This was an out-of-sight kiss for Middlestein for two reasons: one, because he was not expecting it, and second, because that Tracy was a phenomenal kisser. She had soft but firm lips, and she was good at reading men and knew instinctively what they wanted, whether they wanted to be in charge or whether she needed to take control. She made gentle noises of joy, or dark dirty laughs, whatever she thought they needed to hear. This translated into the bedroom of course, too. She’d be on top, bottom, sideways, whatever. She hadn’t enjoyed sex in years, what did she care anyway? Much older men had ground that desire out of her since she’d been a teenager. She just wanted a new dog. Why hadn’t anyone bought her a dog yet? Maybe this guy would buy her a dog, what was his name again?
Middlestein let himself be consumed by the kiss for a moment longer, and then his mind wandered to his current self, his physical form, his sixty-year-old body, which was still lean enough—he had been a runner for years, at least until his knees gave out a few years ago—but sagged in parts. He had an old-man chest, the flesh around the nipples puffy yet drooping, and he had gray hair everywhere, on his chest and back and around his penis. He wasn’t terrible-looking naked, but there was no hiding who he was either. He didn’t know if he could contend with even a glimmer of disappointment on Tracy’s practiced expression. Then he realized it wasn’t so much about being naked with her as much as it was about seeing her naked. Seeing a real-life, healthy woman in the nude, up close, personally, intimately, safely. But how would that work? Was it even worth whatever it was going to cost him?
He pulled away from her, allowing himself to touch her hair, and then her shoulder, which he noted later must have been dusted with glitter, as he found traces of it on his fingertips, and on his pants.
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s been so long. I feel like I don’t even know how anymore.” Better to admit an alternate insecurity, he thought. The truth seemed much more humiliating. And anyway it was not a lie.
“You came all this way to stop now?” she said. That challenge might have worked on a younger man, but not him. The fire in his loins was a particular kind. He was desperate, but he would not be rushed. He had not lived this long in life to be pushed around by a stranger.
“No, I think it’s enough,” he said.
“What about if I give you a hand?” said Tracy quietly.
He nodded, and she swept herself up and away, down the hall to the bathroom, returning shortly with two hand towels and a large pump bottle of lotion. She put the bottle of lotion next to the picture of her and Mitzi, one towel on her lap, and one towel on his. She kissed him again.
“Do you like to kiss?” she said. He nodded. She put her hand on his face and then ran it down his chest—quicker than he would have liked, and he could have said that and she would have listened, but he felt completely out of control and unable to speak—and straight to his crotch, where she rustled around softly—It’s right there. Good God, woman, how can you miss it?—until she found what she was looking for. She petted him on the outside of his pants, and then quickly unbuttoned his pants, unzipped his fly, and then released his penis from his boxer shorts. She stroked it, and then stopped and leaned over to where the bottle of lotion sat. She pumped the bottle a few times. It was an anticellulite lotion, Middlestein noticed. She rubbed it on him.
“Do you like it this way?” she said. Her voice was girlish and flirty, and her eyes were direct. “I bet you like it this way.” She didn’t wait for a response, she surrounded him quickly—Listen, can you blame her? Ten-thirty on a Tuesday? Let’s get a move on already, buddy—and it took not long until he came.
*
Middlestein felt great! He drove home fast. No traffic! Fantastic! He was thrilled, if only because he knew he was going to sleep like a rock that night. But for now he was still all jazzed up. He felt ten years younger. God, she was good. He was pretty sure he was never going to see her again—one hundred bucks for a handy?—but it was nice to have that number in his back pocket in case of an emotional emergency. She was clean and local, and he felt safe with her. Still he didn’t know how comfortable he felt supporting, even in the smallest of ways, a woman who had more square footage than he did.
But it had been luxurious to be reminded of the pleasures of a woman’s touch, the delicate thrill of its softness, the tension of trusting her to touch him the right way, the tiny death and rebirth that came with an orgasm. It wasn’t soulful, necessarily, but it felt deep to Middlestein. He would renew his search for a woman.