staying in with a chinese
We shower while waiting for delivery. You get the hiccups, which basically never happens. I take to kissing you for each one, on lips, cheek, neck, collarbone… You smile at the gesture as red and pink swirls down your alabaster body, the stream parting where Tracy and her child make a firm protrusion under your ribs. Your stomach is taut with meat which, for once lacking the major bones, squelches down into a tight sphere palpable under your soft and generous belly.
Since the Chinese is around the corner the delivery comes before you finish showering. I leap out and grab a dressing gown to meet the driver. I leave three carrier-bags full of streaming fresh food in the bedroom and come find you in the shower.
When I come back in the room you’re picking your teeth of a couple of shreds of meat with a nail. You startle and blush, but continue picking. I forced you to shit out two human beings in front of me. Bodily functions are no longer an issue.
I notice you swallow the meat. Nothing is wasted.
Once you’re clean you wrap yourself in one towel and gather up your hair in another. I finish shortly afterward. You look thoughtful as you hand me a towel.
“Andrew,” you begin, a little hesitantly. “You haven’t seen me do that before…”
I don’t wrap myself in towels, I scrub myself dry and then wander around naked. I’m scrubbing now, one leg on the side of the bath. “No. No, that was new.”
You flinch like I’ve just punched you. “Do you hate me now?”
I just saw you take apart two lives and eat them mouthful by mouthful. Before now I’ve seen you subdue men three times your mass (as you were at the time) and face down threatening spirits. You always seem indomitable but right now your shoulders hunch and you look small.
I let my towel drop to the floor and close the distance between us in two steps. When I hug you the mass beneath your ribs becomes immediately apparent, pressed between us. “I don’t hate you. I could never, it’s just not in me.” You lean your forehead against my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that. You must have been starving.”
“Mmhmm.” You look up and flash me a fragile smile. “Still am. What did you get me?”
“You’re perfect,” I say, suddenly impassioned. A complete non sequitur but I’m clearly working through some stuff. “I’m so grateful you showed me that. Never ever act according to anything other than your nature. You’re perfect, Raven.”
You bite your bottom lip then, after a pause, nod. I’m too wrapped up in searching the angles of your face for something to realise I am holding dinner ransom.
“So… The Chinese?”
“Fuck. Yes! I need to dry. One minute. Race you.”
You grin and kiss my cheek, then leap towards the bedroom.
You’d somehow got through half the giant bag of prawn crackers in the thirty seconds it took me to towel my hair. When I burst into the room you looked up at me, guilty as a squirrel caught stealing from a bird feeder. The sight of you so startled made me burst into hysterics and you couldn’t help but join in, accidentally spraying a few cracker crumbs over the bedspread.
I scooped up the escapees and popped then in the bin, then sat by you on the bed and helped you unpack container after container from the carrier bags. You grew visibly more excited.
“Feed me?”
“Always.”
The first of the remaining prawn crackers are ceremonial. You open wide and roll out your tongue, your big eyes staring into mine as I place the cracker on your tongue like a communion wafer. It crackles against your tongue as your saliva hits. You withdraw it into the shadows and suck till its structure is completely gone, then a tiny swallow makes the rest of it go too.
The rest of the meal is a better place. I flit between feeding you everything. Deep-fried battered chicken in spicy sauce is followed by crispy duck rolls, hand-made quickly and devoured faster in two bites. Duck rolls are followed by crispy beef in OK sauce on rice, and I feed you this with my hands, relishing the way your lips close warm around my proferred fingers, how they glide as they move back, scraping the spicy food with them for chewing. Your stomach groans powerfully as you pack it fuller and fuller. The mass of woman meat intermingles with a hundred other ingredients, turns yellow in your stomach with Oriental spices.
My absolute favourite thing to feed you is the noodles.
Chicken, prawn and pork together are incidental. You know my obsessions… The way each mouthful requires your opening wide and slightly scooping together the dangling noodles with your pink tongue sends shivers down my spine. You can see me hard under the towel. Curious if I’ll keep enough presence of mind you slip your hand under there and grip me, slowly massaging my warm shaft in your hand.
I exhale long and slow. When the next chopstick load fails to materialize you pause stroking, and that’s enough to teach me. I keep shoveling noodles into your waiting mouth and you play with me idly, giggling when I twitch because you went too fast or because you let a raucous, sexy burp slip over your extended tongue.
Then I seem to freeze. It’s nothing you’ve done. I’m just elsewhere, noodles left dangling not quite at your face.
You search my distant eyes then conclude that you’ll have to take this mouthful yourself before it gets cold. Teeth snap shut around the noodles and you chew them and speak around the bolus. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Why? Why am I not disturbed by what I saw?” I come back alive and look at you, awed, disturbed. “Raven, I… You handed my a child just born and I… You held open your mouth just like you are now…”
“You’re not disturbed because you’re too busy being turned on,” you offer, squeezing me afresh. I shiver but shake my head, stopping you by putting my hand on top of the towel.
“No. It’s more than that. I know you’re above us, that we’re your food. But, like, others wouldn’t feed you children…” I trail off, then pick up the thread somewhere else. “Why do I worship you like I do?”
You sigh and fold your hands in your lap. This requires a lot of thinking given the happiness hormones assaulting your system from the packed stomach. Rolling gulches and gurgles mark the point that Tracy begins to ooze into the rest of your digestive canal.
“You let me in.” It’s your turn to stare into space. “I gave you one little bite to tie you to me. But not enough to do all this. It’s like… All you needed was that one little push. You already wanted someone to take you. And I took you.” You come back to me and smile. “I’m your deepest fantasy, a desire so overwhelming you sacrificed your whole self to me.”
We look into one another’s eyes. I had almost forgotten that bite.
“But come on. Your deepest fantasy is hungry. Feed her.”
I nod and take up my chopsticks. Still elsewhere, though. You decide to focus my attention.
All it takes is opening your mouth. “Aaaah.”
I feed you every last scrap of takeaway. You’re too stuffed to move afterwards, nevermind make love, so I give you a smooth and sensual massage with the lightest of touches. As I rub your aching, gurgling tummy I wonder if I could ever wake up from you, from your gorgeous sensuality and ravenous excess.
No, I conclude. I only ever wanted to be wanted. And if it ever happens that you no longer want me, I will burn in the very same belly my hands explore right now.
And I will thank you, from the bottom of my heart.