by Charlotte Tenneyson
(9/14/05)
He wanted to write to her. He had so much to say. His thoughts rattled around in his head and needed to be expressed. Some great little lines of dialog, some haiku poems, some silly comments, all being lost for lack of a way to record them and share them. The keyboard was so daunting and cumbersome, getting in the way of expression, a barrier to the experience, a destroyer of the state of mind and the message.
One day, as he jabbed the delete key one more time to remove an incorrect letter, he noticed his fingers and how they moved. It reminded him of the dexterity that he tried to demonstrate when touching her. He looked for and found the letter N. He caressed it lightly, not pressing down on it, but tracing the edges with his fingernail, as if it were her nipple. He began to think of the N key as her nipple; every time he touched it, he felt that he was touching her. He began to notice how many words had the letter N in them, how many times he could touch her nipple, by proxy, while writing. He anticipated the pleasure of the upcoming words, seeking the next time to press that key.
Once the N key was easy to find, he found the L key and thought about its meaning for him. Lips and licking came to mind. He ran the pad of his finger across the key, enjoying the smoothness, like running his tongue across her lower lip or touching it with a finger. Soon, every time he typed an L, he found himself running the tip of his tongue over his own lower lip, as if teasing hers. And then, there were words that had both N and L in them, and he could experience caressing her nipple while licking her lip. He became eager to write words like "line" and "lingo," and found occasions to insert the terms "lint" and "nuclear" into things he wrote for work.
The third letter that acquired a meaning for him was Y, because he had seen the word "yoni" as part of a description of the female sex organ in some instructions for couples yoga. He found the word lyrical and pleasing, adopting it as his own. And the letter Y, with its appearance of legs held open, or the shape of the place that the legs come together, became another way of touching her, pleasing her, as he wrote. It took dexterity and a long reach, much practice in finding the right way to touch that letter. Sometimes he hit it too hard and got a series of yyyyy, like a cry of pain or annoyance. Other times, he missed the mark, resulting in T or 7, which held no meaning for him. He developed a liking for words ending in LY, experiencing the pleasure of a kiss and a grope all at once. And, if he had the chance to insert "only" into the communication, he reveled in the complexity of moving his hands to stimulate so many parts of her body with only a word.
He gave himself over to the slow sensuality of leisurely seeking out the keys, letting his hands rest gently, patiently, hovering and waiting for the next way to use his fingers for her pleasure. The restraint that he learned in this way was delicious and sweet. He could almost feel her touching him back. He wondered which letters she would select and cherish as she typed, and began to guess. He looked at the things that she wrote to him and sought out her frequently used letters. He decided that she liked the letter C and slyly concluded that it was for "cock." Thereafter, when he used a C, he imagined her touching his, a light tap, a subtle rub, as her hand curled down to find just the right place and pressure that would get the desired results from that key. Using the C key made him pleasantly hard. And so he found the hardness of using that key pleasant.
His accuracy and speed improved, as he focused on creating joy instead of worrying about technique. The "i" key started to look good to him; he liked the way his middle finger reached upward to find it and the little spurt of the dot above it. Even though he could not find a word that expressed it, that little letter became his symbol for ejaculation. He dubbed it "i-gasm." It was amazing how often the language gave him an opportunity to touch on that image -- he touching himself, her touching him, and the release to be found there.
Writing at the computer had taken on a whole new allure.
