by Shosha Pearl
Avi stroked her face and told her that she was beautiful, that a man could not ask for a better wife or a more blessed life. After dinner, they lay on their bed and spoke quietly in hushed, intimate tones. “I know things are not always easy for you,” he said. Her smile told him that she knew he was doing the best for their family, and that she knew he loved her.
He paused, uncertain. “I have something to give you… but I don’t know if I have the courage to do it. I don’t know if you will like it or freak out.”
Miri smiled. The glass of wine that they had drunk with dinner had made her warm and pliable.
He gave her a package. It was wrapped in pink glossy paper and tied with a gold ribbon. Miri opened it slowly, curiously pulling the wrapping down on each side, then caught her breath in disbelief. She never would have imagined he would buy this for her. Never.
It was made of silver and white shiny plastic. The man at the store had said that it was recommended for beginners, for people who were not sure.
“I know it’s crazy,” he said, searching for her eyes. “And I know it’s probably a bit of a shock for you. But it doesn’t have to be a big deal.”
She looked at the toy, such a thoughtful, brave gift that spoke volumes about him, and about them. But then she thought of her beautiful blue phallus—a big blue man compared to this little white boy—and stifled a sigh.
“Wow!” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he said, running it slowly along the inside of her leg, “You don’t have to say anything or do anything…. it can be our little secret.”
Fringes of Memory
It was exactly as I had left it, folded neatly and wrapped in white tissue paper, stored at the top of a plastic crate in my basement. I had not seen it since I had cleared out the upstairs cupboard to make room for baby clothes that my daughter had grown too large to wear. The passage of time inevitably led to its subterranean exile, left to grow moldy in silent abandonment.
The tissue paper was thin and felt cold on my fingers. The tape, brown with age, held fast, so the paper tore, despite the care that I used to pull it apart. A musty smell wafted up but I barely noticed as my skin touched the discolored fabric. Long, thin, knotted threads, as yellow as the fingernails of ancient smokers, fell limp across my open palm.
Without reserve, I raised it to my face and breathed in the remnant of his smell, still so familiar after all this time.
***
Gavi Halperin came to stay with us in the dying days of the summer break before my second year at university. He wore the same velvet kippot that all the Lakewood boys brought out annually to give a little gravitas to our community’s youth program.
As his former chavruta, my brother Yonatan insisted, both to my parents and to the rabbi, that rather than be housed with one of the usual families, Gavi stay with us. As soon as Gavi arrived, I silently thanked my brother for his assertiveness; I have never loved Yonatan as dearly as I did during those days.
Growing up in a frum family meant that guests were always camping out in our basement but I don’t recall any of their stays with the clarity with which I remember Gavi’s. Not that anything happened. He was frum and I was frum. And my family was frum. These are not easy conditions for steamy relationships. But I watched him, and thought about him, and dreamed about him—and not just when I lay in bed at night, the humming of my young mind accompanied by my sister’s breathing in the darkness—but all the time.
We didn’t talk much—hardly ever, in fact. He was respectful, and I was smitten. Sometimes, I caught him watching me. As soon as our eyes met he would turn away while I blushed and fidgeted. And so the weeks passed with nothing more than the naïve fantasies of a former seminary girl and the mounting tension of her unmapped sexuality. I didn’t know if he, too, felt the tension.
My mother went away for a week, not long before Gavi left. As the eldest daughter, many of her household chores fell to me, including the laundry. This increased familial responsibility was a source of great hardship and resentment. Not that I complained. I had learnt long before not to express my discontent, for fear of unleashing my parents’ monologues on the weight of their responsibilities.
As I begrudgingly unpacked the strewn washing basket, sorting whites from colors, I came across an unfamiliar pair of socks. It took me a surprisingly long time to recognize the tremendous loveliness of these slightly frayed, black socks: they were Gavi’s.
My sifting hands uncovered more: shirts, t-shirts, trousers and to my consternation, underpants. The discovery of the latter was so confronting that I turned my eyes away as I tentatively picked up these extraordinary items between my forefinger and thumb to toss them into the color pile. Underpants were too sensational for me; socks, even the beautiful Gavi’s socks, were too stinky; but everything else was gold.
After closing the laundry room door behind me, I lifted Gavi’s shirts to my breast and held them close, swaying in a dance of euphoric revelry that would rival the movements of any dybbuk-possessed soul.
The madness started innocently. I forgot to return one of his t-shirts to the washing pile, and it missed its turn with the color cycle. So, I stashed it away in my bedroom with a pile of unwashed clothes. It was only that night, as I undressed for bed and saw the t-shirt again, that it somehow made its way under my nightdress, pressed against my beating heart. And then I wore it all of the next day.
Each night, I took a different piece of Gavi to bed. It was mostly shirts and t-shirts, but as my daring enhanced and the reality of his approaching departure began to weigh on my mind, I spent the final two nights wearing a pair of his shorts. They were soft and lay lightly on my skin. I stroked them slowly, my fingers running with increasing pressure toward the place between my legs that I did not name.
He was scheduled to leave Tuesday evening, and I was called on to babysit late on Monday afternoon. To be dragged from home at such a time was a tremendous hardship. But, as my mother often tells me—even today, after everything I have been through—blessings come from hardships, and we never know what Hashem has in mind.
It was still light out when I returned to a house that was empty and airless, the heat of the day trapped inside. Outside, I could hear shouts and raucous laughter from my brothers. I wandered to the back window and caught my breath. Directly in my line of vision, as if running straight toward me, was Gavi. They were playing soccer, and he was wearing nothing but a pair of shorts and tzitzit, which flapped and flew as he moved, his long legs flexing with a strength that made mine weak, and his glistening abdomen all but calling for me to touch it.
I stared unblinkingly. I made no attempt to switch on the lights as dusk descended, for fear that it would end their game. And Hashem, in his infinite kindness, gave me a full hour of the most glorious show that I had witnessed in my short life. When my father’s key turned in the lock, I fled to my bedroom, feigning sleep. His grumbling was a small price to pay.
That night, as I lay in Gavi’s shorts, reliving those precious memories, mania befell me. The vision of Gavi’s youthful physique plagued my mind. The beads of sweat that had rolled down his face to form pools of darkness on the front of his tzitzit were tantalizing. I yearned to touch them; I ached to smell them.
It was not difficult really. I had already decided not to return his shorts or a t-shirt that caressed my skin so tenderly that I knew it was meant to be mine. I expected that like most boys, Gavi would notice the absence of these items and then move on with a puzzled shrug of his shoulders. I had no fear of consequences. And I had to have those tzitzit.
Early the next morning, before the boys began to stir, I sneaked into Yonatan’s room, quietly and carefully. I dared not look at Gavi asleep in the corner, for fear of losing my nerve, for fear of wanting to watch him.
The tzitzit lay draped over the back of a chair by his bed. Slowly, breathlessly, I scooped them up and in one quick movement, took in their smell and turned to leave. At t
he door I stopped, compelled to look at him one more time. Still and unblinking, Gavi’s beautiful gray eyes were watching me.
***
I did not see Gavi again. Shame kept me out of the house until well past his departure. It took several months for the vision of those eyes to cease burning my cheeks crimson. Eventually, the mortification subsided and I slipped back into his shorts and t-shirt.
Sometimes, in the privacy of the bathroom, with the shower streaming into an empty recess, steam filling the room and clouding over the mirror, I would lower his tzitzit over my naked breasts. His smell would fill my nostrils as the fabric rubbed roughly over my hard nipples.
Yonatan went to Gavi’s wedding about a year before I circled my own beshert under our chuppah. The tzitzit went into hiding with the shorts and t-shirt, into the bin. Two years after my husband’s tragic, early passing, I heard that Gavi and his wife had divorced. Yonatan did not know the circumstances, or if he did, he would not tell me and I did not press him.
This morning, not long after dropping the children at school and parking myself behind my desk, I received a Facebook friend request that I accepted with a beating heart. A message followed shortly thereafter: “I am looking for my tzitzit. Do you know where I can find them?”
Before the Canopy
Rachael stood at the window and inhaled the warm breeze that danced into her room, toying with her hair, its ends clumped together in bonds of moisture. She needed to breathe its scented freshness.
The week had been long, filled with joy, anxiety, excitement, anticipation, and panic. And filled with mourning—the joyful mourning of the end of her childhood, her life in her parents’ home, and her solitary journey as Rachael Kaplan. Tomorrow, she would be one half of a couple. She would circle her beloved under the chuppah, and take on his name and the rich history of his family. She would walk accompanied from now unto eternity.
It made her hot and breathless to think of it. A ball of emotion twisted and turned in the place between her breasts and then, as she exhaled, the same ball sank to her belly.
She stepped out onto her balcony and drew in the early summer air, filled with the perfume of jasmine and the hum of tiny, nameless creatures. A thick canopy of garden surrounded her, rising high, dense, and silent, casting dark silhouettes in the moonlight, barely touched by the suburban streetlights only meters away.
Rachael lifted her arms to embrace the moon. Tonight, she overflowed with primal feminine essence, washed clean by her first ritual immersion, as she stood ready to transition from daughter to wife.
She wanted to shed everything that was not her essential self, her core, her womanness. And so she did. Off came her blouse; the long, light cotton sleeves slipped along her arms without a sound. Down came her skirt, its bulk falling with a sigh at her feet. In a swift, successive movement, her underwear followed.
Rachael stood before the moon, shielded from the world by a fortress of leaves, closed her eyes, and felt heaven reach down to stroke her smooth, pure flesh, and hold her in his arms. She raised her hands to meet his; then she encircled her breasts, tracing the line of her waist as it curved out to her hips, along the smooth surface of her stomach. She breathed in the joy of touch.
A bleep of her mobile broke the spell. It bleeped again. She kept her lids closed for a few seconds more before retrieving the phone from inside. It was Zac. They had not met or spoken for a week, as was traditional before a wedding, but they had texted. It was a leniency they allowed themselves, in the interest of efficiency, they said; in the interest of love, they knew.
“You are so beautiful,” the first message read.
“I have dreamed of you like this so often, but you are more amazing than I could have imagined…” continued the second.
The phone bleeped again. “I know I shouldn’t be watching, but I can’t take my eyes off you. Please don’t stop.”
Her shock sparked an energy that ran down her arms, along her spine, and met between her thighs, where warmth burst forth. Rachael immediately understood that Zac was not at his parents’ house, but in his sister’s home, at a window—the only window from which one could see through her wall of leaves, directly to her balcony.
She raised her hands to her face and held them still, but as the fire in her breast grew stronger, the moistness between her legs began to spread. She was Eve, she was Lilith, and she was Rachael.
She drew a line with her finger across her eye, down her cheek, and then circled her lips. She felt the warmth of her tongue as her mouth opened without instruction, her teeth closing on her finger, holding it in place while the sensual molten smoothness of her tongue, of the inside of her lips, enveloped her.
Damp with the silky saliva, she traced the length of her throat. Her fingers and thumb encircled her neck. The sensual strokes of exploration caused her to draw in her breath and raise her head, her eyes closed and her back arched.
It was only natural that both hands now moved to circle her breasts, their firm roundness beautiful to touch. Her nipples were hard and tickled the curves of her palms as they cupped them, circled them, and stroked them. She flattened her hands and rubbed them against their swollen firmness, the familiar pleasure now so unfamiliar in its intensity. She pressed harder, faster.
She could not bear to stop. The sensation overwhelmed her. She moved one hand down the length of her body; it slid across her waist, her hips, her stomach, and down to the furnace that seared between her thighs.
The touch of her fingers sent spasms surging through her core, down her legs, and to her feet, before melting into the balcony. Her lips began to tingle and her jaw tensed as she rubbed herself rhythmically, parting her legs to allow her touch to grow bolder.
She had touched herself before, but never like this. The pleasure, as she found those places that caused her to shudder, was beyond anything that she had experienced in previous secret, guilty moments. But it was not only about the feel of her touch.
Rachael could not understand the excitement that overwhelmed her, knowing that she, who had never been naked in front of a man or boy since her breasts had begun to grow and her hips to broaden, was being observed. Zac, her chatan, was somewhere in the darkness watching her explore her body, and this knowledge aroused her in a way that was frightening in its strangeness.
Her phone bleeped and bleeped again, but she had built a momentum that was impossible to abandon. Tense with increasing desire to reach that place, that sensation that she knew she had not reached in this way before, she became oblivious to everything but the rising tide of need that was coursing through her.
And then it hit. Fire burst from between her legs, to her gut, then her back, and finally the top of her skull, sending a commotion across her lips and causing her to release loud, guttural moans that she did not even hear. As her legs shook and her body swayed, she reached out to steady herself, eventually sinking into a chair beside the door, empty, exhausted, complete.
Taking a moment to recoup, Rachael sat with her head in her hands and inhaled slowly. The phone bleeped again and she panicked. A blanket of shame enveloped her as she reached slowly, reluctantly for her phone. From first to last it said the following:
“I love you.”
“You are the most amazing woman I have ever known.”
“Thank you… Can’t wait until tomorrow ;)”
I Will Watch You
Tomorrow night, the man you do not notice, the man with the baseball cap, who leans against the street lamp in the shadows, will be me. I will wait for you.
When you emerge, wet, fresh, and ready, I will watch you from across the street. You will wear a long skirt that hugs your hips, but falls away loosely so that all I can do is imagine the shape of the legs that rise up from feet bound by leather boots.
You will walk quickly, as you always do, head high, hair tucked underneath a beret, dripping waves tickling the neck I dream of kissing. You will pass the shops, closed and dark, the treif restaurants with tables spilling out ac
ross pavements, people drinking wine, fressing between laughter, and your dark eyes will be alight with the curiosity you always seem to have about the world around you.
I will follow you—far enough so you do not notice me, but close enough that I do not lose you. I will watch you as you pause to cross the road, traffic meandering by, to turn toward your street. I will follow you with my eyes, with my ears, and with my feet, stepping quietly as the hush of well-heeled houses and Art Deco apartment blocks falls from the starless sky to amplify even the faintest movements of someone like me.
At the door to your building, I will stop behind a wall while you search your bag for keys. You will hunt around as you always do, your silhouette in the brightness of a mounted spotlight, until you find them amid the clutter of your life.
The door will slowly wheeze closed, giving me time to breach the distance from the street, before I slip inside and the latch thuds behind me. I will climb the stained carpeted stairs behind you and wait, concealed in the dim light, until you go inside. I will hear the muffled click of the lock and then silence.
I will wait outside your apartment for ten minutes, an hour, maybe more. I will listen to the echoes of your movements from outside your door. I know you will be alone. I know what time you go to work and what time you come home. I know where you shop and what you buy. I know tonight night is mikveh night, and I will wait for you.
I have a key.
When you are quiet, gradually, silently, I will let myself in. You will leave a light on in the sparse, white kitchen, because you are afraid of the dark. But the streetlights will be enough for me to find my way around your tiny home.
I will slide my hands along the smooth painted walls until I find your bedroom door ajar. You will pull your curtains closed so that, at first, I will not see you in the darkness, beneath the tumbled bed sheets. But then my eyes will seek out the dipping curve of your waist, the line of your back, the fall of your arm across the pillows.
