Praise (25 page)

I looked at my drink. I hadn't expected this.

I said, ‘Speech is such a definite thing.'

‘So?'

I thought for a long time, staring at my drink.

I started again. ‘Maybe it's a matter of sincerity. I'm never that certain of anything I feel about a person, and talking about it simplifies it all so brutally. It's easier to keep quiet. To act what you feel. Actions are softer. They can be interpreted in lots of different ways, and emotions
should
be interpreted in lots of different ways.'

‘But people are never going to understand you.'

‘People are never going to understand you if you tell them things, either. It'd be even worse.'

She shook her head.

‘It's been weird,' she said, ‘watching you go through the women. They get so infatuated with you. I don't know why.'

‘You know me better than they do, that's all.'

She was staring at me.

‘You do have a certain sort of look, I suppose.'

‘It's not the way I look. It's more to do with the fact that I don't represent any sort of threat to anyone.'

It was an important statement. What I meant was that because I had no particular life or commitments of my own, I was never going to threaten the life or commitments of anyone else. It could be a frightening thing, looking at how a possible relationship might change the way you existed. In that respect at least, I was a safe option.

Rachel was looking away to the hills again.

‘I don't know about
that
,' she said.

Around midnight we went to bed. Rachel put me in one of her brothers' bedrooms. I didn't kiss her goodnight and I didn't make any offers. It was a cool evening. I curled up in the single bed and thought about Rachel, curled up in her single bed. I thought about her body, the way it would curl. It was a solid, angular body. It was almost sexless. But it did something to me.

It was excitement and sadness.

I'd seen her bedroom. There was a jar of Vaseline on the bedside table.

They weren't noble thoughts, but they were still sad.

What did she do, I wondered, with that Vaseline?

Next day Rachel saddled up her old horse and went riding. I didn't like horses. Large animals in general. I had no sympathy for them, or for people who liked them. I watched her move up the hills. It looked awkward. A little stiff. She hadn't ridden for some time. She disappeared.

I didn't know what I'd hoped for from the weekend.

Depression settled.

Things were back to normal.

Rachel.

Again.

I couldn't stop thinking about her. Once we were back in Brisbane I travelled over to her place every few days, to get out of the flat. Life was slow. I was sleeping fifteen or sixteen hours a day, staring at TV. I needed the conversation.

They were strange days. I didn't understand why I was there, what it was I wanted from Rachel. I understood that she wanted nothing from me but friendship. I understood that all I could do was hurt her if I pushed it further than that. And I understood that she didn't even have any of the qualities I was attracted to in a woman. Lust or greed or impatience. She was sympathetic, she was sincere. It was all wrong.

And I had nothing to offer her. She told me about her men. They weren't anything like me. She talked about the love, she talked about the sex. She discussed it all in emotional terms. What the love meant. What the sex meant.

I didn't care what the sex meant. I only wanted to know what happened. If she enjoyed it, if she came. I watched her talking and I thought how wide did she open her mouth to fit his penis in? Did she even do that? What
did
they do? How often? Where? How did she undress? How did he undress? Did they do it fast, did they do it slow? What noises did she make? What did she say? How did they sleep when it was over?

I imagined Rachel naked. I masturbated over it. I wrote poems about her. It depressed me, disgusted me. I couldn't keep away from her. I even tried to sort out the attraction, rationalise it the way Rachel herself might have, but there were no answers. When I was away from her I could make judgements. I could see the impossibility of it all. But once I was with her again, once I could see her, smell her, listen to her voice, it all slipped away. Something unnamable took over. Something deeper than reason.

Reason said I should have stayed with Cynthia. Cynthia was everything Rachel wasn't. It was obvious Cynthia was right for me and I was right for her. And yet it still hadn't worked.

Then it was a Sunday night. Rachel, Frank and I were drinking at the Queen's Arms. Things were pretty slow, the crowd was small, but we were drinking steadily enough. We were talking about Cynthia. The bar staff, all her old workmates, kept coming over and asking me how she was.

Frank had to work next morning. About nine he called a cab and left. Rachel and I drank on. When the bar closed, we began walking home to my place. We were both drunk.

‘Gordon,' she said, ‘I think you should stop talking about Cynthia. You should stop calling her and stop thinking about her. You're never going to get over her if you go on like this.'

‘I don't think it's really up to me. Anyway, I need the phone calls to Darwin. They're difficult, but they're important. It's something to do with sanity.'

‘How?'

‘Because
Cynthia
has sanity. It's not obvious, but if I really think about her behaviour, it makes sense. I can't say that for anyone else I know.'

‘She was crazy, Gordon.'

‘No. She just understands some difficult things.'

‘Like what?'

‘Like nothing bad should
ever
be accepted gracefully.'

‘Bullshit, Gordon. She's four weeks out of your life and you've already forgotten all the reasons why you hated her.'

She was wrong. I hadn't forgotten.

About a block from home I stopped off at a takeaway to order a hamburger. Rachel wasn't hungry. She said she'd walk on and meet me back at the flat. She'd kept that old liking for walking the streets alone at night.

I waited five minutes or so for the burger. Then I started off. Halfway there I looked up a side street and saw Rachel wandering along the footpath. I called out. She turned around and came back.

‘Help me, Gordon,' she said. ‘I'm lost.'

I put my arm around her. ‘Where were you going?'

‘I don't know, I don't know.'

We made it home. We sat in front of the TV while I ate. Then I said, ‘I'm going to bed, Rachel. You can have half the mattress, if you want. I'll drive you home in the morning.'

She thought about it. ‘Okay. Thanks.'

We went to bed. Normally I slept naked. This time I put on some shorts. Rachel took off her jeans and lay down next to me.

We talked for a while. We were very close, our hips were touching. Rachel rolled towards me and put her head on my shoulder.

‘Rachel, I don't think you should do that.'

‘Do what?'

‘Touch me.'

‘Why not?'

‘I want more from this than you do.'

She took hold of my arm. She was quiet a long time.

Then she said, ‘Don't be too sure.'

I thought, Oh my God.

I couldn't think of anything to say.

I kissed her.

She kissed back.

It was The Miracle.

Our mouths worked open.

I thought, I'm kissing Rachel, I'm kissing
Rachel
.

And it was good. I couldn't compare it to kissing Cynthia, or to kissing anyone. I couldn't even remember what anyone else had been like. This was ten years of fantasy and repression coming true. This was frightening. This was Rachel, this was Rachel's
mouth
.

We rolled together. I was erect, but I didn't press it against her. I was convinced that whatever Rachel was doing with me, it had nothing to do with my penis or my warts.

I ran my hands along her sides, along her T-shirt. Rachel was tall. Her sides were long and smooth. They curved out with her hips and then ... then I was at the end of the T-shirt.

I slid a finger under the hem. I thought, She can't want this,
surely
she can't want this.

She didn't stop me. I moved my hand under. I was touching naked skin. Her stomach. It was hot, soft, dry. I moved my hand up. We weren't kissing any more. I was lying on my side. She was lying on her back. I was running my hand across her stomach. Upwards. It was happening. And Rachel ... I wasn't sure
what
she was doing. Maybe nothing. Maybe she was just lying there, waiting.

I was at her breasts.

If you don't stop this now, Rachel, I thought, if you don't stop this now ...

Her breasts were small. With my other hand I raised the T-shirt to uncover them. It was dark in the room. I couldn't see anything, but my hand was there, and the tips of my fingers. I found a nipple, rolled a finger around it, across it.

She made a sound.

She said, ‘I want you to touch me, Gordon.'

And I was.

Touching
Rachel
.

My brain wouldn't accept it. It was worse than I could ever have imagined.

I was kissing her breasts,
Rachel's
breasts, sucking them, catching them between my teeth. Her hands,
Rachel's
hands, were on my back, in my hair ...

Then my hand was moving down again, along
Rachel's
side, over
Rachel's
hip,
Rachel's
panties, along
Rachel's
leg, back up again, along
Rachel's
thigh, down inside to the flat stretch of her panties, across it, feeling that it was wet,
Rachel
was
wet
, then down along the other thigh, back up again.

Then my fingers were under the hem of her panties, into her pubic hair. It was thick, curled. Then on through the hair, down, under the stretch of elastic. The hair gave out and then there was just skin. A fold that opened into Rachel's cunt.
Rachel's
cunt. And Rachel's cunt was warm and wet and open, just a little. I was running my fingers around the edges, up to the clitoris. It hardened, moved under my finger.

And Rachel was making noises and pushing against my hand.

Then I was kissing her breasts again. Then sliding down her chest, hooking my hands under her panties, pulling them down. Lifting her hips. Pulling the panties over her ankles.

And then my head was between her legs.

Vaginas.

There were several billion of them out there in the world. Women were raised with them, examined them, got used to them, knew about them. But men, what could men do? What could they ever hope to understand? Vaginas were baffling. They spent most of their lives closed up and unthought of, but they were never still. They sweated and moved. They suffered disease, hid disease, harboured disease. They grew stale, smelt terrible, contracted so that not even a finger could get in, expanded so that a baby could get out. They tore open, healed, had spasms, itched, bled, passed urine. They took pleasure, took pain, lubricated, didn't lubricate, stretched over the years, lost shape, had large lips, had no lips, had hair, had no hair, had depth, had curves, had lumps and creases and folds.

And they were part of a
woman
. And if something happened to a vagina, it happened to a woman. And anything that a man did to a vagina, he did to a woman.

But a man could never know exactly what it was he was doing.

When he found himself there.

I nuzzled my way in. Rachel's legs fell to the sides. She smelt light, good. She smelt like Cynthia. She was wetter, though. Cynthia never lubricated very well. I ran my nose up and down the slit, breathing on it, wondering what it felt like for her. I knew it was unhealthy to breathe into vaginas. I didn't know why. I pushed out my tongue, ran it around the rim for a while. My mouth slotted around it perfectly. The lips of Rachel's cunt were small tight ridges, smooth and uncomplicated. I moved my mouth up to where the lips joined and licked the spot until I had her clitoris exposed again and swollen. I squeezed my hands under her buttocks. I lifted her a little. Settled down to it with my tongue.

I didn't expect it to work. It wasn't like anything else, other times and other women. I had no confidence. Not when it came to Rachel, not like this. And confidence was everything. I developed a rhythm with my tongue, up down, up down, treating her clit as if it was a nipple. Rachel pushed with her hips, pulled back, made noises, ran her hands through my hair. My tongue began to ache. Maybe it was working, maybe it wasn't. I was worried about Rachel. Oral sex could be such a horrible thing for the one who had to receive it. It wasn't like fucking. There was the terrible onus of having to enjoy it.

Maybe she wasn't enjoying it? Maybe she wasn't enjoying it at all? Maybe she was just trying to, for my sake, and the longer my tongue licked up and down, the worse it became. The worse it became for us both. Maybe it was failing. Maybe I'd go on until my tongue couldn't take it any more and I'd pull away and she'd make uncertain movements and say something like, ‘That was nice'. And we'd be left with it. That word. Nice.

And this was it, this was all there was. I knew we weren't going to be fucking. I knew I wouldn't even be fucking her with my fingers. This was all we were going to have.

But then it
worked
.

Rachel's breathing deepened. Her hands in my hair grew distracted. Her legs tightened around my head and began to quiver. She gasped, hissed, jammed her cunt in my face. And she came. My mouth was full of saliva, juices. I had to swallow to avoid gagging. I drank her in. Her thighs were slippery with it.

‘Stop stop stop,' she said, tugging at my hair.

I stopped.

I rose up and kissed her mouth.

She kissed back.