At last, I have you. I had feared that you would find the request too strange, or ask questions that I really do not know how to answer; instead, you merely agreed, with a mysterious half-smile. The same smile that I might find aggravating under other circumstances, but now my need is such that I can only think yes, please, indulge me.

Lying naked on my bed in a rectangle of six flickering candles, your body presents an extraordinary wealth of extraordinarily distracting features, but I hold fast to my strange resolve. I grasp your foot, and that seems to bring the problem into focus. I do not see how I could ever communicate the fact that you are beloved, yes, but only half real to me. I am passably familiar with my own body, but yours seems to be somehow fundamentally different in kind. Fancy insists that you are half angelic, a fey spirit, but my mind has no use for the concept of angels or spirits. I know that you possess a measure, thankfully small, of narrow meanness, petty spite and maudlin self-pity, but somehow I see these qualities as being separate from you, not of your essence. I know that you are, like me and billions of others, a skin sack of infinitely differentiated protoplasm and hard white bone, but when you’re not here, sometimes it’s difficult to believe that you exist at all. Strange as it may seem, this foot somehow strikes me as a way to begin.

It is a small, high-arched foot, suggesting the elegant structure of a cantilever bridge. I try to visualize the criss-cross of tendons, the distribution of static and dynamic loads, and begin to feel a pleasure in it. It is well kempt and very clean, with minimal callus, and very little deformation of the big toe. My purpose is not to tickle you – this time – so I avoid any friction on the sole. Running my hand up to your ankle, I feel the bulky arrangement of bones strapped together with hard ligaments, and seem to see them, with an X-ray vision borrowed from Gray’s Anatomy. I feel the big tendon connecting that strange-looking heel bone to your calf muscle, slack now, and I ask you to point your toes. The tendon goes taut, and I trace it up to your calf, now a hard mass of straining muscle, and I feel the two lobes, each with some ridiculous Latin name, soleus and gastrocnemius, the latter of which sounds like it belongs somewhere around your stomach.

I am aware of the fact that I’m naming, objectifying, particularizing, making jokes, and I don’t know how to stop that, but I also feel oddly certain that the raw stuff of experience is being stored somewhere.

Above the knee, we come into the realm of big muscles overlaying big bone in complicated swathes. For a time I lose myself in trying to feel the demarcations, feeling the pulse of the deeply buried femoral artery, the bundling of the muscles running every which way. Here, my X-ray vision gives me only confusion, the memories lost in layer upon layer of detail. Here, too, I am conscious of lingering perhaps overlong, gathering my nerve.

Then, with the absurdity of some elevator operator’s “Going up!,” in my head, I place a hand on the inside of your left thigh, and gently press outward, hoping desperately that you will understand and not ask what I’m doing. To my great relief, you merely spread your legs, and although I’m not in a position to see, I feel that you’re smiling down at me. So, here I am, face to face, so to speak. The lips of your vulva look prim and pursed, which strikes me as funny. The light is not the best for what would amount to a gynecological examination, and with a rare and blessed accession of sense, it occurs to me that no time would be really appropriate for such a thing. However, other senses and more interesting modalities are available. The scent is rather curious and faint, with apparently no intrinsic emotional cargo, and this surprises me. Scents are famously evocative and keyed into the most primitive parts of the brain, and here I was with the ur-smell, the primordial aroma, and it was no more than interesting and pleasant. Something to think about later. I slowly stroke just the tip of my tongue up the exposed ridge of your labia minora, just barely peeking out from between the big lips. Slowly, slowly, again and again. Then with my tongue almost sideways, slowly, but just beginning to seek admittance. Again and again, slowly, but each time a little deeper. I can feel you beginning to moisten, beginning to open to me, but if anything I go even slower. At last, my tongue is free with all of your tastes and textures. I apply several broad, flat strokes and then seek your clitoris, but it is barely perceptible under its hood. I purse my lips and with gentlest suction slowly draw it forth. I try it with the textures of my tongue, quick flicks and very slow, minutes-long friction with the rough edge, sensitive to your reactions, ready to instantly cease anything too intense. As far as I can tell, these proceedings meet with your complete approval. But now, it is time to stop. Parts of myself are also very approving, and much more of this would cause me to lose the tension which, I felt, was necessary. This had all the familiar earmarks of a decision I would regret bitterly later – in fact, I regretted it already - but it was still the right one. You make a small fretting sound as my intentions become clear, but I whisper, “There is time.” You sigh.

With this, I begin to feel the arch of your pubic symphysis, and from this I somehow get a greater impression of physical difference than I felt from your genitals themselves, which is only reinforced by the feel of your iliac crests. Very curious. I am, in some way I can’t define, very pleased by your pelvis. I know that there is also a distinct difference in the proximal condyles of your femurs and the sockets which hold them, but they are too deeply buried in muscle and tendon to feel. I wonder what you’re thinking as I squeeze and palpate your hips, it must seem passing odd. Moving up, your navel is an innie, very inconspicuous, and I smilingly do a quick lint check. No? No. After briefly feeling your xiphoid process – a curious bit of cartilage it is, and I wonder if it had some function in some remote ancestor.

Now, it is time to play. I’m not sure if I could explain how I adore your breasts, have all kinds of interest in them, and yet I don’t take them completely seriously. They are the friendly and relaxed sort, not imperiously pointing at the ceiling, and therefore all the more apt to my hands and welcoming. I play with them for a mindless time, delighting in their warmth and texture, and when I suck on your nipples and then blow gently on them, the erection is charming. Somewhat regretfully I bid them farewell, and begin moving down your arm. Your radius and ulna are slender, with an elegant curve which I know is one of the physical differences between the sexes, though it is too subtle for my crude perceptions. Your arm seems far too delicate a structure to stick into the rough business of life, though of course I know better. I’m not thinking very well now.

At last I come to your hand, and hold it, palm up in my palm. It looks oddly like a two-thirds scale model, and I unexpectedly feel a strong, atavistic emotion, a kind of question, a call to protect and cherish. I kiss your palm, and loosely close it up in my own, feeling in it a combination of strength and fragility far beyond my ability to express. The answer to the question is forever yes.

With this, I move up to your throat and gently feel your thyroid cartilage. How odd that this should be so different from mine, and I wonder why. I feel the pulse of your life beneath the hinge of your jaw, and move up to feel your ears, small and close set. It is regrettable that the glory of your hair lies beneath you, although in this light I suppose it would look like only a fall of darkness. Your supraorbital ridges feel almost non-existent, contrasted to the rough caves of bone out of which I peer at the world.

Here I approach, as closely as anyone could, the ultimate mystery. I close my eyes and press my forehead against yours, and only centimeters away is another world, no less complex than my own. Centimeters away but also countless light-years, which I may know only by inference and conjecture, dubious analogy to my own murky workings, belabored interpretation of sign and symbol. The thought is maddening, but it is also a familiar one, and at last I can only sigh. I open my eyes and look into yours.

In this dim, uncertain light your eyes could be any color, and they are completely still, fixed, looking back into mine. Suddenly, a thought from nowhere, I know that you are dead. This lasts for but an instant of shattering horror before it is blown away by your warm breath on my chin, and my eyes close and to my complete astonishment tears come. It has been so long, so empty, all that is true or false breaks down in me, and I cradle your head and sob uncontrollably. I have no idea how you will react to this, but I cannot stop, cannot explain. I feel your arms come up around me, gathering me close.