At 1 p.m. I received a call from Letizia, who asked me if I wanted to have lunch with her. I answered yes, partly because I didn't have enough time to return home: the rehearsal for the play would begin at 3:30. I longed to see her; at night I often thought about her before going to sleep.
In person she was even more beautiful, more real. I watched her soft hands pour the wine and then immediately examined mine, which, thanks to thecold I brave every morning on the scooter, had turned red and chapped like an ape's.
She talked to me about everything; in an hour she managed to tell me her entire life. She talked about her family: her mother, who had died prematurely; her father, who had emigrated to Germany; and her sister, whom she rarely sees since her marriage. She told me about her teachers, her years at school and the university, her hobbies, her job.
I gazed at her eyebrows and was overwhelmed with the desire to kiss her. Eyebrows are such bizarre things! Letizia's move with her eyes and are so lovely as to induce you to kiss their perfection, then descend to her face, her cheeks, her mourn.… Now, Diary, I do know I desire her. I desire her warmth, her skin, her hands, her saliva, her whispery voice. I would like to caress her head, visit her island and breathe in its air, thrill every inch of her body. And yet I obviously feel blocked, it's such a new thing for me, and I certainly can't pretend that she is experiencing the same sensations, or perhaps she does have them but I'll never know. She looked at me and moistened her lips; her look was ironic, and I felt myself surrender. Not to her, but to my whims.
'Do you want to make love, Melissa?' she asked me as I sipped some wine.
I placed my glass on the table, looked at her, unsettled, and nodded my assent.
'But you'll have to teach me.'
Teach me how to make love with a woman or teach me how to love? Perhaps the two things compensate for each other…
23 February 5:45 A.M.
Saturday night or, better, Sunday morning, since the night has already passed, and the sky has brightened. I feel happy, Diary: my body is saturated with such euphoria, although becalmed by a sensation of utter bliss; a sweet, unbroken tranquility engulfs me completely. Tonight I learned that letting yourself go with someone you like, someone who overwhelms your senses, is a sacred thing. It's then that sex ceases to be merely sex and begins to be love, while nuzzling the scented skin on his back or caressing his strong, soft shoulders or smoothing his hair.
Not for nothing was I agitated: I knew what I was about to do. I knew I was deceiving my parents. I was getting into a car with a twenty-seven-year-old guy I scarcely knew, an attractive math teacher, someone who inflamed my senses. I waited for him outside the house, beneath the awesome pine tree, and I saw his green car slowly approach. He wore a scarf around his neck, and the reflection from his glasses thrilled me. Contrary to what he said a few days ago, I didn't wait for him to instruct me on what I should wear. I chose the lingerie from the top drawer, put it on, and then donned a little black dress. I looked at myself in the mirror and pulled a face, thinking I was missing something. I slipped my hands under the dress and slid down my panties. I smiled, whispered, 'Now you're perfect,' and blew myself a kiss.
When I left the house, I felt the cold seep under the dress, and the surly wind grazed my bare sex. After I'd gotten into the car, the Professor looked at me with bright, enchanted eyes and told me, 'You didn't put on what I asked you to wear.'
I directed my gaze toward the road before me and said, 'I know: disobeying teachers is what I do best.'
He gave me a slightly noisy kiss on the cheek, and we set off for a secret place.
I kept running my fingers through my hair. He may have thought it was tension, but it was really desire. The desire to have him there, at once, without any preliminaries. I don't know what we talked about during the journey because my mind was fixated on the thought of possessing him. I looked at his eyes as he drove. I like his eyes: they're intriguing, magnetic, with long, black lashes. I noticed that he cast furtive glances at me, but I acted as if nothing were happening. Then we arrived at Paradiso, or perhaps the Inferno, depending on your point of view. His car continued down deserted, narrow streets that seemed impossible to navigate. We passed a dilapidated church covered with ivy and moss, and Valerio told me, 'Keep an eye on your left: you'll see a fountain; the next turn is the place.'
I peered down the street, hoping to spot the fountain inside the dark labyrinth.
'There it is!' I exclaimed a little too loudly.
He switched off the engine before a rusty green gate, and the headlights illuminated some words written on it. My eyes rested on two names inserted in a heart so shakily drawn that it seemed to be quivering: Valerio and Melissa.
I looked at him, stunned, and pointed out what I read.
He smiled and said, 'I can't believe it!' Then he turned toward me and whispered, 'You see? We're written in the stars.'
I didn't understand what he meant. Nonetheless, the 'we' reassured me and made me feel part of a team where the members were matched instead of mismatched like me and the mirror.
I was afraid of this paradise: it was dark, steep, almost unattainable, especially since I was wearing boots with very high heels. I tried to catch hold of him as fast as possible; I wanted to feel his warmth. We kept on stumbling over stones. On those dark, narrow, walled-in streets, the only visible thing was the sky, tonight dense with stars, and the moon coming and going, playing just as we were. I don't know why, but this place filled me with gloomy, macabre sensations. Stupidly, or perhaps legitimately, I thought that somewhere nearby a Black Mass was unfolding, and I was the designated victim. Hooded men would bind me to a table, I would be surrounded by candles and candelabra, they would rape me one by one and finally kill me, using a dagger with a sharp, sinuous blade. But I trusted him; perhaps these thoughts were due to my absorption in the magic of the moment.
The alley that provoked such fears led us to a clearing that juts out over the sea. You could hear the waves foaming on the shore. There were huge rocks, white and smooth: I immediately imagined the purpose they could serve. As we approached each other, we stumbled yet again. He pulled me closer to him, drawing me to his face. Our lips grazed without kissing, as we inhaled our scents and listened to our breathing. We joined and devoured our lips, sucking and biting them. Our tongues met: his was hot and soft; it caressed my mouth like a feather, making me tremble. The kisses turned red-hot till he asked if he could touch me, if it was time. Yes, I replied, now's the time. When he discovered I wasn't wearing panties, he froze, and for a few seconds he remained motionless before my bare flesh. Then I noticed his pressure, as he began to massage my erupting volcano. He told me he wanted to taste me.
I sat on one of the enormous rocks, and his tongue caressed my sex as a mother's hand caresses a newborn's cheek: slowly, gently. The pleasure I experienced was continuous, relentless, dense and fragile at the same time. I was melting.
He rose and kissed me, and I tasted my juices on his mouth, and they tasted sweet. I had already brushed against his member numerous times and felt it hard and meaty beneath his jeans. I unbuttoned them, and he offered me his penis. I'd never been with a circumcised man before; I didn't know the glans would already be exposed. It was like a velvet tip, smooth and soft, and I couldn't help but approach it.
I rose, and drawing close to his ear, I whispered, 'Fuck me.'
He too wanted it, and as I was rising from my kneeling position, he asked me where I had learned to give head like that. My serpentine tongue had driven him crazy.
He asked me to lie facedown against the rock, my buttocks in full view. Then he examined them, a bizarre gesture to my mind, yet sensing his gaze upon my curves really excited me. I awaited the first thrust, my hands placed on the cold, smooth stone. He approached and aimed for the target. I wanted him to tell me how I was offering myself to him: a little slut who never gets enough. I uttered a moan of assent that accompanied an abrupt, well-positioned thrust. Then I separated myself from that pleasing puzzle, and gazing at him imploringly, wanting to feel him inside me again, I told him that pausing a few minutes would intensify our pleasures.
'Let's go back to the car,' I said. 'We'll be more comfortable there.'
We again traversed the dark labyrinth, but this time I wasn't afraid. My body was being traversed by a thousand sprites that delighted in chasing after each other and making me feel by turns distressed and euphoric, ineffably euphoric. Before climbing back into the car, I again observed the names written on the gate and smiled, letting him get inside first. Right away I stripped, completely; I wanted every cell of our bodies, our skin, to touch
