The Words - An Autobiography

Then, there we were

Then, there we were, standing in the doorway of the nicest hotel room either of us had ever seen. Me in my new suit with my old gym bag from high school that was the only luggage I owned. My new bride in the wedding dress that she'd earned the right to wear and was still entitled to wear while we were both embarrassed that every one we'd encountered since our arrival appeared to be certain of precisely what we were planning next that would nullify that entitlement. We looked at one another, suddenly overcome with giggles, far from as certain as they all appeared to be about what to do next.

"What do you want to do?" I asked, or she did. It hardly mattered. It could have been either of us since neither felt the least certain about what to do.

"No, what do you want to do?"

"No, I asked you first."

We'd driven to the hotel that I'd booked for us to spend our wedding night after everyone, my mother included, insisted that we should go somewhere special rather than head home to our apartment as we'd initially planned. Neither of us could remember eating a thing before being hurriedly escorted from our wedding reception, and the hotel restaurant was supposedly excellent.

But my fiancée. No, my wife, I had to remind myself, still absorbing that reality. My wife didn't want to go to dinner, still wearing her wedding dress, feeling that everyone was gawking at us and whispering speculatively about why we were there rather than in our room, doing what they expected we would soon. But she also wasn't ready to remove the dress she'd earned the right to wear by refraining from doing what it appeared everyone assumed we would be soon.

"Why?" I asked, assuming that she'd brought clothes she could change into so we could have dinner in the restaurant without her feeling self-conscious.

"Because as soon as I begin getting undressed," she told me, walking into the room with a knowing glance over her shoulder, "we both know we won't be going anywhere. Now that we're finally allowed, we won't be able to restrain ourselves for an instant longer. And I don't think either of us wants to be in a rush and no longer have it ahead of us to anticipate."

Instead, we opened the cheap bottle of Champagne that my best man had thrust into my hands as we were herded from our reception. I inexpertly bounced the cork off the ceiling and across the room. And we both hurriedly caught what foamed from the bottle in the glasses we'd discovered in our hotel room bathroom and that my 'wife' insisted we use rather than guzzling it straight from the bottle as I'd suggested. But we also didn't want to be too drunk to accomplish and thoroughly enjoy what we'd anticipated for so long.

With nothing else to occupy ourselves, we sat sipping from our glasses, anxiously watching one another from across the room for the slightest sign that we'd waited sufficient additional time to generate the proper level of sexual tension. Or whatever else it was that kept us from throwing ourselves into one another's arms and tearing off each other's clothes. We both felt as awkward with one another as we had that evening at the club when we met. Then again, on our first date and our first magical kiss, followed by each of the firsts of our tentative exploration of not having sex. Especially those two notable firsts, after which my then-girlfriend had argued that whatever we'd done in the back seat of my car, both ignoring the speed limits that we'd been well above until it was too late to stop, we weren't having sex.

My wife eventually set her glass down, crossed the room, and perched sideways on my lap, still in the wedding dress that she wasn't ready to shed and still had the right to wear. We kissed our way through the entire spectrum. Beginning with tentative pecks on one another's lips, foreheads, cheeks, eyelids, then lips again. Then one more time, not so softly or gently, until we shortly found ourselves passionately locked, mouth to mouth, hands everywhere, making sounds more primal than affectionate. We finally broke free, breathless and in need, too deep to deny it was time, no matter what time the clock told us.