Affection

Affection by Krissy Kneen Read Free Book Online Page B

Book: Affection by Krissy Kneen Read Free Book Online
Authors: Krissy Kneen
talk about sex.
    But I do.
    Therefore Vox is about you, but not about us, exactly.
    You will talk about sex one day, I tell him. I will have an influence on you.
    When you talk about sex, Paul says, you are not actually talking about sex.
    And so of course I answer, When you talk about other things you are always talking about sex but in an oblique way.
    And then the file comes down. I click over to my Gmail and they are there, Paul’s stories. A little paperclip and beneath it three small files. I open them. A new message from Paul makes a little popping
sound, but I ignore it. He will know I am reading. His stories are good, clever. One of them is funny and it makes me smile. It is not until I open the third one that I feel my heart engaging. This story goes on too long. There is a moment when I feel my chest expanding, my heart opening up to him, my eyes pricking with tears, and then the story moves on a little, like a train that has overshot the station, leaving the passengers stranded with no platform to step down onto. I switch to chat and tell him this and he immediately starts to fix the thing. He sends me an amendment, which seems better.
    I can’t believe you went and changed it just like that.
    Why wouldn’t I if it makes it better?
    I don’t know, because you are a young person. Young people are precious about their work.
    I like to edit, he tells me. I like to make things better.
    I like you, is my reply. I like you very much. I like your stories. If you ever write a novel I might develop a crush on you.
    I am not sure I will write a novel. I may be a short story writer. I like short stories.
    Ah well, then you will never have my unwanted romantic attentions.
    This is a risk I will have to take, Paul tells me, and I laugh. He makes me smile and he makes me laugh.
    When Paul signs off for the night I go back into his Facebook page just to look at the little house perched precariously in the storm.
It is a beautiful image, painted by a friend of his. I like the painting on its own merits but I also now associate it with our conversations. Looking at it, I feel a liquid rush. I become unsettled. I know that I’ll have to masturbate or I will never sleep.
    Oh, so now I have become sexually attracted to an image that stands in for a person that I can only vaguely remember in real life. The physical representation of Paul is that image. I lie on the couch and watch it as I place my hand quietly between my legs, and the release is quick and violent. When it is done there is still the picture on the screen and I really can’t remember what he looks like in real life. When I close my eyes there is a little house on a hill and I must not concentrate on it too closely because I can already feel the warmth of desire rising up in me for a second time, and if I give in to this I will never get to bed.
    My boy is sleeping on his side and the light on his face is a real and beautiful thing. Strange to be able to masturbate over someone else’s profile picture and not feel my love and desire for my husband at all diminished.
    I know better than to wake him with my caresses at this point. He will be tired and irritable. I lie beside him and I am wide awake and he smells like hot dough, baking, and I want to take him into my mouth. My desire for it is difficult to ignore. As I wonder vaguely if I should get up and release the pent-up energy discreetly in the lounge room, I find that I am yawning. I turn over onto my side and leap desperately for a wave of sleep.

MOVING ON
    Blacktown 1983

    Something crashed outside. There were muffled voices. The kitchen was being packed away. The ancient boxes of jelly and custard with their out-of-date faces grinning on the packets, the tins so old they had lost their labels, the more recent purchases of tomatoes, beans, rice. All of this was being transferred to boxes. We would ferret around in these, piecing together our makeshift meals while the kitchen was being

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