Page 88 of My Own Kind of Person

“But I’m not him.”

“I guess I just require a lot of reassurance that someone really wants to be with me.”

We keep talking, and Elijah seems truly happy to chat. I’m happy to do the same, until I feel comfortable enough that I start to think I might like to do something else.

“Okay!” I put my hands together. “I need it to be acceptable if I’m not ready to have sex of any kind. For whatever reason, I get anxious. I think I might be anxious about everything all the time, but this is the place I can’t really hide it.”

“We could do anything, including nothing, and it would be fine with me,” he says. “We could peel potatoes and it would be great.”

This feels freeing, like there’s not some unspoken target I’m trying to hit.

We lie side by side, parallel, his body the same shape as mine.

“You are still wearing your jeans, though,” I say.

“Should I not be?”

“I can’t think of a reason why you should be.”

He pulls his jeans down and I touch my heart.

He’s wearing tighty-whities.

I don’t feel pressure to get things right because he clearly doesn’t. His kisses are sloppy and fast, and he spends a long time making out with…my shoulder? But it makes me happy, like he either has no idea what he’s doing or he doesn’t worry about it. It gives me permission to do the same, to have fun.

I tap my finger from one of his nipples to the other.

He laughs. “What are you doing?”

“I’m figuring out the secret code.”

I poke a finger in his belly button and he squirms away.

“Are you real?” I ask. “Let me see your butt. I want to make sure.”

“You can tell someone is real by their butt?”

“It’s the only way to know.”

He faces away so I can see his long back, and he slips off his briefs. I nearly pass out. I press my hips against him gently and he presses back against me, but I panic and pull away. When he turns toward me, I see his penis. It’s different from mine but it’s the same. I look down at myself. If his body can be desirable and inoffensive—even beautiful—can’t the same be true of mine?

“I’d like to go down on you,” I say. “But I don’t really know how.”

“I can talk you through it if you’d like?”

He tells me, kindly, what to do with my mouth and my hands. He tells me when to go faster or slower. It’s more challenging than I anticipated, but it seems like it’s going well. Then it’s quite clear that it went well.

“It worked!” I say.

He laughs.

Soon he moves me so I’m lying on my back and he starts to kiss down my chest.

“Wait.” My heart pounds. “I think I’m too nervous.”

We talk about how he wants to learn to cook and so he’s starting off by making eggs for breakfast every morning. We talk about his favorite documentary, Ballet 422, which follows a new choreographer putting together his first piece for the New York City Ballet. We talk until my breath slows and I feel safe again.

When he does go down on me, I close my eyes and try to notice if it feels different being with a guy than being with a girl. It doesn’t feel different at all. Afterwards, though, when he lies beside me and I rest my head on his chest and his heart beats loudly in my ear, that doesn’t feel like anything I’ve ever known.