When we smell another’s body, it is that body that we are breathing in through our mouth and nose, 
that we possess instantly, as it were in its most secret substance, its own nature. Once inhaled, the smell is the fusion of the other’s body and my own. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre 

The power of scent influences our human responses during attraction and mating. Love at first sight just may be love at first smell. Perfumes have been created for centuries, as ancient of a practice as we can trace back. Oils, unguents, elixirs, and the like were made for perfuming during and after bathing rituals, anointing one’s body to attract and entice. Our own pheromones are nature’s chemical concoction to attract, allure, and bond us with our mate. Sexual attraction and desire are fueled by scent, along with other contributing factors. But the natural scent of a lover is everlasting in our olfactory memories.

The scent of my lover intoxicates me with desire. When I nuzzle my nose against his skin, I am flooded with emotion. As we kiss, the scent of his upper lip makes my body tingle with a strong sense of devotion for him. I feel this awareness zing through me from his face to my nose, through the bones of my face, down into my breastbone, into my belly, like electrical current into the bones of my hips and down my legs to my toes. It is so powerful, like a magic spell cast over me. The skin of his neck and just near his ear smells so indescribably good and masculine that I feel gravity pull me into him. It’s so strong, I can’t resist. His scent causes a swell of longing to surge through me. When he leaves his clothing behind, I hold it to my face, close my eyes, and remember his embrace. I am obsessed with my lover’s scent.

Gustave Flaubert waxed deliriously with desire over his lover’s scent that lingered on her gloves and slippers. Poet Robert Herrick’s desire for his lover’s intimate scent, whose “breast, lips, hands, thighs, legs … are all richly aromatical,” made him wild with want for her. Napoleon Bonaparte, upon returning home from a long absence due to war, sent a message to his lover Josephine: “Home in three days. Don’t wash.” Washing and cleanliness decrease the musky scent that lovers crave of one another. I must admit, although I do love to bathe and enjoy feeling clean, I also love it when my body smells like sex after making love, because it reminds me of my lover. I feel possessed, scent-marked. But like animals do, marking their scent and licking the scent of others, I want to be scent-marked by my lover’s body. I want to be claimed by him. I inhale the scent of his skin during lovemaking, just his natural scent, without perfumes or deodorant. With my face buried into his armpit, there is nothing like the scent of him, so I breathe him in. It arouses me beyond measure. Kissing his mouth and inhaling my lover’s scent during sex is the most compelling combination of sensory pleasures.

Walt Whitman said the sweat of a lover was “aroma finer than prayer” and I must say I agree. In fact, I’ve discovered that I’m becoming a little fetishistic about the scent of the man I love. He leaves behind a necktie and immediately I smell the narrow part that keeps itself nearest around his neck. I am transported to the warmth of his skin there, the place where my face seeks when we are embracing. I recall the scent of him, remembering the smell when I burrow my face against his warm neck. I hold the thin black fabric to my face and caress it with my cheek. Inhale. Searching for the scent of him, I give the tie another smell along the strip of its silky fabric. Smell again. I discover a hint of his scent. My eyes flutter with the memory and instantly I understand the romantic cliche of smelling handkerchiefs and jackets where the memory of one’s lover exists. There, his white undershirt is draped across the chair. I gather the softness to my face. I smell the faintest scent of his body and take another deep inhale to find his odor at the armpit. His body odor is so delicately fragrant that I have to bury my nose. We recently both discovered our mutual love of each other’s smell, so when he is on top of me during sex, he generously offers his armpit to my face. I delight, savor, and relish him then. It drives me near to orgasm and I’m ecstatic with the fragrance of his underarm, his cock deep within me, his breath near my ear.

We both recently learned about how much we have been enjoying each other’s scent— the lingering scents of our bodies and sexual blending of our odors after lovemaking. He admitted to inhaling my sexual musk from behind, burying his nose in between my bottom cheeks, tonguing me there, and then tasting my sex, breathing it in, the femaleness. Even the remaining odors of my sex upon his, as it lingers the following day, he takes pleasure in. I admit my own renifleur delight of his body, the many areas of his body I love to smell, and even more when it has been a day or two after he has washed. Underneath his arms, his upper lip, his cheek, neck, the sultry musk of his sex, the creases in between his legs, and down underneath his balls, the area around his ass, and further. His feet smell good, and when I massage his toes, I am tempted to either suckle them or smell them. I can’t decide. The inner arch of his foot, the in between of his toes. I want him in a way that I have never known before. You see, I have never desired a man this much, and this may just be my first fascination with a lover’s scent. If pheromones are the cause, then it really was love at first smell.

“Masculine exhalations are, as a rule, stronger, more vivid, more widely differentiated than those of women. In the odor of young men there is something elemental, as of fire, storm, and salt sea. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It suggests all the things strong and beautiful and joyous and gives me a sense of physical happiness.” ~ Helen Keller

From Diane Ackerman’s book A Natural History of the Senses there is a plentitude of information on scent and smell. I found many curious and interesting facts about pheromones and desire in her book about the senses:

“Pheromones are the pack animals of desire (from Greek, pherein, to carry, and horman, excite). Animals, like us, not only have distinctive odors, they also have powerfully effective pheromones, which trigger other animals into ovulation and courtship, or establish hierarchies of influence and power.

Animals would not be able to live long without pheromones because they couldn’t mark their territories or choose receptive, fertile mates. But are there human pheromones? And can they be bottled? Some trendy women in Manhattan are wearing a perfume called Pheromone, priced at three hundred dollars an ounce. Expensive perhaps, but what price aphrodisia? Based on findings about the sexual attractants animals give off, the perfume promises, by implication, to make a woman smell provocative and turn stalwart men into slaves of desire: love zombies. The odd thing about the claims of this perfume is that its manufacturer has not specified which pheromones are in it. Human pheromones have not yet been identified by researchers, whereas, say, boar pheromones have. The vision of a generation of young women walking the streets wearing boar pheromones is strange, even for Manhattan. Let me propose a naughty recipe: Turn loose a herd of sows on Park Avenue. Mix well with crowds of women wearing Pheromone eau de cologne. Dial 911 for emergency.”

I recall the first day we met. He embraced me right away, and I swooned against him, my face fitting into his chest. We kissed and kissed, the warmth, the scent of his skin. Everywhere I met a new scent upon his body. The faint hint of shampoo in his hair, no cologne nor deodorant to hunt through for his natural aroma.

Unnameable fragrance, mysterious. I could not argue with instinct. I wanted him more than any other man in the world. He became the entire universe in the moment of his kiss.

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.

Silent, starving I prowl through the streets.

Bread does not nourish me, dawn disquiets me,

I search the liquid sound of your steps all day.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,

For your hands the color of the wild grain,

I hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,

I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your loveliness,

The nose, sovereign of your arrogant face,

I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

And I walk hungry, smelling the twilight

Looking for you, for your hot heart,

Like a puma in the barren wilderness.

Pablo Neruda wrote this poem about craving a lover’s mouth, with the last line, and I walk hungry, smelling the twilight, looking for you. The animalistic hunger of wanting a lover, searching for them in the scent of twilight, wanting to eat them from the intensity of desire. And like Jean-Paul Sartre said, Once inhaled, the smell [of a lover] is the fusion of the other’s body and my own. 

It was forbidden, that street. When I was a girl, I was not allowed to go down that road. My mother had made it clear  that I could only go as far as the end of our street when I went out on my bicycle, never to wander. The forbidden street was at the bottom of the hill, just to the left, at the end. The entrance was shaded with trees, sloping down into the park. At the end, the road turned into hiking trails, eucalyptus trees, mystery.

I wanted him to drive me through the neighborhood where I grew up, where I skinned my knees from bicycle falls, where I played and drew in colored chalk on the sidewalk. We drove around and up and through the hills, my memory as a girl following along the asphalt. “Where can we go?” he asks. I give him a look, wanting. We kiss quickly. He leans close to me as he curves the moving car through the narrow roads, guiding the steering wheel through my childhood memories. I nestle my head into the scoop of his shoulder, planting little kisses lightly along his neck, nuzzling my nose to smell his skin. I trail my fingers along the edge of his ear, the curving shell roundness of it. Just then, at the bottom of the hill, was the forbidden street I wasn’t supposed to go down.

“Let’s go down that street. Turn here.”

The street is quiet. There are houses on one side. The other side is hidden by the densely wooded brush and trees. The tires crackle slowly along the road. We look for a spot to park. I have butterflies in my stomach and a melancholy ache in my bones. He turns the car around at the end, finding a place. We kiss for a moment. It’s dark, headlights off, streetlights buzzing in their orange glow. We can hear someone’s television in the distance. Like teenagers on a date, we cannot wait to kiss. I clasp his face lightly with my hands. The natural scent of him, his warm mouth melting against mine, I’m intoxicated by his kiss. He leans across the center and unbuckles his seatbelt. The click of his seatbelt undone, the sound, opens a place in my body. My blouse, my wide leather belt, my jeans, the seatbelt—confining me. I want to remove everything, remove the things in my life that keep me from him. I want undoing. I unbuckle my heeled sandals. I undo the seatbelt. His hands tuck up underneath my hair. He pulls my face deeper into our kiss.

His mouth and mine, his mouth, mine.

I look out the window into the nigh, and see myself as a girl, running down toward the end where the dirt path begins. I see myself looking back at the older me in the car. She knows— that little girl— where I am going. Whatever she knows, it’s discovered here, this secret place at the end of this street. She sees me, thirty years later, in a minivan full of my children’s things– a baby seat, a baseball bag, the sand toys for the beach all cluttered in the trunk, kissing a man I am having an affair with, a man I am falling in love with, in the dark, stealing a moment away. Secret. It seems that my life has come to this secret and hidden end of a street, to rediscover something forgotten within me.

We climb into the back of the van, my jeans pulled off, removing my belt, my pussy wet, his hard sex in my hand. “You are so hard,” I marvel, as the length and swell of his cock is warm and heavy with thick arousal. I caress his sex with one hand. I cup his balls with the other. He is sitting on the seat, half dressed, still wearing his shirt. I lean up and into him, kissing him deeply. Holding his body to mine, my blouse is sticking from sweat and desire, the fabric coming between the smoothness of our bodies. I want to feel him naked and breathing upon me. I pull the fabric away to feel his belly and chest against mine. He pulls his shirt away, too. We want our skin touching. I want to dissolve into him where the world is golden-yellow and soft like sunlight in summertime memories. I want to melt away into the light as he plunges his body into mine. No barriers, nothing between us, not even the years we lived so close to one another, never knowing that all this time, we were already close in parallel existence. I want his hunger, his sadness, his memories, all of his colors inside of me, blending both of our shadows, touching, like watercolors all bleeding together until the paper is saturated with imperfect beauty.

My lover’s face in the shadows is luminous and delicate. There is something within him that is intangible, revealing itself to me. His face is like moonlight through a raincloud. I put my hand to his cheek, making sure he is there. Here in the dark, the blueness of the evening, illuminated by the amber street lamps lighting the shadows within ourselves, the forgotten places within us can no longer stay hidden. I open my eyes to see him in the dark. He cannot see me entirely. We can only see each other in the half-light. We are shadows of each other. We are radiant with desire, opening and tasting what is true, kissing him, kissing him. By this desire, he is awakening my soul. His fingers and hands light along my body, undoing me, releasing me, bringing me back to life.

I feel released from everything when we kiss. Nothing is binding me to the gravity of my existence. I am a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis. I am returning to myself within his embrace, by his kiss. We move around in the back, trying to find the right position. We kiss, and I laugh like a teenage girl. My legs are up, bare and dangling over his shoulder. He can’t see my face at all now. What he can see he finds with his hands. He discovers me in the slip of my wanting. My skin against his, my pussy is flowering with ripeness, and, as he touches me there, as he slides his fingers inside, he has me, he possesses me— all of me— the girl running down the street and the woman in the back seat of the car.

We kiss. I press my body into his. My hands are slipping all around his shoulders, feeling the fabric of his shirt, flattening my palms, smoothing and stroking his chest, squeezing his arms, and pulling him against me. I want him inside of me. My hands caress up along the back of his neck. My fingernails claw into his black hair. I have this erotic need to kiss him in the back of the car, half naked like this. It brings moments from girlhood into womanhood colliding within me like a surreal dream. I pretend it is him that I first gave myself to in the back of a car. I pretend, all this time, it was he, this man I see in the half-light, the blue shadows curving along his handsome face, his smile, his sighs. I suckle his lower lip, and he says something, pulling away, mystified, searching for my face. He says something beautiful. He is beatific in that moment. I suck his lip in a kiss again, and the same reaction comes. He is searching for my face. The kissing is making us dizzy with the feeling we have. We are in this dream together, looking out the windows at the broken indigo and granite colors, just shapes now, the houses, the street. We are dreaming each other. What we cannot see with our eyes, we can see with our hands, with our kisses. We can see everything about each other and all the years that paralleled themselves, bringing us to this moment, all the secrets once so elusive, now illuminated.

Thirty years before, I ran down that street, not supposed to go there, not allowed. Danger. My mother worried about someone kidnapping me, taking me away. Now, I want to be taken, I want someone to kidnap me. “Take me,” I whisper.

We are in the back of the van. My body is longing for him to be deep inside of me. I am sucking him as he straddles the farthest back seat, slinking into a position so I can take his cock into my mouth. My face nuzzles into his belly, making my way down. I inhale his musky scent, petting the soft nest of hair there with my palm, pressing down upon where his pubic bone meets the base of his sex. Tenderly I open my mouth to take him in, my mouth wet, longing to suck him, licking the head, savoring the length of his erect cock. He is hard. So hard, I have never felt him harder than that. I want him to kidnap me, just take me and take me. I don’t want to go back. I want to run away. I want him so much I can’t imagine how it’s happened. It consumes me, this want, and there’s no stopping it.

Outside the car windows, it’s deep night. We can only hear our breath and our sighing, our desire for one another climbing over the velour car seats, reaching the branches of the trees outside, shaking. I am shaking with orgasms. He gives them to me, over and over until everything blurs together and I don’t know who I am anymore.

The gray concrete of the street softly encompasses us. There is no time, only our breath, our hands, our kisses. My body sinks upon him, I climb upon him, slide him within me. When I am like this, on top of him, I am his. I belong to him, and that is what I need. It doesn’t really matter what we do, or how we do it.

He moves us down onto the carpeted floor of the back of the van. My leg is cramped against the side of the car interior. I cannot see his face now, but he can see mine by the dim light of the window. I feel him watching me as I ride him, moaning a little, feeling the marvelous way his cock slides in and half out of my cunt, my wet and juicy place where he is entering me. He grasps the sides of my hips, holding me upon him. He holds, squeezes me, and shakes my fleshy hips with yearning. I feel like a woman. When he holds my hips like that, I feel him possess me. The softest place of me, not just the inside of my body, but the most secret place, he finds, he uncovers. I am naked inside. I am his. I am myself again.

It was snowing in Kyoto. I was walking all the way to my Master’s house, carrying my koto close to my chest, facing the falling snow. The tiny snowflakes touched my face like light kisses. It was a pleasant feeling. I hadn’t noticed how cold I was while the little flakes were touching my face. It was a game I was playing with myself while walking, a distraction, to ignore the rest of my body being so cold. My tabi socks were becoming damp with every step, as my geta were not high enough to manage the snowy walk.

Over many years of visits, I became more relaxed while alone with Master Genji. I was becoming older, and had already had my mizu-age. I found that I could choose the men that I found attractive, and create an idea in my mind of what they might be like to make love with. I held their face in my memory, and fantasized about them later when I was alone in my bed. Master Genji was quite handsome. He was a tall man, with a slight build, and a bright, intelligent face. His body exuded a quiet strength, much like a beautiful river. When he was very near, to help me with my koto strings, he had the soft fragrance of tea. There was another, more masculine scent mingled with the scent of tea. It was a compelling scent, to be near him. Master Genji was older than most of my other teachers. However, he was still young looking, at the age of fourty-six.

“Your face, it’s so pink Koyuki-chan,” Master Genji exclaimed. “let me warm you, here, you’ve got snowflakes all over your face.” His large, slender hands brushed the icy flakes from my cheeks, eyebrows, and lips. This was surprising, as I had never felt a man so casually touch my face before. He immediately grabbed me solidly by my shoulders, and hurried me into the center of the house, near the hibachi. The room was deliciously warm, glowing with heat. Master Genji was dressed in his usual attire; an indigo dyed yukata, which complimented his ivory-colored skin. After he brought me close to the hibachi, he went into another room and fetched a different kimono.

It must be his wife’s kimono, I realized.

In his hands were dry tabi, and a cloth. He took my koto, which I found myself clutching still, as I was very chilled. Master Genji brushed my face with the cloth. “Koyuki-chan, I am sorry, forgive me, but the house maids are not here today, and my wife has gone to visit a friend in Nara.” He looked apologetic, and a little embarrassed. He brushed off the snow gently. He sat me down near the blazing hot hibachi, and slowly, began to remove my tabi sock from my left foot. He stopped. He was nervous. His hands were shaking.

“Forgive me, Koyuki-chan, please…” as he cautiously removed my tabi, revealing my bare foot. The heat of his hands on my bare skin felt like nothing I had ever felt before. His smooth palms felt like the softest silk, contrasting with the rough tips of his callused fingers, from constant koto playing. I gasped, from the touch of our skin. His hands pulled away. “Oh, so sorry Koyuki-chan, I only want you to be warm.” He was sweating, damp on his forehead. His face looked like a teenage boy’s, an amazed look of wonderment. “If you don’t want me to remove your tabi, but, you see, they are wet with snow, and…”

“Genji-sensei, I don’t mind. Please,” and I guided his shaking hands back to my bare foot. He caressed my toes with the movement, putting on the dry tabi. My big toe was cozy inside the warm, dry sock, then the other toes followed, encased in the fabric. He finished pulling the sock up to my ankle, as both of his hands lifted, the motion causing his fingers to graze my leg while administering the sock. He then removed my other tabi sock, and replaced it again with a dry tabi.

“I will now have to help you into this kimono, Koyuki-chan,” he stammered. “We cannot allow you to stay in your damp kimono, or you will become ill.” My koto was placed near the sitting area by the fire. I remembered Master Genji’s fine hands helping me place my own fingers upon the strings. He was a caring teacher. All of our lessons were leading to this moment, I felt, and suddenly I realized what the older geisha were discussing about men. This was what they called desire.

“Yes, Genji-sensei,” I answered, allowing him to undress me. He was as hesitant as my first patron, Yujiro. I remembered the sensation of being completely naked in front of a man, as Master Genji removed my obi, and then the many layers of my kimono, unraveling. Not wanting to upset Master Genji, I closed my eyes while he undressed me. I could only hear his breath. His warm hands, barely touched my belly as he unwrapped the layers of fabric. His breath went silent. Only his palm was firm against my body, unmoving. Soon after, he began breathing quickly, as I was waiting for the dry kimono. I simply stood there in the warm room, waiting, naked. His fingers, so skilled with musical instruments, traced my body. I felt his fingers, drawing along my body. I kept my eyes closed. I allowed him to touch me. His fingers, gently, traced along my collarbone, down my arms. He held my wrist, down to my hands. His large hand enveloped mine, slipped away. With his other hand, he lifted my arm, and put the dry kimono sleeve on. Half on, the kimono fabric was hanging with its heavy weight of silk down my bare back. My nipples were hardening. Master Genji traced my breasts, lightly, and touched, drawing a circle around the bud of my left nipple.

His mouth, suddenly.

The heat of his mouth was near my breast. It sent shivers throughout my body, and the tiny hairs along my skin stood on end. He traced my other breast with his fingers. He lifted my other arm into the sleeve. The kimono fabric clothed my back and arms, with my breasts and stomach, legs, exposed, fully bare. Master Genji was quiet again. His breathing stopped. He led my hand to his yukata, and I felt the heat of his arousal. His penis was so stiff, incredibly hard, like a large flute. The indigo fabric he wore was covering his male desire.

We said nothing.

The most surprising thing happened. Master Genji touched the most delicate part of my body. My eyes still closed, I could only feel his fingers, with the slightest pressure, upon my sex. He circled my clitoris with the  faintest touch. His free hand delighted along my bare skin. I felt his rhythms, playing my body like an instrument. My mouth flowering apart, I heard from my breast, a sound coming out. It was like sighing. My heart was beating faster, quickening. My clitoris was alive with all sensations, as Master Genji circled it as light as the feathery flutter of a bird’s wings, as sweetly as he touched the strings of his koto. My voice was uncontrollable. His long fingers penetrated me, plunging inside of my wetness, an oyster-like slippery sensation from within my sex. My clitoris was so sensitive, as Master Genji’s fingers deftly played my sexual place. Struck by some intense emotion, he gathered me up into his arms, and brought me into his sleeping area. My eyes opened for a moment. I saw a different Genji. He quickly unrolled his futon mat on the tatami as if it were putting out a fire lit deep in his body. This was no longer the gentle Master Genji I knew as my teacher, but some demon spirit inside of him.

“Spread your legs, Koyuki-chan, please.” He demanded. I was surprised by his urgency and command. Only had I heard such a voice come from him when I hadn’t practiced enough, and made too many clumsy mistakes while playing my koto.

I did as Master Genji asked me to do.

His hands were ready to make me sing, like his koto. He slid two fingers inside of me, while his other hand circled my clitoris again. Every once in awhile, Master Genji’s mouth would wet my clitoris, and it was a great discovery to realize this part of my body. I made deep resonant sounds while his slender fingers curved and bowed into my sex. The pressure and rhythm he used, brought my body closer to the most blissful feeling I have ever experienced. I sighed, my eyes fluttering, unopened. To open my eyes would break the spell. Every limb and part of my body vibrating with pleasure, as I felt wave upon wave of rising wave, wild rippling sensations dancing through me that I had never known before.

It seemed that my body was full of music, nothing but deep and beautiful sounds rising into the air, singing as a bird, calling into the winter sky. Slowly my whole body was but an instrument of love, and Master Genji, with his magical fingers, played me, with hands that knew every sound I could create. Oh, and deep within, at the deepest part of my being, from the center of my softest place, as his fingers delved deeper, touching and tickling, circling, the more my voice cried out with the strange sounds, notes, the song of my pleasure. The unknown within me was revealed, in a shivering ripple, a vibrato of a string, my deepest and highest octaves.

As I found the courage to open my eyes, Master Genji was looking upon me with great tenderness. Something tremendous had begun. I was no longer the young girl that walked into the house of Master Genji. I was, suddenly, on a snowy afternoon, a woman.

After so many years since this film was created by director/writer Jean-Jacques Annaud, The Lover (1992), it still resonates with a concentrated amount of beautiful desire. The Lover was based on the true story of French writer Marguerite Duras’ life experience. She had written about her first lover, which was later translated into this film from her book.

Marguerite Duras, the author of many novels, plays, films, interviews, essays and short fiction, including her best-selling, autobiographical work L’Amant (1984), translated into English as The Lover, describes her affair with a Chinese man when she was a teenage girl. This book won the Goncourt prize in 1984. The story of her adolescent blossoming into womanhood was written by Duras in The North China Lover. The film version of The Lover, produced by Claude Berri, was released to great success in 1992.

I first saw this film in 1992 when it was released, and was transfixed by the poetic way the writings had been translated into film. The memoir in book form was tragic and melancholy, and not nearly as sexy as the film. The story itself was fleshed out (no pun intended) into a sensual, erotic, and explicit visual.

As I have had a long-time crush on Tony Leung Ka Fai (there are two Tony Leungs in the acting world, both exquisitely sensual and hot), this film is my most favorite of his acting, um, skills. Now, the opening scene of Tony as the wealthy Chinese man (known in the film as “The Chinaman”) dressed in an elegant white suit, simply takes my breath away every time. Jane March is delicate, lovely, and the embodiment of a girl becoming a woman. She oozes sex combined with feminine girlishness, and her portrayal of the young Marguerite Duras is remarkable.

Aside from the intensely passionate sex scenes, which cannot be anything but real, the film tells a universal story of erotic love.

Anais Nin has been a great inspiration to me. I read her diaries, her erotica, Delta of Venus, and Little Birds, during the years that I lived in New Orleans. I feel that Anais is a part of my soul. Without her existence, without her writing erotica, it is possible I would have not attempted to write erotica myself. I was writing poetry, living as an exotic dancer, and as an artist, in New Orleans. My life was infused with sensuality and art. It was natural, then, that Anais spoke to me in a dream, and inspired me to follow in her footsteps.

{This story was written in homage to Anais Nin}

He could not sleep. It was too hot, even in the late evening. There was barely a breeze from the open window of the cottage. The sheets were rough upon his skin, as he shifted his body against the bed. He felt restless after seeing her that day.

He was walking alone, heading towards the beach, as the late afternoon rain showered everything with color. Turquoise water, emerald green leaves, every color, sparkled in the light. Clouds drifted into vapor, becoming a brilliant violet. As he walked along the sand, taking in all sensations, rhythms, colors, he felt as if he were entering a dream, the vibrancy of the setting sun changing the world into a magnificent and indescribable hue. Then, something else in the distance took his eyes off of the sunset. A shape, a woman, against the dark rocks. The sound of waves breaking, the roll and whisper upon the shore, the sound of everything meeting together; heat and water, ocean and sunlight, as his bare feet brought him closer to her.

Her naked skin, drops of rain upon her body, beaded like jewels. He was keenly aware of his breath, inhaling the voluptuous summer air, as his eyes dazzled along her with all of its sparkling light. She was not just a woman; it seemed, but some kind of mythical sea siren. Constellations of water, an entire galaxy before him, the wonder of her flesh as she dozed in the heat, there, washed ashore like Venus, born from the sea foam.

It was this image of this woman that rippled inside him. He soaked in the dampness of the air from the passing tropical rain. Within him, it conjured sadness, an ache. He missed Sabina.

He had been alone this trip, returning to the posada on the remote beach where he had once brought Sabina. It was when they were first lovers. He returned there to remember their happiness, and to soothe himself of their parting. To complete the circle, of eight years together, he decided to return to the place where it began. It wasn’t, at the time, so important to him. He thought impulsively to bring her to this beach, just so that he could be alone with her, without his family, hers, all of the bustling city life and complications in the way. He had barely known her for long. It was just a simple place to be alone.

And then, he loved her. How it entered his heart without him knowing. He loved her with an immense love, and the realization that she was no longer his, pained him deeply. He tried not to remember the sound of her voice a few months ago, when she told him she loved another. Here, on this beach, he would only remember their happiness, their desire.

Getting out of bed, he decided to go for a swim. The thick foliage of cashew and mango trees surrounded the little cottage; their swaying silhouettes cast dark blue shapes in the full moon’s light. The scent of musky fruit hung in the air, as pungent as the memory of Sabina’s body underneath him.

He walked along the path to the ocean. As he reached the shore he quickly stripped off his white linen pants, throwing them down on the sand. Swimming at night without clothes on made his body feel exhilarated, alive. He ran into the surf; the warm, dark water flowed like liquid silver under the light of the brilliant moon. Stars glimmered thousands of eyes, points of light, so far away. Everything was breathing with the luminous moonlight.

His body felt buoyant in the salt water. He noticed the pleasant way his limbs felt pushing and pulling himself through the surf, tingling with an extraordinary sensation of being.

Looking ashore, the silver strip of white beach glowed. It was then that he saw her again, the woman. She was walking toward the water from the path. This time she wore a white dress, the billowing fabric waving loosely around her legs as she walked. It was the sight of her that seemed like a dream, with the moonlight illuminating the white fabric of her dress, her skin, the sand. Watching her, the water lapping to his shoulders, he immediately felt his penis becoming hard. As she came to the place where his pants lay, she stopped to undress, stepping from her clothing and rushing into the water to join him. The motion of the water around his hard penis, watching her swim nearer to him, he surrendered to the pleasure and wonder. She swam closer, smiling at him. He smiled, softly, naturally, and without any words between them, she swam closer still, her body touching his, the slip of her skin brushing against him. She dove into a wave, and he followed, chasing her. Laughing, the woman broke out of a wave and raised her body into shallower water, running farther away.

“Catch me,” she said breathlessly, diving into another swell of water. He chased her, swimming quickly to reach her, wanting her. She dove and raced through the water as swiftly as a dolphin, swimming closer toward the black rocks where he first saw her.

He chased her until his arms finally clasped around her body, in the water, capturing her, her skin against his. She wrapped her arms around him, pulling him nearer, feeling her breasts against him, her belly, and the soft hair of her sex against his thigh. His penis became hard again, brushing against her. She held it in her hand under the water, gently, teasing it with the softness of her touch. It was then that he kissed her, the taste of her mouth succulent, wonderful. She touched him firmly, fingers and hands searching, feeling the shape, delighting in the hardness, as they kissed. She pressed closely to him still, her hands tickling around his cock, grasping it, like some kind of wild sea anemone taking him in.

She pushed her sexual lips warmly, slippery, upon his thigh as the water waved around them. So close, he wanted to thrust himself within her, right there in the ocean. The swell of tide surrounded their bodies, as they held each other in the sea. Their mouths tasted, kissed as they delighted in each other.

Under the moon, she was more beautiful than he remembered from that afternoon. Her face, the curve of her shoulders, traced by the silver light, transfixed him. He was not sure if it was real, but the spell of this beach, it affected one like a drug. No longer was anything real as it was in the city, the harshness, the concrete. Here, it was as if his body felt more alive, almost vibrating, with all of his erotic nerves awakened.

The surf ebbed for a moment, and the softness of the light and sound surrounding them was as though a thousand feathers were falling to the earth, as though, by magic, he was drugged by desire, and had fallen into some other place. She looked into his face and whispered. “I have been waiting for you to swim at night like this. I have been in the cottage next to yours this entire time.” Her mouth was close to his. He could feel her breath warm near his lips. She held onto his shoulders in the water.

“You have been waiting, then,” he said softly.

“Yes.” Her mouth enclosed around his in a delicate kiss. He kissed her firmly then, his arms around her, suddenly dreaming of Sabina. He tried to push aside the thought of Sabina, but it was impossible. The more he thought of her as he kissed this woman, the more he felt his desire. They went to the shore, drifting closer to the shallow water. She pulled him down upon her, and with her hand, she guided him within her. The sudden intensity of sliding inside of her, exquisite, as pulsating, burning rushes of desire coursed through him like sea-tide. The sight and feel of her gleaming wet body, underneath him, sighing, wanting, gave him a delirious pleasure.

She was offering herself to him; he felt the sense that she washed him of all sadness, of loneliness, of the reasons that brought him here to this beach. The warm ocean tide rushed around their feet and legs like the rise and rhythm of their bodies together.

He tasted her kiss, savoring her mouth. He was lost in the world of her, afraid that it was a dream. Yet, it was real; the still tropical air, the heat of this mysterious woman beneath him, the sound of the waves. Her breath against his mouth, her hands, arms, holding to him fiercely, her sex clutching around him, stirring him to push harder, whirling his sensations into a wave a desire. He kissed her feverishly, wanting nothing but their desire as the sound of their sighs and the waves melted into each other.

Laughing as if drunk, they held each other there upon the shore.

“Come,” she said softly, “let’s go and rest.” They rose and walked together, grabbing their clothes, and nakedly, under the bright moon, went toward the cottages. She held his hand and smiled, and both were quiet, no words needed to be said. He felt content just being with her, entranced by her beauty, her gaze.

At his cottage door, he brought her into his room. He wanted to pleasure her more, and so, as she lay upon his bed, he parted her legs, drawing his mouth near to her sex. In the veiled morning light coming from the slatted window, she looked like some kind of Venus, born from the sea foam, open before him, seashell, abalone, pearl-skinned and radiant. Her breasts high and full, the arc of them curving, her belly, round and fertile, pale and luminous. His tongue lightly brushed the little pearl, her clitoris, her sex like an oyster, as the bottom of his lip grazed her sexual lips. Her scent was fragrant, a mixture of warm rain, musk, and the taste of salt from the seawater, with the sweetness of mango fruit. She responded to his tongue, sighing and moving against his mouth. Her sex was like a wide-open flower, the bud of her arousal like the pistil of an orchid.

He felt his arousal again, his cock hardening and full against the cool sheets of the bed, as he lay between her legs, his mouth upon her sex. With her eyes half open and drowsy with pleasure, she gave a soft smile and pulled him upon her. She wanted him within her again, yet, as he knelt before her, she stopped him with her hands.

She wanted to look at him in the amber daylight, whispering, telling him to lie down, to let her look at him, touch him. She smoothed her hands along his body, washing along his strong legs, wide ankles, feet, toes, gliding her hands, everywhere, upward, to his sex, teasing his hardened cock with her hands again, then his belly, his chest, arms. She knelt between his legs, meeting his eyes with hers, taking his sex in her hands, then within her mouth. Her warm tongue lapped along the length of him, taking it entirely within her lips, savoring the shape of him, languidly, sensuously. It was such an exquisite feeling that he could not bear it; the rhythmic sliding of her hands, her mouth.

The feeling came over him hungrily, impatient, wanting to possess this woman, this woman from the sea, with each undulating sensation she gave him. His body was full of fire as if all the heat of the sun were burning through him. It was as if she embodied every woman he had loved. Reaching for her, pulling her upon him, he entered her moist sex ardently, pushing into her with a surge of passion that rose from his longing.

He made love to her this way, bringing himself close to his own pleasure, and staying within her, waiting. It seemed as though hours had passed, nothing but her, shuddering and rising into the waves of her climax, diving into soft kisses, caresses like water, whispers like sea foam.

Soon the sun was strong and beating through the shade of the trees, through the slats of wood from the windows. He had surrendered to the woman from the sea, a Venus without a name, falling asleep in her arms. Not until he fully awoke in the late afternoon did he realize she was gone.

He looked for her in the cottage next to his. Glancing through the open door, he saw that nothing was there but the simple furnishings; no luggage, no sign of her. The day was shadowed by a late afternoon storm. The breezes picked up as the rain began, and he found himself running towards the hotel office, to see if she was still there, to find her. He asked the clerk at the front desk if the woman in the cottage next to his was still checked in.

Through the electric window, little points of light, tiny bright pixels burst like stars as the images appear. He sends them to me, through the jungle of wire, from his trip back home. Brazil. I see him smiling, laughing, the curve of his eyes crescent moons of laughter.

His Korean eyes, an echo of generations, of the tangled arms and legs of his mother and father, grandmother, grandfather. From Korea to Brazil, from the shore of the Yellow Sea, Huang Hai, through the bodies of continents, to the open arms of languid Bahia. It was there he was, I can only guess, conceived on a languid afternoon, where they made love slowly, like the rhythm of waves caressing the sand. His parents must have given him his smile too, a smile that beams in tropical warmth. In the picture on my screen, there is the equator of his mouth.

I am lost in the equator of his mouth.

Beaches appear, the sway of palm trees, colors in the sky, jeweled light. Water of impossible color, a blue, so deep and clear it looks unreal. It makes me think of the bath gel I loved as a little girl; aquamarine from a plastic tube, the scent of fresh wet grass and flowered soap.

Bahia. With that blue tropical shore behind him, he looks into the square frame at me, sipping on a straw out of a coconut. He is tall, wide-shouldered, leaning toward the camera, sleek black hair in a chignon, strands coming loose in the warm breeze. He sips, lips placed around the straw. The vision sends electric shivers through my body, thousands of minnows swimming along a fast river current.

It is my desire to kiss him that sends these sensations shoaling through the river of my body. He is underneath an umbrella, and as I look deeper within the picture on my screen, I can almost feel his skin. It is sticky from the humid air, with little hidden lights along his shoulder that sparkle and lure me. Along his left shoulder, a reflection of blue from a beach umbrella curves along his skin. His skin must be so smooth, I think. I wonder what does he taste like upon that shoulder? Does it taste saline from his sweat, the salt air? I imagine the scent of him, musky, coconut tanning lotion, and spicy like cinnamon tea. The ocean water is glittering upon his skin, drying in the sunlight. He is luminous.

In my mind, I hear his laughter. His voice is luxurious. It fills the air with a rhythm, and the soft guitar string of his voice resounds in a chord of sunsets.

Images fill the computer screen in squares. Within these squares, the beach and the man I desire. They are little gems, glittering. I want them like a thief. I want the contents to consume me until I am covered in sun and sand, with his strong body rising within me like the surf.

Waves of blue drench me. I am wet and tasting sweet and salty, skin slick with coconut oil, my sex open like the center of a fruit. Bananas curve from trees. I desire his sex, to fill my mouth with. I want him with a thirst, as he sips the coconut. I imagine his tongue tastes sweet. I slip the thought lightly along my lips, tasting the thought again, tasting the slow syrup of his kiss. Sand surrounds us, so hot, burning, sugar in a pan. Lips like passion fruit, like guava. My mouth longs to taste him. Plantain sweet, in my mind he fills my body, and I imagine sea-foam with the tide of his desire, his beautiful sex sliding within. The sound he makes, the way his face delights and his mouth opens. As I touch myself, I think of his face like this.

What does he say when he is with a lover? In a cadence of Portuguese, whispered, does he say things that are raw, delectable? I want him to say these little things within the shell of my ears.

Now I am reaching for him, imagining my body upon his. My legs are wrapped around him on a lounge chair, the one behind him, in that picture with the coconut. He is holding me upon him, his hands strong around my waist, around the small of my back as we make love. Thinking this, my sex becomes as hot as the climate of the Amazon.

I look at more photographs; little squares, appearing like sudden dreams. I see another of him, his arm outstretched, taking a self-portrait from the passenger seat of the car. It is the angle he looks at me, head tilted sideways, a hint of a smile, but his face tells me much more. His eyes are concentrated desire. He is inviting me to look deeper into the world of him. He is wearing an aqua-blue shirt, the color of everything. I finger through his warm black hair in my mind. My eyes drift over his right ear, his smooth face, graceful eyebrows punctuating his barely-there smile. An intimate smile, a ripple on the glassy surface of a beautiful lake. Something deep within him, yet just the surface shows this gentle smile. The lobe of his ear asks for kisses. His chin, symmetrical, burnished porcelain. Yet that mouth. It’s his mouth that pulls me, draws me to him. Now we are between the equator and the Tropic of Capricorn.

I have wandered into the Tropic of Desire, following the map of this longing, dreaming in this hothouse, intoxicated. Here, he is mine.