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| Image credit: Photo by Theremina on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons |
This morning when I woke up, my husband was getting dressed. I leaned on one elbow in bed, watching his silhouette against the curtains as he took clothes from the dresser. As I followed the familiar lines of his body, I remembered the first time I saw him naked, the first night we made love.
We were in college. Mark had just turned 21 just a few weeks before. When we first met, we were teenagers. It's hard for me to believe now how young we were then. I thought we were such fully formed adults at the time. We had been friends for the past year or so, growing gradually closer and sharing more and more. We would stay up late into the night, talking and laughing: about our families, our childhoods, our past relationships, our past sexual experiences.
I knew he had a girlfriend he started dating in high school, who had broken up with him (and left him broken hearted) during college, shortly before I got to know him. I believed he was a faithful and loving man who had been celibate for at least the past year, since shortly after they broke up. He had told me about the youthful flings he had here and there -- long ago, before or after this last serious long-term relationship, before I knew him -- and how he had learned from them how much he was a one-woman man.
I had a boyfriend at the time. He had been at my place earlier that same evening. He brought with him a bottle of wine and an understanding that he'd be having an enjoyable night. My roommate was out of town, so the place was all mine for the night, so it went without saying that there would be sex, of course. Yes, the place was all mine, yet it turns out, I didn't feel like sharing it with him. Maybe we fought, maybe I just asked him to leave, but he left angry, disappointed and out some wine. And I got on the phone.
I knew Mark was in love with me. I knew he was attracted to me. I knew I loved him and was attracted to him. I knew I was alone and had the whole night ahead of me. I knew if he came over that night, we'd make love. And I desperately wanted to. I wanted him like I wanted to gasp for air after being tumbled underwater in the ocean. He knew it too, and tried hard to convince himself, to convince me, that he should stay away. After all, I had a boyfriend. But I asked him to come, begged him to come, and he came.
It was a winter night and we took a walk in the snow, our breath hanging in the crisp, clear, moonlit air, as we postponed the inevitable. When we came back to my place, on the sofa, kissing, I whispered, "I'm yours." I got up to get the lights, a condom, and I turned across the darkened room to see his silhouette against the window, dark skin darker than the winter sky. I watched the way his body moved undressing: movements I've seen a hundred times since, movements I watched again this morning as he got ready for work. I was in awe of his beauty. And he of mine.
His eyes opened wide when he saw me for the first time, wider still when he touched me, and I heard his sharp intake of breath. I felt like the most beautiful woman in the world. I felt like I was giving him a great gift and that my body, my sexuality, my femininity, my whole self -- not just body, but mind and soul -- were wholly accepted, treasured, cherished and loved. I was special. We were special. This was True Love.
We never made it to the bedroom, but lay twined together on the living room floor until dawn crept in soft through the windows. And for days afterwards, I could smell the deep musky smell of him on my hands and body, lingering with me, no matter how many times I washed, as if he were ingrained in me, still telling me he loved me.
Overlaid on this picture is what I know now: that he had never been faithful to his previous girlfriend; that the flings he was telling me about, casting in the distant past, were happening as he and I were flirting, falling in love, moving toward a sexual relationship; that he didn't struggle to stay away from me that night because of my boyfriend, but because he'd only just completed treatment for a sexual transmitted disease he picked up during a one night stand with a woman whose name he didn't quite remember and he wasn't yet sure he was disease free; that other women since then have seen the same movements and the same silhouette and maybe even thought they were my husband's True Love too.
There was a time when that overlay, that horrible ghost image, was all I could see; it blotted out the original for a time. It's still there now -- giving me a fuller, rougher picture than the soft blurred edges of my early twenties -- but the new lines don't cut anymore; they just are. And my husband -- older, more familiar, less romanticized, more real than that first night -- is still just as beautiful to me silhouetted against our window today as he was nearly twenty years ago.
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