He reached over and took my hand and—as we all knew he would—he put my hand on it. It was OK. It was more than OK. Outside of us—this world we were hurtling through—that was hard like ice is hard, shining, brittle. This was flesh. It was warm. Gently warm. The skin was very smooth, velvety smooth. Like a commercial for skin conditioner. I let it feel good to me, to my touch, my critical mind, my ego mind—all gone—just floating, flying through this tunnel of magic ice, yet being human animals, pulsing with blood, all sorts of cells—the incredible air coming through the open roof…it wasn’t sex—not for me—maybe for him—it was something more abstract, maybe more elemental, not inside the limits, the boundaries of the category sex.

He reached over and began to stroke my hair. For a moment, there was a break in the perfection. I knew that was a step toward pushing my head down and trying to get a blow job. I tried to not let that…that return to standard, sort of sordid, that cliché of sex actions, take over, because part of me was thinking that maybe it would end up being OK like holding and stroking his erection was.

Then he’s sort of thrusting with his hips up against my hand. I say sort of because the seat belt is restraining him, there’s not much of a thrust he can do, locked down like that. He releases the belt so he can get more movement and so he can squirm around if he has to, to get my head down there.

I’m trying to be nonjudgmental—pretty much being nonjudgmental—not just as a matter of professionalism, as I would normally do—but out of a feeling of that’s how we’re built, that’s what we are. If you want to say it’s God that made the trees and encased them temporarily in this magic shining ice, that’s what made us, too, with sex and the complications and the transactions…

He’s pushing up and down more, and more sensually, and more urgently, against my hand.

I feel his hand on my head, the sexual energy coming up through it. OK, a guy getting urgent and pushing harder for me to go down on him, that’s totally usual, familiar, boring…but now it’s not a hand, an arm, a dick…I don’t feel the hand, I feel the energy, and his arm, the hand, they’re just a conduit.

He’s going faster and faster. His hips. The music is playing. It’s at the part I sort of know the Ride of the Valkyries, totally bombastic. Dum da da-dum dum, dum de da dadum, dum de da da dummm.

Then, as we’re going over a slight rise, he hits a patch of black ice.