by James Martin
(12/25/02)

The Someday is Somerville's favorite mellow coffee shop, furnished with castoff chairs in every sort of style and color. I slid into the chair across from Vessa with my cappuccino and hung my umbrella on the chair back. "So you wanted to try some sort of science experiment?" I asked.

"No," she said, "a social experiment! Listen to your messages more carefully, Jane, especially when a revelation is coming through!" Vessa smiled over her gauzy, multicolored scarf. Her close-cut black hair licked at her face. She was so earthy, so daring and feminine yet foul-talking -- everything I was not. She wore close-cut clothes that accented her curves, all in bright, thrown-together colors that somehow always harmonized.

"Tell me," I said.

"After you broke up with Bobby" -- though he had broken up with me, and you could hardly use such an active term to describe his indifference -- "I was thinking how we confuse our need for companionship with plain old horniness. Companionship is what people really want, and you can get it from anyone -- the old guy who sweeps my courtyard, the kids on the playground. It's what you and I give each other, right? But our sex drive makes us pick these losers who somehow ring our hormonal bells, and it fucks everything up."

"So to speak," I said doubtfully.

"Well, the trick is to separate them! Don't you think?"

"That's the old casual-sex myth. It never works," I said. "Don't you watch the soaps?"

"The difference," she said, "is that you need the right person. Remember that new guy downstairs from me who was playing blues too loud? He asked if it was easy to meet people in Boston, and I told him about my new theory. That night we made out next to the piles of boxes he was moving in. There was something about him! I thought, there's no reason not to do this. I didn't feel any old skeletons clanking around in his brain."

Vessa was so bold. She was always steered by her own pleasure. She called me sophisticated and ironic, but sometimes I thought my sweater sets and tailored clothes were more earnest than I wanted to be. I envied her freedom. "So that was your experiment?" I said.

"No," she said. "You are the experiment. You've been moping for weeks, obsessing on Russell Crowe and Matt Damon. You need some action, lady, and I've found the guy."

"This guy?" I said. "Why, because he's cute?"

"He's skinny, angular face, glasses. Sexy, even though he's not the cutest. But it doesn't matter, cause you're gonna meet him blindfolded."

"What?"

"No looking at his face and thinking about what your kids would look like. No guilt. Nothing but the sensations. We're gonna get you out of your funk, your good-girl shell, and this is the perfect way."

"What if he's some crazy killer? No way I'm doing that."

Vessa just sipped her drink and smiled.

I sat in my car with the engine off, rain smearing the windshield. I could catch a late half-price movie at the Somerville Theater, slip into the darkened theater and forget I was blowing Vessa off. Or I could call Bobby. Wasn't missing him the only reason I'd do something as crazy as this?

A couple walked by under a frog umbrella. Everyone around Vessa's and my neighborhood -- which we called Summerville because we had moved in during a summer of optimism and adventure -- looked so hip. I was tired of being uptight. My therapist said I didn't have to do everything at once, that I had a long life, that things would happen someday. But when would someday ever come if I didn't make it come?

What the hell, I thought. Someday is today.

Vessa's floor lamps cast warm pools of light. She was still wearing the clothes she'd worn that afternoon; I'd dressed up, though I couldn't say why, since I wasn't supposed to wear my clothes for long.

"This is so exciting!" she said. "Nervous?"

"Well, yeah."

"Then let's start right away," she said. She led me into her bedroom, where two wine glasses stood on her bedside table. "You've got to be naked," she said. "Pretend you're going into the sauna."

Trying to avoid thinking too much about it, I took off my clothes, carefully folded them, and lay down.

"You must have lost five pounds since the breakup," Vessa said, looking at me.

She took out four colored scarves and loosely tied my hands and feet to the bed. "Just to remind you," she said. She gave my foot a little squeeze as she finished tying it. She slipped a black stretchy blindfold over my forehead. She must own it. What else didn't I know about her? She kissed me on the cheek, and then paused, bent over me. Just before she slipped the blindfold down, she looked in my eyes with an odd expression, then lowered her head and sucked my nipple. When she took her head away I could feel the cold air crinkle it.

"Okay," Vessa said. "I'm going down to the Someday. I'll tell him you're ready. I'll be back in a couple hours, and I can watch the downstairs door; I'll make sure nobody crazy comes in. Good luck!"

Vessa's bedroom smelled like her. I could hear the rain on the windows, stronger in the living room. I wondered if I'd hear him come in. I thought I heard him a couple of times, but when he walked in, I knew.

He pushed the bedroom door open. My whole body was alert waiting for a touch, yet I was startled when I felt his fingers graze my face. He felt my forehead, and my cheeks, then gently traced the end of my nose, my closed, blindfolded eyes and the edges of my lips. He sighed quietly, and I relaxed.

In a moment I felt his lips on my collarbone. He sucked softly. He was gone for a moment, and then his tongue -- only his tongue -- ran up to the top of my thigh, and then with almost no pause, up to the top of the other one. Had he gone around the bed?

His tongue licked my bicep, and then the other one, feeling almost disembodied. It ran down between my small breasts, circled my belly button, then plunged into it. He nipped at my belly right where it sank into my belly button. I thrust my hips at the touch before I remembered to be embarrassed. The wetness on my belly button led to more wetness below.

When he stopped I yearned for more.

His hands took my thighs from underneath and spread them gently. I was so exposed, so naked. I waited for sensation, but none came. I arched up, searching for it, thinking his fingers might be just out of reach. Then I felt him blowing on me, a warm stream of air that was so delicate I could hardly stand it. He started kneading my thighs, but he still only blew on the wet heart of my pussy, withholding his touch. I made a little sound before I noticed.

After a moment he pulled away. I heard him breathing hard very close to me. Something warm and soft caressed my lips and it took me a moment to realize it was the tip of his cock.

I tried to envelop it in my mouth, lifting my head to mother him, to amaze him with my willingness, but he pulled back so I could only lick and suck at the head. I kept reaching, kept yearning to please him, and still he pulled back, all the time getting stiffer and more excited.

He gave a quick gasp and I heard him jerk away from the bed and moan.

My whole body was aware of being alone, of not touching him. After a moment I felt a cool circle pressed against my breasts, one and then the other, first above the nipple, then on top of it. The base of one of the wine glasses, I guessed. Suddenly he lifted it away, and I felt something warm and viscous being carefully poured on my nipple and spread with his finger. His semen: I smelled it. He poured more of it into my belly button, then drew it in a line to my other nipple with one of his fingers.

His hands were at my wrist, untying Vessa's scarf. He took my hand and made a little circular motion with my fingers in the come on my belly. I thought of the times I'd been embarrassed to stumble in on my college suitemates watching porn movies, yet here I was, rubbing his come in with my hand, over my nipples and into my belly button. Though I wasn't sure it was safe, I touched a little bit to my tongue; it was warm and salty. And I pushed my hand against my pubis, longing to touch myself.

I heard him make a smiling sound. He tied my wrist again and ran his finger from my nipple to my ribs, collecting the liquid. There was a pause, then I felt him blowing on my pussy again. And then I felt his finger!

"No!" I said, but he only said "Shhhh," with a father's confidence and certainty.

I stopped thinking and let go; I lifted my ass to fuck his wet finger. I moaned and thrust against him, his hand pushing back. His thumb was in my mouth, his mouth was on my sticky nipple, and his fingers were probing me, rubbing, spreading, seeking deeper and deeper.

He pulled away. I waited, thrusting languidly on the bed.

I heard one of Vessa's drawers open, and heard a buzz. What had to be Vessa's vibrator rubbed over my clit and probed my pussy. It was so intimate to feel what I knew she must have felt so many times before. Had she tasted his cock like I had? I imagined her kneeling in front of him, looking up with submissive, aroused eyes.

His finger slipped deep into my ass, and as I thrust faster he wiggled it deep in my rectum. Pulses of pleasure radiated from his finger, a new feeling. I was so wet...I started to moan, louder and louder, and I thrust onto his hand crying, "Jesus! Jesus!"

I couldn't remember ever coming so hard with Bobby.

I sank back onto the sheet, wet with my sweat. I relaxed and breathed deeply while he feathered his fingers down my body. He kneaded my legs and arms and brushed my hair out of my face.

I felt entirely tranquil. His finger touched my lips, and I sucked it. I tasted my ass. He had given me one of my own tastes. I sucked harder.

He kissed my forehead and raised my head till we kissed on the lips, for the first and only time.

He withdrew.

I heard little noises around the bedroom for a minute, and then, after a silence, heard the front door latch click closed.

I lay for a moment hearing the forgotten rain against the windows. I tugged loose from the scarves and rubbed my wrists and ankles exploratively. Only then did I reluctantly remove the blindfold. Putting my feet on the floor was disorienting. The two wine glasses, one dirtied, were on the bedside table next to a folded piece of paper.

My name is Michael, the paper said. I've had a vasectomy and been tested.

I stretched on the bed, then slowly stood up. Standing felt like part of a forgotten world. As I went to the chair with my clothes, sitting there folded exactly as some other me had left them, I passed Vessa's open underwear drawer with the black vibrator on a pile of panties. I looked away, then came back and took a long look. Vessa had sexy satin panties unabashedly alongside lacy ones. A beautiful red bikini pair sat on top; I felt it between my fingers, imagining it had been under Vessa's clothes as she sat with me at the Someday today.

The rain had ended, and I opened Vessa's front windows. The air smelled fresh and carried all the different scents of the square.

I opened the refrigerator and popped the cork on the unopened bottle of red wine. I put one of Vessa's old Mozart records on the record player and sprawled in an easy chair drinking my wine. When it was done, I recorked the bottle, washed the glasses, and straightened the bed.

Going down the stairs, I felt Vessa's red panties tight on me. They meant something. They meant that something new, something I could hardly imagine yet, was going to happen. Someday.

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