The End of Excitement As I Know It
“Your pussy looks delicious and I’m starving” reads that little blue text bubble. My body jolts with excitement and a high-pitched *AHH* leaves my body without warning. Carissa’s exchange with our smoking hot kickboxing instructor sounds more like erotic fiction than reality, the one-on-one training sessions Joe has set up this week oozing with so much sexual energy it would make an entire Atlanta strip joint blush. I reply with an army of all caps proclamations of excitement and stunned disbelief. “THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE,” my final soldier, storming the field of this gushing exchange. I wait for a response; my mind takes an unexpected tilt. Me and you ended your borderline euphoric visit with the decision to be exclusive. I wonder, does this mark the end of excitement for me?
The memory of Marcelo falls onto the forefront of my mind like the winds of longing blew it all the way there, just to spite me. Marcelo, the Brazilian man who I matched with on Tinder and proceeded to meet for the first time on the nude beach during my vacation in San Diego. Marcelo, the bronzed, bulking man that closer resembled a statue of a Greek god than his actual pictures. Marcelo, the man who joined his shadow with mine onto the white wall of his all white room, moving together next to the window of an electric blue sky, a burst of color after sunset almost radioactive.
I remind myself of when Marcelo said he wanted to make me his wife one day, yet today I doubt he could tell you my name. Even if he could, it would taste like salt water, deceivingly refreshing and bitter all at once. With you, hearing my name on your lips tastes of something almost too sweet, but not–something so warm it make you warm all over. Like water in the desert, I need it desperately.
The taste of empanadas fills my memory. Ah, yes, the empanada stand. The playground of inexplicable possibility, between two of the most elusive speakeasies on Hollywood Boulevard–the empanada stand, Christian’s empanada stand. The empanada stand I spent nearly every weekend of my 4 month stint in LA. At first it was to spend more time with him, my coke dealer and my lover. The blow pulsed like an ecstatic current, highlighting the excitement of chance encounters, the dank breeze of the best kind of trouble sweeping the neon lit streets with the fury of Santa Ana winds, the never ending nights together fucking until it was time for another line. I think of Christian, the man who showed me how to do coke off an erect penis. Christian, the 38-year-old that looked much more like a spry 25 and made you laugh like one too. Christian, the sweet man with two pitbulls so perfect I love them still, the man who favored my character and friendship enough that he didn’t bat an eye at letting me *just* help sell empanadas for free blow when I started seeing the Turkish fighter and security guard I met at an after hours club.
Turkish Matt, the man I met red-faced from embarrassment. I told Alvaro (the man I almost married for his green card that I met through my professor), that I thought he was attractive. Alvaro turned to him immediately, speedily working his way to him, against my nervous protests. I pretended I was busy dancing by the time Alvaro made it to him, looking anywhere but over there. Turkish Matt, the man who wasted no time trying to get to know me, on or off the clock. Turkish Matt, with the hard, resolute exterior and astonishing softness for me, the man who only wanted me to say one thing as dirty talk–*I love you*. Turkish Matt, who loved sharing a bottle of wine in a bubble bath fit for one, our bodies entangled with one another. Turkish Matt, who so desperately hated when I left before he woke up that one drunken night fumbled to handcuff me to him before we passed out.
You don’t need to handcuff me to you, I am bound to you by our connection, something much more tangible to me than the fleeting memories of those who came before you (pun definitely intended). As I replay the moments of excitement that I’ve always worn with such pride, the moments I’ve held so close to affirm my belief that life is meant to be lived, I realize that this new chapter does not banish me to a life devoid of excitement. This new chapter, our chapter, is riddled with *three-dimensional* excitement. Not the flat, jolt of excitement that can be summarized by a couple of lines or text bubbles, but rather the dense, all-encompassing excitement that has no end–a bottomless pit of conflicts, both internal and external, ever-changing character development, climaxes of the highest degree, rolling plot points that will constantly challenge us as well as strengthen us.
“I DIED IN THAT MOMENT,” she finally replies. Although my excitement for her pours out of me like a bursting fire hydrant, my excitement for us, for this, ignites my soul with a severity completely foreign to me. Cheers to something new.
Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/fbrai8/excitement_as_i_know_it