Latex Reunion

I'd been on that fetish forum for five years. Five years of late-night messages with a woman from Texas, and it took me until this October to actually book the flight. Dustin, forty-four, librarian from Ohio, and it took me five years to do a thing I could have done in five minutes.

Not that I'm complaining about the five years. The five years were good. April and I traded messages about everything, not just the latex stuff. She'd send me photos from whatever country she was in that month, and I'd send her pictures of the new acquisitions cart at the library, which sounds boring but she claimed to love it. We talked about her terrible ex-boyfriend and my dead houseplants and whether Paris was overrated. Neither of us had ever been.

Somewhere in there, around year two, the conversation drifted to the actual reason the forum exists. She mentioned she'd never worn latex. I admitted I'd thought about it constantly since I was twenty-five and saw a woman in a black dress at a concert in Cleveland and lost the ability to speak for about an hour.

After that we talked about it the way some couples talk about buying a boat. Someday. Definitely someday. We even set a date once, three years ago, and I cancelled because of a work thing that was not actually a work thing, I was just terrified. She was gracious about it. So we set another date the following spring and I cancelled that one too. She was gracious about it again. That's a hell of a thing to do to a person twice, and I did it twice.

The third time I didn't let myself think. I bought the plane ticket, sent her the confirmation number, and turned my phone off for an hour so I couldn't take it back.

So that's how I ended up standing in a tiny Airbnb in the 11th arrondissement, holding a garment bag that contained the two most expensive purchases of my life, listening to the courtyard below while some French guy argued cheerfully with somebody about parking.

The apartment was small and warm. Tall windows, a bed that seemed to judge what we were planning, a kitchenette nobody would ever cook in. It was perfect.

The knock came at four.

I opened the door and there she was. April, forty-two, shorter than I'd pictured, with dark hair cut short and a huge smile and a rolling suitcase that looked like it had survived several airports.

"Dustin!" she said.

"April."

We did the hug. It was awkward. One arm each, the weird pat on the back, the whole dance, and then we both pulled back and laughed at the same time.

"God, that was terrible," she said, coming in and dropping the suitcase. "Five years and we hug like coworkers."

"We can redo it later."

"We absolutely can. Is this the place? It's so cute. Oh my god, the windows." She went straight to them and looked down into the courtyard. "Listen to that. That's Paris arguing about a scooter. I've read about that."

"You've written about that. You've literally been paid to write about that."

"Paid to write about it, never done it. Travel blogging is mostly writing about places from hotel rooms, Dustin. You know that."

I did not know that, but I believed her.

She turned around and clocked the garment bag on the bed. I saw her eyes go to it, then to me, then back to it.

"What's that?"

"Well," I said. "Remember how we were supposed to do this three years ago and I chickened out?"

"Vividly. I have a whole folder of drafts where I told you off."

"I never sent the angry drafts," I said. "I read them and felt bad, but I never deleted them."

"You read them? Dustin, those were private!"

"They were in a shared draft folder, technically. Forum thing." I picked up the bag. "Anyway. Since I ruined it the first two times, I figured the third time I'd better show up with more than an apology."

I unzipped it. Inside, folded in tissue paper like something from a store that hates customers touching things, was a black latex dress. Short, high neck, long sleeves. I'd spent two weeks choosing it and then another week convincing myself I hadn't lost my mind.

April went very still. Then she made a sound, half laugh, half something else, and sat down on the bed.

"You didn't."

"I did."

"That's latex. That's actual latex. Can I... can I touch it?"

"It's for you. Touching it is the whole point of it."

She picked it up like it was a bird that might fly off. The light from the window hit it and it shone like wet stone. She ran her thumb along the shoulder seam and just looked at it.

"I've written about this," she said quietly. "Like four hundred times. Interviewed designers. I own exactly zero of it. Isn't that stupid?"

"It's not stupid. I've thought about it for nineteen years and I own zero of it too."

"Wait. What's the rest of the bag?"

"Other half's mine. Pants and a top. Black. I have no idea if it fits. The guy at the shop asked me a bunch of questions and I panicked and agreed to all of them."

She laughed, that real laugh I'd only ever gotten through a screen. "You let a latex shop salesman dress you?"

"I let a latex shop salesman have opinions and I nodded until he stopped talking. It could be a crop top. It could be a poncho. We'll find out together."

She was still holding the dress up against herself, looking down at it. The afternoon light was doing something unfair to her face.

"I'm nervous," she said. "Which is ridiculous, we've talked about this exact moment for years."

"It's not ridiculous. I've rehearsed this afternoon in my head about a hundred times and I'm currently standing like a coat rack."

"Ok, but real talk." She set the dress down carefully on the bed, the way you'd set down eggs. "We've never actually done anything. We've never even kissed. Five years of talking and we're basically strangers who know each other's entire lives."

"I know. That's why I want to say it plainly before anything happens." I took a breath. "I want this. I want to kiss you, and I want us to put all this stuff on, and I want to spend tonight finding out if the thing we've been building for five years is real. But only if you want it too. Say so, or say not, and either way we're fine."

She looked at me, and this time it wasn't a screen between us, and she didn't laugh or deflect.

"I want it," she said. "Obviously I want it, I got on a nine-hour flight, Dustin. But I'm glad you asked."

"Seemed important."

"It was." She stepped over and kissed me, and it was not a coworker hug. It was soft and slow and her hand came up to my jaw and I forgot every rehearsal I'd done. When we broke apart she was grinning. "Ok. Ok. That was worth five years of being an idiot about it."

"Agreed. For the record I was the idiot."

"You were the idiot."

I pointed at the bathroom door. "So. Do you want to go first? There's talcum powder in the bag, the shop guy insisted, apparently you need it to get the latex on."

"There's a whole procedure? Nobody told me there was a procedure in four hundred articles."

"He gave me a printout. A laminated printout, April. I've been carrying around laminated latex instructions through two airports."

She lost it then, laughing into my shoulder, and I held her there in the little apartment while Paris argued about the scooter downstairs.

"Alright," she said finally, wiping her eyes, picking the dress back up. "You can watch me figure out the procedure. Then you're on your own with whatever that poncho situation is."

"It's a top."

"Sure it is, baby."

She went into the bathroom and shut the door most of the way, then stuck her head back