Suddenly I feel the colder air around me. Suddenly I feel the world around me. I feel all the parts of it that aren’t us.
I tell myself he’s being considerate. I look at him and say, “Are you sure? I want to. If you’re worried about me, don’t be. I want to. I…prepared.”
But he’s pulling back, too, now. One hand still holds my side, but the other settles in the small space between us. “I don’t think we should,” he says.
I say, “Okay,” even though it’s not, because I don’t understand.
“It’s not you,” he tells me. “And it’s not that I don’t want to.”
Exit dream, enter nightmare. “So what is it?” I ask.
“It feels wrong.”
He says it’s not me, but who else could it be? I’ve pushed it too far. He must think less of me.
“Let me worry about Justin,” I say. “This is you and me. It’s different.”
“But it’s not just you and me. It’s also Xavier.”
“Xavier?”
He points to his own body. “Xavier.”
“Oh.”
“He’s never done it before. And it just feels wrong…for him to do it for the first time, and not know it. I feel like I’m taking something from him if I do that. It doesn’t seem right.”
This seems more in line with the way the universe has treated me all my life. Send the perfect guy in the perfect body. But then make him a virgin whose first time I’ll be taking away without him knowing it. There’s no vocabulary in my head for dealing with this.
Closeness. I got so caught up in sex that I forgot what I was really after, what I really wanted. Even if we’re not going to have sex, I don’t have to give up on everything else.
That’s what I wind up telling myself.
After a spell of being only in my mind, I return back to my body and press it closer to his. Turning so we’re knees against knees, arms around backs, face to face.
“Do you think he would mind this?” I ask.
His body answers for him. I can feel the tension fall away. I can feel my welcome.
“I set an alarm,” I say. “So we can sleep.”
I roll over, and he presses his chest against my back, echoes his legs behind my legs. Gathering into a pocket of time, and refusing to leave it. Together, our bodies cool. Together, our breathing slows. Together, we feel unalone.
Our bodies can fit in so many different ways.
The current of sleep carries us at different wavelengths. Sometimes I wake and he’s asleep. Sometimes he must be the woken one. And other times, our wakefulness coincides, and we have brief conversations as we remain holding on.
“Are you he or she?” I ask.
“Yes,” he replies.
“I know we don’t talk about it,” he says, many minutes, maybe hours, later. “But why are you with him?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I used to think I did. But I don’t know anymore.”
“Is this love?” I ask. But he’s asleep.
He mumbles something. It sounds like, “Is your uncle Artie tall?”
When we are both more awake, but still without any desire to move from the bed, I face him and ask, “Who was your favorite?”
He puts his hand on mine. “My favorite?”
“Your favorite body. Your favorite life.”
“I was once in the body of a blind girl. When I was eleven. Maybe twelve. I don’t know if she was my favorite, but I learned more from being her for a day than I’d learn from most people over a year. It showed me how arbitrary and individual it is, the way we experience the world. Not just that the other senses were sharper. But that we find ways to navigate the world as it is presented to us. For me, it was this huge challenge. But for her, it was just life.”
“Close your eyes,” I whisper.
I trust that he does. We feel each other’s bodies as if we’re in the dark.
Hours later, or maybe it’s minutes, the alarm goes off.
The day is passing, and we let it. The light is fading, and we say nothing as it goes. This is all we want. Two bodies in a bed. Closeness.
“I know you have to leave,” I say. My eyes are closed. I feel him nod.
“Midnight,” he tells me. “I have to be back by midnight.”
“But why? Why midnight?”
Now I feel him shake his head. “I can’t be sure. But it’s up to the body, and the body just knows.”
“I’m going to stay here,” I tell him.
“I’m going to come back tomorrow,” he promises.
More time. More time together.
“I would end it,” he says. “I would end all the changing if I could. Just to stay here with you.”
“But you can’t end it. I know that.”
I don’t sound mad or disappointed. I’m not mad or disappointed.
It is what it is.
We start to look at the clock. Knowing. It’s time.
“I’ll wait for you,” I tell him as he gets dressed, as he gets ready to go.
“We’ll both be waiting,” he says. “To get back to this.”
I have no idea what I am doing, and I am okay with that.
He kisses me goodbye. Like he is heading off to school. Or work. Like this is the future. Like we are used to this.
I don’t know what to do after he’s gone. There’s no computer up here for email, no phone reception.