Chapter Twenty-Three #2
"You know what this makes you," he says.
He's not asking. He rubs his thumb once over my belly.
"It makes you what you already were, just finished.
You'll never use that. Not once. You never did and now you never can, and that's not a sad thing, sweetheart, that's the thing you kept when you gave up everything else.
You held onto it this whole time. Through every woman, every room, every night you thought you were failing at something.
You were saving it. And now it's saved for good.
Locked up sweet and small and never spent.
" His voice doesn't change at all, stays low and warm, a man telling me a kindness.
"You'll always be a virgin. That part of you never got used and now it never will.
That's forever now. It's the one true thing about you that can't ever be undone. "
It goes into me and lands where he puts it and my whole body answers it.
Not with shame the way it would have once, the cold up the neck, the spike.
It answers warm. It answers grateful. He's handed me the last of it, the final line under the final thing, and it's the kindest verdict a person has ever given me because it's the one that's finished, the one with no test left in it.
There's no woman I have to prove anything to anymore.
There's no night ahead where it might finally have to work.
It's decided. It was always going to be decided and now it is, out loud, permanent, in his voice, the person who decided it with me.
I'm a virgin. I'll always be a virgin. The most used, most kept, most emptied-out virgin there ever was, my mouth and my hole given over and given over, and the one thing they count still sealed and small and never once spent, sealed now so it can never be.
The relief of it is enormous. I could cry from how much it isn't a weight anymore.
"Thank you," I say, and my voice breaks a little on it, and I don't mind. "For finishing it. I didn't want to keep having the part that could still be undone."
"I know you didn't." He leans down and kisses my forehead, slow. "You don't anymore. You don't have a single part left that isn't kept."
* * *
He turns me over then, easy, a hand at my hip, and I go like I go now, my body doing the arranging before my head can, up onto my knees with my face down in the pillow and the new cage a small hard press against the quilt beneath me.
He works the plug out slow and sets it aside and my body gives it up and stays open behind it, already turned toward being filled, and he pushes into me unhurried and deep and I go quiet around him, how I'm made to.
The little gold thing hangs there useless against the bed, sealed, never any part of this, further from it now than it's ever been, because now it can't even pretend it might someday be otherwise.
That's the thought that comes up while he uses me, plain and hot.
It's over for the front of me. It's decided and shut and it will never get a turn, not one, not ever, and I press my hips back to take him deeper and the shut fact of it is what makes me do it.
I look for the shame. It's there. It's always there and tonight it's the whole engine of me.
Kneeling here with him deep in the part of me that works while the part a man is supposed to use sits welded shut and small against the sheet, given up for good, retired to nothing right in front of my own eyes an hour ago.
A year ago that picture would have been the worst thing I could think about myself.
Tonight I reach for it on purpose because it's the thing that lights me up.
I go looking for how low it is, how finished, how little is left of the man I was supposed to be, and every place I press on it the heat climbs, and that's the whole of it now, that's how I get there, down the ladder instead of up it, the further down the more I want it.
He takes his time and then he pulls out of me slow, and I know what's next before he says it, because I know the shape of him by now, how he likes to end a thing at the very bottom.
"Turn around," he says. "Clean me off."
I turn around on my knees and I take him in my mouth still slick from being inside me, the taste of the deepest part of myself on him, and I do it without a flinch, without a second where I have to talk myself into it, because there's no version of me left that would say no to anything he hands me.
I clean him with my mouth like he wants, slow and thorough, tasting exactly where he's been, and it's the settledness of it that tips me over, the done and decided fact of what I am, kneeling here with nothing in me left to argue.
Nothing's touching the front of me. Nothing has to.
It lets go somewhere deep and quiet while I've got him in my mouth, a slow spill out of the sealed nothing between my legs that I don't stop for and couldn't aim if I tried, and I moan around him from it, from the full and finished fact of being used top to bottom and kept that way for good.
I keep my mouth on him through it. It barely registers next to what my mouth is doing.
Serving him at the very bottom with everything shut and settled is the whole of what I want now.
He finishes in my throat with a sound low and final, and I swallow it because that's where it goes, and I stay down after with my forehead against his thigh and the new weight sealed and small against me and my breath coming back slow.
* * *
He pulls me up off the floor and into his lap, an arm around my back, and holds me there while my knees come back and my jaw eases and the whole night settles over the both of us.
His hand moves slow on my spine. The lamp is low.
The box with the pink cage and the dead key sits closed on the nightstand and I don't look at it. There's nothing in it I need.
"Say it," he says into my hair. Not a push. He just knows there's something in me that wants out, like he always knows. "You've got one more in there. Let me have it."
I find it. It's easy to find. It's been sitting right at the front of me all evening waiting to be true enough to say.
"This is home," I say. My voice is wrecked and low and completely sure.
"It's the thing I was for. I spent my whole life trying to get somewhere else and it was here the whole time, and now there's no part of me left standing anywhere but here.
" I turn my face into his neck. "Thank you for shutting it.
All of it. I didn't want to be a person things could still be walked back on.
Now I'm not. Now I'm just yours, finished, the way you made me. "
"That's right," he says. Warm. Pleased all the way down.
"That's exactly right. You're home, and you're done, and there's not a thing left on you that isn't kept.
" His hand stays flat and heavy on my back.
"You did the last of it yourself, you know.
You asked. I just built the thing and brought it home.
The wanting was all yours." He says it like the kindest praise there is, and it goes into me and settles as praise, and I don't dig under it for anything else, because his hand is on my back and I don't dig under things anymore.
* * *
Later he cleans me and works the plug back in and settles me against him, and I lie there in the dark next to him with my hand come to rest without me sending it, down low, over the small sealed shape of the last thing.
I feel for the lock out of an old habit that's already dying.
There isn't one. I feel for the seam, the join, the little pin-head, the barrel a key would go in.
There's nothing. My finger goes over smooth warm gold and finds no place anywhere on the whole shape of it where it opens, because it doesn't, because there's no it-opens left, not on the cage, not on the name, not on any part of me.
Every door I ever had has been shut and this was the last one and it's shut now with no other side to it, no latch, no handle, nothing for my hand or his or anyone's to ever take hold of and work back the other way.
The band's at my throat. The plug's seated deep with him kept warm behind it.
The name is the only name I've got left and it doesn't catch and it never will again.
And the front of me, the part that was supposed to be the whole point of a man, is a small pretty finished thing welded shut for good, decided, retired, a virgin sealed a virgin forever, and my own hand rests on it in the dark and finds it exactly as closed as I wanted it, and there is nothing in me tonight that is still a question.
Not one thread left hanging off the end of me anywhere.
I have never in my life felt so completely put where I belong.
And it's only the first night of it. The last door went shut an hour ago and it's still warm from setting, welded small against me, and there's no other side to it now.
No latch on the far side of any of it. Nothing left anywhere on me that a hand could take hold of and work back the other way, mine or his, tonight or ever again.