very filled with dreams

Naked "Touch"

rkb:

So often I forget about stories I’ve written, perhaps deliberately, to make room for new ones and, well, some of those true ones are a little too close or painful or nostalgic to want to recall. But since I’m editing my own anthology Naked (title may change) for Cleis Press and just saw this post about an Amazon review praising my story “Touch,” I thought I’d share a snippet of this ooooold story.

J. Kelley from Macon, Georgia wrote on Amazon:

I read Rachel Kramer Bussel’s piece ‘Touch’ first. It’s the story of two female lovers and the appreciation for the heat between them. Only way I can describe it: the honesty of every sentence just stunned me. I recommend the book just because this story is sultry, thought-provoking, wise and romantic. And because I can’t adequately describe how good this story is - you just have to read it.

And yes, I am channeling Tristan Taormino’s “Caution: Sharp Object” here - “The boys on tv” are from a segment I’ve taped and long since forgotten the details of and because I’m Miss Disorganized am not even sure I have a clip of, but whatever. Part of why I don’t have files and clippings and scrapbooks like a good media whore is that I’m so much more focused on the future than the past. Anyway, part of “Touch” from Alison Tyler’s anthology Naked Erotica. I’m trying to get many of my older stories posted in the writing samples section of my site - that’s a goal over the next few months. I didn’t really think anyone was reading them so didn’t update for years and now there are enough stories that I think are decent that I feel okay about adding some. Once upon a time I bought a voice recorder and thought I’d do podcasts; I’d still theoretically love to do that or vlogging, but who knows? When I have all that mythical free time, perhaps.

The boys on tv ask me how they should touch a woman, seeking some magic formula that will make them the perfect lovers, bring their girlfriends to surefire orgasms, but the truth is I have no idea. When I’m with her I’m no longer any kind of expert, I barely even know my name except when she says it, all deep and throaty and needy. Most of the time I don’t know what I’m doing, don’t know where I’m touching her, don’t have a technical name for it or a recalled memory of reading or writing about this. I couldn’t, because I’ve never felt or done anything like this before. With her, I’m not a sexpert but a sorcerer, a magician feeling my way along, teasing, testing, probing, hoping.

Every time I touch her, I do so by instinct, and if I were to stop and think about it I’d be wracked by insecurity, yet with her it all makes perfect sense. She used to say to me, in that breathy, high-on-sex kind of way, “you know exactly how to touch me,” and I thought it wasn’t true, or an exaggeration. I didn’t feel like I knew; it was maybe a happy accident, but maybe my body knew before I did, instinctively. At first I wasn’t sure what to do with her, what to do with this sensual, beautiful woman with the body of a girl, all slim and thin and seemingly fragile. I didn’t know that I could put as many fingers as I want inside of her, and she’d eagerly claim them, didn’t know that instead of being fragile she is infinitely strong; in fact, it’s a challenge to break her, to make her shake and shiver and moan, to give up some of that strength to me. I didn’t know that sliding my fingers inside of her, something as seemingly simple as that, could bring tears to my eyes, could make me want to stay there forever. I didn’t know that being the one doing the fucking could bring me to the same heights as being the one getting fucked, could make me feel so free and high and happy.

A snapshot: She is lying across the queen size bed, her head hanging off the side of it, spread out before me like the most delicious buffet. I have been away for a weekend that feels like much longer, and I look at her and it’s almost like I’ve never seen her before. I am nervous and ravenous at the same time, and watching my fingers move over and around her hot pink lips, I shiver, unsure whether to try to control myself or to let myself go. As I slide my fingers into her, first one and then two, and then more, until I have most of one hand pressed deeply inside of her, I marvel at the way she feels. I am touching skin and heat and pressing up against bones and flesh and she asks me what I’m doing to her, and I kiss her instead because I don’t have an answer for her. She is more mysterious than any boy will ever be, holding so many more secrets inside of her, ones I live to unearth.