She tells you orgasms aren’t her thing. As if living in a constant anticlimactical state makes her some kind of martyr. More like self-inflicted torture, you think.
You say, “Life without culmination is a life not worth living.”
She searches your gaze. Searches your audacity. One eyebrow arched in skepticism. Then the slight twitch of a smirk as the sentiment laces itself in mirth. She replies, “that is, unless the best parts of life have already been lived.”
And this is what you did on the mornings you both found yourselves on adjacent stoops, philosophizing over things out of your control. Like the rising cost of everything or how her middle one must fully process every feeling, otherwise, he is a lion ready to attack.
She takes a pull from her spliff.
You choke a little on your own. She is an aerialist of thought. Her palms wrap around a steaming cup of ginger tea. Its scent wafting across the invisible line. You take a sip from the French press you discovered at the little bakery down the street.
“They have the best scones,” she says.
“They seem difficult to make,” you say.
“I’ll teach you…”
With a glance, the last of your thoughts cloak themselves in your own exhalation. Inside, her husband can be heard urging their little ones into submission. She avoids your contemplation—perceived or otherwise—he drags out their names in that way exasperated parents speak.
“They’re a lot for one person,” she says.
“Only if you say they are,” you say.
Then the two of you fall into a volley over manifestation. Over the power of the tongue. Over all the hopes she has for her marriage. Her kids. Her business. Your failed relationships, endless aspirations, and failed endeavors—
She says, “you don’t give yourself enough grace.” You admire how beautiful it is when the sun and moon sit in tandem in the sky. Then you say something that reminds her of what the two of you almost did last night.
“You…” she faults with an uncurled finger primed to reprimand your audacity. Somewhere in the bottom of her mug, among the residue tells the story of a future not yet imagined. You can only hope she is lost in the possibility. She on her side of the stoop, you on yours. Soon he is pushing through the screen door, the youngest tucked in his armpit like a football. Legs kicking. Fist clenched. And a roar that bubbles from so deep inside the whole nation can feel her wrath.
He plops the little one beside her and for a beat, there lingers a hue of discontentment. That glint in his eye that almost convinces you that he knows. That in the deepest parts of his analytics lies newly tapped clairvoyance. You and he are never more than a head nod of recognition and you are okay with that.
When he retreats—taking with him the thoughts he will never share and the words he will never speak—and once the little one is snuggled with Mama’s phone in the chair She once occupied, she finally makes her way to you. Sits close enough for you to smell the ginger tea on her breath when she begins to speak. Amid the awakening morning of joggers and dogs walking their owners, she leans into you—shoulder brushing shoulder—and says, “it isn’t the orgasm that’s remembered, it’s the effort it took to get to it—”
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
