Ready

I like the dance of making out, the unpredictability and shifting rhythm of two eager mouths. Playful, charming, and slow, gentle lips and cautious tongue; then aggressive, intense, lustful. Focused. Hungry. An open mouth turns a kiss from a show of affection to a declaration of desire. Even a hesitant introduction of tongue creates a spark, wakes up a clit, calls nipples to stand at attention.

I like softly moaning into another mouth: little breaths of satisfaction, impatience. I like putting things in my mouth: shoulders, nipples, wrists. Fingers. I like my sounds muffled by a hand, a palm cradling my chin, fingers stretching my lips, pressing down on my tongue. I like sliding hands wet with spit, sweat, or come across my face, down my neck, onto my chest. I like being slippery, ready. Making out doesn't promise sex, but my cunt gets wet regardless. More than once I’ve been asked, “Have you always been this easy?”

As a teenager, I made out with boys in cars, in tents, in living rooms while parents were at work. I remember always feeling disappointed. Not until I kissed a girl in college did a meeting of mouths and tongues create the same flood of heat and surge of adrenaline that I felt looking at my dad’s hidden porn magazines. In the walled garden behind the mansion on campus, I rushed forward with a glorious intensity, my body ready, aching. “Jamie, slow down,” she said. I wanted my hand in her hair and her fingers between my lips.

I like the physical closeness of another face in my face, another body pressed against mine, pressed against a soft mattress, the wall of an alleyway, a bed of grass. At Dyke March in my 20s I made out with everyone. Friends, exes, coworkers. Lipstick worn away, reapplied, forgotten. The day was always decadent, delicious, and full of joy.

I once made out with a woman who had multiple piercings in her lips, tongue, and dimples. The contrast of textures was jarring but sexy, softness and warmth against smooth, hard steel. I wanted my mouth on the other parts of her body that probably tasted just as salty and metallic. “Jamie, slow down,” I was told, again.

On New Year’s Eve at the Lexington Club in San Francisco, I made out with a long haired butch Latina I met in line for the bathroom. Over the next week she called the coffee shop where I worked multiple times. “Jamie, it’s that girl again!” I heard over and over, from coworkers who answered the phone, girls with whom I had also made out. I never took the call, always told them to tell her I wasn’t there. I didn’t want more from her after the evening was over; we had our moment at midnight, in the loud, dark lesbian bar.

The first time I kissed my wife I was drunk, and engaged to someone else. Before we kissed, I handed her my glasses, and asked her to clean them for me. She did, not breaking eye contact. The second time, months later, my relationship and hers both ended, we kissed like we had been waiting to kiss for years, like there were a thousand stories our mouths needed to tell each other, immediately.

In an empty bar in the Mission, we switched from talking to making out and back again, from deep conversation to hands on legs, necks, wrists. I wanted to climb on top of her, grind myself against her thigh. When I got up to use the restroom I noticed a three inch wide wet spot darkening the fabric of my skirt, beneath my ass. I had been so turned on from kissing her that my excitement had soaked through my underwear. This was the level of want I wanted, what had been missing when I was a teenager.

Ten years married, I pursue my wife in our house; we make out on the couch, in the hallway, against the wall in the bathroom. I hop on the counter in the kitchen and wrap my legs around her waist. I ask her to put her fingers in my mouth, and she does, not breaking eye contact. She smiles at me, always entertained by how often I want her. “Jamie, slow down. We don’t have time for more than this.” I know. And still, I’m ready.

Jamie is a queer femme in her mid 40s, living in Portland, Oregon, with her wife and daughter. She writes primarily about sex, but also explores ideas of loneliness, connection, and family through a collection of screenplays-in-progress.

Insta: @fortheloveofwant

Artwork credit: Lucie Arnoux @luciedrawsthings