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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