Maybe the Moon

a second finger joined the first, and the circle was miraculously complete.

    I lay there panting, a pat of butter melting into him, as much there as everywhere. Those chimes were back again, doing their silly thing, and a kitten was mewing plaintively somewhere outside.
    “What about you?” I asked, glancing down at his cock to show him what I meant.
    He took hold of it and slapped it once against his belly, making a wonderful sound. “You mind?”
    “Of course not.”
    He smiled at me sheepishly and began pumping away, slowly at first, then building steam.
    “What can I do?” I asked.
    “Nothing. Just stay there. Stay close.”
    So I obliged, happily, nestling into his shoulder, enjoying theripe, ferny smell of him, the rising heat of his body. Just before he came, I lodged my tongue in his ear and gave his nearest nipple a vigorous tweak. Jeff told me once that men like that too—or at least some of them—and it seemed to work, because Neil groaned even louder the moment I did it. His sperm shot so far that gobs of it caught us both in the face.
    “Whoa,” I said, laughing.
    He rolled his head toward me, wiped some of the stickiness off my temple. “I’ll get a washcloth.”
    “No. Stay put.”
    “OK.” He observed me with startling tenderness, then added: “Those eyes.”
    We stayed sprawled there for the longest time, blissfully debilitated. As I nestled into his shoulder, he reached down and held my foot for a while, rubbing it idly, as if it were a smooth stone, all but engulfing it in one of his palms. Something about the gesture got me to thinking again. Worrying.
    “Neil?”
    “Mmm?”
    “This wouldn’t be…a black thing, would it?”
    “Huh?” He turned his head toward me again.
    “Don’t take it personally, OK?”
    “What wouldn’t be a black thing?”
    “This,” I told him. “Us.”
    “What are you talking about?” He let go of my foot at this point, not angrily, but certainly distracted.
    “Well, some black people see little people as…sort of enchanted. Like a good luck charm or something, someone who can grant wishes. They’d do anything for you. Just because you’re there.”
    He propped himself up on his elbow suddenly, separating us. “I am not believing this.”
    “It’s the truth.”
    “According to who? David Duke?”
    “I know how it sounds, but it’s not just blacks. Norwegians are just as bad. Or good, depending on how you look at it. And some of the Eastern Europeans. It’s cultural, really.”
    “And you thought…?”
    “I didn’t think anything. I’m just asking.”
    “What? If I think you’re a leprechaun?”
    “Well…yeah.” I tried to soften it with a smile. “More or less.”
    He laughed more bitterly than I’d hoped.
    “Please don’t be mad.”
    He brooded for a while, then asked: “How long have you been thinking this?”
    “Not long. Just then, really. I’m trying to…explain it to myself.”
    “Explain what?”
    “Why you would…you know.”
    “Cady…”
    I knew where he was heading, or thought I did, and did my best to stop it. “I’m not fishing for compliments, Neil.”
    He grunted. “More like handing out insults.”
    “I’m sorry. I’ve had it happen before, that’s all.”
    “You have?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “Somebody black.”
    “Yeah, sure.” Reading his expression, I amended that as quickly as I could. “I mean, not like this, not with someone I really…not in bed or anything…Oh, fuck, just fuck it.”
    My confusion made him laugh, at least. “Relax,” he said, sliding in next to me again. “Tell me about it.”
    “No, it’s stupid. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”
    “C’mon, tell me.”
    So I told him about the time Mom and I stopped at a market in Watts to use the telephone, how the kindly old proprietor had grinned at me and followed me through the store, heaping me with frosted doughnuts and Baptist blessings, how we’d returned thererepeatedly when money was low for bags of free groceries, with nothing expected in return except the touch of my hand on the old guy’s arthritic elbow.
    “Was he the only black person?” Neil asked.
    I told him there’d been a few others.
    He chuckled, absorbing it all, more fascinated now than offended.
    “I shouldn’t have brought it up,” I said. “I was just being insecure.” I smiled at him wanly. “Which is a Jewish thing.”
    “I know,” he said somewhat ruefully. “This whole thing could be a Jewish thing.”
    “What do you