Is it possible to physically feel absence? Can you miss a sensation you have never known? It was not just the pressure of him in my body, of course. It was the connection, and it was his joy, or what would have been his joy. More than ever I knew I could not feel. I wondered for a moment if I were dead, or if something had died in me the minute Thomas and I had met. But I knew every part of my body was alive, except for this one part. I had been swollen with his life since I was fifteen years old. I was alive and young and I was healthy and yet I could not feel him. It was broken. We were broken.
I held his arms and he grunted in my ear. I knew he was moving inside me then. He had been for a few minutes. I tried to moan, and the noises would not come out of me, at least not any noise I recognized. He looked me dead in the eye, a look of love, and I turned away. I looked all over the room, anywhere but at him. My eyes felt crazy; it looked like someone was flashing the light switch off and on in the room. Dark, light, slow-motion, super-speed. I thrashed my head to the side, back and forth. I was in charge of what I saw. I could tell my eyes what to do, my neck what to do, my head what to do. Every part of my body except that one part. I kept thrashing. I would not let him concentrate on me. I would not let him see what was really happening.
He thought I was really turned on. He said my name over and over. I looked at the curtains, my beautiful curtains. The stripes were raised. They were not just white. There was a difference. The neighbor’s dog was barking. They let him loose again, I thought. Why don’t they care about that dog like I do? And it was not even mine to love. I started to cry. I could not stop. My cheeks were getting wet. Finally Thomas came. He laid his face next to mine. He felt the wetness, I knew he did. He sighed.
“It’s bigger now,” he said.
“I know it is,” I said.
He put his hand on my cheek. He brushed away a tear with a finger, then held it up to the light and looked at it. Evidence against me. Evidence I could not feel a goddamn thing.
“Why can’t you feel it, then?”
“I do not know, Thomas.”
He put his hand back down on my face and slowly slid it down around my neck.
“It drives me crazy,” he said.
“I know. It drives me crazy, too,” I said.
“I thought you said you didn’t care,” he said. He was trying to catch me. His hand tensed around my neck. I was stuck now. Outside a car sped by, and the sound of the thick motor choked the air.
“No, I just meant that you being sad, it drives me crazy to see you that way.” I was saying the words, but they were coming out all mangled. The pressure of his hand on my throat was starting to hurt bad. I was even tighter inside.
“Maybe you want me to be crazy,” he said. Now both hands were around my neck. My eyes were popping, I could feel them reaching out of my head toward him. I could feel everything in that moment. Everything except for his penis, now shrunken down. My eyes were wide open but I could not see.
“How can you not feel me, Moonie?” He was yelling at me, but it sounded quiet, too.
“I do not know,” I said. “I just can’t.” I choked out the words.
“Four and a half inches,” he said. “That’s what he told me.” Thomas started to cry. He loosened his grip. I gasped for air for a minute and then I pushed him off me. I rolled off the bed and onto the floor. I pulled away into the corner of the room. My eyes still felt like they were coming out of my head, like they would never settle back into place. I closed my lids and prayed for everything to go back to normal. My eyes still hurt.
“Just sit there, that’s right, like you always do,” said Thomas. I opened my eyes. He crawled across the bed toward me and then stayed at the end and stared at me. “It’s either you or it’s me,” he said.
I shook my head, I raised my hands. I did not want it to be me, even if it was. “It is not me.”
He reached out and slapped my face. “It is you.”
I put one hand to my cheek. I ran my tongue against the inside of it. I did not taste blood.
“It is not me,” I said.
He slapped my other cheek, harder.
That was it. That was enough. There are things a wife does for her husband, and there are things a husband does for his wife, and this was not one of them, on either end. Outside the neighbor’s dog barked as if he were in pain.
I stood. I walked to the closet. I pulled out a sun-dress and slipped it on over my head. As it fell down my body, Thomas grabbed the back of my head with his hand and pulled. It hurt. I tried to stay calm but inside everything that had been tight suddenly gave way, as if I were a balloon full of water and he had popped me with a needle. But it was not a joyful release. I felt it, I felt it all open up and flood me. Whatever control I had of myself was gone.