My Afternoon with Alejandro

It used to be that I had sex with someone because I couldn’t bear not to. I had to touch his skin, be as close as humanly possible, in the words of a short story writer whose name I’ve forgotten (which I read in a collection called Writing Our Way Home: Contemporary Stories by American Jewish Writers). Now I have sex because I’m horny. Which is not a bad thing, but is less dramatic, or romantic, certainly, and I guess is what happens when you’re 34 and not nineteen. Not that I had sex at 19. I had sex, once, at 17, and then there was a 7 year drought before Luke Parker wore me down with his incessant, arrogant wooing and blunt, uncircumcised dick. But anyway.

I mean, ever since I became a slut the goal has been adventure rather than intimacy. I have had occasional, terrifying forays into intimacy: with Sweetheart Daniel, especially, who is still my favorite non boyfriend ever. But now sex is more about getting off than anything else. Thus Alejandro.

After he contacted me the other week I hemmed and hawed before agreeing, ’cause, though he is cute and our sex was satisfactory, surely sex ought to be more than satisfactory. But. Of late my number of sex partners has shrunk – Alex’s girlfriend is back in town and Jed is, as ever, completely unreliable, so I thought what the hell, and told Alejandro to come on over.

He turned up on Sunday afternoon. I hadn’t seen him in over a year, and it occurred to me that he could be anyone at all. I remembered him as tall, dark-haired, and handsome, with a very faint Brazilian accent and a leather thong around his neck. When I saw him on my doorstep on Sunday – well, it could have been any tall, dark-haired man. “Hey!” I grinned, like we were long lost friends. “Come on in.”

Until Mmmark, Alejandro was definitely the most handsome man I’d ever slept with, but sexually we were sort of ho-hum. We had sex two or three times, and it was quiet, polite, eyes closed-type sex. That is, he doesn’t talk dirty. He was clean cut, and had a nice body, lean and lightly muscled, as I believe the term is, but I had no desire to be as close as humanly possible to him.

So I got him a glass of water and gestured for him to go to my room, and there I sat on my bed and we discussed what we’d been up to in the year and a half since we’d last met. “I took a break from acting,” Alejandro informed me, which I took to mean he’d gotten burnt out from rejection. “But now I’ve started teaching and acting again. It’s going really well.”

Yeah, yeah. He put his backpack on my armchair and after a bit more in this vein, walked over to me: “Are you ready?”

“Huh? Oh—”

“Cause last time you had to drink…” He lifted his arm and mimed drinking like in commercials for soda where people throw back their heads and gulp down high fructose corn syrup. I recalled that on our first date I had insisted on drinking several alcopops (English slang for those soft-drink like mixed drinks you can buy at the supermarket) before getting naked.

“Oh, no—” How things had changed! I could now have casual sex sober.

Alejandro crouched down in front of me and put his face close to mine. He smelled faintly of cologne; Aqua di Gio?

Our faces were close together, but instead of kissing, his lips just hovered next to mine. He was making me wait, which I appreciated, since it added an element of seduction to what was otherwise, well, not a very seductive scene. For a long time we stayed like this, our lips not quite touching as our bodies mimed closeness. I nipped the air surrounding him, waiting for his mouth on mine.

At last we kissed, and Alejandro pushed me backwards onto my mattress. He lay on top of me and I closed my eyes as we kissed, because I was afraid that looking at him would make me feel too detached.

He gently, then not so gently, bit my neck, and I scraped my nails along his back. I always notice a man’s smell, and while the cologne wasn’t overpowering, the cologne made me feel like I was making out with the ground floor of Bloomingdale’s.

We kissed and kissed and I kept my eyes closed so I could concentrate on the sensation instead of asking myself what I was doing with this person. He pulled my shirt over my head and when he struggled with my bra I unhooked it for him. Then I tugged his t-shirt off. His skin was warm against mine. He unzipped my skirt and I slipped off my underwear, and then he pulled off his jeans so we were naked. His dick was medium sized, thick, nice.

His fingers drummed at the skin around my cunt, but not at my clit or lips, again, he teased me. My breathing got heavier, and I wrapped my hand around his dick, it felt thick and solid in my fingers. Still Alejandro’s fingers lingered at my clit, the ghost of his fingertips on me.

At last he slid his fingers to my clit, and I moaned with relief. I was slick for him, all the waiting had done me good. He rubbed his finger inside me for a minute and then turned on his side: “Do you have a condom?”

I nodded, and handed him. I watched as he put it on, then gestured that I wanted to be on top. After a moment I lowered myself on top of him, and closed my eyes as his cock opened me up. For a second I paused, and we looked at one another. Then I pushed myself all the way down, and felt his dick sink all the way in. I sighed.

I started rocking back and forth. Alejandro’s face looked rounder, his skin more olive. He smiled up at me, and I smiled back. He bent his head, and took my left breast in his mouth. Had he remembered that I liked that or was that something he wanted to do? I arched my back against him.

We fucked in silence, exchanging polite smiles as we pushed against one another. I came quickly and then Alejandro took over, rolling on top of me and pinning me to the mattress.

We kissed a bit as he fucked me, and I relaxed with his cock nice and smug inside me. He thrust back and forth, grunting occasionally, and I ran my hands along his back, feeling like I was soothing him somehow.

He took a while to come and when he did he gasped like he’d run a race. As soon as he came I thought: OK, you can go now. Which is very ungenerous on my part, seeing as how Alejandro is a perfectly nice guy and had just given me a perfectly nice orgasm. Nonetheless. We have nothing in common except sex, and now that he was lying next to me in a post-coital way, I felt obliged to make small talk. And anyway if he’d just gotten up and said, “Well, that was great! See ya!” I would have been offended. “So,” I said at last, clearing my throat, “How are you?”

And Alejandro told me, but I didn’t really pay attention since I was wondering how long he might think it was appropriate to stay since clearly I couldn’t kick him out. After a few minutes he got up, dressed, got himself a glass of water and when he got back he reached for his knapsack. “Well,” he said, “I better get going.”

“Well!” I said, jumping out of bed and pulling on my clothes. “Let me see you out.” So I trailed him to the door and we touched lips. He stepped outside and blinked in the bright sunshine.

“Good seeing you,” I said, and gave him a friendly, disinterested smile. He waved, and for a moment there was almost a rueful glance, but then he turned and I shut the door and was alone once more.