The Cheek Perforation Dance

by Sean Thomas

  — Hi Becs

  His smile is cold. His eyes, frozen, hard; sparkly …

  — Meet the band – Says Patrick, wafting a hand to indicate a group of languid-looking Indian guys in flared jeans and orange shirts, who are sitting on a dilapidated leather sofa. Patrick turns his head between the band and Rebecca, and says in an introducing-you tone:

  — Bird, band – Turning – Band, bird …

  The only member of the band not wearing make-up says:

  — Nice to meet you, bird

  Patrick chuckles at this and shrugs apologetically at Rebecca, then one of the band members says:

  — Patch don’t do all the fucking hooter

  — I won’t I won’t

  — C’mon, share it out

  — Calm down, hoovernose

  Rebecca notices that the band members are laughing, in a sycophantic way, in a sucking-up-to-Patch way. Angered by this, delighted, disdainful, envious, feeling like she now really needs a drink, Rebecca gazes awkwardly and self-consciously at her boyfriend. Patrick is swabbing his finger once more across the top of the fridge; this time without looking. After absent-mindedly rubbing the fingertip over his upper gum Patrick looks at Rebecca and goes to say something but before he can talk his coketalk she says:

  — Sacha and Murphy are waiting outside could you get them in?

  Offering the ceiling a pained expression, Patrick says:

  — Not that Yiddish bum-weasel

  Another band member laughs. Rebecca:

  — Patrick, please

  — Why d’you bring him, the tosser

  — They’re my friends

  — He better behave himself. Only man to fail the Turing test

  — Patch – Rebecca is getting very embarrassed, and angry, sensing the inquisitive contempt of the irritatingly tanned, annoyingly Asian musicians. She senses them assessing her legs, sneering at her clothes, and wondering why precisely she lets Patrick treat her like this. God, Rebecca exhales, musicians. Even their saxophones annoy her: sitting there, glittering. Who do they think they are, musos, with their plectrums and drum machines and argot and endless streams of compliant women watching them do nothing?

  — OK. Wait here

  Taken aback, Rebecca feels Patrick brush past her; for a second she smells his sweat mixed with antiperspirant; then he is gone.

  So now?

  Apprehensive, Rebecca sits on the edge of the leather sofa and tries to engage the band in chat. Again she senses their ardent disapproval of her: of her Hampsteady uncoolness, her rich girl uncredibility, her intellectual, postgrad, unstreetsmart, wrong-clothes-wearing heiressness. Not for the first time in Patrick’s circle Rebecca feels she will never be part of Patrick’s circle; not for the first time in her time in Patrick’s circle Rebecca wishes she had an eyebrow stud and a small sarcastic tattoo on her shoulder and no money and a pretty obvious drug habit. So maybe she should do drugs? She has never done drugs. So do some drugs?

  Abandoning the attempt to converse with the coked-up, laughing, joint-rolling members of the band Rebecca opens the fridge and grabs at the first thing she sees: a half-bottle of vodka. Unscrewing this and taking a big cold shot, she wipes her lips with a bare forearm and then pushes her way out of the dressing room and makes her fighting, angry, defiant, vodka-chugging way to the door of the hugely booming nightclub. On the way she spots Patrick’s colleague, Patrick’s PA, Patrick’s accountant. She is surrounded. She is in enemy territory. Oppressed and hemmed in and made to feel claustrophobic by the Patrickness of her environs Rebecca takes two more largeish nips from the icy vodka half-bottle, and goes for the door. Before she can get there she finds herself standing by Murphy, Sacha, Patrick and Joe, who are all by the bar drinking from blue bottles of Indian beer as Patrick uses a beer-bottle-holding hand to point a finger at Sacha:

  — Let’s play a game

  Sacha replies, a tone in his voice:

  — Please, feel free

  — OK – Patch burps, and winks at Rebecca; Rebecca notices Murphy is rolling her eyes anxiously in Rebecca’s direction as if to say yes they’re arguing already.

  Patrick is saying – Let’s play Ipswich

  Sacha:

  — Ipswich?

  — Yes, Ipswich: you know how to play that?

  — No

  — Well it goes like this … – Smiling – You fuck off to Ipswich. And stay there

  — You are a genuine … prole, aren’t you

  — My club, my rules

  Rebecca:

  — Please you two, not again

  Murphy says:

  — Come on, Becs, let’s go and dance

  — Why are all Nazis provincials?

  — Is it because she’s sleeping with me, or because you are a git?

  — Oh, Murf, stop them

  — I bet I come back as a marmoset

  — Sorry?

  — When I die

  — What are you on. Joe?

  — Or a tapir

  — Stop them or I’m leaving

  — I’ve got some E you know

  Rebecca, ignoring Joe, says to Murphy:

  — I don’t really need to listen to this

  But Patrick is spitting the words at Sacha:

  — I mean do you believe that if a black guy rapes a white woman that’s a racially provoked crime? Course you don’t, so why is it if a white man hits a black man mm?

  — That’s a ridiculous question

  — The weird thing is I bet you haven’t got any black friends have you? I have

  — Oh shut up both of you

  — Yeah chill your squirrels

  — Joe I want some E

  Rebecca is pulling Joe’s sleeve; saying again:

  — Joe. Some Ecstasy

  — What?

  — Give me one?

  — But … you don’t …

  — So there’s a first time – Rebecca lifts her eyes to Joe’s kind, laughing, good-natured eyes – Anything’s better than listening to those two. Give me an E, please?

  Commanded, Joe filches in his pocket, and pulls out a little screw of cigarette paper. Unscrewing the cigarette paper to reveal two smallish blue pills Joe carefully takes one pill and hands it over. Braving, steeling, girding, Rebecca closes her eyes, knocks back, and chases the pill with a slug of warm Kingfisher. Then she opens her eyes, and rejoins the world, and pushes near, and finds Patrick jabbing an angry hand which Sacha is angrily pushing away. The two of them are going at it. For ten minutes, for twenty minutes, Rebecca stands there dumb and dutiful, listening to the bull sea elephants head-butting each other on the South Georgia strand. Then, exasperated by the crass stupid maleness of it all, Rebecca pulls Murphy by the silky sleeve and they step aside and Murphy says:

  — They’ll never stop

  — Why do they do this every time?

  — You know that the prime age for a man to murder is the same age at which a man is most likely to have a hit single?

  — Thanks, Joe

  — Just thought ya should know

  — Men and Facts, you’re as bad as Patch

  — Like we’re interested

  — Why don’t YOU stop them, Joe?

  Joe shrugs; sinks his beer. Joe looks back at where Patrick is gripping Sacha’s arm. Rebecca sips her beer; feels the bpm of the music from the basement below; running up her calves, running up her spinal cord, making space and feeling in her brain. The music is delicious, a lovely beat. Rebecca feels a little weird. Joe is looking knowingly at Rebecca’s shiny eyes:

  — It’s a quick come-on isn’t it?

  — How can we stop them

  — I know Patch he’ll be … he’ll be

  Too. Too. Very. Rebecca is suddenly feeling very. The music and the beer, the dazzling lights and the blue bottles of beer are very. Rebecca laughs and Joe laughs at Rebecca’s laugh and then Rebecca feels a surge of affection for the bottle of beer in her hand, its lovely sapphire blueness, and the delicious sound of the
music beating, beating. Fucking her from behind. Fucking her from behind? Where did that come from? The thrust of the music is fine. Without consciously willing it, Rebecca finds herself following the music and Joe down to the basement where some different band is playing, brilliantly. Almost joyous, wholly amused, Rebecca starts to dance: to dance to everything. The smoke and the sweat and the joint smoke and the epileptiform lights make her feel very alive, very in love, very much like kissing Joe.

  Touching her own face with her own fingers as she dances Rebecca feels she wants to kiss Joe, the same way she wants to kiss the lights and the music. The music is so good: the way it takes her from behind, makes her spin. Rebecca is dancing so hard she is dizzy but she doesn’t care because she knows the crowd all feel the same, as dizzy and happy as her. Rebecca feels at one with the crowd, she feels like a communist, like a Hitler Youth, like a North Korean, worshipping the music, the despotic dancebeat, the sweet tyranny of this gorgeous dance music, the beat; and then at just the right time as Rebecca feels all this she feels a hand on her back pressing the cold sweet dampness of her dress to her sweating back. Rebecca turns and sees: Patrick. Patrick is grinning and saying ‘Joe told me’ and Rebecca doesn’t know what he means but she likes his teeth, the drumbeat, his mouth, the beat, his dark thick hair. Grateful and happy Rebecca feels Patrick’s mouth close upon hers and she feels his chin stubble and senses her scent on his skin as they kiss, she feels the thumping bassline in her groin and she loves it; her cuntbeat, the cuntbass/cuntdrum, fuckme, fuckme, fuckme

  — Fuck me, Patrick

  But before she can. Theygo. Upstair. Darkness. Corrid. Here the beating music is quieter but still very loud as Patrick pushes a door, and pushes her into a kitchen. Dazed, dancey, gladdened, Rebecca notices by the wet on the windows that it is raining, the rain is running down the window; remembering she loves the rain Rebecca pushes the window open and reaches far out the window so as to feel the rain on her fingers, as at the same time Patrick lifts up her dress from behind and parts her. The rain. The rain. Rebecca licks the rain from her fingers as he opens her up; she presses her palm to the cold wall and her head to the cold window glass, as he enters her, as she thinks about the rain. The rhythm, the bassnote, the cuntbeat. They are having sex against the sink making the cutlery on the draining board bounce up and down, and Rebecca half shuts her eyes and squints at a glass full of knives and forks, an armoury of silver in the rain light, the cuntlight, the drumlight. The metal of the sink unit is cold against Rebecca’s exposed breasts as he pushes her head down into the sink as he does her like the music, does her, drums her, bangs her in time with the delicious music in her head that she now understands oh this drug oh this drug oh yes oh yes

  Patrick. Patrick. Patch. Patc. Half aware Rebecca feels him grab a fistful of her hair and lift her head back up and push her cheek against the cold sweet glass of the windowpane where she counts the rain again; but then no more, no more, NO MORE: newly determined Rebecca pushes back from the sink and she swivels on the man she loves, the man she loved, the man she has always loved, always wanted, always needed; in the sweet, sad, blueglass, nightclub-kitchen half-light Rebecca turns right round and fronts his low blue silent eyes and she says out loud:

  — Hit me

  And this time, this time, this time. This time he raises a hand and backhanded hits her hard right across the face, twice, and again, and almost at once Rebecca feels the stab of pain in her stupid face, the salt of blood in her girlish mouth; and with the shudder of a longed-for surrender she sinks to her cold grateful knees.

  11

  — Is it true you used to ask the defendant to hit you during sex?

  Patrick leans his chin on his thumbs, looks intently at Rebecca as Rebecca pauses, demurs. The judge looks curiously at Rebecca; Rebecca stares to the wall and stays mute; the defence counsel, standing three yards down the desk from the prosecution advocate, smooths a nonexistent goatee and stares directly at Rebecca. Then he says:

  — Would you like me to repeat the question?

  Dressed in her yellow gingham blouse and sensible long grey skirt, Rebecca turns and looks imploringly at the judge; but the judge is taking pains not to notice her. The judge is writing something down in a big notebook; the pale-silver wig bobs as he scribbles. Finally, with an air of hopelessness, Rebecca turns and says, slowly, to Patrick’s defence, to Robert Stefan QC:

  — At times, yes

  — Sorry, Miss Jessel?

  — I said, yes. At times I would ask him … – She sighs; then – To strike me

  — And did he?

  — Yes

  — Always?

  — Sometimes

  — Was it most of the time? Would you say he hit you most of the time? When you made love?

  Rebecca looks like she is trying to think through a puzzle; she frowns intensely and gazes at Stefan’s wig, at the white tie ribbons of his collar, then she says:

  — I suppose we did … I suppose I used to ask him, quite a lot. It was … just … something we did. In bed – Her eyes wander the room and for a second her gaze meets Patrick’s gaze; chilled, shocked, fearful, Patrick averts his face; as he does he sees Rebecca turn back to Stefan; she is listening to Stefan ask another question:

  — So when would this happen?

  — Sorry?

  — When would you ask him to strike you, at which point during your … lovemaking?

  — Uhm

  Stefan is calm; Rebecca is swaying. Then Rebecca seems to get a hold: she says flatly, at the defence counsel:

  — During moments of passion

  — And when he hit you … what kind of blows were these?

  Rebecca looks down:

  — Slaps

  — Hard slaps?

  — Quite hard

  — Never punches, he never used his clenched fist?

  — No, never

  — You’re certain?

  — Yes. I wouldn’t have liked that. That’s not what we were into

  — Of course – A hint of something in Stefan’s voice, a faint harmonic of irony – And how often did this happen Miss Jessel? How often did he … slap you?

  — I don’t remember …

  — You don’t remember how many times you asked him? Or how often you asked him?

  — I don’t remember how many times … A few times. A few times at first. And then he … then he … – Rebecca stops, mid-sentence. Stefan nods, waits; says:

  — And then he got the hang of it? Is that what you mean? That’s when he understood that that’s the kind of … rough sex you liked? Right?

  — … If you want to put it that way

  — And after a few weeks you didn’t have to ask him any more? He’d just do what you liked?

  — Yes. No. I … – Rebecca tilts her head; she levels an assessing stare across the courtroom. Patrick finds himself admiring his ex-girlfriend’s peculiar bravery, despite. Despite the fact he wants to firebomb her house with her inside, the tilt of pride in his truelove’s demeanour leaves him astir; to quell himself Patrick exhales into his praying hands and half shuts his eyes as his ex-girlfriend says – I don’t remember exactly when it was that he first … hit me – Patrick opens his eyes as she goes on – I do remember he liked hitting me. Very much

  — I see. Yes

  — He used to like hitting me and tying me up

  Patrick stares at the royal crest on the wall above the judge’s wig

  — He got off on it …

  The crest; the unicorn; Honi Soit.

  — It used to worry me sometimes of course how he liked it

  At last Stefan says:

  — And it was … always like this, even on the night in question?

  — Uhn?

  Rebecca has gone mute, a nonplussed expression blanks her face. The defence counsel adjusts his wig, straightens his gown, refines his question. As the lawyer questions Rebecca about some stuff, about the alleged incident, Patrick finds himself looking at Rebecca’s fingers
wrapped around the sill of the witness box. Despite his best efforts to concentrate on Rebecca’s evidence, Patrick’s mind is drifting, he is reminded by her fingers of the way she would wrap her fingers around the wooden bedstead of her bed in Hampstead, as he fucked her from behind so hard he could feel in his groin how hard he’d fucked her three days later. Narrowing his eyes Patrick purges these images: instead he checks the actual whiteness of Rebecca’s knuckles; as he does he flinches to see the sparkle of a ring on the slender middle finger of Rebecca’s right hand. It is a ring he once gave her; it looks like the silver and turquoise ring from Mexico. His own hands tucked under the biceps of his tightly crossed arms, Patrick hunches forward, thinking, thinking, remembering the ring …

  Then he hears Rebecca’s testimony:

  — He was punching me, hard

  Stefan:

  — And this was different?

  — Yes. Totally. They weren’t slaps, he wasn’t … playing. He was knocking me around, like a puppet … He was drunk, it was … frightening

  Stefan nods, as if fully expecting this testimony. Patrick finds himself approving his brief’s court performance: nice and professional. Patrick thinks, urges: nice and professional. In his seat Patrick sits stiffly and watches as Stefan makes delaying noises.

  — Now. Yyyyesss – Stefan lets a limp hand shift some papers on his desk. Sliding sheets of paper languidly, one over the other, Stefan pauses and seems to think, then he looks up at Rebecca:

  — I know we’ve been over it in some detail already, Miss Jessel, but if I can take you back to the … beginning of the alleged incident? One more time?