Chapter Sixteen - Maya
So, it looks like we’re camping. One of his phantom forest elves has set up a tent in yet another clearing ahead. But calling it a tent is like calling the pyramids mere triangles. The tent is the size of a house.
“Ever been in a yurt?” says Conrad. Of course, he knows the answer, which is no.
It’s even more impressive inside than out. Except for the round shape, you’d have no idea that it wasn’t a house. The walls are paneled, hiding the poles that support the structure. There’s a firepit in the floor, functional no doubt, and a stove in the corner. No, yurts don’t have corners, but it’s over there against a wall. There’s even a cooler full of drinks.
“I had them set this up for us,” he says. “I think we’ll be able to do some very good work here.”
It looks that way.
One thing I’ve always been sure of is that men are uncomplicated. Exasperating, yes. Infuriating at times, sure. But I’ve always felt like I knew where I stood when it came to whichever guy was next to me. He wanted something from me, and I wanted to believe that he was as interested in getting to know me as getting into my pants.
Conrad is complicated. You hear that we’re all made of many selves. Angry you, lustful you, petty you, generous you, cruel you, and so on. The light and the dark have to fight for center stage and if you’re lucky your good attributes spend the most time front and center. Conrad seems like he’s got a million sub-modes battling inside him. It feels like he wants me to figure out who he is. Or maybe, who he could be. He said he feels protective of me, but I feel the same way. Is that crazy, feeling protective of a man who has so much money that money has essentially ceased to exist for him? A man with such resources that he has unlimited options? A man with such good looks that he could fill this yurt with a grateful harem at the snap of his fingers.
I watch him start the fire and it doesn’t seem crazy at all. He knows what he is. He knows what he’s not. He’s curious about who he might become. It’s hard not to respect that. It’s impossible not to want it for him.
“Is this going to help us fall in love?” I say.
He looks around the yurt. “Oh yeah. This is kind of like a primitive atom smasher. But in here, instead of atoms, it’s all of those pesky inhibitions that make people put up their walls get destroyed.”
Once the fire’s going, he sits in a wicker chair and pats his knee. “This is what people do,” he says. “Come sit on my lap. You’ll be overcome with desire and emotion.” He throws back his head and laughs. “Please don’t ever tell anyone I said that. I just had to see how it sounded out loud.”
I sit on his lap. I put my arms around his neck. He can laugh all he wants, but I’m overcome with desire and emotion. “You know, I think that all of this touching can really confuse the issue.”
“You might be right. It’s tough to experiment in a vacuum.” He kisses me and I put my hands in his hair. It’s hard to believe that the normal world is only 15 minutes away. By helicopter, that is.
When we separate I say, “You know, I thought of something that might help. It’s straight of the girl’s guide to falling in love.”
“Is that a real book?”
“Probably. And one of the non-negotiables. You’re supposed to meet my friends so I can get their opinion on you. The good news is that right now I really only have one friend, so this will be easy.”
“If we’ve got two weeks out here, how long would you need for your friend to give me an evaluation?”
“No more than a night or two.”
“All right, give her a call. If she says yes, I’ll have someone go get her.”
Angela screams so loudly into the phone that the yurt nearly collapses. I don’t give her the details; I just present it as an invite. She wants to know when we’ll be getting married. She wants to know if she can marry him. She wants to know what he looks like naked. Conrad can hear the whole thing. He looks like he’s regretting this decision. When I hang up, he says, “We stay here tonight. We’ll bring her up to the house tomorrow afternoon.”
“And what are we going to do in the meantime?”
“I need to spend a couple of hours writing. I want you to do the same. Then we need to add another layer to the experiment.”
“What should I write about?” I say.
“That’s up to you, Maya. But it might be helpful for you to write about what you want from a man in your life. Then you’ll have a better way to gauge whether I can be that man or not.”
He delivers this speech like he’s Spock. But I know he’s just trying to appeal to my analytical side. It’s not a bad strategy. I know I said it before, but it bears repeating: when you find a man that encourages your mind, you don’t just throw everything away and worship him just because he’s not fixated on your body, but it’s an uncommon thrill.
As I put the pen on the paper, it is quickly apparent that I know much more about what I don’t want than what I do. Other than my night with Conrad, the rest of the men in my life haven’t exactly set the cosmos on fire. Let’s see:
You already know about Ian. Cheating, charming, cowardly.
Tim had been a waiter with a screenplay in a desk at home. He called him mom three times a week and cried when he couldn’t pay his bills on time.
Nick had been in the city for a summer before returning to an oil rig somewhere in the ocean. He had been an adorable moron whose T-shirts all had words on them.
There had been a philosophy professor whose name I couldn’t remember. He used words like “Kantian” at the breakfast table before the sun had come up. He had approached sex like he did his classes: painstakingly, clinically, as if he thought Socrates might show up and judge him.
Other than them, there had been a few boyfriends when I was a teenager. What I wanted was what they were not. I want ambition. I want stability. I want someone who adores me and challenges me. I want someone independent who has passions of his own. I definitely want someone who had a body, a pair of eyes, and ass like Conrad’s. I’m not proud, I can admit it. The thing I want most of all, I think, is for someone to know everything about me. Not that I’m overflowing with unshared secrets, but I’ve never been in a relationship that passed beyond that guarded stage where you’re not even you, you just send your representative to date in your place.
Conrad will know me if I let him. But I guess we have to follow the experiment to its end. Good God, this is all so weird and wonderful. Angela is going to lose her shit when she gets here.
He’s writing. He hasn’t looked up once. Now and then he pulls on his lower lip when he’s trying to concentrate or work through something. He occasionally sighs and I wonder what he’s remembering, or if he just had a flash of insight. Then I’m done wondering because I get so wet that I’m going to die if I don’t deal with it. Slowly, so he can’t hear me approaching, I put down my notebook and crawl towards him. There’s a layer of cushion on the ground, so I’m silent.
Conrad looks up and notices me at the same time as I’m reaching for his zipper. I push him back against the chair he’s in and his cock is in my mouth before he can protest that I’m interrupting his literary masterpiece. He pulses against my tongue, and I take as much of him in as I can. His hands are in my hair. My hands are on his muscular thighs. Soon he’s moving his hips to meet me, lifting slightly off of his chair. I’m lost in the moment, dimly aware of myself, more aware of his moans. It’s a delicious sensation, being nothing but body, focused solely on someone else’s pleasure. And maybe I’m being selfish, but part of me knows that if I make this memorable enough, I’m going to get something in return for my efforts. When he comes I make no effort to pull away.
“Jesus,” he says, finally releasing my hair. He leans back, eyes closed. When they open again, he looks like he’s starving and I’m the first bit of food he has seen in a week. He moves out of the chair and pushes me against the ground. One hand pulls my blouse open, squeezing my breasts, while the other yanks my skirt up. He pushes lightly against me with his palm, grinding slowly. I thought I was wet before, but nothing like this. He slips a finger under the cups of my bra and toys slowly with each nipple, just as he pulls my panties aside and slips another finger inside me. I try to sit up, ready to beg him to put his cock inside me, but he takes his hand out of my bra and softly covers my mouth. “You don’t want the ducks to hear,” he says with a devilish grin, before he disappears, kissing down the length of my body, settling between my legs.
It’s no surprise to find that he’s a bit of an artist down there. His tongue directs me to arch my back, to grind my teeth, to moan and whimper and I can tell my eyes are rolling back in my head. He slips another finger inside me while he works my clit with his tongue, and now his fingertips are pushing against my ceiling from inside. I come in under a minute, then again. It shakes me so hard that I worry I might not ever come back to reality. Then it gets even better and I worry that this might stop. Reality no longer has any charms for me.
When he finally lets me go and sits back, smiling down at me, I feel like I’ve been wrung out. I am so deliciously empty and sedated that I feel like I must weigh a thousand pounds.
I want someone to really know me, inside and out. Conrad certainly knows me better than anyone else ever has. My God, with the way he works my body, it’s like he’s always known me. He’s just been waiting for me to show up.
“I think you were really inappropriate tonight,” he says. “I’m starting to think the experiment is going to fail. We aren’t sticking to rigid methods. This is kind of all over the place.”
“Meh,” I say. “Some of the greatest breakthroughs were accidents, right? People who just said fuck it and did what they wanted?”
“You certainly did what you wanted tonight.”
He’s right about that. And it wasn’t enough. And I worry that it might never be enough. It’s not the worst problem to have. Conrad stokes the fire and opens a wooden chest. He takes two blankets out and lays them over us. At some point in the night, it begins to rain. I wake with him pressed against me from behind, his hand resting on my hip.
A shared moment, even though he’s asleep.