Nothing More Beautiful (19 page)

“So, you
do
think we have a
connection? Because I really thought so.”

“I love everything about our relationship so
far,” I said, looking up at him. “Even the sex. I’ve never felt so
close to—to that moment, but it still didn’t come.” I laughed at
the pun.

“So the sex was good, but not good enough?”
He was rubbing his forehead, trying to absorb everything.

“It was great,” I answered. “But Danielle
got me thinking that maybe I should find someone who can make me
feel that sexual intensity, you know, at least once in my
life.”

“Look, I know I have to work on intimacy,
and I am—I know I’m a little distant when we do it. I’m working out
some problems there from my past. But I think I can give you that
moment
, if we work on it together. If we learn about each
other’s bodies—meaning, if you let me learn yours, what turns you
on and what doesn’t.” He grabbed his bag, unlatched the clasps, and
brought out a book with an illustration of a woman with blue hair
kissing a man with orange hair.

“
Guide to Getting It On
?” I read
aloud, as he handed it to me. I flipped through the table of
contents and blushed. The compulsion to flee arose, and an image of
me bolting out the door flashed in my mind.

Vince slid off his jacket, the space heater
I bought working as it should, making it nice and toasty in my
room. “It’s an older edition that I found at Powell’s, but I think
this book will help both of us connect in that department. I’ve
already read some parts of it, and I think it can give us some
perspective. Like, did you know that only about one-third of women
have orgasms from intercourse. Do you have orgasms when you
masturbate or from oral sex?”

All the blood drained from my head. The
question slapped me in the face, and a dizzy spell suddenly
attacked me, making me wobble on the bed. I leapt off the mattress
and headed for the door. “I—I—”

Vince reacted, putting his arm around me.
“Are you okay? You look really pale?”

“I—” I could hear Danielle teasing me,
Prude! Prude! Prude! Grow up, Maci! You’re an adult. You can
talk about adult stuff.
“I’m not very comfortable talking about
this stuff.”

“Sex?” he asked, concerned and confused.

“Yeah, sex,” I replied, my breathing picking
up as panic set in. I wrestled out of his hold.

“Like anxiety?”

“I don’t know.” My back hit the corner and I
sunk to the floor.

Vince knelt before me, watching with worry.
“Breathe, Maci. Breathe,” he said, as my breaths shortened. They
were coming so quickly that dots started to appear in the distance.
He placed a hand on my shoulder. “Breathe.” He slowly drew in a big
breath and held it, then let it out just as slowly. “Like this.” He
repeated the action, and I attempted to copy him.

I don’t know how long we sat there while I
mimicked his breathing, but it felt like hours. When I finally got
my lungs under control, I about keeled over into the fetal
position, ready to burst into tears from embarrassment. “You must
think I’m a total wacko.”

He laughed, stroking my cheek. “On the
contrary, I think you’re quite normal. Everyone has something that
makes them panic. I guess for you, it’s sex, or at least talking
about it.”

I hung my head, my eyes downcast, humiliated
by my reaction. “I don’t know what it is, but for some reason
talking about sex just seems so wrong, like it’s something illegal,
which I know is irrational. I know there’s nothing wrong with
it—that sex is a good thing. And the weird part is, it’s not like
my parents forced abstinence on me, or anything religious like
that, I just have this part of me that cringes inside and panics
when someone brings it up. Do you know what I’m saying?”

“Kinda, I think.” His hand slid under my
chin and brought up my head so that our eyes locked. “We don’t have
to talk about it—”

“No, that’s the thing: I want to.” My hands
went wild as my voice exploded. “I want to be able to say ‘cock’ in
front of my best friend and not feel like I’ve committed a felony.
I want to stop blushing like a teenager when someone brings up sex.
I don’t want to be a prude, and I know I am one—but that’s not who
I want to be.”

“So, what do you want to do?”

“Honestly, I have no clue where to
begin.”

“How about we both say what we’ve done and
work from there?” He cocked his head, still holding my chin. “I can
start.” He removed his hand and sat cross-legged, his elbows
resting on his thighs.

“What if I’m like this forever?”

He shook his head. “You won’t be, trust me.”
He pointed at the book that had slipped from my hands and now lay
on the floor by his feet. “You have a guide.” He grinned, showing
off his remarkably white teeth.

I smiled back and nodded.

“Well, what I’ve done is pretty short, I
think.” He looked at the ceiling as if concentrating hard. “I
started masturbating when I was in fifth or sixth grade.”

“Really, that young?” I asked, blown
away.

“Oh yeah,” he said calmly, “and that’s not
even young, I knew a guy who started in third grade.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty damn crazy.” He was
nodding in agreement. “At that age, I probably didn’t even know
what good my thing was for besides peeing. My freshman year at
Stanford I met a girl and lost my virginity then. We dated for four
years, and yeah, she was the only person I’ve ever been with.”

“What? Seriously?”

“Well, until you,
yeah . . . and all we did was normal stuff, I
guess. A few different positions, nothing too out there, no oral
sex or anything like that. We never went crazy or explored that
much. What about you?” He raised his eyebrows in a pointedly
humorous fashion.

“Six,” I blurted. “Well seven, counting
you.”

He leaned back. “No way? Seven, really?”

I nodded, my face crimson, burning.

“It’s just, I didn’t expect seven when
you’re so shy about the subject.”

“I think Danielle has been a factor in that
number, boosting my confidence when I was ready; and it’s different
doing
it. I don’t know why, but talking about it is like a
huge wall, an obstacle that my mind just can’t overcome. Does that
make sense?”

“I think so,” he answered, though his
scrunched-up face said otherwise. “So with seven partners you’ve
never had an orgasm?”

I shook my head. “Not once.”

“What about by yourself?”

“I’ve never masturbated,” I confessed. “I’ve
tried a few times, but it never felt right, you know? No, I guess
you wouldn’t.” I laughed to myself.

Vince laughed, too, but it was more nervous,
I-don’t-know-what’s-going-on laughter. “What about oral sex? It
seems like you’re one of those two-thirds who doesn’t have an
orgasm from intercourse.”

“Never had it, giving or receiving.” I
inhaled a deep, calming breath. “I’ve always stopped the men from
going that far. I mean, I’ve imagined what it feels like, but I
guess that is also part of my mental block when it comes to sex.
I’ve also only had sex in . . . well,
missionary.”

His mouth fell open, and it was clear that
he didn’t know how to react to that. “Then it’s more than just
talking about it, if you’ve only done one position your whole life,
and never explored anything else.”

I reflected on that for a moment. “Yeah, I
guess so. But in my head, it’s talking about it to myself, see? So
it’s sorta the same even though it’s not. And it’s not like I’ve
never considered exploring. I’ve had fantasies. I’ve wanted to try
stuff . . . I just haven’t been able to cross
that barrier. I’ve never been able to tell someone what I’ve wanted
to do.”

“Then tell me,” he said, his body language
encouraging me. “In fact, how about we write down our fantasies and
anything else sexual that we’ve ever wanted to do? We can make a
list and talk about it. That way you can get comfortable about the
idea ahead of time, and maybe we can cross them off the more we
adjust and grow. How’s that sound? Can you write them down?”

I squirmed against the wall, and then
offered him my hand, and we pulled each other up, though it was
obvious he was doing most the work. I opened a desk drawer and
extracted an old, empty notebook from a stack that I kept around,
found a pen and handed it to him. “You first.” I lay down on the
bed.

Vince did the same next to me, flipping to
the first page of the notebook. He wrote across the top “The List”
and then put the point to the first line, pausing. “Let’s
see . . . what have I always wanted to
do. . .?” He paused, chewing on the cap of the pen, then
suddenly, started writing. He angled the paper so that I could see
when he was finished.

“Make a home sex video?” I looked over at
him. That was certainly something I’d never considered before.
“Would you upload it for people to see?” I nearly choked getting
out the words.

“It’d be for our eyes only. I always thought
it might be fun and erotic. Fill a room with candles and light a
fire, make it more than just taping sex. Anyway, it’s your turn.”
He pressed the pen into my hand.

I eyed the paper, clearing my mind, inhaling
deeply.
What did I want to do? Better yet, what did I want to
tell him I wanted to do? Honesty, honesty, honesty,
kept
running through my head. If I were to break out of this spell, I
had to be open and honest, otherwise it wouldn’t mean anything—it
wouldn’t amount to anything. One thing I’d always wanted to see was
a
Thunder from Down Under
show in Las Vegas. Something about
a man stripping excited me in ways I never wanted to admit,
guarding that secret to the point of denial. I wrote down
“Have
a man strip for me”
and turned the notebook back to Vince.

“Really?
Interesting . . .”

“What does that mean?” I shot him a
look.

He leaned over, kissed my cheek, and then
spoke in a low, soft voice in my ear, “It means that I can make
that one happen.”

The hint of that possibility turned me on as
my pulse quickened. “Now you.” It didn’t take him long to come up
with
“Have sex publicly in a car
.
”
When my mind
grasped “public,” the thought just about sent me running for the
hills, but I maintained my composure, reminding myself that it was
only a list of fantasies and not some commandment I had to follow.
When the pen came to me for my second fantasy, nothing came to
mind, and I searched the darkest parts where I imprisoned all the
things I wanted to ignore.

“You want me to go again?” Vince asked after
a few minutes went by in silence.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, but as I was handing
the pen over, one formed in my head, based on the heady historical
romances I read. “I’m not sure how to phrase this, but I’ve often
imagined dressing up in 1930s clothing, and walking into a P.I.’s
office asking for help on a case. Then we have sex on the
desk.”

“So, like role-playing?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s what it’s called. So
should I write it all down?”

“How about 1930s P.I. office sex?” he
suggested.

I wrote it down next to the number four I
made.

“I have a role-play scenario of my own.” He
laughed while writing it down.

“You want to dress up as Spider-Man?”

“And have sex with Mary Jane Watson. She’s
one of the lead females in the story . . . Have
you ever heard of the popular ‘Princess Leia in the golden bikini
fantasy’?”

I nodded. “There was a ‘Friends’ episode
about it.”

“Yeah, that’s right—well, this is my version
of that.”

I tried to picture how that would go, but it
seemed so silly that I couldn’t conceptualize the scene and I gave
up, thinking of something that I’d wanted to do. “How many should
we write down?”

“I guess until nothing else comes,” he
answered. “Are you empty?”

Shaking my head, I remembered a fantasy I’d
always had when I was younger, but had forgotten about as I aged
and became more sensitive to the subject. Writing it down felt like
I was breaking free of the shackles that had been binding me since
puberty.

“Sex in the shower,” he read back. “That’s
one that I’ve done.”

“Was it as steamy as they make it look like
in movies?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see.” He put
on a seductive smile that pulled me to his lips, and we paused our
task for a short make-out session, resuming a few minutes later
with hot breaths and an escalating sense of urgency. Despite the
desire, Vince wanted to wait and let the moment build until it
would be impossible to deny—a practice in restraint for both of
us.

He rolled to the side to give us a little
more space. “You might not like this one, but I think part of
making this list is employing full disclosure and honesty, and it’s
something I’ve fantasized about on occasion, so I think it should
be included.” He wrote it down, forcing a gasp out of me.

“With whom? Alma?”

There was nervous sweat beading down his
forehead. “No, not with Alma. That would complicate a lot.”

“Because she’s your business partner?”

He hesitated for a breath, and then said,
“Yes.”

“Should I even ask: male or female?”

He laughed hard. “Female.”

The thought of a threesome scared the hell
out of me, but I pushed the actual act to the back of my mind,
keeping everything notional. “Then who with?” I bit my lip with a
lascivious glint in my eyes, attempting to hide my revulsion.

“I haven’t actually given it any thought,”
he said, returning my lustful gaze. “When I’ve fantasized about it,
the women never have recognizable faces, you
know . . . they’re just imaginary.”

“I see . . .”

“If we decided to do it, we would both have
to choose the person, together.”

I wanted to puke, but settled on nodding,
accepting the pen when he offered it. “Sounds fair. Back to
me . . .” I sighed. How many more could I come up
with? I felt at the end of the road with my ideas. There was
nothing left in the imagination tank. Until I glanced up and saw
the beautiful beach picture in my “Hawaiian Aerial Views” calendar,
which was still on January. “Have you ever been to Hawaii?”