Nights with Manca

The first night came after coming home after a work event, celebrating the joining of MyWheels and Amber. On the way home in the metro, I felt Manca's affection, from sitting by the water after swimming, and from her embrace after I had let her read my piece of text called 'Flowers'. (Both things happened earlier in the week, but to be honest it's all melting together now in my mind, and I can't clearly separate all the pieces.) I decided that when I came home, I'd kiss her, of which I had previously been reluctant, because I thought I knew it would not have any meaning if she wouldn't initiate it. At home, Maria was over, and we first kept conversation, about police agents and fines, until Maria left. When I kissed Manca, I was surprised with the vivacity and determinedness with which she kissed me back. We intertwined our bodies and kissed and lay on the couch together, until at some point Manca told me, that she couldn't receive all my love, and how she still didn't know whether she could want more. I told her this hurt me, and then we went full analysis mode, and I reached the conclusion that it might just be a technical thing. Maybe you're lesbian, maybe you're asexual, maybe you're too overwhelmed and just unavailable. Whatever the case, if it's just the construct around sex, we can work it out. That's so much less important to me, than debating in my mind, whether you want to be with me. It's mostly just inconvenient, for me, to understand. At the end of a long talk, I asked her what her best outcome for the evening would be, and she surprised me by asking whether I'd want to sleep alongside with her (and no more than that). I had to think about it, and then decided I wanted to. In the middle of the night, she changed heart and we made love passionately. I guess this was inevitable, looking back.

The second night, three nights later, came after she came home after a long day full of birthday celebrations for Julia. I had stayed up hoping to see her, and then when she came home, she sat down next to the couch and placed her hand on my leg, and we talked. Later, she flopped herself onto the couch next to me and we watched the remaining part of an episode of Fleabag. A first, she stretched her hand out to me, which I took, and we moved closer, kissed, and decided to sleep together again.

Will you BYOB, or, bring your own blanket, she asked? I told her that for a second I wondered whether she meant that we'd sleep under separate blankets, that I obviously wanted to sleep under the same one. She said, my god, I really do have such a hard time providing people with safety, that even a joke like this will get misinterpreted..

Although I proposed to just sleep, cuddle, kiss, with no further intentions, we of course couldn't help ourselves from getting more intimate. We made love, tried to sleep, made love again, and then talked about the technicalities of making love, making sounds, my penis, orgasming, her Julia, my Julia, and such.

In the night, when we would rearrange ourselves, she would always move with me and make sure to keep holding my hand, whether around her or around me, and I felt her love so close by.

That second night really was heaven. She came home wanting me, and our desire for each other was transparent and simple. Sure, sex might be a problem, I thought, but her want for me was clear. I think I also remarked on it at some point, how strange it felt, that I had to re-acclimatize a bit to the situation. There was no tension, no game, I didn't have to look for clues or wait for affirmation. She was just there with me.

I've sleep-deprived myself somewhat, but there was a poetic moment somewhere in the night, where I was halfway lucidly dreaming. We rearranged our bodies, Manca sought and held my hand while she spooned me, and I contemplated how our bodies meshed so well together, but in my mind it was simultaneously the authorization system I had set up in the MyWheels codebase the week before. There was a tension of engineering, would it fit together, and it turned out to fit perfectly.