Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

She couldn’t remember the last time she had been kissed. That was certainly one of the reasons why she had gotten divorced. At some point a few years ago, her husband had stopped kissing her. He stopped kissing her lips, and her neck, and her ears, and her shoulders. He stopped making any pretenses of foreplay, any intimations of intimacy; the sex remained, but bare of all indicators of love, it became offensive, insulting even. She hadn’t thought of leaving then, she thought that she could survive, that it wasn’t such a terrible thing, living without love, that it would stop bothering her, that rejection, that aloneness in what should be a joining, what had once been a joining. But she just wasn’t able to shrivel up to suit the situation; there was too much life and love left in her to retreat, to agree to that debasement.

She hadn’t sought love out, but she just couldn’t stay locked in. It hurts to be told that you are unattractive, unlovable, undesirable, because there was no other way of interpreting his lack of gestures. What else could it mean? What else could it be when a man just uses a woman to satisfy his sexual urges but doesn’t attempt to meet her need for loving attention?

The man in the car, who she met four days ago, was surely an answer to her unarticulated longings. His words and actions were swirling in her head, combating the negativity from the man who was supposed to have been saying those things to her. You have the most beautiful smile. You have a glow about you. Can I kiss you? Was he for real? Was he just trying to seduce her? Was he sent to tempt her, to raise her up just to dash her down? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that her lips were being kissed, and she was responding, finding that gentle pats of lips and soft licks of tongue against lip were better than she had remembered them to be. She didn’t remember how sensuous it was, this mouth-dance, this meeting. Her whole body was coming to life in reaction. She stretched towards him, seeking for more points of contact; her hands sought out his cheeks, his head, his shoulders, his arms, his back, both touching him and asking him to touch her through her gestures. And he responded with a soft, suppleness.

* * *

Her tears came as soon as he closed the car door to return to his car, and she started driving off, on her way home. The coldness in which she had been living, in which she had almost consigned herself, hit her, and tears of relief and pity overcame her. She pulled into a parking space and let herself go. These were not tears, they were sobs, sobs of relief that she had not let her husband kill her, that she had not acquiesced to live without love, to live without passion and compassion. It was a shock and a relief, too, to know that she could still give and inspire love, and maybe even more than that, that she still needed love.