In The Beginning

Eve Fox

I waited in the anonymous hotel room with sweet anticipation. Our long-time, long-distance friendship had shifted a couple of months before in thought, though not yet deed. I was amazed at the power of our written exchanges. I felt them repeatedly in my body with a surge of arousal that was stunningly, irrefutably, birthed in my brain. "This is chemistry!" I thought. But I couldn't know if it was in fact solely the product of my brain, or if it would be sustained once we were physically in one another's company. I had never been with a woman before.

I had put on a slinky black slip, hoping to greet her at the door with arduous languor. My brain had already taken the chemistry out on an imaginative limb. Then, as it grew later and later, I began to look out the window for her arrival, my anticipation budding a small flower of anxiety. Ahhh. There she was, pulling up to the curb just outside the hotel entrance and hauling out an incredible number of heavy-looking bags. Conflict. Stay with my scripted languor or jump into clothes and run out to help her? She looked overburdened and a bit anxious herself. Maybe I wanted her sweaty, but not with the effort of lugging stuff into the room. I jumped into jeans and pulled on a light blue t-shirt, not bothering with a bra. The hotel staff and other guests would have to deal with the sight of my nipples.

I saw relief and weariness in her dark eyes as I appeared beside her at the curb. The trip had clearly taken longer than she thought. I grabbed some bags—what could possibly be in them? We made it back to the room. She had brought flowers, found a container for them, then arranged them with a small goddess figure, and a stone next to the sage and candle I was already burning. An altar.

I was nervous. I had told her I needed to take things slow, that I was a person who valued a nice plateau. Now I saw what all the suitcases were about. She had taken me at my word, and come prepared for any eventuality with piles of books, movies, and delicacies to eat. In case my slow was very, very slow. In case we were mistaken about the way we thought we felt about each other. In case things didn't work out. She stood over me as she began an in-depth show-and-tell of the suitcase contents. The slow part of me was prepared to let her go on. But the impetuous part that had envisioned kicking the door closed behind me as I took her in my arms and kissed her was feeling thwarted. A short internal discussion ensued.

"How wonderful to draw this out. If we just keep letting the tension build and build, it will be exquisite!" whispered the slow part.

"How can you let her just stand there and talk two feet away from you?" countered the impetuous part.

I pulled her down onto the green loveseat sofa next to me. We kissed, and kissed some more. I touched her dark curls, tugging them a bit, and running my fingers through them. We stood up together, slow-danced our way towards the bed in the adjoining area, still kissing, searching each other's eyes, checking in. Each slow moment answered the silent and continuous question between us, "Is this OK? Is this OK?" with soft moans of approval, "Mmmmmmm."

We lay down on the bed. She began to kiss me more deeply. I was aware of my breasts and nipples underneath the cotton of my shirt. She helped me out of my jeans. Dressed in panties and the shirt, I held her close, swung one leg over her hip, feeling full of wonder, pulsing hungrily against her. She lifted my T-shirt. I watched her take in my breasts, the scars on them. The lumpectomy scar from the breast cancer on the right. The still-pink incisions on the left from the surgical reduction for symmetry that had made a bulls-eye of my left nipple; it had been removed and then sewn back on. She talked to me, a steady stream, going over every inch of me, my hips, belly, and down and up my legs with her eyes, her lips, her hands, softly repeating, "So beautiful….so beautiful.

My body still has soft lines and smooth flesh, though my belly, I think, is large and wide. I had gained weight with cancer treatment; it had mostly done away with my waist. I had not felt beautiful for a long time, and I had never felt beautiful like this. Her face was naked before me, her body still clothed. Time for a plateau. We sat up and took a break. I was alone for a few minutes while she slipped into the bathroom. I took off my T-shirt and put on a blue knit nightie, making a decision to remove my panties. She returned. We resumed our embraces, and she quickly noticed. "My, my. My, my my," she murmured with a throaty chuckle. So naughty," she added appreciatively.

More slow time. I felt sweetly, utterly enveloped in her kisses, which were soft and nurturing, somehow maternal. Off came my blue nightie. Then it was her turn to remove some clothing. It was her first time too, in a way, her one-and-only long-time partner dead of breast cancer a little over a year before. She unbuttoned her flowered shirt, shyly shared with me that she had bought a new bra. "Very pretty," I thought aloud. The bra stayed on for a while more, and at last I helped her take it off. Then her black trousers. Not sure what to do next, I began somewhat hesitantly to explore the weight and texture of her breasts in my hands. Suddenly I wanted more control, no doubt the result of my nervousness. I lightly but firmly grabbed her wrists, and, more in a parody of dominance than the real thing, I knelt over her and held her hands down behind her, both of us laughing between kisses. "Turn around," I said, enjoying my new power. "Stay still," I said. "Don't do anything with your hands." I covered her entire back with kisses, letting my breasts graze her skin, still laughing with silly delight at the game. I turned her to face me again. Her breasts were large, and now I noticed the faint white lines against their darkness. Those breasts had fed two babies. I kissed and sucked them, waiting expectantly for her nipples to respond. I myself had not been breast-fed. I began to make up for it.

She still had her panties on. They were elastic and lacy. Her thighs and legs were large and veined. She had warned me beforehand of something she called her belly pouch. It was time for those panties to go. Naked, she was a lived-in Willendorf Goddess, the belly pouch she had spoken of falling to either side of a line right down the middle of it, just above her pubis. Her sizeable behind went perfectly with the rest. She was lush, voluptuous, feminine, gorgeous. Something deep inside me bowed down in worship.

I had brought several costumes, she had brought one: a fedora. She set it at a jaunty angle shading her eyes. She wore the long silk scarf I had given her fashioned like a man's tie. It fell between her breasts. I lay on my side and watched her in it as we talked, resting, taking a break. The fedora and tie off, we came into each other's arms again. I lay on my back and watched her sighing over me, caressing me, kissing me. "Oh, so beautiful, perfect, just the way I imagined you," she exclaimed softly and repeatedly.

"She's not just kidding around," I thought. "She really IS a lesbian. She really likes me A LOT."

I kept my eyes on her face, watching and listening with increasing wonder. Was that really me she was talking about?" I, who had been so desirable in my youth; I, who had nonetheless never stopped hating myself; my rounded belly, curvy hips, short waist, S-curve in my spine. I had viewed my body with harsh judgment every day since puberty when I dressed and undressed. Looking in the mirror before I left the house was an exercise in how to compensate for my failings. I, who was now past menopause, a kind of cultural sexual discard. I, who had slept with so many men, and never felt so wholly, completely loved before.

I opened to her fully, with all of me. "Does it feel weird?" she asked me. "Maybe a little," I replied, but in truth I was thinking, "Weird compared to what?" I was already so outside anything in my previous experience, there was nothing to compare. She parted me with her fingers, still talking to me between kisses. I was drowning in those kisses, and happy that it was so. Her fingers were filled with knowing, but it wasn't only that; it was that her fingers, her kisses, and my body made one complete, profoundly connected circuit. I was wet, so wet; I hadn't known my body still capable of that. And though it was overpowering in its way, my consciousness stayed still and present through it, like the eye of a hurricane, and I felt her, knew her to be there with me, and erupted.

working notes

My sweetheart was the muse for In the Beginning. I sat down to write this story about three months after the event that inspired it, which was our first romantic time together over a period of a few days spent in an anonymous hotel room. I seem to be the kind of writer who processes things slowly over a period of time. I didn't want to lose this experience. I sat down, eyes closed to retrieve it in its fullness, and began to type.

As I wrote, the organizing thought seemed to be that I love this woman through and through. The truth that I wanted to emerge is that I believe our bodies are vessels for the larger Essence that we are. Many of us continue to inhabit our bodies way past the point that we are considered attractive by the culture—commonly known as middle age and beyond. The Bard said, "Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds…." My lover's body and mine are plenty altered since we first met in high school; I wanted In the Beginning to be the prose proof of what Shakespeare expressed in his sonnet.

I love the Essence of the woman inside the body, and I love her body as the physical expression of that Essence. Both are sacred and inseparable to me. When I finished writing, I chose the title In the Beginning as an ironic reference to seeing things differently than they were seen and notated in that more famous In the Beginning in the bible. My experience with my love was my beginning, my genesis with her, in which the creation of a new paradigm in which to live was born for me.

As the months go by, our bond grows, deepens. Our relationship resembles nothing so much as it resembles itself. It has not donned a form, like foul weather gear, or marital roles. It is its own living entity, each day. I have never known such happiness.

about the author

Eve Fox is a writer in the throes of freeing herself from the repressive regime that has ruled her mind. She has been actress, meditation, reiki, and yoga teacher, polarity therapist, secretary, wife and mother. She values the presence and companionship of her familiar, Jade, the fluffy Diva Kitty with the crooked tail.