With My Body (23 page)
Authors: Nikki Gemmell
Everywhere, now, little barriers are shooting up.
You try to focus on your school work, finally; you’re nearing the end of the holidays and the study’s banking up. You’ve been existing in a golden morass of sex that is slowing you, killing your thinking, you’ve got nothing done. The pleasures of Woondala have been making you weak, interfering with your focus and calm; it’s like a magic spell binding you, swamping you now, snatching your ambition and your strength.
Him, too. You can tell. This is for the best, this being apart, yes. Because something is falling away—sometimes, recently, he hasn’t been looking out on the verandah near enough for you; sometimes you’ve had to wait too long after throwing a pebble at his study window, until finally he emerges as if dragged from his desk.
You, the intrusion.
He’s been lamenting recently that he’s not getting enough done, he’s too distracted, this second book is so difficult; it’s like extracting blood from a stone. Lamenting that he wrote his first book with such an arrogance and an innocence, never knowing if it would be published, but now he has the weight of expectation on him and it’s clogging him up. Lamenting his fear, the writer’s fear, that the urge to think rarely strikes the contented; that he needs the hunger or he will stop.
The wolf-ranginess of the alone. You fear it, that it is deep in him, and it will always win out.
Someone asked Sophocles, ‘How is your sex-life now? Are you still able to have a woman?’
He replied, ‘Hush, man; most gladly indeed am I rid of it all, as though I had escaped from a mad and savage master.’
You wrote the passage down recently while you were waiting for him, flipping through the books by his bed and coming across it. You felt a little whine of frustration blundering between you in that moment, which is growing, now, in this time apart.
Will he break you?
How the heart leaps up to meet a sunshiny face, a merry tongue, an even temper
But then. A great surging within you, you can’t help it, you must go back, can’t not; shuddering deep inside as you cycle up his driveway on the afternoon of day four with one very beautiful art deco tea cup wrapped in newspaper in a Woolworths bag—from your grandmother, she lost the saucer decades ago and says you can have it, to find a match.
You flit by something glinting in the sunshine. Stop, turn your bike around.
A jar, suspended on a single thread of wire wrapped around its neck.
Inside, a note. On red paper so fragile you could almost eat it, melt it on your tongue.
You soak through and permeate the spirit and skin of my days. It is wondrous, torturous, transcendent, crushing, tender, all at once.
The smile plumes inside you like ink through water. Affirmation—and isn’t that, in the end, what we all want. His writing voice is like a hand reaching inside you and holding your heart and never letting it go. You place the jar back onto its knot
of a bark hook and walk on with your bicycle, the slip of paper in your overalls, spreading its warmth like a heated stone tucked into a pocket in the deepest of winters.
Another jar.
Another note.
Green this time, as fragile as the last.
Every conversation I have with you sneaks inspiration upon me. Your honesty, your spark, your enthusiasm for life. I just want to be with you forever, complete and strong, true, moving, growing, binding … my soul mate, my elemental wife.
Another, further on.
The other day I felt as if I had fallen in love with your soul, my feelings were that strong. I am with you. I am always with you. Never forget that.
Another. A scrawl on a eucalyptus leaf.
Your proud, walk tall love!
And gouged deep in the bark of the Scribbly Gum it hangs upon:
‘My spirit so high it was all over the heavens.’
Pound
All of it wrapping you in a gigantic yes.
You drop your bike, you break into a run.
He is waiting on the verandah, sitting on the top step, staring
out, as if he has been doing this for four days and nothing else. He calls out your name when he sees you and there is all the loneliness of the world in that cry and you rush up and hesitantly you feel him, like rare china, scarcely believing.
It is as if he will break with your touch.
When his whole heart and conscience accompanied and sanctified the gift
You bowl into his study without looking back, heart roaring. Take the scraps of coloured paper and the gum leaf from your pocket and open his pot of Clag liquid glue—the glue you used to eat as a child—and stick each torn strip of paper to his wall, one beneath the other, in a ladder of neatness by his typewriter. You varnish them to the old, yellowed newsprint on his wall in a line of permanency he will never forget.
‘What are you doing?’ So quiet behind you that you jump.
‘Trapping them. With you. Forever. Because I can’t have them at home. My dad might find them. And because you need to be reminded of what you’ve written. Every day. Every single day for the rest of your life. You must never forget. Alright?
Any
of this.’
That last sentence raw, urgent, teared-up.
He turns you around. He kisses you. The moth’s first kiss in your trembling.
‘I won’t.’
He lifts you into his arms and carries you to his bedroom, pausing just once, to kiss again, on its threshold.
Human life is so full of pain. The mind instinctively turns where it can get rest, and cheer, and sunshine.
Nothing more life-affirming than this, now, as he is poised above you. Something deeply spiritual in it as he moves, in silence, staring into your eyes. A divinity to it. You know now it is the most exhilarating mystery available to us, as humans. You are communicating on the deepest level—in silence. Both of you cracked into vulnerability and honesty, into light.
You have never felt closer to someone in your life.
‘I can just see us in Grandma’s feather bed with the two kids between us,’ he murmurs in the golden quiet of afterwards, as you lie together in his sheets within an afternoon of soft pattering rain. ‘I’ve never felt that before.’
You roll away and wrap his languid arm around your belly. Something here is turning, softening, the rabbit sex has died today into something quieter, more solid. The sweetness of skin against skin. The stillness and sanctity of no talk.
It has come to this.
Better beg, or hunger, or die in a ditch—than live a day in voluntary unchastity
But away from him, that night, a warning; no it can’t be this, surely not.
An article in a fashion magazine abandoned by your stepmother, about the dangerous allure of first love. That first passion that can whisper through your blood your entire life and become the standard of intensity by which all other partnerships are measured. You sense, that night, a shiver of a truth: that the man in reality will always fall slightly short of the man in your head, the concept of him—that the known will never quite arouse the way the mystery will later, alone. The shock of reality—sour breath, wrinkles, flaccid stomach, dulled teeth—all is forgotten with that precious little bauble of wonder and chuff that you carry to bed with you, every night, into your sleep.
That you love, and are beloved.
There is nothing else in the world that you want.
You have found a love that will be the foundation for your entire sex life to come, you sense this, even now. And God knows if you will ever be able to replicate it—if you are being spoilt for life. Is this Tol’s way of expressing his love? Stamping you with
these memories so that forever onward you will be dissatisfied, disappointed, until you give up; bound by worship and longing for an experience long ago, ruined by it.
You pick up your notebook.
There will never be anyone else.
Year by year the fierce experience of life, through death, circumstance or change, narrows the circle of those who own friendship
By the dam bank, naked in the softness of the mud, he tells you he wants to marry you out here, that it’s like the two of you are welded by the elements, by the land and the water and the air. Yes, you breathe, yes. The sweat and the semen gluing your skin and he suddenly presses in, so fierce, as if he’s trying to extract the life-force from you, thudding his torso against yours and murmuring,
it’s like we were made for each other, we fit
, as you curve into each other,
you keep me alive
; and his cheek is soft against yours as you stare up at the cloud-dotted blue and feel a peace blooming within you, because this is right, you fit. Yes, married out here—by the sky, and the dust, and the air. Anointed by ochre, and light.
‘I’m ready,’ you tell him.
‘Really?’
You nod. Ready for the next step.
We take pleasure in tracing the large workings of all things
That night, in preparation for God knows what, you order your notes. Because you have no idea what you’ll be writing in the notebook next. So, now, a collation of all you have learnt from this summer about what works. For whatever is next.
It is a gift to experience sex with someone you love: For then the pleasure is multiplied thousands of times over, becomes sex full of emotion, the best.
A gift to experience sex with a man who treats lovemaking with reverence: Because with that comes a generosity of spirit—he won’t get you to do anything you don’t like.
A gift to be with a man who is not intimidated by you: Who is not afraid of women.
A gift to be with someone who knows what they’re doing: Whose touch hums; who is assured, gentle, confident. Who cherishes women so that his love for them—and their bodies—illuminates the experience.
A gift to be with a man who will hold a woman, just that, as she comes: Wrap her in his arms, still her shuddering but not intrude upon it, share the experience but not snatch the pleasure from her in that deeply private moment.
A gift to be with a man who is kind: When a man is attentive and considerate, when he listens to what a woman wants, then she’s gone, like a dog rolling over for its tummy to be tickled.
A gift to be with a man who tells you that you’re beautiful: Who instils in you a sense of confidence. Who empowers, not chips away or wears you down.
A gift to be with a man who respects the mind: For some, the best sex they’ve ever had may well be the sex they’ve never had. You can be much better at it by yourself, in your imagination.
A gift to be with a man who coaxes you to break down barriers and enter places you’d never usually explore: But gently, so gently, with tenderness.
You shut your notebook and enfold it across your chest, lying on your back.
Poised.
On the brink of God knows what.
The known face of your girlhood will altogether vanish—nay, is vanished
‘There’s something incredibly erotic about a woman—’ his voice drops into breath, he can barely say it—‘bound.’
A sharp intake of your breath.
‘Hidden,’ he continues. ‘Wrapped. Think of Heloise and Abelard. Unwrapping themselves, all their clothes, their known lives—for each other, no one else. The cheongsam will be waiting in that ditch where you leave your bike. Will you wear it? For me?’
You nod your obeyance.
‘What we’re about to embark upon is a form of bondage … but not as you know it. The best type of bondage can be very life-affirming, relationship-affirming; it requires a heightened level of trust between two people, a willingness.’ He whispers, cheek to cheek. ‘A closeness that doesn’t exist in normal life. Absolute surrender, trust; a communion of equals. Are you ready?’
You nod, your eyes dancing.
He picks up a heavy art book. Flicks through it. You weren’t expecting this. He runs his hands over a picture of the
Mona Lisa
.
‘Look at her. What is this woman’s story? She’s a mass of erotic contradictions. There’s the sober clothes, the demurely folded
hands, but this,
this
—’ his fingers trace her lips—‘the extraordinary smile. This painting is all about sex. Don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ you laugh, seeing it. ‘She’s just done it. Or is thinking of it.’
‘Absolutely. And it’s a big reason, I suspect, why this picture is still so alluring five hundred years on.’
You gaze at the sexual contradiction on the glossy page before you. The hints of a private, supremely confident eroticism behind the sternest of public masks; the sombre clothes, the knowing lips.
‘Reserve and sexuality.’ He looks at you. ‘An explosive combination. My favourite. Never forget that.’ He buttons up your flannelette shirt, right to the collar, and steps back. Nodding.
‘Explosive. ’Til next time, my love.’
You want to crumple to the ground with torment, anticipation, wetness, want; you do not. It is only then you notice the thick rope Tol has taken from the couch, is wrapping around his wrist, pulling taut, jerking it.
