Blue Daughter of the Red Sea: A Memoir

Book 4 The Book of Disenchantments

Book 4 T B  D Come, make us a god who will be our leader; as for the man Moses, who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him. Exodus 32:1 T  D  of a Roman evening had endowed my being with boredom. And solitude, in its darkest and shapeless suit, had reached the remotest corners of my soul. My mind, being unable to decide what conversation to engage in or which subject matter or philosophical quest to focus on, resolved to turn its undivided attention to the images and words that were simultaneously running on TV. I abandoned my company, which was composed of four young men, in their enjoyment of mutual conversation and pandora/panettone eating. I went closer to the TV and stretched my body across the sofabed and shut the voices of the boys behind me out. The news, Notizia, on Canale 5, was mostly eager to inform the audience on one specific phenomenon: Y2K.There were fewer than two days left to the year 2000, and the prophetic TV messenger was speculating about computer crashing and terrorist invasion. Yet, I could not pay attention to the warning of a possible scary turn of the century because Esu’s presence was in the way of my concentration. I’d met Esu a week earlier at a Christmas party and liked him since. I was in Rome after an absence of four long years, and most of my first week had been invested in scheming tactics to conquer the latest object of my infatuation. The boys left to get more food. Esu’s body took the space beside mine on the sofabed. We borrowed the Y2K subject from the news and conversed about the possibilities of crashes and terrorism. In the meantime, I could feel my body grow tense. Somewhere down our conversation, his hands started to caress my neck, and then his lips invaded my neck and lips. He kissed me and kissed me until our tongues formed only one taste. His hands fished for any skin on my body, depriving me of my clothes. They undid my bra and found their way to my breasts. His mouth gently suckled on my nipples. He kissed his way down my body, pausing at my belly. And the entire time, I watched him in the fullness of his act, with my eyes wide open, analyzing his every move. He kept his eyes shut, and the look on his face had the air of someone who’s taken flight. Again, he· 123 · 124 The Book of Disenchantments
kissed his way back to my lips and again our tongues acquired the taste of one. I tried to participate by responding to his kisses and by running my hands through his dreadlocks, but nothing I did tuned me to the moment. Then, his hands unbuttoned my pants. No, Esu. I’ve never done these things, I said. Stai tranquilla! Don’t worry! His fingers entered the door of my vagina. It hurt. It hurt really bad. Esu, it hurts. Aw, fa male, Esu. He took his fingers out and returned to my lips and tongue and breasts and back to my lips. Then, his hand took mine and guided it to his penis and he let me shake hands with it and left me to my fate. I held it in my hand and did not know what to do with it. I was shocked at its erectness and dared not to stoop to look. Instead, I looked at Esu for direction. But he was in ecstasy and paid no attention to me. I freed my hand of the penis , still with no clue and no desire to do anything with it and forced myself to concentrate on the kisses. Only the clean kisses. But it was hard to do that, for his fingers were back down there, and it hurt like hell. I told him once again that I was hurting. He regained his fingers, and this time he used them to strip me of my underwear. I let him, but I panicked when I felt his erect penis on my belly. No, Esu, no, I said. I don’t want to. He repeated, Stai tranquilla! His penis brushed against my belly and I became terrified because I didn’t know what it felt like when...