Authors: Nikki Gemmell
With My Body (22 page)
Now you’re on top—‘Throw back your head,’ he commands as his eyes eat your body up.
‘Keep laughing,’ he commands. ‘That’s it,
glorious
.’ You feel empowered, strong, lit.
‘Love that body God has given you, all its miraculous gifts,’ he commands, ‘what it can do, what it’s changing you into.’ As you do, you realise the great secret: an enjoyment of sex isn’t about technique, or cleavage, or a perfect body.
It’s about confidence.
The perpetual dread and danger of exposure
Returning, always returning. Because he has burnished your days with light. Your emboldened back as you walk down the corridor of your house, as you roam the aisles of the supermarket. You’re sure everyone must know,
something
; it is in your eyes, your shoulders, your new height, spark. Love, you now know, is the supreme propulsion of life—the great repairer, rescuer, uplifter. You feel sexy, sexier than ever before, you are turning into someone else.
He says you have the most beautiful innocence, a radiance. He loves your passion for life, for living, he says it shines from you and is in awe of it. He says you have an absence of cynicism, you’re not afraid to lower yourself with enthusiasm and some people think that’s a weakness—like a smile or an apology—but he doesn’t. He loves that you don’t wear perfume. The smell of the earth in your skin, your hair. Under your arms, between your legs. He wants you to love your body, to know it, to not be afraid of it. He says you must never lose your sense of ludic, a word he loves, your playfulness, your spark. You must never be pushed to the side of your life, from the core of who you are, you must never let a man do that.
He could never do anything to hurt you, he pledges, doesn’t
want to push you, needs you. You cannot sleep properly, cannot eat properly. You keep running to the toilet, diarrhoea, can’t stop smiling, staring into space, lost. You fly on your bike and then fling it aside in its ditch and run up his road; never quite sure if he’ll be there, jittery, craving. Turning your head at his gate as you whizz past in the car—always checking—that it’s not stopped, this secret Woondala life, that it will never stop.
You will do anything for him now to keep that gate ajar, you are bewitched. He has whispered of collars, of handcuffs, other people, men, women …
let’s see how far we can take this
. You do not know what is next. You want it. You trust him. You are ready to be laid bare, stripped.
Ready, at last, for the next step.
As you walk away on a sun-smeared afternoon there’s an enormous joyous raucous shriek: a white cockatoo—then twenty, maybe thirty—before you, all around you, playing. Landing on the roof and the falling fences and flimsy tree branches that don’t quite support their weight, flopping upside down, clinging to the rocking branches and working their wings, squawking and playing and squabbling and you laugh out loud, at all of it, all, its joyously screechy fabulous magnificence. Seizing life, seizing all of this. You sit in the middle of the dust and extract your battered little book.
I am becoming known. I have found the courage. I am ready. I trust.
Perhaps she makes a pride, and her husband a joke, of her charming ignorance in common things
But then other days: a souring. A falling away. No, not today, you just want to read a newspaper, rest, in stillness and laziness; put it all aside like the richest of chocolate cakes you have gorged upon too much.
And then.
The whisper behind your ear.
‘I want to do so many things with you. Before it’s too late.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Explore.’
He turns you around, he kisses you tenderly, once.
‘Please,’ he says. ‘Will you let me,’ he says. ‘For a lot of women experimental sex is associated with pain. Coercion. Fear.’ His lips, a flutter of a butterfly against your ear. ‘But it doesn’t have to be like that. It can be a gate opening to an entire other world of … bliss. If you want it. Enough.’
You say nothing. You give him nothing. You squeeze your legs on your bareness. Gasp, just.
The grand and meticulous experiment.
Ladies, ’tis worth a grave thought—what would the most of you leave behind you when you die? Much embroidery, doubtless, various pleasant, kindly, illegible letters; a moderate store of good deeds and a cartload of good intentions. Nothing else—save your name on a tombstone, or lingering for a few more years in family or friendly memory.
He brings out a small leather suitcase.
‘We’ve only just begun,’ he smiles. ‘But it all, of course, has to be on one condition: everything we do is of your own free will.’ You nod. ‘Just remember that pleasure is all about surrendering ourselves, and accepting pleasure is a big leap for a lot of people. No one’s born a lover—we all have to learn.’
‘Even you?’ You tease.
‘Oh yes. Me most of all.’
He opens his suitcase. Takes out a blindfold. The softest velvet, as black as midnight. He ties it around you; his cock in readiness, firm into your back. Gently, so gently, he turns you around. He slips something flat and heavy into your hands.
A book.
The surprise of it.
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise.
Written eight hundred years ago.
‘Don’t return to this house until you’ve read it. Until you’re ready for the next step. They were medieval lovers. And this is to show you that these things have always been done, and
will
always be done. If you dare. If you want it.’ His voice drops to a whisper. ‘And I think you do.’ He kisses you on the lips, once, the moth’s kiss. ‘With someone you trust … ’
Late, at home, you devour the words, hidden under your blanket as if not even the walls or the night air can bear witness to what you are reading; midges hovering and you slam the book shut on them as you come—your fingers between your legs—and come, with anticipation.
Our desires left no stage of lovemaking untried, and if love could devise something new, we welcomed it. We entered on each joy the more eagerly because of our previous inexperience and were all the less easily sated.
The key word: joy.
Those two deeply religious, searingly intelligent people were having a huge amount of fun.
JOY.
Written in your notebook, in readiness.
You are a foreigner in his country, a child in his nursery; all is new, wondrous.
You are ready.
For anything.
Because you are doing this to learn.
It is, after all, what you asked for in the first place.
‘ … he forgets his mother and his brothers and all his comrades, couldn’t care less if his property is lost through neglect, and, in disdain of all those proprieties and decorums whose beauty he once cherished, he is ready to be a slave, to sleep anywhere he is allowed, as close as possible to his desire.’
Socrates
Women’s work is, in this age, if undefined almost unlimited, when the woman herself so chooses
He is ordered, he is ready. Before the two of you can proceed there are two things you must know.
‘I want you.
You
.
No one
else. Believe it. And secondly, stop worrying. About everything.’ He taps your head, his voice lowers. ‘Trust me.’
The softness of his cheek against yours.
You have been reading, preparing, priming, learning. For this moment, the next step. You no longer angle yourself during sex as if you’re viewing the scene from the ceiling, no longer direct yourself into the most flattering positions. You’ve learnt to accept your body, with all its faults, don’t care what you look like.
‘I just don’t notice, alright,’ he’s admonished more than once. ‘I’d much prefer you relaxed.’
You nuzzle in gratitude, breathing him in deep, and you open your body wide, wider to him, wanting to offer yourself for his pleasure and his alone, wanting to snare him forever with infinite sex.
And lo and behold, you feel more womanly than ever before.
He is right.
You are ready.
Thrumming with it.
The day is stretching into lengthening light, soon you must go. He asks you to stand. Naked, still. He says he wants to prepare you for next time. When it will start. Give you a little taste.
He slithers off the silken grey ribbon from its black box, kneels, slips it around your waist like a tailor at a dummy and ties it just above your belly button, in a bow.
A present, to be unwrapped.
‘Close your eyes,’ he whispers.
The long trails of the satin are teased over your bareness, goosebumps spring to life under their coldness. Gently, so gently, he instructs.
‘Now put on your clothes and pedal away tall, on your bike, and imagine all that is ahead. In two days. Don’t undo this ribbon until you’re home. Think of everything we’ve learnt so far. Anticipation. Secrecy. Imagination. Surrender. Trust.’
He kisses your lids, first one, then the other.
‘Love.’
The moth’s breath against your ear.
‘Restraint … ’
The trails of satin whisper between your thighs.
‘And release.’
‘To know’ gradually becomes a necessity, an exquisite delight
It is the weekend. Two days—two churning days—of waiting ahead. You’re like a horse straining at the starting gate, kicking out strong in your box.
You drive past Woondala with your father.
The gates are locked.
Locked
.
Your head whips back.
‘What’s up? You alright?’
‘Nothin’.’
But your groin. Squeezing in want as it bears down on the car seat. Still feeling those slices of satin lingering, teasing, electrifying; long after they’ve gone.
What you have learnt:
We love the things we are not meant to.
What you have learnt:
Love is a restless absence.
What you have learnt:
You shouldn’t be doing this.
What you have learnt:
You are enslaved, you can’t stop.
Published or unpublished, this woman’s life is a godly chronicle
‘I need your notebook.’ First thing he says.
‘Why?’
‘I have to write something down.’ He smiles. ‘One last time.’
‘But it’s all
my
notes now.’ You hold it protectively at your chest. ‘I don’t want you seeing it anymore. Anyone … ’
He laughs. ‘Give me my page,
you
. I’m not looking at anything else. Trust me.’
Reluctantly you hand it across; he turns obediently to the back.
‘Just one more thing, alright. To mark the next stage, to frame it.’ He looks up; a roguish smile.
RELEASE
Ted Hughes wrote in the foreword to Sylvia Plath’s journal that even though he spent every day with her for six years, and was rarely apart from her in that time, he never really saw her show her real self to anybody.
Including him. Ever.
‘I think we can improve on that.’
You bite your lip.
A nervousness has stumbled into your love.
To many, truth comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years
‘But do you really love me?’
The guarantee that is needed to proceed.
‘Yes yes, come on.’
You’re holding back. ‘Sometimes, I don’t know, I think you’re too clever to love anyone. That your type only ever love
so
much.’ You squint and pinch your fingers as if they’re holding a pair of tweezers.
Because he has learnt survival and you have not. Because you fear it.
‘Do you love me, Tol, as much as I love you?’
He hesitates.
‘I don’t know.’ Sincere. Honest. Matter-of-fact.
You stop. Look around. In something like panic. You’ve been colonising his world ever since you set eyes on him and you’re still not convinced that he likes it, enough; are never sure.
‘I could make this such a beautiful home.’ You smile, testing, a game, turning to a wall and sweeping your hand across it.
He doesn’t reply.
‘I
said
—’ you repeat, louder.
He doesn’t reply. He’s making you feel soiled, suddenly, with his silence.
You snap away. Cut the session short.
The piracy of indifference, and you will not stand for it.
Furiously you cycle home, the light dappling the dirt road in zebra shadows like strobe lighting flicking across your eyes as you wonder how this all ends—it won’t, it must.
Feeling as vulnerable as a fontanelle, suddenly, with all this.
There is no anguish like youth’s pain—so total, so hopeless, blotting out earth and heaven, falling down upon the whole being like a stone
For four days you do not go back.
Riddled with frustration, hesitation, doubt; shielding yourself against future hurt. You can’t give him what he wants because you’re not sure he’ll ever give you the equivalent in return. He wants so much from you: your deepest thoughts, your truth; but you don’t have his and suspect you never will. You are not an instrument by which he will work things out here, you will not let him hone his skills on you for something—some
one
—else. Someone in the past or the future or even, God forbid, the present. Who exactly is in the city, waiting, that he’s always running back to? Who’s in his other life?
