Chapter 71
Mr. Korgy wakes up around eleven by the sound of his own snoring.
“What was that?” he asks.
“Your own snore,” I say.
He laughs and wipes the crust from his eye then glances at the clock. “Whoa, we slept in.”
He apologizes for being such a mess last night, and I tell him it’s alright. That I understand. That it’s been a lot. That it’s been hard.
“Still,” he says, shaking his head, then he kisses my neck gently and pulls my hair behind my shoulders and tells me he can’t believe this is actually, finally happening, and I agree.
There’s so much I want to talk about, so much we need to unpack, but it all feels too weighty for 11 a.m. So instead we share how we each slept—him, better than he expected, me, decent enough—then we move on to discussing the weather.
“It looks pretty cool out.” “Fifty-nine.” Then we discuss what we want from room service.
And then we order room service. And then we discuss how excited we are for room service to arrive.
“Those oatmeal pancakes sounded pretty good.”
“So did your Denver omelette.”
“Did you get homestyle potatoes?”
“No, toast. Did you get potatoes?”
“I did. Wanna split both?”
“Yes.”
The food arrives and we eat, then I sit in Korgy’s lap and initiate a bit of frottage until we’re both worked up enough that we undress and move to the bed.
As I sop up his cum with a towel, he blushes and asks if I can put in my earbuds while I presume he takes his morning shit, but I do him one better and take a walk around the lobby, even stopping for a cup of cucumber water by the reception desk since I’m not familiar with his shitting patterns so have no idea how much time he needs.
“You okay, dear?” the receptionist with the pearl earrings asks in a tone that lets me know she doesn’t think I am. I assure her that yes, I’m fine, great even, and then I make my way back up to the room.
“So what should we do today?” Mr. Korgy asks, biting into a crisp piece of bacon. “I mean, assuming you want to spend the day together…”
I tell him that of course I do, and he suggests we take a walk, or drive out to Wasilla to get some food or catch a movie.
After we check out of the hotel, we wind up doing all three. First the walk, then an early dinner at some hole-in-the-wall Thai spot, then the movie.
The walk is lengthy and the conversation gushes, all the things we’ve been waiting to talk about spilling out, dovetailing with each other.
Korgy says that he thought I’d never talk to him again, and that the last few days were the scariest of his life.
I apologize but he says I shouldn’t. That he needed the kick in the ass.
He starts rattling off plans animatedly, and I wonder if it’s because of the excitement about his new life with me or if it’s just the spike from his three cups of breakfast coffee.
“I’m gonna give Gwen some space,” he says. “Let things cool off. I wish I had the balls to be totally transparent and tell her why I left, I know I owe her that…but that will just take some time, I think.”
He says the reality of the situation would probably be too painful for her, that he wants to have mercy.
“Also I don’t think she’d understand,” he says. “I mean, frankly I still don’t in some ways. Still can’t believe it…But life is weird, right? We can’t help who or what we love, who or what we want. Might be the most honest thing about people—what we want.”
We talk about our plans moving forward, for how and when to integrate the other into our lives, a topic I’m embarrassed to admit I’d never even thought about.
When I’d fantasized about us, I’d always just thought about us.
Him and me. The bubble. I’d never zoomed out.
Expanded the context. Thought about what it might be like to hang out at backyard barbecues with his friends and their kids.
Or going out to dinner with his seventy-year-old mother, attempting to carry on some form of socially acceptable dinner conversation, the content of which I have no fucking idea.
“I don’t think we have to rush in to telling people,” I say.
By the time we sit down at the Thai place, the conversation slows. They surprise me, the lulls. Not charged. Not giddy. Not loaded. Just empty lulls that stretch in length and that we both try to hide by studying our menus very intently, discussing food for the second time today.
“The chicken satay looks pretty good.”
“Mmm. Yeah.”
Have we really already said everything? There was so much pent up, so much that needed dissecting and exploring, this profound life shift for the both of us, and we covered it all in a few hours?
“I’m leaning pad see ew,” he says.
“Cool. I’m thinking tom kha kai.”
Every time we’ve been together before this, we’ve been racing against a ticking clock, trying to hide so we don’t get caught, shoehorning all of our feelings for each other into hungry sex and hushed conversations, our limited access to each other fueling our desire even more, a sexual supply and demand.
Every second was risky and dangerous, frenzied and exhilarating.
But now there’s so much space. And so much time.
And so much of each other. Scarcity is tension. Excess is…whatever this is.
“And do we share the chicken satay as an appetizer?”
“Sure.”
It’s strange talking about such trivial things with him today.
Domestic, logistical things that seem anticlimactic given the circumstances it took to get to them.
The odds we were up against. The obstacles we overcame.
The nine grueling, nail-biting, adrenaline-charged months of up-and-down whirlwind on-again-off-again will-we-won’t-we chaos, all to talk about chicken satay?
We play footsie under the table and I feel an uptick in my heart rate, so I try to take things a step further by moving my foot to his crotch, but then the food arrives. The chicken satay’s lukewarm and a little chewy, but the mains are good.
We get to the theater and sit in the back row.
We shake a box of Raisinets into a jumbo bag of buttered popcorn and Korgy gives me his sweater since I’m cold.
He occasionally whispers his assessment of the movie into my ear—a well-delivered line here, a bad cut there.
It’s a little distracting but I don’t mind since the movie’s boring.
By the time we leave the theater, there’s still a bright sky due to Alaska’s bloated daylight hours in the summertime, and my soul feels the bloat.
“Our first full day together,” Mr. Korgy says as we get in his car. He elbows me like he’s being playful but his eyes are scouring and needy. “I hope you’re not gettin’ sick of me…”
I assure him that I’m not as a tight ball twists in the pit of my stomach. Must be the buttered popcorn.