Jacques was more of a Foucault guy than a Derrida type, but Foucault’s first/given name was often pronounced like Michelle by Americans, and that was way too nelly. Jacques wanted to be perceived as sensitive yet strong, seductive yet gallant, protective of both a lover’s vulnerabilities and eccentric idiosyncrasies. Besides, Jacques loved all the puns, having been a jock who loved to jack up the action, not to mention jack off, which he rather enjoyed as Jacques Off, until he realized people might hear it as Yakov and think he was named Jacob. Very confusing.

“You’re never going to get off if you don’t change the channel, dude,” it was as if his hand suddenly spoke.

Jacques liked Jacques precisely for its Frenchy, debonair, double-breasted suit allure, the freedom of kissing lovers in a park, surrounded by rigidly trimmed into geometrical-shaped bushes. It had taken him years to finally get that English gardens are the wilder and French the more precise. He’d obviously elevated the public spectacle of French kissing to wild abandon and linked all those stuffy symmetrical shapes to the Victorians.

“Helloooo? Should I slow down here for a School Zone or what?”

Jacques sighed. Sometimes it felt like his body bullied his mind, and only occasionally did his mind hang in there long enough to say, “Fine, but can’t we think of something else? Must it always be the same scenario?”

“Now you know,” his hand paused, slowly circling in teasing strokes, “what the therapist said. ‘Globally generalizing terms like always are a no-no!”

“Pick up the pace, dude.”

“See? Double Standard Alert! Complain the body bullies only to turn around and inflict your mental bullwhip on us!”

“Oh, come on. You like to bottom sometimes. It’s not like it makes you all butch in the streets, femme in the sheets or—”

“Yes, but it is more a foreplay--I’ll take it for you like a gladiator, baby--thing than a physical turn on.”

“Meaning, you don’t mind if she beats the shit out of the driver as long as you get to fuck her like a racing chariot horse as your reward?”

“Ooo, that’s hot, Let’s run with that thought.”

“My point, precisely! Always bang, bang, boom, boom! Don’t you have any other rhythms?”

“Bend over, and I’ll slap ‘em on your ass!”

“’Violence, I hate your violence,’ as June says to Henry.”

“Yes, and note it’s Anais Nin’s version of those events that makes one think of June in that scene as, That manipulative little cunt!”

“Always the body’s favorite excuse: I was manipulated!”

“Feeling a bit testy today, are we?”

“Just tell me I’m not going to end up blowing some guy while you fuck me like you always do.”

“No, you’re both blowing me and some other guy/sometimes gal/sometimes semi-circle jerk around you, and I’m fucking you with some other guy while I go back and forth between the blowing. It’s much more a parallel universe, matrixy kind of thing.”

“So why aren’t there any parallel universes that include something besides my blowing and get fucked at the same time?”

“Don’t forget you’re getting sucked by the babe from underneath. I do try to think purely of your pleasure sometimes. Ooo, that’s hot,” the hand strums more rhythmically now.

“You know what I mean. I want you to fuck me slowly and look into my eyes.”

“As long as the soundtrack to that scene is not ‘You Light Up My Life’ or ‘I’ve Never Been To Me.’ Way too gay boy chick flick. First that Aussie ‘Priscilla’ dude and then ‘Hedwig’? This is why more men don’t get in touch with their inner femme. The music goes all sappy!”

“OK, Big Daddy—“

“Ooo, that’s right, talk to the hand, baby!”

“What music would you accompany your fucking me nice and slow while looking soulfully into my eyes—“

“Well, if soul is the optimal term, there’s only my main man, Barry: ‘I’m Gonna Love You (love you, love you), Just A Little More, Baby.’”

“OK, just for a moment, let’s pretend you didn’t grow up in the 70s.”

“I could go with ‘The Way We Were.’ I think Hubble is a wistful character and Babs’ stock has sure gone up with the straight boys since she married James Brolin.”

“So you can only look into my eyes vulnerably when I’m not a screaming meemie in your life anymore, is that it?”

“Is that a trick question? Can we just get back to the task at hand?”

“Sure, as soon as you set the mood music scene, Romeo.”

“’We will fly, way up high, where the cold wind blows.’”

“You really shouldn’t try to sing Rickie Lee Jones, darling.”

“Always and shouldn’t. Please remind me, Magical Voice Recorder & Kinky Porno Camera Watch to bring these terms up next couple’s counseling session. ‘Or in the sun, laughing having fun, with all the people that she knows.’ Think of it more as Joe Cocker singing Rickie Lee, only raspier and slower.”

“OK, Big Boy, I’m sliding it in just to see where this goes.”

“’And if the situation, should keep us separated, you know the world won’t fall apart.’”

“Note that little back door clause while you’re at it, Magic Watch.”

“’And you will free the beautiful bird, that’s caught inside your heart.’”

“That’s right, Daddy, giddy-up, but don’t free that bird too quickly now.”

“’Can’t you hear her? Oh, she cries so loud. Casts her wild over water and cloud.’”

“Oh, yes, yeS,YES, Daddy! Meg Ryan coming sounds here!”

“’That’s the way it’s gonna be, little darlin’.’”

“You tell me, Daddy!”

“’We’ll go riding on the horses, yeah.’”

“That’s right, take me for a ride, Daddy! Faster, ride me, take me home!”

“’Way up in the sky, little darlin’. And if you fall I’ll pick you up, pick you up.’”

“I thought you said the last time you rode a horse, your saddle loosened, and you fell off.”

“Is your saddle shakin’ loose, hon?”

“Oh, no, I’m enjoying the steady gallop. Can you maintain? I don’t want to touch myself yet.”

“As long as we’re not chasing unicorns.”

“Now, while you’re inside me, feeling me from the inside out, feeling me squeeze you, my cunt reaching to your rhythm, bumping, you, sucking you, fucking your cock; now while you fill me, thrill me, keeping the pace, waiting for me to come; now tell me why it couldn’t just as easily be, ‘And if I fall, I know you’ll pick me up, pick me up,’ hmm?”

“Fine, baby, however you want to play it. You can be Shrek and Fiona, and I’ll just be the donkey, your faithful steed no matter what.”

“Really? Ooo, that just makes me want to touch myself. Really? No matter what?”

“Always.”

“Oh, yeah, Daddy! Take me home, take me home now, you Big Stud!”

Later, when Jacques’ hand and mind lay catching their breath, feeling his aura go all blue-ish orange, smoldering in sweet, sensual sensation, he would wonder at the horse-riding fantasies of many young girls and how women going from riding one to fucking one has got to be a far weirder turn than a man going from fucking a Madonna to a whore.

He turned, his elbow on the pillow, reflexively stroking his hand through the air as if her long red hair were still there, spread out like a mermaid's, as if she were still beside him, eyes closed like she sometimes kept them for a while, enjoying her private bliss before opening them to him tenderly, her eyes deep alpine lakes of pale blue sky that often grew watery when she came.

He would pull her head to his chest and feel his head on her breasts at the same time, feeling comforted in comforting her, in feeling her tears, if only in his throat. He would know then why she needed this, wanted this, why she needed to make sure even as she fucked and sucked him, he was with her and not just a bent over blow up, bobbing head doll.

Of course, he would kiss her forehead, brushing the tears from her cheeks with his lips. Of course, “I worship you,” he’d whisper.

Then he’d look down and see once again the empty pillow, the tears finally coursing from his throat to his eyes, darkening small dots of pillowcase like raindrops on pavement. Of course, I still miss you, but how long shall I mourn? How long shall I sing to you in the night and feel the sweet seduction of your hands, your lips, your words? How long until every woman I meet is no longer compared to the memory of you?