Other People's Sex Lives

I woke up after a vivid dream. I had just seen, in the clear pictures of my mind, the first time Jacob made love to Kathy. I woke up ashamed. I did not feel guilt for the nature of my dream, for the reverie had naught to do with eroticism. It left me with no physical sensation. I felt shame because my dreams had, in some mystical manner, pried to a moment of private love between two souls I valued as my close companions.

I looked at my alarm clock, and found out it was five in the morning. I would have to wake up for work in an hour and a half, and I felt reluctant to spend the time trying to catch the threads of my sleep. Certainly, this was partially due to my worry of the next images my subconscious might summon for my resting mind. I got out of bed, and begun preparing myself a cup of coffee. For the first time in months, I longed for a cigarette. I wished some shop would be open. I wished I had decided to leave myself half a pack before quitting. I wished for a dozen more scenarios that could provide me with a smoke at this instant. I realised the absurdity of my wishes, and chose to double my dose of coffee instead. It would have to suffice.

As I sat down sipping the black substance, the images of my dreams chose to enter my mind again. I tried to focus my mind to think about the list of things to do at work, my plans for supper in the evening, anything. I even tried to recall the programs on television that evening. Nothing worked, and my hopefully imagined images of Jacob and Kathy played over in my head again.

Jacob was lying on his bed. He was staring at the ceiling, listening to the music that Kathy was continuously switching in his stereo. She listened to one song, and then whimsically changed the CD to an entirely different group. Jacob did not pay much attention to her. It was nice enough to have Kathy around, but he was thinking about something. I was unaware of his thoughts, but his facial expression was unmistakably contemplative. His mind drifted in and out of the music playing, of Kathy’s a-melodic, but still pleasing singing, and the occasional comments she threw at his direction. It was strange to think he had invited her to visit. They could have just as well been in separate rooms.

As Jacob decided to enter the reality of the room once more, Kathy was near him. She had put on an Iron & Wine CD, and seemed at least momentarily satisfied with the selection. The stereo was allowed to rest. Now, however, Jacob was unable to drift in and out of his room, because Kathy was talking without pausing. Jacob listened, but he did not rise up from the bed. He was still staring at the ceiling, occasionally replying to Kathy’s comments. As an attempt to gain his attention, she moved above his face, interjecting herself between Jacob’s eyes and the white ceiling. She was smiling and talking trivialities. The glowing, smiling face above Jacob’s eyes was beautiful.

Jacob found that he now no longer paid any attention to Kathy’s words. He felt only an increasing attraction to this face floating above his eyesight. She seemed like some cloud in high heavens, although the truth was that she was less than half a meter’s distance away. Jacob thought of Kathy’s face as a treasure both divine and tangible, and was surprised to feel his general indifference give way for an unexplainable desire to kiss this hovering smile above him. He finally rose up from his vertical position and interrupted Kathy mid sentence with a sudden kiss. Kathy’s lips did not respond back with fiery passion. She did not attack Jacob with her kisses. However, nor was her response to Jacob’s sudden kiss reluctant. She continued smiling within the kiss, her eyes closed with pleasure. She enjoyed the moment, but did not act. She was neither heated and aggressive nor cold and passive. She simply was a part of Jacob’s kiss.

The kiss lasted long. After the lips parted, the two looked at each other in the eyes as a nervous tension entered the room. Then, in complete silence, they nodded, undressed and made love.

There is no need to depict the lovemaking. It is in fact entirely insignificant. Every thing the sexual act between the two young people signified is symbolic within that first kiss. During their moments of passion, Kathy continued with her passionate surrender. She enjoyed with sincerity, but inactively, as a part of Jacob’s lovemaking. She was in bed as she was in that first kiss.

The sex was merely an unimportant continuation of that first kiss. The relationship that followed between Kathy and Jacob was an equally unimportant continuation of that first kiss. The entire existence of Jacob and Kathy together as a couple began and ended in that first kiss. All their moments surmounted to Jacob’s unexplainable desire to reach for that piece of whimsical divinity he imagined in Kathy’s smile, and Kathy’s agreeing, inactive smile during Jacob’s act for possession.

That kiss was all there was for Jacob and Kathy. I can imagine that years after Kathy has left Jacob’s life, he still returns to that kiss. Jacob believed the essence of love was defined in simple moments. With Kathy gone, he often thinks of her, trying to find a moment that proved they were in love.

My ultimate fantasy of love; a beloved woman surprises me with a cup of coffee in bed, and rests her head on my shoulder. Kathy would never bring me coffee. She hated coffee, any hot liquid for that matter. She was more of a juice-drinking girl. Could she have loved me? She never worked her words about me to excited stories. She spoke to me of the most trivial things in the world, but never even hinted how she felt about me. Yet, every time I needed her, she was invariably there. When I wanted to rest my head on her shoulder she was there. She never responded to my affections. She never kissed me. Yet, every time I kissed her, her warm body shone happiness upon my lips. She always smiled within our kisses.

Kathy. She loved orange and mango juice, she told me. She told me she loved acoustic love songs, but her all time favourite song was surprisingly ‘The Fragile’ by Nine Inch Nails. She loved talking for hours. She loved walking without any particular destination. She loved capital cities that begun with a ‘p’. She loved the way Italy looked in maps. She loved novels by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. She loved watching Jazz bands play live, not because she liked Jazz, but because she loved watching the concentrated, smiling faces of the performers. She loved movies starring John Cusack. She loved being there. I guess as a part of that, in her own way, she loved me too.

My coffee tastes bitter, and I abandon my attempts to understand the tides of Jacob’s mind. Jacob misunderstands. Kathy’s love for him must have been great. It was something she could not define in the confines of the trivial nature of everything else she loved. In that one kiss, she was there for Jacob. By being there, in that one kiss, she was that one thing that transcended Jacob. She just was. Simply being, she actually was both divine and tangible at the same time.

My shame for the dream is not just shame for prying into personal lives of two people defining their love. It is jealousy. Jealousy for Kathy’s face hovering like a halo above Jacob’s face, when I know that I too love her. Jealousy for the fact that so much happened because of that one kiss, and it all happened to a man who fails to understand the significance of the being of love. Jealousy, because in my dreams, I am so foolishly moved to tears by other people’s sex lives.

By JPV

Copyright March 2006