In The Moments That I Loved Her #15
By Micheal Huggins
Photo by Ryan McGinley, I Know Where the Summer Goes

The ironwork of the railing was significant – a brilliant narrative of fleurs and vines – to such a degree he found himself distracted by its intricacy even as his body ground clumsily, drunken into hers. The chairs, on the other hand, were quite cheap. Plastic deck chairs, white and soiled. You’d need one of those high-pressure sprayers to get them clean. And here he was, stripped with her on his lap, her eyes and chill perked breasts facing the sea. As they rocked together in the low tide Mediterranean breeze, as the canopies of the private bathing tents writhed in the dim light of the promenade streetlamps, as he ran his hands up the contours of her thin waist and strong hips pushing on her back ever so slightly asking her forward and down, he wondered how it was that a five star hotel in the south of France believed this acceptable? How does one attain such a marked title with dirty plastic furniture? Never mind that he was fucking her on a balcony adding to the misery of one of those very chairs; this much to the delight of boardwalk passersby huddled together, their necks craned and eyes stretched to make out the details of silhouettes in the dark. If only they knew the truth of these cheap props, he thought. Would the voyeurs still bother? He picked her up from under her thighs, directing her silently to the railing, and not without stumble as their legs tangled and stepped awkwardly in the pivot. She draped her arms along the railing and let her nipples touch to the cooled metal. She had always been proud of the way they looked erect, often pinching them through her shirt before they had gone to dinner. And despite his agreeable indifference to the actual aesthetic, the frequency with which she did this aroused him much more, he decided, than the effect she pursued. Yet at that moment, he was sure a photograph head on from a perspective suspended just beyond the railing’s guard would be the most beautiful he had ever taken of her, or seen for that matter, especially if the aperture had been set shallow enough to blur his own form. He imagined her eyes – their blue tint fading just a touch of green as the chill did its work – drifting. Not detached, but rather independently enjoying the motion of their sex for what it was after the bottles of Bordeaux that had accompanied dinner. He, himself, felt similarly. It was not a night that called for a brute seriousness, or even a great passion. He knew after the first bottle when they shrugged laughing and ordered another that the sex would not rank among their most spiritual. He knew her body and his own, well. Her cunt would be at first quite wet, damp even at the tip of her fruit, and then grow dry unless he tasted it – perhaps too much to ask, the wine having dried his mouth as well as her sex. She would not climax. And of himself, he knew his cock would not find the strength it had on other occasions. But the feel of such intimate flesh cradling each other pleased him. He enjoyed the cool wind across the moisture she left on him as he withdrew and again pushed their heat together. He enjoyed the warmth from her. He enjoyed the touch of his chest to her back and the tiny clear hairs that lead down her spine, visible only briefly in the right light. And as they both looked down the path of moonlight receding out on the sea, he wondered if they were tourists or if the French had come to expect this sort of thing from the holiday beach crowd. Not that anyone needs a reason to watch two people fuck…