Eliza
Sets herself free.
Paris, 2005
Eliza had some religious conflict. An Italian woman so beautiful I would gasp when I saw her set against the Paris streetscape, her abundant sexuality was wrapped in the barbed wire of Catholic guilt. She was sad, sweet, and tall, possessing full-spectrum intelligence that she doubted all the time. I loved her and she knew it.
We would do things like go out to dinner or visit art galleries and walk around the city. I loved being among people with her to observe their responses.
She thought she was ugly. This verged on humorous. Even in a city like Paris, where the astonishing women abound, she had the look of being able to stop traffic. With apologies, the French have nothing on Italian women. Eliza could toss on an ordinary scarf and overcoat and create a look so elegant my heart would skip a beat.
I know, I am sensitive, but she was special. I was in love with her sad eyes, and I loved, loved, loved to kiss her pouty lips.
She had a hot libido and she kept trying to quench it with me. We would come back to my apartment in the 5th, and she would mostly undress and we would play, or try to. It was as if Jesus was standing to one side of her and the Devil to the other, and the path of pleasure would lead her to the lake of fire.
I was available to please her in every way, ready for whatever she was ready for. She was not ready to fuck and even at age 34, I suspected she was a virgin. I’ve known a few before. Remember what Billy Joel said about Catholic girls.
With virgins, you give them space and sometimes they decide it’s time. They eventually have that moment when they are consciously ready. You just have to be there for it. She was what I would call emotionally immature, girlish and a little demanding but in a playful way. I adored her and was so swept up in her elegance and her delicious voice and sweet heart that I played along with her. Despite any complexities, she was fun to be with.
She trusted me, this I know; and she wanted to relax. For one thing, I was not like other Italian men: I was not demanding, I was openly affectionate and I was patient with her nascent sexuality. I’m also not interested in getting my dick sucked. This takes a lot of pressure off.
I don’t know how it is with other ethnicities, but Italian men think that Italian women are exquisitely beautiful. This is not mere preference. It’s fire in the blood. Though not always as powerful as “the thunderbolt” such as when Michael Corleone first sees Apollonia Vitelli in The Godfather, it’s a little like that.
Eliza, who pronounced her name e-leet-za, had the most wondrous figure and small breasts like on a marble statute. For me she was a pheromone drug. I could smell her hair and her mouth forever. And though she wanted to, she could not let go. She said she felt guilty.
You cannot really talk someone out of guilt, but you can slowly seduce them out of it, and also play with it. Just to shock her I once invited her to pee on my face. She feigned disgust but I could see the gleam in her eye.
We once did a mock confession where she pretended to be a little girl and admitted how horny she was. I asked if she masturbated and she said yes, but she would stop before it felt too good, to avoid going to hell. I, the benevolent priest, told her it was true that she was a very bad girl, but she could orgasm only if she said 10 Hail Marys afterward — and promised never to do it again. .
One night, I showed her my Book of Blue portfolio. She looked through the photographs carefully, studying each woman, intrigued and a little jealous. She looked closely at a series of photos of Paloma (then my best friend and private photography professor) full-on masturbating into the mirror, and with the gossamer curtains blowing in next to an open window, and finally throwing herself into fully expressed cry-out orgasm splayed on the floor in front of me.
I left the book in her lap and got up to make some Parisian pink lemonade, my latest beverage formulation. One thing I appreciated about Ms. Eliza is that she did not try to ply herself out of her inhibitions with liquor. She would have her requisite wine with dinner and that was it. In any event, while I was crushing fresh lemons, mixing up raspberry juice and maple sugar, she had disappeared to the alcove of my bedroom.
And then I heard her say her favorite word: Ayuto! This is Italian for “help!” but she would say it sweetly and a little self mockingly when she wanted my attention.
I put down what I was doing and went to visit her. She was fully naked, kneeling up with her knees apart on my bed. Both of her hands were clasping her pussy. Her eyes were a blend of terror and glee, and her face perplexed, almost doubtful.
“Oh my,” I said.
She groaned and took herself deeper.
I got close to her and kissed her ear, sneaking a whiff of her hair. Then I pulled back a little to give her space. She was going for it. It was as if her entire aura had eased its tension, her body relaxed, her face lost its girlish look and revealed herself to be deep and intense and not quite certain of herself.
I stood there, astounded, as she showed me her masturbation.
All I could say was, “Yes, Eliza.”
She was not going to tease herself. She knew what she wanted and it was right within reach. I looked down at her fingers enmeshed with her cunt. With one hand she both stretched her lips and penetrated herself with a finger or two. With the other she was fapping her clitoris at full intensity. I looked back at her face.
Her orgasm was imminent. It had possessed her. She began to tip over into herself, about to lose her balance.
Finally, and at long last, she let herself go. She allowed herself to relax into the beauty of her existence. I was spinning as if in witness of the Goddess herself.
Then her voice set free. She let out a long, delicate streak of human sound. Her face melted into an expression I had never seen and the waves of submission took her. We gazed into one another’s eyes for a long, delectable, extended moment. It was almost too much beauty to bear, but I was right with her, my expression revealing my astonishment and love and understanding.
Her orgasm took her and her hips thrashed a little and her torso shook as she gave herself over. And then she collapsed into my arms and I held her. Doused in sweat, she wept gently and I licked her tears. We embraced until we forgot where we were.
Finally, I said, “May I?”
And I guided one of her hands to my face and sniffed her fingers languidly, and then licked her juice from them. I took her other hand up to my mouth and made sure she could see exactly what I was doing, licking every drop from her, massaging the webs of her fingers with my tongue, and swallowing her gently as she looked on. I touched her lips with my own.
