I know what he's doing on the other side of that door. He's making love to me. 

No doubt about it, when it's this quiet and still -- the sink not running, the floor not creaking, nobody banging around in the medicine cabinet, no piss streaming into the toilet. Silence like this isn't natural; it has to be practiced. We both know what it means, after getting into bed, when he suddenly announces that he has to go to the bathroom. Blanket thrown back, whisper of skin leaving the sheet, and I am alone, watching the shape of his back disappear into the rectangle of light beyond the door. 

Evening ritual. Now I lay me down to sleep.

From that point on it's quick. Some clothes stripped off, never all of them, and the quiet descends like a shared blanket...a shared secret. I can almost hear him, the heel of his hand stopped short of slapping his thigh, his breath panting through his mouth as he struggles not to groan aloud. My name in his thoughts, clearer than the rest. I wonder whether he can almost hear me -- the moist sound of my fingers, my thumb against my skin, the pop of my knee as I raise my leg. Trying not to gasp, trying not to shriek. Trying not to hit my body too hard against the mattress. If the bed creaked, he'd know the moment I reached completion, bouncing toward the ceiling, arched beneath the covers that shield me from his return. 

He and I take such pleasure in each other, on opposite sides of the door. 

I try to guess what he thinks about. Whether he concentrates on the mechanics or if he has specific fantasies about me. Am I seductive or shy, affectionate or forceful, is it my mouth or hair or my whole person that he takes? What positions does he put me in? Does the body of some other woman -- an ex or an actress -- stand in for my own, or has he studied me better than I think? Does he picture me lying here, thinking of him?

I wonder if I tell him I love him, before I hear him sigh loudly and flush the toilet, wash his hands, switch out the light. 

More than once, he's finished faster than I expected and almost caught me. It was just as uncomfortable for him as it was for me. Flushed, sweating, our culpability is manifest. Does my scent reach his nostrils? I can rarely catch a whiff of him through the door, sharp like cut grass or rising bread. Maybe it's pheremones. Does the chemistry work differently when we do it this way, without connection in the flesh?

Sometimes I feel ridiculous. I think he must be a masochist, putting up with this. I wonder what that says about me.

Still, I wait for a sign. A signal. Something to identify the proper moment. He waits with me. He is younger than I am, and he still believes we have forever together, so we can afford to let a little time pass. I wonder how much time before I must give in. And then how much more time before the inevitable lessening, the acknowledgement that it isn't all he hoped. I would rather stall forever if necessary. 

"Are you happy?" he asks me one afternoon, while we're working in the garden together, up to our elbows in dirt and sweat.

"Yes." And I am. I am happy that he has asked. He can't penetrate my thoughts. I know he's confused about why I could go on indefinitely, loving him from this distance. He craves physical evidence, like a stain on the sheet as proof of my feelings. To make love as if love were a tangible object. The word made flesh. Nothing else will satisfy his desire.

Maybe I've held on to my chastity for so long that it's become a permanent part of me, like armor that doesn't come off. Or maybe I chose chastity because the armor was there already. Because I'm a coward. I have only to say the word -- one word, his name -- and he'll open the door, come to me in flesh instead of fantasy. Some nights I almost call him, but something always closes my throat.

It's not fear of letting him enter my body that stops me. It's my soul, already permeated with him, so infused that we can touch one another without even being in the same room. Transubstantiation, my hands become his touching me, and his mine. Communion.

He was nervous telling me how he felt about me, yet somehow he was not afraid. Sometimes I tell myself his courage means he doesn't feel as deeply as I do. But then I look into his eyes when he's smiling at me, and know the truth. He's not afraid of losing himself with me, in me. He's left the door unlocked. How and when I open it is up to me.

I lie awake long after he's returned from the bathroom, his quiet snoring even and comforting. But my hands and feet are cold, and tears course down my cheeks. I can't reach for him, though I know that if I did he would hold me, make no demands. It's not fair to him, when he gives himself so freely, to turn to him for solace from my own subterfuge.

Love is an active verb. When I do tell him, there will be no walls, no doors. No defenses on either side. Uncontrolled, explosive. Obliterating. Death might be like that, if death were something to be fantasized about in the night. 

I wait for a sign, a signal. A call. I'm not sure what it will be. Something unequivocal, though, like the screams of fire engines as the city burns, or an air raid siren signaling the end of the world. Something to tell me that it's time.

Copyright © 2002 Em Wycedee. All Rights Reserved. May not be re-printed in any form without express written consent of the author. Do not copy or post.