The three of us, old friends, are all in the car that morning along with their luscious Chocolate Labrador. Bound and bonded as chosen family, I have spent the previous night at their house on the hill and we’re currently headed home from a quick trip to the Saturday farmer’s market. C is at the wheel and as he expertly navigates the car up and around the steep curves, L asks, “So, Jen, what if anything have you heard from Dave?”
The question neither surprises nor upsets me. Instead, I am rather expecting it. This query, about my ex-husband, has spilled from the lips of all those I’ve encountered during my own love-fest weekend in Santa Cruz.
I tell L, quickly, that I have not heard anything because I have not spoken to him in over a year. I know nothing of Dave. I also wish to know nothing of Dave so I’ve not gone searching for clues or answers or suggestions of him in all the obvious places. What surprises me, again, is to hear that C and L know nothing of Dave, either. At all. This has been the common thread amongst all my friends. Together, along with me, we know nothing.
There is a time in a marriage, when you’re in the very center of it, when you believe that you will know everything of your chosen other always. You cannot possibly fathom not knowing. Your heart is not capable of traveling that byway that might take you to a place where not knowing could be a possibility because not knowing would mean things too horrible to contemplate.
Of course it is naïve to believe and to wish and to hope that this always knowing will always be possible. Things happen. People change. Hearts break. Nothing, not even the knowing, is forever.
What I really longed to share with C and L though, to shout from the back seat, was not about the knowing of nothing, but about the discovery of something. Something else entirely. Something that I know is quite lovely indeed.
“I’m wondering how you taste?”
Those five words, in a text to my phone, caused the very finest hairs on the back of my neck to stand at attention. I had truthfully given up on him, decided that he was not the least bit interested in me, concluded that he had younger and more beautiful women to enchant when those five words came flickering across my screen. The small of my back prickled with anticipation as I realized the fate of my future with The Outlaw might honestly rest in my response.
“Ice cream”
Truly seductive, I know. I will admit right now that The Outlaw has a way of turning my 45-year-old brain to that of a 17-year old horny teenager. It is as if anything and everything I know about the rules of seduction, the laws of attraction, the wily ways of womanhood get flung to the rafters along with my bra, my panties, whatever clothes I might be wearing and I just want to fuck, fuck and then please, sir, let’s fuck some more.
The Outlaw tastes really good, Internet. Better than ice cream. Better, even, than anyone else I’ve ever tasted.
That part, that part right there? That part about tasting better than anyone else? Is truly curious to me and has me a bit flummoxed only because I suppose with all those previous sexual partners (and I have had more than can be counted on my available fingers and toes, but let’s stop counting, shall we?) I did not attribute the fact that sometimes I just had to HOLD MY BREATH because of the way he smelled to me a contributing factor to my own non-enjoyment. I honestly thought, “Well, he stinks?!? His breath makes me gag. I can’t really change that about him. I like lots of other things, so I’ll just BREATHE THROUGH MY EARS!” Years of that breathing through my ears and I suppose I just got very good at it. I became a Gold Medalist in the Ear Breathing Olympics and carried on having sex without knowing how anyone else truly tasted or just how horrific they may have smelled.
I’m no longer breathing through my ears. I’m barely breathing at all, but for completely different reasons. Everything tastes just yummy. I do mean everything. I’ve been cautioned not to fall in love with The Outlaw, as that is a story that never ends well. I’m trying very hard not to despite how delicious he tastes. Despite how much I want to devour him. Despite how very much he makes me truly feel, at last.
For now, I am truly just enjoying the very lusty ride.
