By Pearl Cleage
Date: 31 December 1999

from "what looks like crazy on an ordinary day"

"Can I touch your breasts?"
"Yes."
"Your belly? Your beautiful soft behind? Your lovely legs?"
"Yes"

And he stroked and soothed and tickled and teased and looked and lingered and sighed and savoured like he'd been waiting for this moment as long as I had. And when he saw that he was bringing me to the edge of someplace I truly wanted to be, he leaned over and asked me in the sweetest possible way if he could go with me, so I took him in my hands.

"Can I touch your penis?"
"Yes"
"Can I touch your balls?"
"Yes"
"Can I touch your nipples?"
"Yes"

By now, we were whispering the questions together into the darkness of each others skin.
"Can I touch your heart? Your soul? Your spirit?"

And we sang the answers like a duet that we had practiced for a lifetime.
"Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, baby yes yes yes!"