These days, when we talk, it feels like it did at the beginning. At the beginning, everything was a certain amount of contrived. Everything was several layers of excitement. He was altogether too smooth and spoke of poetry; I was what I imagined was mysterious and dodged his advances, with that hint of you-could-have-more that women allow to creep into their voices when they are giving in to being chased. At the beginning it was all a dance, every beat edging closer and closer to the edge. At the beginning there are rules.
It's not exactly the same as it is now. The years detract from the uncertainty; he knows my game and neither of us can claim we don't know how the dance ends. Having already seen each other in various stages of undress and various combinations of disheveled and breathless, there is no attempt to pretend the love, the lust, is not there. But still, there are rules.
And it is still a game. He calls and says, cautiously, hello. I say hello. We go through the motions of asking about each other's days, but the undercurrent of our voices say, I want you. He is careful not to mention that he thinks of me and I am careful not to mention I think of him but somehow these things come out while remaining unsaid.
He says he needs his coffee. I say, I remember. And we are quiet, both of us, but what we are thinking, what we are replaying, is all those times I made him coffee. We are thinking of that teaspoon of coffee powder, two of sugar, a dollop of milk, the hot water, and the rims I insist on kissing, secretly, before he drinks. We are thinking of how when I leave that first time, I leave behind three pre-prepared glasses of coffee, just add milk and water, on the counter for when he comes back. We are thinking of the note I left, short but nostalgic: "I've already kissed the rims."
But there are rules so I say simply that I remember he needs his coffee, there is a silence, and then we move on.
I mention that I have arranged my curriculum, and I am graduating in a year. He says, "You are graduating in a year?" The end of the sentence too casually lilted into a passing question. I know him. I know what he is thinking.
He is thinking, a year is not long at all.
He is thinking, there's always room for one more Asian in Sydney.
He is thinking, I am thinking, that it could work.
But there are rules.
So we bite our lips and laugh nervously and strangely like the unseasoned unsure would-be lovers that we were going to be two years ago. Then he makes a joke or I accidentally slip in a double entendre and for all the intimacy we have already shared we are at that brink again, poised at the edge, caught between human control and animal lust.
That we have done this before has sharpened our senses. We know when the other is out hunting and we know when it is time to feed. It doesn't take much for the wind to shift. When it happens we are both immediately aware of it. His voice takes on a growl and mine a pleading urgency and when it happens we can't help but react, violently, by shaking off all restraints and throwing ourselves wholly into the climax we know is coming.
Afterwards we are silent. He is thinking of the moments after we have spent in the flesh. He is thinking of me on my side, his chest at my back, both of us riding out the final involuntary squeezes and thrusts until the last possible second. He is thinking, I am thinking, of how we lay still together in our moments after.
And he says, simply, "Possum."
And I say, just as simply, "Master."
And for these moments after which will invariably stud the next ten weeks, we know that will simply have to be enough.
Because there are rules.
