Skin Time

Skin time has always been at the heart of my loving. This is the best of time now with Nick. And going back decades, I think what I wanted most was the caress and glide of my skin on another human's skin. 

Nick and I get together almost daily now for lunch and a nap. That wonderful sinking into peace I allow myself when the loft has been tidied and we have flopped with a chuckle onto my bed to "assume the position." I spoon behind for most of our nap-time, but make a grumbly Nick turn over to balance us out with a few minutes on our left sides, me untangling our clothed bodies briefly from the throw blanket till we have rearranged ourselves facing the other way. 

Then a couple nights a week we will have real skin time when he stays over and we sleep together. It used to be that our naked skin on skin was a preamble to sex. Cuddling, caressing, groping, kissing were the preface, sometimes the only entry into the erotic for us. 

Now it is more often just the sacred communing of skins. Time to cuddle around his back. Kiss the bumps of his spine. My hand and forearm grazing over the hills and valleys of his side, over and over rounding on his buttocks and sliding into the trench between his legs, scooting in deeper to his warmth as he opens his leg. 

Then pulling him close to me so my entire soft front can kiss his entire lean back. This increasing intimacy as he grabs my arm wrapped across his chest, and engulfs my hand into his heart. We breathe and sigh and then our bellies share a conversation of chuckles, a rumble of deep satisfaction from the pit of the gut. The center of weight in each of us giving way just a little more into the glory of body-warmed, flannel-wrapped memory-foam. 

Skin meeting skin meets an entirely human need. Without this human touch babies die. Crib death. Children of all ages fail to thrive without a caressing touch. Even as adults, we humans, lacking sufficient human touch will become cold, unfeeling, isolated, dull shells of ourselves. Perhaps this can be ameliorated by contact with pets. Perhaps. Animal fur, after all, also provides access to a healing soup of neuropeptides--a balm for our anxious souls. 

The skin is so full of receptors--different parts of the skin encrusted with particular specialities. Some areas are more full of pleasure receptors. I delight in the discovery of where on my lover's body I can cause the swells of sense pleasure--subtle, sweet, or overwhelmingly exciting--and which tempos, how fast the entry and retreat of hand or breath or hairs on my arms. Where is a firmer and more reliable caress demanded? Where is a steady conversation of reliably adept and listening hands allowed. 

Skin time is no longer a lowly cousin of sex time. Not for me. Not for us. Skin time is the ruler of our contact kingdom.