There are needs that shape our lives without ever manifesting themselves in any conscious thought. 

We're done. Complacent and calm, we wander about drinking casually without hurry. We go out and mingle with couples and she falls into my arms each night and I never have to ask for it. I taste her for hours and we maintain a joy and a need and I foresee no reason why that should grow awry. 

I'm in the bathroom with a Dead Guy Ale, the best beer. It's from Rogue River, Oregon and it's delicious but should only be attempted by those who are calm and levelheaded. 

I have my shirt off and am shaving. I ponder who I am in the mirror and am thankful that I find it funny. I am the mirror. I leave myself empty to allow her to paint me. She is a painter, after all, but this has nothing to do with the filling procedure of hers. 

The razor comes up and the white disappears and more black dots appear in the basin. James Brown is playing and his music seems the perfect accompaniment to our circumstance. The guitar is steadfast and torpid at the same time. Funkide funkide funkide HEY! It goes and James Brown snaps his voice and I picture his head jerking up as his foot stomps emphasis and his finger snaps. "What do you think / About the key / of F?!" 

Maceo goes off on a display of color and that is like a conversation between me and my creator, my Baby. Or perpetuator. Her and I. 

We are immortal in this transient stage of growth. We have security and comfort for the first time and I stand in the bathroom and shave and she wanders in and I'm taller than she is and her skin is so comforting and it's an attraction I have with her that is stronger than everything else combined. 

She asks about a baby and my job is at a research firm and I make presentations monthly and I make three times more than the median income writing these reports. She makes twice the average and we can each have whatever pharmaceutical pills and doctor visits we want. 

"Do you think we should have a baby?" She says and I don't think. I act. But I don't pretend. I personify and I am empty and the instant anything enters me I aim to expel. Usually by entering her. This is our relationship. 

I have been under the influence of various things as of late, not necessarily any ingestible substances, more, men-of-thought; and I say, "Babe, it's all on you. I love you more than the ocean is vast and if we created that thing together it would be the best but we should think about it vs what we want to do yet, money we want to selfishly spend. Do we want to climb to Advanced Base Camp on Everest? We've always talked about that. Do we want to travel China and write our documentary and film ourselves making love on the Great Wall and sell it to Indie Nudes? Baby these are the trade-off's, do we want to start giving our life to something else at this time, or at this time plus x? or never?" 

"Plus," I say, tapping the razor underwater and bringing it for a third swipe on the lip. "It's really on you since I'm sure there is a junior Vega out there given all the sperm I donated in my collegiate days." I finish and I feel like a professor with the razor bouncing in my fingertips and my long speech and her deft attention. 

"What?" Is her even more deft response as her head stammers back and forth. I cackle and drink from my beer after toweling the white way. 

"Ohh." I soothe and put an arm around her. 

"You donated sperm to a sperm bank?" 

"Sure."

"Why?"

"Is that rhetorical?"

"No."

"Money. A biological desire to advance my genes."

I shrug and she turns away with an existential sigh that is collecting words. "I'm disappointed in that." She says and suffers me through a pause. 

"Ok."

"We're supposed to create that together. Just me and you. Not you and whoever wants to pick you out from a magazine."

I am touched at how much this means to her and I continue to shave and she simmers and broods and relaxes and her brain wanders and I finish and dress and have an expensive outfit with fashionable shoes and blazer and dress shirt and she's gorgeous and we go to a club. We dance like we don't know each other. We dance like we'll never see each other outside the dance floor. We'll go home and I may vomit. Or we may make a slow love and twirl perpendicular on the bed and joust between positions until it's me on top chasing after it wanting to slay it like a tiger stalking a fawn and it's done. 

Later we'll eat swordfish and we'll get matching tattoos and then maybe another and maybe I'll get a third without her and it'll be a manipulation of something of Warhol's and there will be an anniversary. 

She makes more friends and I buy a broken piano. I find things in the brain tickled that haven't been unfolded since youth. I'll sit for hours on the out-of-tune thing and read notes and slowly build symphonies and she'll say, after three months, "You're actually getting good." And I don't reply to that sort of talk. 

Things are lubricated and they slide accordingly. There is momentum from somewhere and we follow it. Her friends become closer to me as they become intimate with her. We still go to these clubs and we're suckers for this overpriced melancholic techno ballad at these huge warehouse clubs near the ocean. We go and dance and she's been bringing Olivia, who works with her at that place they work at, and there is never a fear of over-spending the budget on drinks. 

Olivia looks up to us and she's from Managua and adorable. She gets stood up and the three of us are on the dance floor and I make continuous runs to the bar for tall glasses of fluorescent drinks. We use them to fill up like we're Los Angeles cars simmering around the basin. We're in the club and they're both so close to me and I'm so connected to Baby's skin that it's mindless and Olivia is so close in proximity that a distance is crossed without thought and several long and angelic songs later I'm acknowledging and condoning and it's 2 and we're driving home and Baby's hand is where it belongs and Olivia can see this form the backseat and Baby's got her head turned and I try to stay within the lanes of traffic. 

Autopilot takes me home and we're under the sheets. I'm on my back and I have two hands and I like her skin. I've always wanted skin like this and she cuddles to me and Baby's pulled all four out and I have two and they each have one and they each claim things on me and who's responsibility is this wondrous act? 

Everything the Church claims to assuage is absent and we float amongst ourselves and there is no selfishness and we share. I have a duty and things fall open and places are reached and noises are delicate and sensible. The end is a slow-in-coming thing with many false ends and plateaus and false summits and crevices. 

Olivia dresses and the room is bursting with grace. The taxi leaves and Baby looks to me and for the first time in dozens of months there is a subtle pause and everything is waiting and empty. 

I dare not speak. There is a long pause as it's obvious she is about to speak. "Was that right?" 

I can only shrug. 

"Was that moral?"

Again I shrug and I'm helpless. We watch each other and the soundtrack has obdurate skips and scratches on it. I speak, "I still love you more than my bones will allow and it aches sometimes how much our love presses out from the core. It's often close to ripping apart my flesh from the inside and scattering my innards about the Walk of Fame." And it's verbose and I've always been good at this horrible sort of thing. 

That night we're extra close and the morning is slow and delicate. The night is reminiscent of a spring in Alaska. Where I stole her younger self away and was too callous and made her cry long distance to her mother and yearn to flee my beard and wicked ways. There was nowhere else to sleep that desolate night and we lay side by side. I regretted and slipped my hand into hers and she found this the cutest thing. It was simple and it worked. 

Now. Olivia is our best friend. We know each other so well and we are humans. I work for a research firm and give monthly presentations to a group around an expensive mahogany table. Baby works for the state as an honorable social worker with Nicaragua-born Olivia. We are humans and we are not slugs. We are not dolphins nor Bonobo's. Nor sex-changing fish. Obviously. We are complex and there is a wordless treaty designed for a sustainable peace.