We had sex three times before she told me she'd been raped her freshman year in college. What do you say when someone tells you that two minutes after they brought you to climax. I thought of all the daytime talk shows where people talk about traumas and did my best impression by asking her some thoughtful questions. I felt a moment's rage and harnessed it by letting a few tears well up in my eyes. She searched my expression for understanding or maybe a bit of absolution, I couldn't tell which. I hovered on the point of switching roles from lover into therapist so I pulled back emotionally and gave her ass a light slap. "Nona, you are so beautiful and sexy and I am grateful and humbled that you opened up to me," I told her. I ate one of the fig bars she'd brought over and thought about my last yoga class and how I didn't want to leave child's pose and how sex with this woman was gratifying in the same strenuous, mind-altering way that yoga can be when practiced with a sufficiently open heart.
I am a yoga instructor. I get paid a living wage to entice people into a mental state that our modern world steals from them. I try not to breach the appropriate professional distance with my students, but sometimes it does happen. Nona is a few years older than I am and has a stressful corporate job. The first time we kissed was after I offered to help massage a knot in her calf, and before I knew it she had pulled my hand to her crotch. I know it sounds porny and cliche, but it was the kind of lewd and purposeful gesture that I can't resist. Nona had lived most of her life in her own head, I've since come to realize, so for her to do this to me was a great triumph of body awareness and old fashioned gumption. I left my hand where she'd put it and recited a few lines of a Sanskrit verse. She intoned the response, which I'd taught the class, and we proceeded to snake about the floor of the studio playfully and blissfully and, I now must admit, utterly self-consciously. For I had not yet been awakened into the amazing reality this woman would introduce to me.
"Those are pretty decent this time, aren't they?", she asked me, seemingly ignoring her mention of the rape and my changing of the subject.
I am a yoga instructor. I get paid a living wage to entice people into a mental state that our modern world steals from them. I try not to breach the appropriate professional distance with my students, but sometimes it does happen. Nona is a few years older than I am and has a stressful corporate job. The first time we kissed was after I offered to help massage a knot in her calf, and before I knew it she had pulled my hand to her crotch. I know it sounds porny and cliche, but it was the kind of lewd and purposeful gesture that I can't resist. Nona had lived most of her life in her own head, I've since come to realize, so for her to do this to me was a great triumph of body awareness and old fashioned gumption. I left my hand where she'd put it and recited a few lines of a Sanskrit verse. She intoned the response, which I'd taught the class, and we proceeded to snake about the floor of the studio playfully and blissfully and, I now must admit, utterly self-consciously. For I had not yet been awakened into the amazing reality this woman would introduce to me.
"Those are pretty decent this time, aren't they?", she asked me, seemingly ignoring her mention of the rape and my changing of the subject.
