by Coco Houston
June
At the beginning of the month, I still sit in the sun most days, writing my manuscript. The other little dogs come and go as the heat is too much for them. But little Versace lies at my feet and both of us would be there in the garden from dawn to dusk. My skin is a gorgeous sun-kissed colour of deep rich wood as the sun tans me while I sit writing with Versace; those hours we spend together are so precious, in fact priceless to me, I think they are worth so more to me than this book, if it ever makes it.
20th June
The Midsummer Sabbat Solstice, sometimes known as Litha, pronounced Lith-a which is another celebration on the witch’s calendar, we celebrate the light and honour the sun, between the 19th and the 25th. We make flower crowns and we hold fire rituals at night, building bonfires and dancing. We also decorate our altar with summer fruits and flowers, and leave candles burning all day long. We make lavender cookies for love, protection, purification, peace and happiness. Oat cookies with lemon zest for love and friendship and vanilla ones for lust and love. This is the longest day and the shortest night and is the time to celebrate the completion of the cycle that began with winter solstice. There are also so many different ways to celebrate this time, dates and days may also change due to calendar year. I don’t see Brad tonight, he is at work. Thank fuck. I just do all my witchy stuff quite happily wondering if he loves me. Do I love him? Music box. The real love I know is what I feel for my children and my little dogs. Later I cleanse myself and wash away negativity, moisturise as I renew myself with a charge to improve my life. I am therefore creating beauty in soft skin and mostly promising myself to stop reaching for moon dust because most days, all I am getting is sand from the beach in my ass.
22nd June
We go to Port Patrick for a night out. We have dinner at an exclusive hotel at the harbour. The food is amazing, I have duck in blackberry sauce and the wine is a rich dark fruity red, which compliments the dish perfectly. Brad has fish and white wine. We meet up with friends who are on holiday there for the weekend. We have a lovely evening, going in and out of all the different small bars which sat along the front promenade for a drink. We listen to the live bands playing modern and Celtic music.
Afterwards back at our hotel, Brad starts an argument with me, which leads to him slapping my face hard. I tell him to get out of the hotel room, which he does. He sits in the jeep for a while then he returns to the hotel by the time I have removed my make-up. I am in a silk chemise making coffee in the corner of the suite when he enters through the room door. He apologises as I look at him, I say nothing. I know I am in an abusive relationship that now would never change. He would never change. I would have to either get out of the relationship or live with it and him for what it truly was, the decision was mine and mine alone to make. I turn away from him, he comes to bed; as he tries to hold me in the darkness, and I pull away. Later I wake up cuddled up into him; I get out of bed making more coffee while he sleeps. I sit in the cool room by the window overlooking the bay, as I watch the sun come up on the horizon, I know and I admit at last to myself that my friends in my head are right for sure, I am fucked and this relationship is as fucked as me because I cannot live with him or begin to imagine what it would be like to live without him.
The next five days are perfect and full of blissful love as Brad pampers me with presents and is so sorry and treats me like a princess once again. It won’t last though, I know that. I sit in the sun writing some more as wee Versace is as always by my side. He listens to me as I talk away to him, I tell him all about my life and he looks up at me as I explain my dreams. I pick him up, his fur is so warm as I whisper to him that the relationship I have with his daddy is so destructive, so harmful, but like an addiction I keep on living it but then I ask him, for how long? He looks at me with dark brown eyes as tears run down my face; he licks them to comfort me. I smile as the friends in my head answer the question. They say it will be for as long as you want to, Coco, for as long as you want.
By the end of June though the tide is turning again, well, just a little at first. The problems start again, although not too serious at this point as they are just more stupid arguments about particularly nothing which end usually with us making love. This pattern continues. We are back in the position I call Mr and Mrs Blake, as in the movie where husband and wife fight all over the house, then make love as the same. Well, that is fast becoming our routine. At times when I fight with him, it feels like I am sleeping with the enemy but the romantic evenings and lovemaking we share outweigh for now all the other shit. We are just so explosive together, like a hurricane meets volcano. I sing made-up song lyrics to him, “I am gonna put a spell on you, then watch you burn,” as I crawl naked up the bed onto him after yet again another pointless row. Never on an even keel, we would be either deeply in love or happily cut each other’s throats. I just continue to sing, “Make love to you under my spell, then watch you burn as in hell.” My song is so appropriate in comparison to my life with him. I love him then I hate him. Music box. He loves me? He loves me not?
Though to be fair, in general in our own sadistic way, we are happy I suppose because when it is good between us it is brilliant, but when it is bad it is fucking awful.
July
July had arrived, keeping the warm weather. We share a lot of ritual sex acts, which as a witch I perform on him, also with him. During the long afternoons of that time, we make love in secluded woods amongst the long grass. We go for naked picnics there together, feeding each other the food then drinking wine from the bottles before pouring it over each other’s body, followed by licking it off and fucking each other roughly, wildly under the hot sun.
I book dinner for two at an exclusive hotel in a very historic part of town. I also book a room to stay overnight and request that the bed is made up with my own new purple satin sheets, which I supply. The hotel staff willingly do so. He is asked to come dressed in his white shirt to meet me there. He arrives to find me not waiting in the lobby as was planned. He phones me on his mobile phone asking where I am. I tell him to come up to room one. He enters to find me wearing black underwear and a black and white silk robe. I blindfold him with black silk knickers then with him only wearing his white shirt he is sat on the edge of the bed and fed jellybeans. I remove the blindfold whereupon he thinks it is party time. Oh really! Then I get him to lie on the bed, I strip off the robe, taking the silk belt off my robe and put it beside him. I walk away from him in underwear casting a spell with my wand, I make the black and white silk belt move, wrapping itself ’round his wrists, tying him up. He is terrified. I put on high heels now with my long black and purple silk lined witch robe followed with the lightening of my vampire candles of red and black wax. Little does he know that dinner is not on the fucking menu. Whilst he is still wearing his white shirt, I unbutton it then drip the hot candle wax on his chest. I then tie him to the bed as he watches me walk around chanting spells, swishing my robe back and forth, thus showing off my black expensive lace and velvet top stockings. I untie him whilst keeping my underwear on, I refuse to make love with him. He sits on the edge of the bed as I lie behind him, I put my hand on his shoulder as I instruct him to leave, just go. I just wanted to punish and hurt him, I guess. He leaves quite upset. He is quite broken actually. Game over. I won. Let him feel what it is like to leave me behind in a hotel room on my terms this time, not his. This is what he has done to me sometimes, as he headed home to his wife after sex, leaving me to spend the night alone in plush surroundings. I was used to it, but that is not the point. Sometimes it hurt me so much, not tonight though. He goes back home to our house alone. I choose to stay myself, go for dinner on my own. I have my photograph taken wearing my beautiful long witch dress whilst standing on the ballroom staircase amidst all the sparkling fairy lights. Then I go back to my room, light candles, enjoy a relaxing bubble bath and happily, not in the least bit feeling guilty, under those soft, silky purple sheets I eat my expensive chocolates with champagne from room serv
ice. Fuck him! Besides it does not bother me being in hotels on my own and I intend to do it again very soon. He phones me a lot during the evening, but I don’t answer him. I sleep peacefully and the next morning after a sensational breakfast, the menu is one of the best, very exclusive choice, bringing in London, showing up some of their top hotels. I have my breakfast afterwards Brad comes to pick me up, the only thing he said was that he hoped I enjoyed my time alone. Which I did, apart from missing my little dogs, a bonus was that I was nearer actually to wee Gucci. I don’t tell him that.
At home though, we still bicker on and off, Brad is still hiding things from me. We are not being honest with each other yet again. I know this is very true on my part plus I am sure it is in Brad’s case too. I hide from him that when he is working nightshift; I still a lot of the time spend the night with Gucci in the barn. He would have gone mad about it, putting a stop to it for my own sake. Not for keeping me safe from my donkey but you could never tell who was wandering about out there at night; I guess he had a right to be concerned; after all he worked in a forensic unit. He could not, however, understand why Gucci did not run biting at me anymore, which I pretended in the car was not an issue. I kind of dismissed it as if it was neither here nor there, treating it casually so he would not catch on to what was going on as I always made sure to be home before he came in from work. I was delighted with my secret still being hidden from him even more so that Gucci now was my little friend.
Brad and I mostly fight during the daylight, which I find very strange. While at nights behind the closed door, we engage in more unusual sex, still performing evil games using ties with blindfolds on each other, which we use as some kind of restricting yet punishing torture in a form of sex. Using hot candle wax or ice cubes which melt uncomfortably on our bare skin. We play with slimy foods, use objects and sex toys during our lovemaking, which goes on for hours and hours. We live out different sexual fantasies and on doing so we still share ritual cleansing baths before and afterwards. We make love outside in the dark garden in torrential rain where he fucks me in freezing cold showers, naked under the tress, I cast more witchcraft spells, it is as if we are looking for something completely different sexually together, something way beyond human understanding yet we don’t know what or where to find it.
We have a terrible fight near the end of the month which results in him raising his hands to me yet again. I retaliate, slapping him back hard whilst yelling at him to get to hell out. This time he goes without much of a performance. I get drunk on wine, and then falling all over the ship, go to bed. I wake up to find him in bed beside me. He is hard in his sleep, so I roll him over onto his back, I climb on top of him, sitting on his hard-on, just as he wakens up he comes right into me. I kiss him smiling, he whispers back, “Love you, Coco, by the way that was an amazing dream I just had.” So this is us right back too square one. No apology given either way or on any count about the earlier commotion but that is cool with me because I am buying time, only he just doesn’t know it.
The next day comes with me being ill and hung-over with the alcohol, then I am totally devastated and broken beyond Brad’s belief as when I go to visit my donkey, I find he has gone. Just gone, he has disappeared just like that, into mid-air. Gucci is not to be seen anywhere. I search all day and night with him not being found. I can’t find any trace of him at all or even of my quilt. The farmer says when he went into the barn that morning to put him out to the field, it was empty and he assumed I had come and taken him away. Now though the farmer states the obvious that since I do not have him then maybe he has been stolen or has just got lost. Fucking stolen or lost. I am in hysterics, screaming at him and Brad to find him or else. A few days back the same thing had happened to my little dog Versace; he wandered out the gate, and then got lost. I was so distraught, it was unbelievable, I was so frightened he would die or get killed and I would never see him again. I searched for hours, looking for him in shock and hurt, praying so hard I would get him back. I was screaming absolutely terrified in case he didn’t return. He was found safe, and my son brought him home to me. I was delighted beyond words to see his little face as I broke my heart holding him tight into me. Now the little donkey is gone too. I hope he is all right wherever he is. Stunned and shocked, I am numb for days as I wonder about what has happened to him, where he is and I am sure someone has taken him away but why? I search everywhere for him with no results and still with no idea or understanding of what has happened to him.
August
The first of August is ‘Lammas’, it is the celebration of the first grain harvest, a time for gathering in and giving thanks in abundance. I celebrate with the rest of the witches the Sun’s life – giving energy reborn as life giving bread. Thanking the goddess, the Grain Mother all with a heavy heart. I hurt deeply more so, all I really want is Gucci. I don’t make corn dollies, I don’t bake bread. I make spells for Gucci to be found and for him to be well wherever he is.
2nd August
Still I search for my donkey.
I hate this fucking month of the year, although it is my son’s birthday month; it never seems to hold any happiness for me other than that. But this time, this month kind of changes things of the past a little. Brad and I share so much happiness despite all the sadness on losing Gucci. I will never forget this year, I shall remember for as long as I live the love we shared the August of this summer.
The weather stayed humid while Brad and I made love in the river under a waterfall, which was an amazing experience. He built a den in the woods, pretending to be my Robin Hood, and we stayed in it all night making love, looking up at the sky, making wishes in the stars. I spoke to our ancestors beyond the night sky, asking them to grant my wishes of keeping us all safe and well. I asked them that night to bless Versace, keeping him in the gate, to look after all my other little dogs keeping them well and to make sure Gucci was happy and safe wherever he was. I called it the ‘fairy den’ as Brad had decorated it with flowers, rose petals and solar fairy lights. He had wine, chocolates and perfume waiting for me in this little tumbling down homemade house in the woods. I wore the pretty pure white underwear he bought me as we slow-danced under the moon. It was so romantic the way he removed it from me, kissing me all over, and then when I was totally naked, he laid me on the forest floor, entering me with such passion, we both came together so quickly. We walked in the woods at midnight laughing as he tries to scare me in the dark, pretending to be the shagging monster that was going to get me, shag me all night, and then eat me. In the blackness of the forest we went singing and dancing through the trees before screaming in fun, pushing each other into the freezing cold river. Fuck knows what the forest would have said that night if it could have talked, I smiled to myself. I wished we could have stayed like that forever, in the den, in the woodland just me and Brad with my little dogs.
The next day and night, however, I spent yet again searching heartbroken for my donkey. I found nothing.
It was this month that we shared what I called the Strawberry Summer Nights, where all the food and wine was strawberry flavoured and together we bathed in baths full of strawberry-scented bubbles. It was on those special nights that I wore sensational sexy underwear in shades of pink as we made love at least three times a night under strawberry-coloured sheets. Some of those hot August days we made love in the sea at little private beach we found and claimed as our own. We called it Coco Beach. We camped out there at night in a tent on many occasions, where we lit a bonfire burning the driftwood, and then we would make love again by the fire on the sand or at the edge of the sea as the waves rolled in over us. We drank wine and toasted marshmallows on the embers of the dying fire as we sat hand in hand, planning our future together, watching the sun coming up on the horizon. It was perfect.