Bound to You (35 page)

We danced together for two hours, weaving in and out of one another’s movements as we got to know one another. It turned out that Joel was actually a professional dancer, just finishing a tour of Tokyo and bound for New York the following morning, ‘so I figured I’d stay up all night and sleep on the plane.’

‘Likewise!’ I laughed.

‘Well then, we’d better make the most of it!’ And with that he leaned towards me and had me whipped about in his arms before I could even pretend that I was about to venture off in the other direction. We danced like this for another hour or so, before Gina reappeared, exhausted and pointing to her wrist. We needed to catch the first train back to the hotel if we were to make our flight.

‘What’s your email address?’ he asked me. I told him. But how the hell was he going to remember it? I know. I pulled out my fuschia lipstick and scrawled my email address down his arm.

He grinned and held his arm out from his body awkwardly. ‘I’m not going to bend, I’m not going to dance, I’m not going to sweat, I’m just going to preserve your email address for as long as I possibly can on my arm here!’

It worked. He’d added me to Facebook by the time Gina and I had reached our hotel an hour later.

But before we left, Joel and I had kissed.

When I arrived back from Tokyo two days later I felt as though my internal circuit board had finally sparked back to life. I was reenergised, full of new ideas for similar travel-writing based ventures, and thinking seriously about taking the plunge to becoming a full-time freelance journalist.

Most importantly of all, finally, I felt free of Sebastian. What Japan had given me was the space to realise how toxic our relationship was, and always would be. For months he had made me feel as though I needed his affections and his attentions to feel whole, when really, I had been whole all along. It was he who had been lacking, taking advantage of my capacity to offer care and love, knowing full well he could never reciprocate.

Of course, none of this pain and heartbreak had anything to do with the BDSM aspect of our relationship. I thought about that conversation Christos and I had once had about it, my presumption and prejudice that all women that enjoyed submitting to men were damaged. I didn’t regret the sex for one moment, well, except the scissor sex. But that was so toxic precisely because of the dynamic between Sebastian and me. Besides, once you’d crossed over to kinkdom there was no going back to straight vanilla sex. In time, perhaps not too long a period of time, I’d be ready to start over with someone who relished all the pleasures it could bring, but who also understood the meaning of love and respect. I had never met anybody who had me feel so disrespected, nor so emotionally depleted. And nor inadvertently, so optimistic about the future, a future that did not contain him.

Sebastian and I were done.

Tokyo had rewired me; now I needed to make sure there was no danger of slipping back into recently acquired bad habits. Finally, I snapped out of my self-obsessed narcissism. ‘As the soul is far more worthy than the body, it deserves to be all the more cultivated and adorned.’

It was my favourite quote, ironically from the Renaissance courtier’s manual I’d sat reading the night all those moons ago when Christos had commented on my red lips. Even a book advising men on the best way to seduce women several hundred years ago, knew that real allure came from the inside. Ever since, I’d had it stuck to a small sliver of card above my desk at home, so that if I was letting petty, destructive thoughts about my appearance (or now, Sebastian) distract me from writing about rape, or the persecution of gay, bi or transgender people in Russia, or how the US government restricted safe access to abortion, I would remember what really mattered. I returned to it now. Work on your soul, I thought.

I went back to yoga. It was the practice that had taught me to appreciate my body for all it could do, not all that it couldn’t or wasn’t after I’d recovered from anorexia, and I knew it was the practice that would help me to heal now. It helped me foster a peace which permeated every other area of my life, allowed me to work under pressure more easily, reminded me to check up on my friends, to look out for the old man with the drinking problem who lived in my flat block, to ring my family and to be grateful for all my many blessings.

And then I got a cat. Ever since I’d moved to London I’d been pining for a pet. In a rare twist of serendipity, Violet sent an email around saying that an escort friend of hers had had to bring her old cat to work because it didn’t get on with her new dog. Did anyone know of someone that might re-home Brothel Kitty?

I went to meet him. He was rangily handsome, a too-white tabby with very pale green eyes, a brick-coloured nose and a striped brown chin that made him look as though he were sporting a goatee. Immediately he jumped into my lap. And so it was that I acquired Snap, the most wilful and demanding of cats.

Once re-homed with me, he was like the neediest of submissives, an expert in topping from the bottom, and would head-butt my fingers off the keyboard as I typed or scratch ferociously at the bedroom door in the middle of the night to be let in for a pet. If I’d been out all day, he would aggressively miaow when I opened the door and jump up at me, placing a white paw on my leg until he got the caresses he craved.

Gina came round to see him once he was installed. ‘Trust you to acquire a cuddle monster cat, Nichi!’

‘I know, I know,’ I laughed. ‘He got too used to being petted by lots of nice naked ladies in the brothel. But it’s a delight. Not the being woken up every night, but everything else. Although he did try to get down my top the other day . . .’

‘Please, you are not being molested by your cat!’ laughed Gina. ‘Anyway, other VIP matters – how’s the job-hunting going?’

Just as my personal life had been radically shaken up, so, on my return from Japan, was my professional one. I had come back to London to find out that, due to a lack of funds, I was being let go from my current job with immediate effect. job within a few days of arriving back in London. And yet I had quickly begun to view it as a blessing in disguise. I had no money saved and only the smallest amount of writing work lined up, but my modest successes in Tokyo had convinced me that I could make it as a freelancer if I put my mind to it.

‘I’ve only just really started properly looking, to be honest. I’ve decided I don’t want another staff job. I want to free up time to write.’

‘Hmm, sounds good. I’m wondering if there’s anyone I know who might have some contacts for you,’ Gina pondered aloud. ‘You don’t seem too stressed about it. Is that the yoga working?’

‘Partly. . . But I think it’s just more that after dealing with Sebastian, I reckon I cope with anything.’

One wet Monday, I emailed round my friends to ask if anyone had any magazine contacts I could try and tap for work. A couple of them came back with suggestions. And then Gina called me. ‘I’m putting you in touch with a friend of a friend, some guy who was looking for a copywriter for the design company he worked for. ‘He’s an absolute sweetheart. Called Jake. An all-round creative whizz and a really good egg. Drop him a line.’

As is often the case in London’s incestuous Medialand, it turned out that Jake and I had more than a few friends in common. But the Chinese whisper about looking for a copywriter turned out to be just that.

‘Nichi, I’m so sorry, I wish I could help but there’s no work going where I’m based!’

‘Oh, no worries’, I replied.

‘I’m surprised you’re job hunting though. You write about sexual politics and things, don’t you? I read all your stuff. I love your work!’

I love your work? I was just another one of the thousands of small-time journalists with odd bits in the nationals. I love your work? What a line! Who was this guy?

‘Ha! Well, that’s just the freelancer’s lot. Always touting . . . Sorry to have bothered you, Jake.’

‘Not at all! Why don’t you add me on Facebook? That way if any of my friends have any work I can point them in your direction.’

Well, sure, no problem. This was how casual networking functioned.

I signed in a few days later and had a proper look at Jake’s profile. My God, he was cute. Actually startlingly handsome with a wedge of playfully styled dark-blond hair, a wry smile,, and the sexiest, hooded brown eyes. His profile page was filled with inspiring, unstaged shots of him out with his friends; at their picnics and parties, riding, skating, trekking, and painting. Painting? Oh God, no, please no more artists. But no, he was actually studying for a Masters in Fine Art in his own time. By day, he was a successful graphic designer with his own business. I liked the look of Jake.

The next day there was a message from him. ‘Hey Nichi, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to help workwise but I actually have a favour to ask you. I’m working on a portraiture module for my Masters and I was wondering if you might let me paint you? I’m asking lots of friends and contacts on Facebook so please don’t worry if you can’t. Jake.’

Oh God. No. No painting. I began to write him a note to decline. Snap jumped up on to the desk demanding my hand and promptly sat on the keyboard. The message disappeared. This cat needed some serious housetraining. I sighed. Gina was calling, I’d sort it out later.

Later that evening, I saw Jake online. He instant messaged me.

‘Hey Nichi, how are you? Just checking if you got my email?’

Oh God, I’d completely forgotten to reply to it.

‘Hi Jake, argh, so sorry, this will sound like a mad excuse but I did reply and then Snap deleted it before I could send.’

‘Snap?’

‘Sorry! My cat!’

‘Oh! I was thinking you had some possessive, domineering bf who intercepted your communications with strange men, lol.’

‘Ha. No. Alas not.’

‘So would you be interested in the portrait?’

I took my fingers off the keyboard. I really should just have sent him an email. It was awful to get caught like this, having to explain yourself.

‘Jake, I’m really sorry but I just don’t have the time right now.’

‘Oh but you don’t need any time. You don’t need to sit for me or anything. I was just wondering if I could use one of your profile pictures and make a drawing from that.’

Oh. Oh! Bloody hell, what was I going to say now? Now I was going to have to explain why I felt awkward about him doing it. Which would make me sound all uptight and narcissistic again. Which I might have been a few weeks ago but I really wasn’t now. Well, no I was desperately trying not to be now. But I really didn’t want to have to admit my silly insecurities to Jake. Anyway I didn’t have to go in to detail. Just be firm. Invoke the domme! Say no!

‘You have the most amazing eyes. And your face is such a unique shape.’

Ha ha. That was one way of describing the golden egg!

‘Well, that’s sweet!’

‘Please?’ typed Jake and sent a pleading emoticon.

I blushed hotly in front of my computer screen. No, Nichi, no! This was the stuff that didn’t matter any more, I’d been telling myself for weeks. And yet it felt so nice to have someone pay me a compliment. I’d actually almost forgotten what it felt like.

Oh why not, what harm could it do.

Three days later Gina called me. ‘Nichi! Have you been on Facebook? Get on Facebook now!’

I looked at the clock. It was 5.52 a.m. Even Snap, who generally functioned as my alarm clock, but had been curled up next to my head on the pillow, looked aggrieved at having been disturbed.

‘Gina! Why are you up at this time?’

‘I haven’t been to bed yet, we had a lock-in at the restaurant. Anyway, did you check your FB page last night?’

Did I what? Oh, well, no. I’d been boxing with Tim, my trainer. And then I’d watched
Newsnight
and gone to bed.

‘Well log in now. While I’m on the phone to you!’

‘Gina, what the hell?’

‘DO IT, bitch!’ She affected a mock-uber-domme voice.

‘OK, OK, hang on!’

‘Can you see it yet?’

‘Gina, I’m going to hang up in a minute, hang on! Right, OK, it’s just loading now. OK I’m signed in . . . what am I looking . . .’

I answered my own question. There on the wall of my Facebook page was an exquisite painting of me. Jake had taken one of my better headshots and produced an impossibly flattering portrait colouring in my green eyes and my painted lips even more vividly. He hadn’t altered the shape of my face, but somehow my cheeks didn’t look quite so puffy painted so proficiently.

‘I told you you needed to log into Facebook!’ Gina said in triumph, ‘that’s like the biggest come-on EVER! Has anyone ever drawn a picture of you before? This guy wants you.’

‘We’ve never even met!’

‘Yeah, well that’s about to change. You’re coming to this free art festival with me on Saturday. My friend Rebecca told me about it. Jake will be there. You’re going to meet him.’

‘Gina, what are you doing, I’m not ready to meet anyone else! I’m barely over Sebastian.’

‘I’m not asking you to go out with the guy, just to hang around with someone who’s nice for once! You might make some journo contacts. Anyway, you now need to say thank you to him for stroking your bruised ego back to full health!’

I was sceptical, but there was no resisting Gina when she’d formulated one of her dogged plans. On Sunday, I met her at Trafalgar Square where the event was being held. It was an alternative art fair, brimming with stalls displaying stunning, quirky textile pieces, sculptures and paintings by all kinds of artists working in mixed media. If I hadn’t known better I might have worried that I would bump into Sebastian, but for months he’d planning to go to Amsterdam to work on an expo out there.

‘You look nice!’ said Gina when she saw me. I’d taken the opportunity to pull on a bright shift dress, electric blue and orange, open at the back to reveal a flash of bright pink bra. I’d found an amazing necklace in a shop near my house that interwove all the exact same colours in a complimentary rainbow. Plus some patent sherbet orange heels I’d bought in Japan. They were utterly lurid but I loved them. And besides, it was an art fair after all.