For a month-and-a-half, PF and I have been emailing regularly. He is a Professor and is very gifted with the written word, but sometimes he infuriates me with his completely impersonal but really, really lengthy responses. I know he loves nothing more than to write and write. He does it in academics and he does it in pop songs and he does it in emails. But trying to read between all those sentences is frustrating. What is he feeling? Does he fancy me? Does he like me as a friend? Does he think I’m smart? Am I interesting enough for him? How incredibly insecure of me. But then again, I read and reread the emails I write to him, and check a thesaurus for new and interesting adjectives. What am I doing?
I regret not speaking to him more when we had four days together at the music festival in June. I had my eye on him from the very start of it. After he performed, I remember walking past him leaning rather dramatically outside the restroom, waiting for the door to open. He is very tall and so brings a striking element to visualizations. As mentioned in my previous entry about him, it wasn’t until the last night when I finally spoke to him and I was completely and utterly charmed. I still hold onto the way he looked at me, with such kindness and warmth in his eyes, though the feeling in that memory has faded slightly.
And now we have been emailing regularly but what are we saying? I think sometimes I am just propping up his ego, though it’s not as obvious as that. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, he lives by himself, and – as a Professor – he’s not teaching this summer. He’s alone a lot. He responds to my emails quickly but with such long treatises, the length and substance of which I’ve never received before. I often find them interesting, other times infuriating, but mostly intriguing.
Still, there are occasional nods to sex, romance, and attraction in his words. And it is one of those from yesterday that’s set me off. Many years ago, he broke his collarbone by falling off his bike. He said:
That is about the end of the story, save that my collarbone has been visibly disjointed ever since for anyone who cares to look (I remember the guitarist I was in a band with at the time, already a father of two teenagers, speculating that this would make me attractive to girls: not only fanciful at best, not to say false, this theory, but probably even more immediately flawed by the fact that no-one can see my collarbone most of the time)…
The eroticism that inspired in me, he may never know. Ever since last night, my heart has been flipping up into my throat the way it does when lusty, blushing desire rushes through me in hopes of turning a fantasy into reality. I’m seeing PF in a week or two, hopefully more than once, and with some time alone god willing. I know that I am going to be fixated on his collarbone, the glimpses I may get.
I fantasize about the night growing later, more drinks being consumed, us in a crowded room. Everyone moves around us but we are in slow motion. We talk and laugh and stare at one another, careful not to draw curious attention to ourselves. I cannot help but stare at his collarbone peaking out from the rim of his shirt, desperate to touch it with my fingers and mouth. He fixes his gaze on me, knowing what I want to do. Sitting close to him, I reach over and trace his collarbone slowly with my fingers until I find the slight bend where it was once broken. The feeling of warm honey races through my veins and I desperately want to run my tongue along his break (much like Vellini rushes into the room to lick the blood off the suitor she had her husband shoot in The Last Mistress). His eyes are locked to mine and it’s like we are fully enjoined with just my fingers and his neck.
Slowly but steadily I get up to go outside, around the corner, anywhere away from this crowd. He follows but a minute behind me. We find a small space between buildings and he bends down and grabs my face and kisses me. How I long to fight with his wonderfully protruding nose. His whole elegant body envelopes me and I not only taste his lips but finally trace a path down his neck and lick his clavicle in long lashes.
