I left my fiancé on the night of the full moon.
In a strange way, our love had always been built around the phases of the moon. With each new progression, each dedication, each affirmation of what we both felt, the night seemed to wax and wane. Ours was a love story to die for. Yet only twelve full moons after we fell in love at first sight, we were causatively destroying everything we had made.
Precisely one year before, we had met on a Caribbean island and instantly fell in love. Before the end of our first date we knew that we would be married. The passion of that February morning had not faded for one second since, and we had created and lived and loved and thrived together in his artsy flat in central Rome. We lived a fantasy life in a hopeful world. We worked our asses off and built our dreams together. We were ten years apart. We were wildly different. We were so in love. Romeo and Juliet were dawdling fools in comparison.
We had a fantastic kind of honesty that got us through my father’s fatal illness, times of economic hardship and even an outbreak of terrorism along the Italyi borders. But we never could get past one issue. It was the ONE issue we never spoke about; I think we were too afraid. We didn’t want to fight, so we chose to ignore it rather than to confront it. It got us in the end, and the life we had formed together imploded in one fight.
He wanted me to stay in the Middle East. I wanted to go home to San Francisco. Neither of us wanted to break up; neither of us wanted to move. He had a booming business and a life in Italy. I had a booming family and a life in California. He begged me to stay; I said hell no, had he SEEN San Francisco?? The ensuing hours of grief, anger, torture, betrayal were hellish. We stumbled into a black hole of fighting. No matter how many times we shook the eight ball, no magic solution appeared. He wouldn’t move. I wouldn’t move. Neither of us wanted to do the long-distance thing. So after two weeks of pleading and searching and trying to find solutions, we knew that it was over. WE—the couple with THE most romantic love story you EVER heard—were going to knock down the pieces and quit playing, as if our love were a stupid game of chess.
We’d been torturing each other for those two weeks, and destroying every inch of what we had. Our fights had been brutal. They never resolved anything or led anywhere. On some level, I began to hate him. I told myself I was right to leave. I felt compelled to go. He started to complain about my little habits that drove him insane, like leaving the bathroom rug on the floor when it was wet and letting it mildew. He screamed at me every night, and during the day he wrote me long emails telling me how much he worshipped me. We both said very hurtful things, and we stopped making love. That might have hurt the most. We’d never stopped making love since the day we met, and we enjoyed each other so much. But not anymore. Just the thought of sleeping in the same room drove us nearly insane, and I started to wander the house crazily at night, talking to myself and having vivid nightmares.
We knew it was over. From our rickety kitchen table I booked a flight home and told him we had to leave the flat at 4 AM to get to the airport on time. He mumbled some sort of groan. I roamed around the apartment that I had transformed from a dirty bachelor’s pad to an inspired modern flat, picking up my odds and ends. I threw away my toothbrush. I took the pictures of us kissing on the first day we met and sneaked them into my suitcases even though I knew they would only bring me pain. He sat helplessly on the edge of the bed we had made so much love in and stared at the floor with cloudy eyes. The love poem I had written for our six-month anniversary hung on the wall beside the bed, and when I tried to rip it off, it tore in half and left a long streak of pink paper fluttering weakly on the wall.
We didn’t say anything. What was there to say?
At 11 PM he asked me to dinner and I accepted after saying coldly, “We can’t have sex. It wouldn’t be right. We always had the most amazing sex, but that’s because we were making love. I don’t want to do it now and ruin the images I have.”
To my surprise, he unquestionably agreed, and even added, “What we had was too good.” He was always so sensitive like that. Tuned in to how things really were.
Our last date was much like a first date. Two people, yearning for each other in a subtle way, walking together but not holding hands, not touching, talking politely, fumbling over uncomfortable silences. I noticed that both of us had dressed too nicely—we were trying too hard. What were we trying to prove? I had always felt gorgeous to him whether we were lounging around at home in our matching sweatpants, sweatily climbing rocks in the northern mountains, or sunbathing naked on the private beaches we loved to frequent. How quickly the magic had disappeared.
We were already visibly different. He smoked as we walked, as through trying to show me that I no longer had jurisdiction over his habits. I sadly remembered the months of exercises and programs we had done—together!—to get him over this habit he told me he was dying to break. I remembered when he said he wanted to be better for me, and stopped drinking so much. All of that work, that time, that money, that effort. How much we gave! How much of ourselves we had handed away.
A blaring ambulance brought me to the present. We walked in a most awkward way down the avenues of Rome and wound up at the classy seafood restaurant at which we had our first official “date”. Neither of us really intended to end up there, but the magic of Rome is that it leads you on in its own special way, it turns your feet to exactly where they need to go, and we, in the drunken daze of despondency, had unthinkingly followed it to this most ironic place.
Amongst the multitude of cheery, snogging lovers we found our place in a corner booth and took our time admiring the leather on the seats. We did that idiotic thing that I always hated to see others do where you take a sip of your stupid cocktail and then look at the other person and put down your drink and then smile and pick up your drink and take another sip and once in a while say something and then take another drink because you are such a mindless idiot that you have absolutely nothing to say. It felt like an insult to our relationship because we had always had such sincere, candid interaction.
I got up to go to the bathroom even though I didn’t have to go. I just wanted an excuse to escape the pressurized silence that was imploding my brain. He lustily ran his eyes over my bronze legs as I ambled back a few minutes later.
“You’re still the fucking sexiest girl in the universe.”
I gave him a half smile and sad eyes. “Why is this so awful? Maybe we shouldn’t have even come. I feel like this stupid date is a smear on the dignity of our gorgeous relationship.”
“You have to fill up the endings with happiness. Otherwise you can’t have happiness in your new beginnings,” he observed wisely. He was always saying stuff like that. Things that made so much sense to me, things that made me think, and dream, and laugh.
“You just want to get in my pants again, you dirty bastard,” I joked, running my soft hand on his thigh, “You’re thinking about how I give the best blow jobs in the world and feeling sorry for yourself.”
He gave me that dazzling grin of his. “Maybe it’s a little of both…but seriously, you have magic hands…and those LIPS!!” he trailed off, reminiscing with a pained look on his face.
Dinner came and went. He drank lots of vodka and overate, both unusual things for him. I purposely ordered something small because I knew I wouldn’t eat anyway. I was just trying to humor him. I already had that heartsick stomachache thing. You know, the one where you realize your relationship is over and then for the next few weeks you feel nauseous and the sight or smell of food just makes you want to cry and die? It was already coming on and I wasn’t even aboard the plane yet. He snarfed down an extra lager. We each had our own ways of dealing with the anguish.
On the way back, we did this thing that we used to do where we’d joke around like we didn’t know each other. It was hilarious to us for some reason. We’d always done it. I guess we just had the same sense of humor, because once we started bantering, we could go on for hours.
That night, it was different.
I didn’t usually put on an accent, but tonight I did. He asked me if I was single and I told him I was. He asked where I was from and I told him London. My British accent was unpredictably great that night. He told me he was a photographer from Egypt. We told tall tales about our made up lives. Then he asked me what I did for a living.
“I go around the world making awesome men fall in love with me, and then I ruin their lives and leave them.”
“It must pay pretty well,” he said, “because living in Rome is really expensive.”
“Yeah, it works out for me, I’ve even got a cute little flat just here off the main drag, actually. Want to come up for a drink?” I casually invited in my best Princess Diana tone of voice.
I led him up the stairs to the apartment we’d called our “lair” for a year and fumbled with the keys on purpose. I left him on the stairs below me so he was staring right at my perfect ass. He leaned in and nuzzled me between the thighs just as an elderly Jewish man came wandering down the stairs; we giggled. I let him in and he politely commented on the nice apartment I had.
Keeping up the pretenses, we quickly washed ourselves and sprinted to the bedroom. He sucked my pink toes and tickled me through my thong as I asked, “So, what’s your name?”
“Jacob,” he said with a smirk, which was hilarious since it was such a plain name, and his real name was so outlandish.
“I’m Victoria.” I chose a very English name because I knew the English thing was a HUGE turn-on for him. Every time I said something in my simpering accent, I could feel his boner raging upwards. “And I like the way you suck my toes, Jacob…” I whispered, my voice trailing into a moan.
He kissed me with those thick pillowy lips and was a different man. Vodka and cigarettes clouded his usually innocent taste, and his muscles seemed to bulge under his showy trousers. I made a face at the unfamiliarity.
“You taste like cigarettes. Good thing this is a one night stand, because I would never date someone who smoked.”
In a way, I was glad he was someone else. It made it easier to keep up the façade…and I let myself go. He kissed me very, very slowly for a few minutes, then sat down on the edge of the bed. We hadn’t kissed in thirteen days. I leaned down into him and felt my curly red hair toss in waves around his bearded cheeks. He relaxed onto his back and drew me onto him. I felt my skirt billow out at the movement, and my warming panties grazed over his bulging cock through his boxers.
I knelt to the floor and slowly removed his black socks and green boxers as he took off his shirt. Then I sensuously drew my tank top over my head and let him run his eyes over my breasts, hidden by a flowered black bra. I turned around and let him undo the tiny zipper of my too-short skirt, and as he drew the skirt down to my ankles he kissed and licked every inch of my ass.
I kept my high heels on so he could access all of me. We continued to banter as I rubbed my perfectly toned and round ass in his face, letting him nibble and lick my smooth, strong legs. He pushed on my back to bend me over, pulled aside my silk g-string, and spread apart my butt. He gently licked my anus and nibbled around my pussy slowly. I groaned in ecstasy. This was something he’d never or rarely done. It felt amazing. I’d always been too shy to ask for it, but we were different people tonight. We both knew it. We’d always had mind-blowing sex, but the overly-dramatic sexual excitement in the air tonight proved that we both knew we were in for something really special. Nothing to lose; our last inhibitions vanished. No holding back. Just pure pleasure.
By 1 AM we were deep in the hottest, heaviest sex I could ever remember. I dominated him just the way he liked it, and we moved in a bonded motion that can only be achieved by the most intimate of connections. I kept up the accent. He teased at me and said he never knew the British were so uninhibited.
It was nice that we knew each other so well physically. It was easy to please him. I knew exactly how to suck his balls into my warm mouth and run my tongue along them as they rolled around inside me, one at a time. He begged me to drown him in my saliva and I skillfully did so, using both of my hands to slather his huge dick so it was nice and slippery.
I slipped a neon cock ring onto his shaft and watched his popping veins grow in the moonlight. We both liked it kinky, but not too unnatural. We liked to add toys and tricks and both got immense satisfaction out of pleasing each other. We never wanted to distract from the purpose of the love we made. We were spiritually right there, playing and jostling and giving each other all we had.
I turned him on his belly and made him raise his ass in the air. I positioned myself behind him on the soft blue sheets and licked along his anus and balls while using my hands beneath him to slowly stoke his shaft. His ecstasy was so complete that his legs began to shudder, and he kept begging me to let him cum, but I stopped him each time by dexterously squeezing the base of his cock to prevent him. It was a sweet torture.
My friends would never understand this; they all think it’s disgusting, and I can see how they think that. But they don’t get it. The point is that it feels good, and it’s an acceptance. It’s saying, “I love every inch of you, just as you are.” It’s an acknowledgement of the deepest kind of appreciation and respect, being willing to do anything just to make that one special person feel good. He loved it, anyway.
His favorite thing was for me to demand all kinds of special treatment, and I let him have it that night. I sat on his face and gyrated against his beard and nose, forcing him to suck my clitoris and lick deep inside of me. I made him kiss every inch of my legs and in between my breasts, and I made him fuck me every way I liked it, standing up, sideways, doggy style, missionary, upside down. The few hours we had seemed to last forever, and there was no pressure. We only lived to please each other.
He finished me off with my favorite position—me on my back with a big pillow under me, raising my cunt in the air for him to hammer. I furiously touched myself while he pounded into me. I came for the third time that night in screaming rapture. I decided he had worked hard enough and began to thrust myself in circles as we lay sideways, riding his cock and working my back in fast arches as his slippery dick plunged in and out of me. He loved it when I did that. It took him over the edge. His strong hands gripped my shoulders from behind and I turned to watch his face crinkle in the elation of orgasm. He groaned my name—my real name—as his cum spurt deep inside of me.
He snuggled me. The room smelled delicious, intoxicating, foreign. His right arm curled up around his head and my right one stretched up. Our index fingers intertwined tenderly. His left arm was thrown across the milky smoothness of my belly, and my hand softly nestled between my breasts. His brawny legs linked through mine. Our sweaty sighing was the only sound. The cold air filtered in through the open windows and the curtains ruffled in the breeze. We were so tangled up that I couldn’t imagine getting closer to him if I tried.
I slept better in that next hour than I have ever slept in my whole life. Better than when I was a cradled baby in my mother’s arms. Better than when I had to take morphine for a surgery and didn’t wake up for a thousand years. I was at peace. Somehow, strangely, our tippy scales of pluses and minuses had evened, and the good once again outweighed the bad. It wasn’t about the sex, really. It was…an admission. After so many hurtful words, our true selves had shone through to prove that we needed each other more desperately than ever. We had always known. We slept and slept and slept, and never wanted to wake up.
At 4 AM my eyes fluttered open. I rubbed his back and kissed my favorite spot, this little patch of soft skin by his ear that’s the cutest thing you ever saw. I ran my fingers along our naked bodies to wake us up. We choked down vitamins and water to wake us up and stumbled to the shitty old car that we never drove. Rome was a place for gleaming motorcycles, and we’d ridden hell out of ours. Cars seemed inappropriate here. He carried my ridiculously-heavy luggage to the trunk and opened my door for me. Even at this ungodly hour, he had perfect manners.
I knew that he wouldn’t wait with me at the airport. I didn’t ask him to. It didn’t seem right. We had always been able to communicate without words, and in the stillness of that chilly morning our silent language flew effortlessly. At the Rome International Airport curbside check-in, he loaded up my bags and kissed me passionately. We hugged each other as though we could never let go. We didn’t say anything except “I love you, I love you, I love you”, over and over and over. He drove away and I went out of his life.
The Boeing 757 climbed towards the glowing moon, and underneath my eye mask, I began to silently sob.
