Troika (13 page)

T
he litany of indignities that I must suffer in our sex life is sometimes too awful to accept—so awful that I have at times considered putting a permanent end to it. The only thing that prevents me from shutting down completely, from refusing to touch or be touched, is the rare moment when Julian and I are together: when our bodies touch; when the upper half of my body feels his weight; when I forget for a moment, as if I am in a dream, that I cannot move; when I see that look of pleasure on his face; when my ability to bring him to orgasm is a validation that, yes, I am still a woman; when my brain triggers a recollection, an echo of my able-bodied self when I once moved freely above Julian, below him, beside him; when I experience not an orgasm in the traditional sense, but something frustratingly close—a vague sensation above my waist, a tantalizing tingling, a flutter and a spreading warmth like a drop of ink
on white linen. The brain, I guess, rewiring and adapting and trying to give a paralyzed girl just a little bit of pleasure in life.

Julian enters the bedroom at half past nine. He’s been out for dinner with Roger, his buddy from high school with the bad foot, the good heart and a loyalty to Julian that is unshakable. I love Roger. I love anyone who cares for Julian as much as I do. Julian and Roger have been at Clancy’s, their favorite little Irish bar on Second Avenue. Julian doesn’t drink at all, not since the accident, and Roger only has the occasional beer, but they love this place, what with the antique wood bar and the old Paddy from Shannon who pours well vodka into the Stoli bottles, and the antiquated jukebox that plays classics from The Chieftains, The Dubliners, The Wolfe Tones. They’ve got shepherd’s pie there, corned beef and cabbage, even a wild game menu with quail, ostrich, bison and all sorts of weird, wild things that Julian loves. The hunter’s son.

Julian enters the bedroom. He smiles. You good, babe? he asks. I smile in return and, with my left hand, weakly pat the open stretch of mattress by my side. Julian removes his clothing, everything but his boxers. I admire his body—sinewy, lithe, powerful. The body of his youth. Julian sits down next to me. He puts his hand on my shoulder, which is one of the few areas of my body that transmits normal sensation.

In Julian’s eyes, there is a hint of his amorous flash, vital and dangerous, that has stirred me since our first night together. Prior to the accident, there was a certain coarseness to Julian’s otherwise glorious lovemaking—not violent or mechanical or detached, but instead efficient, controlled, determined, as if his sexuality, his technique, were driven not by a need to dominate me, but instead by a need not to be dominated himself, to defy any submission on his part.

Since the accident, Julian’s flash has appeared with less frequency.
But he is more tender now, and the crippling of my body has awoken in Julian a reservoir of compassion, an appreciation of human fragility, an understanding that his aggression could be harnessed, tamed, maybe even a belief in the possibility that one could be safe without dominating the world. Julian now expresses his desire for me in different ways. The playful, painful tug of hair—which had once been my great delight—has been replaced by the gentle stroking of my scalp. Instead of the pinch of my nipple, Julian now runs his tongue delicately across my breasts. And rather than a quick slap on my bottom, there is the long, deep therapeutic massage that stimulates the flow of blood in my partially immobilized body.

“What do you think?” Julian asks.

“About what?”

“About trying tonight?”

“Tonight?” I reply, alarmed by the immediacy of this proposed intimacy.

“We could,” he says reassuringly. “It’s been a while. But no pressure if you’re not up for it.”

I struggle to recall our last attempt at intercourse. “How long?” I ask. “How long has it been?”

“Not sure exactly. Five, maybe six months.”

I cringe at the length of our dry spell. I pause and consider the preparation that will be involved. I consider the potential pleasure of the act, the possibility of achieving a greater closeness with Julian, the look on his face as he comes inside me, the twist of his mouth, his post-ejaculatory daze, his surrender, his collapse, the full weight of his body supported by mine: all beautiful images that evoke in me not a
current
desire to fuck Julian, to make love to Julian, but rather a desire that is vestigial, a wistful longing for a complete romance that is not missing its most essential element.

“You do know how long it takes me to get ready,” I say.

“An hour?”

“About.”

“I can wait all night.”

I sigh and brace myself for what comes next. “Okay, have Norma come in.”

Julian kisses me on the forehead. Since the accident, I find this gesture to be patronizing, as if I am either infantile or elderly. Almost immediately upon Julian’s departure from the room, Norma enters.

“Yes, Mum, you ready for bed?” she asks, unaware of our intentions.

I pause, embarrassed. We’ve been through this a few times, Norma and I. And while it’s always awkward for me, it arouses in Norma an adolescent jubilation, as if she is back in Trinidad preparing for her first date with the shy boy she met at a church dinner.

Norma accurately interprets my pause. She smiles to ease my discomfort. From the cabinet next to the bed, she removes a pair of rubber gloves. She shakes them, snaps them over her hands, then removes a suppository—bullet-shaped and waxy—and a tube of petroleum jelly. She squeezes out a glob of jelly and coats the suppository, gently turning me on my side.

“I normally don’t do this on the first date,” she says.

“This isn’t our first date,” I reply.

She reaches between my legs, nothing more than two floppy ropes, and inserts the suppository into my anus. I wince, not from the pain of the insertion, as that I cannot feel. I wince from the indignity.

“How long does it take? I forget.”

“When was your last movement?”

“Midday. Around three.”

“Then no more than an hour, Mum. Then we’ll get you all cleaned up.”

Paralysis raises numerous issues when it comes to sex, the most repugnant being one’s inability to control bowels and bladder. For how quickly the inadvertent release of feces or urine can extinguish the roaring libido!

Norma guides me on to my back. She taps the urine bag that is strapped to my midsection. “Half-full,” she says. “Maybe three-quarters.”

“How’s the color?” I ask.

“All good, Mum, not too dark. Perfect color.”

She rubs her gloved hands together, warms them up, and then pushes slowly down on my bladder.

“Anything?” I ask.

“Yes, Mum, it’s filling up now.” Norma watches as the bag swells with urine. “I think that’s it,” she says, removing the bag by twisting a plastic seal that connects to the catheter tube. Norma wraps a diaper around my waist and tapes it up, careful that it does not tug at the dangling tube. “I can stay here with you, Mum. Or come back when it starts to work.”

“Best to come back, Norma.”

She nods and lowers the lights. “I’ll make sure Mr. Pravdin doesn’t come in until we’re finished. Keep that man at a distance until you all fresh and pretty.”

I stare at the ceiling and wait for the rumbling sensation in my bowels. I snapped the cord clear through, so waist-down I’ve got nothing. Then there’s a few inches above the waist, a narrow, transitional band where I’ve got some feeling, then above that there’s normal feeling, and in some places it is even super-normal.

From the bathroom in the hall, I hear Julian in the shower. He is
engaged in his own pre-sex ritual. I hear him humming out of tune. He’s the only man I ever met who is so tone-deaf he can’t even hum right. Several minutes later, Julian turns the shower off. He moves to the sink, indicated by the tapping of his razor on the marble counter. I know from experience, from listening to his rote ablutions for so many years, that he will shave quickly. Another minute passes and the sink is off.

I close my eyes and imagine him now. He takes a small towel from the rack and wipes his face, clears off the remaining dollops of shaving cream. He moves closer to the mirror. He examines his face. He wonders what it is about this face, with its odd angles and the crooked nose and the scar across his right cheekbone—a busy face—that has such a powerful effect on people. He shrugs his shoulders.

I feel a movement in my midsection, the suppository softening my stool, causing my bowels to contract, expand, contract—and forcing the feces downward through my rectum and then outward, toward the light. My body expelling excrement is one of the few sensual pleasures that remain. I don’t get the full experience, though. There’s no feeling of climax when the shit squeezes through those final inches and leaves my body. But there is movement within the intestines that I do experience and, when it is finally expelled, a feeling of lightness and detoxification that I enjoy.

I know that the process is complete only when the smell becomes detectable. My diapers could be filled with five pounds of shit, but if by some miracle it were odorless I would have no idea that I’d soiled myself. No idea. It is only the smell that alerts me.

I call for Norma by pressing a button on the side of the bed. Norma knocks before entering, a gracious, subtle adherence to etiquette that in some odd way helps preserve my dignity.

“Come in, Norma.”

“How you feeling, Mum? Ready for a wash?”

I nod affirmatively as Norma rolls the rubberized mattress next to the bed. The mattress is part of a customized, all-purpose bathing unit that has stainless steel channels and protective rails running around all four sides, hot and cold water dials, a shower nozzle, a small rack for soap, shampoo, sponges and scented lotions.

Norma drops the side rail closest to the bed. “Come here, Mum.” She places her hands under my arms and slides me, top half first, over onto the bathing cart. Slipping one arm under my hips and the other under my knees, as if I am some tragic, beached mermaid, she guides my lower half on to the cart so that I am now perfectly aligned. “You okay?”

“All good,” I say. Norma removes my diaper, taking a quick peek before disposing it in a sealed container by the bed. “How much?”

“Tons, Mum. No need to worry when you with Mr. Pravdin. There can’t be a speck left in you.”

Norma lights a long wooden match and touches the wicks of the six Cire Trudon candles that fill the room—and have since I first returned home from the hospital. The candles, citric and woody, hide the smells that my body emits. And as if we are in some Eastern temple, the candles have the effect of ritualizing this cleansing. She turns the dials, hot and cold, and tests the water first with her hands, and then—because my lower half has no pain receptors—she checks again with a thermometer. Satisfied, she removes a sterile sponge from a package, soaks it in water and then squirts on some antibacterial soap.

Norma starts with my feet. I look down to see her cradle my left leg, holding my heel in her meaty palm. She tenderly spreads my toes, glides the sponge between them; then, up over my ankle, my calf, under my knee, my upper leg. She repeats the same procedure on my right leg.

Once Norma is finished with my legs, she soaks the sponge,
squeezes it out, soaks it again, then applies more soap. She rolls me onto my side so that I am facing her. She lifts my left leg, which, given its dead weight, requires considerable effort on her part. She guides the soapy sponge between my buttocks, cleans out the remaining feces. Several times, she cleans the sponge with water and applies soap. She returns to my buttocks, the area between, until she is satisfied with the results. And then, with the quick flick of her foot on the bin pedal, she disposes of the sponge.

Norma removes a new sponge from the rack, douses it and applies not the antibacterial soap but a mild soap designed for babies. She moves to my vagina—that sacred space that once offered me both a narcotic escape and the promise of children, but that now offers only a sickening reminder of my fallowness, a dry crusty hole.

She works her way inside, cleaning me, careful not to abrade the tissue within. When she has finished, she again discards the sponge and moves on to a new one.

“The worst is over, Mum.”

“For you or for me?” I ask.

“There’s no worst for me. It’s God’s work, a privilege. I should be paying you.”

“That can be arranged.”

Norma laughs and returns me to a supine position. She runs the sponge over my lower belly, along that narrow band where the sensation begins. She cleans out my belly button, moving upward—and I brace for what comes next.

The best way I can describe the change in my sensitivity since the accident is as follows. Let’s say that when I was healthy, I had one million sensory receptors on my entire body: from my scalp to the soles of my feet. Now, that’s not the real number, it’s just for illustration. After the accident, what happened is that the, say, half-million receptors that had been allocated to the region below my
waist—my feet, my legs, my hips and vagina—were not eliminated; rather, they seem to have been relocated upward, so that my upper body now has twice as much sensitivity as before.

But it is not as if these half million additional receptors were spread out evenly over my upper half like some pointillist creating richer detail in a painting. Rather, while some of them are placed between existing receptors, thus reducing the distance between point A and point B, the vast majority have been placed
on top of
existing receptors, stacked like poker chips, amplifying the sense of touch. Some areas, like the belly button, are stacked two or three high, thus creating a heightened sensitivity that is only marginally more enjoyable than before. But there are some areas, why they were chosen I do not know, that seem to be stacked as high as the ceiling. The receptors on my breasts are ten high, a thousand percent increase over my prior self. My nipples, twenty high. And here’s the strangest of all. My ears—the lobes, the flesh just outside the canal, the ridge—a good thirty high. So high that my ears have become sensualized, almost sexualized.