Soaked in the humid hues of Isla Mujeres, I dialed into the scene unfolding before me. Never before had I seen my girlfriend’s figure suspended mid-air the way it was that afternoon, her salty moans and rhythmic contortions defraying a tropical sunbeam into shards of light that danced, indiscriminately, across my chest. With our fingers entwined, her tongue sunk into a warm pocket of my throat while the man behind her hammered her into ecstasy. Our contorted vignettes, the throes of our threesome, were beautiful and demoralizing, at once.
My body, stretched diagonally across a thin, dense mattress, was framed by her knees as she towered above me. I couldn’t see him, this man whom we had met a few hours prior, but I could see the curve of her torso and his stiffened shaft pumping into her cavity, propelling her towards me with a concentrated force. It was a configuration, a seductive deliverance, that I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around: she saw me but felt him, and the deeper he thrust, the more illuminated she became. “Harder,” she screamed, now clutching the ribs of a pillow. He grabbed her waist with his right hand, then his left. She dipped her breasts into my mouth, hardening her nipples as she skyrocketed into climaxed oblivion. Our eyes locked. “You’re all I need,” she said, collapsing into my arms. An electric ache split open my chest, and I smiled.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
Ella and I were together for five years, our growth, our groceries, even our thesis, inseparable. She wasn’t gay, but we were in love, an inconvenient truth that skewed the definition of “us” while contributing to a recurring theme that we’d never escape: she wanted me, and we weren’t enough.
I remember fantasizing about kissing Ella for the first time during our third year at Syracuse. We lived with three other roommates on Redfield Place, our bedrooms opportunely adjacent. I remember her scent crawling through the floorboards and into my sheets, arresting any chance I had at sanity, or sleep. Everything about her was intoxicating: her elongated physique, her ancient green eyes, her love for and commitment to anthropology, indigenous people, and the planet. A naive jock with choppy blonde hair and a disassociation from my body, I’m not sure what exactly drew her to me. But our connection swallowed time.
As our friendship deepened, the thought of us becoming romantic felt somewhat unlikely yet possible enough for me to mentally map how our first uniting might unfold. Our lips, illuminated by the soft glow of a late-night movie, slowly finding one another’s as we spilled across our weathered sienna couch. But our relationship didn’t start, or end, quietly.
“I want you,” she stated, vehemently, while we were studying for a structures exam. I put my pen down and looked at my desk, trying to process the words I’d dreamed I would hear, feeling the pull of her stare behind me. She got up from my bed, yanked me from my chair while throwing the weight of her body into mine. After a prolonged, sensual, almost cataclysmic kiss, she grabbed my wrist and led me to the bathroom, tearing off my clothes and hers while turning on the shower. I think our roommates were home that night and close enough to hear the furor. She didn’t care. I did. But not enough to stop it. As clouds of billowing steam were pierced by swollen sounds and streams of water, she placed every inch of her into every inch of me. And I was no longer a virgin.
The next morning, my entire constitution had shifted, my step awake and awash with wonder. She, on the other hand, was unmoved and inaccessible. I remember feeling stoned to sleep that night, wanting desperately to discuss all that had developed between us. But this was how the narrative, our narrative, would go. Our connection would intensify over months, years, but the peaks of our relationship would mirror our intimacy: sporadic, sultry, and always on her watch. Sex became a bellwether for us. When she wanted it, it was on. And I mean on. Rapturous. Erotic. At times, even public. But it was actually her withholding of sex that made it so unbearably desirable. Not because it gave me access to an orgasm. It gave me access to her.
As our relationship aged, sex and poetic conversation were gradually replaced with wild, sometimes dangerous, one-off escapades. Drugs in the Netherlands. An African Arrest. Overnight trains and midnight raids in Barcelona, Benin, Hayesville, Milan. The higher we went, the harder we fell, and the more I craved the collision. Extremes kept her near.
As the arc of our love continued to torque with time, so did the twisted beauty between us. Busted lips met bruised skulls, but our mornings were steamed with graphite, woodsmoke, and seasoned measures of Bill Frisell. Bloody brawls and broken glass bankrupted most of 2007, but our fury also fed curated lofts and architectural awards. With every shadow, there was light. Passports. Pills. Elevation. Despair. Lust. Laughter. Fists. Fields. Some might say we had it all.
In the end, it wasn’t the highs and lows, or the destruction, that broke me. It was sharing her; sharing us. Our tidal waves were most vicious when she slept with other people. She never told me about the men with whom she’d mate, but I found traces of them everywhere. Letters in her car. Used condoms on our floor. But I never saw them in action, allowing just enough distance to survive. It’s amazing what the mind can will away.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
I whisked Ella away to the Caribbean for my sister’s wedding over four years into our relationship. Here, we knew no one, and I could hardly wrap my mind around how having her to myself would feel. Mexico was a special trip, a family occasion, leaving so little room for us to go south.
The ceremony was gorgeous, our first week like a dream. I can still remember the way her blue dress sliced through the pastel of the equatorial streets. My heart was still. And happy.
But then, there he was: a tanned, brown-eyed beau, painting a balcony on Calle Punta Soya. Ella and I were returning to our abode from the beach, and he caught her eye. A smile led to a chat. A chat led to a drink. And their afternoon chemistry led to a rosy invitation. “Trust me, Emma,” she said, finishing my Paloma. “This is exactly what we need.”
Walking up the stucco steps to his second-story studio, I could see a universe of blue against bright orange walls, an explosion of color and contrast. I had never seen a flat that opened to the sky. And I had never felt so dark while drenched in light.
☽☾ ☽☾ ☽☾
“Now put it in her,” Ella urged, her fingertips pressed into the flesh of his pecs. “I want to see it in her.”
Holding him from behind, she took his shoulder blade in her mouth and massaged his groin, touching him the way I had only known her to touch me.
Still erect, our mystery man’s brown locks and carved abs were glistening with sweat as he eagerly turned my way. I didn’t want him in me, but she did. It was all we needed. Until it wasn’t.
I think his name was Alex.