Talking in Tongues
I threw open the window and looked out on the world, naked as the day I was born.
Every morning, the same. I gaze out on the place where the Ashley and the Cooper rivers join to form the Atlantic Ocean. Check the weather prospects. Sometimes rain, sometimes a hurricane. Usually the rising sun is warm and bright on my body and I see and feel the glory of God’s creation. Sometimes I hear a sound of delight or dismay from some lucky jogger on the waterfront path below.
This day it was sunny and the path was empty. Perfect.
Perhaps even more perfect if I’d woken a little earlier. Roused by the light flooding in, Ted rolled out of bed when he saw me standing in silhouette. He stood behind me, wrapping his hands around me and cupping my breasts as their happy nipples firmed in response to the hard jut in the small of my back.
I turned to him, enjoying the embrace for a few moments more, calculating the possibilities…
“Not now, honey,” I said. “So busy today! Tonight?”
His hands were under my buttocks and with just a little lift from those strong arms, everything might have been different.
We would have opened late or taken a safety risk. Maybe something else would have gone wrong. Maybe the end result would have been the same.
No use worrying about it now, but God was I tempted.
Ted was not your everyday fucker. You know, whomp it in, wiggle it around, whip it out, and wipe it.
Oh no.
He had a gift. He knew the right spots. He listened to my breathing, he paced himself and we finished together in perfect synch.
Another thing. Down in the South we have this thing a lot of the churches do. Glossolalia. Speaking in tongues. Kind of weird if you’re Episcopalian, but it’s how we reverence the Lord and it’s charming to see worshippers in ecstasy.
Speaking of ecstasy, Ted did something else with his tongue to show his reverence. He called it glossolabia. I called it a “Ted Talk”.
I was a lucky woman, for sure.
And he was a lucky man. I loved Ted. I loved the way I could make him happy with a simple thing like his favourite breakfast sausage or a bit of special sauce. Or just a smile.
A vertical smile in this case.
“Tonight,” he agreed, and we looked each other fair in the eye.
Our things took time to do right. Time we didn’t have right now.
Tonight. For sure.
