Urgency Named
The immediate Saturday morning passed as mornings do after a late night of dancing.
The day belonged to Jenny's visit in the afternoon. After sleeping in, I pottered a late breakfast and flipped the weekend paper. Next, I threw a load of washing into the machine. Then I tidied my bedroom, filling in until midday. Finally, I tried to read as I awaited her arrival.
Hemingway is a superb writer, yet I couldn't concentrate on Robert and Maria.
As I look back on my days with Jenny, in hindsight, questions I never raised with myself emerge.
When does someone know they want to be close to someone else? Is it an exact symbiosis?
Unlikely.
It's close enough to lead to physical contact.
To say it started on a dance floor serves as a coordinated reference point for Jenny and me.
Jenny arrived at my share house around midday. I assumed I offered her coffee! However, I can't visualise mugs in our hands or the table. Our conversation was pleasant and social—the hallmarks of casual friendship.
Yet I stalled a captive to her company. Devoid of a sense of urgency to direct more? An unaccompanied pair, only each other, to sustain and lead the conversation. I can't recall the chat details. I remember we used it to scope each other.
Jenny's majors included theatre and music. She shared her enthusiasm for musical theatre, where she hoped to direct or produce. We lounged close in separate black vinyl easy chairs. The drawn blinds showed a warm day and a quiet street beyond the garden bushes. Her amber eyes and a face shaped by her hair to her shoulders stand out. One of Jenny's legs eased over the arm of the chair. Jenny wore jeans. She positioned herself to interact.
No awkward silences or sensing of a wrong choice here, or she's not into me.
I floated lost in her company.
Jenny suggested, and I agreed to an afternoon drive.
I drove to a nearby beach. Here, we walked and talked; memory filters nothing of consequence. I wore black shorts. A detail remembered, yes and no, because the recollection was Jenny's, not mine.
A month later, Jenny chirped; she liked my butt in those shorts. It finished a swell afternoon, and Jenny focused on something other than the incoming waves.
I know I lacked complicity to peppiness, seasoning a desire to build keener interest. I needed to be forward and not rely on my behind.
Busy schedules separated us for the next few days. Jenny promised to ring me later in the week. The new week started. Lectures, assignments and part-time work filled my days.
Jenny and I arranged to meet on Tuesday night by phone on Thursday evening. We met for coffee in the city centre as I drifted to company keeping with initiative absent.
My mind shied, and it ducked, prodding to say, the standard, I like you.
I devolved, lapsing into passive listening.
Jenny revealed her plans for the upcoming weekend, a visiting commitment. Either the details she gave were vague, or I slacked on distilling them.
I luxuriated in her presence. My mind idled; it failed to plan, like asking Jenny on a date.
Then we returned to our cars in the same car park. I faltered, letting her drift, leaving her thinking perhaps I belonged in the false start category.
In hindsight, I was frigging close to Jenny letting me go.
Jenny liked me, but I wasn't showing her. I desired her closer, yet to initiate passion, my weakness.
We separated at the entrance to the car park, as she said she needed to go. Her parked car was nearby, and mine was far off.
A simple "Bye," and I headed towards my car, separated.
The distance between us moved beyond personal space to public space. We entered the typical goodbye space. Soon, she would be in her car. Jenny stopped and hesitated.
I gazed into her amber eyes, and she returned them to my brown ones. The linger of mutual attraction held us.
The immediate lure — though neither of us spoke.
Space dissolved, and I sliced through my timid self. Jenny revealed her intent. Our lips met, and tongues found their sensory accessories.
Our kiss burst forth, sudden and defining.
After lips were introduced, Jenny said she would catch me when she returned.
I watched her drive off. I don't remember how I filled in the rest of the evening.
I recall, as we kissed, I thought, Geez, great kiss.
Though it felt like a fuck.
That word circulated in my mind as our tongues caressed.
I entered the realm of astonishment.
Now, it's pretty awkward to admit the word circulating in my mind during our first physical contact. A kiss is a promise of more; it doesn't mean sex. Yet my mind linked it with screwing. Luckily, it spawned generic because recalling anyone else how spoiling of the moment.
Memory archived earlier sexual experiences.
One kiss. The starting point of a possible relationship. My wonder is that I moved towards Jenny, and she moved towards me. A brief pause in the fabric of our previous unconnected lives. The tie of two separate lives tangled in a kiss.
We eliminated the stumbling block of touch. And what a first touch — not holding hands, an arm around the shoulder, or a peck on the cheek, wham, straight to a French kiss!
An erotic statement opened the gambit of consensual desire. Our kiss was not a textbook, romantic location—first kiss daydreams, like full moons and candlelit dinners. Instead, the spell of compelling sensuality weaved its magic in a car park under harsh, flickering overhead lights.
The kiss, in memory, frames for me as rapid, insistent and the nectar of connection. My wistful, fanciful imaginings in the past; take it slow. Approach and use eye contact. Position your hands. Sometimes, the manual is useless. Instinct and response became my guides.
The kiss defined itself without a sense of Jenny's or my body. Apart from our lips, a broader touch lay dormant.
My wonder traces where fixed my being and my balance? How did our heads angle to avoid awkwardness?
What can I say? A kiss of a lifetime.
I recall our kiss as a foretaste, inciting us. It defies ranking or rating as a super kiss and the taste for the next expanded. Nothing could be gradual at a later encounter. Urgency named, the speed felt, and the insistence would snowball buoyed by passion's momentum—a twin avalanche of cascading desire surging to its release. Jenny and I proved powerless to restrain future mutual fervour.
After our kiss, we held a joint momentary glow. Our eyes met as tongues and lips parted. A concerted kiss, the appetiser, the sensual harbinger of earthly delights. Our bodies rendezvoused as the space separating our lives closed, bridged, and crossed.
Jenny, at twenty-two years of age and Luke, at twenty-three, primed to blend.