive that she does not recognize.
She would know her husband's writing, and her long ago lover's, and her so-called editor's, or her broker's, and the list goes on. She is
suddenly grateful her agent is a woman. What the heck? It could be from a woman. But she thinks the gift is from someone else, the one least expected. Her role for him is to be...the perfect lunatic -- or the perfect nothing at all. She has wondered lately if he even exists. There is no real
evidence of him anywhere. She has come to believe that he, and anything pertaining to him, is only an invention, a delusion, an auditory
hallucination. And sporadically, a visual one.
So she calls, and casually he answers. The hallucination comes from the phone, the radio, the television, the coffee maker.
"It's me."
"Hey you...."
"I got the gift."
He laughs. That far away laughter that resonates in her body, it's almost haunting -- "Put it on."
"No."
"Aw, come on."
The plug is on her hand, moist now from her sweaty palm, "mm...no really, I can't."
"You can do it."
Feeling surprisingly uncomfortable...she insists, "I don't want to."
"Fair enough, but I wanted to see you today."
"Really?"
"Yes."
"Today?"
"Only if you're wearing it when we meet."
Speechless for the first time with him, she says nothing.
"I'm busy right now," he continues, "I'll meet you in an hour at the library."
She wants to talk, but cannot.
"See you soon. Stay warm." And he hangs up.
One hour? the drive alone will take half that time. Lifting the receiver of her phone, warm from the recent conversation, she holds it to her ear. One call to decline, or three to proceed.
First dialing, "I'll be off campus for the afternoon. Please cancel my appointments."
Second, "I have an emergency meeting. Please pick up the children today."
Third, a long distance call across the Atlantic to her confidant and mentor, old man Bishop Ferdi. On voice mail, "Forgive me Father, for I am about to sin. I'll call later to confess."
Down the hall in the sterile restroom stall, she rubs the plug with the cocoa butter lotion that is always in her bag. The white cream looks like come, oozing, dripping between her fingers. The heat of her hand liquefies it, like the sex juices of the yoni stage, thin and watery.
Within the confines of the stall she pulls up her skirt, pulls down her underwear and garter belt -- they press, encircling her thighs. Leaning
her forehead on the thin wall, she parts her legs slightly. She touches her pussy. It's dry. She's cold. Softly she rubs her clit, then daringly lunges her finger into the warmth of her vagina. There she finds her wetness and brings it out. Taking the plug, she inserts it into her cunt then quickly brings it out and stabs her anus with it. Swallowing a scream, she whispers in a pressured tone, "There we go," then regains her composure.
After washing herself, she looks at the image on the mirror and feels so far away from the woman smirking back. There is always in her two women at least, one desperate and bewildered who feels lost in a crowd, and another who enters a room gently smiling, always smiling...presenting only eagerness, curiosity and simplicity, concealing her helplessness. She wonders which will come forth today.
On the drive to the library she listens to Jimmy Hendrix, and thinks of nothing at all.
Emerging from the car, she feels on the verge of coming undone, of indulging in absolute madness, crazed by anticipation. Oddly enough, it does not feel sexual. Denial.
He is sitting with pages sprawled about him at the back most table behind the stacks. She is torn between grabbing those pages and hugging them to her and smelling them and reading them all at once. His words, having been forever denied. Or simply reaching out and touching his hair -- she does nothing except to smile, feeling weak with gratitude, utterly joyous at the sight of him and of those pages. She's fearful of crying. The man smiles radiantly, and she laughs, realizing they are both just happy to be there.
Sitting across the table from him, immediately she grabs a page and reads. For the moment nothing else matters.
He calls her name -- startled she realizes he had never called her name out before, and then she jolts up as she feels the vibrating inside her. Damn. She'd forgotten about the plug. Like a tampon, intrusive for a few minutes and then gone.
Gasping, inhaling she mutters, "Oh...no...don't."
Smiling, looking at her, he does not stop. She can't stop herself from looking right back at him. The man lures her to take in every ounce of him. All that she recalls tenfold, oh -- so much more of it.
Hazy, green gray eyes, they pierce and caress at the same time. Her breathing becomes shallow as she tightens her sphincter once then twice then rhythmically. Uncomfortable, she crosses her legs, and then the vibrating stops, leaving her numb. Looking around, she realises there is nothing to look for, nothing to look at, just him.
"How are you?" he asks.
"I'm fine." His hair is much shorter than she recalls, leaving only his pronounced facial features to get lost in. That slightly skewed way he holds his mouth, the indentation on his chin, and then she looks down. It's his hands that have always come to mind.
Again he turns the plug on, as he talks about this or that, and then nothing at all. Strangers, passers-by would never detect what he is doing to her body.
"Please stop," she begs as her legs squeeze tight, trying desperately to stop the vibrations. The tightening of her butt cheeks and her pussy only makes her want to hump -- against anything...the chair...the books. If only she had worn jeans, tight jeans, then she could make herself come.
His middle finger starts to rub back and forth on the table. His other hand is caressing the papers, leafing through them, touching them. It's his hands, his touch, always at a distance, separated by layers of fabric. She imagines her wetness clinging to his fingers as they rub her. As they torment the spot that would drive her crazy.
Her hand holds her forehead, she longs for her long tresses of hair, her protective veil, now in a drawer -- braided, her dismembered limb. A slight moan escapes, and then the plug stops.
"Fuck," she says.
"What's wrong?"
He continues to sort through the pages as he talks. She cannot hear a thing he says. All that matters is his hands on those pages. His knuckles, the size of them, his fingers....
He puts both hands flat on the table and states, "Couldn‘t this be enough?"
She forces her eyes away from his hands, feeling dizzy with desire, and oddly still...not so sexual.
She agrees to whatever he might have said, as he looks at her gently. She looks at him dazed, then feels the numbing of the vibrator again. He reaches with one hand, takes her index finger, and rubs the top of it with his middle finger. She sighs, her vision fixated on his face, her mouth slightly open, softly panting, periodically swallowing. Swimming in her wetness, her body aches. Her face twists, her eyes shiny and dull, her age evident as she denies the sounds of her orgasm. It has no other way to show itself, other than the creases, the expressions, the facial statements of pleasure.
Abruptly she hisses "shut it off." And he does. She giggles, he laughs. Standing, she whispers, "You were fantastic," then walks away, knowing that the plug was squeezed out in the midst of it all...she has come unplugged. In silent prayers she begs to just make it the restroom.
After rinsing it off in warm soapy water, she throws the plug into her bag and forces herself to not return to him to demand that other half. At that moment, she feels capable of doing anything to have that magic gadget in her possession.
Instead, from the truth that only distance provides, she looks at him, they smile at each other. From afar she waves good-bye, and walks out into the biting wind that makes her shortened hair lash about in vengeance.
Walking to her car she feels silly, sheepishly triumphant.
Her cell phone rings....
It is Bishop Ferdi in Rome, "Ana, is something wrong?"
She giggles. "Nothing Bishop, not one thing. It was just a fantasy. I have not sinned."
