With My All – Chapter 1 – The Shoes

The shoes were the first thing I noticed.

This is not because I am a person who thinks about shoes particularly. I am a person who thinks about people, and the shoes told me something about the person – specifically, that he was a man who had purchased footwear at some point in the recent past and had done so with the complete absence of any aesthetic consideration whatsoever. They were brown. Not a deliberate, interesting brown. An accidental brown, a color that happens to a shoe rather than being chosen for it. They had reached a stage of wear that suggested they had survived significantly more than they deserved to, held together by habit rather than structural integrity.

They were attached to a tall, skinny man in the tomato section of the farmer’s market who was holding a heirloom tomato and looking at it with the specific expression of someone who has been handed an object and is not certain what is expected of them.

“Those are the good ones,” I said.

He looked up.

Sharp features, messy brown hair, the kind of face that becomes interesting the longer you look at it. He was wearing a grey t-shirt that had been washed to the point of acquiring its own opinion about its shape, and he was looking at me with the mild, open expression of someone for whom being spoken to by strangers is neither alarming nor particularly exciting.

“Are they?” he said.

“Definitely. The ugly ones always taste better. It’s a principle.”

“A tomato principle,” he said.

“A general principle. Applies to most things.”

He looked back at the tomato. He had the quality of a person who was genuinely considering what I had said rather than just waiting for the next thing to happen.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he said.

“You should. I have strong opinions about tomatoes.”

“What else do you have strong opinions about?”

“Coffee, pavements, and Tuesdays,” I said. “In that order.”

He smiled. It was a good smile – not the performed smile of a man being charming, just the real thing, the involuntary response to something actually landing.

“What’s wrong with Tuesdays?”

“Nothing’s wrong with Tuesdays. I love Tuesdays. Everyone overlooks them.”

“I’ve never thought about Tuesdays.”

“Most people haven’t,” I said. “Which is my point.”

He looked at me for a moment. Not evaluating – just looking, with the easy attention of someone who has nowhere urgent to be.

“Do you want to get coffee?” I said. “Since we’ve established I have strong opinions about it.”

“Yes,” he said.

Simple as that.

We went to the coffee place three stalls down – the good one, the one that roasts its own beans and has the slightly superior attitude that places roasting their own beans are perhaps entitled to. I ordered for both of us because he said “whatever you think” when I asked what he wanted, which I received as a gesture of trust and which I would later understand was a characteristic mode of operation.

“I’m Kate,” I said, when we sat down.

“Damian.”

“What do you do, Damian?”

“Currently between things,” he said.

“What kind of things?”

“Most recently, logistics coordination.”

“What happened to it?”

“Management was difficult,” he said.

“Management’s often difficult,” I said.

“This was specifically difficult,” he said.

I laughed. He smiled. The coffee arrived and it was excellent and I told him about the roasting process and the difference it made and he listened with the patient, receptive attention of a man who is genuinely interested in what the person talking to him is saying, which I appreciated.

We talked for an hour and a half.

I did most of the talking, which I registered in the distant, non-concerning way of a person who is comfortable talking and is therefore comfortable with this situation. He asked enough questions to keep things moving. He had the specific quality of a good audience – attentive, occasionally surprising with an observation, never trying to redirect.

At some point I said: “Are you hungry? There’s a good place around the corner.”

“Sure,” he said.

We had dinner.

I picked the restaurant because I knew the neighborhood and he didn’t, or at least didn’t offer a suggestion, and I chose the table and ordered the wine and asked most of the questions and by the end of the dinner I knew the following things about Damian: he had grown up in a city three hours away, he had a mother he spoke to once a week, he had studied something that hadn’t led to much, he had opinions about films but not about food, and he had been single for about eight months.

He knew about my tomato principle, my Tuesday enthusiasm, my job – I was in marketing for a mid-sized company, I liked it more than I expected to – my flat, and the fact that I had a recurring disagreement with my upstairs neighbor about shared laundry access that had been running for six months without resolution.

“What do you want to do now?” I said, when we were on the pavement outside.

He looked at me.

“What do you want to do?” he said.

I considered.

“Come to mine,” I said.

He came.

The flat was not far. We walked and I talked about the neighborhood – the good baker, the bad dry cleaner, the pavement repair that had been in progress for four months – and he walked beside me with the easy, comfortable stride of someone who has been invited somewhere and sees no reason to be anxious about it.

I made tea.

We sat on the sofa and the conversation had the specific, warm quality of a late evening with someone you have been talking to all day and have not finished talking to. He sat with the comfortable looseness of a man in someone’s home, his long legs stretched out, his hands around his mug. He looked right on my sofa, which I noted.

I leaned over and kissed him.

Not tentatively – I am not tentative about things I have decided to do. He kissed me back and his hand came to my jaw, the mild, receptive warmth of a man who had been waiting to see what would happen next and is pleased with what happened next.

We moved to the bedroom.

I want to tell you about this because it was good and I believe in being accurate about good things. He was warm. Tall and warm. He undressed easily, with the unself-conscious ease of someone who has not complicated their relationship to their own body, and he looked at me with genuine, uncomplicated appreciation.

I pushed him back onto the bed.

Because that was what I wanted to do, and I had long since stopped waiting for permission to do what I wanted to do.

I climbed on top of him and his hands came to my hips with the automatic, warm grip of a man who is content with exactly what is happening. I looked down at him and he looked up at me and I took him in my hand – hard and warm, thick in my palm – and I felt the specific, excellent pleasure of a situation being exactly as good as expected.

When I took him inside me we both exhaled, the shared sound of two bodies agreeing with each other. I started to move, setting a rhythm that was mine, rolling my hips forward in the way that worked, and he held me and watched me with the warm, slightly dazed expression of a man who is receiving something good.

I rode him slowly at first, feeling the full stretch of him, the pleasure building in long, warm waves. His thumbs pressed against my hips, not directing, just grounding – the specific quality of Damian’s physical presence, which was warm and receptive and entirely without agenda. He was good at this in the way of a man who doesn’t try too hard and is therefore surprisingly effective.

I leaned forward and his mouth found my breast and the added sensation made me catch my breath, and I moved faster, the rhythm finding its pace, the pleasure building with the specific, excellent efficiency of a body that knows what it wants and is getting it.

I moved and the pleasure crested and the orgasm arrived with the clean, full satisfaction of something that was always going to happen, my whole body going bright with it, my hips grinding down against him, his hands gripping harder.

He followed me over with a low, sustained sound that I felt in my whole body.

I stayed on top of him for a moment, both of us breathing.

Then I lay down beside him and he put his arm around me with the easy, automatic warmth of someone who has always been comfortable being held and held.

“Stay,” I said.

“Okay,” he said.

He stayed.

He was still there in the morning. I made coffee – the good kind, because I had the good beans – and he appeared in the kitchen in the t-shirt he’d been wearing the night before, his hair spectacularly disheveled, the terrible shoes he had apparently put on before anything else.

I looked at the shoes and felt a warmth that was partly affection and partly the specific pleasure of a detail that remained consistent.

“Morning,” he said.

“Morning,” I said. “There’s coffee. Mugs are the second cupboard.”

He found a mug. He poured coffee. He sat at my kitchen table as if he had been sitting at it for years.

It just kept going from there.