I noticed without paying attention

By all rights, neither of us should have been particularly interested in sex. My period was coming to an end but its conclusion hadn’t yet been announced by the sudden flaring of horniness that I’ve come to expect in recent months. As for him, that problem with the valve in his heart had spooked him (the thought of popping one’s aorta will do that, no matter how unlikely the eventuality) but he was getting over the nauseous novelty of it and had started applying a more realistic yardstick: he needed to keep his pulse low enough not to incite the fluttering of heavy moth wings in his chest.

We’d both had emotional ups and downs; his vague promise of playtime in the evening turned into “I’m not really in the mood anymore”. Promises, or even suggestions, create expectations and I’d had too many let-downs.

Fuck it. Start over, tabula rasa. Let’s just be close and see what, if anything, happens.

In the mellow lamplight we both warmed a little. I stroked his cock through his underwear. Then the underwear was removed, he reclined, and I leaned across his lap, propped on my left elbow. I stroked him some more. I noticed without paying attention to the purple and yellow bruises on his right groin and upper thigh, at the site of the puncture for the angiogram and a few inches below. Bruises can come out in unpredictable ways as gravity draws the blood down within the body before it surfaces again and leaves angry stains.

I leaned forward, licked the slick drop of dew from the tip of his cock. Holding him at the best angle, I lightly touched the tip of my tongue to his frenulum, stroking delicately up and down. I ran the tip of my tongue around the corona, first this side then that side, listening to his breath.

When I took his glans into my mouth, sucking gently, I felt the smoothness of his skin against my tongue and lips, heard him suck air through his teeth, and watched how, when I withdrew, the base of his cock clenched. I noticed without paying attention to the patch on the right side of his cock where the hair was shaved. A clench must feel good, so I kept up the light sucking, focused on eliciting this one small reaction.

He decided to masturbate to his finish. I noticed without paying attention to the clear-and-red plastic ID bands encircling both of his wrists. I knew they each bore his name, age, gender, a bar code, and numbers whose significance I could not divine. The bands that he had slid up his arms as high as they’d go so they wouldn’t move and draw any more of his attention. The bands that he concealed with a long-sleeved shirt, despite the late summer heat, whenever he left the house. The bands that serve as a constant reminder, like a thread tied around one’s finger (does anyone do that anymore? did anyone ever do that?) that he has major surgery coming up. Don’t forget, now!

His head was against the wall, upper torso supported by my dense pillow. I reclined in the opposite direction, our left sides together: my knees were together just above his cock, my left knee bent so that my lower leg touched the bed, my right leg straight across his chest. When he stroked himself to his climax, his come crisscrossed and warmed my leg. I noticed without paying attention to his heartbeat.