Three Twisted Knots

I don’t talk much here about my relationship with Nathaniel. I mean, obviously I spend a lot of time with him. Obviously, I’m crazy about him. But I don’t talk about the physical side of it. First, because it’s private business, and I know that no written document, no matter how well hidden, can ever be completely private. And second, it’s still new to me, and writing about it, I don’t know. I’m not ready.

But I am not a virgin any more, and I haven’t been, not for months. I love the way he touches me, how he always seems to know just what to do, how he makes me forget everything else in the world except for him and me. And I love how he teaches me things with his body, no words necessary. I want to make him happy, and I think I do. I guess reading all those books with the naughty bits paid off eventually. Something unusual and wonderful happens when we make love: I glow. I don’t mean I feel like I’m glowing: I mean my body actually glows. If I felt comfortable enough, maybe I’d ask someone here if all sidhe glow when they have sex, or if it’s something that only happens with a very special, wonderful, perfect lover. A lover. I have one. That feels weird to write, even though like I said, it’s been happening for months.

But I want to talk about something that happened, just a night or two ago. We were together, in the bathing pool. It was very, very late. Everyone else had gone to bed or something. The battle was going on outside — I could almost feel it. And I just had to be with him. I might have surprised him with — well, I was very insistent. And I guess it happened really fast. I just couldn’t stop. He’s been so gentle with me: he probably thinks I’m an animal now, but I don’t mind being an animal, and I hope he doesn’t mind that side of me. We haven’t talked much about it — sex, I mean — I guess you don’t, do you? It would feel weird to sit around discussing this or that and what we do and what we want… it would feel artificial somehow. I beat around the bush a lot, don’t I? This would be even worse if I had a computer: I’m limited by the speed of my handwriting, at least. My streams of consciousness used to attack me for pages at a time; now they are consigned to mere paragraphs.

Anyway. We actually were closer together than this sketch shows: I don’t know how to draw us together. And I’m not comfortable drawing — yeah. On to what happened. We were, I don’t know, just finishing? (I would make a shitty porn writer!) We were just finishing, and he held me really tightly, and his heart. His heart was just hammering in his chest. His heart. Nathaniel is a vampire. I don’t think about it a lot. But it’s true. My boyfriend is a vampire. He is not alive in the same way he was born alive. He is undead. He is a very sexy creature from beyond the grave (I cannot believe I am writing this down). He knows how to make it look as if he is breathing. He drinks. He can pretend to eat, he says, when he has to (I have never seen him do this). But he does not actually have a heartbeat. I know from conversations with some folks both here and in Jasper Cove that some vampires can simulate a heartbeat, but Nathaniel doesn’t. He isn’t good at it, or that’s what he said. She used to refuse to take any kind of advice from him, because she felt he wasn’t a proper vampire somehow (probably because he hasn’t killed me yet; I don’t know). But something about that time, that moment, maybe the place, made his heart beat, in a natural way, like I imagine a living man’s heart would beat when he was agitated, or excited. Did we do that? I think we did. I think we somehow made that happen. Maybe I did it. Maybe I’m a goddamn fae defibrillator or something. Maybe she was right and Nathaniel really isn’t a proper vampire after all. Maybe he’s something different, something special.

It would be so easy now to embark on some Mary Sue flight of fantasy about how I’m the magical fae with super vampire-revival powers, but I’ll hold off on that. He was like a little kid, though, checking his pulse everywhere. It was cute, and it filled me with wonder. He fills me with wonder all the time (not like that; get your mind out of the gutter!), but this time was, I don’t know. Different.

The next day, it had gone away again, and he managed to produce only a weak pulse when I asked him about it.

But still. It happened, and I wanted to record it.

It’s how he makes me feel, maybe. Really and truly alive. Like that song that was popular when I was in primary school, the Evanescence song, “Bring Me to Life.” So cheesy, but that’s what I feel like when we are together. Maybe I make him feel that way, too.