Unattainable

I want to tear him apart. I want to reach inside of him and stir him like I’m scrambling eggs and rip out his heart and show it to him. Scream at him to look at it and make him admit that it’s beating for me. I want to see him hurt. More than anything, I want to hurt him like he has hurt me. I want him to feel inconsequential, but it’s impossible, because I have made him my King. He Knows.

There is an acute misery and pleasure in wanting someone who keeps you on high alert, drawing you in, wrapping you up, consuming you, and then unfolding, unraveling you, dropping you, casting you aside. They come back for you eventually but you don’t know when, so you wait.

The first time we fuck I’m running away from a relationship. I think I’m running to him, because I don’t yet realize he’s unattainable. The night before I move out of my ex’s apartment I text him and he is available. We sit in the backyard of Lady Jay’s and he admires my matching manicure and pedicure. The nails are bright red and pointed at the tips. I know he wants me, and I want him too, but he understands my situation. He says I can stay at his if I’d like—“We don’t have to do anything.” I agree.

At his apartment, he gives me a shirt to sleep in and I slip it on, turning away from him as I undress. But once in bed, I roll over to turn off the lamp on the bedside table and in this maneuver, I reveal my ass, clad in black lace panties under his shirt. He groans with defeat seeing my ass, and rolls toward me, beginning to press himself into me. I open up to him. He’s on top of me, altogether new: a new weight, a new girth, a new man. It feels like we fuck a million times that night, we’re so hungry for each other. This is the beginning of a two year long feast and famine.

In the beginning, we play at relationship. He takes me to dinner, and we go back to my place. When he comes too soon, he asks me to tell him how to get me off. “Just lick my nipples lightly,” I say, while I get my toy and press it firmly against my clit, shaking with waves of orgasm.

We meet out at a random bar after work, get drunk, and I expertly hail a taxi in midtown to take us back to Brooklyn. I’m proud of myself, I feel like a character in a movie, gliding out into the congested street. In the backseat of the cab he goes down on me, his tongue on my pussy, his tongue on a disgusting Manhattan taxi.

I go to his place very late one night, I’m drunk but he’s not. He asks me how I want him to fuck me. I tell him, “Fuck me like you love me.” “How is that?” He asks. “Hard and slow,” I say. “Hard and slow.” And he fucks me that way, and I imagine he loves me, and we are both overcome with the intimacy of it, imagined or not. We come at the same time.

He obeys me in bed. In bed he is earnest, and convinces me he cares. But everywhere else he is mean, stubborn, guarded. He makes plans with me and goes missing when the day arrives. He texts me twenty times in one night and then not at all for three weeks.

I don’t hear from him for a long time and finally I delete his number. A couple of months go by, then he texts to say he misses me. I know it’s him and I can’t resist responding. We make plans again. Sometimes I see him. Sometimes I don’t.

In the space between I ache for him. My body only thinks of him. In every moment of desire, in every other man’s bed, I’m with him. I listen to the song “Wish He Was You” by Best Coast like it was written for us. I know he hates that band, and I like assigning the song to him as a kind of punishment.

It has been a really long time since we’ve seen each other when I get a message from him asking me to come over. I agree, but I am determined not to have sex with him. I plan to make him want it really bad, make him respect me, and then deny him, as I have felt denied by his continual disappearances.

At his place, not an hour goes by before his fingers are inside of me. I don’t even know how it happens. Floods of memories rush over me, correcting the fantasies I’ve been entertaining for months. He is just a man, he is just a boy. I am reminded of how his breathing was always; short, ruffled.

I utter something like, “I kind of missed you,” and he quickly shoots back, “I missed you too.” I refuse his advances to get inside me for as long as I can, but then I feel his cock and see its thickness and I don’t care about respect or revenge or anything. I grab him and he pushes into me, the first length of him is an agonizing dream. Then we’re fucking, fucking, and he pauses to go down on me every so often so he doesn’t come too soon, each time I try to pull him back into me. I don’t want to be empty of him. He pushes into me so far it feels like he’s reaching for something, trying to get somewhere he has never been.

I turn over for him, and he warns me that he will come, and then he does, seconds later.

And then we lay, entangled together and sweaty, his grip on me always too tight. Minutes go by, then he bites me. I respond, ask him to bite me more. He starts biting my thighs, from the backs of my knees, he bites up to the bottom of my ass. And then we are fucking again, he pulls me on top of him and comments on how wet I am for him, loving the pain of his teeth in me. He holds my hair back and looks into my eyes while I hover over him. He’s gentle, searching, reaching.

We order sushi and watch an episode of True Blood. I’m lying on the couch on my side with my ass in his face. He is grabbing the fat of my thighs. Testing it. Squeezing and observing. He finds the bones of my butt under my flesh and presses into them, letting my ass fit into his hand. Holding it and touching my bones.

It’s late and I’m lazy, the months of wanting feel so distant now that I am having him so much. We get into bed spooning, his leg resting between my legs. Our bodies electrify. I start grinding on his leg, and then look back at him and we begin to kiss. Slowly, so slowly. Tasting each other. His mouth like toothpaste and mine like spicy tuna. We’re opening our mouths wide, eating each other; he puts his fingers in me again and I gasp at the spot he finds. He gets on top of me and starts to fuck me hard and slow, then rolls me on top of him. I try to fuck him slow, like our kisses. Like I love him. But I speed up and get close to coming, and then I’m fucking him so hard his bed is hitting the wall and I’m screaming and some part of me thinks that he’ll tell me to shut the fuck up, but he doesn’t. I come and he comes and then we sleep. Throughout the night he wakes up and his hands find my cunt in the sheets and he plays with me a little, kissing me with his sleepy mouth. “I think I’m addicted to your saliva,” he whispers in the middle of the night. And I am convinced in that moment he loves me, too.

In the morning I have to leave for work. I don’t hear from him for a few weeks.

I can’t do this anymore.

I tell him we need to talk. We sit in Maria Hernandez park on a sad bench and I tell him that I can’t do this anymore. I tell him I want more from him, I want to date him. He makes up some dumb excuse about not being in a good place, not being able to give me what I deserve. I say fine, but I say we can’t talk anymore and we can’t fuck anymore. “Except,” I say, “one last time right now.” On our walk to his place I take his phone and delete my number. Unfriend us on Facebook. We fuck in his bed and then I leave quickly, acting like I somehow got the last laugh.

I don’t know why I think this will work.

“Did you lose a bracelet? I found something behind my bed I think may be yours.” Reads a late night Facebook message from him some months later. I don’t know if I lost a bracelet, but I can’t resist answering him. “What does it look like? Send a picture.” He does. It is not my bracelet. I would never wear something even remotely like it. He doesn’t know me.

“Yes, that is my bracelet.” I respond. “When can I come pick it up?”

I show up and he buzzes me in, leaves the door open and waits in his bedroom. I enter tentatively, and he points to the bedside table where the bracelet sits. I begin to cross the room to get it, some other girl’s bracelet, but his body intercepts me. He is standing in my path, and when I attempt to push past him, a heat rises between us. He pushes me down on the bed. I’m ready for him. There’s no foreplay, no warm up, just my endless desire for him. He never disappoints me physically. I feel the weight of him on me, his warmth, and my mind releases a flood of some chemical, telling each of my parts that this is the only thing that matters, that all the time I spend imagining it is worthwhile, and now I’ll have another memory of him in me, on me, consuming me.

After we fuck, I dress, and tell him simply, “That’s not my bracelet.” He laughs, and I start laughing, too.