11 The Sweetness of Doing Nothing
The next morning, I was awakened by the howling wind, accompanied by thunder and lightning that occasionally lit up the room.
I huddled close to you, shivering; I’d never confessed to you that I was terrified of thunder.
In reality, I was afraid of any deafening noise, even human screams.
Your skin was so hot that you felt like a radiator.
I thought you’d come in handy on those freezing winter evenings—in just a few days, since the cold season had already begun in Italy.
The rain pounded hard on the palm leaves.
You were sleeping soundly; the storm was lulling you to sleep.
Summoning my courage, I got up to make some hot tea and warm up some cookies in the microwave.
I wondered what a day on a tropical island was like when the weather was bad.
The aroma of the tea seemed to wake you, and I hurried to bring you a steaming cup.
We sipped the hot drink while munching on vanilla cookies, hoping to warm ourselves up.
A clap of thunder louder than the others made me run back to bed and bury my head under the pillow.
Sensing my moment of panic, you began to massage my back.
I felt an unexpected pleasure that was relaxing me—perhaps a little too much.
You were conveying warmth to me with your hands, which glided along the sides of my spine and then lingered on my shoulders, skillfully melting away the tension accumulated over years of sadness spent without you.
I wanted to share my thoughts with you, but I was afraid you’d stop massaging me to listen, so I slipped my hands under the pillow to hug it.
I wondered, though, why I should be hugging a pillow when I had you right there beside me.
I turned slowly, and realized too late what I was risking.
I hurried to tell you that I wanted to look into your eyes.
Knowing that I was telling you a half-truth, you replied calmly, “Go ahead, dear, I’ll keep massaging your back.”
I immediately realized I’d painted myself into a corner and didn’t know how to get out of it.
I lay there motionless, staring at you with a terrified expression on my face, while you—carefully ignoring the distress signals I was sending you—began massaging my neck and then worked your way down to my shoulder blades.
I decided to go all in by saying your name.
You knew full well that when I called you by your name, it meant there was something important or serious I needed to tell you.
Without stopping, you asked me what was wrong, and I could do nothing but reply that nothing was wrong.
In fact, I’d run out of ideas. So you went back to loosening up the muscles in my arms, and when you reached my breasts, you looked at me with a defiant expression.
I burst out laughing, and you joined in, saying you were having a blast embarrassing me.
At those words, I felt a surge of pride, and without thinking, I kissed you, holding your hands in place.
Perhaps you thought you were dealing with a little girl, and in some ways, I was.
My relationship with sex had always been traumatic, to say the least.
My earliest curiosities had been satisfied during a lesson taught by a priest, along with other sixteen-year-old girls my age in the sacristy of the local church—a lesson organized at the request of our respective families.
After that, I’d been left to fend for myself, even though my mother was a midwife, and to be on the safe side, I’d always made sure no one laid a hand on me.
Anyone who’d tried, under the pretense of loving me, ended up with a split lip and a few scratch marks from my open fingers on their face.
And that had been my introduction to the so-called adult world.
I had a clear idea of what I wanted for myself in life, and the mere fact that I was pretty worked against me.
Years had passed since those early experiences of mine, but those unhappy beginnings had left their mark on me, and now my fears were resurfacing. I loved you immensely and didn’t want to feel that way, so I decided to fight back because you didn’t deserve for me to let despair get the better of me.
I kissed you with all the love I could muster and guided your hands to my breasts.
It was the first time I’d ever done something like that, and strangely, I felt at peace with myself and the whole world.
With you, I was growing up; I was becoming aware of my body, and I was no longer ashamed of it.
I couldn’t help but smile, thinking about how many women you’d seen in your line of work as a doctor.
Strange to say, but now the roles had reversed, because I’d finally managed to embarrass you.
You’d almost given up on having the chance to look at me without me placing my hands on my breasts or letting my long hair fall over them, covering them perfectly.
I didn’t even know if you were like most Italian men, who didn’t take it seriously unless it was a size 4.
I was a modest B-cup—and not even a full one at that—but unlike when I was fourteen, I now really liked them and showed them off with balconette bras.
To break the silence, I told you I already regretted having done it, and in a way that was true, but as you gently cupped them, you replied that you wouldn’t let them go so easily.
I felt my heart tighten in the truest sense of the word; you had the touch of a miracle worker, because I felt a warmth radiating from your hands and spreading throughout my body, as if I’d drunk a glass of grappa.
I was getting drunk on you; you were going to my head and I couldn’t make sense of anything anymore.
I wanted to feel my skin against your chest, and as I moved your hands away from my breasts, I pulled you close to me, sighing your name.
My heart was beating in unison with yours.
It was a sensation I’d never felt before, so profound it sent shivers down my spine.
I realized what people did at a Maldivian resort when it rained.
The forecast called for rain all day, and the sun could wait a while before peeking out.
As I felt your back beneath my hands, I marveled at the softness of your skin.
It felt so good to run my fingers over it.
I was so eager to explore your body, centimeter by centimeter, and feel it finally shiver.
Uncovering each other like this, without rushing, was something beyond my wildest imagination, and I was surprised to realize that I would never truly know you inside and out—but I didn’t mind that at all.
If a few days earlier I’d feared that all of this might end when the vacation was over, now I was certain it could never happen.
I wondered what you thought about it. Sometimes I couldn’t read your thoughts, but I didn’t press the issue; I respected your silences and that particular way you had of withdrawing into yourself.
You stopped to ask me if I loved you.
I wondered how I could not love you; you had reshaped my life—by then, I no longer knew where I had come from, nor even where I was going. It was as if you were guiding me through a dark place, and I was following you, trusting you; it was all new to me.
Sometimes you’d stop, as if to check if I was still behind you.
Other times you’d ask me to retrace my steps, convinced you were worthless.
In those moments, you felt like nobody, and I would patiently take your hand to guide you through the darkness.
It was a difficult journey, but we had started it together, and I intended to continue it with you, because I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, while you still couldn’t make it out.
You gave me the strength to hope without even realizing it.
“Honey, aren’t you going to answer me?” you asked, alarmed.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart; I was lost in my thoughts, but I’d already said yes in my mind.”
You looked into my eyes and whispered, “You think too much; save your thoughts for when you’re not by my side. We’ve wanted so badly to be close, and now I want to show you the difference between dreams and reality.”
My eyes widened with concern. When you did that, an unknown world opened up before me, and you’d sweep me into it, driving me wild.
The excuse of shyness was useless; by now you knew exactly how to handle me, and I surrendered to a thousand sensations I’d never felt before.
In those moments, I managed not to think—and you didn’t even give me time to do so.
If a tsunami had come, it would surely have stopped at the foot of the bed, knowing it was nothing compared to the force of our passion.
That day seemed to go on forever, so great was our desire to make love.
When the call for dinner rang out across the village, you looked at me questioningly, asking what time it was.
I started laughing: you looked like a war veteran, your body wrapped in the sheet that made you resemble a silk cocoon; I had even managed to puncture a pillow with my fingernails, causing several feathers to escape and now float around the room, carried by the breeze coming in through the window.
You laughed too as you watched the feathers sway above us, and you hugged me happily.
We decided to go out to dinner; for some reason, we’d gotten so hungry.
We arrived at the restaurant completely soaked.
With that kind of rain, it was impossible to use an umbrella because the water was falling so heavily, but the drops were so tiny that they misted people as if they were houseplants.
We dried our faces with napkins. It had been my idea; you were too much of a gentleman to think of something so odd and uncharming.
Truth be told, I knew the rules of etiquette perfectly, but when necessary I turned into a Rambo—an attitude that was at the root of the deep rift between me and my mother.
You willingly accepted the unorthodox solution I’d come up with, because you loved me so much and, after all, you were spoiling me a little.
Since you seemed to go along with everything that came to mind that evening, I convinced you to order a hot asparagus and potato soup to warm us up.
I let you choose the main course at my own risk.
In fact, the waiter brought us charcoal-grilled lamb chops.
I was trying to avoid eating meat, but that evening I had to give in to your arguments that protein and iron were important for the body.