The Etymology Of Making Love
June 28th, 2005 by Adam
For Tessa
Last night I dreamed you were drowning. I dreamed you were headless; faithless; perfect.
I saw us walking slowly alongside the Danube, my hand resting comfortably on the small of your back—or sleeping on floors; shooting pool in bars, laughing; talking. I saw us in bed together: wrapped around your naked body— offering comfort, security, peace— with the smell of sweat lingering on our skin, freshly exhausted from frantic lovemaking.
I feel I must stop to qualify and say this—when I say ‘making love’ I do so in the most literal sense, because I believe that carnal act of knowing is just one part of a much larger process. When I speak of us ‘making love’ I mean to include everything: nights out together, long dinners, quiet evenings in borrowed houses, nighttime drives, drinking beer, watching movies, holding hands as we cross open spaces– the limitless possibilities of being. ‘Making love’ is not a singular act, but a protean, conscious and creative process by which two people literally build memories and a shared history out of moments that seem to seep with the comfort and affection they feel. Mankind is capable of such amazing feats, making of this sordid life what we will. We create our own happiness—in the truest sense of words; make love.
Nevertheless, those intimate moments are powerful and moving; your hands tracing my body; wet skin and warm breath; the synchronous movement of tensing muscles and flexing joints; deep kisses; the softness and vulnerability when you whisper ‘Am I beautiful?’; the deep inhalation and furrowed brow which marks the stillness just before climax. This is passion, yes, and desire also. This is love more physical and tangible than pithy phrases can allow, yet this is not the end result. This is just one tiny part of an active process: a cycle of participation, denial, renewal, growth. Being physically inside of you—those moments of empowerment and crippling indigence— is but a fraction of the love we have made together.
The end result is this: a half-forgotten memory that borders on fantasy; a long week of sleeping on floors dreaming about your eyes, your laugh, our music; moments built of equal parts fear, desire, comfort and trust as the days pass with infuriating regularity and I feel it—the inevitability of your leaving, and the void it will leave in me. In five weeks you will be gone from this place– leaving behind the familiarity of our established (if sporadic) patterns—and the objectivity of design frightens me far more than geographic barriers or time that counts with the cruelty of months.
It’s not enough to say that I’ll miss you when you are gone.
I miss you already.
Adam