Holding hands

A stray thought. A darkened cinema. The pleasure of his company. A settling into the scent of popcorn and chocolate and the whiff of someone else's hair oil clinging to the head rest. The plush seat, large as a hug, red, but fading to brown in the lightlessness. And at some point, perhaps in the trailers when the movie has not yet sucked us both away from the real world, we hold hands.

It is a simple thing, this knitting of fingers, a careful lacing together as if for a moment we are carefully tied. Just the thought of it is an erotic charge more powerful than the thought of climbing into his chair and mounting him, of placing my hand in his lap and testing the hardness there. The holding of hands makes the other possibilities seem like child's play. A simple basket of fingers is enough. I feel it deep in my groin. It is visceral.

I am certain I have never held hands like this in the cinema. I have sat beside someone and the longing is a graze that I can feel down one side of my body. The holding of hands is too intimate a thing for me. I know I have done the other, the careful fingers placed strategically, even once, for a second when the cinema was deserted, I shifted onto his lap and took him inside me before adjusting my skirt and settling back in my place. But the holding of hands is something more than this. It is a gentle thing, a gesture of care and I wish that I was brave enough to try it for myself.