Moments in the Morning After - an older story
I wake at six and look at the woman beside me, she is dreaming, murmuring and snuffling to herself in her sleep. There is, to my mind, nothing quite so beautiful as a sleeping woman. I watch for a few minutes, taking in her features. Petit, with short black hair, elfin features now warped by sleep, bent by the few hours rest against the pillow but still “cute”, definitely my type, I was acting true to form last night. She has a tattoo of a crucifix on her side and I remember kissing it last night. The memory carries me away, the events of a few hours ago become vivid, the past becomes more real than the now.
I’m lost in recollection, in the memory of pleasure and lust. Fiery, passionate sex that carried us through the night. The level of intimacy that can only be allowed with a stranger. No trepidation, no inquiries, no pauses and explorations of limits and acceptability because there is no concern about hurt feelings or crossed boundaries. The freedom which comes from not caring. I know so many people that will argue that the first time is never the best, that sex grows with the exploration of a lover. They are correct in their way but they talk in terms of a partner, of an investment. To me nothing can match the raw force, the abandon that come with pure lust, with not caring, simply doing.
The memories have fired my blood, a cliché but an accurate one, not the warmth that comes with love but the heat that comes from lust. I’m tempted to wake her, I always am, but choose not to. To wake her would drag last night into today. It would cease to be a moment in history and intrude upon the present, become the now. I’m unwilling to ruin this moment, to merge it with the past.
In the morning my flat is just a flat, there are socks on the floor, empty coffee cups on the bedside table, a half-full ashtray has been spilt in the night, in the throws of passion or through alcohol induced clumsiness I do not remember. Where now is last night’s place of passion? Gone is the palace in which we made love on silk sheets, it is replaced with the common-place reality of a duvet stained with the night’s sweat, of crumpled pillows and bed-sheets poured onto the floor, mingling with the ash.
I slide from bed carefully so as not to wake her and pad into the kitchen to put coffee on, I have no milk, I take my coffee black and have no idea how she takes hers. She drank it black last night without complaint and that is the limit of my concern. I pull a cigarette from the half empty packet on the worktop and light it while the pot fills, savoring the smell, enjoying the moment. I’ll bring in the coffee soon, on a tray with a pot of dark sugar crystals. I look forward to drinking the coffee, to kissing her. Perhaps she’ll be in the mood, perhaps not. I don’t remember her name, I consider checking her purse, which lies among discarded clothes on the living room floor but decide against it, it would be an invasion, more than that, it would be a connection. Knowing the contents of her purse would make her real, a person. In an hour or so I’ll get dressed and say I have to go to work... it’ll be a lie.
Copyright Matthew Greenhalgh 2005 etc.
I’m lost in recollection, in the memory of pleasure and lust. Fiery, passionate sex that carried us through the night. The level of intimacy that can only be allowed with a stranger. No trepidation, no inquiries, no pauses and explorations of limits and acceptability because there is no concern about hurt feelings or crossed boundaries. The freedom which comes from not caring. I know so many people that will argue that the first time is never the best, that sex grows with the exploration of a lover. They are correct in their way but they talk in terms of a partner, of an investment. To me nothing can match the raw force, the abandon that come with pure lust, with not caring, simply doing.
The memories have fired my blood, a cliché but an accurate one, not the warmth that comes with love but the heat that comes from lust. I’m tempted to wake her, I always am, but choose not to. To wake her would drag last night into today. It would cease to be a moment in history and intrude upon the present, become the now. I’m unwilling to ruin this moment, to merge it with the past.
In the morning my flat is just a flat, there are socks on the floor, empty coffee cups on the bedside table, a half-full ashtray has been spilt in the night, in the throws of passion or through alcohol induced clumsiness I do not remember. Where now is last night’s place of passion? Gone is the palace in which we made love on silk sheets, it is replaced with the common-place reality of a duvet stained with the night’s sweat, of crumpled pillows and bed-sheets poured onto the floor, mingling with the ash.
I slide from bed carefully so as not to wake her and pad into the kitchen to put coffee on, I have no milk, I take my coffee black and have no idea how she takes hers. She drank it black last night without complaint and that is the limit of my concern. I pull a cigarette from the half empty packet on the worktop and light it while the pot fills, savoring the smell, enjoying the moment. I’ll bring in the coffee soon, on a tray with a pot of dark sugar crystals. I look forward to drinking the coffee, to kissing her. Perhaps she’ll be in the mood, perhaps not. I don’t remember her name, I consider checking her purse, which lies among discarded clothes on the living room floor but decide against it, it would be an invasion, more than that, it would be a connection. Knowing the contents of her purse would make her real, a person. In an hour or so I’ll get dressed and say I have to go to work... it’ll be a lie.
Copyright Matthew Greenhalgh 2005 etc.