Free A Wall of Light by Edeet Ravel

on the table along with a bowl of sugar cubes. Then I sat down facing him. I was too much on edge to eat, but he bit into a turnover with evident enjoyment. We drank our coffee in silence. He was waiting for me to speak but I had nothing to say, and in any case I didn’t trust myself to understand his response. I had the sense that he welcomed the silence, that he found it peaceful. When he seemed ready to go, I touched his hand with mine.
    He froze; he seemed astonished. He stared at my hand and didn’t move. But he didn’t protest, either—he didn’t draw away or get up or give any indication that he didn’t want me. I closed my hand on his and led him to my bedroom.
    He stood in my bedroom with his arms hanging by his sides and watched me. He seemed very curious, as if I were an exotic animal in a zoo, as if he’d never seen anyone like me before. The bed wasn’t made, as usual, and I straightened out the sheets a little. Then I closed the shutters; I didn’t want him to see my scars. I returned to the bed and held out my arm, invited him to join me.
    He didn’t move: he was immobilized by indecision. I saw him standing there and deliberating. His body was in an odd state of suspension, pulled in opposite directions by two contradictory impulses. Caution was urging him to make an excuse and leave, but at the same time he was clearly turned on. I said, “It’s all right if you don’t want to.”
    This seemed to help him arrive at a decision. He approached the bed, removed my panties, licked his hand to wet me, discovered that it was unnecessary, unzipped his black jeans, and found his way inside.
    I stroked his back through his thin ironed shirt, a sad white shirt with pale yellow stripes. I couldn’t reach his face, which was turned away from me, but I kissed his shoulder and touched his hair, which sparkled as if it were made of black jewels. What a cute mating ritual, I thought. I wanted it to last a long time but it was over in a few minutes. He rose from the bed and pulled up his jeans.
    I said, “You’re my first lover ever.”
    He looked confused when I said that, and then suspicious. It was his turn to wonder whether he was in the company of a mad person.
    “I’m deaf,” I said. “Do you want to say something? You can write it if you like.” I handed him a small notebook from my night table.
    But this only made matters worse. He stared at the notebook, mumbled something about being in a rush, and fled from the bedroom, fled from the house.
    I followed him outside and watched him hurry to his cab and drive away.
    I sighed. What a disaster!
    It was half-funny, half-depressing. I couldn’t help seeing the man’s quick escape as slightly comic; it was like something out of the Marx Brothers. And here I was, standing barefoot on the pathway, staring at the empty space where the taxi had been parked. I felt foolish, to say the least.
    I returned to the house and poured myself a glass of lemonade. I took the lemonade out to the back garden, sat on the white cedar swing, and rocked gently back and forth, the soles of my feet brushing the grass. I felt a great sense of relief, as if I’d removed a curse a jealous fairy had cast upon me at birth. Several things had surprised me: first, the intense physical pleasure of the moment he entered me. No wonder there were so many of us on the planet, millennium after millennium, despite plagues and earthquakes and every conceivable misery. I had felt the man’s cock gently seeking a way in, finding its way like a little hedgehog burrowing in the earth, whispering to my body. Even though we were strangers, we were both aware of the intimacy of our coordinated movements, our coordinated pleasure.
    Even more striking was what happened to his body when he came. Here was a moment of utter submission to the universe, to all the souls and ghosts and spirits of the universe. This was a man disappearing; replacing him was something elemental, like a crystal, for