The Uncertainty of the Meek 

Part 4 The Secret Language

You're not in love with Anne." He didn't ask; he stated. It was Tom's
usual, calm voice, just as if he had said, "It's going to rain." Perhaps
with even less concern.

I didn't answer. It wasnıt that an unusual a response from me. He seemed
to accept my nonresponsiveness and didn't say anything else as we walked
under the forest canopy. My mind, though, raged with words. He was right.
As had happened so often in my life, it took the obvious to jar my
self-timidity loose and admit a truth I had long known but failed to shape
into a conscious thought. Anne was convenient and safe. She was warm and
nonthreatening. We could go for a week without speaking, my quick-guide
for judging the positive qualities of a lover.

But with Anne, as with everyone except Sarah, not speaking usually meant
being alone together. There wasn't the communication of soft glances and
subtle shifts in posture. Holding hands communicated only bland affection
and none of the hundreds of things that Sarah and I developed a vocabulary
for.

I needed to get comfortable with Tom before we commenced what Anne and I
hoped were a few sessions of sexual intercourse. Getting comfortable lead
me to take more and more walks with Tom. It was autumn, and there always
seemed to be another park to explore. Anne was getting jealous, although
she rarely spoke of it. I began to suspect she wasn't meek; she was a
coward. It wasnıt an inwardness that kept her from telling me of her green
feelings, it was her unwillingness to have a confrontation and her fear of
hearing what she didnıt what to know.



The way things evolved wasn't part of the plan. Tom and I were supposed to
go from talks to bed and then out of each others lives for nine months,
but when he bent his head down towards mine, my lips moved toward his. A
kiss was somehow more intimate that our planned coupling. Kissing was
unnecessary; it wasnıt procreative. His kiss was soft. I had expected it
to be rough and bristly. His tongue didn't chase after my mouth. It was a
brush, as unurgent as every other aspect of Tom's life.

"You're very beautiful, Michi." He never deflected his compliments with
conditions or escape clauses. He made his statements to be accepted or
rejected on their merits alone.

My hands found his waist, and I pulled myself against his chest. I counted
my breaths, knowing that after too few, I would have to return to Anne.
Anne will ask me about our walk, and we would spend a few words. Anne will
ask me if I'm still comfortable with this. I'll lie and say I'm having
doubts, but I want to go through with it. Anne will take my hand and lead
my to our bed. She'll pull back the sheets, and pull me under. We'll swim
in those intimate waters for much longer than normal, until the pressure
to be alone forces us up for air. Separating, we'll breath in our solitude
in great gasps before falling asleep with our backs together. A year
before, those gasps would have been greeted with joy, the heady feeling of
intimacy and solitude colliding. But tonight, my gasps will be those of
the asthmatic.

I let his hand gently lift my mouth to his again and savored the kiss. I
pressed my lips into his, feeling the bristles that hid just outside the
boarder of his lips. Our kiss continued, my tongue, surprisingly
assertive, found his tongue and prolonged the kiss. My skin chafed as our
kiss became more urgent. I heard Sarah's voice, so rare now, caress my
mind. "Michi, oh Michi, yes" I felt her legs forcefully press into my back
as I devoured her for the first time. Tom's fingers in my hair only
deepened my memory, as it was her fingers urging me on. Finally, she came
and slipped away from my mind. I was very aroused and feared that Tom
perceived it.

As I pulled my lips from Tom's, he eased away from me, leaving only our
hands touching. His smile wasn't a grin. There was no victory at my
submission to him. My initial trepidation that having sex with Tom, or any
man, would be a victory for him. He would have conquered a lesbian;
brought her back into the fold. It was the stereotype of male power--able
to tame anything by shear will and masculinity. Yet, in Tomıs arms, there
was nothing but a shared experience between two people. We were Tom and
Michi.

I hadn't dreamed that there would be much more than a brief vibrator
session to get me sufficiently aroused, his quickly getting off while I
imagined Anne's hand, and then a chaste kiss good-bye. But even that could
be taken as a victory by the wrong man. And could I deny him something of
a victory? Despite my fears of male conquest, could I treat him
resentfully, as a tool necessary for the job, but hardly tolerable for its
crudeness? No, it seemed, in my plotting mind, that my only ethical course
was to pretend that it was reasonably good, that he was a fine lover who
understood women, as just payment for his help in my quest to become a
mother.

But in Tom, there seemed no need for conquest; his skills were not in need
of proving. We kissed, mutually, and that was all that he wanted or
needed.

We walked silently in through the forest towards a cliff that overlooked
the Columbia. He promised me a sunset there, and I suspected we would
reach it just in time. I thought about Sarah again. It had been ten years
since our breakup. I had managed to mostly forget about her. When I
finally took a lover, three years after the break-up, I would imagine
Sarah when we made love. I imagined Sarah after she left; I imagined Sarah
before she arrived. My initial post-Sarah lovers passed facelessly through
my life, supplanted by the ghost of Sarah. By the time Anne came around, I
was ready to leave Sarah behind, and Anne's pretty face and quiet manner
were enough to put Sarah in a box which was opened only rarely.

But now, walking with Tom, who knew that Anne was just something I used to
repress the memory of Sarah, Sarah was reborn inside of me. Her athletic
legs kicked open the box, and she bounded out, fully fleshed out of the
most powerful dreamstuff I held within. She took me in her arms and talked
to me about nothing, saying everything. I dropped Tom's hand and fell to
my knees, weeping.

My mood was dark and bitter as tar, yet I laughed with joy at Sarahıs
presence. It was a presence crushingly large that was enveloping me. Sarah
and I argued--you should be happy, No, I should be crying. Where were you
all of these years I've been with a stand-in, a cheap, plastic model of
you? Here, always locked up in here. It was a foolish argument, by a
desperately confused codependent.

Tom's arms surrounded me but did not hold me tightly. His thumb stroked
the back of my hand. His touches spoke to me in the secret language. I
could talk if I needed to, but he'd never ask. The decision was mine
completely.



I had never cheated on anyone before, but if had I slept with a dozen
women (or men, for that matter), I would have cheated on Anne less
thoroughly than I did those moments with Tom. I wish I could have written
it off as a momentary weakness, the afterimage of a bad dream, or some
meek person's compliance with the unspoken demands of an assertive
personality. But it was none of these.

In some way, Tom contained all of the reserve of Sarah I secreted away
while I became a proper adult. My memories of Sarah are all memories of a
teenager, a girl who was just starting to venture towards womanhood.
Certainly, Sarah was remarkably mature and confident for her years, but
there were so many things about her that I would now find girlish and
undesirable. But how rarely did I let myself glance at her failings. I
kept them at the back of my tome of memories, in the pages that stick
together, and start to tatter when forced apart. The ink was smeared, so I
kept to my favorite parts of the story, where Sarah was always my shining
chevalier, my Lady of the Lake, handing me the sword with which I could
conquer my world, the sheath to protect me from the wounds the world might
deliver.

Tom was Sarah born again as an adult. Or perhaps the Sarah of my memory,
the Sarah's whose flaws were hidden. I feared her Phoenix-like rising
would cripple me, but if these feelings were for Tom, and not Sarah, my
entire sexual identify would be torn apart. My sex life was a central part
of me, and I was not prepared to deal with questioning it.

I laid next to Anne, silently praying to gods I scarcely believed in,
hoping that my feelings would clarify, that I could divine who I was, and
what I was doing next to Anne. She slept a troubled sleep, tossing and
turning next to me, murmuring untranslatable nightmares into the
darkness's papyrus. Anne had never been able to decipher my secret
language, and I, for all of my skills as a translator, could never read
hers. But our emotions crept out in English. She knew I was a wreck with
doubt, doubt about her, doubt about myself. I knew she feared she was
losing me. I knew our relationship,--I, Michi Lorre--mattered to her,
meant something eloquent and sacred to her.



We drank coffee in silence. We always drank coffee in silence. But that
morning, the silence was not beautiful, orderly, but raging with
uncertainty and mistrust. Her every sip was an accusation shouted from
mountain tops to my guilty mind.

The following morning, tension grew only worse. This new silence drove out
our sublime silence, its expanding mass crushing the delicate life we
knew. We began to make love more passionately--and more loudly--in an
attempt to drive the new silence away. We talked more frequently, making
small talk about the hummingbirds that had left with summer. We talked
about the neighbor girl next door. None of it mattered. It was brittle
conversation that snapped in the breeze, settled with an aching crash, and
then the new silence returned.

My work suffered. That shouldn't be a surprise. I found words were
increasingly awkward. How could they describe my moods? How could a
business document about import duties at DeGaulle push aside the crumbling
of my life? I flipped idly through a thesaurus, looking for the right
word, but thinking only about Sarah's kisses and then Tom's.

At some point in the middle of the "R"s, my hand came to rest on my thigh.
My fingers traced words--ancient, lost words--against my skirt. I licked
my finger to turn the page, but instead of turning, my finger dwelt on my
lip, slowly caressing its surface, turning the sensitive inner lip out to
the world. My other hand found sentences that took it towards the edge of
my skirt and slipped under it. My tongue found the finger at my lips and
pulled it in, and I pushed my thighs together. I closed my eyes and rolled
my head around my shoulders sensually, my hands creeping slowly, gently
towards my venus and my breasts. My tongue danced over my lips. My thighs
rubbed together with increasing energy.

My self-kisses blended in my mind with Tom's kiss, with Sarah's kisses.
They fused as my hand found my nipple. They separated when my fingers
began pushing against my panties. Those fingers had to be Sarah's. There
were no fingers like hers. But it was Tom's hand on my breast, and--I
realized almost with an unerotic start--his mouth pressed against mine.

I slowed my pace, rubbing the sides and top of my breast, my belly, my
thighs, keeping away from the danger zones, while I let my mind undress
Sarah. It was a provocative strip-tease. Her t-shirt coming up just enough
to expose her navel before dropping down while she undid the top button on
her jeans. Then the shirt went up again, showing her wonderfully strong
abdomen. She held it there and kicked off her flats. She pulled her shirt
up over her bra, exposing the outline of her erect nipples. She left it
half-off while she walked over to me and kissed me on the mouth, a
glancing kiss. Then her jeans crept down her legs, as she shifted from
right to left, left to right. Her tan, powerful legs shimmered in the
light. The t-shirt was off, and she kissed my cheek and then my neck.
 
"Michi, Michi." Her breathy voice was always the most powerful aphrodisiac
I'd ever known. My hand became more bold. Sarah removed her bra, exposing
her perfect little breasts. She teased me by hiding them with her hands,
exposing then one at a time, or even a nipple at a time. "Michi, Michi." I
was ready to come.

She pulled her panties off rapidly and jumped on me. It was her hand
driving between my thighs, her fingers on my breast. I came harder than I
had in months.

I sat in my chair, slowly recovering. My eyes still shut, my breath
shallow, broken. I pictured Sarah next to me, holding my hand. But there
was Tom, naked now. His cock was full, and he stroked it slowly while he
watched Sarah and me. The idea that Tom was watching us excited me, and my
hands returned to my rumpled, soaked clothes. I made love to Sarah again,
but watched Tom stroke his cock. I kept focused on his eyes while they
bored into my own. I saw his face, red, clenched in orgasm, as I came
again, even harder than the first time.

It took me a half an hour to recover. I straightened my clothes as best I
could, told one of my coworkers I was ill, and left. I walked in the park
where Tom had shown me the sunset, trying to figure out who the hell I
was.

At seven that evening, I called my office and left a message that an
emergency had come up and that I wouldn't be back until Monday. I got my
car and drove up to Seattle.



I was in Seattle for a week and a half. My good work had bought me the
time for my "eccentric little jaunt." It didn't buy me anything from Anne.
I think we talked more during that time--all over that horrid invention,
the telephone--than we had during our five years together. It isn't fair
to break up with someone over the phone. After Sarah left me, I certainly
promised I would never do it to anyone, but I told Anne I had to move out.
It wasn't technically breaking up, but, well. . .

Tom helped me find a place when I returned. I stayed at a hotel, afraid of
spending the night with him, even if it was in another room. He held my
hand when I cried and let me talk with my secret language of touches. I
told him everything, but the secret language is not a precise one, so were
you to ask him, he'd be able to offer only a rough outline of my emotions.

Anne and I met for coffee or dinner with increasing infrequency. We no
longer had intimate silences. I had killed the relationship. Three months
later, Anne confessed she had had a date. I saw them at the opera a month
after that, and they seemed quite content.