i wore white because i knew the fabric would show more once the light disappeared.

i told him it was because tokyo had been unbearable all week.

he looked at the dress and then at me.

“very practical.”

“i’m a practical woman.”

“that’s new.”

we were standing outside a train station forty minutes from shimokitazawa, waiting for a shuttle to a summer music thing somebody he knew was playing.

i had almost cancelled that morning.

not because i didn’t want to see him.

because i did.

we had been fucking long enough that i could predict most evenings from their first ten minutes.

alcohol.

sarcasm.

some small disagreement neither of us respected enough to resolve.

his hand eventually finding the part of me that made conversation feel inefficient.

then morning.

then whatever distance we needed in order to become interesting to each other again.

i had started to suspect repetition was making us intimate without making us close.

the shuttle arrived late.

he let me take the window.

six other people were inside, including a girl with silver eye shadow asleep against another girl’s shoulder and two men discussing synthesizers with the solemnity usually reserved for war.

he put his hand on my knee.

i looked down.

“what?”

“nothing.”

“you say that too much.”

“nothing?”

“yes.”

“maybe you ask too many questions.”

his thumb moved once over my skin.

i looked out the window.

that was how the night started.

not with sex.

with a thumb.

the festival was smaller than it had looked online.

a field.

temporary speakers.

food stalls.

warm bulbs suspended above tables before the actual stars appeared.

rows of lavender beside one path, although when i touched some of it i realized it was decorative sage.

instagram agriculture.

he bought wine.

i drank mine too quickly.

not enough to become unreliable.

just enough to become less interested in pretending.

by sunset i had photographed nearly everything except him.

he noticed.

“you photographed a trash can.”

“good light.”

“but not me.”

“bad light.”

“cruel.”

“accurate.”

he took my phone.

“give it back.”

“stand there.”

“why?”

“good light.”

he took three photographs before i reached for the phone.

one looking at him.

one looking away.

one slightly blurred because i was moving.

i deleted the blurred one.

kept the others.

i preferred the photograph where i wasn’t looking at the camera.

perhaps being seen is easier when you can pretend you didn’t notice.

later, while somebody changed equipment onstage, i watched a couple disappear down a narrow path behind the taller plants.

the woman’s hand was inside the back pocket of the man’s jeans.

“where do you think they’re going?” i asked.

he followed my eyes.

“to discuss agriculture.”

“seriously.”

“you asked.”

“maybe they’re going to smoke.”

“maybe.”

neither of us believed that.

i watched the path after they disappeared.

felt something low in my stomach.

not jealousy.

recognition, maybe.

the thought had arrived before i invited it.

somewhere private.

not completely private.

his hands beneath my dress.

voices nearby.

the possibility of footsteps.

the possibility that privacy could fail.

“walk with me.”

he looked at me.

“where?”

“you ask too many questions.”

“you’re taking me into a field.”

“try to survive.”

he followed.

the sound changed first.

music losing its melody and becoming mostly bass.

conversations breaking into fragments.

someone laughing behind us.

a bottle falling somewhere and not breaking.

the path narrowed between tall plants.

not enough cover to disappear completely.

enough to make discovery uncertain.

that mattered.

i knew it mattered before i understood why.

he caught my hand.

“how far?”

“afraid?”

“of lavender?”

“sage.”

“even worse.”

i stopped beside a wooden fence.

he stopped too.

looked back toward the festival lights.

then at me.

“someone could come down here.”

i kissed him.

his hesitation lasted less than a second.

then his hand was behind my neck.

the first kiss tasted like wine.

the second like the cigarette he had smoked ten minutes earlier.

his body pressed mine against the fence.

the wood was still warm from the day.

his mouth moved down my neck.

i could still hear people.

that changed everything.

not what he was doing.

what i was noticing.

a woman’s laugh.

footsteps on gravel.

the bass arriving through the plants.

somebody calling someone’s name.

sex in private usually makes the world smaller.

this made the entire world feel present.

his hand moved beneath my dress.

“someone can see us.”

“you said that already.”

“you don’t care?”

i looked toward the path.

empty.

“not yet.”

he laughed quietly.

“you’re insane.”

“boring people say that.”

his fingers found the edge of my underwear.

then stopped.

“tell me if you want me to stop.”

“i don’t.”

“sure?”

“yes.”

he touched me through the fabric.

slowly.

i was already wet.

that was the first thing i was embarrassed by.

not him touching me.

the fact that my body had started without him.

the path.

the voices.

the possibility.

something in me had responded before there was anything physical to respond to.

his fingers slipped beneath my underwear and found my clit.

i inhaled sharply.

he smiled against my neck.

“quiet.”

“fuck you.”

“later.”

“now.”

his fingers moved lower.

inside me.

i closed my eyes.

there was something wonderfully stupid about being fingered against a fence while somebody covered an old japanese pop song badly somewhere behind us.

wong kar-wai would have given us rain and cigarettes and an aching soundtrack.

we had mosquitoes.

perhaps desire survives aesthetics because it has no need for them.

his fingers curled inside me.

my knees softened.

i caught his shoulder.

“okay?”

“yes.”

“sure?”

“don’t stop.”

he didn’t.

then we heard footsteps.

both of us froze.

his fingers were still inside me.

my hand closed around his wrist.

the footsteps came closer.

slow.

two people talking.

a woman’s voice.

a man answering.

my heart began beating harder.

fear was part of it.

not all of it.

they were somewhere beyond the plants.

six metres.

maybe four.

close enough that if they turned the corner they would understand immediately why his hand was underneath my dress.

he leaned toward my ear.

“we should stop.”

i shook my head.

he stared at me.

“seriously?”

“keep going.”

something changed in his face.

his fingers moved again.

slowly now.

carefully.

the strangers kept talking.

i couldn’t make out the words.

only the casual tone of people who had no idea they had become part of somebody else’s sex.

his thumb circled my clit while two fingers moved inside me.

i pressed my mouth against his shoulder.

he felt my body tightening around his hand.

“you like this.”

not a question.

heat moved through my face.

“shut up.”

“you do.”

“please.”

“please what?”

i looked at him.

“make me come.”

the strangers stopped walking.

my entire body became alert.

his fingers moved faster.

his thumb stayed against my clit.

i could hear the woman’s laugh.

the bass.

my breathing trapped against his shirt.

then i came so suddenly my legs shook.

i bit his shoulder.

his other hand gripped my waist.

orgasm tightened through me while two strangers stood on the other side of the plants discussing something completely ordinary.

when it passed, i stayed against him.

breathing hard.

ashamed.

turned on by the shame.

ashamed of that too.

the footsteps moved away.

he slowly pulled his hand from beneath my dress.

looked at me.

i knew what he was thinking.

“don’t.”

“i haven’t said anything.”

“your face did.”

“you wanted them to catch us.”

“no.”

“no?”

“not catch.”

he waited.

“almost.”

he laughed once.

not mockingly.

almost impressed.

the distinction sounded stupid spoken aloud.

it was also exact.

being caught would have ended the fantasy.

almost being caught was the fantasy.

he unfastened his trousers.

“still want almost?”

i looked at the path.

then at him.

“yes.”

he took a condom from his wallet.

“you planned this?”

“i’m an optimist.”

“disgusting.”

he rolled it onto his cock.

i pulled my underwear aside.

he looked at me once more.

“sure?”

“yes.”

he lifted one of my legs.

then entered me.

slowly.

the first push made my head touch the fence behind me.

“fuck.”

“quiet.”

i almost laughed.

then he moved again and laughter disappeared.

his hand stayed beneath my thigh.

mine went around his neck.

we fucked with the path visible over his shoulder.

every few seconds i looked.

not because i wanted someone to appear.

because i wanted to know they could.

his cock moved inside me.

the fence shifted faintly against my back.

my dress gathered around my hips.

the world remained stubbornly present.

voices.

wind.

music.

the occasional movement of somebody beyond the plants.

sappho understood the body as mutiny long before anyone had a word like exhibitionism: heat, trembling, language failing while desire calmly produces its own evidence.

i had always thought being watched frightened me.

apparently the sentence had been incomplete.

being watched without choosing it frightened me.

choosing the possibility was something else.

his breathing changed.

he moved harder.

i tightened around him.

“look at me,” he said.

i did.

and that was when the fantasy changed.

for several minutes i had been thinking about strangers.

hypothetical eyes.

anonymous witnesses.

then there was only his face.

actually watching me.

knowing.

he knew that footsteps had made me wetter.

knew i had asked him to continue.

knew i wanted the possibility of somebody seeing me being fucked.

that frightened me more than the path did.

“don’t look at me like that.”

“like what?”

“like you know.”

his hand tightened against my thigh.

“i do know.”

i hated him for being right.

he fucked me harder.

i came again with my eyes open.

no footsteps this time.

no strangers.

just him watching my face while my body stopped belonging entirely to composure.

afterward he pulled out and stepped back.

my dress fell around my thighs.

three seconds.

maybe four.

respectability restored.

he tied the condom, wrapped it in a tissue, and put it in his pocket until we found a bin.

the practicality was almost obscene.

i laughed.

“what now?”

“nothing.”

he stared at me.

“you’re impossible.”

“you knew that.”

“not this part.”

that sentence stayed longer than it should have.

not this part.

someone can know the geography of your body and still discover an entire country inside your imagination.

this is where the fantasy stops being about strangers.

so far, you know i wanted the possibility of being caught.

what follows includes:

the first time i admitted i had imagined being watched before.

why describing the fantasy embarrassed me more than fucking outdoors.

what he asked me to do once he understood it.

the difference between exposing my body and exposing the thing that made me wet.

another orgasm.

and why being understood by one person eventually frightened me more than being seen by ten strangers.

continue reading aftertaste — $9/month

what if strangers are easy because they can see everything without knowing what any of it means?

Subscribe now

i had already decided to fuck him before he arrived.

this is the first fact that makes everything afterward less flattering.

i could blame bangkok. the heat. the wine. the temporary moral amnesia of sleeping somewhere that does not contain your own toothbrush.

but the decision had happened before dinner.

in front of the mirror.

while choosing the black dress.

while putting on underwear i would not have chosen if i genuinely believed i was going straight back to my hotel alone.

sex begins earlier than penetration.

sometimes it begins while packing.

while shaving.

while deciding whether a dress says i happened to look like this convincingly enough.

while imagining somebody seeing you before you have admitted that being seen is the point.

i took a photograph in the restaurant bathroom because i did not want to return to the table yet.

the wall behind me was covered in artificial ferns. gold mirrors multiplied everything: my face, my body, the stupid black dress, the woman who already knew exactly where the evening was going and still preferred to call it uncertainty.

he was outside smoking.

we had barely spoken properly in a month.

this had not prevented him from sending evidence of himself.

a song at 1:43 in the morning.

rain against a taxi window.

his guitar on a floor i didn’t recognize.

convenience-store coffee.

objects offered instead of sentences.

i resented every one.

i saved every one.

when i returned to the table, his eyes moved down the dress and back to my face.

“what?”

“nothing.”

“you always say that.”

“because you always ask.”

his knee touched mine beneath the table.

neither of us moved.

“you disappeared,” i said.

“i was working.”

“people can work and remain reachable.”

“you could have called.”

“i did.”

“once.”

“twice.”

“one was after four.”

“you were awake.”

he smiled.

there are people who know exactly how much arrogance they can afford because they have already measured your desire against your anger.

i wanted to slap him.

i wanted his mouth on mine.

the distance between those impulses had become embarrassingly small.

after dinner he asked where i was staying.

“why?”

“curious.”

“about hotel architecture?”

“exactly.”

“download tripadvisor.”

he laughed.

i hated how much i had missed the sound.

this was probably the first betrayal of the evening.

not taking him upstairs.

recognizing him.

outside, bangkok was still hot enough after midnight to make everyone look slightly guilty.

he kissed me beside a convenience store.

fluorescent lights behind us.

a delivery bike parked badly against the curb.

somebody inside examining instant noodles with more seriousness than either of us had ever applied to the relationship.

nothing cinematic.

thank god.

i am suspicious now of memories that arrive beautifully lit.

his cigarette was still between two fingers.

his other hand moved behind my neck.

i tasted smoke and wine.

then his body was against mine and the month i had spent arranging my resentment into something intelligent collapsed almost immediately.

desire is humiliating partly because it has no respect for chronology.

anger requires memory.

the body prefers the present tense.

in the taxi, his hand rested on my thigh.

still.

that was worse than movement.

movement asks.

stillness assumes.

his thumb moved once against my skin.

my body reacted.

i looked through the window because looking at him would have turned response into confession.

there are ancient poems about this exact humiliation.

sappho describing the body becoming impossible to govern before the mind has agreed to anything: heat, trembling, language collapsing precisely when language would be useful.

thousands of years later, we have ride-share apps and air-conditioning.

otherwise, very little has improved.

his hand moved slightly higher.

philosophy became less useful.

upstairs, i kicked off my shoes before the door had properly closed.

he laughed.

“what?”

“nothing.”

“say that again and i’m charging you.”

“for what?”

“emotional labor.”

“you’d be rich.”

“you’d be bankrupt.”

he kissed me.

hard enough that my back touched the door.

his mouth moved along my neck.

my hands went beneath his shirt.

his skin was warm from outside.

real in a way messages never are.

“still angry?” he asked.

“yes.”

“doesn’t feel like it.”

“fuck you.”

“that appears to be the plan.”

i laughed.

then hated myself slightly for laughing.

the zipper of my dress was at my side.

he couldn’t find it.

“other side.”

“i know.”

“apparently not.”

“stop talking.”

“make me.”

he kissed me again.

the dress came off.

i stood there in my underwear while he looked at me.

there are ways of being naked that have almost nothing to do with clothing.

i was more exposed by the look than by the absence of fabric.

i had spent a month pretending i did not care whether he wanted me.

now i was standing in front of him waiting for proof.

his hands settled at my waist.

then my breasts.

then along my thighs.

my body responded with an immediacy that embarrassed me.

i wanted resentment to have biological consequences.

i wanted self-respect to produce some physical refusal.

instead i was wet.

there is something almost offensive about the independence of the body.

you can have principles.

memory.

evidence.

the body receives touch and develops its own opinion.

we fucked before either of us apologized.

before he explained the previous month.

before i asked the question hiding underneath almost every other question i had asked him.

the first moments were clumsy.

my necklace caught against his mouth.

his knee struck the edge of the mattress.

i laughed.

he told me to shut up.

then his fingers moved between my thighs and humor became temporarily impossible.

this is another thing i dislike about pleasure.

its complete lack of ideological discipline.

my mind had spent weeks constructing a case against him.

my body crossed the picket line.

when he entered me, i closed my eyes.

not because it hurt.

because it felt familiar.

that was worse.

my body remembered him faster than i wanted it to.

how close to pull him.

how his breathing changed.

the pressure of his hand at my hip.

the rhythm that made thinking increasingly difficult.

familiarity can impersonate intimacy almost perfectly.

he knew where to touch me.

i knew when his body was beginning to lose control.

for a while, this knowledge felt more important than anything either of us could have said.

he pushed my hair away from my face.

“look at me.”

i opened my eyes.

there was nothing ambiguous in his expression.

that was what i had missed.

not simply sex.

certainty.

for those minutes i did not need to interpret a message.

guess at silence.

calculate distance.

his body wanted mine.

it was the clearest sentence he had given me in weeks.

i came with my face turned toward his shoulder.

orgasm interrupted thought with the efficiency of violence.

for several seconds there was no unanswered message.

no past month.

no future.

only sensation.

then sensation ended.

the room returned.

then he did.

then i did.

afterward he lay naked beside me drinking water.

i watched his throat move when he swallowed.

“what?” he asked.

“nothing.”

“liar.”

his phone was facedown beside his trousers.

i had noticed that before we fucked.

now i noticed it differently.

there are questions you should ask before somebody takes off your underwear.

i asked mine afterward.

“are you fucking someone else?”

he stopped drinking.

not dramatically.

just enough.

the pause answered before he did.

“why are you asking that now?”

i laughed.

“excellent.”

“i’m serious.”

“so am i.”

“we never said we were exclusive.”

“that isn’t what i asked.”

silence again.

“are you fucking someone else?”

he looked at me.

“yes.”

this is where knowing changes the meaning of everything that came before it.

so far, you know i asked after we fucked.

what follows includes:

the woman i immediately invented in my head.

the evidence against my own innocence.

why i asked him not to leave anyway.

the second time i fucked him after knowing.

what jealousy did to pleasure.

what orgasm absolutely failed to resolve.

and the small gesture afterward that hurt more than hearing there was someone else.

continue reading aftertaste — $9/month

Subscribe now

what happens when your mind accepts the truth before your body has any intention of obeying it?

i woke up this morning to sunlight coming through the blinds in stripes across my skin and my first thought was about someone i’ve been trying not to think about for three months.

not a dramatic thought. not a painful one exactly. just — him. the way he laughs at things before they’re funny yet. the specific way he says my name when he’s about to say something he thinks i won’t want to hear. small things. the kind that shouldn’t matter and somehow matter the most.

i lay there for a long time letting the light move.

i’ve been doing this thing lately where i tell myself i’m over something and then my subconscious completely ignores me. i’ll go three, four days feeling genuinely fine. making coffee. writing. taking photos of morning light because that’s the kind of thing i do when i’m okay. and then something small happens — a song, a smell, a certain quality of afternoon — and i’m back at the beginning again. not dramatically. just quietly. the way water finds its level.

i’ve started to think that desire doesn’t actually respond to decisions.

we talk about it like it does. we say things like i’ve decided to move on and i’m choosing not to want this anymore as if wanting is a position you can simply change, like switching seats. as if the body doesn’t have its own memory. as if the specific way someone made you feel can be reasoned away by sufficient willpower and the right number of weeks.

i’ve tried willpower. it’s exhausting and it doesn’t work.

here’s what i’ve noticed instead. the wanting doesn’t go away. but it changes texture over time. in the beginning it’s sharp and everywhere — you’re aware of it constantly, it interrupts things, it makes the ordinary feel slightly unbearable. then slowly it becomes something more like background noise. still there. you’d notice if it stopped. but you can function around it. you can have whole days where it recedes and you remember what it felt like to just be in your own life without the weight of someone else’s absence in it.

and then a morning like this one happens and it’s sharp again for a minute.

i don’t think that means i haven’t moved on. i think it just means i’m human and he mattered and the body keeps its own records regardless of what the mind decides.

i’ve been thinking about something hana said to me last month. we were on the phone late, the kind of call that happens when it’s too late to talk about anything except the real things, and she said — you know the problem isn’t that you still want him. the problem is that you’re ashamed of it. like wanting someone who isn’t choosing you back is a personal failure.

i didn’t say anything for a long time.

she’s right. that’s the thing that’s actually hard. not the wanting itself but the story i’ve attached to it. the idea that if i were stronger or smarter or more evolved i would have stopped by now. that the desire itself is evidence of some weakness i haven’t fixed yet. that i should be able to decide and have my body comply.

but desire isn’t a decision.

it’s more like weather. it moves through you without asking permission. you can’t control whether it arrives. you can only decide what you do while it’s there. do you text him. do you book a flight to taipei. do you reread the conversation from last november for the fourth time looking for something you might have missed. or do you just — let it be there. acknowledge it. let the light move across your skin and think about him for a minute and then get up and make coffee and write something honest about it.

i’ve been choosing the last one lately.

it doesn’t feel like strength exactly. it feels more like acceptance. like i stopped fighting the weather and just started dressing for it.

the sunlight moved off the bed completely while i was writing this.

i made coffee. i thought about him one more time. then i sat down and wrote this instead of texting him.

that feels like enough for today.

— rina

unlock a new image

Subscribe now

i never really plan anything. i just get to a point where staying somewhere feels like lying to myself and leaving feels like the only honest thing left to do. so i booked a flight. packed badly. ended up standing on a bridge in lucerne at 11am watching the water move under it and thinking about kai.

Subscribe now

i’m always thinking about kai.

Read more

i wasn’t looking for sunflowers. i was just driving because i needed to be moving and i can’t think properly when i’m still. something about momentum makes the hard things easier to look at. like if you’re going fast enough the thoughts can’t quite catch you.

they always catch you eventually.

Subscribe now

Read more

i was just walking because kai texted me that morning and i didn’t know what to do with my body after that. not a big text. not a declaration. just three words that meant nothing and everything depending on how you read them. which is the most kai thing he has ever done. which is why i’ve been in love with him on and off for two years in a way i’ve never fully admitted out loud.

Read more

Subscribe now

i was twenty two when i understood that you can miss someone who never actually existed.

not died. not left. just — never fully arrived. they were there, technically. physically present. texting back. showing up. but there’s a version of someone you build in your head when you like them, and that version is so vivid, so specific, so achingly real that when the actual person disappoints you, you don’t grieve them.

you grieve the one you invented.

i think that’s what most heartbreak actually is. not the loss of a person. the loss of a possibility. the death of the future you had already started living in your head before anyone gave you permission to.

we are so strange like that. humans. we fall in love with potential. with almost. with the 2am version of someone who says the right things in the dark and means none of it in the daylight. and we know. somewhere underneath all the hoping, we always know. but knowing and leaving are two completely different skills and most of us were never taught either.

i stayed in something once that had expired a long time before i admitted it. i kept showing up to something that had already ended, rearranging the furniture, telling myself it still felt like home. and maybe that sounds sad. but i think there was something quietly brave about it too. about refusing to stop believing in something. even when the evidence told you to.

the philosopher simone weil wrote that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. i used to think that was about kindness. now i think it’s about love. really paying attention to someone — not the story you’ve written about them, not the potential you’ve projected onto them, but the actual person standing in front of you — is maybe the hardest thing we ever do.

and the inverse is also true.

being truly seen, not idealized, not needed, not convenient — just seen, exactly as you are — is so rare that most of us have never experienced it. so we settle for being wanted. which feels similar enough, until it doesn’t.

i don’t know where i’m going with this.

i think that’s the point.

aftertaste isn’t going to give you answers. i don’t have them. i’m writing this from the middle of figuring it out, same as you. but i think there’s something in the writing itself. in saying the quiet part out loud. in sitting with the uncomfortable feeling long enough to name it.

you found this for a reason.

glad you’re here.

— rina 🖤

Leave a comment

Share