Thursday, 9 August 2012

Nostalgia (Part 11)


I have never heard it said of the blind that time moves more slowly if you have no sight; perhaps it only affects the sighted when they close their eyes. Whatever the actual passage of time, it seemed as if eternity was going to pass before I finally discovered what this game was actually about. Finally, I started to feel the most gentle pressure across the heels of my palms; those muscles that work our opposable thumbs. The sensation was one that I had not experienced before. This was not a thumb or a finger but felt much like she was using her own palm-heels to slowly massage my own.

It is always difficult to know whether you should reciprocate in such circumstances as these; it is doubly difficult when you are deprived of any visual clues. I decided that it could do no harm to at least indicate that this was not unpleasant and so I gently started to rotate my hands in the opposite direction to her own motions; or at least what I perceived her circular motions to be.

“Keep your eyes closed,” she whispered.

I desperately wanted to track the passage of time, Mississippi-one, Mississippi-two, Mississippi-three, and yet I found that I was completely unable to do so; the only thing in my mind was the counter-rotating heels of our hands. I do not know how long this lasted, perhaps a single minute, perhaps five, perhaps an hour but after an indeterminate length of time, the pressure dissipated to be replaced by a gentle rotational pressure on the tips of my little fingers. I am not sure how I knew that the pressure was caused by her very own little fingers but I was certain of it. I believed I had descried the nature of this little game. I was even more certain when, a while later, the pressure relaxed on the tips of my little fingers and was replaced by a similar pressure on my ring fingertips.

“Keep your eyes closed,” she whispered again.

This was a most pleasurable experience but in many ways it was neither erotic nor arousing, as she moved from first one fingertip to another and then back the way that she had come. At each relaxation of pressure on one fingertip and, before applying pressure on the adjacent fingertip, she would whisper the same refrain: “Keep your eyes closed.”

Although I did not know exactly how long this continued, still I was aware of the slowly dimming light seen through the thin flesh of my eyelids; dusk had certainly come and gone by the time that she finally stopped. I had, however, become so used to my eyes being shut that I did not immediately open them when the pressure finally ceased on my fingertips.

“Thank you,” she whispered. “You don’t know how long it has been since I did that nor the comfort I am able to garner from it. You may open your eyes now.”

I opened my eyes to find her face no more than an inch from my own. Placing her hands around my cheeks, she kissed me on the tip of my nose.

“It is merely a guerdon, Dominic, in thanks for your patience and your kindness. Some brandy?”

As she reached for the two glasses which were still half full, I shuffled backwards on my rear end so that I could comfortably rise from my position between her legs, or at least to do so without kicking her in the head with my feet. I knelt beside the table as she handed me a glass. Raising our glasses in the typical English toast, ‘Bottom’s up’, we drained the glasses of brandy. I looked at my watch.

“One for the ditch?” I enquired. She nodded enthusiastically. I got up and retrieved the bottle from where I had left it by the chairs. Pouring another two glasses, we each took a small sip.

“Isn’t the phrase supposed to be ‘one for the road’?” She asked.

“It is but by the time that you have had your fifth ‘one for the road’, it becomes ‘one for the ditch’ because that’s invariably where you end up spending the night!” She laughed. Placing my brandy on the small table, I hurried to the chairs and swiftly folded them down and replaced them in her small garden shed. I picked up the pizza box and placed it onto the table in the kitchen/diner before resuming my place with the brandy.

“I’ll take this table back to the lounge when I leave,” I said. “There is no point in making two trips when one will do for both.”

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